The Internet Is a Never-Ending Bounty of Amazing Things

Wow.

The guy with the world's biggest penis has a Myspace page.

Go figure.

We'll See Horses Later

A beautiful, little, behind-the-scenes Flickr video by fetish photographer and Reverse Cowgirl friend Steve Diet Goedde, "We'll See Horses Later," starring model/illustrator Ulorin Vex at a horse farm near Redlands, CA. (Click here for bigger.)

Why Men Cheat

Have you been hoping for a really cringe-inducing, terrifically long feature story about why men cheat written by a middle-aged guy ever since the Spitzer story broke? Well, your prayers have been answered. See "The Secret Lives of Married Men" by Philip Weiss in this week's New York.

The sad tale begins, "I’m 52 and have always struggled with the desire for sexual variety," and primarily consists of Weiss wandering from pseudo-expert to married male friend, all the while wondering what would happen if he cheated on his wife. "If my marriage broke up, my wife could easily move in with a sister. I’d be as lost as plankton." Mmm. Plankton. The Baby Boomer's new sexy.

How a story like this makes it to the page is beyond me. I wonder about the pitching process. Did this guy and Moss figure this one out over one too many drinks at the Spotted Pig?

And why, above all, did it seem like a good idea to have a man who did not cheat on his wife tell the story of those men who do?

In Letters from Johns, men cheat because they're lonely, because they're bored, because they're afraid of dying, because they're afraid of living, because they don't know how to say what they want to say, because of the blow jobs, because of the naked women, because of the thrill of it, because life is hard, because fucking isn't, because of all the things that you and I can't see because we're not there in the room with them.

Men cheat because they can.

Email of the Day

Hello Susannah,

I have been reading your blog with fascination for the last several months. I wish I could remember who linked to it, so I could thank them for helping me find it. Your posts are always interesting, well-composed, and thoughtful. I voted that I read your blog because I am smart, and I feel smarter for reading it. When other writers were criticizing you for introducing Letters from Working Girls, a comment I made on Audacia Ray's site was then quoted on Bound not Gagged, which then made its way to your site as "Sex Writing is a Political Act." Whether or not my view accurately represents yours, I was proud to have somehow participated in the discussion.

I'm prompted to write you now because I'm really impressed with how much content you've been putting up recently. You warned that you would be posting like a crackhead, and you are totally delivering. I imagine it might be hard to keep it up, but please know that as long as you're posting, I will be reading.

Best,
Tom

Stripper Nation

The other day, Dacia had a post on Naked City featuring Vegas themed stripper shoes with a stack of dice for a heel and a bunch of poker chips rattling around in the hollowed out Lucite platform underneath the toes. That sent me wandering around Funky Pair, your one stop shopping spot for stripper shoes. There, I found a series of seven-inchers that transfixed me. These ones have a slot in the hollowed out part under the toes. For men. To put their tips in. I find this fascinating and genius. The ones pictured here spell it out for you. There's others with a mouth for a tip slot, a money slot if you're really thick skulled, a butterfly slot for the romantic. I love the thought of the women walking around on money. Of course, if that's not your style, there's always the mudflap girl who lights up or disco balls. I'm sure there's a coin slot joke to be made here, but I can't think of it.

The Girl With The Golden Vagina

It looks like a tell-all by Natalie McLennan, better known as the $2,000 an hour escort featured in New York's now infamous "New York's #1 Escort Reveals All" cover story, is set to be published this fall.

The Price: My Life as Natalia, New York's $2,000-An-Hour Escort is due to arrive in bookstores on October 1, and the publisher is Phoenix Books, making Natalie/Natalia's publishing mates with Gene Simmons and Larry Flynt. Uh, congratulations? I, for one, would rather see a book like this only far, far better written by somebody else. You know who are, woman.

Where's Judith Regan when you need her, indeed? I wish the mainstream book publishing industry would start publishing books by sex workers who can really write, dammit.

Son of Hef

GQ has a great interview with Marston Hefner, Hugh Hefner's 18-year-old son with Playmate Kimberley Conrad, by Steven Kurutz.

It's not great because of the fact that it reveals what life is like when you grow up as the son of America's most infamous playboy, but because it reveals what happens when your interview with Hef ends.

"After about forty-five minutes, Hef appears to be losing steam. I turn off the tape recorder, and he rises from the couch. As he does, he rips the kind of fart that one does not even attempt to hide from. No one in the room blinks."

Ha-ha. Now that's great reporting. In my opinion. (via Goldenfiddle)

My Review Of Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff

My review of Chuck Palahniuk's new novel, Snuff, is up at Radar.

"If Rick Moody, according to Dale Peck, is the worst writer of his generation, Chuck Palahniuk's latest novel, Snuff (out today), may be the worst novel of this century."

Suffice to say, I didn't like it.

I got the book the other day, and I have to say there is something about it that fascinates me. It's this book published by this big publisher, Doubleday, which is part of Random House, and the book looks like a sex doll if a sex doll were a book. I suppose if you cut a hole out of the middle of it, you could fuck it. The inside of the cover is decorated with tiny silhouettes of a couple screwing in all kinds of positions. There's a reverse cowgirl on there somewhere.

Review copies come with press releases, and this one in big shouty letters explained the book in mathematical terms: "Palahniuk + porn = brilliant satire." The equation, though, falls short, because, as I stated in my review, Palahniuk's novel never rises about the porn it claims to satire. Instead, the author pens another fragment-filled slop-fest of faux sentiments strung together with info cribbed from Wikipedia and an idiot's understanding of the porn industry born out of watching too many porn movies.

Snuff was of special interest to me because, as I've stated here previously, I was on the set of a gang bang movie, specifically: "The World's Biggest Gang Bang III: The Houston 620." And it's clear upon reading the book that it's this very movie that Palahniuk used as his primary source.

One of the three main male characters who tells the story is Mr. 72, a young man who's under the impression that he's the given up at birth son of the gang bangee Cassie Wright. He's come to the gang bang to meet his mother, you see. And he's come bearing a bouquet of flowers for her.

I had forgotten until I read that bit that at the real gang bang, "The Houston 620," there was just such a person. I interviewed him. He was young, and small, and he had brought flowers for Houston. In medias res gang bang, he presented them to her. Everyone cooed. Then he had sex with her. As I recall, he stuck the tip of his tongue out a bit as he did so, like a kid tackling a particularly difficult problem in math class. The whole thing was as riveting as it was sad.

So, I'd venture to guess Houston is the real Cassie Wright, Mr. 72 was that kid, and the opening scene about eating at a buffet at a gangbang was probably yanked from this scene from Evan Wright's "Scenes from My Life in Porn." In the long list of gang bang movies Palahniuk lists near the start of the book, it's the Houston vehicle that remains unmentioned, which I find to be, uh, interesting. I suppose he watched the movie.

I guess he thought that was enough.

Naked Blokes On Post-It Notes

Remember how not long ago I interviewed Chris Gilmour about his year-long project drawing naked chicks on Post-It notes called Naked Chicks on Post-It Notes? I asked him why naked chicks, and he said: "I tried drawing naked blokes, but it made me feel uncomfortable. I'm going to have to work on that in the future." Now, he is. These days, Gilmour's working on Naked Blokes on Post-It Notes. I'm assuming this project will be a year-long one, too. That's a lot of penises.

Email of the Day

Hi,

I read your blog. I work as a publisher (in Paris, France). Your write beautifully and you should really do something, a novel or a documentary, about the Houston ordeal. What you wrote is deep, moving, and the way you depict these men tells everything. It made me think of a french song, by an extremely famous singer here, Jacques Brel. These men killed themselves, too, and the whole Humanity with them. It should really be forbidden.

All the best from France,

Philippe Moreau
Directeur éditorial
Editions Danger Public