Patrick Gavin, somewhere in Wyoming, is unwilling to part with his DNC press pass, perhaps in the hopes it will have some sway with state troopers, or shirtless Subway customers.

@FishbowlNY Elk Canyon Downtown Pub and Grill. 511 Mount Rushmore Rd. Custer City, SD. 605 -673 -4477 about 3 hours ago from txt. After we twittered that the Elk Canyon fielded a phone call for us from Rachel Sklar. The open road is sizeably smaller post-Twitter but way more hilarious.

Actor Sam Rockwell takes a question at the talk following Radar‘s screening of Choke last night.

The adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk‘s novel, Choke, premiered last night in New York’s West Village at a screening hosted by Radar and followed by a Q & A with Clark Gregg, writer and director of Choke, the film’s star Sam Rockwell and Palahniuk, who fielded questions on how faithful the film was to the book.

The talk was led by Radar executive editor Aaron Gell, who expressed gratitude that people showed up, presumably in light of the Barack Obama acceptance orgy occurring at the same time. “I was kinda amazed that this many people stayed for the question and answer session,” he said. “Usually, on a night like this, a big television night, people leave as the credits roll.”

But how did controversial author Palahniuk feel about the whole affair?

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So long DNC ’08. Hello RNC ’08! FishbowlNY is about to hit the big, wide, American road with FishbowlDC; a trip that will either take us through Kansas, or Nebraska, or South Dakota, no one seems quite sure. Because no one has yet managed to wire the Plains states, or the interstates, look for us on Twitter. It’ll be just like Jack Kerouac except in 140 character bites and less profound. Hooray new media. Rumor has it the Observer‘s Steve Kornaki has a head start, and Mickey Kaus will be bringing up the rear.

And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about.

Very, apparently. Steve Springer, the Los Angeles Times‘ “On the Media” columnist, offers a variety of increasingly complex metrics to prove that the Beijing Olympics “were watched by more Americans than any event in U.S. television history.” 214 million different Americans to be exact, according to NBC spokesman Adam Freifeld. This number includes all the platforms.

Some comparisons: Roots, the highest-rated miniseries of all-time, had a total of 660 million viewers, but most watched every night, leaving the total number of different viewers well short of the Olympic number. Similarly, 266.5 million people watched the 1982 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers (why?), but again, most of those were repeat viewers.

Ratings, however, were a different story. While the Beijing Games faired better than both the 2000 Games in Sydney and the 2004 Games in Athens, Barcelona (1992) and Atlanta (1996) topped the recently concluded contests.

NBC owns the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics in Vancouver and London, respectively, and it will be interesting to see how the company capitalizes on the relative success of these Games. The Peacock did some things right (the streaming video on the Web site was generally solid), but it failed to understand the true opportunities provided by the proliferation of high-speed Internet. We should not be going to YouTube 30 seconds after Usain Bolt wins the 100m to watch it. In a world this fast, sports need to be live or else we will turn elsewhere. Are you listening, Dick Ebersol? We’re available for a very reasonable consulting fee.

Regardless, we’re pleased we won’t have to write another post about the Olympics for at least 12 months.

While we were at Outside‘s Santa Fe headquarters yesterday, we caught up with Outside’s Go‘s editor Kent Black, who graciously agreed to be videotaped while walking us through his magazine’s Oct/Nov lineup.

It’s our first time with this video camera, and while we’ll readily admit that Richard Blakeley won’t be out of a job anytime soon, we’re happy with the result. Where else are you going to hear an editor say his men’s magazine “got a little soft,” in reference to its sports coverage, of course?

(A note about Viddler, the video hosting service we’re using: Click on the “+” icon and magical things happen. You can embed comments right into the video. It’s like Pop Up Video without the annoying hosts. Enjoy.)

Fresh off the highest traffic day ever on its Web site, The Atlantic is bolstering its sales staff, hiring Felix DiFillipo and Bill McGarry from Forbes and CondeNet, respectively.

DiFillipo joins as associate publisher. He had previously been advertising director at the financial publication. McGarry, formerly interactive sales director/digital strategist at Conde’s Web arm, comes on as digital ad director.

The hires are targeted at the magazine’s growing online presence. “DiFillipo and McGarry join The Atlantic as the title introduces several strategic shifts, including an enhanced online focus as well as a forthcoming redesign and branding campaign,” a statement says.

The full release is after the jump.

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Outside‘s editor Christopher Keyes was nice enough to give us a tour of the magazine’s awesome office yesterday and submit to an interview for an upcoming So What Do You Do? article. While discussing the brand’s extension beyond print (editors love talking brand extension!) Keyes mentioned Outside‘s first foray into television:

“We’ve got our first TV production coming out on the Travel Channel in November, which we’re pretty excited about, and we’re looking to develop a lot more television programming.”

We, being dutiful media reporters, took the bait. Hey Chris, can you tell us more about Outside‘s next great adventure?

“We did a package of stories two time, two years in a row called ‘Unsolved Mysteries,’ which was just exploring mysterious things that had happened in the wild. The pilot is actually hosted by a former intern here who wrote the package, Tim Sohn. He and a producer flew to New Guinea to investigate the disappearance in 1961 of Michael Rockefeller, the son of Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York. They just came back and Rockefeller disappeared while swimming from his boat which capsized to the island. That was the last he was seen. So one of the first things Tim had to do was recreate the swim, which had him swimming in shark-infested waters. It was pretty hilarious. He says the scariest thing for him was getting in front of the camera for the first time, not the sharks.”