What I Think of Cocked

Image credit: Amazon.com

"Cocked" is one of the pilots Amazon coughed up among those shows it may or not make. It's about a family, and the family business is guns! Kudos to Amazon for picking up that firearm. I was interested in seeing this show. After all, I have been known to shoot a gun. The opening scene takes place at something that is supposed to look like SHOT Show, and I have been. In any case, prior to viewing, I thought gun owners and 2nd Amendment fans would be excited to see this, but when Jason Lee, who plays the patriarch's bad boy son, does a bunch of coke and bangs the Shannon twins, I thought probably the NRA will not be sponsoring this program. "Beauty, bullets, and blow, what more could you wish for?" Lee's character considers after going down on either Kristina or Karissa. The other brother is Sam Trammell of "True Blood" fame, who's the good son, and who gets called home, sort of, to save the floundering business. Brian Dennehy is the dad. Some blonde is some illegitimate daughter who wants to take the whole thing over. A rival firearms manufacturer is trying to put them out of business. And so it goes. All great ideas. All wonderful fodder. And yet. Woefully miscast. And instead of going for drama, it goes for wild-eyed slapstick. What was missed: A "Sopranos"-type show in which real people with real lives and real problems just so happen to manufacture and sell America's most controversial product. That didn't happen.

Do You Watch Porn?

I'm curious:

Do you watch porn? If so, how do you watch it (online, mobile, VCR)? Do you pay for it? Do you watch movies, look at stills, download clips? What content do you prefer? How often do you watch it? Where do you watch it (home, work, car)? Why do you watch it?

I'm working on some writing about the future of porn, and I'm curious to know how you look at porn today.

NB: Your anonymous email may be posted to this blog.

Email me: susannahbreslin@gmail.com.

Guns & Porn

The image above is by Roger Kisby and from BuzzFeed's "49 Insane Photos from the World's Largest Porn Convention." Last year, I went to AVN and SHOT Show. As I recall it, the gun show was first, and the porn show overlapped near the end, so I spent several days shuttling between back and forth between guns and porn. It wasn't the hardest job I ever had. I suppose I felt a bit of nostalgia looking at Kisby's pics, and I pined a little remembering my SHOT conversation with a guy about animal urine. Maybe I'll go again next year. We'll see.

What Lucy Did

"Lucy." Starring ScarJo. Written/directed by Luc Besson. It's no "Under the Skin," but it'll do. Lucy is an accidental drug mule in Taiwan. She ends up getting hyper-dosed with blue crystals that make you smarter than Bradley Cooper in "Limitless." Now, she's, like, superhuman, a superhero, some kind of superwoman. She gets chased my Asian mobsters, flirts with a French cop, and kills people because, why not? For some reason, the smarter she gets, the more she acts like a robot (???). Her boobs never change. Just her IQ. Best line: "I'm colonizing my own brain." YOU GO, GIRL. It's all very feminist, but in a way that doesn't make you want to vomit. Sadly, it lacks "The Fifth Element"'s happy happy joy joy. This is more grim. More French. More remorse. The special effects are questionable. The ending is absurd. Still, there are those ... lips.

Notes

Notes. pic.twitter.com/KWdNFXpwQr

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) January 25, 2015

The Couture Dangle

In a way, it's not that surprising that Rick Owens was the designer to send men with exposed genitalia sauntering (bouncing? promenading? wagging?) down the runway in Paris this week. After all, his moody, drapey, muted-toned clothing has an almost penis-like quality to it. Leave it too long, and it drags. For some reason, I missed it -- or I didn't really get it -- when I first perused the shots on Style.com. After all, it only looked like a glimpse of low-hanging ball. Much ado about a peek of testes didn't get much of a response from me. Then Amelia pointed out "The Hottest New Trend in Menswear Is Visible Dick," and that got my attention. Gawker exposed full-on-dong, and I understood we were looking at something different here. But what, um, was it? "The penises weren't the point of the show," The Cut chided. Then what was? According to Owens, "Boys with their dicks out is such a simple, primal, childish gesture." Agreed, but what does it mean? In hopes of phallus analysis, I turned to the New York Times, where the always annoying Guy Trebay coughed up: "By deliberately exposing a few pendant bits of flesh, Mr. Owens seemed to be suggesting how tenuous and vulnerable are the basis for what we think of as masculinity." Ah-ha. So man is only as strong as the thread of skin that attaches his balls. Personally, I thought that between the overwhelmingly dull feminist sloganisms at Acne Studios and the horrendous guys-in-granny-getups at Gucci, Owens felt like someone must remind everyone: We Are Men, and These Are Our Penises. We got it, Rick. We got the dicks.

Image via Style.com

Dong Fang Spa

Asian massage parlors, or AMPs, dot the southwest portion of Florida. They can be found in the area's many strip malls, tucked between home improvement stores and quickie grocery marts. It seems as if they are always open, yet it is hard to spot customers entering or leaving.

Dong Fang Spa is located in Fort Myers, Florida, on a busy thoroughfare called South Tamiami Trail. Other than its name, it is unremarkable.

According to local news outlets, the establishment was busted for prostitution several years ago:

"At one point, the detective grabbed his penis and asked, 'What about this?'

Yu again asked if he was the police, to which the detective replied, 'No.'

Yu stated she would take care of his penis for an additional $80.

At that time, the takedown signal was given and Yu was placed under arrest and charged with prostitution."

Some Amazon Pilots Reviewed

Since we the people get to decide which TV series get made on Amazon and which don't, here are my thoughts thus far.

"Mad Dogs": Just stupid and gross. Bad and wrong. Buncha guys acting like dicks. Pass.

"Salem Rogers": Not bad. Overly-rehabbed actress gets out and tries to make a comeback. Her catch phrase: "Right on, tampon." Pretty funny. Mildly embarrassing. Make it filthier.

"Down Dog": So stupid I can't even remember what it's about except yoga.

"The New Yorker Presents": Interesting! Fun for intellectual types. Marina Abramovic talks art, and Tyrone Hayes talks frogs. Recommend.

"Cocked": Haven't watched this one yet but am very interested. Guns! No network bullshit so whatever on politics. Well timed, what with SHOT Show and all.

"The Man in the High Castle": Terrible name! Best show. SO INTRIGUING. We lost the war and half the country belongs to Hitler and half the country belongs to the Japanese. Stupid white Americans are everybody's bitch. Really beautiful and fascinating and love.

"Point of Honor": Hate old timey shit so no comment at press time. 

Also: moar "Transparent," please.

[Amazon]

Creative Advertising for Perverts

Previously, I wrote about "litvertising." In other words, using fiction to sell things.

Speaking of which, I wrote a few pieces for NYC, 1981, a site created to discreetly promote "A Most Violent Year," which was written and directed by J. C. Chandor and for which Jessica Chastain was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. The movie takes place in 1981, that most violent year, and the content of the site is all about that year or that time.

I did one piece that was non-fiction, "The Rise and Fall of the King of Swing," and one piece that was fiction, "Sex and the City, 1981." I did some research before writing the latter piece and came up with the idea of portraying a man wandering the streets of the city at night and ending up at a peep show. I ended up watching this video of Show World. It is amazing.

In any case, literary prose can sell products. Several years ago, I ran some racy American Apparel ads that caused some controversy. It would be interesting if AA ads had micro-fictions paired with them that illuminated what the girl was thinking, revealing what's under her surface.

From my piece:

"I end up at Show World, and I hand the guy my cash, and I get in the booth, and the curtain slides up, and there’s a girl dancing on a pedestal in the middle of the round room, and she’s totally naked. This is why I love this city. There isn’t anything you can want that you can’t find in it."

[Sex and the City, 1981]

Her

"Her." An interesting movie. A guy falls in love with his operating system. Strange colors. Lots of shots in Shanghai, which you will recognize if you've been there, although here it is pretending to be Los Angeles of the Future. Scarlett Johansson as the throaty computrix. First half: a bit twee (see: Spike Jonze). Second half: more interesting, metaphysical. An intriguing scene in which the OS hires a sex surrogate for a ... kind of ... three-way? It's all very [something]. The best part is when the computer evolves beyond human capability, leaving love and language in its wake.

In Case You Were Wondering

"(2) 'Adult film performer' shall mean any individual whose penis penetrates a vagina or anus while being filmed, or whose vagina or anus is penetrated by a penis while being filmed."

via Mike South

2015 Goals (Late)

1. Blog once a day for 365 consecutive days
2. Sell one product a month for 12 months
3. Do more Pilates

The Grand Boyhood Equalizer

This week I watched three movies: "Boyhood," "The Grand Budapest Hotel," and "The Equalizer." Somewhere along the way, I realized all the movies were, in one way or another, about what it means to be a man. I liked "Boyhood"'s dazzling cuts across time, but eventually it lapsed into one more Linklater movie in which rat-faced and hirsute men mutter on about the meaning of life or lack thereof. Watching "The Grand Budapest Hotel" reminded me of the time I went to Le Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris: an arresting visual spectacle that leaves you wanting something more than a lemon martini. I found "The Equalizer" to be no "Training Day," which is on my top ten list of favorite movies, but a very amusing investigation of Home Depot careerism and how the mundanities of selling home supplies can drive you to take up a side career in Russian mob gorenography. I wonder what stunt-cinema "Boyhood" will inspire: Watch as Christian Bale loses 100 pounds in 120 minutes! May "The Grand Budapest Hotel" cause nature to be more symmetrical. Boston beckons to us all, thanks to Denzel Washington and those men who make their money as sociopaths with business cards.

Know Your Trigger

I was mildly amused to see my name mentioned in the entry for "Trigger" on Know Your Meme.

"On April 13th, 2010, the news site True/Slant[16] published an article by writer Susannah Breslin, who criticized feminists for using the phrase too generously."

via FFFFOUND!

It referenced a post I wrote for True/Slant in 2010, "Trigger warning: this blog post may freak you the f*** out."

An excerpt:

"After some in-depth research (like, half an hour, maybe?), I was able to conclude that, for whatever reason, the feminists are all over their TRIGGER WARNINGS, applying them like a Southern cook applies Pam cooking spray to an overused nonstick frying pan. It’s almost impressive, really. I guess the idea is that blog posts are TOTALLY SCARY, and if you are EASILY UPSET, if you see a TRIGGER WARNING coming, you can look away REALLY FAST, or click elsewhere, so you won’t, you know, FREAK THE FUCK OUT."

Depressingly, Sia recently felt compelled to apologize for a video that some considered "triggering":

"I apologize to those who feel triggered by #ElasticHeart My intention was to create some emotional content, not to upset anybody."

How embarrassing. The point of art is to make you feel. Especially things you did not know you feel. Or don't know how to feel. Or are unwilling to feel.

"One eye sees, the other feels." -- Paul Klee

We all live in the Valley of the Triggers. Without them, we are merely shooting blanks.

The Problem with Hating Cops

If you haven't read "Why We're So Mad at de Blasio," by Steve Osborne, a retired New York City police officer, you should. It served as a much-needed respite from the near non-stop anti-police tweets that have peppered my Twitter feed for the last several months.

More often than not, those tweets have spewed forth from the mouths of the various liberal journalists I follow. Seemingly completely lacking in self-awareness and without the vaguest qualification, they lynch police officers with unrelenting vigor and venom. Cops, they spout, are bad. Cops, they announce, are evil. Cops, they declare, are the real bad guys here.

Sometimes, as another tirade trickles down my feed, I wonder if any of these mostly male, mostly white liberal journalists know any police officers. It seems they don't. For them, it appears, police officers are some foreign invading army that has come to town and must be pilloried. The way they talk about police officers, you get the sense they believe all police officers are inhuman, or subhuman, or not human at all.

That's why Osborne's piece is so poignant: because he dares to do what seemingly no one else is doing, which is to paint a portrait of the real lives of police officers. "I sometimes regret having dragged her into the life with me," Osborne laments of his wife, who must bear the shared stress of his dangerous job. He shows us the human side of the badge.

Between here and there, I dated a few police officers. I was never a cop's wife, and I was no badge bunny, but I got a slice of what it's like to be involved with someone whose day job involves the reality that they might leave for work and get killed on any given day. The police officers I dated were the types of guys who ran towards fires, ventured into buildings from which gunfire had emanated, understood they might die doing a job that, at the end of the day, didn't even pay all that well.

I guess the liberal journalists I follow don't know those police officers. They have an idea of what all police officers are like, and that stereotype is what they tweet about daily. They do so while hiding behind their glowing screens, tucked in their offices, doing jobs in which they almost never risk their anything for anybody on any day.

Of course, eventually, something bad will happen to some of these liberal journalists. Their car will get broken into, and they'll call the police. They'll get mugged, and they'll call the police. They'll get into a car accident, and they'll call the police. Or maybe something worse will happen to them or to someone they love, and they'll call the police.

The officers will show up to do their jobs, and those same liberal journalists who screeched their anti-police rhetoric online will thank the officers very much for doing their jobs, and then those liberal journalists will go back to doing whatever it is they do for a living in their safe little lives.

Rugby in Florida

Photo credit: Susannah Breslin