Washington DC is already the most fun place in the world, what with its many free museums, intoxicated douchebags in popped collars, and Sassiest Boy in America Ian Svenonius. But for one magic week, next month, when the city is choked with hundreds of thousands more tourists than usual, you will be able to drink all night long. The DC City Council approved a 5 a.m. bar close!

They say human happiness depends largely on your position (social, economic) relative to those around you, an axiom that would explain why the bunch of struggling New York writers at the National Book Awards on Wall Street seemed so giddy in press reports about the "determined... party." "Our dinner here is larger than it's been in five years... we have an afterparty (with) 300, 400 people coming," the executive director of the foundation behind the gala told GalleyCat (video after the jump). Call it the awards' year of hope, then, particularly with the hopey president-elect getting a shout-out in several speeches and an African American author taking home the nonfiction prize for the first time since 1991. A short (fun!) video and winners after the jump.

It's been fun to watch the American press covering how foreigners react to Barack Obama. First we heard how nominee Obama was inspiring the black working class in Europe, along with fashionistas. Then president-elect Obama became the toast of the global intelligentsia, for his expected foreign policy changes. But now some little feuds are opening up across the Atlantic that will allow U.S. newspapers to give readers what they crave: A chance to laugh at sad, bickering Euros. Based on what the Times of London is saying, we foresee some front-page coverage!

This is Adam Smith, "also known as Steve Zacharanda," in Chicago on Election Night. He is a reporter for the Birmingham Mail, a newspaper in the UK. He's just been approached by a friendly Dutch person with a video camera. He seems to be filing a story, and he's definitely been drinking. Please watch his hilarious reportorial style—"I'm just a little bit pissed.... Thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, baby!"—after the jump. Click to view As the Telegraph reports:

I watched the election results last night at a big shiny CNN party surrounded by flat screen TVs and media people in suits. Sure, there were free mozzarella sticks and lots of cheering, but Lou Dobbs was there too, and when the Obama victory came through I wished that I was out in the streets surrounded by hundreds of crazy cheering hopeful people. And I found that very thing on Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg, the geographic heart of all we mock. Hipsters, it was your finest moment. And you can't help but believe that when the amorphous hipster mob takes to the street for democracy while a grim Lou Dobbs climbs silently into his pajamas somewhere across town, brighter days are ahead. God bless America.

A media pool report on Barack Obama's Daily Show taping indicated he handled the appearance with his usual calm rationality and didn't blow everything with an ill-advised gaffe, as nervous nellies (or anyone who has tracked Democratic presidential nominees for the past, oh, two decades) might worry he would. According to the Daily News' Mike McAuliff, the candidate (wisely!) wouldn't even indulge a joke about old people in Florida:

Times food writer Kim Severson spends her time these days not with restaurateurs but in Alaska, where her background at the Anchorage Daily News has suddenly become a very valuable asset. Severson today reeled in a tasty scoop: Confirmation, first, that Levi Johnston, the teen father who is marrying into Sarah Palin's family, has in fact dropped out of high school, as rumored, amid slipping grades and unwelcome pressure from his family to play hockey. Severson also delivered the most credible explanation yet for why Track Palin, son of the Republican vice presidential nominee, enlisted in the Army. The rumor mill had him caught up in a drug bust, or perhaps nailed for vandlizing some school buses, and under pressure to join as a corrective. It sounds, for now at least, like the reality is more mundane, if still quite sad. It seems Track, a top Wasilla hockey prospect prone to rink rage, met his fate on the ice:

Here in America, Barack Obama spends most of his time insisting he is a non-terrorist, American-born Christian who doesn't hate white people, and who impregnated his wife only after they got married. Sad. But in Europe the Democratic presidential candidate is actually producing uhhh, what's it called — CHANGE. And HOPE. French newspaper Le Monde credited Obama with "stirring up high hopes" among French blacks, while the Times said Obama "hastened... a new black consciousness there." And today fashion writer Cathy Horyn reveals that Obama helped inspire a forthcoming issue of Italian Vogue with all-black models, including Naomi Campbell, pictured at left in a shot from the issue. The idea, executed by photographer Steven Meisel, was to highlight inequality in the fashion industry:

Lovable media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp, has been going around predicting a landslide victory for the Democrats this November and also big-upping Senator Barack Obama—he called Obama a "superstar" and a "complete phenomenon" at a conference yesterday. He apparently nudged his pet tabloid the New York Post toward an Obama endorsement in the New York primaries (despite his early attempts at making friendly with the Clintons). And as the Post goes, so goes, well, other News Corp holdings. So maybe Fox News will let up on Barry a bit? They've never been terribly friendly to McCain anyhow. But why would this noted conservative tyrant endorse Mr. Liberal Hope? He's done it before—with a friendly little weasel named Tony Blair.

Did you watch the Clinton/Obama debate last night? We didn't! But apparently it went like this: Hillary was all "Obama is a plagiarist hope you can Xerox lol" and the crowd sorta booed but the media decided it was the best zinger ever and Obama was ok but no zingers at all! And Hillary had a rousing and inspiring closing speech that she totally plagiarized from "Lonesome" John Edwards as the following YouTube clip clearly shows.