Shot

An awesome shot of me by Clayton Cubitt.

The Weiner report

Head on over to my Forbes blog, where I've got an exclusive from Anthony Weiner sext recipient Ginger Lee: "How Porn Is Making Money Off The Anthony Weiner Scandal."

With Spitzer struggling to put his call girl-loving past behind him in a bid to become New York City’s next comptroller and Weiner staggering through an increasingly messy campaign in hopes of becoming the next mayor of New York City, pornographers at the other side of the country are rubbing their palms together and trying to figure out how they can make money off the steamy headlines.

Venus

Awhile back, I had the awesome experience of being shot by my friend Clayton Cubitt. This is what you look like after breast cancer treatment. Thanks so much to the incomparable Katie Wedlund for styling me.

Where I'm going this weekend

This weekend, I'm going to Kewanee, Illinois, hog capital of the world.

Wildcatting

Read Susan Shepard's excellent piece: "Wildcatting: A Stripper's Guide to the Modern American Boomtown."

At times the customers were bafflingly delightful. The farmer who pulled a Leica out of his overalls and asked if he could take my picture. The shy, funny drilling contractor who would bring us surf and turf from the nearby steakhouse on slow nights. The tattoo artist who said the town was so small you could walk across it. The photographer on assignment to shoot one of the first boomtown articles written about the area. The local fortysomething lesbian smiling like a 21-year-old. The kid who was tickled that I recognized his Daniel Johnston T-shirt. These people would make my day.

Trance

I watched "Trance." It was deeply horrible. Do not recommend. Redeeming qualities: Vincent Cassel, lush colors, the soundtrack.

What I'm reading

"Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-​brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-​print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek."

-- David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Monkeys

Monkeys, Chicago, Illinois

The Loser

"In the smaller room is a large bed he makes up himself, several record albums he rarely plays, a telephone that seldom rings." -- Gay Talese, "The Loser" via Damon Brown

Le Sex Shoppe

When porn was sold in brick-and-mortar stores. I took this photo about a decade ago. It will appear in an upcoming book by Charles Saatchi.

Nicki Minaj would like to buy you a drink

I interviewed Nicki Minaj for Forbes:

“I kind of think of myself almost like a man,” Minaj explains. “I’m not going to fall back from something because it’s never been done before by a woman. It’s time for a female Jay, a female Puffy.”

It's hysterical

My friend Clayton Cubitt launched his Hysterical Literature site today, and it includes an essay I wrote: "The Last Real Porn Star."

This is the number of people who have watched a video of porn star Stoya read an excerpt from Supervert's Necrophilia Variations: 6,986,096.

Stoya is not: naked, having sex, in a porn movie.

She is: reading a book.

By the time you read this, over 7 million people will have watched Stoya read a book.

"We were at a party, you and I," Stoya reads, and everybody listens.

Flowers

Flowers, Chicago, Illinois

Woman's work

"So you end up maximizing, rather than minimizing, the risks."-- "Woman's Work"

Newsstand

Newsstand, Shanghai, China

Shine on

If you're at Target, swing by the book section and pick up my girlfriend Lydia Netzer's SHINE SHINE SHINE, now available in paperback. It's Target's pick for what you should be reading at the beach. I loved it.

What it's like to be a human lab rat

What is it like to be a human lab rat? Let’s say, for the sake of illustration, it’s the future. Privacy is an antiquated concept, an artifact of an age in which secrets were possible. In this future world, your selfhood is quantified. Every nanosecond of your day-to-day life is automatically recorded, tracked, measured: your heartbeats per minute, the cornflakes you ate for breakfast, the number of times you’ve cheated on your wife, the 2.33 minutes you spent gazing distractedly out the window of your corner office at the rapidly-changing skyline, the weight of this morning’s post-latte bowel movement, those dreams you have but do not recall upon waking. The great data archive of your life is created at the very moment you move through it. Without questioning or thinking, you understand on a deep, visceral level that within the brave new hive mind, "the unrecorded life is not worth living."

["What It's Like to Be a Human Lab Rat"]

Why Eliot Spitzer did what he did

Since Eliot Spitzer has announced he's running for New York City comptroller, it seems like a good time to revisit my Letters from Johns project.

The project ran from January 2008 to January 2009. I requested letters from readers of my blog who had paid for sex, letters in which they shared their experiences and why they did it.

A few months after the project began, Spitzer was busted for patronizing a call girl.

At that time, I wrote about the project for Newsweek: "Dear John."  

"I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done":

One can try to hang a sign on us, the collective john, as perpetuating the global conspiracy of sex/slave traffic, and I'll grant that my Thailand trip may have/probably did contribute to some sort of thuggery. But in the end, I am ashamed of nothing I have done.

"I'm a State Investigator":

I keep a coded diary, in case it's discovered. 1 dot is oral, 2 dots is vaginal sex, and 2 connected dots is anal sex. In the event that someone questions the dots, they are associated with good/bad days: no dots are normal days, 1 dot is a good day, 2 dots is a great day, and 2 connected dots is the best day for that week.

"I Have a Physical Disability":

I am now a regular customer, although not as regular as I’d like to be. This is mostly because my brother has moved overseas, and it is hard to find people who will willingly accompany me. However, each time I go, I no longer feel like a cripple. I feel whole. 

The guinea pigs

Over at my new Block Kids project, I explore the most famous controversy spawned by the study for which I was guinea pig: "The How to Spot a Baby Conservative Debate."

Conservatives were outraged. Glenn Beck attacked the study on the debut of his CNN show, noting, “I really shouldn’t be happy, because I’m a conservative." Michelle Malkin wondered, “If whiny kids grow up to be conservatives, how do you explain the sniveling psychosis on the Left side of the blogosphere …" At the Volokh Conspiracy, James Lindgren took a deep dive on the data. SEED explored both sides. 

[READ]

What I'm reading

What I'm reading right now: I'm Right, You're Wrong, Now What?: Break the Impasse and Get What You Need.

I found it while reading this HBR piece: "Practical Tips for Overcoming Resistance."

From the book:

The results of a recent study of 3,682 couples [...] found that women who give up and give in during arguments with their husbands are four times more likely to die prematurely than women who argue productively. The women who held it in also had a higher risk of depression and irritable bowel syndrome. The study's authors conclude that healthy arguments are good for your health and longevity.

The Block Kids

I've launched a new project: The Block Kids.

We weren’t just preschoolers; we were test subjects. My fellow preschoolers and I became the subjects of one of the most ambitious studies of identity ever undertaken: the Block study.

[READ]

Of Maggots and Madonnas

The concept is quintessential Knight/McQueen. Create the face of an angel and place it, pride of place, in a church in the southern French town of Avignon. Nothing much new about that, you might think, except that instead of using stained glass or any other such obvious and/or widely deemed appropriate materials, the pair constructed the piece entirely out of dyed maggots – 80 gallons of dyed maggots, to be precise. It’s a frankly horrifying thought, which is, of course, the point. -- "Of Maggots and Madonnas," c/o Clayton Cubitt

Squares

I'm looking for someone to build me a custom personal site using Squarespace. Know of someone? Email me.

Glenn Greenwald and porn

Since folks are talking about Glenn Greenwald's previous career in porn, it seems like a good time to revisit a 2008 piece I wrote on Max Hardcore and obscenity that features Greenwald: "To the Max."

Reading Greenwald's post, I wondered if he had ever watched a Max Hardcore movie. I sent him an email, asking if he had.

A few minutes later, I received a reply. "No, I haven't. But I read about its content. Why?"

I replied: "You should."

He replied: "I really don't care what consenting adults do with one another in order to entertain themselves or please themselves sexually--I'm not a busy body trying to sit in judgment of what other adults choose to do with themselves, especially in their sex lives. Not even the Government claimed that these films involved minors or non-consent, so as far as I'm concerned, it's nobody's business what they do, and whatever they do isn't going to change my mind in the slightest."

[READ]

InterrroClayton

This is a very cool idea: InterroClayton. Clayton Cubitt is selling his brain. One cell will cost you $1 $2. I did it. Try it. You might learn something.

NYC mannequin

NYC Mannequin, New York City, New York

Muckraker

I added my journalism profile to Muck Rack. Check it out. Then hire me.

Red

Porn Awards Red Carpet, Las Vegas, Nevada

Everything is going to be alright

My favorite work of art I saw in New York City was Guido van der Werve's everything is going to be alright.

Like the somewhat over-employed metaphor of Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, propelled into the future as it looks back at the ruins of the past, our man at the front (the artist himself) is a paradoxical figure of fearlessness.

You can read more about it here and watch a 30 second excerpt here. 

Bald mannequin

Bald Mannequin, New York City, New York

Oh, Mickey

What's it like to model for Clayton Cubitt?

Awesome.

Here we are having fun at his studio in Brooklyn.

Follow him on Twitter. Love him on Instagram.

[IMAGE]

Money pool

Statue, New York City, New York

Midtown mannequin

Midtown Mannequin, New York City, New York

Mannequin in window

Mannequin, Chicago, Illinois

Don't tase me, girl

I talked to TASER about Tasers, women, and targets:

The pink C2 was released in 2007. “Women may not want to look tactical in all black,” Tuttle reports, and with the pink model, “If it falls out of her purse, no one’s going to think, ‘Oh my god, what’s that?’”

[READ, IMAGE]

Street fair girl

Street Fair Girl, Chicago, Illinois

She a bad bitch

B.o.B "Headband" ft 2Chainz [Lyric Video] from Defient on Vimeo.
It's the end of my second week blogging daily on the sin beat at Forbes. I'm having a great time. Check it out.

I went to Aviary. It's the most awesome place ever. I regret not ordering the drink that comes on a Bunsen burner.

I bought Liar's Poker, and now I really need to read it.

This is not a reinvention story

I've switched beats at Forbes, and it's been pretty rewarding so far. I wrote about the process:

The week before that I took a pole dancing class and discovered that I would make a terrible stripper: “Gyms for Women Sell More Than Fitness.”

Today, I interviewed a porn lawyer, talked to a co-founder of Taser, and set up a meeting with a molecular mixologist.

I plan to talk to the guy holding the sign on the corner with the reference to the Bible on it, but I haven’t done that yet.

[READ]

Sin stock report

I had a fun time yesterday interviewing the creator of Sin Stock Report.

Created by Aaron Hoos, a stock broker turned business and finance writer in Winnipeg, Canada, the outlet bills itself as “the only internet magazine focused exclusively on those stocks you DON’T want your mother to know about!”

[READ]

Starlets

Porn Stars, Las Vegas, Nevada

Lazer

This video is crazy.

Bang

I had fun interviewing Lisa Looper about the super popular bra holster she created.

At this year’s NRA convention, men were interested, too. “There’ll be a big crowd of men standing around watching us demo,” she recounts. “I think at one point they think there’s going to be a flash, and it never comes. If you take boobs and guns and combine ‘em, there’s some sex appeal, whether you mean there to be or not.”

[READ]

The vice beat

Crickets, Shanghai, China
Over at my Forbes blog, I'm working the vice beat. Yesterday, I posted about cricket fighting, and today I'll have a post that's best described as: Is that a gun in your bra or are you just happy to see me?

The vice beat covers a lot of territory -- gambling, alcohol, tobacco, weapons, adult. But it can also include any business sector that a portion of the people view as having a negative impact on our culture. Illegal drugs, for example. Some people consider food a vice these days. I wrote a post awhile back on whether or not Apple is a sin stock.

Got tips on any subjects, people, or stories that you'd like to see explored on SIN INC? Email me.

Follow the leader

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I love it.

One-armed mannequin

One-Armed Mannequin, Shanghai, China

Hey, homo

Nicky Da B - Go Loko (Official) from Clayton Cubitt on Vimeo.
One thing that's cool about the internet is that you can watch the arc of someone's career play out in real time.

Take, for example, Clayton Cubitt. A long time ago, he lived in a dreampod. And he took pictures of girls (sometimes in trouble). And he worked with meat. And then he die-d (Antwoord). 

Now, he's gone loko.

It's your career. Expanding and contracting. Rising and dipping. The internet where you leave the residue.

[BLOG]

Twat

I'm not sure you're aware, but my new Twitter is here.

Butt

Statue, Suzhou, China

I'm a pole dancer

For my Forbes blog, I took a pole dancing class.

In pole dancing class, there is nowhere to hide. At the start of class, I had chosen a pole in the second row. Presciently, most of the other women had chosen poles in the back row.

[READ]

Interior

Interior designing with Damon Brown, Crate & Barrel, CB2, West Elm, and Lydia Netzer.

What I'm reading

Necrophilia Variations, Supervert

My new logo

The awesomely talented Chris Bishop has designed a logo for my Forbes blog, SIN INC. It's a redux of the logo he created for my Reverse Cowgirl blog years ago. It is awesome.

Check out Bishop's original cowgirl logo. His haunting Bad Memory painting hangs in my home office. He's famous for his unicorns humping shirt.

[CHRIS BISHOP]

Tax that ass

My pal Bubbles let me interview her for my Forbes blog. What's it like to work with a pole tax? Bubbles explains.

Jezebel, as you pointed out, called Houston’s pole tax “genius,” adding, “Pretty smart to use money from folks who enjoy sexualized women to aid sexually assaulted women.” Are pole taxes feminist — or anti-feminist?

The pole tax is a regressive and optional tax and as such is definitely not progressive, liberal, or in line with a statewide economic policy that would further the interests of most of the working women in the state.

[READ]

You are no longer distinct

Hey! That's me. Back when I had a mohawk. Or maybe it was when I had a fauxhawk.

In any case, please go read photographer Clayton Cubitt's latest phototreatise. It's a fascinating evaluation of how photography has transformed time. Fall into his dark worm hole.

"What if every phone in every pocket had this technology, and you could consent to have your presence 'photographed' from anywhere on Earth at any time, by sharing your own connection with another artist, and vice versa? Imagine Errol Morris' 'Interrotron' in hyper-realistic 3D, from all angles, at all times. What if a future decentralized social networking platform allowed everyone to connect their capture node, for the use of any other artist, or just a chosen circle of friends? We already use Google Street View for location scouting. What if it enabled us to change to any angle and scrub back and forth in time as well, and from any 'open' node near it, side to side, and from drones above, not just from a single Google car that passed by once?

This is the Constant Moment. This is as close to a time machine as we're likely to get."

[READ]

Cowgirl in Asia

Last week I returned from my second trip to China. The first time I went was in December of last year.

In case you are not aware, Asia is insane. Or at least China is. Or at least the parts that I went to are -- Shanghai and Suzhou.

What is the population of Shanghai? Closing in on 24 million. As a point of comparison, the population of New York City is around 8.5 million.

When people find out you went to Asia, they are most of the time impressed. I am not sure why. Invariably, if they haven't been there, they want to know what it's like. I say, "It's like New York City on steroids," but that doesn't really cut it. It is massively busy, a completely different world, hyper-capitalist and deeply old school.

My favorite things are: Pudong, with its wacky skyline; the antiques market with busts of Mao at every turn; the food, especially the crispy duck at 1221; the animals and insects market, where the frogs are rainbow colored and the crickets have a fight club; the marriage market at People's Park; the golden temples populated by saffron-wrapped monks and surrounded by skyscrapers; the sensation of being a stranger in a strange land.

At one point, I was meandering around a park in Suzhou, camera in hand. I thought, There is nothing here to photograph other than trees and bridges. A minute later, I rounded a corner to find a statue of a little boy bent over, his pants pulled down, a sculpted dog sniffing his butt.

That's China for you.

The Bitcoin girl

I really loved Kashmir Hill's bitcoin survival story. Hilarious, interesting, smart. Definitely check it out.

Kenna unlocks a barred door next to the T-Mobile store on 20^th Street to a bicycle-choked staircase that leads to the second-floor “halfway hacker house.” He tells me he took over the space 14 months earlier and convinced the landlord to let him live in it for 9 months rent-free while he and his childhood friend, Jeff, cleaned the place up.

“We think it was basically a crackhouse,” says Jered. “We were sweeping hypodermic needles off the floors.”

[READ]

Price

From my latest on Forbes, "The Price of Investing in Sin":

In a way, the Asian carp are not unlike sin businesses. Forced to meet extraordinary challenges, both thrive under dire circumstances, surviving despite public dislike, under shifting environments, and circumventing genocide attempts.

[READ]

Prayer

Prayer, Shanghai, China

Signs

Signs, Shanghai, China

Frogs

Frogs, Shanghai, China

Silhouette

Silhouette, Suzhou, China

Newsstand

Newsstand, Shanghai, China

Umbrella

Umbrella, Shanghai, China

Tins

Tins, Shanghai, China

Alley

Alley, Shanghai, China

Business

Business, Shanghai, China

Action

"Action is transformative." -- Cindy Gallop

I need a stripper

I am looking for a stripper in Chicago.

Do you know one?

Are you one?

Do you know someone who knows one?

If you post this somewhere you hang out, might a stripper in Chicago see it and reach out to me?

Do you think kismet is possible when the subject is gentleman's clubs?

Email me.

Medium

I wrote a piece on Medium about when my brain got squishy.

You realize there is a problem when you cannot sort the laundry.

Picture it:

There you are, in the laundry room.

The laundry basket is full of dirty laundry.

You look out the window.

It’s:

1. overcast
2. the sky is a pale blue with cloud streaking across it
3. it’s raining and you’re wondering if the roof is going to start leaking again

[READ]

Kitchen mannequin

Kitchen Mannequin, Chicago, Illinois

Swim

Really liked this video and images of Marines in the water.

The Marine Corps Instructor of Water Survival Course is among the most physically demanding courses in the Corps. The attrition rate can range from 20 to 50 percent, but students who endure earn the title of MCIWS.

[IMAGES]

Jesus Saves

Jesus Saves, Chicago, Illinois

Plimpton!

"After that, he's, well, a collector of experiences."

Experiments

Chemo Port (No Longer There), Chicago, Illinois
I did some experiments lately.

I took a camera class. That led me to realize I don't really care to figure out how my camera works. I should work with it as is or buy a camera from another decade.

I took an improv class. I pretended to flirt with someone at a pretend post office. Afterwards, it occurred to me that I already knew I was willing to do anything in front of a group, no matter how stupid it made me look.

I went to pilates. I'm sick of yoga. Pilates made me feel like my muscles were glued to my skeleton again, rather than engaged in an ongoing internal civil war.

Conclusion: Experimentation is good.

Repent, Sinners

Porn Awards, Las Vegas, Nevada
I renamed my Forbes blog.

Now it's SIN INC.

There I will be working the vice beat.

Booze, broads, bozos.

It's the most interesting thing I've done in at least decade.

[READ]

Changes

There are some changes going on here. Tune back in on Monday to find out what. This photo (via Jim Romenesko) is awesome.

The pig belted out a horrific, loud squeal until Afari released it in the cage of the truck.

[PHOTO]