BACK WHEN I had dignity and reviewed porn sites for ...

And the latex love only seems more impressive at the Hot Air party at Rare, where typical lame burlesque is supplanted by great decadent cabaret. The fire portion of the evening is too L.A. goth, but stripper Dirty Martini's balloon act is grandly old-school. Madame Cole de Sade also cuts a fine figure pinning balloons on a trembling sub, while the ladies posing inside balloons are genuine vaudeville.

It's an unusually impressive evening, which?typically?brings in a depressingly small crowd. Maybe balloon fetishists are just savvy enough to avoid Rare's Bulletproof Busboys, notorious for whisking away your half-finished drink with the stealth of a ninja.

And speaking of bad drink deals, the fiscal conservatives of the New York Sun don't even opt for an open bar during the media-only portion of the daily paper's anniversary bash at Lobby. Even worse, the music is the same funky sounds you'd hear at any Century 21 holiday office party. This prompts me to take my money around the corner to Wakaba, the great conservative bar where patrons assault undercover cops who offer them drugs?although I don't leave before a cute conservative gal informs me that public humiliation isn't keeping the Wall Street Journal's John Fund from still being a lecherous old creep.

By the time I return to Lobby, the media types have fled, and the party's become another gathering sponsored by mediabistro.com, the website dedicated to journalists looking for jobs. Considering that he's almost unanimously disliked by his employees, it's probably not surprising that Sun editor Ira Stoll couldn't muster enough friends to fill the club by himself.

I've always figured that a MediaBistro event centered on unemployed writers handing each other resumes. MediaBistro founder Laurel Touby, however, is quick to tell me otherwise. Touby assures me of this while taking my hand, offering to get me a drink and explaining that her parties are all about people making new best friends. She drags some gal away from the bar, I order my drink, get asked $9 for a Jack & Coke, and turn around to find that my own new best friend is suddenly nowhere to be found. No doubt MediaTaxiGirl.com had already been registered.

But lots of people are dishonest about how they make their money, which lands me at the Museum of Sex for Eric Danville's lecture on Linda Lovelace. The museum is too touristy for most NYC gossip columnists, but the "Icon" lecture series has become a reliable place for celebrity dish. Lovelace, though, was always transparent when applying pseudonyms to Hugh Hefner and Sammy Davis, Jr. in her multiple autobiographies.

However, it's never been revealed who the incestuous father/son Hollywood duo was in The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace. As the only porn writer to deal with Lovelace in her final years?and the fine author of The Complete Linda Lovelace?it only makes sense to go to Danville for the dirty truth:

"Shit. I don't know."

"You never asked her?"

"Umm?no."

So there's one tale taken to the deep grave, although Lovelace's other big secret?that being sex with canines on film?is later on display at the Linda Lovelace Stag Film Festival at Otto's Shrunken Head. This is particularly important footage, since Lovelace's happy doggie coupling belies her later tales of being forced to make those loops. On the other hand, I probably managed an amiable smile while once paying $9 for a goddamn Jack & Coke.