Sloane Crosley, author, popular publicist, self-effacing autobiographer, HBO series subject, gossip monster assembler, big ass chronicler, partygoer, and etiquette specialist has a new video interview out, and damned if she's not commenting on us and the rest of the "snarky urban jungle." Whoa, you write about somebody 27 times and all of a sudden it's like they can't stop talking about you. It's okay though—she thinks all this vicious online gossip is a net positive(!), a view that I tried to get across to Keith Gessen at his party, without success. Perhaps he will be persuaded by listening to his pal Sloane! Watch Crosley explain why she tolerates Gawker and its commenters, but Village Voice readers made her cry, below:

Why isn't George Packer's terrific little play Betrayed — about the three pro-American Iraqis who don't quite get what they need from America – not doing better? (It opened in February at the Culture Project in Soho, extended its run for a bit, but is slated to close on June 16.) Maybe because he's too good at his day job: Betrayed is based on one of Packer's lengthy Iraq dispatches for the New Yorker, and his natural audience might have simply said goodbye to all that after the original piece appeared in March 2007. But is it still "too soon" to render Iraq as anything other than journalism? Yep. For starters, the war has to be over first.

The LAT undertakes an important sociological mission today, highlighting the basic costuming differences between two very different breeds of obsessive fanperson: The Sex and the City fan and the Flight of the Conchords fan. While one group leans towards unabashed label-whoredom and pricey slingbacks, and the other towards Little Joy-friendly ironic hipsterwear and All-Stars, they manage to find some common ground in the category of animal prints—though in SATC's case, they're covering Dolce & Gabbana cocktail dresses, and in FotC's, they're literally paying homage to the the ironed-on wildlife prints adorning Bret's sweatshirts.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery—that beloved local necropolis where in one visit you can pay your respects to Don Adams and Mel Blanc, have a picnic, then catch an outdoor screening of Shampoo with a couple thousand of your closest friends—is in jeopardy, friends. Noting that the atmosphere has become significantly less relaxed for visitors in recent months, LAist did a little further digging, and learned that Brent and Tyler Cassity, the charismatic brothers from Missouri who rescued the celebrity graveyard from years of neglect, are now under investigation for suspicious business transactions involving prepaid burials at their Midwest locations. From the St. Louis Dispatch:

State Farm ran this painfully ordinary ad recently showing a happy Asian couple holding a baby, posed in front of their typical suburban home, voicing thoughts about saving money on insurance. Perfectly tedious. But Multicult Classics finds another version of the ad—same house, same car, same happy family pose—featuring a different (Filipino?) couple. They're also thinking about insurance! People have always said that all Asians look alike, but really; not even a different stroller? Below, both of the ads:

This just in—an official statement from Rob Reiner on today's history-making California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage:

Middling Queens neighborhood Jackson Heights (whoa now, Queens residents) is taking on fancy Brooklyn writer's enclave Park Slope in some provocative ads! "More Park Less Slope" they say, mystifyingly. "Queens Is The New Brooklyn." They also made themselves a neat little "JH" logo shaped as a man resembling Mr. Peanut. Break out the checkbooks, home buyers! Jackson Heights is preferable to Park Slope, based on arrogance levels alone. But the established lowest-to-highest rankings of NYC boroughs (Staten Island- Bronx- Queens- Brooklyn- Manhattan- Philadelphia) will never change. Bigger picture of the aspirational ad, after the jump.

DING-DONG! DONG-DING! The rainbow-colored smoke has emerged from the chimney atop the California Supreme Court. The Court bells, each recently adorned with a giant portrait of Dave Beckham and Posh Spice, are sounding. For it's official! Same-sex couples in our glorious, seaside state have the right to be wed! We know you have questions, so we went directly to the Defamer special correspondent on Legal Fine Print Accompanying Totally Fabulous Rulings to answer them:
Defamer: So what does this mean?

Metromix L.A. posted an angry—and justifiably so, we'd say—response to a NY Times piece from earlier in the week about the movement to save L.A.'s beloved taco trucks, currently endangered thanks to new city ordinances that would limit where they can do business. (The article begins, "Los Angeles, loath to rally cohesively around a local cause, has joined hands around tortillas," and continues to paint a portrait of an apathetic community who only manage to rally when the fate of their al pastor-access is in danger.) Decries Metromix:

Apropo of nothing save the fact that it's nearly quitting time and this is the funniest fucking thing we've seen in as long as we can remember, we offer you just a taste of the mightygodking.com blog's treasure trove of Atari 2600 cartridges, "discovered at a garage over the weekend." Who knows why we were squandering our youths on War and Night Driver, when we could have been delighting to the high-flying exploits of Gay French Mario Bros.? (And as an aside—we just noticed the striking symmetry between these covers and those of that other formative interactive entertainment of our youth, Choose Your Own Adventure books.)

Discussion: break dancing—cool, embarrassing, or some mixture thereof? A new film called "Planet B-Boy," opening tonight in New York, takes a look at break dancing across the globe—the type of thing that could spark a revived cultural moment for the niche urban phenomenon, like "Spellbound" did for spelling bees. The Times gives it a fairly positive review; the New York Sun kind of pans it, but what do they know about B-boys? I always considered them to be fun to watch, but not something I would ever personally become. Will we soon see nouveau break dancing battles across Soho and Williamsburg as the form gains a brief, ironic throwback popularity? Or will it remain consigned to circles in Union Square and Rock Steady anniversary parties? After the jump, the movie's trailer, and a clip from LOZ—the best b-boy crew that I ever saw up close—in action. DC stand up!

Alarming reports in the national media today are painting a picture of an America in which men pursue nontraditional sports. Such a development could spell doom for football, baseball, and basketball, the three real sports that this great nation has produced which define manhood for millions of terrified young adolescent males who would really rather be playing Wii or listening to music or doing something artistic, but are instead forced to prove their mettle by getting seriously injured by their larger peers. This is how it has always been. But now, American males are being seduced by the twin threats of gymnastics and synchronized swimming. We have video evidence, and the chilling cautionary tales, below.

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal for profiling an atypical celebrity of sorts this morning: John Wesley Jermyn, better known as "The Crazy Robertson" or "The Robertson Dancer" to locals. Jermyn, onetime draft choice for the Kansas City Royals and a fixture for years on the southern tip of the celebrity-drizzled slice of Robertson, has over the course of two decades made a name for himself by doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else: dancing on rollerblades in riotous sheer spandex outfits.

Hugh Grant bought an Andy Warhol painting of Liz Taylor in 2001 for $3.6 million, which sold at Christie's auction yesterday for $21 million—less than the $25 million it was valued at, but still a tidy profit of over $17 million. Those sums were dwarfed, however, by Lot 66401: Suri's First Poop, which took in a staggering $147 million from a private collector in Southeast Asia. [timesonline]

This weekend prior a team of seasoned workers ascended a wooden ladder into the stuffy, cramped Attic at The Grove™, deftly maneuvered around a few dozen leftover boxes from Forever XXI (How did those get up here?), navigated the gloom to a particularly dusty, cobweb-laden corner and eventually returned - multiple times - with some hundred-dozen of boxes of Christmas decorations in their arms. Yon decorations are an essential part of what has become the single greatest commercialized Baby Jesus experience afforded Los Angeles shoppers in the last decade, if not century: CHRISTMAS AT THE GROVE! After the jump, read General Manager Jackie Levy's friendly missive on the preparation of the Vegas-sized spectacle, then sing along to a photo gallery of the stunning Yuletide transformation that will eventually result in the mall fountain's dancing waters being replaced by streams of liquid gold, frankincense, and myrrh ejaculated skyward in perfect time to "O Little Town Of Bethlehem":

We trust by now you've fully recovered from your Wednesday night Halloween activities—or, in certain cases, have yet to come down from what has quickly evolved into a three-day bender, your keys, wallet, and memory long gone and the last remaining threads of your Zombie Britney costume the only things covering your essential regions as you pound the hard streets in search of another hit of stale candy corn. Whatever the case, we think you'll thoroughly enjoy this music video of the WeHo Carnaval, compiled by crack Defamer videologist Molly McAleer.

The other day we went to American Ballet Theater at City Center. Jorma Elo's "C. to C.," set to Philip Glass's A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close, premiered on October 27th and is probs the best dance piece we've seen in years. Principal Marcelo Gomes (pictured!), so masculine yet sensitive! Julie Kent, such a cougar! Misty Copeland, vastly underrated soloist who should have been made a principal a long time ago.

The Best Week Ever blog has pulled the above clip from Sunset Tan, E!'s latest documentary-style celebration of all that is glorious about life in our somewhat image-conscious city. Be appalled if you must that a doting mom would drop $1300 on having her daughter irradiated and spray-tanned to a hue favored by Lindsay Lohan; we, however, are disgusted only that the parent didn't march her neglected child over to Dr. 90210's office for an on-camera consultation for the pre-teen breast augmentation that's wildly popular in fifth-grade classrooms this year, or, at the very least, a quick Restylane treatment to preemptively paralyze the various facial muscles that will soon rob her of her youthful good looks.

As if the L.A. dog population isn't already just a bunch of pampered assholes who crap wherever they like and expect the rest of the world to trail behind them and clean up their gilded messes with an attentive, gloved hand, the new PetsCell mobile phone promises to elevate them to another level of privileged insufferability. Soon, dog parks all over town will be filled with the abrasive chatter of cockapoos bragging to their pals out for a jog at Runyon Canyon about the shar-peis* they mounted last night at the Chateau Marmutt, coarsening an already obnoxious local canine culture.

Our nightmarish vision of a post-agency-relocation Century City mall food court clotted with lunching, nattily attired drones left with no recourse by the dearth of local culinary options but a hastily devoured Fuddruckers baby-burger, it seems, has fully come to pass: Today's LAT looks at the turf war raging between new CC residents CAA and ICM, who have quickly made their presence felt on their neighborhood's lunchtime scene: