You know this year's award ceremony was far more subdued than last year's chocolate fondue-spewing extravaganza which doubtless degenerated into sex orgies in the Conde Nast offices shortly after. But I did notice that there were far fewer ugly people in attendance this year! The key to not getting laid off in the magazine business: for men, a nice suit and one of those fake ass short beards favored in Esquire pictorials; for women, Michelle Obama arms. Maybe actual starvation has replaced eating disorders? Either way, you guys look great!

There were not as many media reporters patrolling the pre-party, because they've been laid off. Sad.

It was all about grim smiles and grim determination! As people filed into the auditorium, the big screen flashing the year's magazine covers kept showing mags that had already died. Every Conde Nastie that got an award felt it necessary to give heartfelt, shiny-eyed thanks to Si Newhouse for his commitment to writing paychecks. They really meant it!

Many of the winners of the actual awards who actually worked in the magazine industry were sitting towards the back, but you know who was sitting right up front? Julia Allison. No shit. That is why the magazine industry is dying.

When the time came for the tribute to Annie Liebovitz, Jann Wenner, Tina Brown, Anna Wintour, and Graydon Carter all took the stage to say how much they loved Annie. Something is clearly off with Anna Wintour, who was stooped over like—dare I say—an old lady? Her voice was wavering and kind of meek, and I couldn't tell whether she was sick, or emotional, or just stricken with stage fright. Could be any of the above!

There were plenty of insanely random semi-celebrities lured in to present awards (Steve Earle!) but the only really funny one was Will Arnett. That guy certainly does possess comic timing! The least funny thing: the fact that People editor Larry Hackett got to present the award for "Reporting." WTF. And Columbia J-School dean Nick Lemann is a great writer but he seems to be growing into more and more of a Saturday Night Live character, the longer he spends in academia. Soon he will break out the monocle.

But the most surprising thing of all was that—I must admit—the ceremony was touching. All these people know that their industry is dying, but they soldier on. The delusions are gone. All that is left is the grimness. And the magazine industry will keep hefting its Ellies until they're forced to sell them for scrap.

Magazines!

[Pictured: The glamorous pre-party. Can you count all the glamorous people? Try!]

Hirschorn, who famously predicted that the New York Times could go out of business in May is a former magazine editor who started Inside.com with Kurt Andersen before jumping over to the world of cable TV at VH1 and now his own production company Ish Entertainment. Sullivan is a former editor of The New Republic who now is proudly a blogger who makes his home at The Atlantic's web site.

For thirty minutes they talked about the dismal state of print, but mostly it was a good old-fashioned media schmoozefest and as a testament to their draw (or the paucity of media parties these days) the turnout was impressive, bringing out the likes of Sigourney Weaver, public radio heartthrob Ira Glass, New York editor Adam Moss, and glossy gossip queen Bonnie Fuller. These are the new things I learned last evening:

• Years ago, Hirschorn and Sullivan were roommates in D.C.
• Sullivan was once straight and had a girlfriend that Hirschorn thought was hot.
• Sullivan, who suffers from sleep apnea, did not sleep well the night before because he left his air mask back in D.C.
• ABC News in-house libertarian John Stossel was unaware of Andrew Sullivan's evangelism for testosterone therapy.
• Ira Glass hops from foot to foot when he wants to ask a question.
• Sigourney Weaver doesn't read Gawker.
• The media as we know it — i.e. relatively easy way for a large few to eke out a comfortable upperclass existence — is doomed.

Photo fun! See which media figures you can spot in the crowd!

Pics courtesy of The Atlantic

Take last night, for example. The conference's official happy hour was packed, while the cocktail party hosted by Break Media, CollegeHumor, and other panelists from the "Comedy on Television and the Web" panel was far more relaxed. Attendees included CollegeHumor's Ricky Van Veen and The Office's BJ Novak. In between buying dozens of Kamikaze shots, Break Media CEO Keith Richman complimented Mahalo's Jason Calacanis's poker game. (Calacanis is a noted gambler, so much so that we sometimes wonder if he might have a problem.)

Break Media CEO Keith Richman, former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas, and New York writer and comedienne Caroline Waxler

We arrived at Digg's Second Annual Big Digg Shindig at Stubb's BBQ too late to see the live Diggnation taping — though we hear it was packed shoulder to shoulder — but just in time to see fanboys mob Diggnation host Kevin Rose and dispensable sidekick Alex Albrecht for autographs en masse.





NY Tech Meetup organizer, proven wantrepreneur, and host of The Interwebs Nate Westheimer

iLike's Ali Partovi and Hype Machine's Anthony Volodkin

Valleywag alumna and Boffery cofounder Melissa Gira Grant with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg

After a stop at an impromptu Next New Networks party, we headed to the Driskill Hotel. Microcelebrity egoblogger Julia Allison was flanked by fans who showed up after she sent a message on Twitter seeking reassurance of her self-importance. She has actual fans! Three of them!

Why is CEO Jerry Yang all smiles in these pictures with employees, some of whom he's about to lay off? Well, he's losing his job, too — as soon as the company finds a replacement. (The search is going so poorly that the company may end up tapping a board member out of sheer expediency.) Perhaps that sense of impending loss has allowed the company's billionaire founder to chum around so convincingly with rank-and-file Yahoos at a suburban racetrack south of San Francisco, dolled up to look like a poor imagining of Las Vegas.

The smiles and parties are part of Yahoo's problem. Remember that this company, which started as a collection of links Yang kept online, grew to be worth $100 billion and emerged from the dotcom bust without peer among Internet portals. Back then, a company mandate to embrace fun made up for long hours spent crushing rivals.

But Yahoo is now worth a sixth of its peak price, and its culture has since turned into a toxic parody of the kind of public-school self-esteem programs Garry Trudeau once mocked in Doonesbury. Work and achievement aren't properly celebrated at Yahoo. Instead, just showing up to work seems to be what counts. To keep up with Google, Yahoo lavished salary hikes and raises on employees; it now has an uncomfortable number of the overpaid and underworked. Long before the economy turned sour, Yahoo needed to cut back a good quarter of its workforce. As gloomy as the prospect of its coming layoffs are, Yahoo will still have too many employees. But its shareholders paid millions to throw them a party anyway.

More shots of Yahoo's last hurrah are on Flickr, the photo site whose employees surely wish it wasn't owned by Yahoo.

(Photo of Yang with employee by zhouyaoji, group shot by remfan)

For the 1999 bash, guests had to take a boat from Lower Manhattan, and the party was full of celebrities (De Niro, Madonna, Demi, Paul Newman...) and literal fireworks. It resulted in the union of Salman Rushdie and his now-ex wife Padma Lakshmi, who met there. "Weinstein Brothers Revel in Vulgarity, Glory of Manhattan," was the headline in the New York Observer. "[Publisher Ron] Galotti continued his Bullworth -esque excursion into black culture by swaggering through a rap he had written for the occasion."

At Pop Burger, there was an open bar. It was hard to get a drink! The event was hardly star-studded—a round up of the usual suspects you see at every media event, add a dash of Christopher Buckley and his post-National Review fame. When fact the mini-burgers ran out after 8:15, making some people sad. Yet, free prosecco still felt decadent for our lowered standards. "I'm surprised we were even able to have this!" said one guest while quaffing champagne. And the small talk? About the layoffs and the recently laid-off, as well as "I'm not even allowed to bitch about work anymore, because at least I still have a job."

"You'll be seeing us again in some way!" he told us without blinking or laughing once. Performance art.

"You're killing me," sighed the flack at the door when we were finally plucked from the line and had the audacity to bring in a guest. No, we're killing print! It did seem a bit ironic that the final Radar party was wildly oversubscribed.

So Maer, how are you feeling? "We put out sixteen good issues," he said, adding that he'll be an editor-at-large at Tina Brown's Daily Beast, "helping out." Will he have to go into the office? "Only when I feel like it."

Meanwhile, we heard the rumor of a party guest who was laid off at Radar on Friday, hired at Culture + Travel on Monday, and laid off again on Wednesday when that magazine folded. And this was all before covergirl Shannen Doherty arrived, who showed up dressed in black shiny leggings, looking like a sexy cat. (We were promised absolutely "no access" to her.)

As Nick Denton wrote in 2005,

"Gawker has covered Radar to the point of absurdity, as if it was a reality TV show, in which every actor and every action, however minor, was worthy of mention. Maer said that, at Radar, everyone was a celebrity. The blogs have taken him at his word. One day he'll appreciate the attention; but not just yet."

While the party was just (yet another) Radar wake, it felt like much more: Maer Roshan has always been one of the biggest believers in magazines and in the now-outdated idea that they can be culturally relevant—a fine industry to dedicate your life to. After a brutal week of magazine foldings and months of layoffs, it felt like we were mourning much more than the third death of Radar.

[Photos: Nick McGlynnn for Random Night Out]

Previously: Radar 2.0 Launch Party
Radar 2.0 Wake
Radar 3.0 Launch

Can you imagine, kids in their twenties having a good time? This must end! Didn't they get Sequoia's memo? Morin, Facebook's official speaker-to-geeks, turned 28 and rented a downtown art gallery Tuesday night to celebrate. After I tracked down Morin, I gave him a salami I'd picked up at VC firm Alsop Louie's party earlier that night. (It was a heartfelt regifting.) Besides Morin, I identified several other members of Camp Cyprus:

• Brittany Bohnet, Morin's steady Googler girlfriend and the other half of the Internet's cutest couple
• "Professor" Meagan Marks, known on Valleywag for her ancient-history stint as a recruiter (she's now working as a program manager)
• Joe Green, famous for his Causes application, infamous for his squarecut swim trunks
• Jessica Bigarel, a graphic designer at Apple
• Scott Marlette, the coder behind Facebook Photos

With Morin, that's almost a third of Camp Cyprus. (Sadly, Wall Street Journal Jessica Vascellaro wasn't there.) You'd think they'd be enough to bring down the Internet, but no.

I caught a brief glimpse of soon-to-depart Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz, but didn't get to say hello — he left early, which just confirms his reputation as being not much of a party animal.

Things got a tad more surreal when MC Hammer showed up. When I left the party, the former rap star was chatting up angel investor Ron Conway, who has, yes, invested in the Hammer's inevitable startup.

Digg's Matt Van Horn plots with Keith Rabois, Slide's evil-genius mastermind.

Ron Conway invests in a glass of wine.

Working for Comcast sounds pretty good to Plaxo's Joseph Smarr and John McCrea right now.

Really. MC Hammer was there. At Dave Morin's birthday party.

Alsop hastened to clarify to partygoers that Wolaner is his "no. 1 girlfriend." Why the enumeration? He still has a habit of picking up other women. I mean that literally. I saw him pick a blonde girl off the floor and give her a full-body hug at the party. That's leverage, of some kind or another. I took one of Stewart's sausages to give to the host at my next party.

New York Times reporter and recovery memoirist David Carr brought up the afternoon's faux pas: I had impulsively Facebook-friended him without, um, meeting him before. "I hovered over your picture for a moment," he rasped. "I thought, 'She seems nice!" He seized me by the shoulders. "Are you going to ass-fuck me, though? You really can't tell."

Carr's close personal friend in sobriety, actor Tom Arnold, said he just loved fameballs like Julia Allison. Really? "Yes!" Why would an actual celebrity care about fake famous people? "Their stories are well-written... Do you like them? Do you hate them? I can't tell. I see you guys trying out other people, seeing how they'll play." Fameball tryouts! He hugged me.

Observer roustabout George Gurley was lamenting his one-month-and-counting ban from celeb coke den Beatrice Inn, from which he was barred after his affectionate piece about the West Village bar ran in Fashion Week Daily. He's been "so much more productive" during his shutout. Kirsten Dunst probably hasn't, though, as they let her in the door quite often.

Dating columnist Julia Allison refuted dating rumors in legalese: "I'm technically single." Also: "I am hiring a publicist as soon as I get the money." But doesn't Web 2.0 allow everyone the freedom to be their own publicist? "As we've seen, that doesn't always work so well."

There is a thing as too much freedom.

Click for the gallery slideshow by Nikola Tamindzic/Home of the Vain:

Click for the slideshow.

OK, so I didn't do any reporting—or embed with a team, as was offered—because my heels were too high and my feet hurt. (When Clay Felker said that women make the best reporters, he meant that they make the best reporters if they are wearing sensible shoes.) But the New York Press did!

“Nah, she’s not my date bro, just some chick. I was voted biggest flirt two years in a row, and I was the second-rated pole jumper in all of New York State,” the preacher’s animus, dressed all in black and flipping his H&M fedora, explained.

“Second in the state bro,” a far more offensive character and teammate, CK Sweat, chimed in at full throttle. There was no stopping him, “fabulous is the only word for me—tight Gaultier jeans, tuxedo scarf and granny glasses, I haven’t seen anyone better dressed tonight.” Okay, what makes you a hipster, CK? “First of all, I’m too much of a jock to be a hipster. Being in the top 2% of athletes excludes me from that category, but I can thrive anywhere.”

The closest I got to a slow dance was when the burly Polish bouncer felt me up without permission. So in that respect it was exactly like high school prom!

Until next season...

[Photo: Lyndsey Matthews's Flickr]

Conference

• Connectivity still an issue. Wifi out on Monday and the major celebs showed up to kowtow to King Arrington and Jason
• There is a secret mutiny going on with startups in the pay-to-play Demo Pit. They gave out poker chips to ticket holders to vote for their favorite startups, there 3 colors one for each day to decide. A single company, through the use of hot and semi naked booth girls has managed to monopolize Day 1's chips (80). The winner of the chips would get a review and extra publicity. So to counter the startup — which does something stupid — there are now alliances going on where other startups are grouping together and sharing their chips so that one company doesn't win. So far about 20 companies are in this coup.

Dinner

• Showed up for Nicole Jordan's dinner party at Lulu's. The bill was like $3k and I had to pay like $100 when I thought the meal was free.
• Calley Nye showed up, brought by Larry Chiang, but very quickly cozied up to Barney Pell of Powerset. They were hugging and cuddling and the guy had his hand on her thigh/knee the entire time.

Party

• Held at club Temple, they intermixed the TC50 crowd with the young kids that just randomly showed up. Music was loud and obnoxious and the crowd was a weird mix of uncomfortable geeks and drunk kids.
• snuck into VIP floor with Mark Cuban and entourage, bought him a beer
• Met [former FuckedCompany blogger] Pud and spoke to him about startups and AdBrite. he's finally very happy with with the way it's working right now.
• Jason calacanis showed up and he was pretty drunk most of the time.

After party

• At the W Hotel bar/lobby with Jason Calacanis, Mark Cuban, Frank Gruber.
• Mark had a gaggle of blondes surrounding him. Most look 18. He kissed and rubbed quite a few them right next to me as I tried to get drinks. One was very upset that Mark wasn't giving her enough attention.
• Jason Calacanis is blizted enough to be stumbling everywhere
• Met a drunk girl that work for Geni/Yammer. She's apparently David Sak's BFF, some major assistant to the producer of Rush Hour or something. Got recruited from LA to handle "book-keeping and HR." says she's under NDA but eventually figured out that she has stock and they're working out a way to sell Yammer, a side project, by the next month.
• Calley showed towards the end of the night and approached Jason Calacanis while his wife was standing next to him but then Mark Cuban.
• As the party ended she's managed to convince him to let her hold his hand while he's hugging and kissing the other blondes.
• When we got kicked she managed to get herself into the front seat of Mark's surburban along with his entourage and left.
• Jason left in a limo at 2:30am with a very disgruntled wife and most likely not able to wake up for TC50 Day 3

The subway ride was a level of hell I have not recently experienced on the MTA. An exhausted-looking man with three kids sat across from me the entire ride, alternately changing his shabbily-clad childrens' diapers and barking at them to "Shut the fuck up!" I kept hoping he would get off at the next stop, but he didn't: of course, he was going to Coney Island.

When the train pulled into the Surf Avenue station, bloodcurdling screams went up from the 9 to 12-year-olds on board. "Last day!" they cried, running towards the door. Mami already needed a beer.

The Astroland environment immediately transformed every child into a whirling, shrieking wraith. Everything was as it should be: a woman on the boardwalk sold jewelry and a pile of worn-looking panties off a table, four for $10. The the games, rides—which may be sold to the Middle East when all this is over—and shooting ranges were popping.

There were assorted camera crews there to document the park's probable death, as well as many lone white dudes with cameras. Maybe they all had photoblogs.

So, WTF was going on? I asked the man who manned the "Shoot Em Win" booth on Surf Avenue, near Astroland's gaping maw.

"It's going to hurt a lot of people. It's going to hurt a lot of working people," said Mike, who has worked this booth for "a lotta years." The Daily News reported Astroland as employing 75 year-round workers and 275 seasonal ones.

"Two shots, five bucks, win a stuffed animal," he told a young boy who approached the stand. The kid was dragged off by his older brother, who told him, "Don't spend that ten, boo." Mike isn't sure if Shoot Em Win will return next year—it's all up in the air.

So was it really closing? I asked the Black Scorpion, a Texas gentleman who had just performed as part of the Circus Sideshow—which will not close, as Coney Island USA own the building. His act involved tying his shoelaces with his so-called "lobster hands"—he was born with only three fingers on each one. "Looks that way," he sighed. People were lining up for a "Future of Coney Island" peep show in which we peered into dioramas that depicted what Coney Island might look like post-rezoning. It was not pretty.

So was Astroland gone for good? Probably. Maybe. Nobody quite knew, not even the park's employees. Your answer depends on how much of a cynic you are. Like the game where you squirt water into a ceramic clown's mouth, it's all just a crapshoot anyway.

I tried to win a dirty stuffed clownfish from the Claw machine, and lost two quarters.

[Photo: ElissaSCA's Flickr]

The crowd was small, our spy reports — "about 20-30 people, mostly TechCrunch50 finalists." SearchMe.com was one of the finalists — "some woman even Twittered that they got in." Arrington drives a gray Porsche, and "left with a ladyfriend, didn't get to see who." (Anyone know who he's dating? Do tell!) On to the pictures!

Arrington, even as host, never could seem to crack a smile:

TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde watches from the sidelines:

Arrington and Del Conte catch up:

And here Mr. Henderson shook my hand and didn't mind at all when I said it was really his longtime companion Tom Coates, part of the Fire Eagle team and old queer hand of the blogosphere, whom I came out to meet. "We're here in my circle of exes," Culver continued. "And I have one to toss back at you," I added.

The rest of the evening is lost in a botched Flip video file sync — no footage for you — and a flurry of text messages wherein I tried to locate the guy getting a handjob in the men's room at the end of the night. No help from Fire Eagle there! Tip me if you know who the lucky jack was? (Photo by Andrew Mager)