WWW - Origami: it used to be such an innocent craft, such a sweet way of creating flowers and boats and critters. Well, don't look now, but there's a new wrinkle to the old Japanese art of folding paper. Rizzoli will soon publish "Very Naughty Origami," with step-by-step instructions on how to shock your friends and neighbors with lascivious handiwork. The book's pièce de résistance is an illustration of little paper people having group sex.
Can there be any doubt that the middle of the road isn't where it used to be? The formerly outré, freaky and unthinkable now constitute business as usual in popular culture. And these have become outright selling points for books that eagerly capitalize on their kinks. Although the celebrity autobiography is a genre that might be deemed obscene by definition, it takes on a whole new meaning with Jenna Jameson perched high on the best-seller list.
Ms. Jameson, the self-promoting porn star ("How to Make Love Like a Porn Star," written with Neil Strauss, a former music writer for The New York Times), is no stranger to tricky positions. After all, she does some of her best work gyrating against a stripper's pole. "How about the time," she is asked, "when you were on top of the pole and you turned upside down, but you had too much oil on your legs, so you slipped off and fell right on your head?" This appears in one of the various interviews, dialogues, monologues, diary entries and comics patched together to form this G-stringed Horatio Alger story.
When it comes to displaying herself, Ms. Jameson had previously tried everything except her current maneuver: being planted right in the middle of the bookstore. Amazingly, a memoir that once would have won itself a plain brown wrapper can now be found beside books about Henry James.
It's a sign of the times that Ms. Jameson's on-the-job reminiscences don't stand out from the crowd. It's another sign of the times that some of the book's photographs of the author and her pals are confusingly captioned. It's not always clear which long-haired blonde with heavy makeup and breast implants is Ms. Jameson, unless the reader happens to be looking at the tattoo on her rear.
For more check out, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/books/10CROW.html?hp
