Joy Zinoman After 35 years, the head of Studio Theatre is stepping down. How has Washington theater changed? What’s next?

John Lannan The only one of the Nationals’ 30 pitchers to last the entire season, he might have suggestions for a better season next year.

Stacie Turner According to insiders, the Georgetown real-estate agent is one of Bravo’s Real Housewives of DC cast members, so watch out for film crews.

David Ferriero The newly appointed US archivist, who headed the New York Public Library, comes here with a mission of transparency and openness.

Cate Blanchett The Australian actress will be here for a month of performances in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Kennedy Center.

Brian Nutting The longtime Congressional Quarterly editor was fired for asking impertinent questions about mass layoffs at the newly merged Roll Call–CQ.

This article first appeared in the November 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.

It’s all about healthcare this week, and Joe Wilson knows it: His wife has the dreaded swine (the tweet was written by his son). Will it affect his stance on allowing illegal immigrants to purchase insurance? Probably not. He is, however, “honed” to serve in South Carolina, so we guess he’s been working out to stay healthy.

In other news, Roy Blunt’s campaign against Robin Carnahan takes a lofty tone, Chellie Pingree exposes Louie Gohmert as a horrible punner, Arlen Specter uses fighting words, Robert Menendez introduces the most obvious bill of all time, Zach Wamp had a good time on his birthday (even though he had to, you know, do his job and all), and Bill Nelson is left slightly disappointed. And sorry, Kevin Brady, but we couldn’t help sniggering when we read your last tweet.

In this disheartening Redskins season, a revolt against team owner Dan Snyder has spread through Redskin fandom. In response, Fedex Field security has been ordered to shred, stomp, or seize any protest signs directed at Snyder or the team’s top executive, Vinny Cerrato. (See accounts by the Post’s Dan Steinberg of fans at Monday night’s loss who were allegedly harassed by security and ejected for screaming “Danny sucks” near the ESPN booth.)

Fans in turn have taken their protest to a place beyond management’s control: the Web. From bitter blogs to fiery Facebook tirades, what some describe as Fascist Landover is under attack.

Robert Allbritton says he’s not aiming to compete with the Washington Post.
    
“That’s not the plan,” he says.
    
But what he’s doing indicates the opposite.
    
Taking a page out of his creation of Politico, Allbritton has put his money on a veteran Post staffer -- this time Jim Brady -- to build a web site that could again strike at the Post’s heart. Politico challenged the Post’s command of national politics; the new venture will take on the Post’s coverage of local news.
    
“We have been talking about lessons learned from Politico in news, the web, and the economy,” he says. “Now it’s time to put something together. If we wind up competing, that’s the way it goes.”
    
Allbritton’s new “something” will debut in the spring, separate from Politico. “Different name, different brand, different staff.”
    
Same kind of leader: a journalist who bridled under the Post’s bureaucracy. Two years Allbritton convinced Post political stars John Harris and Jim VandeHei to leave the capital’s dominant daily news operation to start a new venture based on high-speed, high-intensity coverage of political news. Now he’s brought in Jim Brady to apply the formula to local news.

The story that comes to mind when reading Haleh Esfandiari’s memoir of wrongful arrest, surprise raids, puzzling interrogations, and solitary confinement in Ahmadinejad’s Iran is Franz Kafka’s dystopian novel The Trial. Yet unlike the fictional bank clerk Joseph K., Esfandiari—who runs the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program in DC—survived her ordeal, including four months in Iran’s Evin Prison on trumped-up charges, to deliver a taut, jolting narrative that describes how life in the Islamic republic is stranger—and darker—than fiction.

Esfandiari, who fled Iran in the winter of 1978, had been visiting her mother in 2006 when Iranian police forced her cab off the highway outside Tehran, swiped her passports and plane tickets, and disappeared into the night.

Interrogations follow. Esfandiari pleads her innocence. An investigator with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence twists her testimony. The story, a snapshot of Iranian paranoia in response to the Bush administration’s rhetoric, is also a luminous panorama of Iranian life. In prison, Esfandiari befriends the female guards, whose dark chadors disguise worldly concerns about body weight, love, and the future. In the juxtaposition of these women with Esfandiari and the generation that came of age before the revolution, the book channels another Kafka story, The Metamorphosis. As Esfandiari’s tale proves, Gregor Samsa’s transformation from man to insect is no more frightening than Iran’s from homeland to prison.

DCBeer began as Mike Dolan’s personal blog—he’d post updates every now and then, but he lacked a real focus and regularity. Wanting to start a blog about the local beer scene, Dolan relaunched his site in June as DCBeer, and he and his friends Andrew Nations, Mehan Jayasuriya, and P.J. Coleman began posting about local craft brewers, homebrewing, bartenders, and more. They even started an e-mail newsletter and a homebrewing club, and they’re teaming up with bars to host tasting events; the second one is tonight at the Black Squirrel.

The site is geared toward beer drinkers, brewers, and bartenders, but you don’t have to be a connoisseur to get something out of it. In fact, the writers don’t even consider themselves experts: “I’m a beer enthusiast,” says Dolan. “But I guess I’ve read enough and tasted enough to at least pretend to be an expert.”

We caught up with the self-proclaimed beer nerds to find out what they’re drinking this fall. Read on for where they go for a good beer selection (not Brickskelller!), their favorite beer that comes in a can, and their ordering tips for beer virgins. Sláinte!

Dahlia Lithwick is Ben Brad­lee’s kind of woman. She’s got the Yale undergrad and Stanford law degrees, the talent to pen brassy features about the Supreme Court, a sense of humor, and an eye for the jugular. Back in his day, Bradlee might have roped her into a beat on the Washington Post Style section alongside Sally Quinn.

Lithwick doesn’t write for Style—you have to read Slate, the Washington Post Company’s online magazine. Covering legal affairs since 1999 and now also writing a serialized chick-lit novel, Lithwick is a Don Graham kind of woman.

The Post Company head adores Slate. The Post in print is his albatross, a newspaper that loses millions; Slate represents his digital dream, with the potential to do great journalism and make a profit.

“Slate itself is now a good business,” says Jacob Weisberg, the New York–based chief of the Slate Group. No one will provide proof, but word is that the magazine will make money this year.

Slate is also a good place for Grahams to work. Washingtonian has learned that Laura Graham, 32, one of Don and Mary Graham’s four children, has been hired as director of product development and strategy. She will work out of Slate’s Arlington office. She becomes the second member of the third generation of Grahams to work at a Washington Post publication. Her cousin, Katharine Weymouth, is Post publisher and head of Washington Post Media.