86'd List
Nice Kitty
Photo credit: Imaxtree
Space Dandy!
I don't do much anime, but I read about "Space Dandy" on Lauren Rae Orsini's blog: "Why Is the Media Covering 'Space Dandy' While Other Anime Get Ignored?"
"The New York Times. The Atlantic Monthly. The two last places you’d expect to see critical reviews on a show with 'breasturants' as a major plot point." [Otaku Journalist]
I haven't been to a lot of breastaurants. I think the only one I've been to is Hooters. I've been meaning to go to the Tilted Kilt, but I haven't made it there yet.
"So perhaps there’s also reason to be patient when 'Space Dandy' gets off to a rocky start in its first episode, the only one available for review. Particularly painful is an early sequence in which the pompadoured title character, an intergalactic alien hunter, travels through space to his favorite hangout: a cross between the 'Star Wars' cantina and Hooters, where 'zero G meets double D.'" [NYT]
It sounds hilarious. It's not surprising that a clever, surrealist take on sex comes from outside the US. In America, the gender wars turned the bedroom into a battleground.
"Ironically, Space Dandy’s campy style—there is a literal boob monster in one episode—begs to not be taken too seriously, but with his pop-culture sensibility and cinematic directing style, Watanabe may be anime’s greatest chance of getting the respect it deserves." [The Atlantic]
Playboy Bunnies, Years Later
Photo credit: Robyn Twomey
"These headshots, taken at the Former Playboy Bunny Reunion in Las Vegas, are the result of my interest in the women of Playboy and where they are now. The tight frame and non-retouched images allow space for one’s personal reflection on age and beauty. The body language suggests even more about who these women are: strong, beautiful, fragile, provocative, and everything in between. They are complex characters that are proud and empowered by their beauty and sexuality, at the same time stricken by the fleeting nature of it."
God Save Us
Straight to Video
"MDL: 'Boogie Nights' scored horribly. They recruit for these [test screenings] off a paragraph [synopsis] in the mall, and the paragraph for 'Boogie Nights' made it look like a sitcom, and then they come for this three-hour exegesis on existential crises in porn. It got to a point where Bob Shaye, my old boss, chased good scores on that movie, and that movie was never going to score high.
MW: I remember he did his own cut and made Paul watch it.
MDL: Yeah, it was horrible. It was tough. That movie was going straight to video, and then the reviews started to come in at the New York Film Festival. If it wasn't for early reviews…"
Smells Like Tesla
Let's Go Long
Long-form is a type of journalism. If you are stupid and young and you wrote something that was several thousands words long, you probably think you are writing long-form journalist. You are not. Probably, you've read a few of these pieces. Maybe you left a tl;dr in the comments.
"What, then, is the function — the purpose — of 'long-form'? To allow a writer to delve into the true complexities of a story, and also to bring readers closer to the experience of other people. Whether a long-form story is published in a magazine or on the web, its goal should be to understand and illuminate its subject, and maybe even use that subject to (subtly) explore some larger, more universal truths. Above all, that requires empathy, the real hallmark of great immersive journalism." [NYT]
Going long is about more than word count. A monkey could type 10,000 words in a row. Well, perhaps not words, but characters, surely, given the right tools. IMO, LFJ is about: immersion, empathy, and depth. Unsure you have met these requirements? You have not.
"I have had it with long-form journalism. By which I mean—don’t get me wrong—I’m fed up with the term long-form itself, a label that the people who create and sell magazines now invariably, and rather solemnly, apply to their most ambitious work. Reader, do you feel enticed to plunge into a story by the distinction that it is long? Or does your heart sink just a little? Would you feel drawn to a movie or a book simply because it is long? ('Oooh—you should really read Moby-Dick—it’s super long.')" [Atlantic]
No one ever said long-form journalism that goes beyond word count is fun. It is hard. One could argue it took me 10 years to write "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?" because that's the period of time over which it ranges -- longer, really. And who wants to work that hard for that long? It's so much easier to upload another blog post, watch another TV show, fill up endless empty spaces with words considering subjects about which you fundamentally know nothing.
"Over the next ten minutes, he threatens to beat her, threatens to torture her, pulls up her shirt, pulls up her skirt, hits her breasts, hits her thighs, throttles her by the neck with both hands, humiliates her, degrades her, makes her cry, chokes her until she is gasping for air. He gets her to tell the camera she is 27 years old and the only reason she’s here doing this particular job on this particularly day in this particular hotel room in the Valley is for the money, and the fact of the matter is she has two young children to support, of whom the man asks rhetorically, and seemingly for the sole purpose of screwing with her head, 'They’re going to grow up to be proud of her, right?'" [TSPSDT]
Show Time
Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
V-Day in the Club
"Valentine’s Day is one of the those special 'off' days that happen every-so-often in the strip club. Working the night of one these off days is never business-as-usual—it’s usually, business-as-oh-my-God-did-that-just-happen. The day of Cupid falls on a Friday this year, and there’s going to be a full moon."
You're Shit
Girl Gangs
Photo credit: Hassan Hajjaj
"His confident, upbeat portraits of young women wearing veils and djellabah while posing on motorcycles subvert preconceived notions of Arab women; his subjects are traditionally clad but defiantly modern, bearing bright smiles and the markers of youth, independence, celebration, and fun."
[Taymour Grahne via Kottke]
Say, What?
"To do so, we're going to need to become a lot less squeamish when it comes to talking about the penis; here again, Amazons is extremely instructive. Others have described the book as 'penis-obsessed,' but to me it feels more 'penis-honest.' As a culture, we continue to possess a serious and seriously idiotic reluctance to spend much time considering male genitalia with much detail; it's always lurking but never shown. 'Full-frontal' is still fairly rare in any context outside of pornography, and it's basically non-existent when the male in question is aroused. Most books and movies seem to operate on the (very false) assumption that the penis is either soft or erect, as if it were manufactured and distributed in a one-size-fits-all commodity."
[The Awl]
Interview Secrets
Photo credit: Kim Weston-Arnold
"'When I was little, I would play this game where I would talk to people in order to see how much I could get from them without having to reveal anything about myself.'"
Make It Rain
Brand Whores
Photo credit: Steven Klein
"I found the tech conference I went to really depressing. Everyone there was a brand whore. Is this what we are: brand whores?"
[Forbes]
What Girls Are Made Of
Your Sunday Zen
Weedy McSmoke c/o djdickhennessy via Kat Snacks
All The News That's Unfit to Print: 2.8.14
What's your password. [This Isn't Happiness]
Give us money, we are pretty. [Clayton Cubitt]
Dick fetish. [Roxie Vizcarra]
It's almost Valentine's Day. [Nerve]
"'It's really nerve-racking,' she said, clutching her see-through lace dress." [LAT]
Tattoo you. [Maxime Ballesteros]
A day in the life of a porn star. [iHeartRadio]
The secret history of Las Vegas. [NYT]
She's larger than life. [My Modern Metropolis]
He's a very bad man. [EW]
"It was the beginning of the end of the monster sex ride." [Salon]
She makes music when she walks. [Style]
Thomas Jefferson goes to a porno. [Swierczy]
Porn stars are real. [Slixa]
She's not like other girls. [Kotaku]
Knee pads are in. [Style]
Beware illegal ass enhancements. [Vice]
Let's go for a swim. [Tumblr via Clayton Cubitt]
Do what the fembot says. [The Cut]
Meeting in the ladies room. [Fashion Copious]