For $125, Sylvester Stallone's mom will look at a hi-res digital photo of your butt and use it to tell your future.

I don't know what else to say.

Looks like dcbaseball.com has unveiled the official team name and logo. It's the Washington Nationals, and the logo is a pleasantly shaded bit of nothing.

It seems like a conscious decision was made to keep the team as featureless as possible. An adjective for the team name -- and a somewhat abstract one at that. Great. Red white and blue color scheme on the logo? Daring. I particularly like the use of a fucking baseball as the logo's centerpiece. In case people forget what sport they're watching, I guess.

The worst part is the inevitability of the merchandising evolution. First there'll be the initial wave of "we'll buy anything" purchases. Then sports talk radio will get sick of using two unnecessary syllables -- there are so many athletes and coaches who we need to talk about firing, after all. So Nationals:Nats as Capitals:Caps. Reluctantly, we'll finally admit to ourselves that we're cheering for an airport (or a dead crooner), and Nat will come to mean Gnat.

Almost immediately, a wave of starter jackets emblazoned with a ferocious-looking anthropomorphized insect will be disgorged onto area department stores. Post sportswriters will start a major push to convince readers that baseball puns involving the word "swat" are clever.

Finally, a couple of Christmas seasons later, someone will design a real logo, which will be used for the absolute minimum period necessary to allow the sale of throwback paraphenalia.

That's right: I have seen the future. And it's like today, but with slightly more holograms.

Charles, Jon, Karl and I caught two bands at the Galaxy Hut on Saturday. Since there's no thread over at HaH for me to cause trouble in, I figured I might as well write it up here.

A trio named the Rachel Nevadas opened things up. My initial impression was that they sounded like early Wilco at their most directionless and rocking. That's meant as a compliment. Then came a song with the energy and percussive melody of Ted Leo. And then the available beer began to outpace my desire to come up with comparisons.

These guys can write songs that sound different from one another, they can play well and with energy, and they can make you bob your head. But they can't sing. Lead vocalist Prabir Mehta has an acceptable if mediocre rock & roll range, but he wanders around the notes; bass player Chris Freeman sings occasional backup, but he doesn't sound like a plausible solution to the problem. These guys are definitely worth seeing -- I think all four of us agreed on that. It could have been an off night for Prabir, or it could be that some instruction will pin down those notes. It could also be that I'm blowing the badness of the singing out of proportion, as I was sitting directly under the PA used to pipe out the vocals at an unpleasantly high volume.

I'm a lot more confident in my opinion of the Hurricane Lamps. I've been wanting to see these guys since reading this enthusiastic review on Pitchfork. Unfortunately, the live experience didn't live up Pitchfork's no doubt highly scientific 7.4 rating. Ridiculously pinched vocals and uninteresting songs had our table tuning out halfway through the set. I was ready to like these guys. Oh well.

What's wrong with DC vocalists anyway? I'm no expert on the local music scene, but it seems primarily composed of lackluster singers and post-punk operations that get away with slightly melodic yelling or lilting narration. The last genuinely interesting local rock singer I saw was Martin from WSC. He's no Jeff Buckley, but he can hit a note, has an interesting timbre, and seems well on his way to developing a classically debauched and androgenous rock & roll stage persona. Is that asking too much?

UPDATE: HeresAHint has put up a review after all. I'll agree that the RNs' harmonies were well-written -- they weren't very well executed, is all.

Man. No American Idol for me this year.

this is something i've thought about doing for a long time, ever since i mentioned a deal i found for travel to bali and hong kong on this blog, and julie ended up using it to go visit our friend jessica. i've made it a habit every monday of going through all the travel sections of newspapers from over the weekend, and i often find some really great deals that i would take advantage of if i could, even though 99.9% of the time i can't. well, even if i can't, that doesn't mean that somebody out there wouldn't find the info useful - and it might even inspire some vacations amongst our friends. so some travels deals i thought were good are behind the cut.

woohoo! from their newest issue, the best of washington:

HABIT-FORMING BLOGS

One of the stars of the "Blogger Alley" at this year's Democratic National Convention was Duncan Black, senior fellow for the Web site Media Matters for America - and better known by his pseudonym, Atrios. Black fills his blog, Eschaton (atriosblogspot.com), with staunchly to-the-left political news and incisive media criticism.

Among the first big-name bloggers, Time and New Republic social critic Andrew Sullivan gets some 85,000 visitors a day to AndrewSullivan.com. His smart, conservative commentary has even inspired Sullywatch (sullywatch.blogspot.com), a critical blog about his blog.

Count on the DC message-board users at Chowhound (chowhound.com) to
sniff out the newest restaurants before the critics can get into print and to argue for pages over who serves the best banh mi. For more concise analysis, we like software engineer Jason Storch's D.C. Foodies (dcfoodies.com), a chronicle of his adventures in Washington dining.

The editors at DCist (DCist.com), an offshoot of New York's popular Gothamist, collect tidbits of political and cultural arcana - like news that former Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug was selling her armoire in Arlington and an obituary for the "historical" bathroom at Georgetown's late Au Pied de Cochon.

CapitalWeather (capitalweather.com), run by EPA climate analyst Jason Samenow, calls itself the "power center for DC weather." Look for meticulous reports from experts on sunrises, snow, and tornadoes plus interviews with meteorologists and snowfall-prediction contests.

The curmudgeonly missives at Why.i.hate.dc (whyihatedc.blogspot.com) are equal parts comedy and contempt. blogger "James F." calls Washington a place "where common sense is kidnapped and hunted down for sport." Recent rants take aim at Marion Barry's reelection to the DC Council, the dimness of Arlington streetlights, and - surprise - the Redskins.

In the great tradition of the Onion (onion.com), ScrappleFace (scrappleface.com) crafts hilarious fake news stories with headlines like KERRY: BUSH OUTSOURCED BIN LADEN VIDEO PRODUCTION and BUSH SWATS KOFI ANNAN WITH ROLLED NEWSPAPER. Editor-in-chief Scott Ott doles out slaps to both parties, and the short reads are perfect for procrastinating at work."