From Playbook:

SOUND FAMILIAR? Lead sentence of lead story of today’s WashPost: “The contours of a deal to avert the year-end ‘fiscal cliff’ are becoming increasingly clear.”

–FLASHBACK – POLITICO lead story, Nov. 29: “[T]he contours of a deal – including the size of tax hikes and spending cuts it will most likely contain – are starting to take shape.”

The stories in question are this one by Allen and Executive Editor Jim VandeHei and this one by WaPo‘s Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane. Both pieces address the inner workings of Congress on a deal to avoid automatic tax increases and spending cuts. (The awkward factor here is medium high: VandeHei and Kane both previously worked at Roll Call. Notes Kane: “We are good friends as our Mike and I.”)

Asked about the similarity of language in both stories, FishbowlDC received a response from Kane that could only be described as touchy… continued…

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Local gay author scared to write at night profiled by MetroWeekly– Lee Hayes, a gay author who lives in Brandywine, Md., tells Will O’Bryan for MetroWeekly that he’s scared to write his scary stories at night. “The house kind of creeps me out,” he says. ”I’ll just have to write in the daytime.” Hayes typically writes novels with gay themes but his latest is a super natural thriller without any apparent gay undertones. Unless you count the most phallic animal possible making appearances throughout the book: snakes. “If you don’t like snakes, this will help you get over your phobia,” he says.

Slate contributor wants you to contemplate dying– A cheerful Oliver Burkeman, who writes for The Guardian, has an article in Slate in which he encourages people to think about death this Halloween. “Newer studies … suggest that what’s crucial is how you remind people about death,” he writes. “Do it more gently and subliminally, and in the context of topics other than terrorism and war, and it makes people more compassionate, happier, and healthier.” He adds, “There’s no need to spurn the pumpkin-carving or the zombie costumes. But wouldn’t multigenerational graveyard parties provide a meaningful complement to that?” Um, sure, why not?

A timely sexy-women slideshow from The Daily Caller– On Sunday night, much of the Northeast was terrified, wondering whether their homes would be flooded or their relatives and friends killed by Hurricane Sandy. But late that night, The Daily Caller took to the gutter and published “Sexy Sundae II: Beautiful Women Eating Ice Cream,” a follow up to “Sexy Sundae.” It’s a simple slideshow of scantily-dressed women licking ice cream cones. “Not even the impending doom of Hurricane Sandy can stop us from bringing you Sexy Sundae,” the post says, bylined by Scoop Delacroix, the pub’s secretive byline.

See our last pick after the jump. It concerns hanging up Halloween tights once and for all…

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, WaPo‘s Eugene Robinson, Foreign Policy‘s Laura Rozen and WaPo‘s Charles Krauthammer all made the Politicos of the Fourth Estate cut. Todd even got a full page pic in the mag.

The issue also included a Q&A with a Washington veteran, former ABC White House correspodent Sam Donaldson. An excerpt:

On media coverage of the Obama White House:

“Some people say, ‘Oh, what’s happened to the White House press corps? They’ve fallen down.’ I don’t think that’s true. Here’s a man who, like some other presidents, came into Washington walking on water, in a figurative sense. Some of them do. But then you start noticing their feet are wet, and of course, a few of them drown before they get across the tidal basin. You can point to a lot of mistakes he’s made, but they’ve been minor. It’s hard to say, ‘Well, the White House press corps should have really given him what for.’”

More from Donaldson here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.