Emily Goodstein is turning 30 and she wants to celebrate with YOU. Who the hell is Emily Goodstein?  She describes herself as a “local blogger, photographer, and reproductive justice advocate.” If you look at her website, she also “a sweatpants enthusiast.” Sweatpants are for two people. Pregnant women and fat men. They get a free pass. Anyone else who wears them should consider just wearing a burlap sack out in public to avoid the shame of sweatpants.

Getting to the point of all this, Emily is putting on a bash to ring in her big 3-0 with something called a “birthday conference.” In other words, she’s charging YOU to come to a boring series of panels with people talking about subjects that Emily finds interesting. The BEST two examples she gives are “email organization and cookie decorating.” The invitation has this inspirational gem from Emily: “My 30th birthday is an opportunity to create a convergence of all my favorite things and people,” said Goodstein, “The result is a day that is not only about creativity and celebration, but also elevating serious issues and bringing together some great minds. I can’t think of a better way to kick off my 30s.”

I’ve been to some awful birthday parties. Most notably the one earlier this year where I had to take a 5-year-old to Chuck E. Cheese. But, I would spend a lifetime trapped in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit before I sit down for a panel on email organization disguised as someone’s birthday party.

Want more details? Read more

As former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) attempts to res-erect his political career by maybe running for Mayor of New York, this week he took the next step by bringing back his infamous Twitter account. As has been reported, he has changed the name. Instead of @repweiner he’s now @anthonyweiner. A clean slate, perhaps?

News of his new account is on the rise.

How did everyone handle it?

Weiner Gets Trumped

Always a class act, Donald Trump welcomed Weiner back with all the warmth of a frozen hotdog. “Pervert alert. @RepWeiner is back on twitter. All girls under the age of 18, block him immediately,” he wrote on Twitter.

AP Formalities

Even the AP couldn’t contain themselves and included the words “disgrace” and “lewd.” “Ex-NY Rep. Anthony Weiner back on Twitter 2 years after he was disgraced upon tweeting lewd photo of self.”

WaPo Flacidly Whacks Weiner

WaPo holds back in their tweet, writing only, “Weiner returns to Twitter.” But in their story they go into slight attack mode, writing, “Well, look who returned to the scene of the crime!” wrote The Reliable Source gossip column. And then they return to coy and lame, writing, “Weiner, now publicly mulling a political comeback with a possible bid for New York mayor, resigned from Congress two years ago after he — well, you remember.”

 Weiner As One-Man Chippendales Show?

Unlike Washington, New York mags aren’t afraid to get in your face. Such as Gothamist, who writes, “Ladies, Anthony Weiner is Back on Twitter With A New Handle.” New York Magazine’s Intelligencer blog, meanwhile, writes, “Anthony Weiner Rejoins Twitter in Second-Worst Way Possible.” The story begins, “Yes, a crotch shot would be worse.” And PBS and NBC’s Jeff Greenfield goes all The Onion on us by writing, “NY Post Headline Writers Walk-Out After Editor Imposes Limit of 12 Genitalia-References Per Day on Anthony Weiner Stories.”

And the Strait-laced…

ABC World News: “@AnthonyWeiner Returns To Twitter Amid Mayoral Speculation”

Drudge: “Anthony Weiner Creates New TWITTER Account”

Twenty four hours in nearby Boston.

HuffPost‘s media story on and by two reporters, Christina Wilkie and Michael McLaughlin, covering the Boston crime scene stories last Thursday read like a potential NYT travel story: “36 Hours in Cambridge and Watertown.”

Where to eat? Aside from adrenalin, keep your energy up with water, brown-bag lunches and Boston Kreme donuts courtesy of the Massachusetts State Police.

Where to stay? There are a few terrible options. 1. In a shopping mall parking lot with the rest of the press. More specifically, a white rented Hyundai. 2. Stay within the designated press areas unless you want to be held at gunpoint by police officers. This happened to HuffPost‘s Christina Wilkie, who learned fast that leaving the group of media covering the story was a very bad idea.

Where to sleep? Sleep? There will be no sleep.

Wifi quality: Somewhere between awful and wretched. From HuffPost writers: “Battery power was carefully rationed for phones and laptops, and drained at an alarming speed.”

What not to miss: Drunks getting too close to the crime scene. They make for good pictures and anecdotes as they were heard cursing and spotted being cuffed and shoved to the ground.

Adventure seekers: Clearly, Watertown. This is where Wilkie strayed by a matter of feet from the rest of the media. This is when all hell broke loose as evidenced by the below anecdote from the story.

An excerpt:

Reporters quickly learned that leaving the group was a bad idea. Along an unbarricaded side street, an officer spotted Wilkie. “Put your hands up!” he yelled. “Put your f***ing hands up!” She did. “Now get outta here. Run!”She did.

We asked Wilkie for more context on what happened before police screamed at her. She told FishbowlDC, “At that point in the night, about 1:45AM, there were about a dozen reporters and cameramen loosely assembled at the edge of the yellow crime scene tape stretched along Nichols Ave at the corner of Nichols and Quimby Streets in Watertown. There was no police tape along Quimby, just a few locals milling around on the sidewalk, so I walked about 30 feet down Quimby St. to see what was going on.”

You don’t want to miss what happens next.

Read more

National Journal “The Hotline’s” Editor-in-Chief Reid Wilson has taken quite possibly the longest vacation known to mankind. For the past three months, he’s been traveling in New Zealand with this wife, Veronica Pecnik.

To be sure, you can take Wilson out of “The Hotline” for a little while, but you can’t take “The Hotline” out of Wilson. For much of his time away he has been writing about his trip in creative posts on a personal travel blog that mostly have nothing to do with politics. How refreshing for him.

Coming home hasn’t been without its glitches.

Sitting at Auckland airport after an incredible 3-month trip. I’ll miss this amazing, beautiful country and its incredible residents.

— Reid Wilson (@HotlineReid) April 17, 2013

Back in the USA. Now, only a continent to cross before I collapse in my own bed.

— Reid Wilson (@HotlineReid) April 17, 2013

Super delayed flight means I landed in DC at 2:30am, after 26 hours of traveling. But awesome @united 391 pilots made up for (part of) delay

— Reid Wilson (@HotlineReid) April 18, 2013

Burning questions remain: Will Reid be able to ease back into regular life with ease or are readjustment issues on the Horizon? Will he snap at Ron Fournier over a minor newsroom flap in a post-trip jet lag rage?

With the White House Correspondents Dinner a little over a week away, most news outlets have made their plans. They’ve invited guests, scored party invites and rented tuxes. One outlet that won’t be representing at the annual nerd prom is Buzzfeed. Despite their application for tables, the WHCD has denied them tables at this year’s event. We have to wonder if WHCD President Ed Henry has turned this into a personal squabble. Buzzfeed’s Michael Hastings wrote about his dislike of Henry in his book. We wrote about that here. Maybe Henry is a little touchy with his tables?

Despite the snub, Buzzfeed is turning WHCD lemons into lemonade. They are throwing their own “BBQ with Buzzfeed” DURING the Correspondents Dinner. It’s a ballsy move that will allow folks without tickets to the actual dinner to party with Buzzfeed. We hear the entire NY based Politics team, including founder Jonah Peretti, is making the trek.

More details. Read more

Last month TPM Editor Josh Marshall broke out into a cold sweat late one night over the issue of apostrophes on Twitter. He wants them gone. He was cranky about it and the issue kept him up ridiculously late and tweeting well into the wee hours of the morning.

Now he’s moved on to the number of spaces after periods.

Who’s with me?One Million Strong for 2 Spaces after a Period!

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 10, 2013

He continued, “What the fuck is this movement to have only one space after a period?  Gay marriage I can handle.  This I cannot,” Marshall piped up on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Joshua Green had a terse response. “Hey freak, if God wanted two spaces he’d have told Moses.” He added, “BTW, there’s a special conversion therapy for guys like you.”

Some 160 retweets later, the jury was out: Read more

What do you get when you cross two Politico writers with running shoes? No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. The answer: Executive Editor Jim VandeHei and Playbook author Mike Allen running the Cherry Blossom 10-miler on Sunday.

VandeHei’s time: Clock Time: 1:37:32 Net Time: 1:27: 57 (Gender place: 3458)

Allen’s time: Clock Time: 1:37:32 Net Time: 1:27:56 (Gender place: 3456)

VandeHei and Allen ran it with VandeHei’s brother-in-law, Dale Schuurman. The trio apparently ran together and finished simultaneously — one for all, all for one. Technically we think this means Allen beat VandeHei, although, if true, it was only by a one-second margin. Likely no long lasting resentments will arise.

You’re a journalist.  Come on, you love to see your byline. So we have an unusually fishy idea: name an Oyster after yourself (or a coworker) and have the name immortalized forever. P.J. Clarke’s is introducing its’ own signature oyster on Tuesday, with its name to be chosen by secret ballot.

Brad Blynier, one of the owners of the War Shore Oyster Company, the company that’s harvesting the exclusive oyster for the restaurant, describes the oyster as “farm raised, premium cocktail-sized and has a robust brininess with a clean, mild and sweet finish.”

Based on the oyster’s characteristics, we’ve come up with naming suggestions but feel free to come up with your own (write us at Betsy@mediabistro.com,  fishbowldc@mediabistro.com or use our Anonymous Tips button):

The Badass Oyster: Do we even need to name the journalist who comes to work with a chain tied to his waste? That’d be BuzzFeed D.C. Bureau Chief John Stanton. The Meghan: For Meghan McCain, a tart oyster served naked of its shell; The Rose Garden: after The Daily Caller‘s Neil Munro, an oyster served live and will never shut up. The Burger Oyster: it’s cocktail-sized, after all, and has former TIME scribe and professional partygoer Tim Burger written all over it. To spice things up, we have The Rosie: sweet, tart and can cuss like a sailor for BuzzFeed‘s Rosie Gray (and we mean nothing by the tart, only that it’s a flavor that might be present in an oyster.). The Bob Schieffer, farm raised, but still clean and sweet– an undeniable D.C. institution. The Hardball Oyster: All robust and briny things should be named after MSNBC host Chris Matthews, shouldn’t they? The Pothead Oyster: all laid back and smooth, HuffPost‘s Sam Stein. The Howeeza: after mild, sweet Judy Kurtz from The Hill. The Ezzy: serious and wonky with a touch of lemon and an aroma of fresh figs for WaPo‘s favorite “f–k you” blogger Ezra Klein. The Weingarten: a little sour-aftertaste for D.C.’s ultimate curmudgeon, WaPo‘s Gene Weingarten. The Luke: for MSNBC’s Luke Russert, a very meaty oyster;  “Shorty” the Jake Sherman oyster. The Stealth Spunkster: she’s everywhere and nowhere all at once after Hollywood on the Potomac‘s Janet Donovan; and The Lady: the always well-mannered and comedy-laced Neda Semnani from Roll Call‘s HOH. The Angry Oyster: Can you guess? That’d be Tim Grieve, who just gave Politico the middle finger and bolted to National Journal. The Fresh Mouthed Oyster: Politico‘s own salty tweeter Ben White, who likes to share his crappy hotel experiences. Hey, maybe this time the Jefferson Hotel will actually hold a reservation for him or the W will give him a room that doesn’t place the bathroom in the foyer. The Potty Mouthed Oyster: Mike Elk, a brusque, sharp-flavored oyster for the labor journo who swears more than any other. The Shooter: Who else? After the gun activist journalist herself, Emily Miller of TWT. And finally, we offer The Boyle: for you-know-who, the always all blown up Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News.

Do not stop reading. We’re not kidding. Here’s the fun part… Read more

In our ongoing feature tracking the life and times and “gets” of Twitter media star Marty Rudolph, today we have actress Morgan Fairchild, who, incidentally, dated then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the early 80s.

Marty, ever the charmer, speaks to Fairchild like they’re old friends.

@morgfair How have you been? Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a Good President if she Runs & Wins in 2016?

— Marty Rudolf (@Marty2634) April 3, 2013

Score! Two hours later, she responds. Read more

After being mugged for the second time in her life, Alexis Levinson didn’t take up martial arts. She spent a weekend at Kelly McCann‘s civilian training course in Frederickburg, Va., for “Kembativz.” It’s an intensive self defense program that specializes in “pounding the fuck out of people,” in the words of the McCann, the main trainer.

Levinson, a reporter for The Daily Caller, wrote about her experience at great length in a Tuesday story headlined “A weekend at Kelly McCann’s Kembativz civilian training center.” The course is three days long and Levinson did it twice– once in January and again this past weekend. She took the course after being mugged in November in the Eastern Market area. She was ambushed, thrown to the ground and kicked while her stuff was taken.

Asked if she feels like she could adequately kick someone’s ass the next time an attempted mugging occurs, she said maybe.

“There are some things that just hurt whether you’re 6 feet tall or weigh under 100 pounds,” Levinson told FishbowlDC. “That was actually the whole point of the course — it wasn’t about being able to beat someone up, but rather about being able to do enough damage to the attacker that they are no longer a threat to you. At which point you run.”

Of the things that “just hurt,” Levinson singled out getting hit in the neck. “Getting hit in the neck really, really hurts,” she said. “Like, I never really thought about that as place to hit someone, but it’s really painful.”

Levinson writes in her story that finding her inner anger was one of the more difficult points of her training. She’s apparently more of a lover than a fighter at heart. Until she was paired up with the exotically named Kaja… Read more