Last night after our day-long editorial conference at The Viceroy (I presented on the 
topic of "What Works and What Doesn't for Yahoo! Broadband Portals"), a bunch of us Yahoo!'s and our entourage went to a cocktail party at Arianna Huffington's house thrown by Yahoo!'s Lloyd Braun and Scott Moore in honor of Gawker's Nick Denton and Mark Lisanti and celebrating the Yahoo!/Gawker syndication deal. (That's right, you can now check out a random assortment of Gawker posts co-branded on Yahoo! News. Hip-hip-hooray. I think. Or maybe that's just the party line...)
Arianna was an amazing hostess. She greeted us all personally as we arrived. (just as sweetly as she greeted Bill Maher and David Mamet.) And her bartenders certainly poured some stiff freaking drinks. Chris took tons of photos, as always of our posse at the party. I'm not so sure I can run for President anymore. Sarah also took a bunch of pics. Sadly, no Arianna. Our reflexes were obviously dulled by the drinks again. While sipping vodka and sodas, I met Gawker's Lockhart Steele, who it turns out is also class of 1996 and also a former college newspaper geek. Lockhart, alas, did not try to pick me up, though our very own superstar editor John Briggs did and succeeded (and I didn't even spill my drink!)
Here's gridskipper's little post about the party. They called us "Yahoo jocks." Dunno what they're talking about. I thought that whole cool vs. uncool, nerds versus jocks thing went outta style in 1987. This means war! You know how I'm so sensitive about these things...
I pinged the URLs to Esther today, and she IM'd back:
esther: funny that gridskipper calls it a 'melee'/gang war and chris calls it a 'love fest'
Chris described the scene more accurately. I witnessed a lot more lips-to-ass contact between the Gawker and Yahoo! crews than any actual threats of personal violence. It was all about the laaaaaaahv. Sweet, sweet laaahv. And I, personally, loved it. You can read more about the party on Defamer, and look at their pics.
After Arianna's, I drove Oren, Rick, and Mali (followed in another car by Heather and Allyson) to the In-n-Out burger in Westwood for some late night cheeseburgers (with onions!). We drove with the top down and blasted Spandeau Ballet's "True" (screaming along at the top of our lungs) as we headed back to Santa Monica to the Viceroy.
posted by Jess at 2:23 PM
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