Woman's work

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

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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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.”

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The forever war

How long do you think you’ll continue covering Guantanamo?

There are people who call the War on Terror the "forever war"; if this is the forever war, then this is the forever prison. I want to stay here for the 9/11 trial, which I think is years away. I feel like I have an institutional knowledge. Everyone else rotates in and out of here. The soldiers come and go, the lawyers come and go, most of the reporters come and go. I feel a responsibility to stay. I want to see how it ends. I’m a little concerned it’s never going to.

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Trouble

Brandi Grissom's "Trouble in Mind" is a great piece of longform journalism.

That night, as he lay in bed, still high and muttering about angels, Andre stabbed himself in the chest with a knife, then fell asleep. The next morning, his mother, who had moved in with him, took him to the hospital, where Andre explained that he had cut himself trying to “cross over into heaven.” A nurse noted that Andre was psychotic. An emergency room physician, Dr. William Bowen, examined him while he rattled on about a new world order and the hidden meaning of symbols on the dollar bill. After determining that Andre’s self-inflicted stab wound was not serious, the doctor left the room to apply for an emergency detention order to keep him hospitalized. But by the time Bowen returned, Andre had slipped out of the hospital unnoticed. Bowen called the police and provided a description of him, explaining that he could be dangerous.

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Centrifuge

The totally awesome Centrifuge Brain Project via Swiss Miss.

Gods

A lot of people hated "Prometheus," but I didn't.

Oh, by the way, I am going to discuss a spoiler here, so if you don't want a spoiler, stop reading.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR SPOILERS.

Anyway, a decade and change ago, I used to be a film critic or something like it. I went to a lot of movies. I love movies. Particularly going to the movies. I like the whole overwhelming largeness and the submerging of you in it-ness. That's great.

When you write about movies, you have to remember all the facts, and get the stories straight, and one thing that's nice about watching movies now is that I don't have to do that anymore.

I think that's part of the trick of liking "Prometheus." It's like loving Quasimodo. It's flawed, but you love it anyway.

My absolute favorite scene in the movie is when the girl bones the dude, and the dude has the alien in him, so he ends up impregnating her with an alien. Or alien thing. Or whatever.

Then it starts growing fast, and of course she happens to be half-naked, and she runs around while you watch it trying to blast itself out of her belly.

It's super creepy.

But there's this machine thing there, like that sort of thing Michael Jackson used to sleep in so that he would be albino Peter Pan forever, and it performs surgery on you. So while she's got this thing trying to ram itself out of her gut, she starts pounding on the keys to tell the machine to give her an abortion. And it's all, "Sorry, I only do dudes, not abortions." It doesn't say that, but it says something sort of like that, and I love that because it says something about the difference between women and technology.

Anyway, she basically tells it that there's a foreign object in her midsection that needs removing, and she climbs into the machine, and then she basically watches while it gives her an abortion.

It is fucking fascinating. There's screeching, and blood flying, and a baby alien thing writhing, and one thing I love is the complete absence of maleness in it. Like, I don't know. For reasons I can't explain. Like this is the true the horror, the horror of womanhood.

Anyway, I think it's a lovely movie, and she's a superb final girl, and you should see it in 3D.

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Hey, tough guy

Make sure to watch "Gangster Types and Tough Guys," a terrific audio slide show featuring the thoughts and shots of the amazing Bruce Gilden.

Then, visit "Shaped by War," an equally riveting audio slide show focusing on war photographer Don McCullin.

Finally, Lens wonders: "Too Many Angles on Suffering?"

James Nachtwey's latest tour: "Haiti: Out of the Ruins."

For more Yakuza, there's Anton Kusters.