Life After Koh Masaki
Koh Masaki was Japan's foremost gay porn star when he died one month ago today. "It must have taken him a lot of courage to decide to live in Japan. I've realized that recently," Masaki said, about his partner, Tenten, a model and Chinese expatriate that he met on a train home from a Lady Gaga concert. They were talking to the photographer Keiichi Nitta for a recent video series profiling gay couples for Vice Japan. In the video, Masaki, soft-spoken and with a close-cropped beard circling his angular face, never talks explicitly about his work in adult film, but his many fans would have had no trouble recognizing him.
"It's my duty to take care of him," Masaki said, glancing over at Tenten.
By the time he died from peritonitis after an appendix operation, at just 29, Masaki had established a celebrity persona in a business where such a thing hadn't existed before. Japanese censorship laws require blurring genitalia, but social stigma leads many performers (regardless of gender) to obscure their faces, too. Dark sunglasses, hats and blacked-out swimming goggles are common accessories in an industry whose overall value has been estimated at around $20 billion.
As the Internet and social media continue to transform gay life, particularly in Southeast Asia, Masaki's career hints at one of its biggest contradictions: greater connectedness isn't necessarily driving a push for social progress—at least not in all the ways familiar in the West. By forgoing anonymity, Masaki didn't set out to remake society. Still, his decision gave many gay men more than just a recognizable face in the porn they watched. He created a role model who not only enjoyed gay sex but openly identified with it. What's more, Masaki seemed to have thought it his duty to look out for them, too. READ MORE
New York City, June 17, 2013
★★★ A pneumatic hammer raised a yellow, choking cloud of dust in the thick morning air. The 1 train was stifling and had that lotion smell again. The dust or the lingering thought of the dust was itchy on the skin. This was summer lite, the worst of it still seemingly subject to mitigation, if you stayed out of the direct sun or away from construction. It could be outsmarted. Midafternoon brought a quick hot plopping rain. Smokers stood in it on the fire escape, undeterred by the raindrops or the soggy staleness between them. Then the storm had passed, and already the metal steps were drying off. Things had cleaned up after all, and summer light filled the evening. A red-orange glow fringed the toddler's head as he sat by the window, grabbing for extra storybooks, trying to prolong his already prolonged bedtime.
Painless Guides To Paying Off Your Car
This post is sponsored by Kia.
The Megan Method — Overpay, Then Sell
My first car was a wonderful, amazing, dark green faux-wood-interior-paneled convertible. I bought it outright from a lady in the neighborhood, and I used all my savings—$5,000.
When that car broke down, I bought another car, this one from my "car guy." I traded my car in to him and financed the rest—$4,000.
I got a loan through the credit union, and overpaid each month so that I could pay it off early and avoid some interest. But now I need to replace my brakes and my air conditioner—to the tune of $2,200, which I will not be doing. I'll sell it as-is and pay off the remainder of the lease and start over. Not with a used European car. Never again with a used European car. READ MORE
"An idiot-proof type wrapping paper has been designed to help men who struggle to present neatly-covered gifts."
Artist Contextualized
"When scientific learning began to eclipse religion as the more reliable explainer of the mysteries of life, our view of the world flattened out—we went from looking to the sky for answers, to looking here on earth. In the absence of divine authority, our perspective, individual human perspective, became as important as anything else. Picasso was able to see this, with his crazy giant eyes, more clearly than other people. And so began to paint the world exactly as he saw it—as a collection of two-dimensional geometric shapes, like planes of broken glass, splintered and warped and shifting with the viewer’s relative position to the object in sight. The world, as Picasso painted it, didn’t look like anything people had seen before. But in a certain way, it was closer to the truth, as people had started to experience it, maybe without anyone even knowing it. He was showing people what was inside themselves, showing them the future.
That’s what it felt like to watch Kanye perform 'New Slaves' on Saturday Night Live last month."
—Dave Bry goes there.
Interview With A Person Whose Mom Came Out of the Closet
Rebecca is a 24-year-old web designer who lives in New York City.
So, let’s talk about your mom! What was her story growing up?
She was born in 1960 and she grew up in a Catholic family in New York, not super religious but culturally so. She told me that she thought maybe she was bisexual, and she also definitely wanted a family, and at that point the way to have a family was to get married to a man. So that’s what she did.
How did your parents get together?
She met my dad in college—he’s nine years older than she is—and they got married a few years after that. She was the one to propose, which is interesting to me. I was their only child together, and when I was about three, they got divorced and she came out.
I don’t remember her coming out to me. I’m sure she did, but I was so little, I surely didn’t know what she was talking about or care.
Had she dated girls before marrying your dad?
Not to my knowledge. She has some ex-boyfriends, a few of which have come out themselves! I’m guessing the answer to your question is either “no” or “something scandalous that she doesn’t want to tell me.”
"[A] political campaign against sexual assault in the military… shows signs of becoming an effort to criminalize male sexuality."
Superstar Eccentric Nathan Rabin On The Magic Of Phish And The Glory Of Insane Clown Posse
Nathan Rabin is a staff writer at the forthcoming site The Dissolve, which was formed with Pitchfork from the mass exodus from The A.V. Club, where he was head writer. Back in 2010, Rabin set out to write a book about Phish and Insane Clown Posse, two bands who are as ignored by the mainstream music world as they are adored by their fans. He followed Phish on tour that summer and then went to the Gathering of the Juggalos, ICP’s annual 4-day festival, finding both experiences to be intriguing but less than affecting.
Then, as they say, everything went wrong. Rabin went broke, lost a year’s worth of writing, and started to wonder if he was going crazy. So he did it all again. The summer of 2011 found him back on the road with Phish and at the Gathering. Wouldn’t you know it, music saved his life. “I need more things in my life with completely intangible value," he wrote in his resulting book, You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me—and what he found that year were community, salvation, and joy.
You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me is both a perceptive and funny introduction to the communities that surround two bands, as well as being a candid and moving memoir. We talked about music, fandom, and escape over email.
Two words that come up repeatedly in your book are joy and vulnerability. In the journey that you chronicle in this book, your experiences of both seem to parallel each other. Can you talk about how they're connected?
Sure. The first year that I worked on the book I was crippled with self-consciousness. I am someone for whom writing comes naturally. But I could not get anything out of my experiences that I could use in the book and that's because there was a barrier between me and what I was writing about. I couldn't find an entryway into this world that I desperately wanted to explore, so that contributed to my self-consciousness and my sense of pessimism and doom that I'd never finish the book, which in turn further fueled my self-consciousness. It was a vicious cycle. READ MORE
"Tourists and graffiti artists have turned the Brooklyn Bridge into an illegal canvas, scrawling motivational messages, valentines to the city and not-so-diplomatic doodles on it."
The Pile of $h*! That Was '$h*! My Dad Says'
Writers adapt all types of stories to the screen. Whether they be based on works of fiction, like novels, comics, or plays; myths, handed down from generation to generation; or even real stories that happened to real people. All of them, however, communicate the subtle and not-so-subtle moments of everyday life, explaining the human condition in ways that can be as effective as they are entertaining.
Adaptation can be a tricky $#@!er, though, especially when some of the most important aspects of our lives, whether they be love, art, and/or family, come from 140-character perspectives. As every Twitter draft folder shows, such a short slice of life requires some finessing. READ MORE
"People who increase the amount of red meat in their diet may be at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a new study of more than 149,000 Americans. The study researchers found that people who increased their red-meat intake by half a serving per day during a four-year period had a 48-percent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the next four years compared with people who made no change in their red-meat intake."
Johnny Smith, 1922-2013
“He accomplished everything he ever wanted. He played with the best musicians in the world, he went deep sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, he was a great father.”
—Jazz guitarist Johnny Smith was 90.
"He said that only a small fraction of the more than 100 loans given by N.Y.U. (some of which were made by New York University itself and others by related foundations) were for second homes."
Meet The Photographer Who Wants $3.6 Million From BuzzFeeᴅ But Who Won't Restore Your Faith In Humanity
Spoiler: he won't get it. (Maybe he'll get a little settlement?) Above: a screenshot of the post in which BuzzFeeᴅ included a ("a"!) copyrighted photograph.
But you just can't stop top BuzzFeeᴅer Matt Stopera! He'll do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He's an artist and a machine.
Litigant and photographer Kai Eiselein lives near the Washington-Idaho border—great part of the world! His top wedding package rate is $3,000. He has some very nice bird photos.
The photographer is… representing himself. (Oh well!)
I still maintain that whatever lawyer told BuzzFeeᴅ honcho Jonah Peretti that "assembling a photo into a list of other photos" is "transformative use" got their JD by mail-order.
"I had lunch the other day with someone I extremely look up to. Okay—I had lunch with Will Smith, and listening to him talk, it made me think I don’t know what love is."
—I think Drake is legitimately disgusting.
Watch 'Rock Stories' About LCD Soundsystem And Nirvana From MTV Other
Did you know that a young Kurt Cobain was once arrested on a vandalism charge for drawing on the walls of an alleyway? Or, did you know that LCD Soundsystem's frontman James Murphy once dropped a skinhead? Legendary VJ Matt Pinfield relays the stories he's picked up from years of hanging out with some of the biggest names in music on MTV Other, a new online destination that focuses on MTV's music heritage. Check out the James Murphy and Nirvana videos here, and find other videos also created by a variety of indie animators about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, U2 and more at MTV Other.
"A film review on Wednesday about the documentary 'More Than Honey' referred incorrectly to a discussion of the history of raising a hardy Alpine breed of black bee at the beginning of the film, and misidentified the person who believes in the 'racial purity' of the black bee and says it is threatened by a yellow striped bee. While Markus Imhoof, the director, is descended from a long line of Swiss beekeepers and discusses his family’s history, the discussion of the black bee is about the raising of the breed by a Swiss beekeeper, Fred Jaggi, not about the Imhoof clan’s raising of that bee. And it is Mr. Jaggi, not Mr. Imhoof, who believes in the bee’s 'racial purity' and sees it as threatened."
New York City Is Overwhelmed With Opportunities!
Neil Gaiman! Claire Messud! The Roots! Laurie Anderson! It's hectic up in this piece tonight! There's also an enormous lineup of super-short readings tonight at Kunsthalle Galapagos by a cavalcade of weirdos, including Lynne Tillman, Emily Gould, Christian Lorentzen and Gideon Lewis-Kraus.
Mapping The Newest Old Map Of The World
Under circumstances shrouded by mystery, two brothers painted this on a wall by the railway tracks at Paddington on Christmas Eve of 1974.
Until the wall was knocked down, ten years later, passengers would cruise past it as their trains slowed in and out of London. It was anonymous, 45 centimeters tall, and not very colorful, but a lot of people remember it. "Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere."
In his lovely A History of the World in Twelve Maps (the Daily Mail called it "jaunty"), historian Jerry Brotton calls the graffito "perhaps the best metaphorical description" of what happens when a person uses a map. You see a place on the map and you are transported there; the image collapses the distance between you and the place to nothing. Knowing how to use a map, however, a geographical machine clicks and whirrs in your imagination and you end up able to define, accurately, the distance between you and the other place. Close at hand, far away.
But how has that geographical machine in your head been shaped by the conventions governing how maps are put together? A map has a metaphorical relationship to a real place—it always processes the place in some way—and that mediation can have an important effect on how we imagine the world.
So, it makes a kind of sense that Jerry Brotton and artist Adam Lowe have made one of those insane public art objects that really make you go "huh": a three-dimensional, full-sized, plaster relief facsimile of the Hereford mappa mundi, the largest and loveliest surviving medieval world map.
The facsimile is, according to Brotton, partly a rhetorical attack on Google Maps. There really is a way this makes sense. Let’s start, however, with the Hereford mappa mundi, which is my favorite map of all time.
Completed in 1300, the map is still on display in Hereford Cathedral—Hereford is halfway from Cardiff to Birmingham—for everybody to look at.
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