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Heidi Goes Cable: On Nov. 17, 1968, the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets played an exciting football game that went down to the wire—and that no one watching on TV in the eastern half of the country saw the finish of, because NBC switched from football coverage to a made-for-TV movie, Heidi, about a young girl living in the Swiss Alps. Last night, Comcast viewers in D.C. watching the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants play to determine who went to the Super Bowl must have wanted to yodel. Local ads for the cable company’s Xfinity service cut into the football feed late in the game, prompting outrage on Twitter. Probably not as much outrage as 49ers punt returner Kyle Williams later prompted, though. -2
School’s Out: District officials have gone to some lengths lately to tout progress made in D.C. Public Schools, boosting enrollment and slowly changing the system’s reputation. Maybe a bit too slowly, though, for word to reach the deputy mayor for education, De’Shawn Wright. Wright told a forum in Ward 4 recently that he wouldn’t send his kids to Roosevelt or Coolidge high schools—which, as it happens, quite a few Ward 4 parents do send their kids to, as they’re the DCPS high schools in the ward. Wright says that’s not what he meant. Wisely, he did not add that the Ward 4 parents probably misunderstood him because they’d gone to crappy Ward 4 schools. -2
Memorial Trench Warfare: It’s not enough that Congress gets to muck around in the District’s budget and our laws; now some House Republicans want to take our memorials, too. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is trying to resist an effort by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, to turn the District of Columbia War Memorial to the dead of World War I into a national monument instead. Of course, Norton doesn’t actually get a vote on the matter, so if Poe really wants to seize the memorial, there’s not much she can really do. +1
Always Low Prices (On Pot): The District hasn’t finished deciding who will get to sell legal medical marijuana yet, but it turns out you may not need to wait around too long. A store popularly known as “the Walmart of Weed,” hydroponic supplier WeGrow, is set to open up on Rhode Island Avenue NE, selling everything necessary to produce massive amounts of medicine, for anyone lucky enough to get a license. Or of weed, for anyone who doesn’t. +1
Friday’s Needle rating: 42 Today’s score: -2 Today’s Needle rating: 40