"A dramatic day for team USA, with flamboyance in men's figure skating from an uninhibited talent."

That seems more, um, forthcoming than is usual for figure skating coverage. Aren't they supposed to be trying to convince me that the American favorite is the Bad Boy of the ice dancing world? You know, like they do every four years?

fun stalkable moment: i (along with dcsobloop) will be at chicagoist's first local concert event, ctrl-alt-rock, on thursday evening. the assembly, may or may not and the alphabet will be playing. 8 p.m., $8, schuba's. if you all remember correctly, i was involved in dcist's concert last year, unbuckled, so i'm all about supporting this show.

and guess what? i'll be at the second coming of unbuckled as well! you should be there. thursday, february 23, dc9. excellent d.c. groups the hard tomorrows and olivia mancini and the housemates will be playing. come on out!

just a note to mark the launching of beepcentral, a web site aimed at young chicago surburbanites published by the daily herald, a newspaper serving the areas northwest of chicago. beepcentral grew out of a recent medill media management project, one of the reasons i applied to medill in the first place.

every year, a group of students who select to do the project basically spend a full quarter working as a consulting group to a local newspaper or publishing company. essentially, the company says "we want _____"; the students design, build and market a product from the ground up to suit the company's needs. generally the companies want a) something designed to bring in younger readers and b) an online component.

i'll be doing the project this spring quarter. i've heard rumblings that the partner this time around will be the minneapolis star tribune. i'm really excited about it, even though i have no clue as to what the project could be this time around, but i'll keep you informed!

don't know if anyone else subscribes to email tipster service daily candy - i do for both chicago and d.c., and while i often find their tips to be a) more geared to people earning $80,000/yr and up b) too cutesy, every once in a while they know what they're talking about.

well, i guess those folks knew what they were doing - they could soon be sold for more than $100 million, says the WSJ:

Mr. Pittman bought a controlling stake in the site for about $3.5 million in 2003. With traditional and electronic publishers keen to get their hands on Internet-advertising properties, Daily Candy could fetch more than $100 million, people familiar with the matter say.

While a relatively small transaction, a Daily Candy auction will be an important barometer for the pace and valuation of Web deal making. During the past 18 months, Internet media transactions have attracted top valuations, as publishers worry that advertising dollars are migrating online and away from newspapers, magazines and television. Big media players such as News Corp.; Dow Jones & Co. Inc., which publishes The Wall Street Journal; and E.W. Scripps Co. all have made Internet-related acquisitions.

Daily Candy's business is a simple one: It produces urbane email newsletters that make daily recommendations on shopping, entertainment, food and media. Originally written for a clutch of trend-obsessed New York City women, the site produces 11 electronic newsletters, including editions for Chicago, San Francisco and London. Advertisers pay for access to the newsletter subscribers.

Without costs for printing or the need for much editorial product, Daily Candy boasts margins of nearly 60%, say people familiar with the matter. The hope for 2006 is that the business will produce revenue somewhere less than $20 million, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the low-teen millions, these people say.

anyone interested can read an old but good interview with founder dany levy here.

I'm glad that Catherine got her flowers, but I'm not very happy about how she got them: at 9:30 at night. She had to cancel plans to go out in order to guide the FTD guy in by cell phone. And then he forgot to give her the chocolates I'd ordered.

I guess it'd be tacky to complain about how much money I had to drop to get such stellar service, so I'll just call it a racket and leave it at that. Bah!

tom cruise has bizarre outbursts at kayne west concert.

you know how tommy described that weirdly giddy feeling of something awful and uncontrollable starting to happen, but you're powerless to prevent it, like when you crest the top of a rollercoaster? except he was talking about major and scary privacy issues?

well, this is how i feel about the inevitable decline of tom cruise. we are on the verge of watching some monumental breakdown, people, the likes of which has rarely been seen before in celebrity history. mark my words, folks, it won't be long before he's peeing into stored milk bottles and putting on three hundred pounds. all we can do is grab some popcorn, sit back and blog it all.