Your U.S. Senate At Work: Maybe it's best D.C. doesn't have any members in the Senate, after all. Because if we did, they'd probably do embarrassing things like what Pennsylvania's Democratic Sen. Bob Casey did today, which was whine on Twitter about the Nationals' plan to sell advance tickets to a May homestand against the Philadelphia Phillies only to people whose credit cards match addresses in the D.C. region. "I'm calling on the @Nationals to reverse course on a reported plan to block @Phillies fans from buying tickets to games at Nationals Park," Casey blurted. ".@Phillies have some of the best fans in the world. They shouldn’t be left out in the cold because the Nats want a stronger home field adv." Of course, it's not like the people in the Senate have anything better to worry about than how many fans of their baseball team get to travel to another city to be obnoxious in person, right? -1

Brick City: On the eastern side of the District, transportation workers have been installing streetcar tracks for some time now. And on the western end, they'll soon be ripping them up—and then putting them back in—all for looks. An $11 million Georgetown streetscaping project will involve replacing brick streets with new, more historically accurate bricks, and regrading, but keeping, long-unused tracks. The first fully finished block opened this morning. +2

Free Money Here: This morning's Washington Post seemed thicker than usual, especially for a paper without a propaganda insert from China or Russia in it. Turned out there were 35 extra pages of agate type listing thousands of people and institutions with unclaimed assets that the District government is now trying to track down. Among the names on the list: Democratic powerbroker Harold Ickes (and also my younger brother, who is finally collecting his winnings from a sports bet he placed in Las Vegas several years ago). To see if there's a windfall coming your way, click here. +3

Type This Way: When word came that the District was switching the typeface on its street signs as it replaced broken ones, it seemed like good news. But now it seems the new design isn't quite as clean as it was advertised to be. The signs, which use mixed-case letters instead of ALL UPPERCASE as the old ones do, sometimes use mixed-case letters for quadrants, too, identifying streets as being in "Nw" or "Se" instead of NW or SE. And it turns out some of them also use different fonts within the same sign. So if you spot a sign that looks wrong, no, you don't have to rush out to buy new glasses. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 34 Today's score: +3 Today's Needle rating: 37

On The Whole, We'd Rather They Be In Philadelphia: For a variety of reasons, the crowd at Washington Nationals games is often dominated by fans of the visiting teams. (One reason: The area's transient population means every team has a lot of fans here. Another reason: The Nats haven't been very good in their brief existence.) But the front office wants to change that, at least when it comes to Philadelphians. For a May series against the Phillies, the team is selling advance tickets early, but they can only be purchased with credit cards with D.C., Virginia, or Maryland addresses. Will it work, and keep the park Phanatic-free? Probably not. But at least the Nats aren't marketing directly to Phillies fans anymore! +3

Panopticon: As we noted yesterday, chef Geoff Tracy is upset about speed cameras on Foxhall Road NW, but he ought to be glad he doesn't live in Montgomery County. There, officials are considering putting cameras on all school buses, in order to catch drivers who ignore the stop signs on the buses. Which sounds irritating, but not as irritating as drivers who ignore the stop signs on the buses. +1

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream (Of Statehood): The hunger strike for D.C. voting rights ended without actually achieving statehood, so activists have now moved onto refusing something besides food: Sleep. A sleep strike, though, turns out to be even more dangerous than a hunger strike, and one of the strikers called off his vigil several days in. The other, though, Ricky Lehner, is still awake. The city's colonial status has kept many Washingtonians up at night, but this is something else altogether. +1

The Interest Rates Are Too Damn High: Municipal governments and European nations have been watching their credit ratings slide lower and lower recently, as budget crises and debt loads become too much for bondholders to bear. But the District is trying to get its rating upgraded, not lowered. Mayor Vince Gray headed to New York today to meet with ratings agencies and talk up the $1 billion reserve balance the city has on the books, in hopes that the credit rating will improve, lowering the interest rate D.C. must pay on its bonds. With any luck, none of the ratings agency folks have been reading up on the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation. +2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 36 Today's score: +7 Friday bonus: +2 Today's Needle rating: 45

Take The Long Train Home: What's more frustrating than having to squeeze onto a crowded six-car Metro train even though the subway system can handle eight cars in each station? Watching a ten-car train go by. The transit agency recently disciplined some workers for allowing a train too long to fit properly in stations to run all the way around the Red Line, from Shady Grove to Glenmont, before anyone noticed, on Dec. 2. It's not the first time this has happened, and we bet it won't be the last. -1

Today In Ben Stiller News: Forget fancy economic development plans—maybe the District should just hire Ben Stiller as a tourism promoter. The Smithsonian says visits to museums downtown declined last year, because a long bump from the 2009 release of Stiller's Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian finally wore off. Meanwhile, HBO is set to produce a comedy about a Jewish family living in D.C., written by Jonathan Safran Foer and starring Stiller. Which, presumably, will lead to more visits by out-of-towners to the Sixth and I Synagogue, where his mom is the boss. +1

State Of The Traffic Is Bad: Not only will Mayor Vince Gray not be a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama's at tonight's State of the Union speech, but streets between the Capitol and the White House will all be jammed up due to security-related closings. Which basically means Gray should probably watch the speech from home like the rest of his constituents anyway. Prediction: Obama will not mention D.C. statehood, anxiety on Twitter will follow. -1

Goodnight, Sweet Prince: The Nationals ended the season just barely below .500 last year, and the thinking in baseball circles was that the team was maybe just a few moves and a few years away from becoming a serious contender. But given the chance this winter to make one of those moves, the Nats whiffed like a batter chasing a Stephen Strasburg fastball, reportedly letting free agent first baseman Prince Fielder sign with the Detroit Tigers because they didn't want to pay him for as many years as he wanted. Is it too early to say wait 'til next year if pitchers and catchers haven't even reported to spring training yet? -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 40 Today's score: -2 Today's Needle rating: 38

Or, at least, the ears.

The bottom of the ninth inning of Friday night's Nationals/Phillies game did just that for anybody listening on the Nats radio network.

The underdog Nationals entered the inning down two runs, then everything just started going their way, and the giddiness among Nats fans just kept building and building.

By the time Ryan Zimmerman came to the plate with the bases loaded and the rain-delayed game all tied up, a Nats win over the overdog Phillies seemed like destiny.

And Zimmerman, who's got an aura of destiny about him, too, delivered a game-ending grand slam that you just knew was coming.

Play-by-play man Charlie Slowes immortalized it all with a home run call for the ages: "Swing and a long one! Deep left field! Way back! It is gone! Goodbye! Goodnight!" (Trust me: It's better when you hear it.)

An inning like that gives you the kind of prolonged excitement as a fan that the, as Red Smith used to call them, "back and forth sports," where a team's offensive successes are usually immediately followed by the other team taking over possession of the ball, cannot provide.

Am I wrong?

Hoya Paranoia: Big East basketball is tough—plays that might be called technical fouls in other conferences barely merit a glance from the refs. But that doesn't mean the Georgetown Hoyas were ready for what they got today in China, in the second game of their "goodwill tour." A bench-clearing brawl ended the game in the fourth quarter, as a crowd of Bayi Rockets fans in Beijing threw things at Georgetown players, who exchanged punches with the Rockets, then left the arena. (One widely circulated photo showed guard Jason Clark being stomped on by two opponents.) Presumably the Syracuse game will look kind and gentle by comparison. -1

Silt Spill: The mysterious substance befouling the Anacostia River (and causing several clean-up attempts by officials worried it was oil) has finally been identified, and it is... silt. Yes, the same stuff that naturally occurs in, oh, just about every river in the world. Evidently there was more of it than usual recently, in part because it rained last weekend for what felt like the first time ever, and it amassed in sufficient quantities to look threatening. No word on whether authorities will be called out next to deal with the sudden presence of odd green plantlife growing on what had previously been patchy bits of dead straw on people's lawns around town. +2

Carsharing Is Carcaring: For years, Zipcar (and before the companies merged, FlexCar) has been able to park its sharable vehicles on District streets either for free or for a $200 annual fee. Those days are about to end; a serious rhetorical battle is about to begin. D.C. officials auctioned off 84 curbside parking spots Zipcar used to use, leaving the company with only 12. The change only affects 10 percent of Zipcar's vehicles, but the Zipcar folks are unhappy enough about it that they've told customers who don't like where the spots are relocated to or what rental rates do to contact DDOT boss Terry Bellamy. What, exactly, does a pack of angry Zipsters look like? We'll find out soon enough. -1

Take Me Out to the Opera: The Washington Nationals won't be playing baseball late next month; they're already mathematically eliminated from the playoffs this year. But the ballpark won't be going unused—the Washington National Opera will broadcast Puccini's Tosca to the stadium on Sept. 22, with free seats available in the outfield grass. No word yet on whether Ben's Chili Bowl and Shake Shack will be open. +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 63 Today's score: +1 Today's Needle rating: 64

Singletown U.S.A.: People complain enough about dating in D.C. that new statistics are enough to make you wonder whether anyone anywhere in the nation is having any luck—the District turns out to have the most favorable ratio of women to men (for women) anywhere in the country, and it's been rated in the top 10 cities for single men and women by a Rent.com survey. Apparently a low divorce rate worked in the District's favor in the rankings, though it's not clear how that actually helps single people find partners. +2

Go Take A Walk: And now, time for another installment of arbitrary national rankings! (Besides the installment above, that is.) Today's edition comes courtesy of Walk Score, which ranked the District the seventh-most-walkable city in the nation. New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Philadelphia beat us. No city, not even New York, got the highest possible rating in the scores. Time for some grade inflation? +2

And The Heat Goes On: Weather records are falling so fast lately, it's barely even worth writing them down. No new record was set today here, but with a high of over 90, it became the 43rd such day of the summer—which already puts 2011 in the top 20 percent of hottest summers by that mark, and leaves the current year only six 90+ days from breaking the record of 49, set... last summer. Tomorrow's expected to be over 90, too. Climate change sure is delightful! -3

Strasburgmania II: It's not every day that a Hagerstown Suns game makes the front page of The Washington Post; after all, the team plays in the lowest rung of the minor leagues, A ball, and its stadium is 66 miles from downtown D.C. But when Stephen Strasburg shows up at Municipal Stadium to pitch his first competitive game since last summer's elbow surgery, it's news—and not just because, it being August, there's not much else going on. The Nationals star only faced eight batters, going less than two innings in his first rehab start; his fastball was clocked at over 96 miles per hour, though, which is a good sign. So far, at least, there's no Strasburg Suns memorabilia showing up on eBay. +2

Friday's Needle rating: 53 Today's score: +3 Today's Needle rating: 56

After last night's 1-3 performance at the plate in Houston, Werth is hitting .212 on the season. (For the record: The Mendoza Line is named weak hitting vagabond shortstop Mario Mendoza. He had a lifetime average of .215.)

He went 2-for-12 in Atlanta (.167), this after MASN and Nationals marketers decided to base their promotional campaign for the team's first series after the All-Star Break on Werth's prowess at the plate, even if that prowess had only been visible this season against the Braves on the road.

So you ended up with TV commercials showing Werth in the batters box with an excited announcer letting us know the $30,000-per-at-bat outfielder was "batting .333... at Turner Field!"

Not any more, he ain't.

Werth has invited increased post-All-Star break scrutiny by deflecting his season-long slump with assertions that he's a late-bloomer year after year.

"I’ve always played my best ball towards the end of the season," he told the Washington Post's Adam Kilgore several weeks ago.

He's 3-18 since the break.

But, there are places where Werth is still celebrated. Bowie, for example, where the Baysox are putting on Jayson Werth Bobblehead Night on Monday.

Werth played in Bowie from 1998-2000, and his overall stats with the O's minor league club are: .237,  six home runs, 38 RBIs.

But back to the show: Will Werth swing lower than .200 as a Nat?

Well, to quote the same folks who told us Werth was going to burn up Atlanta like Sherman last weekend:  Expect It™!

Who's next? Fox says Montgomery County's own Jim Riggleman will be the interim guy. Why not bring Davey Johnson in?

Johnson was marvelous last time he managed in the MASN market. And he's already coached the Future of the Nats, Stephen Strasburg, during the Olympics.

The Nats didn't listen then.  A source who I'll  refer to as "a guy who knows a guy" told me they did this time. Fab decision.

UPDATE 10:37 a.m.:  Asked if Davey Johnson is indeed The Guy, Nationals spokesman Mike Gazda says, "I have no idea at this point."

Gazda says the Nats have no press conferences scheduled on the replacement search, though some informal pronouncements will likely be made "in Chicago, when we're ready to announce it."

Gone for Good: The Washington Nationals have, contrary to all usual behavior in past seasons, won 11 of their last 12 games, including one this afternoon, and looked like a decent ball club while doing it. So naturally, manager Jim Riggleman decided this was the perfect time to resign. Riggleman apparently was bothered that the team hadn't yet agreed to pick up the option on his contract for next year. It had never really occurred to us to quit our job because our continued employment wasn't guaranteed, but hey—that's baseball. -3

All Wrong: There won't be any more confusion in the future about whether D.C. Taxicab Commission meetings can be videotaped, confusion of the sort that led to two reporters being arrested at one such meeting yesterday. That's the good news. The bad news? That's because videotaping is banned. Nothing like transparency in government! -3

Have a Lucky Day: Stop reading this item, and check your lottery tickets to see if you've won $250,000. Someone who bought a ticket at the 7-Eleven at 11th and U streets NW last week is walking around with a quarter-million bucks in their pocket, but they haven't come forward yet to claim their prize. Confidential to winning lottery ticket owner: Feel free to bring the ticket by Washington City Paper's offices for, uh, safekeeping. +1

Sharks Patrol These Waters: If a shark week falls in the middle of the summer TV doldrums and Discovery Communications doesn't affix a massive marine animal to its Silver Spring headquarters, does it make a sound? Okay, as a Zen koan, that doesn't work. But it's the right question to ask after hearing the news that Chompie will not be installed this year. The shark will be back next summer for shark week's 25th anniversary. In other news: People have now been watching shark videos on TV for 25 years. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 50 Today's score: -6 Today's Needle rating: 44

Pop Goes the Beard Award Winner: The surest sign that pop-up shops and restaurants have gone completely mainstream? The federal government is doing one. José Andrés announced today that he'll team up with the National Archives for "America Eats Tavern" this summer, taking over the space that has been Café Atlántico for years. The new spot will serve hot dogs, oysters Rockefeller, New England clam chowder, and other stuff that, we presume, some future chef growing up in Asturias, Spain, is dreaming of eating. +2

Doors Closing: Short Metro trips may be soon be a thing of the past—if only for time management reasons. That's because the transit agency is considering running trains 25 minutes apart on weekends in order to help close a budget gap. Which means if you're only going one or two stops, chances are you could walk between them faster than a train would even come to pick you up. (It also means more chances to get app trapped.) -2

BLANK You: Over the course of just eight months or so, Cee-Lo Green's song "Fuck You" went from catchy, clever pop phenomenon to overplayed, censored background music; we know some people who only know the song with its radio-friendly hook, "Forget you." But apparently its newest version—a heartfelt appreciation of firefighters and others, titled and sung as "Thank You"—hasn't made quite the same splash. So when the Nationals played it Friday night while honoring wounded war veterans in the third inning of their game, the crowd didn't respond so warmly. As the man says, ain't that some shit? -1

Graduation Day: To all the college graduates reading this: You are slackers. Sure, you may have gone to a university, may have even graduated in four years, may have gotten straight A's; you've still got nothing on Ty Hobson-Powell. The Northwest D.C. resident graduated today from the University of Baltimore at the age of 15. Next he's off to law school, and then to getting his driver's license. Seriously. +1

Friday's Needle rating: 67 Today's score: 0 Today's Needle rating: 67

LeasingSocial: Business is good if you're in coupons these days—just ask the producers of TLC's Extreme Couponing, a show that probably would never have been greenlighted in a less frugal-minded era. How good, exactly? Good enough that LivingSocial had to rent a whole new office to prepare to expand. The D.C.-based Groupon rival will take over all seven floors of a Chinatown building dating back to 1890. No word on whether they'll get their lease free if three other companies also rent from Douglas Development through their personalized link. +1

Biting the Hand that Feeds You: For a guy whose main claim to fame is being on a cooking TV show—where none of the audience can actually taste any of what he made—Spike Mendelsohn seems to be awfully impressed with himself. The Top Chef alum has decided that D.C., where his Good Stuff and We the Pizza restaurants are, is a "second-tier city where you can be a big fish in a small pond." Mendelsohn isn't the first person to argue that D.C. is no New York. He may, however, be the first person to argue that D.C. is no New York using his own ability to succeed here as evidence for his case. -2

All Your Bus Are Belong to Google: It's been obvious for some time now that any need to recall information will, sometime in the not-too-distant future, be outsourced to Google. For Metro subways and buses, the future is now. Google Maps has, after a wait of some time, added the local transit system to its database; you can now plug in two addresses in the D.C. area and get directions on how to ride the train or bus between them. "But surely, Metro's own Trip Planner service already does this?" you may be asking. If, that is, you still use an aol.com email address. +2

Now Batting, George Washington: About a month into the baseball season, the Washington Nationals (also sometimes known as the Washington Natinals) are just a game below .500. But they rank 23rd out of 30 major league teams a stat that matters more to the bottom line: attendance. Which means it's already time for some Bill Veeck-style marketing. So tickets for Monday night's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates will cost only $1. Sure, there are fees that add a few more bucks to the total, but still—what's more fun, sitting in the outfield on a nice spring night, or eating a McDonald's Fruit 'N Yogurt Parfait? +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 77 Today's score: +2 Today's Needle rating: 79

Walgreens logo

Wegmans

Nats

The great Charlie Slowes' early home run call — "Bang! Zoom! go the fireworks!" — was rendered obsolete  by the Washington Nationals management this year.

Could his glorious winning-game-ending catchphrase — "Another Curly W goes in the record books!" — and the logo that engendered it be endangered, also?

Well, Walgreens is clearly out to stake a claim on the "W."

Lawyers for the drug store chain recently pummeled the grocer Wegmans into submission for using a capital W in its logo.

From the Asbury Park Press:

Walgreen Co., the nation's largest drugstore chain, sued Wegmans last October, accusing the Rochester, NY based supermarket company of trademark infringement.

Walgreens began using its name in a script logo, as well as a stylized W logo, to promote its drug stores since 1951, the company said.Wegmans adopted its own script logo in 2008, a version of a logo first used in connection with its grocery stores in the 1930s and 1940s, Wegmans said in court documents.

It has used a W logo on its Wegmans' brand soft drinks since at least 1992...

"The cost of making relatively minor changes to a limited number of products was much less than the cost of litigating this case to the end," Wegmans spokeswoman Jo Natale said in a statement. "We wanted to return to a logo we had used many decades ago. There was never any intent on our part to make our products or logos resemble those of Walgreens."

 

What if Wegmans' quick caving emboldens the druggies to go after other W lovers?

After all, as seen above,the Nats' logo looks a whole lot more like Walgreens' symbol than Wegmans' ever did. And, with what we've learned in recent years, baseball and pharmaceuticals are linked in the public's mind as much as the food and drug store chains were.

So, you want a piece of the Nats, Walgreens?

This is the Bread of Election: The upcoming special election for the D.C. Council, by law, falls on April 26. By a somewhat older law, so does the last day of Passover. Which means observant Jews aren't supposed to write, or use the electronic voting machines, until 8:40 p.m. Polls are scheduled to close at 8 p.m. So Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Shalom—The National Synagogue is suing the Board of Elections and Ethics, seeking to keep polls open until 10 p.m. or later. Early voting, of course, is available now, from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday (though Friday afternoon and Saturday would also pose problems for anyone observant enough not to vote during Passover). Nu, rabbi: If the polls close at 8, but anyone who wants to has several weeks to vote before the actual date of the election, dayenu. -1

Get Out the Online Vote: Instant runoff voting is one of those ideas that you know is too sensible to ever be implemented in this country. It lets voters rank candidates in order of preference; if no candidate gets a majority, the lowest ranked one loses, and the second-choice votes from people who ranked that candidate first get counted. And so on. Greater Greater Washington decided to run an IRV poll for that upcoming D.C. Council race, combining both a sampling of urbanist opinion and a voting system good-government types love. And then Sekou Biddle decided to try to win the (completely non-binding) survey, sending out four consecutive tweets directing supporters to it. By the end of the day, Bryan Weaver was still winning. And absolutely no one was surprised. -1

Vote 'Em Out, Sheriff: No matter how D.C. voters feel about their elected officials, at least we can all take comfort knowing that—so far—none of them have been evicted from their homes. Residents of Brentwood, just over the District line in Maryland, can't say the same; Mayor Xzavier Montgomery-Wright was tossed out of her home for being $7,400 behind in rent. If she's not a resident of the town, she can't serve the second term she's running for. -1

Mascot, You Are No Jack Kennedy: Going to Nationals games the last few years has been fairly predictable—the team will lose, and large-headed likenesses of George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson will race. (And TR will not win.) Last night, the script changed a bit. Not the baseball part; the team lost to the Phillies. And no, Teddy didn't finally pull it out. Instead, John F. Kennedy made his debut in the race, knocking over Washington near the right field fence. Somehow Washington came back to win. We look forward to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt president racing one day, zipping around on a wheelchair, defeating fascism, and looking dapper while he does it. +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 63 Today's score: -2 Today's Needle rating: 61

One more reason Opening Day in Baltimore beat the crap outta Opening Day in D.C.: Kegasus went to Camden Yards!

More photos after the jump!

(Shots of Kegasus courtesy of the Maryland Jockey Club)

The Newlyweds' Game: Opening Day 2011 at Camden Yards. (Photo courtesy Scott and Rebecca Zakheim)

For the four-bagger print edition of Washington City Paper, I wrote this week about Opening Day. I'm old enough to know that Opening Day around here, like everything else everywhere else, used to be better.

I got the sense that nobody in D.C. cared about Opening Day this year.

Nationals brass I spoke with say my perception is wrong, and that they were happy with both the ticket sales to the first game of 2011 and with the actual turnout.

I dunno 'bout that.

Perhaps my perception was distorted by the dreary weather here last week and all those stories the liberal media printed about how tickets to the Nationals/Braves game were going for nothing.

But using a proven and scientific method I refer to as "surfing over to Craigslist a whole lot," I'd been following the movement of tickets for the openers here and in Baltimore.

My conclusion from all this exacting research was there was a much huger buzz about the O's game than the Nats' opener before raindrops or sunny days were forecast, respectively, here and to the North.

And I never came across any Craigslist ad for Nats tickets quite like the one placed by O's fan Scott Zakheim.

Zakheim knew for a while he was getting married on Sunday at a hotel in the Inner Harbor. He also knew that he wanted to take his new bride and fellow O's fanatic, Rebecca, to Opening Day at Camden Yards. But as the big day — the game, not the wedding — drew closer, Zakheim began thinking it might not happen.

"I jump on StubHub and Craigslist and all I can find is Standing-Room only for $75 a pop or lower level on the baselines for something like $275 a pop. Insane!" Scott tells me. "I tried making some last ditch calls to some family connections and to a friend of mine who is a broker in NYC. Nothing. $65 for SRO. $250 plus down low."

So Zakheim did what any real fan would do in his situation: He played the nuptials card.

“Bride and Groom Need Opening Day Tickets,” his Craigslist ad said. “Got married yesterday in downtown. Want to go to Opening Day to celebrate!!! Will take anything – uppers or lowers. Budget is 100-150.”

And, a scalper responded and, Gandhi-like, turned down bigger profits and sold the couple a pair in section 334, row 12, for $150.

"I think these seats were going for $100-$125 on Craigslist and probably pushing $150 each on the ground at Camden," he says. "It was a little wedding miracle."

Would anybody go to those lengths to see a Nats game?