To round out a long week of protesting Bush, the war, IMF, and hurricaines a coalition of cross-genre rockers and rappers are holding a massive free festival down at the Washington Monument on Saturday. Hosted by everyone’s favorite dissident Jello Biafra and featuring acts as diverse as Joan Baez to the Bouncing Souls the Operation Ceasefire concert promises to go down in US protest history as a monumental day.

Or at the very least a great day of free tunes.

The Operation Ceasefire schedule is as follows:

2:05 PM – Machetres
2:30 PM – Living Things
3:18 PM – Joan Baez
3:50 PM – Wayne Kramer and the Bellrays
4:41 PM – Steve Earle
5:31 PM – The Coup
6:23 PM – Sweet Honey in the Rock
7:09 PM – The Evens
7:54 PM – Ted Leo+Pharmacists
8:50 PM – Head Roc
9:37 PM – Thievery Corporation
10:59 PM – Pure Belly Dance
11:27 PM – Bouncing Souls
12:12 AM – Le Tigre
1:00 – Fort Knox Five

If you feel like taking a drive this Saturday to avoid all the protesting and rocking-out on the Mall – you could always hike out to scenic Fredricksburg VA, have some lunch, and take in some of the awesome bands playing at the Wall of Sound Festival.

Unlike Operation Ceasefire this festival doesn’t feature any nationally known acts and it isn’t in protest of the anything, what it does have is some of the best underground shoegazer and noisy-pop bands from up and down the East Coast gathering for a full day of jangly guitar goodness. For more info go here.

Line up and Times for the Fest

01:30pm-02:00pm / Remora
02:10pm-02:50pm / Hotel Yes
03:00pm-03:30pm / Plumerai
03:40pm-04:20pm / Back To Blonde
04:30pm-05:10pm / Skydivers
05:20pm-06:00pm / Kisskill Destroyer
06:10pm-06:40pm / Baby Calendar
06:50pm-07:30pm / The Offering
07:40pm-08:20pm / Grayland
08:30pm-09:10pm / Alcian Blue
09:20pm-10:00pm / The Sad Lives Of The Hollywood Lovers
10:10pm-10:50pm / Ceremony
11:00pm-11:40pm / Stellarscope
11:50pm-12:30am / A Place To Bury Strangers

E Street Cinema is kicking off their new midnight movie series “The GraveYard Shift.” Every Saturday at midnight they wil feature a cool old movie to be introduced by a prominent member of DC’s cultural community. This Saturday the featured movie is the ultra-cool psychadelic gangster filick “Point Blank” being introduced by DC”s finest homegrown crime novelist George Pelencanos! This is doubly cool.

First “Point Blank” starring Lee Marvin is a spectacular movie. Directed in a weird minimalist yet visually intense style by John Boorman, it stars Lee Marvin kicking ass and taking names as Walker a hood out to get his after being double-crossed and losing his money and his gal.

Second the chance to hear George Pelencanos talk about a movie he loves is always a rare treat. Everyone knows his DC based crime novels are some of the best DC fiction going but how many people know how much a film nut this guy is? He is super-passionate about his flicks and was one of the original investors to get none other than the Coen Brothers their start when he helped finance “Raising Arizona” and “Blood Simple” through the old Circle Theaters chain. I’m sure he’s going to do a bang-up entertaining intro to this Boorman classic!

Danger, Danger!

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

These are the shoes that the TSA decided were so dangerous that they had to have “additional screening.” These shoes. The ones I bought for $10 at Target. In the CHILDREN’S section.

Tom and I are headed to Webzine 2005 in San Francisco this weekend, where we’ll be meeting up with Grand Metroblogging Poobahs Sean and Jason, plus bloggers from both LA and San Francisco.

Also in attendance will be Philip Kaplan, who you may remember as Pud of Fuckedcompany.com. OMG. I am about to become a drooling fangirl. A conversation with a coworker:

“Pud from FuckedCompany is going to be there too.”

“No way! You have to get his autograph!”

“I’m going to make Tom take my photo with him!”

“Get him to sign your BOOB!”

“Um, no.”

“You know, you’re not a very good groupie.”

“I know. Tragic.”

Display Only?

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

What happened to “Out of Order” ? I mean, I just don’t get it. There we are, sitting in the Dulles terminal waiting for our Jetblue flight to California, charging our laptops (hint for travelers, all payphone areas at Dulles have at least one grounded 3-prong outlet beneath the payphone banks) and we spot this gem. I got nothing folks, this one is just way too out there for me. What purpose in the world could a payphone have as a display? Look at our pretty yellow handsets! They’re so…YELLOW! You too could have such a delightful yellow hue in your very own home!

What’s goin’ on here, Verizon?

I don’t know how accurate this story is, since it’s from the Internet Movie Database, but I might as well report it anyway. Paris Hilton has been accused of offering alcohol and drugs to teenagers in Baltimore. Baltimore police are investigating claims coming from an episode of The Simple Life: Interns in which Paris offered some teenagers bourbon and pot to help them relax before taping. One of the teens told the police, “She loaded myself and two other underage kids on shots of Jack Daniels to loosen us up for the show.” If the police decide that this wasn’t a joke, Paris could be forced to pay a fine (pocket change) and spend time in jail (yeah, right). If nothing, this will increase our site traffic, thanks to people searching for Paris Hilton.

The National Real Estate Index reports that D.C. is the 13th most expensive U.S. city to rent in. Baltimore is number 17. D.C. rentals cost about $17.54 per square foot; Baltimore’s cost about $13.91. This is compared to New York, which is number 1, with rentals that cost about $26.04 per square foot. Apparently we’re supposed to blame the 2001 recession, which in turn means we can blame terrorists, right?

This summer was a long drought for me when it came to concerts. There were maybe 4 concerts in the DC area I was excited about? Anyway, I can stop complaining about the lack of good shows and start complaining about the log-jam of goodness about to hit our region.

Sept 22 (THU) Alcian Blue, Airiel, Hartfield – Warehouse Next Door
Sept 23 (FRI) Clutch double-set – SONAR – Baltimore
Sept 24 (SAT) Wall of Sound Festival – Fredricksburg VA
Sept 24 (SAT) Operation Cease-fire – National Mall
Sept 27 (TUES) Wolf Eyes – DC9
Sept 28 (WED) Black Rebel Motorcycle Club w/ M. Gardener – 930 Club
Sept 30 (FRI) Pixies – SONAR – Baltimore

Oct 2 (SUN) Helmet – Recher Theater – Towson
Oct 2 (SUN) New Model Army – Black Cat
Oct 3 (MON) Helmet – State Theater – Falls Church
Oct 3 (MON) Raveonettes – Black Cat
Oct 4 (TUES) Khanate – Ottobar – Baltimore
Oct 5 (WED) Gang of Four – SONAR – Baltimore
Oct 12 (WED) Mono w/ Bellini – Talking Head Club – Baltimore
Oct 18 (TUES) Acid Mothers Temple – Ottobar – Baltimore
Oct 22 (SAT) Gwar – 930 Club
Oct 23 (SUN) Alcian Blue – DC9
Oct 25 (TUES) Jello Biafra w/ the Melvins – Black Cat
Oct 25 (TUES) Social Distortion – 930 Club
Oct 26 (WED) Social Distortion – SONAR – Baltimore
Oct 26 (WED) Adult – Ottobar – Baltimore

Nov 18 (FRI) Echo & the Bunnymen – Black Cat
Nov 28 (MON) Front 242 – 930 Club
Dec 9 (FRI) Depeche Mode – Patriot Center

How is one man supposed to cover all of this? Or afford it? Hell, some nights even have two good shows simultaneously! I’d have to be friggin’ Nightcrawler to cover those!

Ah well, it’s gonna be a damn fun Fall concert season!

Just when you thought you were sick of hearing about pandas…

The public might be able to see the new little cubbie before Thanksgiving. The National Zoo plans to give out timed-entry tickets in order to control the crowds. The cub will be named on October 17th.

In other panda news, John Kelly has a great column of fake panda blog entries.

Come ride the waves of feedback at the Warehouse Next Door tonight as local heroes Alcian Blue host two of the best new shoegazer bands out there, Hartfield and Airiel.

Any self-respecting fan of the genre would be insane to miss this rare opportunity to see Hartfield who are visiting all the way from Japan, and Airiel from Chicago who as far as I know have never played DC before.

When you take these two bands and add Alcian Blue to the mix you have the ingredients for a potential world-ending vortex of sound right in our own back yard. So you can either sit at home tonight watching the premiere of ER like a lame-o only to get caught totally off-guard when the sonic blast blows your apartment to bits, or you can be down at the Warehouse Next Door meeting this aural apocalypse head-on*!

(*J&MC fans – see what I did there? wink wink*)

Tix are $7
Doors at 8:30