We'll bet Tony Hawk taught you to "ride his halfpipe," Kevin Rose. But did he also teach to adjust his riser?

Yahoo's Marco van Hylckama Vlieg gave himself an impromptu performance review.

No matter what Levi Johnston tried to do with his tongue, Air America's Verena von Pfetten could not hate him.

Podcaster Scott Simpson wouldn't put it past Richard Branson. Neither would we.

Animal obsessive Susan Orlean saw a bald eagle and, better still, it did not try and kill her or drop dead under her lethal gaze!

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

Steve Krakauer of Mediaite marveled that someone spelled the name of his website wrong. We marvel when anyone manages to spell it right.

UPDATE: The original version of this post mis-spelled Steve Krakauer's name.

The New Yorker's Susan Orlean announced her marriage to Mashable's Pete Cashmore, who will presumably elevate her above her past work as a part-time farmhand.

This is why TheFrisky's Jessica Wakeman can't have nice things.

Tila Tequila welcomes a conversation with your child, however prurient.

Paris Hilton is just fulfilling her moral obligation to entertain you, people. One does not question life advice from Marilyn Monroe. Especially when everything turned out so well for her.

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Joel Madden, the Good Charlotte vocalist, has already been eclipsed by his infant son.

Franklin Kramer refused to tell the Atlantic anything about his interview to be America's top cyber-spook. So he's definitely qualified for the job in one regard!

Our dear departed nigh editor doesn't think this Mexico City circus deserves to even be mentioned in the same breath as Entebbe. Now that was a hostage situation.

TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy is worried she's turning into some sort of flake! Hard to imagine.

Not only does "conservative" columnist Amanda Carpenter shop at Whole Foods, she also totes an Apple laptop. See you at the Birkenstock store, Amanda!

Susan Orlean would like you to know that a certain book party is going to be significantly less awesome.

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Wonderwall editor Alex Blagg can't bring himself to just put the DVD in the mail, already. You can get it back, Alex! It's like the library. Or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

Online videographer Molly McAleer is feeling child abusey again!

The Onion's Joe Randazzo officially wins the heated Twitter competition to crack the funniest joke about the death of Dominick Dunne.

Wired portrayed Craig Newmark as a stubborn oddball, so the Craigslist founder took that image and ran with it. Well played.

Susan Orlean passed along the Good News about the resurrection of the late Julia Child.

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Music journalist Touré was just trying to say Halle Berry would pinch anyone writing about her. OK, well, we know who our next blog post is going to be about.

Hunch's Caterina Fake found a slightly politer way to say "I don't have time for your bullshit."

First we found out Susan Orlean had a RAID array in her laptop, now we learn she has a terabyte hard drive on order. Maybe the New Yorker writer should be throwing some stories over to Wired?

Google literally saved journalism! It was only one story by one writer (Rob Pegoraro) at one newspaper (Washington Post), sure, but you have to start somewhere.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza isn't ashamed of how he puts the "Hyper" in "The Fix."

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Susan Orlean is what you might call an extremely high-maintenance writer. Even by New Yorker standards.

Another day on Twitter means another uncomfortable revelation, for Perez Hilton.

Technologizer's Harry McCracken got sort of Zen about losing all his work. Except for the theism.

Politico's Ari Melber is way, way too busy to watch himself on national television, so he lives it to his many fans on Twitter.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein got tired of hearing himself talk, to say nothing of the person he was interviewing.

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Slate's Jack Shafer now has people wondering whether he is, literally, humorless. It's either that or he's a bad joke-teller.

If crazy New Yorker cat lady Susan Orlean has an actual RAID array on her laptop, we're turning in our geek cards immediately.

This is why you should never agree to let the writer Touré ask you a hypothetical question.

CNN's Ed Henry can't get anywhere near Notre Dame without mentioning, preferably to a national audience, how the university rejected him once, long ago.

CNET"s Natali Del Conte kinda liked being coerced into going to spin class.

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Orlean seems positively obsessed with critters. She brings this business on herself, really. Today the New Yorker writer was stung by "a huge jerk of a wasp," supposedly while drinking Diet Coke, all innocent like. Wasps suck, as a people, she says, and in this we must agree with her.

A few days back, Orlean got all dressed up for a picture shoot with donkeys. She posted several photos to her Twitter stream, including one of the poor photographer being eaten alive by the beasts. It would seem Orlean is cursed, and contagious.

She could use this to her advantage; our working theory is that Orlean is using her Twitter stream to angle for an Animal Planet show.

What drama! And this just after the bombshell revelation that her dearly departed chicken had been ill with some sort of chicken disease. Oh and, Orlean had just, ominously, recommended Bear Claw ice cream to a fellow Twitterer.

Is there some sort of cyclic symbolism gnawing at us here? Some small whistling thing perched on our shoulders, telling us to let ourselves be subsumed by the natural world, to recognize our animal insides? Or is it simply a story of a ski house and a bear that met one green-flecked mountain evening? There's so much potential here!

Get on it, Orlean.

The Twitterati were discerning customers today.

Gizmodo associate editor Adam Frucci's outgoing voice mail message is about to get really interesting.

AFP's Olivier Knox stumbled onto a fascinating interview.

Gakwer contributor Melissa Gira Grant wrote up a gadget review, on spec.

The New Yorker's Susan Orlean doesn't see Mark Sanford shooting the breeze with, say, Eliot Spitzer; the adulterous politician would apparently run with a more southern crowd.

When it comes to conference proliferation, Air America's Ana Marie Cox really does hate freedom.

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And of course she's Twittering about it, though she doesn't tell us what exactly happened to the fourth chicken, who we're going to call Laroche.

So a sad little story that all played out in some green corner of New York. This probably says something about how we let people go. About how we sometimes lose them forever. About how we hope with abandon and despair that they will someday return to us, whole and alive and uninjured by the bigger world—that mysterious and luring realm that we cannot keep at bay.

Yo, Orlean, you should write something about this.

Image via Getty

The New Yorker's Susan Orlean wasn't about to let social pressure keep her from blogging about suicide

Salon's Glenn Greenwald pulled his punches with regard to the White House Press Corps, as usual.

The Daily Show's Tim Carvell was not impressed with the Times' sales pitch.

David Carr found himself easily distracted from his work for the Times.

But his colleague Patrick LaForge seemed to relish his new job: Assuring New Yorkers of various things that will not, in fact, kill them.

Who knows what other surprises we'll have in store. Maybe George Bush will start tweeting how he really feels, and then Cheney will most definitely be in the building putting him on blast. But you know what? Even if that doesn't happen, it'll be fun, because we'll both be here. And when we get sick of each other, we can leave, and then come back... What or why am I typing right now?

Before exiting stage left, I want to remind folks where to holler if you need me. Thanks to Susan Orlean, Emily Gordon, Eric Easter, Troy Patterson, and Aviva Yael for their contributions. Support your artists! We're gonna close this puppy out with Sade Adu singing a poignant love-ode to ridiculous tattoos. At least, that's what it is now.

Sade & WTAN Present: Like A Tattoo from weekendvids on Vimeo.

Wear it like a tattoo, y'all.

See, Dan Baum had more to say about Susan Orlean, and we thought it only fair to give the lady a chance to respond in full. Why? Because we are children, and have yet to put down childish things. Soooooo, from the hallowed halls of the New Yorker to the fecal-crusted basement of WTAN on Gawker: we present, Susan Orlean.

Why, oh why did I find myself mixed up in the Dan Baum brouhaha (by the way, was the word "brouhaha" ever more appropriately used than in this instance? I think not.)? Chalk it up to medium and message, which were very different reasons I felt compelled to reply. First, the medium, which was the lesser of the two reasons, but still, I was irked by the endless stream of tweets from Mr. Baum — I felt like I was sitting at one of those horrible dinner parties where one person insists on doing all the talking, and in this case, talking backwards. This is not a federal offense, of course, and there are far stupider things on Twitter everyday, but using the form in that way definitely drew attention and almost demanded a reply (I suppose a simple, "Could you please shut up?" would have been fine, or a gentler "Excuse me, don't you have a blog where you could put this story up? Twitter is, um, for short messages, did you notice?" but it was provocative; I ignore about eighty percent of the things in my Twitter stream (as I bet most people do), but this endless posting had me on the edge of my seat — compelled to read but not happy about it.

But this would ordinarily amount to me nothing more than me complaining about it over dinner to my husband. But then comes the message. Discussing details about salaries, contracts, hiring, firing — I think it's indiscreet and unprofessional, but that's just my opinion; if Mr. Baum wants to, he's entitled. Even airing opinions that I happen to disagree with strenuously — that the atmosphere at the New Yorker is "creepy", for instance — is his right. It's just that Baum's characterizations seemed so off-base that I couldn't help but respond. I'm not an apologist for the magazine. It's an institution I am very loyal to and very proud of, so it was maddening to read his account, suggesting that the New Yorker is a strange, dysfunctional place full of whispering freaks, headed by a capricious, vengeful editor-in-chief. Huh?? In a court of law, Baum's testimony would be practically inadmissible; he's a writer whose contract wasn't renewed (not "fired", as he describes it — but whatever), obviously wounded and disappointed. Bias alert! I've been at the magazine since 1986, enjoyed ridiculous amounts of freedom to write what I want, gotten paid extremely generously, mouthed off a number of times when I disagreed with editing changes, and been granted great liberty for book leaves and family demands. Even after so many years as a staff writer, I remain in awe of the quality of the magazine, its history, and its ongoing excellence. Bias alert! My own testimony is equally tainted, I admit.

I have never met Dan Baum, and I wish him well. He hasn't asked for my advice, but here it is, anyway: 1. Don't be fooled by the one-way mirror quality of Twitter; it's a peculiar medium that is more invasive than it might feel. 2. If I ever hire someone, please call and remind me to have him or her sign a "No tweeting when I get fired" clause. 3. If you decide to publish in a very public forum details of something that is somewhat personal, don't complain when people respond in a somewhat personal manner. 4. When you are objecting to something written by a woman, using the word "twat" (as in, "[Orlean] launched a series of twit-for-twat responses..") is not usually advisable.

Now, let's all get back to work.

Susan Orlean is the author of the children's book, Lazy Little Loafers, and when not barking @Twitter works on her biography of Rin Tin Tin, to be published by Little Brown.

image: via

True story, no hipster-grifter! We also have a panel including Emily Gordon of Emdashes, Troy Patterson of Slate, and Eric Easter of EbonyJet to talk about all this code-of-omerta breaking going on via Dan Baum. We can fix this!

We are also going to present "The Ten Tat Commandments" (c.f. Notorious BIG) while looking at some of the most ridiculous tattoos ever, courtesy of tat-curator Aviva Yael.

(Oh, and for those unfamiliar: I'm T.A.N. — The Assimilated Negro, for short — and I rock the mic here every Saturday afternoon. )

But for now, we toss it to French girls walking through the streets of music with text boxes over their girly parts. Woot.

image: via

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.

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

So far Orlean is doing the punching, and Baum is just lying back and taking it. No fair!

Baum, who may or may not be using his Twitter experiment to drum up publicity for his new book (does it really matter what his motivations are if the end result is so damn smart and so damn good?), spoke a bit on Monday about the macabre aura present in the vaunted New Yorker fact-checking department...

I particularly liked the fact-checkers, who go way beyond getting names spelled right and actually do a lot of reporting. More than once, the fact-checkers uncovered information I hadn't had, found crucial sources I hadn't interviewed. It's like having a team of back-up reporters. They work like soldier ants, and are invariably cheerful. Their boss, Peter Canby, is a calm and competent gentleman. I must say, though, the office itself is a little creepy. I didn't work there. I live in Colorado. But I'd visit 3-4X a year. Everybody whispers. It's not exactly like being in a library; it's more like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying. Like someone's dying, and everybody feels a little guilty about it. There's a weird tension to the place. If you raise your voice to normal level, heads pop up from cubicles. And from around the stacks of review copies that lie everywhere like a graveyard of writers' aspirations. It always seemed strange. Making it to the New Yorker is an acheivement. It is vastly prestigious, of course. And the work is truly satisfying. Imagine putting out that magazine every week! Yet nobody at the office seems very happy. The atmosphere is vastly strained. I'd get back on the Times Square sidewalk after a visit and feel I needed to flap my arms. Get some air into my lungs, maybe jog half a block. And I came to realize I had a really good job. I could write for the New Yorker, but not have to be of the New Yorker. Therein lies the reason I'm no longer there.

One New Yorker writer took a bit of offense to Baum's assertions...





Susan Orlean later contemplated offering an alternative to what she obviously perceives as Baum's Twitter-trashing of her workplace...





Oh please do Susan. Twitter fight! Please do!

Internet microcelebrity Julia Allison gazed into the abyss.

Rich Barton, CEO of real-estate startup Zillow, let his iPhone app go to his head.

VH1 pop-culture commentator John Aboud sartorialized.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean finally turned into a crazy cat lady, as we'd all kind of expected.

MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall feigned objectivity.

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

SF Appeal editrix Eve Batey triumphed over musical shame.

Fox Chicago anchor Nancy Loo conducted consumer food-safety research.

Vain, pompous, self-aggrandizing Technology Review editor Jason Pontin couldn't choose just one adjective.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean had an insight about the likes of Pontin.

By mid-afternoon, Air America radio hostess Ana Marie Cox had once again turned her thoughts to booze.

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