BASEBALL MITZVAH, WEEK #2: No response from IBL's Baras or IPBL's Rosen; kids suffer

On Tuesday, May 13th, Our Man Elli in Israel laid out a benevolent challenge to the two US businessmen who sought to profit most from the idea of professional baseball in Israel: Boston bagel baron Larry Baras of the failed Israel Baseball League and the Miami millionaire Magnetix maven (or should we say Boca billionaire basketball boychick) Jeffrey Rosen: Do a baseball mitzvah by helping out Shuki Goodman, who'd placed a notice on the Janglo bulletin board seeking used baseball equipment for his non-profit program for at-risk called Chein Farm Learning in the Galilee, in upper Israel.

Seven days have passed.

No response.

No mitzvah.

Tabloid Baby's Mitzvahpalooza photos help convict war profiteer in fraud case

Tabloid Baby has aided in the conviction of body armour mogul and Iraq war profiteer David H. Brooks on 17 counts, including insider trading and securities fraud, stemming from what prosecutors described as corporate looting and stock-trading schemes that made him more than $190 million.

The multimillionaire from Long Island was found guilty yesterday of looting his business to fuel a lavish lifestyle-- including the infamous "Mitzvahpalooza": the $10 million Rainbow Room bat mitzvah where stars inclusing 50 Cent, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Don Henley, Kenny G, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and Ciara serenaded his coming-of-age daughter.

The New York Daily News reports that:

"As proof, prosecutors showed the federal jury damning photos of Brooks holding court at the staggeringly opulent 2005 bat mitzvah for daughter Elizabeth."

The photos of that bat mitzvah, an embarrassment and shame to the rap and rock legends who were exposed as sellouts for making themselves available like balloon artists or party clowns, were first tracked down and published here on TabloidBaby.com- in November 2005- then republished and broadcast-- with credit-- to this news organization.

(See our original posts and exclusive photos here, here, here, here, and here.)

Brooks was indicted in 2007. Tabloid Baby was not called to testify in the case, nor were our photos ever subpoenaed.

photos © Tabloidbaby.com

Our challenge to Larry Baras and Jeffrey Rosen: Guys, do a baseball mitzvah this summer!

So here are after nine months of covering the state of professional baseball in Israel and what have we got to show for it? The players have scattered to the four corners of the Earth, the most prominent being a journeyman from the Dominican Republic who’s made his way up and down in the Yankees farm system; the founder of the Israel Baseball League is facing lawsuit(s) and questions he refuses to answer as he hunkers down in a bunker of his own creation; and the American businessmen who want to take his place with a league of their own have proven to be just as secretive-- and a lot less personable!

And despite our best efforts, in the end there’s no pro ball in Israel this summer.

So how can we make some good out out of this?

How can we get Larry Baras of the Israel Baseball League and the Israel Professional Baseball League's Jeffrey Rosen to do a mitzvah?

Well, leave it to Our Man Elli in Israel to take these lemons and make lemon-flavoured hummus-- in the form of a challenge to the Boston bagel baron and the Miami millionaire Magnetix maven to do something besides lining their pockets and ignoring us.

“I got an email from Janglo, a community bulletin board for Anglos in Jerusalem. Somebody named Shuki Goodman wrote this:

farm program for english speaking kids at risk
is looking for used baseball equipment in decent condition.

Tizku L'Mitzvot,

Shuki Goodman

“Baseball equipment!! For kids at risk! I spoke to Shuki. Turns out, he's from Queens, and he used to be a vendor at Shea Stadium! Now he runs a non-profit program called Chein Farm Learning in the Galilee, in upper Israel. It’s for 14- to 17-year-old kids who, he tells me, are either starting the slide downward, or trying to climb back up.

"Heres a quote: 'One 11-year-old is here for defending his mother from his father's beatings; another kid has been kicked out of 12 schools; another one was depressed and locked himself in his room. Some of these kids have been involved with drugs and alcohol-- not all by any means, but some-- and they're looking to find their place.’

“They stay in a dorm facility, and some of the boys are so attached to the community here that they even stay for Shabbatot,’ Shuki said. ‘Playing baseball is a good thing to keep them busy. It’s a much more gentle sport then basketball or hockey, where one player can be so good he can run over the others. Baseball is so much a team sport. They all need each other, so it creates more of a unity. It teaches better values, getting along, caring for someone else.’

“Hey," Elli says, "I agree.”

And so do we, Elli. So here’s the deal:

Yo! Larry Baras and Jeff Rosen! You both were planning on a baseball season this summer, which we now know will not be happening. So certainly there must be some equipment that you have that will go unused.

Help out Shuki Goodman’s kids!

Here's an opportunity to do something for disadvantaged kids, and at the same time do something to repair your tarnished reputations.

As Shuki Goodman wrote:

Tizku L'Mitzvot.

"You should be worthy of doing mitzvot."

Here's your chance to do a really good deed.

Why not?

It’s even got Sam Peters (at left) smiling! And anyone else who wants to chip in, contact Shuki Goodman at shukig@juno.com.

We'll keep you updated.

Tabloid Baby exclusive on Good Morning America

ABC's Good Morning America gave Tabloid Baby a mainstream national audience this morning when it used our exclusive photos of the $10 million rock star-studded (let's see Don Henley pontificate about this one on the new Eagles tour) bat mitzvah party two years ago that led to an indictment for war profiteer David Brooks.


So what if it's the weekend show? Our colleagues in "mainstream" news may turn up their noses at the term "tabloid," but when it comes to getting a scoop or photos to illustrate a news package, you might be surprised how quickly such pretensions are dropped-- just as you'd be surprised at how many tabloid babies have grown up to be top network news producers and suits.


As for us, we just got a chuckle out of seeing the words "Tabloid Baby" in the corner of the screen throughout a network news report. We also think it's cute that a network news package about a shameful bat mitzvah was fronted by a reporter named "JuJu."

Exclusive Photos! Mitzvahpalooza!

Big news over the weekend, when "Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Don Henley to Stevie Nicks to Aerosmith..."

Brooks got better talent than the NBC Katrina relief benefit.

It’s the little secret of pop music.

Be they rockin’ rebel, gangsta rapper, tabloid witch, or hifalutin’ media-bashing prick who hasn’t been allowed near a 13-year-old girl since one turned up comatose in his hot tub, you pay them enough money and they’ll play at your little girl’s bat mitzvah.



Steven and Joe, we give you a pass because of Honkin’ on Bobo and Mark Hudson.



And because you’ve been refreshingly candid about rock ‘n’ roll whoredom.


Ciara, you’re cool because we never heard of you.


But 50 Cent? Oy! (Isn't this from that James Toback flick, "Get Rich or Die Shrayen"?)


And Don Henley? Live this one down!



Ha! Forty one years ago, this was commentary:

photos © Tabloidbaby.com

UPDATE!! Click here and scroll down for more exclusive and shocking Brooks bat mitzvah photos!

Eladio stuck in traffic on Yankees' Thunder Road

Eladio Rodriguez, the great brown hope of the former Israel Baseball League, is languishing. The IBL’s co-MVP got a late call to the New York Yankees’ Triple-A team in Scranton Pennsylvania last month, but lasted only a day—and one great game-- before being shipped to the Yankee’s lowly Single A branch in Staten Island. And though he’s since been kicked up a notch to Double A and the Trenton Thunder-- a Yankee farm team that is not not named for the Bombers-- he’s the third catcher on the team and not likely to show off his stuff any time soon.

Mike Ashmore, a beat writer for the Hunterdon NJ County Democrat, offers daily coverge of the Thunder on his Mike Ashmore’ Thunder Thoughts blog. He lists Eladio last in his weekly team power rankings:

24 - Eladio Rodriguez, C (NR)
A catcher who converted to pitcher, then back to catcher for last year’s Israel Baseball League season. Currently serving as the team’s third catcher…highly unlikely to see anything resembling significant playing time.

The Thunder played to their largest crowd of the season last night (more than 7,700 fans) against the Portland, Maine Sea Dogs, and lost 7-1.

Maybe they can use a little help at the plate from an IBl batting champ…


Larry Baras or Jeffrey Rosen? Which big shot baseball Israel macher will man up to our charity challenge and do a mitzvah? Cast your vote... and stay tuned…

Sinking New York Times elevates stinking TMZ

Recent viewers of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com and its whitewashed syndicated television sister know the AOL and Time Warner-backed operation for its ugly misogynistic harassment of the troubled woman who gave birth to octuplets, and know its shaved bronzed midget frontman as the giddy giggling amalgamation of Sidney Falco and Roy Cohn who's shown up joyfully on local news and morning shows to wallow in the pugwash of the latest conscienceless backdoor gangbang perpetrated by his jealous Hollywood-hating attack squad.

But to readers of The New York Times, TMZ.com is a shining light of investigative muckraking journalism, not only challenging but leading the mainstream in the coverage of "billion-dollar business scandals and the economic collapse."

In a story that's hit the Times website tonight, reporter Brian Stelter states that TMZ actually "drove mainstream coverage and Congressional outrage with a blog post late last month that exclaimed, 'Bailout Bank Blows Millions Partying in L.A.' The site reported that Northern Trust, a bank that received $1.6 billion in taxpayer money, had hosted hundreds of clients and employees at a golf tournament and a series of parties in Southern California. 'Your tax dollars, hard at work,' the site wrote.

"Northern Trust never sought the bailout funds, but agreed to take them last fall at the behest of the government. Regardless, the photos of Tiffany gift bags and the grainy video clips of Chicago and Sheryl Crow performing for the group angered readers —as well as Congressional Democrats, who demanded in a letter that Northern Trust repay what the company 'frittered away on these lavish events.' The bank said it would do so 'as quickly as prudently possible,' news that earned four exclamation points from TMZ.

"Harvey Levin, the editor of TMZ, who called the story 'the most important thing we’ve ever done,' knows his readers don’t come to the site for a dissertation on mortgage-backed securities. 'It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around $800 billion in bailout money. It’s too big a thing,' he said. 'It’s much easier to understand paying for a Sheryl Crow concert.'"

At a time when established, major newspapers are folding left and right in the face of economic woes and Internet competition, such praise and validation in the pages of the financially-troubled New York Times seem outlandish and hard to even fathom-- unless you read TabloidBaby.com and remember our criticism of the boy blogger-turned-Times reporter.

After Stelter wrote his second gushing Times story about the TMZ TV show in December 2007, we wrote that "youthful TV blogger-turned-New York Times special reporter Brian Stelter continues to drag the former 'newspaper of record' down the slippery slope of hype and spin with his breathless adulation of the syndicated television series based on the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com."

While TMZ's most notable "contribution" to the coverage of the economic crisis has been its scapegoating and mocking of the so-called "Octomom," tabloid television shows have been, as Stelter praised TMZ and other infotainment shows, "expanding their coverage" since the Eighties, when A Current Affair covered the San Francisco earthquake and fall of the Berlin Wall. The acquisition of the Northern Trust celebrity party photos was the center of TMZ's jaded and cynical spin, but it was a very brief diversion from its usual corrupt fare. Stelter's use of the Times platform to give credibility to the site only gives Levin and his patrons more authority to state with a straight face that the work they do is of value and deserving of corporate and network support in expanding.

And all this comes on an evening when TMZ's gallery of online headlines is highlighted by

Reality Doc Sued Over Alleged Botched Vagina

and

Neverland Was Filled with Sculpted Boys

(Of special to irony to those who recall Harvey Levin's initial brush with the spotlight, TabloidBaby.com "drove mainstream coverage and Congressional outrage" in 2005 with its exclusive photos of Mitzvahpalooza, the $10 million bat mitzvah tossed by a Long Island defense contractor accused of supplying faulty body armour to US soldiers in Iraq, and featuring pop and rock stars like Don Henley, Tom Petty, 50 Cent and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Mainstream organizations from Rolling Stone to Time magazine used our photos.)

EXCLUSIVE: BROOKS TO TROOPS: "F--- YOU!"

Another exclusive lost photo from the $10 million bat mitzvah bash that war profiteer David Brooks allegedly bankrolled with embezzled funds. The man whose company allegedly manufactured defective body armour for our troops in Iraq now faces life in prison for fraud and embezzlement, but at least he'll have his memories of the night he was Mister Groyser Tzuleyger.

And later that evening, he was really in the pink:


Wonder if the pimp suit was bulletproof?

photos © Tabloidbaby.com

MITZVAHEXCLUSIVE: Heartbreaker for rock fans

The new documentary about Tom Petty is called Runnin' Down A Dream, but as these exclusive photos attest, the old school rebel rock 'n' roller can't run from the fact that he "hosted" the $10 million bat mitzvah thrown by indicted war profiteer David Brooks.

performance photos © Tabloidbaby.com

War profiteer faces prison for Mitzvahpalooza

The former CEO of the leading supplier of body armor to U.S. soldiers in Iraq has been charged with looting the company to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included a $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. You remember the "mitzvahpalooza"-- that's the private party that featured performances by sellout superstars including Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, 50 Cent, Ciara, Tom Petty, Steven Tyler & Joe Perry of Aerosmith and (strolling near the buffet, searching for the brown note) Kenny G-- "private," that is, until Tabloid Baby made it public when we ran exclusive and timeless photos of the event two years ago.


Now the real-life Daddy Warbucks may pay big time for the Rainbow Room rockfest. Long Islander David Brooks faces 21 counts, including securities fraud, insider trading, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. He could go to jail for life. And these rock 'n' roll and hip hop stars must go through life knowing these pictures are in their closets.

performance photos © Tabloidbaby.com

Sex, nudity, dirt, sleaze: A superb Canadian export

The story about the NHL player who's not gay or bisexual but posts cellphone pictures of his shaved private area and poses with his tongue in another dude's mouth led us to a part of Canada we'd never did much thinking about: a very raunchy and colorful celebrity and gossip scene hidden behind perceptions of hosers, beer, heavy coats and a large Asian immigrant population.

Our staff's search for the photos of Jiri Tlusty's (as in "Too lusty"), err, staff, led us to many blogsites posting apologies for having removed the photos and a lawyer's letter scaring them into doing so, before we found Is This Happening, "Your #1 Source for Canadian Celebrity Gossip"-- "I know what you're thinkin'"-- the site that first posted the pix of the Toronto Maple Leaf winger's wang and then got the interview with the English-impaired Czech that others copied into a factoid in which he denied being gay.

Here's the text:

Zack Taylor: Why are were there pictures sent to us of you and another man licking each other's tongues?

Jiri: Because was really good night after his birthday and we had really good time all our group from home town

Zack Taylor: Are you gay or bisexual?

Jiri: I am not gay or bi nothing

Zack Taylor: What are your views on homosexual hockey players - whether it be in the NHL or just in general?

Jiri: I don't know nothing about the homosexual

As we scrolled down Is This Happening?, the site revealed itself to be Canada's equivalent of the most evil Fleet Street rag imaginable! It's what the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com would be if it wasn't corporate and had some smarts and wit, and what Defamer promised to be before it was mysteriously, suddenly sapped of its mojo and devolved into a reflection of two gay guys sitting on their couch all day watching and recording The View and Oprah. And what makes the site all the more fascinating is that it's dedicated entirely to celebs from Canada-- or celebs who had the misfortune of showing up in the Great White North.

Above, Avril Lavigne, allegedly caught flashing at a party two years ago, identified by her "skin tone and belly ring"...

Chubby Sinatra singer Michael Buble (left), snapped by a "sluty (sic) blonde" with whom he's allegedly been loveratting... Howie Mandel's bar mitzvah photo... Jessica Alba chumming with her body double... Canadians you didn't realize like Sandra Oh... Anne Murray.

And even our pal Gene Simmons (right--who seems to be getting frantic lately) humping chicks at a Toronto nightspot.

The site's said to be run by one Zach Taylor, a radio host and comedian. In any case, it's a lively encapsulation of an overlooked scene-- and the jaded Hollywood scenesters should take note. Meanwhile, we add Is This Happening to our list of links.

What the hell happened to Luke Ford?

Hey! What's going on with pioneer blogger and charismatic Internet personality Luke Ford? The Woodstein of the pornography industry-turned-conflicted Orthodox Jew has always been a controversial figure, but as long as we've known him, he's also been a well-groomed, camera-ready media star.

So imagine our surprise when we strolled though his site to see a photo of Luke looking like he'd been voted off Survivor, escaped from Josef Fritzl's cellar or at the very least stepped off a Chabad mitzvah tank.

We asked Luke what’s up.

TB: Nice new look. Is it religious-inspired or are you preparing for a movie role?

Luke: Yeah, the beard is a religious thing. I read an article in the February issue of Commentary magazine on the role of the beard in Judaism and then went to lunch and sat next to a guy with a beautiful long white beard -- the singer Rick Moses, a fellow convert to Judaism -- that I decided to grow a beard.

Have you indeed given up the porn coverage?

I sold lukeisback last October and have not written on porn since (not for any sites that have porn advertising anyway, I guess I've mentioned the topic a few times on lukeford.net).

Have you given up all secular pursuits?

I have not given up all secular pursuits by any means.

Who do you endorse for president?

I don't endorse anyone for president, but expect I'll be voting for McCain. Uggh.

Anything else to report?

Could you mention or link to my live cam?

You got it.

CLICK HERE FOR LUKE FORD ‘S LIVE CAM.

OLD LUKE↓