Last week, Gawker received an anonymous tip attempting to stoke moral outrage within at least one of us, in hopes that we’d share it with the world. We receive quite a few tips of this nature, but the difference here was that the outrage was so obviously counterfeit, and so clearly calculated to get us to promote the object of that counterfeit outrage.

If you were released from prison after serving 17 years for murdering your friend, what would you really want to do upon experiencing freedom? Would "eating a cronut" be in the top 5,000? No? Well, you are not ex-New York club fixture Michael Alig, who literally cried while eating the pastry the other day.

An addition to today's Michael Alig profile in the New York Times: "An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a popular gay dating app. It is Grindr, not Grndr." Oh, Times, never change!

The newly free former (and future?) Club Kid Michael Alig is an object of fascination for many, despite (and in many cases because of) the fact that he murdered his friend Andre "Angel" Melendez using a hammer and Drano.

After spending over 17 years in prison for killing his temporary roommate over a drug debt, o.g. Club Kid Michael Alig is a free man. He left the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, NY, earlier today on a conditional release.

Drag queen Jane Lane is well known on the gay club scene for his outrageous clothes and oversized personality. On Sunday, he became known to the NYPD when he bit off someone's ear and was arrested. Details and photos below.

Twitter's all about self-promotion. This we know. MC Hammer knows that, too, and apparently has been quite successful at it, which explains why Gravity Summit invited him to keynote this week's social media conference at Harvard.

If you were eagerly awaiting the release of club kid (and convicted murderer) Michael Alig, it looks like you're going to have to wait a little while longer before you get a chance to take him back to the Limelight for a trip down memory lane. Although Alig was due to be released next month after a 13-year stretch behind bars, an additional four years has been tacked on to his sentence, reportedly because he came up positive during a drug test. Oh, and if you're under the age of 25 and you have no idea who it is we're talking about, you'll find the full backstory here if you're interested. [BlackBook]

♦ Sasha Petraske's Mercury Dime won't be serving alcohol (it was denied a liquor license yet again last night), although Petraske is hoping to rebound by turning Milk & Honey into a "private social club." [Eater]
♦ Cocktail king Dale DeGroff is working with Marriott to create cocktails for the hotel chain. [NYT]
♦ Philippe's new West Village offshoot, Philippe Chow Express, is now equipped with touch-screen kiosks. [NYT]
♦ Guest of Guest's map of where the cool kids hang out. [GoaG]
♦ Le Cirque has dumped its à la carte menu. [Zagat]
♦ Steve Lewis corresponds with his old pal Michael Alig. [BB]
♦ A cooking lesson courtesy of Wylie Dufresne. [GS]
♦ Laura Bush clearly has no interest in what Frank Bruni thinks. She turned up at Michael's for lunch today. [MB]

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), used to receive telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembered where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

• Morgan Stanley boots 4 employees after they accompanied clients to a strip club. Apparently this touches on Morgan Stanley's touchy gender discrimination issues, but we find it just as offensive to assume a female staffer wouldn't want to take the high rollers to Scores. [Wall Street Folly]
• After three years of delightly offensive and brilliantly entertaining pro bono work, the Black Table throws in the towel and heads to rehab. [Black Table]
• Are they Yindies? Yupsters? Or just annoying fuckwit posers? [LA Weekly & Newsweek]
• A reasonably kind rationalization of your Life & Style habit, courtesy of Salon. [Salon]
• Slightly more pleasant than chugging glasses of Airborne. [Female First]
• Supermodel Kate Moss, always the bravest girl in Bolivia, agrees to return to London to speak with authorities about that whole cocaine thing. [Telegraph]
• Happy New Year, John Norris. You're gonna need it. [MisShapes]
• We may not LURVE New York's 101 restaurants, but we certainly wouldn't rather watch an episode of 2 and a Half Men instead. That's just crazy talk. [PDHyman]
• Club kid killer Michael Alig is baaack! [WOW]
• You can jack the price of hooch up all you want; it's not going to stop a single person from getting hammered at brunch. [Reuters]
• Get more for your money at Starbucks. [Slate]
• McSweeney's grows a precious new tentacle called Wholpin, for DVDphiles. [Cool Hunting]
• Is there any limit to the fun we can have at Tara Reid's expense? [Gallery of the Absurd]