As discussed, the thing we all like least about our jobs here is the frequency and persistence with which Star Editor-at-Large Julia Allison instant messages us. Today, she dropped a bomb on us.

We bitch and moan about the stresses of this job a lot—mediocre pay (not Observer-bad, but still!), little sleep, getting slapped around by a hot and crabby gay—but perhaps the most frightening aspect of working at Gawker occurs in those random moments when Star Editor-at-Large Julia Allison pops up on the IM to drop some knowledge. So, fine, we're spreading the agony around.

Or, at least, how to sound like a local idiot! As we prepare for this weekend's journey to the Hamptons, the life lessons are already piling up. First of all—did not know this!—one doesn't go "up to the Hamptons," one goes "out to" them. This is, you see, because of their geographic location! Still, whatever, you don't actually wait on a line (or even in one). And Moses didn't actually go south to the Pharoah's land— scholars agree he probably went north-northwest. Anyhoo, we still wanted some advice. We sat down with a regular Hampton-goer, who requested anonymity. We'll call him the Noam Chomsky of Amagansett.

Sad news from Portfolio. The September issue reveals the world's worst kept secret: George Steinbrenner is unwell. The Post, writing about the piece today, describes a tragic moment from Franz Lidz' article:

Hoping to maintain some sway with both the young and those Upper East Side parents desirous to understand their children's IM conversations (that they're surreptitiously recording), Sunday Styles this weekend featured a guide to emoticons, those signifiers of emotional life expressed with punctuation marks that are so popular with the kids. How very dotcom and youthy! Our reactions started with I:-/ then a little %-( but finally ended up :I. Emily, on the other hand, was more like :) so we ('') (chatted).

Rhymes With Cory: So remember last week when you were all, "Oh no, Emily's going to be gone all week, we're never gonna have enough material?"
BALK BTW: As if it were Friday.
Rhymes With Cory: And I was like, "Nah, we'll be fine." And you said, "We're going to be begging My Cock for posts." And I told you it would never happen?
BALK BTW: Uh huh.
Rhymes With Cory: Is Your Cock awake? Because we have a huge hole.
BALK BTW: Funny enough, we were just IMing. Are we really that desperate?
Rhymes With Cory: I would take a post from Your Balls at this point.
BALK BTW: Okay, lemme see if he's up for it.

You've heard about that Obama girl video, right? Everyone's talking about it. But is it harmless fun or an insult to womanhood's long struggle to be considered equal to men? It's an issue driving a wedge between even the closest of friends—for instance, Huffington Post media critic Rachel Sklar and Star editor-at-large Julia Allison. We've obtained a transcript of a recent (private) clash they had on the subject, and we make it public here because, well, it's very important. Whose side are you on? The answer might surprise you!

If you can't stomach reading through another Cary Tennis Salon advice column—and who can, they're ridiculous—we'll summarize today's. A gay writes a long-ass letter (all of Cary's correspondents write long-ass letters; the dude's audience appears to be comprised entirely of damaged hypergraphics) about a male co-worker who registers high on the gaydar but claims to be straight. BUT. He has told the gay that the gay has pretty eyes. What does it all mean? Should the gay see if the "straight" is actually bendy? Cary answers with some bizarre rambling advice that includes an imagined dialogue between "Gaydar Tower" and "tall dark handsome object," which makes us want to kill ourselves and doesn't really answer the question. So we checked in with our own (unsuspecting!) resident agony aunt.

Manscaping: According to Simon Doonan, it's an epidemic amongst our city's movers and shakers. The depilatory procedure, "known among practitioners as 'back, sack and crack,' ...concerns male hetero hair removal. Yes, below the waist. Eeeeeuw!" Our feelings exactly, compounded with fear: Do we really have to go out and get our short-and-curlies tweezed away? Because, seriously, you could make wigs for every resident of Staten Island and have plenty left over for blankets and handkerchiefs. To get to the bottom (haha, get it?) of this whole sordid business, we checked in with the ladies of Jezebel.

You may not know it, but press-averse Oscar winner Angelina Jolie is a huge fan of quirky literary quarterlies. While some say she developed her interest in the scene during what we assume was her brief affair with n+1's Marco Roth, it's obvious that she's not beholden to any one particular title. Clearly having heard of the financial drain recently incurred by McSweeney's, the talented thespian took to the streets of Manhattan yesterday with a copy of Dave Eggers' What Is The What? as a show of solidarity. Possibly she also agreed to exchange her lifetime subscription for a pack of playing cards. Celebrities: They're just like a couple of doofuses in Williamsburg! [Ed. Note: Yes, that is a picture of Balk's computer looking at the photo of Angelina Jolie carrying the Dave Eggers book that we were not going to pay $500 to buy. It's a nice picture though! Log into the fine website Splash News and go see!]

So last night "The Sopranos" - the greatest television show EVER, etc. - drew down the curtain. Balk and Choire rose at an ungodly hour to sort out the whole thing. If you're the sort of person who has not yet seen the episode and doesn't want it ruined, call in sick to work and watch it now. Then come back here and read this conversation which, it goes without saying, has more spoilers in it than [certain character who got shot last night] has holes in him. Enjoy and chime in.

Claire Messud's contemporary classic about class and family and creativity and pretension in New York City in the significance-laden summer of 2001 comes out soon in paperback! To celebrate, Emily and Doree had a long conversation about who would play what roles in their fantasy version of the movie. Casting directors should feel free to send them bouquets and thank-you notes. Also, this is much more entertaining than Balk's "ha ha, ladies have blood come out from between their legs" thing that he did that one time.

I was just reading the new memo from the LA Times publisher—Jim Romenesko summed it up pretty well by quoting "The old model is broken" and leaving it at that—when I realized it was the last day of the month! Oh no! Our May traffic goals! Is our little website going to make it? And who among us would help us set a new record traffic month, thereby letting us keep our jobs without shame or emotional torture?

Last night at the New York Public Library, amusingly Chuck Noblet-esque writer-gay Henry Alford quizzed New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead about her new book One Perfect Day. Henry wore a powder blue tuxedo, but in keeping with the theme of wedding-industry excess that the book decries, he had a different outfit for the reception afterwards. Kurt Andersen and David Remnick were there. So were Emily and Doree.

Hopefully you're enjoying the fantastic new redesign here at Gawker. We're aware that there are still a few unresolved issues, but rest assured that our tech team is working diligently to address them. On the less diligent side, nobody is doing shit about our fucking servers, which hinders our ability to post in anything approximating a timely schedule. You might have noticed the tons of clips today? They are all we can get out! If you are actually reading this post it's some kind of bloggy Christmas miracle. Anyway, there are a couple of things we do during the twenty to thirty minutes (that is not at all an approximation) we spend waiting for a new window to open: Doree goes for a manicure. Emily pickets funerals. Stein does some sort of complicated ballet routine around the office. Balk and Choire engage in conversations like the one that follows on a daily basis.

Yesterday, a Massachusetts court upheld a $2-million defamation award against the Boston Herald and some of its reporters, including David Wedge. Because we don't know anything about anything, we called in David Lat, the fine (yet deliciously shallow!) legal mind behind Above the Law, to tell us what this means for newspapers and bloggers who don't like getting sued—and what it means for those who do so enjoy suing.

Lower East Side bloggerbar Lolita had a decidedly high school-ish vibe last night—a generation of ladies whose lives were so changed by Sassy magazine that they grew up to work in the media gathered there to fete the publication of Marisa Meltzer and Kara Jesella's book about that seminal teen mag. Doree and Emily were there. So was Atoosa Rubenstein.

Last night was Prom Night for Manhattan's Young Adult authors! This prom wasn't like high school prom, though. It was held on the Lower East Side, no one arrived in a limo, and you could openly purchase and drink alcohol. Also, everyone there was pretty much a grown-up. The party was a benefit for Advocates for Youth, a group that works to protect young people's right to sexual education. It also celebrated the publication of 21 Proms, a collection of young adult short stories, sales of which will also benefit the charity. Oddly enough, Deadspin editor Will Leitch and Gawker co-editor Emily Gould both found themselves at this event. What follows is their ill-advised morning-after postmortem. Will anyone sit with them in the cafeteria ever again?

How's Mara Altman faring under the new regime at the Voice? Altman, student and prot g of deposed Voice editor David Blum, has somehow survived thus far in the Tony Ortega era. We've taken issue with some of her work in the past, but maybe she's grown and changed under the tutelage of more stable hands. What kind of stuff is she turning out now?