Dylan Sprouse Nude Pic

Dylan Sprouse, a former Disney star, had a few nude photos “leaked” on twitter recently. The photos were removed, and Sprouse didn’t deny they were photos of him. Allegedly, one photo showed him in sheer boxers, the other was nude and he was covering his privates…partially. His statement went something like, “Oops, I guess I messed up.” If that doesn’t make you smile, nothing will.

This was his other comment, verbatim:

 “The reason I’m making light of the situation is because I don’t think what I did was wrong,” he writes on his personal tumblr page. “To be blunt, I was proud of my progress in the gym, thought I looked hot, and wanted to share it. There is an odd taboo with the human form (especially in the USA) and I don’t particularly think its a good thing to teach people that you should ‘hide yourself’ as something incredibly sacred. Blah blah blah, that’s a medieval notion.”

Then why didn’t he do a full frontal photo? Just curious. I recently watched the film, Take This Waltz, which focused on a “happily” married woman who falls in love with a hot young guy who lives across the street. Don’t waste your time with this one, especially if you’ve been “happily” married for any length of time. Seth Rogen was excellent, but you’ll wind up hoping the female main character gets run over by a car and suffers a long, horrible death. But the interesting thing to me in this film was that I noticed several female full frontal nude scenes, some of which took place in the women’s locker room. And yet not one male full frontal. What’s that about? Take off those pants, Seth Rogen.

You can read more here. You can view the pics here. NSFW.

Beyonce Amazon War

I posted last week about my own disappointment when I wanted to offer a free brand new release holiday book on Amazon, The Littlest Christmas Tree, and also distribute that book for free at other retail web sites where e-books are sold. However, Tony informed me that in order to put the put up for free on Amazon I would have to sign a three month exclusive with them (meaning I couldn’t distribute the book anywhere else for three months but Amazon), and I would only be allowed to offer the book for free for a set amount of time. So I opted out of the Amazon lending program this time, didn’t sign the three month exclusive, and released the book for free everywhere else but Amazon. The book is on Amazon for .99, but everywhere else it’s free. I would gladly have put it up on Amazon for free, too, if they’d let me. I don’t do those things very often and with indie books I’ve been sticking to .99. On a much, MUCH larger scale, I recently read about Beyonce’s Amazon issue, and she took her stand to a completely different level.

According to this next article, Amazon and Target refused to sell Beyonce’s new album because she released it on iTunes first, with a one week iTunes exclusive. It’s interesting because the very thing Amazon did to me with the exclusive they require for the lending program is the exact same thing they penalized Beyonce for doing with Apple. Beyonce retaliated by going to a Wal-Mart store this past weekend where she gave 750 shoppers a fifty dollar gift card, an amount that totaled something close to thirty eight thousand dollars.

The article presents an interesting question:

Why would Amazon and Target want to make enemies of Beyoncé, whose antics in Wal-Mart have made them look petty? They probably have their eye on the long game. This is only $10 million or so in lost sales between the two companies, after all—not even a rounding error in either company’s revenues. And most artists are not Beyoncé—they need Amazon and Target more than Target and Amazon need them.

It’s hard to disagree with that reasoning, however, any kind of negative publicity no matter how small it is often takes on a life of its own. After the Target debacle on Black Friday, I’ll personally never look at Target the same way again. That was a huge issue that affected too many people to forget. And in spite of continued growth, Amazon has been irritating people in small ways for such a long time I hate to even go there to write a book review anymore. I’m not the only one who feels this way. This season, for the first time in five years, I did no Christmas shopping on Amazon. And it wasn’t even a totally conscious choice. I just didn’t feel like going there. And I think that has to do with an accumulation of things that have been happening all year.

By refusing to sell Beyonce’s album to spite Apple, the only people Amazon and Target are really hurting are consumers. And if this sort of attitude continues other people will be doing what I’ve done and they’ll be taking their business elsewhere. I’d hate to see that happen, and I’d like to see Amazon more customer oriented. Authors like me need Amazon. Beyonce can be as independent as she wants and it’s not going to hurt her. But too many artists need Amazon to work with them, not against them.

Best Artists 2013: Male Nudes

The next link will lead you to the list of best artists of 2013, one of whom is interesting because he’s Russian and his art directly opposes the highly publicized Russian stand against LGBT equality. In fact, it’s a bold artistic statement.

You can check the images out here. The first one is a men’s locker room where a group of men are showering together.