♦ You weren't the only one who stayed up to watch election results. Brad Pitt and Oprah watched the festivities from Grant Park in Chicago. Harvey Weinstein had a party at Public House attended by James Franco, Josh Lucas and Jessica Alba. Robin Williams and Billy Crystal watched Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert live. And in LA, Courteney Cox and David Arquette hosted an Obama victory party attended by Jennifer Aniston, John Mayer and Sacha Baron Cohen, among others. [R&M, E!]
♦ Star is standing by its Jennifer Aniston pregnancy story. The mag claims she's undergoing fertility treatments so she can get pregnant by her 40th birthday in February. [Star]
♦ Are Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes planning to have another baby? [OK!]

♦ Stock futures were down on Wednesday morning as investors focused on the challenges facing President-elect Obama. Yesterday's gain, however, was the largest Election Day rally in 24 years. [Reuters, NYT]
♦ The former chief risk officer at Bear Stearns is now a senior official at the Fed where he's part of the division that supervises U.S. banks. [DB]
♦ US companies cut 157,000 jobs in October. [Bloomberg]

For screenshots from major websites, see here and here. [via kottke]

"They went to the Coliseum, to be exact, a watering hole conveniently located across the street from CNN’s office at the Time Warner Center in midtown Manhattan." [TV Decoder]

What did one of the most despised outgoing presidents in history say to his replacement, who had just been smothered in superlatives and the warmth of a nation? George W. Bush said election night was "awesome," referred oddly to Barack Obama's "good bride" and invited the president elect to what will probably be one of the most awkward dinners in White House history. "Amazing you got so dang far on that 'change' platform, hopey," we imagine the president saying, before reaching for another pull on his non-alcoholic beer. At least the president promised a "smooth transition." Click the video icon for MSNBC's summary of the call.

So apparently Obama rented an actual orchestra for his big victory speech? That sure added to the cinematic drama at Grant Park. And for those die-hard McCain supporters not softened up by Obama's dramatic speech, the president elect deviously called to the stage his impossibly cute, scene-stealing daughters, and then his VP Joe Biden walked his 90-year-old mom to the edge of the stage as if to say, "look, ma, I'm vice president!" This is clearly a White House that's going to play shameless hardball with the opposition. (Video after the jump.) One minor nit:

Spontaneous street parties are forming in the wake of Barack Obama's election to the presidency, and we've been getting emails about it. After the jump, shots taken in the streets of San Francisco, DC, Philly, New Orleans, Chicago and Baltimore and various parts of New York — and even in Freeport, Sierra Leone. Send us shots of your own and we'll add them to the galleries, or feel free to post in the comments. In the meantime, try not to get too drunk or start throwing anything or pushing anyone. (We're hopeful you won't, hopeys.)

Barack Obama's ascent to the presidency tonight was a perfect moment of cinema: A graceful conciliation by his opponent, dramatic music at Grant Park in Chicago, a moving speech and a picture-perfect finish surrounded by family and his vice president. Also: Crying. Not only by the Democrats in attendance but, from what we can tell, even among some Republians. "I was crying and I despise the Dems," one tipster admitted to us. MSNBC cut to a gently weeping Oprah Winfrey as Obama reached the "Yes, We Can" crescendo of his spech; some other criers follow below. Good luck not choking up again.

Barack Obama just wrapped up his victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park. His kids are getting a new puppy! The gays and the straights, disabled and non-disabled alike were thanked. But what about the Internet which elected him? Nothing. Just like I predicted, he took our money and ran. All the way to the White House. What was that you said about "net neutrality"? I'm betting that's one of those things Obama said couldn't get done in one term. (Screenshot via Ustream.tv)

Yes, Barack Obama promised his children a new puppy. The president elect also thanked his supporters and praised opponent John McCain as someone who has "endured sacrifices for America most of us could not begin to imagine." But he also seized upon his historic moment to highlight the changes that have swept America over more than two centuries, and to call, in a moment that recalled both the pageantry and message of John F. Kennedy before him, for a spirit of unified sacrifice in the populace.

Throughout this election, self-interested vendors of neophilia have touted tech's ability to transform old-school politics. In reality, it has put a new facade on an old building: touchscreen vote analyses and Twitter quotations are just new ways of presenting exit polls and man-on-the-street interviews Barack Obama's heralded social-networking tools? Merely an update of the ward-boss operations of old. CNN's "virtual Capitol" on election night was the ludicrous culmination of this trend. When Wolf Blitzer thanked a holographic correspondent — "Jessica, you're a terrific hologram, thank you so much" — I realized that tech is not transforming the political process; it is debasing it.

Forget hacking voting machines; our media brethren are, at this moment, most concerned with gaming Digg to get out the vote for their stories about Barack Obama's apparent victory in the electoral college. (Our sister site Gawker was late to the game; its headline submission for "Obama Wins!" was seventh in line, judging by the URL.) Taking the lead: "Digg This If You Voted for Obama!" with more than 20,000 votes. It points to a CNN.com story. New media serves merely to confirm the victory of old media.

John McCain conceded the 2008 election before a crowd of supporters that sometimes interrupted him with their disappointed shouts. But the Republican presidential nominee offered a genuinely conciliatory speech, emphasizing the historic nature of Obama's win and pledging to work together with the president elect.

Click to viewBig Think, an online-video site backed in part by Facebook investor Peter Thiel, asked Republican candidate John McCain what it would mean if he lost. Here's what he said.

When I was little, I used to whittle crayons into the shapes of the heads of various Presidential candidates during election time. Why? Nobody knows. But it's that childlike and irrationally exuberant enthusiasm I'd like to muster right now. Think of election night as a sort of prom for the nation—for one night, the jocks and the preps and the princesses and the thugs can put aside their petty rivalries, cynicism, and class boundaries, and slow-dance with Obama. It's one of those bittersweet nights where you really believe that, you know, anything can happen.It's been a long time without a whole lotta change, especially if you're young. Long enough to make you think that you don't care, and it doesn't matter. But after eight dark years of Bush—plus eight years of Clintonian disappointment before that, and four years of the current President's dad before that—what do we have to lose in being hopeful about a president who appears to be unlike any other we've seen in our lifetime? Would it kill us to imagine a place where we don't have to wait six hours in the emergency room and be presented with a $3,000 bill because we don't have health insurance? Does it make sense to feel embarrassed every time you venture abroad? Is it not totally crazy to imagine that a clerk working 40 hours a week at CVS might be able to take home more than $286? Must balancing your—or America's—checkbook really involve criminal survival economics and voodoo math? Is it completely fucking insane to envision a nation that doesn't invade other countries for a fabricated wild-goose nuclear weapons chase, oil, or fun? No. No it is not. Are you so mad as hell that you're not going to take it anymore? It's OK. Are you bored and disillusioned and tired of politics? Understandable. But something's happening, although what isn't exactly clear. Forgive us for getting caught up in the moment, but it feels like something's moving. Obama will be the first to tell you that he ain't no Jesus, black or otherwise. But tonight, we say without snark: we feel hopeful.

CNN, ABC, NBC, and Fox have called the presidential election for Barack Obama. Amazingly, Twitter is still online. Current is still broadcasting vibrating states.

In the first election of the 21st century decided by the end of Election Day, Democratic Senator Barack Obama was elected President, beating Republican Senator John McCain. Obama, 47, is the United States of America's first black president. Despite his race, despite his being a liberal Midwestern Senator running with an east coast Democratic Senator, despite running against an incredibly well-respected and admired Republican with great independent voter appeal (at least back in the day), Obama took it decisively. It was a good year for Democrats, what with the economy melting down and the last dying breaths of the miserable presidency of universally despised Republican president George W. Bush, but it did look, for minute, like it might be another close one. If, for example, Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination, as it was predicted she would last year, we probably would've seen a repeat of the "50+1" strategy of fighting the election only in two or three "swing states" (Kerry states + Ohio = victory!), and probably another 49/48 popular vote split. But Obama fought in "red states" like Indiana and much of the mountainous southwest. The map expanded, and stupid Ohio and Florida were justifiably stripped of a great deal of their terrible importance. Obama finally won with more than 50 percent of the popular vote, the first time a Democrat managed that feat in a generation. Obama ended up a much stronger candidate than even his early partisans could've predicted, with a calm, intelligent, cool demeanor. That demeanor got him labeled a stuffy egghead early on, especially when contrasted with Hillary Clinton's newfound fiery populism, but in a time of great upheaval, "appearing presidential" suddenly looked good. And he looked presidential in three debates, while his opponent, John McCain, sputtered and shouted and, in Joe Biden's memorable words, "lurched" around the stage of the town hall. Thing got completely fucking crazy in the last days, as the Republican dead-enders began trying, surprisingly without efficacy, to appeal to the basest instincts of the electorate, painting Obama as a Marxist Socialist (and quietly encouraging people to think he was a DANGEROUS MUSLIM TERRORIST), but every time voters saw the candidate he looked like a rational, moderate, smart family guy. It was a half-hearted use of identity politics by a Republican who always hated the rabble of the Religious Right but it did intensify to uncomfortable levels in the end. The high point, weirdly, was a crazy young white woman in Pittsburgh filing a false complaint to the police claiming she was mugged and robbed by a huge black man who carved a B in her face. The self-inflicted B was, of course, carved backwards, and soon she was off for mental health treatment. It was a nice little microcosm of the state of the race nationally—the race-baiting didn't work! He inherits a nation utterly fucked to it's core by the venal incompetents of the Bush years, and lord knows it's idiotic to invest all your hopes in one guy egomaniacal enough to want to be president at all, but we have secret hopes in our tiny heart that he'll be a decent success. And, of course, we all get fucking unicorns. Seriously. Check your mail next January. Unicorns and cocaine for all! Image: (c) Jana Kohl and Robert Sebree, www.ararebreedoflove.com, used with permission from (c) holder.

NBC and Fox News make their calls: Barack Obama is your 44th President of the United State of America.

Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's, 9 p.m.: the ancient Ukrainian bartender makes my change and hands it back to the guy sitting next to me. Breaking: Obama won Ohio! There are eight of us in the bar, and a shorn and bespectacled young man shouts, "He won Ohio!" to the peanut gallery sitting in the back. Scattered applause.Now it's 115 McCain, 195 Obama. "I'm so impressed. Finally, we're doing something right," says a shaggy dude in a denim shirt. "But do you think he'll take Long Island?" an earnest Asian boy asks. "God, just say something," someone else moans at the TV punditry. "'So, Bob, what did you have for lunch?'" he mocks. "I wish we had a—what do you call that thing that shows the hot girls taking off their panties—oh, a webcam of Rush Limbaugh, right at the moment where Obama wins. I just want to see his eyes pop out of his head," says the outspoken shaggy dude. Now we're at Blarney Cove, 10 p.m.: the "mid-day gentleman's bar" in the twilight zone on 14th between A and B is usually more crowded at ten in the morning. No matter: "Who do you think'll win?" I ask the oldster next to me. He smiles: his reply is a long one, and utterly incomprehensible. He removes himself to wrangle with the jukebox; "Teacher's Pet" comes over the speakers. "This country does not deserve Obama. America is the Zombie Bride!" exlaims a young man in a grey suit and homberg. "America is the Zombie Bride!" he shouts. "It's a metaphor."

Want to watch North Carolina gyrate to a hip-hop beat? Tune into Current, Al Gore's user-generated cable channel. I don't mean people dancing in the streets; I mean an outline of North Carolina pulsating. The channel is carrying, on live TV, headlines you could read on Digg and messages you could read on Twitter, along with video snippets from current viewers. Other than that, it's offering the same kind of exit-poll projections you could get on CNN, but in hot pink and cyan instead of the traditional red-blue-gold color scheme. Digg founder Kevin Rose pops up occasionally with live updates from a San Francisco night club where Current, Digg, and Twitter are hosting an election-night party. It's Web 2.0 in your living room — and it makes me wish I could Brillo-pad the "vision" out of "television."