Earlier: The Last 'Cargo' Post of the Day, We Swear — But It Pertains to Bowling, and Bowling Is Good

Earlier: Gawker Reading Crash: Bonnie Fuller on the Upper West Side

When Gawker mascot Andrew Krucoff came to us and asked if he could launch a blog book tour here for his "punk rock hero," we shrugged and scratched our heads and attempted to ignore him. (But, then, that's our regular reaction to Krucoff.) Apparently this hero of Kruc's, Frank Portman, has written the MySpace generation's Catcher in the Rye, and because we're intrigued by anyone Kruc has maintained an asexual crush on since he just was a little Kruci, we thought it wouldn't hurt to grant the request. After the jump, the two talk abut the book, King Dork, their long-unrequited love, about lots of other things about rock journalism. Future Lester Bangs — or even Chuck Klostermans — of America, take note!

Nothing brings out the drunken college kids like the first vaguely warmer days of spring. (We drunken out-of-college kids drink proudly and consistently, heedless of weather.) So suddenly, here they are. And they're confusing us. To help us understand the folkways of this exotic tribe, we asked Gawker Mascot and amateur anthropologist Andrew Krucoff to don his trusty pith helmet, enlist earnest documentarian Nikola Tamindzic, and head to the remotest depths of the Central Village — the native habitat of this unusual people — to investigate. After the jump, his reports of beer pong, fake IDs, and the dreaded Look of Shame.

Because we know you're tired of embarrassing yourselves:

I'm sure the past two days were less fun for me than they were for you but all will return to normal on Monday. Jess & Jesse have promised to climb out of their spacesuits and deliver the kind of genuine media analysis and gossip that you are accustomed to receiving. Have a great new year, everyone. Even you Lizzie Grubman, regardless if I think you're the real enemy too. - Andrew Krucoff

Today will most likely witness Gawker's lowest traffic of the year so with that in mind I pledge to take it to depths unseen since...yesterday. Didn't appreciate the Paris Hilton snatch yanker pic? Don't worry, plenty more in the bottomless ocean where that came from. If any esteemed members of the media are actually reading this, perhaps David Remnick of The New Yorker, I apologize if you don't like chocolate in your peanut butter. (Sorry, that was awkward.)

Answering a phone call at 6:30am is not usually advisable; when the caller ID shows the name of a Gawker editor your best bet is to hurl the gadget like a grenade. Well, for the past month I've been tip-toeing around the Green Line in Israel and I once microwaved an egg so I'm used to things blowing up in my face.

It's been far, far too long since this familiar manifestation of naggery has appeared in the lower-right of our screen:

Gawker mascot Andrew Krucoff is now, finally, best we can tell, a man. Naturally this process included what appears to be a fifth of vodka.

He can't hold down a job and he can barely hold together his everyday life. Yet, it's somehow not at all surprising that within three weeks of arriving in Jerusalem with no previous Hebrew training or Jewish education, beloved mascot Andrew Krucoff has not only decided he's ready for a belated bar mitzvah but has also managed to find a group of people — bloggers, natch — to coordinate it and enticed pervy Dov Charney of American Apparel to sponsor it.

If we ever bothered to fight our way through the monthly perfume sampler also known as Vanity Fair, we would have discovered this earlier and mounted a more appropriate counteroffensive. As it is, it's far too late on a Friday for us to do much more than just point it out: VF tore a precious editorial page away from coverage of minor European royalty this month and instead devoted it to making fun of us. (At right. Click on it to enlarge.)

• John Huey is finally initiated as the successor to Norm Pearlstine's editorship at Time Inc. The ceremony involved branding, hazing, and some tasty swag.
• Daily News EIC Michael Cooke barely lasts 10 months before scampering back to the Windy City. At least he'll be taking a nice, new pair of shoes home with him.
• The Upper East Side's finest brats open their own under-18 Chelsea nightclub, where they won't be drinking or blowing rails.
• Fabulist Jayson Blair returns to the Times building, but naturally lies about the incident.
• Actor Chris Klein attends the Condé Nast holiday luncheon!
• We haven't sold out to the New York Times Company, but can you imagine if we did?
• Body-armor magnate David H. Brooks breaks all records for nauseating indulgence by throwing his daughter, Elizabeth, a $10 million bat mitzvah at the Rainbow Room, complete with A-list entertainment and princess costumes.
• Woody Allen graces Lincoln Center, prompting us to recall when his films were consistently good.

Krucoff poses with two IDF troops and a heretofore unknown species: a Jewish Abercrombie model.

It's nearly four days since Gawker mascot and erstwhile Conde Nastie Andrew Krucoff left the Lower East Side for the far holier precincts of Jerusalem, and we were starting to get concerned. Not only is this the longest we've gone in many months without any hectoring email or IMs from him, but, most worrisome, his youngisraelite.com had not been updated since well before he left. Such shpelkis he was giving us!

The question has been showing up here and there recently: What ever happened to Andrew Krucoff?

Well. Look at that. For all your (and our) pretensions of a transgressive, avant-garde, subcultural existence, turns out we're all burdened with quintessentially lumpen taste in our Time Person of the Year nominees.

A new Nastie reports:

Sure, Conde Nast might have successfully scared all its minions into submission with Monday's cursory dismissal of Gawker mascot and Times-certified First Amendment hero Andrew Krucoff. But is that victory turning Pyrrhic? What really matters to the mag empire is selling copies, and we hear the brouhaha is costing Si's subscriptions, especially in the coveted Anne Arundel County, Maryland, demographic:

Speaking of which: Get clicking, people. Numbers ain't looking great today, and if you don't step up we'll have to get someone else fired.