Making History One Dick at a Time: The Rise and Fall of a Gay Porn Empire |
At America's premier gay-porn publisher, dick size was king. Every model we published had to be attractive and fit, but it was their equipment that determined where they would end up. If a guy was going to be an Inches cover man, his member had to be jaw-dropping. Playguy called for boyish bulges. To appear in Mandate, the flagship, his dick should be attached to a body and face almost no reader would turn down. And if a guy was going to show off his cock in Torso, where I worked, it had better be positioned below a six-pack. These publications were housed in unassuming offices in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. But the company—variously called Modernismo, Mavety Media Group, and MMG Services during its reign—was run by a larger-than-life personality: George Mavety, a straight man with a huge appetite for both sex and food who looked like a 1920s fat-cat caricature by the time I arrived in the mid-nineties. |
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Mike Tyson Takes One Last Swing at Immortality |
Mike Tyson steps through the black ropes and lies down on his back in the middle of the boxing ring. He looks up at the ceiling of the warehouse in the Las Vegas suburbs and closes his eyes. The makeshift gym is so silent and sterile that all you can hear is his breathing and the hum of the air-conditioning. In a few weeks, Tyson will turn fifty-eight. He's back in training for his first officially sanctioned boxing match in nearly twenty years—a much-hyped matchup with the influencer-turned-pugilist Jake Paul that is set to be held in a football stadium filled with fans and streamed live to a potentially massive audience online. But right now it's time to get to work. |
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The 35 Best New Movies and Shows on Max |
When HBO rebranded its streaming service as Max, the television network also changed its slogan to "The one to watch." While we're still not used to calling HBO "Max," the tagline isn't half bad! No matter how many names the service tries out—who could forget HBO GO?—HBO is still the best place to go for prestige entertainment. After all, to hit you with another old HBO catchphrase, "It's not just TV, it's HBO." If you somehow need a reminder, HBO is the house of The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Sex and the City, Band of Brothers, Girls, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and countless other hall-of-fame series. Even today, the network is still producing some of the best TV and documentary films of the streaming wars. So here's a list of our top 35 favorite newish films and series from HBO (and streaming on Max), in no particular order. |
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The Georgia Republican Who Stood Up to Trump Prepares for His Next Fight |
Brad Raffensperger is rattling off statistics while we wait. It's just after 4:00 P.M. on Tuesday, May 21, and the Georgia secretary of state is standing outside a small conference room in an underground bunker on the east side of Atlanta, where he and his staff gather on election days. A couple dozen workers are spread around an open seating area, quietly fielding phone calls and staring at their computer monitors. With its fluorescent lights and gray carpet, the place has the muted feel of a regional sales office. The secretary, though, is energized. As the official in charge of overseeing elections in his state, Raffensperger is always ready to dive into the details. Today is a statewide primary, and more than seven hundred thousand of his fellow citizens will show up to cast a ballot at Georgia's roughly twenty-three hundred polling sites, on top of the nearly six hundred thousand who voted early in person or by absentee ballot. For this election alone, says Raffensperger, the state had to produce about nine thousand different ballot styles to cover every local race and precinct. On one wall of the command center, big screens show real-time updates on the percentage of polling places reporting results, voter turnout, and voter wait time, which is averaging less than a minute—a point of pride for the sixty-nine-year-old Raffensperger. A successful structural engineer before entering politics, he's all about optimizing systems. Right now he's eager to demonstrate his latest innovation. |
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The 50 Best Songs of the '90s |
Every genre got its moment in the sun in the '90s, but hip-hop was in its golden era. Toward the tail end of the decade—June 1999, to be exact—Napster crashed through the music industry like a wrecking ball, changing it in ways that artists and executives are still reconciling with today. No one really saw it coming. We were too fixated on the radio, waiting for our favorite song to play so we could record it and create a bootleg mixtape. Maybe that's a good way to think about this list. It's a mixtape—a sampling of songs from one of the most inspiring decades in music. There are record-smashing hits, underrated gems, wacky one-hit wonders, and influential indie tracks. There's a little bit of everything and something for everyone, except die-hard Harvey Danger fans. Sorry, but "Flapole Sitta" sucks. |
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Yes, You Can Participate in Brat Summer as a Dude. Here's How. |
Have you been noticing a lot more neon green in the atmosphere lately? Are the women in your life professing that they're "so Julia" despite not, in fact, being named Julia? Do you find within yourself the mysterious desire to go to the club, no matter where you are and what time of day it is? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you, my friend, might just be experiencing a brat summer. The brattiness of the season can be traced to English singer-songwriter Charli XCX's party-hard album Brat, but even when that dance-worthy final track ends, being a brat endures. Club classics are still club classics even when they aren't being played, after all. Brat summer is all about experiencing the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, celebrating going to parties and going to parties to celebrate. Cigarettes are being smoked with more urgency, tank tops are being worn with less care, martinis are being drunk far dirtier than before, and with each passing day we're all getting a little bit brattier. |
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