In the race for the top of the social networking heap (which some might compare to the Special Olympics, since even if you win…), Facebook now trails Myspace by only 8% in terms of worldwide traffic according to February comScore data:

Facebook continues to close rapidly on MySpace’s visitor total: At 100.7 million uniques in January, Facebook is now just about 8% smaller than MySpace’ 109.3 million. A year ago, MySpace’s worldwide lead was nearly 4x.

In fact, Facebook already has Myspace beat in terms of daily unique visitors, as shown by the helpfully CTRL+C-ed chart above. Personally, I don’t really get what all the fuss is about Facebook. But I’m also the guy who tried to defend Friendster back when Myspace was the new hotness, so basically, I’m a fucking idiot.

{Kudos to MySpace for installign this feature. At first I thought “Amber” was another color on Bush’s fear tactics terrorisms wheel, then somebody in the office told me that it means Child Abduction. Keep you eyes peeled for:}

Missing From: Bakersfield, CA
Missing Date: 3/19/2008 12:00 AM

Contact: Bakersfield Police Department
661-852-7800

Circumstances: ON MARCH 19, 2008, AT 10:35 AM, ZANE NEWTON WAS ABDUCTED FROM BAKERSFIELD, CA. ZANE NEWTON IS A 9 YEAR OLD, WHITE, MALE, 4 FEET 3 INCHES TALL, 75 POUND, JUVENILE WITH BROWN HAIR, AND EYES, LAST SEEN WEARING LONG DENIM SHORTS, LOOP EARRING, BIRTH MARK ON CHIN. SUSPECT IS, A UNKNOWN AGE, MALE, 6 FEET TALL, WEIGHT UNKNOWN, HAIR, EYES, LAST SEEN WEARING A POSSIBLE BLACK CLOTHING AND MASK. THE SUSPECT WAS LAST SEEN DRIVING A BLACK HONDA , WITH A CA LICENSE. OTHER VEHICLE INFORMATION INCLUDES: WHITE DRIVER SIDE DOOR WITH GREEN LICENSE PLATE FRAME. IF SEEN CONTACT BAKERSFIELD POLICE DEPARTMENT AT (661) 852-7800.

Missing Child
Name: Zane Newton
Hair Color: Brown Eye Color: Brown
Skin Color: White Age: 9YO
Height: 4FT3 Weight: 75LBS
Gender: Male
Description: Last seen wearing long denim shorts and a loop earring. He has a birthmark on his chin.

Suspect
Name: Unknown Unknown
Height: 6FT0
Gender: Male
Description: Last seen wearing black clothing and a mask.

Vehicle Information
Make: Honda
Color: Black
License State: CA
Description: White driver’s side door with a green license plate frame.

For the second year in a row, Playboy and C3 put on a late night party at SXSW, and for the second year in a row, I was lucky enough to attend.

While last year, the party was housed in a giant warehouse-type thing in the middle of nowhere, this year’s event was right downtown at a giant warehouse-type thing at the corner of 3rd and San Jacinto. The line circled the block and even the media entrance was swarmed by 11 PM.

Inside, there seemed to be a new adventure tucked into every corner: free barbecue; free drinks; a room full of Port-A-Potties that also housed a Rock Band hooked up to a television the the back of a car and a well lit area with a backdrop for crucial drunken photo seshes. The people were fascinating to watch:

• There was a surly red-headed bartender. She admonished people for taking too long to order their drinks; allowed her “regulars” to skip in head of the line; and when a particularly douche-y party goer knocked over her stack of plastic cups, she fixed him with a steely glare and lectured, “Really dude? Really?” Yeah, dude. Really? One day I’m going to marry that girl.
• There was a couple–or just two like souls who found each other in an instance of pure serendipity–who boogied toward the back entrance. He was dressed in a low-cut, V-neck, red velour with white racing stripes. His humongous, curly hair was accented by a white headband, and his face wore one of the sweeter ironic moustaches I’ve seen during the trip. She was wearing skin-tight striped hot pants that could barely contain her luscious booty. Their choreography consisted of moves that my have been stolen from the Torrance Community Dance Group, and they were pretty darn fabulous.
• And I think I saw Elijah Wood.

There were bands, too. The Heavy played some songs, and they were kind of whatever. MGMT gave me a headache, but not in an awesome High on Fire sort of way. Justice started off at a throbbing cacophony and just started cranking shit louder and louder until brains started frying. That’s when shit really started going off. Moby played a DJ set, but I missed it (I’m kind of bummed about it now since we’re totally bros now), and by the time I got back (around 3:45 AM), the venue (slowly clearing out) was pumped so thick full of smoke (and I was so pumped thick full of whiskey) that my eyes started tearing. Cutting through the haze was difficult, but there were a ton of people on stage, how many, and who was actually DJing, I couldn’t tell. It looked like a lot, and they were back lit, which made it kind of creepy.

Luckily, they were still serving whiskey, and back by the photo sesh area, a woman with sweet guns (in addition to other things) interviewed Spencer. Swag included: a wristband, guitar pick, free magazine and a couple other things I’m not allowed to mention because they may be incriminating. Good time had? Oh yeah.

In an interview in today’s New York Times, the call girl behind the Eliot Spitzer scandal, known previously only as “Kristen” was revealed to be Ashley Alexandra Dupre, an aspiring R&B singer, as can be heard on her Myspace profile:

I am all about my music, and my music is all about me… It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel. I live in New York and am on top of the world. Been here since 2004 and I love this city, I love my life here. But, my path has not been easy. When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I’ve never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music. It started when I moved in with a musician during my odyssey to New York. One day, I was in the shower singing “respect.” He and his lead guitarist burst in, had me repeat it and it started. We wrote, rehearsed and toured. After recording a bit with them, I decided to move to Manhattan to pursue my music career. I spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry. Now, it’s all about my music. It’s all about expressing me. I can sit here now, and knowingly tell you that life’s hard sometimes. But, I made it. I’m still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché, yes, but I know it’s true. I have experienced just how hard it can be. I can honestly tell you to never dwell on the past, but build from it and keep moving forward. Don’t let anyone hold you back or tell you that you can’t…because you can. I didn’t and here I am, just listen to it….

I mean she’s hot, but $1,000 an hour hot? You can bang girls like that in Chico for a couple Grey Goose and Soda Waters and a nice dinner. But whatever, guess its harder for an old ass bald dude. But seriously. PROTIP: Pussy ain’t never worth it!

This is probably the most epic internet video I’ve seen EVAR, since lunch. It kind of reminds me of the time they tried to block Myspace from the Synthesis office, otherwise known around these parts as BLACK FRIDAY. Shit was not tight. In protest we all showed up to work with 40s taped to our hands and got hammered every day till they turned it back on. It only took 9 months.

So granted, that video with the dude beating his wife or whatever was pretty corny, but TRJA did scan over 800k units of their first record, which even by today’s margins is no chump change, especially for a label like Virgin, whose roster reads like a dollar bin in a used record store. Nevertheless, in a blog post titled “Virgin Records, Soundwave, and our NEW record…” the band states:

Stay tuned for a series of important announcements regarding Virgin Records, the Soundwave cancellation, and our NEW record…

To our fans in Australia - an announcement has been making the rounds that we are not playing Soundwave in order to stay behind and make another record for VR - this information is highly inaccurate and something that we did not approve -the full story shortly. Don’t You Fake It.

Long Live The Alliance

-RJA-

Hints as to what this might mean are pretty much summed up elsewhere on their Myspace profile, where under label they list “none.” So the real question is who dumped who? The all-knowing wisdom of The Velvet Rope seems to to point to El Droppo, which is kind of sad until you remember….THEY ACTUALLY CALLED THEMSELVES THE RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS!!111

Anyone who calls their band something like is srsly asking for it. But on the bright side, after selling 811,176 copies of their last record and touring on it for a couple years, each band member - after recouping costs for recording, promotion, tour support, etc - probably made literally tens of dollars, so I’m sure they won’t be hurting for a least a couple of days. Rock and Roll! The only job where your paycheck is really just a loan! In their downtime the members of TRJA are busy coming up with totally original concepts like this:

Actually…wait, didn’t that already happen?