*I think we won’t soon hear the end of all this. It’s enough to make me want to skip town for the week.

*This’ll explain why Henry Paulson had such a nice weekend.

*OK, so the post is a week old, but it so embodies the humanity of the young professional class in the District.

*Maine: Preparing not for winter–but a hurricane?

*McCain is right: Could that have been the blunder of the 2008 campaign?

*The Examiner gives local theater some good play.

This week: FF’s triumphant and merciless return!

Watch in awe as Erik gives the cold shoulder to the Dupont Current, the InTowner, and the Examiner. The Washington Hispanic is en fuego, naturally, while Erik himself is back on the attack…sporting a dashing new haircut.

Don’t touch that remote!

[FF Bonus: Scroll down after watching to discover what the Examiner's cover really says!]

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

[...and the Examiner says... "Palin's Slapshot." Zing!]

There are plenty of people in the Washington area who’ve cursed out the Examiner for its penchant to throw papers willy-nilly on lawns and stoops.

Yet Shepherd Park resident Don Squires came up with perhaps the most original protest. At an advisory neighborhood commission meeting earlier this year that addressed the unwanted deliveries, Squires showed up with a bag of Examiners that’d landed on his front lawn. He proceeded to dump them in the meeting room, provoking a commissioner to declare him out of order.

Squires responded that he was just making a point: No one wants a pile of trash in their space. Watching all of this was Examiner Publisher Michael Phelps.

Phelps also absorbed some blows on the very candid Shepherd Park listserv, which boiled over with nastiness about the free newspaper. Wrote one neighbor:

Recently, we were out of town for 10 days and our home was broken into. In our absence, The Examiner had been delivered and was littering the sidewalk to our house (I stopped the Post). For 2 years, I have begged and pleaded for delivery to stop, repeatedly voicing my concern about this being a home security issue. I have contacted Mr. Phelps and the head of circulation numerous times; I have called the 800 number; and, I have filled out the “Stop Delivery” function at The Examiner (all suggested by Mr. Phelps himself during his ludicrous ANC appearance).

The Examiner also got some pressure from the office of Councilmember Muriel Bowser, which acted as an intermediary between Phelps and the angry residents. Phelps was unavailable for comment.

These days, less newsprint is getting thrown around in this stately D.C. neighborhood. Squires reports that for the first time since mid-July, he’s not getting the deliveries. One big help is that the Examiner around that time bagged its nearly daily deliveries and went with a twice-weekly schedule. “I think it was done with an eye toward not bothering people as much,” says Squires.

The Washington Post has got a photo gallery of the early skirmishes at Redskins training camp. The Skins are out there on the field early, and in the worst of the summer heat. Many other NFL teams open up practice later this week, amid a cooling trend.

Chapter 7 in the Chandra Levy series also hit the streets Sunday, and I am starting to withhold less and less judgment. I mean, whatever new stuff is in this episodic disaster is marginal. So marginal, in fact, that when I come across things that I think may be new, I check my memory in search of what I knew before the series. Most of the time, I can’t quite remember, but I do know this: The series has yet to tell me anything way above and beyond what I knew before, or at least enough to justify throwing multiple reporters on the thing for a whole year. I mean, the Post is verily boasting of sinking that much time into the thing. I’d think they may be embarrassed to admit as much.

Examiner profiles first gun registrant, saying that Amy McVey didn’t seem like the “typical” owner of a firearm. And the paper’s conservative editorial page slams Pelosi.

So what else is going on, aside from the heat?

Well, there’s former Washington City Paper Editor David Carr’s book, The Night of the Gun,” excerpted in the New York Times mag. Carr is a close friend, by way of disclosure, and I helped a bit with the book, so attach whatever weight you choose to my opinion that the book is a compelling page-turner.

This week’s Fuego/Frio is, quite literally, off the charts. The Beacon is legit on health care, the Post is stale on Levy, and the Washingtonian is still the Washingtonian.

So what’s the big deal? The Washington Examiner, whose attempt to hustle readers merits a whole new category.

Fuego, frio…falso?!? Tune in to see what all the fuss is about.

Arrriba!

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

Erik manages to stay vertical this week, as he calls out the Washington Diplomat for sexist fluff and the Post for their rehash of the Chandra Levy murder.

Meanwhile, FF doles out generous props to the Brookland Heartbeat, and to the Examiner for heeding some sound advice.

The glue stick is back, the stories are hot—or not!—and Erik is in top form. Don’t touch that remote!

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

Headline pun courtesy of Amanda Hess.

This week’s episode is a veritable gauntlet, as Erik takes on the Post’s “Sunday Source,” sexist sports editing, overly rhapsodic weather reporting, and the Washingtonian—whose wretched T.O.C. proves disastrous for Erik’s central nervous system.

Oy!

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

It looks like PB&J Television’s proposed Late Night Shots reality show is really going to happen. According to the Examiner, this District ‘Hills’ is currently fielding “offers from three television stations,” and a deal is expected to be made within the next few days.

Who are the lucky instant television stars?

One thing is set in stone, however: the first cast members. They are local socialites / hotties / 20-somethings Katherine Kennedy, Krista Johnson and Sophie Pyle. Johnson’s younger sister, Alexa Johnson, may also play a role in the show. (Both Johnson sisters are alumnae of South Carolina’s College of Charleston, Kennedy graduated from Loyola Marymount and Pyle is taking a semester off from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Hotties! Tell me more:

“It’s all going to be about our real lives,” said Krista Johnson, who is a partner at the Georgetown boutique We One You Two. “It’s going to be in the same vein of MTV’s ‘The Hills’ but ours is going to be more realistic.

Realistic reality? Oh, well. At least there are hotties.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

Fuego/Frio is back from vacation with a new punch, some added zip and—just for good measure—a fresh touch of oomph.

Watch in awe as Erik assails the Washingtonian for hamhandedness, the Washington Hispanic for gun-nescience and the Washington Examiner for treading on well-trodden ground.

El Pregonero, meanwhile, gets some love for a paradigm-shifting day-laborer piece.

Plus: props to the New York Times for beating Wemple on the Brauchli story.

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

Harry,

Interesting column today about Kwame Brown—thin, but interesting. But one thing: the deputy mayor for planning and economic development is Neil O. Albert, not “Neal Albert.”

Oh, and belated praise for your column from a few weeks back about how local Republicans are giving council challenger Patrick Mara a hard time. But again, the executive director of the local GOP is Paul Craney, not “Paul Kraney.”

Sincerely, LL

Sports! We all watch them. And what a weekend it was for Washington’s teams. The Caps, holding onto their postseason life, and the Wiz showing again that they’re not in the same league with the Cavs. Even though they are.

*Wizznuttz–whaddaya say about this series? C’mon, it’s playoff time, yet you fellows can’t give me a weekend update? C’mon!

*On Frozen Blog has a great meditation on the woes of Flyer Mike Knuble and the implications for the rest of the Caps series, in which the home squad is down 3-2 heading into a big game on Monday night and then–locals hope–Tuesday night.

*WaPo draws a powerful link between the local econ and one of the most environmentally devastating practice of modern times–mountaintop mining. The fundamental: Washington needs more and more power, and more and more of it is coming from coal. The coal has to come from somewhere, and it often comes from mountains whose buzzcuts make them look like “Mars,” in the characterization of an environmental activist.

*Recycling feat of the weekend: Examiner puts story on its site about how burglaries are up 21 percent in the District. Credits and links to WTOP. Go to WTOP, and find that WTOP links to and credits the Washington Post, which actually did the journalism.

*Columnist Mike Wise makes a good point about the Wiz–until and unless Abe Pollin’s team actually wins a series against this “rival,” there’s no rivalry. Just a one-sided relationship of sorts.

*Check this out on the Washington Times site: Ollie North executes hit piece on Jimmy Carter.

Whereas last week we tackled the vicissitudes of male pregnancy, this week everybody’s en fuego. Watch as Erik and Ruth dole out generous felicitations to El Pregonero, The Examiner, and the Post.

Got a story you’d like to see discussed on the next Fuego/Frío? Let us know in the comments.

Our look-back at the weekend starts with the Washington Post’s look-back at the MLK Jr. riots of 1968. A perfectly fine story, but one that the Post has done so many times, not just on riot anniversaries, but every time a city-in-transition story comes about. I’m sure I’ve read it at least 20 times–always a variation on this: “Gloria Robinson, 55, an office administrator, grew up in Columbia Heights, where a new shopping center and condominium apartments stand on a street devastated by the riots. She is convinced that the promise of rebirth eludes poor and working-class African Americans.”

*Check out the Washingtonian’s top blog post of last week.

*The latest Department of Public Works newsletter provides tips for recycling, plus: Don’t forget that the special springtime hazardous waste throwout day is…..April 26 at the Carter Barron Amphiteater!

*For years, area residents have been sending back the D.C. Examiners that wind up on their lawns. Well, now the paper is fighting back, with sex!

*Not a lot cooking on the Washington Times site, so might as well read about the impact of tax rebates on tourism.

Thanks for checking in. And stay tuned to our blog today! Among other things, there’s big stuff going down in the media world, as the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded. The Post is a shoo-in for one prize, for the series on Walter Reed. But what about the Cheney series? The coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre?

It’s not every week that Washington, D.C., gets a new baseball stadium. I realize that. But please, local publications, get this baseball-crazy bug out of your system as soon as possible. I’m tired of seeing some new iteration of the same story, over and over again. Here we go, prime example: stories about the stadium food.

Jeff Dufour of the Washington Examiner, I’m talking to you! We almost featured your story “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,” which ran yesterday, on the latest Fuego/Frio episode. The Post wrote about stadium food on the front page of their Food section on March 5. They talked prices and vendors and overall provided way more information than your piece. Sorry.

But then, the Post re-wrote their own stadium food story in today’s Food section. This time, they judged rather than just reported on the food, with the oh-so-cute labels of “Home Runs,” “Runs,” “Hits,” and “Errors.” But come on, if I’m in the mood for a Kosher hot dog, I’m going to get that hot dog, even though the Post gave it the lowest rating. I’m at the game! Who cares if it’s rubbery?

Maybe, I’m just jealous because I didn’t get to run around gorging myself on junk food in the name of work. Or, maybe, I’m grouchy because enough is enough…it’s time for a new story.

It’s chilly today, folks. The Post, el Pregonero, and the Examiner are all under the weather. Black Lips? I’m sure the band’s feeling healthy enough after Saturday’s show at the BLACK CAT.

Got a story you’d like to see discussed on the next Fuego/Frío? Wondering if you’re the only one who didn’t know breakfast was important? (You might be.) Let us know in the comments.