“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours” is the slogan for the new play My First Time. Performed in the minimalist style of The Vagina Monologues, the performance features two actors and two actresses on stage reciting excerpts from more than 40,000 tales of lost viginity submitted by users on MyFirstTime.com.

Notable stories included quotes like:

“I remember my first sexual experience. I was alone at the time!” (Story #6509)

“I still have the Metallica shirt he wore that night.” (Story #23960)
 
“File mine under clumsy and awkward!” (Story #4294)

“As I recall, I was pretty good at it. No really!” (Story #143)

Our summer interns Sarah Euler and Lynsey Gilchrist went to the New World Stages on West 49h Street in Manhattan last week for a press preview of the show.

Lynsey: I was kind of skeptical. I’m usually not into the whole four-people-sitting-around-talking thing, but I was actually really impressed.

Sarah: I didn’t know what to expect when I heard about the show. I thought the actors would just be reading funny stories from the website. While many of the stories were amusing (What lasted longer, your first time, or the commercial that was playing on TV at the time?), they included some that were sad. The variety of stories and emotions made the play more entertaining. The comedic timing of those funny stories was perfect for each situation. The audience would be silent after upsetting stories, but then be laughing again only minutes later.

L: Especially when the actors started reading quotes from the surveys everyone in the audience filled out (What would you tell your first if they were standing in front of you?: That she still turns me on after 20 years every time I hold her hand). That was the best part, and it makes every show different—although I did feel kind of bad for whoever had to sit back stage and tally up the surveys so fast.

S: I liked that the stories were all different and we weren’t hearing the same ones we’ve heard before. I was afraid that some of the stories would be overkill, but the variety kept me wanting more.

L: I agree, and I was surprised by how balanced the stories were. You had submissions by everyone from priests to real-life 40-year-old virgins to people who lost it when they were 12 and even story #1853 about a man in his university radio station during World War II.

S: There were a few stories that did not seem too out of the ordinary, but there were a few that I was shocked by. Some almost seemed unreal. At one point, I even heard some audience members gasp during a story about rape—and interestingly, a can of Coke. But they did a good job balancing those stories with some funny ones. The mood changes throughout kept my attention and interest.

L: Overall I really liked it. I thought a lot of stories would be read just for shock value, but the submissions they chose all had good messages.  

S: The show definitely has more to it than just being funny. Part of the proceeds go to Sex Etc., a sex ed program.
   
My First Time is performed at the New World Stages every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.

Ingmar Bergman’s death on Monday will certainly stir fresh interest in both his work and his life. To offer some insight, here’s a link to Bergman’s June 1964 Playboy Interview.

 

Ah, the Spice Girls. With the Beckhams coming to America and a reunion tour  announced, there has been a lot of controversy in the office as to which is the hottest Spice Girl. Left to right in the Union Jack photo are: Posh, Sporty, Ginger, Scary and Baby.

The first summer they were broadcast on MTV, I was 14 years old and there was no escaping them. Unfortunately, I still remember the lyrics to Wannabe. I took “if you want to be my lover, you gotta get with my friends,” to mean that girls wanted you to fool around with their girlfriends. I was let down when this wasn’t the case. I know Baby Spice was a fan-favorite, but because I was 14, all the girls I knew looked like Baby. Also because I was 14, there were two things I really cared about: sports and women. Naturally, Sporty Spice was the one I envisioned myself with back then.

Now, older with a few more interests (but not too many), and eleven more years of interactions with females, I’m dumping Sporty.

At least 30 times, I’ve had some friend tell me about a new girl he’s fallen for, “and the best part is that she loves sports! We can watch football together.” That’s the worst part. You spend all your time outside work with a girl and—though you love her dearly—when the game is on and you want to go to Jon’s house to watch it, she wants to know why she can’t come.  Sharing interests and hobbies are wonderful for couples, but not when it cuts into guys’ time or you can’t have a life on your own.  

Anyway, sorry Becks, I am now into Posh/Victoria. Who did you like? Do you still?

No shit, here’s what people were reading across from me on the subway this morning:

Harry Potter
Barbara Kingsolver
Harry Potter
[not reading]
[sleeping]
Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter
[unidentified book, not Harry Potter]
[not reading]
Harry Potter

All readers were adults, possibly in their mid-20s to mid-30s. Granted, this was a subway ride in the 9:30-10:00 a.m. range, so these were not Wall Streeters or other Highly Successful People. Indeed finding myself in the midst of a quietly raging Harry Potter Reading Party gave me the opportunity to consider the question I always have: Who the hell are all these adults who read Harry Potter? Trends in appearance include flip-flops, shorts and general shagginess among the men, bland New York summerwear (black top, beige calf-length skirt) for the women. I cannot guess what they were doing with the rest of their days—lunch with a friend at a sidewalk café? Meeting with an advisor to discuss the progress of a graduate school thesis? Or perhaps just a stroll into Central Park, a search for the perfect shady spot on which to lay a blanket, and a solid six hours with the final volume of their favorite kid-wizard series? Possibly the last—their outfits seemed to scream “I have nothing to do today.”

What, if anything, is wrong with this picture? Why did I find these people so irksome? Eight years ago, an adult reading Harry Potter was in some sort of “know”—the idea was that yes, it’s a kids’ book, but it’s such a fun and comfy read that adults can enjoy it too. Harry was brand new yet felt like a classic you wish you’d grown up on. Now it seems more like some kind of drug, inducing heavy nostalgia for childhood—not your childhood, because it didn’t exist back then, but childhood in general. This for a generation (mine) that has enough trouble letting go and growing up. (See Vans sneakers, dodgeball leagues, et al.) I’m happy that a writer can make the kind of scratch J.K. Rowling is pulling down, but I’m also happy that this is her last Harry Potter book. For what appear to be educated New Yorkers, the “at least they’re reading something” argument is useless. These aren’t 12-year-olds. We’re in a great period for literature; there are too many interesting, challenging works of fiction being produced to fritter away your time on something as intellectually lazy as the 3,000-page Harry Potter corpus.

Well that ought to settle that. Speaking of intellectually lazy frittering and general brain-rot, I have here on my desk a stack of printouts of celebrity nipple slips to review for the Grapevine page. This will probably consume the rest of my day. And maybe tomorrow.

If you’re game for a sure-to-be classic monster movie along the vein of Jaws or Jurassic Park, you should check out The Host from Magnolia Home Entertainment, which just came out on July 24 on DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD. This surprising South Korean hit—the highest grossing film of all time in that country—is about an unremarkable family thrust into a life-threatening crisis when a monstrous mutant emerges from the Han River and snatches a young schoolgirl. The government claims that the hybrid fish-reptile-amphibian monster is the host of an unidentified virus and locks down the area, crippling the family’s efforts to comb the labyrinthine sewers along the Han River before it’s too late for the little girl.

As with any box-office explosion that detonates in the Far East, Hollywood has already sniffed out this gem for an American remake. But aside from moving the story to these shores and throwing in a bunch of American actors for viewers allergic to subtitles (if you’re one of those, there is an English dub track on The Host), there is no compelling reason to tinker with this monster mash. The effects aren’t akin to a man in a rubber suit tromping through a set of toy buildings and trucks here. Instead we have the digital dynamos from Weta Workshop (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings) and The Orphanage (Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, Sin City) responsible for creating this convincing monster as it wreaks havoc along the shores of the Han. It’s also in the sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking way this awkward family handles their unexpected crisis that elevates this film above just another creature-on-a-rampage flick.

Brave next-gen pioneers will definitely want to savor the clarity of the eye-popping Blu-ray version of The Host. If you want to know more about director Bong Joon-ho’s inspiration for his unique river monster and how it was brought to life, be sure to explore the exhaustive behind-the-scenes features included on the discs as well.

Deion Sanders. The name has always invoked strong feelings, which usually boiled down to whether you felt he was an exciting showman or self-promoting hot dog.

But now that he’s taken it upon himself to write an op-ed piece for the Southwest Florida News-Press in which he basically justifies dog fighting and Michael Vick's alleged involvement, I think we can all agree exactly what he is:

Ignorant.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s let Deion speak for himself (he does it so well):

"I believe Vick had a passion for dogfighting. I know many athletes who share his passion. The allure is the intensity and the challenge of a dog fighting to the death. It's like ultimate fighting, but the dog doesn't tap out when he knows he can't win.

"It reminds me of when I wore a lot of jewelry back in the day because I always wanted to have the biggest chain or the biggest, baddest car. It gives you status."

Need I say more?

My friends at The Washington Monthly were kind enough to sponsor a reading of my new novel at Borders on 14th Street in Washington, DC, on Tuesday night.

I met a lot of wonderful new people, but perhaps the most surprising guests were two Playboy alumni who showed up just because they heard a Playboy editor had come to town. They were Cynthia Grenier, who among other work for the magazine, conducted our interview with the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman in June 1964, and Peter Ross Range, who for many years was the articles editor. I’m delighted that they thought to come by and say hello.

Your eyes do not deceive you: That's the beautiful Bridget Marquardt, with her dog Wednesday, who visited our New York offices this week. (Photo by Mat Szwajkos)

It’s amazing the way corporate ownership affects the news coverage. Today is a perfect example. While CNN’s website features a teaser for a broadcast piece with the headline “Go inside the world of illegal dogfighting! The secret subculture exposed by an NFL star's indictment” (the exclamation point, by the way, has not been added), a lead item on the continuing investigation into the death of former NFL defensive back Pat Tillman, and another on a 12-year-old girl killed by a softball—not to mention more coverage of the NBA betting scandal—the real news goes unreported.

A third person was arrested today in—get this—the biggest ever Army contract-rigging and bribery case to come out of Iraq. We’re talking about $15 million of taxpayer money, public servants, and contractors sucking at the teat of the LOGCAP contract for Iraq (check out this month's Forum in the magazine for more on that particular gem).  

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s part of a July 26 report from the AP:

“A third member of a Texas family has been arrested in connection with what a federal official says is the largest Army contract-rigging and bribery case to emerge from the Iraq reconstruction effort.

"Carolyn Blake, a former schoolteacher, was charged Wednesday with laundering money and conspiring to accept $3.1 million (euro2.26 million) in bribes from contractors.

"Blake is accused of working with her brother, Maj. John L. Cockerham, a contracting and procurement officer assigned to Fort Sam Houston, who was arrested Monday on charges that allege he took $9.6 million (euro 6.99 million) in kickbacks and anticipated receiving $5.4 million (euro3.93 million) more for rigging military supply contracts.

"His wife, Melissa Cockerham, 40, was also arrested Monday on charges she accepted bribery payments for her husband and helped conceal them.

"Investigators say the payments occurred in 2004 and 2005, with the money being deposited to banks in the Middle East and then moved to offshore banks in the Caribbean.

"‘This is the largest bribery case that's come out of the Iraq reconstruction experience,’ Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, told the San Antonio Express-News.”

And as if that isn’t salacious enough for the mainstream news organizations, here’s something else uncovered by a local Texas paper, the San Antonio Express-News:

“It was unclear how the government learned about the bribes to Cockerham, but various sources told the Express-News that the case is one in a pattern of contract-rigging and bribery cases at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, involving multiple members of the military, including some who died under mysterious circumstances as investigators closed in.”

Hmmmm. One might think there’s a story there, eh? But why bother doing difficult reporting work when you can take us “inside the illegal world of dogfighting!”

The color chart below put together by Armin Vit represents the distribution of top grossing movies by rating (NC-17 on the top G on the bottom). According to the spectrum the Sin City colors—blood (or red lipstick) and darkness/passion and danger—sell adult movies while earth tones and blues attract the kiddies. I know these deductions are no-brainers but it's impressive to see an adult world juxtaposed with a child’s eye. Tip of the hat to BoingBoing.

The mass gourmetfication of everyday lowbrow and middlebrow foods is nothing new. In part thanks to a random umlaut, Häagen-Dazs elevated ice-cream in the 1980s, while Starbucks and Sam Adams tricked out coffee and beer, respectively, in the 1990s. Is jerky the next foodstuff to get the upgrade?

More all-natural Rabbit Heads taken from our archives. This week we present visions that arose from violence: (1) A broken mirror in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (2) a broken window in New Jersey, (3) a broken window in Oakland, Maryland, and (4) a broken window in Ottawa, Canada. What this means is, we don’t need to see any more broken glass.

  

 

 

 

 

What an incredible sham the buzz around last night’s debate is. The coverage this morning focuses on the delivery of the questions—singing, et al—rather than the quality of the questions or—god forbid—the substance of the answers. This is, as any sentient observer knows, exactly the problem with mainstream media coverage of politics today—the failure to deal with the substance of policy. (That and the failure to make political figures answer the actual questions posed, by making pointed follow-up questions—but this, too, was unaltered in last night’s format.) The use of YouTube videos to pose the questions has only exacerbated this, and, worse still, done so with the ostensible purpose of "democratizing" the candidate debates, and by extension, the election process.

I guess the one thing that can be said of today’s coverage is that many of the video makers also made clear, by their novelty delivery, that the focus was to be on them. What kind of an ass-clown sings a question if not to grab the spotlight? Why must serious questions be couched in woe-is-me personal anecdotes? It might seem counterintuitive, but the use of YouTube extended the cult of personality of TV news, the me-me-me of onscreen newscasters whose calculations are based on how they themselves come across rather than on how best to elicit real answers from candidates or how best to parse policy distinctions.

 

It’s a tragic, self-imposed, Huxleyan result: YouTubers were willful—even gleeful—participants in the further subjugation of politics to process and empty spectacle.

In that regard, the debates could indeed be regarded as historic: They’re a new nadir.

A couple of years ago, I had one of those flights from New York to my home in LA that lasted 17 hours, involved a faulty aircraft, an emergency landing, a blizzard, a shortage of available airplanes, de-icing problems and long, uncomfortable hours at JFK.

From the beginning, my seatmate was a young comedy writer from New York named Adam Mutterperl. I had never met Adam before and never talked to him again after that day, but when you spend 17 hours straight with a stranger you do get to know each other, especially when the batteries on your iPods run out.

I don’t recall everything, but I remember thinking when it was over that if I was going to be trapped for 17 hours with a stranger, I had lucked out with Adam. He had that weird name that stuck in my mind and was low-key and funny, even during the somewhat tense emergency landing. (After we were safely on the ground, I called my wife from my cell to describe the amazing number of fire engines surrounding the plane. Adam tapped me on the shoulder, “Don’t forget the ambulances,” he said. “They’re cool, too.”)

He was flying to LA to pitch a TV show. I have no idea what happened, but I just rediscovered Adam as one the contestants on America’s Next Producer, a reality show that premiered last week on the TV Guide Channel. (Think Top Chef or Project Runway, except the winner gets a big office in Hollywood, a box of cigars and the chance to abuse the people around him.) Adam was sort of in the middle of the pack on the debut episode—he didn’t win, but was in no danger of being eliminated, either.

Since it’s on the barely noticed TV Guide Channel, I’m sure I’m one of dozens of people watching the show. Based on that one bizarre cross-country trip, I think Adam deserves better. If keeping me from pulling my hair out for 17 hours is any indication of his ability to entertain, he probably deserves to win.