See This Movie
Watch this movie. Tragic, and beautiful, and totally original. America has the president it deserves.
Hustling for Dollars
I did an interesting interview with a veteran stripper who coaches other dancers on how to make more money.
Stripping ain't easy, kids:
"Our work ravages our bodies and many dancers are managing chronic pain without insurance. Like athletes, we often tolerate the intolerable because our options are limited. A good club is worth dealing with the occasional unsavory business."
Sick
13 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "💀"
Wonder Woman Disappointment
I saw "Wonder Woman" and am apparently the only woman in the country who didn't OMGLOVEIT. Confusing. I've been thinking about writing a post on my Forbes blog about it, but I haven't yet been able to figure out why it didn't entirely do it for me. Wonder Woman was a bit naive and one dimensional. The action was stagey. The plot was disjointed. I was underwhelmed by Gal's acting chops. I missed Lynda Carter. Chris Pine was canned. It made me long for something more like Emily Blunt's character in "Sicario." But she's no hero.
Trump, Comey, and Those Russian "Hookers"
The last time I was in the same room with the man Larry Flynt deemed the "pimp master general of America," Dennis Hof, I was at "The World's Biggest Gang Bang III." Yesterday, I talked to Hof, several sex workers, and a therapist who works with sex workers about what it means when men in power -- in this case, fired FBI director James Comey and President Trump -- talk Russian "hookers."
From "Comey Talks Russian 'Hookers' and Sex Workers Are Not Amused":
Years ago, not long before he got into the brothel business, Dennis Hof says, he met Trump. "I met him 27 years ago," Hof recalls. "I was in the timeshare business. He wanted to timeshare the [Trump] Taj Mahal, and he wanted me to come aboard to do that. I didn't do that. I said there's not enough money in the world to make me live in Atlantic City." Instead, Hof became "the pimp master general of America," the title, Hof says, given to him by Hustler publisher and Larry Flynt Publications president Larry Flynt. Hof, now 70, runs seven legal brothels throughout Nevada.
More of This
I've been doing more pilates lately. It seems to do all good things. I'm standing up straighter. My muscles are longer. And I'm working on getting my alignment realigned. It's certainly a curious practice, and I can't say I understand how it works, but you might want to try it if you haven't. You can start by going to a mat pilates class. It will tone up your core in no time flat. Promise.
Tall AF
4 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "all your friends short af 😂👑💅🏻 #tallgirlproblems #tallgirls #tallbarbie #tall #sixone..."
Check out my Instagram for the latest installment of my #tallgirlproblems series.
Recent Things
Keeping up with me on my Forbes blog? I've posted a few things there lately that are worth a look.
I'm super excited for the premiere of HBO's porn drama "The Deuce" this fall.
This guy likes to smear food on his face and take pictures.
Say hell yes to ladies-only "Wonder Women" screenings!
Dubai's Robocop scares me.
And don't miss my think-piece on mugshots and why love them. (Hint: It's not them, it's you.)
"Inspected at this range, the supermodel is revealed to have a slight mustache. The famous actress has an angry pimple. The male superstar has something awful stuck between his teeth. Stars, we think, feeling pleased, they're just like us."
Sincere
48 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "👀 SINCERE #corvair"
What the Web Used to Be
58 Likes, 10 Comments - Christyna Mills (@christynamills) on Instagram: "There's a first time for everything 💁 The scorpion/cocoon is mine! 🦂💪So much pain...😂 * * * Thank..."
It used to be that the internet was a great place for voyeurism. You could peer into people's private lives (blogs), you could find things nobody else had ever seen (rule 34), you could be transported somewhere else through something that felt new and fresh (see: whatever turned you on in the beginning). Now it's harder to do that. Lifestyles are curated brands. Blogs have been eaten by corporations. People have turned into performances. It's filtered, it's curated, it's packaging. For some reason, I feel like I see more intimacy on Instagram now. It's where I find myself wandering when I want to find what I haven't seen already (and, let's face it, for me, that's pretty much everything). Anyway, I came across this video of a woman on a pole today. It's just a flash of her life, her exploring what she can do, and, of course, above all else, it's fascinating because it's beautiful to witness that.
I can't figure out if it's possible to embed an Instagram video on Squarespace. Watch the video here.
Tally the Tall
8 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "tfw it takes you an hour to shave your legs 🤡👑💅🏻🛀🏻🦄 #tallgirlproblems #tallgirls #tallgirl..."
This is the latest installment from my Instagram art series featuring Tally the "Tall"-sized Barbie. (Really. That's how she is billed on the packaging.) Here, she is lamenting how long it takes to shave her long legs. Truth! I should've taken off her clothes and put her in the tub. Next time, I'll do better.
The Latest, The Greatest
If you haven't already, check out some of my recent posts over on my Forbes blog.
I wrote about a subscription box service for ... strippers. I interviewed a woman who got cancer -- and then got an obscene grill. And I shared my thoughts on Netflix's "I Love Dick."
Related to that last, I enjoyed Alexandra Schwartz's more negative and cleverly cutting evisceration of "I Love Dick" in the New Yorker.
She writes:
"That manifesto-like tone is typical of the show. In moments like this, it lands with cocky charm. Mostly, though, it seems as if Soloway and the women of her writer’s room (to her credit, she insisted on an all-female script team) sat around spit-balling sound bites to print on T-shirts or Women’s March posters."
Ouch.
More Tall Girl Problems
3 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "tfw you try on a full length gown 😭😡🤢👑🔥☄️💥🥃💣💊🕳 #tallgirls #tallbarbie #tallgirlproblems #sixone..."
On my Instagram feed, I'm exploring #tallgirlproblems with my #tallbarbie from Mattel's Barbie Fashionistas line. In this installment, Tally demonstrates what it's like when you try on a full-length gown and it doesn't even reach your knees. How will she get through prom? And who the fuck is tall enough to be her date?
#tallgirlproblems
1 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "tfw you order shoes online 😡👠⁉️💥😪 #tallgirls #tallbarbie #tallgirlproblems #barbie..."
I recently bought one of Mattel's Barbie Fashionistas. They come in petite, curvy, and tall. (Oh, and original-sized.) I bought tall, because I'm six-one. I thought I might experiment with exploring some #tallgirlproblems through the adventures of my #tallbarbie on Instagram. You can follow my exploits -- or should I say Tally's exploits, for that's her name, on my Instagram feed. Future installments could include having to get short people stuff from high shelves, dating when you're the height of a giraffe, and never being able to find pants that are long enough to cover your ankles. When you've got #tallgirlproblems, everything's a stretch.
I Love Dick
On my Forbes blog, I shared my thoughts about "I Love Dick." I didn't love every episode, but I'm obsessed with the fifth episode. Watch it! Watch the whole thing. And especially episode 5. It's a wonderful thing.
Can't Wait to See This
Amazing!
Love these images of octopi.
What Is Blogging?
Jason Kottke has an interesting post here in which he compares blogging to vaudeville.
He writes:
Image via 3:AM Magazine
"Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this on here before, but I often think of blogging as vaudeville to social media’s moving pictures (aka 'movies')."
His post was inspired by another post by Tim Bray about blogging.
He writes:
"The great danger is that the Web’s future is mall-like: No space really public, no storefronts but national brands’, no visuals composed by amateurs, nothing that’s on offer just for its own sake, and for love."
I like both of these considerations a lot. Writing this post, a line from one of the world's greatest photojournalists, James Nachtwey, came to mind:
"I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony."
Here's what Merriam-Webster says about what it means to bear witness:
"to show that something exists or is true"
That's my experience of blogging. That it's the act of bearing witness to one's life, that writing it down in public is a way of showing that one exists and one's life is true, that to blog is to insist that one is real and that one's existence is deserving of being witnessed by the world.
Inside Baseball, Porn Valley Style
Awhile back, my friend Tod Hunter, The Best Writer in Porn, posted this very funny image to the comments section of my Facebook page. That's Tod in the image, and the text reads: "The best writer in porn ... unless Susannah Breslin comes back."
I met Tod on the first porn movie set I ever visited. Tod is a journalist who covers the business and knows pretty much everything there is to know about the industry. He's always been unfailingly helpful to me in my ventures there. So this image greatly amused me.
Thanks, Tod!
The CEO of HIV
The New York Times has an interesting profile of the CEO of HIV.
Read it:
"To his many critics in AIDS activism, Weinstein is the Koch brothers of public health: a mastermind driven by ideology, accountable to no one, with bottomless funds and an agenda marked by financial opportunism and puritanical extremes. It doesn’t help that A.H.F. has been the subject of near-constant litigation and complaints for questionable business practices, including union-busting, giving kickbacks to patients, overbilling government insurers and bullying funders into denying grants to institutional rivals. (A.H.F. has denied these accusations.)"