• DCAC's annual 1490 Wall Mountables show has finally been announced. The first-come, first-served group show has scheduled installation for next week, so check out all their rules and get your artwork ready ASAP.
• The Library of Congress partnered with iTunes to feature historical videos from their archives, along with some audio podcasts and filmed lectures. Just download the iTunes application and head to "iTunes U" in their store.
• During the summer, visit the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum by picking up a free shuttle from the Smithsonian Castle, Air & Space Museum, and the Anacostia Metro every Saturday and Sunday starting at 10 a.m., through September 20.
• Visit the Torpedo Factory tonight for Second Thursday, with open studios at the Art League School and meet-the-artist receptions at the Target Gallery. 6 to 8 p.m.
• It's a pricey ticket, but if you have $250 ($350 for two) to spare, get a ticket for the Theater Alliance's Art 4 Art fundraiser this Saturday. You'll get dinner, drinks, and even better, a piece of art to take home with you.
• L'enfant Moderne in Georgetown is holding Art in the Alley every Thursday this summer from 6 to 9 p.m. Join them for art, music, and more.

"You just have to keep working hard and take it one step at a time and hopefully you get there," said Adu, who is amazingly now 20 years-old. "But obviously the most important thing is playing, get some games and that keeps you sharp."

While it was nice to see folks with United connections again, who else impressed? For one, forward Charlie Davies looks like the kind of player that Adu needs to be -- fast, furious, and a threat despite his size. Upon entering the game, the 23-year-old New Hampshire native brought an immediate fire to the proceedings. This was no more evident than when he almost scored the flukiest of all hustle goals by nearly blocking a clearance by the keeper into the net. Although Davies couldn't quite will the slowly-rolling ball across the line and past Honduran keeper Donis Escober, the two American tallies came shortly after he entered the fray -- including Davies' clever layoff which gave Quaranta his shot at glory.

Honduras stuck with the States for most of the match, and their attacking trio of Walter Martínez, Marvin Chávez, and Carlos Costly looked dangerous all night. Finding success in discipline and counteroffensive longballs, Honduras looked to expose the United States offside trap. It worked a few times -- none better than in the first half, when Martinez made fools of centerbacks Michael Parkhurst and Chad Marshall to earn a clear breakaway. With only Perkins to beat, the Honduran captain shot just wide of the post, although the largely pro-Honduras crowd exploded on the optical illusion, which made it appear as if the ball had gone in. That was the loudest RFK has been for quite some time.

For all his goalkeeping skills, Perkins' best moves of the night may have been avoiding beer and water bottles, which unfortunately cascaded down in the waning moments of the match from the hands of disgruntled Honduran supporters.

After the final whistle, American coach Bob Bradley seemed pleased with the effort, although he conceded that a more consistent showing will be needed to get the national team to where he wants it to be.

"I thought the response of our team was quite good. Games like this, there's got to be a good collective effort from start to finish," said Bradley.

All in all, it's another notch in the United States' very successful history at RFK. Bradley and company move on to Boston, where they can ensure advancement to the knockout round of the Cup with a draw or better against Haiti on Saturday.

Breakin', Breakin' 2 and the Electric Boogaloo Party

Cannon Films never missed an opportunity to make low-budget campy films that capitalized on existing cinema and social trends, whether with mindless action flicks like Delta Force or endless Death Wish sequels. Thing is, as bad as the movies usually were, they epitomized the spirit of so-bad-they're-good so thoroughly that they often were even more enjoyable than the movies they were exploiting, particularly in the case of the Xanadu/Rocky Horror ripoff The Apple. When faced with the question of how to make some money off of the burgeoning hip-hop culture of the early 1980s, the answer was clear: 1) take a German documentary about breakdancing; 2) combine it with a classic plot — in this case Romeo & Juliet by way of West Side Story; 3) use the actual people from the documentary as the primary cast to keep costs down; 4) profit! And apparently they did, because they rushed into production on a sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, a film notorious for its exquisite awfulness, in which the warring factions from the first movie must band together to stop an evil developer from destroying a rec center that everyone in the community uses. Both films are screening as part of the AFI's '80s festival, and Saturday night's screening of Breakin' 2 will be followed by an "Electric Boogaloo" party. Keep your eye out in the first film for an appearance by Ice-T as a club MC (he was one of those cast from the documentary), and he plays an even larger role in the sequel.

View the trailers for Breakin' and Breakin' 2.
Breakin' screens at the AFI tomorrow and Tuesday, and Breakin' 2 Saturday and Wednesday, with the Electric Boogaloo party following Saturday night's show.

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The Hurt Locker

The Iraq War has been going long enough that we've had no shortage of films about that conflict, but most of them have fallen flat. And not just because Americans aren't yet ready to see this ongoing and controversial conflict depicted on screen. As a rule, they simply haven't been very good, ranging from gung-ho action pieces to annoying liberal-guilt-induced hand-wringing. But with The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal have fashioned not only the best movie about that war yet released, but hands-down the finest American film about war in at least 20 years. Small in scale, the film focuses on a three-man army bomb squad working in and around Baghdad to defuse the many explosives planted by insurgents. Bigelow's talents as one of Hollywood's most skilled (but under-utilized) action directors combine in surprising ways with Boal's script, written based on his own experiences as a journalist embedded with an EOD squad in Iraq. Bigelow's talents make for a gripping, at times gut-wrenching time, while Boal's writing manages to convey the horrors of war while working in many standard action-movie tropes that usually don't have any place in a film this intelligent, yet work all the better for their unusual placement.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street and Bethesda Row.

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Brüno

Sasha Baron Cohen is the master of the stupid human trick. The tricks aren't stupid, mind you. It's the humans. Ever since his humble beginnings on his BBC-based Da Ali G Show, Cohen has excelled at playing the fool and provoking people into showing the worst sides of themselves on camera, like some chameleonic blend of Andy Kaufman and Art Funk. Brüno may mark the end of the phase of Cohen's career that began with that show, as it represents the third feature film based on one of the three major characters he created for the show, starting with the somewhat disappointing Ali G Indahouse, and followed by the crassly brilliant Borat. Brüno is the polar opposite to Borat in some aspects: as gay as Borat was homophobic, as worldly as Borat was provincial. What the characters share is a forced naivete to the effects of their idiosyncrasies on those around them, which somehow comes off as a kind of innocence that allows Cohen to draw his unsuspecting subjects into traps so embarrassing that lawsuits ensue. The litigation over Brüno is already underway, and the movie hasn't even been released yet. Cohen's objective being essentially the same with both characters, we can probably expect more of the same of what we got with Borat, but that's hardly a bad thing.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at theaters all over the area.

"I'm hoping they can find and enjoy the humor in the religion and culture," she said. "We have to stop taking ourselves so seriously."

Headscarf and the Angry Bitch begins its Fringe run tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Warehouse Theater. Tickets and a full schedule of performances are available here. 50 min. $15

A Tactile Dinner will be preformed at the Arthur S. Flemming Center at 1426 9th Street, NW. Tickets are $15 with a suggested $5 gratuity. Performance times are Saturday, July 11 at 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m., Sunday, July 12 at 3 p.m., 6:15 p.m. and 8:15 p.m., Monday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 19 at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Beverages are not served during the production but juice boxes and water can be purchased prior to the performance for $2 a piece.

Tickets can be purchased at the Capital Fringe Festival Box Office at 607 New York Ave NW, by phone at 866-811-4111, or online at www.capfringe.org. Tickets may also be purchased with cash only at the Arthur S. Flemming Center one hour prior to scheduled performance times. Seating is limited, so advance purchase is recommended to guarantee a space at the table.

In a game rocking between two sides like a boat on the high sea, Quaranta gave an all-out effort. After all, he'd know better than most that the next chance he'll get to make this kind of impression could be months away, years away, never to be seen again. But it was one play, one movement, which cemented this night as one that the D.C. United man will never forget. Robbie Rogers moved quickly down the left flank; then some outstanding pinball movement by Benny Feilhaber and Charlie Davies, and suddenly, the ball came into the area, quick and tight. Davies laid the ball down; Quaranta, cougar-like, saw the play develop and pounced on the speedy striker's clever lay-off.

Then: boot, ball, net. And, for good measure, a slide on the knees into the frenzied masses, who were all prepared to shower the hero of the day in a collective embrace -- near total redemption, in but a few short seconds.

It's because we hear something in their words which we use to inspire ourselves.

Quaranta, on this night: "It was a very special night for me, personally...just to be back on the field with the team. To listen to the anthem was very emotional for me. It's been such a fun and long road back. I was [overcome]. It's hard to explain. To be able to do it in front of my wife and my two kids...I just wanted to come back and be a good person and once that all started falling into place soccer came next. I've been enjoying life, I've been very happy off the field, like I said today. And I think being so happy at home has really done well for me on the soccer field."

It's because we see something meaningful that we hope to someday, somehow, see in ourselves.

That, my friends, is why we watch.

[Ed. Note: We'll have our regular recap of the Americans' 2-0 victory later this afternoon.]

The lesson learned from this experience is that a Kastles game without at least one star player makes for a fairly uneventful evening. WTT may be an experiment doomed to failure, because tennis, no matter how you tweak the rules, is unlikely to have the speed and appeal of a major team sport. Most people who buy tickets (or at least those who did last night) to a WTT match are not much into the cheering or other crowd-riling tactics of the organizers without some kind of star power to pull it all together: the announcers became more and more desperate in their appeals to "bring it on" as the evening wore on. The occasional lonely cheer of the Kastles slogan ("Refuse to lose!") seemed to be mostly for comic effect. That said, the audience was more than content to watch each point quietly and applaud politely for good play -- which seems an awful lot like real tennis to this writer, just, you know, without the real tennis. The rules -- in an attempt to make the game faster -- eliminate most of what makes tennis exciting and a sport of athletic endurance. Perhaps the one redeemable aspect: when the occasional long volley or hotly contested final point actually happened, it did a fine job of reminding you why you liked tennis in the first place.

The actual match kicked off with men's singles. The Kastles' Scott Oudsema (henceforth known as "the handsomest guy in all of Party Tennis") took on the Freedoms' Nathan Healey. Oudsema took an early lead, dominating from the outset -- but Healey came back big in the end, earning a 5-4 victory over the Kastles. It set the tone for the rest of the night -- the only match won by the Kastles was men's doubles. Venus Williams took a two-game lead over the Kastles' Olga Puchkova in no time at all; with three big aces, she won the match 5 games to 2. Next up: mixed doubles. Williams and Healey took on Rennae Stubbs and Leander Paes in a great, close match. Three of the four players on the court were in finals at Wimbledon the prior week; Party Tennis attracts only the best talent. The Kastles ultimately fell 5-3, punting another one.

A half time break featured an "Ask Venus" segment led by a kid reporter and a quick start match, where Williams and Stubbs played doubles with two children who had completed the afternoon's tennis clinic. Team Williams showed no mercy and handily won. Then it was on to the final two matches of the night. First, Williams and Lisa Raymond played Stubbs and Puchkova. Williams was completely unstoppable all night long. Even after winning women's doubles, the Kastles were still down 20 games to 11. After a quick break where Coach Murphy got stomped in Wii tennis by a kid (really, we can't stress this enough: Party Tennis), the night's most enthralling, and final, match began. "Boom Boom" Oudsema and Paes took on Healey and Eric Nunez in men's doubles. It was neck and neck, coming down to a 5-2 lead by the Kastles.

But wait! This is Party Tennis! There's got to be a strange rule to spread out the drama!

Overtime eliminates the possibility of the final sets becoming exhibitions. If the team ahead in the cumulative score wins the final game of the last set, then that team is the winner. If, however, the trailing team wins the final set, the match is sent into overtime and continues until, a) the leading team wins one game, or b) the trailing team ties the match score. If the score becomes tied, the match is decided by a Supertiebreaker.

Tonight, the Kastles take on the St. Louis Aces, featuring star player Anna Kournikova. The Russian, though, will be out due to a wrist injury.

>> Guitarist Jimmy Bruno got his big break at just 19-years old, playing with legendary drummer Buddy Rich. Thirty five years later, he is a seasoned veteran and respected jazz educator. Catch him at Blues Alley on Saturday. Tickets to the 8 and 10 p.m. sets are $25 + $12.50 minimum/surcharge.

>> Vocalist Luba Mason's latest album, Krazy Love, explores the trials and tribulations of modern relationships while using the Brazilian music as a launch pad. She will perform material from this album during her 8 and 10 p.m. sets next Tuesday at Blues Alley. Special guests will include her husband Ruben Blades, a vocalist and Pan-American star in his own right, along with Yellowjackets bassist Jimmy Haslip. Tickets are $35 + 12.50 minimum/surcharge.