TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy couldn't get into Brazil this week, supposedly because the country's visa officials are incompetent. And yet somehow the New York Times' Jenna Wortham finagled herself entry into that exact same country. It's enough to make Peter Kafka think Lacy's problems had more to do with her than with the entire nation of Brazil being somehow incompetent!

Lifestyle blogger Terri Potratz will spend this weekend knitting, and she's both stoked and proud.

BlackBook's Tricia Romano wasn't feeling very bipartisan about health-care reform.

Gizmodo's Brian Lam saw his long weekend erode before his very eyes. This frightened at least one of his Gawker Media compatriots!

MTV's Maya Baratz was impressed by nerd gear during a coffee break.

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Former Village Voice columnist Tricia Romano has a piece in Thursday's New York Times profiling the phenomenon created by Ryan Heffington, a "choreographer, performance artist and designer" who has created something called "Sweaty Sundays," a weekly aerobics, errr, dance class held in a performance space in the heart of LA's very own Williamsburg.

Here, members of this creative class - artists, photographers, fashion designers and screenwriters - dance off the previous night's excesses to a soundtrack of indie rock, techno, and 1980s new wave hits. And they do it while looking fabulous in Jane Fonda leg warmers and belted leotards.

"It's kind of an American Apparel ad come to life," said Terence McFarland, 40, the executive director of the Los Angeles Stage Alliance, who is a regular.

On a recent Sunday, Christopher Kreiling, a 33-year-old visual artist, was among the first to arrive. It was his first time, but he already had the look down: a pair of very short white corduroy shorts, a pink-and-white striped tank top and the all-important headband.

"I just had 10 cigarettes and a coffee," he said. "I'm like, ‘O.K., let's go.' "

Heffington says that the class has become so popular with the local idiots that he's added a second Sunday class as well as a weeknight one called "Wet Wednesdays." And don't fret over not being able to participate in the fun yourself if you don't happen to live in the LA area, because there's a DVD coming soon. Yippee!

Now, the real question the article about this hideous trend brings up is what will the Williamsburg hipsters do to top it? Sorry Williamsburg, but your little kickball and tetherball retro-fitness trends don't stand up against this. You all need to step it the hell up! Surely it's the lack of availability of things such as "Sweaty Sundays" that stokes Tricia Romano's smoldering hatred of New York. Win back her dark, jaded heart! Do it for New York!

New York's Jessica Coen knew how Michael Jackson would have wanted to be remembered.

ABC News' Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent, was basically just watching Michael Jackson videos all day Friday.

Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow blamed Americans for killing Michael Jackson by not paying enough attention to him, and thus never learning that they were paying way too much attention to him.

This would be Kurt Andersen's moment, if only he'd pursued his morbid dream.

BlackBook's Tricia Romano made her own fun.

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

Digg founder Kevin Rose is sorry he forgot you don't have a magical VIP Web browser like he does.

Chris O'Brien of the San Jose Mercury News noticed a Yahoo profanity policy was kind of fucking hypocritical!

Oliver Knox's vacation to Paris began with some quality American customer service. Being an AFP man, he reported it.

Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin found the Ugly American, in Guatemala.

Writer Tricia Romano quietly cursed the blogger who revealed her happy secret.

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

Susan Orlean of the New Yorker deigned to contemplate Facebook's redesign.

BusinessWeek's Jon Fine caught up on year-old Viacom trivia. (Yes, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman's son works at Google. Duh.)

Washington Times Web columnist Amanda Carpenter wasted time on Twitter to announce she was not wasting time on Twitter.

Former Village Voice writer Tricia Romano began drinking early.

AFP correspondent Olivier Knox confessed to a mancrush on Wired editor Adam Rogers.

See something worth noting on Twitter? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

Jezebel reported that Wu said that a Times profile that mentioned his boyfriend essentially outed him to some of his extended family. Maybe. But it seems that him being gay wasn't much of a secret outside of that. Ex-Village Voice nightlife personage Tricia Romano dug up this pic of Wu in 2006 with noted tranny Amanda Lepore at an AIDS benefit. And only gays hang out with Amanda Lepore at AIDS benefits! Actually not, so this post is basically just a good reason to show you her photo of Amanda Lepore and Jason Wu, Michelle Obama's designer. He's on the rise!

[Pop and Politics. Wu was reportedly making some sort of replica dolls of Lepore at this benefit, which is strange regardless of sexual orientation.]

As an ex-New Yorker who is brand spanking new to L.A., the concept of downtown being a dead zone is quite strange. And having only driven through late at night (going the wrong way, on a one-way street, natch) I was curious to see what an L.A. downtown art walk would be like (held every second Thursday of the month from 12 to 9). Art Walks in Seattle’s Pioneer Square were fun, but were too often filled with "Look ma, I has knitted you a rainbow hat!"—a/k/a bad hippie art. And the Chelsea Art Walks in NYC were impenetrable and thick with snobbery and unintentional comedy: rich people wearing all black, posing seriously in front of pictures with their heads cocked just so to the sides. L.A.’s version proved to be far more pleasant and interesting—exhilarating even. Won't you join along as I take you on a photographic tour?

A fellow recently-imported New Yorker joined me via the red line subway, which she reported “was clean and pleasant, with no rats, and not too many people,” and arrived unscathed at our meeting place on Fifth and Main at the Spring Arts Collective Gallery, where the highlight (for me anyway), was a Cabbage Patch doll’s decapitated head in a cage by Kim Ye, and a series of twisted paintings where all the twee-looking subjects appeared to be peeing at the adjacent Clair Obscur Gallery.

That artist, Mari Araki, was part of an exhibit called Storybook Paintings. Also in that collection, were a series of extremely well done Tim Burton-esque fantasy paintings by Dany Paragouteva that seemed like they should be in a strange children’s book.

Around the corner, there was a room with eerie red lighting; and string of drawings formed a narrow hallway, which led to… a guy playing a harp. There were a cluster of beat up TVs, improbably, old toy Gizmos.

Said a guy sitting nearby, “Come back at 8:30, it’ll all come together.” We found out later this was the Soul or System. (Get it? Solar system! Or Soul system! Gah.)

Down the street we found a few huge photo realistic paintings. One was a close up of a hand being scorched by a lighter. The color was dark and rich and very carefully done. Then we noticed a man sitting in a rusty chair next to the paintings; he looked like he was part of the exhibit. It turned out to be the artist himself, Josh Talbott, who explained that he had done all the large painting in a studio in New York when he was hobbled with a broken leg, and then had to ship the monsters out to L.A.

The best collection was the LA Art Girl’s at the Phantom Gallery. For one thing, there was a unicorn.

There was also a giant gas mask.

And there was this piece (we couldn't figure out who did it.)

There was also a fundraising 'garage sale' called Selling In by Felis Stella (of which the proceeds went to Alzheimer's Association and the Cancer Research Institute). For sale: "Grandma's sewing machine."

This female-centric show was miles better than the one titled, "Where The Girls Are," featuring tiles of overexposed Dita Von Teese and a "performance art" piece by Tiffany Trenda called "Death of an Icon," in which she dances to Madonna's "Open Your Heart" video and then gets shot. The piece ends when a curator puts a card next to the bleeding artist and calls it a work of art. Just, no.

We made our way around to the other street, and found a clusterfuck of people on the sidewalks. It was after 7 by now, and the area was starting to fill up. There was a guy playing the sax next to a giant skull; a few feet away, a guy and his friend got to work redecorating a sofa with spraypaint and markers.

We were lured into one place with the promise that spoken word poetry by people from Greenwich Village would be on offer; instead, it seemed to be a community meeting about the overabundance of police in Skid Row. Next door, an exhibition of homeless art was mostly bad, except for a few pieces, including those of Darlene Altemeier.

Off the beaten path, a sidewalk sign with an arrow led us to Crewest, a pretty fab all-things-graffiti subculture shop. They had a minimalist funk band jamming the back room; someone doing screenprints; and a smorgasbord of interesting, politicized anti-police art, including the biting piece of commentary above and at right.

Last, but not least, the store Pussy & Pooch had an exhibition in its back room of cool animal paintings—like this pug.

But that, it turned out, was not the piece de resistance. That turned out to be cuts of fake lawn that you can buy from Petapotty.com, in case you don't have a yard. They can come complete with a hydrant.

Here's a Petapotty in action.

And with that image, I bid you adieu!

Hi. I'm Tricia Romano. I moved to Los Angeles four months ago from New York, a city I famously loathed, where I spent 8 years in the trenches at the Village Voice. I wrote the nightlife column, "Fly Life", for five of those years, and have the damaged liver to prove it. I also wrote features and cover stories for the paper, one of which won an award. I grew up in Las Vegas (no, we didn’t have slot machines in our classrooms), and lived in Seattle when it was trendy (i.e. after Nirvana broke) where I wrote for both the Stranger and the Seattle Weekly, and was an unabashed raver, before moving to New York. Since I am brand, spanking new to L.A., I have not yet soured on this whole spending-hours-of-your-life-in-traffic thing, and am excited to have summer all year long, and concur with Randy Newman: I love L.A.! I am currently living by the beach, and scraping up a living by penning articles for Radar, the Advocate, and MTV, among others. You can also find me hooking on Main Street.

And with that, please give Tricia a warm and rousing welcome!

[Photo Credit: Nikola Taminzdic]

Being asked to apologize brings out the Human Nature-era Madonna in me. You know, "I'm naaaaaaaaat saaaaaaaaaaaaaaareeee, it's human nature/ I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me/I'm not apologizing!" However, I guess we are all doing this Blogger's Selichot thing today, and I might as well take my sins down to the water's edge and cast them away while I've got the opportunity. So here goes.

• Dear Social Life EIC Devorah Rose: I'm sorry I started the rumor that you were a stripper. I'm also sorry that I ended the rumor that you were a stripper! I know you didn't really want me to disabuse people of that illusion, but the truth is pretty important to me.
• Dear Village Voice writer Tricia Romano: Regarding your Ultragrrrl article a while back, I quoted something you told me in an email. I should have asked your permission or reminded you that you were on the record. This was a dick thing of me to do; I was just learning the ropes at the time (still learning!) and I realized at the time that I had hung you out to dry but I had too much pride to apologize. Then one night Balk dragged me over to apologize to you at a party! That was a dick thing of him to do, but I'm glad he did it. Even though he is a massive, massive dick.

  No, I will never apologize for saying that Balk is a dick.

• Dear Julia Allison, I'm sorry I called you a "pundit-floozy" a while back. Now that I know you better, I understand that you're not a floozy at all. You're serially monogamous with a series of jerks, just like me!
• Dear Sarah Silverman: I am sorry you have to do it with Jimmy Kimmel. I'm also sorry that you're way smarter and funnier than he is. You're kind of letting the whole female race down with this shit, dude. I guess that was more of a "Jewpology" than an apology. Oops! Hey, it's cute when I'm funny in a bitchy quasi-Antisemitic way, right?
• Dear Internet: I'm sorry I overshared with you about my personal feelings. Looking back, I wish I hadn't abused you with my ranting about how I believed in love (don't worry, I no longer do!) or posted pictures of myself in a bathing suit, thereby establishing a dangerous precedent that can only end badly with some kind of Choire-Balk wrestling singlet shot. Wow, if that comes to pass, we will ALL be sorry.

And I will always remember, mostly with fondness, all of the parties and places I've seen: Motherfucker, MisShapes, Siberia, Mama's Bar, Rated X, the Cock, the Hole, Halcyon, Matter:/form boat rides, Bunker at subTonic, the Dark Room, Nublu, P.S. 1, Body and Soul, Shelter, Cielo, Centro-Fly, Luxx, APT, Plant Bar, Filter 14. There are too many people to thank (don't worry, I won't soon forget) and too many moments to immortalize. I'd need three columns to do everyone justice, but I don't have that. Party over: out of time.

Not exactly. Our Trish has, in fact, left the column to take the position of Voice staff writer. No word yet on her replacement as Boswell to Ultragrrrl's Johnson, but, reached for comment, she did have this to say about her new position:

I'm looking forward to losing the 20 pounds I've put on in the last five years due to consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol, and to getting some pigment in my skin thanks to time spent in the sun (which I've seen for exactly three hours). Next feature: In Defense of Puppies and Kittens.

A Full-Circle Farewell [Village Voice]
[Image: Nikola Tamindzic]

Continuing on the streak of Team Party Outings to anniversaries, we got all dressed up to celebrate five years of "Fly Life"—that's Tricia Romano's Village Voice column chronicling downtown nightlife. I was sort of expecting a rave in a dank techno-pit like Subtonic, but clubland is dead, so we got stuck at The Box instead, for a night of burlesque accompanied by predictable box-as-in-vagina jokes. But being in classy joints makes one a bit uncomfortable, which means one imbibes 17-dollar glasses of wine. Ugh, no open bar? Thanks a lot, Tricia.

Kicking off the night were The Pierces, a lovely pair of non-burlesque sisters from Alabama, mostly notable from the blonde one's engagement to a Stroke—Albert Hammond, apparently, who made an appearance to support his ex-fiancee. Also, they sing.

Channeling the spirit of the dearly departed Fez, a "Fly Life" favorite, master of ceremonies Murray Hill took the stage to introduce the performers and to out Tricia to her parents. As if they wouldn't have figured something was up after the night's entertainment of boobs, stripteases, and enema bags.

First-up was a topless Julie Atlas Muz swinging around, then squeezing herself into a giant balloon/body-condom. Next was Mike Albo impersonating Britney Spears. Then a Pontani girl striptease, and the Wau Wau sisters capped things off with a Catholic schoolgirl-on-schoolgirl box-eating extravaganza. Just like Christmas. —phil

First stop: Tricia Romano! "I asked her what the sales were, I didn't check against that with her publisher and just took her word for it. I asked her twice, and she gave me the same number both times." Well that if asking twice isn't a test of accuracy, we don't know what is! We went ahead and asked Simon Spotlight Entertainment's publicity director whether she could explain why Bookscan shows fewer than 8,000 copies sold. "Corporate-policy prevents us from releasing sales figures but I can confirm that a large portion of the book sales were through special sales." There you have it, sort of: Ultragrrrl's book is a huge success, possibly!

In Defense of Ultragrrrl [Voice]

• "She has this way of spinning hipness and pluck and zazz and what appears to be genuine enthusiasm into (again, what appears to be) a cushy lifestyle. As hustles go, you can't really knock Lewitinn's."
  
• "And so, I ask seriously, because, after reviewing the facts again, my mind is boggled: what the fuck does Ultragrrrl need to be defended against? Isn't she, like, winning at life and lunching with greatness?"
  
• "Message-board and blog comments mock Lewitinn's appearance (to the degree that makes Romano's heart bleed) ... Big. Deal. When you're visibly successful, you're going to have people who hate you. When you write a blog further heightening your success' visibility and otherwise blathering about your fabulous lifestyle, you're going to have more people hate you ...That's life."
  
• "The Internet can be a funhouse of emotions, where people feel free to distort, gushing or seething at the blippiest of passing fancies because ultimately, succinct, precise writing is hard, damn it ...The transfer of emotions in an online setting is some telenovela shit."
  
• "Obviously, I believe in the power and potential truth of the Internet, otherwise, I wouldn't waste my time on this blog."

  Yes, us too again now. Now and forever!

  The Offensive [Fourfour]

Best Nightlife Photographer: I'm completely biased because he's one of my good friends, but that doesn't really stop other award givers, does it? It's my party, and Gawker's Nikola Tamindzic wins. His photos are beautiful mini-masterpieces that make everyone look better.

Battle of the Tatas [Village Voice]
[Photo: Lock]

...helped convince regular people they are amazing enough to get their photo taken. (Merlin Bronques of lastnightsparty.com and Mark Hunter of thecobrasnake.com, I'm looking at you.) Coupled with the digital-photography boom and the prevalence of photobloggers, a paparazzi-type feel has erupted at every nightclub — places where not too long ago, anyone, famous or not, could let loose anonymously. Now people don't just want you to take their photos, they expect it.

All the regular douchebags (or whatever we're calling them now) make an appearance (as does Gawker shutterbug Nikola Tamindzic, who is most assuredly not a member of that fraternity), including our good friends the Misshapes, who star in this absolutely priceless anecdote:

This summer, MTV Books will publish a MisShapes photo book. The party's posed portraits have become so iconic that Scott Meriam, who shoots the images, says that during Madonna's famous visit last year, she seemed to know precisely how to look for her "quote-unquote 'MisShapes photo.' She knew exactly what the photo was." Indeed, on Saturday night I was standing next to a wall so unremarkable that I was stunned when an obvious newbie shrieked, "Oh my God! Is that the famous white wall?"

While you're rubbing your eyes at that one, Romano hits you with one more:

Sometimes clubbers simply take matters in their own hands and insert themselves in the frame. Or they do what one drag-queen did to me at Rated X Saturday night — after assessing the result on my camera, she made me take another shot. Snap. "(MisShapes DJ) Geordon and I have a saying," Meriam says. "'Just shoot everyone.'"

If only.

Us Weekly [VV]

I was greatly entertained by Lloyd Grove's write-up of [Moby's] party in the Daily News, claiming that Cynthia Rowley, Rocco DiSpirito, Julia Stiles, and Crispin Glover were in attendance. While the first three celebs were there, the Daily News' "spy" doesn't get out much because "Crispin" was really Interpol's Carlos D. [...] Spy also missed Isaac Mizrahi and the juiciest detail of the night: After the party was broken up, Bono finally arrived at 3 a.m.

Oh, poor Lloyd — but Romano's always willing to help a colleague in need. Apparently the nightlife pixie sent old man Grove a heartfelt letter offering to take Lloyd out to the downtown clubs and parties in exchange for a tour of the uptown classy joints. We're also told she sent along an L.E.S. Hipster Survival Package, complete with a copy of the NME, photos of Carlos D and Crispin Glover, and a pair of reading glasses (all of which, we suspect, will go straight to errand boy Hud Morgan's desk).

Mo Mo More [VV]