It all started innocently enough. Sugar Publishing's Rebecca Gruber was nice enough to put us on the guest list for the party, which was cosponsored by PopSugar and TechCrunch. After leaving our car with the valet we sauntered into the Vanguard, a well-known dance venue on Hollywood Boulevard, without a care in the world. The comely Bonny Pierzina accompanied your correspondent as a photographer. After running into some friends near the door, we procured sodas and set out to mingle. We stopped to admire Perry Farrell mixing hip-hop hits from the Wu Tang Clan and the Beastie Boys.

I figured I'd introduce myself to Arrington and thank him for throwing the party. That was a mistake. I shook his hand, and before I could finish saying "Hi, I'm Jackson West, the new guy at Valleywag," he huffed, rolled his eyes and walked away. Laughing it off, I suggested to Bonny she roam the crowd and get some pictures of the party goers while I circled through the rest of the venue.

But it wasn't over with Arrington. He wrangled event security, tracked down Pierzina, and told the bouncers that she wasn't supposed to be there. She was then escorted off the premises, but not before being asked where I was — presumably to be disappeared from the party as well. The hero of the night was social networking entrepreneur Nick Dynice, who suggested politely to Arrington that it was rude and tasteless to turn Pierzina out.

After a flurry of text messages, I snuck out to check on Pierzina, and found some guerilla marketers from Vimby also being asked to leave. Back inside, tasteless 1938 Media videoblogger Loren Feldman traded barbs over Valleywag's traffic (and how little of it went his way). Recent Bay Area transplant Marjorie Kase, CEO of Blogger Reps, lamented the travails of her former employer MeeVee.

The rumor started going around that Cashmore had also been ejected, which turned out to be quite true. One Hollywood agent complained that the "douchebag level" was high, even for him. Once we caught wind of the planned afterparty at the Roosevelt Hotel, we tracked down Arrington one last time to thank him for the free drinks, getting blown off again once recognized.

So there we were at the Roosevelt, enjoying some fine hamburgers at 25 Degrees and dishing with Mahalo's Sean Percival when who should sit down at a booth but Arrington. The Valleywag team thought maybe we'd buy him and his entourage a round of drinks. After explaining the situation to our sympathetic server Leah, she suggested that maybe a milkshake would be more appropriate to the evident maturity level, and we agreed.

So with a signal agreed on and the camera ready, we walked by just as the milkshake was delivered. Hope you enjoyed it, Michael — we hear they're delicious, especially the strawberry.

(Photos by Bonny Pierzina)

• Geek posers Anxious to make a good impression with geek guys, some women do what the guys do: try to prove their geek cred. They may well be smart, but dropping a nonsense reference to Ruby on Rails as a pickup line doesn't display any brains. This rush to be relevant is unseemly and unsexy no matter who's doing it. And they tend to attract their own. Pass them up with no hard feelings: They'll probably go for a liberal-arts dropout turned tech blogger.
• Geek golddiggers I thought this was a myth until I first overheard two Marina girls (pointy boots, skinny jeans, big sheer blouses) assessing a row of sagging dudes in blue shirts seated at the bar at 111 Minna. The game plan: "You talk to him, I think he's with Google?" Where once women went for geeks because their awkwardness made them easy to manipulate, now they've got the promise of being kept by them. The future geek trophy wife probably won't go back to your room with you on the first night — tease and deny is her game, and in the long run, she charges way more than a pro for it.
• Geek collectors A woman who genuinely admires tech-obsessed guys for their drive will likely not be in it for the promise of equity. She gets off on stick-to-it-iveness, not stock options — and she's most likely to be a geek herself. Aside from being outed on some blog, there's not much to fear here. The honest geek collectors won't be able to help themselves: When chatting you up, they'll inevitably let slip stories of conquests past. Don't act like the onetime prominent videoblogger guy I knew and get threatened if she tells you she's bedded your industry rivals. She's just trying to tell you she's been there before and will stay fascinated when you pillowtalk about the mean Twitters they sent. If you're lucky enough to meet a collector, when she suggests you bail early, forget that you haven't given out all your business cards and take her hand.