An adorable little blonde person ventured out to the East New York home of former Gawker advice columnist Tionna Smalls to ask her what she thinks about Internet fame. "It's all a lot of fun of games in the beginning." But. "If people think you're getting more burns off their site than they are, they'll get rid of you. It's jealousy."
Care for some cold clafoutis from Balthazar? How about old gossip? Today's "blind item" in the Daily News had juicy hookup details regarding Star's Julia Allison and Men's Health's Dave Zinczenko.
The health-code-violating gossip, as we pointed out, was way old—the pair broke up last May! Allison hastens to add, "Dave and I dated a year ago, and although we remain good friends, he's happily ensconced in a relationship... we haven't dined at Balthazar in over a year." She had one last thing to say regarding Dave: "The measure of a man is how he treats you when he's no longer fucking you." In this, Julia Allison is right. (Excerpted IM convo follows.)
God, Ben Widdicombe—could you be any more obvious in that "blind item" in today's Daily News? Um: "Which inexplicable media star (blame www.Gawker.com for that) likes to boast that she let a certain handsome men's magazine editor, who is also much in the gossip columns, get to third base during a dinner at [downtown eatery] Balthazar?"
Blog host Tumblr almost apologized to its users for leaving a big door open to hackers for 40 minutes today. "We screwed up today, and we cannot possibly express our remorse," a company blog said, offering some consolation to anonymous bloggers like Fake Nick Denton who may have had their (hopefully anonymous) email addresses exposed when the hacker or hackers peered at 27 registration records. But Tumblr groveled a little harder for Star editor-at-large Julia Allison, whose blog was the only one defaced, and fairly horrendously at that. An italicized section at the end of Tumblr's post read, "We'd also like to make a special apology to Julia Allison, whose account was temporarily affected by our mistake." See, Julia? Not everyone treats you like a jerk! [Davidville]
While editing administrator code today, Tumblr founder David Karp and developer Marco Arment inadvertently published private user data for 40 minutes. Karp reports on his blog that 27 email addresses were exposed. He told us that four accounts — including popular Tumblr blogs by Julia Allison and Pete Nidzgorski — had their passwords changed. Karp told Valleywag he knows who changed the passwords. "He was a registered user, so we were actually able to look up his info," Karp said. The suspected hacker won't lose his Tumblr account. "I don't think we'll be taking this out on him," Karp said.
We heard from a tipster that Julia Allison's reality show has been given the go-ahead to begin production. No word from JA herself though, just a mysterious blog post. I tried to call Julia for comment, but like every other time I try to call her, some guy asked me 'pick-up or delivery'? I guess she lost her cell phone again. Update: Julia called back. She says she hasn't heard anything about the show and her blog post is about her new website that's launching next month. False alarm.
Don't visit the site unless you want to furiously close the window, but a gang of hackers who call themselves the "Gay Nigger Association of America" have taken over the dating columnist's blog, making the window rotate wildly and the speakers shout "Hey everyone, I'm looking at gay porn." Thank god everyone in my cafe is used to my laptop doing that. [NSFW: It's Me Julia]
We don't know what's more indicative of a total lack of taste: the fact that Rock Star Games is passing out a big foam hand in the shape of "The Shocker" to promote their new Grand Theft Auto release, or that this would cause College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen to publicly assert his very own personal patent on the big foam Shocker hand. Or, the lowbrow Julia Allison-related joke that we could (but won't) make to tie these disparate cultural phenomena together. [Ricky Van Veen]
Here, finally, is a video clip of Julia Allison's Sunday appearance on Howard Kurtz's CNN media extravaganza, Reliable Sources. I'm not somebody who can detect human emotion, but doesn't it look like Howie has a crush on her? You can really see it in his eyes. Click to watch the instantly classic clip, which includes Julia's request that all you haters "go for it!"
We now know the kind of woman Jimmy Wales goes for: brunettes who appear on Fox News and have conveniently troubled Wikipedia entries. In January, the founder of the world's greatest online list of unusually shaped vegetables was courting Canadian controversialist Rachel Marsden with sex-fantasy-laden IM chats. But at the same time, Wales was also playing the gallant on Star editor-at-large and former Fox News late-night pundit Julia Allison's Wikipedia page.
As some of you may have heard, oft-chronicled Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison was on CNN's Reliable Sources this morning. Host Howard Kurtz asked, "You've been called the Paris Hilton of the media world. And Radar magazine says you are the third most hated person on the Internet. I don't know how that statistic was arrived at, but doesn't that kind of criticism and mockery, doesn't it-don't you find it depressing?" Ms. Allison responded, "Actually, I found that really amusing. I actually ranked above the Marine who through the puppy off the cliff. That's quite an accomplishment. I mean, you know, I said to 'Radar'-I said, 'Thank you very much for hating me more than Rachael Ray, more than Tony Kornheiser.' I mean, how is that possible? I was impressed with that, yes. My parents were very proud.'" Then Kurtz asked if she thinks that any press is good press.
Recently, a mysterious figure known only as Commander McBragg began sending us thrilling and, he claims, true stories of his colorful life. A daring rescue by a young Hillary Clinton, late nights with Barack Obama, and, today, a little romance with a young woman named "Julia."
I remember back in 2002 when I was working as an operations research officer at the Concepts Analysis Agency at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, and lived in a little one bedroom apartment off Ft. Myer Drive in Rosslyn near the Metro. It was early May and I was dating Julia, this chick I had met in a bar in Georgetown across the Potomac two months before. I'd always liked little brunettes and she was very outgoing and vivacious, but also seemed pretty frivolous and I had the feeling that if she graduated she would end up as a flight attendant for US Air if she was lucky, or a waitress at Bennigan's if she wasn't.
Some people defend their online blog antics—sharing, bragging, writing, photographing—as simply a way to let their friends and family know what they're up to. Bullshit! The personal blog is a repository for personal vendettas, thinly-veiled sexual conquests, cries for help, intellectual masturbation, and career undermining. In other words, it is a rather stark portrait of your life, filled with Freudian slips. The thing is, being online every day—bloggin' as a self-promotional tool—wears down your boundaries. The things you'd thought you'd never say suddenly seem perfectly fine. Next thing you know, your blog is no longer some sort of branding mechanism. It's a place where you snap photographs of yourself sleeping. We've pointed out some of the most high-profile culprits.
Ever since Julia Allison and Meghan Asha visited the Valley last summer and said in front of various cameras that they intended to find themselves a geek boyfriend, people have described the pair as golddiggers. We know Asha isn't one — why marry for money when you come from it? — but yesterday, Allison told CNET's The 404 that she isn't staking out San Francisco riches either. "If I'm gold-digging, why would you go to San Francisco? There are hedge fund managers right here," Allison said. "And they're getting cash instead of equity in a company that isn't worth anything," b-school graduate Asha chimed in. After the jump, Allison digs a deeper hole:
The British press succumbed to the charms of self-promoting media personality Julia Allison. And it's not some filthy tabloid like the Sun that's begun writing about the titillating Star editor at large - Allison elbowed her way into the pages of the Guardian, considered something of a highbrow read among America's left-wing bloggers. The paper's Peter Preston, noting that Allison doesn't actually write anything for Star, said, "Calling her some kind of 'editor' rather than PR pedlar... gives her a sheen - and, since she's good, it polishes a Star or two as well. Full marks for ingenuity." Gosh, what other British scribbler intellectualizes Allison that way? Oh, right, that guy. (Click the thumb for a full-sized scan of the print Guardian.)
Radar makes its list of the top 10 most hated people on the Internet and slips Julia Allison in at number three — making her more hated than David Mortari, the Marine who threw a puppy off a cliff in Afghanistan. This alone shows how stupid this list is, but Julia's response to being named number three? Priceless:
"At first, she wore a va-va-va-voom dress. I told her she'd catch pneumonia. Now she wears a sweater and jeans. I'm very proud of that." — Valleywag editor and sweater bear Owen Thomas, bragging — bragging! — about his campaign to stamp out the last remnants of glam in Silicon Valley. Thanks for nothing, bosstard.
Randi Jayne Zuckerberg, the nerd chanteuse and sister of Facebook CEO Mark, visited the fair island of Manhattan last week and frankly, we'll never be the same. Zuckerberg — sorry boys, she's planning to wed in May — came to town with her mother. Notorious notoriety-possessor Julia Allison roped Zuckerberg into a meal — and one of her lip-sync videos. We haven't seen the video yet, but we're hoping wantrepreneur Allison was smart enough to hand over creative control to the vastly more talented Zuckerberg. She's excellent at show tunes. Stills from the shoot are below.
