The 2008 AltWeekly Awards finalists, announced yesterday, include six from Washington City Paper, which also published two out of the three stories nominated for best feature among the highest-circulation altweeklies in the U.S. and Canada.

The City Paper was also named among finalists in the photography, blog, arts criticism, and music criticism categories for papers with circulations above 55,000. Only the L.A. Weekly, with eight nominations, received more nods than Washington City Paper. More than 1,400 entries from 129 papers were submitted.

Dave Jamieson’s June 1, 2007, cover story, “Letters From an Arsonist,” about the motivations of a man who torched D.C. for decades, and Joe Eaton’s Sept. 28, 2007, cover story, “The Battle Over Heavy T,” about an obese teenager on the run from social workers, were feature finalists. Jamieson has also been named a finalist in the local reporting category for the Livingston Award, a national award for journalists younger than 35.

Staff Photographer Darrow Montgomery, who has been with City Paper for more than 20 years, was also named a 2008 finalist. He has previously won three AltWeekly Awards, including one for first place.

In the Arts Criticism category, Jeffry Cudlin was named a finalist for reviews on the artwork of Edward Hopper, Wolfgang Tillman, and Mingering Mike, and for his review of Modernism: Designing a New World at the Corcoran.

Sarah Godrey is a finalist in the music criticism category based on her reviews of artists Trey Songz, J. Holiday, 50 Cent, Kanye West, and T.I..

The Washington City Paper staff blog, City Desk, was named among the three best blogs for circulation 55,000 and over. The blog was judged overall and for three submitted entries, including breaking news by Arthur Delaney from the Eastern Market fire, Show & Tell Columnist Amanda Hess’ take on “Yuppies, Goths, and Other Groups I Don’t Identify With,” and the tax scam hearing liveblog by Loose Lips Columnist Mike DeBonis.

This is the 13th year for the AltWeekly Awards. Within the past 12, Washington City Paper has won 47 awards in the highest circulation categories, second only to the L.A. Weekly, which has won 61. Third-highest among largest-circ award-winners is City Pages (Twin Cities) at 28, according to the Association for Alternative Newsweeklies.

Washington City Paper is owned by Creative Loafing, which also owns the Chicago Reader and Creative Loafing Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa, and Sarasota.

Among the 2008 finalists, John Sugg from Creative Loafing Atlanta was a named in the Political Column category for circulation over 55,000. The Chicago Reader’s Lee Sandlin was also named a finalist for arts criticism.

The AltWeekly Awards honor superior journalism and graphic design among alternative newsweeklies. The contest seeks to promote excellence by recognizing work that is well written, incisively reported, and effectively challenges established orthodoxies. Winners will be announced at the annual Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention, June 5-7, in Philadelphia.

ThugArmyLife says, for one, he wouldn’t buy food, gas, or bandanas anywhere in D.C. from May 25 through May 31. The boycott planned for D.C. and NYC and promoted on the Thug Army Tupac-fansite is in protest of cops getting off for shooting 14-year-old DeOnte Rawlings in Southeast and 23-year-old Sean Bell in Queens on the morning of his wedding.

It’s being organized by Black Legacy, a student org at Lehman College in the Bronx. The reason this will work is: “Society has a responsitility to protect all its citizens, yet society consistenly turns its back when black men are killed by the police. Yet black dollars drive the American economy. It’s time to send a message with money—or lack thereof.”

The boycott week includes Memorial Day. Anyone think people will actually refrain from buying meats for the grill to save the next DeOnte?

T’helah Ben-Dan, co-president of Black Legacy, says that’s up in the air. “To be totally honest I’m not sure of the reaction in D.C., but I do know we’ve been doing a lot to spread the word,” Ben-Dan writes in an e-mail. “I recently got a message from DeOnte’s cousin, who works for an organization called PeaceOholics, and I forwarded information to her so she could help publicize the boycott.” Ben-Dan’s also blitzing PR and media types, who’ve yet to pick this up with any kind of fervor.

 photo by jlmaral

An occasional series whereby Jule admits she is not Julia. Or Joy.

Let’s say you’re not as attractive as you’d like to be. Or maybe you fucked up at work. You forgot to call your mom on Mother’s Day, that experiment with chicken turned into a congealed and taseteless lump, you killed the plants. One way to feel accomplished is to make cookies.

And so I bring you Red Velvet Black & White Cookies. I waxed on about these before and about my crush on Joy the Baker. Have you read her blog yet? If not, stop reading this one and get on over there. Or go to Ewa’s, who made Joy’s incredibly yummy and small-child-sized Lemon Whoopie Pies.

So, anyway, I had been contemplating the coming out party (from my oven) of these colorful cookies for some time. And, you know, they did make me feel successful. Everyone who tried them liked them. Some even raved. Except me. I forgot that I don’t really like Black & White cookies. They’re too sweet. Cloying, even. A touch treacly. But if you are a died-in-the-wool New Yorker (where the Black & White is unassailable), or if you’ve visited there and came home thinking everything about the place is just so sparkly and perfect (honestly, people do think this), if you just love you some Black & White cookies, then you should give these a try.

The cookie itself is made from a wonderful batter—flavorful and very, very red, and very moist and soft. Better as a cupcake in my opinion. As for the glazes, my suggestion would be to cut down on the corn syrup in the vanilla glaze, add a little more vanilla and little more water than the recipe calls for. The chocolate glaze is pretty well perfect.

Here is the recipe, by way of Joy, by way of (oh, the horror) Rachael Ray.

There’s more to Woodley Park than feuding Indian restaurants. Who knew? While wandering around in the rain yesterday, I found one of the neighborhood’s new assets: the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery in what used to be a nasty little restaurant, Thai Town. (”Trust me,” says Stanford in Washington’s program cooridinator Janine Chen, “you should have seen the kitchen.”)

The building was built in the early 1900s and included a grocery store front, which has been partially restored, says Chen. It also includes Stanford U’s program, where students work at internships during the day and live in the building the rest of the time. The gallery space at 2655 Connecticut Ave. NW opened in October and is currently showing its third and most popular exhibit, “Leadership: Oliphant Cartoons & Sculpture from the Bush Years.”

Pat Oliphant, a classic and fantastic skewerist, lets loose on Bush and Cheney, of couse, with fine contributions to the Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales canons. One of his most brilliant works, though, concerns the Clintons‘ departure. Both are shown walking out of the White House gates loaded down with lamps, rugs, artwork—a lambast on B.C.’s obsession with his legacy and the prospect of H.C.’s return down the road. For a native Australian, Oliphant’s pretty prescient about U.S. politics.

But the exhibit’s greatest highlight, by my estimation anyway, was Oliphant’s description of a speech he gave to a D.C. room lousy with Republicans, including the sitting president at the time, Gerald R. Ford. Oliphant always drew Ford with a Band-Aid across his head, a comment on the late prez’s trademark clumsiness. Following Oliphant’s speech, the artist walked over to Ford and actually drew said Band-Aid on the man’s actual head. Ford, with his also-trademark good humor, sat perfectly still and grinned the whole time. A secret service agent, while also grinning, let Oliphant know that he would not be drawing on the president ever again. Later and as a tribute, Oliphant drew a panel with a laughing , handsome Ford—sans Band-Aid.

The traveling exhibit will be up through July 11.

photo by dbking

Just kidding. But while you’re waiting, why not consider someone else who’s yet to officially quit but still has no chance whatsoever?

A very occasional series about escaped cats.

Poor Hugo. He was a street cat rescued from West Virginia and carted to D.C., only to bounce around to friendly and supportive, but ultimately temporary, foster parents. Then Vikram Chiruvolu, 31, who works at home writing a book about philosophies of physics and information theory, met Hugo, loved Hugo, adopted Hugo.

And then Hugo jumped from his third-floor window off Belmont Street NW, swinging onto a nearby branch and landing on a soft patch of brush below. He left behind his collar, as well as his soft cat bed, his favorite game (an extended fishing pole with a string attached), and one very sad Vikram, who had never had a pet before and had Hugo for only about 10 days. “He’s a terrific cat, really friendly and social. He’s the most puppy-like cat, just loved to play and be around people,” says Chiruvolu.

So Chiruvolu papered Adams Morgan and North Dupont Circle with fliers. His friend and adoption coordinator, Omkar Sawardekar—he fosters pets with the foster-only rescue outfit Homeward Trails—dutifully put lost-cat listings on Craigslist and offered a $100 reward. One fine fellow called and said he had a cat in a box and was going to kill it if he didn’t get 50 bucks. Sawardekar says he called the Humane Society.

The whole experience of losing Hugo has opened a “whole world of strangeness” regarding cats, says Chiruvolu. A woman in his neighborhood—she is like the “Jedi cat lady,” he says—sought him out and asked him if Hugo was a recently neutered male. She has six cats, see, and a garage set up as a playground for strays and she had recently smelled some urine she didn’t recognize.

“She had six cat traps on her front porch and told me how they worked,” says Chiruvolu. They then walked around the neighborhood together and the Jedi cat lady taught Chiruvolu “how to think like a cat. I think I almost got it.” But, alas, they did not find Hugo.

Chiruvolu did see him once, completely freaked out with his hair on end, possibly after a run-in with a fox. Hugo bolted past him and into an alley. This was about a month ago and it’s the last time Chiruvolu saw Hugo. If you’ve seen him, e-mail the info to comm-668928260@craigslist.org.

Delayed congrats go out to City Paper alum Dave Jamieson, who has been named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Award. Winners will be announced June 4. The Livingston honors journalists under the age of 35 and is the largest all-media, general reporting prize in American journalism. There are no separate categories for print, broadcast, or online entries.

CP submitted Dave’s riveting June 1, 2007, cover story, “Letters From an Arsonist,” in the local reporting category. He worked the story for more than a year, beginning with letters exchanged with Thomas Sweatt, who torched D.C. for decades before he was finally caught. The story reveals victims not even known to Sweatt. If you missed it, get on it.

If Dave wins, in addition to making us all proud, he’ll pocket $10,000 (and no doubt take out the person who submitted his application—hint, hint—for several beers. And maybe an app). Fingers crossed!

Here was little Debbie in happier times, from the alumni listserv of Charleroi High (Class of ‘74) in North Charleroi, Pa., an exurb of Pittsburgh off the I-70 corridor:

PALFREY, Deborah J.(Jeane)
803 Capitol Street
Vallejo, CA 94590

PHONE: 707-648-1000
FAX: 707-648-1000
EMAIL: JeanePalfrey@sprynet.com

Have lived in California, for the past 20 years. Self-employed, design/import(furniture/interiors). MBA in international business. Always threatening to go back to law school. Have supported the National Innocence Project (New York), California Innocence and now, LAEP/Life After Exoneration Program (Berkeley based grass root’s organization), since the late 90’s. Never could stomache injustice- social or otherwise. At current pace, most likely will be slugging it out in the California prisons/courts in my 60’s and 70’s. A good way though to take my final curtain call. Hobbies include travel(international, whenever possible), non-fiction, cooking (had to quit “Cookbook of the Month” Club when I ran out of shelf space), all of PBS and the Amazing Race (looking for a partner willing to jump out of planes). (Updated 8/6/05)

Wired has the best stuff on the juicy scandal still percolating with D.C.-based Women’s Voices. Women’s Vote, which admits to being behind some high-tech “anonymous” phone calls going to primarily black households in North Carolina. The calls from a Lamont Williams imply improper voter registration and give instructions on re-registering, only the voters there have not necessarily improperly registered and the instructions to wait for a packet in the mail and send in another application would put voters well past the deadline to vote in Tuesday’s primary. Virginia State Police investigated similar robo-calls before VA’s primaries last February, also sourced to Women’s Voices. Women Vote.

The group’s president (and Duke grad, no less) is Page Gardner of Northern Virginia, who has been making the rounds in this hamster-wheel primary to talk about the impact of single women. According to the Institute for Southern Studies and OpenSecrets.org, Gardner has contributed $6,700 to Hillary Clinton in one form or another in 2005 and 2006. Her total contribution to the Obama campaign: $0.

Gardner does have a response to all of this: “We apologize for any confusion our calls may have caused.” That may not be enough for the Attorney General.

Following a full day of surgery—Earth Day, natch—a couple of D.C. cosmetic surgeons started crunching the numbers. Just how much carbon is used in the disposal of sucked-out fat?

Considering that an average of 7 pounds of fat is sucked out per surgery and that national surveys estimate Americans undergo 450,000 liposuctions and tummy tucks annually, that’s about 3 million pounds of yellow, goopy fat to get rid of. Each pound of fat is about 78 percent carbon, but because no one has yet figured out how to make biodiesel out of it in a way that people will, uh, stomach, the fat gets incinerated, pushing about 1,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. Drs. Navin Singh and Marwan Khalifeh, senior partners at Ivy Plastic Surgery Associates in Chevy Chase, D.C., figured out that creates the pollution equivalent of driving 2 million miles.

So they’re trying to do something about it. Their office is paperless; they’re energy conscious and all of that. But there’s only so much they can do with fat, so to offset handing about 160 pounds of fat per month over to a medical waste disposal service, Singh and Khalifeh are purchasing carbon credits.

Singh calls it a “baby step” for his industry. “The first incentive is to conserve, reuse, recycle. We do as many of those things as possible, but when we can’t, you have to go for a lazier way and purchase credits.”

The surgeons got online at carbonfund.org and signed up to spend about $100 to $200 a month on carbon credits, which will (they hope) go to companies and nonprofits involved in pollution reduction, protecting existing forests, planting trees, etc. “You do wonder if this is legitimate or if someone is taking our money and not doing anything, so we spread it around with different companies while we figure this out,” says Singh.

Something else they figured out: If people actually jogged off the weight, that would be cheaper and better for their health, but not actually better for the environment. “They would just liberate that carbon into the air by burning it off,” says Singh.

(photo by keizie)

This weekend I came across the greatest find since moving to D.C. Caveat: My interests tend to skew less toward record stores and more toward woodland creatures. If yours do, too (hey, I know it’s a stretch, but the blog is lookin’ light today, OK?), you should check out Prince William Forest Park. Once you have your immigration papers in order, that is. They don’t like them illegals there, you know, but there are 15,000 acres, so it’s easy enough to get lost no matter who you are. That’s what’s great about this place.

From D.C., the park is only about 35 miles down the road, right off I-95 and the Marine Corps training site at Quantico. That means that in less than an hour, you could be set up at a wonderful campsite deep in the woods for 15 bucks a night. The Oak Ridge Campground inside the park has nearly 100 sites and is located 5.5 miles down wooded roads from the visitor center. Stop in there to get a great map of the park. Each of the three campground loops has decent bathrooms and a water spigot; Loop A has a shower, even, for those who do that sort of nonsense while camping. There are no hookups, however, a blessed deletion for tent campers (there won’t be any retirees and their obnoxious RVs anywere nearby. In fact, having had a few bad experiences with the RV/generator crowd, I found this place with the help of The Best in Tent Camping: Virginia: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos). One aspect the book fails to play up is the spaciousness of the sites, especially compared to some of the puny ones inside Shenandoah National Park. Each comes with a fire ring and a pole to hang a lantern.

Beware the raccoons, though; they’re cheeky, so hide your grub. Also, I found a tick on my person, quickly tweezed off and killed, so bring some spray, but for god’s sake don’t whine about ticks. Just be careful.

Best of all: There are 37 miles of hiking trails maintained by the Potomac Appalacian Trail Club; several nice ones start right at the campground. The North Valley Trail includes a lovely stretch along Quantico Creek to Lake Quantico Falls and the former Pyrite Mine, abandoned in 1920 after workers went on strike for a 50-cent raise. Apparently, they don’t like them unions in Prince William, either.

D.C. Foodies has a nice little scoop on Murky Coffee, which City Desk has been following like a lost dog. It appears many of Murky’s assets have been bought by a local businessman who plans to open a coffee shop near the Big Chair in Anacostia. A little digging unearths the Big Chair Coffee Business Plan, put together by sole owner Ayehubizu Yimenu, who appears to live in Greenbelt, Md. Left a message for him, but here’s the deal:

• The coffeeshop will open at 2122 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE and plans to serve sandwiches, salads, and pastries. Customer base includes employees across the street at D.C. Lottery and the Taxicab Commission.
• It’ll be open Monday through Friday until 6 p.m., closed Saturday, and open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, “delivering superior service to a community other coffee shops do not operate in.” Indeed Big Chair Coffee counts as its only competition a carryout deli half a block away.
• Beverage prices will range from $1.64 (12 oz coffee) to $3.92 (20 oz latte). Beans will come from California Coffee Roasters. Cold sandwiches made in-house will go for $5.49, salads run to $6.29.
• There will be indoor and outdoor seating.
• Employees will include two managers and four to eight more workers. Free samples and a marketing blitz are planned for the neighborhood.

Photo by jgoldmania

Our Morning Roundup Update: Guilty. That was the plea today of Silver Spring resident and former Metro supervisor Marcia Anderson who, as part of her plea, agrees to pay restitution for stealing $560,000 from her employer. Sentencing will be in August. The scheme, according to Metro, involved Metrocheks, which have proven problematic in more ways than Marcia. Fed employees were caught last year trying to sell their unused vouchers on eBay. One IRS employee made about $930,000 that way while still claiming a free parking space at work. Metro, master of the obvious, is phasing out the use of Metrocheks this year. —Jule Banville 

Tonight at the Verizon Center is going to be amazing, nuts, historic. I’ve been to two of the playoff games, but don’t get to go this time around. Our quintessential Caps fan, Drew Thiemann of Arlington, a season-ticket-holder since age 8, does. So how is Drew weathering the ride with the “Cardiac Caps”?

You could properly call this Caps squad a team of destiny. To make it into the playoffs, defying a string of ridiculous odds, is incredible by itself. But to find ourselves down 3-1 in the series, against this same hard-nosed Philly team, then rebounding to tie the series, now facing a home Game 7…this sort of material is hockey legend in the making. Shades of Dale Hunter’s 1988 overtime game winner are lingering in my thoughts as I nervously wait for tonight’s puck to drop. I’ll be in section 400, sporting red instead of my usual Bobby Gould No. 23 jersey.

He’s been wearing that jersey to the game since he was a small boy who didn’t fit in it, but is switching so he can Rock the Red. See what I mean about historic? Go Caps.

This set of photos—wherein some dude dresses like a clown and hits D.C. sites asking viewers: “What do you see?”—is getting all kinds of play and comments about its creepiness and brilliance. So take off the mask, clownish. Who the hell are you?