Robert Rosen

Somebody sent me this "lol" image yesterday, but I didn't get it. "Why is the beaver a liar?" I asked. "A beaver wouldn't lie."

"It's not a beaver," the sender explained. "It's a groundhog. It's a joke about the weather."

Though it has been winter-like here in New York City, spring did begin today at 7:02 A.M--which means that the Beaver Street Winter Assault, as I've insisted on calling the latest phase of my ongoing media campaign, has officially concluded.

Regular readers of The Daily Beaver are aware of the three successes that have continued to fuel Beaver Street’s quest to reach a more substantial audience. Allow me to recap:

· A major interview in the December 2012 issue of StorErotica, a trade magazine that goes out to every book-ordering sex shop owner in the U.S.
· A rave review in the February 2013 issue of AVN (page 53), which is the first time that Beaver Street has come to the direct attention of its core audience—people who work in the adult industry.
· An extensive photo feature posted March 6, in LA Weekly, which trended #1, and brought Beaver Street to the attention of that much sought-after mainstream audience.

So, it’s time to declare victory and move on to Spring Siege ’13, which will climax on June 16, at the Killarney Rose, with the second annual Bloomsday on Beaver Street: Father’s Day Edition.

See you there!

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By the time you click on the graphic to the left, "10 Sexy Photos from the History of Pornography" may very well have dropped out of the top 10 of the "Most Popular Blog Stories" in LA Weekly. But that's the ephemeral nature of the Internet. What's "hot" now is not going to be hot 10 seconds from now. Whatever the case, with all the tweeting and Facebooking, Beaver Street has had a good run in LA this week, and if there's one city where it should have had a good run, it's LA. The piece, posted Wednesday morning, led to an immediate sellout of the book on Amazon, which is the first time that's happened.

Meanwhile, over in Chicago, my Nowhere Man interview with Bryan "Shu" Schuessler was streamed Sunday afternoon on Core of Destruction Radio. As it was being streamed, I had a lot of fun on the chat board with Lizard Messiah, the guy who runs the Website. We talked about John Lennon, Beaver Street, Jim Morrison, and conspiracy theories. Lizard was unfamiliar with Lennon's first solo album, Plastic Ono Band, but when the interview ended, he played two cuts from the LP, Mother and Working Class Hero. Very cool. (If you missed the interview it's available as a free download here.)

Goatserpent, a Core of Destruction DJ, also logged onto the chat board for a while. I noticed on his profile page that under “Favorite Books” he lists “early 90s issues of Swank.” Hey, Goat, you ought to pick up a copy of Beaver Street. I worked for Swank in the early 90s.

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Media exposure is the oxygen that keeps books alive, and this week Beaver Street and Nowhere Man both got a nice infusion of it. Between the Beaver Street pictorial in LA Weekly--trending #1 last time I checked--and the Nowhere Man interview on Shu-Izmz (which will be streamed this Sunday on Core of Destruction Radio), I can unconditionally call this a good media week. Since it's Friday, it's snowing in New York City, and the Mistress of Syntax has taken a day off from work, my inclination is to end this post right here and go out and play in the snow.

I'll follow my inclination. See you next week!

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Thanks to LA Weekly, I've learned a new acronym: NSFW. It means "Not Safe For Work." That's how the paper has labeled their extraordinary Beaver Street pictorial, "10 Sexy Photos From the History of Pornography."

The spread brings to life much of what I write about in Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography--like High Society magazine. Ironically, if you toiled for that esteemed publication in the 1980s, NSFW had an entirely different meaning: Employees were forbidden to read The New York Times, or any other newspaper, without special permission. Instead, the publisher demanded that everybody spend as much time as possible reading (and stealing ideas from) competing porno mags, especially Hustler, which he considered the "bible" of beaver books.

In the likely event that you don’t work in an alternate X-rated universe, then NSFW is indeed the correct designation for the Weekly’s Beaver Street spread. So, read it when you get home, and take a trip down the memory lane of 20th century men’s mags. It’s a world that’s fast disappearing.

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As a public service, I’ve taken it upon myself to read the “five great reads about the business of smut” recommended by Slate, and began with “Scenes from My Life in Porn,” a 10,000-word opus, by Evan Wright, that ran in the April 6, 2000 edition of LA Weekly. I started with Wright because his experiences seemed similar to my own in certain ways, and he did transform his life after his three-year stint in porn, publishing books and getting high-profile magazine assignments.

Thumbnail Critique
Plot: Total loser lands job at Larry Flynt Publications (LFP), writing “girl copy” and reviewing porn videos. He meets porn stars and directors.
Format: Anecdotal
Mood: Depressed and depressing
Highlight: Watching a gang bang video with its naked, HIV-positive star, Brooke Ashley.
Sample Quote: “Fortunately, LFP provided a safe, nurturing environment for disturbed individuals exorcising their personal demons through pornography writing.”
Sample of Wright’s Girl Copy: Dee is “now free of the psychiatrist’s drugs that once made her a complete zombie with no will of her own, nor any control over what she did with her body.”
Also See: Prisoner of X by Allan MacDonell Read More