And here's an item from Tom Schecter, a sophomore in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music: "I definitely haven't heard of it... Is it all classical music?" Yeah, dude, coz Sibelius sux.
(Re)Turn of the Screw
That's not entirely accurate, it's more like Return of the King of Screw. Al Goldstein, who founded the infamous Screw pornography magazine in 1968, is back in the porn business after winding up on the street.
| ___About Random Access___ Random Access is a daily column by Robert MacMillan that explores the latest trends in technology and how they are changing daily life. Random Access won't tell you why a new gizmo will revolutionize your ad server. It will tell you about episodes from daily life -- exasperated waiters who use blogs to vent about their customers, whole runs of salmon injected with nanoparticles for individual tracking in Norwegian fjords and the growing number of DJs who are sick of being sidelined in favor of iPods. (Only one of these stories is fake.) Most of what you see will be culled from news sources and blogs from around the world, though we will supplement Random Access with original files on the novel, unusual, bizarre and reactionary happenings in the world of technology and society. E-mail: Send links and comments. | | |
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Goldstein, "last employed as a greeter at a Kosher deli and as a wholesale bagel salesman working on commission, is back promoting smut, this time over the medium that helped push him from his porn pedestal -- the Internet," Reuters reported. "Goldstein was named Monday as national marketing director for XonDemand, an Internet video-on-demand porn Web site. The site is an Internet version of the old-fashioned peep shows that populated the once-seedy stretch of 42nd Street west of Times Square. Customers can pay a per-minute charge for viewing a pornographic firm or order the whole movie."
I caught up with Goldstein and XonDemand chief Frank Ryan who were on a road trip together out in Los Angeles. They had just met with Metro, an adult video purveyor, and were planning to meet Hustler founder Larry Flynt today. "Al says we're probably going to Spago tomorrow night," Ryan told me. Among his other media plans are assaults upon morning radio hosts Howard Stern and Don Imus.
Goldstein, at a fortuitous 69 years of age, told me that he was the Colonel Sanders of porn. Just like a dinosaur, though, Goldstein had been reduced to living on the street for a while after the Internet destroyed his print porn empire.
Now, he said, it was time to join the online world: "Every magazine, every newspaper, is horse-and-buggy. Screw magazine was put out of business because you could get all the porno you want on your computer. Knowing I could not beat them, I joined them." We'd provide you with links, but washingtonpost.com is a family Web site.
Goldstein, before signing off, added that "video-on-demand is what it's all about," and with XonDemand's anonymous service, "there's no tracking your degenerate, devious ways." Yeah, sure Al, just you, me and the RIAA.
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