Six Flags' reorganization is nowhere near complete, and god only knows what's beneath the surface of this debacle. But from the sound of things, when all's said and done Snyder will still be chairman of Six Flags board of directors when that company comes out of bankruptcy.

How can this be? In Snyder's world, what do you have to do to lose your job?

One small aspect of the fiasco: Would somebody PLEASE explain to me how Snyder was allowed to pay a whopping $175 million for Dick Clark Productions using private equity money from Red Zone Capital, a fund he controls, then turn around and sell 40 percent of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags, using public equity money, which he also controlled? And Snyder did this deal, remember, in 2007, while Six Flags was on the way to the bottom and he was already blaming the company's woes on its billions of dollars of debt.

Snyder made the Dick Clark Productions sale around the time he made a licensing deal between Johnny Rockets, another Red Zone-owned company and controlled by Snyder, and Six Flags. Again, would SOMEBODY please explain to me how that's allowed?

I mean, I make a lot of fun of Lindsay Czarniak and Dan Hellie working for Snyder's Redskins Broadcast Network and WRC News at the same time. And that really does bug me. But Czarniak and Hellie's conflict of interest ain't a hair off the ass of the conflict of interest Dan Snyder had in dealing with himself during Red Zone's sale of a huge chunk of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags. Let alone the Johnny Rockets deals.

How hard a bargain do you think private-money Dan Snyder drove with public-money Dan Snyder in making these deals?

(AFTER THE JUMP: More on Dan Snyder, Red Zone and Dick Clark? DeMatha sends more jocks to college? Remember Harvey Grant? The DC Armor are gonna just disappear? Somebody's still kvetching about the El Al/FedExField comparison?)

And what bang have Six Flags investors gotten out of the tens of millions of stockholders' bucks Snyder threw at himself during the 40 percent sale of Dick Clark Productions? Who's looking out for who?

Who knows what the Dick Clark Productions ownership situation will be when this comes out of bankruptcy.

But, again, it looks like Snyder will still be in charge of both Red Zone and Six Flags at that time. Maybe he'll have a chance to buy Dick Clark Productions from himself during the bankruptcy, then sell Dick Clark Productions to himself all over again.

Seriously, in Snyder's world, what do you have to do to lose your job?

***

From our Hyattsville bureau: DeMatha's library will be packed tomorrow to unveil the latest batch of athletes that the sporting powerhouse will send up to the next level.

Among the more notables in the jock octet featured in the scholarship signing ceremony:

Jerian Grant, son of Washington Bullets 1988 first-round pick Harvey Grant, will announce he will attend Notre Dame. That'll make him the first DeMatha basketball player to commit to South Bend since Hall of Famer Adrian Dantley back in 1973.

And, Casey Thrush will be the first DeMatha student to accept an NCAA hockey scholarship while still in high school, representing the Stags' desire to dominate yet another prep sport.

This signing ceremony, which is surely bigger than any signing ceremony any other local high school will have this year, does not include DeMatha football players. DeMatha already sends more folks to the NFL than any school in the country. They're doing something right in Hyattsville.

***

The return of the DC Armor for a second season is looking bleaker and bleaker. This update from oursportcentral.com's Weekly Pro Sports League and Franchise Report:

American Indoor Football Association: The future of the D.C. Armor in the AIFA is in doubt. The team played before very small crowds in its inaugural 2009 AIFA season and it is unknown whether the franchise will attempt to play a 2010 season in another venue or simply be discontinued.

Somebody's gonna miss you, DC Armor.

***

JTA, which describes itself as the "Global News Service of the Jewish People," and a media organization I have long suspected is controlled by Jews, had some fun with Cheap Seats Daily's comparison of the security at FedExField during the Prague Spring for Redskins fans to the security of El Al Airways.

I had gotten a call from a friend before the Eagles game a few Mondays ago, who told me about getting the once over and then some from a guard at the FedEx gate. So I wrote:

The only first-person account I got was from a friend who called me from FedExField just after being searched at the gate like he was boarding an El Al flight.

He asked the frisker, “Are you looking for anti-Snyder paraphernalia?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” the guard told him.

That caught the attention of El Al account manager Ron Glickman, who wrote us to say that "the checks that one would go through for an El Al flight are a lot less hands on" than what I wrote about FedEx. El Al, Glickman said, hasn't done done any [body checks] in the past year in the entire United States.”

And Glickman's quotes, in turn, inspired JTA blogger Eric Fingerhut to wonder what entering FedEx would be like like if in fact El Al did take over security:

You'd get to the gate and they'd ask: "So, did you write your sign yourself? Did anyone help you to write your sign? When did you write your sign? Has it been with you since you wrote it?...

That guy's funny!

***

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Hate to stomp on the weather beat that others at City Desk are already covering with gusto. But I'll stick to forecasts, and stay away from the retrocasting favored by the boss.

So, Sunday in Landover at kickoff: 47 degrees, rainy, winds 13 miles an hour from the north and 100 percent cloud cover. That used to be called "Redskins Weather!" around here. Now, it's called "You Can Get a Redskins Ticket for 17 Cents Weather!"

On a related note...

Redskins Ticket Watch: More than a thousand ads for Skins/Chiefs tickets on Craigslist this morning. Asking prices in just the first few listings I found went from "Way below face value!" to "Half Price!" to "75 percent off!" to "Make an offer!"

Face value's a pipe dream. Come to think of it, with 47 degrees and wet on the horizon, 17 cents might look like a windfall by kickoff. In any case, folks who intend to show up at FedExField might need to bring something to cover their heads from all the precipitation.

Like, bags or plates, maybe?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Vinny Cerrato is told it's the talent, stupid? Snyderatto = Rosie Ruiz? Snyder changed the copy in the cheerleader car wash contest AGAIN? Will the Great Dan Steinberg fall for the not-actual-cheerleaders picture bait AGAIN? Ronnie Mervis and Dan Snyder use the same advertising firm?)

***

Great Moments in Uncomfortable Radio: Randy Covitz, a beat writer for the Kansas City Star covering the Kansas City Chiefs, came on this morning's "Inside the Red Zone," the mystifying show hosted by Redskins personnel wizard/Six Flags investor Vinny Cerrato.

Cerrato was going over the problems that young head coach Todd Haley was having with his 0-5 Chiefs when Covitz blurted out: "We know it's not the coaching. It's the talent!"

We know that, Vinny? Right? A guy can't win without talent, for crissakes! We know that, Vinny? Right? So how come Jim Zorn's on the hottest seat?

On a related note: Washingtonpost.com's Dave Goldberg rates the Skins front office as the worst in the NFL.

***

Vinny Cerrato no longer takes phone calls from listeners on his show, as he did when then-new WTEM owner Dan Snyder gave the longtime sidekick the program early last season. 'Course, the Skins briefly had a winning record at that time.

Times have changed, alas. So Vinny has more airtime to fill all by himself.* He used much of it to today to counsel Redskins fans repeatedly that a football season "isn't a sprint, it's a marathon."

And Snyderatto's got just the role model for marathoning: Rosie Ruiz.

*I just discovered that The Great Steinographer transcribed almost every portion of Cerrato's show other than the KC interview and the marathon references. I mean, Cerrato's show goes off the air at 10:00 a.m. This latest load of Steinography was posted at 9:24 a.m. How big is Steinberg's staff? How many fingers does he have? How great is he?

***

Dan Snyder's Cheerleader Fetish Update: More toning down going on at the Washington Redskins cheerleader car wash.

For the unfamiliar: Dan Snyder's sportstalker WTEM recently launched a Redskins Cheerleader Car Wash contest, where cheerleader's will pick up a sponge and hand over their pride to somebody in the 25-54 year old male demographic that the station covets.

Cheap Seats Daily has written about the car wash as critically and as often as the Washington Post editorial board does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And Snyder has heard our roar. Or, well, he's tweaked the language in the ad campaign to make it less pervy.

First he removed the dudes and their pre-masturbation conversation that were featured in the original radio commercial for the contest. Now, he's also de-perved the copy in the online advertisements.

Original: “How would you like to see the Redskins take on the Cowboys? — AND have the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders soap up and scrub down your car???”

Tweaked: "How would you like to see the Redskins take on the Cowboys? – AND have the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders give your car a great SpongeTech wash???"

(Spongetech, a sudsy sponge manufacturer, is a sponsor of the contest, and a company that was recently kicked off the trading board by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly shady accounting and disclosure practices. But that's not the yucky part.)

So cheerleaders no longer are on "soap up" and "scrub down" duties. They just have to "give your car" a wash. Different, yes, but still humiliating.

But how come Snyder won't let go of the picture of the cheerleaders all sudsy and rubbing down a car -- though "not actual cheerleaders" were used for the photo shoot, according to a small-print caveat -- that has been featured in the campaign?

Until he does, Cheap Seats Daily has no choice but to run that photo again! (Take that, TGDS!)

***

Something's fishy about the ongoing guerilla marketing campaign from Mervis Diamond Importers.

Ronnie Mervis has put himself out to unhappy football fans as the guy who can replace Dan Snyder as owner of the Washington Redskins.

There's so much rancor toward Snyder in this area, just by offering himself up, Mervis has brought an incredible amount of attention to himself and his jewelry firm. But it's sorta odd that Both Mervis and the Washington Redskins are listed as clients of the same advertising firm: ROI Advertising of Northern Virginia. Mervis is also a big advertiser on Snyder's sports station, WTEM.

Snyder's probably in on it.

***

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We couldn't be happier!

The bankrupt company's creditors are asking the courts to hold up proceedings until they can investigate the relationship between Six Flags and Red Zone LLC, an investment group Snyder formed with a lot of Redskins Park, including team bigwigs Vincent "Vinny" Cerrato and Karl Swanson. Snyder used the group's Six Flags stock holdings take over the amusement park chain via a stockholder coup in 2005. Snyder anointed Mark Shapiro, also a Red Zone member, as made CEO of Six Flags.

The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that in recent filings with the court, attorneys for the firms holding notes for Six Flags, which is now more than $2 billion-plus in debt, singled out as questionable several actions made under Snyder's tenure that involve Red Zone.

Among the dubiousest: Red Zone's sale of a chunk of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags, a deal that took place shortly after Snyder acquired the production company.

Back to us: SIX Flagging pegged that sale as fishy long ago. In a July 2008 post in this space, we called it "a bizarre transaction that essentially amounted to one of Snyder’s private equity outfits (Red Zone) making a $40 million sale to one of Snyder’s public equity outfits (Six Flags)."

Think the Private Snyder, playing with his own money, would strike a fair bargain with the Public Snyder, who was spending stockholders' loot?

Sure he would....IN OPPOSITE LAND!

Some folks were kinder to the deal: Rick Munarriz, a pundit for Motley Fool who urged invest in Six Flags under Snyder from the time he took over as Chairman of the Board until most nails were in the coffin, called the Dick Clark Productions sale "brilliant.

The investors also called for an investigation of a school of fishy moves Snyder and the board made in April, just before Six Flags filed for bankruptcy protections, including: giving raises, doling out $4.5 million in bonuses, and pledging big chunks of equity in the company when it comes out of reorganization.

All the perks to Snyder's insiders came as common stockholders investments were heading toward worthlessness.

If Six Flags' portion of Dick Clark Productions was scheduled to revert to Private Snyder and his investment buddies after the re-organization, well, we might have us some trouble!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder's Six Flags soap opera.

On a related note: Dan Snyder's Six Flags announces that despite its bankruptcy, plans to build a park in Dubai will "proceed as planned."

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder's Six Flags soap opera.

Sports leagues, like romantic relationships, can't survive taking a break. Last year AFL owners thought they were different, announcing that while they'd be spending the 2009 season apart, they weren't breaking up.

Again: Just need some space. Just taking some time off from each other before getting back together.

Well, this week, several AFL owners leaked to the press the date that they'll be getting back together: The 12th....OF NEVER!

The AFL is dead.

The disbanding means, alas, Dan Snyder won't ever bring us the AFL team he promised back in 1999.

(AFTER THE JUMP: MMA is the next arena football? How many Redskins blogs are out there? Dan Steinberg marvels at whose muscles? The Washington Times toasts Bruce Smith? Michael Vick is partying where? The Nats are still playing?)

Snyder bought the DC franchise rights for the AFL shortly after taking over the Redskins. He said back then that he was going to name the indoor team the Warriors, and registered trademarks for that name and for an arrow-and-feather logo and helmet design.

Then Snyder never made any move toward putting that team together.

At the time, I figured Snyder only registered the marks because it looked like he could lose federal trademark protections on "Redskins" for being racist, and he wanted a fall-back name ready.

All these years later, I still agree with myself. Guess we'll never know what his real intentions were.

No official announcement of the league's disbanding has yet appeared on the AFL's web site.

However, the league's "Mission Statement" is still prominently placed:

“To serve our community with pride and passion as a quality example of individual and team excellence on the field, in the office, at the arena and within the community by consistently exceeding our customers’ expectations by demonstrating the highest character, appreciation and respect for our game, customers, teammates and partners as a cost-effective and visionary organization providing a total entertainment experience.”

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....Among the few things I can think of more boring than reading the AFL Mission Statement is watching an arena football game.

Columnist Ray Ratto takes the indoor football and runs with it. Ratto links indoor football with Twitter, and says UFC is the next AFL.

I agree.

***

In case you missed it: Dan Snyder's SIX Flags lost another $121 million-plus change this spring. Who's to blame? God, government, Mother Nature, Swine Flu, Jesus' death, and minimum wage employees, say Dan Snyder and Six Flags co-captain Mark Shapiro.

And so what if Six Flags is in the toilet? Dan Snyder just wants to win, dammit!

***

The Great Dan Steinberg marvels at the big muscles the Redskins have. Thank goodness the NFL has been so out-front in the drug testing realm, so that I and other media types, not to mention all football fans, don't have to waste a single second wondering whether ANY of these behemoths achieved this unnatural looking state through any means other than just eating real good and throwing lots of steel!

Way to keep it clean, NFL! Just say no, kids!

***

The Michael Vick Watch goes on off the football field, too. An event called the "Michael Vick Community Celebration" scheduled for this weekend in his hometown of Newport News, Va., was cancelled because, organizers said, Vick had to be in Atlanta for a Humane Society event.

But then no animal rights types in Atlanta would confirm that Vick is supposed to be there, either.

The big questions: What sort of creeps would organize a Vick "celebration" now? Who can even be near the guy and look at him without thinking, "Yucky!"?

***

Speaking of troubled Tidewater athletes: Real odd story in the Washington Times with longtime football writer Dave Elfin working mightily to try to rehab Bruce Smith's image just after the Hokie/Bill/Redskin's conviction on a third DUI arrest in 12 years.

The city of Virginia Beach cancelled a party that was going to celebrate Smith's induction to the Hall of Fame because of his drinking and driving problems.

Elfin argues that for a guy with three DUI arrests he's great with kids, and a great businessman, too, for a guy with three DUI arrests.

"If I hadn't done what I did on the football field," Smith  says of his buying things for an old football coach in his hometown, "I wouldn't have been afforded the opportunity to give back in such a fashion."

Well, there's that, Bruce, plus: you'd be in jail now.

***

The blog DC Pro Sports Report has a compendium of all the Redskins sites out there. Good god, you won't believe how many there are.

***

Nats have a six-run eighth and beat Florida, 6-4. Greatest comeback win of the season! Three-game winning streak!

Uh, oh! This just in: Until further notice, it's still football season! Just as things were getting exciting! Darn!

***

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Team Snydiro -- Chairman Dan Snyder and CEO Mark Shapiro -- have now been telling the world for almost four years that Six Flags has gotten things together.

Today, more proof that Six Flags hasn't gotten things together.

Shapiro emerged from hiding this morning to release another set of dismal financial figures for the bankrupt Six Flags, these from the second quarter 2009.

This report, like every report the company has issued since Snyder took over the company in late 2005 amid big boasts of how he was going to right the ship, contained awful numbers.

Six Flags, already more than $2 billion in debt, lost another $121.6 million.

Also as with previous releases, Snydiro blamed everything and everybody but themselves and their management for the company's atrocious fiscal state.

God and governments were particularly culpable, according to Snydiro.

"Our decline in performance is a reflection of all that surrounds Six Flags — a severe recession, a balance sheet restructuring process, the swine flu pandemic, adverse foreign currency impact at our international parks and miserable weather, particularly at our East Coast parks," Shapiro said in a statement.

That's it?

Nah!

Shapiro also fingered the "timing of Easter" and the "minimum wage increase" as factors in the rock-bottom bottom line he and Snyder showed the More Flags, More Fun! investors.

Wanna blame Easter for your woes? Go ahead. Whatever. But that minimum wage claim is outstanding, even from Snydiro. The figures released by Six Flags today, Snydiro said, covered the period that began April 1 and "ended June 30, 2009."

Teensy quibble, Snydiro: The Federal minimum wage went from $6.55 to $7.25 a week on JULY 24, 2009!

Nice try, Snydiro!

Geez, this same ol' whine from Six Flags management has got me sleepy. Good thing that during the second quarter, amid the bankrupty filings and dealing with the lack of a raise in the minimum wage and all things just sinking more to hell, Snydiro started selling an Official Mattress of Six Flags!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder's Six Flags soap opera!

Dan Snyder's business partner and protege was named CEO of Six Flags when Snyder took over the amusement park chain by leading a stockholder coup in 2005. And for a long time, Shapiro was front and center whenever the company was in the news. Shapiro generally came off like Leonardo DiCaprio in "Titanic," hanging off the bow of the big boat and boasting that he was on top of the world; for as long as Shapiro talked Six Flags up, everybody knew his ship was eventually gonna sink.

But since the sinking actually took place -- with Six Flags' Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in June and the wipeout of whatever was left of Snyder and Shapiro's investment in the company via Red Zone LLC, a kitty once worth more than $120 million -- Shapiro has been largely absent. (Six Flags stock traded today for between 11 and 12 cents a share, down from $11.93 shortly after Snyder's takeover, and the company's reorganization plan calls for the common shares to be declared officially worthless.)

Shapiro wrote an open letter to Six Flags employees telling them to stay the course, then, far as I can tell, disappeared from public view. Other company officials have made the public statements when Six Flags announced marketing deals with an automaker, a video game producer, a condiment and a mattress maker, and when opened a hair salon.

The loudest silence from Shapiro came yesterday, when the amusement chain, as it has every year since the Snyd-iro team's been in place, declared that customers love Six Flags more now than they did under the previous management regime. The press release let somebody named "Mark Quenzel," identified as "Six Flags Executive Vice President of Park Strategy and Management," spew the phony great state of affairs the way Shapiro used to leading up to the company's collapse.

There's been no announcement from the company about a change in Shapiro's status, and according to Six Flags' headquarters in New York he's still onboard as CEO and "active" in running the company.

But all these absences beg some questions: Is Shapiro taking the summer off? Is he taking care of business for his other bankrupt company?

Or has he jumped ship?

Cheap Seats Daily has learned...that new Washington Nationals manager Jim Riggleman's boyhood fight song was STOLEN!

From GIRLS!

As reported in this space the other day, Riggleman's baseball team at Richard Montgomery High School used a special cheer to get fired up before games:

Thunder, Thunder, Thunderation
We’re the Rockets Delegation
When we fight with determination
We create a soul sensation!

Well, I'm saddened to report that the schoolboy jocks filched the tune from...the Girl Scouts?

(AFTER THE JUMP: Original lyrics to the tune Riggleman et al stole? Should the Nats steal the same fight song? Snyder's own cheerleaders used against him? RIP, Six Flags Cheerleaders? Don MacLean used steroids? Slow news day?)

Here's the lyrics to the traditional Girl Scout anthem, "Thunderation."

Thunder, Thunderation,
We are the Girl Scouts across the nation.
When we work with determination,
We create a real sensation!

Thunder, Thunderation,
We are the future of our nation.
When we work with determination,
We create a real sensation!

The Girl Scouts song is in the public domain. So no money has to change hands because of RMHS's thievery.

But it just seems wrong. And, this was 1970, after all. Couldn't Riggleman or any of his teammates have called "Cooties!"?

In defense of Riggleman's RMHS: theft of the Girl Scouts song is rampant and ongoing. The tune was even bastardized by the Obama's flock during the 2008 presidential campaign.

So why don't the Nats steal the fight song and make it their own? Something like:

Thunder, Thunder, Thunderation
We’re the worst team in the nation
But when we're more than an abomination
We'll create a soul sensation!

No matter what, "Soul Sensation!" has to stay. Look at that team photo above. Title of the bio of the 1970 Richard Montgomery baseball squad: "Not Only the Ball Was White!"

***

We all know Dan Snyder loves cheerleaders. But it now looks like a dandy brouhaha is brewing between Snyder and WJFK, and it centers on the First Ladies of Football.

According to DCRTV, for WJFK's press conference at the Verizon Center on Tuesday, where the talent lineup for D.C.'s new sports station (discussed in this week's Cheap Seats column) was unveiled, Snyder's CBS-owned rival hired Redskins cheerleaders to fire up the crowd.

When Snyder learned that his own girls were being used to pump up the competition, DCRTV Dave reports, he was "pretty pissed."

Genius idea on WJFK's part, I gotta say. Straight out of the Art of War or one of those Eastern battle philosophy tomes: "Those who understood the true nature of power could easily defeat these larger foes by leveraging their supposed strengths against them."

Snyder was already mad at WJFK for snagging the Westwood One NFL package from his WTEM for the 2009 season. So if the Skins make the playoffs, the games could be heard on Snyder's foe's frequency!

Snyder, remember, hired former Westwood One honcho Larry Michael a few years ago to strengthen his media holdings. Hasn't really worked out so far.

But radio feuds are good for all concerned.

***

Speaking of Snyder and cheerleaders: His fetish for gals and pom-pons was clearest last year when he founded the Thrilleaders for his malnourished Six Flags chain. The Thrilleaders were billed as the first cheerleading squad ever dedicated to a theme park. Somebody probably should have told Snyder there's a reason it was the first cheerleading squad dedicated to a theme park. Though no official announcement has been made that the Thrilleaders are defunct after just one season, there's no record of appearances since their inaugural rollout last summer, and no scheduled appearances are listed on their home page.

RIP, Thrilleaders. We hardly knew you.

***

The Thrilleaders was surely a dumbass idea, but not the dumbest-ass idea Snyder foisted on Six Flags.

As the company is getting its bankruptcy papers in order, Six Flags has just opened a second outlet of RollerCoaster Cuts, what is designed to be a chain of hair cutteries for rich kids. The new point, in King of Prussia, Pa., will offer the same service menu as the original RollerCoaster Cuts in Hartford, Ct: kiddie manicures and haircuts named The Glammy, Zoink, Big Kapow and Blama Jama for upwards of $50.

The more I write this stuff, the more I wonder if Snyder's really rich.

***

Ryan O'Halloran of the Washington Times pummels Snyder and his pals the Lerners in his "First Down" column this morning. O'Halloran names both the Nationals and the Redskins on his list: "TWT FIVE MOST DYSFUNCTIONAL PRO SPORTS TEAMS"

"Even before training camp, speculation as to whom The Danny hires as coach in 2010 is running wild," he writes. True and amazing.

***

Bleacherreport.com profiles Don MacLean, one of the surliest Washington Bullets of all-time. He was Jay Schroeder in shorts, a West Coast guy with great talent who folks here wanted to love but just couldn't. This piece doesn't have enough info for local fans about his sad stay in DC -- not even a mention of his breaking a thumb in a Baltimore bar fight in 1995 while already on the Bullets injury list for bad knees, adding six weeks to his down time.

But the story more than makes up for it by including some awesome trivia about MacLean. First, he is UCLA's all time leading scorer, over "Kareem, Walton, and Reggie." Who knew? And, best and worst of all, MacLean was the very first NBA player ever popped for steroids.

After the bust, Charles Barkley went public with his defense of MacLean: "I've seen Don MacLean naked, and he doesn't use steroids."

***

The day after the All-Star game was always known as the slowest sports day year. It's a little different now. There's no baseball, obviously, and golf tournaments or auto races never took place on Wednesdays. But we now have the WNBA scheduling events during these doldrums, knowing they'll get coverage.

So: Mystics lose in San Antonio, 79-78.

It's still a slow sports day, is what I'm sayin'. But if you've read this far, you knew that.

***

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After decades a couple weeks of rumors, this afternoon at the Verizon Center WJFK-FM brass will officially announce the station's flip from man talk to sports talk.

All the highlights of the new lineup -- eight hours a day of Mike Wise and LaVar Arrington --  and the date of the switch, July 20, have already been leaked.

***

On the team's downest day of the season, the Wall Street Journal kicked the poor Nats in the nads. Here's the lede of the paper's coverage of the Sonia Sotomayor coverage, a story titled "Hearings Reflect Broader Struggle":

Much like the Washington Nationals baseball team, which has known since springtime that it has no realistic chance of winning a pennant this year, Republicans in the Senate knew before they took the field Monday that they had no realistic hope of defeating Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

So GOP senators, like the Nationals, are left to ask themselves: What are we playing for here anyway?

"What are we playing for here anyway?"

They're really asking themselves that? Well, if the GOP Senators are at all like the Nats, specifically .196 hitter Austin Kearns, then they could answer themselves: "We're playing here for $8 million a year!"

(After the jump: Six Flags goes with mayo substitute? Jim Riggleman's high school cheer? DC Divas back on top?)

And, for crissakes, given how tough a day it was for the franchise, couldn't the Journal have made it easier and kinder and gentler just gone with some WASHINGTON SENATORS simile?

***

In case you missed it: Manny Acta's replacement Jim Riggleman was a "soul sensation" during his days at Richard Montgomery High in Rockville.

Here's his old baseball team's cheer: “Thunder, Thunder, Thunderation, we’re the Rockets Delegation/When we fight with determination, we create a soul sensation!”

Damn, that's funny.

I remember playing in a softball tournament years ago and just before our game started the opponents got together and screamed the theme to "Rawhide" to get fired up. We knew they were going to whup our ass. We were right.

Why don't teams have cheers anymore?

***

The D.C. Divas surrendered a touchdown and the lead to the Boston Militia with less than a minute left in Saturday's IWFL Eastern Conference Championship game. But Diva Tara Stephenson returned the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown, giving D.C. a berth in the July 25 league title tilt in Austin, Texas.

The Divas, now 10-0, were forced to play in Boston after getting screwed and losing their #1 ranking to the Militia in the Massey Ratings, the ranking system used by the IWFL to determine playoff seeding.

After this win, the Divas head into the league championship with the top spot in the ratings.

***

Speaking of screwed: Dan Snyder's nothing-left-to-lose theme park chain, Six Flags, has signed an endorsement deal with Miracle Whip.

Yes, the mayonnaise substitute. Under the deal, Six Flags will now begin selling a "specially-themed and branded sandwich" at its parks called the "Miracle Whip Roller Roaster" and will put discount coupons on "20 million" tubs of the goo at stores nationwide.

This comes just after Six Flags agreed to make Anatomic Global the “Official Mattress” of the parks, and started actually selling the beds through the  parks ($1,299 in queen size).

Here's the official explanation given by Six Flags for the condiment alliance: "The companies will collaborate on a co-branded marketing initiative designed to reach consumers through multiple platforms and marketing touch points including grocers' shelves, digital media and targeted in-park signage at key rides and attractions."

One word: Huh?

I mean, sure, that quote, coming from the company's PR staff, makes Six Flags' bankruptcy understandable.

But I'm still going to have to ask Dan Savage what sort of things folks at a theme park could do with a tub of Miracle Whip and a queen-size mattress.

***

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To promote the remake/redo/reimagining of 1980's Fame (out Sept. '09), MGM is hosting a virtual competition for U.S. residents 14 and older to show off their stuff. (Tastefully.)

It apparently doesn't matter what you do -- a flier claims that possibilities include "singing, dancing, acting, or surprise us!" -- nor how many folks you do it with. (Again, tasteful, people.)

Just upload your video at MySpace.com/Fame by Aug. 3 for the chance to win various prizes, including $5000 cash, a photo spread (!) in OK! Magazine, a trip to Hollywood, a "meet-and-greet with a top talent agent and studio executive," and -- wait for it -- inclusion of your wowza performance on the Fame DVD. Which I'm guessing will be released not too long after the film tanks.

Go to the MySpace site for more info, and consider: The promo's promise that the winning bit of entertainment will "live forever" on the DVD could be a blessing or a curse.

Yesterday, Snyder's theme park chain, Six Flags, announced yet another sponsorship deal. This one makes some bedding company called Anatomic Global the "Official Mattress" of Six Flags. And you can buy the official mattress straight from Six Flags for $1,299 in queen size.

Why would a theme park chain need an "official mattress," let alone start selling them, did you ask?

Good questions. Here's my guess: Snyder took over as chairman of the board of Six Flags in 2005 by leading a stockholder coup to throw out the previous management team. Snyder incited the takeover by sending a letter to all Six Flags stockholders, a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which he told them they'd have been "better off hiding their money under a mattress" than investing in the company before he was put in charge.

Enough people believed his claims to indeed put Snyder in charge of Six Flags. And its stock shot up to $11.93 a share shortly after investors turned over control of the company to Snyder.

Boy have those words come back to haunt Snyder and anybody who believed 'em. Six Flags went downhill not long after Snyder wrote that big zing at the former management. And about two weeks ago, after three and a half years of Snyder calling the shots, his chain hit bottom and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

If the initial reorganization plan proposed by Six Flags goes through, common shares of stock, which have been worth a quarter or less for some time, will be worthless.

So anybody who invested in the company under Snyder and stuck with him lost it all. Yup, all those folks now know that they'd literally be better off putting their money under a mattress.

But not under just any mattress! Under an Anatomic Global mattress, the Official Mattress of Six Flags!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder's Six Flags soap opera.

Six Flags has just signed a new sponsorship deal with Chrysler. According to a press release issued by Snyder's theme park chain earlier today, this means cars produced by Chrysler will remain "the Official Vehicles of Six Flags." Also under the new deal, the littlest of what was once the Big Three automakers will subsidize Fourth of July celebrations at Snyder's theme parks.

Birds of a feather, you could say: Six Flags filed for bankruptcy protections about two weeks ago. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protections in late April, but only after getting about $12 buh-buh-buh-billion in handouts from the federal government.

Now Snyder's getting a taste.

What's wrong with this country?

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder's Six Flags soap opera.

As predicted in this space, the beat wasn't big enough for the Skins' GM/racquetball partner/DJ and the Post's writer/blogger/agitator.

La Canfora left the paper to work the NFL Network.

The entertaining putzes over at Dan Snyder's message board, Extremeskins.com, are taking credit for driving La Canfora away.

And while the Skins obsessives don't trust anybody coming from Baltimore, they liked one thing about the Maese move.

As Extremeskins poster RedskinsVictoryorDeath put it: "As least they didn't hire anyone from the City Paper..."

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Here's how far out of football Mike "Biggest Loser" Williams---an offensive lineman and the largest of the Redskins' Five Guys Named Williams by at least a Williams---was before Cerrato pried him away from the buffet: The guy can't even be used by gamers on Madden '09!

This dude's peeved about not being able to put Biggest Loser on his digital roster, and uses the situation to demand changes from EA Sports, which produces the game.

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Remember, tchotchke freaks: Tonight's Matt Wieters Collectible Figurine Night at the Bowie Baysox game!

Management, saying they've been burned by hoarders at past giveaways, have put new rules in place guaranteed to take all the fun and civil rights out of the event.

From the Baysox website:

"There will be a limit of one figurine per person and there will be a 'No Exit and Re-Entry' policy in effect from 6:00 - 7:00 pm or until all giveaways have been distributed. Fans will not be able to exit the stadium during this time period."

Here's hoping a brawl breaks out between Baysox security and some clown trying to get out of the stadium yelling, "I bought THREE tickets! I want THREE Matt Wieters Collectible Figurines! HELP!"

I smell a scandal! GateGate?

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Where God and gridiron intersect: The Newsboys, Mark Brunell's partners in Christian Rock via Nashville's InPop Records, are scheduled to play shows at Dan Snyder's Six Flags parks this year. If there is a this year for Dan Snyder's Six Flags.

InPop's been the focus of complaints from cult-watcher groups, who claim the record label is a mouthpiece for EveryNation churches, which has in the past been caught using recruiting methods shadier than anything John Calipari ever tried.

But before you bash Theme Park Rock, remember: The Jonas Brothers played Six Flags when they were nothing. And Bob Dylan played Kings Dominion when he was Bob Dylan!

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The latest issue of Sports Illustrated tells the tale of Jeff Komlo, the former DeMatha and Detroit Lions QB turned drugged-up, domestic-abuser fugitive.

Komlo was killed recently in a car accident in Greece, where he was living on the lam and completely out of touch with friends and family. But he fell apart years before his death.

The story doesn't answer why Komlo went wrong, but just reading how wrong he went is fascinating.

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

The catchy lede, on why Rhee appeared on the cover of Time mag holding a broom---a cliched pose for a reformer of any institution. Here's the Post's Bill Turque, reporting Rhee's account to D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray of why she allowed this photo to go get shot:

Rhee explained that most of the shoot for the Dec. 8 issue involved images of her with children. The idea for the broom, which she gripped while standing stern-faced in front of a blackboard, came up near the end, she said, according to Gray's version of their meeting. She told Gray that it wasn't her first choice for the cover but that the decision wasn't hers. Gray wasn't satisfied.

"Why did you let the picture be taken in the first place?"

Then comes the nut graph!

Other key points:

*There are pockets of success in a context of continued failure;

*She has confidence in about a third of her principals;

*She has some perspective on herself: "We weren't doing a good job of communicating," she said regarding her too-fast push for change;

*She must kiss the asses of D.C. councilmembers to get the funding she needs;

*Good observation skills by Turque: "Rhee now sits at hearings for hours at a time waiting to speak, per the council tradition that has members of the public appear first. She can be seen fiddling with her BlackBerry, conferring with aides and idly cracking her knuckles, one hand at a time."

The skinny on this Rhee front-pager is that it's a great way for people to catch up on all things Rhee. It's comprehensive and there's fun stuff about the politics of Rheeism. But for dweebs who've been following the twists and turns of the chancellor's reform efforts, not a lot of smashing-new content here.

And now for the official Weekend in Review retrocast: Amazing weekend on the weather front, in all respects. Low humidity, dry after a long wet spell---perfect for just about any kind of outdoor activity. Sun a bit intense during those peak afternoon hours, but hey, this is D.C.

Check out the analysis of ubiquitous sports analyst Dave McKenna on the latest woes of Six Flags. And to think that just after Snyder took that company over, I was seriously considering buying stock. After the way he was so successfully fleecing Redskins fans, I figured, Hey, how can I lose? Good thing I never pulled the trigger on that one.

And speaking of more financial woes, LaVar's restaurant didn't work out so well.

Wouldn't be a weekend roundup without visiting the Washington Times, and this weekend, the editorial staff is really on a hot new topic: tasteless video games!

Rant of the weekend: Yes, the Francis has long been something of a scene, a cruising spot, and so on. But if you're going to take it to the next level and make out and roll around on the concrete and really kinda get into it, you should bring some more padding than just a towel. It can't be that comfortable to mash around like that on that hard concrete surface. Try multiple towels, an inflatable raft, or the grass on the field just outside. Those are more comfy options.

Snyder's company filed for Chapter 11 earlier today. Who knew bankruptcy courts are open on weekends?

Snyder took over Six Flags more than three years ago through an ugly stockholder coup. Looking back, the funniest part of the takeover came on Oct. 24, 2005, when Snyder sent a letter to investors saying the stock price was being stifled by the then-chairman of the board, and told stockholders they'd "have been better off hiding their money under a mattress" than investing in the company.

Snyder, who according to SEC filings got Redskins Park employees including Vinny Cerrato and Karl Swanson to go in with him on the theme park investment, controlled 10,921,300 shares of Six Flags stock at the time of his mattress comments. Stock in the company hit $11.93 a share shortly after the takeover, according to the database of MSN Money.

That puts Snyder and his Redskins Park posse's Six Flags holdings at $130,291,109.

With the bankruptcy filing, common stock in Six Flags is likely worthless. That $130,291,109 is gone.

Looks like Vinny and Karl would have been better off hiding their money under a mattress than trusting the boss.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder's Six Flags soap opera.