A Valleywag spy attended the second day of TechCrunch50 and then followed the crowd to a dinner, a party and an after party. He learned that blondes love Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis likes to drink, and flack turned TechCrunch blogger Calley Nye knows how to leave with a billionaire. Also, our spy reports that the startup that's getting everyone's attention at the show itself is doing it "through the use of hot and semi naked booth girls." All that and more in his bullet-point recap, below.Conference

Bless their little hearts, TechCrunch50 organizers Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington have had someone sing the national anthem to kick off each day of their startup demonstration conference. Even we here at Valleywag, who will presumably believe anything, couldn't believe this. Marxists, Objectivists and Kurt Vonnegut can all agree: drawing national boundaries and exciting nationalist sentiment through propaganda was so last century. And to have Arrington's former paramour Meghan Asha try to hit that high note in a room full of pitch-perfect math geeks, as pictured here? Deadly.

It's the echo chamber's busiest week of the year. Chris Shipley kicked off the Demo startup conference on Sunday in San Diego. Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis have amassed an army for TechCrunch20 TechCrunch40 TechCrunch50. We're curious: Which one are you going to, and why? Tell us in the comments. One prominent tech blogger told Valleywag he's splitting his time between the two shows because he doesn't want to offend either Shipley or Arrington.

After rehearsing onstage demos with fifty companies last week, TechCrunch50 conference organizer Jason Calacanis listed eight rules for giving a good demo in a message sent to his public mailing list. What's the worst thing that presenters do deliberately? If you've ever been to a conference, you'll recognize it.Many presenters believe in repeating their message three times for the audience: "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Then, tell 'em. Finally, tell 'em what you told 'em." It's a practice that comes from academia, where summaries of long, complex research papers help make them digestible. Calacanis hates that:

Jason Calacanis, the Mahalo CEO and email list administrator, and Michael Arrington, editor of TechCrunch and hero to hopeless website creators, held a meetup in Menlo Park last night for finalists in their TechCrunch50 startup beauty contest at the British Bankers Club. Our spy infiltrated the proceedings — and served Arrington a milkshake. "He didn't seem too happy about it," reports our informant. More photos from the event — including a surprise appearance from CNET TV star and former TechCrunch writer Natali Del Conte, who came after the proceedings were over for a brief tête-à-tête with Arrington.The crowd was small, our spy reports — "about 20-30 people, mostly TechCrunch50 finalists." SearchMe.com was one of the finalists — "some woman even Twittered that they got in." Arrington drives a gray Porsche, and "left with a ladyfriend, didn't get to see who." (Anyone know who he's dating? Do tell!) On to the pictures! Arrington, even as host, never could seem to crack a smile:

It's not surprising, but the number's good to know: Stats from First Republic Bank place San Francisco luxury homes at an average $3.01 million in value. It's a new high and a slight increase from last year. By contrast, high-end homes in Los Angeles are off 3.8 percent. San Diego luxury home values dropped a full 7.8 percent. Does that mean Brentwood bulldog daddy Jason Calacanis will pay lower taxes now? That guy has an angle on everything. (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

Reprinted from an email, because Jason Calacanis makes it impossible to otherwise link to.

We know that Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis likes to feed his pinup bulldogs Taurus and Fondue burgers from In-n-Out and Pinkberry froyo (to keep their coats glossy and brains brand-aware, we're assuming). Little did we know that he's also eating his own dog food. In a monstrous essay sent via telegraph email titled PR Strategies for Startups, he offers his tips on garnering free publicity by gaming the press. A lot of it is stuff you probably can't get away with unless you're already wealthy, have cute dogs, and are named Jason Calacanis.But in the section, "How to bond with a journalist," he suggests that "you can cut to the front of the line by spending just 30 minutes researching the journalist you're pitching." We're not sure what's creepier: (A) that Calacanis emailed the piece directly to me and very special contributor Paul Boutin, nagging us to post it, or (B) that his suggestions describe the duties of the minion he employs to monitor us.

Our featured commenter, Robin Wauters, has one question for you about the latest spat between Mahalo's Jason Calacanis and Rocketboom's Aaron Baron:

In this corner, Andrew Baron, cofounder of hot videoblog mess Rocketboom, challenging Mahalo founder and incumbent blowhard champeen Jason Calacanis. Baron lands the first blow, citing Mahalo's "flat" traffic. Calacanis counters with some trash talk and then a body blow to Baron's privileged upbringing. Baron complains to the ref that the "trust-fund baby" charges were below the belt. Meanwhile, Calacanis argues with the judges that Baron shouldn't get the point on the Mahalo traffic jab. After the jump, the action continues.

Shortly after we ran the item about the writer who accused Jason Calacanis of plagiarizing from his TechCrunch50 conference's main competitor, we got this email from Chris Shipley, who has run the Demo conference for years. Short version: The text from which writer Deb McAlister-Holland claims Calacanis copied exactly 1,893 words may have been in a newsletter sent out prior to 1996. McAlister-Holland claimed her piece "was on the Demo website for three years," but no one's turned up either a copy or McAlister-Holland yet. Long version: Demo's current guide to presenters, below.

Here's the short version of a long story: The TechCrunch50 conference is a relatively new event cohosted by blog entrepreneurs Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis. It presents itself as an Web 2.0 counter to Chris Shipley's firmly established Demo event, which itself was created as an antidote to previous tech shows. Both TechCrunch and Demo unveil new products and companies live onstage. Demo charges companies to participate. TechCrunch does not, and claims Demo is a "payola" scheme. Got all that? Great, now you'll understand why it's a big deal that a lady you've probably never heard of claims that 1,893 words of Calacanis's guide to pitching your company "were directly lifted" from a guide she wrote for Demo ten years ago. Deb McAlister-Holland hasn't yet produced her original article nor responded to attempts to reach her, so I'm skeptical. Chris Shipley says the article predated her 12-year stewardship of Demo, and disavows the charges. Jason Calacanis, plagiarist? Come on, that would require him to give someone else the last word.

After sitting through 200 10-minute company pitches for his upcoming TechCrunch50 event, Mahalo Chief Opinionator Jason Calacanis emailed around a 2,500-word guide to presenting a new company and/or product, aimed at novice startup founders who haven't figured out the ropes yet. Having suffered through many such presos myself, I gave Calacanis Valleywag's highest honor: an edit.

Last year, self-identified kingmakers Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis put together a conference with a gimmick: They selected 40 Web 2.0-ish startups to make their onstage debuts, and kept the list of the chosen "TechCrunch40" secret until showtime. Looking back at that list, I can't say I'm stoked to see this year's expanded roster of 50 companies. Each one will be making its public launch in a down market, on the same day as 49 other startups. So don't worry, guys, I won't be sniffing around the San Francisco Design Center Concourse trying to get the secret list this year. We'll let GigaOm have this one.

Taurus, the male half of Jason Calacanis's bulldog duo whom no one can not love, was rushed to the animal ER yesterday with a swollen leg that turned out to be from a snake bite. If you haven't been following on Twitter, an antivenom blood transfusion — see left paw above — made everything ok. (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

On July 11, Valleywag bulldog-photo provider of choice Jason Calacanis announced he had quit blogging and would only communicate through an email list. Of course, someone hooked up that list to a blog. Now the blog is gone, and an email to the tips feed says, "I got a DMCA notice this week ... Jason's gonna be a douche about something he told people to freely distribute ... The whole reason it was up was so I could read it in Google Reader rather than have it get lost in my inbox." Jason?

Flaxen-locked funtrepreneur Jason Calacanis says Google has been a content company for a while now. With Knol, the Googlers plan to become the Internet's reference library rather than just its card catalog. I used the editorial equivalent of gzip to compress Calacanis's arguments down to 1/10 size.

Opening tonight at the Village East in Manhattan is August, the Indiewood tale starring Josh Hartnett of an Internet startup's collapse on the eve of September 11th. The film is an homage to an era of excess gone sour, and we figured we'd sum up the references for those of you who were there to reminisce and for those of you who weren't to get an idea of what you missed. In this clip early in the film former John Hancock Tech Fund manager Marc Klee plays himself as an analyst discussing the fictional company in the film, LandShark, shortly after a gangbuster IPO.

The road to recovery from gambling addiction is a long one, but the first priority is admitting to yourself that you have a problem, which Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis did in his first email missive since quitting the blogosphere:

Internet person Rex Sorgatz put the pieces together-the New York story on the mean Brownstoner commenter, the Times story on commenters running the asylums, and finally last week's Time piece that was kinda-sorta in defense of anonymous nastiness. Commenters are a trend! Everyone is basically terrified of them! And this weekend, former blog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis up and quit the internet. Or, at least, he quit blogging. And started a private email list! Which is basically the definitive proof that the War is Over and the Commenters Won.