Finally. A goddamn invitation to a real party with real f**king stars. Like Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders who were nice enough to give us Peter A.'s email to RSVP. These, friends, are stars. Love them. Gossip about them. But mostly, read them.

Oh, there were more stars, but we had to bump them out of respect. Hell, we ran into our unemployed blogger hero Dan Gillmor talking to Craig Newmark tonight and were too shy to do much more than wave or say hello. Anyway, after a gorgeous sunny day (finally) in Santa Cruz taking pictures with Hank at Cheri Lovedog's tattoo parlor, we got back to the city just in time for the EFF party at 111 Minna, grabbed some delicious and spicy Henry's Hunan [Ed. Note: Recommended click-through], and then wandered over to Wired's RaveAwards, where we figured we'd be lucky if we ran into Niall Kennedy, Min Jung Kim and Anil and Alaina. And we were!

Sorry, Ana Marie, but you were upstaged tonight. Though it wasn't by VIP lounger Xeni Jardin. SFist meets none other than David Byrne after the jump.

By special request, we present Cindy Cohn and Fred von Lohmann. Cindy's the legal director of the EFF, and Fred's the Clarence Darrow of P2P file sharing. He'll be arguing the Grokster case in fron of the Supremes this March. SFist and everyone else with no cable and a passion for the new season of Deadwood (we mean, uh, non-infringing independent content) would like to wish him the very best of luck with that. Fred was the quiz master at BayFF earlier in the evening, and he and Cindy have just announced their engagement! Congratulations!

We had a picture of Jason DeFillippo, who was nice enough to attend our Muni photo protest, but we couldn't get it up for stupid JPEG reasons. So we post this one of him, even though he feels it's okay to use the first-person singular. Weird. What's that all about?

Our first 'get' of the night was one Ana Marie Wonkette, who we found in the line for the fruity drink bar -- quelle surprise! Luckily she forwarded our tip to pseudo-Wonkette who linked to SFist Mary-Lynn's scoop on Paris and Gavin (thanks for that!), so we had an entree. She was very nice to us in person, and Mr. Wonkette, Chris Lehmann, was extraordinarily gracious. When we asked if New York Mag missed Lizzie Spiers, Chris said he was "happy that she could get back to blogging." Sincerely.



The band for the night, in town for Noise Pop (and a big, fat, corporate appearance paycheck) was the Polyphonic Spree. We hadn't seen them before, and our assessment is "Blood Sweat and Tears crossed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir." Don't get mad at us, blogosphere! Indie post-pop punk folksters freak us out. Especially when they wear coordinating mumus.

The best was when we got a picture of Nicole Lee, Courtney Patubo, Min Jung Kim and Jason Schupp mugging for the camera. How San Francisco is flowers in your hair?

Finally, the pic you've all been waiting for, David Byrne caught with his beautiful lady on Fillmore and Geary. God is that guy awesome. You know he was responsible for the rebirth of Johnny Otis' son Shuggie?