HOW IMPROV CAN HELP YOUR CAREER

A few weeks ago, I did a reading. Not many people showed up. Some people can't stand doing readings when hardly anyone is in the audience. It doesn't matter that much to me. One time, years ago, I did a reading, and there were two people in the audience. Generally, I think of every reading as a dress rehearsal for something else. 

Earlier this year, I took an improv class at Second City. If you're going to do improv, this is the place to do it. I wasn't even sure what improv was. I figured I'd stand in a room with other people, and eventually I would stand in front of the group and do something wacky, and everyone would laugh.

We started out in a small theater with a tiny stage, but after that, we split into groups, and we sat in a classroom. It was like being in school again. Maybe there were a dozen people in the class. The teacher was middle-aged, very skinny, and unshaven. He looked like he hadn't eaten in a long time. He wore long sleeves every day. I tried not to draw conclusions. 

It was an intensive workshop, so we went all day for three days in a row. One guy was from somewhere like Tennessee, and he hypnotized kids in classrooms as part of some sort of education. I think it had to do with teaching children what being susceptible is. There were other random people there. A young woman who was spunky, pretty. One of those burly guys who's funnier than you'll ever be, no matter what. 

We learned how to do space work, which is basically interacting with an object that isn't there, which is harder than you'd think. And we got into pairs and acted out stories without saying no. And we stood in a circle and played games that had to do with words and not thinking.

By the last day, I found myself lying on the floor on my back. There was another guy who was sort of above me in a chair, and he was pretending we were on a rocket ship heading into outer space. I went with it. I didn't have a problem going where he wanted to go. I held on and played along, and for all I know we got there. 

So, the reading I did a few weeks ago was the first time I had a chance to use my improvisational skills since I did the improv class. Basically, I didn't move as I read the story, except for once. It was when the wife who is telling the story describes a time that the husband in the story drew an imaginary circle around them and told her that they live together in this safety bubble. At that point in the story, I spun my hands through the air, showing the small crowd what the bubble was like.

Later, that was the part that people mentioned. They liked that. I don't know if they liked it because I flailed my arms in the air, or because they knew what I meant when I showed them that space where it's two people in a bubble together and everyone else is in another universe.

I WANT TO BE A MALE PORN STAR

One of the most popular pieces I've ever written is a post I wrote for Forbes: "The Hardest Thing About Being A Male Porn Star."  

I wrote it one way at first, and then my editor said I should rewrite it in another way, so I did that, and I thought she was wrong, but she wasn't wrong -- she was right. 

At this moment, the post has 945,210 views, and it gets over 1,000 more views every day. Most of its readers come from search. I'm not sure what they're Googling, but my guess is it's some combination of "male" and "porn" and "star."

I took the photo you see here of a guy who was at a porn convention in the Midwest. A lot of guys were wearing T-shirts with racy slogans on them. Another guy's read, "I WOULD CUDDLE YOU SO HARD." I don't know who the men are that like my post on male porn stars so much, but I imagine they are guys like these. Average guys. Guys who like porn. Fans of superheroes, cuddling, and women.

Since I wrote the original post, I've gotten over 100 emails from guys who want to be male porn stars. They email me from across the country and around the world: Florida, Pakistan, Suriname. They have this idea that I can help them break into the adult movie business. That's not what I do, and it's a tough thing to do. These days, especially. Unless you ride in on a girl's coattails, and that's another story altogether.

Sometimes, I email them back. I only write one thing: "Why do you want to be a male porn star?" Sometimes, they reply. Mostly, they say the same thing. They never really explain it. Not in way that I can understand it, anyway. I'm a woman. They're a man. The lack of understanding is the difference between us.

A few days ago, a guy emailed me about becoming a male porn star. "I need to talk to you!" he wrote. "You seem like you have a lot of info that will help me. Send me an email when you have time please." I emailed him back, asking why he wants to be a male porn star. "I like it," he replied. "I want to make money." Not long after, he emailed again. "I find myself into it," he told me. I didn't respond. "Did I mention something wrong?" he wanted to know. He emailed me again. "Are you still there?" he asked. He kept emailing. "Can you please get back with me?" he pleaded. I didn't know what to tell him.

HAPPY BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH

I wrote a piece for Women's Health on "What No One Tells You About Breast Cancer."  

My own breasts had tried to kill me. My tits had turned traitorous. I could no longer pretend I was immortal; I was fallible, imperfect, vulnerable. During chemo, I wanted to pick up the beeping IV machine pumping toxic fluid into me and throw it against a wall. I couldn’t. As much as I hate to admit it, cancer cowed me. It changed my cells, and it altered my sense of self, turning my bravery into anxiety, my recklessness into OCD, my braggadocio into silence.

WHAT I DIDN'T SAY

Yesterday, I wrote a post on my Forbes blog about a woman who runs an adult store on Oahu. Here's what I didn't include. 

1. A movie called "Jock Itch."
   
2. A movie called "Active Booty." 
3. A movie called "This Is Definitely Not Ugly Betty: A XXX Tranny Parody." 
4. That one of the store's most popular sex toys is the Glow Stoker, because it is transparent.
   
5. A movie called "MILFs of Japan." 
6. A movie called "Sensual Emotion." 
7. A movie called "Island Girls." 
8. The conversation we had about when she mops out the arcade. 
9. When I asked her why the Japanese come here to get adult movies, and she told me it's because the Japanese adult movies are censored, and then she said, "They want to see vagina. They want to see penetration." 
10. That some of the Japanese buy a lot of adult movies and then take it back to Japan and sell it. 
11. The part where she talked about Hawaii's "shaka vibe." 
12. The part where she said of her customers, "I'm not your mom."
    
13. The fact that the arcade also had video poker games. 
14. That she kept calling the back room with booths where you can watch adult videos "The Arcade," and I kept calling it "The Jack Shack," and she said of calling it "The Arcade" that, "It makes it sound nicer," which is true.
    
15. When I asked her who comes into the store, and she said, "Everybody."  

GUN TOURISM

For my latest Forbes post, I explored gun tourism in Hawaii:

In fact, as you walk down Kalakaua, you’ll see guys holding signs for shooting ranges and wearing T-shirts with targets on them. It’s their job to bring tourists to the smattering of shooting ranges in the area. One flyer offered “REAL GUNS” and “FACTORY AMMO” at the SWAT Gun Club. Another displayed the different firearms — from a 9-mm Beretta to an AK-47 — you could shoot at the Hawaii Gun Club.

It was like Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California — except for instead of burning incense and selling hemp necklaces, they were hawking the fruits of the Second Amendment.

ME AND MY .22

I went shooting and wrote about it for Forbes: "A Girl and a .22." I had a terrific time doing this piece, and my teacher was great.

The "firearms store" at the center of the story was fantastic. I was happier than a pig in shit when I was taking the photos.  

I love this shirt. (Ammo is in short supply.)

Last Wednesday, I drove out to GAT Gus in East Dundee, Illinois, about an hour northwest of Chicago. Located down the street from Santa’s Village Azoosment Park (the day I drove by, beyond the over-sized candy cane-framed entrance, the park was still and silent) and next door to Club Premier (the flashing digital sign in front of which offered the rental space to those with upcoming banquets, quinceañeras, sweet sixteens, birthdays, and weddings), this is not your average gun store. The massive building, which used to house a restaurant with a speakeasy theme, contains a sprawling, 65,000-square-foot firearms superstore, making it one of the country’s biggest. GAT — an acronym for guns, ammo, training — draws customers with 20,000 square feet of retail space devoted to all things gun-related and 63 shooting ranges. This spring, GAT completed an $8 million renovation and expansion. And why not? Business is booming. 

I'M READING TONIGHT

Tonight, I'll be reading a new short story, "The Urologist," at The Pungent Parlour in Chicago, IL.  

The Pungent Parlour is a monthly reading series hosted by Chicago writers Jeff Phillips and Jeremy Solomon, and will feature a rotating cast of six-to-seven writers presenting short pieces of Fiction and Essay.

Held at Black Rock Pub in Roscoe Village every 3rd Tuesday, this month's show will be on Tuesday, September 17th. Doors open at 8pm (mingle, get some drinks and apps) show starts at 8:30pm.

Readers this month include other Chicago writers;

Kevin Robinson
Aaron Cynic
Ben Tanzer
Susannah Breslin
Jeff Phillips
Jeremy Solomon

The show format draws on elements of a salon, set in a space that features couches and even a fireplace, and readers and audience are encouraged to interact before and after the show.

There is no charge to attend the show. Beers can be had for as little as three dollars.

HIRE ME

On my consulting page, you can learn about some of the work I've done in movies and TV, digital marketing, and the gig economy. Contact me for more information and rates.  

"That movie by that famous director starring that girl? I found her for him. That screenplay in need of doctoring? I did it. I specialize in Hollywood, vice, America's underbelly, and finding what you can't. I produce, write and doctor screenplays, help directors cast roles, conduct research, do voice overs, and serve as a popular talking head on network TV shows and documentary specials"

I GET EMAIL

"The romantic emtional scenes of porn videos gave me life in my youth at 26 with a sense of love now there just straight to sex.

So i search for a sexual partner on occassions to satisfy and found them already but haven't involve myself because it has been a long and complex relationship forming and two girls give me an edge or fuel in my life.

Sorry for getting personal.

I think banks and treasurers are to blame for failing to be involve in the business plan."

THE BEST CUPCAKE IN THE UNIVERSE

Today I visited Molly's Cupcakes. I'd heard they're the best cupcakes in town. But are they? As an investigative journalist, I knew it was my responsibility to find out the truth.  

I made my way through the teeming crowds of young straight people who have ruined the neighborhood for the gays over the last decade and stepped into Molly's. I'd seen online there was a counter with swings for chairs, but all the swings were occupied by boxes of cupcakes, thwarting my plans for eating a cupcake while sitting in a swing.  

Immediately, I noticed everyone working at Molly's was a) female and b) extremely attractive. The attractiveness was so endemic that I wondered if it was some kind of a plan. Probably, unattractive girls were turned away, unaccepted applications in hand, on a regular basis. Also, every girl was perky and seemed genuinely happy. Maybe it was the cupcakes.

I picked half a dozen cupcakes from the case. Behind the counter, two marginally older but similarly attractive females were assembling cupcakes. It looked like serious business.  

I wondered how wise it was to buy a cupcake named Cake Batter. What kind of a person buys a cupcake pregnant with raw cake batter? Me, I would realize later, as I cut into the blue-topped wonder and cake batter spilled forth like a Chicken Kiev I once had at the Russian Tea Room.

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Cupcake porn starring the Ron Bennington / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

At home, I took the cupcakes up to the roof deck. The sky: blue. The breeze: soft. In the distance, sailboats wiggled on the lake.  

I sliced open the Ron Bennington with a fork. As far as desserts go, the Ron Bennington is an obscenity. A chocolate orgy of peanut butter filling and crushed butterscotch flakes. It is wrong. It is immoral. It is tasty.  

The Ron Bennington is Molly's most popular cupcake. Apparently, it is named for this guy. It does not taste like a cigar.

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Cocoa the Dog admires Peanut Butter Nutella / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

What flavor is this cupcake? I forgot what I had ordered by the time I walked out of the store. I called them up to find out what I had. This one was a mystery. Quite possibly, it's the Peanut Butter Nutella. The cupcake wears a cookie like a hat. The middle hides a glob of Peanut Butter Nutella. The dog and I enjoyed it.

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Is it good for you? Does it matter? / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

I began to feel slightly nauseous. Thankfully, I'm a veteran reporter with over a decade of experience. I plowed onward.  

The Peach Cobbler you can almost believe is good for you. I mean, it has a piece of fruit on it. A thin slice of peach soaked in sugar syrup, but fruit nevertheless. The cake is cobblery. Whip cream, peach puree, and brown sugar streusel are involved. This would be good for breakfast. Every day. Forever.

A wasp buzzed into the cupcake zone. I picked up my notebook and struck the wasp. It landed on the ground a few feet away, half-crushed. 

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So many cupcakes, so few stomachs / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

Last year, I sampled cupcakes dispensed by a cupcake ATM. Molly's Cupcakes are better. Also, they are $3.75 a pop. The girl on the phone said the one on the upper-right was Molten Chocolate. Like a volcano of deliciousness.

I pulled the paper wrapper off, and the top of the cupcake came off in my hand, revealing the chocolate ooze inside. If this cupcake were a sin, it would be sloth.

Part candy bar, part cake, all guilty pleasure.  

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Me want cupcake / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

Meet Cookie Monster. A mini chocolate chip cookie. A dollop of whip cream sprinkled with chocolate chips. A vanilla chocolate chip cake. A raw cookie dough center.  

I bite into the Cookie Monster and decide I will live the rest of my life in the spirit of this cupcake. Unabashedly, it is what it is, lacking self-consciousness, utterly Cookie Monsterish. It is the best cupcake in the universe.

The wasps swarming, I notice a smear of frosting obscures part of my notes. I grab what remains and run inside, the dog trailing after me. My work here is done.

THE PORN STAR JOURNALIST

In 1998, I moved to Los Angeles, in part to cover the adult movie industry. In April of that year, a male performer infected several female performers with HIV. His name was Marc Wallice. 

Recently, several adult performers learned they're HIV+. They include Cameron Bay, a female performer, and Rod Daily, a male performer. There appears to be a third party who tested positive for the virus, as well: a female performer. And there may be a fourth, or that may be a rumor. In the meantime, a legal debate is raging over whether or not condom use in porn movies should be mandatory.  

Back in '98, I visited porn star Tricia Devereaux at her apartment. She had tested positive for HIV, but she was waiting for the results of a second test that, as I recall, would prove definitely whether or not she was positive. (She was.) We sat on the sofa in her living room, and she told me her story. 

Since then, as I wrote on my Forbes blog, I wince every time another HIV case surfaces in the adult movie business. Like Dr. Tim Lahey, a self-described "HIV doctor" and Dartmouth professor who wrote an eloquent and insightful post on the subject for ScientificAmerican.com, "The Dignity of a Porn Star," I feel compassion for these performers.

"Not only is it tempting to have an oversimplified view of how porn stars get HIV, it is also easy to oversimplify the relationship between HIV in porn stars and the worldwide HIV epidemic. Porn stars are not the cause of the HIV epidemic. They are its public face (et cetera). We could arrest HIV transmission entirely in the porn community, yet HIV would rage on around them. Porn stars, like all of us, make bad decisions and suffer hard consequences. They deserve our compassion, and I hope they get it."

What's different about the latest HIV outbreak is who's telling the story.

City of Temecula 

Picture the map of an earthquake. At the core: a red dot. This is the epicenter, "where a seismic rupture begins." It is the temblor's ground zero:

Full Definition of GROUND ZERO

1  :  the point directly above, below, or at which a nuclear explosion occurs

2  :  the center or origin of rapid, intense, or violent activity or change; broadly :  CENTER 2a  <the party town that served as ground zero for those corporate … bashes  — Rich Eisen>

3  :  the very beginning :  SQUARE ONE

From there, the concentric circles span out across the surrounding territory, the tremors' impact lessening as the distance from the site of origin increases.

I grew up with earthquakes, in Berkeley, California. The ground was always moving. In 1989, I was asleep at my then-apartment in nearby Oakland when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. The San Andreas Fault sprung to life with a 6.9 jerk. The epicenter was somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I awoke with a start. Half-dreaming, my first thought was that a gorilla was bouncing on the electrical wires in the alley. Then, we ran outside. Elsewhere, a freeway pancaked, part of the Bay Bridge collapsed, the World Series halted.

Years later, in Los Angeles, I rented a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a courtyard building on Los Feliz Boulevard. I could feel the earthquakes on a regular basis. The structure would sway slightly, I would wait for it to stop, and then I would go back to work.

Who knows the earthquake best? The person standing at its epicenter.

On September 3, 2013, Rod Daily tweeted: 

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Rod Daily, September 3, 2013

Since her status was made public, Cameron Bay has been chronicling her story on Twitter, from her diagnosis, to the high cost of treatment, to living with HIV.

Cameron Bay, September 10, 2013

In the 21st century, the porn star stands center stage. She is a gonzo journalist, reporting from the front lines of the war on Porn Valley, the Internet her Teletype. Stoya deconstructs the industry and HIV. Kayden Kross exposes the economics of the business. Aurora Snow considers the future of Google Glass XXX. 

What's left of Adult Video News, porn's once-mighty trade magazine, has been eclipsed by a pack of digital Walter Winchell's steeped in porn's insider intel: Mike South, AdultFYI, Luke Is Back, Porn Valley Observed, The Real Porn Wiki Leaks. Their headlines bark the latest X-rated news, their beat a mix of industry gossip, behind-the-scenes facts and rumors, pics of naked porno chicks having sex on adult movie sets to which you were not invited (but they were).

The mainstream media gawks at the spectacle. By the time the "real reporters" show up in the San Fernando Valley, the caution tape has been hung already. Dumbstruck and days late, the serious journalist lingers on the periphery, parachute deployed. Under one arm: a cache of banner ads.

(Is this journalism or a jerk-off session?)

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Sex machine, Woodland Hills, CA / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

In this latest case of HIV in the porn industry, it is not entirely clear who patient zero is. Bay performed in straight adult movies. Daily performed in gay adult movies. Since the Great Porn Recession, it is not uncommon for adult performers to supplement their income by escorting on the side. The third HIV+ performer has not stepped forward, although several adult sites have published her name (if it is, in fact, her).

Years ago, I met a porn star who was also a call girl. She had slept with the world's most famous actors and the world's most famous athletes and the world's most famous rock stars. She was a knockout, a dime, a straight-up stunner. Years later, she reappeared in the media in connection with a famous man and a sex scandal. "Oh, my god, that's [redacted]!" I announced to no one and pointed at the TV screen. In another life, I had waited in her living room while she smoked crack in her bathroom, her brooding boyfriend looming in the background.

Porn is messy. Most journalists don't like to get dirty. 

What is a journalist? As Dave Winer points out, the government is attempting to answer that question for you:

"Imho if the government says who's a journalist, under penalty of law, then there will be no journalism." 

Is Julian Assange a journalist?

Is a suicide bomber about to detonate a journalist?

Is a porn star who publishes her story on TwitLonger a journalist?

In 2013, the porn star is tired of being your fantasy. She has something to say. Her medium is her message, and in cyberspace her bytes are what make her real.

THIS RESTAURANT IS SHIT

Recently, I traveled to Shanghai, China. It's my third visit in a year. I have yet to wrap my head around it. The city is New York City on steroids, some 23+ million people occupying a small slice of what used to be known as the Whore of the Orient. It is "Blade Runner" in the morning, death-defying to cross its whizzing intersections, an insane mash-up of surreal skyscrapers, freshly-dead meat hanging from hooks over caldrons of living crustraceans, and Louis Vuitton belts paired with Hello Kitty t-shirts worn by girls with black bangs holding over-sized mobile phones as they teeter along on plastic platforms.

So, I suppose it was no surprise that it was in a thin alley that I found a restaurant with a theme, and the theme was shit. At first, I thought the gold urinals on the wall were something Warholian. Then I noticed the giant toilet mounted to another wall. Finally, I spotted the display by the door, which you see above: a woman's legs in a steaming tub under a serving platter upon which was waiting a perfect turd on a plate.

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This is dessert, Shanghai, China / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

This was Modern Toilet. On the company's website, under "Toilet Story," the origin was explained: "We are a group of 'muckrakers' following our dreams."

It all started when one of us was reading the manga, Dr. Slump on the toilet – and the rest is history. In the beginning, we mainly sold ice cream – a big pile of chocolate ice cream sold in containers shaped like a squat toilet.

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Toilet-themed gift items, Shanghai, China / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

I was reminded of a line from Paul Auster's City of Glass:

As it happened, he was sitting on the toilet, in the act of expelling a turd, when the telephone rang.

Modern Toilet began in Taiwan. Now, there are over a dozen Modern Toilets, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan, among other places.

Upstairs, I took a seat at a table. My seat was a toilet. The table had a glass top. Under it, there was a bowl. In the bowl, there was a plastic swirly turd. The place mats were decorated with smiling turds.  

Originally, Modern Toilet was devoted to ice cream. Today, it serves all kinds of foods. Wanting to stick with the theme, I ordered two sundaes. The first sundae was a pile of brown balls that looked like shit. It was served in a pink bowl that was shaped like a toilet. The second sundae was a large swirl of chocolate that looked like a turd and was served in a black dish that looked like a toilet. The chocolate balls had a creamy chocolate filling. The chocolate turd came with chocolate flakes.

In theory, children may be more interested in Modern Toilet than adults. About 50% of the people in the packed place were parents with small children. Children, after all, have a different relationship to going to the bathroom than adults. For kids, bowel movements are new, their first act of creation, an event celebrated by a fawning parent who perhaps proffers a gold star or some such commendation.  

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So many toilets, Shanghai, China / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin

I cannot imagine Modern Toilet expanding to America. Our country is a church to shame: We hide what we do not understand. In the U.S., the human body is a secret horror: a mysterious, unknowable territory to which the head is unfortunately attached. Going to the bathroom is done on porcelain thrones to counterbalance the sad truth shitting exposes, that we are lumps of sentient meat that spend our days filling one hole and excreting out the other. Work, which consumes so much of our time, exists for little reason other than to support our daily habit: eating, shitting, sleeping.

In Shanghai, at least, things are different. It is not unusual to see small children going to the bathroom in public spaces. For example, I was on the Bund on a busy Saturday. A just-married couple, as they do, was having their photographs taken with the dramatic skyline of Pudong as a backdrop. The groom was Chinese and wearing black pants and a scarlet jacket. The bride was blonde (American, I think) and wearing a scarlet wedding dress with a long train that had cutouts like paper. The photographer worked with a crew to take the shots. At one point, the photographer crouched to take several photos. A small boy of maybe two squatted down a few feet from the photographer. A crowd had gathered by then. The little boy, who wore cutout pants that many small children do in China, squatted and peed on the walkway. His mother stood nearby, smiling and snapping a photo of her son as he let forth his stream.

I had no trouble eating the desserts that looked like shit at the toilet-themed restaurant. It wasn't a big deal to me. The food was quite tasty. The ambiance was amusing. Of course, I suppose it is a matter of personal taste.