Don’t call it a comeback!
I have been absent for a couple of weeks–can’t get into the reasons, but let’s just say it rhymes with schmeehab. My diagnosis is a condition similar to sex addiction, except, instead of sex, huffing HP toner fumes. Not the most glamorous of highs, but the Finchworm is, above all else, a man of the people.
1. Golf Tee & A.
Gosh, I hope there’s an interesting legal story for me to cover. What’s that you say, Uproxx overlords?
“Model Sues Playboy After ‘Golf Tee in Butt’ Stunt Goes Terribly Wrong”
Curiosity piqued! I’m so in love with this story that a KATE UPTON TOPLESS lawsuit story does not get the top slot, although, logically, a butt story should be #2 (lotta puns this week, so buckle up).
Fine, this has already been reported by Filmdrunk’s hot stepsister site With Leather and the esteemed Deadspin. But it is no more a sports story than the latest photos of Farrah Abraham getting “drilled” are under the purview of OPEC. No, the Teebutt Dome Scandal is all mine, partly because an actual lawsuit has been filed, mostly because video of the event (kinda NSFW) will surely be nominated for a 2014 Oscar in the category of Best Documentary: Shart Subject.
It’s in the hole! It’s in the hole!
For those of you without the ability, or the will, to watch the video, allow me to describe what you didn’t see: a woman, apparently plaintiff Elizabeth Dickson, is lying face down on a golf course. Her wee purple skirt is pulled down far enough to reveal a few inches of gluteal chasm (term of art), into which a tee has been placed with a golf ball atop it. Someone swings a driver and, in a putative attempt to hit the ball, strikes a glancing blow against her right buttock. Afterwards, the plaintiff appears to be laughing, but might be crying. And not in a laughing-so-hard-she’s-crying way so much as an ouch-my-ass way. Difficult to tell.
Apparently, this all took place at the Playboy Golf Finals near LA on March 30, 2012, and Dickson (more like Dicks IN, am I right? I’m not? OK!) filed suit on March 14, 2014. Why did it take two years? Hey man, her crack legal team (f*ck you) couldn’t be expected to draft a complaint like this quickly. Thing is almost, like, 8 pages long.
Highlights.
What is she suing for? The long answer is, negligence and the intentional tort of battery. The short answer: at least $500,000, plus whatever else she can get in punitives, medical expenses, legal costs and anything else a jury might want to give her (Trinkets. Hats. It’s all good). The shortest answer: justice.
Highlight a): Defendant Kevin Klein. In addition to a couple of Playboy entities, Kevin Klein is a named defendant as well. He’s the one who actually swung the golf club. Very disappointed to find out he’s not the dude from A Fish Called Wanda. That would have been a fascinating career trajectory.
Highlight b): Klein “was acting in the course and scope of his employment.” This is something you allege so that the corporation (deep pockets) can be found liable, not just the employee (shallow or no pockets). Pretty standard stuff. In this case, however, when you watch the video and see Klein hit a woman’s ass with a 1 wood (a “wood” being a club with “a large head and a long shaft,” God I love this), remind yourself, THAT MAN IS AT WORK. He’s on the clock, another day at the salt mines, clobbering tush. Bet he never got to do that on the set of The Big Chill!
Highlight c): mutually exclusive pleadings. The suit is for battery–an allegation that the defendants acted intentionally–as well as for negligence–saying the action was unintentional but preventable. These things cancel each other out, but as I’ve written before, that’s OK in a lawsuit. They can’t know for sure the reasons this horrible crime occurred until they get Kevin Klein on the stand and force him to admit under oath, weeping, that this was the culmination of his long-sought vengeance against Dickson’s right buttock. Klein! You MONSTER! And you were so good in Sophie’s Choice.
Highlight d): “By reason of said injuries, the Plaintiff ELIZABETH DICKSON has incurred loss of earnings and earning capacity.” Drink that in. This woman is alleging that because she got hit on the ass, she suffered what are referred to elsewhere as “severe bodily injuries.” Now, I believe that getting hit the way she did was painful–it’s one reason, but certainly not the only one, that I don’t try to pick up golf tees without using my hands. However, I have to question “injuries,” like, plural. I count one. And I doubt “severe,” too. Based on his swing, I’m guessing Kevin Klein’s range is for sh*t. So maybe she’s dealing with an unsightly bruise. On the bright side, if she goes back to a golf course and somebody asks what her handicap is, she can just pull down her pants, point, and say, “it’s not a handicap, it’s a challenge.”
Mostly, I’m enamored of the idea that you incur loss of earnings and earning capacity by contracting a case of ass bruise. That’s not the kind of thing that affects most careers. However, I can see how it might prevent her from getting hired as Tiger Woods’s new driving range.
Verdict. I’m not a big fan of country club sports. My theory is that Gentiles were invented by golf as a way to propagate itself. And I definitely don’t find it particularly sexy, not even when an LPGA lady kisses a glass dong trophy. So while I’m not particularly sympathetic to woman who answers yes when asked to participate in whatever you call this, I think whoever thought it up should be fired out of a cannon into razor wire factory.
While I won’t be heartbroken if she doesn’t win the $500k, she should get much more by selling the rights to her story. It’s one of the classic tropes–man vs. man; man vs. nature; man vs. himself; club vs. ass. Tail (yep) as old as time: some version of it exists in every culture, like a creation myth or mismatched buddy cops. Pitch it as Legend of Teabagger Vance meets Caddyshack meets the butt.
2. Upton No Good: You Can’t Spell Photoshop Without Two “Ho”s.
No, I’m not calling Katie Pageviews a ho, I just liked the headline.
The website Celeb Jihad posted what it claimed was a topless photo of film actress Kate Upton taken during a Sports Illustrated photoshoot, according to the Hindustan Times and a bunch of other sites whose links I prefer not to provide. Lawyers representing her and/or Sports Illustrated apparently sent a cease and desist notice instructing the site to remove the photo, which we of course know to be fake because if there was an actual topless photo of Upton in existence, it would be getting far more media attention than bullshit like Crimea.
We’ve been down this road before.
Yes, this is a non-story story. Nimrods have been photoshopping celebrity faces onto naked bodies since the days of “It Girl” Clara Bow. F*ck, there were probably some ribald daguerreotypes of Mary Todd Lincoln’s head superimposed atop Harriet Beecher Stowe’s supple, gleaming torso. Why someone would rather stroke to such a canard than any image among the infinite varieties of honest erotica available, I have no idea. There probably won’t be a lawsuit over the Upton fauxto, and I couldn’t even find the demand letter–I looked and all, but I didn’t, like, hire Simon Wiesenthal to help me track the sh*t down or anything.
So why bother writing about it? Because readers. A while back, I covered a version of the same thing happening with alleged Ellen Page nudes, and people clicked the f*ck out of it. That column had a Kate Upton aspect to it as well, because she is the current owner of the Internet. Essentially, a combined Star Wars/Star Trek/Game of Thrones movie starring bacon would attract half as much web traffic as a story about Upton buying slacks. So until Silverado star Kevin Kline smacks her left boob with a cricket bat and I have a genuine controversy to address, I will continue to provide all the news about her that nobody could possibly need.
View at your own risk.
I hesitate to do this, but the people need to know. If you ask me to list three-letter organizations that fill me with fear and dread, the KGB, IRS, NRA and NSA fall far below TMZ. If you dare, watch them discuss the Upton pseudo-news, and know that I would rather work for Al-Qaeda’s human resources department than in that office.
Breaking.
I have just received a Kate Upton nude. While I cannot verify its authenticity, I can guarantee that it is not photoshopped.
Let’s be careful out there.
Twitter: @buttockus