When you’re done Googling that, check out the new property lines feature on Google Maps. The Georgetown Metropolitan did—and seems a little put out that a select few properties in that tony part of town are (shocking!) bigger than the rest.

Peebles rumors (wouldn’t that be a great band name?) are confirmed: The Washington Business Journal reported yesterday that real estate mogul Don Peebles is considering running against Mayor Adrian M. Fenty in the election next year. City Paper's own Loose Lips writes: "A real race? Be still LL's heart!"

The blog New Columbia Heights asks: “Is your power out?” Some 400 residents in that neighborhood reportedly went without electricity from Monday night through yesterday afternoon—and according to Pepco's outage map, a few are still sitting in the dark. Unfortunately, we don't know about them, because they can't read this.

Someone wrote to Prince of Petworth concerned about the amount of water being used to hose down the sidewalks every day. Online commenters came up with 10 million alternatives. And I still got sprayed this morning on my way to work.

Finally, don’t forget to clear your calendar for the annual 17th Street Halloween High Heels Race next Tuesday. The crowd this year is estimated to reach 15,000, but true drag-lovers can sit VIP for $40. Interested in tickets? Google it.

The piece has some likely suspects -- David Geffen and Google, among them.

But the most intriguing and, for us locals, scariest of the alleged Times takeoverers?

Howard Milstein.

Yes, THAT Howard Milstein.

The Howard Milstein who a decade ago tried to buy the Redskins at the Jack Kent Cooke estate sale! The Howard Milstein who brought Dan Snyder into the fold to give him the local color he thought would get him approved! The Howard Milstein who had too many enemies at NFL headquarters and got kicked out of the buying process! The Howard Milstein who then stepped aside and watched as his former partner took over the buying process!

THE HOWARD MILSTEIN WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR DAN SNYDER OWNING THE REDSKINS!

Whew.

According to the Fortune piece, Milstein, identified simply as "a New York-based financier," has been "buying shares" of NY Times stock.

Run for your lives, New York Times readers!

Or, maybe, just renew your subscription and give subscriptions to all your relatives so the Sulzbergers don't have to sell.

Just don't say we didn't warn you...

***

Those streaky Nationals are at it again!

Ryan Zimmerman's hitting skein ended at 30, but the team has picked up where the Face of the Franchise (is that a compliment any more?) left off: The Nats haven't won since Zimmerman's streak stopped, and go for their sixth loss in a row tonight against Pittsburgh.

Back to feel-good streaks: Tonight the Nats will start Shairon Martis, who is 5-0 (really!) and will have to arm wrestle Zimmerman for the team's one set-aside slot at the All-Star game.

***

At Pimlico on Friday I ran into the RoboVendor, Perry Hahn. He was at the track selling Black Eyed Susans by the tray on Black Eyed Susan Day.

Hahn is up there with the most fascinating folks I've ever come across in my years of typing. He got a mechanical engineering degree from Maryland, but has devoted his working life to vending mostly beer at mostly sporting events.

Hahn was planning on going to the Nationals game that night after racing, and he had worked the Nats game a day earlier. He travels the country for Super Bowls and rock festivals and anywhere else a dispenser for hire is needed.

"I'm averaging more than one event per day now," says Hahn, 47.

Hahn is much more than merely a workaholic alcohol vendor, however.

In the early 1990s, back when stadiums sold beer in cans but wouldn't let customers keep the cans, Hahn decided to put his engineering brains to work. He designed what the US Patent and Trademark Office calls a "Tandem High Speed Can Opener," as well as U.S. Patent  #5,228,203. The gadget rips the tops off of two beer cans simultaneously and in a nano-second, which eliminates the need to flip the flip-tops and allows the beer man to empty the beer into cups in no time flat.

Hahn told me back in the day he could open and pour a case of beer cans in one minute.

Fans at Camden Yards noticed him wearing the battery-powered mechanical device on his wrist and dubbed him RoboVendor. Most stadiums have gone to selling plastic bottles, and Hahn designed another machine to twist the caps off of two bottles at a time.

I asked him the other day what his biggest vending day ever was, and, while he didn't give me a dollar figure, he did say it came at a Harley Davidson party in Milwaukee.

(By bizarre coincidence, I'm pretty sure the pair of hands selling beers in the Washington Post's slide show of Saturday's Preakness, with a contraption attached, belong to my guy Perry Hahn! See for yourself -- photo #4 in the sequence.)

***

The NBA's draft lottery is tonight.

The Wizards, with the second worst record in the league, have a 17.8 chance of getting the number one overall pick. If they get it, we'll talk even more about Kwame Brown.

For all the badmouthing Brown gets around here -- he's Heath Shuler in shorts and no helmet, essentially -- he's still in the league, with Detroit. And he averaged 17 minutes and five rebounds a game this season, so he'll be back somewhere.

Can you be rightly called a bust if you last nine years?

***

My hero Robin Ficker is running for office today in the race for the District 4 seat on the Montgomery County council.

His politics are as odd as his antics at the old Capital Centre, but I'm pulling for Ficker. If he gets in, he'll do enough wacky stuff to fill several columns.

If it was really a race and these folks really ran, Ficker wins, no problem. He still runs up and down the Cole Field House steps a few times a week to stay in shape.

He can even run there on Sundays now that he's dumped his Redskins season tickets.

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

Just like the newspaper industry he criticizes so frequently, What Would Google Do? seems like an attempt to make money off of content Jarvis previously gave away for free (his blog Buzzmachine apparently wasn't generating enough Google Ads revenue to pay the bills). Reading the book, one can almost imagine Jarvis opening up Google Docs, pasting in a series of blog posts, whipping out the thesaurus (or rather, firing up the search engine) and tapping out awkward transitions between each topic like a co-ed writing a thesis paper. That "link to the rest" rule, along with many other ideas Jarvis lays out, now has a catchier title then when it was a blog post titled Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. The general point is the same - in the age where everyone is a critic, why does every paper need a local critic? The link, writes Jarvis, changes every business and institution, but it's "easiest to illustrate its impact on news.

Publisher's Weekly says the "scattered collection of rambling rants lauding Google's abilities" generally misses the mark (but they don't even offer a permalink to their review on their website, so don't expect Jarvis to take them too seriously). "While his insights are stimulating," PW notes, "Jarvis's tone is acerbic and condescending; equally off-putting is his pervasive name-dropping."

But Jarvis isn't likely to care too deeply about what the book reviewing elite has to say, he's probably more curious about his customer rating on Amazon.com (currently at 3.5 our of 5, based on six reviews). The entire mentality of What Would Google Do? focuses on the power that the internet has given average people. Jarvis embraces the democratization of news (emphasizing news organizations as networks and platforms) and may have a good grasp on where the industry is headed in the future, but even he still relies on hierarchical structures of the past. Books are just about the least Web 2.0 platforms out there (even print newspapers can offer corrections in the next issue) and you will not find a full copy of the book on his website. The praise for the book on the back cover is full of big names including Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody - no anonymous Amazon screen names here.

But even Jarvis admits he's somewhat of a sellout who can't live up to his own ideals as he admits in the book and in an interview with Newsweek:

"First, I'll confess, I'm a hypocrite. I didn't put this book up as a purely digital, searchable, linkable entity—I didn't eat my own dog's food—because I got an advance from the publisher, and other services. Dog's gotta eat. I couldn't pass it up. In terms of the process of the book, though, I hope it was Googlier [than most] in that I thought this book through on my blog. And the great thing about the blog is the people who help me there—readers who with amazing generosity will act as peer review and challenge my ideas, and push them and fill in gaps in my knowledge."

His chapter on media focuses on the shakeups required to the instrustries profitable. He dubs newspapers "The Google Times," Hollywood "Googlewood" and the publishing industry "GoogleCollins."

Newspapers don't get off easily. In a segment of the book called Newspapers, post-paper Jarvis writes that for news organizations, going digital is not as simple as filling web pages. "This transformation requires them to reinvent themselves - how they think of themselves, how they operate, how they relate to the public, how they make money - and fast."

Overall, Jarvis' manifesto for the internet age is a interesting perspective that shakes up the status quo and advances discussion of the future of media, which is perhaps what companies need during this time of digital transition.

He says that Google's impact on media is more direct and immediate than in other industries and endorses a radical solution: "Cannibalize thyself. Convincing audience and advertisers to move to the future is better than following them there after they have discovered other sources of news." He recommend papers set a date in the not-too-distant future to turn off the presses.

Here it's clear that Jarvis is recommending newspapers abandon the print ship a bit early. Asking the news industry to abandon print when it can still make money is a bit like asking Exxon to figure out a way to make gasoline obsolete. Ultimately, the financial pressure necessary to shift newspapers online will come from competition with other news sites. Let's hope (for aspiring journalists sake) that they're not too far behind the curve.

This posting was written by an intern, who--Jeff Jarvis will be happy to hear--is unpaid and therefore not draining from the concentration of resources where they matter, even if book reviews are not what he does best.

I'd joked that I didn't understand the lingo in the filings. I never took Latin, for one. Turns out Ben doesn't get it either:

I think we’re all getting used to this Chapter 11 lingo. Not sure I know what nunc pro tunc is either. The filings are a little confusing due to the fact that we’re current with all our bills, taxes and payroll but when this weeks bills come in the mail, we’ll update the filing. Additionally, the law requires you to list all the taxing authorities and all the sister companies so this quickly becomes confusing to those who aren’t used to these proceedings.

I'd also expressed some concerns about Eason getting dinged by the court for failing to include a complete list of his creditors and debts. He doesn't explain to the blogger. The way he tells it, we've just run into a bit of a rough patch.

All our pubs are profitable and we’re growing nicely online – we just ran head first into a brutal economy that isn’t showing any signs of getting better anytime soon. The City Paper and CL are doing fine – this just gives us the time we need to keep building out our digital strategies.

In general, the future looks bright. (This is from an earlier email to Rob.)

The trust and presence that City Paper has in the DC market is phenomenal and we think that the combination of DC and Chicago with the CL company give us the national reach to play a significant role in emerging media across the country. We're now able to really get deep into 3 of the top 10 markets in the country and with our brethren in the alternative industry, we're able to compete against the Silicon Valley funded dot coms that are challenging traditional media companies.

Here we come Google, watch out.