On Friday night, the marble terrace around the Kennedy Center, normally known for its panorama of the Potomac, transformed into a squatter's camp of freezing music fans with one goal in common: to try to get their hands on a pair of free tickets to see indie super-hero Sufjan Stevens perform backed by a symphony orchestra in the Opera House on February 5.

As evidenced by the massive turnout Friday, which included fans camping out in line overnight, Stevens is a fine fit for February's ten-year anniversary celebration of the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, which has been a beacon of musical diversity and eclecticism in Washington.

Steven's 2005 album, Illinois, is a sprawling kaleidoscope of sound aimed at capturing the spirit and story of the "Land of Lincoln." The critics salivated over its soaring anthems and home-grown ballads and praised Stevens for making an authentically middle-American soundtrack filled with songs of progress, celebration, mystery, and maturity.

With his blend of intricate and insightful lyrics and high-pitched vocals layered over banjos, oboes, and full-fledged symphonic crescendos, Stevens has gathered fans across genres and generations, many of which were represented Friday night.

By 1:00 am, eight hours before officials began distributing free tickets on the red carpet of the Grand Foyer, there were already some 500 high schoolers, college students, twenty-somethings and even a few baby-toting families coiled along the outer walls, staircases and flower beds in clusters of tents, blankets and sleeping bags.

The chilled marble slabs on which they rested were as cold in the early morning hours as ice cubes. Had it been July, the patio would have been a deafening party. Strangers would have moved from circle to circle making friends, making out, and adding their voices to Sufjan sing-a-longs. But on Friday, the scene was eerily quiet but for the sporadic strumming of a few scattered guitars, the occasional string of expletives with every icy gust of wind, and the rustling of restless slumberers fumbling for cigarettes in their coat pockets.

By 9 a.m., the time when tickets were to be officially distributed, the sun perched on the rim of the Jefferson Memorial across the river, and the terrace was a tightly wound snake of 2,500 shivering stragglers - 1,500 more than the number of available tickets. As tickets began to be handed out, those who'd weathered the night emerged from their caves of covers to stretch and thaw, some doing laps around the Kennedy Center to regain the feeling in their legs.

The morning's conversations echoed Stevens' diverse pull as part hippy-poet, part storyteller, part Old Testament prophet. Two nearby teenagers recited Bible verses to each other, while a group of students from Virginia Commonwealth University swapped ribald drinking stories. My friend Jessica and I, who had read each other lines from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets before the cold clamped our mouths shut, feasted with our friends Daniel and Nathan on stale Doritos and frozen grapes. An eight-hour wait in below-freezing temperatures - had it been worth it?

We'll know for sure next Monday when we see Stevens perform live, but on Friday we at least got to live out our own version of a Sufjan song. In "To Be Alone With You," he sings, You gave your body to the lonely/They took your clothes/You gave up a wife and family/You gave your goals/To be alone with me.

To get tickets, all we had to give up was a little warmth and a good night's sleep.

NY Fashion Week

First Lady Bush is headed to New York's Fashion Week on February 2. And she won't be alone—her hairdresser Nuri Yurt from DC's Toka Salon  is going along to keep Laura's locks in line.  There is no known shortage of hair stylists in New York, but Bush prefers to to keep her coif under strict control.  No "bed head" for Bush.

Welcome to "The Future Bookshelf," The Washingtonian's new feature highlighting upcoming or just signed books with a Washington connection. Tune in each Monday for a new installment, author interviews, and deal gossip.

This week's focus:

The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore
Penguin Press, Spring 2007

Obscurity is often the destiny of failed presidential hopefuls. There’s something about losing a contest of such great magnitude that snuffs out any smoldering ambition.

The 2000 election had the opposite effect on Al Gore. Perhaps it was the uncertainty of the defeat—he did in fact win the popular vote by more than a half-million votes—but in the seven years since his loss to George W. Bush, Gore has channeled his energy, which is unarguably laced with a good deal of bitterness, into successful stints as a Columbia University professor, Apple Inc. board member, Current TV president, and most notably, conservationist author of the best-seller An Inconvenient Truth, which he and director Davis Guggenheim made into an Oscar-nominated documentary.

This spring, Gore will continue his second career with a new book, The Assault on Reason, published by Penguin Press. In a publishing season packed with titles by the country’s political elite, Gore’s book is the most anticipated.

There is little doubt as to why Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reissued their respective books, Dreams of My Father and It Takes a Village, early this year—they have their eyes set on the Oval Office, as does John McCain, whose forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Hard Call appears to have all the markings of a presidential manifesto. In Home, published last fall, John Edwards managed to work his domestic blueprint for the country into a coffee-table book filled with anecdotes and images by contributors ranging from director Steven Spielberg to pastor Rick Warren.

Gore’s intentions behind The Assault on Reason are more mysterious. As the title suggests, he aims to criticize what he called in a 2004 speech at Georgetown, President Bush’s “troubling relationship to reason.”  But does the displaced Tennessean still pine for the presidency or is he content to try shaping his party and its policies from the ideological fringe?

Take the book down from the future bookshelf to find out.

Below are some of the week's Washington-related deals: 

Photograph by Jessica McConnell

Save for a few bursts of applause, George Washington University’s Q&A last night with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was unremittingly tame.

On Iraq, the audience heard familiar lines: “I think the President’s right on this stuff,” “Yeah, it’s a war. What did you expect?” and “It would be foolish to say how long this is going to take.” Nevertheless, moderator Frank Sesno, a GW School of Media and Public Affairs professor and former CNN Washington bureau chief, pushed the issue. Sesno raised the question of WMDs and Osama bin Laden, to which Snow coldly replied, “We’re arguing against things that have become folkloric.” Snow also admitted the huge challenges facing the Bush administration in Iraq, and, in what must be disheartening for a press secretary to say, said, "A soundbite isn’t going to win this. A soundbite isn’t going to regain confidence."

The former Fox radio host had two comments of note on the press: First, he doesn't feel that anyone can be "objective" in reporting. "God's objective. He knows what the truth is," he told the packed auditorium. "Everything else is scratching at the surface." Second, the White House is continuing its efforts to bypass the mainstream media when possible: As part of his messaging for the State of the Union speech this week, Snow hosted a conference call with 25 to 30 bloggers to discuss the President's agenda and speech.

There were a few personal revelations to be gleaned from Snow, who got chocked up when he was discussing his battle with cancer. "You're only granted so many blessings," he explained.

When Snow was still a part of the conservative press corps, President Bush referred to him by the nickname of, “Antonio Nieve.”  Now he just calls him “Snow” or “Snowbird.”  When it comes to TV, Snow doesn’t watch Jon Stewart (“I can get a few yucks, too, if I put my mind to it,” said Snow), and he thinks The West Wing’s portrayal of the White House is “an absurd idiocy.”

What was perhaps most surprising was Snow’s audience support. Although Bush’s  approval ratings hover somewhere in the 30’s, GW managed to select an overwhelmingly pro-war student audience. According to organizers, the event was the most popular in the School of Media and Public Affairs’ history—900 people applied for roughly 300 seats in the Jack Morton Auditorium—and, when Sesno took an informal poll to gauge the audience support for Bush’s proposed troop surge, a clear majority of students raised their hands. Students applauded Snow’s statement on the importance of keeping the media away from public officials’ families, including that of Vice President Cheney’s daughter, Mary, who is pregnant and a lesbian. At the same time, though, the crowd also applauded mention of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Snow also explained that, as White House press secretary, he now has more time to spend with his family—at least in his current role he gets some weekends off.

This week saw the 2008 presidential field further solidify and numerous candidates competing to show who's more serious, more studious, or more hard-working. We'll still in the "peacock plumage" stage of the campaign, where campaigns that haven't even yet figured out their policy platforms strut over process stories—who landed which consultant, who can line up which advisors, who raised how much, and who can give the most serious topic.

Without further ado, here's the top eight developments you need to know about this week's presidential campaign. Memorize this column each Friday and you'll be able to hold your own with any full-time political operative at a cocktail party over the weekend:

1) Just as the big news last week was that Barack Obama got in, the presidential campaign-shattering news from this week is that Hillary got into the race on Saturday. (We might take a moment to point out that this column recommended last Friday that Hillary Clinton couldn't afford to wait too much longer and within 24 hours she entered the race.) Since then there's been almost non-stop announcements from her explatory committee—from her visit this weekend to Iowa to that she'll headline New Hampshire's 100 Club Democratic fundraiser—all with the point of underscoring the second half of her announcement: "I'm in," she said. "And I'm in to win."

2) This week saw the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and another demonstration that Sam Brownback may end up causing more trouble in the GOP primary than most people imagine. "Brownback for President" signs littered the crowd during the March for Life and whereas most other candidates were absent, Brownback's speech riled everyone up. If the true-red social conservative can raise enough money—not a ton, mind you, just "enough"—he'll force John McCain and Mitt Romney to tack further right than they want in Iowa and elsewhere.

3) In the who's in, who's out department. New York Governor George Pataki, who's been flirting with the race, has packed up his New Hampshire office and put it up on Craigslist. It's not a definitive sign that he's not running, but everyone else is racing to open offices, not close them. John Kerry also formally bowed out of the race this week, ending much speculation and even contradicting moves from just a few weeks ago. Kerry dropping out really helps Joe Biden, who was sharing the third-tier candidacy with Kerry and is also a powerhouse on foreign affairs. Of course, more "I love me" stories like this keep Biden from being taken too seriously.

4) If you want to see a monkey wrench in the presidential campaign, watch Andy Stern. Stern's the powerful head of the rebel service employees union, whose executive committee meeting this weekend will be a must-stop for Democratic presidential candidates. The February issue of The Washingtonian speculates that Stern might consider a third-party bid for the White House, which could not be taken lightly given his 1.8 million adoring fans/members. And Stern's not mincing his signals: He leaves the executive committee meeting for his own tour of Iowa and New Hampshire early next week. Stern may not be able to win, but if he gets pissed off he could certainly ruin someone else's chance of winning.

Some of us are die-hard Colts or Bears fans; some of us become dazed and confused at the mere mention of football. But anyone can get excited for the Super Bowl—if you're at the right party. Here are some of the more unusual events we discovered on tap for Sunday's game.

A few interesting notes today from MSNBC/National Journal's annual morning-after State of the Union breakfast on the Hill:

* According to the reporters and the congressmen who were present at Charlie Palmer's for the coffee and punditry there was only word where President Bush diverged from his published speech remarks: Democratic. Whereas in the speech text, the word was written "Democratic" (as in Democratic Party), verbally he always just said "Democrat" (as in Democrat Party). It wasn't a mistake. The twist of the tongue is a regular Republican linguistic trick that hopes to rob Democrats of the power of calling themselves "democratic." South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn explained this morning the purposeful mis-pronunciation, "That's the way we put people down in the south and I think they picked up on it."

* Every year at the State of the Union, there's one Cabinet official who remains in a secure location off Capitol Hill in case a Tom Clancy-like attack destroys the rest of the government. Last night it was Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general and former White House counsel. Chuck Todd, the Hotline's editor, joked today, "What would the liberal Dems have thought of that? President Gonzales." The crowd laughed. Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes quipped back, "Thank goodness we got through it without incident."

* Lastly, another linguistic note: There's an ongoing disagreement about what to call the large crop of newly elected congressmen. Evidently, the Class of 2006 has decided that the term "freshmen" isn't appropriate. For one thing, it's gender-specific. For another, according to the class linguists, there's more power in calling themselves "new members," conferring upon them membership in Congress and also uniting them into a class. As "freshman" Representative Jason Altmire (D-Penn.) explained, anyone in advertising will say that the two most effective words are "new" and "free," and the 2006 elections, the most expensive congressional elections ever, were certainly not free. Thus the branding of the "new" members. Congressman Clyburn, an old school member and the Democrat's party whip, repeatedly tripped himself up on the phrase.