It's a very special day for all of us here at the Gawker empire. Nick Denton, titan of finance, destroyer of worlds, and master of us all, is celebrating a milestone birthday. You can imagine the scene at the office: champagne, canapés, solid gold busts of Nick's head for every guest... it's really something. Nick hired the Emerson String Quartet to provide live musical entertainment (they're playing a collection of his favorite Motorhead songs), and, in a few minutes, he's going to pick three employees, strangle them, and bury them in the backyard, just because he can. Happy Birthday, Mr. Denton! Here's wishing you another sixty wonderful years!

A blogger has noticed that Gawker Media, publisher of Valleywag, Gizmodo, and other blogs, makes its sites' traffic numbers public, as well as its advertising rate card, and done the basic math. But if you believe a revenue projection that ignores discounts off the rate card and unsold inventory, then our publisher, Nick Denton, has a bridge to sell you. Maybe even some ads, too. [Shylock Blogging]

We had no idea we were pulling down this much scratch. (Um, we imagine our business department doesn't either, in fact!) Hey, Nick Denton, when you finish your caviar omelet at Balthazar, can you stop by the office? We'd like to renegotiate our contract. [Shylock Blogging]

My musing on why it took Forbes so long to reach a deal with its own editor, Dan Lyons, to bring his Secret Diary of Steve Jobs to Forbes.com, raised a question in my mind: How do we know the outing of Fake Steve Jobs wasn't an inside job? There's one very close link: Damon Darlin, the recently appointed technology editor at the Times who edited the story, used to work at Forbes. I have the utmost respect for the reporting skills of Brad Stone, the Times reporter who broke the story, and believe he discovered Lyons on his own, the old-fashioned way, through hard work and shoe-leather reporting. But is it possible Forbes insiders, to create buzz for both Lyons's forthcoming Fake Steve book, Options, and the arrival of his blog on Forbes.com, fed the Times just enough tidbits to help Stone land the scoop — or, at the very least, decided to play along once they learned he was on the hunt?

Let me replay a scene from the heated negotiations that brought me to Valleywag. Nick Denton, Noah Robischon, and I are sitting at a table at Balthazar, Denton's home away from home in New York's Soho neighborhood. "Minions!" I shout at Denton, upending a few espresso cups as I slam the table. "I demand minions!" Denton shrinks in his chair and looks at Robischon. "We can get him minions, right?" the blog mogul whispers. "Well, maybe if we cut Sicha's male-hookers budget," says Robischon, as he whips out his programmable calculator. "Screw Choire!" I bellow. "Minions!"

It's almost — almost, but not quite — enough to make us want to stop picking on him. Jason Calacanis has gotten sick, declared Facebook bankruptcy in the face of 150 pending friend requests, and turned off comments on his blog. He even expresses envy for the invite-only comments system that Nick Denton, his archnemesis and Valleywag emeritus, whipped up for his Gawker Media blogs, Valleywag included. When Calacanis thinks Denton is doing something right, you know he's really at the end of his rope. Or maybe it's just the antibiotics talking.

Someone has spooked Fake Steve Jobs. Drifting in and out of character as Apple's CEO, Fake Steve has posted some rambling accusations on his blog about Valleywag publisher Nick Denton. I'm pretty sure FSJ is pulling another one of his over-the-top jokes, but for the record, Denton is far too cheap to shell out money to pay a private investigator to tail Fake Steve.

Jupitermedia (owners of photo provider Jupiterimages and a fleet of websites) just bought Mediabistro, a site for media professionals that includes specialized job ads, articles, and insider media news, for $23 million. Mediabistro's a small service — exceedingly small, with some 50,000 unique visitors a month I can't even remember why I made this obvious error; Mediabistro gets six million pageviews a month. — but one well known in the journalist scene. And it's apparently more familiar to those at the Gray Lady than new parent company Jupitermedia. Contrary to the New York Times report, the company hasn't owned JupiterResearch for years. A more ironic divestiture, given the purchase of Mediabistro: Having sold tech jobs board Dice.com in 2005 for $200 million, Jupitermedia is now buying its way back into the recruiting business, adding Mediabistro's media-job listings to its JustTechJobs website.

(Valleywag Emeritus Nick Denton took a break from playing with his iPhone to pen this screed. Enjoy! - Ed.)

The Wall Street Journal takes a hard look at a new dilemma in the workplace: What happens when your boss wants to be your Facebook friend? Cubicle Culture columnist Jared Sandberg relates the sorry story of one Paul Dyer, who found himself in that situation. He accepted the request, but not before removing incriminating photos from his page.

There's a new wag in town. And I'm feeling good. This sleepy little burg has a thousand secrets, and I can't wait to start telling them. But for the curious, I'll start, briefly, with the real story of how I got this job. Nick Denton has his version, of course, but I think mine's better, because it involves tormenting Denton.The short version: Much as I wangled a gig at Suck.com by being a complete pest, I got this job by bothering Denton. Nonstop. For two years. The torment, of course, mostly consisted of repeatedly turning down the job of running Valleywag — and then turning around and IMing Denton daily — no, hourly — no, minutely — to tell him how, precisely, I thought he ought to do it. My passive-aggressive campaign for the job culminated in drinks in San Francisco's Mission District a couple of months ago, when he finally confronted me:

Wow, feels kind of self-indulgent around here this week. That's probably because a) there's no news, and b) we are so completely in love with ourselves and our drama and we are endlessly fascinated with what we write about best, which is us. This post will be no exception. It's all about me. Did you know it's my "Gawker birthday?" It's true! I started here a year ago today. In the intervening twelve months I've worked with six different editors, written approximately 2,500 posts, suffered through three staff transitions, and learned more about Rupert Murdoch than I know about my own family. I developed a case of pneumonia that literally almost killed me, I've never slept more than five hours a night, and, once, Nick Denton gave me the finger. ("It means you've arrived," he explained helpfully.) A man can only take so much.

You may not know it, but press-averse Oscar winner Angelina Jolie is a huge fan of quirky literary quarterlies. While some say she developed her interest in the scene during what we assume was her brief affair with n+1's Marco Roth, it's obvious that she's not beholden to any one particular title. Clearly having heard of the financial drain recently incurred by McSweeney's, the talented thespian took to the streets of Manhattan yesterday with a copy of Dave Eggers' What Is The What? as a show of solidarity. Possibly she also agreed to exchange her lifetime subscription for a pack of playing cards. Celebrities: They're just like a couple of doofuses in Williamsburg! [Ed. Note: Yes, that is a picture of Balk's computer looking at the photo of Angelina Jolie carrying the Dave Eggers book that we were not going to pay $500 to buy. It's a nice picture though! Log into the fine website Splash News and go see!]

Our wacky boss Nick Denton hires real journalist (and former Suck-er) Owen Thomas to run Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag. (Great, now that Denton's not blogging himself, he's going to be all CEO on us again.) Meanwhile, we hear that one Valley tycoon has promised to "destroy" Denton over a threatened outing. (Yay!) Well, prepare the destructo-ray, crazy person, because you know Denton will want to retire from blogging with a bang. [GigaOm]

Last night, the three-day blogbang known as the Webby Awards climaxed with the gala celebration featuring Mr. David Bowie and Prince and hours and hours of awards (winners here if you're interested) and, more importantly, an afterparty at Hiro with DJ Jazzy Jeff. We sent Max Silvestri and our own Camera Obscura Nikola Tamindzic to capture the aprés Webby gyrations. Yo Steve Chen! Yo Chad Hurley! Lookin' good! Would Your 'Tubes like to buy a weblog?

We just received a copy of the anthology Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Love, Lust, and Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men, which is pretty much what you'd expect. We were thumbing through the contents, wondering about what its contributors might have to offer (Does Ayelet Waldman love her fag more than her kids?) when we noticed an essay by Gawker founding editor and current layabout Elizabeth Spiers! Who was the gay who showed her the way? It's someone we all know and fear here at the office.

The only reason to attend last night's premiere of the new Showtime series "The Tudors" at the W Hotel was because word on the street was that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was going to be there. Seriously, never has creepiness and beauty so closely aligned in one human being. Those eyes: pale dreadful spotlights. Those nostrils, lupine and flared. Those lips, churlishly curled and plump. But he never showed up.

With your help, we've ID'd some of the potentially worst bosses in New York. We'll be parading them in front of you daily, and when we're done, we'll all decide together who's the worst. Feel free to shout out your suggestions if any of these tales joggles a traumatized (or happy) memory!

Unintelligible, lamedropping-addicted "blahg" PXthis has an intriguing anecdote today concerning the travails of one "leigh-haber," who we wrote about when, in the wake of her promotion to head of her own imprint at Rodale, Page Six called her "the new Judith Regan." Leigh had an interesting run-in at Waverly Inn last night:

• Washington Post: "The best-run newspaper company in America because [Donald Graham] is head and shoulders the best newspaper executive in America." [NYT]