Uncategorized – Page 18 – Hopeful Romantics

What the Porn and Newspaper Industries Have in Common

At first blush the pornography industry and the newspaper industry wouldn’t appear to have much in common. But they do. The business model has eroded in both industries. Both are falling victim to Internet sites that deliver the same information without charge. Newspapers are going belly up and their staffs of reporters and media people are getting laid off by the droves. The same is true for the pornography industry, with the exception being that the actresses who work in these productions are getting laid less and laid off with greater frequency.

It is a pity, I suppose, that we have to lament the loss of two of our most pervasive institutions. One gave us news, and one gave us distractions. But these are changing times. Perhaps all times are changing times, but these times seem to change more frequently and more dramatically than those in the past. Political and economic tsunamis are now worldwide, commensurate with the global economy. Even regional industries are affected by the global economy. It holds true for news and sex. Although it is ironic that it is “news” that is the four letter word.

Both the news and porn industry are not only succumbing to the free Internet outlets, but have been damaged by amateurs who are only too willing to perform the same duties of professionals in the obscure hope of lasting recognition. Here were two institutions that most thought would never die. They were the purveyors of public interest and as such thought their need would never end. But appears those need have been supplanted, and their industrial business models have been eclipsed by advancing technology.

The pool of applicants for what few jobs remain has increased substantially, while revenue has declined precipitously. Porn stars who regularly made a good six figures a year are now struggling to make less than half of that. Journalists who ascended with the status of the industry are watching their salaries reduced, dramatically. That is if they still have a job and aren’t either exiled to the blog world or faced with only part time work wherever they can find it.

Perhaps not so ironically, both industries had similar, modest starts. Both were started on the streets, where papers were hawked and sold to the teaming masses on the old city streets. The reporters and most of the staff were blue collar workers, men and women who barely finished high school yet alone college. But they knew their business and learned their trade. They could write well and some with original style and flair. They built followings and over time their grasp of the world around them evolved with the world itself.

That changed with the advent of a different sort in the newspaper. Newspapers may have taken the high road as the “Fourth Estate” and such, but the business itself was grounded in gutter fighting for distribution territory as well as the odd relationships between the “Fourth Estate” crew and the municipal lords on whose deeds they reported. The local news world was punctuated by the occasional threats to the reporter’s well being and some mutual back scratching, along with bonafide investigative tactics. There was also the human interest story, the local cat caught up in the local tree kind of thing.

The blue collar guys were supplanted for the white collar guys. Where you once hung loosely from the lower rungs of the ladder of success, news people now gained new status and with it greater salaries. You were no longer reporting for the love of it, the proverbial printer’s ink that became indelibly embedded in your system, but also because you could make a buck. Hell, you could even get famous.
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Pornography, too, had its beginning from the streets. In fact, vendors on the QT would peddle what were labeled as “French Films,” to willing customers who would pay cash,. Perhaps there is irony that the early smokers were often peddled under the counter at newsstands. The films themselves were scratchy and grainy. But in an emotionally suppressed nation they provided nervous relief for a good many stalwart Americans. take them home and run these 8 millimeter wonders for their friends and colleagues.

These sessions were called “smokers,” and they hinted of the dark but playful corners of small town and suburban America where the Rotarian, Elks and other clubs held their smoker sessions as not so secret, special events. Male bonding at its bondiest. It was a fun time. A few beers, some scratchy black and white silent sex extravaganzas, punctuated by corny subtitles, and there you were.

With the sixties and seventies there was sexual liberation, and pornography migrated to movie theaters. First came the poor excuses for sex films, supposedly educational vehicles that showed enough actual sex to stimulate public taste. Then came the seminal “Deep Throat,” and “The Devil and Miss Jones,” and soon it was not only acceptable but hip to go see a porn film. People took dates to these theaters, which were often converted from mainstream venues that had fallen on hard times. Still, because some were the older theaters with big screens and many seats, couples could see their sex in near-Cinema Scope. Giant sex organs projected from the screens like angry lizard space aliens.

Then came the video tape revolution and the sex industry came home. Couples watched porn in the comfort of their bedrooms, sipped on wine, ate some cheese, and tried out sex acts they saw on their color TV. Thousands rushed into the industry as the demand grew for these erotic wonders. Here, the San Fernando Valley became the capitol of the porn industry. I remember vacant homes on the blocks being rented out for sex sessions. Production trucks pulled up front and the film crew remained as discrete as possible as they shot sex for a consumer market that was shopping in the local mall, a few blocks away.

Then came the Internet. Sex exploded on the Internet. It lead the way in resolving key issues about selling goods and services on the Internet. The sex industry practically developed E-Commerce. The sex industry resolved algorithms and search engine puzzles long before mainstream industry. It was pornography, after all, that issued so many offerings to so many sexual predilections. Each one had to be cataloged, keyworded and put up for sale. And sell they did. entrepreneurs became billionaires. If not everyone made a fortune then a good many made a decent living from having sex on the Internet.

But now the party is suddenly over. Not completely over. No. But the party has diminished. If the lights aren’t out, they have been dimmed, for sure. Like the newspaper industry, the porn industry is going through the tough economic times from which it may never recover. Sure, some of the icons will still stand, and some of the elements of both institutions will remain. In some form.

As for those who worked in these industries, finding work is tough in this economy. There may be some opportunities for those who can make the transition. As for most, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again. Meanwhile, while searching for work, the news people are going on the Internet, and the porn stars are going to college. What strange times are these.

Bull Sharks as a Metaphor

In a world where things are neither what they are supposed to be or where they are supposed to be, the Bull Shark serves as an excellent metaphor. The Bull Shark is different than most other sharks, or for that matter, most other saltwater fish. It can adapt to fresh water. Like some kind of aquatic hybrid it flips from the saltwater environment to the freshwater environment as easily as a Prius in city traffic.

Lately, the Bull Sharks have been wandering up the Louisiana Swamp Lands through the inland waterways and traveling as far as St. Louis. Whether they are restless creatures, afflicted with a poor sense of direction, or merely curious to see St. Louis is anyone’s guess. But the trip from the Delta to St. Louis is a good 900 miles, so in an era when most folks are sticking close to home the Bull Shark is in search of new hangouts.

You wouldn’t expect to see a shark in fresh water. Especially in shallow fresh water. And it must come as a real surprise to have one gnawing on your leg. Since they can grow up to ten feet long, a hungry Bull Shark is no small matter, nor can it be easily dismissed. It is more like if the Taliban decided to visit your local shopping mall.

What makes this new expeditionary Bull Shark force even more disturbing, is that if they find romance in those freshwater byways, the female can spawn some dozen little babies. Makes the Octomom pale by comparison. And as we know, babies get hungry, and babies will feed on just about anything. While the Bull Shark prefers its sushi alive and swimming, it can eyeball a human who in murky water appears the flapping fish.
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So here we have another situation where external forces are messing with our conditioned knowledge of the universe. In this case a crackpot theory or a subject for B Hollywood movie becomes are living reality. It’s another case is down is up and up, of course, is down. Only not all the time. Sometimes up is really up, and down is really down.

What we think we know, is not the case. What we have been told, turns out to be as mythical as any other legend, be it Bull Sharks in the swamps or alligators in the sewers of Manhattan. We have facts, but then the facts mutate, much like the Bull Sharks and the Swine Flu. In the end, we have all this information, and we remain confused.

We decry healthcare reform because the government is involved, but we demand we keep our Medicare and Social Security. We spend more than we make, and then we wonder why we are broke. We are vehemently opposed to terrorists and those who support them but insist we have the right to gas guzzling vehicles. We are preoccupied with our electronic gadgets, and then wonder why we are lacking in intimate human relationships. We search desperately for romance online, but ignore the person standing next to us.

We think sharks are saltwater creatures. Once again, we are wrong.

The Women’s Movement, Advance Back to the 1950’s

There are many ways to move backwards. One of the more popular ways is to embrace what we perceive as tradition. We view a seemingly idealistic pattern of behavior that has been rejected perhaps by previous generations and see it with fresh eyes and renewed vigor. We see the upside, forgetting or ignoring that a downside ever existed.

It is perhaps even natural to want to return to the past. The present is unsettling, and the future is obscure and insecure. In the past it seems like values and virtues were firmly set. People were honest artisans who farmed organically and used beasts of burden and not dreadful gasoline guzzling, sheet metal monsters to travel about. Men were genteel and women were kind and gracious, capable of walking on air. People has a special sense, a sixth sense, if you will, to perceive things that escape us today.

Of course, no one wishes to dwell on the realities. The health issues, the dangerous horse doody and the piles of garbage in the streets. We forget the levels of ignorance, illiteracy, and genetic maladies that left us with goiters, wall eyed, hairlipped, or with an extra leg hanging out of our chests. We ignore the millions who starved because organic farming wasn’t quite getting it done. We admire the honest craftsman but ignore the fact that until here was mass production most went without most things. Many went without even shoes. Most people had two outfits. Every day and Sunday. There were no color choices or the need for shoe racks or designer hangers.

And then we have the Women’s Movement. First off, there is no denying that there are great many skilled, highly intelligent and competent women practicing in any number of professions. These are great women who have changed the course of history and made tremendous contributions to their industries and disciplines, and to society as a whole.

More women than men are graduating from medical school and law school. Women, overall, earn more money than they ever did. On the less grand scale, there are more working women, showing up at the office or working diligently from remote locations, mainly because they have to contribute to the household income. They work because they have to, they want to, to the point perhaps where they never give it a thought.

But then there are increasingly more younger women who lack the desires of the women who pioneered the Women’s Movement. Maybe it is a generational thing. Perhaps it is even rebelliousness or a backlash of sorts. Or maybe some have arrived at the harsh reality that sitting at home is a lot better than showing up at an office where you are forced to deal with politics, harassment, and the duties inherent with your profession or job.

Some may argue that this is not the case. And some may argue that these women have the freedom to do whatever they choose. It’s about choice. Yes. Certainly it is. But when you are taking up space in an elite law or medical school so you can be a better marriage prospect, rather than a contribution to that community, something may be wrong with this picture.

As Marilyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, was quoted in an article in the New York Times, “It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?”

In the same article Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, ” What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

Simply put, a lot of precious space is allocated in schools that produce influential inhabitants in their disciplines, people who move forward to assume places at the highest levels of their professions. People who become inventors and innovators, judges, developers of vaccines, leaders in their communities and their nation. This is not necessarily the place where someone takes up one of the few seats to practice for a couple of years and then move on to stay-at-home motherhood.

And with this type of behavior, we are referring to the achievers. We are referring to the elite. Beneath the elite we have those who quite simply just want to marry the richest guy with the most stuff on the best career track who can let them stay at home. Where professional challenges were once the major concern for young women in college, it seems now the big ticket it merely to find the guy. Find the guy. Marry well. Marry rich. As for love…maybe?

That way you can stay home, have lunch with your girlfriends and wax for hours on the celebrity hit list and other people they don’t know. This new attitude, as noted before, may be an act of rebellion. It may be a reflection of the economy. It is tough economic times and life is tough out there. Find someone who will take care of you. Not someone you can be with and share the joys and misery. Someone who will take care of you.

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There is no blame, really. And this is hardly a rant. It’s an examination of the overall policies, social and financial, that have left this nation, hurting, wanting, and very insecure. As a market driven society where consumerism made up two thirds of the economy, going cold turkey on the shopping impulse is like being a junkie at a revival meeting. You don’t know what to do with yourself or when the pain will start to fade.

In a society where air brushing as created the perfect form of beauty that no living being could ever recreate, it is bound to drive women crazy. To think that our celebrities and movies stars, who appear to us after sixteen hours having designers, makeup artists, etc., preening, fussing, and dressing them, can be copied in real life is bizarre. Truly bizarre. Yet that belief is the standard. It is an accepted reality, in spite of the facts. In spite of the facts that the celebrities and models can’t duplicate in real life the perfect image of themselves.

Yet here we are with women believing that with a few good beauty tips and some high priced cosmetics they can actually look as good as their aspirations. So women, smart women, exchange beauty and dressing tips, talk about their favorite celebrities and seem never wonder how they allowed themselves, no voluntarily, jumped into this box in the first place.

Men don’t escape responsibility. When it comes to romance and related social issues. Most men are idiots. Inarticulate idiots, at that. “Dude. Dude?” The idolize the marketing version of the sex symbol that is both unwieldy and unachievable. It makes them feel awkward to think they have settled for less than the stay at home beauty queen.

It is understandable. Most men really don’t have much to work with. They have their jobs and the things they buy and they things they believe they possess. Like their women. Most men have been programmed that anything remotely resembling taste, outside of cars and lawn care, is effeminate or gay. They are taught to believe their wives know better about everything except the job and the industry they compete in nearly every day of their lives.

More importantly, many men are threatened by thinking and successful women. They want their women to stay at home. They don’t want them competing. It is tough to have a bigger penis contest with someone who has you out outmaneuvered because they aren’t wearing one. It is tough to go up against the traditional social pressures that have evolved since Mom and Pop partnered as equals in the Mom and Pop shops.

After all, your mother and father probably set up the family that way. Others around you have condemned you as less of a man if you can’t carry the weight of a stay at home wife and three kids in the self-indulgence program on the weight of your designer shoulders. This is your job. Nay. This is your duty. Sit there and be mute, forgetting the lessons of the past.

What past? When the little woman sat home and allowed her brain to atrophy on nonsense and more nonsense. When the high point of the day was doing battled with that dreaded ring around the collar. When the woman was viewed as chattel, because as such they had no real ownership other than what was allowed by law. When soap operas and smores took priority over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the advent of social change.

Part of that change was Women’s Liberation. More succinctly, Women’s Rights. I remember when a good job for a woman was being a teacher. “You could always teach,” or so it went. “Or teach for a couple, few years until your husband gets his career off the ground. And then you can stay home and go out of your mind with the children.”

Okay, it’s different now. With the advent of illegal immigration and cheap labor, many women have a helper. They have a nanny and a housekeeper. They don’t clean, they don’t have to clean, cook, or do the laundry themselves. The maid does it. If you explain it correctly in broken Spanish, then she may even hang the delicate fabricates and not cram them into the dryer.

It is different. Women’s careers. Been there done that. Women are free to go to the top schools in the country and then be the stay at home mother. They can nosh with friends on salad and sushi. They can discuss the merits of Young Einstein. Rather than try to be one themselves.

As for the women that still march on, working to achieve at the highest levels of profession and society. Bless you for keeping the bar at some civilized level of progress. I realize it is tough sledding in the face of those who criticize you and wonder if you have a screw loose for not seeking out the perfect fellow and settling down. At home. But you are the ones who the next generation may use as role models. You may yet inspire the next generation of women, not to stay at home but to take advantage of their talents, their brains and, yes, their sexuality. Take advantage so that society can benefit from your unique and special skills.

Gates and Crowley and the Real Issue of the Law

In this world of heightened reality, surrealism has a hard act to follow. This is a bizzarre place where odd concoctions of thought and fantasy are turned into pronounced theories and devoted belief structures. The obscure is often mainstream. The irrelevant is elevated to new heights of culture.

Small wonder the recent Boston tempest between a Harvard Professor, Henry Louis Gates, and Cambridge Police Sergeant, James Crowley, would erupt into a controversy that would last for days, culminating in part with a beer with President Obama at the White House. There the three men will hash it out, make peace, and present themselves to the media in some ersatz form of reconciliation.

But suppose Crowley and Gates had a little too much beer in the Oval Office and in a state of inebriation began shouting epithets, escalating in their mighty altercation to something more vulgar. Suppose they lost their tempers, again, and their heated argument erupted into fisticuffs, leaving it to our youthful president to break it up. Now that would certainly be a photo op like none other. The controversy that began with Crowley confronting Gates in his own house would rage on for weeks and months, perhaps. Talking heads would pontificate for days as the more mundane aspects of two wars and a failing economy were ignored in the news cycle. It may even take precedent over the raging salary controversy on American Idol.

Now surely I jest. Or try to. But crazier stuff does happen. There are people in politics who would have been laughable on both sides of the aisle, just a few decades ago. There are idiots with all types of specious theories, and more idiots who give these theories credibility. The Gates-Crowley controversy has brought to our attention the national discord on racial relations that, no matter what we do, still lurks beneath the surface of everything.

Others will argue whether Crowley erred or whether his skewed perspective on race prompted him confront Gates in a matter that was either unprofessional or defied procedure. We can argue all day, and we have, whether it was racial profiling and a whole bunch of other stuff that escalated the situation to the level of national headlines. We can argue the macro effects, although by doing so we ignore the more micro effects, the human element that the two men let their tempers get the best of them. In plain language, it became a pissing contest where feelings where hurt and personalities were slighted. Such situations often end with poor results.

This is not about race to me, but a more general and, probably, a more substantial issue. The main issue that concerns me is at what point does a police officer have to arrest someone is his own house. Where is the justification? Yes, I realize Gates pursued Crowley out of his door. It would seem by at least some reports that Gates was obnoxious in berating Gates for confronting him about a fabled burglary. In Gate’s own home. Gates, understandably, was pissed off and in being so accused Crowley of everything but burning a cross on his lawn.
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At that certain flash point, the place where we revisit in our brains and secretly wish we could do over differently, Crowley reacted and arrested Gates. Did he have the right to arrest him? Is the fact that Gates was supposedly behaving obnoxiously probable cause for taking him into custody? Surely Gates pursued Crowley out on the porch. But he onlyfollowed him to diss him, give him more mouth. Gates never laid his hand on the cop or really threatened him in any way. So, where is the law on this matter?

This is an important issue. Because here rests not only legal precedent to justify Gates’ arrest, but the potential arrest of us all. This is where precedential law can be decided. This is the Rubicon where in response to false accusations or misguided interrogations you as a citizen have the right to get mouthy inside your house and on your own front porch, Or this is not acceptable behavior and the police have the right to run you in.

Yes, I realize that Gates is accused of disorderly conduct. I realize that the police say his actions were drawing a crowd. But he was drawing a crowd for perceived slights and on his own porch. So where is the law on this? What will happen the next time someone shouts out his displeasure from the shelter of his home?

Any attorney will tell you that most precedential criminal law is hardly decided over the actions of an innocent man. Be it Miranda, whose case, Miranda Vs. Arizona, established the Miranda Act, who any number of precedential legal cases; the subjects involved were not a bunch of nice guys. They did something wrong. They were unsavory characters. But it was their alleged crimes and the subsequent reactions of the law that determined the precedent and process for the greater good.

Henry Louis Gates is the exception to most potential precedential law. He is a preeminent scholar and hardly your criminal element. He has the respect of his colleagues and much of the country. He has the reputation most subjects of precedential criminal law grievously lack. So here rests the perfect place to debate human rights, and the rights of privacy and property and not just racial profiling. This is a case that as fate would have it is the result of two men losing themselves to a pissing contest. But the core issue itself is a matter of rights that go back to our days as colonies and British subjects. There are perhaps Fourth Amendment issues resting here. In any case, it is truly a matter of law.

The incident itself is a pity, if nothing else. But since it is now among us, resting firmly in our news cycle, it would be more intelligent to shift the perspective to human rights in general and not just the racial issues. Instead of the talking heads droning on to earn their keep, something significant could be decided here. But it won’t be. It is too complex for the news cycle and those who for effective news marketing must line up one one side or the other. Instead of a serious dicuss we will be forced to endure, if you will excuse the expression, more white noise. The real issue will not be decided over a beer. Nor through mediocrce talking points.

When Exceptional People Grow Older

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Years ago, when I was first starting out as a writer, my agent in the Los Angeles had a small second floor office in the old Writers and Artists Building, in Beverly Hills. On several visits to her, I would run into the notorious gangster, Mickey Cohen. He was one of my agent’s clients. Jane was new in the business and maintained an eclectic roster reminiscent of Broadway Danny Rose, only with class.

Since we shared the same agent, Mickey and I would nod at each other and maybe manage a few words. He was sick and dying, preoccupied with getting his book to press, before he passed on. He didn’t have much time for chitchat, or maybe I read it wrong and he nothing but time. He looked lonely and out of touch, out of step in the modern world. His old bookie joint on just off of Sunset Strip had long been converted into a leather shop and finally a hair salon.

I thought to myself that this had been one of the most feared men in America. He ruled Los Angeles and was said to have been one of the luckiest gangsters, having dodged several assassination attempts. He made his enemies pay for such transgressions. He lived long after them. And now cancer was taking him down. He was old and fragile, not the fearsome sort of long ago.

Since that time I have been fascinated by the enigma of age on exceptional people who performed extraordinary deeds. Age can eventually make us all appear frail and marginal. Age can disguise our pasts and the things that took place when we were young, virile and a little bit crazy. But with people, ordinary or not, who committed themselves at one time or another to extraordinary acts, it is so strange how time and age can all but eradicate any sense of the deeds we performed.

On many occasions I found myself staring at persons of some notoriety, waiting for their remarkable character to break through the layers of camouflage and some how reveal itself. You wait for that projection of energy. Sometimes you can catch a glimmer, and sometimes you can’t. Sometimes, depending on life and its fortunes, enough of that character remains, albeit in a slightly muted form.

I was reminded of the vagaries and cruelty of age, recently, when I sat down with an old friend who had been ill for some time. Here was a man who served as a war correspondent in countless third world garbage dumps, who had interviewed potentates and politicians of every stripe. He was a man who has investigated some of the greatest scandals of our time. And now, as he sat across from me, it was tough for him to talk. Over time and a couple of drinks, however, that special glimmer of significance did overtake his earlier reservation. He became more animated and under pain and duress projected some of his old self. Still, seeing an old an ill man in front of me, I had to search of evidence of a greater past.
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There was a former member of the Navy’s Underwater Demotion Unit. A frogman, before there were Navy Seals. He was old and moved slowly, but was a wealthy man as a result of having bought and sold enough real estate to develop a good part of Los Angeles. There was no indicator to what acts of courage this man had performed. He was just another tired old man, still moving forward in the quest of making a buck. But he still had the skin burns from the demolition cord he used to blow up enemy submarines that were docked in their bases. Swim in through the protective netting and swim out again. A few less submarines.

Some people still retain that sense of character. Old actors. Rock and Roll Stars. Performers still manage to put on that face and put on that show. An aging Mick Jagger still looks and appears like Mick Jagger of his youth, albeit, a little slower and a little more craggy. Anais Nin was dynamic almost up to the time she grew terminally ill. She had that special grace and allure, moved across the room like she was gliding on wheels. From what friends say, Henry Miller, her lover of yore, maintained his special presence. Beatrice Wood was still going strong into her 100’s. She was a world class potter but also the lover of Marcel Duchamp. Maybe it’s love, exotic romance at its best that keeps some vital and young in spirit. And delightfully crazy.

I remember meeting the Newton Boys. They were old time bank robbers, cowboy types who still retained their wit and sense of humor. With them, ironically, I could see them as they were, holding up a bank. If they thought they could get away with it.

And then there are the ones we are left to wonder about. What would Marilyn Monroe have been like at eighty? Would Amelia Earhart be dynamic and special, projecting that special aura when they periodically honored her as a pioneer for women’s rights? John Lennon?

So the next time you see someone who is elderly take a second look. Before you judge them merely old and frail, pathetically marginal, look for the signs of an exceptional character . Not everyone will have it. Let’s face it, while we can be kind and classify everyone as special, there are some of us, a few of us, who in one form or another have gone the extra mile. We may not even like what they did. We may not approve of it. But we can recognize that at one time or another they did something extraordinary.

Under the layers of personal history, trials, and disappointment, age may have obscured that special character. But it can never quite remove it entirely.