Riskless smoking is now cool and Bloomberg has a problem with it–proposing City Council legislation that would regulate the e-cigs like tobacco. In Blooomberg speak, regulation likely = taxation. E-cigs are lifesavers for those who want to quit and the marketing is so savvy, non-smokers are even willing to give it a try. If Mike has his way,
E-smoking New Yorkers will pay a lot more for their stop-smoking cure. I’m not the seeing the logic here, since Bloomberg is famously
anti-smoking.
Doulas Elliman Broker and former porn star,
Fredrik Eklund
The NYFD calendar is 
back, for its second appearance since it was canceled in 2007 when one of New York’s bravest and hottest was revealed to have had a prior life in porn. A similar resume is enjoyed by Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York’s Fredrick Eklund and he revels in his naughty past. So let’s revel in all this brave beefcake strutting for charity, $12.95.
http://www.fdnyfoundation.org/
She’s beautiful, talented and as A-list important as a star can be, but to the Brit art director designing the ads for Beyonce’s bikini campaign for H & M, she was a bit too big in not the right places. Kudos to B.K. for pulling rank and refusing to be cut down to skinny girl size by the ad agency re-toucher. The ads are running with the original 
un-doctored photos, the better to show off her superstar curves.
Master Hatter Dave Brown
Obsessed with owning a custom version of 
Jughead’s beanie? Then the go-to-guy to see is master hatter Dave Brown of Rochester, New York. He made Harrison Ford’s Raiders Fedora and more recently did the dangerously dapper headgear for Boardwalk Empire bad boy Nucky Thompson. Clooney’s a customer as are many country stars and Hollywood costumers. A custom chapeau will set you back about $400.
It’s not surprising that this 
lurid Hollywood memoir became a Los Angeles and New York Times bestseller. What’s equally shocking to me, is that author Scotty Bowers, 89, never made a nickel from setting up everyone from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Kate Hepburn (according to Bowers, she preferred pretty brunettes). Bowers still works as a party bartender and Hollywood handyman, so I’ll assume he didn’t profit from pimping. As for his other shocking and excruciatingly detailed sexual adventures, we’ll never know the truth. All of the kinky players in Full Service are dead. Celeb heirs all over Hollywood will not be happy with these revelations. Yuck!!!!!!
via New York Times:
“At the same time, a lot of what Mr. Bowers has to say is pretty shocking. He claims, for instance, to have set Hepburn up with “over 150 different women.” Other stories in the 286-page memoir involve Spencer Tracy, Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and socialites like the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. “If you believe him, and I do, he’s like the Kinsey Reports live and in living color,” said Mr. Tyrnauer, who recently completed a deal to make a documentary about Mr. Bowers.”–NY TImes
LOS ANGELES
Scotty Bowers, around 1944, after his return from his first posting abroad.
Cary Grant is among the celebrities discussed in the ribald new memoir “Full Service.”
STRAIGHT actors who wanted to pay for sex in the 1990s had Heidi Fleiss. Gay ones during the late 1940s and beyond apparently had Scotty Bowers.
His story has floated through moviedom’s clubby senior ranks for years: Back in a more golden age of Hollywood, a guy named Scotty, a former Marine, was said to have run a type of prostitution ring for gay and bisexual men in the film industry, including A-listers like Cary Grant, George Cukor and Rock Hudson, and even arranged sexual liaisons for actresses like Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn.
“Old Hollywood people who have, shall we say, known him would tell me stories,” said Matt Tyrnauer, a writer for Vanity Fair and the director of the 2008 documentary “Valentino: The Last Emperor.” “But whenever I followed up on what would obviously be a great story, I was told, ‘Oh, he’ll never talk.’ ”
Now, he’s talking.
Mr. Bowers, 88, recalls his highly unorthodox life in a ribald memoir scheduled to be published by Grove Press on Feb. 14, “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.” Written with Lionel Friedberg, an award-winning producer of documentaries, it is a lurid, no-detail-too-excruciating account of a sexual Zelig who (if you believe him) trawled an X-rated underworld for over three decades without getting caught.
“I’ve kept silent all these years because I didn’t want to hurt any of these people,” Mr. Bowers said recently over lemonade on his patio in the Hollywood Hills, where he lives in a cluttered bungalow with his wife of 27 years, Lois. “And I never saw the fascination. So they liked sex how they liked it. Who cares?”
He paused for a moment to scratch his collie, Baby, behind the ears. “I don’t need the money,” he continued. “I finally said yes because I’m not getting any younger and all of my famous tricks are dead by now. The truth can’t hurt them anymore.”
Twenty-six years after Hudson’s death from AIDS and more than four decades after “Hollywood Babylon” was first published, it will come as a surprise to no one that the images the movie factories created for stars of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s — when Mr. Bowers was most active — were just that: images. The people who fed the world strait-laced cinema like “The Philadelphia Story” and perfect-family television like “I Love Lucy” were often quite the opposite of prudish in private.
At the same time, a lot of what Mr. Bowers has to say is pretty shocking. He claims, for instance, to have set Hepburn up with “over 150 different women.” Other stories in the 286-page memoir involve Spencer Tracy, Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and socialites like the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. “If you believe him, and I do, he’s like the Kinsey Reports live and in living color,” said Mr. Tyrnauer, who recently completed a deal to make a documentary about Mr. Bowers.
“Full Service” at the very least highlights how sharply the rules of engagement for reporting celebrity gossip have changed. The sexual shenanigans of movie stars were a currency for tabloids stretching back to Hollywood’s earliest days, but studios and, subsequently, squadrons of privately hired public relations experts could usually keep all but the most egregious behavior out of the news media. Secrets were kept.
A degree of that still goes on, of course, but it’s much harder to keep details as salacious as the ones Mr. Bowers outlines under wraps. Now all it takes is one pair of loose lips for TMZ to beam all manner of embarrassing information around the globe.
The people behind the memoir, including Mr. Bowers’s agent, David Kuhn, and Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, insist that “Full Service” is not a prurient tell-all, but instead provides a window into an erased, forgotten and denied past of Los Angeles. In his pitch to publishers, Mr. Kuhn positioned it as no less than a tale about “the complex and conflicted psychosexual history of America’s soul.”
A lot of big publishers didn’t agree, or at least were not willing to risk the bawdy stuff to get to any larger point. (Yes, the book was offered to Knopf.) Mr. Entrekin said he decided to publish “Full Service” partly because “there seemed to be nothing meanspirited about it at all.
“You don’t get the sense that this guy is trying to exploit these experiences,” he said.
The heirs and estates of some of the people mentioned in the book are bound to feel otherwise. Fans, too.
“He needs to brace himself for attacks,” said William J. Mann, the author of celebrity biographies like “Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn,” which details what he says was Hepburn’s lesbianism and Tracy’s bisexuality, using Mr. Bowers (identified as Scotty) as one of several sources. “Some of the pushback is going to be homophobia,” Mr. Mann added. “But there will also be people who say he’s making it up to sell books and others who say why can’t you let these people rest in peace.”
“Kate” drew all those reactions and more when it came out in 2006. In particular, “Spencer Tracy: A Biography,” written by James Curtis and published in October, dismisses Mr. Mann’s account of Hepburn’s and Tracy’s sexuality, characterizing Mr. Bowers as unreliable. “Bowers is full of glib stories and revelations, all cheerfully unverifiable,” Mr. Curtis writes.
Jennifer Grant, the daughter of Cary Grant, declined to comment on Mr. Bowers’s book. But her spokeswoman said Ms. Grant’s book, “Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant,” published in 2011, acknowledges that she knew him to be very straight and that he was amused by chatter that he was bisexual.
The ABC News anchor Cynthia McFadden, an executor of the Hepburn estate, said it was its long-standing practice not to comment about books like “Full Service.”
Mr. Entrekin said that the book had been vetted by a libel lawyer. “Based on his comments, we deleted some information,” he said.
Lawyers who specialize in celebrity-related matters said neither federal copyright law nor the patchwork of state-based “right of publicity” laws offer recourse to heirs or estates displeased with assertions published in a memoir. “They might be in tears, but there’s nothing they can do about it,” said Alan U. Schwartz, a veteran entertainment lawyer at Greenberg Traurig.
A $20 bill, given as a tip, according to Mr. Bowers, bought his services in the beginning. That was 1946, and he was 23. As Mr. Bowers tells it, he stumbled into his profession by accident.
Newly discharged from the Marines after fighting in the Pacific during World War II, Mr. Bowers got a job pumping gas at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, not far from Paramount Pictures. One day Walter Pidgeon (“Mrs. Miniver”) drove up in a Lincoln two-door coupe, according to the book, and propositioned Mr. Bowers, who accepted.
Soon, word got around among Pidgeon’s friends, and Mr. Bowers, from his base at the station, started “arranging similar stuff” for some of Bowers’s more adventurous friends.
Many clients were not famous, Mr. Bowers said. Film production was flourishing in the late 1940s, and Los Angeles became a destination for writers, set designers, hairstylists and other “artists with open minds,” as Mr. Bowers put it. It was also a time of the vice squad, which raided gay bars. “The station was a safer hangout,” he said. “Sometimes police would come around, sure. But I think I never got caught partly because I kept everything in my head. There was no little black book.”
Perhaps it’s hard to look at Mr. Bowers today — an elderly man with sloped shoulders and a shock of unruly white hair — and believe that a half-century ago he was sought out by some of the most handsome men to have ever strutted through Hollywood. But after some time with him, the still-sparkling blues and the impish smile help convince you that he could have definitely had seductive powers.
Mr. Bowers quit pumping gas in 1950 and says he supported himself for the next two decades through prostitution, bartending and working as a handyman. Mr. Bowers writes that, in addition to his gay clients, he also gained a following among heterosexual actors like Desi Arnaz, who used him as a type of matchmaking service. Mr. Bowers, who says he personally “prefers the sexual company of women,” says he never took payment for connecting people like Arnaz with bedroom partners.
“I wasn’t a pimp,” he said. (Mr. Arnaz’s wife at the time, Lucille Ball, apparently felt otherwise, according to “Full Service.”)
Mr. Bowers said he continued this life until the onset of AIDS in the 1980s; he also married in 1984. AIDS “brought an end to the sexual freedoms that had defined much of life in Tinseltown ever since the birth of movies,” Mr. Bowers writes. “It was obvious that my days of arranging tricks for others were over. It was too unsafe a game to play anymore.”
Over the years, according to Mr. Bowers, various writers he encountered considered writing about him. One was Dominick Dunne, whose son, the actor and director Griffin Dunne, provided a blurb for the “Full Service” book jacket. (“A jaw-dropping firsthand account of closeted life in Hollywood during the ’40s and ’50s.”)
Mr. Bowers says Tennessee Williams, during a visit to the Beverly Hills Hotel in the 1960s, wrote “a revealing exposé.” But Mr. Bowers hated it, and Williams scrapped it. “He made me sound like a mad queen flying over Hollywood Boulevard on a broomstick directing all the queens in town,” he said. “It was way over the top.”–NY Times
Progressive’s Flo is a delight. The Aflac duck was adorable. And yes, most of the insurance companies that protect you from the calamities of life now effectively use humor in their adverts. But there’s only one Jake from State Farm. And it turns out that 3:00 am Jake is Jake Stone of Bloomington and he really does work at a State Farm 24 hour call center. Everything about this spot is perfect–the writing, the casting, the message, the khakls. We get it. Guys like Jake are there 24/7. Justin Cambell plays the husband, Caryne Shea the wife. DDB/Chicago created the spot.
Despite the hype and the seeming head start, the big winners after more than a decade of Project Runway are Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum and 
Michael Kors. The “Mood” fabric store became famous as did Parsons and Kors became a billionaire after he took his company public. 
The winning designers?
Not one has become a major brand or even a minor one.
Via Realitynation.com
Season One Winner, Jay Mccarroll
Season 1 – Jay McCarroll
Age: 38
Residence: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (and sometimes New York – Upper West Side)
Studied at: Philadelphia College of Textile and Science and London College of Fashion
Known for: Making functional, yet wearable products and being anti-fur.
Accomplishments: Featured in documentary about life after winning Project Runway called Project Jay. Featured in a different documentary called Eleven Minutes, which was about the entire process of his 2008 fashion line Transport. In 2008, launched blog and boutique The Colony. Has own fabric line (found at jaymccarrollfabric.com).
Other Reality TV Appearances: Winner of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club Season 7 (He lost 40-pounds.)
Today: Teaching at Philadelphia College and promoting his fashion line on QVC.
Follow: JayMcCarroll.com and Twitter: @jaymccaroll
Season 2 – Chloe Dao
Age: 40
Residence: Houston, Texas
Studied at: Fashion Institute of Technology
Known for: Women’s Evening Wear
Accomplishments: In 2007 her designs were featured in an exhibit called “Exit Saigon. Enter Little Saigon” at the Smithsonian Museum. Became national spokesperson for Dove’s “Sleeveless Ready” campaign. During Spring 2007 New York Fashion Week, LensCrafters chose Dao as a featured designer and also as a panelist for “it” eyewear. Sold out an entire line called Simply during its initial QVC airing. Partnered with NuoTech in 2008 to create a line of travel bags and accessories.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: Happily working at her Houston-based boutique called Dao Chloe Dao.
Follow: chloedao.com and Twitter: @chloedao
Season 3 – Jeffrey Sebelia
Age: 42
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Studied at: Los Angeles Trade- Technical College
Known for: His neck tattoos and being a “villain” on the show.
Accomplishments: Participated in Project Runway All Stars. Started a fashion line named directly after him (he already had a line called Costa Nostra before appearing on Project Runway). Re-entered the music industry with a band named Sing Orpheus. Teamed up with a company called Fluxus and created women’s wear. Then in 2009 began a fashion line for children called La Miniatura.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: Working on his newest endeavor—children’s clothing.
Follow: laminiatura.com and Twitter: @JeffreySebelia
Season 4 – Christian Siriano
Age: 27
Residence: New York, New York
Studied at: Baltimore School for the Arts and American InterContinental University in London, England
Known for: Being the youngest contestant to ever win Project Runway and also over-using the saying “fierce.”
Accomplishments: Launched a line named after him self that retailed at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Was named one of Crain’s Top 40 Under 40 Entrepreneurs (due to his label raking in over $1.2 million). Created lines for the following companies: Puma, Gaia’s Online Prom Wear, Payless Shoes and most recently for the catalog retailer Spiegel. Other fashionable endeavors include designing a phone for LG, a make-up line for Victoria’s Secret and a Siriano mini-Starbuck’s card. And in 2009 he co-wrote a book titled Fierce Style: How to be Your Most Fabulous Self.
Other Reality TV Appearances: Guest judge on Bravo’s Make Me a Supermodel Season1, Episode 11; Guest judge on Project Runway Season 11, Episode 1
Today can be found: In New York opening his first Christian Siriano store.
Follow: christianvsiriano.com and Twitter: @csiriano
Season 5 – Leanne Marshall
Age: 32
Residence: Brooklyn, New York
Studied at: Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
Known for: Making custom wedding gowns.
Accomplishments: Debuted a line at New York Fashion Week each Spring and Fall since Fall 2009. Heidi Klum and Paula Abdul both have commissioned her work.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: In Brooklyn concentrating on her bridal line and blogging at petalsandwaves.blogspot.com.
Follow: leannemarshall.com and Twitter: @leannemarshall
Season 6 – Irina Shabayeva
Age: 31
Residence: New York, New York
Studied at: Parsons School of Design
Known for: Being of Russian heritage and also being versatile in women’s design.
Accomplishments: Created a brand of women’s wear called Luxe that sells on Home Shopping Network. Specializes in custom bridal gowns. Also has done some big commission work: Selena Gomez wore a gown to the 2011 People’s Choice Awards. And Carrie Underwood wore her dress for album cover Blown Away.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: Preparing to debut a collection of clothing and footwear for INC International Concepts that can be found in over 50 Macy’s stores starting on February 19, 2013.
Follow: irinashabayeva.com and Twitter: @irinashabayeva
Season 7 – Seth Aaron Henderson
Age: 40ish
Residence: Vancouver, Washington
Studied at: He is self-taught.
Known for: Using recyclables and earth friendly textiles.
Accomplishments: Voted MY TV’s ‘Best Male Reality Star’ in 2010. In 2011 partnered with Maroo to release a line of iPad cases and covers. Provider of commentary to the following media outlets E!, Marie Claire, Style and Lifetime. Most recently released an organic clothing line with Earthtec.
Other Reality TV Appearances: Project Runway Casting Judge for Seasons 8, 9 and 10
Today can be found: Still designing and selling his latest products at annebocci.com.
Follow: sethaaronfashion.com and Facebook: facebook.com/sethaaron
Season 8 – Gretchen Jones
Age: 30
Residence: Brooklyn, New York
Studied at: She is self-taught.
Known for: Working with natural materials and supporting local business, and what some may call being an old-fashioned hippie-ish.
Accomplishments: Created brand of clothing named after her self, Gretchen Jones Collection. Also created jewelry line.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: Paying tribute to Joan Baez in her new Spring 2013 line and boasting about her Brooklyn nest by Fort Greene park.
Follow: gretchenjonesnyc.com and Twitter: @gretchen_jones
Season 9 – Anya Ayoung-Chee
Age: 32ish
Residence: New York, New York
Studied at: Parsons School of Design and Central St Martins School of Art & Design
Known for: Her cool haircut (shaved sides), once being Miss Trinidad and Tabago and learning to sew just three months before appearing on Project Runway.
Accomplishments: Voted Project Runway Fan Favorite. Created fashion collections for show every season since her win. Accepted year-long position as travel ambassador for Trinidad and Tabago. Became engaged to long-time boyfriend and photographer Wyatt Gallery.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: Trying to redefine the Caribbean as a fashion mecca while working on her beautiful flow-y dress designs.
Follow: anyaayoungchee.com Twitter: @anyaderogue
Season 10 – Dmitry Sholokhov
Age: 33
Residence: New York, New York
Studied at: Parsons School of Design
Known for: Once being a ballroom dancer, having a heavy accent (he’s originally from Belarus) and losing his job to be on the show.
Accomplishments: He just won so give him time. I’m sure we’ll hear more from him soon.
Other Reality TV Appearances: None
Today can be found: Enjoying his newfound winnings and fame, and settling into the New York scene.
Follow: dmitrysholokhov.com and Twitter: @dmitrysholokhov
Syndrome has set in and women are resigned to paying too much for not that much (think Stella Macartney’s PVC bags tagged at way over $1,000).But, in what we hope is a trend, Neiman Marcus included a few bags under $500 and a sampling under $300 in their ‘new arrivals” email heads-up.
Tory Burch, $395
House Of Harlow, $225 at Neiman Marcus
Michael Michael Kors, $188 At Neiman Marcus
Oryanz $420, At Neiman Marcus
Michael Michael Kors, $448 At Neiman Marcus
Rebecca Minkoff, $195 at Neiman Marcus
Zac Posen $295 At Neiman Marcus
Phillip Lim, $425 At Neiman Marcus
Michael Michael Kors $248 at Neiman Marcus
Kate Spade $158 At Neiman Marcus
Barry Weiss
Auctioneers Dan And Laura Dotson
Darryl Sheets
Are Dan and Laura and Darrel going,going gone forever or just temporarily in storage in the fallout from Dave Hester’s accusations of rigged auctions (and expense account boob jobs) on the A & E hit Storage Wars?
This via Radar Online: “Storage Wars drops 3 cast members in the wake of the Dave Hester lawsuit. On May 1, Radar Online reported that Darrell Sheets and auctioneers Dan and Laura Dotson have been cut back from the newest season. Some fans of the show believe that Hester’s lawsuit filing caused producers to kick him off the show and to “punish” others who have been staples on the show as well.
“In the aftermath of Dave Hester filing a lawsuit against the A&E network and the production company, at least three familiar faces have now been cut back on the hit show,” Radar Online reports.
“Storage Wars” drops 3 either because of money or some other reason unknown to the public. Basically, sources say that the powers that be are trying to cut back on money so they are going after some of the highest paid cast members and cutting them out of episodes (most reality TV stars get paid per episode). For some, this is very unacceptable. Examiner reported
“They make good money and they need the money. Suddenly the show just told them, ‘We don’t need you for this episode,” a source said referring directly to Dan and Laura Dotson.
“Storage Wars” drops 3 after Hester’s claims that the show is “fake.” It is unknown if these cast cuts are directly related to his claims and the lawsuit or if it’s all just coincidental.”–Radar Online
“I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.”– Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony House and Museum, Rochester, N. Y.
“Every woman deserves a purse of her own.” –Susan B. Anthony
Via NY Times:
“Though she has rarely been described as a style icon, the suffragist Susan B. Anthony 
was readily identifiable on her travels by her red shawl and alligator handbag. To her, a bag was not a fashion statement but a symbol of independence at a time when women were not allowed to enter into a contract or even open a bank account.
T
he alligator bag traveled with Susan B. Anthony wherever she went—around New York, to the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C., across the country to California and other western states, even crossing the ocean on a ship bound for Germany. It was by her side on trains, sleighs, stagecoaches, buckboards, steamships, and all other forms of transportation Miss Anthony used in her thousands of trips to meet with people, give speeches, advocate for women’s rights, and change hearts and minds to support equal rights for all people. This simple alligator bag carried Susan B. Anthony’s most important items for her travels—speeches, papers, the transcript of her 1873 trial, petitions, and other documents necessary to press the case to others that all people should be treated fairly in the workings of communities and governments.
And yet, Anthony is now the namesake of what appears to be an “it” bag.
The Susan B. Anthony House, a museum that operates in her former residence in Rochester, has been selling a $250 handbag made of fake alligator that was inspired by one of Anthony’s own club bags, similar to a doctor’s bag.
Called Ms. Anthony, the 17-inch-long crescent-shaped 
bag was designed by Gail Riggs of the Abigail Riggs Collection to benefit the museum. It is inscribed with two of Anthony’s mottos: ‘Failure is impossible!’ and ‘Every woman needs a purse of her own.’–NY Times
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