Photo: Lisanti's Facebook

Today is editor Mark Lisanti's last day at Defamer, Gawker Media's L.A. gossip site, and we must confess we're very sad. In four years and about 10,000 posts, Lisanti proved himself to be tirelessly creative, funny, sharp, and perceptive. Though he was ostensibly our competitor, his writing was so great that we never got angry at him for constantly scooping us. He managed to break many of Paul Boutin's Rules for Gawker Media Writing every day — Lisanti rarely made just one joke, he happily quoted every stupid thing someone said, he never bailed early — and his posts were sublimely hilarious as a result.

Whenever we manage to scrape together enough time to reread one of our posts before we publish it, we always ask ourself one question: "Is this as funny as Lisanti would have written it?" Then we shrug and publish it anyway.

Apparently, the guy was so nice that his co-workers posted an unironic and heartfelt good-bye post just now, complete with an awesome video tribute. We can't do that, but we do have a going-away present for Mark, after the jump.