Michael J. Fox proved on Saturday night that he knows how to shred a guitar to an oldie but a goodie — or at least an oldie where he comes from. During Saturday’s annual A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cure Parkinson’s benefit in New York, a fundraiser for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the actor got onstage and played lead guitar to “Johnny B. Goode,” the same song that wowed the ’50s-era high-schoolers at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in “ Back to the Future .” Read full article > >

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Michael J. Fox plays guitar at benefit, reaffirms his Marty McFly awesomeness [Video]

THE TALK-FUNNY GIRL By Roland Merullo Crown. 304 pp. $23 Read full article > >

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Carolyn See reviews ‘The Talk-Funny Girl,’ by Roland Merullo

Stand-up comedians routinely talk about working tough crowds, but Ahmed Ahmed’s toughest might have been an audience of one, at a Ramadan dinner he attended last fall at the State Department. “Hillary Clinton comes in, and I get to meet her,” Ahmed recalls, “and she says, ‘You’re a comedian? You better make me laugh at dinner.’ And she sits down in the seat next to me. I was so shocked. ‘So tell me about these comedy shows you do in the Middle East.’ I told her. She said, ‘You do it in English? And they get it?’ Yeah, I said, they get it. She said, ‘I’d like to see it.’ I said, Funny you should ask, I just happen to have a copy right here . ” Read full article > >

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Ahmed Ahmed’s ‘Just Like Us’ comedy tour movie mixes message with laughs

Coming and going, there’s no escaping the work of Moshe Safdie. The Boston-based architect has two huge, expensive, in-your-face government office buildings in the District, and both sit at essential nodal points of city life. His headquarters for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, finished in 2008, dominates the intersection of Florida and New York Avenues in Northwest, putting a fortress-like facade to commuters along one of the busiest corridors of the city. And, now, there’s the U.S. Institute of Peace, the large, sandy-white building with the funny, glass canopy on top that sits opposite the Mall next to the Interstate 66 on-ramp. Read full article > >

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Not at peace with building’s style

Here’s the funny thing about this month’s lame-duck session of Congress, in which frantic lawmakers have pinballed from tax cuts to “don’t ask, don’t tell” to a nuclear weapons treaty:

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Lame-duck session hasn’t been so lame