(Photo: Instagram/Mazy)

Airbnb Is a Belieber Early this week, CEO Brian Chesky tweeted out a photo of Justin Bieber, whose startup cred apparently extends to Airbnb renter. The Instagram shot was taken by Mazy Kazerooni, cofounder of #DominateFund, Ben Parr's still hush-hush, celebrity-focused micro-VC. Gee, wonder who their LPs are?

Friday flashback This week the revamped Digg got an unexpected celebrity thumbs-up: Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit fame (infamy?) tweeted at developer Robert Tolar Haining, "I love Digg. Great job and beautiful interface." "Why thank you sir!" Mr. Haining replied, because what else are you going to say when Fred Durst compliments your UI?

Curtain's up This week, Facebook sibling/musical theater devotee Randi Zuckerberg attended and spoke at TedXBroadway. More importantly: She got to meet Lt. Sulu himself, George Takei:

With @georgetakei at #TEDxBroadway! He was so great talking about theater & social media, I don't even have to speak! twitter.com/randizuckerber…

— Randi Zuckerberg (@randizuckerberg) January 28, 2013

Not even gonna front like we aren't jealous.

Devastating It seems Monday was a rough day in the Business Insider office. We speak not of Henry Blodget's regaling the Internet with tales of his air travels, nor of the site's tussle with the Awl over the nature of parody. No, we speak of the fallout from Sunday's episode "Downton Abbey." "Still kinda shaken by last night’s Downton," tweeted deputy editor Joseph Weisenthal. "Sybil?" Mr. Blodget responded with understanding and sympathy, before adding that it had been "brutal."

It's hard but we'll all get through this somehow, just like the Granthams. Stiff upper lip!

Panty Drop Off Softbank principle and devilishly stylish VC Nikhil Kalghatgi got a little surprise in the mail this week. Turns out some silly prankster decided to send him "3.9 kg of panties." Though he declined to reveal just how many pairs of panties equal 3.9 kg, he invited one lucky user to DM him on "Thonger, the all panties Twitter." Sassy.

(Photo: Twitter)

It's all Greek to me I don't think that word means what you think it means.

(Screenshot: Twitter)

The Coworker Is Right WeWork resident Asi Lang guessed the right price on stage with Drew Carey, while his fellow coworkers watched on TV from 175 Varick Street. Between this and all the Foursquare questions on "Jeopardy," game shows seem to have a Silicon Alley bias.

Oh you fancy huh Appcelerator head of partnerships and occasional Betabeat columnist Spencer Chen has some sick Super Bowl plans. Too bad TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler has better ones. Suddenly we feel gloriously populist for our plans to watch it in our PJs on a normal-sized TV.

(Photo: Tumblr)

(Photo: Flickr.com/LeWeb3)

Yesterday, word leaked that former Mashable editor Ben Parr is launching a seed stage VC fund targeted at celebrity investors. The cofounders of Tracks.by, a platform for music artists, are also partners in Mr. Parr's fund. The tech world, as it's wont to do, erupted into a collective scoff: A star-studded investment firm helmed by a “disgraced” journalist, who was fired for blabbing about his salary, doesn't sound like the stuff of Sand Hill Road.

Unwilling to let an opportunity for backseat quarterbacking pass them by, tech bloggers immediately swooped in to offer their analysis of Mr. Parr’s newest venture.

The Wall Street Journal chimed in with a cautionary tale for Mr. Parr, penned by a journalist-turned-VC-turned-journalist-again, who quit his ink-stained day job during the first bubble to become an investor. Just because reporters write about startups, it seems, does not make us experts on the innerworkings of a business. Writes the WSJ:

When journalists give up their penny-a-line trade and think they are financiers and business executives, you are in a bubble....We wish Mr. Parr and his team of neophytes well, but he has a lot of work to prove that writing about startups in any way prepares him for the very different life as a VC.

Venture Beat writer Jolie O'Dell--a former coworker of Mr. Parr's--took a similar tact, questioning the trio's "capacity to run a credible investment outfit." She hammered that point home by making the post's URL "O Rly?"

Kernel Mag founder Milo Yiannopoulos, who himself is no stranger to blog controversy, took a more personal approach, calling Mr. Parr a "tragic figure" who got "carried away with his own celebrity:"

Since then, Parr has cut a rather tragic figure on the international conference circuit, his lanyards showing white space where the name of an employer ought to be. A year later almost to the day of his termination, however, Parr, who in a delicious slice of faint praise was described as “relentlessly nice” by waspish Valley journo Owen Thomas, is returning to the limelight with… yup, you guessed it. A venture capital firm.

And as for the "celebrity" aspect of the fund, PandoDaily pointed out that nary a celebrity is currently to be found:

First off, it’s a celebrity fund, but its grand entrance to the scene included scant actual funds and nary a celebrity. That’s a bad start. At best the oddly named group – the first financial vehicle with a hashtag as part of its name? – is a nascent concept, with a fundraising “target in the single digit millions” to quote the friendly launch article by Forbes’ Tomio Geron. The anchor investors are not celebrities themselves, but rather the business managers of Brittney Spears, Lil Wayne, and Drake. In the world of celebrity, close doesn’t count.

To be fair, as the New Yorker noted in its profile of Scooter Braun, talking to the managers of stars does seem to be the first step towards clinching that celebrity investment. As we mentioned in our profile of Rap Genius, Troy Carter, Lady Gaga's manager and an investor in Tracks.by, has been known to stop by the offices of Andreessen Horowitz.

Lucky for Mr. Parr, celebrities may be less tied to Silicon Valley tradition. Besides, if Michael Arrington is any indication, he can always get back his day job.