John Brownlee here. Before I started guest-blogging here, Joel asked me, as temporary co-chair of his consumerist Algonquin Round Table, if I had any swell ideas. Chomping on a cigar, he stretched the fat man suspenders with the dollar symbols he likes to wear just for such dramatic gestures as far from his nipples as they would go, then let them go with a snap that made me wince.Then he looked at me with an expression half composed of expectation, the other half contempt. But I wasn’t cowed – I did have a swell idea.

“The Consumerist is all about the dark side of consumerism, right?” I enthused. “So why not an entire week devoted to the darkest (yet most ancient!) kind of consumerism there is? A week filled with exposes and reader anecdotes! I’m talking, of course, about prostitution.We can call it ‘John Week’! Get it? It’s like a pun or something. Because my name is J…”

“I know what your name is,” Joel snapped.

“Just checking, because the New York Times certainly doesn’t,” I replied. “And the best thing about this idea is you’ll be in Vegas, so you can do some reporting from the front! Or the back, if you prefer. Sous casa, after all!”

Anyway, obvious from the last week’s stories is the fact that that idea didn’t exactly fly. But my guesting stint is running down, Joel’s MIA in Vegas and I haven’t heard a peep from the Gawker overlords. So a small taste of what could have been:

How did a Wollochet Bay area man rack up $22,000 in prostitution bills that led to an assault and shooting?

Well, maybe he owed only $2,200 or so.

Pierce County sheriff
s spokesman Ed Troyer said Thursday that Terry Riggs, 57, told investigators he lent $5,000 to a 21-year-old woman to buy a car and she was paying him back with sex, at $250 per turn.

Then she changed the price and gave him a bill,
Troyer said.

Corrie Lynn Githens
price went from $250 to $2,500 per act, Troyer said.

That small quote is a lot less hysterical than the entire article. And we thought Sony was screwing us out of our hard earned cash.

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