The shutdown meant White House interns stepped in to handle some of the jobs paid staffers were legally barred from doing. And on the night of Nov. 15, 1995, Monica Lewinsky and former President Bill Clinton had their first kiss—as $50 million and six years' worth of investigations reported in excruciating detail.

A few years after that shutdown, as Lewinsky became so famous that her first name alone sufficed for headlines, Washington City Paper ran a piece by then-staffer Jake Tapper about a date he'd gone on with the former White House intern in December 1997:

Monica was/is like a lot of young women inside the Beltway, only more so: young, ambitious, and looking—looking for next, seeking a place to land, searching for that one friendly face in the crowd who will think she's worth talking to. A guy, a boss, a boyfriend, a mentor, a friend. For Monica, that person turned out to be Bill Clinton. Clinton apparently saw in her either a consummately gullible kid, or maybe, just maybe, he was taken by the same thing I was: an absence of jade, a willingness to look around the next corner, a sweetness that is rare in a city built on bitter and sour and salty.

(Clinton would go on, of course, to be the husband of the U.S. secretary of state. Lewinsky got a master's degree at the London School of Economics and has generally stayed out of the spotlight. Tapper's at ABC News now, covering the imminent approach of yet another government shutdown.)

Read the whole story here.

One of the week's big stories in Washington was the quick fallout from the newest gotcha video from James O'Keefe that forced the resignation of two NPR executives. The fundraising scandal involving a fake Muslim organization happened at Georgetown's Café Milano, which has long been a bastion of D.C.'s boldface names, for better or worse. The Washington Post's J. Freedom du Lac, noted in a tweet: "Weirdest thing new NPR scandal: The secret taping occurred at Café Milano. I thought only famous people ate there!"

That's a good observation. It's not like O'Keefe is a household name. Under normal circumstances, the NPR execs caught up in the scandal would never be worthy of a mention in The Washington Post or the countless other publications in our fair city that give a damn about who is eating where. (For those who care, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich celebrated his conversion to Catholicism with a lunch at the tony restaurant on Prospect Street, back in 2009. More recently, Rob Lowe was "spotted" there in January, in town, the Examiner reported, for some shoots for Potomac Fever, a reality TV show which aims to chronicle the lives of "young, driven media people trying to navigate power and love" in the nation's capital. Maybe they'll all hang out at Café Milano and marinate in their egos? Gross.)

Anyhow, not that we're in the business of giving O'Keefe advice, but if he really wanted his NPR scandal to measure up to the city's most shady shenanigans, he should have picked the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City as his secret-recording venue. It has a long and storied history. That's where Linda Tripp secretly recorded Monica Lewinsky back in 1998 and more recently, where the FBI secretly recorded Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson accepting a $90,000 bribe that would later be found wrapped in tin foil in his Capitol Hill freezer.

Photo by Flickr user Todd Huffman using an Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

Attention Bill Clinton lookalikes! You could be in a low-budget movie that hasn't yet been picked up. But it totally could be!

Washington Biz Journal just floated a little gem about a Clinton casting happening at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City (you know, where Lewinsky was grilled... and then allowed to shop) the weekend before the inauguration. The indie film, tentatively titled The Blue Dress (wonder what it's about?), already has a few roles cast, including an actress from the Philly area playing Monica and Paula Jones playing...Paula Jones. The parts of Al Gore, Ken Starr, and other key players (i.e. Secret Service extras) are also up for grabs.

But mainly the filmmaker, Daniel Vovak of Behesda, wants to find his Bill. And remember, this was in his paunchy days, so go for a jog and then stop for burgers on your way out.