Rachel Sklar of FishbowlNY was positively ga-ga about the latest Huffington Post party in Los Angeles that featured a spectacular commingling of Old Media and New Media. A number of boldfaced names were in attendance - including literary stars from both Left and Right Coasts, a raft of New York bloggers flown in special for the event, big-time media names like Bill Maher, assorted glitterati friends of Arianna, and execs from Yahoo. At Fishbowl NY, that potent combination of media stars (new and old) translated into two days of full-color pictures on the blog and two days of breathless recounting of who said what, to whom, over what kind of cocktail:

"As any reader of December's Vanity Fair can surmise, [Arianna Huffington's] house is gorgeous, spacious and lovely and warm and unpretentious, and the perfect venue for a glittering and convivial party for all sorts of glamorous media/entertainment types. Which was fortunate, because hundreds of them were about to arrive for her party for Defamer's Mark Lisanti and Gawker Media, her happy reciprocation of Nick Denton's party for her in September, co-hosted by Gawker's new business associate Scott Moore of Yahoo! We're not sure how to end that sentence with anything other than an exclamation point, but really the night was so exciting and fun that we didn't need to try."

If you can get past all the party details above, one thing is clear: we have just witnessed a mad mating of Old Media and New Media, brokered by companies like Yahoo and individuals like Arianna Huffington. Companies like Gawker Media (built on an amalgam of low-cost blogging tools and celebrity-fueled scandal chatter), it seems, are now just as mainstream as the highbrow, up-market New York Times or Washington Post. Check out the FishbowlNY photos one more time (like this lovely pic of Arianna) and then write down the date: November 17. That's the day that the distinction between Old Media and New Media officially blurred away. While Internet gearheads were worried about blog widgets and RSS doodads, media-savvy folks from Yahoo were figuring it all out.