The gossip journalism scene, if that isn't too oxymoronic for you, will be changing a bit in New York. Ben Widdicombe, who writes the gossip column Gatecrasher for the Daily News, wrote his farewell column today. After 10 years as a gossip columnist, he will be packing away his pens and penchant for the dish on celebrities, socialities, and any other booze-soaked scandalite looking for 15 minutes of fame, so all of our ears may be buzzing a little less. Why the change? After a decade of going to star-studded red carpet events pounding the pavement, his writerly relationship to scandal began to shift…and he actually heard some rumors and thought to himself, "This is none of my business." Imagine that, in the era of paparazzi! No news yet on how the News will continue to compete on the gossip front with the Post's Page Six in the ongoing tabloid wars, but Ben, us media whores who love the tabs' gossip sheets will miss your crashing gates.

I remember when I first heard about this "Hannah Montana" creature, months behind everyone else it seemed. Well, Billy Cyrus' daughter Miley has become so big that she is gracing us on the cover of June's Vanity Fair, which hits stands today. And, from the looks of it, Hannah Montana is all grown up.

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[Quin Browne, blogging away]

Note from GofG: We have made quite a group of blogging friends here at GofG and, sometimes, get lucky enough to get a post out of them. Today, Quin Browne is here to share with us here experiences on moving to our great city and how "The moment I landed, I was able to announce, "ich bin ein New Yorker!", because, let's face it… you are or you aren't. It doesn't matter if you were born here or moved here … it's in you or it isn't." Which is something we can whole-heartedly agree with....

"You never know where you're going to land in life."

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Omfg, did u no r kids can't write??? Apparently new data has been released that demonstrates how Web 2.0 is further devolving our ability to communicate and destroying our culture. No, it's not because we substitute social networking sites for actual socializing, or because YouTube and blogs are ending life as we know it by sinking traditional media outlets. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found in their study that at least 64 percent of teens have used informal style while attempting to write formal school assignments—such as "LOL" style abbreviations or emoticons. (Emoticons! In a paper! Man, I wish I had tried to get away with that—sometimes nothing conveys what you mean quite like a =D ).

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Which venue has the highest quality female talent? So was the first question, of what we are led to believe will be many, in DBTH's new "polls". Maybe his readers are smarter than we thought, Rose Bar (a favorite of mine) took home the gold, (um duh) with Beatrice Inn following. I won't even start to try and guess why DBTH chose to include TenJune, Marquee and StudioB on the same list yet failed to put on 1 Oak or even Submercer...a crazy cat that one. The comments may have been the best part about this little charade of his, namely this one:

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OK, OK sure VICE, is just another hipster rag, with it's bathroom humor and all. Or so say the heads that don't get the jokes or find it's articles about which poppers work best for which sex acts or their ACID vs. SHROOM debate article a bit unsettling, but The Dos and Don't are almost urban legend now. Their clever street fashion critiques of various anonymous people makes it easier to get on the interweb in the mornings. Sure other publications like Cosmo do the same thing, but just not with the acidic charm. Check it out and check it often.

Wow. I thought that posting love song lyrics your profile and changing your relationship status were pretty public displays of dissatisfaction with a love interest. I had no idea. In today’s tech-savvy world, there really are countless ways to humiliate those you were once intimate with (ahem Julia/Jakob). Take, for example, the blogosphere. Or more specifically, my personal weblog, where an old flame publicly confronted me on the specifics of our (not-so) romantic relationship. More»

Photo via whatiworewouldbehatedbymaryrambin 

Some of us hold ourselves to impossible standards.  If I fail to curse at my fellow commuters under my breath at least six times per rush hour, then I feel like an worthless failure of a human being.  But that's why they make gelato!  For the guilt.

Then there's Molly McAleer.  She's set her sights high by creating an awkwardly-named yet rather genius ode to chroncling her Journies with Mary© in What I Wore Would Be Hated By Mary Rambin.  She's clearly come full circle in the five stages of failure, with which I am intimately acquainted (thanks, boss!): More»

[Photo via Excelsior 1968 by Robot Johnny]

Gawker actually LIKES something?! Well we just HAD to check this out. What caused the #1 authority on all things snarky to succomb to an actual SIMPLE positive approval post? Leave it to Robot Johnny who spent the time to dig out his mom's old high school yearbook from 1968 and redraw her classmates as cartoons. It is some pretty silly fun...I hope someone from my high school class decides to do a copy cat on.

I've come to rely on the internet for many things. Housing. Food. Roommates. Timewasters. Jobs. Ways to complete my Comp Lit paper without actually cracking a book. Now, my prayers and nightmares have come true: I can now go gently into that good night with the help of a dot com. Two new websites, Post Expression and Just In Case I Die, are betting that, even in the afterlife, we'll yearn for that final piece of connectedness with which to convey our messages of love while flaunting our newfound technology in the face of lesser-wired mortals. More»

Cough. Cough. Well, the good news is that soon we’ll be out of oil anyway—or tropical rainforests, I can never keep track of which first. But say goodbye to that $350 mil that was supposed to go towards bettering our public transportation. I mean, who cares if London and Milan have taken public measures to steer their city dwellers off the road and onto the subway. We’re America, dammit! We like living in our smog. I mean, without that smog I wouldn’t be able to cruise around in my boyfriend’s kickass wood paneled 1992 Chrysler Town and Country. More»

[Photo via roeblinghall]

How does one entertain an avowed misopolitan in one of the citiest of cities? Normally, when our s.o. makes his way over from Delaware, OH, we take him to Soho, the West Village, Gramercy Park. "See," we say. "New York can be pretty." He will shrug, too distracted by a minked and Birkened denizen catwalking to the beat of a coffee cup of coins to notice the nice blue door, or the window box of geraniums. So this time, we decided to venture off-island, into uncharted Burgs and Slopes.

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