I’ve gone almost a full week without saying something nasty about the blogosphere, so let’s get back to speed. If the first failing of the blog world is the tendency of bloggers to fall, trance-like, into a state of circle-jerk self-absorbtion, the second failing is the temptation towards sickening self-promotion. (Hey! Next Thursday at noon I’ll be on Iowa Free Radio, 610 AM, for five minutes! Listen in! Please love me!)

Today’s exhibit A is Chris Mohney, aka the Gawkerist. A few weeks ago Mohney started a blog dedicated to poking gentle fun at Gawker Media and Nick Denton. Last week he gave us this post: Nick Denton Finally Pays Us to Stop Blogging:

about a month ago, I decided to try something stupid, which, obviously, became Gawkerist. I won’t bore you (without an advance check) about all the details that went into constructing this blog, but rest assured it was more deliberate than it may seem. . . .

Many correctly guessed that Gawkerist was a stunt to attract attention and finagle work through nontraditional channels. What I didn’t necessarily expect was that the first people to guess this (on day 2 actually) would be everyone at Gawker Media.

Fortunately for me, their acute self-knowledge was no defense against assaultive flattery by way of meticulous attention, and as a result, I’ll be lashing myself to the mast of Gridskipper next week. Drop by, won’t you. I may still post here occasionally, but now that I’ve sold out, I’ve lost all credibility that I earned through three weeks of intermittent labor as an anonymous nobody blogger with an extremely narrow focus. I’ll just have to console myself with better tequila.

Ah, the wonders of the blogosphere. All hail the New Media.

Power Line points us to this astounding back-and-forth between Paul Krugman and Daniel Okrent.

I’m a big believer in character over politics and this exchange makes Krugman look like a jerk and a bully. Key graph from Okrent:

I offered him only three examples of “shaping, slicing and selectively citing” (for some reason, he’s left one out of his rebuttal) because I was at home when he began bombarding me with outraged demands for retraction and apology; I’d completed my tenure as public editor the preceding week, and did not have any files with me. When I had the chance to consult some of my reader mail later in the week, some of his greatest mis-hits immediately came to the fore.

If you’ve spent any time in journalism you know people like this: The crazy person who calls 15 times a day and demands retraction for an “error” which is really a difference of opinion.

Krugman look more like a nutty letter-to-the-editor writer than a columnist. And not a particularly gracious colleague, either.

Remember Markos Moulitsas, the future of the Democratic party? Here he is today:

When we had the troops to fight the war, they could claim, like Andrew Sullivan did, that the troops were our servants and had to heed their orders. But we’re running out of soldiers to death, injuries, AWOLs, and horrific recruitment. Now is the time for these War Cheerleaders, these Chickenhawks, to show their mettle. Now is the chance for them to stand for something bigger than themselves and their video game fantasies. Now is the time for them to be real men. Real Americans.

Gutless bitches is right. They deserve nothing but contempt.

Keep this in mind the next time a Democratic politician stoops to pay Kos homage.

Last Saturday night I sat in the second row, center, at the Studio Theatre in Washington to see with my own eyes “Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants.” The award-winning show, which was supposed to end its run two weeks ago, was extended an extra week due to popular demand. Indeed, at the 7:30 performance, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. In addition, the theatre was a small one, so that my wife and I were at times only about six feet away from the man himself. The set design was truly fitting–what resembled a small study with old wooden bookshelves, even older-looking books, and strange bits of memorabilia (such as a white deer’s head, propped atop a barrel, with a playing card stuck between its antlers). As for Ricky Jay himself, he is quite a presence, looming, large, and wrinkled–but exuding warmth. He wore a suit jacket with sleeves rolled up, so as to show he is no amateur when it comes to sleight of hand. As for the tricks, a few highlights:

With two volunteers from the audience, Jay played several hands of blackjack and poker, explaining the aim of a con as not just beating a player but rather barely beating him. When others showed a 16 or 17, Jay would turn his cards over, revealing a 17 or 18. He easily dealt himself four aces and later, a royal flush. He also demonstrated dealing from the bottom of the deck and, most improbably, from the middle.

Jay starts the show by going up to audience members, asking them to pick a card, stick it back, and in various ways and flourishes, singles the card out. The point of this exercise, I think, was not so much to show he can easily find it, but rather in his technique, such as pushing the card or shooting it out, as if on its own.

Jay was able to find a woman’s card, which she signatured, in an unopen deck. (I know it wasn’t really in there but even staring at his hands, I could not figure out at what point he slipped it in.)

Ricky Jay is also an able card thrower. First, as far as the end of the theatre, then as a boomerang, catching it. He then throws the card into the air, and as it comes back to him, he slices it in two with a pair of scissors. Lastly he hurls the cards at … fruit! Namely, he hits a watermelon, getting a card to stick to its hard shell.

One of the things that makes this show great is Jay’s storytelling, whether it be about the Great Malini or the history of three-card monte (of which, even after marking a card so you know what it is, he turns it over and it is an entirely different suit). He is also at times self-deprecating. (There are even a few shades of the comic-book guy from the Simpsons.) When explaining how the Great Malini once made his wife appear from under a cup, he adds, “As hard as I’ve tried, I cannot even manage to get married.”

Ricky Jay is the heir to the Great Malini, a true historian of all things conjurable. I hope he has enough true followers, because one day an apprentice will have to fill his shoes. And I hope to God it isn’t David Blaine.

Lots of sports talk for Tuesday:

(1) Larry Brown: For the second time in three years, Larry Brown has been in contract talks with another team while he is supposed to be leading his current team through the playoffs. The national sports press sounds slightly outraged this morning at Brown’s duplicity, which is fitting, although I wonder where the outrage was when Brown was selling the Sixers down the river by throwing in the towel during their playoff series against Detroit–while he was almost certainly in talks with Detroit to become their next coach.

You may think of Larry Brown as a Hall of Fame coach, but I’ll always think of him as one of only two basketball coaches bad enough to lose the gold medal at the Olympics–and the first to lose with pro players. (I don’t count the stolen game against the Soviets in 1972 as a loss.) Brown is a genius, but he’s the type of guy who is ostentatiously classy–but only when it doesn’t cost him anything. And when bad times come, he’s the first out the door.

(2) Johns Hopkins: The Blue Jays won the NCAA lacrosse title yesterday for the first time in a generation. Too bad. Hopefully bad luck will return to Homewood next year. Don’t feel sorry for them–believe me, they deserve it.

(3) Danica Patrick: I know nothing about racing, but the attention lavished on her sticks in my craw a little since she didn’t win the Indy 500. The guy who did win–Dan Wheldon–looks to be on a pretty impressive hot streak. He’s the overall series points leader and Sunday’s win was his fourth victory in five races. Yet Wheldon is nearly anonymous to the casual observer and Patrick is omnipresent. That hardly seems just.

Let Patrick win something, and then we can all celebrate her. The rest of Danicamania has the distinct odor of Kournikova-ism. People who value sports should want to avoid that at all costs.

(4) French Open: Lindsay Davenport is the opposite of Danica Patrick. Nobody fawned over her when she was a young teen coming up on the tour. Nobody cared when she got her game and her body into shape and started winning Grand Slams. Nobody even really cares now that she’s making another run deep into the French Open. All Davenport does is win and embody everything that’s great about tennis. Why can’t ESPN do big, gushing profiles on her? She deserves them.

Then there’s the big question presented by this year’s open: How good is Roger Federer? He’s only 23 and he’s already won four of the majors. He looks like a dominant champion.

But in tennis champs come in two varieties. There are the unstoppable juggernauts who take over the game for years at a time (Sampras, Lendel, Borg) and then there are the transition players, who take over the game for a couple years and then fade away (Hewitt, Wilander). Which is Federer?

Orson Scott Card asks:

I mean, what kind of idiot breaks a hole in the hull of his boat during a storm, just because he doesn’t like the guy at the tiller and thinks the storm could have been avoided?

You’re welcome Andrew!

Perhaps for the first time ever, lacrosse is the main story on ESPN.com. Of course that’s only because the piece is a profile of gay Dartmouth goalie Andrew Goldstein, and it leads a package about gay athletes, but hey, whatever.

The striking thing is this mind-blowing hightlight of Goldstein stopping a shot against Syracuse and then blitzing 80 yards downfield and scoring on the Orange. In terms of pure foot-speed, it’s a pretty astonishing move by Goldstein.