New York Times Detroit bureau chief Micki Maynard pursued her love of U2 to absurd lengths.

Ultrapretentious startup consultant Chris Sacca got excited about a nude wedding.

Marie Claire features editor Lea Goldman contracted the Blueprint Cleanse flu.

VentureBeat snooper Eric Eldon listened in.

Fast Company writer Ellen McGirt made an obscure Blueprint Cleanse reference, we think.

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CNET video correspondent Natali Del Conte kicked back.

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter was an eyewitness to injustice.

Mancunian editrix Louise Bolotin sang her heart out.

VentureBeat editor Eric Eldon found a benefit to his Facebook obsession.

Fox Chicago anchordame Nancy Loo suffered for her art.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

TechPresident's Micah Sifry leaked Obama Web guru Katie Stanton's complaint about government bureaucracy.

Boing Boing adventuress continued her travels in Africa.

Jake Tapper, ABC's resident hunk of red hot newsmeat, gave an incomprehensible update about President Obama's quest for culinary knowledge.

VentureBeat blogger Eric Eldon exemplified the South By Southwest work ethic.

As did Air America radio hostess and frequent alcohol seeker Ana Marie Cox.

VentureBeat blogger Eric Eldon, who lives in the hipster San Francisco neighborhood of the Lower Haight and rides a hipster bicycle to other hipster neighborhoods and wears hipster glasses and has a hipster job and is generally in denial about being a hipster, criticized hipsters and their cowboy-boot affectations, just in time for them all to pack up their cowboy boots and fly to Austin for SXSW.

Facebook platform manager Dave Morin, who lives in the San Francisco hipster neighborhood of North Beach and is in such denial about being a hipster he doesn't even realize he should be in denial about being a hipster, packed up his cowboy boots and flew to Austin for SXSW.

Cutie-pie CBS Internet correspondent Natali Del Conte got stalked in Texas by Luke Wilson and Paul Rudd.

Chris Lehmann, better known as Mr. Wonkette Emerita, grokked a fundamental truth about Del Conte and Morin's destination. (Psst, Chris: SXSW has hotels, a complete lack of boot-ruining playa dust, and better food. But other than that, you're on to something there.)

Hipster-mongering Details editor Daniel Peres doesn't read Gawker unless told to, Columbia J-school student James Sims, who we suspect is himself a hipster, wrily noted.

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Mancunian editrix Louise Bolotin recounted her cat's lepidoptivorous habits.

Chris Nuttall of the Financial Times was so on vacation that he couldn't even type "holiday."

Geek videoblogger Veronica Belmont came up with a great new business model for Facebook.

British journalist Debbie James was grateful for fags, by which we think she meant "cigarettes."

VentureBeat editor Eric Eldon mindlessly fondled a gadget. Oh, is that what the kids are calling it?

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See the hypercompetitive pattern? Hacks have always hustled to scoop rival papers. But tech blogs are being driven to distraction by the notion that they've been beaten by a story. In the rush to publish, they're not even stopping to check their own archives.

Checking actual facts is far more cumbersome. Jordan Golson, another former Valleywagger who now blogs at the Industry Standard, made a stink about a report on TheHill.com about iPhones coming to Congress. TheHill.com's overly sensational headline topped a report that merely stated that Congress's administrative arm was testing some iPhones. Golson called the flack quoted in TheHill.com's story, who backpedaled from his earlier statement that "lots" of Congressmen had requested iPhones.

Tom Krazit of CNET News, one of the guilty parties cited by Golson for reblogging TheHill.com, got to the bottom of things: Congressional IT administrators were testing a total of 10 iPhones, and all of two Congressmen had asked about getting iPhones instead of the standard-issue BlackBerry.

This messy process shows the blogosphere at its best and its worst. Through a series of iterations, the horde of bloggers arrived at the right result. In the meantime, however, a lot of people got the wrongheaded notion that Congress is switching to the iPhone any day now. (I'd note that TheHill.com has yet to retract its initial report; it would not be the first time a flack has said something, regretted it, and then claimed he was misquoted.)

There will always be a factchecking squad on the Internet. But I think the reblogging craze will fade over time, as the Web's writers learn the deep satisfaction of telling one's own story for the first time — not repeating someone else's for the nth.

I managed to snap this one pics-or-it-didn't-happen piece of photographic evidence. It proves that good times were had by yours truly and Eric Eldon of VentureBeat. After that, I put down my now-useless, superhigh-tech, amazingly unusable Sony camera, which if I haven't mentioned it, was lent to me by my good friend Brian Lam, gadget expert. I look prettier with a lemon drop in my hand than a camera anyway. Flickr photo sluts Terry Chay and Jeremy Pepper were also there, so you can check their streams for more.

Oh, and confidential to Caroline McCarthy of News.com: You were missed. And much discussed. No, we're not telling you what was said about you. Hope you enjoyed those Mission margaritas, babe, but let me tell you, nothing's sweeter than Valen's cocktails, and nothing's more bitterly delicious than North Beach gossip.

Did I mention that Brian Lam, my good friend, was a gadget expert? And that he lent me a camera?

As I walked into the swank backyard of Marc Bodnick, the Elevation Partners managing director who is, unlike private-equity colleagues Bono and Roger McNamee, not a rock star, I was instantly handed a mango margarita and surrounded by men with mustaches. "What is this? The Edge?" I thought to myself. But it turns out that the Castro-conformist facial-hair regime wasn't the result of the gay mafia; no, it was just one of those Silicon Valley workplace motivational schemes gone horribly wrong. iLike CEO Ali Partovi abstained, but twin brother Hadi, the company's COO, joined in. He's in the upper left of the above collage, joined by various employees.

Snacky but control-freaky PR doyenne Brooke Hammerling tried to stop me from taking pictures, but I snuck away, whipped out of the camera, and went crazy documenting the iLike team's unfortunate facial hair. They even offered to supply a disposable razor and shaving cream so I could convert my goatee to the preferred look. I declined.

The party was ostensibly for iLike, but there was a big contingent of Facebookers, pumped from their second ultimate-frisbee win against Google. Founder Mark Zuckerberg showed up, and we made small talk about his sister Randi's burgeoning online video career. Then I sat down to dinner with Ron Conway, the angel investor, who affected a lack of concern about the meltdown in the markets. He did seem a bit distracted, though. Could the rumors be true that he just lost a big local deal to out-of-town venture capitalists?

Speaking of power VCs, as I was talking to Conway, VentureBeat blogger Matt Marshall pointed out semiretired Kleiner Perkins partner Vinod Khosla to Eric Eldon, one of his writers. It was a really good turnout — especially considering that Bodnick and iLike were competing with a private, but well-attended, August Capital event just down Sand HIll Road. I'd tell you more, but much of the night was off the record. Good thing, too, as I had one too many mango margaritas.