Here is all the money that’s not being spent on hiring more reporters.

The afterparty report, drunker and therefore more hazily-recalled than the pre-party report, but full of glorious Liz Gorman photography, is yours for the taking, after the jump.

We went to Bloomberg before the dinner was finished to beat the crowd, and it was immediately apparent that a lot of money had been thrown at this thing. The Macedonian embassy has never looked so expensively sleazy. There was house music and a live timbale player, which meant that it was impossible to be heard while you tried to namedrop.

America’s finest.

It very quickly filled up — wall-to-wall journos and pseudo-celebrities. The New Yorkers in attendance admired their mayor’s logistical party-planning ability, as evidenced by the awesome number of bartenders (“That’s why I voted for him,” said one. “Seriously.”), while quietly muttering to themselves that it wasn’t as good as a New York party. Yes, but do your New York parties have Ace Young? Well, do they want him?

Behind the dry ice — the bathrooms. Fanciest party in DC, but they were still airplane toilets.

Jeffrey Wright, Joe Wilson and Joe Wilson’s Wife, Colbert, basically everyone we mentioned in the last post minus Clooney made appearances of varying length, though it was impossible to actually find anyone.

We hung out with half of our Clooney-endangering sister and were introduced to a dour Lloyd Grove, then went out to the quieter and calmer back patio thing to suck down cigarettes and discuss Colbert’s performance with Original Wonkette and Mr. Original Wonkette. It was decided that Colbert bombed due to either the material or the audience. Or both. That much was certain.

The Red Carpet line was dutifully mocked (“how many pictures can you get of Chris Wallace before you get bored?” “Ask Capitol File”) and people tried to figure out if that was the mom from The Gilmore Girls or not, and if not, then who was it?

We drank, we didn’t dance, we tried to find Michael Brown, and finally we were convinced to go check out the dark horse Capitol File party at Cafe Milano. We weren’t the only ones — Coulter, Morgan Fairchild, Antonin Scalia, Ludacris, and a couple other made the same jump at some point, seemingly because it was easier to be heard discussing your newest project at Milano. Coulter had set up a little salon in the back where she sat cross-legged on a counter and enjoyed the slavish admiration of various carefully-unshaven dangerous boys. We told an inappropriate and possibly libelous story about her to our companion while she pretended not to notice us.

We finished up the night there, wondering if the Blue Gin party would’ve been worth it to crash too (Clooney, sure, but what about Jeff “Skunk” Baxter?), amazed at the never-ending stream of alcohol. We were told perhaps five more times that we’d gotten someone or other in trouble with their employer, and Washington Times staffers seemed eager to convince us that they hadn’t “drank the kool-aid.” Jeff Corwin hit on Liz, and she asked him who he was. It was a magical night.

Jeff Dufour’s gettin’ lucky tonight.

Here’s a report from the only person we know who went to Reuters:

Reuters After-party: No one famous. At all. Sarah from America’s Next Top Model kept walking around with her less-than-worthy male beau. Around 2:30am Chan. 9’s Jeff Napshin and and CNN’s Ed Henry arrived from the Bloomberg party to give some much needed star-power. Yeah, that’s how bad it was. Well, actually for us plebe’s there was plenty of free booze, random party favors (including Pixie Sticks and silver-coated almonds), and Reuters Town Cars to drive us home in style. Oh, and the 6 plasma TVs with Reuters news footage on loop added some class… as did the bevy of young women with “Reuters” written in sequins across their chests. If only the pounding house music wasn’t so **** ing loud.

Governor Pataki’s gettin’ lucky tonight.

Cafe Milano. Scalia’s in the back room chatting with Luda, Morgan Fairchild’s out on the patio, Wonkette’s at the bar wishing we’d told Tucker Carlson to switch to an ascot when we had the chance.

Finally, after the lights came up and the music stopped and the bartenders hid the bottles, we went home, finding, for some reason, that we’d stolen a glass. Which almost made up for our leaving our Bloomberg schwag somewhere in Georgetown. Not that the schwag was that great — slippers, mug, chocolates, etc. Washington needs to work on this.

Suitable for framing.

“Keep smiling. Coulter’s right behind you and she can smell fear.”

What makes it Washington’s best party might be the way that it’s not depressing until the next day.