The Ghostbusters of Porn
When you’re a porn star and your content gets pirated, who you gonna call? Takedown Piracy. Read it here.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
The Last Showgirl
Really enjoyed The Last Showgirl. Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis are wonderful. Sweet, atmospheric.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Black and White
Have you subscribed to my newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl? The latest edition is out, and it’s a real good time.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
An Appreciation of Pee-wee's Playhouse
I wrote an appreciation of Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the late, great Paul Reubens for HILOBROW. Read it here.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Alan Moore Foresees the Future of Pornography
Alan Moore foresees the future of mobile phone pornography in 1982’s The Saga of the Swamp Thing #1, in which a man “looks at his hand” where “something shimmers” and “a blue lady is dancing just for him.”
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Books I Read: A Child's Life and Other Stories
I can’t remember the first time I read A Child’s Life and Other Stories, but it would have been over 20 years ago. The book seared itself into my brain. The art spellbound me, the stories were set in the Bay Area where I had grown up, and the rage and pain of a young person who was neglected at home and acting out sexually and through drugs and alcohol was deeply familiar to me. I could say this book changed my life, but that sounds overdramatic and like a cliche. I will say that when I sat down to reread the book, I wondered if it would have the same effect on me all these years later. And it did. It makes me want to be braver and more reckless and more honest in my own work. And that’s invaluable. Thank you, Phoebe Gloeckner.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
What I'm Loving (Decor Edition)
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Research About My Newsletter
Image credit: Nikola Tamindzic
Research shows that people who subscribe to my newsletter have more and better sex than people who don’t.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
XXX
The last adult theater in Los Angeles: Tiki Adult Theatre. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Books I Read: Pretending Is Lying
What a curious ride Pretending Is Lying by Dominique Goblet is. A hazy graphic memoir. A disturbing accounting of childhood trauma and its consequences. A visual depiction of navigating life, relationships, and love that reels through time and place to land defiantly nowhere. I really liked it. Not for the unimaginative.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
"I Went to ...": A New Series for The Reverse Cowgirl
Over on my newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl, I’ve launched a new series: “I Went to …” In each installment, I’ll share my latest reporting adventure. First up: "I Went to a Nude Figure Drawing Class.” Make sure to subscribe.
The New Print Playboy Magazine Is Underwhelming
In my newsletter, I wrote about Playboy magazine’s return to print as an annual. It was a pretty disappointing experience with a few exceptions. Find out what I liked and what I didn’t here and make sure to subscribe.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Books I Read: Over Easy
Wow wow wow. Over Easy is so great! This book was such a delight, and I read it slower and slower as I neared completion because I didn’t want it to end. I’m a bit younger than author Mimi Pond, but I grew up in the East Bay so the people types and general places and all over vibe was very familiar to me. I appreciate that she focused on this important place and special time and fantastic cast of characters rather than feeling like she had to deliver up some sort of action-oriented plot. I loved this book. I’m sure I’ll read it again in the future.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
I'm a Ghost
The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating story about ghosting written by Stella Tan and illustrated by Liana Finck. Nota bene: “But those who disappear on their paramours have their reasons for going silent.”
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Munch
A selection of art books for sale at an estate sale. For more of my L.A. photographs, follow me on Instagram.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Books I Read: After land
After Land is an extremely strange book by Chris Taylor. I loved it for the images. It’s haunting and weird and striking. The story is elusive and slippery. If you’re looking for something that’s different, this book is that.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Watch out!
Image credit: Dina Litovsky
In this week’s edition of The Reverse Cowgirl Roundup: a dominatrix slips on her boxing gloves, a new board game posits players as strippers, a famous actress shares a secret about her private parts, and more.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Data Baby Is a New York Public Library Book of the Day
Thank you so much to The New York Public Library for making my memoir, Data Baby, a Book of the Day!
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Books I Read: The Road - A Graphic Novel Adaptation
I was really looking forward to reading this graphic novel adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by Manu Larcenet, and I was equally disappointed. The book looks impressive: Hardback! Generously sized! Nicely printed! But the contents amount to a grim, underwhelming, forced march (ha!) through a hellscape that reduces McCarthy’s brilliant novel into snatches of dialogue that amount to nothing. Where is the literary-ness? Where is the lyricism? Where is the new thing ideally produced when a work is adapted into another form? Not here. I’m not fundamentally opposed to graphic adaptations of literary works—I loved Brad Ricca and Courtney Sieh’s artful adaptation of Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House—but this ain’t it.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Fuck You, Pay Me #19: Best of Forbes.com
Porn star in wax, Las Vegas, NV | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
This is part 19 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
Off and on for a period of many years, I was a contributor to Forbes.com. Earlier this month, I decided to refocus my energies away from someone else’s website and on my newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl. Here are some of the best things I posted on Forbes.com, from the Oscars of porn to the biggest strip club in America.
To my right, an older man—maybe 60, or 70—is reading the evening's program with a small yellow flashlight.
To my left, a young Asian woman is studying her program as if cramming for a final.
"WE CAN'T HEAR YOU!" a man behind us screams.
On the stage, a woman whose breasts risk overflowing the neckline of her sparkling dress is at the microphone, but there is a technical difficulty, and we can't hear what she's saying.
It doesn't really matter. This is porn.
“How the Biggest Strip Club in America Grinds”
If you drive north from Miami, Florida, on Interstate 95 to Miami Gardens and make a series of turns, you'll end up at the front door of Tootsie's Cabaret, the biggest strip club in America.
On the late Friday afternoon I was there, the massive parking lot was filling up slowly. A valet directed me to the VIP parking, where I was greeted and led down a maze of hallways to an office past a stack of shelves overflowing with a rainbow of Tootsie's T-shirts to the office of Ed Anakar, the director of operations and president of RCI Management Services Inc. In other words, he works for RCI Hospitality Holdings, a publicly-traded, Houston-based corporation that until last year was known as Rick's Cabaret. Today, RCI operates over 40 establishments in the hospitality space, among them: Rick's Cabaret and Vivid Cabaret in New York City, Bombshells in Houston and Down in Texas Saloon in Austin, and Club Onyx in Charlotte and The Seville in Minneapolis. You can find RCI on the NASDAQ under RICK.
“Paul Manafort's Purported $15,000 Ostrich Jacket Is the Talk of the Trial”
Who would spend $15,000 on an ostrich jacket? If you believe Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye, Paul Manafort would. The high-priced fashion item was cited today on the first day of the trial of the lobbyist and former President Donald Trump campaign manager. Manafort has been charged with 18 counts of bank and tax fraud. He is being tried in Alexandria, Virginia.
Asonye made the assertion in court in an effort to shed light on Manafort's income and seemingly extravagant spending habits. According to the Washington Post, “the most peculiar new detail [Asonye] offered was on Manafort's spending, explaining how the lobbyist spent so much on menswear. He had a $15,000 jacket, Asonye said, ‘made from an ostrich.’”
“Playboy Is Naked Again and It Is Awesome”
Playboy is back to peddling nudes.
Just in time for Valentine's Day, Playboy has announced its 63-year-old magazine will return to publishing naked women.
In 2015, the magazine, faced with competition from the internet where anything goes when it comes to sex, stopped running images of unclothed young ladies.
By all accounts, including my own, the results were terrible.
Now, Playboy Enterprises is back in the skin game with its March/April 2017 issue.
I took the liberty of downloading a copy. (Want one? It's $5.99.)
Here's why I like it.
“The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star”
You might think being a male porn star is easy. Have sex for a living? That's a piece of cake.
So, what can some of the biggest woodsmen in the porn business teach us about work?
As it turns out, guys who get it up for a paycheck have something to offer when it comes to career advice.
I heard from seven of Porn Valley's biggest studs via email and got the secrets to becoming a successful working stiff.
About I My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email