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Michelle Kingston • February 8, 2012

Did you have any trouble accessing your favorite sites last Wednesday? Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, Wordpress.org, TwitPic, Good Old Games and a couple of handfuls more shut down on Jan. 18 to participate in the largest online protest in history.

You were unable to Google these guys as they blacked out to demonstrate what the future could hold for the internet world if SOPA and PIPA were to be passed.

No, we are not talking about the Middleton sisters, but in fact, two bills that could potentially change the way we surf the net. The Stop Online Piracy Act and its sister, the Protect IP [Intellectual Property] Act, are designed to secure the problem with foreign-based sites selling pirated movies, music and more.

Many have argued that the bills undermine free speech and make it possible for the government to take down any site that includes links to pirated content. They also give the Justice Department more authority to stop U.S. companies from providing funding to the foreign sites. It would also block access by making it impossible to type in web addresses to these sites or by requiring Google and other search engines to disable links to the pirated pages.

The way the House bill is written is so broad that SOPA and PIPA opponents fear that some of the most visited online sites, such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter that rely heavily on content uploaded by users which can then be pirated, could be targeted.

Thanks to our favorite pages turning their lights out, the public was alerted of the seriousness of the bill, showed us all how our lives could potentially be affected, and the bills were tossed to the trash — for now, anyway.

On Jan. 20, Congress shelved the bill. SOPA and PIPA were supposed to be debated and voted on, but after the protest, the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, released a statement explaining that they would be postponed. Pheeew.

Michelle Kingston •

Despite the Controlled Substances Act that makes cultivating, selling and distributing marijuana illegal, the nation’s capital will be welcoming weGrow, a full service hydroponic superstore, in March.
This place is a one-stop shop for everything necessary to start a garden. Commonly referred to as the “Wal-Mart of Weed,” weGrow has the largest showroom of hydroponic equipment sure to help medical marijuana cultivators and indoor harvesters but does not sell actual plants in stores.
“This is a great step forward for medical marijuana patients in Washington, D.C., and nearby states,” Wong said. “WeGrow will be here to work with medical marijuana growers to ensure the safest indoor growing practices are being followed to produce the best quality medicine for patients.”

Under a new D.C. law, doctors in the area can write medical marijuana prescriptions for patients with chronic ailments like cancer and HIV/AIDS. The law also lists 10 sites that will soon be authorized to grow the plant and five distribution centers where the medical marijuana can be picked up by patients.
The weGrow store is set to open its 2,500-square-foot store at 1522 Rhode Island Ave., N.E., near the only Home Depot in D.C. and just a few blocks from the Rhode Island Avenue Metro stop.

Michelle Kingston •

The Trust for the National Mall announced today that it has received a $7.5 million donation from David Rubenstein, Co-Founder of The Carlyle Group. The gift will provide the funding required to repair the Washington Monument, which suffered extensive damage from a 5.8 magnitude earthquake on August 23, 2011.

“David Rubenstein is a true patriot, and we are grateful for his significant and generous contribution to restore the Washington Monument, one of America’s greatest treasures,” said Caroline Cunningham, President of the Trust for the National Mall. “David’s leadership demonstrates how the public/private partnership of the Trust and the National Park Service will successfully drive the restoration and enhancement of the National Mall, home to the hope, history and heroes of the America.”

“America has been very good to me and I am humbled to be able to honor the father of our country in this way,” said Rubenstein. “Reopening the monument as soon as possible will help ensure that many people get to learn about American history and the unique role that George Washington played in the birth and life of our great nation.”

According to a report released by the National Park Service, inspectors found numerous cracked and chipped stones, including six large cracks that extend through the marble exterior of the Monument’s pyramidion, that have left the 127 year-old structure extremely vulnerable. The Monument also suffered missing mortar, the displacement of components of the lightning protection system, and damage to the elevator counter weight frame.

Congress recently allocated $7.5 million to repair the Monument with the expectation that the National Park Service in partnership with the Trust for the National Mall would raise an equal amount in private donations. David Rubenstein’s generous contribution meets that objective.

“Millions of people have seen the dramatic video of chunks of mortar and limestone raining down on visitors in the monument as the quake rocked the east coast last August,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “While no one was hurt, the damage to this iconic obelisk was substantial and it has been closed to the public ever since. Thanks to David’s gift and the support of the American people, the National Park Service will once again welcome visitors to the Washington Monument and share the story of our nation’s first President.”

The National Park Service expects to award a contract to repair the monument by this August; work is expected to take 10-12 months.

The Trust for the National Mall is the official non-profit partner of the National Park Service dedicated to restoring and improving the National Mall. For more information on the Trust for the National Mall and the work that is being done to restore America’s Front Yard, please visit www.nationalmall.org.

Gary Tischler •

Newt Gingrich talks a lot about being a man of big ideas, how he embraces them, gives birth to them and spouts them morning, noon and night.

He ought to come over to Arena Stage and see “Red,” John Logan’s play about the raging, despairing, non-stop talking abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko in crisis, as he takes on a critical mural project and a new assistant.

Talk — and there’s a lot of wonderful, powerful talk — about big ideas. It’s enough to make a politician realize just how small his ideas really are.

“Red,” directed by Robert Falls, the gifted artistic director of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, is a two-character play about Rothko, arguably the star member of the generation of American painters whose abstract expressionist breakthroughs put New York at the center of the art world once defined by Paris.

Rothko, with his huge and mysterious paintings of emotional color fields achieved fame, if not understanding, early, became, along with the erratic Jackson Pollock and his action paintings, a rock star of a movement that was already being threatened by yet another next, new thing, the rising work and fame of pop art stars, such as Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg and others.

When we see Rothko, alone in a chair staring at a canvas, he is arguably one of the most famous living artists in the world. Pop art is on the horizon, and Rothko has taken on, for big money at the time, a commission to create a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the new Seagram Building.

In “Red” — the murals are varations on the color, a kind of combat between dark and light as well — we see Rothko in full with all of his famous imperfections: the grandiosity, the urge not only to talk but to make pronouncements, his famed insecurity and egomania always warring, the contempt for other artists, critics, intellectuals and so on. We see him through him, and through the eyes of a new assistant, a sharply-edged dynamo named Ken, an aspiring artist himself, a fact that Rothko notes and ignores.

Most people, either by reading the program information or just by more than a passing interest in modern art will know that Rothko’s story ends badly — a suicide in his late 60s in 1970, adding the last dose of tragedy and drama to the story of the expressionists. There’s a sense of urgency to the proceedings, especially when he’s talking about Pollock’s possibly suicidal death in a car crash, and in a scene that seems almost horrifically prophetic, paint being mistaken for blood.

What you get here is theater — about art and an artist and the artistic impulse. It’s pretty inventive stuff, high theater and drama as well as high-mindedness, all of it executed at a level of kinetic, intimate physicality.

Looking at these two artists — Ken is a young man who’s embraced the new art, he has a back story of murdered parents — you see a father-son rivalry as Ken, with thin, tensile strength like tough wire, challenges Rothko right where he lives, in his most cherished views of himself as an art-philosopher, a serious beyond serious man. That’s Rothko’s gripe about the pop artists who have achieved fame without being serious, a notion that Warhol for one would find ironically hilarious.

Ken’s continuous challenges seem at first fresh, an affront to a god, but he earns the right by sweating with Rothko, doing everything he wants, sharing his passions. There is no better scene about art in a play than the occasion when the two, like sweaty street rats, set about priming a huge canvas with paint — it’s a choreographed dance, it’s heated, almost desperate and beautiful, it’s almost a mating exercise, not with each other but with the canvas and the paint. It’s a shared moment, an intimate contact with paint which leaves both men splattered, they look like a shaman and his assistant in the dark arts.

Ken’s main and biting attack on Rothko is his betrayal of his own art by taking on a $30,000 commission. Rothko thinks he’s creating a cathedral for his works, an idea at which Ken scoffs. Rothko wants the diners to sit in awe of his work, having lost their appetite for everything else. In the end, Rothko, historically and in this play, gives back the money and won’t have his work in the Four Seasons.

Edward Gero, the long-working Washington actor who seems to be saving his best work for the latter part of his career, gives a bullish, bravura performance, the intellectual as hard-nosed verbal street fighter, defending Nietzche, discussing Apollo, drinking hard, working harder, hardly ever at rest. It’s a great performance matched sharply by Patrick Andrew as Ken. He’s prickly. His skepticism is like a coat of porcupine needles.

The set by designer by Todd Rosenthal is a lived-in, worked-in cathedral, informed and haloed by Rothko’s art and by the sweaty reality of the workaday artist’s studio.

“What do you see?” Rothko asks more than once. “I see red,” Ken says. In the play, we see a lot more. Going to places like the National Gallery of Art or the Phillips Collection in Washington, where you can find Rothko’s haunting work, you might ask yourself a different question: “What do you feel?”

“Red” will be performed in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage through March 11.
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Robert Devaney •

The noon Jan. 30 deadline came and went, as United State Park Police again warned protestors at McPherson Square at 15th and K Streets that camping with overnight sleeping would no longer be allowed. Some have already complied; many appeared ready for a fight and stay in the park overnight.

Photographer Patrick Ryan of SnarkInfested.com reported from the scene: “Occupy D.C. protestors put a giant ‘tent of dreams’ over the equestrian statue of General McPherson in the center of McPherson Square and chanted, ‘Let us sleep so we can dream!’ ”

U.S. Park Police spokesman, Sgt. David Schlosser said that Occupy D.C. protestors on McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza had been made aware of camping regulations but gave no hard schedule for arresting any die-hards violating the deadline.

On Monday, no arrests had been made as of 3 p.m. The so-called showdown seemed to have mellowed and been deferred. U.S. Civil War Major General James Birdseye McPherson, whose equestrian statue was covered with a blue tarp and who died with his boots on in 1864, might not have been so agreeable.
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Gary Tischler •

Gay marriage is a hot-button issue among what’s left of the sorry lot of Republicans running for President. Alongside the debates and elections is the touring production of the successful 2010 Broadway revival of “La Cage Aux Folles,” the 1980s mega-hit musical of gay glitter, glam, romance and divas. This musical brings with it an aura that’s part eager-to-please and part pixelated nostalgia that has settled in at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater.

This “La Cage,” maybe any “La Cage,” does not prove the show biz and social buzz of everything old is new again. This “La Cage” is what it is, or as its true star and diva, Zaza, famously sings, “I am What I Am.” The musical is plenty dazzling, even if the production often seems like a visitor from the past.

“La Cage” has had so many incarnations and identities that it’s a wonder Leonardo DiCaprio hasn’t been in one of them. It started out as a French comedy and became very successful in the United States. This show features a pair of gay men, one being Georges, a stylish, elegant owner of “La Cage a Folles,” a popular nightclub where men dress spectacularly as women and put on a nightly vaudeville/musical show. His partner, Albin, is insecure, emotional and often hysterical, who transforms himself nightly into Zaza, the blinding star of “La Cage.” Together, they’ve managed to raise a son whom Georges acquired as a result of a youthful fling with a Parisian showgirl long ago. Now, sunny boy is in love with the daughter of a virulently homophobic politician who’s coming to visit with his wife. Voila-le situation.

Out of this material, the writer-actor-playwright, Harvey Fierstein, and big-time Broadway composer, Jerry Herman, brought forth a hugely successful musical which starred the growly-voiced Fierstein as Albin and, oddly, Gene Barry of television’s “Bat Masterson” as Georges. The show ran as forever as you can on Broadway and then reappeared in a not quite successful revival in the early 2000s. A second revival, which originated in the West End in London, was again a big hit, as was its Broadway version which would feature Kelsey Grammer in his Broadway musical debut as Georges in 2010. The production, now at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, has George Hamilton starring as Georges and Christopher Sieber as Albin.

“La Cage” was the crowning glory of Herman’s career, which was preceded by “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame,” both spectacular musicals and vehicles for diva-type actresses and anthem songs. Both seemed to be part of a journey for which “La Cage” and Albin/Zaza seemed to be the final destination.

A few years back, Mike Nichols directed an American non-musical film version called, “The Bird Cage,” which starred Robin Williams (playing Georges) and Nathan Lane as his partner, as well as Gene Hackman in a remarkably funny turn as a blustering right-wing senator.

But now we have “La Cage” right in our own backyard. For mysterious reasons, although it often operates in a kind of vacuum where no time has passed at all, it’s almost irresistible for its sheer entertaining sincerity and pink-and-white-feather, scene-stealing and changing show. In spite of its not-so-middle-of-the-road setting, it has an old-style Broadway razzle-dazzle and — it should be said — sentiment. It’s all about love, romance, enduring affection, great big hearts and, what do you know, family values. In “La Cage”, nobody argues about gay marriage, but the idea of family is sentimentally self-evident, especially in the song, “Look Over There,” which extolls Albin’s constancy and maternal qualities. With great, slapdash humor, the show also manages to get across the point that the home of Albin and Georges — colorful and eccentric though it may be — is 1,000 mega-watts more normal and loving than that of the politician, who treats his wife like a beast of burden not allowed to speak.

It is 2012 after all, and this show still bowls you over as in the past with eye-candy costume, terrific dancing on the part of the gentlemen and lads who perform as “Les Cagelles” (Angelique, Bitelle, Chantal, Hanna of the Whips, Mercedes and Phaedra), and also includes a house warm-up act, a kind of sit-down comedian in drag.

The part of Georges — a stylish, but low-key, pragmatic sort — has often been played in the past by a Hollywood leading-man type, somewhat asexual except for the red smoking jacket. It has included the likes of Barry, Van Johnson and Hollywood Squares host, Peter Marshall. Hamilton, while a little slow afoot at age 72, still had that old Hollywood, wavy hair magnetism, but he had something even better. At first blush, Georges and Albin have always appeared as an odd couple, a relationship that runs like a roller coaster going down most of the time. But Hamilton lets you see by singing “The Best of Times” and looking at Albin with hapless, hopeful, can’t-help-myself love just how deep the feelings run between these two men.

You might cringe a little here and there throughout the production since it remains squarely rooted in the 1980s: the politicians are hurling words like “homosexual,” as if they were saying “serial killer” and the events taking place at “La Cage” are seen as scandalous and shocking. Time has done its work, as it always does, but it’s taken none of the fizz off this enduring and legendary musical.

Just don’t expect to see Rick Santorum sitting next to you.

“La Cage Aux Folles” runs through Feb. 12 at the Eisenhower Theater.
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Gary Tischler •

Rhythm and blues — the musical category sometimes infused with soul, jazz and rock and roll—seems like an oxymoron, as if saying “I’m so sad and depressed I wanna shake it all around with the whole dang mess of it.”

But then, the genre has always been a crossroads for all sorts of feelings and characters. It’s where the heart multitasks its pain and jubilation. It’s where Elvis Presley soaked up Beale Street. It’s where Billie Holiday brought a smoky blues to jazz. It’s where song-writers from everywhere made people get off their behinds and do everything from the glide to the hand jive to sultry, slow dancing.

It’s where the son of Greek immigrants and a woman whose life and music all but embodied a steady saunter on the dark, sad, wild side, which she turned into the most soulful of troubled blues. And somewhere in there, the two crossed paths, one discovering the other.

These two — Johnny Otis, 90, born Johnny Alexander Aliotes and sometimes called the “Godfather of Rhythm and Blues,” and Etta James, 73, who translated her own trouble life of sad romance and loss into powerful blues-filled music — died within three days of each other.

Otis, a multi-tasker in his own right was a bandleader, club owner, musician and, most influentially and importantly, songwriter and talent scout. He embraced African-American musical forms with gusto. He loved jazz, rhythm and blues, the blues themselves and soul music. And he discovered James, by way of his Barrelhouse Club and Revue in the Watts section of Los Angeles when she was a teenagee, as was Esther Phillips, the dynamo jazz singer also discovered by Otis.

The life of Otis criss-crosses genres and was fueled by a strong melting-pot passion, an avid love of African-American culture as muse and part of the great American mosaic. In his times, everybody crossed his path including the great blues singer Big Mama Thornton, who did the original version of “Hound Dog,” a song which later became a part of Elvis’s early success. Last, but not least, Otis was the author of the hugely popular song “Willie and the Hand Jive.”

Etta James was now and forever known for “At Last,” the stirring, heartbreaking (when sung by James) ballad of utter love, loss and triumph, which Beyonce sang to the Obamas at one of their inaugural balls, stirring up some controversial anger on the part of James.

She needn’t have worried. Although, ironically, Beyonce played James in a dramatized account of Chess Records called “Cadillac Records,” “At Last” was her song, every last emotion-packed line and vowel. She was one of those gifted singers and musicians — Charlie Parker and Billie were others — who struggled throughout her life with various well-documented addictions. The troubles — money, drugs, lovers and husbands — draped all over music, she brought, like Billie, the blues to jazz and added her own voice and style.

Born Jamasetta Hawkins, she met Otis as a teen in the 1960s. He guided her career for a number of years and also dubbed her Etta. Back then she wrote “Roll With Me Henry,” a raccous, sensual song, somewhat later, became “Dance With Me Henry,” a sanitized hit for Georgia Gibbs — because “roll” connoted sexual activity.

By all accounts, James was one-of-a-kind on stage: dynamic, dramatic, raunchy, powerful and moving. It’s the kind of concert stuff from which legends are built.

She told one reporter that when she sang the blues, she sang life. Her life, to be sure, but that’s what all the great blues and jazz singers and musicians do: singing life, living songs.

Lisa Gillespie •

This is the Year of the Dragon, which will be quite evident at the Chinese Lunar New Year Parade, taking place on Sunday, January 29, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, on H and I streets, between 6th and 8th streets in Chinatown.

The Chinese community in the Washington metropolitan area will celebrate the New Year with local residents and visitors at the annual Parade and accompanying festivities, featuring traditional Chinese dragon and lion dances, musical bands, including a local high school Marching Tribe, a cultural exhibition, and the giant firecracker—an all-time favorite that explodes at 3:45 pm.

The festivities also will include programs and activities at the Chinatown Community Cultural Center. Revelers can participate in face painting, live music and performances, and raffles from noon to 5:00 pm. The Parade attracts more than 20,000 people annually and is sponsored by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of Washington, DC.

Georgetowner •

Citizens Council Meets With Police, Jan. 25

The monthly Citizens Advisory Council will meet Jan. 25, 7 p.m. at the Second District Metropolitan Police Department station at 3320 Idaho Avenue, N.W. — 202-715-7300. One of the goals of the Citizens Advisory Council is to offer a venue that encourages community participation in public safety issues by a unique partnership with the MPD’s Second District.

Co-chaired by Commander Michael Reese of MPD’s Second District, the meeting will include discussion of crime trends and police priorities in combating crime. There will be Officers of the Month awards by Reese selects with a presentation describing awardees’ accomplishments.

CAC’s board includes Trena Carrington, an assistant United States Attorney, assigned to the Second District. She will discuss recent crimes and prosecutions and answers questions.

“One area where we can make an impact is partnering with the newly established Community Courts,” Chair of the CAC, George Corey writes. “Our last meeting with the senior Judges of the Community Courts was the best attended event we had hosted. We would also be at the ground floor and could make a real contribution.”

Corey and his group want to get the word on their efforts. “Our speakers in the past year included well attended presentations on Internet Safety for Children and MPD and DEA coordination,” Corey writes. “We urge you to join us [Jan. 25] to discuss our participation in vital public safety issues in our community.”

For more information, contact [George S. Corey](mailto:coreygeorges@ymail.com), Citizens Advisory Council for the Police Second District.

Visions of Georgetown: CAG Presents Georgetown ARTS 2012 — Submission Deadline: Jan. 24

The Citizens Association of Georgetown is seeking Georgetown-based artists to participate in a show of artwork at the House of Sweden from Feb. 16 to 20. Hurry. Here are the details:

= The show is open to artists who either are current residents of Georgetown or who have studios in Georgetown.

= The show runs Feb. 16 through Feb. 20 with a Feb. 16 reception, 6 to 9 p.m.

= Work may be for sale or for display only, as the artist wishes. CAG will process sales and pay artists at the end of the sale. CAG takes no commission on sales.

= Artists pay a $50 entry fee to CAG to defray the cost of the show. In addition, each participating artist must complete a 3-hour volunteer shift during the show.

= The show is open to artists working in the following media: painting, photography, sculpture, prints, 2D and 3D mixed media. We cannot accept jewelry or anything requiring electricity. Pieces accepted into the show should be of a suitable nature to be viewed by families with children.

= There is no jury. Entry is first-come, first-served. Please get your application and payment in promptly to secure your space in the show.

= Artists may submit up to four pieces for inclusion in the show. The final number displayed will depend on space available. (Maximum size per piece is 48″ in the largest dimension.) All 2D work must be properly framed and wired for hanging, or it will not be accepted.

= CAG will advise you the exact time to deliver your work to the show site at The House of Sweden.

= Check with CAG and submit three jpegs of your artwork to [cagmail@cagtown.org](mailto:cagmail@cagtown.org) — Citizens Association of Georgetown, 1365 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007 — 202-337-7313

‘Children of Uganda’ at G.U.’s Gonda Theater, Jan. 26

Hailed as “first rate” and “inspiring” by The New York Times, “Children of Uganda” returns to the D.C. area at the end of January for the 2012 Tour of Light, to share the rich culture of East Africa through song and dance. The dance troupe’s goal is to raise funds to provide shelter, education and a bright future for children orphaned by AIDS.

Performances range from the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage to Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center Gonda Theatre, where the group will perform on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 7:30 p.m. All ticket proceeds and donations will benefit Children of Uganda.

[Children of Uganda](http://childrenofuganda.org/), a U.S. nonprofit that supports and educates several hundred children in Uganda, is sponsoring the 2012 Tour of Light, and bringing 20 talented young performers to America to showcase their culture, and share the stories of so many children in Uganda who, like them, have been orphaned by the AIDS pandemic.

For more information on the D.C. (and other city) performance schedule, please go to the tour blog: [touroflight.blogspot.com](http://touroflight.blogspot.com/p/tour-schedule.html), or call Patricia Davies at 202-337-0991.

‘Lost Washington, D.C.’ at Dumbarton House, Feb. 9, Focuses on Lost Home of Francis Scott Key

Feb. 9, 6 p.m. — lecture and booking signing: “LOST Washington, D.C.,” by author John DeFerrari. Free. Meet and listen to author John DeFerrari discuss his recently published book “LOST Washington, D.C.,” based on his blog, [the Streets of Washington](http://www.streetsofwashington.com/). DeFerrari will also talk specifically about one of the stories in his book — the Key Mansion in Georgetown, home of Francis Scott Key. For additional information, contact [Programs@DumbartonHouse.org](mailto:Programs@DumbartonHouse.org), or 202-337-2288 — Dumbarton House, 2715 Q St., N.W.

Marit Fosso •

For those of us who live or work in Georgetown, public transportation is not always the best option. With the closest Metro stations not being really nearby, we tend to depend a lot on taxis to get around.

D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) will proceed with a Jan. 30 hearing on the D.C. Taxicab Reform Bill. The reform comes after the D.C. Taxicab Commision’s decision in December to increase taxi fares, according to the Washington Post. “We want an enhanced level of service and better overall performance,” Cheh told the Washington Post.

If the bill passes, various improvements in the District’s taxi service could make our everyday taxi rides go more smoothly. The bill proposes that taxis will need to have equipment that allows customers to pay with credit card and to have roof lights that clearly indicate whether the cab is available or occupied. These improvements are supported by nine out of ten taxi riders, according to
a non-scientific internet survey initiated by Cheh.

Another improvement that would make our taxi rides easier is the proposal within the bill that all taxis should install GPS devices. The bill also proposes that taxi drivers should go through a training course, covering geography, passenger relations skills and driving skills.

Cheh’s bill also proposes that all taxis should have a similar color. Her internet survey shows that yellow is most popular among the taxi riders, if the taxis are required to have uniform color. ”I hope they don’t go with yellow,” Cheh — who prefers white — told the Washington Post.