'Pretty Filthy' Reviewed

Charles Isherwood reviewed "Pretty Filthy" for the NYT:

Image credit: Mister Decal

"The travails of Becky, who quickly renames herself Taylor St. Ives (you know, after the apricot scrub!), and her boyfriend Bobby (Marrick Smith), who eventually joins Becky in the business as Dick Everhard, form a narrative through-line. In one of Mr. Friedman’s most searching and affecting songs, they reveal the disorientation that results when they find themselves in bed at night, after a long day at the office, suddenly unable to discern who they are to each other, sexually and emotionally."

[NYT]

That Girl

@nicolewinhoffer by @maracorsino

Premature Expostulators

Yesterday, I wondered why so many of the men who email me because they want to become porn stars are from India and Pakistan, and on Facebook my author friend Michael Anania theorized:

"First, my guess is that most of these queries come from guys who haven't actually read your article...premature expostulators. Why India and Pakistan? It probably has something to do with all those bleak hours spent in the sub-erotic murmur of Help Lines pretending to be 'Tim' or 'Jonathan.' 'Tap the Ctrl button rapidly' they say, aroused by the shred of power they have, 'and tell me what happens.'"

Genius.

Hold, Please

A very cool holder for your iPad care of photographer Cass Bird.

Sex vs. God

Two adult stores and a church are battling it out on Wisconsin billboards.

Image credit: Daughter Number Three

"And in the midst of the billboards beckoning shoppers to stores offering sex toys and pornographic videos are equally large signs declaring that 'Porn Destroys Love' and asking if you've 'Got God?'"

[LAT]

Periodic Table of Sexual Terminology

Love this Periodic Table of Sexual Terminology via This Isn't Happiness.

"There's even a useful guide to alternative words for his 'n her bits 'n bobs just incase you're struggling to locate the 'panty hamster' or the 'swizzle stick.'"

[Dorothy]

#BRASHARK

Bra Shark. #art pic.twitter.com/Tlr2vlptSa

— Mark Duffy (@copyranter) February 7, 2015

i would like too go on an adventure to be a pirn star

John Holmes via Zazou Fans

I get emails practically every day from men who want to be porn stars because I wrote a post for my (former) Forbes blog called "The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star."

To date, I have received 355 of these emails.

(And that post has nearly 1.7M views.)

I posted some of the emails here, but I need to update that.

Can someone please explain to me why large numbers of the men who email me wanting to become porn stars are from India and Pakistan?

I would be very interested in knowing the answer to this question.

You can illuminate me here.

Here's a recent one (I used the subject header of the email as the title of this post):

"What on earth do i neef,i know no one no contacts nothing,whete fo i start,
Pls,pks help me i will be indebt to you,
Yours faithfully

.... .[redacted]"

Tip Your Stripper

Salon has an interview with Elle Stanger, a stripper who advocates on behalf of her fellow dancer's rights as workers.

Stanger shares:

"Currently, we exist in a loophole. It leans more towards the independent contractor side. I don’t have all the answers as to how we can reconcile or find what our true status is. I don’t think we’re there yet. Certainly, the vast majority of strippers that I’ve spoken with and club operators and owners, we pretty much only understand that we don’t want to be considered employees and there are several reasons why. First of all, there are so many venues in town. If you enact minimum wage and force these venues to pay us minimum wage, it’s going to put a lot of them out of business. Economically, I don’t want to put people out of work. The second reason is a lot of people working in entertainment or the adult environment, we do have other hobbies, education, and we have other jobs. But due to discriminatory hiring, if Susie Stripper with her PhD in literature wants to go back to school and continue being a college professor — and I’ve met women who are college professors and strip in secret — if she’s subject to a background check and it shows up as entertainer on her work background because she had to list it, since she was considered an employee, she may or may not be hired, whether or not she’s qualified, simply because of discrimination. A lot of entertainers really don’t want to have to be forced to list this work because we know that it could affect our future conventional work choices."

[Salon]

Rihanna Swims with Sharks

That's Rihanna hanging around in a shark's mouth for Harper's Bazaar. The side-by-side homage to "Jaws" is here. Video of Rihanna swimming with sharks is here.

Who Dated Who on 'Sex and the City'?

I'm embarrassed to report that not only did I do the "Can You Guess Who Dated Who on 'Sex and the City'?" quiz, but I only got 11 out of 15 right.

[BuzzFeed]

That's What He Said

She likes her coffee like she likes her men...strong and with a stick of butter shoved in them

— Clayton Cubitt (@claytoncubitt) February 7, 2015

Sex in Space

If you were thinking about becoming an astronaut so you could have sex in space, think again. BuzzFeed has a listicle featuring "9 Reasons Why Having Sex in Space Is a Horrible Idea."

"In microgravity, sweat doesn’t drip down your body. Instead it clings to your skin and forms pools, Millis said. If you were engaging in some heavy, vigorous sex, then blobs of liquid would be flying all over the place."

[BuzzFeed]

The Porn Site That Hollywood Built

Jason Reitman, gross, tells the Huffington Post, gag, that he created a real porn site for his movie about the internet and the people who patronize it.

"'We had a guy whose job, full-time, was to look at porn ... and find thumbnails so we could create Pornhub pages so that it looked as though someone was searching things and things were coming up,' Reitman told HuffPost Live's Roy Sekoff. 'So that guy, for weeks, he just watched porn and came up with thumbnails and titles to clips.'"

Congratulations, dickhead.

[HuffPo]

That Girl with That Butt

Too disco for you https://t.co/wlLKNDueVy cc @eslauraabad

— Peteski (@nevverdaily) February 6, 2015

Memo from the Corrections Department

The Facebook Whisperer says this status update should have wryly informed consumers not to use Trojan condoms past their expiration date.

[Facebook]

Jennifer Lawrence Naked. Again. But This Time It's OK.

Oh, hey, it's Jennifer Lawrence naked in Vanity Fair. Well, not entirely naked because her outfit is a big snake.

Patrick Demarchelier snapped the pic which is an homage to this pic by Richard Avedon.

So it's OK for you to see her naked if she says it's OK to see her naked, but it's not OK for you to see her naked if she says it's not OK to see her naked.

Glad we cleared that up.

VF reports:

"Last July 29, on a Patrick Demarchelier shoot at a private residence in the Hollywood Hills, a giant Colombian red-tailed boa constrictor spent most of the day cooped up in a perforated, extra-large storage container managed by two very capable handlers. When it came time for the snake to take his star turn, there was frightfully little between him and Jennifer Lawrence—only a long metal rod with a hook at the end. The actress proved to be very brave and nonchalant about having a serpent wrapped around her body—an homage to the 1981 Richard Avedon Vogue portrait of Nastassja Kinski that launched a million dorm-room posters—and coolly focused her eyes on the camera."

One can assume they take pains to point out the date of the shoot in order to make clear the photo was done prior to her nude photo leaks last August.

[Vanity Fair via Fashion Copious]

Poop Emoji Dress

Betabrand is deciding whether or not to make a poop-emoji dress for women to follow their poop-emoji shirt for men.

Adweek's David Griner coos: "This is truly a golden age for the poo emoji, that fecund swirl who's become the messaging embodiment of all things odious."

The company is crowdfunding this shit. It's an exciting time for coprophagiacs.

Looks like they're also doing poop-emoji shoes.

[Adweek via Rob Walker]

Cronenberg Does Hollywood

Behold the trailer for David Cronenberg's latest, "Maps to the Stars." It is rated R and contains STRONG DISTURBING VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC NUDITY, LANGUAGE AND SOME DRUG MATERIAL. So, the usual Cronenberg.

Variety reports:

"But the film’s most au courant and inflammatory conceit is no doubt the portrait of the 13-year-old mega-star, Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), a kid just out of rehab whose longtime success on TV and $780 million gross for his latest film allow him to call his agent stuff like 'Jew faggot' and get away with it. He also thinks it’s funny when he labels people 'vabinas' and, on a would-be goodwill visit, asks a hospitalized young girl how her AIDS is doing."

[iTunes]