Wired posted its profile of Julia Allison, the Time Out New York dating columnist and onetime protocelebrity (now in the process of crossing over into the real thing). Yes, the cover story (preceded by the cover itself) retreads much that Gawker readers already know about Allison, and many of you will, no doubt, find the piece altogether too friendly, a celebratory, rather than judgmental, distillation of her techniques for self-promotion and attention whoring. But there is news. Confirmation, for one, of Allison's long-rumored reality TV show for Bravo, IT Girls. Wired said the deal was signed in June, though it's clearly been in the works for much longer. Then there's a terrifying new wrinkle to Allison's new "lifecasting" Web venture, Non Society:

All that sucking up to Chris Anderson and "branding" herself as a sort-of techie has finally paid off! New York dating columnist Julia Allison—famous for being famous for no reason on the Internet—will grace the August cover of Wired. (She must have timed her baffling new website Non Society in order to coincide with the cover.)

While it's tracking nicely and all set to smash Friday the 13th's other green menace—The Happening—into M. Night Smithereens, Universal is still not taking any chances on getting The Incredible Hulk word out. Besides the new one-sheet featuring a Herb Rittsian, rear-view shot of the verdant one filling out a pair of Levis HulkFit™ jeans (one must never underestimate the power of the all-mighty gay dollar!), a new TV spot puts what was supposed to be a surprise cameo—Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Starke, aka Iron Man, aka the new Marvel-Universal Quality Assurance Seal of Approval mascot—at the very top, there to ease the concerns of a traumatized fanboy nation who still wake up in cold nightsweats screaming, "ANG LEE'S TAKE ON THE MATERIAL WAS ENTIRELY TOO CLINICAL AND ROBBED OF ALL HULK-SMASH PASSION!" The two may eventually go on to fight alongside one another in The Avengers movie, something hinted at by Iron Man's own super-secret-surprise cameo—which revealed itself only to moviegoers who sat through the credits. If you missed it, it's after the jump:

Vimeo's Jakob Lodwick, the ex-man of both Star talking head Julia Allison and her BFF Mary's little sister, 18-year-old soap star Leven Rambin, is in Esquire this month. He's finally fulfilled his dream of becoming a model! (They featured boys of the web, who got to keep their clothes on.) Meanwhile, Iminlikewithyou's Charles Forman, pictured on the left, has finally fulfilled his dream of dating Julia Allison. And now they're pictured in the same spread—awkward! Click to enlarge. [via AlleyInsider]

It's Day 8 of the Emily Gould saga, the former Gawker editor whose first-person blogging narrative that landed the cover of the New York Times Magazine. Our coverage of her is nothing personal, just business—she's officially a "person of interest"! Today's installment: some people, including Gould herself, seem to be offended by the article's accompanying photos, shot by fine art photographer Elinor Carucci. They're "intimate," like the text, but "intimate" also reads as "sexy," and God knows we can't have that. (Gould called them "vaguely cheesecakey" in a NYT Q&A.) Although the Observer wrote today that "the writer was involved in winnowing the photos to a dozen... 'when I saw the cover, I was shocked,' Ms. Gould said on the phone. Did she feel a tad exploited?"

For former Gawker blogger Emily Gould's raw "Blog-Post Confidential" essay in the upcoming New York Times Magazine, she was photographed by Elinor Carucci, who specializes in "portraits of everyday female vulnerability." The photo on the left is Emily Gould by Carucci, the one on the right is Carucci, from her Closer series. Shoot the Blog remarks that Carucci, admirably, is able to "delivers editorial imagery that is barely distinguishable from her own [fine art] work." That's the photographer equivalent of making it big writing personal narratives! (Click to enlarge.)

Occasionally, on this very website, enlightening debate breaks out. In between the clusterfucks and the bodysnarking, talk about blogging, the internet, the effect of technology on relationships, and the Way We Live Now occurs. In that case, Emily Gould's just-online article in next Sunday's New York Times Magazine has done what it set out to do. We found it fitting to highlight a conversation between commenters Cassandra and A Dismal Science. Are we all Emily? Is nobody Emily? Should we stone her to death, as is the Internet's custom? "There is not one Emily. There are millions of Emilys." Read on...

As Nylon points out, the rainbow gal to the left—photographed at age fourteen for New York magazine's LookBook section, a street-fashion centerfold in which oft-annoying people explain their outfits—is actually in one of their ads for the June issue! The ad was shot by loose cannon and Last Night's Party photographer Merlin Bronques. Kay Goldberg is eighteen now and looking totally fashionable—so it's OK to click for the photo.

Everyone's ankling the New York Times establishment today: our roving photographer, the alarmingly tall Nikola Tamindzic, is profiled in the paper's City Room blog. What makes his photos special? "I don't judge my subjects... I like that hour between three and four in the morning when desperation sets in, when you see all the anticipation of going out starting to fade. The masks drop and everybody realizes the night is not going to be everything they were hoping for." [NYT] [Photo: Nikola for Home of the Vain]

"I'm going to try to never write about you," I whispered to the boy whose shoulder my head was on two nights ago. Oops. Emily Gould has made a writing career of her personal life and built a personal life around her writing career, exposing her relationships on a personal site and on Gawker when she was a writer on this site. Now, in a cover story for this coming weekend's New York Times Magazine, she does an accounting. "What I gained-and lost-by revealing my intimate life on the web," goes the cover line-over a sultry photograph of the author sprawled across a bed, a laptop power cord suggestively looping towards her tattooed arm.

Electronic Arts officially announced Steven Spielberg's first video game yesterday. Strangely, it's a puzzle game, which sounds uncharacteristically un-epic for the director; shouldn't he be making the new Halo? But Boom Blox, a Nintendo Wii game that Spielberg conceived two years ago, actually seems worth more than an hour of play, at least for those of us old enough to be amused by the sheer number of things flying around and exploding. After the jump, the game trailer and requisite punchline.

Ellen DeGeneres promises to liven up the Deal or No Deal proceedings when she makes a guest appearance on the hit NBC game show. But unlike past guests, like Donald "The Banker" Trump and Celine "Open Da Case!" Dion, the canine-regifter will join the show's Pyramid of Hot Briefcasemodels. TVGuide.com reports:

The prosecution in the Phil Spector trial spent the better part of the day aggressively trying to discredit defense witness Dr. Vincent DiMaio (pictured), a forensics expert and author of a book on gunshot wounds, who insists the only way Barbarian Queen star Lana Clarkson could have died the night she followed an insistent Spector to his castle-like manse was by placing the gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger herself. DiMaio cited both physical and circumstantial evidence, including the fact that the aging actress seemed depressed over her dwindling career prospects—at which point the world's most ubiquitous ex-con socialite made an unexpected cameo: