Washington Post Theatre

This week, the Washington Post announced the release of its new iPad app. As part of the roll-out, the Post created this video where Bob Woodward, perplexed by this amazing new technology, wanders through the Post newsroom full of iPad-obsessed colleagues, to Ben Bradlee's office in order to find out more about it. By the end, Woodward seems to accept that iPads are just as good, if not better than typewriters, and you get to see Bradlee feign enthusiasm for both Twitter and "juicy gossip."

I think it's great. If there's a director's cut with additional footage, I'd love to see it. This is the sort of thing the Post should do more often. Not necessarily use the newsroom as the setting for wacky web videos (although, I wouldn't mind it), but it seems like a good way to get people interested in and excited about the Washington Post is to let them see more of its inner workings. After all, for anyone who's lived here for any considerable period of time, the Post isn't just a newspaper, it's a D.C. institution, just like Saturday Night Live is to New York or Wrigley Field is to Chicago. And who isn't fascinated by what goes on in an institution?

Anyway, here are my five favorite parts of the video:

1) Bob Woodward's Mystery Box

I doubt Woodward actually keeps a box labeled "Watergate" by his desk. (Actually, I doubt Woodward has a desk in the bullpen. Or a typewriter. But it's clearly all part of the bit, so never mind.) It'd be awesome if he did, though. A box that no one was ever allowed to open or even touch. Just sitting there. Tempting people with its deep, dark secrets.

Granted, the contents would be a lot less mysterious now that we know who Deep Throat was, but I'm sure Woodward still has all kinds of great Watergate and Nixon administration souvenirs that he could keep in there. Old notes and photos. A never-seen copy of Haldeman's pardon request. Checkers. That kind of stuff.


2) Dana Milbank Strikes Out

Like lots of people who read Dana Milbank's column, I constantly go back and forth on whether or not I actually like Dana Milbank. Some days, he comes off as witty and insightful. Other days, he just comes off as a jackass. And there are days where there's overlap between wittiness and jackassiness, and which side you come down on depends on who you like more, Milbank or whoever he's being a jackass towards.

I'm currently in a pro-Milbank period, but I still got a laugh out of Milbank's hurt look after asking his attractive coworker whether or not she's read his latest column, and getting a less than enthusiastic response. But what do you expect when you use a line like, "It's generating a lot of Facebook chatter"?


3) Bacon Wig = Bacon Win

I don't know if this is a photo with an actual story behind it, or if the people behind the video simply threw it because they thought bacon is inherently funny (it is!) and a wig made out of bacon makes a good sight gag (it does!). Either way, it comes up big. Incidentally, if you do a Google Image search for "bacon wig," you get all kinds of interesting hits, including more bacon wigs, lots of Elvis-related stuff, and most interestingly, a bacon bra and a bacon merkin.

Don't Google "bacon merkin" at work. In fact, if you don't want to get fired, I suppose you shouldn't Google any sort of merkin. Another way The Man is keeping us down.


4) "Hey, was that Robert Redford?"

In junior high, we watched All The President's Men in civics class. I remember my teacher, who I guess was a big Nixon fan and still held a grudge 20 years later, going off on a mini-rant about how Woodward looked considerably better in the movie than he did in real life, and that he owed Robert Redford big time for making him look good.

Arguably true, but maybe not a sentiment you need to share with a bunch of 13 year-olds. It wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as the time my earth science teacher announced to the whole class that she was a virgin, but thoughts on Bob Woodward's level of hotness vis-à-vis Robert Redford, wasn't something I needed to hear, either.


5) It's Like You're Watching All The President's Men 2

You don't have to be a huge journalism or political geek to get a thrill out of seeing Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee together. Even if it's just to hawk an iPad app, as opposed to unmasking a sinister White House conspiracy.

When they inevitably remake All The President's Men (I'm sure my former teacher will again be outraged when it's announced that Matthew McConaughey or Shia LaBeouf or whoever is playing Woodward), I hope the new version ends with a foreshadowing scene--needless to say, an entirely fictional one--in which Bradlee, Woodward and Carl Bernstein are having a drink together, celebrating the publication of the Watergate story, and Bradlee muses that 40 years in the future, maybe he and Woodward will star in a humorous website video together. Bernstein starts to ask what a website is, then stops and instead says, "Wait, what about me? Won't I still at the Post?" And then there's just awkward silence. Roll credits.