When the story first broke that Dan Snyder was considering taking legal action against the ownership of the Washington City Paper, there were a scattered few who wondered whether Snyder was pursuing the suit as some sort of perverse publicity stunt. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I know. But, think about it: we have been talking a whole lot about Dan Snyder in the last couple of weeks — and a piece today by new WaPo sports columnist Jason Reid lends at least a little credence to the theory.

, Former D.C. United prodigy and lightning rod Freddy Adu is off to Benfica of the Portuguese League, reports Steven Goff at the Soccer Insider. When Adu came to United at the tender age 14, his arrival inspired fanfare within Major League Soccer that has only since been surpassed by some British geezer. After three up-and-down seasons with United, Adu was sent to Real Salt Lake for a major allocation (a powerful tool in MLS…

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton’s San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan’s cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Sunshine A group of astronauts are on a suicide mission to save a dying Sun, lest the earth perish as well. While it may sound like a plot suitable for Michael Bay’s Armageddon 2: Bigger and Hotter, in the hands of director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and his 28 Days Later screenwriter, Alex Garland, it may…

In times when security fears, whether justified or not, begin to creep over our lives, it’s important to remember that the tiny chipping away of legitimate rights can be a slippery slope to unwarranted governmental authority over our lives. We wrote in June about photographer Chip Py’s experience in downtown Silver Spring, as well as Kate Mereand’s similar confrontations all over D.C., and their subsequent formation of DC Photo Rights, a Flickr group dedicated to…

In her publicity photos, 23-year-old singer-songwriter Melody Gardot is usually seen wearing a pair of dark sunglasses that one initially assumes are a part of a well-cultivated look. In fact, Gardot wears the glasses because of injuries she suffered when she was struck by a car while bicycling home in her native Philadelphia. Prior to the accident, Gardot worked part-time as a cocktail pianist while studying at Moore College of Art & Design. While in…

>> Artomatic comes to a close this weekend, after five long weeks of inundating us with massive quantities of art, free performances, lectures, concerts, film series, demonstrations and workshops, and spirited community building that even your old summer camp counselor couldn’t match. If you haven’t gone down to Crystal City yet, the old Patent Office location is only a few blocks from the metro, and the art fair only rises up every two (sometimes three)…

Just how do you recruit a 19-year-old woman to live in a studio apartment atop a big chair in Southeast Washington? This was the incredible feat achieved by Charles Wendell Curtis, who the Post profiles in an obituary today. Curtis was the man who built Anacostia’s 19 1/2 foot tall Big Chair in 1959 to promote his family’s furniture store. The original chair — when built touted as the World’s Largest Chair — was replaced…

You’ve read about The Vita Ruins on DCist before. You may have even seen them perform at our 4th Unbuckled concert. When all that buzz was going on about the band, they’d only had a few (literally — Unbuckled was their third show) performances under their belt. Since then they’ve built up a reputation that’s allowed them quite a bit of luck in booking shows and getting people talking. But the Virginia natives are…

When your alumni game features less than one former player for each year your franchise has played, and none of them play goalie, something might be wrong. The 2006-2007 season was a chance for the Washington Capitals to take a long, sometimes painful look at the prospects it has drafted and traded for in recent years. Over the season, the team discovered that these young players were generally young, inexperienced and insecure. With the right…