Can you imagine, kids in their twenties having a good time? This must end! Didn't they get Sequoia's memo? Morin, Facebook's official speaker-to-geeks, turned 28 and rented a downtown art gallery Tuesday night to celebrate. After I tracked down Morin, I gave him a salami I'd picked up at VC firm Alsop Louie's party earlier that night. (It was a heartfelt regifting.) Besides Morin, I identified several other members of Camp Cyprus:

• Brittany Bohnet, Morin's steady Googler girlfriend and the other half of the Internet's cutest couple
• "Professor" Meagan Marks, known on Valleywag for her ancient-history stint as a recruiter (she's now working as a program manager)
• Joe Green, famous for his Causes application, infamous for his squarecut swim trunks
• Jessica Bigarel, a graphic designer at Apple
• Scott Marlette, the coder behind Facebook Photos

With Morin, that's almost a third of Camp Cyprus. (Sadly, Wall Street Journal Jessica Vascellaro wasn't there.) You'd think they'd be enough to bring down the Internet, but no.

I caught a brief glimpse of soon-to-depart Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz, but didn't get to say hello — he left early, which just confirms his reputation as being not much of a party animal.

Things got a tad more surreal when MC Hammer showed up. When I left the party, the former rap star was chatting up angel investor Ron Conway, who has, yes, invested in the Hammer's inevitable startup.

Digg's Matt Van Horn plots with Keith Rabois, Slide's evil-genius mastermind.

Ron Conway invests in a glass of wine.

Working for Comcast sounds pretty good to Plaxo's Joseph Smarr and John McCrea right now.

Really. MC Hammer was there. At Dave Morin's birthday party.

Her favorite quotes:

Jesse: I feel bad for all the homeless people
Katharine: I know, they should all go to shelters
Jesse: But I think these are the homeless people who refuse to go to the shelters.
Katharine: Well then why don't we use them for genetic testing!

A longer trailer for her new show:

An interview about her show:

Her prior claim to fame, appearing on Nickelodeon's "The Naked Brothers Band" as Jesse Cook:

Jesse also does comedy. Sort of.

Hornbaker attributed his actions to desperation over his infant daughter's hospital bills. The Valley is a very forgiving place, when there's money to be made. Conway likely bought Hornbaker's story, and saw promise in his new idea; why would he have invested otherwise? But if Foomojo — or Youvebeenboned.com, which may well prove a better name — doesn't take off, the meaning of the phrase "Ron bomb" may change for good.

We've heard Levinsohn likes to trade on his MySpace-to-News Corp. deal by "bullying around little startups, demanding special deals because he's a famous 'CEO'." Problem is, Levinsohn may have run Fox Interactive, the News Corp. company that purchased MySpace, but he never exactly wrested control of MySpace, the only Fox Interactive property that matters, away from Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson. Levinsohn's attitude is known to irk the Valley's influential, particularly angel investor Ron Conway.

Still, we applaud Microsoft's selection. Joining ComVentures, now renamed Velocity Interactive Group, at the expense of two partners last December, Levinsohn neatly proved his worth in a knife fight.

So far, the people deemed worthy of such recognition include Intel Capital's Eghosa Omoigui, Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and angel investor Ron Conway. Each is depicted in the group portrait on the left. But people, forget Silicon Valley leaders. It's the rest of us who deserve to see this project through to its completion.

The painting, tentatively titled "Fellowship of the VCs," will draw its artistic inspiration from a timeless, classic source: Lord of the Rings movie posters. How is that not the most wonderful thing you've ever heard? There's only one day left to make your pledge. Make it now, or be forgotten by history, people.

That's because Miller and Levinsohn had announced in August a similarly named vehicle, Velocity Investment Group, for investing in startups, in conjunction with General Atlantic Partners, a buyout fund. That Velocity never lived up to its moniker, apparently.

No matter. The real question is, do you want to sell your startup to these guys? Ross Levinsohn may have access to $1 billion in funding now, but he's still the guy "bullying around little startups, demanding special deals because he's a famous CEO," as a source once told us, explaining why legendary angel investor Ron Conway can't stand the guy. As for ex-AOLer Jon Miller, well, he's not exactly a king of Pessinus.

But Zuckerberg's most important backer, Peter Thiel, does not work on Sand Hill Road. From his offices in San Francisco's Presidio, he's set about changing the rules of how startups get funding and how founders make their fortunes. Through his Founders Fund, he has begun issuing "Series FF" shares to the entrepreneurs he backs, giving them the right to sell shares alongside their companies to new investors. Thiel, who felt unjustly treated as the cofounder of PayPal, wants to let his protégés build companies without worrying about how to make rent.

Old lions like angel investor Ron Conway will probably view this development with outrage. They feel entrepreneurs, with no capital at risk, should not become rich until well after their already wealthy backers get paid, Today's startup generation begs to differ. The IPO market is still a shadow of its former self, and sales to large companies are an unreliable route to wealth — and a sure way to lose control of one's company. Meanwhile, vast pools of private money are waiting to be tapped.

Zuckerberg still owns nearly a third of Facebook . If the rumors are true, even if Facebook flops, the 23 year old would be set for life.

Update: An unimpeachable source says the sale didn't happen. Was I played? Perhaps so. Read my followup on why I think this rumor spread — and what its purveyors may have hoped to accomplish.

Burrell told the Financial Times he spoke with angel investor Ron Conway prior to teaming with Arone and Young on DanceJam. In an interesting side note, business partners might be surprised to learn that prior to his tech career, Burrell also dabbled in music. He's perhaps best know for his 2006 album titled Look Look Look. And here's a picture of Burrell with fellow entrepreneur Jay Adelson, the CEO of Digg.

Probably the biggest surprise last night was that despite Facebook's busy day announcing new features to allow users to spam each other, one of the company's Harvard connections still showed at last night's Founders Club party here in New York. Which one? ConnectU founder and litigious claimant to the Facebook throne, Divya Narendra, of course.

What, you were expecting Adidas? I asked Narendra what he really thinks of Zuckerberg, but he wouldn't. Didn't want to piss off his lawyers. Narendra was happy to dish on fellow wannabe Facebook founder Aaron Greenspan, however.

"I have no idea how he got that New York Times article," Narendra told me. "He has nothing to do with any of this."

Bitches just jealous.

New York angel investor Ron Conway also turned up last night. I'd have snapped a photo of him, but for a big fella, the man pulls a mean pirouette at the sight of a camera. And did you really want to see a photo of his backside? Silicon Alley wantrepreneurs are not allowed to answer that.

One thing I didn't know about Adelson: Apparently he lives in Dutchess County, north of New York, and commutes to San Francisco to run Digg. Does this mean we can claim him for Silicon Alley? (Ed.'s note: No.)

CollegeHumor's Zach Klein and Ricky Van Veen also showed, dragging down the whole affair with their ironic style and funny-looking glasses. They only cost $7 dollars on eBay. Father figures Josh Mohrer of BustedTees and Vimeo's Jonathan Marcus mostly managed to keep the boys in line, though dress code violations (sneakers) barred the entire crew from the Rainbow Room afterparty. Nobody said beauty was easy, fellas.

The obvious winner is Splunk, which has commanded one of the highest valuations assigned to a software startup in recent times. Splunk also wins the services of John Connors, right, the former Microsoft CFO who's now a partner at Ignition, who's joining the company as a board member.

And the losers? Rory O'Driscoll, left, of Scale Venture Partners, whom Splunk turned down despite bidding to invest at a higher valuation. O'Driscoll indiscreetly complained last week of his disappointment at losing the deal — and no wonder, since Splunks fits in several areas Scale likes to invest in. Also shut out, with a lowball bid: Famed angel investor Ron Conway. Could this be what preoccupied him at last Thursday's party for iLike?

Splunk CEO Michael Baum, though, seems to be celebrating a bit overmuch. In a blog entry last week, in which he alludes to his company's fundraising, Baum writes:

It's a privilege not a right for investors to take a look and consider partnering up with you.

Here's the pitch:

Recently, you guys ran a piece comparing Google versus Yelp, and while Yelp gets a lot of 'cool' buzz, they only reach a few big cities and have not captured the practical, business side of the puzzle. MerchantCircle (one word) is about to announce tomorrow that we've passed 200,000 local small business owners signed-up. That number makes us the leader in a space that everyone is trying to get a piece of right now.

We have more merchants than Google, Yahoo Local, CitySearch, Insider Pages and any other local directory site you can think of.

Well, that's nice. Suspect, but nice. But then we started digging.

• MerchantCircle might have businesses listed, but it has practically no users. Site traffic, according to Compete.com, is a fraction of the nearest competitor's.
• No wonder: It's theoretically possible to browse the directory of listings, but the MerchantCircle site itself is designed as a roach motel for merchants.
• The boasted merchant listings are questionable. Many appear to be prepopulated from databases, or possibly "scraped" — copied wholesale — from other sites. Take this listing of San Francisco restaurants, for example: Most have little more than addresses.
• MerchantCircle appears to be using automated systems to cold-call local merchants. Like Yelp, MerchantCircle touts user ratings as a reason for businesses to sign up for the site. But unlike Yelp, MerchantCircle isn't waiting for there to be any actual user reviews. For some time, MerchantCircle has been autodialing businesses in an effort to convince them that users may have left bad ratings about them on the site. Never mind that the reviews — and the users — may not exist in every case. For local businesses, which rely on the phone to attract customers and make sales, autodialing is a thousand times worse than email spam; wasting time with an automated system is the same, in their minds, as taking money from their pockets. Lying is just the icing on the cake.
• MerchantCircle CEO Ben Smith promised to stop the autodialing — but it's continued. John Battelle, founder of the Federated Media online-ad network, contacted Smith about the practice in September 2006. Smith claimed "that he's on it." According to the comments businesses are still leaving on blog posts about MerchantCircle, the practice continues to this day.
• The company is counting on search-engine optimization, or SEO — the art of tweaking websites to make them rank highly in search results — for traffic. So far, it's failed. But even if MerchantCircle's attempts at SEO worked, Google and the other search engines would rapidly catch on and banish MerchantCircle's pages from their indexes.

MerchantCircle's business model has evolved into a circle jerk: Rather than persuading actual users to visit its listings, MerchantCircle is styling itself as a social network for local businesses which link to each other's profiles on the site. But if you ran a local shop, would you rather raise your profile with the Chamber of Commerce, or get actual customers in the door? As with any such arrangement, this circle is likely to leave local businesses exhausted and unsatisfied.

Which raises the question, why are Valley notables giving this company a hand? Among the company's investors and advisors are Scale Venture Partners, Disney's Steamboat Ventures, Ron Conway of Angel Investors, Auren Hoffman of Rapleaf, and — ironically enough — Chas Edwards, a vice president at Federated Media. His boss, Battelle, must be so proud.