I first met Los Angeles PR hunk Howard Bragman while publishing HERO Magazine back in late 1999. We’d meet up at Crazy Fish in Beverly Hills and he’d graciously share his vast business acumen over Asahis and spicy tuna rolls.

Now, Bragman’s advice comes to the masses in his upcoming book: Where’s My Fifteen Minutes? which is due for release the day after Christmas. Drawing upon juicy examples from Frank Sinatra to Monica Lewinsky, Bragman explores how to make the public relations game work for the average Joe. (more…)

Hey Sam, I’m working on my “six pack” and I stumbled on the Flex Belt today and I’m interested, especially after having read a lot of positive reviews. What are your thoughts? This of course would be an addition to regular exercise and diet. —Jeremy, Los Angeles

Here’s a fitness axiom: there’s no shortcut to real results.

In my humble opinion, the Flex Belt is just modern snake oil.  While I disagree with the science behind the product, I also don’t know anyone who’s owned one, so I decided to investigate. I did several news searches and found no editorial articles that weren’t copied word-for-word (or pretty close) from the company press releases. I did however stumble upon this post on “Today’s Distraction,” a blog about, you guessed it: distractions.