Is it likely that a bleach blonde with fake tits who worked for Playboy appeared in a Playboy pictorial? Is it likely that a millionaire reality show contestant would murder his bleach blonde girlfriend and think he was going to get away with it by chopping off all her fingers and pulling out all her teeth but not removing her serial numbered breast implants? Is it likely that, if someone were so horribly cruelly disfigured, either just prior to being murdered or post-mortem to incompetently prevent identification, that TMZ would buy a death photo from someone in the coroner’s office and post it on the internet? Well, the only part of the the Jasmine-Fiore-murder-followed-by-death-photo story being reported which is not true is that the victim posed for Playboy. Full disclosure: Jasmine Fiore may have had a bit part in the horror movie The Abandoned which was an advertiser on this site and others I work on, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t bias me on this. I’m pretty sure I would find this story simultaneously ghoulishly hilarious and horrifically tragic regardless.

One Ryan Alexander Jenkins was indeed thwarted when one Jasmine Fiore was identified by the serial number on her breast implants. Apparently Ryan Alexander Jenkins recently finished taping on VH1’s I Love Money 3. I don’t really know what that show is about and I can’t imagine the prize dollars are anything significant to anyone already a millionaire, but I can’t quite bring myself to look it up either. Gawker’s Jezebel reports that, since Ryan Alexander Jenkins became a person of interest in the murder of Jasmine Fiore, VH1 has pulled all mention of the Megan Wants a Millionaire show he was a finalist on. Jezebel further reports that the murder suspect may have actually won the grand prize on I Love Money 3. Jezebel goes on to commend VH1 for their sensitivity in removing the MWAM content from the VH1 web site (juicy bits helpfully archived by Jezebel.)

I have also never seen Megan Wants a Millionaire, which was apparently canceled fairly early in its run. A while back I covered the Charm School reunion show where Sharon Osbourne and this Megan Hauserman ditzy blonde self-professed gold-digger got into a cat fight, although I admit I’ve never seen Charm School and only watched the cat fight vid on the VH1 web site when it became a hot topic.

At that time, Megan’s claim to fame was that Poison frontman/insecure meanie/embarrassment-to-aging-rockers-everywhere Bret Michaels rejected her on Rock of Love. Is being rejected by a guy who was okay-looking in 1986 really a resume item? Apparently so, as Megan Hauserman was given her own show Megan Wants a Millionaire. The Superficial reports, “You know what the most fucked up part of this story is? There’s a reality show where millionaires compete for the love of a self-proclaimed gold-digger with fake breasts. That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard all day.”

It seems that, immediately after being rejected by Megan Hauserman on camera for VH1 in March, Ryan Alexander Jenkins went to Vegas and married his girlfriend of some time Jasmine Fiore. Wouldn’t you be pissed if your significant other went on television to humiliate themselves pursuing someone who is not you? Certainly would not spell wedding bells to me. According to Jasmine Fiore’s understandably bereaved and distraught mother Lisa Lepore, Jasmine Fiore had the marriage annulled in May, but law enforcement can find no record of this. One Robert Hasman got a series of text messages from his ex-girlfriend Jasmine Fiore over the two days before her death. Then he got just one cryptic message, well after her estimated time of death, which just read “suck it“. In other post-mortem commentary news, What Would Tyler Durden Do reports, “Jasmines roommate says their relationship was “on the rocks”. She also said that Jenkins told her he was “done with the relationship” and that “he couldn’t take it anymore”. This was one day after Jasmine was found in a dumpster . . . She’s not very attractive, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to kill her. Legally, I mean.”

Ryan Alexander Jenkins is Canadian and is believed to have fled to Canada, although his father, a wealthy architect, developed a resort on an island in Honduras and owns at least one plane. The Huffington Post reports that Canada has agreed to extradite Ryan Alexander Jenkins if he is apprehended in Canada because the State of California has promised not to pursue the death penalty in this potentially capital crime.

Judging from video of Ryan Alexander Jenkins singing “I love my wife” to Jasmine Fiore in Vegas which he posted to his MySpace page (and TMZ helpfully archived), Jasmine Fiore was brunette at the time of her death. So bleached blonde and naked for Playboy = false. All the ridiculous stuff (including VH1 choosing not to profit from tragedy) = totally true.

The biggest problem with the astroturfing style of marketing is that it makes everyone very skeptical of everything; it makes it very difficult to believe in anything. If a star willingly gets naked on camera, there will be some puritanical types who will think ill of them for it. Yet most people who enjoy being in the spotlight and being immortalized have a hankering to be in the spotlight and be immortalized even when they are, ya know, doing it. I have frequently run into famous people who want me and Forrest Black to shoot artistic nudes of them, but who do not want anyone to see the finished work. As an artist, it is important to me that people actually see what I create, so we have, to date, declined private commissions of this sort. A combination of following the various sex tape scandals, and my own personal conversations with people who wanted to get naked on camera without the social repercussions, has lead me to assume that most sex tapes are released with the knowledge and consent of the parties involved. That way, they can get the erotic attention and the victim sympathy.

The problem with this is that some people actually want their private lives to be, ya know, private. I have come to believe that actor Verne Troyer genuinely feels his privacy is being invaded with the current sex tape clip making the rounds and, at the request of his manager, I am having the honestly barely PG-rated clip removed from BlueBlood.net.

Late this evening, I received an email from someone named Ray Hughes who said that Verne Troyer was his client and who attached a PDF of what appear to be court documents pertaining to a temporary restraining order or TRO. A TRO is something issued by a judge to stop something potentially damaging from continuing while the court determines whether that thing is actually damaging. I couldn’t find any web references connecting anyone named Ray Hughes to Verne Troyer and I actually couldn’t find anyone named Ray Hughes listed as an attorney in Los Angeles. I could easily have blown it off until Monday and spent the evening watching a canceled science fiction series on DVD with pals, as planned. Instead, I read the court documents, which seem to be from a suit against Kevin Blatt, Sugar DVD, and TMZ and sent the following email back:

Hello Ray,

Although I may have shaken Kevin Blatt’s hand at a party, it could have been his brother’s hand, as I sometimes get the Blatt siblings confused. That’s as close as I’ve gotten to Kevin Blatt, TMZ, or SugarDVD, so I don’t think I could easily be characterized as falling under the category of agents, servants, employees, officers, directors, representatives, attorneys, successors, or assigns of Kevin Blatt, TMZ, or SugarDVD, or those acting in concert with them. The video I have displayed is embed code from YouTube which runs off of the YouTube site. Beats me whether the TRO would apply to my situation or not and 10 o’ clock on a Friday night is not the ideal time to get legal advice.

Nonetheless, acknowledging that I have not had benefit of legal counsel and admitting no wrongdoing and waiving no rights I may have, I will express my initial gut response to your request. I believe that my article on BlueBlood.net was respectful to Verne Troyer. It was certainly intended to be respectful of him and his accomplishments. If Verne Troyer genuinely feels his privacy was invaded, I will cause the references you request to be removed and issue an apology. It is difficult, in today’s virally-oriented marketing environment, to ascertain who truly wishes to keep their sex life private and who deliberately released their naked ass to the public and just pretends concern so no one dings them for being naughty.

I guess it might be possible to figure out contact information to verify via the court on Monday, but, if you could please forward me your response from an email for a recognized law firm before then, my opinion, pre-counsel, is that I can probably accept that as sufficient proof that Verne Troyer is truly concerned about invasion of his privacy. When you email me from an official email address, which I’m assuming you will, can you please advise me whether it is the YouTube video clip embed or the link to TMZ or both which you wish to have removed.

Best, Amelia G
http://www.blueblood.net

Ray Hughes emailed me back a hour later, explained that he was Verne Troyer’s manager (not attorney as I’d assumed) and that he always did business from his Gmail account, but he did CC an email which appeared to be for a Tracy B. Rane at McPherson & Associates, although he indicated that he’d just as soon not involve the attorney. I guess Verne Troyer’s lawyers don’t work on the weekend either. However, the court documents attachment references McPherson & Associates as where to send whiny-ass reasons why it is vital to the public interest to be able to keep naughty Verne Troyer video live on the interwebs. Verne Troyer is listed on the McPherson & Associates web site as a client. I popped over to TMZ to see if they had any mention that they were, ya know, being sued and found the following:

Verne Troyer has filed a $20 million lawsuit, claiming TMZ violated his rights by publishing and airing portions of his sex tape.

In the suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in downtown L.A., Troyer claims TMZ violated his privacy rights and infringed on his copyright and trademark by running portions of the tape on TMZ TV and TMZ.com. He also alleges TMZ violated his right of publicity and misappropriated his name and likeness.

Troyer says the tape was stolen and ended up in the hands of Kevin Blatt, the guy who distributed “One Night in Paris.” Blatt is also named as a defendant.

In addition to damages, Troyer wants an injunction prohibiting further dissemination of the video.

Calls to TMZ were not returned.

I know that a lot of people are inclined to flip any papparazzi from TMZ the bird and nobody wants to pick up the phone to give TMZ a comment. Apparently, TMZ won’t even answer a press query from TMZ.

So anyway, the sex tape video clip has been removed and my sincere apologies to Verne Troyer for any distress my post may have contributed to. I want to be clear that I may not be legally required to remove the clip embed and I am definitely not legally required by any law or settlement to apologize for posting the video. I want to apologize because I feel very strongly that someone who wants their privacy should be allowed to have it, unless there is news which is important to the public interest. It is rarely vital to the public interest that we all be able to watch other people have sex. Not that watching other people have sex can’t be perfectly entertaining, when all parties consent.

Today, Blue Blood’s design czar Forrest Black and I rolled over to band manager Jason Fiber’s lovely Hollywood Hills home to do some press on the always-charming and fun Andy LaPlegua. Andy is touring in supporting of the forthcoming Frost EP from Combichrist. So, uhm, naturally, we drank beer and Jason brought up that there was a new sex tape potentially coming out starring Verne Troyer.

I confessed that I already knew this as I’d started my day reading the adult industry trades mags, who were all abuzz with the info that SugarDVD had started the bidding on the Mini-Me sex tape. SugarDVD CEO Jax stated publicly that he would only be into distributing the celebrity sex tape, if it were possible to get proper performer releases from both the actor Verne Troyer and his naked co-star.

I gave my opinion that a Verne Troyer sex tape would be very marketable, but the one I really want to see is where the drug dealer club kid (or whatever he was) allegedly tied up Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame and made him confess his love of receiving anal on video, and then left him in the trunk of a car. Upon reflection, I don’t really want to see a naked Joe Francis being abused, but the karmic justice of it appeals to me.

In the unlikely event that you do not know who Verne Troyer is, he is best known for his role as Mini-Me, the bad guy’s smaller doppelganger protege from Mike Myers’ Austin Powers. He has also appeared in everything from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to rap videos and Apple commercials. Really Apple commercials tend to be sorta like viral sex vids for marketing anyway.

What would make a Verne Troyer celebrity sex tape so marketable is that he is famous, good-looking, and thirty-two inches tall. Which is a pretty rare combo. Fun facts to know and share: Verne Troyer was prom king in high school and is also an accomplished stunt man, the latter partly because nobody else would be the right build to body double for his stunts.

Warner Bros. subsidiary TMZ released a teaser from the video, pictured above, and it does indeed appear to actually feature Verne Troyer. The mere fact that Warner Bros. owns the gossip and scandal site TMZ really says something about the nature of fame and celebrity today. Apart from anything else, it points out that Warner is more on top of their approach to the online world than most media megacorps. Manager Jason Fiber was president of Cordless Recordings, the digital record label or “e-label” subsidiary of Warner Music Group. Today, Jason, whose background clearly shows he knows something about internet marketing, was joking that he was going to have to add consulting on celeb sex tape strategies to the list of what he did for clients.

I report that Jason was joking, but Verne Troyer’s STARmeter on IMDB is up 90% since last week. So, uhm, yeah, joking. Whether or not anyone ever sees Verne Troyer naked on video, he will definitely appear in this summer’s blockbuster from Mike Myers called The Love Guru.