Musk, apparently eager to give the magazine an exclusive and reassure buyers who must put down a sizeable $40,000 deposit for a car that they won't see until 2011 at the earliest, said that GE Capital was an investor:

Q: What can you say to reassure buyers fearing you might go under?

A: Even in the worst case of an Armageddon scenario, I'll personally refund people [their money] if need be. I think there's very little danger of that. We've raised around $40 million, and a bit of news that hasn't come out yet [is] General Electric is investing in Tesla. [GE Capital] will be the second-largest investor in this round, after me. Our business plan that we presented to investors gets us to profitability by the middle of this year, even if some negative stuff happens.

A Car and Driver spokeswoman confirms that the magazine is running a story on Tesla in its May issue.

Musk appears to speaking about Tesla's long-delayed $40 million debt financing round which just closed this month. We asked GE if they had invested in the company. Andy Katell, a spokesman for the GE Energy Financial Services unit said no:

We have not invested in Tesla, although we are closely watching it and several other companies in this area.

In January, speaking at a town-hall-style event for Tesla buyers, Musk had hinted that a major player with a "household name" would soon announce an investment in Tesla. So add this to the list of Musk's statements which later prove inoperative.

Update: Tesla now says GE had promised an investment at the time Musk gave the interview to Car and Driver, but backed out the day it was supposed to wire funds to the company.

Jurvetson was just minding his business at an A-list inaugural celebration, on line in the men's room, when he witnessed one of the few arrests associated with the overwhelmingly peaceful inauguration, he wrote on Flickr:

A buzzing group of eight cops berated, ‘cuffed and extracted a young couple that looked terribly embarrassed and a bit tipsy. The offense: copulating in public. Oh yes, it was a veritable love fest!
I had to wait my turn, as I was the next occupant of their “bridal suite” – the one stall in the men’s room.

Jurvetson isn't the first to float the idea of Obama sex. But he's an innovator with the title he posted above his story on photo hub Flickr: "Inaugural Balling."

From one snarky headline factory to another, Mr. Jurvetson, we salute you.

(Photo via Jurvetson's Flickr.)

(Thanks to Megan for the pointer.)

What we still don't get: Why is Jesse Draper bothering? Most videobloggers we know are hoping to parlay a career covering tech — and by "covering tech," we mean "flouncing around on camera with an iPhone" — into a Hollywood star turn. With "Valley Girl," Draper is going about things backwards.

"If the typical Gore event was 20 people in a living room writing six-figure checks, and the Kerry event was 2,000 people in a hotel ballroom writing four-figure checks, this year for Obama we have stadium rallies of 20,000 people who pay absolutely nothing, and then go home and contribute a few dollars online." Obama himself shrewdly capitalizes on both the turnout and the connectivity of his stadium crowds by routinely asking them to hold up their cell phones and punch in a five-digit number to text their contact information to the campaign.

• Customer data stored by different service providers will be combined to create more intelligent services.
• Oil will have increasing difficulty competing with biofuels made from cheap nonfood crops for transportation.
• Water technology will replace abating global warming as a global priority.
• The mobile device industry's migration to smart phones will produce great disruption for big industry players.
• Booming market for healthy aging technologies.
• Four-fifths of the world population will carry mobile Internet devices within five to 10 years.
• Algorithms will be constructed to develop new industrial chemicals, new biofuels and eventually artificial intelligence.
• The mobile phone is your most important device.
• There is going to be a venture capital shakeout.
• Within five years everything that matters to you will be available on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse

Somehow we got on the topic of makeup for TV interviews...
Jobs: I have never worn makeup.
Shriver: Really?
Jobs: I don't give a s**t what I look like.
Shriver: But some people do.
Jurvetson: Yeah, like Schwarzenegger. Boy, does he layer it on. Have you ever seen him close up?
Shriver: [chortles] Have I ever seen him close up? I can't believe you asked me that.

DFJ's Melton is clearly no dummy; Stanford's not in the habit of issuing degrees to the like. But she joins an investing team filled with other back-benchers. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz have also put money into Redfin, but Allen and Schultz tapped underlings to serve on Redfin's board. If Draper, Jurvetson, Allen, and Schultz really intend Redfin to upend the real-estate industry, why aren't they backing it personally? Clearly, Redfin isn't a star of their portfolios, or an idea that really captures these Internet dreamers' imaginations. They're aiming for a base hit at best — which is why they bunted when it came to picking their board representatives.

He's so...what's a word that's almost but not exactly the opposite of dreamy? Actually, there's some hipster charm to that tousled-haired boy genius known as Bill Gates. What do you think is going through his mind as he gazes at the camera with bedroom eyes?

I won't pretend that venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, who invested in Hotmail, Skype and other companies after working at HP and Apple, is chagrined by a photo that he uploaded himself. Even if he looks like Star Trek ensign Wesley Crusher on summer vacation.

Before Sergey Brin founded Google, apparently he was one of those sitcom characters who dresses in drag for an episode, leading to a wacky adventure in which some burly guy thinks he's a hot woman. As well as that dress fits, Sergey is no Bugs Bunny.

Even exhibitionist tech pundit and former Tech TV star Chris Pirillo eventually got embarrassed over this shot of him baring it all in Alaska. At least he has the best ever argument for shrinkage.

Philip Kaplan of FuckedCompany, however, has no such shame. That's why, if Marshall McLuhan is the patron saint of Wired, "Pud" is the patron saint of Valleywag. The man who danced around the ashes of the dot-com crash waltzed around with two girls in a live webcam stream. Try sticking that on YouTube.

You can tell Michael Arrington is not sure what he's doing in this photo with marketer Tara Hunt, but even after he learned, the TechCrunch blog founder pulled the shocker back out months later.

Why are 37signals founder Jason Fried and the founders of San Francisco web-dev house Adaptive Path so embarrassed by this bathtub shot by Maggie Mason? It reveals them for the sexy city slickers they are. Besides, in San Fran, just be thankful they were wearing their swim trunks (though for all we know, Jason could skinny-dip in the tub).

Microsoft staff, 1978. Bill Gates is actually proud enough of this photo to keep it on his corporate biography page.

I can understand the topless photo of bloggers Robert Scoble and Shel Israel: they were pulling a stunt for their book Naked Conversations (back when Scoble spent more time getting naked and less time being a dick). But the naked-with-laptop shot? Dude, maybe it would have worked if you didn't flop your tits over the screen.

I've always felt that RSS guru Dave Winer had some latent cause for all the aggression that makes him abuse so many people. What could that possibly be? He looks happy here in this sauna full of naked young men. Aha, obviously there's Dave's hidden passion: he's a closet lover of hot...sweaty...climates. That dirty Californian rainforest-botherer.

For visiting tech execs, Buck's is a hotter destination than Lombard Street. Scandinavian entrepreneurs will skip the Golden Gate Bridge for a 7am pilgrimage. The restaurant itself is an unpretentious-looking pancake and egg house in tiny, affluent downtown Woodside, where Valley moguls keep their equestrian estates.

Buck's is, basically, a roadside diner. Ample portions of affordable, predictable fare are served beneath giant model aircraft that hang from the ceiling (welcome to Woodside - you fly, right?) It's not the food, it's the clientele: You're more likely to breakfast next to a billionaire than to spot your frazzled tech support manager. Power brokers like DFJ's Steve Jurvetson are regulars. Laptop demos of startup sites and software are a common sight.

But don't fanboy the VCs over their eggs. The man to meet is the owner, Jamis MacNiven. MacNiven is a de facto member of the Valley's power broker elite, yet one to whom you're allowed to walk up and introduce yourself should your visit coincide with his irregular onsite hours. Shut up and listen, and you'll realize the guy is smarter than some of his patrons. It was MacNiven who gave Wired the last word on free Wi-Fi, when he told the mag that charging for Internet access was "like charging for salt and pepper."

Still, don't get your hopes up. Gossipy techies and lazy journalists have overplayed Buck's reputation as the place to be discovered. MacNiven is to blame, too — every month he reminds another reporter that Hotmail was funded right there at table 15.

Instead of pitching your business plan, kick back and listen to MacNiven's life story if you want a toehold among the Valley's movers and shakers. Woodside, by design, is a long detour for breakfast from the go-go grid of Highway 101. But it's instructive to watch VCs chill over pancakes before 12 hours of pulping startup founders. And unlike Michael's, MacNiven will give you table 15 before you get rich.

Joe Schoendorf: [Mr. Schoendorf is a venture capitalist with Accel Partners.] ...So we have to ask ourselves, 'Who's the next Intel; who's the next Apple; who's the next Google?'

John Doerr: [Mr. Doerr is a venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.] If you're saying a new player is going to displace Microsoft or Google in the next five years, I just don't see it. I think Google will be the next Google.

Just so you know? Doerr was one of the VCs who took Google public.

Steve Jurvetson: [Mr. Jurvetson is a venture capitalist with Draper Fisher Jurvetson.] Will there ever be a new Google?

Doerr: I hope so, but it might not be in information. It might be in entirely new fields.

Ann Winblad: [Ms. Winblad is a venture capitalist with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.] Who's the new Sony?

Doerr: Samsung. It's already happened. Sony bought Samsung.

(Actually it didn't. Not even metaphorically.)

Winblad: So it's not Google?

Pardon, what? How does this even make...what?

After the jump, it just gets worse.

Moderator Tony Perkins speaks up:

Perkins: But Steve Jobs has been a pioneer in user interfaces. I project that in three to five years Apple's music distribution dominance via iTunes and the iPod will have faded; it will have become the fifth or sixth player.

Doerr: Uh, wait—because, because, because?

Perkins: You can make fun of me John—

Damn, I was supposed to get permission?

—but I say this because it's a closed, proprietary system, and what my kids want is to be able to download music and share it with friends. [boring stuff removed]

Doerr: But you're projecting that Steve and the team at Apple are not going to be smart enough over time to serve that market.

Perkins: Well, unless they adjust ...

Schoendorf: You're also assuming that everybody else is going to suddenly figure out that market, but there's no sign they've even started.

Perkins: Everybody's in the business.

It's then that Jurvetson requests a show of hands to counter Tony Perkins. Tony, ever the gentleman, tells his persecutors, "Okay, we'll see. We'll invite you guys back." That's right — those MC fees make all the abuse worth it, don't they, Tony?

Gluttons for punishment can hear ZDNet's podcast of the talk.

Finding the Next Google [AlwaysOn Network]

The usual talking points:

• It's not a bubble, it's a boom.
• No one's going public. Everybody flips (—which would make a good Mr. Rogers book. "Everybody Flips").
• Every day, in every way, we're getting better and better.

New, hard-to-swallow talking points:

• The founder of an old teen social site (Bolt.com) knows something about a successful start-up.

Hunt for new media darling hints at bubble [FT]

Todd Lappin started Telstar by tricking out a van with pseudo-official insignia in the late 80s so he could illegally park in loading zones. Todd did the same to a new SUV in the 90s, and the idea ballooned. He could drive onto secure lots, park wherever he wanted, and avoid theft or vandalism. Then came the schwag, the photo series of industrial scenes, and most recently, the Model 442 Shareholder Value Generator.

Half the fun is in the caption and notes (including some from big-time VC Steve Jurvetson), which you can see here:

NEW!! IMPROVED!! The Telstar Logistics Shareholder Value Generator [Telstar on Flickr]
About Telstar [Telstar on Flickr]