One of the standout tracks in a soundtrack of standouts is Jidenna's "Classic Man" in "Moonlight." Over at Pitchfork, Maggie Lange has a charmingly rigorous dissection of the track, how it plays a part in the movie, and the subtext it lends to a scene that's fraught with tension and desire.
"*Classic man interruptus* is also a great scene about rev panic: When you start up your car after someone gets in, and you forgot what you were listening to when it was just you. It’s like a diary open on the table. Who you are alone and who you show to other people can be different (a theme from Moonlight!), and sometimes our music can betray this. Of course, I don’t want to assume anything about whether one should or should not be private about their time with 'Classic Man,' this is just a thought about vulnerability and presentation."
36 Likes, 5 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "$1K bundles of singles, to be sold, minus 10%, out of a gym bag at the foot of a strip club stage..."
When I was in Memphis, I visited a black strip club. This Instagram image is from that visit. I will write a post about it, likely this week, probably on my Forbes blog. I wasn't sure whether or not to go to the club. When I asked white people about the neighborhood, they said, don't go there. When I asked black people about the neighborhood, they said, you'll be fine. So, I went. It was really late, and I wasn't sure where the club was. I accidentally walked into the wrong club. The guy behind the bulletproof (?) window where they took the cover charge finally figured out where I was trying to go. They told me to go around the corner. So, you know, I did.
I had fun writing this fashion piece. I like fashion. Fashion is crazy.
"Certainly, whether she is stuffed into a clutch of florals, swaddled in outrageous padding, or encumbered with tags and luggage, this woman does not appear to be particularly free. Rather, the resultant vision is of a woman who is simply carrying too much. Lost in her Rick Owens sculptural attachments or decorated with a necklace of charms that drapes so low as to graze her crotch, she appears to be overloaded by her own desire to be a peacock."
BBC Radio 5 Live had me on yesterday to talk about the social media controversy in the wake of the death of Hugh Hefner. On social media sites, feminists celebrated the demise of a man they asserted turned women into objects while others (like me) celebrated the life of a man who'd helped pioneer the sexual revolution and was a longtime champion of freedom of speech. The debate starts at the 1 hour 22 minute mark here.
I woke up in the middle of the night, checked my phone, and saw there was a text from the BBC. Was I available to talk about Hefner? There was only one possibility: Hef was dead. Not long ago, I received an invitation from his son Cooper to attend the annual Midsummer Night's Dream part at the Mansion. I couldn't attend, and in declining, I wondered if it was my last chance to visit the Mansion while Hef was alive. I've been there two or three times before -- for various events. I worked for Playboy TV for five years, and at one event at the Mansion, I met Hef. He was smaller than I expected. I think he was wearing either a pink or a lavender shirt. He was friendly, and I was gobsmacked to be meeting a legend in the flesh. Wandering the grounds of the Holmby Hills property was another experience altogether. Pink flamingoes picked across the lawn. Little monkeys danced around enclosures in the yard. The grotto was unreal. It was a kind of Shangri-La. Here's to presuming Hef now presides over some equally paradise-like dominion in the sky, surrounded by bunnies.
I wrote an homage on my Forbes blog:
"For years, I proudly wore the Playboy bunny on the front of my shirt, in the shape of a pendant I hung around my neck, on a baseball hat. Unlike the feminists who had attacked Hef for his portrayals of female sexuality, I found in his entrepreneurial spirit, his unabashed love of women, and his unrelenting curiosity about our sexual selves a role model that gave me someone to be."
I had a terrific time working with the delightful gang at FourTwoNine magazine to play a part in creating "At Home with the New Superstars of Porn." I've long been a fan of editor-in-chief Maer Roshan, and I was thrilled when he reached out to me to write the story that would accompany photographer Jeff Riedel's amazing images of porn stars when they're not in front of the cameras. It was such an interesting piece to work on, from start to finish. It's online now, and you can also buy a real paper (!) copy of FourTwoNine at better bookstores near you.
"After decades of porn leading technology, the hope now is that technology will lead porn back to profitability. Online, the gig economy’s cam boys and girls turned porn stars are delivering custom content to consumers who are willing to pay for bespoke virtual intimacy. In the Valley, a new generation of tech-savvy pornographers is busily turning your freakiest Google searches into high-production projects for which even the most jaded porn watchers are shelling out money. For the first time, women are elbowing their way into the industry’s old boys’ club and creating a new brand of porn that’s sex positive, feminist, and ethically made. And the once clear division between straight and gay porn is slowly, inexorably disappearing."
Please check out my new post featuring my totally weird tour of Graceland and its new $45M entertainment complex. Graceland is totally weird. Did I mention that already? I thought it would be "cool" and "interesting," but instead it was mostly "disconcerting." Why would you put a waterfall where a fireplace should be? Is it wise to make your den look like a jungle? What are the consequences of creating a hallway of mirrors in a stairwell leading to a basement where one wall is embedded with multiple TVs? I have no idea what these answers are.
I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of my buddy Matt Young's EAT THE APPLE: A MEMOIR.
It just got a starred review in Publisher's Weekly!
"In this bold memoir, ex-Marine Young examines how war transformed him from a confused teenager into a dangerous and damaged man. Fresh from high school and with no direction, Young walked into a Marine recruitment center in 2005 and sealed his fate. Soon he was suffering the indignities of basic training before being deployed to 'the sandbox' in Iraq, where he sweated, masturbated, shot stray dogs, and watched friends get blown up."
I wrote about "The Deuce" on my Forbes blog here. I found it to be a bit of a mixed bag. Generally, I'm not much of a fan of David Simon; too much I AM TRYING TO MAKE A POLITICAL POINT and not enough internal turmoil. Where is "The Deuce"'s Tony Soprano? You will not find it in James Franco's porny twins sitting in front of a mirror in a bar. Probably the best thing about the show is Maggie Gyllenhaal's Candy -- that hooker with a heart of gold and, in this case, a complicated soul. She's probably the most nuanced thing about the show, refusing to fall prey to Simon's terminal heavy-handedness and forever case of the seriousnesses. Candy is sweet, and predatory, and careful, and reckless. There's a sweetly complex scene that Gyllenhaal drives in which Candy turns a young trick, and deftly. Something about the scene where he squeezes her boobs, and when she subsequently subverts what you think the sex worker-john dynamic is demonstrates the humanity you find in unlikely places. As for porn, there's little of it. That's coming, apparently. For now, the players are setting the scene. I'm curious to see where it goes. I try and remain optimistic.
Someone sent me a link to this podcast that covers how the porn industry has been reshaped by technology. I listened to one episode and didn't think much of it. For the most part, men struggle when it comes to covering porn. Example 1. Example 2. Exception 1. Exception 2. I'll give the rest of "The Butterfly Effect" a listen.
I enjoyed watching "The Defiant Ones." It's a kind of mini-series on the parallel-ish careers of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine and what led them to sell Beats by Dre for big bucks. It's got some interesting material on the rise and troubles of NWA and the various musical permutations of its members that came after, a fun origin story from Eminem, and a peek inside the rollercoaster ride reality that is success. At one point, as things get really troubled with rival rappers feuding, Iovine wonders: "Am I defending free speech or am I funding Hamas?" While the investigation is frequently gritty, it mostly ignores the more troubling aspects of both their privates lives and sheds little light on what fundamentally makes each man tick -- beyond that he's a hustler. The second half of the last episode is the weakest, turning into something of an ad for their shared product. But, whatever. We don't really get them, after all, but it's fun to bear witness to how they made it there.
If you haven't already, make sure to read David Roth's "The President of Blank Sucking Nullity." It's my favorite thing I've read on Trump thus far, and it really gets to the ... uh, heart of the man.
"To understand Trump is also to understand his appeal as an aspirational brand to the worst people in the United States. What his intransigent admirers like most about him—the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted—is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned. The howling and unreflective void at his core will keep him lonely and stupid until the moment a sufficient number of his vital organs finally resign in disgrace, but it liberates him to devote every bit of his being to his pursuit of himself. Actual hate and actual love, as other people feel them, are too complicated to fit into this world. In their place, for Trump and for the people who see in him a way of being that they are too busy or burdened or humane to pursue, are the versions that exist in a lower orbit, around the self. Instead of hate, there is simple resentment—abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite."
Over on my Forbes blog, I wrote a bit about why I enjoyed "Ozark." It's dark, it's violent, and it's surprising. A financial planner gone bad doesn't sound interesting -- but it's the underbelly that's fun.
Financial planners are fun
"Hey, I've got this great idea for a show about a financial advisor, and --." Somehow, everyone in the room at your pitch meeting has already fallen asleep. The reality of "Ozark" demonstrates the opposite, though. Instead, a knack for enterprising approaches to doing deals is what makes Marty able to survive when -- well, people start getting killed in gruesome ways, the family must relocate from Chicago to the Ozarks in order to launder a massive amount of dirty money, and a pregnant, half-naked stripper appears. Who knew finance could be so ... edgy?
0 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Red"
A lovely piece by Jacqui Shine on the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.
"The chapel is lit only by a skylight, designed to match the one in Rothko’s New York studio, where he built a partial mock-up of the chapel interior to work from. No matter where you stand, the room’s irregular geometry seems to thrust you into its center. Comforts are few. There are usually two tidy rows of backless benches in the center of the room, a handful of meditation cushions on the brick floor. It is quiet but rarely silent. It is not an easy place. Nothing tells you how to see."
29 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Back in my skinny camos like 👀"
I've lost some weight lately, over the last few months, which is a positive. Most recently, I was able to fit back into these camo pants. They're from The Gap and sit low and fit the leg tightly. I had to go meet some people I knew at a bar, so I wore these pants with some black heels with straps around the ankle. Oddly, I can't remember what shirt I wore. I tried on several before deciding. I think I wore a top I got years ago in Texas. If you keep things around long enough, they come back to you, apparently. As for the weight, that's due to a membership at a gym, doing Pilates, and walking. And not eating bread. Or, you know, cake. Mostly.
I intend to write a review of "Ozark," but haven't done so yet. I highly recommend it. It's about a financial planner who gets involved in some trouble. It's better than the trailer. Give it a look. It's on Netflix.
311 Likes, 17 Comments - my uncensored life (@theuncensoredstripper) on Instagram: ""Pound of flesh" One of the more intricate (and endlessly frustrating) aspects of being a..."
If you're interested in getting an uncensored (well, except for the fact that it's Instagram) peek into the life of a sex worker, I recommend The Uncensored Stripper's Instagram feed. Filled with photos new and old, immediate-feeling anecdotes of sex work done and undone, and the complications of providing emotional labor, give it a follow here.
