The Young Voyeur
“Revisiting that scene made me wonder if that was a kind of cinematic experience of the erotic.” Read it here.
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What I'm Listening to: Emily Allan's "Steps to Destruction"
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LAPD Estate Sale
Estate sale of a Vietnam War vet and retired LAPD officer. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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What I'm Watching (Next): Magic City
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Books I Read: I Made an Accident
Kevin Sampsell’s I Made an Accident dazzled me with its beautiful, mysterious collages and pried my brain open with its curious, dreamy poems. I really loved how the art and prose play together, suggesting new connections, making a meta collage of images and words in book form. Accidents never looked this good. Delightful.
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Sunset Boulevard, Today
A model on an ad on Sunset Boulevard, taken today. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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What I'm Listening to: Baby Rose's "Landslide"
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Tarzan(a) Is Calling Me
“I wanted to see this house because it was the house where Thelma Dickinson’s character in Thelma & Louise lived.” In my latest newsletter, I explore Tarzana in the San Fernando Valley. Subscribe to get it every week.
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Books I Read: Mediations
I really loved Susan Meiselas’ Mediations. It provides a wonderful overview of her career, development as a photographer, and efforts to rebalance the power dynamics between photographer and subject. I particularly enjoyed the essay by Eduardo Cadava, which manages to be both personal and theoretical. Recommend.
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The Audition, Cont.
A panel from My, My American Bukkake Too, 2004
As I wrote on my blog previously, I pitched a story about the most extreme, out-there thing I’ve ever seen in all my years writing about the adult movie industry to a popular podcast. This podcast tends to explore topics on the outer limits, so I thought this may be a fit. They responded, letting me know they were interested and requesting a 10-minute audio audition. Because these events had happened some years ago, I spent quite a bit of time going over everything I’d written about this particular subject over the years. Last Sunday, I created an abbreviated version of the notes I’d taken during my re-research. Last Monday, I made a list of 10 bulleted points and sat down to record. For this podcast, you can have notes and bullet points, but in terms of telling the story, you must do so off the cuff. In any case, my goal was to record the audio in one take, which I did; I figured my first go at telling the story would be the strongest. Then I sent the audio recording I’d made to the producer with whom I had been in touch. Now, it’s a wait-and-see game. We’ll see what happens next.
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When Pornographers Were Kings
Adult actress in the grass, Los Angeles, Calif., 2001 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
One of the books I’m working on at the moment is a book-length work of narrative nonfiction. The title is: When Pornographers Were Kings: A History of America’s Most Notorious Business. More to come soon …
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The Collagist
A collage I made on my kitchen bulletin board, under a painting I bought at a San Fernando Valley estate sale.
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Fables of the 818
Image via Wikipedia
One of the books I’m working on at the moment is a short story collection. The title is: Fables of the 818. The interrelated stories take place in the San Fernando Valley—at strip clubs, porn sets, and massage parlors.
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What I'm Watching: Deichkind's "Keine Party" (Featuring Lars Eidinger)
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Fincher, Tarantino, and Pitt
Blush & Bangs, Highland Park, Los Angeles, Calif., 2005 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
David Fincher is filming the Quentin Tarantino penned spin-off to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, starring Brad Pitt, so they transformed a section of Highland Park into the 1970s.
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Were You Brave?
The Glendale Room, Glendale, Calif., 2005 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“Generally, my question for myself in life is pretty simple: Were you brave?” Subscribe to my newsletter here.
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I'm Revealed
Tonight, at 7 p.m., I’ll be a storyteller at Revealed, where people share true and personal stories about the “comedy and complexity of being human.” The show is at The Glendale Room, and the tickets are $8.
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My Photograph in an Upcoming Group Art Show
I’m delighted to share that one of my photographs will be part of a group art show in Brooklyn this fall. The show, curated by photographer Ellen Stagg, is called “Don’t Be a Square,” and it will take place at SHAG. The exhibition will be up from September 19, 2025, to January 3, 2026, starting with an opening reception on the 19th from 6 to 8 p.m. My work is titled Flowers (Adult Movie Set); it’s featured in the lower left-hand corner of the invite pictured in this post. I took the photo on the set of an adult movie in Canoga Park, Calif., in the spring of 2009. Below is Ellen’s curatorial statement. I hope you’ll check out this awesome exhibition.
Don’t Be a Square, Group Art Show
Curated by Ellen Stagg
Shag from September 19 - January 3
108 Roebling Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
“To Be Square: Means to be old-fashioned, conventional, or uncool”
Erotic art is never square, but I asked the artists of this show: “How do you see outside a box when you put yourself in one?”
Making art in a square is not typical, but it can be done. Most canvases are rectangles in Landscape or Portrait, but a square is the same on all sides, creating a canvas for all the artists to be the same, but expressing themselves in their own way, fully and freely.
The artists in this show exemplify just that—all different. From color to black and white, and through the use of media from Photography, Collage, Drawings, Sculpture, Paintings, Video, and Multimedia, they all have a common ground—the square—and their own way of thinking outside their own constraints. By expressing themselves fully with the theme of Eroticism and what it means to them to be boxed into four walls, they are thus exposing their own deepest desires of sexuality and sensuality.
The work flows so well together because of their common canvas, but they are all so different in a playful, sexy, and thought-provoking way. If we are forced to be boxed into a square, how do we test the limits of our sexuality? Stop putting yourself in a box with conventions and don’t be a square.
Artists to show:
Agatha, Amanda Heck, Ames Robin, Daze, Dee Lee, Ellen Stagg, Isa McMullen, Jeff Faerber, Joe Borzotta, Lara Scotton, Leo Brooklyn, Marianna Carlina, Martina Secondo Russo, Micheal Paul, Peekaboo Pointe, Porkchop, subtexture, Susannah Breslin, Sy Rivers, Trixie LaPointe, Tom Tapit and William Thompson
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Books I Read in July: Favorite and Least Favorite
This year, I decided to read only books with pictures. In July, I read four books. (You can find all my short book reviews here.) My favorite was Barbara Nitke’s American Ecstasy; from my review: “I read and pored over this book at a glacial pace because I didn’t want it to end.” My least favorite was E. M. Carroll’s A Guest in the House; from my review: “I had to search the internet to try and understand [the ending].”
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The Halfway Point
Yesterday I reached the halfway point in my novel, which is set in the San Fernando Valley’s adult movie industry. As seen here, with the book’s epigraph. Only the rest of the way left to go. Onward and upward.
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