The Daily Blog

Jun 3

Amber Rose Says Vibe Magazine Printed Lies in Cover Story.

Landing the cover of Vibe Magazine’s Sexy Issue started off as a happy moment for model Amber Rose, until she actually read what the publication printed about her.

Rose, who gained popularity while dating hip-hop star Kanye West, sounded off via Twitter late Saturday evening (May 28), saying the cover story was “untrue and ridiculous.”

“Just read ‘my’ interview in @VibeMagazine half of the story was untrue & ridiculous,” Rose tweeted.

She continues, “F##k that Cover F##K @VibeMagazine yall wrote a bunch of negative bulls—- that I never said or did. Yall don’t give a f**k that I have a Mom & Family that’s gonna read that fake a** s**t I gave yall a truthful interview & Yall f****d me. I’m so sick of keeping my mouth shut I didn’t ask for this life it was handed to me I was nothing but nice to everyone I spoke to @ Vibe.”
In the Vibe story, Rose who is currently dating rapper Wiz Khalifa, revealed details about her life post-Kanye West, her relationship with Reggie Bush, why her story is relatable and being iconic.

In the last two years, Rose has taken her notoriety and attempted to build a brand for herself. She signed with Ford Models in 2009, and has appeared in a host of hip-hop videos. At one point, she was pitching a reality show about her plans to launch her own line of eyewear.

Her recent Twitter rant has stirred up speculation that it may be an attempt to help boost magazine sales. At press time, Vibe had yet to issue a statement regarding Rose’s allegations.

Vibe’s June/July Sexy Issue is a double cover that also features Miami rapper Rick Ross and is scheduled to hit newstands on June 6.

Jan 10

Toni Braxton Considers Posing for Playboy.

Looks like the hits (of a different sort) keep on coming for Toni Braxton. Having just announced the pickup of a reality show, ‘Braxton Family Values,’ comes more news from the ‘Un-break My Heart’ singer.

This afternoon Braxton took to her Twitter account to ask fans their thoughts on the possibility of seeing the songstress grace the cover of Playboy magazine.

“New Year, New opportunities,” she tweeted.

“So I have been considering taking up Playboy’s offer to feature me on their cover this year. What do you think?”

Having recently filed for bankruptcy, perhaps Braxton is trying to use her physical assets to recoup some of her financial losses. She certainly wouldn’t be the first. In October, the 43-year-old singer filed for bankruptcy for the second time in her career. According to court documents, Braxton states that she is worth between $1 million and $10 million, with debts of up to $50 million.

After what were likely concerned responses from her followers, Braxton told them that the photos would be tasteful (just a little T & A she added). She also tweeted that she’d like to pose with Hugh Hefner and proclaimed him the sexiest man over 30. Hef is likely hoping that the third time is the charm, since Toni claims she’s been approached to pose for the mag twice before. Perhaps the timing is right since the spread might help the the public focus on something other than her financial woes and the lackluster sales of her most recent album, ‘Pulse.’ It will likely spur interest in her new reality show as well.

Although she hasn’t made the decision yet, only time will tell if showing the world her goodies is shrewd or just plain lewd.

Dec 27

Playboy’s Hugh Hefner Gets Engaged to a Playmate … Again.

CHICAGO - Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner says he’s gotten engaged again.

Hefner said in a Twitter message early Sunday that he’d given a ring to girlfriend and Playmate Crystal Harris, saying she burst into tears.”This is the happiest Christmas weekend in memory,” he wrote.

To clear up confusion over whether the ring was simply a Christmas gift, Hefner later tweeted: “Yes, the ring I gave Crystal is an engagement ring. I didn’t mean to make a mystery out of it. A very merry Christmas to all.”

This would be the third marriage for the 84-year-old, star of E! reality series “The Girls Next Door,” which chronicles Hefner’s life at the Playboy Mansion. He divorced Playmate Kimberly Conrad last year.

Harris is 23, according to her online biography by E!

Dec 5

Silent Treatment: Vanessa Williams Turns Down $600K Tell-All Deal.

Desperate Housewives’ star Vanessa Williams covers the Power 100 issue of Ebony magazine and in the feature story confessed to recently passing on a $600,000 book deal to write a tell-all tome.

The 47-year-old chanteuse tells the African American lifestyle glossy that a book publisher wanted her to disclose intimate details about her first marriage to Ramon Hervey II and second marriage to former NBA star Rick Fox in a memoir.
“I don’t want to reha Vanessa Williams' Ebony magazine cover sh the past,” she told Ebony. “I want to talk about what makes
me, and why I’m a survivor. And [the publishers] didn’t want that. They wanted to know about my ex-husbands. But I’m not going to throw my kids’ dads under the bus.”

The 15-time Grammy Award nominee, who was also nominated three times for Emmy Awards for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy for her role as Wilhelmina Slater on ‘Ugly Betty,’ joined the seventh season of ‘Desperate Housewives’ earlier this year after ‘Betty’ was canceled.

Nov 17

LeBron James Finalist for Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’.

Time Magazine released the 25 finalists for its annual “Person of the Year” list, and LeBron James is included — much to his amazement.

“I am who I am and I think I’m in a position of my life where I’m going to get better every day,” James said following Miami’s practice Monday. “But it’s too much.”

The nominations include figures of international influence such as President Barack Obama (the 2008 winner), Lady Gaga, Sarah Palin, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.The intrigue and hype surrounding James’ free agency this summer transcended sports and entered pop culture. And the way James embraced the spotlight — including his decision to announce his intention to sign with the Miami Heat on an hour-long ESPN special — has polarized fans, prompting some to accuse him of being egotistical and self-serving.

But even James seems reluctant to place whatever he accomplished on the same level of Time Magazine’s other finalists, which also include the trapped Chilean miners who spent more than two months underground before finally being reached and rescued in a gripping story that was covered worldwide.

“That’s just crazy,” James said. “What those guys did, the courage and what they stood for, I should be nowhere near that list. Nowhere near it.”

Time Magazine employs a loose definition in making its selection, choosing a person or group of people who have “done the most to influence the events of the year” — for better or worse. Starting with aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and most recently selecting Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernake in 2009, Time Magazine has recognized everyone from Pope John Paul II (1994) and Amazon.com founder Jeffrey Bezos (1999) to the likes of Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942) and Adolph Hitler (1938).

This year’s selection will be revealed next month.

Oct 29

The folks at Playboy must really be feeling like boobs right now.

Supermodel Lara Stone has won her lawsuit against the French edition of the girlie magazine for running unauthorized nude photos of her over the summer, reports London’s Telegraph.

A French court has awarded Stone “significant” damages as part of the settlement.

The skin pics, taken last year by photographer Greg Lotus, appeared in the June issue of French Playboy.

And while 26-year-old Stone has peeled off for glossies like W and French Vogue — and currently appears in a racy banned ad for Calvin Klein X jeans — she has said that she would never pose for Hugh Hefner’s pages.

“It’s not the kind of publication I would ever choose to appear in,” the Dutch-born model said in July.

Playboy has been ordered to publish a prominent legal statement confirming that they infringed Stone’s image rights, and the gap-toothed beauty will donate her court winnings to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

”No woman wants photos of them to be published in Playboy without permission,” says Stone. ”I’m very pleased to have won the case, although of course I would rather not have had to take legal action at all.”

Oct 22

Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione died on Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, according to The Associated Press. While the pipe-smoking, velvet-pajama-wearing Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner was the mainstream face of men’s magazines in America, Guccione cultivated a more outrageous reputation, constantly pushing the envelope of good taste and seeking to outgun his lifelong rival in the skin trade with outrageous layouts and stunts.

Hefner sought to portray the suave, sophisticated man of leisure, but Guccione cut a rougher figure, wearing wide-open disco shirts and gold chains and running more explicit photo spreads and tabloid journalistic investigations in his magazine. The Brooklyn native went from nearly entering the priesthood to running a mainstream adult magazine that showed America more skin than any previous publication at the time and becoming one of the richest men in America.

Guccione was born Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione on December 17, 1930 in Brooklyn. While the New York Times reported that at one point the Roman Catholic Guccione considered entering the priesthood, life had other things in store for him. After years of living in London and running a dry-cleaning business while drawing cartoons for newspapers, Guccione decided to launch a rival to Playboy at the height of the feminist movement in 1969.

With risqué images he often shot himself, the magazine became an instant hit and reportedly brought in nearly $4 billion over 30 years. At one point, his fortune estimated at $400 million, Guccione landed on the Forbes magazine list of the wealthiest Americans. A lifelong art fanatic, Guccione spent that money on filling his 17,000-square foot Manhattan home with original artworks by Picasso, Matisse, Dali and Renoir. His empire included 15 other magazines at its height, among them titles on photography, health, bodybuilding and computers.

Penthouse reached its pop culture zenith in 1984, when it published photos of the first black Miss America, actress/singer Vanessa Williams, who was later forced to give up her crown following an outcry over the explicit shots. In addition to also running nude photos of a pre-fame Madonna, Penthouse also ran work by high-profile writers like Stephen King, Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates.

Guccione also poured $17 million into the X-rated epic “Caligula.” The Gore Vidal-penned 1979 film was a sex-filled flick about the Roman emperor starring Sir John Gielgud, Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren.

But as quickly as Guccione amassed his fortune, his empire began to crumble. He lost millions in investments, was socked with massive back tax bills from the Internal Revenue Service and saw circulation plummet for this signature magazine as free content on the Internet began to sap the allure of his company’s projects.

In 1998, while battling cancer and mounting debts, he began selling some of his beloved artwork and media properties. He was finally forced to file for bankruptcy in 2003 on behalf of his company, General Media. He resigned as CEO of Penthouse International in 2003 and creditors foreclosed on his beloved Guccione mansion in 2006, forcing him to move out. The contents were sold for fire-sale prices in 2009.