A few months ago, I had a flashback. I was drunk and listless at a bar in Austin, Texas, 4 or 5 years ago, when I ran into a friend. He started giving me crap about something. My lizard brain stirred. I began to shriek, much like my son does when he's having a tantrum, and I flailed my hands crazily. I hit my ex-friend on the side of the face with a beer bottle, chipping one of his teeth. As the bouncer tossed me onto the street, I didn't feel tough. I felt like a drug-addled idiot.

I started thinking about what I'd tell my son in the future about that fight. Would he be proud of me? Probably not.

Actually, one drunken episode is fairly excusable. But Elijah ain't gonna be proud about the years of publicly-accessible essays chronicling his toddler foibles, including his crying jags and failure at karate.

Remember, privacy begins at home. The first step to stopping writing about your child is admitting you have nothing else to write about. Actually, Neal, you might try for a NYT Magazine story out of your struggle to stop child-blogging!

[MSN/Mens Health]

It was dutifully lifecasted.

"When I got to his cool new office, just off of the Bedford st stop, Jay said it didn’t really look that bad, and gave me some sort of Cipro drops, which have already started to make a difference. Total cost? $0, if you’re a member of their practice (which is very reasonable)... The ability to email and text your doctor, then walk right in and have him see you? Unbelievable."

Well, it IS great that he's helping the uninsured.

Oh... but look, her visit has already made Dr. Jay's blog. Lifecasting! We're all lifecasting. HELP. (Please don't blog my upcoming "appointment," K?)

"WHEN SOMEONE IS SO POPULAR ON MYSPACE THEY HAVE FAKE PROFILE MADE ABOUT THEM, THE REAL PERSON MAKES A "PROOF" BY TAPING THEIR NAME AND MYSPACE ID NUMBER AND SENDING IT TO MYSPACE AUTHORITIES."

[via fimoculous and Tomorrow Museum]

It's not just her. Our very own publisher once remarked, "We were scared of the commenters for a while, yeah?"

Alvarez-Bell goes on to say:

No matter what I post here, it will be ripped to shreds, whether by the grammar police (I dare you to find me something more boring than someone correcting another person's grammar), the pearl-clutching grannies who take umbrage with my use of profanity, or those with a general distaste for what and how I write. That's not what bothers me (I just find it intensely dull). What bothers me is that I woke up these last few mornings perfectly happy... until I remembered that I had to write something for Slog and the dread set in.

Related: Should novelists respond to their critics? Harper's dissects.

However! As evidenced by last Wednesday's real-life commenter festival, blog commenters are people, too! They are, almost without fail, surprisingly sweet in person. Maybe it's because our commenters, besides being smarter than the average ones (although still disturbingly critical of other's physical appearance), live in constant fear of execution. Like in Stalin's Russia.

"I recently got back in touch with another friend—we'll call her Catherine—I hadn't seen since college, except a couple years ago when we ran into each other in the West Village, right after she'd moved back to New York from Los Angeles. Anyway, we've been hanging out. She's single. The other day she was telling me that most of her friends from college (except for me and a couple others) are married, and most of the married friends have at least one kid. Catherine was in a sorority, and I'm convinced that there's a correlation between sorority membership and getting married by 27 and having the first kid by 29. My younger sister, who is 24 and was in a sorority, seems like she will bear this theory out, though she got offended when I proposed it. Then I found out she had shown our mom engagement rings on the Tiffany's Web site, just in case her boyfriend should turn to my mom for advice.

...A friend of mine—we'll call her Natalie—is moving in with her boyfriend in brownstone Brooklyn, even though everything's so fucking expensive these days that you might as well just move back to Manhattan. She met this guy at work; at the time, she was involved in a torturous long-term relationship with another guy, one of those relationships people get into in their early 20s and then wake up one day and, hell, they're 28 or 29 and nothing has changed, he's still the same guy they were vaguely annoyed with all those years ago, except now they live together and he does things like punch walls when he's upset."

"So last week, a fashion friend of mine sent an event e-mail for "Fashion Meets Finance," presumably mocking my earlier attempts that week to get around paying rent. It's an event created specifically for "the young men and women of the fashion and financial industries" to get together and pro-create the next inspiration for Gossip Girl 2025. One could RSVP on their website and include point facts such as salary (take note, JDate).

It seems to target only men in Finance and only women in Fashion, making advertising and blogging undesirable careers for the Ivy league class of 2008. Although I, a man, could say I work in fashion, I RSVP'd listing my previous life as a Wall Street tool in order to be accepted into the event (yeah, you read right; many people RSVP'd and were rejected. Trannies, geighs, and midgets need not apply).

It was being held at Taj on 21st between 5th and 6th. I arrived at about 6:30 with 3 of my fashionista co-workers and got to mingling. After making an immediate visit to the bar swarmed by hedge-funders and dolled-up fashion buyers, I decided to pull out my cash fan of $49 and pose with my friend Christine (who by the way came to this event with NO intention of being "Carrie-d" away, but likes to have fun nonetheless).

We then caught the eye of a Post reporter who interviewed us for next week's Page Six and snapped a few shots of me flashing my cash fan adoringly at Christine, and then turned away when he realized I very much preferred to flash my $49 adoringly at him.

The crowd was pretty tame at first; there were way too many single guys moping around with their $12 drinks and glittering girls gaggling, presumably, about how boob tape is the new black. After dancing a bit (what was a gay supposed to do at an event like this, network?) a strapping young man in red skinny jeans caught my eye.

My Radar [magazine]-savvy friends pointed out that it was none other than Neel Shah, and better yet, on assignment! The pencil in ear and small white notepad should've tipped me off. After hitting him up for some magic berries, I went to the bar and took a conscious note of how every single suit who had been moping just an hour earlier had already been coupled off with their mannequin for the night.

After 8pm, it got real raunchy with a DJ spinning 90s dance hits and drunk I-bankers douchebagging away with their fashion girls on the dance floor. After witnessing one guy do the twist, and another suit shimmy to the ground, I knew it was time to leave. (Although at some point, I shimmy-ed as well, although I did so ironically!).

Sufficiently wiping off the couple sucking face atop by handbag on the couch, I made my way outside for a last cigarette and had Christine snap a Cash Fan shot circa last week Gawker. The bits of conversation we caught outside could very well epitomize this event, or rather, the entire heterosexual Manhattan night scene:

Blonde Fashion Wench in white dress: "Hi, What's your name again?"
Suit who was Gellin': "Bill."
Blonde Fashion Wench: "Oh! I have an uncle Bill. Can I call you Uncle
Bill?"

And the next minute, another couple:

Brunette in a strapless red cake dress, walking out with her future
divorcé: "Oh! Shoe store! Shoe Store!"
Hedge-funder: "Um, so where do you live again? I'll get the cab."

Needless to say, my friends went home and I left alone. My rent check will be mailed first thing the next day."

Lucas Brown, a junior at Oberlin College here, was still wet from the shower the other morning as he entered his score on the neon green message board next to the bathroom sink: Three minutes, according to the plastic hourglass timer inside the shower. Two minutes faster than the morning before. One minute faster than two of his housemates.

...The bathroom is the showstopper on the tour. Besides the hourglass timer — Mr. Brown pointed out that it was called a shower coach and cost $3 online — the shower's energy-saving motivational accessories include a picture of former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina plastered to the ceiling.

That was Ms. Bob-Waksberg's idea. No one wants to linger in the shower with someone staring down from the ceiling, she said.

"You could also look at it another way," she said, "that John Edwards is encouraging me to take a shorter shower."

Another person I ended up I.M-ing daily was one of Gawker's most frequent targets, a blogger named Julia Allison, who, within a year, parlayed a magazine dating column into a six-figure TV talking-head job and into into a reality show, all while updating her blog several times a day. She wore skimpy, Halloween-style costumes to parties and dated high-profile men in a high-profile ways—her tech-millionaire boyfriend collaborated with her on a blog where they took turns chronicling their relationship's ups and downs. I was initially put off by Julia's naked attention-whoring—"Attention is my drug," she often confessed. In thousands of photos on her Flickr feed she posed, caked in makeup, like a celebrity on the red carpet, always thrusting out her breasts and favoring her good side. But in the midst of this artifice she was disarmingly straightforward about how much she craved the attention that Internet exposure gave her—even though it came at the expense of constant, intensely vitriolic mockery.

If this and the second excerpt are any indication, it's an odd piece for the cover of the magazine. On account of how it looks like one woman's personal journey through notoriety, and not the Grand Socio-Cultural Statement On The Way We Blog Now that some of us were wary of. But also it's not an odd piece for the cover of the magazine, because look at alll the attention it's getting! The Times is just like Jullia Allison! As are we all!

New York Times Magazine Exposes Readers to Blogger [NYO]
Photo: Julia Allison, natch.

Emosogynistic: boys who act all emo and sensitive but who are actually totes not.

Fuckjam: any song whose primary use is in the bedroom. Ex: John Mayer, "Your Body Is a Wonderland." Or anything by Portishead?

Promosexual: A promosexual's sexuality is mainly measured in terms of how much promotional value it has. Recently used by New York to describe Clay Aiken; could also refer to Manhattan crazy/Casanova Paul Janka.

I went to a party last Saturday night, I didn't get laid, I got in a fight.

So, this kegger was on South 3rd Street in Williamsburg and was hosted by a couple of 23-year-old boys, one of whom had a heart-shaped hickey on his neck, no joke. (Emosexual!) I didn't get there there till like 1 a.m., thinking that the party wouldn't really be going until then. But it turns out I missed the band, and the keg was kicked. I managed to find a plastic bag filled with cans of Miller High Life, so I put them in my purse and made my way to the roof.

Up there, I found a drum kit, a mic stand, and a bunch of people drinking Sparks. If it weren't for the evidence of an iPhone or two, I totally would've thought I'd traveled back in time to those heady days of 2005, when we were all hopped up on malt liquor energy bevs. Like, people still drink Sparks? And they actually buy it, rather than get it for free from Vice parties or Steve Aoki?

I invited Dana, because I knew that she would stir some shit up. Or at least take her shirt off at some point. She's achieved a modicum of micro-fame on the internet for such behavior. Anyway, she made a beeline for the mic stand and drums, and the people at the party were trying to tell her to lay off them. They were all, "You're wasted! We can tell." Apparently, they're the type to kill kegs and pound Sparks to achieve a light buzz. Drunks are not welcome at their ragers.

Anyway, Dana started beating on the drums like they were bongos, which prompted one dude to leap into the drum kit and knock her over. Once that mess began, Calisha Jenkins, one half of Drunky Brewster, began screaming one of their rap songs. A lyric that stuck with me was, "Just because you poked me in my butt/ Doesn't mean that I'm a fuckin' slut."

The dudes at the party hated it and were screaming, "She sucks! This stinks!" But you know what stinks? Armpits—especially when they're being ventilated and flaunted. You know what else stinks? Calisha's vagina. She'd been shoving garlic up there as a home remedy for a vaginal ailment.

And even though the jerks at the party were booing Calisha, the young thugs on the roof one building over were hootin' and hollerin'. They were loving every last drip-drop of her garlic in clam sauce. Dana began "interacting" with them (probably a one-boob flash) and we invited them over. They came bearing gifts of blunts and Coronas, which they opened with their teeth.

After the dude crashed the drums and the mini-thugs crashed the party, the too-cool-for-school set hopped the barrier and sat in the corner of the neighbor's roof deck. Either they didn't know or didn't care that all night long, dudes were using that area as a urinal.

At about 3:30, this Mystery-pick-up-artist flunkee-type with a flavor saver came up to me and was like, "OK, we're wrapping this up now. Time to go home." I was like, "Do you live here?" And he was like, "No but I know someone who does." And I was like, "Yeah, I know someone who lives here, too, and it's cool if I stay." Then he began yelling about how he was gonna beat someone up. And I was like, "Do you mean me?" And he was all, "Yeah, I'd hit a girl!" And I was like, "Oh, I'd like to see you try!" And he was all, "I'll really do it." And despite my best efforts at wishing and hoping that he'd pull a punch and liven up this dying party, he completely pussied out and instead started making calls on his phone.

As the night wore on, it became increasingly obvious that I'd be going home alone, even though there were these two sorta fuckable guys there. My friend ended up banging one of them. She called me the next morning to tell me his penis was small and that he was one of those dudes that like fucks you forever without noticing that you've become bored and dry.

I decided to call it a night, but then I met this dude who introduced himself as Billy Dee Williams. I told him my name was Eartha Kitt. We hung out on the front stoop with his friend while he rolled a blunt. But then the two boys got in a fight over the fact that the cigar dropped on the ground. The issue was oddly important to them and the situation became really tense and uncomfortable, so I ran into the street to hail the next cab that rolled up. Bill Dee Williams was like, "Hey, we're sorry. It's cool. You should hang out." I began to give it a second thought but then he said, "I mean, it's not like you have your own weed at home, right?"

"Yeah, actually, I do," I said. I climbed into the cab headfirst, and made my way home, where I smoked it in peace and quiet.