Don't feel bad if you've ever called P.J. O'Rourke a shithead. It's not so far from the truth. On November 8, O'Rourke showed up at the bash for the Atlantic Monthly's 150th anniversary with a giant scab on the bridge of his nose. "I've been waiting all night for someone to ask me what happened!" he told us. So? While cantering around a friend's polo field in Virginia, says O'Rourke, "my horse, Pronto, and I had a kind of parting of ways … He simply came to a stop and I did not." O'Rourke went flying. "It was a one-point landing, face first," he says. To add insult to injury, O'Rourke's friend had just fertilized the field. "Most of this scab is from me scrubbing the stuff off," O'Rourke explained. "I essentially fell face-first into shit. It was a classic situation: 'With this much shit, there must be a pony around somewhere.' And there was!" —Jada Yuan

Earlier: The ‘Atlantic’ 150th-Anniversary Party: A Play in One Act