Partyin' at Arianna's...
By Brad Friedman on 11/17/2005, 10:39pm PT  

We enjoyed ourselves muchly last night at a shindig at Arianna's pad --- her real one, not her virtual one. The photo above would be me on the left, some guy named John Amato from some blog named Crooks & Liars in the center, and our delightful hostess on the right.

The party, apparently, was in celebration of Yahoo's (or would that be Yahoo!'s) deal to distribute Gawker Media's Defamer blog --- one of several in the burgeoning bloglomerate which also includes the erstwhile rumor-monger Wonkette, amongst others.

The party was sponsored by Yahoo! and HuffPo and Arianna had a few words to say in support of the blogosphere, and at the expense of non-blogospherian Bob Woodward who just happened to fall smack dab onto her shitlist yesterday in time for the fete.

Throughout it all --- and in the wake of the largely very-rightwing-so-far Open Source Media blog portal which launched yesterday amidst some fanfare as aided by some $3.5 million in startup do-re-mi and various other couplings and consolidations we've noted and/or been a party to of late --- it seems the 'sphere may be entering into an interesting new phase.

I was reminded of the dot com '90's gold rush which ended in much crashing and a fair amount of burning as the bubble finally burst. And now, as the world scrambles to capitalize and monetize on the blogs as "the next big thing", I'm fairly certain there will be a considerable amount of crashing and burning ahead in this realm as well.

Nonetheless, we look forward to the corruption of big corporate money any moment. We could use some (both the corruption, and the money). But since it's the gossip sites of Gawker that brought in the big bucks yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps we needed a bit more of that sort of thing at BRAD BLOG. So, in that spirit, I considered posting a scandalous piece about some of the glitterati in attendance at Chez Arianna last night. Something along the lines of...

As I came in, I was delighted to catch Bill Maher at the door who was on his way out. I told him I admired his work and I was stunned when he looked straight at me, pupils in full dilation, and said, "Fuck off, Jew!" before pushing me aside and heading out the door. Later I happened to notice David Mamet and Ron Silver, drunk as skunks, making out on the darkened side of the pool, and I believe I caught Lawrence O'Donnell slipping a mickey into one of Arianna's Long Island ice teas. No idea what that was about!

Oh, well. None of that actually happened. But we're happy to name drop a few of the folks who were there, whether they were making out or otherwise (Maher was actually rather kind and no more noticably stoned than usual.) And as an extra bonus for those who've read through this far, here's an Election-related(!) cartoon from Mamet --- who, with William H. "Bill" Macy was a former teacher of mine back in the day (name dropper!) --- as just posted over at HuffPo.

Worlds collide. And oh, yes...there will be blood.

UPDATE: Arianna has more, plus lots of pics.

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