The n+1-ish Way To Email "Let's Get Drunk!" [Cabals]

There's something about organizing social events over the internet that encourages people — everyone, really — to try a little too hard to impress. This is why Evite pages are filled not only with RSVPs but also with in-jokes, double entrendres and various other self-conscious displays of wit. And why so many emailed party invitations take three long paragraphs to get to the point! To make sure you never waste another minute being cute like that in a damned internet invite, have a look at this phenomenon in extreme form: Emails in which n+1 staffers, along with other highfalutin types (from the New Yorker, Council On Foreign Relations, Paris Review and so forth), are told "hey let's meet at the bar" in the insanely obtuse manner they surely prefer. Harper's editor Christian Lorentzen is apparently the one who writes these things, but Jess Roy could no doubt use the emails to spin yet another indictment of the greatest literary cabal of our era, etc. — without even leaving the house! We've reprinted a couple, via Daily Intelligencer, after the jump.

Dear chums,
There's drinks tomorrow at seven at the Scratcher, 5th Street and Bowery, these, because sometimes its fun to honor something inhuman, will be in honor of giant rock formations, such as you see girding the highways of New England, granite in and around the Granite State, and here I am gripped by the urge to plagiarize something about a different sort of mineral, but looking at Auden's "In Praise of Limestone" see no lines ripe for insertion, though there are a few good ones, like, "I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing; / That is how I shall set you free. There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad." But Xian, "That's such a downer," you, the list, say. "Do you really expect us to show up at this bar for the umpteenth time after spout some bullshit about rocks quote some depressingly pious mid-period Auden lines? What happened to the days when our inboxes would fill up with eighty emails about Norman Mailer making love to three-hundred-pound women? Where the fuck is Jon-Jon? He was fun." Right, I say. The earth is an oyster with nothing inside it. Not to be born is the best for man. The second best is the bailiff's order: "Break your embraces. Dance while you can."

As ever,
Xian

Dear everyone,
There's drinks tomorrow at nine at Scratcher, 5th and Bowery, these for this one who is certainly expressing something, who a few think is expressing something wrong, who is not certain that he is not expressing something wrong, who is telling something about suffering that is not a saddening thing to anyone hearing and not a dreary thing, and who very many are certainly wanting to be doing what this one is doing, wanting to be ones clearly expressing something, and who a few are very certain this one is someone great.

As ever,

Xian

At least, in these, he puts the time/place first so you can skip the rest of the email. Still!

[New York]

Daily Candy To Comcast For $75 Million? [Rumormonger]

We heard last week that Daily Candy, the email newsletter for lady shopaholics, was about to be sold. Now digital PR man Adam Isserlis is floating the name of the rumored acquirer: Comcast, one of the two consumer-unfriendliest companies in America! The rumored price is $75 million, a bit below the $100 million+ controlling shareholder and former AOL second-in-command Bob Pittman has been seeking since 2006. But that's still not bad for an email list. The question is: Why Comcast? What the hell is a cable company doing buying a content play? Shouldn't the very presence of Bob Pittman, spectre of the darkest days of the failed AOL-Time Warner merger, remind Comcast of how ill-advised this sort of vertical empire building can be? Meh, Comast is on a roll and doesn't want to hear it.

Comcast, mind you, also recently bought internet address book Plaxo. Its explanation of the acquisition was mind-numbingly non-sensical:

Comcast’s ambition is to make more and more content available to consumers across all platforms,” said Samuel Schwartz, executive vice president for strategy and development at Comcast Interactive Media, in an interview. “When you add the social dimension to these products, you can navigate through those platforms based on what your friends are doing.”

Uh, right. Whatever. Schwartz went on to say that people would be able to use Plaxo to send an episode of Lost to their friends, which is also bizarre, because the hard part of sending a TV show to a friend (WTF?) is not finding your friend's email address — it's sending the show.

Since Comcast is famous for canceling the service of its most Web-savvy customers and for sneakily disallowing certain programs from connecting to the internet, some (smart) people think the company should maybe focus on fixing those problems instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on awkward internet acquisitions. But where's the glory in that? Being a media company is way more fun than trying to meet the needs of millions and millions of customers!

[IssTumBul]

Pregnant Man's Baby Photos: $300,000 [Celebrity-industrial Complex]

Female->male transsexual Thomas Beatie is featured in People magazine today with his new daughter Susan Juliette, born June 29 in Bend, Oregon without a c-section (which would make it a "natural birth," haters!). GaySocialites.com said the child will live a "confusing life" because of the father's love for the spotlight, adding that admirers of the pioneering birth should bear in mind that "you don't go on the cover of People magazine for free honey!" Actually, that's very true!

According to a celebrity magazine insider we've been in touch with, Time Inc. paid Beatie $300,000 for People's rights to the exclusive baby pics.

No word on whether he's giving the money to charity, but doesn't Beatie kind of deserve to keep it? Bidding on Angelina Jolie's baby pictures approached $20 million, and even D-listers Nicole Richie and Jamie-Lynn Spears managed to net reported seven-figure deals for photos of their offspring. And not one of those people went to the trouble of changing her gender, retaining her reproductive organs or waddling around as the world's only pregnant man!

In fact, one wonders if Beatie couldn't have gotten a better deal. Sad! But only by the (also sad) metric of fameball skills. Beatie still looks like a very happy Dad, which is rumored to be worth quite a lot in and of itself (pish!).

Live-Blogging Project Runway, Week 2 [Adventures In Live Blogging]

Commenters, for this week's challenge, you will have 60 minutes — starting at exactly 9 pm Eastern — to construct a Project Runway "liveblog" using nothing by sandpaper, twine and fruit rollups. If you don’t have access to those materials, then please just use the wit, perceptiveness and itchy posting fingers that are the hallmark of Gawker commenters the world over. Your moderator, commenter MisterHippity, introduces himself and lays some ground rules after the jump.

I am your host, Hippity Klum, and my role is to contribute little of real value but look ridiculously hot in the process. (You'll have to use your imagination here) Also, I have a couple of simple ground rules to cover:

1. Some Project Runway spoilers have been floating around, which probably aren't true. Nevertheless, it's impolite to post any of them here because some people don't want to read them involuntarily, so please don't.

2. Please don't wear hats indoors — and comb that "fauxhawk" out of your hair. That sort of thing may fly among Bravo reality show contestants, but it won't pass muster here.

That's it. Those are the only rules. Oh, and don't forget the Wow Factor; that's very important. Also, remember to turn on your TV.

And above all else, don't bore Nina!

Mid-Market Gossip Columnist Invents Media Feud From Thin Air [Feuds]

Minneapolis Star and Tribune "gossip" columnist (there is no gossip in Minneapolis) C.J. has a kind of hilarious "item" about how Times media columnist and addiction memoirist David Carr is now feuding with Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz. How does she manage this? She quotes a Kurtz column in which Kurtz sums up Carr's assesment of himself as a lousy junkie, then calls Carr to ask if he'll be on Kurtz's show. Carr, probably befuddled at receiving a call from C.J., says something kind of confusing about how they are not that close. Then, FishbowlNY picks it up? Best entirely nonsensical made-up feud ever! Team Junkie! [Strib]

Didja Hear The One About How Obama Is Like Hitler? [Politics]

It's healthy to question the adulation of public figures. But as creepy as certain adherents of the Obama cause can be, they're more than matched by archconservatives who see "fascism" in every kitsch rendering of the Illinois senator in his many pieces of campaign paraphernelia. Latest case in point: Dr. Melissa Clouthier, a chiropractor turned blogger for Right Wing News and her own Information Pollination. Featured is a screen capture of an entry now up at her site in which she compares a poster heralding Obama's Berlin appearance to a Hitler propaganda image. See, both men are shown in profile (danger!), and both can now be associated with Berlin's Siegessäule, or Victory Column: the Fuhrer had it moved to its present spot to mark the capital of his envisioned Greater Germany, and under its famed golden statue is where Obama will make his Teutonic debut (scandal!).

What's so ironic about the "liberal fascism'" trope advanced by Jonah Goldberg and on display at Couthier's address is the origin of the term. Stalinists coined it in the pre-Popular Front era of the 1930's as a way of grouping European social democrats (also called "social fascists") with Nazis. Both were viewed by the Kremlin as partners in the same expiring capitalist system, and it wasn't until the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that the whole pox-on-both-your-houses farce was dropped. Before then, Reds in the Reichstag were complacent about National Socialism. "After Hitler, Our Turn" was their strategy; it kept them from forming a viable bloc with Social Dems that might have stopped the real fascist's parliamentary rise to power.

So Goldberg, et al., whether they realize it or not, are trafficking in one of the oldest and sorriest Communist smears of liberals. That's especially rich because the best conservative thinkers deplore just this sort of moral equivalence. Isn't it supposed to be a mainstay of the hysterical left to use the f-word to silence the opposition?

You can argue with the myopia (or ignorance) of Obama's campaign advisers in choosing another historically charged setting for a mass rally. Siegessäule is the omega to Brandenburg Gate's alpha, and it too has caused a few hiccups among German politicians with long memories. But that's as far as any sane logic should ever go.

[Melissa Clouthier]
[Via Matt Yglesias]

WEDNESDAY EVENING NEWS DUMP [Reversals]

OMG! Moe Tkacik is actually coming to Gawker! [Radar, Previously]

Obama To Sleep With Child [Advertising]

Two of the ad guys at Saatchi who worked on that unauthorized JC Penney pro-teen sex ad are now leaving the agency for unspecified reasons. One of them says he wants to go work on the Obama campaign now. Let's hope so! [Creativity]

'Mean Girl' Lindsay Ditches Gal Pal Ronson! Is It Over? [Splitsville]

Though they only confirmed their relationship a short time ago, it looks like Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson may already be heading for a break-up! One of our inside New York sources, Guest of a Guest spotted the actress/deejay duo at the Waverly Inn last night, a Gotham hotspot frequented by all of the Big Apple's most in-the-know glitterati. All seemed well enough as they dashed out of a sleek black SUV and past the usual swarm of paparazzi into the restaurant. But then things got ugly! Our source tells us:

We really did not pay much attention to them once we were seated, except at the end of their meal when Lindsay stood up and stepped/stumbled on [my friend's] foot. Without looking back or apologizing she headed straight out the door. We guess her exit was spontaneous as Samantha was behind her sputtering: 'Are you leaving?' 'Lindsay are you leaving?' 'I guess she’s leaving.' 'She just left!'

And that's not good! Our body language analyst Nolan Ryan tells us: "Lindsay, by stepping on a guest's foot, shows us and Samantha that she's not afraid to step on people's toes. If your foot or toes are in the way of her foot or her toes then she will step on your toes or foot with her toes and foot. It doesn't look good for them." Another insider tells us that Lindsay was "wearing clothing" and "seemed to be breathing in and out."

Fans of the lesbian couple will most likely be holding some sort of candlelight vigil tonight outside the Beatrice Inn, another New Amsterdam sizzling nightspot. We have no word from either of the young ladies' reps, as we have no idea how to reach them. Stay tuned for more exclusive coverage, only on Gawker!

Choire Sicha: Enemy of Love [Ruiners]

Choire Sicha (inadvertently) destroys celebrity relationships! First the former Gawker minion interviews actor (I guess?) Balthazar Getty who gushes about his fabulous wife and kids and then a few months later he's caught cheating with a topless Sienna Miller. Then he spoke with baby-faced Biloxi Blues star Matthew Broderick, who also waxed rhapsodic about his family. And now? Ol' Bueller's sneaking out of some red headed floozy's friend's window. Choire, you must be stopped! Or, at the very least, please don't interview Matt Damon or his barmaid wife. I just love them together.

Em & Lo Need Some Masturbation Advice [Profnet]

See, this is why I will always stand behind Profnet as my preferred place for reporters to find sources for bizarre stories, no matter what cheaper competition comes along: because of Profnet's unparalleled sophomoric joke opportunities! For example, are you an expert on masturbation and all of its ins-and-outs, ha? Well "Em" of "Em & Lo," sex book authors and your source for "all things love, sex, and star related," wants to talk to you right away! And she'll happily promote your masturbation projects in return:

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