Is porn a legitimate business?

I wrote a story on the adult movie industry's quest to be perceived as a "legitimate" business for Minyanville.com.

While some porn companies, such as Private Media Group (PRVT) and New Frontier Media (NOOF), operate like any other business, most aren’t run like Fortune 500 companies. In truth, the porn business operates a lot more like the drug business. There are no pristine halls in towering skyscrapers wherein neatly attired businesspeople churn out reams of porn. The majority of adult video businesses are small operations run out of nondescript warehouses on unremarkable streets in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley.

[Think Porn Is a Legitimate Business? Think Again.]

See me live

On November 11, I'll be performing in The Encyclopedia Show in Austin, Texas. It's a little bit entertainment and a little bit education. This show's theme is Serial Killers.

Though the show is accredited by the Institute of Human Knowledge and Hygiene, it is our ongoing mission to chafe against logic and proof, find meaning in obfuscation, and wrest truth from fact for good.

Hosts Michael Graupmann and Ralph Hardest assigned me the subject of Ed Gein.

Searching the house, authorities found a number of items:
* Four noses
* Whole human bones and fragments
* Nine masks of human skin
* Bowls made from human skulls
* Ten female heads with the tops sawed off
* Human skin covering several chair seats
* Mary Hogan's head in a paper bag
* Bernice Worden's head in a burlap sack
* Nine vulvas in a shoe box
* Skulls on his bedposts
* Organs in the refrigerator
* A pair of lips on a draw string for a windowshade

The 8 PM show will be at ND at 501 Studios, which is located at the corner of 5th and Brushy. Admission is $6, and there is an open bar.

Keep an eye out

I've got some new stories coming out online in the near future.

The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's newish SFW site, will be posting the first installment of my new column, "Stupid Advice." In it, I'll be pointing out men's magazine articles in which the authors offer up stupid advice for men, explain why it's stupid, and possibly even offer up some not stupid advice of my own.

Next week, Nerve.com will be posting my Talking to Strangers story. I talked to strangers about dating and their personal lives. It includes photo portraits that I took of the interviewees. It's a doozy.

Minyanville will run a story I'm writing on the adult movie industry and the latest HIV outbreak. What are the media reports not telling you? Find out.

Check back here, where I'll be posting links to these stories as they go live.

Spaceship

Shot with my iPhone.

Quote of the day

I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born. -- Oriana Fallaci