We hope you’re having a wonderful time with your family and friends.
Need an Internet break?
Here’s a quick look back at 2011:
HILLstory Flowchart: What’s Your Next Move?
You’ve landed an internship on Capitol Hill and you finally figured out your way around Rayburn.
Now what?
Washingtonian: From Intern to Senior Partner: How to Get Ahead on the Hill (Chart)
So you want to be a DC journalist?
Before wading into the unknown, take a spin around the DC Journo Board and see if you’re able to escape with your dignity intact. Look out for angry flacks, disgruntled Members of Congress and the occasional unfriendly editor. If you’re lucky, you’ll hop a ride on Air Force One, or better yet, get a parody Twitter feed made about you.
Thanks to FamousDC’s Journo Advisory Committee which helped us with this project: Chris Frates, Neda Semnani, Felicia Sonmez, Rick Klein, Ryan Grim, Erin McPike, Eliot Nelson, and Kate Nocera
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Capitol Hill is full of funny, bizarre and otherwise interesting moments that don’t happen anywhere else in this country – moments happen at least once, if not multiple times a day. Most of us ignore them, because they’ve become so common, while others of us can’t believe they continue to happen.
Well, over-worked and under-paid Congressional staffers, there is some hiatus from the weirdness that is Capitol Hill, and that would be the Capitol Hill Bingo Board.
If you witness any of the below events, mark it off on your Capitol Hill Bingo Board. [click to enlarge]
Occupy Cava Happy Hour [Pictures]
Yes, Neda, we need a bigger boat.
Snead, Shultz and Roll Call: May it be time to graduate the Recess Happy Hour of Awesome to a bigger space? Just sayin’ …
Roll Call rundown can be read here.
A big thank you to Patrick G. Ryan for snapping some amazing photos last night.
Roll Call’s Neda Semnani: Hopeful Happy Hour
To mark one of the most surreal times in Congress, FamousDC and Roll Call threw a happy hour of hope at Cava Mezze on Eighth Street and people came … including an Australian bloke in shorts and a bow tie who wants to buy naming rights to White House in order to sell soap.
Also a blond lady, her husband and their cameras came. It was weird. Moving on.
HOH is happy to report that even with the House scheduling, rescheduling and un-scheduling the vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) debt limit provision, Cava was full up with non-reality show Hill folk.
It was way less sticky than the last recess bash — but just as much fun — with two bars and the mist-ers misting away.
Packed in the crowd of the overworked and ready to party was Adam Kovacevich from Google and Nick Schaper and Dave Natonski from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
(In a shocking turn of events, we hear the chamber supports coming to an agreement on the debt ceiling plan.)
Jim Brewer of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades came, as did Michael Shank, communication director for Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.).
Fellow gossip girl Nikki Schwab with the Washington Examiner and 94.7’s morning drive-time superstar, Tommy McFly, were chatted up by the serial party crashers.
Eighth Street was the place to be last night: Rumors of House leadership dining together on the block were swirling all night (though we certainly would have been surprised to see them because they were in a meeting blocks away).
But, an HOH spy did see GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) leaving the Fusion Grill and jumping into a Jeep Cherokee — a la the Zoolander models, we’re sure.
Our spy also saw Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) with the crowd, too, though they didn’t get a ride with the others.
Other staffers who took shelter with us: Amber Marchand and Brian Diffell from the office of Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Charles Chamberlayne from the office of Sen.John Cornyn (R-Texas).
HOH’s One-Minute Recess: Hot Happy Hour
By Neda Semnani
Roll Call Staff
June 9, 2011, 12:55 p.m.
HOH teamed up with FamousDC to throw a recess happy hour on Cava’s rooftop bar Wednesday night. And we are not exaggerating when we say it was hot like whoa.
The place was dripping with sweat and packed to the rafters with Hill folks. (Dudes, we have to ask, what’s up with the blazers and the button-downs? Take off the jackets. Roll up the sleeves. It’s summertime and way too hot for propriety.)
Obviously it wouldn’t be an HOH happy hour if the drinks weren’t free (thanks, Roll Call!), the guests weren’t sassy (thanks, FamousDC!) and we didn’t overhear Hill people.
Jim Billimoria, communications director for the majority with the House Ways and Means Committee, looked dashing sporting a new haircut. We’d tell you where he got it done, but he won’t let us. Never mind that, because he did introduce us to his friend, Daniel Reilly, spokesman for House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
Kyle Downey, communications director for Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), also stopped by, and we spotted him chatting with Congressional Quarterly’s health care reporter Emily Ethridge. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce boys, Nick Schaper (former staffer for Speaker John Boehner as well) and Andrew Kovalcin, also hung out. As did the lovely Carly Baker from the British Embassy.
Tommy McFly, the new morning drive-time disc jockey for 94.7 (he starts in two weeks! Give him love), made an appearance (and a couple Katy Perry jokes) and was laughing with Josh Shultz of NJI Media and FamousDC. Pete Snyder and Sara Diaz of New Media Strategies, the other fabulous happy hour sponsor, were seen chatting it up with Famous Amos Snead of FamousDC and Story Partners.
Media cats spotted sweatin’ with the Hill folk: Rick Klein from ABC News’ “Top Line,” John Bailey from MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” and Evan McMorris-Santoro and Ryan Reilly of “Talking Points Memo.”
Here’s what we know, kids: Hill folks plus news folks plus free booze times a rooftop (and after a Congressional scandal) equals trouble.
And at HOH we do love trouble.
Mike Allen’s POLITICO Playbook: Top Talker
–PLAYBOOK FACTS OF LIFE: This was an actual D.C. secret, unknown even by people who usually know such things. And we coulda SWORE it was Dayspring and Heye!
Capital Comment: FamousDC Unmasked
By: Shane Harris
12/26/10
For three years, the politics-and-media blog FamousDC has carved out a niche by ignoring the political celebrities that most gossip sites adore and by embracing the press flacks, Hill schedulers, midlevel reporters, and K Street climbers who stand behind—and sometimes are crushed beneath—their famous bosses.
Their workaday exploits and off-hours shenanigans feed a blog devoted to congratulatory profiles, zippy interviews with up-and-comers, and birthday shout-outs. But as satisfying as the dispatches are to FamousDC’s fans, trying to guess who writes them has often been even more fun.
Attempts to out the authors of the group project have been fruitless. But recently, FamousDC’s founders decided to end their self-imposed anonymity: Amos Snead, a principal at the public-relations firm Story Partners, and Josh Shultz, a partner at the digital-communications agency NJI Media, turn out to be the affable scribes behind the chatty site.
They’re a pair of thirtysomething Southern transplants—Snead is from Alabama, Shultz from Texas—who seem never to have lost their twentysomething wonder at all the esoteric awesomeness of life inside the Beltway.
The duo began writing during their off-hours, when Snead was a Capitol Hill press secretary and Shultz was the director of new media at the National Republican Congressional Committee. In their day jobs, they were courting bloggers. At night, they were bloggers.
Ever since, FamousDC has succeeded by never losing sight of its audience. “We started writing about people who we wanted to read the site,” Snead says. He and Shultz also validated notoriety on a smaller scale. “Joe Biden is a big deal,” Shultz explains, “but so is Doris, the cashier at the Longworth House cafeteria.”
FamousDC isn’t all about pats on the back—it got a lot of attention for posting a foul-mouthed and cutting spoof of what’s inside Rahm Emanuel’s in box. But, Snead says, although tipsters have frequently offered potentially damaging revelations about third parties, “we never carry anyone’s dirty water.”
Acknowledging that the mystery of FamousDC was part of its allure, Snead and Shultz are uncertain about what will happen now that they’re coming out of the blogging closet.
“If I had an answer, it probably would mean we’re overthinking what we’re doing,” Shultz says. He and Snead plan to continue managing a team of a dozen or so volunteer bloggers, who, for now, shall remain nameless.
This article first appeared in the January 2011 issue of The Washingtonian.