Antiques Roadshow hasn’t visited Washington since the PBS show’s first season in 1996, but Washingtonians can count on local auction houses to showcase equally quirky local finds—like 215 “rare and important canes and walking sticks” from the collection of former ambassador Dick Carlson. Maybe more notable is the number of canes that Carlson—now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy—didn’t give to Sloans & Kenyon for its November auction. In his home, office, and second home in Maine, he estimates about 3,000.

69 Number of marathons run by Ohio congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who at age 55 finished the October Marine Corps Marathon in less than four hours.

$10.75 Amount, in millions, paid by former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorenson and his wife, Gillian, for a new apartment at Manhattan’s swanky 15 Central Park West building.

$2.3—Amount, in millions, that Katharine Graham’s UN Plaza co-op in New York sold for in November, six years after her death. The buyer was Astrid Horan, a retired staffer for the late governor Nelson Rockefeller.

60,000Number of guests entertained at the White House holiday parties in December.

1,000Pounds of shrimp served to White House guests.

1 Rank of Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School in U.S. News’s 2007 ranking of best US high schools.

Earlier this year, Martin agreed to represent Michael Vick after the Atlanta Falcons quarterback was indicted on charges related to illegal dogfighting. Then came the disclosure that Martin had been hired to represent Idaho senator Larry Craig. Those two high-profile cases landed Martin’s name and picture in newspapers across the country, but it didn’t do anything to please a third high-profile Martin client, actor Wesley Snipes.

Snipes had been scheduled to stand trial in the fall in Ocala, Florida, on federal charges that he fraudulently claimed nearly $12 million in federal tax refunds and failed to file returns from 1999 to 2004. The federal indictment claimed that Snipes’s accountants had a history of attempting to bilk the IRS and linked Snipes to a church in Florida that teaches its adherents how to avoid taxes.

Martin—whose firm, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, has an office in Florida—had been retained to represent Snipes.

Martin was much in demand among entertainment and sports figures after his successful courtroom defense of New Jersey Nets basketball player Jayson Williams, who had been accused of shooting his chauffeur.

In late September, Martin filed papers in the Florida federal court claiming that Snipes was given bad advice by his accountants and was not part of a conspiracy.

As Martin’s work for Vick accelerated, Snipes fired Martin and complained to the judge that Martin was so busy with the Vick case that he could no longer make his October trial date. Martin has said that Snipes decided to fire him solely to get a trial-date continuance, which the judge granted.

Snipes has since retained a new lawyer. One colleague who has represented high-profile clients notes, “Keeping celebrity clients happy when you have a passel of them is as much an art as a science.” Sources say that while Martin might have liked spending the winter in Florida, landlocked Ocala wouldn’t have been his first choice.

Here’s how much each of the top presidential candidates raised in Maryland, Virginia, and DC through the end of the third quarter of 2007, according to USA Today (each $ = $100,000):

Maryland

Clinton: $2,916,869 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Obama: $2,307,129 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Giuliani: $655,060 $$$$$$$

Romney: $602,023 $$$$$$

McCain: $455,745 $$$$$

Edwards: $308,110 $$$

Thompson: $159,050 $$

Virginia

Clinton: $2,312,392 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Obama: $1,857,852 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

McCain: $1,425,963 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Romney: $994,353 $$$$$$$$$$

Giuliani: $959,996 $$$$$$$$$$

Thompson: $479,856 $$$$$

Edwards: $444,246 $$$$$

DC

Clinton: $3,617,172 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Obama: $2,665,666 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

McCain: $514,185 $$$$$

Romney: $391,542 $$$$

Dodd: $360,950 $$$$

Giuliani: $357,804 $$$$

Thompson: $127,449 $$

Photograph by Matthew Worden

Jamie Hess, an event planner and nightclub promoter, got into the business after working in the tech industry.

During the day, Hess does events for groups like law firms and trade associations. At night he runs events at such DC hotspots as Lotus Lounge, Indebleu, and Play Lounge as well as up-and-coming sites like Tattoo.

When I started working, my parents told me that since I was earning money, I should give something back.

I started doing events for the Washington Animal Rescue League. From that first party, I had a couple of people come up to me and say, “Hey, I had fun. Will you help me plan my next event?” Then I realized I was having fun, so it developed into Career 2.0.

This is a very promoter-driven town. The same venue on different nights can be a very different place.

My business card says event planner/nightclub pr. I’m not trying to get 500 people to a club. I’m trying to get that venue in the paper, get the right crowd to the right event, trying to hire the right staff, and all sorts of stuff that I didn’t realize were part of this job when I started.

Washington is slower to pick up nightclub trends. It took several years for bottle service to become the norm.

You cannot open a bar or nightclub without having a MySpace page or some sort of online presence. But you can’t rely on that to sustain it. Only two years ago, Evite was the way to go, but now people get way too many Evites. Now you have to be more personal

While critics have hailed the East Building of the National Gallery of Art as “one of the great architectural draws of its time” and “an enormously successful place for seeing art,” not once have the accolades been followed with “and it begs to be touched.” Yet near the Fourth Street entrance, an engraving done for the building’s dedication has been rubbed repeatedly to the point that a dark haze has accumulated over the name of the building’s architect, I.M. Pei.

Museum staff and scholars like to interpret Pei’s smudged name as a positive response to the building. “This is a touching tribute to Pei’s work,” says Carter Wiseman, architecture lecturer at Yale University and a Pei biographer. Pun intended?

It started when Margaret Warner, senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, scored a big get: She was the first Western reporter to interview Pakistanti opposition leader Benazir Bhutto upon her release from house arrest.

Meanwhile, in the life of Margaret Warner—partner at McDermott Will & Emery in DC—the New York Post disclosed a $1,390 tab she expensed while working for WTC Captive Insurance Company, the congressionally chartered insurance fund meant to settle 9/11 claims against New York City. A fund official said that the $1,250 dinner for eight at Giovanni Ristorante on West 55th Street was okay but that an additional $138 for cocktails at the Waldorf-Astoria bar was billed to the fund in error; it doesn’t reimburse for alcoholic beverages. Warner’s law firm promised to reimburse WTC Captive Insurance for the mistake.

Asked whether she knows the PBS Warner, the lawyer Warner—known to friends as Peg—wrote that they’ve never met but that “in living in Washington for over 25 years, I sometimes have received junk mail intended for her, and apparently we see several of the same physicians.”

If the lawyer’s lucky, maybe her next $138 drink bill will end up in the mailbox of the globetrotting correspondent.

This article first appeared in the January 2008 issue of Washingtonian magazine.