Women From Heaven

Posted on June 10, 2007 by Luke Ford

I call my friend Kevin. He’s slept with 60 women this year. "It’s all because of this movie The Secret," he says. "My whole life changed when I saw The Secret."

"I was hip to it before anybody. I don’t want to call it self-help. It’s more like the power of now… If you visualize what you truly want every day…things will happen."

"The Secret changed my life. It was after Abby left me. I was in a deep funk. I was hanging out with a chick who worked for Deepok Chopra. And she told me I needed to see this, it would change my life."

"I found myself in the position where I kept attracting the same types of girls. And I still am but I understand now why and I just choose to do it."

"I thought, it would be great if I just had pussy falling out of the sky. I started visualizing what it would be like to have a chick every single night coming over here. And boom."

"I can’t talk about a couple of them because they’re married."

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Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Is Separating From His Wife – They Appear Headed For Divorce

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Luke Ford

I believe Corina will now take over the Getty House (the mayor’s mansion) and look after the two kids there (Loyola High School is almost walking distance from Getty House) while the mayor will move to their home in Mount Washington.

KFI reported this story around 4 p.m. June 8, at the same time I was blogging it.

Rick Orlov’s story appeared quickly on DailyNews.com:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his wife, Corina, announced today that they are separating because of the pressures of his job.

During a transition period, Villaraigosa will return to the couple’s Mt. Washington home while Mrs. Villaraigosa and their two children continue to live at the Getty House.

"Each of us loves our children more than anything in the world and we are committed to working together for their benefit," Villaraigosa said in a statement. "I ask that the media and the public respect our privacy through this painful period of transition."

Villaraigosa has had a light public schedule the last several days and has no appearances planned for this weekend. Aides said he will hold a news conference on Monday to discuss his family situation.

Duke Helfand of The Los Angeles Times reports. LAObserved.

I reported several months ago that the mayor’s marriage was kaput.

Antonio and Corina have not been seen together in public since last May (when the then president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, visited).

Kevin Roderick wrote on Feb. 2:

Apparently responding to blogger Luke Ford’s allegation that the Villaraigosas had split up, the mayor told the Times last night that the entire family — himself, Corina and the two teenage children — is living at Getty House. "Absolutely not true," Villaraigosa said of the gossip. "We are not separated." He did admit to strains, but called them "ups and downs." The couple had broken up once, before he ran for mayor the first time, over his affair that coincided with Corina undergoing cancer treatment. Just who Villaraigosa spoke with last night is strangely murky. The Times attributed the comments to "an interview Thursday evening at Getty House," but the short story carries no byline. Corina was not at home at the time, the paper said. 

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Is Your TV Making You Evil?

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Luke Ford

Fishbowl LA blogs:

People who watch lots of TV are not to be trusted, according to a study by the Culture and Media Institute — a group that purports to "help restore America’s culture, character, traditional values, and morals against the assault of the liberal media elite." The report finds that heavy TV viewers do not adhere to "classical virtues" and are less likely to value religious principles.

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Rules Of The Blogosphere

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Luke Ford

Michael Weiss posts on Jewcy.com:

I’ve been covering the blogosphere for Slate for almost two years. In that time, I’ve formulated two laws which further immersion into the messy world of unvarnished opinion has done nothing to overturn:

Weiss’s 1st Law of the Blogosphere:  Journalists who become bloggers will suffer in both roles because the abuse and stupidity they’ll face in the latter will make them psychologically less fit for the former.

Weiss’s 2nd Law of the Blogosphere:  The crazier the comments section of a blog, the more interesting the blog.

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I Take Acid

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Luke Ford

Around 6 a.m. Friday, I dreamed I was hanging out in Boston (I’ve never been there) with my dad. After a long walk, I found some acid and for the first time in my life I took an illegal drug. Then I sat in a closet and watched two chimes swing back and forth.

We had visitors. The son (circa 25yo) wanted to take drugs with his friends. I said I wanted to sober up and hang out with the adults. I felt horrible about breaking my pledge to myself that I would never take drugs and I feared that I had stepped over a precipice.

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Muggings in Pico-Robertson raise concern in Orthodox community

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Luke Ford

Brad A. Greenberg writes in the Jewish Journal:

As dusk turned to dark on the first night of Shavuot, one rabbi, who asked not to be named, was mugged at knifepoint on Rodeo Drive near Olympic Boulevard as he was walking home after services. Eight hours later, five Orthodox men were walking down Pico Boulevard near Sherbourne Drive when a van pulled up and two men jumped out waving handguns. Less than a week later, another Jewish man was mugged in Beverlywood.

"All we want to do is be left alone and be able to go to shul and spend time with our families," said Cliff Alsberg, who handles security at Aish Los Angeles. "But these people are coming in and disrupting our lives."

Los Angeles police have attributed 11 robberies of about 30 people — including many non-Jews — to three teams of suspects. Five people, comprising two of the teams, have been arrested and charged; three men believed to be members of the third team have been arrested but not yet charged.

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The Girls Next Door

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Luke Ford

Daphne Merkin writes in Elle:

It was in aid of understanding my own puzzling interest and the equally puzzling interest of women such as my 31-year-old friend Alana Newhouse, who is an editor at a venerable century-old Jewish weekly by day and an obsessed Girls watcher by night, and of Liza Monroy, a 27-year-old writer who is publishing her first novel and takes pains to distinguish her own interest in the show from that of the masses, that I flew out to Los Angeles to meet with Hef and the girls. Honesty bids me admit that Holly, with her doelike eyes and mixture of dreaminess and steel, is the reason I was drawn into the show in the first place. (Her name is also the one-word answer Alana gives when I ask her why she is so riveted.) If you are of a mind, as I am, to deconstruct the show’s underlying metaphysics, it is possible to see Holly as both a romantically fixated heroine out of a Barbara Cartland novel (or, for that matter, out of Madame Bovary) and a shrewd, very contemporary cookie. There is an intensity to her as well as an inquiring mind—she’s always working on her French or boning up on historical facts—that is easier for me to identify with than Bridget’s boppy cheerleader approach or Kendra’s dazed personality and limited vocabulary (in which cool, great, and no way figure largely, when she’s not being bleeped for swearing).

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Luke Groped Women At Kiddush?

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Luke Ford

Moishe posts to FailedMessiah:

Steve and Yochanan, I agree but you wouldn’t be so generous when he is feeling up your teenage daughter and whispering suggestive comments into her ear during kiddush. That’s why he has been thrown out.

If you can get a hold of them, read all of his bragging posts on Protocols from 2 years ago. He is relying on people’s short memories to clense himself.

By the way, most of these frum girs are so sheltered that they don’t realize that a butt-grab or an arm stroke along with a "good Shabbos" in shul is a problem, they tend to be confused and shocked and move on to ignore it. Its not abuse, just pushing the limits. Sometimes you have to be living in a city to realize what the under current of conversation is and what people will and will not make public. The shuls involved threw him out "for being a pornographer (and you can check his posts on his porn web site) so as not to embarrass the girls in the congregations.

Moishe’s accusation of groping women at kiddush is a pure lie. There’s not an iota of truth to it. The only accusation remotely similar to this one is that a woman (two women?) told Rabbi Steven Weil of Beth Jacob that about 8-10 years ago, I said something sexually suggestive to her. Rabbi Weil has since told this to people as the reason why he won’t let me inside his shul.

Prior to seven years ago, I was often verbally aggressive with women I had just met (though not in shul, well, at least not usually in shul). It was gross of me. Today, however, I have reached such heights of spiritual greatness that you should be envious of me and bow down to me.

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Dennis Prager Makes The Case For Marriage

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Luke Ford

Prager, divorced twice, has the following posted on his PragerRadio.com website for the third hour of his Tuesday show: "It’s June, the month of weddings, so it’s the perfect time for Dennis to do what he does better than anyone — make the case for marriage."

When Prager announced his divorce on the air in February 2006, he said he feared that his second divorce would hurt his credibility on moral issues.

My guess is that 99% of people who’ve divorced twice would be too embarrassed to speak out publicly for traditional values, let alone make the case for marriage.

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Ben Silverman – The Party Animal Who Will Save NBC?

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Luke Ford

I worked as an assistant to Ben Silverman (the new co-chief of the NBC network and television studio) at the William Morris talent agency in July of 1997.

He was always courteous. He was friendly. He was easy to work for.

He also got me fired.

During my time working for Ben, I got to know his female assistant in London (much of it after hours via email). She wanted to see the first chapter of my new book (a history of sex in film).

It was after I had finished my week working for Ben. On my own time, I emailed her a chapter to her email address.

Ben opened her email when she wasn’t around, printed out the chapter of my book, and jammed the printer. He threw a 30-minute telephone tirade the HR lady at William Morris who poured it back on to my temp agency. I was fired.

I remember Ben as a smooth operator. He apparently came from money. He loved the ladies. He loved to party. I remember him lining up get togethers at the Sky Bar on Sunset Bl.

TVWeek.com reports:

Though few news outlets were willing to admit it, Nikki Finke, on her Deadline Hollywood blog, broke last week’s blockbuster news that producer Ben Silverman was taking over Kevin Reilly’s duties at NBC. Ms. Finke’s first post on Friday not only scooped the competition (whose initial hesitant stories on the matter made vague references to "online reports" breaking the news), but also sent the entire NBC dealmaking team into frantic overdrive through the Memorial Day weekend. NBC insiders were furious about both the leak and Ms. Finke’s "mean" comments about their executives during a difficult transition. Mr. Silverman called the weekend "hell" because of the unexpected report. "I hate the blog world," said Mr. Silverman, who Ms. Finke wrote had a "high-flyin’ lifestyle" and a private plane that served as his "moveable frat." Mr. Silverman’s take: "It ends up interfering with people’s lives. It messes with the process. And I’ve never been on a private plane!" Replied Ms. Finke: "In Hollywood, the truth hurts."

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