Lost in the hoopla surrounding the McSteamy and Rebecca Gayheart sex tape is the fact that Rebecca Gayheart, aka the Mexecutioner, was once a video ho of sorts. Yeah, she's known primarily for those Noxema commercials, but all video hoes have something else they do besides showing off their asses in rap videos. It's hard to get by on $50 a day. Trust me, I should know.

Back when I was in middle school, Rebecca Gayheart was in a Heavy D video, directed by Brett Ratner, back before he was the famous director of those Rush Hour movies and what have you. Because I literally spent the better part of the '90s in a basement watching MTV, I was aware of the fact that she was dating Brett Ratner, but it didn't become clear to me until a while later how this came about.

In my later teens, towards the end of the 1990s, I spent the three hours it takes to read Russell Simmons' silly as-told-to autobio Life and Def. And if you've been reading this site for a while now, you know I'm still a little bit salty about it - perhaps because I'm black and hence it's my natural tendency to avoid books, and so, when I do read a book, I can't have it be some ol' bullshit.

Life and Def is actually fascinating, in that, even though it was obviously intended to set Rush up for a career in politics, or whatever he's been doing for the past 10 years now, it's basically nothing but a buncha stories about him sniffing cocaine and angel dust, and banging models. It's obvious there was a conscious effort to tone down that sort of subject matter, but it's not like there's a whole lot else Russell Simmons does. If Rush and his ghost writer focused only on the times he wasn't high as shit, or balls deep in some hoo-er, or both, they would have ended up with something more along the lines of a pamphlet. On the other hand, if Rush had worked with Neil Strauss on Life and Def, it may have been the best book evar, a sort of cross between Krush Groove and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

In the early '90s, Rush and Brett Ratner, who'd directed a few Public Enemy videos for Def Jam, bonded over their mutual love for banging models. It's mentioned in the book that, at one point, the two of them even considered opening their own modeling agency, so they could bang all of the models. I guess they figured that would be easier than however it is you go about banging models, if you're not a particularly good-looking guy. Rush had a shedload of money, but I'm sure a lot of those models were hesitant to get with a black guy - it might bring their price down, just like in real pr0n. Brett Ratner is short and has no talent. And keep in mind, this was back when he was still just directing rap videos. They were probably having to come out of their pockets quite a bit, a pain I'm sure most of us are familiar with.

To think, there was a time when Brett Ratner could be viewed as Rebecca Gayheart's charity work. Now look at the two of them: He's making a mint directing movies that aren't even any good, and she's in a bath tub smoking crack with some actor no one ever heard of, and the girl who was Miss Teen USA, who's smokin'. Admittedly, if I was in a bath tub with Miss Teen USA, it would be the best day of my life, even if I was on crack, and that McSteamy guy was there. (Nullus!) It just goes to show there isn't much of a future for a video ho. Rebecca Gayheart, probably because she's white and was once genuinely one of the best-looking women evar (if you're into a certain kind of woman), went about as far down that career path as you can possibly go, and look where it got her.

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