All Tomorrow's Conference Afterparties

It was a 'Web 2.0' conference sponsored by AOL. For those of you with meaningful lives this is simply some of the fancier programming that can be done on the Internet - but in any event it's always a geek fest, with plenty of braying, adnoidal guys jabbering away on Blackberries and partying like it's 1999 with their paunch and blather about agile methodology or whatever buzzy flim-flam thy think will impress the venture capital guys.

And there's Lou Reed on stage on a small stage in one of the reception areas for an after-party sponsored by Ask.com - if you can imagine it. According to Paul Sloan:

He ended a song, looked out and, in that distinctive Lou Reed voice, said to the crowd: "Maybe you can talk louder."
He continued: "I can turn the sound up and hurt you."
Some people cheered.
Lou gave the order to the sound guy: "Turn it up."
He strummed a blaring chord, then spoke some more, turning up the irony.
"This is the moment I've waited for my whole life. When I was on St Marks Place I thought, someday there'll be a cyberspace and I'll be playing for AOL."

He went on to actually rock the place pretty hard, and the geekerati seemed to enjoy the music. Even Lou Reed has to pay the bills, but he's still got his guitar and his irony, and he's just not going to suffer this indignity without taking something back.