Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

“Gossip Girl” Leighton Meester has a wild side. And we’re not just talking about on the popular series in scenes with her GG character, Blair Waldorf’s, on-again, off-again lover, Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick). Read the rest of this entry »

85 years old actor married from 25 years old girl.
Most of us at this age will probably go to health clinics, but Andrzej Łapicki. 85-year-old is already a great actor married. His wife is 60 years younger than him, Kamila. Young country met at the interview.
“Yes, I certify that I took the vow” - the actor says newspapers. It was not a sudden decision, but it may surprise, because Andrzej Łapicki wife and married during a small ceremony, and invited only the closest to it.
Age difference, that between the spouses is 60 years old, was not an obstacle for them. Newspapers describes that Łapicki and Kamila know is if this young knowledge of the theater student carried an interview with a well-known actor for the “Theater” (polish: “Teatr”). The actor was already on for several years be a widower.
Love aged a few months - describes the media. Andrzej Łapicki and his young partner began to show up together, often go time for theatrical premieres at the Polish National Theater (Teatr Narodowy). Finally decided to download. He publicly came to light June 7 when the premiere art “Marat/Sade” Kamila appeared in the company of Łapicki the ring on a finger.
Daughter of actor and best wishes Łapicki. “If Dad is happy, then I am!” - Says for newspaper Zuzanna Łapicka-Olbrychska.

Woah! Wait just a minute. This can’t possibly be Geek Beat, can it? Where are the nerds? The thick glasses and pocket protector-wearing, techie lingo speaking, socially inept dweebs who got shoved into lockers and pantsed in gym class? Well, dear readers, this nerdolicious babe is here to tell you what you’re missing in non-geek land. In this case, hot retro honeys who take their clothes off and do strange acts in the vein of the original “geek.”
As any self-respecting geek knows, the word “geek” was originally circus lingo for a performer with an unusual act. Though today’s circus has gone to the dogs (well, more like the kids…friggin’ creepy clowns), acts like the Pretty Things Peep Show have revived the earlier traditions of stage magic, “freak” acts like fire eating and walking on glass and, of course, Gypsy Rose Lee style burlesque. That’s exactly what we saw this past Friday at The Trunk Space, where the current three Pretty Things parked their asses — and their RV — for the evening.
Circus freaks and geeks (with photo slideshow!) after the jump…
Clearly it pays to make your living as a sideshow freak, as local performer Dr. Reverend Stephen Strange got to play around with three gorgeous half-naked ladies all night — at their request. No glass-walking or scorpion eating for him this time, but we did get to see his signature tennis racket act and the corny trick above, whereby he bound two unsuspecting guests (one of which was local pop culture princess Nicki Escudero) together and “took” their unmentionables.
The two burlesque beauties, Go-Go Amy and Bettie May, performed a couple of striptease acts climaxing in a pastie reveal (see our photo slideshow!), but Amy went one step further when the tattooed Insectavora put her in a pink magician’s box. As huge blades sliced into the box, Amy’s clothing came off. The >b>stockings. The bodysuit. The panties. Everything but a pair of star pasties and a glittering pastie thong. The whole audience was invited to come up on stage and see Amy’s Pretty Pink Box — for just a buck or two donation.
Burlesque shows tend to “stoke the fires” for couples, if you know what we mean — wink, wink. Some more than others. This dude bought a pair of pasties for his ladyfriend. Although, judging by the fact he posed for us playing with his nipples, we’re not totally sure who the pasties are for.
If you missed the Pretty Things this time around, you can get vintage-y hair tips, makeup and a pin-up photo session for about $200 at their pin-up class in Tempe on July 13 or check out their other tour dates. No rush, though. Bettie May says she and the girls hope to be on the road “for at least five more years.”
Want to see more hot circus geek action? Check out our photo slideshow of the Pretty Things Peep Show.

Sara Ziff began modeling at the age of 14 in New York. At her third casting, in the East Village, models went in to see the photographer one by one. When it was her turn, the photographer said he needed to see her without her shirt. Then he said it was still hard for him to imagine her for the story, so he asked her to take her pants off, too. Nervous, just 14 years old, and eager to succeed in her new profession, she obliged.
Stories like this are all too common in the modeling industry, though unlike anorexia or body-image issues, they’re hardly publicized. Ziff aims to expose them in the documentary she made called Picture Me. Over five years, she took cameras backstage at shows, to parties, and on photo shoots. Her now-ex-boyfriend, a filmmaker, came with her and shot, too. She gave cameras to fellow models and asked them to share their stories. Model Sena Cech described a disturbing casting with one of the industry’s top photographers:

Halfway through the meeting Cech is asked to strip. She does as instructed and takes off her clothes. Then the photographer starts undressing as well. “Baby — can you do something a little sexy,” he tells her. The photographer’s assistant, who is watching, eggs her on. What’s supposed to be the casting for a high-end fashion shoot turns into something more like an audition for a top-shelf magazine. The famous photographer demands to be touched sexually. “Sena — can you grab his cock and twist it real hard,” his assistant tells her. “He likes it when you squeeze it real hard and twist it.”

Cech did it, but turned down the job because she feared the audition was only a taste of what the shoot would be like. The photographer never wanted to work with her again. Ziff explains, “Pretty much every girl I have talked to has a story like it, but no one talks about it. It’s all under the radar because people are embarrassed and because the people in the industry who are doing these things are much more powerful, and the model is totally disposable. She could be gone in two years.” Young models don’t always have anyone to turn to. Just think of the enormous pressures placed on a poor 15-year-old from Latvia who is supporting her family and barely speaks English. Ziff continues:

“I’ve done shoots naked, totally naked. They sell it to you as: ‘Here’s this great artist and he wants to take your portrait.’ I had to switch off the voice in my head that said: ‘Do you really want to do this?’ When you’re being paid a lot of money and you want to appear cool you really don’t want to show any resistance to going with it.
“But at the end of the day I used to wonder: what’s the difference between doing a shoot in your underwear for Calvin Klein and being a stripper? Obviously you are compromising yourself. How far am I willing to go? How much am I willing to show for a big fat cheque?”

A model union could protect models from situations like these. A year and a half ago, two models based in Britain set one up that campaigns for better working conditions, holiday and sickness pay, and protection in case of injury. But they still have a lot of work to do.

Texas Barbie, the towering and very buxom blond in the silver sequined bikini, causes a minor traffic backup at the entrance to the Radisson’s exhibition room. Those saucer-eyed men who resist the urge to stare, however, find themselves in a room full of similarly endowed women — all of them selling nude and semi-nude images of themselves.
Beyond another bikini-clad beauty (a former stockbroker), past tiny Bee Tran (a 21-year-old punk magazine writer who recently found her calling as a nude pinup), sits Miss January 1971, Liv Lindeland. The former Playboy playmate still maintains a shoulder-length flaxen mane and charms photographers with her mischievous blue eyes. But she looks the part of the grandmother she is. And unlike her younger colleagues at the Vintage and Modern Pinups, or VAMP, show earlier this month at the Radisson Hotel near LAX, Lindeland bristles when a camera turns her way. “That’s a mean lens,” she says to a photographer aiming his telephoto at her.
Lindeland’s table is strewn with photos of a caramel-skinned, 25-year-old Norwegian girl with a mesmerizing gaze. These images, which made her famous, bear the soft-focus lighting and pastoral settings of the centerfold portraits of the 1970s. She notes another telltale sign that dates her. “We were real,” she says. “In the ’80s and ’90s, the surgery started.”
As pinups, Lindeland and others embodied the beauty ideals of their time and were celebrated with male adoration and female envy. Inevitably, time passed, and the youthful glow for which they were revered faded. Their lives changed. Some got married and settled into suburbia; others succumbed to the fast lane. Still others continue to stoke their notoriety, earning extra income at pinup collector events such as VAMP, Glamourcon and Playboy Expo shows. But today they appear side by side with smooth-skinned, surgically enhanced young women who are creating their own beauty ideals and moving beyond autographed glossies to members-only Web sites.
This is the plight of the pinup: Life goes on, but the cheesecake shot has a life of its own.
Meet Miss December ‘81
A few tables away from Lindeland, Miss December 1981, Patti Farinelli, is looking uncomfortable. “This whole scene is not my scene,” she says. “I have a normal life.” These days, she’s content to raise her 8-year-old son at their home in Rancho Cucamonga and work in the drapery department of a Home Depot.
For Farinelli, it’s excruciating to smile politely as strangers compare the 42-year-old former centerfold to a photo of her at 21. In fact, her appearance at VAMP was filmed by a crew from TV’s “Extra,” which three days later filmed her plastic surgery, an extensive procedure involving a brow lift, a nose job and the transplant of fat from her inner thighs to the wrinkles around her mouth.
“You look at Cher and say, ‘I’d look that good too if I had the money,’ ” she says. “When I look in the mirror, I look old
In the universe of pinup collectors, however, aging beauties are “vintage,” not “old.” And they’re cherished as touchstones of nostalgia. Their fans are mostly white, middle aged, upper-middle-class men who are willing to fly across the country to see their favorite pinup in the flesh, revisit a time in their own youth and often spend hundreds of dollars on autographed glossies. And their devotion rejuvenates the subjects of their obsession.
“These guys are the kind of guys who would jump in front of the playmates to stop a bullet,” says Bob Schultz, a former bank manager who founded VAMP and Glamourcon in 1993. “You see a lot of these guys kind of kneeling on one knee talking to them. One guy calls it the Glamourcon ‘genuflection.’ ”
Miss September 1959, Marianne Gaba, experienced this reverence the first and only time she appeared at a Playboy Expo. She sat next to one of the magazine’s recent centerfolds, whose explicit photos made Gaba’s demure poses “look like a cooking class,” she says. Then the vintage pinup collectors arrived. “I had a line around the room and charged 10 times what the other girl charged!” says Gaba. “They came from Germany. They came from Australia. When they met me, they started shaking, and they said, ‘Oh my God! You can fill out my collection!’ ” At $50 per autographed picture, Gaba earned $4,000 in four hours.
But she recognizes one reason for her value on the collectors’ market. “They don’t know how much longer I’m going to be around,” she says.
At 63, Gaba is quick to point out during a phone interview that “I still look pretty good,” and when she answers the door of her Beverly Hills home she reveals a trim figure and a conservative ensemble not too far off from the girl-next-door image that landed her on the covers of Hollywood’s celebrity tabloids in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Back then, Gaba dated Ricky Nelson after a stint as his girlfriend on TV’s “Ozzy and Harriet,” and spent the night “necking” with Elvis Presley in his Beverly Hilton penthouse. She went on to roles in a series of beach movies — “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” among them — before marrying a stockbroker in 1962 and starting a family.
Gaba says her centerfold is a blessing to her self-image as she ages, not a curse. “It’s almost like a stamp of approval,” she says. “I was sexy. And I have this to prove it!”
The most famous pinups of this generation, of course, are those who posed in Playboy magazine, which mass-marketed the genre of nude photography beginning with its first centerfold in 1953. Hugh Hefner has been credited with originating the concept of including personal information about the women alongside their photos. “Prior to that, almost all erotic photography had been artists’ models who were never named,” says Playboy spokesman Bill Farley. “He wanted to turn them into the girl next door.”
Or a commodity. Hefner assures each centerfold: “Once a playmate, always a playmate.” After the hometown parade and the national press tour, alumni are eligible to join Playboy’s in-house modeling agency. And, of course, they’re always welcome at Hefner’s mansion in Holmby Hills. “It’s kind of a point of pride for Hef that once you’ve been a playmate you really become part of the Playboy family,” says Farley. There’s one enormous caveat to that statement, however. Playmates are family, Farley says, “as long as they look good, they want to work and there’s a demand for their services.”
Clearly, those without the good genes or the means for surgical maintenance aren’t as viable to the image of the media empire. But the monthly package of promotional head shots and swimsuit photos sent to all playmates provides a small source of income. Former centerfolds don’t own rights to their photos, so they autograph the promotional shots they get for free and sell them for as much as $50 each. An autographed copy of the issue in which they appeared sells for even more.
The new generation of pinups, or “nude models,” is free from some of the restrictions of the past. Unlike the girls of Gaba’s youth, who had to overcome far greater stigmas attached to “glamour shots” and often were cajoled into baring their skin, they arrange their own photo shoots. Then they post the pictures on the Web and charge viewers a fee.
“The difference today is that women are trying to own their content,” says VAMP founder Schultz. “Many women don’t sign blanket releases anymore. Many are saying, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do.’ Content is everything on the Web.”
New breed of beauty
At the VAMP convention, Bee Tran and her boyfriend, Aaron Powell, a photographer, stand side by side and exchange compliments like newlyweds. On a table before them are dozens of slick photographs of Tran in various stages of undress, and Powell refers to them as he details her affinity for the camera and her business acumen.
“The one thing she does, she goes after the best of the best,” he says. “She knows how to do the hookups
After two years in community college, Tran realized she wasn’t prepared to transfer, as planned, to USC. But she was inspired by her classes in human sexuality and interpersonal communications, and the interplay between the two. She networked with other nude models, visited the Hustler store in Hollywood, copied photographers‘ names from her favorite magazines and then contacted them. Six months later she was posing for some of the most reputable photographers in the business, including Tony Ward, Eric Kroll and Rondell Sheridan.
Tran soon learned that control is key. Relinquishing rights to your images is “like signing your soul to the devil,” she says via e-mail a few days after the convention. “You don’t know where these images may go out to.” By owning her photos, she says, “I am able to build and run my own business off the Web.”
Nevertheless, collectors’ shows are critical to building a fan base for those who don’t land a Playboy centerfold. That’s why Tran paid the $75 fee to rent a table at VAMP, and has also appeared at several car shows. She’s building a clientele for her new members-only Web site, which will offer about 40 changing nude photos of Tran to those who pay a $14 monthly fee.
Yet despite her empowerment and enterprise, Tran dreams of being a magazine centerfold. “For some reason, being featured on ANY men’s magazine is like getting a trophy for being Bbeautiful or that you’re an interesting person,” she writes.
Coco Johnsen, whose table at VAMP attracts a steady stream of eager collectors, lists her most recent career accomplishments in the urgent staccato of a screenwriter pitching a script: a series of beer commercials, the title of “Cybergirl of the Week” on Playboy.com, a tiny speaking role in Steven Soderbergh’s “Solaris,” and her self-published calendar, which she estimates will generate $50,000.
“The Internet
A New York model, Johnsen moved to Los Angeles about a year ago to pursue an acting career, and a month after her arrival she submitted her photos to Playboy. The VAMP show was a good way to generate memberships to her Web site. In the two weeks after her appearance, she landed 60 members; each will pay $12 monthly to access her photos and her online diary.
“You are the product,” says Johnsen. “It’s important that you take control of the product and make sure it’s seen in the best light it can be seen in. No one can sell you like you can.”
A man wearing a tidy blue oxford and khakis approaches Johnsen demurely. “Hi, Miss Johnsen. Can I have a Polaroid?” he asks. Johnsen whips out her camera, a must-have for today’s pinups to ensure control of their image. “Sure!” she says brightly. A scantily clad young woman sitting next to her takes the picture, and in a flash, Johnsen earns another fan and another $10.