In fact, in advance of the two-week summit Copenhagen's mayor was so concerned about COP15-related horndoggery that he she sent postcards to hotels urging conference attendees to "be sustainable: Don't buy sex" (which, huh!?). In a city where prostitution is legal, she wants COP15 delegates to focus on emissions, not "emissions". (Har-dee-har-har.)

Now, according to Der Spiegel, the sex workers union, SIO, is fighting back in the most awesome way possible: by offering free sex to anyone who brings in a copy of the postcard and their COP15 ID badge.

If you are a guest or delegate at COP15, Sexworkers in Copenhagen are accepting the postcard as payment for sex. In other words – we offer free sex for your postcard. We do this as a protest against the unjust and degrading campaign of the City Council.

SIO has also created a website protesting the mayor's action. Because clearly what this conference needs is more people protesting it.

How did the world's carbon warriors get a reputation befitting your weird bachelor uncle? According to the SIO's website:

Back in May Copenhagen hosted a small conference on climate changes, as a part of the preparations for COP15. After this conference a newsletter published by the trade union 3F – which for years has campaigned for criminalising the purchase of sexual services – told its readers that the conference had resulted in booming sex sales.

Makes sense: nothing burns off the stress of staring for hours at temperature trends that spell out our inevitable doom like a quick hummer of the non-vehicular variety. However: According to SIO, the reported sex sale boost was just anti-sex worker propaganda:

We had not experienced any increase in number of costumers during the conference. We made a survey to 10 individual sex workers, a number of brothels and escort services. None of which had seen extra activity either. One sex worker even expressed discontent and annoyance with the escort service she worked at, because she read about all of these extra clients and did not understand why she had not experienced this increase in clients herself.

So the lame Mayor—presumably anti-sex work—decided to use COP15 as a way to push her political agenda.

But now that COP15 delegates get free sex there is absolutely no reason why sex sales shouldn't spike higher than post-industrial revolution levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. All you have to do is send your name and contact information to sexforpostcards@s-i-o.dk and produce your ID card and postcard at the time of, er, purchase. As our mom used to say: Have fun! Be safe! Save the world!

Climate change delegates: as randy as they are hopeful about developing a workable international framework to halt global warming.

Not just one single text, Ashley, but at least, what, three or four texts, minimum, on the subject of hookers?

"My case in point," the call-girl-turned-singer/author/model wrote The Post in a text message yesterday.

"Here you have all these girls accepting gifts, money, trips from Tiger in exchange for sex — all the while knowing he is married.

"And now they all can't wait to tell their stories in exchange for even more money from the tabloids?

"And I was the hooker? At least I kept my mouth shut."

On a personal level we respect the fact that you are right, Ashley, and are actually the classy one here. But on a PR level we must advise you not to get too cozy with the tabloids. They'll stab you in the back in a second. Unlike, say, bloggers, who tend to be honest friends you can turn to with any question or random opinion, prostitution-related or otherwise.

Gurl U no U need 2 text message us.

[Pic: Myspace]

Yes, according to the Philly cops who sent one of the "good-looking, blonde, kind of Marine guys" from their Scandalous Internet Behavior Unit to see how far she was willing to get "creative".

"I was hoping maybe I could get a cheaper price flirting with him," Susan Finkelstein, 43, said on the "Opie and Anthony" radio show, a day after she was hit with a prostitution charge. "You know, batting my eyes. It's not unheard of.

"It was him who brought the whole thing up anyway," added the married Finkelstein. "It was just unbelievable that when we started talking about sexy stuff, I got arrested."

Happily, although the arrest was a serious bummer that completely scuttled her plans to take her husband to the opening game, a kindly radio station was impressed by her creativity and got her some tickets. Success!

Note to the Democrats: try not to hold any Obama events in Philly. If the offers being made on Craigslist during the convention were any guide, half the Dems in Philly might wind up in jail.

[pic: CBS]

In the average major American city, there are hundreds upon hundreds of teenage girls working as prostitutes.

In Los Angeles, two loan modification agents were lured to a house, tied up, and beaten for hours by several people. "The two allegedly sought loan modification assistance from the victims but believed that nothing was being done and wanted their money back," according to the district attorney's office.

In Iceland, you can no longer get McDonald's. The company is pulling out of the entire country after Iceland's currency collapse.

Any one of those facts could make you spend your last $1.37 on a piece of scrap metal that could be fashioned into a suicide implement using a little All-American gumption. But try to put things in perspective. You think teenage prostitutes, torture-charges soon-to-be-evictees, and McNuggetless Icelanders have it bad? It could be worse. You could get a job. Then you'd have to stop maxin and relaxin and going to the gym at noon and playing video games and all that good unemployed shit. People with jobs: the real victims.

When do we get our sympathy?
[Pic: Flickr]

There's so much awesome ridiculousness in this clip, I couldn't tell you where to begin. You could start with Christine Romans' theoretical about being a "party girl" who needs "15 hits of E." Or Ali Velshi astutely noting that the word "prostitute," after a good Googling, turns up "many, many roads." He knows this how? Common knowledge!

But then there's Stephen "Cheesy Doodle" Smith. EVERYTHING HE HAS TO SAY IS IMPORTANT. And now he's doing...financial commentary?

"If something were illegal," Smith, uh, argues, "they couldn't come on CNN and advertise it!" O RLY? Also: debatable. But then they get to the subject of who would get involved to enforce this thing, and Stephen A. Smith confuses the DEA with the DA. And then: crickets. Pointless, awkward, wonderful. This is one of my favorite out-of-context clips ever, now. Enjoy.

Said Judge John Grady:

"Sheriff [Thomas] Dart may continue to use Craigslist's Web site to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content. But he cannot sue Craigslist for their conduct."

Since the sheriff filed his suit in March, Craigslist has renamed the section "adult services" and imposed rules requiring a working phone number and valid credit card from, err, adult service providers. This doesn't seem to have impacted business much. But that's actually a good thing for the sheriff: since hookers will continue to flock to Craigslist, which cooperates with police, Dart can continue to use the site as a choke point for large-scale prostitution busts, as he has in the past. He just can't demonize the site for his own political posturing.

Kristin Davis was allegedly the second Spitzer prostitution connection after Ashley Dupre, but who really knows? The important thing is that she has an opinion on this "Spitzer comeback" business, and that she posted it on her blog last week:

There is far more to tell about Eliot Spitzer, the ladies and the way he treated them. There is also far more to tell about Spitzer's relationships with multiple New York Escort services including several of my competitors when I was in the business. I'm sure if he and I both ran these facts would come in during a spirited campaign...

Yes indeed, if Eliot spitzer throws his hat in the ring, I may just have to jump in the race myself. After all, how I could I do worse than the clowns we have in Albany now?

You should, scary lady! This prostitute-ring runner is in favor of legalized prostitution and legalized marijuana and says it's preposterous that she went to jail while Spitzer didn't. In other words, she's right about everything.

[Pic: AP]

The Washington Post speaks to the visionary inventor of the togafied Wearable Towel (which we introduced to you way back in May—theft??), who is under the impression that he can somehow defeat the Snuggie-Slanket superpowers. Which, let's be honest, can only lead to the sartorial equivalent of the Falkland Islands invasion, if he keeps running his big mouth. But you will be happy to know that at least he has attractive family members:

"My brother Ari — " also a star of Bravo's reality series "Miami Social." Heard of him? No? " — he does the Wearable Towel fashion shows," Stein says. "My sister, she was just in a Budweiser commercial," and that's her in the Wearable Towel commercial, gently drying her baby by dabbing it against the Wearable Towel she is draped in.

Pornography of his own sister and her child, in pursuit of Snuggie War victory. Where does it end, Mr. President?

Cops say he was not the most discreet pimp; the hotel knew what was going on.

(Click images to enlarge)

Cops set up a sting operation and rented the hotel room next door, heard sexy sounds, and then stopped the johns when they left. In this way they learned everything: a prostitution operation based online at sites like Craigslist and Cityvibe.com. They got two of the prostitutes to provide statements about how they got their jobs—the old-fashioned way.

So Provencher was getting $400 per day from just one of his (at least four) hookers. A second woman describes much the same "audition" process:

Kevin Provencher is innocent until proven guilty, but it's not looking so great for him right this minute.
[Full complaint, via Eagle-Tribune]

Because we are on his delightful blast email list, we were alerted to today's StoneZone post wondering why Spitzer didn't face criminal prosecution for sleeping with prostitutes, with his socks on. Sure, most johns aren't prosecuted, but Spitzer violated the Mann Act!

What do Chuck Berry, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charlie Chaplin, and Eliot Spitzer have in common? Answer: All of these men violated the federal Mann Act, but only one - Eliot Spitzer - was not prosecuted.

The Mann Act prohibits taking women across state lines for immoral purposes. It was mostly written to prosecute black people who slept with white women.

And what do Berry, Wright, and Chaplin have in common? Unlike Eliot, they all violated the Mann Act more than fifty years ago, when the Mann Act was actually enforced.

But why bring this up now? Well, Vanity Fair is apparently on the case and Mr. Stone would presumably like to be a part of whatever that story ends up being.

Gawker has learned that Vanity Fair's Craig Unger and John Connolly are currently looking into the prospect that the banking and financial interests that Spitzer took on during his tenures as attorney general and governor of New York tipped off the feds to Spitzer's proclivities and launched the investigation.

While we'd love to see Spitzer emerge tormenter-in-chief for Goldman Sachs, this is not good news for his ongoing rehabilitation. First off, it casts his burgeoning anti-Wall Street crusade in a different light. Is his anti-bailout populism a function of his experience as the Sheriff of Wall Street, or of his desire for revenge against that bastards that brought him low?

Second, it only reminds people that Spitzer is a hooker-banging ex-governor. And no matter how the investigation got started, Spitzer's culpability on that count isn't in doubt. But if it is true that representatives of the Wall Street interests Spitzer tangled with handed the case to the Department of Justice, then the case takes on quite a different hue: A prominent Democrat's political enemies handed damaging intelligence to a Department of Justice that happened to be serving under a Republican president during a presidential campaign, and the FBI turned it into a prosecution for a crime that federal law enforcement agencies usually don't get involved in.

So far, no one knows precisely how the FBI came across a little operation called The Emperor's Club VIP, which was supplying high-end prostitutes to Spitzer and other bigwigs from New York to D.C. to London and beyond. According to the criminal complaint [pdf] against the prostitution ring's proprietor—the complaint in which Spitzer famously made a cameo as "Client-9"—the case began in October 2007 as a joint investigation between the FBI and the IRS. But what, exactly, the FBI was doing looking into prostitution, a crime usually handled at the local level, isn't clear. And

The New York Times is also interested in how the Emperor's Club crossed the FBI's radar—the paper has filed a request in federal court to compel the Department of Justice to release its applications for wiretap warrants in the case, which have so far remained under seal. The application, and other sealed documents the Times has been trying to lay hands on, might shed light on how the investigation got started, and the Times has argued that it wants to see the documents because "because the public has a legitimate and understandable interest in reviewing and monitoring the decisions made by the Government in determining to pursue this case, which involved at least one high-level public figure, and then to not seek charges against any clients." A federal judge sided with the paper in February and the government appealed; the case went to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last month and a decision could come at any moment.

One of the conversations appears to back claims that Italy's leader has a giant bed with a connection, as yet unclear, to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

After an exchange in which the prime minister seems to be offering a present to D'Addario, he says to her: "I'm taking a shower." He then asks her to wait on the big bed. She asks which one. He replies: "Putin's".

Right. Is that some sort of little joke or does Putin have a bed at Silvio's vacation home? And if he does, does he know what Silvio's doing in it?

Gabriel Sherman has a huge profile of Jared Kushner in New York magazine today, with a hefty section devoted to his father's little "Set up my brother-in-law with a hooker and secretly tape it and send the video to his family" episode, which landed him in jail. But let's start with Jared's high praise for the Observer, the paper that's been wracked by layoffs and budget cuts under his leadership:

"I found the paper unbearable to read, it was like homework," Jared tells me.

Haha. But Jared is changing that! With his powers of motivation. After he hired PR man Bob Sommer as President of the Observer, he told him, " We called it Weekend at Bernie's, because it was like dead people walking around." Good one! After the NYO's longtime editor Peter Kaplan left and severe layoffs hit the paper, Jared put it to his underpaid, beleaguered journalists straight:

At a meeting last month, Jared told his staff that the Observer needed to move on. "Kaplan is a classy guy, but he's old-school," Jared said. "If we were doing our jobs right, Gawker wouldn't have a reason to exist. Curbed wouldn't have a reason to exist.
"Every Observer writer wants to be a novelist," he went on. "But we need to be deliberate about when we are short and when we are long."

Jared, you are our reason to exist. And your writers don't want to be novelists; they have to, because you laid them off. But Jared's not the type to buy into the doom and gloom; he 's optimistic about the dying newspaper industry to a comical extent. Let's hope he's just lying to put on a happy face:

"I think we're definitely at a bottom for newspapers," he said a couple of weeks later. "Once this Russian winter is over, once the papers fail that should fail, you'll see a resurgence. I think the Observer two years from now will be a very viable entity."

He also promised to run the NYO as a "profit-making entity," which would be a pretty historic moment! Jared seems like not a terrible guy, though, considering the way he grew up—favorite son of a mogul father, who hired a PI to set up his brother-in-law, who he hated, with a hooker, and then had to be talked out of sending the video of the incident to his brother-in-law's children. Jared does not seem to be that cut throat, at least. His dad made huge donations to Harvard and then to NYU to smooth Jared's admission to those august institutions. And it's paid off; the swaggering underclassman has blossomed into a total heart throb. Ivanka Trump found his pimp game irresistible. Their steamy secret of attraction:

"Jared and I are very similar in that we're very ambitious," Ivanka tells me one morning in her office on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower. "That's what makes it so amazing to be in a relationship with someone who is supportive of that. I'm happy for him when he is in the office working late. I know how good that feels when you sit down and return e-mails."

We're fanning ourselves rapidly! Jared Kushner's made some mistakes, sure. He may not be able to run a newspaper very well (who can, these days?), but he's great material. As long as you don't work for him.
[New York Mag. Pic: Getty]

We knew the sea lions would get up to this, sooner or later. Blame the recession if you like. We blame the welfare system. For years, we allow these creatures to lounge around their free habitat at the aquarium, growing fat on free fish provided to them by our taxpayer dollars. We get up and go to work in the morning, while they roll about, shielded by blubber that we paid for.

Well. Now times are a bit tougher. Money's a bit scarcer. The sea lions might have to—heaven forbid—go out and get a job. So do they to do some day labor, or sling hash, or tear tickets at the Odeon? Nay. They turn into common whores:

Even the sea lions at New York Aquarium are going to a new extreme to pay the bills — kissing for money.
Visitors can pay $200 for a tour of the sea lion habitat, ending with the opportunity to kiss one of the fluffy sea mammals.

Isn't that just a fine how-do-you-do? Assuming sea lions have morals was always a mug's game. You might be mildly miffed to see that cheerleaders are robbing people in wheelchairs now, or that the housing bust has spread to the "windowless mud-brick hut" market in Guinea, but sea lions selling their own bodies can only be expected. They are common.
[Pic: Flickr]

Swingers clubs—Try Anchorena, Buenos Aires' premier boliche swinger. Enjoy the kitschy "four life-sized wooden totems of nude men and women, their genitals poised above the center of the dance floor" to get you in the mood. "Forget the tango - these days, Argentina swings," Mark Sanford.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Gay saunas—Unikus Spa is one of the city's most popular gay meeting points, where you can go to descontracturantes y relax, if you know what we mean, Mark Sanford.

Sex spas—A Full Spa offers "Hydrotherapy Pool, Labyrinth /Individual Boxes, XXX Videos, etc." Etc. means whatever you want it to mean, Mark Sanford!

Glory Holes—At Tom's at Viamonte 638, you can go from the Leather Basement to the DVD Booths to the Glory Holes, and back—if you dare, Mark Sanford!

"Publishing"—Leonos is a "publishing" agency that "doesn't do anything" except link its hot male "models" with interested "clients" like you. What you choose to "do" with the "model" is "up to two consenting adults," Mark Sanford.

Around your hotel—"Cutty Sark is a well known bar...guys will have no problems arranging erotic services with the girls here, especially if they're staying at El Conquistador." Club Black is nice, too. Ring the front desk, Mark Sanford!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Drugs—Cocaine here is the same price as Miller Lite is back in South Carolina, Mark Sanford!

Ebner posted the chapter (which he says was cut for "reasons mostly editorial) on his website. It centers on high-end prostitution in and around Hollywood, and is worth reading on its own. But let's pull out the Ron Burkle bits, shall we? Ebner says that Burkle, along with Interscope chief Ted Field, was one of the best-known "lifers"—patrons of super-high-end call girls, all the time. He points out Burkle's close friendship with Bill Clinton, and his private jet that underlings allegedly call "Air Fuck One."

Ebner writes that Burkle and Field both relied on a pimp named David Reich to get them girls. And then: allegations that Burkle paid to watch girl-on-girl action, starring Paris Hilton, live:

I got in touch with Elizabeth Jawhary, a former Hollywood party girl who claims she serviced both Burkle and Field on occasion. Writer Ben Wallace also met Jawhary doing research in L.A. "She was a recovering meth addict, but she did talk about Paris Hilton being along for the ride," he says.

Indeed, when I first contacted her, she was quick to volunteer, "With Paris it was very low key. She would fly down and I was there with them. We would party pretty hard. Paris got naked, and the girls would get naked. This was mainly in Vegas. There were times where you would have Ted or Ron come down, and they would pretty much pay for girl-on-girl action. I'd be there. And they'd pay to watch us girls going at it. And they'd bring in Augie Busch III."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Jawhary tells Ebner that she repeatedly took trips, arranged by David Reich, to meet Burkle and Field. Which amounted to extremely expensive voyeurism and a handjob, she says:

"When I was flown to New York for Ron or Teddy, we stayed in hotels. When they were in Vegas, we'd stay with them at the Mansions at the MGM, the Palazzos at the Rio and those villas at the Mirage. They always had the best of the best. Whenever I would go to Los Angeles to visit, there were day trips - the dumb photo shoots I would fall for. On those day trips we would always go to Teddy's house, which was phenomenal, and the photographer was awesome. The limo would pick us up from the airport. The best thing about Ted is that he would have accounts everywhere - we'd have lunch or go shopping on his accounts. Ron was less generous. I can only remember one time I had a good time with Ron. It was when David had me and my best friend flown to L.A. and we went to spend the night with Ron. He told me it was where JFK had affairs with Marilyn. We went to his house at the beach and he had a big thing of Mr. Bubble. He put it in the Jacuzzi, and he was relaxed, and we just had a great time.

"I never knew Ron to get rough with girls, but I did know him to be a dick. If he wasn't getting what he wanted, he would throw attitude. I think a lot of that had to do with David Reich, and it would kind of trickle down to how he treated girls: 'I'm going to my room, and you all can do whatever the fuck you want to do." So, we were just gambling on his dime at that point. He was resentful that we were on his dime. The one common thread with Ron and Ted was that they would watch girls get it on, or get hand jobs or blow jobs. They wouldn't have intercourse because they were afraid of AIDS, and they were both AIDS Foundation supporters."

Reich himself told Ebner he was friends with both Field and Burkle, but denies being a pimp for either of them and calls Burkle "the classiest guy I have ever met in my life, and he doesn't need any help getting women." Really?

[Hollywood Interrupted]

The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Tuesday, will be released on May 22 in New York and Los Angeles and on demand on the TV network HDNet. It follows an escort named Chelsea who charges $2,000 an hour to act as a client's girlfriend for the night, providing more intimacy than just sex. (In the film's opening scene, Chelsea and her client are shown at a chic Manhattan restaurant discussing the film they just saw - Man on Wire - going back to his apartment and making out, and then having breakfast and reading The New York Times together the next morning.) The story takes place over five days in October 2008, and is partially improvised by the mostly unprofessional actors, who play versions of themselves, like New York magazine staff writer Mark Jacobson, who plays a journalist, and movie critic Glenn Kenny, who plays an escort reviewer. (Some readers may recall that Kenny served as writer David Foster Wallace's editor and sidekick when the duo attended the AVN Awards for a piece for Premiere magazine.) But the casting choice that has garnered the film so much attention is that the main character is played by real-life porn star Sasha Grey.

At the Tribeca Film Festival, Soderburgh explained that he chose Grey precisely because of her porn persona, The Guardian reports. "With Sasha, you can within seconds see her do anything you can imagine with her clothes off," he said. "What you can't see is what it's like to be her boyfriend, to hang out with her and be emotionally intimate with her. So my whole theory is that's the fantasy for those who've been double-clicking – that they want to spend 77 minutes being her boyfriend."

As Soderbergh put it, Sasha Grey is "not the normal adult film star." Grey is 21, but has appeared in 150 adult films and branded herself as a "new" kind of pornstar since beginning her career at the age of 18. According to the Associated Press, Grey is known for "pushing the boundaries of normal sexual acts," but, "she maintains she's always in control." Vanessa Grigoriadis, who profiled Sasha Grey for the new issue of Rolling Stone explains:

Sasha Grey is the adult industry's reigning princess of porn, a rock & roll 21-year-old with an actual mission statement - "Most of the XXX I see is boring, and does not arouse me physically or visually. I am determined and ready to be a commodity that fulfills everyone's fantasies" - and few taboos.

Grey, who is co-managed by former Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro (and appeared in the porn film he directed), has modeled for American Apparel, and sung with the reggae musician Lee "Scratch" Perry. She says she is striving to make porn more artistic; Grigoriadis asserts she is changing the relationship between feminism and porn:

"Porn has been one of feminism's most divisive issues because it hits on such a raw level to so many woman. Here are the fantasies of men, and it's of course better to live out those fantasies through pornography than to try to do them in the real world, but the fact is the real world is impacted by it. Grey says, ‘If you look at me and you think "Here's a woman who's intelligent, cognizant and making her own choices, and you still tell me that what I'm doing is wrong, screw you, because that should end the debate.' "

Grey's appearance in The Girlfriend Experience has been interpreted as the first step in her attempt to go mainstream like former adult actresses Traci Lords and Jenna Jameson, but according to our sister site, Fleshbot, (link NSFW):

If anything, we suspect that Sasha is attempting to remake the notion of what a mainstream star is, and does-much the way she's remade any notions of what an 18-year-old pornstar looks and sounds like .... it's also possible that Sasha could rise to fame in the mainstream cinema while continuing to work as an adult star-perhaps completely remaking our notions of what it means to have crossover appeal.

Though Grey doesn'tactually have sex on screen in The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh says that he felt comfortable casting her because "Porn is beyond everywhere now." He told Time Out New York that he thinks prostitution should be legal and does not consider the prostitute in his film a victim. When asked what he would say to someone who has been roped into a life of prostitution, he replied:

Well, there are people for whom that is true. That's not the case with Chelsea any more than it is with Sasha in the adult-film industry. But, yeah, I think whatever agreement two people want to come to about whatever is really none of my business. I don't know what the difference is between that and what I'm doing for Sony Pictures right now [directing Moneyball].

According to the Village Voice review:

Like Godard, Soderbergh views prostitution as the ultimate paradigm for capitalism. But where Godard saw the hooker as a tragic or exploited victim, Soderbergh suggests there are no victims, only failed traders, in the post-Reagan era of DIY capitalism.

And, says Variety's review, the film de-emphasizes the sex involved in Chelsea's work and portrays her as a woman in control of her own get-rich-quick scheme, much like her clients who strive to make a fortune in the world of finance.

From reviews and interviews, it appears Soderbergh was striving for some sort of meta commentary on how capitalism makes prostitutes and porn stars of us all. The johns in the movie delude themselves into thinking they're experiencing a higher level of intimacy with "the girlfriend experience" than they would by just having sex with a prostitute. Similarly, Soderbergh suggests that audience members, who have presumably seen Grey's porn films, will delude themselves into thinking they are experiencing her on a more intimate level by watching her act in a mainstream film rather than a porn film. But by focusing on a high priced escort who chose to get into prostitution, and having her portrayed by an actress described as an atypical pornstar who feels in control of her career, he conveniently ignores the fact that many women in both industries are exploited. Soderbergh is certainly allowed to use the old fantasy of a sex worker who simply loves her work. However, by ignoring the uglier side of the sex trade, he undermines his argument that his film reflects any underlying truths about sex, pornography, or society.

Trailer for The Girlfriend Experience:



Steven Soderbergh On The Girlfriend Experience: 'I Hired Real People And Turned Them Loose' [The Guardian]
Porn Star Sasha Grey Stars In New Soderbergh Film [The Associated Press]
Sasha Grey, The Dirtiest Girl In The World: The Story Behind The Story [Rolling Stone]
Sasha Grey, Crossover Star (NSFW) [Fleshbot]
Steven Soderbergh Interview [Time Out New York]
Soderbergh's Girlfriend Experience Porn-Star Is A True Character [The Village Voice]
The Girlfriend Experience Review [Variety]

Earlier: Dave Navarro Makes Porno Debut
American Apparel Now Sponsoring Bloggers & Porn Stars (NSFW)
Oprah Learns About The Ins-N-Outs Of Legal Prostitution

The "world famous Moonlite BunnyRanch" announced in a press release today that they've offered the beloved hero of the Illinois taxpayers an "apprenticeship" at their legal house of ill repute.

This apprenticeship could be featured throughout the upcoming season of HBO's CatHouse. Rod's willpower would be challenged daily by the ladies as they bribe him to acquire finer rooms or better working hours and days off. In lieu of Rod's work throughout the apprenticeship Dennis Hof will pay him a handsome amount of money.

Yes, ok, it is a dumb press release promoting one of the HBO shows that only exists to give old dudes without internet skills something to jerk off to but we have not yet mentioned the best part:

The Mancow Muller radio show in Chicago facilitated a conference call with Dennis Hof and Rod Blagojevich's PR Manager, Glenn Selig. The conversation was successful and Glenn Selig is taking this offer very seriously and will present it to Rod Blagojevich very soon.

Isn't that thrillingly plausible? Blago's PR manager is clearly almost as insane as he is. This could happen!

This is 26-year-old Sasha Harris, who took $1,000 from Shlomi for sex and then, according to him, bit his tongue and wouldn't let go until he punched her in the face several times. She didn't talk to the cops, according to the earlier reports, so we don't know what she would have to say about all this. She looks terrible; but ShamWow guy's mug shot shows he got pretty fucked up himself.
[The Smoking Gun; Previously]

• Shlomi meets Sasha Harris in a Miami club. They go back to his hotel.
• She propositions him for "straight sex." He pays her a thousand bucks in cash.
• He kisses her.
• She "bit his tongue and would not let go."
• He punches her in her face repeatedly until she lets go.
• He runs down to the hotel lobby.
• They both get arrested.