For those of you who don’t remember, Mick Foley spent some time in ECW in the mid-nineties after his stint with WCW and before joining the WWF in 1996. These days, in addition to sporadic WWE appearances, Foley is promoting his new book, The Hardcore Diaries, which debuted last week at number 7 on The New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers list. Not too shabby, Cactus Jack!

The successful debut probably came as no surprise to Foley. His other autobiographies, Foley is Good: And the Real World is Faker Than Wrestling and Have a Nice Day : A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks both made it to the NYT Bestsellers list.

In addition to his bestselling memoirs, Foley has penned a number of fictional works, including two novels and a handful of children’s stories.

An Audiofile reviewer called his first novel Tietam Brown, “an unusual mix of insanity, perversity, and humor.” Publishers’ Weekly described his second novel, Scooter, as a coming of age story with “adroitly drawn characters, dark humor and a plot that never loses momentum.”

Foley’s has also written the following children’s books:

• Mick Foley’s Halloween Hijinx
• Mick Foley’s Christmas Chaos
• Tales from Wrescal Lane

Mick Foley is scheduled to speak about his wrestling and writing careers at MIT on April 17th, 2007. His lecture is offered in conjunction with a Comparative Media Studies course on professional wrestling.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that we’re huge Shelly Martinez fans. Yes, she’s hot, but more than that, it’s fun to watch her wrestle. So why is Shelly’s ECW persona Ariel stuck shrieking at ringside every week as Kevin Thorn throws his pasty bulk around the ring?

We want to see Shelly the way she was when she was working the indy wrestling scene, back when they actually let her wrestle. And while they’re at it, the powers-that-be at ECW might want to do a little more with Kelly Kelly, Layla, and Brooke - the weekly dance routine is getting old fast.

If you haven’t seen pre-ECW Shelly Martinez in the ring, make sure to check out the huge photo gallery at DarkViolence.com.

Ashley Massaro is certainly keeping her name in the spotlight. Last week she celebrated the release of her second Playboy pictorial, and tonight she and Kane appear in guest spots on the CW’s Smallville.

According to Ashley, she plays “an ass-kicking babe named Athena” and Kane takes on the role of “Titan, a badass alien cyborg-type creature who escaped from the Phantom Zone.” You can read more about Ashley’s Smallville experience in the Inside WWE interview she did last month.

The episode, entitled “Combat,” airs Thursday, March 22nd at 8pm EST.

In other Ashley Massaro news, fans still have at least one more chance to catch her at a live Playboy Magazine autograph session in Chicago, IL on March 26th, 2007 from 11:00am -1:00pm. The signing will take place at the Virgin Megastore, 540 N. Michigan Ave.

It’s nice to see Tricia Helfer branching out from her role as Number Six on the Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica. In February 2007, we got to see a whole lot more of Tricia in her nude Playboy Magazine spread, and tonight, she starred in an episode of Supernatural entitled “Roadkill.”

Tricia Helfer turned in a good performance, and she makes an excellent scream queen. Fans can read more about Tricia, including her experience working on Supernatural, her thoughts on the Playboy pictorial, and her future acting aspirations in today’s Houston Chronicle.

Layla, Kelly, and Brooke brought Extreme Exposé to the ECW ring again last night, and once again they had stage props, this time canes.

Why, in the name of old school ECW, would you send three divas into the ring with canes and not have them use the canes as weapons? When I saw the canes, I immediately thought of the Sandman who rarely entered the ring without a Singapore cane or a spool of barbed wire. (By the way, there’s great Singapore Cane match footage on The Rise and Fall of ECW.)

Anyway, the ladies of Extreme Exposé did their usual on stage gyrating, Layla did a split, and then the cane-bearing divas were chased away by Snitsky so he could make his in-ring ECW debut. Enough with the eye candy already - there’s plenty of that in the new Extreme Exposé studio shoot pics. Let’s see what Kelly, Brooke, and Layla are really made of in the ring!