In the portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver added to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection last year, the late founder of the Special Olympics movement looks almost ethereal. Bathed in Cape Cod light, her iconic smile turned toward one of the young people pictured with her, Shriver is painted in an elegant dress and pearls, her mane of white hair perfectly in place. But her sons Timothy and Anthony also remember another side to her.

“She was a gigantic competitor, and she loved sports, and she was an incredible friend,” says Anthony, who spoke with Washingtonian.com on the anniversary of the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act this week. “She loved nothing more than her friends. She loved to get out in the field and compete with her friends.”

It’s with that competitive spirit in mind that Anthony and Timothy Shriver, and the organizations they head—Best Buddies International and Special Olympics—are teaming up for a new event in Washington on October 23: the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Challenge. Participants can sign up for a 20-mile bike ride or tandem race or a 5K run or 3K walk, among other events.

One of the nice things about online advertisements is that you don’t have to pay by the word. However, you wouldn’t know this judging fromn this week’s best missed connections. These Craigslisters are pithy and to the point. They do not wax romantic about the luminescent colors of that girl’s dress flowing in the breeze. In fact, why even mention a color at all? Just buy a guy a kayak already, gosh.

You cruised me Sunday morning in my ‘65 MB SL on 17th St - m4m - 56 (dc)
Date: 2010-07-26, 7:15AM EDT
You were a cute young guy, dark hair, shorts and t-shirt crossing 17th St. (around Church St.)this morning as I was coming down in my 1965 Bordeaux colored MB 230SL. It was probably the car, not me that you kept looking at, but if not, let me take you for a ride in it. IF YOU ARE JUST INTERESTED IN CARS, I also have two other MB’s convertibles and 3 other cars as well. Let’s go for a ride! If you don’t see this, anyone else want to take me up on the ride...

So the only way to see all six cars is if you’re NOT interested in the driver?

Megabus redhair - m4w - 24 (Bus from philly)
Date: 2010-07-27, 8:44PM EDT
I know not her name. Red hair. Education vocation. I am tall. Left in a hurry. Email.

I know not your name. Incapable of full sentences. Possible nine-year-old . . . or Ernest Hemingway. No chance.

Congress has tackled a diverse set of issues this week, from campaign-finance reform to cocaine sentencing. The Congressional Twitterverse, however, is a bit more predictable: lots of partisanship and creatively punctuated tweets. Plus Joe Wilson, John Boehner, and Donna Edwards are sarcastic, condescending, or both; Charlie Rangel masters—or muffs—timing with a tweet about cocaine around the same time that the House Ethics Subcommittee announces 13 charges against him; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is encouraging; John McCain discusses eyeballs; and Harry Reid slams opponent Sharron Angle at every turn, er, tweet.

cbrangel Cong. Rangel: Bill To Narrow Cocaine Sentencing Disparities is an Important First Step http://bit.ly/cracksentence
Rep. Charlie Rangel, New York

Erik_Paulsen @DarrellIssa @repaaronschock & my amndts to reduce govt waste were rejected by the majority! The spending spree continues.#reformrejected
Rep. Erik Paulsen, Minnesota

HarryReid Sharron Angle wouldn’t bring a dime to Nevada for education, wants to kill the Department of Ed http://bit.ly/c0jW4k #nvsen
Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada

They don't make movies like St. Elmo's Fire any more. It's not just that the kids in coming-of-age movies are getting younger. It's that movies set in DC now need to involve action—Michael Bay's Transformers are set to tear up the National Mall next summer—or at least espionage, like the tense-but-sedate Breach, not everyday people. The movie turns 25 this year, and Joel Schumacher has written a great remembrance of the film for Entertainment Weekly. It's not online yet, but these are the best tidbits:

I was staying in Georetown. One weekend, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe alone. It was the early '80s, and Georgetown was like a little village of yuppies. It was the height of Reaganomics. The heroes were Donald Trump and Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley. The attitude became "I'm rich, f--- you." And all of these kids were coming out of universities with 20-year plans. I felt sorry for them. I was listening to their conversations and I thought, "What must it be like to spit out of these universities, thinking 'I better make a lot of money'?" No one had done a movie about yuppies yet.

Since I moved from Atlantic Media (located in the Watergate) to Washingtonian, I've made a running joke about how weird it was to move from Foggy Bottom to downtown. It's suddenly so much easier to get to work! The number of affordable lunch options is overwhelming for someone who used to have a choice between Potbelly and what is perhaps Washington's worst coffee shop. In other words, I feel like a workaday hick who suddenly moved to the big city, at least during business hours on weekdays.

So it was interesting to read two radically different perspectives on the neighborhood this week. Ricardo Gutierrez, guest-blogging for Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic, described the neighborhood, where he lived when attending George Washington University, as an oasis: 

Foggy Bottom was so nice and so far from hood. It helped me become a better person and grow past the emotional caps that growing up in a shitty neighborhood forces on you. I was able to smile in the street and say hello to people I'd never met without thinking they were trying to get over on me. I was more open to the world around me. 

Today brought the happy, but not entirely unexpected, news that Dave Weigel, who left the Washington Post last month after emails he wrote to a private, and now-defunct, email list (I wrote about my experience with JournoList in our August issue) were leaked to a conservative publication, has joined Slate, an independent part of the Post's parent company. The amusing—and revealing—elements of the move aside (Slate also houses Mickey Kaus, the first blogger to published leaked emails from the listserv, JournoList), it seems like a great move for Weigel.

A frequent joke about Slate is that the web magazine can be needlessly counterintuitive. But where it frequently excels is in jumping subcultural trends up to the level of national conversation, exploring cultural and community dynamics, and  fusing personality and voice to reporting. Pop critic Jonah Weiner regularly does the first in his rock and pop reporting, Emily Bazelon's reporting on bullying prosecutions of teenagers in a Massachusetts town is a masterful example of the second, and Timothy Noah's gentle pointedness on everything from insurance reform to summer camp and Jack Shafer's tart, sometimes crotchety media criticism, are archetypes of the third.

The Post may have wanted straight reporting from Weigel, and a blank slate behind it, but at Slate he'll be able to play, and to make an asset out of his personality and voice.

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