Those of us who are not actually threatened by the size of Dana Vachon's advance, who feel that he's the best pure writer to have emerged from the blogosphere, and who know him personally and find his affable Westchester goofiness adorable, have had a hard run of it lately. All the press about the Mergers & Acquisitions author makes him seem like such a douchebag. It would be kind of a miracle if it didn't: the Times "A Night Out With" feature and any appearance in New York magazine pretty much instantly confer douchebag status.

Debut novelist Dana Vachon is all over the news of late, with a mention of his new book in today's roundup of Wall Street-themed titles in the Times Biz section, that New York mag bit about how he knows that the people who will buy his book will do so because it's trendy ("I know my audience. They don't read a book a week. My audience is people who are going to go out and buy this book because they've heard they have to read it") and of course, yesterday's A Night Out With column, which found Vachon recreating a scene from his novel at Le Bilboquet with the people who his characters are based on.

• There's a lot of backbiting and infighting at the Los Angeles Times, which is completely unusual behavior at a major newspaper. [NYT]
  

• Ex-Rocketboomer Amanda Congdon's got a new job—as a shill for DuPont. [AdAge]
  

Someone sent us this picture of what they describe as a "wild bird" outside the Conde Nast building this morning, which is apparently freaking people out as much or more than the homeless woman who was peeing in the lobby of 4 Times Square on Friday. The bird will be served in the cafeteria around noon. Anna Wintour's gonna put a napkin over her head and eat it ortolan-style. And now, the news.

Wow, so some messed up stuff happened with the Dow yesterday, huh? A 416 point plunge! Drudge whipped out the siren and everything! And we all know what the Dow's decline means, right? Actually, wait a second, no we don't! We are pig ignorant when it comes to stocks and stuff. We are, in fact, as financially savvy as the New York Post seems to think its readers are ("Don't worry, play Scratch N' Win!"). Fortunately, we know people who do understand these things and are willing to explain them to us. We spoke to Dana Vachon, former J.P. Morgan Investment Banking Analyst and author of the forthcoming Mergers and Acquisitions (pre-order today!).

So we finally read Radar's sixth issue—or Volume 3, Issue 1, depending on how you're scoring—over the weekend, and, well, we kind of liked it. Okay, sure, the cover is absolutely ridiculous. Colin Farrell? In 2007? Was Kevin Costner unavailable for Photoshopping? And the accompanying story itself was completely predictable and would not have been out of place in a number of other magazines (lets say, for example, Spy). The rest of the book? Pretty goddamn good, actually.

Remember Dana Vachon? The blogger who parlayed a bunch of posts about lust and drinking into a book deal which immediately made him the envy of those of us who are still writing on spec for Manhattan Resident? Well, it turns out that rather than spend the summer masturbating (or just masturbating), he finished his first novel. What's it about?