Intrepid cNet reporter Caroline McCarthy went out to the desert to hang out with some TaserBros, and by TaserBros, I mean "The Alameda County Sheriff's Office." They introduce her to the pictured X12 Something Or Other Killer Death Shotgun. The gentleman assisting McCarthy helpfully notes that what's so awesome and neat about the X12 DeathShotty is that it only accepts ammunition for a Taser, so you know, god forbid somebody confuses the Bumblebee Shitspinner with an actual shotgun, they won't be able to pump Grade A American Lead into those pussyass kids screaming about the whales or whatever. Just voltage, pure and simple.

If only that were all. They also exhibit a shockingly awesome (heh) Wall of Tase, which, from what I can tell, works like this: say your little brother has some friends over and they're being real fuckers. You set up two "walls" on each side of the garage, facing each other. You coax them, in your driveway, to come back in the house. As they walk through the garage, you hit the trigger, and BA-BLAW! All nine of those little gremlins are now on the ground, unable to steal your weed. For extra fun, make them eat a bunch of popcorn kernels and see if you can get them to pop post-consumption.

So yes! Taser technology isn't going anywhere; in fact, it's getting cooler than ever. Kinda makes you sentimental for an old-fashioned nightstick beatdown, though, doesn't it? Sigh. Those were the good ol' days.

After TMZ's Harvey Levin busted Maria Shriver for talking on a cell phone while driving, her husband Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to give her a firm spanking. Possibly in a metaphorical sense. Possibly not.

Slashfilm's David Chen praised a fellow Asian American for her dogged fight against racial misconceptions.

Joel Madden, of the band Good Charlotte, knows you're secretly obsessed with him, Rolling Stone "girl."

Gotham-to-San-Francisco transplant Caroline McCarthy can start worrying about the pool of men in her new hometown.... NOW.

Please no one tell Twitter co-founder Biz Stone that this particular Seinfeld episode never aired, and never will air. It's made him so very happy.

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Gourmet Editor Ruth Reichl took a moment to tweet as she packed up her office, made redundant by Condé Nast.

The guy behind I Can Has Cheezburger offered to take over — err, "Haz" — Reichl's magazine.

Diablo Cody got maternal in her own unique way.

Joy Behar might be late to the Letterman scandal, but she'll make up for it by being pun-ny.

Nilay Patel of Engadget simply wants the day's tech news to actually be new. Is that so much to ask?

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Domestic diva Martha Stewart thought she was sitting with Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, when in reality she was sitting with Evan Williams and... Evans' wife? How does that mix-up happen? When the intern who writes Martha's Twitter stream is trying to get herself fired, that's how.

MeetUp CEO Scott Heiferman raised one of the great questions of our age.

Actor Ralph Macchio just discovered the YouTube version of himself. He's not sure what to make of him.

NYU Local founder Cody Brown grossed out the entire park.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy helped some other reporters nail down New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's not-so-exact height.

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Held on a rainy Friday under an enclosed rooftop a stone's throw from Lincoln Center, The Webutante Ball was the sordid brainchild of URLesque blogger Jessica Amason and Gawker Media video maven Richard Blakeley, the two of whom are the co-authors of forthcoming blog-to-book-deal staple This Is Why You're Fat and an egregiously, irritatingly cute capitalist couple. It was, for all intents and purposes, a prom for internet, tech, and media dorks. There was a ballot, and there were nominees. There were winners! And there was a rope, with a line.

I braved the entire thing with my hot date/cover fire, Gawker Party Crash photog Mo Pitz, who was incidentally - and, at least to her, incredulously - a balloted nominee. "I have absolutely no idea how I ended up on that ballot. I'm decidedly not internet-famous." Oh, honey. You are now. Also on the ballot, former Gawker Mascot Andrew Krucoff, who declined to show for the festivities: "I'm celebrating shabbat," Krucoff noted. "Also, fuck that noise," he added. Onward: to the gallery we go!

Former and still-sometimes HuffPo writer, Dan Abrams Kool-Aid Drinker, and author of her upcoming and hotly anticipated book-deal book Jew-ish, Rachel Sklar, gets "man"-handled by her date, the VP of some telecommunicating tech thing called LifeLinks, Ash Kalb. This was staged.

Former Flavorpill editor and Double-X contributor, Anna Balkrishna with New York Post writer Justin Rocket Silverman. I asked Rocket - yes, Rocket - about his recent story for the Post in which he covered the meditative art of fingerbanging. Silverman instructed Balkrishna and I on proper performance, which is apparently akin to the "REDRUM" finger painting from The Shining.

Webutante Ball co-founder Jessica Amason is the "Yearbook Girl" of this entire enterprise. "Also, make sure you don't credit me as 'Blakeley's girlfriend,' goddamnit." She then grabbed me and hung me over the roof of the Empire in a Suge-Knight esque manner to ensure I understood what she was saying. Point taken.

Roger Wu, the founder and president of Klickable.TV, gives us his best entrepreneurial smile. He just gave a bunch of Vimeo kids a curbside beating and left them for dead on the third floor of the Empire.

Nerve and ASSME writer Drew Grant conspires with Yalie and Dan Abrams henchman (yes, that is what a Dan Abrams henchman looks like) Andrew Cedotal to feed me information regarding the sexual workings of fired media elites, which they will then use for profit when taken to corporations who could give a shit about the bold line between journalism, market research, and publicity. They are the future.

Julia Allison showed up in an Escalade, wearing a crown, and walked around the party as such. I have nothing to add here. She didn't win anything, luckily, and went home the same person she arrived as. Also, she came with an unnamed foot solider.

Regular Party Crash contributor Melissa Gira Grant, with former Valleywag editor, the dangerously ginger Nick Douglas. "I'm off the fucking job, get away," Gira delicately noted. Douglas smiled politely and retreated to his iPhone where he used his Pot 'O Gold app to make sure nobody had taken his treasure in the last two minutes.

Guess what party these people aren't with. No, really, guess.

On the left, Former Gawker Intern Mary Pilon, with Web Personae and Webutante nominee Anthony DeRosa on the right. Mary went from being a Gawker Intern to working for the Wall Street Journal! Anthony does something with tech something or other and blogs about the Mets. Neither would take a picture without me in it, so I happily obliged. Suckers.

Jake Hurwitz of College Humor, kissing sweet nothings into the face of College Humor's Ben Joseph. They take a bunch of these kisses and make laughs out of them! Whee! Barry Diller actually encourages this kind of thing.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The winner! College Humor's Amir Blumenfeld is the King of the Webutante Ball, because he fixed the vote! As if having his own MTV show and web series weren't enough, he and the College Humor people had to come and win this shit, too. His queen, ridiculous Jewess Cutie and fellow College Humor startlet, Sarah Schneider, poses with him here. Barry Diller doesn't just encourage, but mandates this kind of thing. Well done, kids. Pictured with him here: an unnamed friend.

Richard Blakeley takes Boyfriend Duty incredibly seriously.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.MediaBistro reporter Hunter Walker tries to scoop something out of Random Night Out photographer Nick McGlynn. McGlynn's doing some startup with socialite creature thing Adrien Field, and Hunter, intrepid reporter that he is, probably wanted to know what planet Field is from.

They don't care about the Young Folks; they're here to sap them of their youth and enter one of their heads through a portal, like the end of Being John Malkovich, except the low-rent version.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Brah! My thoughts exactly.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Cnet reporter Caroline McCarthy is shocked - shocked! - that there are people here taking pictures. This is also the face she makes before she turns into Golum, takes the camera and my notes, leaps off the roof and into her batmobile, where she goes home and tirelessly reports the comings and goings of the rest of these people for a living. Princeton grad. Princeton. Grad.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Foursquare Mayor of Kensington, Brooklyn, New York Press and ASSME writer Matt "Slim Thug" Harvey is being properly identified in this picture.

Gawker Media business something-or-other Scott Kidder wants to know what's in his teeth, and if you could get it out, please, so he could then latch his fangs on to you and suck your will to invoice him for services rendered out through your neck. This is why Denton pays him the big bucks, insert Bloodcopy joke here.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Blogger and Media Maven Brian Van wants to know why everyone wants his picture. It's because he's the one guy wearing sunglasses inside. That being said, this was probably the place to do it, as it was maybe the least egregious display of jocular self-seriousness in the house.

Esquire's matrimonial expert Matt Shepatin was just given some BHG. It's like GHB, but instead of knocking you the fuck out, it makes you all too aware of your surroundings, which can leads to blackouts and unconscious episodes that eventually render you both useless and clinging to the floor of a J-Train, talking to a cat-strewn BagLady about the future of digital media.

Richard Blakeley's Delta Force of terrifying interns. They sit around all day and pick out video clips like monkeys pick coffee beans from trees in far away countries, and then bring them back down to Blakeley. Some coffee-picking monkeys eat the beans and then shit them out for their coffee-harvesting masters; luckily, Blakeley doesn't ask them to do that for him. Yet.

The Founding Couple of The Webutante Ball, together. I asked them, in all seriousness, why they were doing this. Blakeley kept his mouth shut, while Jessica kinda explained. Was it for money, to generate book sales buzz? "Eh, kinda." Why, then? "These people probably didn't go to prom, or never had a chance at being elected king or queen. Now they do. Also, this scene's more or less exactly like high school, no matter what level you're on. It makes perfect sense." But WHY? "Because we're sick of the same parties. We wanted to make people dress up for a change. We needed to class it up." Despite her attempts, these people - myself included - are all circlejerky, pompous, and declasse. But they got drunk on a rooftop bar uptown, which was actually a nice change from Tom and Jerry's. Sigh. All's fair in love and social media.

Party Crash photog and Webutante nominee Mo Pitz is drinking away the sorrow of losing. Ha! Just kidding! She's drinking away the sorrow of being my date.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy came under attack from angry fans of the Dave Matthews Band. Would no one Back Her Up?

Salon's Joan Walsh did not appreciate having to watch Fox News Channel.

ABC backup anchor John Berman was not-so-silently praying for technical difficulties.

Web producer Annemarie Dooling grew tired of flaky renters.

The New York Times' Brian Stelter ate a depressing dinner.

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CNET's Caroline McCarthy discovered her attire was inappropriate.

Inked magazine editor Jason Buhrmester reveled in his own sacrilege.

Boing Boing's Joel Johnson had a good question to ask about D.

The Guardian's Jemima Kiss could hardly contemplate what she'd become.

Kirstie Alley became acquainted with the less happy side of Twitter.

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[Why not check out these stunning images using our handy-dandy new gallery?]

As many as three or four of these mist-braving guests will be sharing a house with a half-dozen others just like them, or maybe their parents, any weekend now. Haute smut photographer Nikola Tamindzic escorted me, my margarita, and my West Coast indifference to "summering" through Hruska's scene.

Rachelle Hruska curses the dark skies with her bright, bright future.

Media lady Rachel Sklar basking in the death of print and all the tight t-shirts it brings.

Lonnie, left, is a stylist. Ryan B, right, is a make-up artist. For this they are permitted matchy glasses and one pocket square.

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of mobile social app Foursquare, loved at least a few of Rachelle's jalapeno-laced margaritas.

Caroline McCarthy of CNET News left chilly and early and so blogged before all of us, thanking Rachelle for getting puffy fingers the size of mittens after slicing peppers all night.

Rachelle with ex-boy and Olympic rower Cameron Winklevoss. Now he's lending a hand around Guest of a Guest, doing "a little bit of everything," like help with the computers and investing and stuff!

A turn-away from Friday night's 90's vs 90's panel at the nearby New Museum conveniently had an excuse to repurpose his outfit.

He's not made of cardboard, but was kept on hand for posing.

Peter Feld weighed his options and also liquor.

One thing Winklevoss is not helping with: meat. Rachelle's current manfriend was on skewers for the day.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.To keep in theme, all guests were issued metallic dock shoes.

Reformed fameballer Rex Sorgatz kept the hellhounds of gossip at bay.

The end of a vampire weekend.

On this roof, there is no irony in anchors.

The internet, they drink just like us.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Andrew Cedotal, from Abrams Research, in twee.

The drinks were sugar-free and served in plastic: no artificial sweeteners and no hard edges to hurt our soft little mouths on.

As near as we can tell, an extension of the Winklevoss crew. At least as of the night before. Visors know no social class.

Hey it's a Journey mashup let's rock.

Rex Sorgatz cares about your internet.

A whiter shade of lime.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The look in a nutshell: aspirational summer whites cloaked in winter's broke-ass misery.

Washington Post dork Chris Cillizza admitted it.

CNET Newser Caroline McCarthy did not have to see a man about a horse.

Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback attempted to rent a car from a shoe store.

New Yorker Twitter controversialist Susan Orlean complained about an inanimate object, for a change.

Wired research editor Joanna Pearlstein rapped her job applicants' knuckles with a Twitter-shaped ruler.

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Erstwhile checkout-line tastemaker Bonnie Fuller found someone who made her seem less loathsome by comparison.

Time writer Karen Tumulty ended up on the wrong side of Texas.

WebMediaBrands mogul Alan Meckler touted his company's stock.

CNET social-media beat reporter Caroline McCarthy subverted the dominant media paradigm.

Bay Area exile Alex Blagg advised Gawker alumna Doree Shafrir, in San Francisco for a book reading, on his former haunts.

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Self-described "popologist" Lyneka Little took a ride on Ikea's wild side.

Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback, the man responsible for inflicting Kevin Rose's Diggnation on the world, apparently couldn't afford a rental car in L.A.

CNET News oversharer Caroline McCarthy filled us in on her food preferences.

Time columnist James Poniewozik watched CNN Fox News shoutyman Glenn Beck play Jenga on live TV.

Formerly important media person Bonnie Fuller made the Lance Armstrong collarbone-break story all about her.

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Twitter-loving food writer turned dubiously qualified Web entrepreneur Amanda Hesser dished out advice to Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby.
New York media scenestress Caroline Waxler bought something as seen on TV, and CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy bullied us into informing you.
Multimedia tech opinionator Sarah Lacy just couldn't leave the studio.
Gossip blogger Perez Hilton did, like, some reporting, kinda.
New York Times Detroit reporter Micki Maynard found a lone supporter of the domestic auto industry.

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Martha Stewart looked down on New Yorkers intimidated by snow, a group which includes home-bound Gawker editor Gabriel "I'm taking a snow day" Snyder. And then she got into a crazy Twitter conversation with Perez Hilton about cupcakes. Which is pretty much what she deserved.

CNET's Twitter beat reporter, Caroline McCarthy, lived up to Stewart's haughty expectations.

New York editrix Jessica Coen watched television in the middle of the day.

CNN's Rick Sanchez had an all-caps freakout over AIG.

Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl gave us a disturbing view of her larder and psyche.

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Late Night with Jimmy Fallon producer Gavin Purcell hopelessly shopped for shoes.

CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy stayed focused on the big, important story of the day.

Slate writer John Dickerson exhibited profound laziness.

Meet the Press host David Gregory fell victim to Twidiocy.

Techmeme editrix Megan McCarthy made a joke about Google's nondiscovery of Atlantis.

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Twentysomething CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy had flashbacks to the '90s, even though she's too young to remember them.

Recessionista Laura Rich prayed for years of a crappy economy.

Tech analyst Michael Gartenberg didn't even try to have his Google conspiracy theory make sense.


Ex-Condé Nasty Kourosh Karimkhany, also a Gawker Media alumnus, plotted the launch of his Web empire with venture capitalist Fred Wilson.

MC Hammer got on a plane because it was raining, or something.

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Fast Company editor Ellen McGirt grappled with a broken iPhone ...

... and so did New York Times TV blogger Brian Stelter.

AllThingsD blogger Peter Kafka kept his eye on the thermometer ...

... while CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy worried she might turn into one. (What really should concern her: All that platonic cuddling with fameball Rex Sorgatz!)

Things got frosty for Wired contributor Clive Thompson ignored his wife, Emily Nussbaum, for a book. Nussbaum, a New York editor-at-large, took her complaints to Twitter.

As the attention-obsessed would-be-media-mogul surely intended, today's Observer's profile of him produced a frisson of controversy inside New York's Tumblrocracy before it even hit the street. Is he really dating CNET blogger Caroline McCarthy, as the article implied? Why would he be so callous as to describe his recent ex, former Huffington Post writer Rachel Sklar, as an "exit strategy" from the problem of dating younger women, or portray her as enthralled by the low-grade attention that comes with being part of a blogging power couple?

Sorgatz, who showered the Observer's Spencer Morgan with on-the-record tales of his exploits with young Tumblr girls, courted both the attention and the controversy. It's not clear why: Surely the online consultant and entrepreneur sees what is happening around him. Fellow fameball Julia Allison's reality show deal with Bravo fell through, and her Web venture Non Society is groping for relevance. The television networks are, at last, supersaturated with minor celebrities placed in "reality" scenarios and hardly in the position to bid on more. Either Sorgatz knows something everyone else doesn't about attention economics, or he just can't stop hoarding the stuff

Sorgatz certainly did his best to whip up some drama for Morgan. His Gossip Girl parties, which found their way into Morgan's lede, have been near-desolate on recent occasion. But the Monday shindig bulked up significantly after Sorgatz added this nugget to the invitation:

This time, it's not just an invite, but also a request....

Spencer Morgan of the New York Observer will also be here, because he is profiling me in his "Men of Manhattan" column. (I know, right?) So in addition to coming over and drinking my beer, you have to pretend you really like me.

Having secured something of a crowd, Sorgatz then provocatively mingled his recent ex Sklar with a new squeeze, "Kristen" from the Web show he produces, "I'm Just Sayin'." In fact, the two women ended up sitting next to one another.

Sklar is on the far right in the second-to-last row of people; we're told that is Kristen next to her. The body language is not subtle. (And, yes, that's our very own expressive Richard Blakeley sitting on the couch.)

As if this wasn't enough, Sklar also had to contend with the presence of McCarthy, who as Sklar's relationship with Sorgatz was ending appeared in more and more pictures with scarf-loving Sorgatz on their respective Tumblr and Flickr streams. The two also made prominent appearances together in blogging circles, at "blogger bar" The Magician on the Lower East Side and elsewhere. Rumors that McCarthy had replaced Sklar swirled among friends and put a strain on their relationship.

At the party, post-breakup, Sklar made the mistake of sharing her feelings of awkwardness toward McCarthy in real-time with Allison. Allison, apparently trying to elbow in on Sorgatz's tearmaking, did Sklar the courtesy of quickly summarizing Sklar's text messages in an email to McCarthy, also at the party and soon in receipt of Allison's message.

But Sklar needn't have been worried; McCarthy is said to be seeing Curbed.com publisher and former Gawker staffer Lockhart Steele. Her public flirtation with Sorgatz was believed by friends to serve mutually beneficial ends — McCarthy got to show her ex, Tumblr inventor David Karp, that she had moved on, while Sorgatz got to build on his image as a playboy while passive-aggressively extricating himself from his relationship with Sklar. In any case, McCarthy obliquely denied the Observer's implication she's with Sorgatz on, naturally, her Tumblr.

If the whole thing sounds like an slightly-more-grown-up episode of Gossip Girl, that's because it is, probably by design. The party drama and the McCarthy flirtation, like the Observer piece, is a case-study right out of micro-fame expert Sorgatz's own playbook.

Sklar, by Sorgatz's own admission the more grounded half of the couple, seems to have played an unwitting role in the manufactured drama. "We were a solid couple from day one, and [Sogartz's romp with Tumblettes and a secret blog] was clearly in the past, and so I rolled with it," she wrote to us after the Observer piece was published. "Also, the 'romp' was a 6-month relationship and not some trip through micro-celebrity."

Sklar certainly deserves better than to be called, by her ex in the Observer, "sort of a solution to the problem of a lifestyle that really primarily revolved around 23-year-old Tumblr girls."

Kristen, meanwhile, advances the Sorgatz plot while promoting one of his businesses. Want to find out about the outré playboy's latest conquest? Then watch her Web show!

If Sorgatz wants to be the next Jeff Zucker, this seems like a bizarre way to get there, however many eyeballs his lifestream ultimately attracts. If there's a point to Sorgatz's caddishness, no one has yet deduced it. But plenty of people are content to watch the bonfire in the meantime.

(Top image via Sorgatz on Flickr.)

"I'm a PC" Apple spokesvillain John Hodgman couldn't decide which brand of speaker wire to buy.

Former Star editor Bonnie Fuller was sorry she wasn't single while hitting the slopes.

AP reporter Phil Elliott wished he'd paid more attention to Tennyson in college.

Wired editor Chris Anderson was mad at himself for hiring the bunch of smartasses who ran a chart just to mock his "Long Tail" theory.

CNET News's Caroline McCarthy wished she hadn't said anything at all.

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Karp is founder of blogging service Tumblr, where McCarthy posted the pic, lending it kind of a "stop hitting yourself!" undertone. Forman is also an internet entrepreneur, having started I'm In Like With You.

McCarthy, meanwhile, writes about the whole social media scene — including I'm In Like With You and, from time to time, Tumblr. Sometimes she even provides her own pictures, although we're starting to wonder if CNET shouldn't reconsider that sort of flexibility.

UPDATE: She's pulled the post. It was "only funny around midnight."

Which well-educated Hollywood C-lister has gotten quite the reputation for chasing tail at media and dot-com parties on both coasts in addition to the usual entertainment industry circuit? This has been going on for a while, but it’s only recently begun to turn him into a punchline. And trust me, this fellow should know already that you don’t want to be a punchline among people who write them for a living. Not to mention the fact that gossip about his left-of-center bedroom interests is starting to get out.

Show off your algorithms in the comments. Include this curiosity: Why would a supposedly "well-educated" actor try to pick up women at tech parties?