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.”

Woman's work

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

Bald mannequin

Bald Mannequin, New York City, New York

Midtown mannequin

Midtown Mannequin, New York City, New York

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

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]

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]

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]

Silhouette

Silhouette, Suzhou, China

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.

[READ]

Improv

Mannequin, Chicago, Illinois
Recently, I took an intensive improv class at Second City. I pretended to be in a rocket ship going to the moon. I should probably write about that.

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"

What to watch

Watch this: "Top of the Lake."

Really, really great. Premiered last night on the Sundance Channel. Best thing I've seen on TV since the last thing I saw on TV that was great. Made with the BBC, of course, because American TV, HBO excluded, is incapable of making anything good.

Elisabeth Moss is a detective who returns to her small New Zealand hometown. There, a pregnant girl, 12, appears -- then disappears. Holly Hunter is a completely insane/fascinating/compelling lady-cult leader without a plan who, when asked by the girl what happened to her (Hunter), replies: "A calamity." I'm pretty sure the chick who played the crazy sister in "Sweetie" is the one who plays a middle-aged woman who isn't afraid to pay whomever's willing to bang her. The cast is rounded out by the bad guy from Baz Luhrmann's "Australia," and a bunch of guys who looked like they escaped from "Animal Kingdom."

Where is the girl? Who got her? Is she alive? I have no idea. It's "Twin Peaks" meets "The Deep End" meets "The Cremaster Cycle."

I'm a fan of "Girls," but you realize how petty and small and brief that show is when you watch a program like this. Take, for example, JazzHate, the HBO show's weak attempt to make fun of whatever it is Jezebel and XOJane think they're doing. Then you see something like the cluster of women inhabiting storage containers in a place called Paradise on "Top of the Lake," and you understand that women may have something more to offer the world than self-hate and misandry. Something bigger and better than realness portrayed by a splinter in your ass. Something more profound than writing about how your crotch smells. Something wiser than believing the commenters who tell you that you're a good writer because you embarrassed yourself in public. Thank you, Jane Campion, for being a woman who is creating, yet again, something that doesn't suck.

In any case, check it out.

Green

I really love Marilyn Minter's work. This is "Green Pink Caviar."

Girls

Girls, Shanghai, China

Guts

Anatomical Model, Chicago, Illinois

Hey, doll

I took this photo today when I was walking around downtown, but it reminds me of the prostitutes I saw in the windows in Amsterdam.

You have to wonder: What goes on in the minds of mannequins?

They never say.