Trance

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

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

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.

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

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.

Muckraker

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

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. 

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]

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]

Follow the leader

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

Action

"Action is transformative." -- Cindy Gallop