[BID ON THE BOOK HERE. SERIOUSLY. IT'S FOR CHARITY.]

Realize: this is the best copy of this book in existence. Period. Bar none. And at a ceremony when the books and authors being honored have the sales of their books disproportionately inverted by their quality, it only seemed appropriate to get everybody in on The Big Joke of the evening: that more people would read Sarah Palin's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Bullshit than any of the nominees' and winners' books, combined.

We offered the book up to some of our favorite literature and media luminaries that were in the house that evening. Dave Eggers—that asshole!—was very nice about refusing to sign our book, probably because it wasn't for his 826 charity. But he was kind. How's that for an endorsement?

Not good enough? What about super awesome sleepy Columbia MFA graduate and Freaks and Geeks actor James Franco signing our book?

Yes, this man signed our book. Okay, Jim. Maybe you made our photographer cry. But you did this one for the children. You're okay, today. Also, the nerds at Slate think you're The Sexiest Man With A Pulse, for what it's worth (read: the most ostentatious pillow talk ever). Congrats. But what if an awesome hunky dreamy movie star with an MFA from Columbia isn't enough reason to spend lots of money on a book people drew on?

Maybe 2009 National Book Award winner Colum McCann signing this bad boy is! YES THAT IS COLUM MCCANN SIGNING THE PALIN BOOK. This took a lot—a lot—of convincing. Charity, huh? But it's Sarah Palin's book! Sarah Palin! I can't put my name on anything of hers! Are you sure this is for charity? What charity?!

Funny you should ask, Mr. McCann. I've picked a charity so great, you can't even say their name out loud without feeling awful for never having done something for them until now: Save The Children. Yeah, you're gonna stiff these guys?

They've done great work bringing literacy programs to kids in need across the country, among other great things they've done for kids that otherwise don't get things done for them that should be. If I were running these programs, I would have them all reading Gawker Weekends and Calvin and Hobbes, because that's what I grew up on, but I'm not, and these people are, and we're all better off. You don't have to buy the book to give a buck. Oh, and if you complain about the charity I picked, I'll come to your house and personally beat you with an unsigned copy of Ms. Palin's 2010 NBA Fiction Winner. But yes, people actually signed this thing.

You want proof?

2009 NBA Fiction Prize winner Collum McCann (fourth page, center) really, actually did take this much convincing. He wrote: "'For we must love this poor earth, for we have not seen another...' Go Obama!" Awesome.

Ricky Van Veen and Neel Shah marvel at how incredibly awesome this book is, while Jessica Coen is laughing to herself imagining Sarah Palin read her fabulous, fierce nugget of wisdom.

Here's the guy who I thought was Toph Eggers, right. I got everyone's name wrong that night. At one point I think I remember identifying Keith Waldrop as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Jeff Bercovici signed the book as Dave Eggers, since Dave Eggers doesn't care about Saving The Children so much as making them read George Saunders or whatever.

Here're the first two pages:

And here're the second two:

And here's the full list of who we know we got:

2009 NBA Fiction Winner, Let The Great World Spin author Colum McCann.

Spider Man 2 actor and recent Columbia MFA graduate James Franco wrote (third page, top-right): "FUCK YEAH!" with a strange vampire-smiley face.

2008 NBA Fiction Finalist Salvatore Scibona (second page, middle-right) gave her "hugs."

2008 NBA Fiction Finalist Rachel Kushner (second page, bottom-left) offers her insight on context clues regarding snowmobiles.

I Was Told There Would Be Cake author by night and Random House book publicist by day Sloane Crosley offered her encouragement "storming the castle." True story: Sloane had no idea what she was signing.

The Seymore Hersh of the Sunday Styles, New York Times writer Allen Salkin took up the entire bottom-third of the fourth page ensuring that I wasn't conning him. He also drew a fairly accurate drawing of himself.

Dave Eggers! As performed/signed by former Portfolio and current Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici (fourth page, top-right).

Columnist Katie Bakes tried to start a #hashtag, while the New York Observer's publishing beat gangsta Leon Neyfakh wrote...something.

Vice and New York Press writer Jamie Peck (second-page, bottom-right, I think) talked to her about wolves. Someone who isn't Vice writer Jamie Peck, apparently, talked to her about wolves. Claim your identity here!

College Humor founder Ricky Van Veen gave Sarah a big CHILL, BABY, CHILL while Former Radar, Gawker, and Page Six writer Neel Shah got tactful.

The Awl writer Alex Balk.

Flavorwire's Kelsey Keith had more sage advice for Palin's future career aspirations.

Cartoonist Laurie Sandell drew a woman holding a smoking gun on the third page. Get it?

Gawker Past and Present: Media Overlord Nick Denton and current Gawker Editor-in-Chief Gabriel Snyder both thanked her for pageviews—heh—while founding Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers wished her luck, and Gawker J²-era/New York Magazine editor Jessica Coen gave her hair tips.

Oh, and me, lending to this the extent of my own profound, political insight.

We also got Gawker's Altarcations writer Phyllis Nefler. and some guy who looks like Dave Eggers brother, who turned out not to be Dave Eggers' brother after I thought he was Dave Eggers' brother. His name is Alec Friedman.

[Alas, because we were drunk, there may be signatures in here we missed. Seriously! If you see your John Hancock—heh: cock—please email me with it. It's for charity. You don't want children growing up to one day actually think that was funny, do you? Right. Neither do I.]

The book's sanctity has been preserved by only having been signed on the night of the 2009 National Book Awards, by attendees of the ceremony. That said, if you win it and want to have anybody else in the Gawker Media offices sign it, sure, fuckit, I'll get them to sign. Hell, we know people who are experts on books that are imaginary that are supposed to be real, and I bet we could get them to sign if that's what you wanted. Or I could eat the book, or I could drop-kick it, or I could detonate it with whatever fireworks you send us, or I could read it, but who's that awful? Not you, potential charity-giver. Anyway. You could do any of those things, or none of them, and just keep it as one of the most awesome literary collectibles ever. You know? You know.

Because one day, you can show this to your children's children, and tell them: I bought this so you could see how happy the people were before it was like this. Now that James Franco is the new Daniel Mendelsohn, and every book published is full of shit, and they all come from blogs, and they're the only things that sell, and they are read on calculators, there was this. There was this night. There were these drunk people signing Frau Palin's book.

And then you can blame it on this guy:

But seriously, it's for charity. Buy the goddamn book. Now. Please. Our auction is here.

[Photographs via Gawker Party Crash photog Mo Pitz.]

We're sorry that this country is so full of homophobic prudes that kissing a guy on stage and simulating oral sex will elicit more than 1,500 complaints and get you kicked off of GMA.

Lambert was scheduled to appear on the show tomorrow—a critical gig, since his album, For Your Entertainment, just came out—but that has been canceled. "Given his controversial American Music Awards performance, we were concerned about airing a similar concert so early in the morning," a spokesperson for the show told the NY Times Arts Beat blog.

This is all the gays fault. We did what we always do and we overestimate just how much we are accepted by society. It may seem like apples and oranges (or butches and femmes) but Adam Lambert is just like what happened in California with Prop 8. We thought there was no way that the good people of California could hate gays so much they would vote down gay marriage. Well, we were very wrong.

The same thing happened here. All of the gays were telling Adam, "Keep it real. Get all faggy. You owe it to us, and they'll love you for it." He responded with a performance that was so gay that he shot rainbows out of his eyes and turned Whitney Houston in a unicorn that he rode across the stage and threw Ryan Seacrest on the back of it and they made out for 17 minutes straight. Oops, too gay. Now we've ruined it for Adam and he's going to end up playing piano in a gay bar and dying bitter and alone just like Jobriath.

The worst part about this whole thing is that we have now negated all the progress Lambert made by being an openly gay pop star in the first place. Now when the next very talented flamboyant rocker comes along all his managers and agents (most of them gay) will say, "Oh, you have to stay in the closet. Look what happened when Adam Lambert sashayed on stage at the AMAs. America will hate you."

That said, this isn't the worst thing that could happen to Lambert. He's getting plenty of attention just as his album is coming out—negative or not. The people who were offended by his dry humping were never going to buy the album anyway, and this flap might just give him enough street cred to get some people clicking the download button iTunes. We hate to make the same mistake twice, but maybe getting all nelly was the right move.

Apparently Lambert has been offered a replacement gig on CBS' The Early Show (caution, Perez Hilton link ahoy). Adam if that doesn't work out, you are welcome to perform here at Gawker HQ, and we'll let you get as queer as you wanna be. You can even put pink pancakes on Nick Denton's head. The only thing gayer than that is—well, your performance at the AMAs.

[Images via Getty]

OH YES. Nick's new neighbor is Samuel Motherfucking Jackson. You know there was a movie made about this, right? [See above. It was not the one where Samuel Jackson gets EATEN by a MOTHERFUCKING SHARK.] Like, they gave this to me, on a Sunday. Holy shit, I'm never asking for anything ever again.

I mean guys, I don't know, all I see is "sitcom" potential written all over this. Wait, the item, the fucking Page Six item is so classic, I'm dying here. Breathe, Foster. Okay, okay. Let's handle this like adults. Look:

We hear the seller, Wall Street dude Eric Gross, got such a kick out of Jackson buying his pad, he may have accepted the bid, despite it being a tad lower than a nonceleb offer of about $4.1 million. Let's hope Jackson doesn't have any secrets, though. It'll be hard to keep them from the only other neighbor on his floor — Gawker guru Nick Denton.

BAHAHA. Oh, come on. You think that glee was because it was Sam Jackson, or did he get a "kick" out of this because it was Sam Jackson living next to Nick? [Former Gawker Intern Turned Page Six Reporter] Neel Shah, PLEASE tell me you wrote this. This is going to be a beautiful wellspring of material. Sam! We have a tips line. If Nick puts his motherfucking recycling in the motherfucking trash, you know exactly who to call.

He did a remarkable job of not saying much. At 8:15 the party had barely begun at the downtown hotspot, known for its strict velvet rope and the racy performances on its main stage, the gregarious Tank Jones and his brother Marvin (in the role as Levi's trainer) were some of the first people to arrive. They installed the one-time human campaign prop at a table in the corner of the balcony so that several PR people could start the parade of press. The rest of the venue was practically empty, but everyone was clustered around Levi.

As the Observer's John Koblin interviewed Playgirl's spokesman Daniel Nardicio about the future of the magazine, the Levi interviews started. Everyone made way for a camera crew from Entertainment Tonight, which has exclusive access to Levi for all the behind-the-scenes action for the photo shoot that is taking place right now (if everything goes according to schedule). We didn't get close enough to hear what they asked during their ten minutes with Levi.

As they clear out, there were more print interviews to do. Michael Musto came by to say hi, but he interviewed Levi at his hotel earlier. I asked Musto if he was a good interview. He said yes, but agrees that it's hard to get him to say much. Jo Piazza from CNN came in and taped a few second with the Johnston crew. Before she started her interveiew, Tank said he's not answering questions about Sarah Palin or about suing for custody of Tripp, Levi's son with Palin's daughter Bristol. Then he flirted with her a little bit as she squeezed in next to Levi to ask her questions. Most of the questions were the same all night: How is this different from Alaska? What is he going to show? Is he ready for the shoot? Does he know that he's a gay icon? Will he do more porn? What does the future hold?

Levi always answers with the fewest words possible. This may make him appear a bit dim, but it seems a smart move for a guy who's standing around a bunch of people paid to turn any utterance he makes into "news." With the reporters gone, he quietly joked with Tank and Marvin.

When Piazza was done, he joked a bit with Nardicio, teaching him how to tuck a dollop of chew under his lip. "Don't you throw up on this table!" Tank chided. A PR person came by and said there were more interviews to be done. "I know. This isn't my first rodeo," Levi said. Another reporter sat down, this one from People. They knew to send a pretty girl.

When she left, the PR man told Tank that Page Six boss Richard Johnson wanted an introduction. Tank responded, "We're not talking to them. No pictures, nothing." The PR man conveyed the message to Johnson. "He just wants to say hi," Mr. PR pleaded with Tank. But Tank had made up his mind: No Levi for Johnson. "That's fine," said the Page Six editor before heading back downstairs. After he left, Tank complained about a Page Six item accusing Levi having a small dick and thus afraid to do any full-frontal shots: "That's not true!"

There was a break in the action and a PR girl brought by the trophy Levi will receive later in the evening: an 11-inch dildo made of silver. Everyone at the table laughed nervously and made jokes about how Levi isn't going to accept a dildo. Levi returned his trophy to the nice lady and said, "I can't believe I just won a giant silver dildo." He and Tank conferred and decide there can't be any pictures taken of him holding it, so they plan to have Nardicio take the stage with him and hold the award.

Then the photographers arrived. In groups of two, they came by the corner, their flashbulbs blinding in the dark club. Levi knew to look directly into the camera and then occasionally look away to blink. He didn't look like he was having any fun. When all that was over, he passed some time ogling the scantily-clad go-go dancers down below. Tank said, "Those are all real women right? I don't want to look if they're not real women." Another laugh. Nardicio tells them that they're all real women. I pointed out that there were definitely some drag queens in the mix. "That's OK, I didn't want those ones anyway," Levi responded. He told me that he hadn't had any time to go out and party while in New York City. "It's been all work. I'm all about business," he says. "But I like New York more each time I come here." What does he think about this event? "It's different," is all he'll say.

As the show starts, Gawker alum Joshua David Stein showed up asking questions for New York magazine. It was getting loud, the house was full. Tank informed him they'd do an interview later. Levi leaned over the balcony to watching the award ceremony on stage and performances by the likes of boy/boy/girl aerialist trio Mantryx. When the intermission came, the crew decided to go outside for some air.

Out on the sidewalk, it is a whole different scene. Dressed in identical tuxedos like they all went shopping at the same men's store earlier that evening, they moved as a unit. Flanked by two enormous black men, Levi wasn't easy to approach. That didn't stop the reporters. Kelefa Sanneh from the New Yorker came up received a stern lecture from Tank about not asking about Palin or custody. Sanneh started his round of questioning but was cut off by the arrival of two 20-something guys who made up TMZ's camera crew. They'd been tailing Levi and his crew ever since they arrived in New York and seemed almost like old friends. Sanneh backed off, to avoid getting captured by their camera. TMZ doesn't care about restrictions and they began asking about custody and Palin. Tank demurred. "Come on, you know better than that."

While Tank was distracted by dealing with the TMZ mess, Jacob Bernstein from The Daily Beast snuck up and peppered Levi with questions and scribbled furiously in his notebook. A male-female duo from Hollywood Life sidled up and began asking their own questions and with a Flip camera. After the questions, the Hollywood Life crew each took their picture with Levi. With Levi alone again, Sanneh came back for a second attempt at an interview. This time, though, he talked more to Tank that Levi. It's easy to go that direction, since Tank is a gregarious quote machine while Levi answers everything with about three words.

Levi was scheduled to accept his award as soon as the ceremony restarted after the intermission. The PR girl shadowing him told him and Nardicio to go hang out at Nick Denton's table so they'd be right next to the stage. but there isn't any room at the Gawker Media overlord's table. Levi headed instead for socialite Tinsley Mortimer's table where photographers eagerly snapped the unlikely pairing. Joshua David Stein returned for his promised interview, but Levi said he needs clear it with Tank. Stein rebutted that Tank had already cleared it, but Levi — who either didn't remember, didn't care, or simply wanted to protect himself — turned him down again, this time a little more firmly. Marvin stepped in and said they'd talk to Tank and do the interview later.

Levi asked who he needs to thank in his speech which he obviously hasn't thought about until then. Nardicio told him to thank Fleshbot and The Box. Levi added that he should also say something about the upcoming issue of Playgirl and to tell people to buy it. He is all business.

When his award was announced he and Nardicio went on stage where Levi successfully avoided being photographed with a big silver dildo. His speech was exactly what he planned: He thanked Fleshbot and The Box and then told everyone to buy his issue of Playgirl.

After leaving the stage, he meets up with Tank and Marvin and they head out the door. He has to get up early to work out before his big shoot. Our colleague Irin over at Jezebel got her questions answered about the type of ladies Levi likes and JDS eventually got his interview, making poor Richard Johnson the only person denied the chance to exchange banalities with the man of the hour. Levi, like he said, was all about business, and last night his business was spectacle.

Top three photos by Hee Jin Kang, bottom by GuestofaGuest

Of course, 24/7 Wall Street has the advantage of being able to conjure made-up estimates out of thin air; that's how the site put a price tag on various blog networks back in February (PerezHilton.com: $32 million (ha); Gawker Media: $170 million (HA!)). Now the site's taken those made-up estimates and combined them with additional made-up estimates of how much each blog network would be worth without its iconic founder. In other words, it's estimating the economic worth of each blogging boss — not to be confused with their actual wealth.

Here are the numbers. Spoiler: Drudge is king, even in hypothetical death.

(Correction: This post originally said 24/7 Wall Street was an AOL property. It is in fact independent.)

Gawker Media's Nick Denton: $26 million. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but it's only 15 percent of his company's hypothetical net worth, since Denton doesn't do much writing or editing. "Gawker would miss the guiding hand, but presumably the company could get another skilled CEO." (Pic: Eliot Shepard via mednut on Flickr)

Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington: $23 million. Huffington is the face of her company, 24/7 correctly notes, lending it valuable "star power and relationships." But the site overestimates the extent to which Huffington has delegated control to "highly skilled editorial staff:" although she's made some promising recent hires from the likes of the Washington Post, Huffington has stocked the wide-ranging site with nepotistic hires willing to abide her detailed (headlines, story placement, story assignments) and wide-ranging orders. As such, she's probably at least twice as essential to the organization as 24/7 estimates (25 percent of HuffPo's $90 million net worth). (Pic: JD Lasica)

Drudge Report's Matt Drudge: $43 million. That's 90 percent of his site's estimated $48 million value. Sure, Drudge has in the past received help from swell guys like Andrew Breitbart (no longer working for him), but they hardly had the skill to open email messages containing Republican talking points and newsroom leaks: "Drudge obviously has editors working for him to gather the hundreds of links from other media but the scoops that run on the sites are almost certainly his."

PerezHilton.com's Mario "Perez Hilton" Lavandeira: $30 million. The jizz-doodling celebrity gossip blogger is obviously an irreplaceable genius i 24/7's eyes: Without him, says the website, "the $32 million value of PerezHilton.com would go to under $2 million." Right, except for the fact that Lavandeira's got his sister and probably others actually writing/doodling the damned thing on his behalf. And since 1> Perez Hilton isn't anyone's real name to begin with and 2> his sister doesn't go around calling people "fags" like Lavandeira does, she might actually be able to make the site more popular.

TechCrunch's Mike Arrington: $12.5 million. Sure, TechCrunch's flagship tech business blog has "more than 20 senior writers, editor and business staff," but Arrington is "a controversial and polarizing figure," so he's worth half the company's total imaginary valuation of $50 million. (Pic: Robert Scoble)

The rest: MacRumors' Arnold Kim, a onetime doctor is estimated worth $4.2 million to his $21 million site; GigaOm's Om Malik accounts for $2.9 million of his tech blog network's $9.5 million value; Mashable's Pete Cashmore is estimated worth $1.25 million, or half of his tech blog's $2.5 million value; Business Insider's Henry Blodget $1.5 million or two-thirds of the total value of his financial blogging company; Markos Moulitsas (pictured) $1.7 million of political blog Daily Kos' $2 million made-up value. (Pic: Steve Rhodes)

1572: French Huguenots massacred in the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
1814: British troops burn down the White House.
1954: The American Communist Party is outlawed.
1966: Nick Denton born.
1992: Hurricane Andrew devastates South Florida.

An apocalyptic, borderline Mad Max sculpture by two guys who go by AIDS-3D. The center of the sculpture was a tower with the words OMG inscribed on it in lights. It originated as a GIF image file, at one point, they say. Interview with them here.

Someone sleeping in a bed, in the middle of the museum. Chu Yun, the artist, "supplied" his subjects with sleeping pills and the bed. The sleepers were being paid $10 an hour to sleep in the museum. Yun's previous work has included putting a woman with down's syndrome in a chair, in a gallery.The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Artist Guthrie Lonergan's Myspace Intro Playlist, in which the artist remixed a bunch of MySpace intro videos. It is not intended to be funny, according to the arist.

This video of rival street gangs in Belgrade fighting, scored to a trance techno track.

Three very large banners, one of which advised me: "DON'T PAY TAXES."

A installation with videos by artist Ryan Trecartin. The room had discarded Lay-Z-Boys and part of an airliner's interior on the side of it. I also remember seeing a shelf with sand on it, and a BlackBerry in the sand. Here is a Ryan Trecartin video. I'm simply incapable of describing its contents: The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The remnants of an art project that took place on the first floor of the museum. There was a bunch of cardboard paper, unfolded boxes, and various other "construction" scraps lying on the floor. There was a small TV in the corner depicting in fast-forward the artist and her friends, building a replica of Rome in 24 hours, and then destroying it. From New York's art critic Jerry Saltz's review of the show:

The first night, I watched kids fashion the altars and temples of Rome's archaic period; by the next morning, when I returned, they'd been destroyed ("by fires," said the artist), and I spied the beginnings of Classical Rome. Just before the opening, the whole city was again wrecked and left in ruins, as the Dark Ages began. Glynn is saying she's not going to listen to the bromides that assert that change takes time.

An 8-bit videogame called FlyWrench by artist Mark Essen. You use an original Nintendo controller to control a line going through different colored shapes: The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The laid out contents of three people, from whom Chinese artist Liu Chuang offered to buy everything off of their person for display in a museum. One included a cell phone, some pictures of themselves, and of course, all of their clothing.

A rotating spiral staircase on a platform, entitled: Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted, Stairway Edit.

Photographs of adults acting out Second Life and video game scenarios.

One of the gallery attendants, wearing a white 80s tracksuit with bloodstains on it. There was a card for it; this was part of this exhibition.

The last thing I saw before leaving was a banana peel on the floor. I couldn't tell if it was part of the show or not, and I didn't bother to check.

Okay, so, some comment, and some context (I lied! Getting you past the jump: it's an art.):

I'm by no means an educated art consumer or art critic, which is why it's probably safer to read Jerry Saltz's assessment of this thing for an actual, critical appreciation. The video game was fun. The message advising me not to pay taxes was nice. But: a woman was sleeping in a bed, in a museum. I'm often advised by people who know more about art than me that much of the point of this is to ask: is it art? Don't get me wrong: as you can tell by the publication you're reading this on, I'm all about the subversive (or painfully obvious) art of fucking with someone's sensibilities. But how does one get into the position to be able to put someone sleeping in a museum and call themselves an artist? Do you have to be embedded in the art scene? Well-established? Anyway. Maybe this makes me a conservative yokel without any kind of appreciation for the more intelligent "pleasures" of life. Or maybe it just makes me someone who went to a museum and "didn't get it." On that note, however, here are some ideas for the next time the New Museum goes at something like this. I submit them in sincere pursuit of the advancement of art and human civilization's ability to express itself:

• Me, sitting in a papasan, smoking a bong, eating sandwiches of various origin.
  
  
• A bounce-house full of puppies, while House of Pain's "Jump Around" is blasted on repeat in the bounce house. This will be at a frequency the dogs can't hear.
  
  
• A full-scale replica of Waffle House installed on the roof of The New Museum, with a staff imported from a Waffle House currently in operation somewhere in the Southeastern United States. The only thing you can't order will be bacon.
  
  
• A four year-old melting plastic toy soldiers with a blowtorch.
  
  
• A New York City MTA official punching himself in the face every hour, on the hour. He will have a stack of unlimited Metrocards in his pocket that you don't know are there.
  
  
• A drawing of me drawing a drawing, drawn by something that is not ordinarily asked to draw. There will be a new one each day. We will start with a parakeet and move forward as such.
  
  
• A coffee stain.
  
  
• This painting of pancakes on Nick Denton's head.
  
  
• A performance-art version of Gawker where I go around screaming at people on the Bowery and handing out gold stars to the ones who scream back something interesting. Any of the ones trying to correct my grammar get summarily executed or "banned."
  
  
• A Starbucks gift card with exactly one cent less on it than is required to buy a small cup of coffee.
  
  
• A pillow filled with marmite, accompanying a down comforter filled with nutella, and a mattress filled with english muffins.
  
  
• A giraffe named Mercedes.
  
  
• A puppet show performed exclusively by people who hate puppets.

That is all. Oh, and this:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus [New Museum]
‘Jesus' Saves - God bless the New Museum's tantalizing triennial. [New York]

The last person to write an item here tagged with Ortega's name on the site? Oh, you guessed it: Ian ("Village Voice Continues To Collapse," March 29, 2008). Notes Ortega,

"Normally, we would contact Gawker for some sort of comment on this kind of thing. But in this case, it seems best to post first and ask questions later — hey, just like Gawker does it!"

Harsh. Nah, but really, aren't old crunchy media people funny? They still believe in nonsense like paper goods, and that people still think inner-media buttfuckery is worth reading or writing about. Sigh. This is a throwaway item. And no, Ortega, we're not giving you the link. Our readers can Google it if they want.

Update (Not Really): Fine, Tony, we'll give you the twenty hits you'll get from this. You could probably use 'em.

Former Gawker Writer Bemoans The No-Benefits Denton Plan [Dr. Tony Ortega's Sing-a-Long Blog]

I still remember the day I called you up and tried to recruit you to Valleywag — only to learn that that sneaky rapscallion Nick Denton had beaten me to the punch by one whole day in offering you the night shift at Gawker. It all worked out in the end — and perhaps better than I could have imagined back in 2007. But the main lesson I take away from that is that you can get Denton to do pretty much whatever you want if you're patient enough.

Denton, who has a weakness for idle truisms, likes to say that gossip is a young man's game. But you're old enough to remember the first dotcom bubble, and how it popped. That's going to be key in the next few years. We may escape a depression, but Silicon Valley is facing a reckoning nonetheless. Too much venture capital chased too few idea for far too long — and a buoyant economy can no longer hide the startup factory's mistakes.

The biggest mistake you can make is getting too close to your Valley sources and fall for their groupthink in order to ingratiate yourself. (You know how I've scolded you for gullibly buying the hype that Twitter is an amazing source of real-time news. Okay, perhaps it was — for five seconds, before the blowhards, spammers, and self-promoters found it.) At least your schooling will help you remain an outsider: As a Berkeley grad, you'll have an instinctive dislike for the Valley's Stanford in-crowd.

At the same time, don't forget that your years living, studying, and working in the Bay Area give you a better understanding of your beat than anyone can have from 3,000 miles away. Gabriel and Nick, though well-intentioned, have the Manhattan media habit of confusing proximity with relevance. Gawker is much more than New York now — and Valleywag's unique place therein must be firmly grounded in northern California's shaky soil.

Remember: Love is far more powerful than hate. Keep a clear-eyed passion for the Valley. Most tech reporters here secretly loathe their subjects, but try to disguise it with a supine gladhandery as they beg for scoops about new startup website features. They hate themselves and the people they write about. Sad, right? By loving the Valley, you can write about it more honestly than any of them. Just prepare to have your heart broken again, and again, and again. To truly love something, you must love it with all its failings.

For example, the Valley's Alice-in-Wonderland economics — why is Twitter worth more than most startups precisely because it has no revenues to speak of? But the thing you must love most about Silicon Valley — the part of the story the local press corps always skips over in favor of buzzwords, punditry, and lazy analysis — is its people.

The Valley's story is not one of chips and code. It is not a tale of technology. It is the always-running tragicomedy of the people who make technology.

Here are a few characters to watch. I hope it helps — but I can't wait to see who you add to the list.

Marissa Mayer Valleywag's first story remains its best. The public face of Google, Mayer also runs search, the only business that matters there. The cupcake frosting of her girly image — one she assiduously advances at every opportunity — may humanize the otherwise robotic computer scientist. But it is a distraction. The real question to ask about Mayer: Does her spreadsheet-ridden management style scale to new problems beyond search? Are her strengths now turning into limitations?

Mark Zuckerberg Ignore the nerd façade. Facebook's 25-year-old CEO is headstrong and ruthless. Here's the grand irony of Zuckerberg's revolutionary venture: He claims to be all about openness and sharing. But his imperious, my-way-or-the-highway management style has created a fractious culture of dishonesty, delusion, and disillusionment at the social network. His underlings either learn to say things they don't believe, or they move on. This is why Sheryl Sandberg is exactly the wrong COO for Zuckerberg. The veteran of the Clinton Administration has forgotten her Google training and reverted to Washington-player form, where staying on message is all that counts. Facebook's best hope is that Zuckerberg learns from his mistakes — but first he has to recognize them as mistakes.

Carol Bartz Yahoo's CEO swears like a sailor. At last, a boss who has found the right language to describe Yahoo's plight! Bartz brings a refreshing frankness to Yahoo. But the already demoralized troops she inherited will need to start seeing results. Otherwise, Valleywag will continue to be a steady recipient of leaks from Sunnyvale.

Elon Musk The CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX is living the geek high life, playing with fast cars, rocket ships, and other people's money. It's wonderful that Musk has realized even a small part of his childhood fantasies. But he risks destroying his dreams by refusing to reconcile them with reality. Factcheck everything Musk says. For example, was he actually running either Zip2 or PayPal, the previous dotcom successes he likes to cite in his bio, when they were sold?

Owen Van Natta Everyone is going to give MySpace's new CEO a pass, because the so-called "social portal" is so clearly troubled. If the former Facebook executive succeeds in a turnaround, it will be viewed as an astonishing achievement; if he fails, people will say no one could save MySpace. That's not fair. Hold his feet to the fire, and judge this disturbingly tan rock-star boss like anyone else on the list.

Peter Thiel Thiel, the PayPal cofounder, likes to brag about how he recruits only the best brains from the best schools to work at Clarium Capital, his hedge fund. Oh, really? Take a look at their résumés on LinkedIn. Like so many of this outspokenly harebrained libertarian's theses, the claim sounds good on paper but doesn't stand up to inspection. Valleywag, alone in Silicon Valley, can take a keen look at Thiel's rhetoric without being dazzled by his inflated wealth.

Tim Armstrong Like Van Natta at MySpace, Armstrong, a Google golden boy now charged with running AOL, will be enjoying a honeymoon. Don't worry: There are plenty of disgruntled AOLers who will gladly help you break up the lovefest.

Jimmy Wales Remind me: What does Wikipedia's founder actually do to earn his keep, besides give speeches? In all this time, I was never able to figure that out. Maybe you can!

Eric Schmidt When did Google's CEO turn into such a raging egomaniac? When the blogosphere was the only corner of the Internet that criticized him, he dismissed it as a "cesspool." But now everyone from Hollywood to the New York Times to the Federal Trade Commission is looking askance at his online empire's practices. "Don't be evil" has turned into "don't get caught." He will, though. Be ready when he does.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin Google's wonder twins have achieved geek nirvana, creating a cloistered campus with free food, lava lamps, and exercise balls to spare. They have a fleet of jets to transport them to rocket launches or rendezvous with Richard Branson and Bono. They've even managed to get married and reproduce. Just one question: Are they still sane? Were they ever?

There are many people who will help you — many of the same people who helped me so much, I hope. They include:

• Nick Denton, for putting up with three years of playing hard to get — and then putting up with much more besides.
• Brian Lam, Choire Sicha, Noah Robischon and Lockhart Steele, for tag-teaming me into taking the job.
• Gabriel Snyder, for expertly steering Valleywag into Gawker's welcoming arms.
• All the Valleywaggers: Paul Boutin, Nick Douglas, Megan McCarthy, Tim Faulkner, Mary Jane Irwin, Jordan Golson, Nicholas Carlson, Jackson West, Melissa Gira Grant, and Tim Woolery. You guys, we've been through so much together!
• Richard Blakeley: We made sweet Photoshop magic together.
• Everyone at Gawker Media: How much do I love you? Far more than just five milligrams.
• Sarah Lacy, Kara Swisher, and Peter Kafka: My peers and fellow purveyors of Valley gossip, you constantly inspired me.
• Countless sources, tipsters, and fellow scribes: Please understand that I esteem you none the less for not naming you here. In fact, your continued anonymity is the best sign of my abiding affection.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Good luck, Ryan. I'll be reading eagerly.

Don't screw it up.

Yours,

Owen
The Valleywag

(Photos by Brian Solis and Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Nick's email asked a question in the subject line..."Did someone hack the Times Twitter?"


Um, yep!

"Speak no ill of a former Gawker writer," Denton once wrote, citing a longstanding, "unspoken rule" at his company, apparently intended to keep his loose confederation of caustic writers from turning on one another and collapsing his profit-making enterprise into an online black hole of self-reference and backbiting.

But some snark slaves couldn't help themselves — and Denton, it turns out, was foremost among them, especially after the CEO took direct control of his flagship website and started churning out blog posts. Breaking the directive in a lengthy item on his predecessor Gould's bed-hopping allowed the gossip merchant to surface some juicy (and worthwhile) dirt on wunderkind novelist Keith Gessen, even if it did betray a certain fascination with the Brooklyn literary set from whom the former business reporter believed himself to be reclaiming Gawker.

The goal posts had been moved: Speaking ill of a former Gawker writer was now allowed, it seemed, if confined to activities undertaken since leaving the company. This allowed any number of further items on Gould, who was turning into a bona fide fameball (and worthy subject of coverage).

But it turned out Denton had broken more sharply with the old Gawker norms than was readily apparent. Recapping Gould's story on Vanity Fair's website today, Jim Windolf reveals that the blog mogul last spring planted an embarrassing video of Gould that was shot at at Gawker Media event while she worked at the company, in which the blogger peformed "mock fellatio on a plastic tube:"

"When I finally met Emily," [onetime "Gawker Mascot" Andrew Krucoff] says, "I felt so bad about posting the blowjob video and I took it down. Yes, it came from within Gawker. Denton fed it to me and I was too eager to play his lapdog on that one."

Perhaps Denton's intent was more mischievous than vengeful; Gould herself once called him "a pranksterish rapscallion" of a boss. But in the same post, Gould also presaged the less charming, "much less okay" ways Denton might treat her, especially once she was out the door. (Denton had begged her to stay and offered an $80,000-$90,000 annual salary, former Gawker editor Choire Sicha told Windolf. Denton disputes that account.)

Gould left little question how the leak of the video felt from her side of things:

"That was the point where I was like, ‘Wow, I am actually kind of scared of this person,'" Gould says. "I had never during my time at Gawker witnessed Gawker being used as a tool to try to take someone down. It was more like, people take themselves down, and you watch, and you write about it. This was different. This was him having an agenda, and to watch people fall in line with it, it's very creepy."

We — oh fuck it, I — don't buy Gould's premise that Gawker coverage of her has been part of a filthy, inaccurate and somehow evil attack campaign. This is (and always has been) a gossip website, and Gould became a significant player in the world we write about long before she appeared on the cover of the Times magazine or signed a six-figure book deal.

That said: leaking an embarrassing in-house video — if that is what in fact actually happened — shot at a company event, to visit a sort of vengeance on an ex-employee is beyond the pale and beneath the man I ultimately work for.

(Especially because I got fairly plastered at the last company event. And acted really obnoxious with Ian Spiegelman. And may or may not have invited Richard Blakeley up to my place. To crash on the couch, I SWEAR.)

[Vanity Fair]

Peppy alternapublican blogueuse Meghan McCain threatened the Bay Area with a visit.

Suze Orman frowned on the acquisition of guacamole via credit card.

Pejorative-epithet-deprived media personality Bonnie Fuller recounted her face-to-chest meeting with Voldemort.

Gawker alumna Jessica Coen maintained her sense of proportion.

Chicago journalist Rob Elder experienced the diminution of print media firsthand.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

The basically gay mogul was surrounded by a bunch of gurgling, drunken youngsters last night, so he acquitted himself the best way he knew how: by making light of his age during his little speech. Our brave commandant, Nick Denton, urged someone who was filming Diller's remarks to focus on his feet, stuffed lightly into loafers and doing some twinkly-toed tap-a-tap-a's. He's all business and old man gruff from the waist up, but downtown it's all a fabulous party.

We're not really sure why we're posting this other than it's funny that Nick successfully encouraged someone to film Barry Diller's feet for a minute or two.

Former Gawker man and current executive editor of Blackbook Chris Mohney, according to his Tumblr. We're sure that vicious negotiations are already underway in the secondary markets.

Also, Dan Lacey, the pancake-obsessed artist who created this iconic image is nowa contributing cartoonist for our porny sorta-sibling Fleshbot.

Lacey, our favorite American artist of the Hope Era, just finished this masterwork today. Each pancake represents one blog in Denton's buttery, syrupy media empire. The painting is now listed on eBay, at a starting bid of $0.99. How high could this work go? No amount would surprise me, frankly. It would be quite a coup for Graydon Carter or Tina Brown to have this one hanging on the office wall. Bid now. [Faithmouse.com]

Turning to Gawker for Gawker Media news makes about as much sense as counting on the New York Post to suss out that Wendi Deng rumor. So, feel free to browse over here, here, here, here, or here.

Fake Nick Denton's most persistent hunter, our own Richard Blakeley, must feel like such a sucker. Assuming he didn't find out months ago.

Real Fake Nick definitely knew how to walk the line!