Publicists have the best job ev-ar. They get to tell their clients how they should appear and then tell the press how their clients should appear to them. Like this one, who's trying to sell a woman's Shaq Sex story.

Hard to believe our nation's star athletes have time to go to the gym and practice jumpshots or whatever, what with all their marketing strategy meetings and reality shows and plotting to invade China like the second coming of opium. Sports stars and their sponsors have known for years that China is the market of the future-"If only 1% of Chinese buy our sneakers, that's $300 million more in revenue blah blah..." just like every other business in the world. But the Olympics have whet athletes' appetites even more. They want to rule China. The question is, why is China letting them do it?

After coming from way ahead to lose Game 4 of the NBA Finals and leaving a less-than-stimulated Hollywood A-list in courtside development hell, the ultimate indignity of the Lakers' lost season came down to this weekend and one impromptu freestyle session Shaquille O'Neal. The deposed center, who never quite got over Kobe Bryant's comments that he might have avoided that whole rape-charge imbroglio a while back if he'd just followed Shaq's (alleged) lead and "paid his women," took the mic at a New York club and fired off a few of his traditionally clunky rhymes ("You know how I be/Last week Kobe couldn't do without me ... I'm a horse/Kobe ratted me out, that's why I'm getting divorced") before finally delivering the official Feel-Good Anthem of the Summer — and probably the de facto chant for the remainder of Kobe's career road games. It's catchier than Gary Glitter, anyway. [TMZ]

Google won't serve ads on top of some YouTube videos for fear of copyright infringement. Google's advertising partner Mogulus, a live-streaming video site, shares no such concerns. Mogulus overlays Google ads on every live streaming and recorded video uploaded to its site. The partial screenshot above shows a Mogulus user live-streaming an NBA playoff game with Google ads run along the bottom of the frame. (The NBA, like other sports leagues, strictly licenses broadcasts of its games.) Google may not be aware it's making money selling ads against copyrighted content. A tipster tells us Google agreed to to serve ads only against Mogulus's recorded content, not live videos such as the Lakers game above. A full screenshot:

• MTV names reality TV queen to head programming. Expect lots more pimping and punking! [MediaPost]
  

In the spirit of the upcoming fashion week, we decided to revisit scenes from the last New York fashion week, in September, and stumbled across this photo of NBA Commissioner David Stern on Cobrasnake, keeping it real at a Y3 party. We're glad to see he was representing in a nicely pressed suit, after all that controversy he stirred up about what NBA players can and can't wear off the court. If only there were one of him getting down with Steve Aoki.