The holidays are all about spending time together, exchanging gifts, and watching the Victoria's Secret Runway Show. Recently, supermodel Karlie Kloss, who is 21 and 6'1", got fitted for a pair of psychedelic wings. The Cut has the behind-the scenes video.
Breaking news out of Hamilton, Ohio, care of the local newspaper's police blotter:
A man walked into CVS, 820 S. Breiel Blvd., and walked out with a box of condoms, bottle of lubricant, five Slim Jims and an A&W Root Beer, valued at $65.71. The suspect left the store and rode off on a bike.
[Journal-News]
Ariel Levy has written the most terrifying reproduction story since "Rosemary's Baby" for the New Yorker. As a journalist, she travels the globe, and she finds herself far from home when her pregnancy goes off the rails. The result is an eviscerating tale: "Thanksgiving in Mongolia."
I got pregnant quickly, to my surprise and delight, shortly before my
thirty-eighth birthday. It felt like making it onto a plane the moment
before the gate closes—you can’t help but thrill. After only two months,
I could hear the heartbeat of the creature inside me at the doctor’s
office. It seemed like magic: a little eye of newt in my cauldron and
suddenly I was a witch with the power to brew life into being. Even if
you are not Robinson Crusoe in a solitary fort, as a human being you
walk this world by yourself. But when you are pregnant you are never
alone.
[The New Yorker]
The coverage of Lars von Trier's "Nymphomaniac" journey from can to screen is a boggler. Take, for example, the latest reports that the controversial director has surrendered his final cut. It's a matter of hardcore and softcore.
Jensen says the cuts were purely for commercial reasons and not to
eliminate any of the films' many explicit sex scenes. There were
initially plans to release both a hard-core and soft-core version of Nymphomaniac
but those plans have now been abandoned. Instead there will be just the
hard-core version but distributors in individual countries can decide
to blur whichever elements they find unacceptable. The Danish version
will go out with all the explicit sex intact and in focus.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
A model sports a "Suck My Cervix" T-shirt at Fashion Week Australia earlier this year. [Man Repeller]
Meet Roja Dove, the man who makes bespoke fragrances for women who can afford to spend $40,350 to smell like no one else. His nose is so sensitive that international flights are nearly unbearable, and he compares creating his personalized perfumes to having sex.
For example, Mr. Dove had three clients smell tuberose. One gave a
horrified shudder, while the other two described the scent as,
respectively, “quiche with cabbage” and “young girls in tank tops
running around a mall.”
[NYT]
Jenna Jameson was on Oprah Winfrey's "Where Are They Now?" last night. She discussed her DUI arrest, her custody battle with her ex, MMA fighter Tito Ortiz, over her kids, and her current problems. It was very sad.
The first time I met Jenna was in 1997. I believe it was August. I visited the set of her movie, "Flashpoint." She showed up at some point and disappeared quickly into a trailer. The girl who went in the door was young, messy-haired, fresh-faced. The person who emerged after dark was wearing towering thigh-high boots, kabuki makeup, and a spiked collar. We paraded into a building behind her like some sort of demented wedding procession. In the cavernous room of an industrial building, she had sex with T.T. Boy while flames shot up all around them.
At the end of last night's episode, she indicated that she has no idea who Jenna Massoli (her real name) is.
[Oprah]
A writer for Vice took a class in how to financially dominate a man. "After years of getting screwed over by the Man, I was ready to screw the Man myself," she asserts. Fun facts: financial dominatrixes are called "fin-dommes," the men they dominate are called "fin-slaves," and there's a thing called a "pay-pig."
She gave him the floor, and we got to pick his brain a little. Right
away, the guy opened up with a Nietzsche quote. “The true man wants two
things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most
dangerous plaything.” I instantly knew I was not going to like anything
else he had to say. He gave his perspective on being a slave, and spoke
of the rush he gets when a woman tells him to do something. He said that
his number one fantasy is to run errands for a woman, and even sign
over the lease of his condo to a woman. He then went on a small rant
telling us that women are great at manipulation, and humiliation. Being a
woman's slave, “appeals to her vanity,” he said.
[VICE]
Behold, a totally insane video from Mrzyk & Moriceau for Jackson and His Computerband's "G.I. Jane (Fill Me Up)." If you like phallic armies, penis sharks, and female face-eaters, you will love this music video.
“We love Jackson’s song, so the ideas came very fast. We wanted
something sex-gore-bizarre, so created this faceless girl fighting
against penises that appear from everywhere.” The explosively charged
narrative takes in Manga influences and the duo’s trademark pop
eroticism, while also providing, as Moriceau opines, a comment on
misogyny and female empowerment. “Of course you can see the power of
feminism in the film,” he says. “But firstly, we want to entertain.”
[NOWNESS]
Dear Sex Worker Customer: Don't do this. Love, Your Sex Worker. [Tits and Sass]
Photos from the heyday of New York's Area nightclub. There is a nudity. [New York]
Is HBO giving you the shaft? Let's check the boobs infographic. [HBO Watch]
Don't forget to wash your hands first. [The Onion]
Kate Upton wears body paint, frolics. [TMZ]
Banksy hit the Hustler Club. The subject is a "lovelorn loser." [New York Post]
Someone got randy with the loaves at Whole Foods. My report. [Twitter]
When paying an escort, Litecoins are the new Bitcoins. [Northern Jewels]
A gay-for-pay porn star murders a millionaire, and the American dream unravels. [Miami New Times]
The Gray Lady does not enjoy your Bob Guccione documentary. [New York Times]
If you're here to read "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?", which was chosen by Slate and Longform as one of "Seven Great Stories About Paying for Sex and Being Paid to Have It," you can find it here.
I wrote the piece in 2009 and self-published it. It is a 10,000-word investigation into the impact of the Great Recession on the adult movie industry.
You can read more about that project and other projects of mine here. You can learn more about me here. More of my photography is here.
An essay I wrote about the project, "The Numbers On Self-Publishing Long-Form Journalism," has been taught in Media, Politics & Power in the Digital Age at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Studio 20 program at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
The original site where the piece was self-published is here. The logo and site were created and designed by Chris Bishop.
You can email me here.
From "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?":
In
this canon, the real subject is not human sexuality but humanity itself.
The products that Jim produces are videotaped vivisections, studies
in which homo sapiens lie upon the operating table, the director is
the doctor, the camera is the scalpel, and the only question worth asking
is, How far will we go if we are pushed to our limits?
The Daily Beast has an interesting piece on the nonsensical rules governing hashtag censorship on Instagram. The issues involve sex, race, and bodily functions. From "Instagram's Sex Censorship Is Inconsistent and Hilarious":
Many of the single word tags like #fuck, #bitches, #porn remain on the
blocked list, but many longer variations, like #fuckfriday and
#mybitches are now searchable. #Dildo and #chink were once banned but
can now be searched, though #wet, #shower, and #popular remain blocked.
Users can search #faketits, #underboob and #boobz, but not #sideboob,
#boob or #boobies.
Kayden Kross and Manuel Ferrara at the AVN Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 2013.
From Supreme, the Piss Face Zip-Up in black, $138. Notes The New Yorker:
This season, Supreme is selling a zip-up hoodie with a quotation,
attributed to the skateboarder Mark Gonzales, that reads, in bright
letters across the back, “I’ve never wanted to piss on someones face
more than I want to piss on yours.” Many of Supreme’s items sell out
online within seconds of going on sale, but the “Piss Face Zip-Up” has
not sold out in any color after weeks on the Web site. “I didn’t stock
any,” Peter explained. (Perhaps Peter miscalculated—mysteriously, the
Piss Face Zip-Up, which costs a hundred and thirty-eight dollars, is
sold out in blue in Japan, where it costs two hundred and fifty-eight
dollars and thirty cents.)
"I’d practically earned my doctorate in strip-club-going. I knew more
porn acronyms than him. I watched smut on my own and never thought to
review his Web history. I even enjoyed the rare strip club outing with
him. But here was a line: no lap dances. I was getting married, I had
found my person, I didn’t need to be OK with all things that a man, any
man, could ever want. Men were no longer a generalized other, there was
only this man that mattered."
-- "Why I Said No to Strippers," Tracy Clark-Flory
Someone took the time to combine PornHub comments and stock photos. [h/t RR]
If you know my photography, you know I'm a fan of mannequins. Today's New York Times has a story on how mannequins in Venezuela are extra curvy. The ideal Venezuelan body shape is Jessica Rabbit-esque and influenced by a culture that is deeply into plastic surgery.
Each day, Yaritza Molina arranges several mannequins at the entrance to
the small clothing shop she manages in Coro, a city in western
Venezuela, always careful to place two ahead of the others. “These are
the princesses,” she said, “because they have the best bust.”
“I have lots of clients that come here and say, ‘I want to look like
that mannequin,’ ” Ms. Molina said. “I tell them, ‘O.K., then get an
operation.’”
This trend is mirrored in America in the African-American community, where you see MediaTakeOut stars like Nicki Minaj and Blac Chyna sporting the same crazy shape.
Steven Klein has an extremely cool and totally NSFW fashion spread in the November issue of Interview magazine. The model is Malgosia Bela, a Polish model and actress. In an interview with Into the Gloss, Bela says she is 36. She got married in Azzedine Alaïa and doesn't go the gym. The editorial is Helmut Newton-ish. I like the shots of her peeing like a man, just having strangled a man to death in the subway with a chain, after a terrible car wreck, fondling some meat, and doubling herself at the peep show. That's Steven Klein for you.
