SEX ON CAMPUS
Interviews by Stinson Carter
Playboy Magazine
October, 2009
From the Playbill: College is where most of us finally get the freedom to figure out who we are. Which makes it fertile ground for our Sex On Campus 2009 Feature. Stinson Carter reports from the front lines.
As school gets back in session, Playboy takes an inside look at the secret sex lives and steamy side jobs of six all-American college girls… click to read
False River (novel excerpt)
By Stinson Carter
The Cathedral bells knocked Cam out of dreamless sleep into a cold and dewy Sunday morning. As the clangs rattled his teeth, he crawled out from the hibiscus bushes to get a jump on the morning Mass crowd.
He hopped the fence onto Royal Street and drew stares from a horse-drawn carriage passing by with the day’s first batch of tourists. The driver was warming up his hangover voice with lies about ghosts and old battles––weaving a peculiar history in which Napoleon and Andrew Jackson were not only contemporaries, but even fought alongside one another in the Battle of New Orleans. It was clear to Cam that the twenty-dollars these Yankees paid wasn’t for the history lesson as much as for the sound of horse hooves clacking on the cobblestones.
As the carriage went off and left things quiet again, the silence of an empty Sunday morning street handed him the hard truth that sleeping in the St. Louis Cathedral prayer garden left him no less tired than he was when he collapsed there at 4am, and thanks to the fresh topsoil he was as dirty as he was stranded. He knew if he was going to have a fighting chance of somehow conning forty bucks by the day’s last Greyhound to Shreveport, he’d have to find a way to look presentable at best and trustworthy at least… click to read novel excerpt
By Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, February 2008
… Downtown is still a tough sell to a designated driver. But if you have a reason to go there–jury duty, long-delayed first visit to friend’s loft, etcetera–don’t head back to your comfort zone without checking out The Edison: a well-funded experiment with alcohol, distressed surfaces, and visible filament. Take a date to a pair of leather club chairs in a candlelit boiler. (Just pretend you don’t notice the busboys hustling around you in suspenders and newsboy caps.) click to continue reading this and more bar reviews
Jesse James on Skincare
by Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, April 2008
Jesse James is about to blow the lid off a few biker stereotypes at a Kiehl’s store near you. The 39 year old is best known as the host of the Discovery Channel shows “Monster Garage” and “Motorcycle Mania,” and for the celebrity-heavy client list of his Long Beach, California bike shop, West Coat Choppers. (Kid Rock, Keanu Reeves and Shaquille O’Neal, to name a few).
But he’s sure to pick up some new fans in the wives and girlfriends of “regular dudes who work with their hands and are filthy dirty every day like I am,” as James describes… click to continue reading
On Neutra Ground
by Stinson Carter
Room 100 Magazine, Summer 2008
Vidal and Ronnie Sassoon met in the early 90’s while she was designing a product from his “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good” line, and he has trusted her design eye ever since. Vidal Sassoon may not let his wife cut his hair, but she’s the only one he’ll let touch his houses. Ronnie Sassoon has a passion for redesigning mid-century moderns, but her latest undertaking may be her finest work yet: a major remodel of Richard Neutra’s c. 1969 Singleton House, a benchmark of the architect’s Southern California Regionalist style… click to continue reading
Love On The Halfshell
BlackBook Magazine, June/July 2007
by Stinson Carter
“I’ve always been into turtles. But I’ve been closeted about it,” says Eric Goode, understatedly referring to his idyllic three-acre compound in Ojai, California, where he cares for, feeds, and houses 300 turtles and tortoises, 15 rare species in all, some of which subsist largely on hors d’oeuvres of escargot.
Just north of Ventura, Highway 33 makes an inland trek from the Pacific Coast Highway into the foothills of the Sierra Madres. The notion that you’ve left Southern California behind first hits you as you drive through the menthol-scented colonnade of eucalyptus trees on the outskirts of Ojai. The shops and restaurants in the heart of town mostly fit within one long, continuous white stucco arcade–shading the Spanish tile walkway outside windows displaying crystals and dream catchers, vegetarian lunch specials, and watercolor landscapes. The skate park at the eastern edge of town is devoid of rebellion, as local kids would catch more flack for lighting up a cigarette than they would for lighting up a joint. click to continue reading
The Good Life of Brian Van Holt
BlackBook Magazine, February 2008
by Stinson Carter
“I don’t really believe I’m the ‘Mayor of Venice.’ My friends just call me that,” says 38-year-old Brian Van holt, who recently showed both his acting and surfing skills in “John From Cincinnati,” the critically praised HBO series from “Deadwood” and “NYPD Blue” creator David Milch.
Whether or not Van Holt abides or suffers the “mayor” title, he doesn’t have to pay for his coffee at Stroh’s, the upscale Abbot Kinney deli around the corner from his loft. And when we stroll into the neighborhood French bistro after their posted lunch hours, the waiter lets it slide. Much later, at the chic tapas outpost Primitivo, he is greeted by name, and by primo back-porch table. Later still, the jam-packed Otheroom bar makes space for his sizable group. The bill is light.
Abbot Kinney runs from Washington to Main, between the yuppie-dom of Santa Monica and the sleaze of the Venice Beach boardwalk. And it’s a perfect middle ground between the two. here you can buy a wetsuit or a Paul Smith suit, a slice of pizza or a slice of foie gras. And it’s a place that Van holt had in his crosshairs years before he finally moved in and took up his post. click to continue reading…
The Drinking Man’s Guide To Summer
Contributions by Stinson Carter
Maxim Magazine, Summer 2009
Mixologists start your blenders! It’s time for Maxim’s guide to the craziest cocktails, hottest bartenders, bawdiest beach bars, and secretest hideaways. Follow us down the hatch. click to continue
Gone Fishing (Of Moose And Men)
By Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, March 2007
“John Wayne taught his kids how to fish here,” says Patrick Holleran, owner of the Sportsmen’s Lodge. It opened in 1946 as a clubhouse for the Trout Lakes Farm that supplied restaurants as far off as Vegas and offered locals a place to toss back beers while tossing out lines.
Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Bette Davis were also among those who dangled liverwurst-baited rods into the lakes to lure trout that the lodge staff would grill and serve on white tablecloths with a martini, or on the bar with a lager. Though suburbia has since turned the lakes into a pond, the Sportsmen’s Lodge has barricaded itself from the strip malls of bordering Ventura Boulevard with a parapet of towering eucalyptus and palm trees, and the stubborn ghosts of the past… click to continue reading
The Real Big Easy
Maxim, March 2009
Contributions by Stinson Carter
Rip up your tourist brochures! Get your butt off Bourbon Street, and cross over to the “other side.” Our no-holds-barred insider’s guide is the only thing you’ll need to experience New Orleans-and Mardi Gras-the way the coolest locals do. click to continue reading
By Stinson Carter
Source:HuffingtonPost.com
Go to any bar in any major city on a busy night, look around, and you’ll see more hands on PDA’s and cell phones than you’ll see on cocktails.
It used to be that if you tried to talk to someone, you only had to compete with the other people in the bar for their attention. Now, you also have to compete with whoever that person is texting–and usually it’s a few people.
We are having distracted bits and pieces of conversation via text to people who aren’t with us, which of course makes us have distracted bits and pieces of conversation with the people who are. We all go about our lives now with one foot in the invisible realm of our e-social lives. Admit it, if you’re out with a friend and they get up to go to the bathroom, the first thing you do is reach instinctively for your PDA/phone, when you used to just sit idly and people-watch. Because even when it’s quiet, it never stops whispering at you from your pocket or your purse: “cheeeeck meeeee. I could be that person who blew you off, finally coming to my senses. I could be that work email you’ve been waiting for. I could be that invitation to something better than where you are now.” It whispers, it calls to us, it is both our social wellspring and the black hole devouring The Now.
I am just as guilty of this as anyone; the vague “yeah’s and uh-huhs” I give people sitting next to me as I try to finish off a text, the endless checking and re-checking for responses, all of it. So the challenge I level now is for myself as much as it is for everyone else: try existing for a night without your phone and see what happens. See how much more you focus on the taste of the wine, or the food, and the person you’re sharing it with. See how much more likely you are to notice the smiling glance across the room, or listen to the story the old regular is telling his glass of whiskey. That phone or that PDA is all past and future tense, and no present. And if the present is the only thing that really exists and our texting habits are allowing us to disregard it, then doesn’t that mean that we are ceasing to exist?
Kelly Slater’s Surf Style
by Stinson Carter
Maxim, January 2009
Back when he was costarring on Baywatch in the early 1990s, 20-year-old Kelly Slater became the youngest surfer ever to win the world champ ionship. Now at 36––and a record nine pro-surfing titles later––the Quiksilver athlete has this year become the oldest world champion in the his tory of the sport. He’s posed for Versace, jammed with Ben Harper, penned a memoir, and dated Gisele Bündchen and Pamela Anderson. But after 30 years of hanging 10, the kid from Cocoa Beach isn’t about to hang up his neoprene and walk into the sunset… click to continue reading
Whistling Dixie
by Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, March 2008
My grandfather chased his bourbon with it, my father stocked his fraternity house with it, and it was my first stolen sip of beer as a kid. I still remember the green and white label looking up at me from the bottom of an ice chest at a barbecue when I was twelve–magnified by a foot of water and the lure of the forbidden, promising Southern manhood by the ounce. Even at twelve, I’d heard the name enough to know that Dixie beer had a cultural significance in Louisiana on par with LSU football, gumbo, and humidity. Even Walker Percy gave it due reverence when he wrote that one can “eat crawfish and drink Dixie beer and feel as good as it is possible to feel in this awfully interesting century.” click to continue reading
by Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, March 2008
Jaime Pressly: The Duchesse of ‘Earl.’
Her rise to the A-list may come as a surprise to those who still think of her as the quintessential Maxim girl in Daisy Dukes. Stinson Carter, however, reveals the smarts and talent hidden behind that sassy gal named “joy” who millions of beer-swilling viewers know on a first-name basis… click to continue reading
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Interview by Stinson Carter
Maxim, March 2009
Jason has his meat hooks full with would-be victim vixens Willa Ford and Julianna Guill in this month’s bloody-good remake of Friday the 13th… click to read interview
Living on Eggshells: Lessons From The Depression
By Stinson Carter, 3/24/2009
Source: HuffingtonPost.com
My grandmother made the best lemon meringue pie you ever had. And when she cracked her eggs, she’d always dip her finger in the shells to get out every last drop of white. She was a child of The Depression, her mother died giving birth to her ninth child and my grandmother — the eldest of the nine — had to take her mother’s place at sixteen. Whatever food my great-grandfather could buy on his country mailman’s wages had to be stretched to feed a house full of hungry, squalling mouths.
We’re all picking up our own versions of the eggshell ritual these days. Maybe you circle past the valet until you find a spot on the street, maybe you just don’t go out to eat much anymore, or maybe you go to a matinee instead of Macy’s on Sunday afternoons. Even if you’re doing fine, you’ve probably started making your coffee at home, and you’ve finally found the courage to say, “tap” when the waiter asks, “sparkling or flat?”
True, we will always be the creators of the Hail Mary pass, and this is still the Republic of Risk and Reward. But when did we begin to cripple ourselves with the idea that “rich” is a stage of life as inevitable as adolescence or old age, and with the attitude that no amount of debt or deception can keep us from getting our due? When were we consumed by our own consumption? We’ve always heard that rich and happy aren’t the same thing, but its been a while since we’ve been forced to prove it.
The last lemon meringue pie my grandmother made was in the cramped kitchen of her assisted living apartment. When she got into that scraping out the eggshells business, I gave her a typically impatient 20-year-old’s glance and offered her an extra egg. “No, this is the best part!” she said. But she also said the best part of a chicken is the bony back and the best part of being old was getting to work till she was 75.
I’m beginning to see that using every drop of egg white because every drop counts makes the best pie; eating the bony back so your kids can have the rest makes that the best piece; and being proud of your job makes working till 75 better than a cushy retirement. I may not ever be so frugal with eggs, and I wouldn’t dare eat a chicken back, but I do hope she’s right about that last thing.
We’re all in this together, and the choices we’ll have to make won’t end at tap water and street parking. But in every new choice is a chance to make sure that it won’t be the scope of our problems that our grandchildren remember us by, but the wisdom of our solutions.
Mr. Pink
By Stinson Carter
Room 100 Magazine, Summer 2008
New Orleans–It’s a late Friday afternoon in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, and the hazy sunset is stretching across the Mississippi, gleaming against the 150 hot-pink tents dotting empty lots that were once a neighborhood (albeit a modest one).
Although it looks like a public art project, this is no Christo exhibit. It is Brad Pitt’s Pink Project. And the worldwide attention it has attracted for his green redevelopment plan has served as a pledge to those who once lived here that they have not been forgotten. click to continue reading
By Stinson Carter
Source: HuffingtonPost.com
Facebook: where we spy on our ex, stay in touch with that fling in Europe, judge our friends’ inane hourly updates, and get hounded by our high school classmates. But where we keep up with mom, it most certainly is not–or at least not until now.
A friend of mine complained to me the other night that his mother posted a “Happy V-Day, Love Mom” comment, and he called her to apologize after deleting it. A girl who overheard him retelling the story piped in immediately, “I can’t believe you! If I saw that on your page I’d think it was adorable.” When she was finished with him, it was clear my friend would never delete his mother’s posts again.
Remember how you always told your Mom she couldn’t stop youth culture? Well it’s payback time, and you can’t stop mom culture, either. Today, with an audience of millions of moms across America, Oprah joined “the Facebook revolution.” You thought your Mom was getting a little too close for comfort on the Internet before? Just you wait. You’ve gotten that Sunday phone call ever since you left home, but get ready for the Sunday comment and photo tag.
Maybe you’re afraid she’ll snoop around your page. Are you still talking to that old flame she always said was “just not good enough for you?” Are you getting tagged in pictures of you wearing that “naughty nurse” Halloween costume or that Michael Phelps-esque portrait of you and your bong? Probably. But rather than worrying too much about that, maybe you should just be thankful that mom’s interested in being part of your life.
I was a little freaked the day I clicked the “new friend requests” tab and saw my Mom smiling at me. I took a second to adjust, and then clicked “Approve.” Aunts and uncles started showing up in there the next day, and I think it’s wonderful. For the most part, they’re far less innocent than we think they are. So what if they don’t want their relationships with us to move into grandparent mode when we move out of the house? They’ve heard about “this Facebook” where everyone around the world is connecting. They want to be part of it, and you’re who they want to connect with. So if the question is, “How do you ignore your mom’s friend request?” The answer is, “How could you?”
Message In a Bottle: Elephants drink wine and other tales from the still.
Review by Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, April/May 2007
Humans first fell off the wagon when we “gave up wandering around eating whatever came to hand and settle down to raise crops,” writes Barbara Holland in her new book, The Joy Of Drinking. Surplus crops sat around and fermented, and soon the magic of alcohol struck the ancient world as a “supernatural inspiration, a blessing draped simultaneously over the peoples of the earth.” From here, Holland races through the ensuing 10,000 years of booze-pickled history with taut, conversational prose… click to continue reading
Mug Shots
by Stinson Carter
BlackBook Magazine, February 2008
The classic black-and-white headsot is dead, and its mausoleum is Duke’s Coffee Shop on the Sunset Strip–not to mention countless dry cleaners and body shops scattered across Los Angeles.
Duke’s walls are a timeline of the once ubiquitous symbol of showbiz, from Frank Sinatra in his Rat Pack suit to Stephen Baldwin with a dangle earring and three-day stubble. “I haven’t had a new one in two years,” says Beverly Pittman, manager and 30-year veteran of Duke’s. “It’s like they’ve stopped making them.” click to continue reading