So a bunch of bloggers had a few drinks last night, or as someone on the Wall and SF Junto put it "some lame meeting of whiney bloggers at a hipster bar” when Alex and Maggie of the strangely peculiar blog, The Mayor and the Hair, came by and asked if one of them was Dean of Gavin Sucks. It was. And so, they dumped their alcohol on poor Dean, who had to spend the rest of the night wearing a wine and beer soaked shirt.

Now this would be nothing except the video of it, in a very shaky form, appeared on their web site and thus started a blog war. Alex and Maggie said it was all done to make a statement about "spleen-spewing blogs driven by pure jealousy." In response, Dean said

"the whole mess smacks of a East Coast-West Coast Hip Hop rivalry resurrected between new Death Row Blogger, ‘2Smac’ Gavin Sucks.com and the ‘Notorious P.I.G.’ Gavin Newsom."

Hmm... this was a publicity stunt? No, couldn't be.

As for us, who witnessed the whole thing (you'll see us in the background, looking confused) we would also describe it as surreal and sort of performance art-y. But also way too cold of a night to pour alcohol on somebody.

Check out our discussion for details on an a cup of salsa's epic journey, a bit on being a cheese archivist, the resurrection of our favorite word from Top Chef Season Two ("craveable"), and some insight into the challenges in writing loads and loads about television at the very popular TWOP:

Okay, Stephanie -- I don't know if it's just coincidence that I keep running into you and your works all over the place, or if you truly are ubiquitous. I'd guess that you're most well-known for your pseudonymous TV commentary at TWOP -- but help me out here: Where else can folks see your past writing?

About four years ago, I started off with my own food site, The Grub Report, to keep track of my culinary school exploits, so you can read the archives there for some really old food writing. I also have written a few things for MSNBC.com, like "Who is the Next Martha Stewart?" and wrote pieces for the Boston Globe back when I lived in Boston. I was featured in the books The Best Food Writing 2005 and Digital Dish, and most recently I authored CocktailSmarts with SmartsCo, which was a ton of fun. And a ton of thirsty research.

For some really old recaps -- going back to the very beginnings of Television Without Pity, actually, when it was known as Mighty Big TV -- you can check out my bitchy take of the horrific Jennifer Love Hewitt Party of Five spinoff, Time of Your Life, and my Star Trek stuff.

We're currently in the Mission and can't make it all the way out to Emperor territory. Somebody, quick, run to those SF Weekly boxes and see what's up!

The best part about this: in his Blogger profile, he lists his industry as "Government."

So an innocuous post of the Reader's from 2004, about George Bush's bad federal judicial nominees, somehow turned into one of the top places for people to post comments about Nevada state judge Chuck Weller. Oh, the Internet really is magic. Anyhow, when Mack shot Judge Weller, the comments page (much like Mack himself) totally took off.

Looks like law enforcement reads the Internets too -- in reading the comments, the Reno police and the FBI noticed that the Reader had two comments from a person calling himself "Mark" who posted a lot of information about Mack's finances, and accidentally referred to Mack as "I" in the body of the text. Doh! After some hand-wringing, the Reader decided to voluntarily give commenter Mark's IP address to the feds (which indicated a location in Mexico or Latin America). Shortly afterwards, Mack surrendered -- from Puerto Vallarta.

Now that Mack's been caught, our next burning question is: how like Reno 911! were the cops, Legal Reader?

Of course, you know who to thank, ultimately. The changes to the obscenity code recommend by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and recently passed into law have jurisdiction over a wide range of potential content, as the Supreme Court has defined 'community standards of decency' the ultimate standard in an obscenity hearing. While Tribe.net has a strong local user base, and naturally our standards of decency here in the Bay Area are rather tolerant, this opens up the potential for a user in the flyover states to deem content produced here obscene, since they can access it from anywhere in the world. Blogger and EFF attorney Jason Schultz explains:

What happened at Tribe is what we can expect in a world where the FBI dictates the terms of what freedom of expression means. It's disappointing that Tribe overreacted like it did and banned far more speech than necessary, but one also has to realize, in a world where you can go to jail for what you help publish on the Internet, there's a serious chilling effect from laws like 2257.

After the jump, we asked some questions of Tribe's CEO, and have the official response. We also culled some comments from Tribe users around the web on the changes, one of whom suggests that the move may be related to the pending sale of Knight-Ridder, an investor in Tribe (along with the Washington Post). If you're a Tribe user and want to check ot the new rules, refer to Tribe's updated FAQ. As Violet's stressed to us, when someone wants to attack free speech, they generally go after porn first and politics next.

Would you believe C.W. Nevius?

This doesn't really strike us as fair as Nevius no longer actually writes a sports column. Something even Deadspin acknowledges. And yeah, most of his columns are along the lines of "The Whacky Adventures of Suburban Boomer Dad" (those teenagers sure do some crazy things!) which could be construed as sucking, but neither are we the intended audience nor is there really any way to write that column without coming off dorky. Plus, as a commenter pointed out, Nevius does something most unusual for columnists today, especially sports columnists, which is actually go out and do some reporting (Nevius was on top of the most recent Pit Bull mauling and wrote some really good stuff about it).

So, in other words, we just don't know about this one. Whadda you think?