This is the back cover of this week’s New Yorker — and that’s my friend of 14 years, actor (and now model!) Mark Chaet.

On Friday I was at the car dealership and before getting out of my car looked around to see if there was anything I needed to take in with me: my wallet, my keys, etc. On the passenger seat was the new New Yorker, which had arrived that day, turned face down. Otherwise I probably never would have seen this back cover. I looked over, and here was my reaction: “That looks like Mark Chaet. That is Mark Chaet. No, I’m seeing things. Looks like him, though.” Then I picked it up and held it closer. “That is Mark Chaet! It’s Mark Chaet!” (Around our house, everything “Mark” is either “Mark Chaet” or “Mark Stephenson” because we have two actor friends of long standing named Mark.)

I called him on my cellphone and said, “Mark Chaet, you’re famous! Even moreso! I’m here at the dealership buying a new car and I just saw you on the back of The New Yorker!”

Here’s the kind of guy Mark is. His reply was, “You’re buying a new car? Cool! What kind?”

This ad campaign (including its accompanying television spot) is cleared to run for up to a year in places like The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and other major print media, so we’ll be seeing a lot more of Mark. Our family has grown used to seeing Mark Chaet on TV, in movies, on stage, in real life — but I never expected to be holding his picture in my hands while I’m in bed. And now he’s on my blog. Congratulations for him — but if I roll over in the middle of the night and find him next to me I’ll know it’s gone too far.

The Independent also had this story on a Chinese actress who finally got fed up with the casting couch — and what she did about it.

Chinese actress uses Web to expose the ‘rule’ of sex-for-roles
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

When the aspiring actress Zhang Yu decided she wanted to blow the whistle on some of China’s top TV and film-makers – those who have demanded sex in return for roles in their soap operas and movies – she chose the internet to make her case.

Zhang says she won all her roles through sleeping with the directors, assistant directors or men in charge of casting. She also made films herself – of the casting couch sessions. Then she rocked the film and TV world by releasing 20 graphic sex videos of her and a host of big names.

From London’s Independent. This one gives a truer picture of his enormous influence on the superhero comics of the times — and on Marvel’s fortunes.

Forthwith follows further evidence of the decline in testosterone among my gender.

Almost 100 years ago, Ernest Shackleton and his crew braved the Antarctic for two years almost completely without supplies once the pack ice closed in crushed their ship.

Today over on msnbc.com, reporter Miguel Llanos writes about his own voyage to the antarctic. He begins by complaining about his lost luggage, and about having to try on different cold-weather clothes. Men, read it here and weep.

“We will never allow anyone to control any part of Iraq,” said the Iraqi prime minister.

And from all reports, that’s exactly the situation.

Sent in by Mike Folie. Clicking here will be well worth your time.

In August 2005, no doubt dazed by my latest literary allusion, Doug asked me for a list of what he should read. So by God, I gave him one. What writer wouldn’t?

In honor of Doug’s 50th, I’ve decided to share it with you, too. It’s still called “Doug’s Reading List,” even though Doug didn’t draw it up and has proved immune to its wisdom. Don’t let that stop you, though. Sadly lacking in a college degree in literature, but determined to hold your own at fancy-schmanzy wine-and-cheese events? Then this is the list for you!

Click here for the page hosting the list.

Wanna pick a fight on the contents of the list? Please do. Post a comment. I eagerly await it.

Today is the 50th birthday of my good friend Doug Hackney.

I met Doug at the Inc. magazine conference in 2001. October of 2001. We were among the few who were “brave” enough to travel to a conference that soon after September 11th. Over a drink at the end of the conference we talked for an hour and a half not about business, but about life and the state of the world — and five years later we’re still having that conversation.

In thinking about what to get Doug, it occurred to me that Doug doesn’t need a damn thing. (Most of us don’t.) Visit his website at hackneys.com and you’ll see that he and his wife Stephanie are world travelers who actually want fewer things, not more. So I figured for his 50th I would just let him know how much I’ve enjoyed that conversation, and how much I admire his dedication to living his own life the way he wants, and helping people wherever and whenever he can. They call it “exploring the world and meeting its people.”

At the top, you see a photo of Doug from last year in the seat of a Kubota tractor clearing debris from the wreckage of people’s homes in Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Below are Doug, Steph, and a friend, after clearing wreckage for a grandmother and her two granddaughters.

Doug is good people. Happy 50th.

Today’s LA Times has a nice obit for Dave Cockrum — and they even spelled his name right.

My favorite newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, ran this photo on Thanksgiving Day. Is it just me, or does it look as though along with turkey, the mission serves human head on a platter?