[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 drew hieroglyphics.

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 or some shit.

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.]

The question presents itself: What the shit do you think you're talking about, lady?

Her two big examples are the John Varvatos store at CBGBs, and the Whole Foods on the Bowery (which is the articles kicker). Great. She mentioned two places within three blocks from one another. Yeah, it sucks that CBGBs is dead, but that place sucked when it was dying and hey, at least Varvatos kept some of the original walls. It could be another Chase Bank, but, whatever.

Here's her thesis:

The problem for those who would like to see a return in New York to its edgy past is that Manhattan, as more than one New York-based blogger has claimed, is still "a gated community for the rich". The cultural critic Julian Brash has complained that under Bloomberg the citizens of New York have been turned into consumers - it is a place where everything is about what can be bought and what can be sold.

Okay, fine. Manhattan's really expensive, blah blah blah. Bankers run everything, blah blah blah. Everything in New York can be bought. And? This city was built by hyper-capitalists, it's why there's so much goddamn money here. Old hat. Certain things about New York absolutely suck and will always keep sucking worse and worse. And let's get one thing straight: people have been saying things about New York sucking for as long as New York's been around. If you read Monocle magazine, which this essay is basically ripped out of, this is like, every issue. This has long been the party line of travel press types—especially ones from abroad—for at least three years. I mean, if you really want to go back, I believe Rolling Stone called New York the Hot Dead Zone in their inaugural Hot List issue. In 1998. Saying New York is no longer edgy hasn't been edgy in forever.

The sequel to this piece is when she inevitably says that Berlin is starting to get really, really hip these days too. Pretty much anybody who went through Ellis Island and didn't stay probably had some sentiment along the lines of "this place sucks." According to the Daily News, one of our presidents basically told us to stick this city up our collective asses (look where he is, now: dead).

But—and I'm sure others have their reasons—I live here because, quite frankly (A) there's still nowhere else in America like it, and like many other people here, I have some sick/awesome compulsion that makes this grind of living here that much more attractive to me than anywhere else and (B) it's still got better stuff than everywhere else in America. Yeah, fuckin' stuff. Awesome stuff.

Now.

Can we quickly go over the reasons London—a nice city, sure—sucks compared to New York? Great:

• Your food sucks. It all tastes like ass until American chefs take two months to do better what you've spent hundreds of years sucking at.
  
  
• The service in your restaurants sucks, because you have to instruct people how to tip by putting a mandatory charge on their tab, like many other countries that do this. Which is the wrong way of doing this, which is why every server you will every have in London will probably be an asshole.
  
  
• Your theater sucks. War Horse—no, really, War Horse—is the best thing you have up right now. Anything good you have on the West End came from us. And don't bring up fucking Billy Elliot.
  
  
• Your nightlife is just stupid. Pubs close at 11, our bars don't close until four. Who goes to bed at 11? Are you serious? So you guys open up clubs that close at 2AM that have two kinds of people in them: the kind who get unceremoniously drunk and piss on everything, or the places Prince Harry goes. And who wants to go there? Also, you only play American music. You think Kings of Leon are the Second Coming of Christ. The Kings of Leon play our bar mitzvahs, goddamnit. By the way: most of those rappers you guys play on repeat (and not even the good ones...50 Cent?!) still live in New York. Our clubs and nightlife might have their issues, but they blow yours out of the water. You guys wouldn't know what to do with The Beatrice Inn if it crawled up your nose in a $100 bill.
  
  
• Nobody knows where anything is in London. Seriously. It's like the worst parts of the West Village for an entire city. Everything is higgly-piggly or whatever dumb word you have for it. We live on a grid. A grid. You guys have the dumbest civic planning this side of kids eating Legos.
  
  
• OH. Don't get me wrong. Our subways suck, for sure. But at least they're supposed to work after midnight, and don't cost half our income to ride. Also, an Oystercard? That just sounds stupid. Who's running your design schemes, Lewis Carroll? Stupid. Oh, and, you wanna talk about EDGY? How about our D-Trains getting stabby again, edgy? Exactly.
  
  
• You guys have never had a nice day of weather in the history of the universe. Seriously. The only person Madonna has to compete with for causing a scene is the fucking sun. It's yellow, it's in the sky, sometimes, it...nevermind. Have you even been here in September? It's like Central Park is trying to get in your pants and get you off, the weather's so goddamned nice.
  
  
• Oh, and the pound is stupid-expensive. Like everything else in your city.
  
  
• Your tabloid newspapers make the New York Post look like The Paris Review.
  
  
• And Whole Foods on the Bowery, sure, Whole Foods sucks. But it's in a pretty great location, and, fuck that, you know what sucks worse? Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's suuuuuuuucks. Which goes back to your food sucking.
  
  
• Do you have Brooklyn? Do you even know what a Brooklyn is? No, not David Beckham's son. You're stupid, shut up. [Quiet Moment: The article didn't mention Brooklyn once, but didn't refer to Manhattan exclusively. Go figure.]
  
  
• London's celebrities are all on Big Brother and fucking suck. They're mouthbreathing idiots. They make Tinsley Mortimer look like Jackie Kennedy.
  
  
• You guys have soccer—yeah, I called it soccer, goddamnit—teams. Multiple ones. Great. We have two baseball teams (including the 2009 World Series Champions), football teams (Including the 2008 Super Bowl Champions), hockey teams (I'm sure they Won Something Great recently), and a basketball team. All of them except for the Knicks could smash every London soccer player. Nothing else, just "smash" them.
  
  
• There is one—and only one—good song about Foggy London Town. There are as many songs about New York as there are New Yorkers, and most of them are awesome.

Anything else? Oh, yeah, did Samuel Motherfucking Jackson just buy an apartment next to your boss? No? Exactly.

Shut up. New York is awesome.

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.

"Consumed," a "fashion short" written and dirtected by Bradley Young—former photography director at Interview, GQ, Instyle, Talk and Radar—and shot on the roof of The Standard Hotel, features socialite and model Lydia Hearst looking her most gorgeous and bored. She vamps for the camera in various killer outfits and interesting tableaux while subway busker Luke Trumble croons "St. Louis Blues" in the background.

There is a sad and gritty undercurrent to the action that reminds us a bit of what life in New York is really like. Sure, there are plenty of glamorous things here in the city, but often attaining them isn't worth the trouble to get them, and sometimes those fabulous parties are just full of lonely people waiting to pounce on a Rubix cube on a silver platter. Still it reminds us of the wonderful luster of the city, and the danger of being swept up in it. Be sure to check out the whole video (and the surprise ending!) at Gravure Mag.

This is a really, really bad problem, especially in New York, where I can feel my neighbor's aura getting dirt on my goddamn windows (it's green, and ugly). People here live really close to each other, and it's part of why we like the city! Because we're totally batshit insane, but also, because there are unspoken agreements that we all adhere to, like we're in a special club. It's really cool. We've even got a name for them: manners. There are other chapters of this club around the country, each with their own modified rules. But there are some rules that are the same no matter where you go, the one universal dictum being: stop being an asshole. If you don't know what this means, then you're probably doing it. But since we have manners, we try our best to contain our murderous rage at you, and then, the universe, for allowing you to exist. It's a double-edged sword. Except now, some people are swinging it.

Ahem.

The lede to Douglas Quenqua's whimsically-titled Sunday Styles masterpiece, As the Rudes Get Ruder, the Scolds Get Scoldier :

Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist and self-described "manners psycho," certainly thinks so. Just ask "Barry," a loud cellphone talker she encountered recently at a Starbucks in Santa Monica, Calif.

"He just blatantly took over the whole place with his conversation, streaming his dull life into everybody's brain," Ms. Alkon recalled in a telephone interview. Among the personal details Barry shared that day - errands to run, plans for the evening - was his phone number, which Ms. Alkon jotted down. "I called him that night and said, ‘Just calling to let you know, Barry, that if you'd like your private life to remain private, you might want to be a little more considerate next time,' " she said.

So there.

The only way that paragraph could've possibly been more pleasurable was if it were followed by an italicized Mothafucka.

There are other examples of so-called "manners psychos"—which, linguistically, I enjoy; I would also enjoy some kind of play on words involving this concept and Al Qaeda—that unfortunately doesn't involve anybody being water-ballooned or beaten with a soft jammy. Like when Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig went off on an audience member on Broadway whose phone kept ringing:

That person should've had their ass kicked. Instead, they were just outed. Patti LuPone, who's essentially Shiva, The Supreme God to Broadway Gays, also doesn't enjoy it when people take pictures of her:

Yeah, you don't mess with Patti LuPone. You just don't. Unfortunately, there are some people who don't do things the way we New Yorkers do.

Better to fight rudeness with sticky sweetness, said Anna Post, a great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post and a spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute (yes, there is such a place). "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar," Ms. Post said.

Aw. That's cute. But when you kill flies with vinegar, it's kinda fucked up and sadistic, you know? Like pouring salt on a slug? Humiliating someone in public for being an ass is a great feeling. There should be draconian punishments for these things, like really, the next time someone gets in a subway before everyone has stepped out, or the next time someone refuses to get up for a preggers on the bus, or the next time you're at the airport and someone body-blocks you at the baggage claim, and then hits you with their oversized Tumi as they use their body-weight to throw it off the carousel, they should be fined $50. No, $100. They should be fined $100 and have to go to court, where they're given the option of paying the fine, going to a class (like driving school, but you learn about how not to crash into people with your asswizzardry), or, if they're too broke to pay or too stubborn to take a class, they're subject to an arbitrary water-ballooning for two weeks: they will be water-ballooned, it will just be a matter of when, where, and how. They should have to live in fear of this water balloon. They should not be able to escape the constant threat of it.

This is an issue to some people. Can you tell?

[Ed. Note: I had a reference in there to "manners psycho" Amy Alkon as a "right-wing loon." Turns out she's not a right-wing loon! But she's still batshit crazy about manners. Then again, I almost shiv'd someone who body-blocked me on the L this morning. To each their own neurosis, except when you're interrupting with my morning commute. I will not hesitate to cut you.]

Today we watched Alexander on Tyra give a girl the courage to tell her mother that she is a lesbian. However, by being true to himself and successful for the unique brand of fashion and flair that he brings to the table, Miss J is helping kids come out of the closet every day. He has made a career of teaching people how to walk with their head held high, and that's just what he's doing for gay people, one flouncy step at a time.

Sure, he may only be a flamboyant fixture on a reality television program, but Miss J is bringing gay black street culture to audiences all over the globe and we owe him desperately for that. When little girls in Kansas are shaking their finger and calling something "Fierce," it's not because they've been to the Christopher Street Pier lately. Alexander never had to come out of the closet (like some silver-haired news anchors) because he was never in it. It wasn't easy for a tall sissy from the South Bronx—as he says in his new book Follow the Model—but he was never afraid to be himself and always had the strength to strut his crazy self out in public even when it might not have been the easiest thing to do. Check out his own silly coming out story in the video below.

Alexander won a Teen Choice Award earlier this year, showing that the kids who watch the show think he's great no matter who he sleeps with. But he's not only spreading acceptance among the show's young viewers and serving as a success story. While he may not be the most mainstream role model for young gay men and women, he is certainly one of the best. Coming out isn't easy for anyone, but for those who fit into more stereotypical gender roles, it can be a little bit easier. Miss J is here to stand up for the sissies and the queers and the freaks, and the people who can't hide behind a butch exterior or a little bit of lipstick and just pass as heterosexuals when it's easy or convenient. He is gay with a capital G, and he lets every natural born babygay at home know they're not alone and that they're better off for the special brand of outrageousness that they've been blessed with by their fairy godmother.

Media junkies everywhere, young and old, this is crack-like goodness. Kaplan's supposed to be on the show to talk about a new compilation book from the New York Observer, but that's passed over pretty quickly for the good stuff. There's even a clip spliced in of former New York editor Clay Felker, who died last year, discussing what makes a great editor. Some of the more compelling lines:

• Sadly, his only swipe at the New York Observer's (Michael Corleone-esque) owner Jared Kushner was a passive-aggressive pawing: "(Jared's positioning it) a little bit different than where I live." Classy, but like Jared, I wanted more blood.
  
  
• On his departure: "I thought I had driven the car as far as it could go."
  
  
• "I have an evangelical mission to save the part of the print media that I love. Which is, to me, sophisticated, arcane, a little bit of a throwback to the 20s, but also a 21st century medium that the internet was a direct assault on."
  
  
• "All my mean friends on the internet say you can't put the genie back in the bottle..."
  
  
• "Tina (Brown) is a lot stronger than I am."
  
  
• "(The best New York editors) come from outside and bang on the door to try to understand it. The really great ones are desperate to understand New York City and are desperate to say what they don't know."
  
  
• On how long it takes him to spot a great reporter: "About a day."
  
  
• "I don't know what's going to happen. I have close friends who work in various (what I like to think of) as information supermarkets. Aggregation has undermined the American news process...It separates the news item from the news story. It's (by definition) a shallow landscape."

Interestingly enough, Kaplan at one point talks about the future of journalism returning to a pay model with a new medium—like, say, an Apple Tablet—that could shut out the broad sheet altogether and create a narrow outlet through which people would have to pay for something like, say, the New York Times (who are more or less cozying up with Apple in anticipation of the Tablet's 'impending' release).

I'd rather leave the futurism to someone else, but this kind of thinking seems a little reckless. Sure, the New York Times is pretty, and has great content, but isn't the information at the heart of every New York Times article—gathering it, compiling it, fact-checking and editing it—where a lot of the money is? And you can't charge people for information. A New York Times exclusive is only an exclusive for the minute or two before someone else has posted their Google-landgrab headline reporting on the New York Times' reporting.

Nevertheless! Kaplan's maybe-changing old-school methodology and the quality he put into his work is going to be interesting to watch as he tries to move whatever products he continues to move forward with as time goes on, which is to say nothing of whatever direction the New York Observer's going to take as well.

Sterling's seemingly meandering and occasionally infuriating talk at the annual Reboot digital culture conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this year attracted some notice, originally, but deserves a wider hearing, if only for his contextualization of Steve Jobs and Nicolas Sarkozy as gothic figures and his advocacy on behalf of expensive beds. Luckily, protoblogger Dave Winer recently re-uploaded and linked the talk.

Observers of the social networking wars should listen to Sterling's rundown on "favela chic," excerpted above. Rupert Murdoch, familial overlord of MySpace parent News Corp., is cast as the "remote, distanct, old-school Brazilian tyrant," while MySpace accounts are likened to "huts." Who knows: Maybe when you lose your job, an anonymous space in News Corp.'s online hellscape might start sounding a lot more fun than the prim, proper — and all-too-accountable — playground that is Facebook.

(Sterling pic: Daniel Barradas)

This IBM was not only the first singing computer, it was also the inspiration for 2001's homicidal HAL 9000. Despite the explosion in networking and processing power in the decades since that film became a cultural touchstone, techno-dystopias seem to have only become tougher cultural sells. Familiarity has lulled humans into complacency. Plus, these little iPhones and BlackBerrys, they're just so cute.

[via BoingBoing]

[Pic: Stephen Wiltshire. There's much more there]

Also, things I didn't know that I now know: Adam Goldberg is a half-Jew who's an LA Jew (and not a New York Jew). This is relatively enjoyable rainy-day entertainment: you might not live in sunny LA, but at least your day-to-day doesn't put you through this:

This poor Australian mother must have had a stroke when her 6-month old's stroller, which should have had its brakes on, rolled on a train's tracks and was promptly hit. Thankfully, the child escaped relatively unscathed.

Some say disaster was averted because the baby was strapped in, but we prefer to think it was a vehicular miracle.

There's so much funny on Regretsy, I'm not sure where to begin. I'm not the only one.

Maybe its name, a streak of obvious brilliance. Or the two anonymous posting names Knitler Youth and Helen Killer. Etsy is inherently funny, so finding the most insane things on Etsy just works. It's not like eBay, where people are selling ridiculous things. These people are expressing themselves. Sure, you could make an argument that Regretsy might be mean-spirited; after all, someone's pouring their heart into these things. Let me assure you that after about five minutes on Regretsy, you'll understand. Also, they link to all of the sellers, which makes for an awesome punchline: people are buying these things after being linked on Regretsy. Often. Occasionally, the internet will turn out a win-win situation. This is one of them. My three favorite Regretsy items below. Throw yours in the comments.

Yes, it's a Leopard Pink Goat Coat. Because your goat is caught in the never-fashion of fourteen years ago and wants to be on The Grind.

Yes, it's a catnip fetus. Because your named your pet Patrick Bateman.

Yes, it's a knit Christmas Nativity Meerkat Manger Scene. Because you're a festive meerkat.