New York magazine's publicist Serena Torrey, who you probably heard from already about Sunday's Oscar party at Spotted Pig – which we're totally disinvited from this year – is on the defense after Keith Kelly reported a few facts about the pub's recent misfortunes. Even though "Web traffic" (pageviews? unique visitors?) on nymag.com is up 2000 percent from last year, as Torrey claims, newsstand sales dwindled 7.8 percent in the second half of 2007, Keith reports. NOT FAIR!, argues Torrey.

"In fact," she whines in to Romenesko, "New York raised newsstand prices by 25% in July 2007 AND we cut draw by more than 2%. We planned and budgeted for a much more dramatic falloff in newsstand sales (which represents only 5% of our circulation to begin with) in the second half of last year; 7.8% falloff was a major victory — as was getting our bulk to 48k (down from twice that two years ago)." See how anything can become good news?

From our mailbag: "In my Media Studies class [at NYU] this morning, the professor asked, "How many of you know who Matt Drudge is?" Total silence. Then he asked, "How many of you DON'T know who Matt Drudge is?" Practically every hand in the 300-person class shot up. So it looks like NYU students don't read The Drudge Report, or New York
Magazine."

Take that, Serena Torrey.

By producing articles like this one.

Last night we hit up Pravda for an hour or so of white wine chatter hosted by Best Life EIC Stephen Perrine. It never takes more than three sips of pinot to forget what party you're at and why you're celebrating, so we were sure to write it down ahead of time: we were mingling among a sea of PR types to honor Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?, the new tome by Mark Leyner and BIll Goldberg. Sure, they weren't giving the the book gratis to any partygoers – you had to buy it! for $14! and it was only in paperback! – but who cares? Men's Health's David Zinczenko was there letting his pecs burst through a white button down, which is about all we need to hear to RSVP.

There was Zinczenko's comparing Men's Health to Cosmopolitan – they're both "horny" magazines, which is why he and Kate White are BFFs – New York's press denizen Serena Torrey showering the bar with glitter (or perhaps it just looked that way; her beauty is blinding), Best Life publisher Mary Murcko ensuring your hand was never without a cocktail (and, should have you two hands free .. well, you get the idea), and authors Mark Leyner and Bill Goldberg hanging on each other's well-sculpted shoulders. Though it was Arianna Huffington's arrival – on the arm of Eat The Press chaperone Rachel Sklar – that caused a stir. (Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Arianna's dressing like a 24-year-old? And pulling it off?)

Though we expected a room brimming with male model types (or at least industry vets who could pass as former abdominal display cases), we weren't entirely let down: Pravda's strawberry martini proved worth the trek into a below-ground lair of air conditioning heaven. Even if we never even caught a glance at the book's cover.