We were hoping for a good old-fashioned wrestling match. A fight to the finish on the order of Xeni Jardi and Violet Blue. Alas, the rumble between L.A. Observed‘s Kevin Roderick and ERSNews.com‘s Eric Longabardi has failed to deliver delicious goods.

To wit, Longabardi’s weak response to Roderick’s take on an ERS piece about him:

Read more

“Accidental” Viral Marketing? We Think Not. Chris Hine is reporting that Gatorade and the ad agency it hired, Element 79, had “no idea” who posted that supposedly shelved commercial featuring the super-fly ball girl. Uh-huh. Just like we had “no idea” that florescent orange was an unnatural color for a beverage.

Bloggers Are The Worst: Pity poor David Sarno who is now SIX posts into the BoingBoing/Violet Blue controversy. A controversy he realized way too late he should not wade into. Well, live and learn, right, David?

Top of the Ticket, Eh? We know it’s a slow news day, but with the LAT announcing that it’s going to be axing 150 jobs sometime soon, you’d think Scott Martelle would want to come up with a harder-hitting piece than “tell us what superhero you think the presidential candidates would be” story.

Rabbi Rushfield’s Wistful Goodbye: Rabbi Richard Rushfield clearly had a lump in his throat as he closed out his post on the kick-off of the American Idol 53-city concert tour: “Outside in the still over 100-degree night, over 100 fans line a railing three stories above the driveway where the Idols would soon be loading into tour buses, their overnight homes as they make their way toward San Diego for Day Two of this last leg of their Idol journey. And on this same stretch of concrete not a month from now, tens of thousands more will stand on line to take their place when the Season 8 auditions come to Phoenix and history races on.” Someone buy this man an ice cream.

Lord of the (Virtual) Flies: Alana Semuels has a fascinating piece about the bad, bad things kids do to one another online. She also offers some tips for online safety (but we have a feeling an editor made her do that).

Well, Glad That’s Settled: David Sarno updates yesterday’s Violet Blue/BoingBoing posts with a bit of learned Web wisdom: “Bloggers are weird.” And insightful, too.

Web Scout: David Sarno gets Violet Blue‘s side of the weird BoingBoing controversy (the site scrubbed every post written about, by or containing Blue’s name.) Too bad he couldn’t get BoingBoing on the phone.

The Big Picture: Patrick Goldstein is new to blogging but has already learned the Golden Rule: Get other people to do work for you. To that end, he recruited film producer Avi Lerner to review a number of new releases. (To wit: “The Love Guru: ‘The worst movie I’ve seen in my life. It was so stupid I wanted to cry. Do I really have to say more?’”) If he’s smart, Goldstein will put this guy on retainer. (Might we recommend a MUCH smaller photo next time? The crop tool is your friend.)

Countdown to Crawford: In addition to having the best name of any of the LAT’s blogs, C2C wins us over with Johanna Neuman‘s analysis of Lou Dobbs‘ question: “Should Bush be impeached over tainted tomatoes?”

Andy Carvin declares today as Stop Cyberbullying Day. Blogher’s Lisa Stone, writing about Kathy Sierra, exhorts us to Hate the Hate Speech. There’s an online community (when is there ever not an online community?). Angela Gunn, in US Today, suggests:

We start treating the blogosphere less like an episode of Jackass and more like the place we live.

And Violet Blue makes the case that cyber threats are usually directed against women, but she doesn’t mention the late Cathy Seipp and her cyber-annoyer, Eliot Stein, aka Troll Dolls.

Meanwhile, someone has been busy, laboring at the parody trade. Eliot Stein’s Diary is not safe for work, according to Patterico.
That alone is enough to make most people click through.

(FBLA thinks the guy in the logo is sort of hot–in a Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down way. Is that so wrong?)