Let's check in and see how Julia Allison's new gig as Time Out dating columnist is going. Maybe she's dropping dirty secrets about media figure she's semi-seeing or offending us by suggesting that women should whore themselves out for shoes. Or! Maybe she's ... getting so lazy that she's calling in Neel Shah and his College Humor compatriots to pinch-hit. Oh, Julia. Already?

In fact, even the boys aren't generating original content: just repurposing dating-related bits from their book Faking It. And instead of weighing in with an actual girl's take on what seems like some highly specious advice—come on, "ask somebody where first class is [on the Staten Island Ferry], and before they get a chance to laugh, whisk your date to the upper deck"?—she seconds it.

"'It's a known fact that women love cheese and wine,' says Blumenfeld. (He is correct. Also, sugar.)" Besides calling Noah Blumenfeld "sugar," Julia's not so much her flirty self at all in this column. Maybe she's spent from her other endeavors?

Shoestring Theory [TONY]