Dedicated party boy and known cat lover Alex Pareene is leaving us today to go work at a hair salon. So let's take a look back at some of his best work.

Alex has been here for a long time, so in need of some help sifting through to find the real gems, we solicited some of Alex's current and former colleagues for suggestions, and amazingly a few responded! They gave us this:

Basically everyone here and elsewhere likes what Alex does, because he's just a brilliant kid. (He is, amazingly, still young enough to be called a kid.) His writing is hysterical, his voice is unique, and his political mind is finely tuned into the idiocies and hypocrisies of our crumbling democracy. We'll have a new politics person eventually, but no one will be able to replace him. He's simply one of a kind.

Gawker's loss is the War Room's gain, starting next Wednesday. We wish him luck and many, many appletinis.