Attendees of the invitation-only Christian Lacroix show at Paris Fashion week this afternoon discovered that "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" is a whole lot more than just a catchy slogan when a PETA Europe supporter removed all her clothes, evaded security, and rushed onto the catwalk with an anti-fur banner. Here’s what astonished onlookers saw at the event:

Another protester, this time at the Valentino show, didn't quite make it onto the catwalk. You can click here to check out the NSFW picture of how that went, but before you do (I swear to you I’m not kidding about this), our legal department is making me ask you to check very carefully to make sure both that you’re 18 years old and that publishing or viewing nude photos is legal where you live. If neither of those things is true, don’t come crying to me when the police knock down your door and drag you away from your computer.

By way of a bit of editorial, this kind of tactic always seems to raise a lot of healthy debate, and I've heard good points made on both sides of the issue. Nonetheless, I have yet to hear a good argument made defending the actions of designers like Lacroix and Valentino, who directly fund people who skin, bludgeon, strangle, and electrocute animals for a living. For more information on that, click here. I don't know if I'd ever be able to do what these two activists did in Paris today, but I'm certain that I'd rather go naked than wear fur. If it ever does come to that point, though, I really hope that I’ll be allowed to do it in the comfort of my own home.

Dear Members of the Iditarod Trail Committee,

Every year, around this time, I start hearing about the vicious event you're responsible for in which dogs are beaten and abused into running up to 125 miles a day without any rest. In the last two years, seven dogs have been killed by the Iditarod, through freezing, ulcers, or just plain exhaustion—and I'm certain that similar fates are in store for the animals whose suffering you’re arranging this year. Of course, these casualties are just the ones that are publicized—the dogs who are bludgeoned or drowned by mushers because they don't measure up to Iditarod standards (or the ones who die alone in the tiny kennels they're confined to for most of their lives) tend not to make it into the newspapers that report on your bloody proceedings.

I'm not surprised that, like so many people who profit from archaic and abusive customs, you defend yourselves by invoking "tradition," but I can assure you that as more and more people learn that your tradition is one of cruelty, lies, and abject misery, it's not one that’s going to be around for much longer.

If you'd like any more information about what PETA's doing to ensure that these dogs' misery doesn't go undocumented, you can click here. We're encouraging compassionate people everywhere to contact the sponsors of this event—Wells Fargo, Daimler-Chrysler, and Chevron—and let them know exactly what they're supporting. I look forward to a time when your sadistic little race is a thing of the past.

Sincerely,

Jack Shepherd

To be honest, I don't think the Iditarod Trail Committee is going to be swayed by my letter, since it seems pretty clear that they're not exactly dog-lovers, but the companies that continue to sponsor this event need to know why they shouldn't. You can contact Wells Fargo here, Daimler-Chrysler here, and Chevron here.

The dreaded Olsen Twins have been spotted again, hiding their evil, flinty little eyes behind dark glasses and draping their malformed bodies in the skins of tortured animals. No need to hide your children and bar the windows just yet, though, as our dashing hero, PETA VP Dan Mathews, has come to the rescue with a trademark snarky comment:

"Maybe their granny left them those ratty furs. They should have buried the coats with her."

If you do happen to come across Ashley or Mary Kate in a dark alley somewhere, it's important not to panic. But do be sure to call animal control immediately if it looks like any of those minks are still alive. And if you happen to run into Dan Mathews, try not to be sassy with him. It never goes well.

TMZ has the full story.

A lovely pic of Pam from her new-look website

I'm going to come clean with you guys and admit that I didn't know what Uggs were until I heard about this. I try to be trendy and keep my ear to the ground about this sort of thing, but apparently the whole Ugg thing has completely eluded me for, like, 10 years. Anyway, I'm told by my colleagues that they were this huge fashion phenomenon that got off the ground in a big way when Pamela Anderson started wearing them in her Baywatch days. Well, Pamela isn't wearing them anymore, and the story has gone everywhere—starting with People magazine. Here's what she had to say on the topic.

"I feel so guilty for that craze being started around Baywatch days - I used to wear them with my red swimsuit to keep warm - never realizing that they were SKIN! Do NOT buy UGGs! Buy Stella McCartney or Juicy boots - I'm looking for alternatives myself for my boys and the men in my life! I'm designing some right now for my family and will try and have some available on my Web site soon."

No wonder they call them Uggs

I know I've said this before, but I love you very much, Pamela. On a related note, you should check out the new design for Pam's website. It's very, very animal friendly. Did I mention that I love her?

Nothing says "Stop the bloody seal hunt" like a pile of dead, naked seal people outside your front door. We're hoping that the Canadian Prime Minister got that message loud and clear last week when these brave souls stripped off, covered themselves in fake blood, and held a “die-in” outside his office to symbolize the bloody seal-killing that happens every year on the ice floes off Newfoundland. Canada, I really do love you guys: the hockey, the maple syrup, the kickass national anthem—all that great stuff—but WTF with the baby-seal bludgeoning? Seriously: worst idea for a national tradition ever.

The geniuses over at NoMoreStrays.com, a website designed to raise awareness about the animal-overpopulation epidemic that this country is facing, have come up with what may very well be my favorite Flash-animated castration game of all time. I defy anyone to find a better game than this in the testicle-removal category. Check out the game, and don't forget to spay and neuter your pets (though for God's sake, do it by taking them to the vet—yes, the carny with the cleavers is a metaphor for your friendly local veterinarian).

Nobel Prizewinner J.M. Coetzee

The internationally renowned Australian novelist and Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee gave a speech in Sydney last week, where he made a powerful case for animal rights—with a particular focus on the food industry, which, as he puts it, "dwarfs all others in the number of individual animal lives it affects." Two moments in his speech really stood out for me—in the first, he compares factory farms to death camps, concisely making the point that so many people miss when they encounter this controversial comparison for the first time: That the practice of degrading living beings to the status of production units should be rejected out of hand, regardless of the victims. Here's what he says:

"Of course we cried out in horror when we found out what they had been up to. We cried: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like cattle! If we had only known beforehand! But our cry should more accurately have been: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like units in an industrial process! And that cry should have had a postscript: What a terrible crime, come to think of it - a crime against nature - to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process!"

Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello asks searching questions about society's treatment of animals

Another comment Coetzee made that really struck me related to the way children perceive animals—his remarks hint at the disturbing fact that, as we grow up, the process of socialization itself can blind us to uncomfortable truths about the wrongs that our society inflicts on others. That children are much better equipped than we are to see the horror of factory farming for what it is, and that those of us who choose to ignore it, or attempt to excuse it, do so only because we have been duped and misled by our own greed and the complacence of others:

"Given half a chance, children see through the lies with which advertisers bombard them (the happy chooks that are transformed painlessly into succulent nuggets, the smiling moo-cow that donates to us the bounty of her milk). It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian."

At their core, the main principles of the animal rights movement are simple and intuitive—easy enough for a child to understand. But it's inspiring to see them expressed with such thoughtfulness and eloquence by one of the world's greatest writers. You can read an edited extract of J.M. Coetzee's speech here.

Proving once again that the folks in our Factory-Farming Campaigns Department are just brimming with so much compassion it could make you sick, they've just extended an offer to help our archenemy, KFC, deal with its apparent rodent problem. After video footage of a KFC in Greenwich Village that was overrun by rats on Friday went just about everywhere on the Internet, PETA sent a letter to the eatery’s owner, offering to help him implement a humane rodent-control program at his restaurant. Here's what PETA VP Bruce Friedrich had to say about the incident:

“This store’s lethal attempt to deal with rodents has failed miserably. Although KFC refuses to work with us toward minimizing the suffering of the hundreds of millions of birds killed for its restaurants every year, we hope that this store owner will work with us on a safe, effective, and humane solution to the rat infestation.”

Honestly, all this turning the other cheek and being nice to our enemies has me reeling. I'd go over to the other side of the office right now and congratulate our Factory-Farming Campaigns Department, but I'm worried that I'd be bowled over by all the excess compassion floating around. Here's PETA's letter to the store.

Just in case you weren't aware, you don't need to be a professional activist to make furriers in your neighborhood wish to God that they could just crawl into a hole somewhere, or maybe pick any other profession. All you need are some signs, a few good friends, and an hour or so of free time. Anyway, here are a few great pictures that some folks in Fort Lauderdale sent me from a protest they held outside AA Martin's Furs last week. Setting the animal issues aside for a moment, what the hell do you need a fur coat for in Florida?

According to Michael, who sent in these pics, the owners of the store asked them to call off the protest as they'd had a recent family crisis. Feel free to comment here, because I'll admit that there's the tiniest bit of a gray area: If your job involves paying people to raise animals in cages so small that many of them are insane by the time they're anally electrocuted, do you deserve a little bit of slack from the people who are telling you to stop it if you've had a rough week?

And in more good news for fur-bearing animals everywhere (this time from Portland), check this out.

A triumphant Forest hoists the Best Actor award at the Academy Awards

My new favorite person in the entire world, Forest Whitaker. Forest won the Best Actor Oscar yesterday for his breathtaking portrayal of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. I've written about Forest a couple of times before, but given what this guy has accomplished in the last year, I don't think a few more plaudits are out of place. After putting together an utterly riveting performance in Last King (which he prepared for by traveling to Uganda to meet Amin's friends and family, and learning a bit of Swahili for good measure), last night he became the fourth black performer to win the Best Actor Oscar, following in the footsteps of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx. And of course, he's particularly dear to our hearts here at PETA because both he and his daughter True are outspoken vegetarians and animal lovers. If you haven't seen the "veggie testimonial" Forest and True recorded for us recently, you should definitely check it out.

We've also got a little contest running at the moment, where you can win three of Forest's best-known films, so click the button below to check that out if you're itching to get caught up on the Forest oeuvre, now that he’s officially the best male performer in Hollywood. Anyway, congratulations, Forest—it's so great to see someone with such compassion and genuine kindness recognized for their achievements.

Awww, look at all the adorable rats! In other, extremely important news, KFC is really, really disgusting.

This video puts PETA in a bit of a difficult position, because we wouldn’t want to actively encourage other impressionable rats to eat at KFC—both for their own health and because of the ethical issues involved—but the restaurant does seem to be quite a favorite among rodents. Check it out:

I spent yesterday morning handing out leaflets outside the Ringling Bros. Circus, which is having its last desultory gasp in Norfolk this weekend before it bullies the elephants and other animals back into cramped boxcars and chains them up for the trip to whatever city it's going to inflict its weird, sadistic little show on next week. There are a lot of cities that give Ringling a really hard time when it comes to town, as activists all round the country rally round to get the word out about the circus's long history of animal abuse, safety violations, and the occasional child pornography scandal for good measure, but I'm fairly sure they dread the Norfolk shows more than any other stop on the tour, as the whole office takes a field trip to opening night, along with a bunch of local activists, to make sure that everyone attending the circus gets the elephants' side of the story as well. Apart from the inevitable middle finger or two, most people are really cool about it and grateful for the information—we always hear stories from people who have thrown away their tickets or vowed never to take their kids to an animal circus again. This year some prospective circusgoers even promised to come out leafleting with us on the weekend, which, well, you can't ask for more than that. Anyway, here's a video.

Jonathan Babineaux, defensive tackle for the Atlanta Falcons, is facing felony charges in Gwinnett County Court, stemming from his alleged February 18 fatal attack on a dog. Evidently, after arguing with his girlfriend, the 286 pound lineman inflicted blunt force trauma on her dog, Kilo. According to news sources, Kilo vomited blood en route to an emergency vet clinic, and was pronounced dead there.

We're calling on the Falcons to suspend Babineaux without pay until the courts can do their thing, and if he is found guilty we have asked the Falcons to release him from the team. But as if this case isn’t disturbing enough, there have been repeated instances of animal abuse by NFL players in the past. In December, six pit bulls belonging to the Chicago Bears' Tank Johnson were said to have been the subject of public and official concern in Illinois. Leshon Johnson, who played running back for three NFL teams, faced felony charges with 21 others in 2004 stemming from their alleged involvement in a massive dogfighting ring. Former Eagles' safety Damon Moore was accused in 2001 of abandoning his puppy in a soccer field in New Jersey, and former Eagles’ running back Thomas Hamner was twice convicted of beating his dog.

Given the seeming pattern of abuse here, we’ve also written to Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, asking him to implement a strict, clear no-tolerance policy on players' abuse of animals. Surely this issue deserves as much attention from the league as any other illegal or violent player activity, which he swore to crack down on in a recent press conference.

At least there are some NFL players who get it. Check out Giants lineman Michael Strahan’s ad here.

Giant Eagle, which has more than 200 grocery stores in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio, has just announced that it will no longer sell foie gras! The company's decision was prompted by nearly 250,000 e-mails and countless phone calls from customers and members of the public who expressed their concern that the store was selling a product which is made by force-feeding ducks and geese until their livers swell up, and which has been banned in the city of Chicago and the state of California—not to mention the fact that it is illegal in numerous progressive countries—because of the cruelty involved. In an e-mail to PETA just a few moments ago, a Giant Eagle representative confirmed that “Giant Eagle Market District stores have stopped the sale of foie gras.”

A huge thank you is due to everyone who took the time to contact Giant Eagle about this issue and bring about this massive victory for ducks and geese. Now that more and more major grocery chains like Giant Eagle and Whole Foods are taking a stand against the cruelty of foie gras, and given that the pope himself has spoken out against it, it won't be long before foie gras is nothing more than a nasty little piece of history. Don't hesitate to make anyone you know who still eats the stuff aware of that fact.

We all know that Holland is a pretty progressive place—you know, they ride bikes there, there's universal national health care, good stuff like that*. All cool things, in my opinion, but what I didn’t know is that there is actually a legitimate political party there called "Party For The Animals" that holds a couple of seats in parliament. And that each political party receives a certain amount of free national TV space to use as they wish. Pretty awesome.

Awesomer still is the fact that, after viewing our State of the Union Undress, which leads into Free Me, the “Partij Voor De Dieren” decided to run their own version of our Free Me video on Dutch national TV. You can check out the badass Dutch version of "Free Me" here.

*Yes, I know, pot is legal there too, and you can’t talk about The Netherlands without at least mentioning that fact. I would have included it, but you know . . . the lawyers would have yelled at me. Again.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails since I posted the Young Guns entry asking to see more of the ads that were submitted. We’re going to eventually post them all online, but until then, you just have to trust me when I say that there’s a reason we don’t show you everything that gets sent to us.

Enough said . . . ? Thought so.

I'd love to announce this as an official PETA victory, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the MLB's decision to get rid of all their wool caps in favor of a polyester blend has more to do with the suffering of sweaty baseball players in the heat than with the suffering of merino sheep in the wool industry.

Whatever their motives, though, this is a big deal for sheep like those in Australia who are horribly mutilated at the beginning of their lives and crammed onto ships to be slaughtered in countries with no animal welfare standards at the end. Whether the major league baseball players know it or not, they're doing the right thing by ditching the wool in favor of a humane alternative. So I, for one, applaud them. Except the Yankees. (Like most Orioles fans, I still haven't forgotten 1996.)

Anyway, there you have it—some great news for animals from the MLB. And now, for those of you who'd like a little more info about the issue, here's an important educational video that my friends Joel, Marta, and I made a little while ago. But please do remember, before you watch it, that you will never get those 21 seconds of your life back.

A couple of years ago, we went after P. Diddy pretty hard for for his furry ways, and to make a long story short, he wound up meeting with us about the issue. We explained how animals on fur farms are killed by anal or vaginal electrocution, how animals in the wild are often drowned, beaten to death or left to suffer in traps for days on end, we showed him video of all this, the whole nine yards.

Well, I guess it at least had some effect on him because in an interview in the new Blender magazine, he says “PETA has had an effect on me. If you look at a lot of the Sean John stuff, we have gone to faux fur.” Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Sean John, or Diddy, have gone completely fur free, but this is clearly progress. And you can't argue with progress.

I’d show you the whole interview, but alas, our Legal Department won’t let me.

Prada girl showing off a piece from the “Fake Classic” line

The one from The Dallas Morning News is my favorite, but I must say that the NY Post gets extra credit for including a photo of the fur hag editor of Vogue Anna Wintour with pie on her face.

Ugly ugly Anna

I really believe the tide has turned on this issue. Prada shows its first fur-free line in decades, other heavy hitters like Calvin Klein, Marc Bouwer, Betsey Johnson, Stella Mccartney, Kenneth Cole, and Ralph Lauren are all fur-free now, and huge retailers like J.Crew, Limited Brands, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, and The Gap refuse to sell real fur.

It's a tough time to be a fur pimp.

The high school I went to was a small Catholic school in DC called St. Anselm's Abbey School, which was run by Benedictine monks. Although it was pretty stressful academically—and kind of traumatizing that there were no girls there—the experience was one of the best of my life, in no small part because of the powerful example of wisdom and kindness that all of the monks provided, both in their teaching and in their daily life. (I also really liked the fact that we had a ping pong table in our senior lounge, but that's a different story.) But the point here is, as those of you who have seen the huge breaking investigation on the front page of our website will have guessed, that my personal experience with the genuine compassion that's a fundamental part of the Catholic monastic tradition has made it even more difficult for me to try to comprehend the tragic blindness to horrifying cruelty that is shown by the monks at the Mepkin Abbey, who run an egg factory farm to fund their South Carolina monastery.

One of the worst parts of this video for me is when a monk compares the process of forced molting to a fast that he and his brethren practice to show their devotion to God. The difference—for the benefit of any Mepkin Abbey monks who happen to be reading this—is that a fast is a voluntary religious practice, while forced molting is an excruciating torture in which chickens who are already crammed together in cages so small that they barely have room to spread their wings are starved for up to two weeks to shock their bodies into another laying cycle.

Before I get too carried away here, the point I want to make is that, while torturing birds is particularly reprehensible when you find out that the people who are doing it should damn well know better (because, for instance, they're monks, for God's sake), the truth is that most of the horrific practices documented in our investigation are industry standard. If you're looking for something to give up this Lent, please think seriously about giving up eggs. You can always give up chocolate next year.

I’ve talked before about my friend Dan Mathews, PETA’s fancypants VP, who spends his life jetting around the world getting celebs on board with our campaigns, disrupting fashion shows, and sometimes ending up in the slammer. Every time Dan gets home from a trip, he has another amazing story to tell.

One of Dan's best qualities is that no matter how serious the issue is that he’s working on, he never lets it get him down. He always finds a way to have fun and make our campaigns accessible to everyone. Dan once told me that the way he’s been able to keep working at his crazy pace for so many years is that his first thought when he wakes up every morning is not about work or politics or animal rights or anything like that—it's “How can I have fun today?” That's some pretty solid advice for anyone, and something I should probably try and remember next time I throw my alarm clock across the room at 6:30 a.m. (I'm not quite the morning person Dan Mathews is).

Anyway, the reason for this whole love fest is that Dan just finished writing his first book, Committed: A Rabble Rouser’s Memoir. The book isn’t out until April, but the buzz is already starting, as the crazy stories in it are starting to get leaked. I just saw this one about Chrissie Hynde getting arrested for protesting The Gap right after the company offered her $100,000 to use one of her songs in a commercial and Pam Anderson shooting this ad ... while she was six months pregnant:

Don’t think she looks six months pregnant? During the shoot, Pam told Dan, "Don’t worry. Nowadays, they can airbrush out a baby as easily as a birthmark." Priceless. The book is out April 17, and I'm actually really looking forward to it. If you're interested, you can pre-order that bad boy here.

OK, so admittedly I’m not the world’s biggest fashionista, but even I know that Prada is a big deal in the fashion world. Like, the biggest deal there is. So this is just beyond incredible.

Amazing clothes—no fur. Love you Ms. Prada.

Not even 24 hours after a PETA Europe member disrupted the Prada fashion show at Milan Fashion Week, and less than a month since PETA reps showed this video to Prada execs in Milan, the mood has swung 180 degrees and founder Miuccia Prada received a bouquet of roses from PETA Europe this morning. The sudden about-face happened because, for the first time in decades—yes, I mean literally decades—there wasn’t a single fur item in Prada’s fall/winter collection. And check this: Miuccia Prada herself said that she is “bored” with real fur. It seems that Prada has finally realized what we’ve been saying for years, that designing with fur is unimaginative as hell, not to mention cruel.

Prada’s new line is called “Fake Classic”—I love it. Check out this incredible orange faux-fur coat. I guess this is what “Fake Classic” means.

Prada’s announcement is making headlines worldwide, but my favorite one so far is from a huge paper in Australia: “Animal liberationists scored a victory today when Milan's style matron, Miuccia Prada, proclaimed she was bored with fur.” Are we on a roll or what? We finished up last year with heavyweights Kenneth Cole, J.Crew, Ann Taylor, and Ralph Lauren going fur free, started this year off with a bang with the Marc Bouwer show, and now this amazing news from Prada.

It all just makes Burberry seem that much more out of touch.

Check this ish out—this piece in our local paper brought a smile to my face today, since all of us here at PETA are gonna be out in the freezing cold tomorrow night protesting opening night of the Ringling Bros. Circus.

And they included this beautiful photo of some local kids at an anti-Ringling demonstration. Love it.

CREDIT: Leona Baker

I'm kicking myself today because I ended up deciding not to watch the Daytona 500 this weekend after everyone I invited told me they'd rather watch paint dry. The only other person I know of here at work who's into car racing is Ingrid Newkirk, but you don't exactly call the big boss up on a Sunday morning and invite her round for a couple of sixers, some vegan bratwurst, and four hours of restrictor plate racing. Besides, Ingrid's big thing is Formula 1 (click here for more on that)—I don't know how she feels about stock cars. Anyway, it turns out that not only did I miss one of the most exciting races in NASCAR history, but a few of my colleagues actually got to go! Admittedly, they had to attend the event wearing nothing but skimpy yellow bikinis and spend the entire time holding signs and passing out faux chicken and anti-KFC leaflets to surprised NASCAR fans, but I totally would have done all that for a free ticket. OK, maybe not. Check it out though—the girls were a huge hit with everyone except the police.

Jennifer Lopez just had a screening of her new film, Bordertown, at the Berlin Film Festival, but she started crying when the crowd responded with loud boos. If Lopez wasn’t such a total fur hag, I just might feel sorry for her. But I really can’t believe just how warped her mind is—she cries because a few people boo her latest hideous movie, but she's totally unfazed by what she saw in this movie.

J-Lo: Crushed by boos...

And happily wearing the skins of tortured animals.

What I don’t understand is why the wannabe diva got so upset this time. She should certainly be used to bad reviews by now, and until she drops the fur, she may as well get used to her events not quite turning out the way she wants . . .

Man, so this year’s Oscar race for Best Actor is going to be a good one, and all of us at PETA are extra excited since two of the nominees have been active in our campaigns.

First off, we’ve got Ryan Gosling, who is nominated for his role as Dan Dunne in Half Nelson. Ryan helped us out with our KFC campaign by penning a letter urging the company to implement basic animal-welfare standards.

But I think the smart money is on Forest Whitaker for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. The experience gained while shooting this pro-vegetarian PSA may just give him the edge he needs.

While writing this entry, I started thinking about some past Oscar winners who have helped PETA with our work over the years, and the ones I came up with were:

Charlize Theron, who got her statue in 2003 for her leading role in Monster. Charlize has helped PETA in numerous ways over the years, most notably by narrating a puppy mill exposé and posing for this beautiful anti-fur ad.

Kim Basinger, who won in 1997 for her role in L.A. Confidential. Kim shot an amazing “Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ad for us a while back, and has pitched in with numerous other campaigns over the years.

And last but not least is Jack Lemmon, who won in 1955 for his role in Mister Rogers and in 1973 for Save the Tiger. Jack was against animal testing and before his death in 2001, he wrote to Congress on PETA’s behalf to protest cruel cigarette smoking experiments on animals.

I know I just said “last but not least” but my celeb-obsessed cubicle-pod-mate Stephanie just told me that four of the last eight winners for best picture starred PETA pals as well. Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, Sexiest Vegetarian nominee Thora Birch in American Beauty, long-time PETA supporter Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator and Dominic Monaghan in Lord of the Rings.

Damn, that’s a lot, huh?

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been oddly fascinated with mannequins in store windows. As a kid I would wonder what they were thinking about, if they were looking at me, and what they do when the store closes and the lights go out . . . As an adult, however, I’ve always been much more fond of human mannequins, particularly when they are smearing “blood” on the front window of stores.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that just a little while ago that in Milan, Italy, three PETA Europe activists took over the Burberry store window there, to let the world know that Burberry tortures animals.

Did I mention that the entire fashion industry is in town for Milan Fashion Week and that this is Burberry’s flagship store? Oh man, I bet Burberry is bumming, especially after all the attention they’ve been getting worldwide . . .

***We now pause to satisfy the lawyers***

The suits upstairs want me to make a couple of things abundantly clear to you, dear reader. Firstly, please note that I am merely reporting that this event happened in Europe, and secondly, just in case it isn’t clear, let me state for the record that I do not support such activities.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

When Vanity Fair recognizes that the tide's turning, I guess it is, right? A friend of mine just sent me this cartoon from Vanity Fair magazine, and I'm not exactly sure what to say about it. It's kind of creepy but, um, cool, I guess . . .

Seeing that buffet of people parts reminded me that if you read Ingrid Newkirk’s will, you’ll see there are marked similarities. Not the least of which is that it is also kind of creepy but cool nonetheless.

About a year ago, I was part of a big brainstorming meeting where we came up with all these ideas for ads that we could make to draw attention to the suffering of chickens in factory farms that wouldn't be just, like, pictures of sad chickens. It was a great meeting, and we came up with a bunch of interesting stuff—ranging from funny to poignant to clever to (inevitably) just really weird. But after the meeting it sort of became clear that we'd just never have the time, money, or staff to turn all of the ideas we had into actual ads, market them, and get them out into the world. Which, you know, sad story and all, but the happy ending is that this year, the Young Guns Ad Agency held a competition for design students, advertising professionals, and artists around the world to make a compelling PETA ad about chickens. We've just announced the winners, and you can check out some of the other entries and vote for the "People's Choice" Award here. Here's one of the ads I liked:

Check out this new PETA Europe ad starring international R&B singer Jamelia. She's blowing up in the British music scene at the moment, so I'm really excited about this ad. Having been born in England myself, I love it when another local guy or gal makes it as big as I have in the music game . . .

My mates in the UK released the ad during London Fashion Week and it is making a huge splash all over the international press. My favorite quote so far:

"The reason I decided to bare all for PETA was because I was educated about the inhumane ways animals are treated to retrieve their fur, and I think it's disgusting," Jamelia said.

I think I have a new crush . . . sorry Fernanda.

My friend Ann Marie just sent me this photo. I guess she was at the mall and saw it in Sephora on the Smashbox make-up counter. I don't really know an awful lot about makeup, having never worn any myself (Actually, there was an unfortunate few weeks during high school when I was trying a little too hard to be "emo" and thought black eyeliner was a good idea), but I thought this was pretty damn cool anyway.

In case you can’t read the text, it says, “every product created by smashbox goes through many stages of development and testing, but we are proud to say that none of it is tested on animals!” Nice work, Smashbox.

Enough people are aware of the whole animal testing thing that it's easy to find a variety of products that haven't been tested on animals these days, but if you’re new to this game and need a little help, click here.

Back in 02/03, PETA conducted a 9-month investigation into a lab used by the Iams pet food company to "test" its food. During the investigation, we uncovered horrible abuse, including dogs gone crazy from intense confinement; dogs left piled on a filthy paint-chipped floor after having chunks of muscle hacked from their thighs; dogs surgically debarked; horribly sick dogs and cats languishing in their cages, neglected and left to suffer with no vet care.

Well, we’ve continued to work on the case and have just received very good news in a report from the USDA. The report confirms Animal Welfare Act violations that we found during our investigation, including:

• Untrained personnel performing animal experiments
• Failure to provide veterinary care and observe animals on a daily basis
• Caging facilities for dogs and cats so stifling that staff were unable to endure the ammonia levels
• Failure to provide animals with the minimum required space

The lab can now either admit to its wrongdoing and settle with the government or go through an Administrative Court proceeding.

I’ll keep you posted, as details become available, but in the meantime, remember to join these folks in the Iams boycott and only feed your dogs and cats food from cruelty-free companies.

We held a big press conference in our offices on Tuesday to discuss the allegations of two former Ringling employees, who recently contacted us to tell us about their firsthand experience of the circus's abusive treatment of animals. Both employees, who worked on the animal crew, told us they witnessed routine abuse behind the scenes, including a violent beating of an elephant which lasted 30 minutes. It was really nice to see some members of the media show up to hear about this breaking news—sad as it sounds, normally with this sort of thing we have to take all our clothes off (or at least show a little leg) to get some attention. But this is a great sign that people around the country are really starting to come round to the idea that animal circuses need to go the way of bear-baiting and cockfighting (there are only two states left that are still being ass-backwards about cockfighting) as something that was probably a really lousy idea in the first place.

A badger from the famous animation, modified slightly by our legal department

If you were alive and had access to the Internet a few years ago, someone probably sent you an annoying, yet utterly mesmerizing, Flash animation starring dancing badgers, a mushroom, and a snake slithering across the desert. The badger video has spawned countless imitations since it was released, driving legions of hapless Internet trawlers insane with its infuriating refrain. Well, those punk-rock, hopelessly in-touch trendsters over in PETA's youth division, peta2, recently put together their own little tribute to the badger phenomenon, featuring peta2's own Nugget, a KFC box with an X through it, and a friendly asparagus character instead of the snake. I'd love to show you the Nugget video now, but its release last week caused such an uproar over at Badger HQ in London, that we decided to take it down rather than anger the powerful British badger interests even more. I would have been kind of pissed at them about the whole thing (I really liked the parody peta2 made), if it weren't for this video that they put together to document the whole saga. If you're going to be this hilarious about it, badger dudes, how can I be mad atcha?

Check out how PETA Europe and PETA India celebrated Valentine’s Day a few hours ago. I love it. Love the bed, love the signs, love it all. As you can see, they’re a tiny bit more conservative in Mumbai than Dublin, but I gotta be honest, those wings and the heart bow and arrow are pretty hot.

Sky News in Britain did a really cool slideshow of both demos. Check it out here.

Wow, check out this photo of Victoria’s Secret supermodel Fernanda Tavares sporting our “No Fur” button. I got it on Valentine’s Day, no less! Of course, I got it from my friend Michael, who she actually sent it to, but whatever, I've never been one to let details get in the way of destiny ...

And here she is in a slightly different pose, in an ad she shot for us a while back.

Fernanda’s not just a pretty face either. Check out her quote from the interview she did while shooting the ad: "Fashion is supposed to be fun, but there is nothing fun about breaking animals’ necks and killing them with genital electrocution—common fates for animals destined to become fur coats," says Fernanda. "The fur industry butchers animals and pollutes our environment. I could never wear fur."

I love you, Fernanda.

Even if the cruelty of factory farming, the increased heart attack and cancer risk, and the environmental devastation caused by the meat industry don't convince you to go vegetarian, I'm certain that the prospect of being the sexiest smelling person in your office will sway you. According to a recent study published by the NIH,

Results of repeated measures analysis of variance showed that the odor of donors when on the nonmeat diet was judged as significantly more attractive, more pleasant, and less intense.

Hott! Scientists sure do know how to make stuff sound sexy when they want to. Unfortunately for me, my fragrant vegan odor doesn't have much effect on my female colleagues, since (as you might expect) pretty much all of the dudes in my office are rocking a nonmeat diet. But if you're looking for a way to make yourself stand out from the competition with the dreaded Valentine's Day holiday looming, it may be worth a shot. Just so I've got my bases covered—for those of you who are already vegetarian but still smell kind of funky, you can find a whole range of cruelty-free deodorants here.

Remember Rocket Boy from the other day? Well, just when you thought we were all out of impotence ads for this year, we’re rolling out the pièce de resistance.

Nice work, Brad.

Just in case you didn’t catch The O’Reilly Factor last night, Bill was more than fair and did a great job covering our State of the Union Undress.

If you’d like to watch the full clip, it's on the front page of FoxNews.com today.

And back by popular demand, here’s the video that started it all …

It's a culture war, and you're invited! Mr. Culture Warrior himself, Bill O’Reilly, is having PETA VP Lisa Lange on his show tonight to talk about our State of the Union Undress and the use of nudity to draw attention to a serious issue like animal rights.

I think you know what side of the issue Lisa will take, and I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what side good ol' Bill will be taking.

The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific. And let’s be honest, it definitely beats watching everyone’s favorite germophobe Howie Mandel on Deal or No Deal.

The first time I saw Steven Glover, more commonly known as Steve-O, was in the opening credits of Jackass: The Movie. Steve-O and about eight of his best friends had all climbed into a shopping cart and pushed off from the top of a massive hill to see how long it would take before they smashed into a wall, flying onto the concrete and sustaining various potentially career-ending injuries. I would never have dreamed that it was possible for Steve-O to do something even awesomer than that—until the other week when he sat down with those wild, fun-loving hipsters in PETA's youth division, peta2, to talk about his experience at Ringling's clown college, and his thoughts about the circus's treatment of animals. Yes, I know "awesomer" isn't a word, but if anything merits it, this interview does. Definitely check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.

Julien MacDonald, a fashion designer who is as notorious for his cruel use of fur as he is for a recent run-in with flour-wielding animal lovers (that's Julien on the right, next to Paris Hilton, also in white), recently extended an invitation to our dear friend Pamela Anderson to attend his Fashion Week show in London. In keeping with her character, Pamela—who could have responded in a number of ways—chose the classy route, politely declining the offer and recommending a few useful resources for Julien to educate himself about the fur issue.

As my mother always told me, "When pelting someone with flour fails, some gentle coaxing from a beautiful blonde will often do the trick." OK, my mother never said that. But it seems very apt in this case. Here's Pam's letter:

February 9, 2007

Julien Macdonald

1 page via fax: +44 207-439-9887

Dear Julian,

Unfortunately I won't be in London for Fashion Week, but I truly appreciate the invitation to your show and your kind offer of creating an outfit for me. I'm hoping you can extend your kindness to include animals. If you stop using fur, I'd be thrilled to attend a show of yours in the future. Please watch my video about the fur trade on peta.org.uk.

You're such a wonderful, talented designer, and I know you can come up with killer fashions that don't kill anything. My friends at PETA and I would love to hear from you should you decide to go fur-free.

Best of luck at Fashion Week, and kindest regards,

Pamela

So a little while back, we had this brilliant idea for a web feature, which was going to be called "PETA’s Top 10 Reasons to Go to Ringling Circus." The idea was that it would secretly be, like, 10 reasons not to go, except cleverly disguised in a different format. Or something. I don't remember exactly—but I do remember that the meeting where we discussed it was really fun, and people were laughing a lot. Unfortunately, once the hilarity had died down and we actually wrote up the text, it just didn't come out quite right—turns out it may have been one of those "you had to be there" type of things. It seemed like a shame to just let the feature die though, so I bravely volunteered to post it right here on this very blog. Just don't blame me if you don't think it's funny.

Anyway, here it is. Ten PETA points to anyone who posts a comment with a reason that's better than ours. Who knows, maybe it’ll mean salvation for this feature.

P.S. PETA points don’t really exist.

10. Even the dullest show on earth is more exciting than your pitiful life.

Get a life! Animal abuse and domination is not entertainment or education. You can enjoy modern circuses that don’t use ho-hum animal acts, such as Cirque Du Soleil. Or come up with some great old-fashioned family entertainment, such as a day trip to a museum or nature preserve or family picnic at a local park. Or God forbid you actually do something active with your kids, like roller skating or a hike!

9. Coming from a broken family, you feel right at home among the animals who have been ripped from their families.

Baby elephants as young as 1 ½ years of age are torn from their mothers to be broken, trained, and sent out on the road. Four baby elephants born at Ringling’s breeding compound have died since 1998. One fractured both hind legs when he fell from a circus pedestal, another drowned trying to escape a trainer, another got sick and died on the road and one died when she was just a few weeks old.

8. You want to show your kids where they’ll end up if they don’t do well in school.


Convicts and Criminals and Felons, oh my! From Ringling head elephant trainer Sacha Houcke (who was fined for beating his daughter) to Spanky the Clown (child pornography) to a murderer on parole and an acrobat arrested for sexual battery – Ringling’s had them all. Can you say “The Most Unsavory Show on Earth?”

7. You want to teach your kids demeaning of life.

Teaching kids about wild animals by taking them to the circus is like teaching them about sex by showing them porno movies. The circus teaches your kids that chaining, caging, whipping and beating animals is acceptable – a bad lesson considering that learning and development experts stress that “Children should see adults treating animals with dignity and respect at all times.”

6. You think $40 on sno-cones is money well-spent.

You won’t be alone if you stay home instead of going to the Ringling Circus. Attendance at circuses is down while prices for concessions – sno-cones, soft drinks, programs and kids’ toys are way up. Plan on squandering several hundred dollars for a family of four to visit the circus this year.

5. It’s like When Animals Attack meets Russian roulette!

At least 12 humans have been killed and more than 100 injured in the U.S. by rampaging elephants. An elephant in a circus traveling in Hawaii killed her trainer and injured another circus worker – it took 87 shots from pistols, rifles, and high powered weapons to stop her. Other elephants have injured and killed trainers and spectators. Are you sure you want to enter your family in the Death-by-Elephant Lottery by going to the circus?

4. If you don’t help the circus owner pay his fines and legal fees for animal abuse who will?

Ringling management forked over $20,000 to settle charges for the death a baby elephant who was forced to perform while sick; $51,305 in legal fees in a PETA lawsuit; and more fines may be on the way with multiple investigations open by the USDA and a lawsuit for violating the Endangered Species Act.

3. You believe that an elephant trainer who beat his daughter would be kind to animals.

Ringling head elephant trainer Sacha Houcke pled guilty in May 2005 for beating his own daughter. Lucky for his daughter that Sacha didn’t use the same bullhook on her that he frequently uses on elephants.

2. You think that 2000 years in captivity isn’t nearly long enough to understand elephants’ need for vast spaces.

Elephants have been exhibited in captivity since before the birth of Christ. Despite Ringling’s claims of education and conservation, there are fewer elephants in the wild today than ever before and those in captivity often die prematurely from health problems caused by a lack of space. While most of Ringling’s elephants were captured in the wild, none of the baby elephants born at its breeding compound can ever be released into the wild because they won’t know how to survive.

1. You’re a sucker, plain and simple

P.T. Barnum allegedly said “there is a sucker born every minute.” He might have been talking about people who spend good money to see animals abused at the circus (and pay for those $13 ‘souvenir’ programs).

Did you get this far? Congratulations! Remember, 10 precious PETA points for every reason you can come up with that's better than ours. Don't everybody shout at once.

The bird flu post the other day reminded me of a hilarious old picture from The Onion. Unfortunately, I just didn't get around to writing about it in the blog at the time, but as I like to say about me marrying Natalie Portman and you going vegetarian ... better late than never.

With all the people getting sick, don’t ya think this is exactly what KFC needs—a bird flu vaccine dipping sauce?

Breaking news here folks, and it's been 17 years in the making: In 1989, a video camera caught nightclub entertainer Bobby Berosini beating and punching the orangutans he used in his act at the Stardust. This week, Berosini lost yet another round in the court battle that has been going on ever since.

Instead of just paying PETA's court costs when we won the case the first time round, Berosini was forced by a federal district court to pay more than $250,000 incurred by PETA’s attorneys in trying to locate assets that he and his wife, Joan Berosini, had hidden after the initial legal battle. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that payment order, on top of the more than $400,000 in court costs Berosini had previously paid PETA. The real victory here, though, is for the animals depicted in the video below, which (just in case it wasn't clear from the whole hiding money and trying to manipulate the justice system deal) shows exactly what sort of a person this Berosini guy is.

$250,000 dollars is a hell of a lot of money to have paid, but after watching that video again, I'm not exactly welling up with sympathy for Mr. Berosini's misfortunes. As PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk puts it,

“There’s a lesson here for any entertainers who still feel that beating animals is acceptable. Berosini kept intelligent apes locked up in steel boxes for years, and he can never pay back the animals for the nightly beating they endured.”

And in the esteemed words of Forrest Gump . . . that’s all I have to say about that.

Sure, if the signs were a little different and our girls weren’t drop dead gorgeous, it could be mistaken for a Hooters audition, but lucky for us—and the animals—the girls are super hot and instead of “Fried Pickles and Chicken Wangs” their signs read: “Fur Out Love In”.

Our traveling campaigners are on a nationwide anti-fur tour right now, and oddly enough, they are getting crazy amounts of attention at every stop. Here’s an article from Austin. Enjoy.

Oh man . . . sad, weird news. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Anna Nicole Smith passed away today. And I’m sure everyone in the world will have an opinion on how and why she died so young.

She worked with PETA on a lot of campaigns over the years, and as strange as it may sound, I always thought she was an absolute perfect fit for us, because just like PETA, you couldn’t ignore her and, love her or hate her, everyone had an opinion. What you see is what you get—I loved that about her.

I always got a kick out of the stories from my friend Michael, who worked with Anna Nicole on all of her PETA projects, and thinking back on it now, she really did a lot for PETA and for animals all over the world.

She spoke out against Iams for its cruel animal tests, spoke up for baby seals in Canada, and gave fur-wearing celebrities an earful, but in my mind her crowning achievement was this amazing anti-fur ad.

After being exposed to animal rights over the years, Anna Nicole even became a vegetarian, and was nominated for the 2006 World’s Sexiest Vegetarian, and looking at her ad you can certainly see why.

It's a tragedy when anyone passes away before their time, but with Anna Nicole, the animals have lost a true sympathiser, and PETA has lost a good friend. We’ll miss you, Anna.

Going vegetarian, that is. A friend of mine from Cleveland sent me this news clip about teenage vegetarians, and it made my morning. Working for PETA, of course I hear stories all the time about the growth of vegetarianism among kids, particularly teenagers, and the folks at peta2 can hardly keep up with their growth—how about zero to 800,000 peta2 e-news subscribers in four years? But it was nice to see the media taking notice of what we’ve known for years . . .

Anyway, enjoy the clip:

Here at PETA, we track trends and statistics on the use of every species used for fur, and sometimes the findings of our research can be a total bummer, like when we uncovered the horrible abuse of dogs and cats for fur in China.

But more and more we are finding that designers and society in general are turning away from the cruelty of fur, and consequently, entire species of animals are being spared. Take, for instance, the great news released yesterday in Dallas, TX, where the findings of a very scientific years-long study revealed the following:

“The fur trade has strangely had no effect on the liger population.”

This is a great day indeed. It always warms our hearts here at PETA when even just one species receives a little bit of justice in the world. ... Yes, even when it happens to be a fictional species popularized by a movie.

And just in case you’ve never seen a liger (or Napoleon Dynamite), here is a very realistic artistic rendering of the rare and elusive species. Meeeeeeeeowwww!

UPDATE: OK, so I’ve received a lot of e-mails. ... Apparently, ligers aren’t fictional at all. Readers have just informed me that, among other things:

• Ligers, unlike most hybrids, can reproduce, resulting in either li-ligers (lion and liger) or ti-ligers (tiger and liger).
• Like tigers, but unlike lions, ligers enjoy swimming.
• Ligers grow much larger than lions and even larger than the largest tigers.

Who knew?

Lost season premiere tonight folks! I was a casual fan of the show until a weekend-long season 1 & 2 marathon turned me into a full-on addict. Now, let’s just say that 10pm tonight can’t get here fast enough.

What triggered the aforementioned binge weekend was when Dominic Monaghan shot a pro-wildlife ad for PETA. It's pretty damn wonderful anytime a celebrity takes time out of their schedule to speak up for animals, but Dominic really takes it a step further. Check out this interview about why he did the ad:

And if you need me between 10 and 11 tonight, don’t bother calling. I’ve got a TV date with my girl. The beer and catnip are already on ice.

In some ways, there's just so much to say about Rocket Boy, and yet now that I'm sitting down to write about it, it kind of leaves me a little speechless. Rocket Boy was an ad that we created about 10 years ago (when I was but a Rocket Boy myself) to highlight the connection between eating meat and impotence, and it recently resurfaced in all its glory when some genius in our Campaigns Department dug it up and circulated it around the office today. The Rocket Boy ad comes from the same brilliant minds that brought you "The Three Stages of a Weiner," and "I Threw a Party but the Meat-Eaters Couldn't Come."

Please direct all complaints to WTFRocketBoy@peta.org, with the subject line "Please, please, please stop with the impotence jokes already. Think of the children!" And without further ado ... Rocket Boy, ladies and gentlemen:

A friend of mine who worked on the Marc Bouwer/PETA show on Friday is still in New York for the rest of Fashion Week. Last night, she went to some trés chic afterparty at the Roseland Ballroom where she reported that what stood out even more than the coked-out models were "the frumpy fur-wearers who looked out of place amidst New York’s trendiest fashionistas, who were by and large fur-free."

Apparently these "asshole" stickers have become the must-have accessory of the season for anyone stupid enough to still wear fur. She says they've been showing up on every fur coat she sees ...

Europe's biggest turkey killer, Bernard Matthews, is back in the news. And oddly enough, this time it's not because their workers were filmed kicking birds and using pipes as baseball bats to hit them, but because government veterinarians have confirmed bird flu at a poultry farm in the UK.

So my friends Anita and Lucy at PETA Europe jumped into action and have been doing these “biohazard” demonstrations outside grocery stores in London to let the public know that there is a simple solution to this whole bird flu mess. Here are a couple of pics from yesterday’s demo.

Not to get all doomsday on you, but even our very own US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt called the likelihood of an influenza pandemic "very high, some say even certain." Yes, bird flu is serious problem and all that, but it just seems like such a simple choice to me: we can either run around in these absurd looking masks all the time like these people

Or we can go vegetarian. Tofu anyone?

Every now and then I’m struck by just how much work we get done at PETA. Especially when we have weeks like we had last week: We won the Pom campaign, Smithfield Foods announced that it's phasing out gestation crates for pigs, and CareerBuilder finally stopped its abusive chimpanzee ads.

Much as I'd like to take credit for all this stuff myself, the fact is that none of it would even get off the ground without the vision and the amazing work ethic of PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk. She’s the first one here every morning and the last to leave, and she's always first in line for “extra” activities like bagging straw for cold local dogs or protesting at the local KFC. Right now she’s on a nationwide book tour promoting her latest book, and there was a pretty great news story about that the other night, which you can check out here.

Anyway, my point here is that Ingrid is amazing and inspiring and all things like that. On a completely unrelated note, Ingrid, it feels like a really long time since I last had a raise ...

Obviously, the overpopulation of cats and dogs is a serious issue, but for those of you who haven't seen this PSA yet, which was sent to us by a member, it's a blast. Enjoy! And, like, don't forget to spay and neuter your pets.

African Gray Prodigy, N'Kisi

His name is N'kisi, and he's been getting a whole lot of press lately in scientific circles because of his huge vocabulary and his unique sense of humor. Instead of mimicking things he's heard already, N'kisi goes right ahead and invents his own phrases to describe new ideas that he's introduced to, and he even rocks the past and future tenses when he's feeling fancy.

According to the BBC, N'kisi described perfume as "pretty smell medicine," and commented on pictures of Jane Goodall with the very reasonable question, "Got a chimp?" The BBC article also reports on N'kisi's sense of humor:

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Kind of amazing.

On a slightly sadder (and perhaps inevitable) note, the story immediately made me think of the countless African Gray parrots like N'kisi who are sold in stores like PetSmart and destined to spend their incredibly long lives in captivity, without much stimulation beyond the occasional "Pretty Polly" comment through the cage bars. Which, well, is just really depressing. … Soooo, instead of ending this entry on such a depressing note, here's a completely unrelated video of a trapped deer being blown to safety by a helicopter. Hooray!

CareerBuilder (the employment company behind the ad campaign with all those monkeys dressed in suits and ties in an office) is tentatively in our good books at the moment—though we're keeping a wary eye on them. The reason is that they've decided to, as they put it, "evolve," and move beyond using primates—as we've been asking them to for quite a while now, on account of the truly disturbing way these unwilling "animal actors" are abused behind the scenes. I thought that CareerBuilder's Super Bowl spots yesterday, which featured a bunch of office workers battling to the death in the jungle for a promotion, were the best of the bunch—and a sign that using actual creativity is a fantastic alternative to just trawling out the live animals when you're stuck for ad ideas.

Of course, in all the hype about the ads and the halftime hoopla, it's sometimes easy to forget that there's actually a football game going on. If you can call three interceptions, five fumbles, and a missed extra point a football game. Stay tuned next week, when we launch our campaign against Rex Grossman for his shameless cruelty to The Bears this weekend. Oh, zing! And yes, in answer to your question, Chicago, I do think I'm pretty hilarious.

If you haven't seen the PETA “Year In Review” video that was made for our annual New Year staff party yet, you should check it out. It’s a great snapshot of just a few of our accomplishments from 2006, and when I saw it at the party, I knew we had to get it on the Web ASAP. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong ... As it turns out, our legal department has all these issues with us using music without permission—yadda yadda yadda. So we had to replace the song that was originally in it. Luckily my buddy Coulter is all musical and stuff, and he gave us a great song that I think works better than the original anyway.

Anyway, here it is: PETA’s 2006 staff party video*:

*Warning: this video does not contain gratuitous nudity. Sorry.

Everyone I've talked to who was at the Marc Bouwer show says that it was just amazing. It was full of celebrities, the media loved it, and Marc’s animal-free designs were beyond anything that’s ever been seen.

I promised you video, so here it is:

This was the first ever collection presented by a designer of this caliber who is 100 percent cruelty-free. Totally awesome.

Pretty much every media outlet was there, including AP, Reuters, The New York Times, and, well, everybody else who is anybody. These are a few of the comments from the press coverage:

"Texans who would rather wear faux fur—yes, there are more than you think—would have loved the Marc Bouwer show. Known for creating gorgeous red-carpet gowns, the designer unveiled real-looking faux chinchilla, tiger, astrakhan and mink furs."

"With its “Imitation is life” tagline and PETA-approved cruelty-free fabrics, Marc Bouwer’s calculated opening looks—a series of gasp-inducing, and yet entirely faux fur coats—signaled a powerful statement that resonated throughout the remainder of his collection: the only skin you need to look glamorous in today’s fashion world is your own.

"Marc Bouwer's collection was exquisite. The dresses were the highlight of fashion week thus far. It will be a feat of talent to out-do Marc's dresses."

My pals Jayasimha and Anuradha from PETA India have been busy little beavers this week, making sure the attendees of the Indian International Leather Fair (IILF) get an earful from the animal protection community, and they’ve held demos and press conferences of their own outside.

According to PETA India, 90 percent of all the leather exported from there comes from illegal slaughterhouses, which are completely unregulated and where the cruelty is beyond imagination. Despite the documented atrocities occurring daily at these hellholes, the Indian Council for Leather Exports says that it is premature to ask its members to source leather only from legal slaughterhouses. Wow, premature to stop breaking the law . . .

The kicker here is that nearly all Indian leather is exported overseas where it is made into everything from leather jackets and gloves to shoes and steering wheel covers, and it is almost always labeled as “Made in” the country where the final product is finished. So if you buy any leather products, there’s a decent chance that it came from India. And no, leather isn’t a byproduct of the meat industry—far from it, especially in India, where many of the cows are killed exclusively for their skins.

Sorry to get all preachy and heavy-handed in the blog, but this is just beyond the pale and it has to stop. Please don’t buy any leather and tell you friends and family to do the same.

Sermon over.

It’s already the talk of the fashion world gathered in New York for Fashion Week, and of course the media is all over it, but just in case you haven’t heard yet, PETA and Marc Bouwer are making fashion history today. This afternoon, PETA is hosting Bouwer’s show—the first ever collection by a designer that’s 100 percent cruelty-free. Not even any wool! In an industry that isn’t exactly known for its social conscience, Bouwer stands out as a very successful anomaly. He’s dressed A-listers galore including Mariah Carey, Oprah, Jessica Simpson, Heidi Klum, Jennifer Hudson, and so many others. Remember how amazingly hot Angelina looked at the Oscars? That was Marc:

We’ll have exclusive photos and video from the show soon, so check back in the next few days.

Good luck this afternoon Marc!

Forest Whitaker is on fire right now. The vegetarian actor, director, and producer has already bagged Golden Globe and SAG wins for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator and rumored cannibal (oh the irony!) Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, and he’s got my vote for the Oscar as well. And last night he absolutely rocked as a guest star on ER.

I’ve been a fan since The Crying Game, and it's great to see him getting some serious recognition for his work now, including his most recent masterpiece, this pro-vegetarian PSA he shot for us with his daughter, True. I posted this before, but, whatever, it's adorable. You should watch it again.

Anyway Forest, you deserve all the success you’re having right now. Your fans at PETA are especially proud.

Unless you live under a rock and watch Antique Road Show on PBS every night, I’m sure you’ve been hearing an awful lot about Simon Cowell lately. American Idol's ratings are higher than ever, and we couldn’t be happier for Simon. So what if he is honest with the out-of-tune wannabe trying to sing "Beat It"? Stick to singing in the shower and open mic nights at your local strip mall coffeehouse, dude . . . I guess you can see where I fall on the whole “Is Simon too mean?” debate.

Anyway, all the hype about Idol and Simon reminded me of the great work he’s done with PETA, so I dug out a couple of the ads he’s shot for us in the past.

Keep telling it like it is Simon!

In our tireless quest to remind the world that all animals have the same parts, and that getting killed and cooked is just as unpleasant for cows, pigs, and chickens as it sounds (actually, more so—for more info on that, click here), PETA held a colorful "human barbeque" demonstration in downtown Nashville yesterday, which seems to have gone over fairly well with Tennesseans.

The part of the barbequed babe—naked, spray-painted red and orange, and displayed on a mock grill in front of countless astonished Nashville citizens and members of the press—was played by PETA's lovely intern Joanne. Applications for our Internship program can be filled out here.

I just heard that Mickey Rourke is holding a protest in Miami this afternoon. Apparently, he bought a puppy from a pet store around Christmas and the puppy died a couple of weeks later. Once Mickey learned from PETA’s Dan Mathews how pet shops sell all sorts of sick and inbred animals all the time, he fired off a letter to the store immediately. And today he’ll be in front of the store letting the public know what he’s learned.

Did you see the guy in Domino or Sin City? Total badass. My suggestion to the store: Do what the man says. For real.

Like most people, one of my favorite things about the pre-game Super Bowl hype is hearing about the commercials that will run during the game. This is particularly true this time around, since (due to a calculating error by the NFL) the Redskins didn't make it into the playoffs this year. But is it me or is the hype around this year’s field of ads virtually non-existent? Granted, nothing will ever come close to that Mean Joe Green Coke spot—or even the GoDaddy ad, but come on ad folks, what’s the deal—are you waiting for PETA to submit its spot to be rejected to get the pre-game ad media frenzy started?

Sorry to disappoint, but, this year we decided to take a different approach. Rather than create yet another brilliant spot that is summarily rejected, we decided just to dig into the vault and re-release some of our past Super Bowl classics.

Take a look and let us know what your favorite is. My money is on the pillow fighting co-eds arguing over whether dolphins or unicorns are cuter. The one about the young ladies with udders is kind of amazing too, if a little disturbing. I seriously can't understand why they rejected these masterpieces. Anyway, with PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian 2006—Prince himself—performing at the halftime show, maybe we don't even need an ad this year ...