Wonkette

• Typical Hill staffer workday: Google themselves until lunch, check Yahoo! Results in the afternoon. [A Blog For The Rest of Us]

• Get your ass in character — it’s the Bush laugh that makes the costume, not the Bush mask. [Circumlocutor]
• Halloween 2006: The high water mark of wretched excess in Western Civilization. [Brunch Bird]
• Washingtonian mag unveils new website with Garret Graff’s party blog, same articles you browse in the supermarket line before putting back. [Fishbowl DC]

* The Marine Corps Marathon registration started today, but that information is totally useless to anyone reading this. [Metroblogging DC] MORE »

* The Washington Wire’s sense of humor isn’t dead after all; it’s just very badly burned. [WSJ] MORE »

* We hope Neil Young will remember some words that rhyme with “war” besides “door.” [Brooklyn Vegan] MORE »

* As goes the nation, so goes D.C.: the smoking ban went into effect today. [Head-Case Briefs; Ask KAC] MORE »

We like the crew over at FishBowlDC and admire their work, which we link to frequently. But given our weakness for irony, as well as our obsession with all things media, we’d be falling down on the job if we didn’t pass along this reader email.

This may take a little concentration — so put down that plastic salad fork and focus. First, read this FishBowl DC item:

Washingtonian’s Kim Eisler is not at all happy with Howard Kurtz. Personally, we’re just amused that at the end of a column spent documenting some other reporter’s conflicts-of-interest, Kurtz profiles a correspondent on the network where Kurtz himself moonlights. Irony alert!

Second, read this “meta-irony alert!” from a Wonkette reader:

Stay with me here as I go all David Foster Wallace on your ass — Um…. the writer of said FishBowl item, Garrett Graff, is the editor at large of the Washingtonian. So — let’s say that Graff highlights how a colleague is not at all happy with Howie Kurtz (whom Graff blowjobish-ly profiled for, uh, the Washingtonian, and what a PLEASELIKEME hummer it was!).

And we are personally amused that Garrett Graff — at the end of his item on how a colleague is upset at a subject of a previous Graff profile AND how said subject has a conflict of interest by dint of his moonlighting job… neglects to so much as intimate that, in the very act of blogging about a guy who’s mad at another guy, who also has a conflict of interest… Garrett soi meme is moonlighting and creating an even more bizarre conflict of interest by reporting about a colleague and refusing to mention it.

Whoa! Didja get all that? If so, then here’s one more thing to note for the record. At the very end of his column, Kurtz at least discloses his potential conflict: “Howard Kurtz hosts CNN’s weekly media program, Reliable Sources.” As noted by our source, Graff does not.

Our musings on this tempest in a teapot — or bubbling in a fishbowl — continue after the jump.

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No, that’s not Wonkette standing behind Joe Pantoliano. [WP/Lucian Perkins]

Truth be told, our night wasn’t that wild — more like reading Emily Dickinson than hanging out with Paris Hilton. But at least we got out of the apartment!

Last night, Wonkette (or one-half of Wonkette — the half of us with a tux) attended the Congressional Correspondents dinner, sponsored by the Washington Press Foundation. The swanky, black-tie event, held at the Ritz-Carlton on M Street, was attended by numerous “famous-for-D.C.” types, and even a few “famous-for-famous” folks — like Fran Drescher!

Slate described the event as “a B-list affair compared with the Gridiron and White House Correspondents Association dinners”; but we still had ourselves a jolly good time. Although Marcia Davis of the Post urged them not to give up their day jobs, the dinner speakers — Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) — were actually pretty funny. But our assessment may have been colored by the “soft bigotry of low expectations” — as well as too much red wine…

Of course, copious consumption of booze helped us through the evening. And did we mention that The Nanny was in the house?

Our detailed coverage appears after the jump.

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• Rumor has it: Blogger of Why.I.Hate.DC fame has had his Christmas wishes answered! Congratulations, dude. Oh, Seattle, we are so very, very sorry. MORE »

The Daily Briefing is on vacation. MORE »

Garrett “Did I mention I was the first blogger in the White House briefing room?” Graff joins Gawkeress Elizabeth Spiers on the list of bloggers to break through the medium barrier and join the staff of a glossy city lifestyle magazine. Of course, Spiers eventually left New York to run Mediabistro.com, which is, coincidentally, where Graff has been. No matter: Graff is joining the staff of the Washingtonian, and, frankly, we can’t think of a more perfect fit.

His announcement follows after the jump. Good news: He’s not leaving the ‘Bowl and he wants a helper! Ability to summarize Hotline interviews a plus.

UPDATE: Graff lets readers in on the good news. [FishbowlDC]

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