iPhone

iPhone

On the list

What Amelia said.

Do that thing

Pink Pants, Las Vegas, Nevada
Want to know how to be a better journalist? Let me explain. It involves a gigolo.

At this point, I don’t really have any big hangups as a journalist. For example, at one point, I was at the convention, and I was looking for this gigolo. I’d seen him on a panel. He sat at the front of the room with another guy, and the theme of the panel was, “A bunch of people have crossed over from adult to mainstream, but what about people who have crossed over from mainstream to adult?” These guys were supposed to be examples of that. The gigolo is the star of a Showtime show called “Gigolos,” and the other guy was a rock star who ended up on “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” and then made a celebrity sex tape because “that’s what you do.”

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Stripper

Stripper, Las Vegas, Nevada

Porn star dreams

I've got my final post on my porn trip to Vegas on my Forbes blog.

I’m sitting in the nosebleed seats at the porn awards.

To my right, an older man — maybe 60, or 70 — is reading the evening’s program with a small yellow flashlight.

To my left, a young Asian woman is studying her program as if cramming for a final.

“WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!” a man behind us screams.

On the stage, a woman whose breasts risk overflowing the neckline of her sparkling dress is at the microphone, but there is a technical difficulty, and we can’t hear what she’s saying.

It doesn’t really matter. This is porn.

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Advice from Ice-T

"You don't get credit for being safe in life." -- Ice-T

Gigolo

Gigolo, Las Vegas, Nevada

Porn stars speak

“I’m real. I bring myself. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.”

I've got another post up on my Forbes blog featuring more from the epicenter of porn in Vegas. I photographed people who work in adult and asked them about business. Above, Bonnie Rotten.

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Blue porn star

Blue Porn Star, Las Vegas, Nevada

This is porn

My first post on the adult convention and awards in Vegas is online at Forbes:

“Porn’s totally gone down the toilet,” Lane reports. So, he’s moonlighting in real estate. “I’m doing my part to save the economy by getting short sales off the market and making fine, quality porno,” he enthuses. “I want to be the Warren Buffett of porno.”

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Vegas, baby

I'm in Vegas, covering the Adult Entertainment Expo and the AVN Awards.

You can follow my coverage on my Forbes blog here.

Feel free to share the link with your friends.

Office

Love this home office. Although, it's totally impractical. How in god's name could anyone spend a day perched on that stool?

Found here.

Market

Market, Shanghai, China

What I'm reading

Currently, I'm reading The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. It was a gift from Lydia Netzer. It is awesome.

Quote of the day

"These are crucial questions for Harvard. But there are also other questions we need to ask ourselves: Do we value mostly students who resemble us in talent and personality and choice of interests? Do we remind ourselves to ask, before conversing with a student with artistic or creative interests, what sort of questions will reveal the next T.S. Eliot? (Do we ever ask, 'Who is the poet you have most enjoyed reading?' Eliot would have had an interesting answer to that.) Do we ask students who have done well in English which aspects of the English language or a foreign language they have enjoyed learning about, or what books they have read that most touched them? Do we ask students who have won prizes in art whether they ever go to museums? Do we ask in which medium they have felt themselves freest? Do we inquire whether students have artists (writers, composers, sculptors) in their families? Do we ask an introverted student what issues most occupy his mind, or suggest something (justice and injustice in her high school) for her to discuss? Will we believe a recommendation saying, 'This student is the most gifted writer I have ever taught,' when the student exhibits, on his transcript, Cs in chemistry and mathematics, and has absolutely no high-school record of group activity? Can we see ourselves admitting such a student (which may entail not admitting someone else, who may have been a valedictorian)?" -- "Writers and Artists at Harvard," Helen Vendler

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The Ari of the Valley

Someone sent me a link to this a while ago. I've interviewed most of these guys. They are true characters.

Just like the Tom Ford-clad armies that handle the affairs of the Brad Pitts and Charlize Therons on the other side of the hill, the Valley-epicentered adult industry is led by a cadre of talent agencies that cut deals and jockey to represent the stars of tomorrow. The skill sets are, in many ways, the same -- tenacious negotiating and maintaining strong industry relationships -- but there are, of course, different responsibilities, such as advising on whether a client should get a boob job (well, maybe there is some crossover there) or agree to perform a double-penetration scene (if you have to ask, don't).

["Inside the Risky Business of Porn Star Agents"]

It all falls apart

ALPHABET from Mihaly Szilagyi on Vimeo.
Love this video of exploding letters! It's inspiring for those of us who are writers. Nothing like the metaphorical writ real. 
 
Found on swissmiss.

Wall

Wall, Shanghai, China

Take a ride

Euthanasia Coaster from Julijonas Urbonas on Vimeo.
I came across this sometime ago, and I just love it. I can't remember what I was googling when I found it. Maybe euthanasia?

“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasant, elegant and ritualistic. Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once sad that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead. This could be done, you know.”

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Quote of the day

I'm not haunted by what happened to me. I never had any desire for vengeance. I never felt any need, even, for justice. Now I feel if I say something about it, people try and use it in certain ways and make it something that it's not. It is what it is to me. It happened. And actually, I got breast cancer a year after, and I think that scarred me worse than what happened in Egypt. When Egypt was over, it was over. I got on a plane, I came home, and I was thousands of miles away, and I had a choice. My choice was very rational. Are you going to take the life that you've been given, or are you not going to live it? Are you going to live it fully, freely — or are you not? Are you gonna be a victim — or are you not? -- Lara Logan

Here's a suggestion

Whose blog did you read for free last year that inspired you?

Thank them for it.

Thank you, this isn't happiness, the greatest you are at whatever you do, for your work that inspired me, motivated me, commiserated with me, entertained me, dazzled me, and intellectually stimulated me in 2012.

Girls

Girls, Shanghai, China