“So, I should probably make a confession… but if I do, I’d rather you didn’t punch me on the nose.”

Knowing that she doesn’t ever read stuff that’s written about her, I could have kept my mouth shut. But for that same reason, I had to tell her and, two drinks in, at least there was a chance her reaction times would be dulled.

“Of course I won’t punch you on the nose. I’m un-offendable.”

I took another gulp of beer.

“Well… it’s just that I sort of skipped Frank Warren’s (Post Secret) keynote at South By Southwest and used the time instead to make a postcard with the words ‘I pretended to care about your start up but really I just wanted to fuck you’ across the front. And then I sent it in to Post Secret.”

Pause.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

So – yes! – I finally caught up with Sarah Lacy for beer, nuts and Manhattans. And about time too – I’d managed to miss her in Austin and London and we were well overdue a drink and a chat about our respective books and the fact that we’re talking about doing a joint reading – her reading from my book, me from hers – despite the fact that she doesn’t have a UK publisher and I don’t have a US one.

She was on fine form – even managing to restrain herself from punching me on the nose, despite being entirely justified in doing so. Truth be told, I feel kind of bad about making that postcard and writing that transcript now – I wouldn’t have liked it done to me – and it’s always much easier to justify taking the piss out of someone when you’re not sitting opposite them.

But as I said to her, like it or not, she’s a celebrity now and asshole bloggers like me will see her as a target. Just a person on a stage – or a page – with no feelings or professional pride. The price – as they say – of fame.

We talked a bit about the interview, actually, even though she’s understandably bored of the whole fucking subject – and it was interesting to hear some context. With that context in mind, and some other behind the scenes information on how she came to be on the stage in the first place – I’m pretty sure no one could have done a better job than she did.

And as I’ve said before, without her, it would have been the most boring keynote of all time. I did re-iterate that I thought the reach-around was a little excessive though. She laughed, but she knew I was right.

So right in fact that she felt the need to get her revenge with this post which pretty much guarantees that Jason Calacanis will punch me in the face, without even having to go to the hassle of reading the book. I would like it made clear, though, that my actual comment was…

“Jason Calacanis is a dick. I can’t imagine anyone meeting him doesn’t agree. You could call his mother and even she’d confirm the quote.”

The face punching bit – and the other quotes – were spot on though. Crazy ‘professional’ that she is, Sarah takes notes, even during drunken chat. Especially during drunken chat. Damn her.

Naturally enough, the conversation soon drifted away from Calacanis and on to mythical creatures: minotaurs, unicorns, mermaids and the like. Specifically, we were discussing how shit the design of mermaids was, if I remember correctly. They just seem kinda backwards…

“Dude, I totally went all the way with that mermaid chick last night!”

“Sweet!”

“Yeah! Second base.”

Mermaids lead in turn to unicorns and to She Ra and my insistence that He-Man’s girlfriend rode a magical winged unicorn. Sarah disagreed – it was just your bog-standard pegasus, she insisted. I held my ground – and before we knew it, a Wikipedia Wager was born. The prize? That the loser would autograph the winner’s book with the definitive answer to the question her and I have been unable to agree on. To wit, is she the American me or am I the American her. I insisted the former of course, and her the latter. The bet was on.

The result? Well, see for yourself…

If you can’t make out the words, it says ‘I am the American version of you – and that’s all I can ever aspire to be (I’m going to weep later). Your friend and doppelganger (I HOPE!) – Sarah Lacy’. So it’s official.

An added bonus was that I got to take away the book, giving me a sneak preview of its contents ahead of next month’s official publication. It’s always awkward reading something written by someone you know and like as – no matter how terrible it is – you have to say it’s great. Fortunately Sarah had thought long and hard about that problem and had come up with the perfect solution – she’d written a book that’s really bloody good. So good in fact that I read it from cover to cover on my flights between San Francisco and Boston. I couldn’t put it down.

The first thing that struck me was the level of access Sarah has, and the effort she’s clearly put into research. On two significant occasions in the past – Kevin Rose’s cover and Zuckerberg’s keynote – she’s been accused of being too friendly with her subjects. Of drinking the Kool-Aid if you like (whatever that is). There’s no doubt about it, Rose and Zuckerberg (amongst others) come across as pretty likeable in the book – perhaps because, all told, they are. But still, it’s far from a circle jerk. Really far from it. For almost every occasion where a ‘web 2.0 superstar’ tells their side of a story, Sarah has finagled a similar level of access with an enemy or former business partner to get the other side. It is – in other words – both fair and balanced.

But above all of that, it’s fascinating to read – really informative, even for those who know their shit about Web two. At JFK I bought a copy of Fast Company, knowing that I would probably finish Sarah’s book before I landed. There’s a nice detailed cover piece on Gina Bianchini – the ‘Web 2.0 hottie’ who co-founded Ning with Marc Andreessen. Reading it just now in the bar at the Hyatt in Boston, I found myself nodding politely but not really feeling like I’d learnt much. The reason? Informative as the Fast Company piece was, the story of Ning – and Gina and Marc – is told much more engagingly and behind-the-scenesly in Sarah’s book. As is the story of Digg – which even prompted me to watch an episode of Digg TV on the plane (think Baddiel and Skinner Uninstalled) – and Slide and Twitter and Six Apart and Yelp and, yes, of course, Facebook. If anything, there’s just too much information and too many interesting stories to fit into one book.

Yeah. So. I know what you’re thinking. Jesus, Paul, you’re drinking the Kool Aid yourself now. What a hypocrite, huh, after the postcard. But I said at the time of the keynote that there’s a difference between having a bad gig and being a bad reporter – and I’ll say again that Sarah is really good at what she does. But more importantly – something that you might not realise if you only know her from that keynote, is that she’s very, very funny.

For example, she was telling me that she’s hit on a new way to break the ice with notoriously tight-lipped entrepreneurs: she will arrive at the interview with a dog on a lead. But not any dog – an inappropriately sized one. That’s the key. Either really small or really big. I laughed as she told me this – assuming it was a joke – but no.

She flipped open her MacBook and sure enough, there were the pictures. Her, Zuck and a tiny little dog, her, Kevin Rose and a huge dog, Larry Page and a ridiculously long sausage dog, Max Levchin struggling with a hound so large that he couldn’t even convince it to move (see left)… she had folder after folder of them. Apparently silicon valley types love their dogs so it works every time. She swore me to secrecy on the story as the technique relies on surprise – but, meh, I’m not drinking your Kool-Aid, Lacy.

In fact, just to prove I’m not entirely backtracking on my SXSWi meanness here are five other bad things you might not know about Sarah Lacy…

1) She is a terrible speller. Look carefully at that photo of the inscription. She has spelt my name with a K.
2) Sarah hates Whoopi Goldberg – to the point where she is launching a campaign to steal her job on The View
3) Sarah intends to steal the limelight from her upcoming Yahoo! interview with Steve Jobs by appearing naked on camera, wearing only an iPod
4) Sarah gatecrashes conferences by forcing dot com Super Colliders to hand over their convention passes or face removal from her book (see chapter six of the book for just one example of this evil technique in action)
5) Sarah once killed an owl

But – yes – these terrible aspects of her character aside, you should buy a copy of ‘Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good (The rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0)‘ and judge for yourself – it’s out on May 15th in the US. Trust me, you’ll really enjoy it. Wired did – they just gave it 9/10 in a really glowing review.

Owl lovers will probably want to skip chapter nine though.

That shit’s just nasty.