Photo of Shuttle Atlantis the night before launch in November 2009 by Heather Goss.As if you need us to tell you, there’s not a whole lot to look up to see this week unless you want to get slapped around by snowflakes. In the meantime, those of you who still have power and internet can at least do a little remote viewing. Update: Endeavour’s launch was scrubbed this morning due to weather; it’s been…

Hell may be closer to D.C. than originally thought Washingtonian’s Todd Kliman revealed that celeb chef Gordon Ramsay, star of such reality shows at Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is likely to take over Maestro at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner. Much like the other chef-utantes breaking into D.C., he will only serve in a consulting capacity. Given his penchant for blasting anything less than perfection, it seems unlikely that the food will…

>> A non-rolling tennis ball catches a lot of parking tickets on Cliffbourne Place. [Marc Fisher] >> D.C. police are trying to identify a body found in the Tidal Basin. [NBC4] >> “A DC Team is in the Super Bowl again. The Beacon House Falcons are in Pop Warner Football’s Pee Wee Division Super Bowl on Saturday, December 8th at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex.” [Notions Capital] >> The District government expects to…

By no means am I strictly an NFL guy. When the lights dim after the Super Bowl each year, I seamlessly move with the seasons into the maelstrom of college hoops and then the long, drawn-out, slow-motion marketing fantasia that is the NBA. Over a lifetime, I’ve soured on baseball but stayed constant to soccer, the sport I participated in myself as a child, with engrossingly mediocre results. But then, the NFL comes around again…

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing– what’s going on in the World of the -ist’s? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama’s unpaid parking tickets, their Governor’s latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as they…

OK, one more time, can someone explain to us the shrewd scheduling of the Super Bowl for Sunday night every year? We wake up on Monday, still stuffed with unhealthy amounts of sausage and seven layer dip, and more than a little bit hungover. How are we expected to work under these conditions? So we’re making this proposal to The Man, right here, right now: make the day after the Super Bowl a holiday….

Between fake terrorist alerts and scandals big and small, this just might be the Best Best of the -ists ever. We’re exhausted just thinking about it. First up, SFist, who saw their little ‘ole site be the center of what was a nice little scandal (even getting their editor on TV) only to find their scandal dwarfed by the even bigger scandal caused by their Mayor boffing one of his aides’ wife. We’re not…

As the world holds it’s breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Super Bowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called “punk rock” for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area. Bostonist said goodbye to John Kerry’s plans…

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into…

Redskins Stumble out of Preseaon The Redskins dropped their fourth and final preseason game last night, losing to the Baltimore Ravens 17-10. The loss sealed the first winless preseason in Joe Gibbs’ 24 years as a coach. Though common wisdom dictates the insignificance of the preseason, there should be cause for concern among Redskins fans. The team scored a meager 27 points over the 4 preseason games, their lowest total since 1961. Their first-team…