Hot Halloween Costumes: Try These On For Size

Might I suggest that if you're planning to go out trick or treating this year, you consider one of the following premiere costumes. Simply, cowboys, superheros and hot cops never go out of style. Do take pictures, you hear?

Happy Friggin' Friday, Cool Cats!

Indulge, live it up and have a great happy hour, all live long day, cool cats!Thanks, Julia!

Model Perfect: Lars Slind

It's been a good long while since we've indulged in a man-size post, but who could resist Norwegian-looking Arizonan scholarship footballer Lars Slind? This boy wonder studied Japanese in high school and college and lived in Kyoto, Japan, for several years.

He now resides in West Los Angeles, in a Japanese community, where he has modeled for the likes of D&G, Red Nightlife and Absolut. He also bartends, is obviously quite fond of tightie whities and most important, appears for the first time as The Smoking Nun's Sexiest Man Alive. Altogether now: Ooh la la!

Yawn! Another Bland NYC Evening... With Miss New York/USA

Tuesday evening I joined Liz D. and Leo at the POP Gallery in Soho for a fundraising gala in support of artist Joel Bermano's charity fund. Liz does the dude's publicity and Leonard is one of his primary profile writers. I was simply there to swill wine and say clever things about the art, such as, "I believe his subtle use of pastel hues is both diacritic and unwonted."

Among "celebs" in attendance were Miss New York Amber Collins, who was charming, beautiful—and intelligent, with a Master's Degree from NYU Steinhardt in early childhood and special education; and New York Giant Ladanian Tomlinson, whose football jersey painting was auctioned to raise money for The Bermano Fund and Ladainian Tomlinson's Foundation. Below: meese with Liz D. & Leo; Bermano & reporter; Leo & Bermano.

Kellan Lutz Covers November 2011 'Men's Fitness'

Kellan Lutz, who is currently starring in Immortals with Henry Cavill, shows off his perfecto 26-year-old, 6-foot-1, 195-pounds of steel bod on the cover of the November 2011 Men's Fitness, which I must say, is about giving me fits.Inside shots of Lutz's warehouse workout.Not surprisingly, it's hardly Lutz's first time showing off his junk on the cover of fitness mags.

'Magic Mike' Is A-OK!

Below are pics from the Magic Mike set of cast member Alex Pettyfer. We're fine with any of these outfits that Pettyfer decides to strip out of.

New Hampshire's GOP-Led House Attempts To Strip Gay Marriage Law

The tiny state of New Hampshire took an enormous backward step Tuesday, approving legislation to take away same-sex couples' right to marry, which has been lawful there since 2009. By a vote of 11-6, a Republican-led House committee intends to replace marriage equality with lesser and unequal civil unions.

Despite the fact that a majority of N.H. citizens "strongly oppose" the legislation, if approved by the full House in January, it then goes to the state Senate, potentially becoming a shamefully regressive law.

Democratic Gov. John Lynch has repeatedly said he will veto attempts to repeal same-sex marriage. New Hampshire enacted civil unions in 2007 and two years later supplanted it with full equality for gays.

Currently, gay marriage is legal in New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont and D.C. More than 1,500 New Hampshire gay couples have married so far.

The proposed backward step to civil unions would allow discrimination against couples in employment, housing and public accommodations, based on "religious or moral" beliefs.

State Rep. Lucy Weber, D-Walpole, called the bill "mean-minded" and "a masterpiece of muddled drafting."

Update: Amy Winehouse Drank Herself To Death

After a good bit of hoo-haw that Amy Winehouse might have died because her tiny system wasn't able to handle rapid detox—following a toxicology report that found no illegal substances in her system—it was revealed today that the 27-year-old singer perished as a result of “death by misadventure."

Those crazy Brits. What that means is that Winehouse, who died July 23, drank herself to death. Her blood-alcohol limit was more than five times the drunk-driving limit. In Euro standards, she had 416 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood when she died.

Further, a policeman who was called to Winehouse's home admits that two empty full-size bottles and one smaller bottle of vodka were found in her room. She had reportedly been clean for the three weeks preceding. God bless her.

Amy's final recording, "Body & Soul," appears on Tony Bennett's second duets album, and it's a beautiful thing.

Men's Health | November 2011 With Cover Hunk Henry Cavill

More goodies from the November 2011 Men's Health, which features upcoming Superman Henry Cavill on the cover.Meanwhile, the following pics are pervading the webbie, showing Cavell shooting scenes in Vancouver with a green screen backdrop. Looks plenty blue to meese. Yowsah!
Nice ads... more from Men's Health.

Sheena Easton: The Singles of 1985-1986 | 'Do You'

In 1984, Sheena Easton was riding a tidal wave of success from platinum top 15 album A Private Heaven, her best-selling ever, with top 10 hits "Strut" and "Sugar Walls." You'd think that at last, she'd catapult to the A-list among pop singers of the '80s, now that she had two Grammys and five top 10 singles in her pocket. She had also evolved into one sexy mama.

Sadly, her 1985 seventh LP Do You not only inexplicably marked a bizarre turn toward a lesbo-punk appearance with an asymmetrical hairstyle that was anything but flattering, while the album, wholly produced by Nile Rodgers from Chic fame, was overproduced to the point that Sheena's vocals became secondary to many of the songs.

First single "Do It for Love" was a fine track, with danceable tempo and a great chorus, but listening in retrospect, it is so cluttered with background vocals and production tics that Sheena is more or less lost in the mix. Radio indulged the release, but it peaked at No. 29 on the pop chart, No. 39 at AC and its remix at No. 21 at dance—not a good sign.

The accompanying music video, meanwhile, was supposed to have a complex storyline that Sheena explained on "Entertainment Tonight," but when all was said and done, it was basically nothing but her performing in a club, while Billy Zane seemingly stalks her and is, for some reason, tossed out of the venue at the end. Huh?

Follow-up "Jimmy Mack," a cover of Martha and the Vandellas' 1967 Motown No. 1 R&B hit, was delightful, with a cute as shit video featuring Sheena in a retro dance sequence (keenly edited, since Sheena herself admits she can't put three steps together). Radio paid it little mind, peaking at No. 69 on the singles chart and No. 30 at dance. Sigh...

EMI was divided on the choice for a third single: either the midtempo "Cant Wait Til Tomorrow" or lush ballad "Magic of Love." I believe they made the right choice with the latter, a wonderfully atmospheric song that possessed an ethereal modern ambiance quite distinctive from her typical AC-type ballads. Again, the video featured Billy Zane, though its slow-mo imagery was a lot of nonsense—with water washing across Sheena's face and a bizarre thematic cross between true love and deception, which had nothing to do with the lyric. The song never charted... anywhere.

There were obvious missed opportunities on Do You: synth-pop "Don't Break My Heart" is cutesy but catchier than "Do It For Love," while midtempo "When the Lightning Strikes," co-written by Dan Hartman, arguably offered the best vocal performance on the disc, albeit so heavily produced. I remember listening over and over to Sheena singing the line, "Call it fascination, with the way our love survives another niiiiiiight..." It was the lowest note she had ever recorded and just filled me with glee. Yep, obsessive... and proud as can be. Do You reached No. 40 on the album chart and sold gold, but it wasn't enough to move her career in a forward direction, for sure.

In late 1985, Sheena contributed a song to obscure British/American holiday flick Santa Claus: The Movie, which starred Dudley Moore and John Lithgow—the soaring ballad "It's Christmas (All Over the World). Just gorgeous, and a return to the pure soprano vocals she was best known for... It never charted, but satiated followers who were afraid that Sheena might be lost to oblivion.

And in 1986, the soundtrack for huge hit film About Last Night, about love and war between a gang of 20-somethings that included Rob Lowe, a budding Demi Moore, James Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins (trivia: with Catherine Keener as a cocktail waitress), included two Sheena songs, "Natural Love" and appreciable uptempo pure pop song "So Far, So Good," both featured in the movie.

The latter was released as a single (with a music video: Sheena's a redhead!), and came oh so close to making the top 40, peaking at No. 43. Other acts on the ST included John Oates, Jermaine Jackson, J.D. Souther, Bob Seger, John Waite and Paul Davis.

Not the best of times for Sheena, but things were about to become downright dastardly, as her next album was denied release by EMI. It's Prince to the rescue.

NYC Vintage Image: Polly's Restaurant, 1915

Miss Polly Holliday's Restaurant and moderately priced tavern on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village was a fave bohemian haunt beginning in the 1830s in New York, which was deemed "indispensable and independent." It endured at various locations into the intellectual renaissance around World War I, where she also ran Polly Holliday's Greenwich Village Inn, offering furnished rooms upstairs patronized by radicals, avant-garde thinkers and young intellectuals.

Sheena Easton's 1984 PMRC Scandal: 'Female-Arousing' 'Sugar Walls'

In 1984, Sen. Al Gore's frigid rich bitch wife Tipper decided that gut-slamming three Marie Callender's chicken pot pies with high tea was no longer satiating. The trophy wife needed a cause.

Under the guise of fake organization The Parents Music Resource Center—formed by a gaggle of Washington wives while having their corns soaked at the nail salon—Mrs. Gore led a campaign against music lyrics she deemed "explicit" and a danger to the "moral stability" of her four privileged offspring.

Her first target was Prince's "Darling Nikki," from Purple Rain—the track was never a radio single, mind you—which Gore played on her Victrola again and again, while surreptitiously drooling over a hot dog with chili and cheese, hoping her cobweb-filled kootycat might moisten, to no avail.

"The images frightened my children, they frightened me. I am way frightened," Gore exclaimed in a press interview over an IHOP Grand Slam breakfast and a bowlful of Cheese Whiz dotted with marshmallows. The PMRC, in turn, released its "Filthy Fifteen" list of objectionable songs "attributable to the decay of the nuclear family in America"—every one relished over and again by the lunching ladies with suppressed glee, while giggling and sucking seductively on a stick on butter.

Fabulously, Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls" was among the contemptible, vile, repugnant, repellant, obscene songs to make the list—cited for its naughty references to "female arousal"—along with Madonna's "Dress You Up" and Cyndi Lauper's "She Bop." The great news: The single's persistent headline-grabbing references by Gore—as she wiped gravy from the corners of her mouth—did nothing but draw more attention to "Sugar Walls," helping propel it to a glorious No. 9 peak on the singles chart.

Of course, the great irony is that if you were a kid at the time, you likely had no clue that "Sugar Walls," written by Prince, was dirty in the least. A grown-up, of course, likely understands that "Come spend the night inside my sugar walls" is deliciously sexual—but a teen is more likely to think sugar walls have something to do with candy or a game or something wholly innocuous.

And come on, who really explores the meaning of lyrics anyway? How many songs have we all sung hundreds of times, only to realize a decade or two later... my god, that's what I've been singing? That's what that means? We've all been there.

I recall laughing myself into a near stupor when Gore said over a large vat of Thousand Island dressing (skipping the salad) in a 1985 TV interview, "When I heard 'Sugar Walls,' I almost drove off the road." Fortunately, there was a Taco Bell around the bend and she quickly recovered with an order of Volcano Nachos and a sour-cream-filled burrito. Sheena was also interviewed numerous times, where she beautifully, succinctly, defiantly defended artistic freedom, in her cute Scottish accent. She hardly came across as "filthy."

Unfortunately, because loudmouth potted-ham loving Gore was a Senator's wife, a governmental hearing was eventually held on the "Filthy Fifteen." Among the detractors: folk rock musician John Denver, who stated he was "strongly opposed to censorship of any kind in our society or anywhere else in the world," stressing that censors often misinterpret music, as was the case with his "Rocky Mountain High."

Likewise, Frank Zappa testified that the PMRC was "ill-conceived nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children (and) infringes the civil liberties of" adults.

Sadly, record labels were running scared as Gore chased them with a giant speckled salami filled with bacon bits. Fearing legislation, in August 1985, they agreed if she'd shut the fuck up, they'd put those god-awful "Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics" labels on albums to warn stupid people to beware. God-fearing Walmart, in turn, refused to sell any album with such a sticker.

Mind you, 25 years later, Al and Tipper Gore are now divorced. She recently purchased a comfortable $8.8 million mansion in California that her husband paid for, where she is surrounded by the comforts of an In-N-Out Burger one mile west and a Dunkin' Donuts and KFC just blocks to the east. And, of course, a TiVo, allowing her to draw the drapes late at night and dress up like Mary Jane Girls, twirling round and round, singing Judas Priest's "Eat Me Alive."