The closing party for TechCrunch50 kicks off tonight, and our spy will be bringing us live updates as the evening unfolds. Hungover organizer Jason Calacanis, who got so sauced he couldn't remember what city he was in last night and showed up late this morning, was offered a bottle of Finnish vodka from a wantrepreneur, soliciting a bit of a reprimand from TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington — who also demanded that Calacanis delete his drunken postings to Twitter (Calacanis complied).

A Valleywag spy attended the second day of TechCrunch50 and then followed the crowd to a dinner, a party and an after party. He learned that blondes love Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis likes to drink, and flack turned TechCrunch blogger Calley Nye knows how to leave with a billionaire. Also, our spy reports that the startup that's getting everyone's attention at the show itself is doing it "through the use of hot and semi naked booth girls." All that and more in his bullet-point recap, below.Conference

Bless their little hearts, TechCrunch50 organizers Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington have had someone sing the national anthem to kick off each day of their startup demonstration conference. Even we here at Valleywag, who will presumably believe anything, couldn't believe this. Marxists, Objectivists and Kurt Vonnegut can all agree: drawing national boundaries and exciting nationalist sentiment through propaganda was so last century. And to have Arrington's former paramour Meghan Asha try to hit that high note in a room full of pitch-perfect math geeks, as pictured here? Deadly.

In the war of words being fought between the organizers of the DemoFall and TechCrunch50 startup conferences, AllThingsD reporter Kara Swisher unleashed quite a salvo yesterday: "Being lectured on journalism ethics by Michael Arrington is like getting parenting tips from Britney Spears." Zing! She proceeds to call out the TechCrunch50 organizers attacks on Demo for what they are — "Marketing 101." Walt Mossberg was a bit more diplomatic, offering more subtle jabs like, "It never occurred to me not to come here [Demo]." Here at Valleywag, we maintainthe highest standards of impartiality through our willingness to get kicked out of any and all such events.

This weekend's San Jose Mercury News profile of TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, so obsequiously flattering that some wondered whether the writer was auditioning for a job at the tech blog, included an inadvertent slam. Evidence of Arrington's importance: According to TechCrunch marketing VP Sarah Ross, Arrington was considered for Vanity Fair's "New Establishment" power list, but didn't make the final cut. So he's sort of famous, right? Just one problem with that theory.If Arrington was, as his flack claims, considered and discarded from the main list, why didn't he show up on Vanity Fair's "Next Establishment," a collection of up-and-coming also-rans? Startup types like Ali and Hadi Partovi, the cofounders of music widget iLike, appeared there, though they're pretty much unknown outside the Valley. In this beauty contest, Arrington didn't even get the consolation prize. (Photo by Maria Avila/San Jose Mercury News)

The TechCrunch50 is out and again the list reads like a self-parody. Shryk? Swype? There is one interesting startup on the list, however: Fotonauts. Not because we know or care to know what Fotonauts does. We're just intrigued by Fotonauts president Keith Teare's habit of saying he owns 10 percent of TechCrunch. Isn't that a refreshing bit of honesty about how a list like the TechCrunch50 gets put together?Arrington himself describes Teare as someone "who formerly cofounded Edgeio with me," leaving out Teare's relationship with TechCrunch. As we understand it, Arrington and Teare swapped 10 percent stakes in their companies. Since Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, went under, we suppose that makes Teare the better dealmaker of the two. He's also more brutally honest. On his LinkedIn profile, Teare says of himself: "I am Mike Arrington's business partner in TechCrunch. I'm the one who advised him not to do it. :-)"

It's the echo chamber's busiest week of the year. Chris Shipley kicked off the Demo startup conference on Sunday in San Diego. Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis have amassed an army for TechCrunch20 TechCrunch40 TechCrunch50. We're curious: Which one are you going to, and why? Tell us in the comments. One prominent tech blogger told Valleywag he's splitting his time between the two shows because he doesn't want to offend either Shipley or Arrington.

Jason Calacanis, the Mahalo CEO and email list administrator, and Michael Arrington, editor of TechCrunch and hero to hopeless website creators, held a meetup in Menlo Park last night for finalists in their TechCrunch50 startup beauty contest at the British Bankers Club. Our spy infiltrated the proceedings — and served Arrington a milkshake. "He didn't seem too happy about it," reports our informant. More photos from the event — including a surprise appearance from CNET TV star and former TechCrunch writer Natali Del Conte, who came after the proceedings were over for a brief tête-à-tête with Arrington.The crowd was small, our spy reports — "about 20-30 people, mostly TechCrunch50 finalists." SearchMe.com was one of the finalists — "some woman even Twittered that they got in." Arrington drives a gray Porsche, and "left with a ladyfriend, didn't get to see who." (Anyone know who he's dating? Do tell!) On to the pictures! Arrington, even as host, never could seem to crack a smile:

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has said that he wants to displace CNET as the tech industry's top news site. His redesigned home page suggests that TechCrunch won't so much defeat CNET as become CNET. Arrington has replaced the Boing Boingy full-posts-in-reverse-order blog format on TC's home page with much more of a news-site layout. There's a top story with a custom-written "deck," to use newsroom jargon, meant to get you to click through to the whole article. It's similar to the format used by most newspaper sites. Here's a demo of the click-through trick:For contrast, Web editors at Wired.com abandoned decks a year ago, replacing them with a mix of standalone headlines and excerpted blog posts. An explanation at TechCrunch says a main goal was to "reduce load times" for the home page. More effective than reducing the amount of story text, TechCrunch's home page clutter of ads and widgets has been trimmed by about 20 percent, compared to old screenshots. I'm sure clever commenters are already concocting their Valleywag-are-hypocrites posts, but here's what you don't know: We fight over stuff like this all the time. I'm a fan of the all-on-one-page format, for easy sneak-reading at work. Certain sweater-clad people here beg to differ.

Add mommyblogging to the long list of maternal entitlements. It's the old story of exploiting your childbearing for commercial gain, this time online! Ah, but even ladybloggers without kids can get a piece of the mommyblogger ad budget. According to the Washington Post, Melanie Notkin's SavvyAuntie.com had advertisers and "a well-known venture capitalist" after her from day one, interested in cashing in with her on on the "parenting site for nonparents." We're reminded of PlanetOut's fundraising days, when venture capitalists told the gay and lesbian site's founders that they should refocus the site to appeal to gays and their hip straight friends. Notkin has a point, though: If you're going to buy your best girlfriend's brood a Barack Obama onesie, shouldn't you be allowed to blog about it, add affiliate e-commerce links, and run ads on the page, too?"This was not going to be your mommy's website ... I wanted it to feel like a fashion and beauty magazine but with tremendous depth," Notkin told the Post blog. For "depth," read "Twitter," which Notkin credits with leveraging her brand or whatever nonsense phrase we're using today to excuse egolinking. SavvyAuntie was among the most oft-Twittered words on its launch day — "her marketing is genius," said TechCrunch's snackiest flack, Calley Nye, before her own post got pulled, for, we guessed, overdoing the PR-speak. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's unpublishing of Nye's post, not the brilliance of SavvyAuntie's business plan, was likely what launched it into Twitter microfame. But Notkin is a genius for spinning the snafu as an event that promoted her "visibility." Someone else's baby, someone else's blunder — it's all fodder for Notkin's marketing event. That's really savvy. (Photo by Kelly Sue)

For $149, you too can go to LiveAutographs.com and get a personalized video and autograph from William Shatner, Carmen Electra, Hulk Hogan, Ted Nugent, about half the cast of Lost, or Battlestar Galactica's Cyloneriffic Tricia Helfer. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington blew a couple of Benjamins to test the site and sure enough, here's Shatner's videotaped greeting. Drop the price to ten bucks and we've got a business model for Julia Allison.

Reporter Brad Stone jumps into the fracas between the Demo and TechCrunch 50 conference organizers, with venture capitalist and Demo founder Stewart Alsop saying of Arrington's public baiting:

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's latest barbed-arrow barrage is aimed dead-center at the foreheads of the most annoying people in our inbox: The PR professionals who hawk startups.

Here's to the screaming ones. The chair-throwers. The death-threat makers. The imperious gazers. The ones who see things differently — and will stare you down until you do, too. They're not fond of rules, especially those outlined by the human-resources department on "treating your employees with respect." And they have no respect for conversational decibel levels. You can cower before them, hide from them, quote them behind their backs, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they're so damn loud. They've worked at Google. Apple. Microsoft. AOL. They've ruled the industry — or they've failed, loudly. Below, we present you tech's 10 most tempestuous bosses — the ones who scream different. While some see them as sociopaths, Valleywag sees genius.

Michael Arrington: Doesn't discriminate — holds everyone in contempt

Last year, self-identified kingmakers Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis put together a conference with a gimmick: They selected 40 Web 2.0-ish startups to make their onstage debuts, and kept the list of the chosen "TechCrunch40" secret until showtime. Looking back at that list, I can't say I'm stoked to see this year's expanded roster of 50 companies. Each one will be making its public launch in a down market, on the same day as 49 other startups. So don't worry, guys, I won't be sniffing around the San Francisco Design Center Concourse trying to get the secret list this year. We'll let GigaOm have this one.

Vancouver-based NowPublic is ostensibly all about citizen journalism. But since Guy Kawasaki sold Truemors to it and signed up as an advisor, it's becoming better known for publishing flattering lists of "influencers," supposedly ranking them according to various social media metrics. The first "Most Public" list focused on New York, but a new list for the Valley and San Francisco is "coming soon." And by virtue of being included in the latest edition, we received an early copy as a press release. Who comes out on top? Ubiquitous attention slut Robert Scoble, naturally. Full list after the jump.

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is viciously critical of Web startups that make their users pay for their wares. But he's perfectly happy to charge party sponsors for booths. The return on investment was hard to find at TechCrunch's annual party held at August Capital's Sand Hill Road offices on Friday. The booths, in the midst of free booze, pretty people, and business cards to swap, went completely unnoticed. The party, TechCrunch's third annual event held with the VC firm, was unremarkable. But the afterparty was legendary. We got in and took photos of the whole thing.

A startup founder tells us that, over the weekend, he and his friends overheard TechCrunch writers celebrating the sale of Michael Arrington's blog to News Corp.'s Fox Interactive unit — Rupert Murdoch's home for MySpace, Rotten Tomatoes, and other wayward websites. The source tells us that the deal has been signed, but TechCrunch is waiting for its summer party at August Capital's Sand Hill Road offices to announce it. Another source who's spoken recently to Arrington says that a deal is on. But a highly placed News Corp. source says there's "no truth" to the rumor. What's behind this wave of TechCrunch sale talk?

The annual gathering of techies at Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp in Sebastopol is like Bohemian Grove but slightly less secretive. Want to know who was in and who was out? Investor Joi Ito's photos should give you an idea of who's who this year. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "Two guys, one glass" by montoya. (Photo by Joi Ito)