The Topless Hairdresser

Typically these pinks vans, which are often parked around Burbank, offer Topless Maids. Now they’re offering Topless Hairdressers. Be advised, this service will be provided for men only, per the signage. It’s hard to forget that number: 1-844-SO-DIRTY. You’ve got to give him credit for his marketing acumen, I suppose.

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In-N-Out

A shot from my Instagram feed: the In-N-Out in Westwood. From LA Observed:

“One of Steve's proudest projects in the Village and his personal favorite was his playful design for the IN-N-OUT Burger on Gayley Avenue, the only drive-through restaurant in the Village and a tribute to Southern California's car culture, which won a National AIA Honor Award in 2002. This was a conversion of a former Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through and a tired and dreary Sizzler steakhouse. Designed with IN-N-OUT's signature palm trees popping through a round opening in the roof, this was Steve's three-dimensional homage to the classic IN-N-OUT boomerang logo, and embraced the company's vivid ketchup red and mustard yellow colors. Steve once described this as "building as signage.” This contemporary version of the "programmatic architecture" made popular in Southern California in the 1930s, 40s and 50s remains a modern and enduring Village landmark (and achieved status as the third best performing unit in the entire IN-N-OUT chain).”

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The Story the Body Tells

If you’re at all confused about where you should stand regarding Confederate monuments, read Caroline Randall Williams’ “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.” It’s a searing, blistering indictment of America’s penchant for myth-making. She writes:

“You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.”

Read it here.

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8 Years Ago

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Not long ago, Facebook started sending me reminders of “memories,” and as of late they’ve been featuring posts from eight years ago, when I’d just finished chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer. After I went through treatment, I’d sometimes remind myself on bad days that, well, hey, at least it ain’t chemo! (Chemo is the worst.) In any case, this was one of those not-so-good days, and I’m glad to have been cancer-free every since.

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Ron Jeremy Charged with Rape

Today on my Forbes blog I wrote about Ron Jeremy, who’s been charged with forcible rape and sexual assault. You can read the details here. Since Jeremy is a fixture in the porn industry, I had various interactions with him over the years. When I was working for Playboy TV, I went to cover an “extreme porn vacation” In Mexico, where Jeremy was one of the performers. I seem to recall he’d had his chest hair waxed into the shape of a heart. I was also present when he performed in “The World Biggest Gangbang III.” At a certain point, he was brought in to have sex with the film’s star, Houston, and he was able to pop on command, per the director’s instruction, as the crowd surrounding him counted him down to ejaculation. In 2009, I pulled into the Roosevelt Hotel, where I was about to check in for a week to write about how the porn industry had been impacted by the recession, and Jeremy was walking in the back of the hotel. I’ve talked to him at various times. Mostly, he seemed like a narcissist and an egomaniac. That doesn’t make him a rapist, of course. Rumors have long been around that he’d sexually assaulted women. In all likelihood, some of those early allegations were dismissed or ignored because the victim was a sex worker or a porn star.

To exactly no one’s surprise among those who know him, he denied the allegations today on Twitter.

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All the News That's Fit to Newsletter

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In my latest newsletter, I talk about writing blocks, the Warren Ellis controversy, and racism in the porn industry.

An excerpt:

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about racism in the porn industry. It is true: There are ways in which the porn industry engages in systemically racist practices. That is not a good thing at all, and I hope that the porn industry works to rectify that wrong. At the same time, I’ve spent over 20 years writing about the porn industry, and the one forever truth in porn was told to me years ago by a producer: If there wasn’t a demand for it, it wouldn’t be made.

Read the rest here, and subscribe here.

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