The Redskins are coming to the end of a four-week period that we pessimistically thought was going to torpedo their season. Surprisingly, the team has gone 2-1 over the last three games, taking advantage of Michael Vick’s rib injury and Green Bay’s general incompetence in the second half and overtime. Initially, this weekend’s game against the Bears was going to be another test of how the porous Redskins defense would match up against another elite passer in Jay Cutler. But Cutler and his backups — former Redskin Todd Collins and Caleb Hanie — have been eating a lot of turf the past three weeks, and the Bears have lost 2 of their last 3. Jim Haslett has no doubt studied game film and is ready to unleash his brand new 10-1 defense, where he sends 3,000 pounds of beef at the quarterback and asks LaRon Landry to cover everyone else.

Romance is in the air at the National Zoo! Hot sloth bear love. Nineteen-year-old sloth bear Francois has returned to the D.C., after a stint at the Little Rock Zoo. There, our young Lothario sired two sets of cubs with Little Rock’s Nocona (who died in 2007). Now he’s back home at the National Zoo, where keepers want to hook him up with 15-year-old sloth bear Hana, whom he knew for five years before…

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo has announced the birth of two Andean bear cubs, born to 4-year-old Billie Jean back in mid-January. The twins are believed to have been over a 24-hour period Jan. 14-15, but momma bear and her offspring have been secluded in a private indoor habitat, so all zookeepers know for sure at this point is what they can see and hear via closed-circuit camera and a sound monitor. So far, zoo officials…

Sure, you picked up a book or two last year. You tore through God Is Not Great, nodding in agreement along the way. You read Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows on the Metro, brandishing the cover proudly and caring little that anyone saw you. You read a lot of graphic novels. And, then, just for grins and giggles, you picked up The Divine Comedy in the original Italian. Okay, maybe you read this version…

The Capitals have assigned Ben Clymer to their farm team. For two years, Clymer has provided the Caps with leadership, toughness and first hand knowledge of what it’s like to win a Stanley Cup. This year and next year, he’ll take that knowledge to the American Hockey League’s Hershey Bears. Clymer joins Stanley Cup winner Joe Motzko, whom the Caps signed this summer as a free agent and demoted over the weekend, in giving the…

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant – it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market…

Happy first weekend of September – and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let’s take a look at what’s been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston’s firefighters bent over backwards all week long – first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else – like Tom…

The Capitals have re-signed pugilistic defenseman John Erskine to a two year contract. After Donald Brashear, who is in a category of his own, Erskine is the team’s best fighter. Erskine’s sixty-nine penalty minutes in twenty-nine games last season show he was not afraid to demonstrate his combative skills. While Erskine began last season in Hershey, playing for the Bears of the American Hockey League, he earned a promotion back to the NHL and stayed…

Monday >> Canada’s post-punk four piece Uncut just released their latest album Modern Currencies in the U.S. on July 17th and will be at DC9 tonight with special guest Patrick Krief of The Dears. Just like their name says, they are raw: loud, bold, and off the wall. Check out the stopmotion animated video for their recent single, “Darkhorse” which includes a fire bombing Ronald McDonald and an army of pissed off Care Bears. 8p.m.,…

Last night the Hershey Bears lost the decisive fifth game of the Calder Cup Finals to the Hamilton Bulldogs. The Bulldogs will now get raises and promotions to the NHL, while the Bears will go home to dark, empty apartments and watch nature shows, searching for an equally absurd example of an obnoxious housepet dominating a bear. Actually, losing in the finals is a perfectly acceptable outcome from the Capitals’ standpoint. Their young players got…