Nerve hired its new CEO away from The Onion, for some reason, and he's doing this, for some reason:

The most significant change to Nerve, which launched in 1997, will be in how little nudity will be on the revamped site. Mills said that Nerve's premium and members-only photo archives, which contain many photos that display substantial expanses of naked skin, will be spun off into a new, as-yet-untitled external subscription site.

The Nerve blogs that sometimes feature nudity will be similarly toned down, said Mills, who started at Nerve last week. The nudity that remains, Mills said, will be more like the nudity that appears in the New Yorker or New York magazine-that is, occasional and relatively incidental.

Ha yes, purely incidental nudity like Lindsay Lohan all up New York magazine, nekkid. I mean if some girl is wandering by the Nerve offices and it's hot out and she wants to slip out of her clothes and do a photo shoot, fine, but otherwise, those titillating reader-submitted short stories should do the trick, revenue-wise.
[Businessweek. Pic: Nerve, scandalously]

Some later episodes lack conflict, but that doesn't stop them from being cute, and this short form can support a couple episodes of light joking. The same spirit of casual and mature portrayal of sex as a normal part of a relationship, even a backdrop for conversation, keeps the story fresh.

Season 3, which is a co-production of IFC and Nerve, premiered Tuesday; a new episode goes up for the next ten days. Watch the whole series here.

"For the record I wasn't speaking euphemistically as far as the 'calamari' quote is concerned. I was referring to an earlier post of mine, where I was talking a bit about dating expectations as you can see from the quote below":

"I guess the main thrust of it all, is people shouldn't really go into a date with too many expectations. Even if things APPEAR to be going smoothly, you really can never know what's going on in the noggin of the person staring back at you over a delicious plate of fried calamari. My advice?

Just enjoy the fried calamari."

"A few years ago I got a call from a friend who said, "I just quit my job [as a magazine editor in New York], rented a car, and I am driving at 90 miles per hour towards Cincinnati. I am driving straight to a bar to meet a girl I met on Nerve personals. Tomorrow I am hitting Chicago for another date with another girl. I am f——ing my way across the country.""

I had been dating this guy for a couple of months and everything was going well- we had good fun, good sex and good conversation - except,he was a really annoying sloppy drunk. On his birthday we went out to a local bar with a bunch of his guy friends and he got particularly wasted and we got in a little argument that concluded with him running out of the bar in anger. Instead of going after him, I left with his best friend.

Even though I'd been dating someone for 6 months, I'd forgotten to de-activate my Nerve profile. I was reminded of this when I got a message notification in my inbox. I felt so bad- I logged on, changed it to reflect that I was looking for platonic friends only, and then wrote the poor guy back. He was pretty good natured about the whole thing, and we ended up emailing each other several times, because we actually did like a lot of the same things. We started hanging out as friends- the guy I was dating know all about it and was okay with it. But I started noticing that I actually preferred to hang out with the Nerve guy than with my boyfriend of 1 year! That was pretty much the beginning of the end... and me and the Nerve guy have been officially together for 2 years now."

Keeping these rules in mind, when Kay walked in and she was an easy eighty pounds heavier than the picture she had sent, I knew the date was a going nowhere. Her face, which had been so attractive in the photos was bloated and her eyes puffy, still the additional pounds made her head look small when compared with her girth. Her whole body rolled when she walked...So I stood up to meet her. When she was about ten feet from me I was overcome by the strangest aroma; an odor that I can only describe as being the result of a chemical accident in an apple orchard. It was coming from her. The smell was simply so overpowering that I immediately thought about attempting to escape, but the only way out was either past her or through a fire-door with an alarm on it.

"I have a boyfriend but I keep my nerve personal profile, secretly. Just to see who messages me. I've gone so far as to have brief, flirtatious exchanges but nothing serious,"

[Nerve: Dating Confessions]

So apparently there actually was absinthe at the party, but by the time we got there it was all gone. For a party supposedly full of people hopped up on a highly alcoholic, psychoactive drink, things were pretty tame. There wasn't even dancing, really.

I talked to Jodie Abrams, the photo editor girl at Nerve and she told me that they think they're gonna call the site "Greendulgence." I could be completely wrong, as the music was really loud and I was really drunk, and that word is kinda weird and doesn't make sense, but I'm pretty sure that's what she said. So then I talked to Ben, who is the editor of the new site and flew out from California. I considered talking about green stuff and ecological responsibility with him, but the only think I could offer on that is how this cycle of Top Model is all about being green and Tyra even placed a compost heap in the model's house. I bet it got full of tampons and Splenda packets.

But what I was really excited about was that I got to talk to feminist author/filmmaker Jennifer Baumgardner at the party. I told her I actually met her a long time ago when I used to work at BUST magazine. She was like, "Yeah, you look like someone who would've worked at BUST." I'm not sure if that's an insult or a compliment. Whatevs.

Outside the hotel, Showtime had arranged for down-on-their-luck thespians to be dolled up in vaguely historical costumes. Their clothing ranged from American colonial to Elizabethan, completely avoiding the mid-16th century when the whole Henry VIII thing took place. Also, though I'll check Wikipedia, I'm pretty sure they didn't have Segways back then. Ah crap. They did!

Upstairs was Bobby Zarem, the last of the old school PR guys. He was deep in conversation with one of the extras who, at this point, had come in from the cold and was roaming the room in doublet and pantaloons. Well into his 70s, Zarem, is a short, balding voluble man, at once gruff and endearing. We chatted a bit about nothing (his favorite movie is Singing in the Rain). I asked him about the whole Roman v. Lewis thing, since he is the king of Elaine's. Zarem said a bunch of shit off the record. But the best quote concerns neither the pedophile nor the libeler. Sort of:

Mia Farrow is a filthy lying dirty cunt. She said Michael Caine introduced her to Woody but it was me. But she says it was Michael just because it sounds more glamorous. But fuck that. We were all at Elaine's and she had come twice to meet Allen. The first time he wasn't there but he was the second time and I introduced them. I even told Page Six she was a lying cunt. And still, I was invited to her book party.

DENTON: How many threesomes have you had?
RUFUS: I don't think any. What's a definition of a threesome?
DENTON: Jesus Christ, how many times has Nerve mentioned threesomes and you've never had one?
JOSH: Hey Nick, how many threesomes have you had?
[SILENCE]
JOSH: Ummm....

By the halfway point, our Guinness was warm and our curiosity about Henry the 8 (as they call him) was exhausted. So we dozed off in our chairs, to dream of threesomes, Bobby Zarem and codpieces. —Josh

Pray that Chuck Klosterman's shooting blanks. It's our only hope.

Baby Daddy [Babble]
Earlier: Neal Pollack: Spokesman of His Grup-Eration
Earlier: 'Babble' Publisher Doesn't Know When To Shut Up

We've found that there are a lot of taboos around parenting, as much as we felt there were around sex when we launched Nerve," Mr. Griscom said. "There are a lot of things you can't say, like, 'We wanted a girl, but we got a boy.' Or, 'We're pregnant with a third, but we don't know if we want it.' "
Babble, he says, will say it, and with wit and style. Or at least with irreverence.

Why, look, there's Princess Coldstare herself, coldstaring from an ad for the Nerve Sex Advice From ... book. We have just one quibble with the ad, which we've helpfully screengrabbed above. Leigh Lezark is not a total stranger. She belongs to the people.

The Nerve Sex Advice Machine [Nerve]

Earlier: The MisShapes: "Total Hipster World Domination Will Be Ours"

Nikola's full gallery from the event is available here.

The last time your pants got tight looking at Nerve, you probably should've thanked photo editor Rachel Hulin, on the left.

Seriously, what does she have to do to get you to ask her out?

Ellen Stagg is many things: an occasional contributor to Nerve, a photographer, and most importantly, a part-time pornographer.

She just agreed to anal.

College Humor's Zach Klein just agreed to anal.

As they awkwardly began preparing for their first photo shoot, Mary began to have doubts about appearing on Last Night's Party.

If she can do it, so can you.

The eyebrows drank the entire martini.

Guerrilla video man Jose Luis Serrano of Octomoto.com chugs some confidence before confessing his figging preferences.

That's not booze in Nerve writer/columnist Margot Berwin's glass, but mutant lactate from her droopy third breast.

It's not a real Nerve party until an editorial assistant takes her cookies out of the oven.

Jossip's David Hauslaib gives editor Corynne Steindler tips on how to seduce Ben Widdicombe.

Griscom thinks that's just the shit, man! Yeah!

Not actually invited.

This violent gang exercises rule over Ludlow Street and parts of Fat Baby.

This is Carl Swanson's "sexy face." Be patient, he's been working really hard on it.

Nerve blog-a-logger Miss Mimesis leers at a potential hump object.

And still, Jean didn't win the raffle.

Last but certainly not least, the difference between Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley.