I like cats, and I really like…

Well, let’s just say there’s something I like about the “Cats ‘n’ Racks” category of the otherwise-supersugary Cute Overload blog. Part of that something could be a definition of “cats” that’s broad enough to include ferrets. (Oh, wait — polecats. Now I get it.)

Or maybe it’s the feline groping:

Who knew borderline bestiality could be so darn cute?

Even I cannot avoid the cultural black hole that is “American Idol”. Solely through media-consumption osmosis, I know — just like you do, admit it — that 25-year-old David Cook is this season’s big winner.

What I did not know was that Cook probably owes his victory to the show’s strong middle-aged (and up) women viewers, who consider him to be safer sexual-fantasy material than boyish-looking runner-up David Archuleta.

Apparently these women weren’t just smitten with a younger man, they were motivated, too: In a landslide victory, Cook, from Blue Springs, Mo., beat Archuleta by a margin of 12 million votes out of the record 97.5 million cast by viewers.

“American Idol” had slipped in the overall ratings this season, but Wednesday’s finale was seen by 31.7 million people — about a million more than the year before, according to Nielsen data — suggesting the show swiftly gathered momentum after it boiled down to man vs. boy.

And the biggest viewer erosion in season seven was right in Archuleta’s voting bloc. Ratings fell 18 percent among women aged 18-34; and 12 percent among teenagers 12-17. Also apparently in Cook’s favor: Viewership has risen among people aged 50 and over, and the median age of an “Idol” viewer, once in the mid-30s, is now up to 42.

You can bet FOX wasn’t envisioning a mommybopper demographic when it originally greenlighted this show. Far from embracing it, they’ll be retooling the talent-herding process during the summer in an effort to lure back the youngsters.

Here’s some first-hand MILF idolation for Cook. Look for the backlash at that and similar URLs this time next year, when all the love from Season 7 is spurned.

Anyone seen Lollipop Girl, of “Grand Theft Auto IV” fame, around lately?

Because she’s somewhat elusive during gameplay within Liberty City itself. Which is ironic, considering that the character is quite prominent in advertising around New York City, and so presumably is a drawing card for selling the game. It’s like one of those top-billed actors who wind up making a five-minute cameo in a movie…

On top of that, a few nights back I was chatting with a woman in some Upper West Side bar who claimed to have been the flesh-and-blood inspiration for Miss Lollipopper. That’s not her pictured above, but the girl I was talking to certainly held a resemblance. I’m not sure I believed the claim — simply because the ad imagery has been plastered all over town, I figured it might just be a convenient and relatable source of small-talk material. Plus, in the game Lollipop Girl apparently has been IDed as a hooker named Lola Del Rio — a dubious star from whom to draw a rep.

Then again, GTA publisher Take-Two and Rockstar Games are based here in NYC, so who knows? Maybe the programmers did have a real-life model to pixelate.

Pondering: If some TV exec dreamed up a new reality series centered around a strip club, would the resultant marketing come up with the term “Realititty Television”?

It seems like a natural — even if the featured titties wouldn’t be.

Think such a concept would never fly, either with the TV industry or the nudie club business? I beg to differ. On the television side, this hardly scrapes the bottom of the reality barrel, and the surefire ratings from featuring nekkid women (even with the naughty bits pixelated out), aided by the built-in controversy it would attract, would dismiss any objections. As for the “gentlemen’s clubs”, the increasingly corporate nature of the business means they’d welcome the exposure (no pun intended — mostly).

When Ask.com recently decided to retool into a women-centric search engine, I derided the move as “a solution in search of a problem”.

I still think that’s the case, as far as Web search goes. But as Yahoo!’s new Shine site demonstrates, the underserved online female demographic is a concept that’s definitely running through the Web media world, and informing business decisions:

Yahoo developed Shine after it studied the market extensively and found that women want content that helps them manage their busy lives and ways to maximize the online time they have, Amy Iorio, the vice president of Yahoo Lifestyles and now publisher of Shine, told the E-Commerce Times.

“Women said, one, that they want a one-stop for everything so they can maximize their time, and two, that they’re always doing for other people, so it’s nice for them to have someone focused on thinking about their needs,” Iorio said.

I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more Web content targeting the double-X chromosome in the coming months.

As for Shine itself, it’s drawing on some solid publishing channels:

Yahoo plans to set the site apart from others in the market such as iVillage with its three-tiered content strategy, which will include original and repurposed editorial from magazines such as Glamour, Self, Bon Appetit, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Prevention and Women’s Health; original content from Yahoo’s team of 10 editors; and user content.

“Women are blogging more than men now,” Iorio noted. “There’s been a real explosion in that over the past six months. We’re already hearing from women who are excited about that opportunity to have their posts appearing alongside that professional content.”

And in fact, Shine’s page layout mirrors that of many glamor websites. In particular, the footer of Shine, with that bleed-edge black background, is a close relative of Style.com’s design. The folks in Sunnyvale are going full-bore with this venture.

There’s a strange dichotomy going on in wedding-gown fashions today:

- On the one hand, body-conscious modern brides are opting for downright risqué outfits, designed to show off well-toned and well-tanned skin (and tattoos, even):

[Natasha] DaSilva is typical of a growing number of brides flouting convention by flaunting their curves. More vamp than virgin, many are selecting gowns that bare a generous expanse of cleavage, midsection, lower back or thigh, temptress styles that may be better suited to a gala or boudoir than to a church or ballroom…

Determined to look torrid on their wedding day, they are picking dresses modeled, say, on the one worn by Christina Aguilera, who was married in 2005 in a gown with a plummeting neckline and ruffled fishtail hem. Or maybe the hope is to emulate Sarah Jessica Parker, who, in the forthcoming film version of “Sex and the City,” spills out of the front of her wedding dress.

- At the opposite end of the blushing-bride presentation is Disney Bridal, which lets a girl walk down the aisle in as snow white a state as possible without being animated. (I’m guessing the groom who marries a Belle wannabe will have to endure Beauty and the Beast jokes all through the reception.)

Both ceremony options are fueled by a particular pop-cultural fantasy. I can’t say one is any more grown-up than the other.

To raise the $75,000 necessary to make her next album, former one-hit wonder Jill “I Kissed A Girl” Sobule came up with a novel idea: Asking for telethon-like contributions ranging from $5 to $10,000, which net back anything from a free digital download of the completed album all the way up to the opportunity to sing on the record with Jill.

The Web-driven goal was reached and then some, with $80 thou as the grand total. Not bad for someone who was fishing around for ideas on this back in September.

That’s still a pretty lengthy fundraising cycle. Jill could have expedited the process by, say, fucking the governor of New York. That seems to be working for the now-infamous Ashley Alexandra Dupré, who’s outing as Eliot Spitzer’s “Kristen” call-girl is apparently parlaying into spiked popularity for her budding singing career.

Although I question how valid that claim is. From what I can see, you can listen to Dupré’s two songs on Amie Street all you want without buying the tracks. Does that translate to the “popularity” that’s boosting their price? I’m doubting that many people are actually coughing up money here.

Still, it’s exposure, and radio stations are warming up to the songs. Dupré might just be on her way to bigger musical fame and fortune than Sobule will ever achieve, without the begging for money part.

Here’s a cute local sports media maneuver: To coincide with this week’s rebranding of the Fox Sports New York (FSNY) to MSG Plus, the channel’s Islanders pre- and post-game host Deb Kaufman is taking the opportunity to rechristen her own on-air handle.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do; there just never seemed to be a good time to do it,” she said. “Since the network was changing its name…”

Well, why not? Starting with tonight’s Islanders-Lightning game, Deb Kaufman will be Deb Placey, her name in her non-work life for the 13 years since she married Ed Placey, a senior coordinating producer for ESPN college football…

She does not plan a formal announcement but figures [Isles announcers] Howie Rose and Billy Jaffe will take care of spreading the news.

Actually, she did make the announcement on the air, during the pregame show. I’m sure many Islanders fans hearts were broken upon hearing that Deb is already hitched; I suppose they could start drooling over competing NHL television MILF Christine Simpson on Versus.

It’s worth noting that MSG Network has not caught up on this development, as it still lists her as Deb Kaufman on her bio page. Rebranding is always a tough row to hoe.

After years of going nowhere in challenging Google, Ask.com is throwing in the towel by niche-ing itself into a women-focused search engine.

Talk about a solution in search of a problem. It’s not like women are complaining that Google or Yahoo! aren’t meeting their Web researching needs. Granted, such a need can be manufactured via deft marketing and reliable technology; but as ubiquitous as Google is in this space, it’s going to be a tall order.

Basically, Ask.com is trying to cash in as quickly as it can, and since women are its chief demographic, that’s where it can have its greatest short-term ad-selling success. There’s no real strategy for the future beyond that.

And just to keep things straight: Ask.com has gone from its old Ask Jeeves manservant mascot — a somewhat masculine symbol — to a female makeover which, I presume, is going to include lots of soft colors and even flowery graphics. Quite the transformation.

To counter the idea that natural childbirth is so painful that it sours a woman on ever having sex again, here’s the kinky-ish pitch behind the upcoming documentary film Orgasmic Birth:

Joyous, sensuous, revolutionary: Orgasmic Birth captures stunning moments of women riding waves of pleasure in the ecstatic release of childbirth.

I half expect this one to be released by Vivid Video…

But in reality, this in-production flick seems to be a thinly-veiled sexualized approach to promoting midwifery.

Actually, there’s a porn-flick plot right there: A woman keeps having babies just to feel the sexual rush. Girl-on-girl with the midwife, afterbirth instead of afterglow… I’m sure there’s a fetish niche out there that will gawk away.

All congratulations due (I guess) to the newly-crowned Miss World 2007, Zhang Zilin of the People’s Republic of China.

Zhang’s victory was doubly impressive because a) She’s the first Chinese winner in the history of the pageant, and b) The show was held in China this year, amounting to a home-team triumph.

All that said…

Anyone else think her hands and fingers are unnaturally long/large? Maybe they’re accentuated that way by the extreme skinniness of her near-nonexistent wrists and forearms. She’s still a beauty, but when I saw that video of her blowing kisses and waving to the crowd, those flapping hands looked really weird.

I guess Britney Spears set the baby-belly-baring bar last year, so naturally Christina Aguilera couldn’t help but respond in kind, smack on the front of the upcoming January issue of Marie Claire.

Which one is the pop-tartiest? Dead heat, I say. As always, it’s the children who ultimately suffer.

Speaking of which, I have an inkling of Baby Aguilera’s name-to-be:

“We were planning on starting to try after the tour. And so, I had gone off the Pill to prepare my body, because I didn’t know how much time it would take. You’ve heard it takes some time — except with Power Egg and Super Sperm here,” she says. “… I’m like, `Oh my god, can you believe it just happened?’”

Power Egg and Super Sperm. I like it — sounds like some kind of superhero tandem. And if you make an acronym out of it, you get Pess. Which is no goofier a celebr-baby name than Apple, Shiloh, Suri, etc.

Cosmopolitan Magazine has spoken, and as always I listen: A new survey finds that most New York women classify themselves as “go-for-it girls” who are fine with casual hook-ups and no-commitment relationships.

“The go-for-it girl is certainly something we see a lot in New York, because it really resonates with who New Yorkers are,” [research firm Intelligence Group president Jane] Buckingham said. “They’re the women who really can do anything, who embrace who they are. They feel strong, confident.”

Ninety-six percent of the go-for-it girls feel they can have a fulfilling life if they don’t get married. That’s drastically different from housewife hopefuls, who mostly live in the South. Nearly half of them said their lives won’t be complete until they get hitched.

The implication, of course, is that the women who have no problem with indefinite singlehood are in better shape, self-esteem wise, than those Southern gals pining for a wedding ring. It points to an exoneration of self-centeredness over traditional mating-for-life impulses.

As a relationship free-agent myself, I’m going to have to go along with that ride. And invite the local ladies to, yes, go for it — I think I can handle it.

Fellow Traveler: I met her outside Lucky Cheng’s. She was having her smoke break.
Me: Lucky Cheng’s? You’re sure she was a “she”?
FT: Yeah yeah, no question. Asian, hot.
Me: Okay, if you say so.
FT: I started talking to her, asked her what she was doing after work. She was interested, definitely interested.
Me: Good.
FT: Then, I said to her, “Just so you know up front: I’m just divorced, and I don’t have a dime to my name.” And just like that, like a switch, she shut down. It was over.
Me: Uh…?
FT: So that’s a sure-fire way to turn them off, just tell them you’re broke.
Me: A stage dancer at Lucky Cheng’s? Probably not representative of the general woman population.
FT: I just know that now, I know how to keep them away.
Me: I think you’re mis-directing your energy. No one’s looking for extra ways to repel the ladies. It’s not like I’m lacking in ways to get shot down!
FT: I’m just sayin’.
Me: Well, thanks for that advice…

As prevalent as those pink ribbons have become — especially in the form of corporate-branded merchandise — it was inevitable that someone would start asking just how much of that donated money is really going into breast cancer research.

On the forefront of this “pinklash” is Breast Cancer Action, which argues that the pink ribbon movement has devolved into pointless consumerism that benefits bottom lines more than a search for a cure.

Or worse, that provides cover for some business practices. Through its Think Before You Pink campaign, BCA is targeting “pinkwashers”:

Pinkwasher: (pink’-wah-sher) noun. A person or company that purports to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon campaign, but manufactures products that are linked to the disease.

I’ve regularly dropped a few bucks for ribbons, wristbands, charity walks, etc. I’d find it hard to refuse these token requests, just on the basis of misgivings over corporate ulterior motives. All large charity organizations get hit by flak over how they administer their funding, and indeed, they regularly come due for re-boot over procedure. This assault on the pink brigades is probably timely, so if it winds up refocusing the cause, all the better.

A couple of days ago, a fellow consultant emailed me during work hours with a simple request: To call her, so that she could find where cellphone was hiding.

As soon as I read the email, I broke out in a big smile. Because I’d been through this scenario before.

I didn’t wind up breaking up with anyone this time around, though. And the phone was recovered within seconds, so I didn’t come off as a jerk. Wonders abound.

Apparently, NBC Universal’s $925-million acquisition of Oxygen Media is being considered a bargain, valuation-wise:

Derek Baine, a media analyst for SNL Kagan who had estimated the value of the channel at about $1.1 billion, told The New York Times on Tuesday, “When you look at the comparable prices and the historical benchmarks, you would have to say NBC made a great deal.”

He noted that NBC was paying only $12 a subscriber for Oxygen, which has about 74 million subscribers. It paid $22 a subscriber for Bravo in 2002, when that channel had 54 million subscribers.

“NBC paid $1.3 billion for Bravo,” Mr. Baine told The Times. “There was a lot of skepticism about that deal when NBC made it. But Bravo now generates over $150 million a year in cash flow.” He estimated that Oxygen could soon generate about $100 million in cash flow for NBC.

Analysts should keep that in mind, considering this is NBC’s second swipe at buying its way into synergistic women’s-targeted media. And since their first attempt, when they bought iVillage, was a floundering failure, I’d expect the Peacock to flub this try too, thus creating negative compensation for the relatively low price they’re paying. As well as demonstrating that NBC just doesn’t know how to communicate with women.

I think it’s unavoidable: Body art that’s located on a woman’s breast(s) is rightly dubbed a tittoo.

I mean, there’s even an equation behind it:

Tit + tattoo = tittoo.

So that makes it nice and logical, I guess.

Despite my appreciation for women’s breasts, this strategic placement doesn’t alter my general distaste for tattoos. I mean, it’s not like I need an extra excuse for sneaking a peek…

As the Web continues to mature into a more robust and polished media outlet, it’s downright refreshing to know that Hot Chicks with Douchebags carries on in the spirit of Web 1.0 text-and-still-photo snarkiness.

The classics never die, mon.

I think it’s funny that, despite the ordering of the two elements in the blog’s title, there’s far more focus on the douchebags (and their caught-in-the-act douchebaggery) than on the hot chicks. It’s something of a case of misplaced priorities, but completely understandable. After all, you can ogle a picture of an attractive woman without much editorial assistance; but can you come up with the fashion descriptor “cactus hair and amoeba mandana” on your own? Of course not.

All I know is that, the next time I get my photo taken alongside a pretty lady, I’m going to obsessively check HCwDB for the next several days afterward…

I’m amused by how easily influenced I can be by some random opinion. Like this one by Schad, involving the origin and ulterior motive behind the current rage in women’s accessorized eyewear:

Ladies, I’m sick of the oversized shades. Besides just looking dumb, they make every woman look alike. I’m convinced that Paris Hilton began, or at least helped establish the trend of the big, bordering on grandma-Solar Shield-sized sunglasses because her face is so busted. The more of her face that’s covered, the better she looks.

Sure enough, after reading the above blog post, I cannot take notice of this look without thinking: I wonder what facial flaws she’s concealing. So thanks for that, Schad — one more thing to obsess about regarding the opposite sex.

Actually, I thought Paris’ fellow Simple Lifer Nicole Richie was the one synonymous with the goggle-like headgear. Although I guess even she’s diversifying her retro-shades look.

How is it that Globe Trekker TV host Megan McCormick is not a big-time TV star yet?

I mean, look at her. She’s cute as all get-out and the camera loves her. Plus, apparently she’ll eat anything. All the ingredients for a television celebrity!

Globe Trekker is obviously positioning her as the main draw for the series. I admit, I’m fairly hooked on the show — but pretty much only when she’s the host. Her segments have a underlying comedic touch half the time, a real fish-out-of-water quality that’s engaging. In fact, her interactions with the exotic locales she highlights inspire me to take a stab at a full-fledged comedy series about a blunter ugly-American travelogue show, featuring deadpan un-PC behavior by a clueless on-camera personality.

Not that that should detract from McCormick’s charms. I like her way more than, for instance, that spastic Amanda Congdon. If we’re comparing New York-based niche-video personalities.