This year’s Oscars gave me an excuse to try out the live-blogging platform Cover It Live.
Instead of tweeting my self-important thoughts about the show or blogging them afterward, I decided to do what so many journalists are doing now at press conferences and other events: live blogging.
I didn’t give anyone a heads-up about my experiment, so I probably had an audience of one – me. But you can still click on the app below and get a recap of all my pithy posts from the evening.
As advertised, the Cover It Live system was easy to set up and get started. I had to configure the size of the app box for Tech-media-tainment, but that was pretty simple. I didn’t like having to create a graphic for the start of my live cast. But the start-up wizard listed it as a requirement. I’d rather have a text box for a plain heading.
Anyway, the experience was a positive one. Live blogging combines the immediacy of Twitter with the richness of blogging on Blogger.
I signed up for a free account, which limits me to a readership of 5,000 a month for live events. It also allows for an unlimited number of replays of the recorded blogcast.
That’s fine with me, given this blog’s limited readership, currently at more than 15,000 visits a month.
Movie awards season reaches its climax tonight with the Oscars. But before the prestigious Academy Awards are handed out, two more notorious movie awards ceremonies were held. On Saturday, the Razzie Awards called out the worst movies and performances of 2010. The big loser was writer-director M. Night Shyamalan and his critically panned martial-arts fantasy “The Last Airbender.” It earned Golden Raspberry trophies for Worst Picture, Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actor, and a special award for “Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3-D.”
For the complete list of awardees, check out EW.com’s coverage.
Also awarded last week were the Anatomy Awards for best female nudity in the movies and on TV. The Anatomy Awards are the work of Jim McBride and his website MrSkin.com.
Campy horror movie “Piranha 3D” won for Breast Picture and Best Nude Parasailing. Check out the coverage by Creative Loafing and AOL.
It was a simple question: Who is that gorgeous woman in the TV ad for “De Blob 2”?
From the moment I first saw the ad while watching “Adventure Time” on the Cartoon Network, I had to know who she was. It’s a star-making 30-second performance. The camera loves her. Her bright eyes and her smile are captivating.
But finding out who she is wasn’t easy.
I checked the websites affiliated with THQ’s video game “De Blob 2” and couldn’t locate the commercial I saw, much less information about it. I did Web searches for woman and actress in “De Blob 2” and came up empty.
I saw the ad again today and tried a few different searches.
Eventually I stumbled upon a question posted to Answers.com’s WikiAnswers. Somebody wrote, “Who is the hot girl in de blob 2 commercial?”
The first answer posted was wrong. (I later deleted it.)
Thankfully someone else responded with the correct answer: L.A.-based dancer Natasha Hugger. That someone was Ms. Hugger’s proud boyfriend, who notes that she will be featured in the musical “The Producers” at the Cabrillo Theaters in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in April.
Congratulations to Ms. Hugger for making such an impact in the commercial. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person wowed.
Update (Feb. 27, 2011): I found the commercial on Vimeo.
Yesterday I wrote about the great Jim Corbett (1875-1955), the renowned big-game hunter, conservationist and author.
I recently finished reading all six of his books about hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in British India and his memories of living in India and Kenya.
For my money, his best book is “The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag” (1947). It’s a ripping good read about a terrifying predator that killed over 125 people in northern India.
The leopard got a taste for human flesh after eating corpses that were not properly disposed of during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
For eight years, people in the Garhwal region would not go out at night. But they weren’t safe in their homes either. The leopard would claw his way in and drag victims out.
Also well worth reading is Corbett’s first book, “Man-Eaters of Kumaon.”
His complete works are available in "The Jim Corbett Omnibus" and "The Second Jim Corbett Omnibus" from the Oxford University Press.
When man-eating tigers and leopards were terrorizing villages in the northern jungles of British India, Jim Corbett was someone the people could count on to take care of the problem.
Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett, at great personal risk, tracked and shot dead 19 tigers and 14 leopards – a total of 33 documented man-eaters. Those big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women and children.
Later in life, Corbett enjoyed great success as the author of books that recounted his adventures, including “Man-Eaters of Kumaon” (1944) and “The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag” (1947).
Corbett also became a noted conservationist, stressing the need to protect India’s wildlife, especially its majestic, misunderstood tigers. India’s first national park was named in his honor.
Corbett achieved his success through continuous education, practice and a dedication to his profession and the people he protected.
Knowledge and experience trump fear
“After a lifelong acquaintance with wildlife I am no less afraid of a tiger’s teeth and claws today than I was” as a young man, Corbett wrote in “The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon” (1954). “But to counter that fear and hold it in check I now have the experience that I lacked in those early years.”
Where he used to look for danger all around him in the wild and was afraid of every sound he heard, he learned through experience what sounds to ignore and which to pay special attention to, he wrote. Through practice, he also was much more certain where the bullets he fired would go.
“Experience engenders confidence, and without these two very important assets the hunting of a man-eating tiger on foot, and alone, would be a very unpleasant way of committing suicide,” Corbett wrote.
Reading jungle signs
From early boyhood, Corbett made a hobby of reading and interpreting jungle signs. This included reading animal tracks and understanding various animal calls, such as langur monkeys or chital deer.
For instance, from a tiger’s pug marks, or tracks, you can tell the direction and speed the animal is traveling, its sex and age, and whether all four of its limbs are sound, and if not, which limb is injured or ailing, he wrote.
From a tiger’s territorial scratch marks, you can learn the animal’s sex, the direction it’s heading, the length of time that has elapsed since it passed, the direction and approximate distance of its headquarters, and the nature of its kills, including whether it recently had a meal of human flesh, Corbett noted.
The calls of certain animals like birds and monkeys can alert you to the presence of a leopard or tiger, if you know how to interpret them.
Such skills as tracking are “absorbed a little at a time, and that the absorption process can go on indefinitely,” Corbett wrote.
But you have to be open to learning, he said.
Pay attention or remain ignorant
In “Jungle Lore” (1953), Corbett recalls taking a 12-mile hike with a companion from one camp to another through a beautiful forest. Corbett describes the trees and other plants in full bloom, brightly colored butterflies flitting about, the scent of flowers filling the air and the forest throbbing with the song of birds.
“At the end of the day my companion was asked if he had enjoyed the walk, and he answered, ‘No. The road was very rough,’” Corbett wrote. This example serves “to emphasize my contention that if you are not interested you will see nothing but the road you walk on, and if you have no desire to acquire knowledge and assume you can learn in a fortnight what cannot be learnt in a lifetime, you will remain ignorant to the end.”
Corbett believed that a person’s capacity for absorbing knowledge was based on how much they had already absorbed. So, the more knowledge you accumulate, the more capacity for learning you’ll have, he says.
Be prepared; don’t enter the jungle with an unloaded gun
Corbett was a stickler for preparation.
“When entering a jungle in which rapid shooting might at any moment become necessary, I never feel happy until I have reassured myself that my rifle is loaded,” he wrote in “Man-Eaters of Kumaon.” “To pull a trigger in an emergency and wake up in the Happy Hunting Grounds or elsewhere because one had omitted to load a weapon, would be one of those acts of carelessness for which no excuse could be found.”
He made a habit of inspecting his weapon thoroughly before a hunt. He would discard any cartridges that looked discolored or dented and he would check his rifle’s safety catch to make sure it was working smoothly.
Corbett was often stalked by the carnivores he was hunting. For safety’s sake, he liked to hunt alone.
“To walk with safety through forests or along deserted roads in an area in which a man-eater is operating calls for the utmost caution and the strict observance of many rules,” Corbett wrote. “It is only when the hunter has repeatedly been the hunted that the senses can be attuned to the required pitch, and those rules be strictly adhered to, the breaking of which would provide the man-eater with an easy victim.”
Fear sharpens the senses
Corbett used his fear in dangerous situations to his advantage. “Danger … tends to sharpen the faculties and to bring into focus all that is to be seen and heard in a forest,” he wrote. “Danger that is understood, in which you are prepared to face, does not detract in any way from pleasure.”
Fear keeps people “on their toes,” he said.
After an unsuccessful hunt for a man-eater, Corbett wouldn’t beat himself up over his failure to bag the beast. Though disappointed, he knew that his failure wasn’t based on his lack of preparation.
To take his mind off an unproductive hunt, Corbett liked physical activity, a warm bath and a good meal.
“Exercise, warm water, and food have a wonderfully soothing effect on bitter thoughts,” he wrote in the “The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag.”
Corbett suffered exposure, mental strain and illness during his hunts, which made the going rough. He battled malaria and pneumonia, but kept his determination to get the job done. “But for all these occasions I am amply rewarded if my hunting has resulted in saving one human life,” he wrote in “Man-Eaters of Kumaon.”
Study your enemy
Corbett studied his quarry. He gained a deep appreciation for big cats. He felt that tigers were maligned as bloodthirsty and cruel by some authors.
He tried to educate people that most tigers were not a threat to humans. He said those that became man-eaters typically did so because of an injury that prevented them from hunting their natural prey. Nine out of 10 times a man-eater was found to have an injury, such as a wound from a gunshot or impacted porcupine quills. And the tenth case would be old age.
“A tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exterminated as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support India will be the poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna,” Corbett wrote.
Corbett pushed for the creation of nature preserves for tigers, including what would become Jim Corbett National Park in Kumaon in 1957.
In his later years, Corbett much preferred photographing animals to shooting them.
“Apart from the difference in cost between shooting with a camera and shooting with a rifle, and the beneficial effect it has on our rapidly decreasing stock of tigers, the taking of a good photograph gives far more pleasure to the sportsman than the acquisition of a trophy; and further, while the photograph is of interest to all lovers of wild life, the trophy is only of interest to the individual who acquired it,” he wrote.
Sir Maurice Hallett, who served as governor of the United Provinces of British India from 1939 through 1945, wrote that Corbett had all the qualities of a successful shikari or big-game hunter. He had “physical strength, infinite patience, great power of observation and power not only to notice small signs but also to draw the right inference from those signs. To these must be added great courage,” Hallett wrote.
Corbett was born in Nainital, United Provinces, British India, in 1875. He worked for railway and shipping companies managing the transportation of goods in northern India. He earned the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army and fought in World War I.
Corbett died in Kenya in 1955 at the age of 79.
Jim Corbett after killing the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1925; Corbett and the man-eating tiger known as the Bachelor of Powalgarh in 1930; Corbett at rest in Dhikala; Corbett and the Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1925; Portrait of Jim Corbett.
I’m no fan of the Transportation Security Administration, the agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that handles passenger screening at the nation’s airports. TSA rules have made air travel a royal pain in the ass. The agency’s rules seem more designed to irritate everyday citizens than to catch potential terrorists. Plus, quite a few TSA screeners I’ve seen use their position of authority to bully, embarrass and demean passengers.
The TSA has become the butt of a lot of jokes in recent months. (See videos from “The Late Show with David Letterman” and Reason TV.) It doesn’t help the agency’s reputation when employees are accused of stealing $160,000 from luggage. Add to that reports of degrading searches (like this one or this one). The Wikipedia entry on the TSA documents a host of criticisms of the agency.
The website The Daily Patdown posts pictures of TSA agents frisking passengers.
After looking at the photos on the site, you have to wonder if the agents reasonably thought these passengers were security threats. The pictures show a lot of senior citizens, children and young women getting patdowns.
Let’s give up the political correctness and do profiling.
When MeeHive closed last October, I went looking for another service that could track niche topics on news sites and blogs. Someone suggested I give YourVersion a try. I did and think it’s great.
With YourVersion, users can create a personalized webpage that tracks news and commentary on topics of interest to them. They can track articles on a sports team or celebrity, for instance, by selecting keywords.
I’ve used YourVersion to track reports of wild animal attacks worldwide, mancation suggestions, and fringe sports like the Lingerie Football League. Instead of Googling those topics occasionally for Tech-media-tainment, YourVersion will troll the Web and compile the articles for me.
It’s an excellent service and does a super job scouring the Internet for pertinent articles.
YourVersion is now one of my favorite websites.
Media companies looking to make money from online viewers have turned to search engine optimization to drive traffic to their websites.
SEO is used by respected news organizations as well as upstart companies who game the system with low-quality content.
Increasingly media and news organizations are writing articles based on search queries – in other words, information people are looking for online.
Old-school news organizations base the articles they publish on what’s in the public interest – things the public should know to keep up on how the government and private sector are impacting their lives.
But in the age of SEO-driven news, more articles are based on trivial things like Christina Aguilera botching the National Anthem at the Super Bowl or the upcoming royal wedding of William and Kate.
Search engine optimization could contribute to a dumbing down of news. Maybe this is part of the slow and steady slide toward “Idiocracy.”
Newspapers used to define what news was. But now the public is in control via their search queries on Google and elsewhere. But a lot of those queries are for lowest common denominator news like celebrity gossip.
News organizations always have had to balance giving the public what it needs vs. what it wants. That means nutritious (good for you) stories along with junk food (bad for you) stories.
Sadly respected news organizations are devoting more resources these days to junk food stories. For instance, USA Today has five journalists assigned to Congress and 27 covering entertainment.
SEO in the news
Search engine optimization and its impact on the news business have been hot topics lately.
AOL earlier this month purchased the Huffington Post, a new-media firm known for exploiting SEO to generate traffic to its website, for a lofty $315 million.
That deal comes on the heels of Demand Media launching a successful initial public offering of its stock that raised $151 million in January.
Demand Media is considered a “content farm” for cranking out thousands of poorly researched and written articles designed solely to generate hits on its websites, including eHow and Answerbag.
Just five years old, Demand Media is worth more than the New York Times Co., based on market capitalization.
Another content farm, Associated Content, was purchased by Yahoo last year.
Some pundits worry that SEO-driven news devalues journalism and will push more journalists into the low-wage sector of the economy. An op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times makes such a claim.
It’s not a pretty picture for the future of journalism.
Russia’s biggest export must be penis enlargement pills, judging from the spam e-mail I receive.
These e-mails prey on male insecurities by promising to increase a man’s penis size. If these pills actually worked, the scientists who invented them would get a Nobel Prize. But of course, they don’t. (See WebMD articles here and here.)
But the e-mails are good for a laugh for their poor English, ridiculous claims and bold promises.
Most of them include websites with the suffix “.ru,” which is the country code for Russia.
Here are some of the pitches I’ve received in recent weeks:
a guy with an enlarged penis will enjoy mind-blowing sex!
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Consider the difference between a 7, 8 or 9 inch penis that is thicker and a penis that is 4 to 6 inches and narrower
Consider the difference between a 7, 8 or 9 inch penis that is thicker and a penis that is 4 to 6 inches and narrower.
With a larger penis you penetrate more sensitive areas of the woman. Your longer penis probes deeper searching those special nerve endings. The added width to your penis fills and presses her from side to side to give your partner the most exhilarating sensations.
As for me, I’m more likely to use el Shrinko advertised this month on “Saturday Night Live.”
At last year’s Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director.
She was the only woman among the five nominees.
Two of the 10 Best Picture nominees last year were directed by women, including Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” and Lone Scherfig’s “An Education.”
At this year’s Oscars, to be held Sunday Feb. 27, no women are nominated for Best Director. But like last year, two of the 10 Best Picture nominees were directed by women: “The Kids Are All Right” by Lisa Cholodenko and “Winter’s Bone” by Debra Granik.
I recently watched two movies directed by women that I thought were excellent: “The Savages” (2007) by Tamara Jenkins and “Away from Her” (2006) by Sarah Polley.
That got me thinking about who the best female directors working today are.
So I posed the question to the Netflix community at Ning.
One member spoke of her fondness for the work of Julie Taymor, who did “Titus” (1999), “Frida” (2002), “Across the Universe” (2007) and “The Tempest” (2010).
But there wasn’t a lot of love for Bigelow, who also directed “Near Dark” (1987) and “Point Break” (1991), and Sofia Coppola, who directed “Lost in Translation” (2003). Both were described as “mediocre.”
In July 2010, Metacritic ranked the best women film directors by their critical reviews.
I counted 18 movie trailers during Super Bowl XLV on Sunday. But only three of them captured my interest.
The best of the bunch was the alien invasion movie "Battle: Los Angeles," starring Aaron Eckhart.
Judging from the trailer alone, it looks great. It opens in theaters on March 11.
I'm shocked that there isn't more buzz for "Battle: Los Angeles." Few people tweeted about it after the ad ran, according to one study.
My two other favorites were the thematically similar "Cowboys vs. Aliens" and "Super 8."
I have to give an honorable mention to Brooklyn Decker who looks to do in Adam Sandler's "Just Go With It" what Bo Derek did in "10" in 1979. That is, steal the show with her stunning good looks. (See below.)
The success of the Lingerie Football League has inspired another sexist sporting franchise – the Bikini Basketball League.
The LFL completed its second season tonight with the L.A. Temptation winning its second title in a row.
The 10-team LFL plans to add four expansion teams next season. The Las Vegas Sin, the Green Bay Chill, the Cleveland Crush and an unnamed team from one other city (perhaps Nashville) will bring the number of teams in the league to 14. (Oklahoma City passed on the opportunity to host an LFL team.)
The LFL has a broadcast deal with Viacom’s MTV2 and has gotten exposure from Playboy magazine, “CSI: New York” and news outlets.
Not much is known about the Bikini Basketball League. It has a Twitter account and a placeholder website that announces “Season 1 of the BBL is coming soon.”
The logo is pretty tacky with basketballs replacing breasts in a bikini top and silhouettes of two women in high-heeled shoes. Are these ladies going to play in heels?
The league’s slogan is “Excellence or bust.” My guess is we’d see more “bust” than “excellence,” if this league ever gets off the ground.
The website lists six proposed team names Texas Hot Sauce, California Wildfire, New York Dimes (dimes is slang for women), Indiana Milkshake (classy), Florida Honeydrippers and Kentucky Cupcakes.
With many details still to be filled in, the Bikini Basketball League would be more interesting than the WNBA.
The question is: Will it have more staying power than foxy boxing or mud wrestling in the history of women’s sports?
Perhaps they could get Jennifer Love Hewitt as a spokeswoman. She apparently likes playing bikini basketball.
Update: There's also a Lingerie Basketball League trying to get started with two teams in Los Angeles - the LA Starlets and LA Divas. (Feb. 10, 2011)
Photos: Bikini Basketball League logo; Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt photographed playing bikini basketball in Hawaii in August 2009 (See New York Daily News and U.K. Daily Mail)
The Lingerie Football League will never be taken seriously as a sport.
For starters, it only hires pretty women to play. So it’s eliminating many of the best female football players from consideration. I’m talking about the toughest, meanest, biggest, athletic, butch women imaginable who already play contact sports and aren’t model pretty.
As a business decision, that was probably a good idea.
But since the sport is not about showcasing the best athletes, it will remain a curiosity.
Given that, it should focus on exploiting its fringe sports niche.
A year ago, I wrote about “Five things the Lingerie Football League needs to do to establish some credibility.” I don’t know if LFL executives read that article, but they’ve made progress on all of those items.
What follows are five things LFL execs should consider for the coming year – things to mull over as the LFL’s second season ends Sunday with the Lingerie Bowl in Las Vegas.
1. Improve the quality of LFL game broadcasts on cable
Going from pay-per-view only to cable television this season was a wise move. It certainly increased exposure for the league.
But the broadcasts frankly were pretty lame by pro sports standards.
I watched the first two broadcasts of game highlights last fall on MTV2 and lost interest. Last Saturday I watched the two LFL playoff games, which were broadcast live, unlike regular season games, which are tape delayed by a week and edited for cable. (I used my DVR and the fast-forward button for commercials and time outs.)
The main problem with the game broadcasts is they don’t capture the on-field action very well. The cameras never seem to be in the right spot to get a close shot. So, most of the game footage is shot from a distance. And when you’re dealing with players who are also hot women, you want to get as close to the action as possible.
The LFL is going to have to invest in a few more cameras and rethink how they're used.
It also hurts that the games aren’t shown in HD. MTV2 on Cablevision in Connecticut is a grainy, low-res digital channel.
2. Use more slow-motion video
The action happens pretty fast in this version of arena football. So, it would be nice to slow down some of the key running and passing plays on broadcasts with replays in slow-motion video.
Plus, slow motion is a nice way to watch pretty women running in bikini lingerie.
3. Ramp up the theatricality of the sport
The LFL has more in common with WWE than the NFL, so it should play up the theatrically of the sport.
The LFL should take a cue from roller derby and portray the players as characters not just athletes. In roller derby, players have aliases or stage names that play up how tough they are. Examples from the CT Rollergirls: Luiciana Pulverotti, Eleanor Bruisevelt and Bonnie Voyage. That's fun. LFL players should have nicknames.
Give the team captains a microphone to trash-talk and excite the crowd before the game starts.
Some of the most buzzed about occurrences from this season weren’t big plays, but a bench-clearing brawl and post-score celebrations.
Wardrobe malfunctions used to be the most talked-about aspect of the game, but that seems to be less of an issue now with tighter uniforms and players wearing pasties under their bras.
Progress? Some fans would disagree.
4. Identify the stars of the sport and raise their visibility
The LFL took some good steps to identify the stars of the sport and raise their visibility this season.
The highlight was getting players from the league on the cover of the February 2011 issue of Playboy and a pictorial inside.
Doing a nude ad campaign for PETA also was an attention grabber.
The league needs to do more things like that.
I would suggest that MTV2 supplement its 30-minute weekly game recaps with a reality TV show on players from the LFL. Show them training and in their regular jobs. Give fans a chance to learn about who these women are.
5. Change the name of the Lingerie Bowls from Roman numerals to years.
This year’s championship game is called Lingerie Bowl VIII, but it’s only the second to crown a winner of the Lingerie Football League. Previous Lingerie Bowls were one-off exhibition games.
Also, calling it Lingerie Bowl VIII is dishonest since Lingerie Bowls IV, V and VI (2007-09) were canceled because organizers couldn’t get their act together. So this year’s match is really the fifth Lingerie Bowl to be held.
Next year, just call it Lingerie Bowl 2012 and skip the pretentions of Super Bowl-like Roman numerals.
Photos (from top down): Lingerie Bowl VIII poster; San Diego Seduction wide receiver Vanessa Neff (No. 9) on Nov. 13, 2010, in Chicago (photo by Flickr user Arrogant); Marirose Roach of the Philadelphia Passion tries to tackle quarterback Ashley Salerno of the Los Angeles Temptation during the Lingerie Football League's Lingerie Bowl VIII on Feb. 6, 2011, in Las Vegas (See Metro.co.uk and the Huffington Post); LFL players on the cover of Playboy magazine; Fan at LFL playoffs in Jacksonville, Fla., by the Florida Times-Union; Chicago Bliss players take it off to show their support for PETA
More than ever, porn studios are making X-rated movies that parody public figures.
The latest targets include talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, singer Elvis Presley and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Hustler kicked off the current trend toward parodying public figures in late 2008 with the first of its porn movies mocking then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. That movie, “Who’s Nailin’ Paylin? Adventures of a Hockey MILF,” was the first of eight porn parodies to date based on the attractive former governor of Alaska. (A ninth film is in the works.)
Pop singer Britney Spears is the second most popular subject for porn movies based on real-life people. She has been mocked in five X-rated movies – one as “Britney Pierce” and four as “Britney Rears.”
President Barack Obama is the third most popular real-life parody subject in porn movies. The 44th president of the United States has received the porn parody treatment in four films, including “Barrack’s Big Stimulus Package” and “Barrack’s Presidential Briefs.”
Pro golfer Tiger Woods has been the subject of three porn parodies, including “Tiger’s Got Wood.”
Since I first reported on the trend in June 2010, I’ve documented some 56 porn movies either based on real-life events or public figures. I keep a running list on the Tech-Media-Tainment Flickr page. The list doesn’t include celebrity sex tapes or movies where someone playing a public figure makes a cameo appearance (such as an actor playing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il in 2009’s “Operation Tropical Stormy.”)
In many of these movies, the title character isn’t the only public figure pilloried.
For instance, Hustler’s first Sarah Palin movie featured a sex scene involving Paylin (Lisa Ann), Hillary Clinton (Nina Hartley) and Conni Rice (Jada Fire), as in former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Upcoming porn movies based on real-life events or public figures include ones based on the Rat Pack, the Beatles, and martial arts great and actor Bruce Lee.
There’s even a porn movie in the works about the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for more than two months.
Related Web links:
Misty Stone portraying Oprah in Hustler’s latest “Untrue Hollywood Stories” (Porn Star Babylon; Jan. 20, 2011)
Hustler’s Untrue Hollywood Stories: Oprah Parody Coming Soon to DVD (Porn Star Babylon; Jan. 27, 2011)
‘Elvis XXX: A Porn Parody’ Streets on The King’s Birthday, Jan 8 (AVN; Jan. 5, 2011)
Silvio Berlusconi-Themed Porn Is Coming (The Awl; Nov. 19, 2010)
First, Netflix thought I was gay. Then Yahoo made the same mistake. And now it’s Entertainment Weekly’s turn to advertise the gay lifestyle to me.
In the digital age, weren’t advertisements supposed to be accurately tailored to each consumer?
No offense to homosexuals, but I don’t swing that way.
Clearly the inability to tailor advertisements to the audiences most likely to be receptive to them is one of the failed promises of digital content.
Not too long ago, advertising pundits talked about how ads would shift from the shotgun approach of mass media buys to targeted online advertising. In that world, dog owners would get pitched doggy products and cat owners would get pitched kitty products. And men wouldn’t have to look at feminine hygiene ads and women wouldn’t be exposed to sexist beer commercials, etc.
But that hasn’t happened because of privacy concerns. People don’t want companies to know too much about them. So the same advertising approach that fills your e-mail with spam affects online display ads and other advertisements.
But the time may come soon when people will have to opt in to get targeted advertising in order to finance all the free services they’re getting on the Internet – from news sites to social networking services.
I personally don’t have a problem with that. Those free services are ad-supported after all. And I’d rather see ads for things I might want than things I definitely wouldn’t want.
Photo: Screenshot of ad for gay dating service seen on my Yahoo Mail page.
" and "The Second Jim Corbett Omnibus" from the Oxford University Press.
” (1944) and “The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag” (1947).
.”
