JPL dishes Rex and sex

Check out my buddy Michael Fairman's interview with OLTL hunk (and Adonis 2009 finalist) John-Paul Lavoisier.

In it, you can find out what JPL's opinion of Rex wearing a speedo is. And you'll be happy to know that, among other things, JPL appears to think his current storyline is about as ignorant as we viewers do!

Check it out!

JPL's hair MIA

Wow! The 2008 Soaphunks.net Award winner for Best Hair now barely has any left! Check out what OLTL's John-Paul Lavoisier has done to his coiffure. I'll have to see it in motion before I know what I really think of it...

OLTL's Mark Lawson wins Best Hunk

OLTL's Mark Lawson won the 2008 Best Hunk award Thursday night as the 10th Annual Soaphunks.net Award winners were announced, marking the first time in history that a newcomer has won the top award in his freshman year. Of his leading (and record-tying) eight nominations, Lawson also won the awards for Hunkiest Newcomer and Best Chest.

Also winning three trophies was B&B's Brandon Beemer, who won all of his categories except the top one. Beemer took Best Pecs, Best Abs, and Best Eyes, meaning he repeated all of his wins from 2007 while on DAYS. Beemer's wins in 2008 mark the first awards in history for B&B, which finally scored after receiving 28 total nominations.

Lawson and Beemer were the only soap hunks to win more than one trophy in 2008.

OLTL was named the year's Hunkiest Soap, the first time that sudser has won that award after six tries. It was only the second time ever that an ABC soap won Hunkiest Soap, following AMC's win in 2005.

In his first year ever as a nominee, classic soap hunk Shawn Christian of DAYS won for Best Hunk Over 40, meaning that for the first time, a single soap has now produced a winner in every single category of the Soaphunks.net Awards, as DAYS claimed a prize in the only category in which it was lacking a win.

DAYS also took the award for Most Missed Soap Hunk for its alum (and 2003 Best Hunk winner) Eric Winter. Winter has logged appearances on several primetime series this year, and he also won this category last year.

In a somewhat amazing turn of events, DAYS' James Scott, the Best Hunk winner the past two years, only converted one of his three nominations into a win in 2008. Scott easily won again for Best Voice, three-peating in a category that only he has won since its debut in 2006. Scott may have only nabbed one win this year, but one was enough to tie him with AMC's Cameron Mathison for the most Soaphunks.net Award wins ever, with 11 each.

In the narrowest margin of victory in Soaphunks.net Award history, ATWT's Van Hansis won Best Butt by one vote over Y&R's Joshua Morrow (22.73% to 22.59%). Similarly, OLTL's John-Paul Lavoisier eked out a razor-thin win for Best Hair over PAS' three-time champ Galen Gering (28.04% to 27.90%). The win was Lavoisier's first since 2002. Gering's narrow loss also meant that PAS would officially finish its awards run with no new wins, giving it a series total of 96 nominations and 22 wins.

GH scored a trophy for three of its hunks. Two-time Adonis runner-up and 2005 Best Hunk winner Greg Vaughan upset James Scott to win Most Shamefully Clothed for the second time. His co-star Steve Burton flexed his muscles in the Best Arms category with his second career win, following a victory for Best Pecs in 2003. Jason Thompson won Best Smile, an award he previously won in 2006.

Thompson fell in his other category, Best Face, to ATWT's now-fired Dylan Bruce. Bruce's win marks the first time that a CBS actor has won in that category.

Overall, OLTL won a leading five awards, followed by B&B, DAYS, and GH with three each. ATWT won two, while AMC, GL, PAS, and Y&R were shut out.

Among networks, ABC had eight wins, with CBS taking five and NBC three.

And yes, once again, Y&R's Thad Luckinbill went home empty-handed. His two losses leave him with 16 career nominations and no wins.

For the complete race-by-race results this year, visit http://soaphunks.net/awards-year.php?year=2008.

The polls are open!

It's December 1st, so voting for the 10th Annual Soaphunks.net Awards officially started at midnight ET. You can access the ballot at soaphunks.net/vote.

As has been the case the last few years, we have bent over backwards to provide evidence for each nomination to help make you a more informed voter. "Review the Evidence" links are all over the ballot. Click them before voting!

And as usual, in the top category of Best Hunk, we have For Your Consideration videos of all of the five nominees' hunkitude from 2008. Behold the beauty, then go vote!

10th Annual Soaphunks.net Award Nominations Announced!

OLTL newcomer Mark Lawson scored a record-tying eight nods Wednesday as the 10th Annual Soaphunks.net Award nominations were unveiled at soaphunks.net. 80 nominations were announced covering 16 categories.

Lawson's eight nominations include the top category, Best Hunk, and tie him with Mark Collier's record-setting number of mentions from 2004.

Also up for Best Hunk and scoring four nominations each were B&B's Brandon Beemer, DAYS' Shawn Christian, OLTL's John-Paul Lavoisier, and PASSIONS' Eric Martsolf, who helped that now-cancelled soap to its final haul of eight total nominations, for a series total of 96 nominations.

Christian's nod marks the first time in awards history that a contender for Best Hunk Over 40 also landed in the overall top category. Beemer, Lavoisier, and Martsolf each have one
previous Best Hunk nomination, though none of them has ever won it. Beemer is the only nominee to have also been in the top category last year.

DAYS' James Scott, who won Best Hunk in 2006 and 2007, in addition to summertime Adonis titles both years, was left out of the race this year, though he did score three other mentions,
including Best Chest and Most Shamefully Clothed. (His relative lack of onscreen shirtlessness in 2008 was to blame.)

A total of 42 soap hunks received nominations this year, five more than in 2006 or 2007. With 20 nominations, OLTL led all shows for the first time in history, helping ABC lead the
networks with 33 nominations. (ABC was in last place in 2007 on that count.) CBS scored 28 nods, and NBC nabbed 11. DirecTV's network The 101, which aired the final season of
PASSIONS after it left NBC, got credit for that show's eight nominations in 2008.

Other points of interest:

• B&B had its best year ever in the nominations, thanks to strong showings by Beemer and newcomer Texas Battle. The show managed seven nominations.


• ATWT's Jon Prescott scored a Hunkiest Newcomer nomination, despite the fact that he has already been released from the sudser. Perhaps even more noteworthy was the strong showing of his former co-star, Dylan Bruce. He has also been let go from the soap, but managed four total nominations, tying him for second place this year.


• The two nominations for Y&R's Thad Luckinbill (Best Hair & Most Shamefully Clothed) extend his unfortunate lead in the no-wins race, with 16 career nominations but no trophies.


• GL crashed and burned this year, scoring a worst-ever single nomination (Murray Bartlett for Best Voice).
  
• Like it or not, the absence of James Scott (and GH's Greg Vaughan) in the Best Hunk category sets up the most unpredictable Best Hunk race in years.

The entire list of nominations can be streamed online, while the text version is also available. Complete year-by-year history of the awards is also available online.

As always, voting begins December 1 at soaphunks.net.

Egglesfield bumped at AMC

Bummer. The character of Joshua Madden, for which AMC concocted one of the biggest ret-cons in soap opera history, has been backburnered so badly that the soap has bumped his portrayer to recurring status.

That means that the hunkalicious Colin Egglesfield is, for all intents and purposes, off of AMC. What a waste!

Egglesfield was an immediate hit with soap hunk watchers, amassing seven Soaphunks.net Award nominations and winning the 2005 prize for Hunkiest Newcomer. That award may be starting to become a curse: of the seven hunks to win it, only two (OLTL's John-Paul Lavoisier and ATWT's Jake Silbermann) are still with their respective soaps.

35th Annual Daytime Emmy Nominations Announced

The nominees for the 35th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards were announced this morning. Of the three people I was really rooting for this year (ATWT's Austin Peck and OLTL's Kathy Brier & John-Paul Lavoisier), a grand total of NONE of them got included. So ho-hum, here's this year's list of the (mostly) usual suspects:

Outstanding Drama Series
General Hospital (ABC)
Guiding Light (CBS)
One Life to Live (ABC)
The Young and the Restless (CBS)

Outstanding Lead Actor
Peter Bergman, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
David Canary, All My Children (ABC)
Anthony Geary, General Hospital (ABC)
Christian LeBlanc, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Thaao Penghlis, Days of our Lives (NBC)

Outstanding Lead Actress
Crystal Chappell, Guiding Light (CBS)
Jeanne Cooper, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Nicole Forester, Guiding Light (CBS)
Michelle Stafford, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Maura West, As the World Turns (CBS)

Outstanding Supporting Actor
Daniel Cosgrove, Guiding Light (CBS)
Trent Dawson, As the World Turns (CBS)
Brian Kerwin, One Life to Live (ABC)
Greg Rikaart, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Kristoff St. John, The Young and the Restless (CBS)

Outstanding Supporting Actress
Tracey Bregman, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Judi Evans, Days of our Lives (NBC)
Kelley Menighan Hensley, As the World Turns (CBS)
Gina Tognoni, Guiding Light (CBS)
Heather Tom, The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS)

Outstanding Younger Actor
Darin Brooks, Days of our Lives (NBC)
Van Hansis, As the World Turns (CBS)
Bryton McClure, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Tom Pelphrey, Guiding Light (CBS)
Jesse Soffer, As the World Turns (CBS)

Outstanding Younger Actress
Vail Bloom, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Jennifer Landon, As the World Turns (CBS)
Rachel Melvin, Days of our Lives (NBC)
Emily O'Brien, The Young and the Restless (CBS)
Tamin Sursok, The Young and the Restless (CBS)

Outstanding Daytime Drama Writing Team
The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS)
General Hospital (ABC)
Guiding Light (CBS)
One Life to Live (ABC)
The Young and the Restless (CBS)

Outstanding Daytime Drama Directing Team
All My Children (ABC)
The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS)
General Hospital (ABC)
One Life to Live (ABC)

Overpraised: Y&R, which even its fans said had an off year. You'd never know it from its annual truckload of nominations. If it was so damn good, why did Lynn Marie Latham just get shown the door?

Underpraised: OLTL, which nabbed a deserved Best Show nom, but only one acting nom to go with it. How Trevor St. John, Tuc Watkins, John-Paul Lavoisier, and ESPECIALLY Kathy Brier got the shaft is beyond me.

Duly praised: ATWT, which was not worthy of a Show or Writing nomination, and got neither. However, its large cast of strong actors got plenty of mentions, although Austin Peck was the show's most compelling performer this year and was likely just sidelined because of his past work on DAYS. Wake up Academy: Peck was the man most deserving that was left wanting this morning. He certainly had more to offer than Dawson (an actor I adore), who was mostly relegated to pouring coffee at the diner in 2007.

Right amount of praise but to the wrong people: DAYS hasn't had four acting nominations in the same year in eons, so I'm thrilled to see it back in contention. But some of the choices here still boggle the mind. Judi Evans? Thaao Penghlis? What about Alison Sweeney or James Scott? Darin Brooks over Blake Berris? Rachel Melvin is the only one I can really see.

Join us tonight in chat (10pm ET/7pm PT) to get my full snarky commentary on this decidedly uninspired set of nominations.

An open letter to John-Paul Lavoisier

Dear John-Paul Lavoisier,

I just had to write and let you know how absolutely unmissable you now are as Rex Balsom on OLTL. Now don't get me wrong, I've been a fan of yours since your first days in Llanview, when you won your first Soaphunks.net Award, for Hunkiest Newcomer.

I even stuck with you when you stayed all covered up, enough so that you earned another win, this time as Most Shamefully Clothed. And most steadfastly, I stuck by you during some truly troubling eggbeater hairstyles.

But JPL, your time is now. Your hair looks PERFECT. (Never change it!) Your body looks wonderful. Your acting is excellent. You radiate chemistry with your co-stars, and you possess a charisma rare in actors of your age in this genre. An Emmy nomination has been due for years, and I am betting this year it finally comes. I truly look forward to seeing what you have in store for me on OLTL each day now.

Hot. Sexy. Funny. Talented. It's just not fair that one guy could be all four of those things at once. Make room for one more adjective: appreciated. Because you are.

Yours truly,

soapy :)