> from the NY Post: JACK Nicholson convinced Martin Scorsese to include a sex scene featuring himself, two hotties and a sex toy in “The Departed.” The Oscar winner, who plays a homicidal mobster, tells Rolling Stone: “I thought it would be more frightening if my character had a sexual component . . . so I called Marty up and said, ‘Look, I just thought of what would be an interesting scene of [my character] having wild sex. And in this scene with two girls, one of the girls is wearing a strap-on’ . . . This was my idea and improvisational, and Marty went for it.”

>Dan G comments on www.porntalk.com concerning the AVN selling to Playboy rumors: I’m more than a shade disappointed that Luke hasn’t taken time out to look at the potential fallout from this deal…who are AVN’s biggest advertisers? Hustler/VCA and Vivid.

Vivid already have an upcoming legal beef with Playboy over money they are owed from their TV deal…do you think they will want to be indirectly subsidising Playboy’s legal defence or any counter-action, whilst also running the risk of a retaliatory critical shitpanning and/or blackout in the pages of AVN?

I would guess no.

Same again…is Larry Flynt going to want to help one of his biggest competitors (in various different markets) get rich? No again.

If this story is true (and that’s a big if until it’s confirmed), then I think XBiz (or perhaps some yet-to-be seen third party) will stand to do very nicely out of the whole thing on an ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ basis.

>sex city posts: So, what? Playboy is totally inept in running its flagship magazine which showed another loss this year. Their internet program was constantly in the red, except for one year where they made a small profit and then outsourced the whole thing to Adult.com (which has seen the number of pirated Playboy photos on the internet skyrocket; when the program was run inhouse by Playboy, they were much more protective of their copyright and brand).

Playboy is one of the most recognizable adult brands out there, yet they are bleeding money. Why? Competition like Maxim and FHM, the staggering amount of free porn on the internet, the failure to embrace the internet as a way to expand the brand, and an overall lack of vision. What worked in 1975 in business does not work today and no one wants to tell Hef the news.

> LIB posts: Paul [Fishbein] tells MikeSouth.com: “We are actually looking at EXPANDING our business, so we ‘ve hired an investment banker to help us with some strategic consulting. It’s the same person who helped Club Jenna make their deal with Playboy. So I assume he was seen with one of us and someone made a very broad, very incorrect assumption. We’ve honestly never had any conversations with anyone at Playboy about acquiring AVN. Our only deal with them is that they are our Broadcast partners for the AVN Awards Show.”