Smell Like Hova
[via Vice]
Just Blow
Gender Wars, Blogger-Style
Famous-for-being-crazy working mommyblogger Penelope Trunk has found the competition. It is male, unburdened, and married to a yoga teacher. The blogger gender war has driven her to drink, apparently.
"And here’s another fear I have: Fear of competing with middle-aged men who abandon their family and marry someone younger. Really. I am sick of it. James Altucher married his yoga teacher. He has two kids he does not live with. My fear is that I am the one living with my kids and I’m competing with men who left their kids behind with their mothers."
Playboy Thief
How Much I Got Paid: #5
Title: "Great Expectations"
Publication: Marie Claire
Date: November 2012
Word count: 803
Payment: $1,400
Notes: If you've never written for a women's magazine, Sarah Miller brings to life vividly what it's like on The Hairpin in "What If a Women's Magazine Editor Edited a BBC News Story About Syria?" I pitched several stories to a Marie Claire editor in 2012, and I ended up writing a back-of-the-book personal essay on dating as a tall woman. (I'm 6'1".) There was a lot of back-and-forth editing. The final version is not my proudest moment as a writer. In Hollywood, some directors make "one for them" (for money) and "one for me" (for love). For me, this was the former. In the magazine, the essay appears under a photo of short preteen boys awkwardly dancing with taller preteen girls.
Conclusion: If you're going to sell out, consider the price.
Startup Ideas
Threeway
Blankets, Chicago, IL / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
Nymphomaniac Reviews
The reviews of the first version -- two parts, four hours, less explicit, to be followed by a longer, uncut version -- of Lars von Trier's "Nymphomaniac" are rolling out this week. So far, the movie has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
"Still, if von Trier means to challenge the depiction of sex onscreen, the truth of the matter is that people can find far more explicit imagery with a simple Google search. And when it comes to the potency of ideas, his script doesn’t uncover anything that wasn’t previously addressed by Anais Nin, Henry Miller or the Marquis de Sade. In fact, given the film’s overall tendency to describe rather than depict specific memories — the exception being the 'Silent Duck' chapter, in which Jamie Bell disciplines and degrades Joe oncamera — 'Nymphomaniac' might actually have been more effective as a novel."
"There are flashes of hard-core action during the initial two hours -- the odd angle here and there, some insert shots -- but mostly the sex scenes look like pretty standard simulation. Volume two gets down in ways the first half doesn't, although anything resembling real sensuality remains MIA. Among the more vivid and/or extreme moments are Joe (now played by Gainsbourg) stuffing as many long spoons as she can up her vagina in a fancy restaurant, then letting them noisily drop to the floor as she walks out, to the astonishment of the waiter (Udo Kier, onscreen for less than a minute); a vividly shot three-way with two African men she's spied outside her apartment window; and in the film's most intense and protracted interlude, her venture into pain as pleasure at the hands of a professional S&M practitioner, played with withering coldness by Jamie Bell in scenes that are startlingly raw (as is, invariably, Joe's backside) and disturbingly transformative."
"How was it for you? How was it for me? Nymphomaniac doesn't care. It goes about things its own way, in the service of its own pleasure, manhandling the audience from one position to the next, occasionally snickering at its own private jokes and daring us to decipher them. Personally I found this a bruising, gruelling experience and yet the film has stayed with me. It is so laden with highly charged set pieces, so dappled with haunting ideas and bold flights of fancy that it finally achieves a kind of slow-burn transcendence. Nymphomaniac annoys me, repels me, and I think I might love it. It's an abusive relationship; I need to see it again."
"There’s plenty of flesh (much of it belonging to porn doubles), although the film is rarely, if ever, what most people would call erotic or pornographic. It’s neither deeply serious nor totally insincere; hovering somewhere between the two, it creates its own mesmerising power by floating above specifics of time and place, undercutting its main focus with bizarre digressions (fly-fishing, maths, religion), a ragbag of acting styles and archive footage. There’s humour too, not least when the wife (Uma Thurman) of one of Joe’s lovers turns up at Joe’s flat with her three young kids in tow. Enormous penises flash across the screen; tragedy sits next to comedy. It feels like an X-rated farce, a circus of genitalia."
"Because there is so much going on in these two films it is almost impossible to take a broad view of Nymphomaniac. Yes it is provocative, funny, smart, wry and challenging (though never sexy) but it is also a remarkable project brimming with bold and often thoughtful performances. It is Lars von Trier at his best and his most frustrating at the same time (he even pops in a rather self-reverential scene of a small child tottering on a snowy balcony that take audiences back to his Antichrist opening), but is always watchable and intriguing. Longer cuts of the films are due…which should be interesting to say the least."
#teledildonicsfail
How Much I Got Paid: #4
Le Sex Shoppe, Hollywood, CA / Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
Title: Le Sex Shoppe
Publication: Dead by Charles Saatchi
Date: Not yet available
Word count: 0
Payment: $150
Notes: In July, I got an email from a woman doing research for a forthcoming book by ad kingpin and art collector Charles Saatchi to be called Dead. She had found a photo I took of a sex shop -- through Google Images, perhaps -- and she wanted to include the image in the book. She offered $100. I forwarded the email to a photographer friend of mine and asked, "Should I do this?" He responded, "Sure. See if you can get $150." I emailed the woman, "For $150, we can do this." I added, "If so, send me a contract, and I'll get that back to you. Thanks." This is a strategy I use often in negotiating. I assume the sale and make it easier for the co-negotiator to say yes than to say no. The co-negotiator doesn't necessarily want to pay you the least amount of money. They want to close the sale. They will pay more to not have to deal with you anymore. The amount here is small, but I found it works just as well when negotiating bigger sums. As for the photo, I took it over 10 years ago, and Le Sex Shoppe, which was purportedly beloved by Charles Bukowski, has since been demolished, according to a report.
Conclusion: When you're a freelancer, everything is for sale.
Finance Erotica
What You See Might Not Be Real, Chen Wenling
"Erotic FinFiction" is devoted to the hot, steamy genre of economics erotica.
"Alexandra’s eyes opened wide as Robert (Wharton MBA class of 2008) slowly revealed the terms of the contract, line by line. She gasped.
The interest was enormous.
She could picture herself compounding it, non-stop, year on year. It was a variable rate loan, and she licked her lips in anticipation, thinking about how it would grow slowly before her eyes."
Balloon Venus
No Joke
Don't like the competition? A porn store seeks to torch a rival outlet:
"A Portland man paid by a porn peddler to torch a competing video store has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.
Mark Fuston -- recovering Dead Head, Gypsy Joker biker gang member and onetime accused killer who says he's changed his ways -- faced just more than three years in federal prison for the March 27, 2003, arson.
Those who paid Fuston to burn down the future home of Taboo Video in Vancouver won't be serving any time for the arson. Fuston, 61, was the only defendant charged in the arson-for-hire plot; as the statute of limitations has passed, it seems he'll be the only one to face prison for the fire.
Also known as 'Mau Mau,' Fuston pleaded guilty to charges related to the Vancouver arson apparently committed at the behest of a rival porn shop owner. Federal prosecutors contended, and Fuston has admitted, he and another man were paid to set the fire."
Mais Oui
How Much I Got Paid: #3
Title: "Porn from My Perspective"
Publication: Glamour UK
Date: November 2013
Word count: 121
Payment: £100
Notes: In August, an editor at Glamour UK asked me to write a short piece "on the hot topic of porn" for the magazine. The feature would be titled "Porn from My Perspective," and it would feature eight mini-essays by women on porn. I would write one of those perspectives. The final version includes anti-porn pundit Gail Dines, former porn star Sasha Grey, and a sex addiction therapist. Originally, the editor requested 300 words. Subsequently, she revised that to 200 to 300 words. She offered to transcribe my words in an interview if I didn't feel moved to write. I wrote my perspective in about half an hour. The pay was low, but the subject was in my area of expertise, and it was easy.
Conclusion: Exercise your writing muscle as you would go to the gym.
More Wannabes
I've added more emails to my blog of emails I get from men who want to be male porn stars. I get the emails because I wrote a popular post on male porn stars for my Forbes blog, "The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star." I wrote about the emails for Salon, "How Do I Become a Male Porn Star?"
"I have emailed you before about becoming a male pornstar. This has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. Will you please give me a chance to become one? I would do anything to.join the porn industry. I just need a foot in the door and I promise you wont regret it. All I am asking for is one chance. If I dont meet your requirements show me the door. This is my dream please give me an opportunity to show you I would be a great male pornstar."
Play Her
Porn Daze
"9 to 5 Days in Porn" is on YouTube. I believe it's a censored version.
"German-produced docu '9 to 5,' about the San Fernando Valley’s 'Hollywood of porn,' impresses as a more balanced view of the adult-film industry than most, neither a lurid expose nor a portrait of individual personalities. Instead, it follows a dozen-plus folks who make their living on- or offscreen from a biz purportedly grossing some $12.7 billion annually (so much for porn being outside the consumer mainstream). The result is nonexploitative and intriguing, if overlong. Content might be too graphic for most arthouses, but U.S. cable, Eurotube and DVD sales are likely."
Dick Pics
Your Sunday Zen
