Locally, the big news was the second best blog party last Friday thrown by TechCrunch down in Menlo Park. Scott Beale was commissioned to take the photos, including the one above featuring an uneasy handshake between Valleywag's Nick Douglas (left) and his favorite whipping boy, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. Nick had been bumped off the exclusive invite list, but Michel must have relented. If he had been dis-invited, apparently crashing the party was not an......

Well, the cat's out of the bag about the new blog from Gawker Media. We've known for a while, but have been pretty good about keeping mum about it due to this SFist's work with Fleshbot. As PJ Corkery revealed Wednesday, it's going to be called Valleywag, and it's going to be helmed by the affable Nick Douglas, who's moving on from his post as editor at Blogebrity. Last night Spot-On's Chris Nolan held......