Transparency
I binge watched the second season of "Transparent" a few days ago. It was really, really lovely. A lot of feels, and a lot of nodding to the imperfection of everything, and an homage to crazy LA.
Watch it.
The Internet Is Jolie Laide
Image via Flyover Life and Style
I keep following and unfollowing Farhad Manjoo on Twitter. For one, he posts too much, and for another, there's something ... treacly about his sentiments. In the latest installment of his "State of the Art" tech column for the New York Times, "The Internet's Loop of Action and Reaction Is Worsening," he asserts that the internet has become a terrible, dangerous thing. "The Internet wasn't supposed to be this ugly," he bellyaches, bemoaning the various ways the web has gone bad: hot takes, social media sparring, the Islamic State.
It's all very disappointing, he whines, pointing to John Perry Barlow's vision of a kinder, gentler internet, circa 1996: a cyberspace place better than meat space, "more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.” How ... optimistic. Instead, we've got beheading videos, Twitter faux-rage, and "2 Girls 1 Cup."
The idea that the internet would offer up something superior to reality was the first misguided thought. The next wrong turn was that if it offered up the the opposite instead, something had gone wrong. In fact, the violent, tumultuous, deeply conflicted world spewed across the screens of our desktops, iPads, and mobile devices mirror us exactly how we are, which, of course, is exactly what we want to see. The war doesn't exist overseas, it exists within. Humanity's perversions aren't born on PornTube sites, they're expressions of our own twisted minds. The internet of 2015 reflects us truly: tortured and deluded, in denial and agape, salivating for something that makes us feel like something other than what we are -- slabs of tissue parked like inanimate objects in front of a pixel otherworld that dances in front of us -- and makes us feel, a little, for a moment: afraid, awestruck, consumed by the horror, the horror that, in the end, is us.
Drinking Tea with the Taliban
Photo credit: Lynsey Addario
I read Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario's memoir, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, and liked it very much. Is it an extraordinary work of masterful nonfiction? No. Is it the riveting account of a woman who has bigger balls than you do? Yes. There may be too much love story in this war story for man readers, but ladies looking to live boldly in a world that isn't made of pixels will be inspired by Addario's fearless approach to love and war.
“Madam,” Haleem said, “the commander’s men are worried you can’t drink your tea through your veil. They would really like for you to drink your tea.” The whispers continued, and if it weren’t for the veil, I would have had a difficult time concealing my smile. Only among Muslims is the hospitality so great that they cannot bear the notion that someone’s tea will be left untouched.
Haleem had another brilliant idea: “I know! You can stand in the corner of the room, with your back facing all of us, and lift your veil to the wall and drink your tea. Once you finish, you can replace your veil.”
And so, in a room full of some of the most vicious fighters against the United States and everything it stood for, I stood in the corner and faced the wall as I drank my tea.
Don't Work for Free, Unless You Work for Free
Image via Inked
In a post about freelancing and writing for free, Poynter quoted a Forbes post I wrote awhile back about freelance writing.
“These days, it’s not enough to be a good writer online,” notes Breslin in a Forbes post. “You have to be a smart marketer, your own content factory, your own publicist. If you can do it all, you are golden. If you cannot, you are screwed.”
#DONUTRAT
My Life in Playboy
I wrote about how my life path has intersected with Playboy, and how I feel about the fact that the magazine will no longer be publishing nudes. I guess I'm disappointed, for some reason.
Growing up, I never expected to work for Playboy. I grew up in Berkeley, California, where feminism is what’s for breakfast, Columbus Day has been replaced with Indigenous Peoples Day, and I was an undergrad at the University of California at Berkeley at the same time as the Naked Guy. According to my feminist film studies class, the patriarchy was something to wage a war against, women’s bodies were a battleground, and sexual objectification was the tool of the enemy. To posit oneself as an object of sexual desire, to relish scopophilia, was an act of political betrayal.
At least in theory, Playboy was the opposite of all that.
SNEAKS
"Can't catch me. #newbalance"
Letters from Men Who Want to Be Porn Stars
Image via Socialite Life
I'm back posting the emails I get from men who want to be porn stars, which I get because I wrote this. I've got over 500 emails at this point, so I figure I might as well keep posting them.
Perhaps these actresses were simply matchless in their craft, but I chose to believe that the majority of them (if not all) were truly enjoying themselves at the hands of their well-selected masculine counterparts. The smiles I saw from these women as they approached such visceral climaxes were sublime, as if Himeros was dripping sweat from exhaustion and each drop of sweat was a divine note that played a melody on each fair lady's skin. The shakes of their glowing feminine bodies as every little sensory impulse went through their electrified minds, all firing back messages to the tiny control muscles of the face to create those heavenly facial expressions and smiles, were a joy to witness.
["I Don't Think I Could Have Been a Male Pornstar, but James Deen Is My Spirit Animal"]
I Got 500 Emails From Men Who Wanted To Be Porn Stars. You'll Never Believe What Happened Next
Image via Wikipedia
My latest on Forbes explores why I keep getting emails from men in India who want to become porn stars:
According to Harjant Gill, a documentary filmmaker and anthropology professor at Towson University who focuses on masculinity in India, the Internet’s swift delivery of pornography across India has transformed the perception of masculinity in India. “I suspect that before internet became so readily available, most men aspired to be like Bollywood superstars because they consumed a lot more Bollywood/Hollywood films,” Gill emailed me. “Now their desires (and sense of masculine achievement) is driven by the form of media they consume most frequently, which is free porn on the internet.” The problem for these men, as Gill sees it, isn’t porn: It’s that “there’s a complete lack of discussion or sex-positive sex-education being offered in families and educational institutions” in India.
Let's Get Lean
"Better view"
Here's a quote I left out of my profile of a young entrepreneur making a cup for getting high:
Me: Who's your hero in business?
Him: Bernie Madoff. He sold dreams and thin air. That has to be applauded on some level.
Fury the Road
"Mad Max: Fury Road"! What a joy and a pleasure! Not a lot here to not like. Sure, it's little more than a high-speed road trip, but who cares with visuals like these! Also: It's not a story about Mad Max or the future. It's a story about women. Women warriors, really. It made me want to chop off half my arm and cut off almost all my hair, so I, too, can be a Charlizeian. I loved: water is the new oil, the world hath forsaken us, ladies as slaves to their bodies, unabashed head-smashing violence, the coolest cars you'll ever see, and tumorish diseases. In a way, "Fury Road" is a lot like a porn movie: Men? Yeah, well, they're kind of irrelevant.
Flakka Fever
"#TeaTime There's a new drug taking the country by storm and turning people into #Zombies. It's called #Flakka (expect to hear about it in rap songs) It's..."
This is the first time I've written about flakka, but, rest assured, it won't be the last. I'm super fascinated by it -- mostly because of the name. Also because Florida. In other parts of the country, it's referred to as "gravel." Florida is no slouch when it comes to the branding game.
Since flakka burst on the scene in 2013, the media’s gone crazy for the street drug that makes folks go nuts. Gawker’s Sam Biddle has a handy guide to all things flakka, aka Alpha-Pyrrolidinopentiophenone, a synthetic cathinone. It runs in the neighborhood of $5 a pop and purportedly makes those high on it act like superhuman zombies. The drug’s ground zero is Broward County, Florida, although its presence is slowly creeping across the country. In Ohio and Texas, flakka’s known as “gravel.” The drug can be swallowed, smoked, snorted, or shot, and flakka fiends have been known to attempt to kick in police headquarters’ glass doors and accidentally impale themselves on fences.
Can I Have Another?
"Pig."
My favorite part of "Is This Burger Obscene?" is the comment: "Obscene and immoral is right, and nothing to be proud of having eaten. Disgusting: you and the burger."
I'm disgusting, that's right!
"I ate half the burger at a high rate of speed. I’ve never smoked crack, but this, I imagined, is what smoking crack is like. You’re barely coming off your high when you realize what you really want in life is more crack."
Take It Off
"PLANET TOOTSIES....leave work and come and play!!! #playtime #sexy #girls #tootsies #miami #booty"
Always a surprise when you write a post about going to the biggest strip club in America and people want to read it. Who knew!
I'm disappointed I didn't get one of the T-shirts.
"What I’m trying to get Anakar to tell me is what he’s doing to bring in a whole new generation of young men who may be more inclined to turn to their screens to get turned on than to head to the strip club. But he’s not in the porn business, and these aren’t cam girls demanding tokens. For better or for worse, he’s in the flesh business. I ask him if one day virtual reality or some future tech device we can’t yet envision could threaten his livelihood. 'I don’t think it beats reality,' he says. He leans forward to drive home his point to me and underscore what he’s selling. In the case of you and your machine, 'You don’t have the true fantasy, which is reality.'"
Say Hello to My Fully-Automatic Friend
I shot machine guns in Miami. It was fun. Here's how that happened:
“Now you get to the shoot the Big Daddy,” Paul announced. “This is the SAW.”
Camming Isn't Everything, It's The Only Thing
I've got a new post up on Forbes, this one on cam girls and $, "Meet the Vince Lombardi of Cam Girls."
Here's a quote from Nikki Night that didn't make it into the piece:
"It makes you feel empowered to have people look at you and say, 'You're gorgeous, you’re interesting.' We’re told we have to be this, we have to be that at work. Especially women. You have to look a certain way. As soon as you start camming, you see the real me. Me being myself. Me being me is not a size two. I might have cellulite, but people think I’m beautiful. They value my friendship. They value my time. I am interesting. People want to listen to me. It's very empowering that way. It takes a lot of balls to do it at first, but once you do have that, there’s this unbelievable feeling you have of being free, and once you're free, you're free. I own it. I don’t have a stigma about my job. I own it."
Broadly with Vice
Image credit: Julez Zamora
Broadly is Vice's new lady vertical. I'm intrigued. You can get your nails done by the manicurist to the porn stars, go shooting with Ann Coulter, or get high while doing yoga. I suppose it's a bit heavy on the hipster, but with no aggregation, no comments, and no hot takes, what's not to like?
That Cop
Definitely take the time to read "The Cop," Jake Halpern's profile of Darren Wilson in the New Yorker. Halpern does a fine job of walking the tightrope between objectivity and wanting to tell a story. There's a braid of stories here, really: Wilson's, Michael Brown's, Ferguson's. In the piece, Wilson doesn't come across the most introspective guy or as the sharpest tool in the shed. Clearly, TV is his medium. In the end, one is left with no greater clarity about what happened other than two large men met and something disastrous ensued.
Eye of the Beholder
"Porn, I guess. #porn #Cosmo #magazine"
A Hearst heiress claims Cosmo is porn. But is it? Other than the tops of SJP's tits runningeth over, I didn't find the cover ... pornographic, per se. Inside, there were lots of ads. They may have exhibited the pornography of women, but I didn't find them to be ... porn. The front of the book was mostly: fashion, OMG hot actors, and stuff to do/read/smear on your face. There was a beauty image featuring a Darth Vader mask wearing a pink satin sleeping mask, which some Star Warsians might find offensive, but I don't think they would find it particularly titillating. Questions answered involved: how to style your hair better, how to get tan, how to minimize pores. One two-page spread wondered: "Are you a Kendall or a Kylie?" (Why can't I be both?) The back of the book had feature stories on: a young woman who had liver cancer, a model with vitiligo, the cast of the "hip-hopera" Hamilton. It wasn't until page 163 of the issue's 212 pages that things got, well, randy. In a photo, a hand held a cob of corn aloft. "Long Live the Hand Job?!" the headline crowed, confused. The piece was written by Tracy Clark-Flory, who's a friend of mine, and its point is really about love, not sex. The following pages host a personal essay about a woman who slept with a male model and lived to regret it: "Suddenly, the sight of his well-sculpted body was the last thing I wanted to see." Most of the rest of the sexy content was helpful, seemingly written for those who are still trying to figure it all out. Victoria Hearst is finding success in her attempts to get store copies of Cosmo covered up because, in her mind, it's "pornography." But it didn't seem to be porn to me. It seemed like it was a product that was created to meet a demand. Young women want to understand their sexuality, and it appears there are too few outlets for them to do it. So, there's Cosmo, leading the way.
The Reason I Liked Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation
Buy THE TUMOR! "This is one of the weirdest, smartest, most disturbing things you will read this year."