Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison typically lavishes her marketing energy on a single product, herself. "How to make You the sexiest brand on the market," she recently explained to readers of Time Out. Last night, however, she lent her star power to another, lesser trademark. It was hard to tell whether yesterday's gathering at Paris Commune in the West Village was a celebration of Allison's 27th birthday, a photo shoot or a launch event for Pink vodka. Guests were asked to wear pink clothes; the cupcakes were pink; and Allison posed for photographs holding bottles of Pink. Every waking moment is a photo opportunity; and every photograph is an opportunity to build the brand of You, and Your alcohol sponsor! Now I admire Julia's shamelessness in lining up free liquor for a private party. But she didn't need to give her backers quite such a thorough commercial blowjob. And, though this may be unkind: there is something sad about a birthday party at which photographers, promoters and random party-hoppers, outnumbering the host's real friends, look awkwardly at each other when it's time to sing "Happy Birthday", too embarrassed to join in. (After the jump, a video by Nick McGlynn.)

The Star magazine talking head is 27 years old, today. For exhaustingly narcissistic coverage of this birthday, and others, visit her blog. (In the comments: a video birthday greeting from Jim Behrle and his Kreepie Kats.)

I received this disturbing photo in an unsolicited email from perpetual Gawker frenemy Julia Allison, whom I have never met. "Recognize this woman?" it read. Why yes I do, because THAT IS MY AUNT standing next to Julia Allison. Apparently they met at some college alumni event. I'm reminded of the scene in every gangster movie where the enforcer goes up to the family and says menacingly, "Pretty little girl you got there. She goes to Longwood Elementary every morning at 7:30." Aunt Carol: If this happens again, just back away slowly and notify campus security.

Maybe you thought you were going to Parsons design school to take pictures like Annie Leibovitz or make paintings like Jackson Pollock or whatever, but the joke is on you, hipster, because when you get there and settle in to your first class all of a sudden everyone will be talking about making internet sex tapes or maybe their fake 90-day suicide plan or titillating their way to cable news punditry, and it will be all be part of the curriculum. In a crumbling America that can't actually make anything except narcissistic "reality" entertainment, Parsons has taken the ingenious step of launching a class where grades are determined by internet fame. Professor Jamie Wilkinson even created proprietary software to track attention by monitoring not just traffic but also Twitter and blog posts, response videos and friend requests (our boss is already salivating). When does Julia Allison get to move into her new Parsons wing and endowed chair? Aspiring Web hottie Sarah Meyers's video about the horrifying future of education, after the jump.

Julia Allison writes that she signed up for a Pownce account despite not knowing "what, exactly, Pownce is or does." (I'm with you there, Julia.) She says she signed up because "I was told to sign up, and ... I follow instructions when given by cute boys." Well Kevin, that's one way to get signups. Just be careful down there in Miami at the Future of Web Apps conference, 'kay? We hear there's a big pink target on your back.

Julia Allison may have made her name writing about sex and flaunting her sexuality, and perhaps she even just yesterday posted on her blog the picture at left, of her spanking a waxed and bethonged hunk, under the headline "What I Really Want For My Birthday." But that doesn't mean she wants your gross sexuality all up in her face! For example, her married-and-pregnant neighbors horrified her just last night by having sex in a most indiscreet manner:

Pictured here, New York's Adam Moss, host of the Oscars party the magazine threw at the Spotted Pig, before ab-obsessed Dave Zinczenko unbuttoned his shirt. Moss, who used to run New York Times' Sunday magazine, is one of the most high-minded of modern editors. Which makes the magazine's web triumph last week all the more disturbing. New York claims 20m pageviews per day for the arty nudes it ran of drunken starlet, Lindsay Lohan. (Yes, jealous.) Moss says the traffic is "addictive". He's joking, for the moment. But wait. (In this week's New York sex diaries, an S&M-loving comedian.) After the jump, lovingly photographed by Gawker's Nikola Tamindzic: Emily Gould; Julia Allison; Alan Cumming and other British luvvies' media gays displaying affection; "Smash" from Friday Night Lights; Marlo's enforcer from cult HBO show, The Wire; and Jews eating piglet.

Michael Arrington and Meghan Asha aren't on-again, off-again anymore. Sources with intimate knowledge of the situation tell Valleywag that it's unambiguously over. We're confident a man with Arrington's prospects will have no problem moving on. Asha, it seems, already has.

Teenaged actress Leven Rambin's latest Page Six Magazine column is clearly designed to terrify competing proto-starlets, at least according to a summary sent in by an email tipster. Rambin said she's putting together a debut album, on which she does at least some rapping. "I have about five careers — soap opera actress, model, singer, fashion designer, writer," Rambin writes. How does she do it all? Powerful friends and, uh, NOT seeking attention.

We weren't actually serious about Julia Allison following up her Time Out New York cover with an appearance on the front of Wired. And yet, here's a photo from Julia Allison and Meghan Asha's brunch meeting with an unnamed Wired "marketing manager." Our hope is expired.

In a move that may send the space-time fabric of the Manhattan gossip media folding in on itself with apocalyptic results, Leven Rambin, the Julia Allison-connected 17 year-old All My Children actress, love object of Hud Morgan, and proto-starlet of the celebrity-industrial complex, has announced that she will be playing a "Lindsay Lohan-esque character" in an upcoming episode of "Lipstick Jungle." So, "does that mean she's a messy party girl with a coke problem?" wonders Ben Widdicombe. "'Oh yes,' Rambin nodded enthusiastically, and then added: 'The character that is, not me.'" The implications are staggering. A recap, a link to a handy visual aid, and a guide to the key questions we now face, below.

Julia Allison, the provocative but usually dignified sex journalist, really needs to think twice about inviting former Harvard "Duchess" Erica Birmingham to her 27th birthday party, and not just because the photo of Birmingham drinking Bud Lite in a tank top that surfaced earlier today. A classmate of Birmingham, who once shared a villa with her in Mexico, wrote in about her notoriety on campus, including "awesome or terrifying" parties involving midgets and dirty parrots. Her email — UPDATE: plus Birmingham's response and another email — after the jump.

Digg founder Kevin Rose turns 31 today. Google might think you're only 30, but we can do the math. Happy 31st, Kevin! We hope you find this post even more heartfelt than the 13 birthday wishes you got on Facebook — oh, and Julia Allison says happy birthday, too. Now Kevin, I have a rich uncle who's looking to invest some money. Can you fill me in on Digg's secrets? (Photo by AP/San Diego Zoo)

We noticed that Julia Allison somehow dug up an old Crimson profile on Erica Birmingham, alumna/Duchess of Harvard, for whom Ivy life was "an all-pink, Champagne-drenched party of her own invention... She's a character, quite literally. She checks into hotels under the name Rosalind Connage, the debutante from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'This Side of Paradise.' When she buys clothes online, she has her parcels delivered to "Duchess Erica Birmingham." And, her father is the former President of the Massachusetts Senate! All that and more, according to the article Allison dutifully re-posted to her blog, with the footnote, "ERICA: CONSIDER THIS AN OFFICIAL INVITE TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY." Cute, but a tipster sent us a pic of young Erica in her heyday. Do you really want this girl at your party? We thought it was supposed to be a classy affair!

Geek-loving cover girl Julia Allison turns 27 soon and all she wants — other than a MacBook Air and whole long list of stuff — is a boy, "tied with a red bow, like a new car for graduation." Knowing Julia's taste for geeks like Kevin Rose and some guy who used to run some video site, we figured: Who better to help Julia land a new man than Valleywag readers? So help her out and vote in our latest poll.

Julia Allison is nearly 27 years old, and she is tired of taking your shit, and will CUT YOU if you mess with her. But also, the walking, talking, blogging bosom kind of likes it if you kick her ass a little bit too. Depending, you know, on the roles the two of you are playing at the time. Here's Julia trying to sound like a total badass, on the internet, and then loving getting smacked around a bit, verbally:

Time Out has a Chicago edition and that edition has a sex columnist. A letter to that sex columnist this week bears a remarkable resemblance to the blog opera life of Time Out New York contributer Julia Allison! It's a sad letter about two bloggers in love who blogged about being bloggers in love (though their sites were read "mostly [by] just our friends, some of their friends read it, too"!), but the guy-blogger blogged about how the girl-blogger couldn't achieve orgasm. Then things got even worse!

A pattern! Julia Allison is following the example of fellow narcissist, publicist Jonathan Cheban: specify desired gifts ahead of one's birthday. Says the Star magazine talking bosom: "Because I am a giver, I will share this list with you." One of Allison's wishes: a tampon case, in pink.

Ab-obsessed Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko is busy promoting his new book, which should be called "A List Of Foods For Healthy, Stupid People To Eat." Washington Post pseudotrend specialist Laura Sessions Stepp caught up with Zinc [WP], who, now that he's not busy wrestling with Julia Allison, has plenty of time to fill humanity in on the areas of his expertise: Abs, vanity, and how Maxim sucks!

Feminist icon Jane Fonda used the word "cunt" on the Today Show, rather than Oprah-approved vajayjay, and the moral guardians shuddered, but with less conviction than they once summoned. Swearwords found safety in numbers: John Edwards thinks Barack Obama is a "pussy"; and the likely Republican nominee, who survived years in a prisoner-of-war camp, is a "sissy", according to Salon. In preparation for a limp-wristed political future, 24 dumped its torture-loving creator. Sissy: not something one could say about Hayden Christensen, star of Doug Liman's new science-fiction movie, Jumper: he manfully squired co-star Rachel Bilson round Manhattan to establish his heterosexual credentials, but not so conclusively that female or gay fans would think him unavailable. (Amazingly, Madonna's new movie got better reviews.) Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman took the opposite tack, playing to male sapphic fantasies on the cover of W to promote their new movie, The Other Boleyn Sister. (We thought Scarjo looked more like a Slovak model.) Talking of pseudo-siblings, Julia Allison's 17-year-old "adopted" little sister, with whom the Star magazine talking head enjoyed posing, hooked up with Men's Vogue cad, Hud Morgan. There's a diagram. Even more complicated: the relationship between fashion designer Marc Jacobs, his boyfriend, and the gay porn star they've adopted. The New York Times adapted to these shallow times by splashing a game show, Deal or No Deal, across the front of its Arts section. But this belated populist appeal wasn't enough to staunch the loss of readers, and advertising: the Gray Lady is joining the Los Angeles Times and most every other newspaper in the US in cutting newsroom jobs. For these stories, and more, here's one page with the week's top stories. (Or just click on any of the names listed, above.)