Although the Washington Redskins didn’t have the worst record in the NFL this season (thanks, Rams and Colts), after another disappointing season fans and sports pundits are looking for a savior. And what better savior for a team that likes nothing better than to win the offseason than Peyton Manning?

After sitting out the entire 2011 season with a neck injury, Manning may become a free agent in the coming weeks, and rumors have already begun to circulate as to where he’ll end up. Falls Church resident Jim Johnson is leading a crusade of Skins fans who hope his destination is the District. (Well, Landover, Md., technically, but you know what we mean, unless you're Marion Barry or Jack Evans.)

About two weeks ago, amid the pre-Super Bowl, post-season hoopla, Johnson started DCPetitionforPeyton.com and began tweeting from @PeytonToSkins, part of a virtual campaign to rally residents around the cause of bringing Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning’s bro to town. Although he only has 62 Twitter followers so far, Johnson isn't giving up. (Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins is on board, now, too!) So Washington City Paper spoke with Johnson to pick his brain about why Peyton would be the best fit at quarterback. This interview has been edited for length.

City Paper: It has been argued that no team needs a quarterback more than the Skins (two words: Rex Grossman), but why Peyton Manning?

Johnson: I think his experience and leadership skills are the most telling. I think the reasons why we need him. You just can't teach leadership and those type of skills on a team.

WCP: What happens if Manning gets signed to the Redskins and then gets hurt?

Johnson: I think the best way to deal would be getting him and creating a team around him by picking up a top wide receiver, which is probably [Justin] Blackmon from Oklahoma State University.

And then another quarterback, a young quarterback in the 2nd or 3rd round. [Peyton] will probably be available—I mean he's turning 36 this year—so he'll probably be available for about three to four years. You always want to have a young quarterback behind you to learn. A lot of teams made the playoffs with rookie quarterbacks who were drafted in the 2nd and third round. We could certainly do that with him.

WCP: How did you feel about the Redskins' season overall?

Johnson: Disappointed. They get off to a good start and then things just go south. Just the lack of leadership, I think they have good leadership on the defensive side of the ball but not on the offensive side. That's something that bringing Peyton Manning would do.

WCP: Do you think the Redskins can afford him?

Johnson: I do. I read just a couple of days ago that's he's looking to do a performance based contract so that he gets payed based on how often he plays. so if he's not playing he's not getting payed as much, which I think would be a phenomenal thing. Trying to prove that he's still able to play so that's why he's looking for a contract that is performance based, not just money up front.

WCP: How do you respond to your site/account's many hecklers?

Johnson: I think everyone has their own opinion, it's important to voice that opinion. I enjoy any dialogue about it, this is just how I feel about it. I think it's important to express that. I don't ignore them, I certainly respond to them.

WCP: How has the general response been to the website and twitter?

Johnson: Really good. I think a lot of people have been behind it, about 40-60. Forty percent for, 60 percent against. I think it has changed as things have become more clarified and Manning has been declared as healthy. I think it has shifted more to 50-50. The site has been up for two weeks

WCP: Perfect Redskins team?

Johnson: I wouldn't bring on Kyle Orton or keep Rex Grossman, the whole team would just be any one who could support [Peyton]. Just look at the all-star teams that they have and all those guys.

Photo via PetitionforPeyton.com

#Fail To The Redskins: The New York Giants won the Super Bowl Sunday night, but most of the D.C. Council seemed to be thinking about a different football team, one that wasn't eligible for the sort of playoff run the Giants made this postseason even though two of their five victories in 2011 came against the new champs. Ward 8's Marion Barry kicked the party off:

You know, the Redskins suck. I'm tired of watching everyone else in the Superbowl. Aint been right since they left DC. #dciswhereskinsbelong

— Marion S. Barry, Jr. (@marionbarryjr) February 6, 2012

But Yvette Alexander weighed in from Ward 7, as did Mayor Vince Gray. Barry, meanwhile, spent the rest of the evening using his new hashtag. And the parody account @DCCouncil (the real council account is @CouncilofDC) pretended various D.C. elected officials were in Indianapolis at the game, which at least one follower didn't realize was a joke. When the home team stopped playing football a month before the Super Bowl, alas, this is the sort of stuff that people spend their time on. Wait 'til next year? -2

United In D.C.: Along the same lines that Barry was tweeting on, since the Redskins left and the Nationals got their own digs, there's only one fulltime tenant at RFK Stadium these days (unless you count the fauna that also call the stadium home). And now D.C. United looks likely to stay in the lease until they can get a less ramshackle home of their own. The only major local pro team to win a title in the last 20 years is close to a deal with the District to reduce its rent so it doesn't lose money just in time for next month's season opening match. +2

Unemployed, Employed, Same Thing: Some D.C. government workers have figured out an ingenious "make money quick!" scheme: Pretend they're not working. According to authorities, the District has paid out more than $800,000 in unemployment benefits to people on the city's payroll since 2009. The workers have been fired, but if the checks on fraud are so lax that the city didn't notice it was paying unemployment to people it employed, we might try to put a claim in ourselves, too. -4

Virginia Is For Gun Dealers: If you're the type who likes to buy a new weapon every day, you may soon find yourself heading over the Potomac more often. Virginia is on the verge of repealing a long-standing one-gun-per-month purchase limit, presumably because the deer population is exploding so quickly that hunters need to be very heavily armed. Chances are this will mean more guns sold in Virginia wind up in places like D.C., of course, but hey—what do rural Virginia lawmakers care about that? -2

Friday's Needle rating: 45 Today's score: -6 Today's Needle rating: 39

Is Our Deer Learning?: Maybe it's not too late to change the award-winning designs of some of the new libraries around town. Because, apparently, the local fauna have trouble with lots of windows. A deer crashed through the plate glass in the interim library in Washington Highlands today, shattering the window; the deer had to be put to death, after breaking its jaw. No word on whether it was rushing to return books to avoid an overdue fine. -1

McPherson Square, Preoccupied: Yesterday's deadline for Occupy D.C. to abide by rules banning camping in McPherson Square passed without too much trouble, as many protesters agreed to ditch things like stoves and sleeping gear in order to keep the U.S. Park Police from raiding the site. Today, the Occupiers failed to get a restraining order against the enforcement of the rules—but they did get a promise of advance warning before a bust. Which, among other outcomes, guarantees extensive media coverage if the cops ever do move to clear the park. +2

History Of Fiction: Republican presidential candidate and would-be moon colonizer Newt Gingrich has compared himself to everything from Moses to "a Viking." So it's almost understandable that Post reporter Stephanie McCrummen might have thought Gingrich was referring to another historical figure when he said he was a student of "the Japanese samurai warlord Toranaga." Unfortunately for McCrummen, Toranaga is a character in Shogun, a James Clavell novel published in 1975, not an actual historical figure. Fortunately for the rest of us, the correction noting that fact is quite amusing. +2

Save Us, Peyton Kenobi, You're Our Only Hope: Two seasons ago, the Washington Redskins signed Donovan McNabb amidst great preseason hype. Before the 6-10 2010 campaign was over, McNabb had been benched for Rex Grossman. So the news that the team is now doodling Peyton Manning's name and drawing burgundy and gold hearts on notebooks in Ashburn, Va., doesn't exactly inspire great confidence. Of course, the modern era being what it is, there is already a petition to bring Manning to town and a Twitter feed to promote it, complete with PhotoShopped images of Dan Snyder posing with his new QB. -1

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

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the last title the team won, Super Bowl XXVI. Played at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, the game against the Buffalo Bills was never really close, and it ended with a 37-24 Redskins win. Watch the highlights here, and remember the good old days.

That doesn't mean there's no reason for the burgundy and gold faithful to watch football this weekend, though. Just a short jaunt up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, fans are preparing to cheer on their own team, as the Baltimore Ravens play the New England Patriots for the AFC title. The Ravens have been trying to lure cranky Redskins fans away for a while now; just in time for Sunday's matchup, Famous DC has posted a guide to jumping on the Baltimore bandwagon.

And in NFC action, the pride of Dunbar High School, Petworth native and Maryland grad Vernon Davis and his San Francisco 49ers teammates will take on the New York Giants (who the Redskins, inexplicably, beat twice this season). Here's a look, via Fox Sports Net, at Davis' D.C. days:

So a Super Bowl ring could still come to D.C. this winter, even if it's not on a Redskin's finger. And hey—maybe next year, they'll bring back Mark Rypien. He's only 49!

Taxi Commission Über Alles: iPhone-friendly car service Uber made a big splash when it arrived in D.C. from San Francisco, with lots of friendly tweets and a fancy lunch for the media. And then New Year's Eve happened. Customers complained that the service's "dynamic pricing" resulted in outlandish bills to get home early on Jan. 1. Which was probably bad enough for Uber, but now they're also fending off an assault by D.C. taxi bureaucrats, who say it may be operating illegally. An illegal luxury car service—is this D.C., or Moscow? +1

She's Baaa-aack: Two years ago, the National Portrait Gallery managed to embarrass itself by caving to demands by Republicans in Congress to remove some gay-themed art from an exhibit of, well, gay-themed art. The woman who launched the crusade against David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire in my Belly," activist Penny Starr, is trying to repeat her feat now. The gallery is running an exhibit on Gertrude Stein, which Starr thinks is inappropriate because...wait for it...Stein was gay. So far, this time, no one seems to care. -1

Game On: Snow in Concord, N.H., today meant a delegation of D.C. officials scrubbed a trip there to testify in support of a bill in the New Hampshire legislature that would (non-bindingly) put the Granite State on record wanting the District to be a state. Apparently the weather forecast for Jan. 27 looks clear; the hearing, and thus the trip, is back on for then. Unless it hails, or rains frogs. +1

The City That Raids: Baltimore, we all know, is no D.C. On the other hand, the minor metropolitan area to our north does have one thing Washingtonians haven't enjoyed in quite some time: a decent football team. So the Ravens are trying to recruit fans from Redskins territory, as they continue their purple-and-black march through the NFL playoffs. Various Ravens say everyone here should root for them, since, alas, the Redskins are mostly booking golf vacations right about now. Does that mean everyone will soon stop yelling "O!" during the national anthem at D.C. sporting events? -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 39 Today's score: 0 Today's Needle rating: 39

College For All—Or Else: For better or worse, a college degree is becoming an essential credential if you want to get the kind of job that can provide a middle class standard of living (before it's eventually outsourced somewhere else and/or your employer goes out of business). So when D.C. Council Chairman Kwame "Fully Loaded" Brown says he's trying to encourage more D.C. high school students to apply to higher education, it sounds like a good idea. It's Brown's specific solution that seems a bit muddled; the chairman wants to require students to take the SAT or ACT and fill out college applications in order to be eligible to graduate high school. Which means anyone who's not interested in college would also wind up lacking a high school diploma. Give Brown's plan an F.  -3

Acqua Gratuita: Consumers revolted last year against surcharges at Bank of America, Verizon Wireless, and other corporate behemoths. Is D.C. restaurant Elisir next on that list? The Italian joint has announced that it's rolling back the 29-cent-per-customer charge it used to impose for filtered water, replacing it with a choice of free tap water or a $3.95-per-table fee for bottled H2O. "It has occurred to us that our water policy is presently not meeting Elisir’s goals" of providing diners with good service, the restaurant says. It has occurred to us, meanwhile, that paying 29 cents for free water is pretty dumb. +1

Uberpriced: New smartphone-savvy luxury cab service Uber has made a flashy entrance into the D.C. market lately, ferrying local journalists to Graffiato for a lunch to preview their business (no one from Washington City Paper attended, so far as we know) and hitting social media outlets to promote itself. Which meant that on New Year's Eve, when regular cabs are hard to come by, there was plenty of demand for a fancier ride. Thanks to Uber's "surge pricing," though, fares went up. The company says it warned patrons in advance that would happen; surprisingly enough, by the time the bars closed in the wee hours of Jan. 1, people seemed to have forgotten that. -1

Fail, Victory: The Washington Redskins season ended not with a bang, but with a wimper, as the team marched up to Philadelphia to lose to the Eagles, 34-10, and finish the year 5-11. That's the worst record coach Mike Shanahan has ever had, in 17 full seasons. Perhaps as a result, he brought in some Navy SEALs and a Marine to the final meeting of the season; their mission was to inspire the players, not conquer them, as the rest of the NFL had more or less already accomplished that one. Meanwhile, on Jan. 26, it will be 20 years since the last time the Redskins won the Super Bowl. Can they draft Mark Rypien this spring? -2

Friday's Needle rating: 58 Today's score: -5 Today's Needle rating: 53

There's a phenomenon known on the Internet as the "Streisand effect," which dates to 2003. Singer Barbra Streisand sued, unsuccessfully, to try to keep photos of her beachfront mansion out of a collection of images of the California shore. Streisand sought $50 million in damages for the alleged invasion of privacy. Before she sued, the photos of her house were hidden, fairly anonymously, among about 12,000 pictures in the collection. Afterwards, everyone knew which home was hers. Filing the lawsuit called far more attention to the photos than they would otherwise have received.

Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder employed a similar PR tactic this year, when he sued the company that owns Washington City Paper the week before the Super Bowl. (He later added staff writer Dave McKenna as a defendant.) Snyder made a bunch of baseless claims about our story, "The Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder," before eventually abandoning his court case. But it's pretty clear in retrospect that what he should have done, if he really didn't like the piece, was ignore it.

Football is a game of statistics, so let's look at the traffic. From the day the article went online, Nov. 17, 2010, to Feb. 2, 2011, the day Snyder sued, Google Analytics recorded a total of 77,691 clicks on the story. Since then, the story's been viewed a total of 485,703 times (through Dec. 26). By suing us, Snyder helped the story get more than six times the views it had before he filed the suit. (This originally said 60 times, not six.)

Snyder may have realized how much attention he brought to the story; he told the New York Times Magazine in an interview published just before he dropped his suit that it was "possibly" a tactical error. Of course, he also said he never read the story—so apparently he didn't add any pageviews personally to the more than half a million the piece got. Regardless, his legal and PR team fared badly enough in 2011 that it made his football team's on-field performance look pretty good.

Either way, maybe it's time to rename the Streisand effect the Snyder effect—after all, in Internet time, 2003 is ancient history.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery/Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Mike Shanahan

But as cruel as the standings have been to Shanahan's reputation as a coach since he got here, the recent box scores have been kind.

On paper, it sure seems like the team he's fielding, and even winning with in the Meadowlands, is nameless and headed for nowhere. You'd have to go back to the replacement Redskins that played during the 1987 NFL strike to find a roster with so few notable athletes or so bleak a future.

No quarterback on the team should be here beyond this season. John Beck and Rex Goodman are just latter-day Ed Rubberts and Tony Robinsons.

None of the top three receivers against New England or the Giants by yards—Donte Stallworth, Jabar Gaffney, Santana Moss, and David Anderson—will be around much longer. (Anthony Allen, anybody?)

They're all ancient enough in football years to be cast off just for age at season's end.

Perhaps someday one of the top two rushers in both games—rookies Roy Helu and Evan Royster—will make a name for themselves. But for now they're far from household even in the home market.

On the other side of the ball, the box score ain't too pretty, either. The Redskins' leading tackler against New England and New York, as it is week after week, and the only candidate for postseason honors, was London Fletcher.

He will be 37 years old before the next training camp opens.

Taking it all in, and Shanahan's coaxing a dominant performance out of this bunch of Redskins against the Giants could be mentioned alongise the Scabskins' win over the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football some 24 years ago.

Joe Gibbs' reputation as a genius was etched in cement after that game. So was general manager Bobby Beathard's, for putting together a better roster of replacements than anybody else in the league.

Yet, it's worth noting that almost nobody who took the field for the Redskins that night was still around when they made it to the Super Bowl.

What does current GM Bruce Allen do again?

Oh, right.

You May Be Rich: Someone somewhere in the District is walking around with $200,000 in their pocket. A winning ticket to Saturday's Powerball drawing was sold at the 4 Seasons Convenience Store on South Dakota Avenue NE. The good news: More proof real people do actually win the lottery occasionally. The bad news: If you didn't buy your ticket at that store, you know it wasn't you. +1

Millions And Millions: Toting a gun around is, apparently, rather passé in the world of big-time criminals. The new must-have item? Grenades and a rocket launcher. Or so say authorities in court papers supporting the arrest of Christopher Washington for alleged weapons and drug trafficking. The FBI and Metropolitan Police Department arrested Washington and other defendants in a year-long sting that police say yielded 70 arrests, 161 confiscated weapons, and $7.2 million in cocaine and methamphetamines. Authorities claim a Mexican drug cartel was involved in the operation they rolled up. Cynical but sound prediction: No matter how many arrests MPD and the FBI makes, drug and weapons trafficking will continue. -1

That's A Cab Of A Different Color: New fares aren't the only changes coming to D.C. taxicabs, if lawmakers and Mayor Vince Gray have their way. A major reform bill would add GPS readers that send data to the taxi commission, install panic buttons, increase the number of hack inspectors, cap the number of cab licenses issued (though not quite with a full-on medallion system), and mandate that all cabs be painted the same color. (Councilmember Mary Cheh wants 'em to be white.) Drivers would also have to take a course in geography of the District. No word on whether the course will teach them to try not to hit cyclists. +2

Hail!: Tuning into the Redskins-Giants game yesterday was a little confusing. The team in burgundy and white uniforms surely wasn't the same gang that's been losing almost every week lately, was it? And why did the guys in blue keep dropping easy touchdown passes? Somehow or another, the Redskins managed their first season sweep of the Giants since 1999, beating the home team 23-10 and playing their best game of the season by far. Unfortunately, the better Rex Grossman plays, the likelier Mike Shanahan is to decide the team doesn't need a real quarterback next year. Still, a win's a win. +2

Friday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: +4 Today's Needle rating: 50

Via a pop-up ad on my laptop, I learned yesterday that the catchphrase for the Obama 2012 presidential campaign is still: "Are You In?"

Of course, Donovan McNabb, another guy from Chicago who swept into town on a platform of change and was handed the second-most important job in the Nation's Capital–Washington Redskins quarterback—was already the focus of a campaign using that same pitch.

The Redskins' "R You In?" blitz didn't work real good.

Since adopting the slogan, in fact, the team has lost more seats than congressional Democrats did in the mid-term elections: A reported 10,000 seats were ripped out of FedExField in the offseason.

And McNabb failed to energize the base and after just one term he was sent packing to make room for a guy from Brigham Young.

Uh oh.

"And, yes, and you can have a college degree..."

When I heard via the Louisville Courier-Journal that Joe Jacoby had gone back to school and was getting his sheepskin today, that's the sentence that popped into my head.

That's because whenever I hear anything about Jacoby, among the most beloved and successful Washington Redskins of all time and a cornerstone of the Hogs, "And yes, and..." pops into my head. No matter the subject.

For all that Jacoby accomplished on the field during a career that lasted from 1981-1993— four Super Bowl appearances (three wins), four Pro Bowls, two first-team All-Pro selections— if Redskins fans had to pick one Jacoby moment, it would be his opening lines in a legendarily awful 1983 TV commercial for Theater Vision, a local big screen television retailer famous for its low-budget advertising campaigns.

The ad, like all TheaterVision ads from the early 1980s, paired the biggest pro athletes in the area and the worst production values in Christendom. Jacoby, dressed in dark polyester shorts, white socks and tight yellow T-shirt and looking like he'd just walked off a practice field because he had just walked off a practice field, stammered his sales pitch to big screen customers: “And, yes, and you can have this set here—50-inch, four-foot-screen—for as little as $895.” (Tragically, all video of Jacoby's TheaterVision commercials has been removed from YouTube.)

I asked Jacoby about the commercials last winter, just after Theater Vision went out of business:

“It is amazing how the commercials live on,” says Jacoby, now an assistant coach at Shenandoah University. “I didn’t know what I was doing. You see what I was wearing? That’s because nobody told me what to wear. I just showed up in [shorts and a T-shirt], and they told me what to say and we started doing the commercial. My daughters get out a tape of that now and then to make fun of the old man. They can’t believe I ever had hair.”

The should-be-Hall of Fame tackle says he doesn’t remember how he ended up shilling for Bessell’s shop.

But he remembers what he got paid: “No money. Just a big-screen television,” Jacoby says.

Jacoby says he never even set up the TV in his townhouse. It was too big.

“Theater Vision got its money’s worth out of that ad,” he says. “People still tell me that that commercial was terrible. Yeah, it was terrible. But I guess it did its job, because it was memorable, too.”

Jacoby now coaches the offensive line at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va.

He told the Courier-Journal this week that he decided to go back (through correspondence courses) to the University of Louisville, where in 1980 he left still 30 credits shy of a degree to pursue a pro football career, after years of feeling sort of phony telling his children and the student/athletes playing ball at Shenandoah U. about the importance of an education.

From the Courier piece:

“How could I keep saying that when I didn’t have my degree?” Jacoby asked.

That changes Friday night. Look for a 6-foot-7, 280-pound guy who’s 52 years old.

He’ll be walking on stage at the KFC Yum! Center to accept his bachelor of science degree in workforce leadership at the University of Louisville commencement.

So, congrats to Jacoby for setting a fine example. It'd be a better story if he studied theater on his return to campus, but still...

Now, all that's left for him is a stop in Canton. Because, let's be serious, it makes no sense at all that Joe Jacoby isn't in the Hall of Fame.

Or, rather: And, yes, and Joe Jacoby really should be in the Hall of Fame.

Yet another sign of the Washington Redskins' reduced hold on the hometown: Big businesses are scheduling events during Redskins games.

Time was, the city had a reputation for shutting down on any Sunday afternoon whenever the Redskins were playing.

But all week long, WJFK-FM has been promoting an appearance this Sunday by Brooks Laich of the Washington Capitals. He'll be at Ted Britt Ford in Fairfax. There'll be autograph signings and free pizza from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

At the same time of Laich's meet and greet and eat, the Redskins will be playing the New York Giants. That's an NFC East rival.

Who among us ever thought we'd see a day when a hockey player trumps the Redskins around here?

'Course, maybe it's the free pizza.

Which brings up yet another kick in the pants for the Redskins: The free grub, according to all the announcements, comes from Papa John's Pizza.

That's the "official pizza of the Washington Redskins."

Ouchie.

Photo via Redskinskidsclub.com

Hail to the Mittens: If you've bought any Redskins-licensed material or attended an event at FedEx Field recently, you may, indirectly, have been supporting Mitt Romney. Turns out Redskins owner Dan Snyder and his wife, Tanya Snyder, have each given $2,500—the maximum amount allowed by law—to the former Massachusetts governor's presidential campaign. Romney is the only candidate either have contributed to this election cycle. Which means that if the Eagles beat the Redskins on Jan. 1, and Newt Gingrich wins the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Snyder can be a two-time loser that week. -2

MasterCab: Taxi fares are going up in the District next year—but at least now passengers will be able to go into debt to pay for their rides. Along with the fare hike, some fees are being eliminated (like the surcharges for having a suitcase with you), and credit card machines will become mandatory for all cabs. No word on whether the new rules will actually require the taxis to do things like "take calls from far-flung neighborhoods" or "pick up passengers who aren't white." -1

Would You Like That Shrink-Wrapped?: Purchasing larger-than-advisable quantities of basic household goods will soon beeven easier. A deal to bring Costco to the Shops at Dakota Crossing, a retail development planned for the Fort Lincoln area, is basically wrapped up, and construction on the membership warehouse will start soon. The good news: Kirkland branded beer for all! The bad news: The area is currently a marshland, which will have to be paved for the development. -1

Frozen With A Chance Of Continued Frozen: As if anyone needed yet another reason to gripe about the insufferable Sen. Joe Lieberman, he's now come out with a warning that federal workers should expect to continue toiling for their 2010 salaries for quite some time to come. Chances are good the GOP will demand a federal pay freeze be extended in order to help pay for the extension of a temporary payroll tax cut for all workers. Chances are also good Lieberman will do whatever the GOP demands, then lecture everyone on how national security requires it to be done. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: -5 Today's Needle rating: 41

Hamburglars: The burgers at Ray's Hell Burger are very tasty, as even Russian President Dmitry Medvedev knows. Apparently some local crooks were more interested in the place for the cash than for the ground-up trimmings from Ray's the Steaks; a trio of armed robbers struck on Thursday, taking money after barging in brandishing a gun. No word on whether they availed themselves of free charred jalapeños on the way out. -2

Bar None: And now, time for another installment of meaningless rankings by national magazines! In today's episode, we learn that only two bars in the D.C. area are worthy of the name. Food & Wine picked its "50 Best Bars in America," and only The Passenger/Columbia Room, in the District, and PX, in Arlington, made the cut. Cue outrage from patrons of other watering holes—but at least they know where to drown their sorrows. -1

The Download District: Access to the Internet used to be a luxury, back in the Prodigy vs. CompuServe days, but now it's pretty essential to participate in the economy (not to mention to laugh at things like this). D.C. government officials hope a new project to expand high-speed connections around the city will help underserved communities get online and also reduce costs for everyone; the first phase of the project, DC-CAN, was finished last week. It's due to be completed citywide by 2013, which means that when you can't download the latest episode of your favorite TV show, you can blame the government and your cable provider. +1

Going Golfing: The season started so promisingly for the Washington Redskins, but now we all know how it'll end—without a trip to the playoffs, just like the last few years. Yesterday's loss to the New England Patriots officially eliminated the team from postseason contention. If they win every game left on the schedule, the Redskins would finish 7-9, which would be an upgrade over last year's 6-10. But does anyone think that'll actually happen? -2

Friday's Needle rating: 50 Today's score: -4 Today's Needle rating: 46