Mark Lawson running around without underwear!

Hehe, well sort of. Check out OLTL superhunk Mark Lawson's recent interview on "Good Day LA."

11th Annual Soaphunks.net Awards announced!

With six nods each, DAYS' Shawn Christian and OLTL's Mark Lawson led all nominees Wednesday as the 11th Annual Soaphunks.net Award nominations were announced live at soaphunks.net. 80 nominations were announced covering 16 categories.

Both Christian and Lawson placed in the top category, Best Hunk, along with B&B's Brandon Beemer, OLTL's David Fumero, and Y&R's Daniel Goddard.

Lawson won Best Hunk last year, while Fumero won in both 2001 & 2002. Beemer is now only the third person to be nominated for the top award in three consecutive years. This is Christian's second career Best Hunk nod, and Goddard's debut appearance here marks Y&R's first inclusion in the top category since 2005.

A total of 39 soap hunks received nominations this year, a tie for the second-most ever. With 18 nominations, OLTL led all shows for the second consecutive year, helping ABC lead the
networks with 33 nominations. CBS scored 28 nods, and NBC nabbed 19.

Other points of interest:

• The good news for CBS: B&B once again broke its own record for nominations, with nine nods spread amongst Beemer, Don Diamont (scoring his 26th career mention), Texas Battle, and Rick Hearst. Similarly, sister soap Y&R had its second-best year ever, with 14 nominations. (The CBS flagship soap received 17 nominations in 2000.)


• The bad news for CBS: ATWT posted its worst showing in six years, scoring only three nominations. What's worse: the de-hunkified sudser saw all three of those nods (Van Hansis, Billy Magnussen, & Jake Silbermann) in the Most Shamefully Clothed Category. Memo to ATWT's powers-that-be: Shirts! Off! More!

• The nominations for Murray Bartlett and Lawrence St. Victor mark the final nods for GL, bringing its series total to 28 nominations...and no wins.

• Will you guys ever give the boy a trophy? The Soaphunks.net Susan Lucci, Y&R's Thad Luckinbill, is back with two more nominations, extending his unfortunate lead in the no-wins race, with 18 career nominations but no wins.


• AMC's Cameron Mathison, suddenly finding himself eligible for Best Hunk Over 40 honors, picked up two more nominations this year, widening his lead as the most nominated soap hunk ever, with 37 career nominations.

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.

OLTL to release Brotherton

From Daytime Confidential:

Soap Opera Network is reporting that OLTL's John Brotherton will soon be released from his contract. The Llanview heartthrob has been on the canvas since 2007 but has struggled for airtime in recent months.

A 2-time Soaphunks.net Award nominee, Brotherton has no final air date at this time.

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...

Fairman and the hunks

Why are you fooling around here when you could be reading Michael Fairman's latest soap hunk interviews?

The soap guru's most recent chats with my site's lovelies include pow-wows with OLTL's hilarious Tuc Watkins and GH's prince-a-licious Tyler Christopher. Check them out!

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.

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 :)