Everyone wants to be a porn star and there is no doubt that we can learn a lot from porn stars. The problem with porn nowadays is that it’staking over for sex educationin general. We talked aboutmaking love, not pornin a previous blog post and we’d like to revisit that idea again. We see a lot of correspondence coming in talking about Cougars and sex, but a lot of the younger cubs who are writing in have definitely taken their cues from pornography.
Sex in the real world differs quite a bit from sex in the porn star world, and while most people would concede that fact, there aren’t many people who put that into practice. It’s one thing to know that something isn’t the same, but our expectations are a little skewed thanks to pornography and we need to adjust them. For one, you need to not take your moves from porn moves.
Porn stars are paid to make things look like they’re feeling good and while they might actually be enjoying themselves quite a bit, there’s definitely some acting going on. Pornography is also filled with ridiculous amounts of stops and starts while the males try to get themselves to stay hard and the females position themselves appropriately. If you have ever had sex which has had too many stops and starts you’ll know that this kills the mood in a big, bad way.
There is also the fact that porn stars are made to look a certain way, they make sure that everything is in place and so their sex looks a lot more erotic than regular sex would. Granted, while you’re in the moment it’s not going to matter that the lighting isn’t perfect or from this angle you can’t see your Cougar’s face completely, but aesthetically pornography has sex down to an art form.
The other thing is that while women in porn seem to be open to anything, their contracts have been negotiated beforehand and they know exactly what they’re doing. There are no surprises really for the performers in pornography when it comes to what sex acts that they’ll be performing,so if you want to be able to do it like a porn star you need to be sure that your Cougar is well aware of what you have planned. The more you talk about these things, the more readily she’ll be willing to do some of them with you.
One thing that you need to keep in mind though, and this is something which has come up more than a couple times in the emails that we’ve received, is that most women are not going to want you to cum on their faces. The percentage of women who like being treated like that is incredibly low and as such you need to be respectful of where they want you to empty your load. You can even ask during the sex or before it if it’s okay for you to cum inside of them. Asking can stop a fight from happening later and trust us, give your Cougar a chance to say where she wants it and she’s going to tell you.
For a quick and completely SFW (safe for work) overview of how real life sex differs from porn star sex, give the video below a watch.
If you've ever wondered what your favorite porn star does in her spare time, glance at her Twitter feed, and you might find that her life is surprisingly normal.
Yet showing off that normal life is likely a key to her overall career strategy. More and more, porn stars are taking to social media to craft a personal brand that proves they've got more on the brain than just sex, a tactic that might even help them cross over into the mainstream.
A new crop of young porn stars aren't just freeze-frames on your video screens any more -- they're animated Gifs on your Tumblr feed, alarmingly witty humorists on Twitter and ferocious bloggers who are just as willing to show you the pizza they ate for dinner as they are to show you their naked booty. These are porn stars who you're more likely to find parading around Comic-Con, speaking on panel discussions at universities and DJing at nightclubs than signing autographs at a porn convention, although they've been known to do that, too.
Taking into account their influence on platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, their willingness to interact on forums like Reddit, the scope of their projects outside of porn and, of course, their overall popularity as performers, we've ranked the 10 most innovative porn stars who could very well be the next Sasha Grey.
A photo from April's Instagram feed, which has more than 12,000 followers
10. April O'Neil
In the tradition of pop culture-obsessed porn stars like Andy San Dimas, who named herself after the SoCal city where Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure takes place, and Diana Prince, named for Wonder Woman's alter ego, April O'Neil takes her name from the foxy reporter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The 26-year-old from Phoenix is into all things geeky, from Dr. Who to Reddit to San Diego Comic-Con, during which she dressed as her namesake in 2011.
This past year, her 86,000+ Twitter followers -- most of whom she actually replies to -- helped her win the AVN fan award for Twitter Queen. While her famous name isn't the most SEO-friendly, she's still relatively easy to find on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and even Reddit, where she's answered questions about losing her virginity, penis size (she says the "motion of the ocean" is more important than size of the boat, metaphorically speaking), bisexuality (she became a porn star "for the pussy") and tattoos (the one on her shoulder is kanji for "I'm a dumbass who got a tattoo at 15," she says.)
“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you I had no control over.”
I was bumping around Facebook the other night, and I came across a post which one of my friends “Liked.” The title peaked my curiosity and I clicked on the link (My Husband is Not My Soul Mate). I really liked the article and thought the author, a woman named Hannah, did a really great job presenting her perspective (and I love her writing style!).
Her perspective is this: She doesn’t believe that there is any “one person” for you to find and marry. Rather, she believes that you can have a great marriage with any number of people. But, she continues, once you marry that person, then that person does indeed become your “one person.” She dismisses the notion that (as we are often led to believe as a society) there is indeed one special person out there waiting for us to find them (or vice versa), and that it is Divine Intervention that brings us together.
She asks a great question: If we credit Divine Intervention with bringing two people together, then what happens when 50%+ of first marriages end in divorce? Instead, she writes about how her marriage is based on her choice to love her husband daily, not a master plan.
As a divorced woman, many of Hannah’s points resonated with me. If I believe that my first husband was my soul mate (and why marry him if I didn’t), and that Divine Intervention brought us together, then how do you explain our divorce 17 years later? Did Divine Intervention get tired of keeping us together? No, not at all. Rather, choices were made that created an environment where we didn’t continue to intentionally focus on loving each other every day. Not surprisingly, divorce followed.
If I look back at my life, I would say I have been in romantic love three times. Is my current husband my soul mate? According to Hannah, no. According to Hannah, there might have been many men who I could have married, but what is important is that I chose my current husband and he chose me. He is now my “one person” and I am now his “one person.” Now it’s up to me/us to “choose” to make our marriage work each and every day. I am still surprised by our compatibility. We think alike. We talk alike. We have the same energy. That being said, we also have tremendous differences. These could be viewed as irritants or deal breakers, or we can instead choose to embrace those changes and be thankful that we aren’t clones of each other. Those differences allow us each to introduce the other to new things, new experiences, and new ways of thinking.
To me, that’s the important takeaway! Marriage is a choice, and marriage is hard work. Take the time during dating to be sure that you are ready and willing to make that commitment. Make sure you are willing to make the choice that he or she will become your “one person” and that you are willing to put the hard work into making your relationship work.
To Hannah’s point, maybe you should quit feeling the pressure to find your soul mate. Instead, try searching for that person who you are able to intentionally choose to become your “one person” who is right for you. And then, make the choice to love that person each and every day. It takes hard work. There will be ups and downs. There will be similarities that bring you together, and differences that threaten to tear you apart. But, if you focus on recognizing that this was your choice, then you realize that you control the rest of the story!
What do you think? Do soul mates exist? Why do we drive ourselves crazy trying to find our soul mate? Is there more than one great person out there for each of us to find, date and marry?
“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha
During the summer, my husband and I decided to take our lovely nieces and nephew out for a day-of-fun in the city. I expected a day filled with fun, laughter, and connection; I was in store for much more—a lesson in love and truth, told by my eleven-year-old niece.
We were all at dinner and decided to play a game where one person asks a question of their choice, and everyone else answers. The question “Who do you have a crush on?” arose, and around the table we went.
All the kids had normal answers such as “um, Jason—no Adam—well, sometimes Chris,” “Definitely Sarah,” “I am not sure if I want to say,” and so on.
Then the question came around to one of my nieces and she answered with a big smile on her face, “Myself!” Wow, what an answer, I thought. If only I had that kind of wisdom and self-love at that age. I was so proud and happy for her that she saw herself through such a beautiful lens.
Her answer started to make me think.How many of us have spent endless hours and years trying to find our true love, the one who will finally find us and make all that time we waited worth it—ultimately, our soul mate?
As my niece pointed out to me, could it be possible we have been searching for a connection that has been within us the whole time?
What if we took that term, soul mate, and looked at it from my sweet niece’s eyes. What would we see? Maybe we would see that a soul mate is not always someone else; it does not have to be outside of you. It could be the meeting of your soul and self within you.
Sometimes, we use so much of our time waiting and searching for someone else to fill us up and love us that we forget how much love we all already have inside that is patiently waiting to be released. We could find that missing piece if we turn inward and remember how special and beautiful we are in our core.
But, more often, we forget how to release this innate gift and fall into our own joy and divinity. We forget to connect to our power within ourselves.
When this happens, we usually end up giving our power away and allowing someone else to define us. We allow ourselves to been seen through others’ eyes, and eventually, forget what we look like through our own.
If we search for our missing half, our soul mate, in another person, we inherently believe we are not complete without someone else. We convince ourselves we are not whole, and we can never be whole until we find our true love.
I believe this false notion allows us to ignore our true potential and avoid taking responsibility for our own love and happiness.
We end up using precious time trying to learn, accept, and love every possible mate, while dismissing the opportunity to learn, accept, and love ourselves.
Sometimes, we are quick to welcome all the “beautiful” and “good” aspects of ourselves, while avoiding the “bad” and “unacceptable” pieces within us. Would we do that to our true love, our soul mate? Or, would we see and accept them for who they are?
I don’t think we will ever be able to love ourselves until we acknowledge all our different aspects—the “strong” and the “weak”— and start giving ourselves compassion instead of judgment. A puzzle needs all its pieces in order to be complete.
Now, I am not saying the only soul mate we can ever have is ourselves. I believe we can have different variations of soul mates—some being people who touch us profoundly and understand us deeply.
But if we make a strong connection with ourselves, we will be able to live from a powerful, authentic place. From here, we will be able to identify our other soul mates more clearly because then we truly know who we are and can better see who inspires us to be more of our truth.
So, where do we find this amazing soul mate? I think it is the meeting place of pure divinity and humanness within us.
Soul mate can be defined as the reunion of our lost self and found spirit.
Only when we learn to love and accept ourselves are we able to receive love and acceptance from someone else. We must first feel it from within to understand and recognize it from without.
So, the next time you catch yourself wishing to be with that one person who could complete you and make your life perfect, remember: Your wish could come true. You might just need to borrow my niece’s lens so you can see more clearly.
Tonya Harding's team is being accused of attacking Nancy Kerrigan; Tonya is now under suspicion. 30 for 30 The Price of Gold Premieres Jan. 16 9pm on ESPN.
It was a melodrama that started in Detroit with the kneecapping of Olympic gold-medal front-runner Nancy Kerrigan, moved like a cyclone to Portland, Ore., where her chief rival, Tonya Harding, lived, then skipped across the Atlantic Ocean and followed them to the sleepy village of Hamar, Norway, where the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games figure skating competition was being held. It remains a maelstrom you had to be in the middle of to fully appreciate.
The saga of Tonya and Nancy seemed too surreal to be true even as it was unfolding in real time 20 years ago. The Zapruder-like tape of Kerrigan wailing "Why? Why? Why?" after she was clubbed on the knee -- in an ill-conceived conspiracy hatched by Jeff Gillooly, Harding's live-in ex-husband, and three cohorts who fancied themselves henchmen-for-hire -- lives in sports infamy. The kicker is, the plot that was clumsily pulled off on Jan. 6, 1994, at the U.S. national figure skating championships at Detroit's Cobo Arena, began to unravel in mere days because of their foolishness and the paper trail they left.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, it's hard to pick out which part of the tale was most bizarre.
Harding, then 23, grew up in a trailer park, liked to play pool and bingo and once menaced the other motorist in a fender bender with a whiffle ball bat. Gillooly, her childhood sweetheart who was known to have a violent temper, was convicted for arranging the attack on Kerrigan to improve Harding's medal chances. The contrast between them and the chaste Kerrigan, a Hepburn-esque beauty who still lived with her parents at age 24 and said training left her no time for a boyfriend, couldn't have been more jarring.
But there was also Shawn Eric Eckardt, Harding's 320-pound bodyguard who liked to give would-be employers a wildly concocted résumé saying he was a security expert who had conducted successful "hostage retrieval" and counterintelligence operations against "targeted terrorist cells" in the Middle East, Europe and Central America. The truth was, the 26-year-old Eckardt still lived with his parents, too, and he blubbered like a baby the moment federal agents knocked on the door to question him.
The Detroit getaway car driver was Derrick Smith, 29, a former night janitor and paramilitary buff who was remembered in his rural town outside Portland for rigging barbed wire and booby traps on the side of a hill where he lived with his in-laws and grandmother. That would be the same granny who greeted a local TV camera crew when it showed up unannounced by firing two gunshots into the air that sent the crew scurrying for cover.
Shane Stant, the man convicted of hitting Kerrigan with a collapsible metal baton, was a 6-foot-2, 220-pound bar bouncer and self-proclaimed bounty hunter who head-butted the glass panel out of a stuck Cobo Arena door in a panic as he made his frantic escape. Until his arrest, his only other big moment of recognition seemed to be a bodybuilding award for Best Chest of the Northwest.
There was also Tonya's mother, Sandy (LaVona) Golden, who'd been married six or seven times, depending on whom you asked. Golden hired herself out to one of the many hotly competitive TV tabloid shows that descended on Portland. Then she vexed her handlers by routinely violating the exclusive access they'd paid for by speaking over the velvet ropes that had been set up to ward off other reporters.
One day Golden riffed about how she'd been a waitress until recently but was forced to quit because of "artificial parts" in her hands. (She didn't elaborate.)
At the time, I was one of the Olympic writers for The Washington Post, and I was sent to Portland to cover the story in January 1994. The following month, I went to the Winter Games in Lillehammer, too, where Harding skated for the United States after a controversial fight for her right to compete. The U.S. Olympic Committee backed down after Harding filed a lawsuit for $20 million.
The night that she and Kerrigan skated their opening short program crackled with unbelievable tension. The Feb. 23 broadcast still ranks as the sixth-highest rated TV show of all time because nearly half the country -- an unbelievable 48.5 percent of American households -- watched, even though it was shown on tape delay.
A few nights later, Kerrigan performed well in the free skate but lost the gold medal in an upset to 16-year-old Russian orphan Oksana Baiul by one-tenth of one point on one judge's card.
Harding finished a desultory eighth after taking the ice late and stopping midway through her program because of a broken shoelace, which earned her a restart and catcalls from the crowd.
To understand just how big a sensation the saga was by the end, it's important to appreciate the context: The attack on Kerrigan happened five months before the feeding frenzy over the O.J. Simpson car chase and his arrest. It pre-dated the explosion of reality TV, and the now-routine sight of some of the most notorious PED users in major league baseball and track and field and cycling deflecting accusations with their vehement denials, or righteous finger-wagging, or crying crocodile tears on cue at news conferences called to protest their innocence.
Harding held one of those, too.
It happened on a Thursday. With a trembling chin and tears in her eyes, Harding read a seven-paragraph statement on Jan. 27 -- three weeks after Kerrigan was attacked -- before a packed room of reporters at the Multnomah Athletic Club in downtown Portland. Harding still insisted she had no prior knowledge that the assault was going to happen. But for the first time, she confessed that she did learn "some people close to me" were involved shortly after her return from nationals.
Then Harding returned to practice the very next day at her Clackamas Town Center shopping mall rink. And critics shrieked "How could she?" But Harding skated in full view of a huge media throng and estimated 2,000 people -- including one woman who kept riding the escalator up and down to get a better glimpse of her.
On still another day, two Harding supporters slung a homemade sign over a mall railing one floor above the ice that read:
"We love Tonya.
"Deal with it America."
The reason the conspiracy unraveled within days was because Eckardt couldn't resist bragging to the wrong guy -- in this case Eugene Saunders, an ordained minister who was also a classmate of Eckardt's in a paralegal course they were taking. After Eckardt played him a scratchy tape of one of the planning meetings for the Kerrigan attack, Saunders went straight to authorities. They had him arrange a meeting with Eckardt at a diner and wear a tape recorder on his back.
Eckardt arrived as promised, but insisted on speaking in the parking lot. So the 26-year-old Saunders -- heart racing now -- agreed to step outside, contrary to FBI instructions.
"Are you wired?" Eckardt asked.
"Why would I be wired?" Saunders answered.
"Well, I didn't want to lie," the minister said somewhat sheepishly in a phone interview we had a few days later.
Harding's ability to soldier on with her Olympic training only created more harping that she was a cold-hearted, sawtooth-edged woman capable of anything.
It didn't help that it was estimated whoever won the gold medal could earn as much as $10 million in endorsements, and that by Jan. 14 -- just six days after the attack -- CNN began running an undated interview in which Harding said of Kerrigan: "We're teammates, we're friends. But when it comes down to it, there are little dollar signs swirling around my head.
"I didn't have the money that other people had growing up. And I still don't …"
Kerrigan didn't come from money, either. Her father, Dan, was a welder and her mother, Brenda, was legally blind. She grew up in blue-collar Stoneham, Mass., playing hockey with her brothers. She and her parents would often stay in the same hotel room at her skating competitions to save money.
Still, by the time she and Harding were on their collision course to qualify for the '94 Games, Kerrigan had been beautifully packaged and expertly campaigned as America's next Ice Queen. She'd gotten her teeth straightened. Vera Wang designed Kerrigan's costumes pro bono, and she'd signed a flock of pre-Games endorsement deals. With her porcelain skin and auburn hair swept up in a classic bun, Kerrigan had an ethereal look as she glided across the ice.
Harding, in contrast, was all firepower and explosive jumps and unapologetic aggression. "A little barracuda," former coach Dody Teachman once called her.
She came along just as figure skating decided to emphasize athleticism and jump-packed programs as well as artistry, and the shift perfectly suited her. By 1994, Harding and Midori Ito of Japan were the only women who had ever performed a 3½-revolution triple Axel in competition. Though Harding stood only 5-foot-1 and weighed just 98 pounds, she could bench-press 110 pounds.
She was known to boast: "Nobody skates like me."
But in the insular world of skating, Harding always had a hard time shaking her wrong-side-of-the-tracks image or living down the many stylistic faux pas she made, like the program she once skated to the rap song "Funky Cold Medina."
She was once prevented from competing in a costume that was deemed too risqué. Her hair and makeup were often derided as garish. She met Gillooly when she was 15, dropped out of high school in 10th grade (but later got her general equivalency diploma), and married him at 19 against her parents' wishes.
By many accounts, it was an abusive relationship.
Harding twice sought restraining orders against Gillooly, and she divorced him in fall 1993 -- only to let him move back in during the run-up to the Games.
Kerrigan would later say she was grateful that Gillooly and his co-conspirators were so bumbling. She missed only a few days of training after the hit. By the start of the Lillehammer Olympics a month later, everyone connected to the attack had been arrested except Harding. After her news conference confession of limited involvement, she later pleaded to a felony obstruction of justice charge and had to pay a $160,000 fine, as well as perform 400 hours of community service. She also was stripped of her '94 national title by the U.S. Figure Skating Association.
Today, at 43, Harding lives in central Oregon with her second husband and their son, who soon will turn 3. Kerrigan, 44, married her agent, Jerry Solomon, and they live in Boston with their three children.
The anniversary of their story is sure to prompt more reminiscing when the Winter Games begin next month in Sochi, Russia, especially because Kerrigan has been hired to work there as a commentator by NBC, which is planning to air its own show looking back at the incident.
Kerrigan recently said she and Harding have never spoken since the attack. And Harding -- speaking in director Nan Burstein's ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "The Price of Gold" that premieres this week -- continues to maintain she never knew about the plot beforehand, though Gillooly and Eckardt told authorities otherwise.
"The people who say I did this -- I mean, 'Huh?' " Harding tells the camera, wagging her head with both palms turned up and disdain flitting across her face.
Harding was never going to be America's sweetheart no matter how wonderfully she skated, and she always knew it. Twenty years later, she remains forced to settle for being the most notorious figure skater who ever lived.
(CNN) -- Despite Kate Gosselin's command to her twin daughters to just "spit it out," neither Cara nor Mady Gosselin were interested in speaking much on the "Today" show Thursday.
The 13-year-old twins, who became famous as kids on the TLC reality show "Jon & Kate Plus 8," appeared on the morning show along with their mother for an interview with "Today's" Savannah Guthrie.
The segment was supposed to be a chance for the twins to elaborate on the conversation they sparked with People magazinelast week, in which they said their lives are pretty normal for having grown up under the lens of reality TV.
The only problem was that neither twin wanted to speak up during the awkward sit-down -- instead, they glanced around at their mom and each other.
When Guthrie asked Mady what she would say to the world about how her family is doing in their post-reality life, she was met with an "um" and a long pause.
Mom Kate jumped in with instructions: "Mady, your words," she said. "It's your chance. Spit it out." When that didn't work, Guthrie tried to get a response from Cara, who was just as quiet.
"This is their chance to talk, this is the most wordless I've heard them all morning," Kate told Guthrie. "I don't want to speak for them."
After some coaxing and a few more lengthy silences, Mady piped up to speak for her sister.
"A lot of people think that filming our show has damaged us," she said. "But it's only really helped."
The original series, "Jon & Kate Plus 8," ended in 2009 along with Jon and Kate Gosselin's marriage. Kate Gosselin soldiered on with another reality show, "Kate Plus 8," but that ended up getting canceled as well. Aside from the occasional celebrity weekly story or OWN interview, Kate, Jon, and their brood -- which includes their 9-year-old sextuplets, Alexis, Aaden, Collin, Hannah, Joel and Leah -- have mostly faded from view.
"People expect us to be damaged," Cara said, as her sister chimed in that others "think we're supposed to be so messed up, like, 'Ooh, the poor Gosselin kids, they're going to be scarred for life, waaaaah.' Here's the big news: We're not messed up."
"It's so false," Cara said. "We're fine. We're better than ever, actually."
Those words are likely a relief to anyone who caught the "Today" interview and wondered why the two were so quiet.
According to Kate Gosselin, any press that they do are things that the twins agree to do.
"It's really frustrating when there is so much out there that is not true," she told Guthrie Thursday. "We know the truth, and that's why they're here, even though they're tongue-tied this morning, to say, 'hey, we're OK, we're doing well.'"
(CNN) -- The nominations for the Academy Awards were presented Thursday morning, and as always there were trends and surprises. Here are a few things we learned:
1. Make way for older women.
It's not for nothing that one of best jokes from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the Golden Globes referred to the lack of meaty roles for actresses of a certain age: "Meryl Streep (is) so brilliant in 'August: Osage County,' proving that there are still great parts in Hollywood for Meryl Streeps over 60," said Fey. And yes, Streep was nominated for an Oscar (for best actress) as well.
But also nominated were Judi Dench, 79, and perhaps more surprisingly, June Squibb, 84. Squibb is a longtime character actress -- you may remember her as Elderly Woman in "Far From Heaven" or Mrs. Cone in an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- who got a chance to shine as Bruce Dern's exasperated yet caring wife in "Nebraska." In fact, of the 10 actresses nominated for either best actress or best supporting actress, six are over 40 and two others -- Amy Adams and Sally Hawkins -- are in their late 30s.
This year featured a number of notable movies starring or directed by people of color, including "Lee Daniels' The Butler," "Fruitvale Station," "42," "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" and "12 Years a Slave." But of that group, only "12 Years" got any support from the Oscars, with nine nominations. "Mandela" picked up a nod for a U2 song; "Fruitvale" -- despite showcasing rising talents Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler -- got nothing. And despite a $100 million box office -- and raves for performers Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey -- "The Butler" also came up with zero. During the Globes show, there was a Twitter hashtag protesting the lack of diversity: #notbuyingit. You'll probably see it again on Oscar night.
Tom Hanks is one of the most beloved film stars in Hollywood. He's a successful producer and two-time Oscar winner. After a sluggish few years, marked by "Cloud Atlas," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and "Larry Crowne," he was back in the good graces at the box office and with critics, thanks to "Captain Phillips" and "Saving Mr. Banks." The result? No Oscar nominations. Maybe he split the vote; maybe voters just weren't that impressed. (They certainly weren't by "Mr. Banks.")
As for Winfrey -- also a successful producer and personality -- the theory is that "The Butler's" summer release hurt its chances. But it was still a surprise that her name wasn't listed for either the Oscars or the Golden Globes. Better luck at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Oprah.
From limo driver to Oscar nominee
Amy Adams: 'I'm at a loss for words'
4. There are no sure things.
The handicappers were wrong about a lot. Take a gander:
• Snubbed: Robert Redford, "All Is Lost." An almost wordless solo performance goes for naught at the Oscars. "Lost," indeed. • Snubbed: The Coen brothers, "Inside Llewyn Davis." Despite their offbeat production, Ethan and Joel have become Oscar favorites -- even if it's just a scriptwriting nod. Not this year. Llewyn Davis will have to keep walking the streets (probably with a waterlogged shoe). • Snubbed: Emma Thompson, "Saving Mr. Banks." So much for "Banks" despite its Disney pedigree. • Snubbed: James Gandolfini, "Enough Said." The academy thought "Enough" was apparently too much, since neither Julia Louis-Dreyfus nor Nicole Holofcener's script were picked, either. • Surprise!: Sally Hawkins, "Blue Jasmine." The academy loves Woody Allen screenplays (he got nominated, too), and Hawkins wasn't overlooked. • Surprise!: "Philomena." A small, character-driven movie about a woman searching for her son? Best picture, best actress (Dench) and best adapted screenplay nominations are the prizes.
Perhaps "Hustle," "12 Years" and "Gravity" will duke it out for best picture. But remember "no sure things," because when it came to audience response at the nominations, "Dallas Buyers Club" was the clear winner, greeted with cheers for every nomination. It has an Oscar-friendly subject -- a heroic battle against AIDS -- and strong performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. It received a surprising six nominations.
Kanye West allegedly punched the teenager after he insulted Kim Kardashian (Picture: Getty Images)
Kanye West is being investigated over an assault after he allegedly
punched a teenager who hurled racist insults at his fiancée Kim
Kardashian.
Law enforcement sources in Los Angeles have confirmed that the
18-year-old man is pressing charges against West after the altercation,
which took place when Kardashian entered a furniture store in Beverly
Hills.
The teenager is said to have shouted at Kardashian: ‘F**k you bitch.
Just trying to help you. Shut up n****r lover, stupid slut.’
According to TMZ, Kim then phoned Kanye to tell him what was
happening and as the teenager became aware that Kanye was on the phone,
he shouted: ’F**k you N****r’ loud enough that the rap star could hear.
The teenager then allegedly said: ‘F**k these fa**ot-ass
n****rs’ in reference to the paparazzi, at which point Kim told him
that the n-word was inappropriate.
At this point, Kanye arrived on the scene and
according to witnesses, punched the teenager while Kim screamed: ‘We
have it all on tape’.
According to TMZ, a third party separated the two men but by the time police arrived West and Kardashian had already left.
‘Kanye was named as a suspect by the victim as well
as witnesses. He had left prior to our arrival, and detectives are
currently investigating,’ Beverly Hills Police Sgt George DeMarois told
the New York Daily News.
It remains unclear whether Kim called Kanye, or received a call from him (Picture: Reuters)
‘The named suspect was identified as Kanye West by the victim and
several witnesses,’ a Beverly Hills Police Department statement added.
But a witness speaking to E! Online told a different version of the story – where there was no physical altercation.
‘Kim and Kanye were meeting for an appointment today,’ a source told the site.
‘Kim arrived later than Kanye. En route into the building Kim saw a young man yelling racial slurs at the paparazzi.
‘Kim told him he shouldn’t use racial slurs and he turned on her and verbally assaulted her.
‘The two ended up in a stairwell where the man was in her face and
continued to verbally assault her,’ the insider added. ‘She was
genuinely scared.
‘Kanye called her phone and she answered and the man continued
yelling at her,’ the source told E! Online. ‘Kanye overheard and came
running down…he confronted the guy.’
‘The guy continued with the slurs. He was in Kanye’s face and
wouldn’t stop. He was taunting him. Police were called to the scene.’
Representatives for West and Kardashian have not responded to requests for comment.
Kanye West allegedly punched the teenager after he insulted Kim Kardashian (Picture: Getty Images)