Romanian Page Views Surge
When last week’s Heck Of A Guy web stats showed an impressive increase in page views for a three year old post, I investigated, only to find that the surge of interest originated almost exclusively from a handful of sites in Romania. Now, Heck Of A Guy has long had loyal readers in Romania but it has never been what one would call BIG in Romania. Why the spike in Romanian viewers? Well, …
It turns out all of the contributing Romanian sites had one common element – the image atop this post. That graphic varied only in that some had one superimposed label or another (see below) while others were unmarked.
The Back Story
Featuring Leonard Cohen, Mihaela, Ira Nadel, & DrHGuy
All of the Romanian sites had taken the photo directly from the June 22nd, 2009 Heck Of A Guy post, That Leonard Cohen Article With His Romanian Girlfriend Michelle In The Opening Photo,1 which was itself an enhancement of a May 18, 2007 post, The Best Leonard Cohen Article You’ve Never Read – At Least Not Recently. Online. Probably, which, in turn, had featured the photo that had appeared in the Sept 1994 MOJO article, “Leonard Cohen” by John Walsh.
And how was the photo used? This is a screen capture showing the first part of the article (in Google English translation) on Nefiltrat, which is representative of the stories on the other sites:
Nefiltrat.ro and the other sites claim that, in the words of the libertatea.ro headline (again according to Google English translation),
The source quoted is Various Positions by Ira Nadel:
Nadel Cohen said in his biography that Romanian woman was the only woman in his life was a bust artist that impressive, the rest of his life with all women small breasts.Interestingly, all Nadel said about Cohen that has been a lifetime love women with small breasts, the only exception being Romanian, owner of a prominent bust, as can be seen in the photo.2
One of the sites tried to find Leonard Cohen’s friend:
Nefiltrat.ro reporters tried to track Romanian, but details about it are quite a few. It seems that this is called Mihaela N. (Cohen Michelle told him, because he could not pronounce Mihaela), that comes from a family of teachers, that is born in a village near Slatina and she emigrated to Greece the mid 70s. She lived in Hydra until the 90s, after which nobody has ever seen. Do not know how she met Cohen, but it is pretty obvious that it was not too hard to conquer, especially because they say it was the absolute irresistible.3
Leonard Cohen: Sexy Women! Sexy Songs!
As for me, I’m thinking that those Romanians know how to write a headline.
- The version of the photo posted at Heck Of A Guy had been photo edited to enhance its appearance on the web site. The same, unmistakeable editing can be seen on the photo used on the Romanian sites [↩]
- Libertatea.ro [↩]
- Nefiltra.ro [↩]
