Joel Tenenbaum was a teenager when he allegedly downloaded just seven songs over a P2P service. The RIAA sued him last year and attempted to bully him into a settlement, but Tenenbaum wouldn't budge. Nesson just filed a counterclaim challenging the weight and premise of the RIAA's original suit in this brief (pdf):

You may be more familiar with Nesson in Second Life, where he is about thirty years younger and seemingly more sane:

Then there was that time he humiliated Nick Sylvester, the Harvard '04 grad who made up details in a Village Voice story:

Hopefully Nesson can lower himself to this new cause in the same way he's done before, and we can download without fear of the RIAA.

Prototypical white internet rap guy Tom Breihan of the Village Voice, analyzing a crappy new Lil Wayne video just yesterday:

The song's video is a typically glossy and show-offy affair, but I like how its garden-variety surreal plotline meshes with its airy track. As it opens, we see Wayne and Static getting ready to go out; both of them, for whatever reason, decide to wear disheveled, tore-up tuxes. A stretch Hummer pulls up outside, and they're happily surprised that it's full of video chicks. But as the song's chorus kicks in, Wayne doesn't waste much time partying with the video chicks. Instead, he opts to change into a completely different outfit and then climb onto the Hummer's roof, where he plays a fiery butt-rock guitar solo as the truck rolls in slo-mo down the Vegas strip. As gratuitous music-video melodrama goes, this reminds me of Slash walking out of Axl's desert-church wedding to play a fiery butt-rock guitar solo, a scene that may have even been Wayne's inspiration here. And I love the way that blinking whirlwind of lights creeps past him; he looks like he's being suspended in space while the world explodes around him.

Mmm hmm. Here's former Voice white internet rap guy/ fabricator Nick Sylvester, flirting with jumping off the "Wayne train":

Julianne wrote a great piece on Lil Wayne today, worth reading because it is most likely about you, the hyperfingered blogskimming danceremixing motherfucker who hasn't listened to any one song the last six months more than six times, except maybe "Young Folks." The general buzz is that Wayne is all-pleasure anymore, one moneyshot after the next, something like a rapping Girl Talk. He writes lyrics with their repurposing in mind, ready to be quoted out of context, which they happen to be from the outset. He chases tangents because he knows we're not listening; maybe he isn't either?

Am I jumping off the Wayne train? No but I feel like Drought 3 is a dare and I don't expect many people to take Wayne up. Here's a guy who can say whatever the fuck he wants on a track, free-associative, ADHD, "lyrical" or whatever, and most times it will hit really really hard, every two-bars something to take back home, a fount of one-liners that coincides with our embarrassingly short attention spans. Maybe you write these lines down in a moleskine, in a section called "@lyrics" using GTD, or maybe you have a sweet blog that needs a headline to go with an mp3 once in a while—maybe the line ends up there, cleverness by association, etc.

And here's the London crowd that apparently forgot to bring their moleskine to record Wayne's wisdom; bottle flies about 1:30 in.

Nick Sylvester's Harvard Lecture: This Clip Will Crash Your Computer And Crush Your Soul [Idolator]

Look, we're not saying Sylvester should never be employed again; we're just saying that maybe he shouldn't be part of the journalism game, where people "report" "facts," and don't just write about their friends. The real guilty party here is the 'Fork, who severed ties with Sylvester in March, and who have made a conscious decision to keep his role a secret; apparently, they don't think their readers deserve to know they have a kinda-admitted fabulist working for them.

Anyone know what specific articles he's edited? If you can figure out which ones bear the mark of this beast, perhaps we can help him with some friendly line-edits.

Pitchfork's Latest Hire Gets a 4.5 [Idolator]
Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Nick Sylvester

UPDATE: Pitchfork is redesigning its website, and an old masthead file got posted. Nick's not back on staff, they assure us. So, um, never mind.

Masthead [Pitchfork Media]
Earlier:
Sylvestergate: Today in Nick News
'Phoenix' Takes Pity on Nick Sylvester

Some might say you're a complete tool. Others may pity you because of your obvious mental deficiencies. And yet more will declare that your writing career is over.

But not the Boston Phoenix. The Phoenix understands, man, and it's not gonna judge. It will pick you up, dust you off, and put you right back where you were at that other alt-weekly, reviewing music. You're going to do well there. Really well. Hell, they might even let you write a cover story someday. And so it will begin again, the circle of your alt-weekly life.

Hype Writers [Phoenix]
Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Nick Sylvester

Speaking of our bespectacled beauty, word on the street is that he's in talks to write front-of-book for the new yorker. totally can't substantiate it, but someone on the inside might.

"In talks to write FOB"? Absolute best-case scenario, we'd imagine that translates as, "Write something on spec, if you want, and we'll probably take a look at it." (Might Sylvester be shading the truth? The horror!) But anyone know anything on this? We're looking at you, Paumgarten...

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Nick Sylvester

Correction
In our March 1-7 issue, we published a cover story entitled "Do You Wanna Kiss Me?" All of the information in the story relating to Steve Lookner was false and completely fabricated. Lookner never made a trip like the one described in the article, never said the quotes attributed to him, and never performed any of the actions that were portrayed. We apologize to Steve Lookner for this story.

We also apologize to our readers for bringing up this issue weeks and weeks after the fact. In addition, we'd like to apologize to Lookner's lawyers for waiting so long to post this correction and, again, another apology to Lookner for any hourly legal fees possibly incurred by our decision to draw this out for two inexplicable months.

Letters [VV]

• A concerned reader asks, suggestively: "Any leads on Cargo not being the only thing getting pruned this spring at Conde? Absolutely no evidence here, just a vibe and a look at the next year (new expensive mags, space in 4 times sq at a premium) and the cold manner with which cargo was dealt (last day for many [was Friday]). have an idea who i'd guess was next, but hate to panic anyone w/o hard info, so please, no "Conde Deathwatch" unless you got something."

• Why was Nick Sylvester finally fired? "[A]bout a week ago I heard from someone inside the Voice that when Sylvester sat down with a lawyer to go through his emails on the story, his entire account has been mysteriously deleted. At that point, they asked him to leave, for real this time."

• What will NBC do if Katie Couric leaves? "Meredith Viera is leaving the View to join the Today Show as a replacement to Katie Couric. This was rumor once but is now fact. You are the first to know."

But what happens to The View if Viera leaves for NBC? After the jump, another unverified tip, from a different reader, spells out the full, three-network musical chairs.

You may want to know something in advance and although it has no connection to your regular gossip (tips) and my usual cheap celebrity sightings, I've learned this straight through the executive VP of [a cable-network company], who basically knows everything in the cable and network TV. The CBS, NBC, and ABC shuffle is going to go like this:

Katie Couric is going to CBS Evening News for a reported $39 million for 3 years! She has an option to get out, or vice versa. Meredith Viera is her replacement for a reported $30 million 5-year contract. Viera's replacement on "The View" is none other than Mimi Rogers (ex Mrs. Cruise), yes you heard me right! Her new beau works on the Wall Street. Salary is reported at $2 million dollars a year? Also, there is a growing buzz to let Star Jones go, once her contract is up in early 2007. She has turned into a liability for the network. Apparently, Tyra Banks was suggested, and the idea was laughed off. Barbara Walters is fiercely pushing for her Indian friend who is "older and wiser" (and annoying): cookbook writer/actress, Madhur Jaffrey to be the new "ethnic" mix.

Charlie Gibson IS NOT getting a permanent spot on ABC World News Tonight. Vargas is taking on full-time duty for ABC's World News Tonight, till Woodruff comes back. Till Vargas is over with baby duties, Gibson will do rotations. Neither Gibson nor Sawyer were released, to counter the Lauer-Viera Combo. Sawyer and Gibson want to re-negotiate the contracts.

So now you know.

Any corroborations? Disputes? Additional rumors? Email us.

UPDATE: Nothing formal and official, but we're hearing from people who'd know that, yup, it's true. For both of them.

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of the 'Village Voice.'

Ward Harkavy, a senior editor at the Voice, will become acting editor-in-chief. And Sylvester will remain on staff. "They like him," explained our tipster.

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Nick Sylvester.

Shows what we know.

Spring Arts [VV (fourth item from bottom)]

• Steve Lookner, Harvard '93, is a Lampoon alum who IMDb says has written for SNL, was head writer for Last Call with Carson Daly, and produced Nick and Jessica's Family Christmas.
• Danny Chun, Harvard '02, is a Lampoon alum who IMDb says is a writer for The Simpsons.
• Vali Chandrasekaran, Harvard '03, is a Lampoon alum who we're told writes for My Name Is Earl.

And, to refresh your memory: Nick Sylvester, Harvard '04, is a Lampoon alum who wrote for the Village Voice and Pitchfork. Until he wrote a fake news story about his two pals hanging out at 151 with a popular alumnus, who inexplicably decided not to play along with joke.

So, clearly, it's all Lookner's fault.

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Nick Sylvester

This is convenient, because there's yet another question left unanswered. Who is Steve Lookner and who is Steve Lucien? The apology from Sylvester referred to a manufactured encounter with Steve Lookner and two others; the angry letter to the editor published this week — the letter that presumably, like Janet Cooke's Pulitzer and Adam Penenberg's reporting on Jukt Micronics, set in motion Sylvester's unmasking — was from Steve Lookner. The Google cached version we linked to (since removed), and then the message board-posted version we subsequently linked to referred to "Steve Lucien." (There's also some inconsistency on the identity of the third member of this crew: Vic or Vail?

It is a good thing, then, that we grabbed a copy of the print Voice yesterday. Which we scanned:

So the answer, then, is that Lookner was in the original and is a real person and is the guy who complained. Who's Lucien? Well, we've heard rumors that Sylvester and Simmons' first reaction to the letter was to try to cover things up — until they learned it had also gone to the letters the editor email address, which is read by another editor, who had already forwarded it to the lawyer. (You know, like how CTU uncovered the terrorists' plan to kill the Russian president despite President Logan's best efforts!) We have no idea if that story's true, but it seems to fit now, no?

The full final scene, as scanned from last week's Voice, is after the jump.

At 151, a Lower East Side bar that's seen The Game manifest itself in all too many ways, from plastic firemen's hats to amateur hypnosis, I met Steve Lucien, DC, and Vic, three TV writers who had flown in from L.A. for the weekend. Under the pretense of visiting friends on the East Coast, the three really had come into the city because, as Strauss writes at the end of The Game, L.A. is completely sarged out. They want to investigate New York.

Those just might be the most outlandish lies we've ever seen. Read on for the unabridged version of Nick Sylvester's groundbreaking cover story.

'Do You Wanna Kiss Me?'
How New York's women are wising up to The Game's pickup tips
by Nick Sylvester
February 28th, 2006 11:42 AM

"It was Saturday night, we had just had sex," recalls Caitlin, a 22-year-old private tutor living on the Upper West Side. "I went into the bathroom. He had, of course, stacks of The New Yorker and some other random books. Underneath the New Yorkers, I saw what I thought was the Bible. And the first thing I thought was, 'Oh my God, he has the Bible in the bathroom.' But it was The Game, the picking-up-girls book. So I flipped through it a little bit."Five minutes in, Caitlin felt like she was reading a script of her night so far: Apparently, she'd been negged, cubed, kino'd, then f-closed by a PUA. She stormed out the bathroom, book in hand. "He sort of didn't want to discuss it."

A neg is a backhanded compliment; the cube is a sleazy "interactive demonstration of value" routine; kino is short for kinesthesia, i.e., physical contact; f-close is sex. That leaves PUA: pickup artist.

"Somewhere along the path of life, many men have picked up bad habits, social awkwardness, and a lack of confidence around women," writes Game author Neil Strauss in an e-mail. "Why aren't they allowed to change these bad habits and start putting their best foot forward when they meet women?"

Ask anyone: The nice guy loses; the jerk gets the girl. Since last September, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (Regan/Harper Collins) has broken down this truism to a foolproof science.

Softbound in black faux leather to resemble the Bible, The Game reveals the field-tested lines and techniques Strauss learned during the year and change he spent interacting with the world's finest pickup artists, leading "sarging" missions (wherein AFCs, "average frustrated chumps," practice their moves at bars on unsuspecting women), and eventually living with a few PUAs in a Los Angeles mansion they called Project Hollywood. Clearly explained, the book's tricks are easy to learn and deploy, and quietly devastating in their success.

"I met him on OKcupid, the online dating service," says Kim, a science grad student at Columbia, referring to a date she went on recently. "So I figured he'd be sorta shy. We met downtown, and one of the first things he said to me was, 'Oh, those look like comfortable shoes.' It wasn't nasty like, he didn't say my shoes were ugly but he noted that I was wearing sneakers not shoes, and it totally bothered me the whole night." Kim went home with him.

Needless to say, rumors of the book's success have sped up the adoption of its lines and methods. The Game has sold 170,000 copies so far, keeping it in the Amazon Top Sellers list, while episodes of CSI: Miami, Twins and even the Late Show have explicitly ripped details, lingo, and character names from Strauss's forays. In just six months, women have wised up to the book, catching men running Game mid-act, and even turning the pickup lines against the men using them.

In a post titled "Playing With the Player," New York date blogger Dolly (cocksanddolls.blogspot.com) recounts her interaction with "PUA Dave":

I decided to fool him by asking how long he thought Pretty Polly and I were friends (we have known each other for less than a couple of months but people have mistaken us for sisters).

He said, "Let me give you the best friends test."

My eyes widened and jaw dropped open. "You're a pick-up artist!"

"Look, everybody's always manipulating," says Strauss in our interview. "The question is, are you manipulating for good or bad?"

To be precise, The Game is not just an elaborate crib sheet. The how-to aspect was important to Strauss, but he programs it into a gonzo journalistic narrative about his own transformation from balding, gawky New York Times rock writer into "Style," the world's greatest pickup artist, who by book's end has been with hundreds of women. One Voice veteran, who remembers Strauss as a skinny, mild-mannered nerd interning for then music editor Joe Levy, expressed astonishment at his evolution into a "pussy magnet."

The book's guiding principle is that, today and for whatever reason, in order for you to attract a woman, you first need to seem actively disinterested in her. But unlike the bulk of relationship manuals, The Game is not theory based. The methods discussed are empirically proven "thousands" of times over. Strauss explains that when a PUA posts on a seduction community message board about a new line that's worked for him, PUAs around the world go out and try for themselves, then report back to the board whether or not the line performed. Every contingency has been accounted for. Nothing in the book hasn't worked.

Even as early as October, I started noticing Strauss's book taking effect downtown. For men completely lost with women, or for others like Rob, a handsome but skittish twentysomething who spent years with a college squeeze and no time in the field, The Game offers step-by-step advice. Eleven steps, to be exact, and key lines and stage directions for each.

Rob and his equally nerdy wing man, who only offered his pickup name ("Popcorn Dog"), were at Bar None on Third Avenue. The crowd that night was a bit older and a little more divorced than usual. Exactly as Strauss prescribed, Rob approached a set of two hard-looking blondes, ignored his prettier "target," then addressed her friend with a canned line he learned early in the book:

"Hey, I need your opinion on something. My friend over there, he wants to buy a wallaby."

The two women were confused but intrigued, and that was enough of an in. They asked what and why and how, and the absurdity of the question overshadowed the discomfort of someone randomly coming up and asking it. The target, presumably used to men approaching her first and certainly not used to men who pretend she's not even there, finally gave Rob some shit, revealing her thick Boston accent: "What are you, friends with weirdos or something?" A perfect setup for Rob's neg. Without looking at the girl, he said to her friend, "Is she always this irritable?"

While Popcorn Dog flew in to occupy the target's friend, Rob now focused on the target, armed with a dizzying mix of straight fluff, playground teases, jokes about people in the bar, and then, finally, a question: "Do you wanna kiss me?"

As mentioned, pickup artists have thought through every social situation, planned for every contingency. If she says "yes" to Rob's question, for instance, he kisses her. If she says "maybe," he also kisses her. If she says "no," Rob responds, "I didn't say you could- you just looked like you had something on your mind."

She said maybe.

That was November. By mid January, it seemed that New York was running out of wallabies.

I followed Rob, Popcorn, and another wing named Reisig to Beauty Bar on 14th Street. The place was prime sarging ground: Simple eavesdropping in the bar's backroom revealed a thick crowd of Upper East Siders, wearing party shirts and expensive unisex cologne, who had cash but no sense of seduction no game. Strauss's moves would work without a hitch.

Reisig went in on a group of younger girls, very early-'80s, Lower East Side look ing, their mascara running on purpose. Headstrong, he went in with an opinion opener: "Hey, I need to get "

"A female opinion on something?" she interrupted, finishing his sentence, one that comes near verbatim from The Game. "I think David Bowie looks great." That part's from The Game too.

Hardly cause for panic. As the book itself predicted, any venue, even an entire city, can get "sarged out"; a PUA masters the Game, though, when he knows how to tweak it modify the lines a bit. Rob had an idea, and approached a three-set with a new spin.

"Listen, my friend over there, he wants to buy an eagle."

But the girls' eyes rolled. One snapped back too: "Oh, interesting my friend wants to buy a wallaby."

Forget overexposure. Some women appear to be reading the book on their own as a precautionary measure. Dolly the blogger's PUA encounter continues:

"I know what the best friends test is," I continued. "It's one of the tricks pick-up artists use."

"What's the best friends test?" asked Polly (she had read the book, but only parts of it).

"PUA Dave asks us if we use the same shampoo. We look at each other and then say we don't know. He says it doesn't matter, because what counts is that we looked at each other before answering, which shows a close bond. The whole thing is part of a routine."

PUA Dave smirked and said he didn't need any routines.

I shook my head, heady on the knowledge that I knew what he was. "All that making fun of me before was part of it, too."

"You mean negging?"

"The 'neg' and 'freeze out' manipulate a woman's insecurities, but New York girls seem to have a steely, overinflated sense of self-esteem," believes Sia Michel, editor in chief of Spin. "This is a walking city, so they're hearing hostile sexual comments on the street all day long."

A friend of Strauss, Michel has been put in an unusually comical position to call out men running Game on her. Not only did she read The Game when it was in galleys, but last year, when she flew to Los Angeles for the Grammys, she even visited Strauss's Project Hollywood mansion, described in The Game as the "church of the spread legs."

"One time someone came up and said, 'Listen, I've only got a couple minutes, but I wanted to ask your advice on something.' And I said, 'Oh, you're creating a 'false time constraint.' He tried to act like he had no idea what I was talking about, but I was like, 'I read The Game too! Are you going to try a 'yes-ladder' next?' Then he just sheepishly walked away." (PUAs use the yes-ladder technique to establish a string of "yes" responses to short, simple questions like "Are you spontaneous?" or "Do you like fun?" Apparently it gives a conversation a jolt of positive energy.)

Michel became even more skeptical of the book's power after interacting with Mystery. The legendary PUA, who brought Strauss into the pickup network, invented the Mystery Method, a combination of negging, canned routines (handing out bead necklaces, performing magic tricks, showing photos of you holding a baby), and "peacocking" dressing flamboyantly to draw attention to yourself. Michel ran into Mystery and Strauss at the Cutting Room on 24th Street, as they led a sarging mission:

"Mystery and his crew were going around the club performing magic tricks on girls, followed by a crew of TV cameramen. I don't even think they were real cameramen. I think the idea was, 'Well, if we pretend like we're being filmed for a documentary, girls are way more likely to talk to some tall freaky magician in platform boots and a leopard skin hat.' "

But Mystery wasn't having much luck there, and decided to move the mission downtown.

"We all ended up at a packed East Village bar, really late, and now he was going full force, working his tactics on my journalist friends," says Michel. "There were ESP games, palm readings, and some faux mysticism where he claimed he could stare into your eyes and glean deep knowledge of your soul. He was wearing a ridiculous outfit I think leather pants and black nail polish were involved which might have been fine on the Sunset Strip but was incredibly cheesy for New York. Virtually every girl there seemed to be shunning him. Finally he had a meltdown and shouted, in the middle of the bar, ' ONE OF YOU IS GONNA FUCK ME TONIGHT!' "

It would be natural for the book's methods to reach a saturation point, and completely fine, except there's one problem: Women still love the jerks. In a situation where most men's seduction instinct, learned from The Game or not, is to play the jerk, then on paper it would follow that men should compete with one another to prove to a target who is the bigger asshole: proving their worth to her by flinging insults at each other, rising to the top by cutting down the bottom, what have you.

In practice, this caveman-style Game hasn't worked very well. At Black and White on 10th Street, Carl B. approached a set of girls already occupied by two fairly muscular men. One of them was wearing a hat that said "Dubai," the name of a major United Arab Emirates city. "Hey, you've been to Dubai too?" Carl pressed. The guy hadn't.

"Oh. Well, must be pretty awesome to have a hat from Dubai without actually having to go there." Carl thought he was in; instead the girls said he was "needlessly mean." "You should just leave," they told him.

Other PUAs nervous about the new rules of the Game think that if they go full blast with Strauss's techniques, using as many as possible all at once, they can overcome the obsolescence of the moves when used in isolation. Call it hyper-Game.

Inside Webster Hall at the Plug Independent Music Awards in early February, Jon brought an enormous camera rig, and in an aggressive form of peacocking, took photos of people as they entered from the V.I.P. door. Inevitably this would prompt a response from women, making him seem both temporarily important he had a camera and less obvious about his intentions you know, he was there to take photos, nothing else.

Key word: temporarily.

"Yolanda?" he asked, guessing my girlfriend's name after taking her picture. It seemed like a bizarre take on The Game's "pick a number" routine. (Quick: Most girls say seven, and in the PUA's back pocket is a piece of paper with that very number.)

"What?"

"Am I close?" Was this a yes-ladder?

"It's Jelena."

"See I was close!" shouted Jon. "Jelena, like yellow. And you're wearing yellow."

This guy was admittedly brilliant, but when he tried to close the deal, his approach was so under the radar that something seemed suspicious. He said, "You should give me your number so I can send you these photos."

"Why do you want my number?" Jelena asked. "I can just give you my e-mail address."

This would have been victory, but after playing so many games at once, Jon had psyched himself out. "No, that's a bad idea," he said, adding inexplicably, "I'm having trouble with spyware."

To think, the whole idea of The Game was to make approaching women easier and now women are warier of men than ever.

I call Strauss. He's at his new home in L.A., awaiting the delivery of Panic Park, an arcade video game that, like Mario Party or WarioWare, is a hodgepodge of smaller, genre-spanning games. One second you're racing, another you're catching floating dollar bills.

What most bothers people about the routines, I tell him, is the manipulation involved. Strauss spins it differently. Better to have a nice guy who pretends to be a jerk for a couple days in order to get you to like him, and then is a nice guy in the relationship, than the opposite."

If anything, Strauss believes, The Game is doing women a service because it's widening the dating pool. More and more kinds of men are talking to them, which means they have more and better choices.

"They're making the rules we're just trying to find a way to play by them," Strauss says. "I talked to some of the women who I'd been with afterward, and did interviews, broke down the experience from their point of view. A lot of them knew I was running Game. They knew the lines and patterns and routines. Even the first girl I had the threesome with, she said, 'Oh, I knew exactly what you were doing. I had never been with a woman before, I didn't want to, but I thought it was such a cool thing that you were doing, so I went along with it because it felt comfortable.' "

Strauss has read Dolly's Cocks and Dolls blog post, and points out that even though she recognized she was dealing with a PUA, she still made out with him.

"Nick, what's the oldest, cheesiest pick- up line?"

" 'Is that a sandwich you're eating?' "

"No, it's 'What's your sign?' We all know it. But the fact is, it still works. Because (a) at some point when you're talking to a woman and maybe this is my Los Angeles experience but I find it generally to be true you're gonna end up talking about astrology, and she's gonna ask you what your sign is. Do you find that generally to be true?"

"Yes."

"Second thing is, 'What's your sign?' is a neutral entertaining opener, and it's a DHV demonstration of higher value it's the same fucking structure as the openers the pickup artists use today. Before it was a clich , it was a nonsexual way to start a conversation. It demonstrated that you knew something interesting and spiritual. The openers today, like 'Do you think spells work?' are pretty much the same thing. So nothing's really changed."

People need to meet, and it's all about thinking those interactions through specifically, how you might handle being caught using one of Strauss's canned lines.

"If you are getting busted, all you need to do is have a contingency plan," Strauss explains. "You say, 'Yeah, I just read that book! I wanted to go out and try it today. It's funny, I get busted the first time using it.' All you have to do is be smart about it. You can't be knocked off course.

"It's almost like tax law. You got the government and I'm not saying the analogy between the government and taxpayers is like men and women the idea is they keep changing the law and trying to make it airtight, and there's always someone out trying to figure out the loophole, and they're finding it every year."

At 151, a Lower East Side bar that's seen The Game manifest itself in all too many ways, from plastic firemen's hats to amateur hypnosis, I met Steve Lucien, DC, and Vic, three TV writers who had flown in from L.A. for the weekend. Under the pretense of visiting friends on the East Coast, the three really had come into the city because, as Strauss writes at the end of The Game, L.A. is completely sarged out. They want to investigate New York.

With them they brought new methods they were updating the Game to give old tricks new life. Recently Lucien had been doing something you could call Reverse Game, in which he frames his Game-driven advances as friendly warnings about Game-driven jerks:

"Hey, there's some weird shit happening in this bar," Lucien will say. "These guys are just coming up and saying really weird shit to women something about an eagle? Then they're mean to you. It's sick!"

"Oh I know what you're talking about! That book!"

"Yeah, you won't believe this stuff. Like watch, pretend I'm one of those dudes who read the book. Do you wanna kiss me?"

After seeing dozens of men at every Hollywood bar carrying around a pocketful of beads to drape around women's necks, per the book's tip, Vic had taken to carrying around plastic snakes, which he would inexplicably leave on bar counters, and a $100 coupon for a $300 psychic reading. The coupons are a conversation prompt, often parlayed into kino from women interested in astrology. Brags Vic, "I can usually get the girl to give me a psychic reading in a few minutes."

Women expect clever approaches, but in post-Game, they might see more roundabout versions, such as DC's new signature move, a pickup line that takes over 15 minutes to tell and wraps up like this:

"Anyway, my friend has had this mustache for as long as I've known him but he just shaved it and now he's freaking out because he has a really bad tan line on his upper lip. He has a date in two days so we were discussing what he can do. My question for you is: Should he wear a fake mustache on the date?"

Overt is becoming the new covert, believes DC, after a night of post-sarging that netted two numbers and, by his account, a "sorta shitty kiss."

"Now I think it's about putting it all out there, like, 'Let's get married tonight.' Other times, though, I have to be more guarded. That's when I tell her I think she wouldn't be a very good wife."

Still, as much as the jerk is king in the dating scene, some women think New York may just be immune to his ruse. As Michel points out, "If you're an unattractive guy and you insult a model or other beautiful woman in New York, why is she going to sit there and take that? They'll just pelt you with ice cubes and wait for someone handsome or famous to buy them a drink."

• Meanwhile, The Game author Neil Strauss is avoiding the shitstorm by staying abroad and promoting his book in Europe.

• A resourceful reader sends us Nick Sylvester's Facebook profile. What you need to know: Born July 7th, 1982, classics and literature major Nick Sylvester's favorite movie is March of the Penguins. So at least last night was a little better for him.

• According to this article written by Sylvester in January, his sister is "a famous model." Is this another falsehood or actually true? If it's the latter, who the hell is she?

• Former Radar-ite Lucas Hanftt on Sylvester: "I thought Pitchfork writers only made up musical genres."

• And saving the strangest for last: Dave Letterman's ex-girlfriend Merrill Markoe emails Gawker to remind us that in her 1998 book Merrill Markoe's Guide to Love had a chapter on "speed seduction." Flack it like it's hot, even if it isn't.

Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Nick Sylvester

• Anna Wintour's summer home is revealed. And, of course, it's the size of a small country.
• Writer/actress Nancy Balbirer gets her 15 minutes of whatever by selling out her anonymous, insane-ish friend who just happened to be Jennifer Aniston.
• When Times reporter Jenny 8. Lee turns 30, she does it hardcore with four cross-country celebrations.
• Eyeliner-rock bible Spin gets sold and editor Sia Michel is sacked in favor of Andy Pemberton. Chuck Klosterman packs his bags as well, along with the mag's other marquee names.
• We put on our reading glasses and pore over former Men's Journal editor Michael Caruso's contract. More interestingly, though, who did Caruso want fired so badly?
• Bonnie Fuller's husband Michael maxes out his credit card buying fancy flowers for the missus.
• We go to the premiere of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things and find the it utterly unwatchable.
• Lizzie Grubman and her fiance set the date for their wedding: March 18. If you race to the altar, you can outrun karma.
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Alcoholic.
• For you, dear readers, we willingly let our eyes bleed.

• From a Voice alum, who says acting Voice editor Doug Simmons has never been a very popular editor at the paper: "The news is that a bunch of former Voice staffers are crafting a letter to the new owners urging them to replace Simmons forthwith. The next step is to get a bunch of people inside the paper to sign the letter as well. A vote of no confidence, so to speak."

• And there's more weirdness in young Nick Sylvester's background. Assuming you're cooler than we are, which you probably are, you knew this already: Nick was a presenter the Plug Awards a month, when he decided to read a Malcolm Gladwell article in lieu of his presenting his award. He was eventually pulled from the stage. Odd.

• Finally: Nick did not in fact faint in his editors' office when Simmons confronted him about his partially fabricated cover story. It was outside Simmons' office, and it wasn't so much fainting as collapsing — he never lost consciousness. Just to clarify.

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Nick Sylvester.

• One rumor inside the Voice, we hear, is that the decision to suspend but not fire Sylvester came from Village Voice Media HQ — the Arizonans formerly known as New Times Media — who agree that Sylvester can be forgiven because he is young and was "fatigued."

• Fun with irony: Due to layoffs and other cutbacks over the last few years, the Voice has eliminated its once-impressive fact-checking department. Way back when, though, the checking ranks included The Game author Neil Strauss.

• And, finally, some headline highlights from Sylvester's Voice oeuvre, courtesy of a reader and his Nexis account: "What a Fool Believes," "Without A Prayer," and, best, "Bullshit Happens."

Dolly's pitch — dated January 26, 2006 — is after the jump.

Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:55:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Dolly D
Subject: The Truth About Cocks and Dolls
To: xxxx@villagevoice.com

Dear Mr. Simmons,

Forgive the boldness of my email, but I wanted to share an interesting story with you.

I have an anonymous blog in which I write about my sex/love life called The Truth About Cocks and Dolls (http://cocksanddolls.blogspot.com/). The other night, I met a pick-up artist, straight out of Neil Strauss's book THE GAME. He was using many of the tricks I read about that are supposed to engage a woman's interest, and the shocking thing was how well they worked. Even though I called him out on his tricks, even as he was performing them, he still reeled me in.

There are numerous pick-up communities and blog rings around. As I type this, men are honing their strategies on how to get any woman to go to bed with them.

I think it's only fair that the women be warned. Most probably haven't read Strauss's book, and don't know what to look out for. I want to write an article about the top ten warning signs that a pick-up artist is in the midst. Recognizing these tricksters for what they are might help disarm them and save a woman from getting played.

My blog is the best writing sample you'll get. I could knock out a killer piece on this topic, especially since I have had recent firsthand experience with one of these guys.

I apologize for pitching a story idea right to the top man, but I do hope that if you're interested, you'll pass me along to the appropriate person.

Best regards,
Dolly D.
(212.748.XXXX)

Earlier: Breaking: Doug Simmons Is Still the Acting 'Voice' Editor

Simmons was returning a voicemail we left for him about 24 hours ago — he's had some things on his mind, we imagine — to apologize for his delay and clarify that he has not in fact quit the storied alt-weekly, which yesterday retracted its cover story after learning parts of it were fabricated. Mediabistro reported this morning that "interim editor Doug Simmons has left the paper (according to a PR rep)" in wake of the revelations about the cover story, by star young writer Nick Sylvester. Sylvester's piece examined how men in New York are employing the pick-up strategies described in Neil Strauss's The Game, and how women are developing countermeasures.

The Voice posted a note from Sylvester on its site last night acknowledging that the final scene of his piece was fraudulent, and the paper said that the 2004 Harvard grad, a Lampoon vet, had been suspended while the piece is reviewed.

"I just adore that kid," Simmons told Gawker, reporting that his review, currently in progress, is not turning up problems beyond the fraudulent conclusion. "The thought of firing him is a painful one for me. I hope this review can bring an understanding to the paper — and to Nick — about the boundaries of journalism."

This incident has raised other questions about Sylvester's Voice work.

"Dolly," the proprietress of blog The Truth About Cocks and Dolls, which was quoted extensively in the piece, wrote a letter to the Voice about the piece, which she posted to her blog before news of the retraction and suspension broke yesterday after. She disputed the premise of the article, but, more than that, she charged that she's previously pitched the piece to Simmons, who'd rejected her query. Dolly wrote:

I read "Do You Wanna Kiss Me?" with great interest, especially since I pitched a similar article idea to you more than a month ago, after I had my first encounter with a pick-up artist. I never heard your thoughts about my pitch, but you must have liked it because you ended up not only exaggerating my idea into a cover story, but quoting my blog as well!

Simmons defended himself against the charge of theft. Sylvester pitched the piece to Simmons, the editor said; it wasn't an assignment. Indeed, the pitch was initially rejected before Sylvester honed the idea further and Simmons accepted it. Simmons also says he's checked his file of old pitches and doesn't see one from Dolly, though he doesn't rule out the possibility she pitched it to another editor at the paper.

The AP, in its report on Sylvester's suspension, raised questions about a piece he wrote for the Voice's Education Supplement, published in August. Several paragraphs of the short wire dispatch were devoted to the August piece:

His few full-length feature articles included several interviews with characters who told somewhat fantastical stories.

In an August story about cheating on college campuses, Sylvester described interviewing a student who spent $500,000 to have a multiplication table tattooed over his entire body; a Harvard Medical School graduate who cheated with Morse code; a Boston College junior named Simeon Criz who cheated using a specially designed deck of playing cards; and a Manhattan doctor named Noam Feldstein who delivers "a hundred newborn babies each day."

Boston College said it had no record of a student named Simeon Criz. The board that licenses doctors in New York said it had no record of a physician named Noam Feldstein.

We read "Crib Sheet Confidential" yesterday evening, and in this case we can jump to Sylvester's defense. (At least partially.) The outlandish story is clearly a satire — it's just not a funny one.

So, now that the paper has removed from its site the vestigial version of the story we pointed you to late yesterday, we'll instead direct you to Google cached version. Good luck "disappearing" that one.

(Also: Yes, yes, we know about that essentially useless Editor's Note. More on that TK later.)

'Do You Wanna Kiss Me?' [VV via Google]

Here's what we hear/speculate/gather: People quoted in the story claim they never spoke to the reporter. Editors at the paper now believe Sylvester likely fabricated material. Writers at the paper believe this is because young Sylvester — a former Harvard Lampoon kid who writes criticism for the Voice and indie-music reviews for Pitchfork — didn't quite get the whole big-reported-cover-story thing, which he wasn't really ready for and which Simmons was pushing him to do. Simmons, merely the acting editor, is trying to make a splash so he can get the job permanently. This is not the sort of splash he had in mind. Sylvester may or may not have fainted in Simmons's office while being berated. And everything in the usually boisterous office is being kept very need-to-know.

Please insert an "allegedly" into every sentence of that second, speculative graf. We'll let you know more as we do. Meantime, we'll actually have to trudge to the corner a pick up a Voice. How delightfully old-school!

UPDATE: And here is an archived or cached or something version of the article, sent in by a diligent reader.

The Village Voice