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.

Red

Porn Awards Red Carpet, Las Vegas, Nevada

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.

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Starlets

Porn Stars, Las Vegas, Nevada

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.

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What I'm reading

Necrophilia Variations, Supervert

Action

"Action is transformative." -- Cindy Gallop

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.

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Baller

My all-time most popular Forbes post just topped 500,000 views.

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Irish

Irish, Las Vegas, Nevada

How much can you make?

Stripper, Las Vegas, Nevada

"3) How much can a contributor make? As I’ve written, a writer who attracts 1 million unique visitors a month for 12 consecutive months, with a solid base of repeat visitors, can earn a six-figure annual income. That’s not easy to accomplish. In 2012, only the second year of our model, two contributors topped $100,000. We had a few at $75,000 and $50,000, and 25 hit the $35,000 mark. There is a long tail at $10,000. Using their individual data dashboard, a contributor can track how they’re doing in real time. For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average full-time reporter or correspondent’s salary at $45,270. Remember, being a contributor (many have worked for major national and regional news brands) is a freelance job, with considerable freedom to publish content for others." -- "Inside Forbes: Amid the Finger Pointing, Journalists Need to Explore New Payment Models"

Clayton Cubitt is always on

My pal photographer Clayton Cubitt has launched a new art magazine/blog. It is very cool. He's famous for, among other things, creating the Hysterical Literature series, seen above.

What began for me in the placental alchemical gloom of darkrooms, the whir of enlarger fans, the cascade of water washing over silver halide prints, has, with the revelatory chime of a computer booting up, evolved into the blue under-lit glow of distributed LCDs, the whir of RAID cooling fans, and the cascade of message notifications from social media. 

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Stoya

Stoya, Las Vegas, Nevada

Toys

Sex Toys, Las Vegas, Nevada

Fan

Porn Star and Fan, Las Vegas, Nevada

Toys

Toys, Las Vegas, Nevada

Sausage

Doll, Las Vegas, Nevada

In a 2011 Forbes article entitled “Women Write Differently Than Men (Duh),” Susannah Breslin writes that she was simultaneously more compassionate and more ruthless when she wrote about the pornography business, because she could identify with women in a way that men could not. “The fantasy and the sex didn’t interest me,” she recalls. “I was looking for the ordinary in the extraordinary, the mundane in the hardcore, the human beings in the sausage factory.”-- The Walrus

Porn star

Porn Star, Las Vegas, Nevada

The most important thing you can do is write awesome stuff, no matter where it is published. Seriously, when people tell me they want to write profiles for the New Yorker, I’m like, "THEN GO DO IT. Have you heard of Blogger.tumblr.com?" I mean, there is absolutely nothing stopping any of us from spending three months with a subject and writing the definitive 10k word piece proving why they are important and fascinating. Except Homeland, bourbon, and laziness. So, shit, write a profile about a lazy alcoholic who watches too much TV. BOOM. Problem solved. (See: Susannah Breslin’s They Shoot Porn Stars, http://theyshootstars.com/). -- Alexis Madrigal, The Believer

Shots from my life in porn

Le Journal de la Photographie has published a series of my adult industry-themed photos.

The photos were taken over a 12-year period, on adult movie sets, at adult conventions, and at adult award shows.

As I write, they're an attempt to show what happens behind the scenes, a peek at what's happening when there are no rules and the video camera is looking in the other direction.

[SEE]