In my part-time incarnation as the Ultimate Washington Insider, I attend the White House Correspondents Association Dinner every year at the Hilton Washington (aka Hinckley Hilton, where Reagan was shot in 1981) in Kalorama Triangle. Here are some nice pictures I took last year and some from the year before that.

The event attracts a unique mix of glamourous celebrities, policy wonks, journos, and what Wonkette has termed “famous for D.C.” people.

I could list dozens of famous I’ve seen there, but the one that really caused me to be star-struck was Carole King, successful mid-20th-century singer-songwriter and, it turns out, jerk.

My parents had the album Tapestry in the house when I was a kid, and I loved it. Each song is basically a masterpiece. “So Far Away,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” “Natural Woman.”

So when I saw her I was taken back to a place that was quite small and childlike in my star-struck heart, and, out of character for me, asked her shyly: “May I take a picture?”

With all the grace and charm of a big-city sanitation worker hanging off the back of a garbage truck, she waved me off and just kept walking, responding to me over her shoulder: “I’ve kinda got another agenda right now.” I think she was on the way to the bathroom.

“Another agenda” she says. What a jerk. It actually hurt my feelings. She made me remember for a moment that I have feelings that can be hurt. And then she hurt them. I later deleted her songs from my iPod.

So I resolved not to ask for any more pictures, just to start taking them. A moment later I was extending my arm, hand, and camera right into Colin Powell’s face and just snapping a picture without asking or aiming or anything.

FOR MORE ON MY WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS ASSOCIATION DINNER PHOTOGRAPHY, CLICK HERE.

Tags: Carole King, Colin Powell, Hilton Washington, Kalorama, Ronald Reagan, WHCAD, Wonkette