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Fox Business Pundit Sells Sex Potion, Used To Wrestle [Fameballs]
John Layfield was not genetically engineered to be a talking head on Fox Business Network, but he might as well have been. He's a 6-foot-6 former professional wrestler who does some sort of investment work, the right combination of showmanship and plausible expertise for the attention-hungry network, whose gimmicks have included a segment on semen detectors and a failed ambush interview. Layfield got written up in the Times this morning for yet another sideline, a supposed "sexual endurance drink" called "Mamajuana," a non-alcoholic version of a Dominican rum-and-herb concoction. A doctor from NYU basically said the drink is useless, but Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto is very interested in trying some:
“I keep hitting him up for a bottle,” said Neil Cavuto, the Fox Business Network anchor, laughing. Mr. Cavuto, who is also managing editor for business news at the Fox News Channel, added that Mr. Layfield “has an excellent sense of the marketplace, so my bet is that he’s on to something.”
Prostitute Exposed By "Anonymous" ABC News Interview [VideUhOh]
When the blogger and prostitute Debauchette was interviewed by Diane Sawyer for an ABC News report, several tricks were used to conceal her identity. She appeared mainly in silhouette, with a distorted profile and a distorted voice. She was identified only as a "beautiful," "highly educated" woman with a day job in the arts. The tricks were not enough, however, to keep Debauchette's parents from figuring out it was their daughter on the screen when they tuned in, as fate would have it, to watch the show. Mom saw Sawyer's report twice, to make sure her instincts had been correct, then fired off an email to her daughter, quoted in a Debauchette blog post:
A few sentence fragments from her note:
“I have to say that it wasn’t a complete surprise…“
“But I was in a state of denial…“
“…it explains a lot about many things…“
“I listened to what you had to say in the interview and I expect you feel you have thought all of this through.“
A friend told Debauchette she was "identifiable by the way I used the word ‘yeah’ and the way I touched my hair." Another didn't think she was recognizable at all.
The blogger has not responded to her mom's email.
I’m stunned, but I’m not ashamed of what I do or what I’ve done. I feel exposed but I don’t feel apologetic. I should feel mortified, but I don’t. Instead, I feel like a very private part of my life has been exposed, like they’ve just caught me in the middle of some sex act. So I suppose I feel awkward.
Debauchette said she appeared on ABC to counter "the old Victorian trope of the broken, dysfunctional, fallen prostitute, incapable of forming her own opinions or making her own decisions." She told Sawyer she has about seven regular clients, mostly married, and that she was once offered $2.9 million to be with a client "exclusively" for a year.
In the video below, excerpted from a longer video posted to Boinkology by Gawker video maven Richard Blakeley, Dabauchette talks about the lover who got her into prostitution, and Sawyer presses her on whether she is truly happy with her work.
Already under fire for its handling of the last Democratic presidential debate, in Pennsylvania, ABC News may very well catch some flack over this incident. But Debauchette does not sound, in her post, like an angry or burned source, and she even speculates her identity may have been compromised not by ABC's cameras or microphones but by her own speech patterns. She casts her appearance as a victory for a "pro-slut" view of sex, and, although she wrote "Hi mom" earlier in the post, ends with this anecdote about sex with a guy she calls "Gabriel:"
He fucked me over his sofa, the flat of his hand pressing down into my back. I felt him take my hair in his hand before he pulled out to come across my lower back, which splattered in a thick, swerving pattern. After, he took a snapshot of his come against my winter-pale skin. Once he toweled my back down and we both dressed, I took a look. It was a beautiful shot.
New Movie Channel "Royally Screwed" Les Moonves [Feuds]
CBS honcho Les Moonves had a week from hell. It started with a Timeshighlighting how his salary keeps going up while revenues at his beleaguered company keep going down. Then he had to answer to news department staff about leaks that made Katie Couric look like a lame duck in the anchor chair at CBS Evening News. Now he's said by Nikki Finke's sources to be "royally screwed" after fumbling negotiations with Viacom, a sibling company in the Sumner Redstone media empire. Moonves had been trying to cut the amount CBS' Showtime was paying for Paramount movies, but Paramount said "screw this" and decided to form its own cable channel along with studios MGM and Lionsgate. Here's why the whole situation is especially awkward, according to the Times:
The new venture could create some awkward moments around Hollywood. Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, is close friends with Harry E. Sloan, the chief executive of MGM, and Jon Feltheimer, the chief executive of Lionsgate. A spokesman for CBS declined to comment.
I think this just means Les Moonves has to dance around certain topics during lunch meetings or dinner parties. That's not so awkward. You know what's awkward? Having lunch with a crazy Scientologist who is about to mock you in a movie, per Redstone's recent rendezvous with Tom Cruise at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Oh, and Redstone, being a cantankerous old bastard, is totally supportive of this CBS-Viacom infighting:
Last month Mr. Redstone, who is the controlling shareholder in both Viacom and CBS, was asked at an investor conference about the two companies entering each other’s business. “They were always intended to be independent companies, free to compete with each other,” he said.
Bloomberg Thinking About Thinking About Buying Times [New York Times]
Oh no, now you've gone and encouraged Michael Bloomberg again: Newsweek reports that "the mayor's confidants and closest associates are, in fact, encouraging him to explore the idea" of buying the Times. And to bolster their case they've no doubt assembled clips of others saying the same thing in the press over the past few months, including Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, shouting head Jim Cramer and former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger. Despite frightful working conditions at Bloomberg's financial information company, his buddies imagine him shielding the Times newsroom from intense financial pressures:
According to the source, the proponents of the merger are appealing to the mayor's sense of "civic-mindedness," arguing that he is best suited to take the publishing company private to "help protect the brand" in the wake of relentless shareholder assaults. "It is clearly a brand that Bloomberg could help preserve and that he cares about immensely … and could pay a competitive price" for, says this person.
It's not like Bloomberg would run the Times like some sort of non-profit. If that were the case, Rupert Murdoch probably wouldn't have even made the pretense, in the same Newsweek story, of claiming to be intimidated by Bloomberg: "I wouldn't look forward to going up against him," said the News Corp. chief and Wall Street Journal owner.
Chris Farley's Cousin A Top Ford Exec [Chris Farley]
I was surprised to read this at the end of a lengthy profile of Ford's chief marketing officer, Jim Farley: "Mr. Farley sometimes seems like a kid in a candy store at Ford, as though Jimmy Car-Car has found the ultimate playground. In those moments, his resemblance to his late cousin, the comedian Chris Farley, emerges in the twinkle in his eye." [Times]
So New York Comic Con has been going on all weekend and, of course, I couldn't go. So while all my nerd brothers and sisters are getting to see extended trailers for The Dark Night and sneak peaks of an Iron Man/The Incredible Hulk crossover, I'm stuck reading their half-assed reports. The one thing I could get my hands on was that my apartment-bound ass did get to see was this teaser for Sin City director Frank Miller's upcoming The Spirit which just hit the Net. Jump!
CBS honcho 
Oh no, now you've gone and encouraged 
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Paul Anka. Maybe it is old, but I sure as shit never saw it before. Now I can't stop seeing it!
So New York Comic Con has been going on all weekend and, of course, I couldn't go. So while all my nerd brothers and sisters are getting to see extended trailers for The Dark Night and sneak peaks of an Iron Man/The Incredible Hulk crossover, I'm stuck reading their half-assed reports. The one thing I could get my hands on was that my apartment-bound ass did get to see was this teaser for Sin City director 
