Bill Cammack

In response to The Lab Episode 02: American Pimp Randolfe wrote:

Now, this was really entertaining and very cool. I’ve always been fascinated by the world of prostitution.

Thanks. :)

Initially, I didn’t think the world of prostitution was interesting at all. It’s just not sporting… paying someone to have sex with you. It’s like how when you were a kid, in order to get candy that you liked, you had to wait for your parents to buy it for you and then you got it in the rations they allowed. Later in life, you have your own money, so you can afford to buy as much of that same candy as you want, whenever you want. The candy’s just as good, but there’s… I suppose “wonder” missing from the situation. It’s not a surprise that you’re getting it. You planned it, you went out and bought it. Same thing as buying chicks. *yawn*

Another problem with prostitution is that it takes YOU out of the game. If anybody can pay this chick do do what she does, you’ve accomplished nothing by paying her except guaranteeing that you get whatever service(s) she provides. That’s completely lame compared to getting out there and seeing what you can do. Same thing with strip clubs. Lame. Why go to a location where you can give the girls money, but not (legally) mess with them… instead of going to a regular bar or something and meeting a girl that you can do whatever you want with for free? I know the draw of the strip club is that the women are supposed to have fantastic bodies, but if you live somewhere like NYC, it’s just a numbers game. There’ll be another fantastic body coming down the street in about five minutes, depending on where you’re standing or what establishment you entered.

What became interesting to me about the situation was the “why” involved. I wanted to know WHY a chick would give her money to a pimp. I mean, I know WHY chicks “ho”… because they can make more money than they could with whatever skills they learned in school, or by NOT going to school. As long as she’s having sex with random guys anyway, she may as well get paid for it. What I didn’t understand was what was in it for the ho to give her money to a pimp, who seems to be doing nothing but shopping for himself, or misappropriating the funds to his benefit, as Brainy so properly explains. The pivotal statement about that is the part where the guy says “doctors need nurses, so hoes need pimps”. Once you realize that the pimp isn’t the leader, but rather the assistant… things start making perfect sense.

Personally, I have an unusual resume in this area. I believe I am one of the few men alive who has been a prostitute, a john and a madam at different times in my life.

That appears to me to be a relatively unique collection of titles, being that they require different motivations. It’s not tough to be a john, though. Just about everybody’s a john at one point or another, purely by definition. Everybody that’s ever bought a chick a drink with the intention of having sex with her is a john. He’s paid for sex, whether he got it or not. Everybody that took chicks out or spent any money or resources on them with the intention of eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) having sex with them is a john. Everybody that married a woman in order to (attempt to) lock her down from having sex with other guys is a john.

It’s tough to be a pimp (madam, as you describe it) for most guys, because nobody wants to go out with a ho. Nobody wants to date a ho. They want them around when it’s time to have sex, but that’s about it. In order to be a pimp, you’d have to accept that your girlfriend is going to be having sex with other guys….. which completely defeats the purpose of calling her your girlfriend in the first place, so cognitive dissonance usually screws that one up.

I traveled the world for four decades, off and on, with a Woodrow Wilson Scholar who spoke seven languages, was brilliant and a chronic alcoholic. We spent an inordinate amount of time drinking in Red Light Districts.

He was exclusively homosexual but loved talking to the girls, barmen, cab-drivers and patrons about their lives. I was a “situational bisexual” who’d setlle for a real girl if a feminine male couldn’t be found.

YIKES! hahaha You remind me of the discussions where people like to claim that men that have sex (intentionally) with men in jail aren’t homosexuals… BECAUSE… there weren’t any women around! HAHAHAHAHA

You understand how women came to be deemed “property” when a woman in Brazil gives you a card with her home address on it and asks you to come visit her in the afternoon (after you’ve screwed for money) because she is looking for “any man” to support her and rescue her from the life.

Well, I mean, it wasn’t until August, 1920, according to that women were allowed to vote in all states of the USA. , Page 4, “Most states adopted the English common law system which provided that a husband and wife were one person, and the one was the husband. All personal property owned or acquired by the wife became the property of the husband, and he had the absolute right to control all real property owned by the wife”. There’s tons more stuff that I don’t feel like finding right now that indicate that seeing women as NOT property in patriarchal societies such as ours is a relatively new concept.

The point being that without the ability to vote and make laws that would benefit them and without the ability to get jobs that guys just wouldn’t let them have, there’s no way a woman could own property. If she can’t own property, the only way she’s going to get it is if she marries someone, and then he leaves it to her in his will. Even under those circumstances, if she got married again, by law, her husband would have absorbed whatever she had gained from the previous marriage. There was no way for a woman to ‘get ahead’ at the time, so renting herself out permanently to a marriage or temporarily in order to make ends meet isn’t much of a stretch… and I’m talking about America, hahaha FORGET about Brazil! :D

I’d hesitate to even call women in the condition you describe “property”, since they can be had for so few $USD. There are enough sites that I’m not going to link to that have endless descriptions of what you can get in whatever country with some ridicuolus economy. You can have women all night and all the next day for what you might spend out with your friends for a night having drinks in Manhattan.

What’s so amazing about “pimping” (from my point of view) is that a pimp turns the normal straight world upside down. He has these women going out and slaving away to give him all their earnings. Meanwhile, the traditional husband goes out and slaves all day to turn all his earnings over to his wife & kids.

Well, that’s exactly what it is, a reversal. Like I mentioned earlier, it makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of the woman as the pivotal character. It’s not so much that pimps are CREATING hoes, as I originally thought. It’s more that the women are hoes ALREADY, and as such, require or look for a certain type of man to involve themselves with. The pimp appears to the ho as someone who’s worth paying for in order to procure their time and/or attention. The pimp likes the money more than the ho, and the ho likes the pimp more than the money, so it’s a fair exchange. She gets to hang out with the pimp, and he gets to go shopping with the money she makes on the corner.

In a traditional husband situation, the value is in the female. She represents his opportunity to have sex at the drop of a hat instead of going out in the street and trying to find and convince a chick to have sex with him. She also represents the opportunity for him to procreate, as well as someone to raise the kids while he’s at work. This starts all the way back at dating, like I mentioned before. The guy gets used to buying her drinks and paying for her to eat or go to the movies, and it’s only a natural continuation that he continues to go to work to ‘bring home the bacon’.

The potential consequence for NOT utilizing money to maintain the relationship is infidelity, which could lead to his ONE girlfriend or wife or whatever leaving him (thus taking the immediate availability of sex with her), or much worse than that….. He might end up on the Maury show with seven other guys who might be the father of “his” new baby. :O

The way prostitutes toss around money when they have it is puzzling. Some believe it is an “easy-come and easy-go” mentality. Several prostitutes, male and female, have told me that they will go out clubbing and blow most of all their night’s earnings on partying and drugs “because you have to do something to relax after all that you’ve gone through to make the money”.

That’s interesting. I have nothing to add to that because I don’t know any actual hoes. I mean, I know “easy” chicks, but not actual professional get-paid-to-have-sex chicks. The easy chicks either have sex just because they enjoy having sex or because they feel it’s an indication that SOMEBODY likes them. Either way, since they don’t make any money from that, I’ve never heard of what you just mentioned.

I always tell people that “working Hollywood Blvd for one summer in the late 1950s” was the best 3-months of life education I ever received. Indeed, it enabled me to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job for the rest of my life with no regrets.

Another concept I don’t have an educated opinion on, due to no experience whatsoever with prostitutes. I would guess however that the randomness and potential danger of the situation would point out how easy it is to get on a subway every morning, spend all of one’s daylight hours in a job, having regurgitated conversations at the water cooler, then coming home, eating dinner, watching some completely biased news and then some form of find-the-criminals-by-science show and then going to sleep only to wake up and do the exact same thing again when you wake up. It’s like even though you’re only making minimum wage, at least you’re guaranteed a certain amount of money at the end of a two-week period. Fringe benefits being stuff like it’s incredibly unlikely that someone’s going to toss you out of a moving car while you’re working “fries” at the fast food restaurant.

Actually, the pimps profiled in the clips here remind me of “pitch men” of sorts. I think their ’sharp’ manner of talking and ‘being operators’ resembled Bill’s persona. Now, I’m not advising Bill to become a pimp (if given the opportunity). Nor am I advising him to decline the opportunity should it arise :-).

hahaha Nope! Not my style. Too much work. :) The ROI is incredibly low. Not only that, but the fact of the matter is that you’re depending on someone else (or several chicks) to give you money. If something happens to that chick, you’re DONE! :D It’s like gambling… like trying to make a living playing the lottery every week. Besides that, I’d be skeeved out that some chick was messing with several guys all day, then wanted to come hang out with ME! hahaha YEESH! :) Pimping is for guys that like money more than chicks…. I’m not one of those guys.

Having said that, I’m not advocating spending money ON chicks. That’s trickin’, like I mentioned before. I’m just saying… Given the option between wasting 8 hours doing some job to get money and hanging out all day with a chick I enjoy… you’ll find me in Belmar sipping Maragaritas. :D

For sure, he’d be perfect to play the role of a “slick pimp” in some future blockbuster movie. However, he’ll probably do just as well pimping some new “techie thing” instead of some new “titty thing” :-).

I rarely receive such intelligent (and somewhat flattering) responses to my thoughtful postings on vlogs. But I felt my insights were greatly appreciated last time around so I thought I’d chance sharing them once more.

Obviously, you have some unique viewpoints. You might need to start your own “street life” blog. :)

Bill, here’s looking forward to seeing you at the Oscars! :-)

I’ll let you know when someone offers me a project that I think might go. ;)

It turns out that Sherdog interviewed Renzo this morning @ 4am. Click the link to go to the page with the interview video.

http://www.sherdog.com/videos/videos.asp?v_id=1079

Basically, Renzo confirms exactly what I said last night, which was obvious from watching the fight footage on DVR. He also makes a very good point about position. With the control Renzo had over the ground position, if kneeing to the head while the opponent’s grounded were *LEGAL*, the fight would have been over ASAP.

I’m glad Renzo’s ok. I had a concussion in 6th grade. I got it just before we went out to eat, and I was nauseous, my vision wasn’t really good, and the food I ate came right back up before we even left the restaurant. My friends were concerned for me, but later that day, I was fine. I’m glad the ref did the right thing and held the match up and ended up DQing Shamrock, because it’s one thing to train for months and then fight at your best conditioning, and another altogether to fight while your system isn’t operating correctly because Shamrock decided to blatantly cheat and then act like he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to do that.

IT’S.IN.THE.RULES!!!!! :? Elite XC Match Rules

Fouls:

13. Grabbing the clavicle.

14. Kicking the head of a grounded opponent. A grounded fighter has more than just the soles of their feet on the ground. Kneeing the head of a grounded opponent.

15. Stomping a grounded opponent.

They’ve both said they want a rematch, so that’s probably going to happen.

Having read the archives of HollaBackBOSTON, HollaBackNYC and HollaBackDC, that I found out about the other day and posted about… I gained more of an understanding of what their complaints are.

[Disclosure: Anyone who actually KNOWS me knows that there's nothing I like more than an attractive chick, and I'll be the FIRST one to check her out... regardless. :D]

The way I can empathize with what they’re saying is to consider bums that we have on the streets of NYC. For instance, you might have a bum standing outside of McDonalds, who has taken it upon himself to act as the doorman. As you go inside, he’ll hold the door for you and perhaps say something pleasant to you. On your way out, he’ll hold the door again, and then ask you for some change. That’s pretty annoying. First of all, it’s not like he has an actual JOB with McDonalds. Second, it’s not like you ASKED HIM to open the door for you either time. Third, you go to McDonalds all the time and open your own doors, so what in the world do you need HIM to open the doors for, and FOURTH, why would you choose to pay him for a service that you didn’t ask for. That’s a couple of levels more annoying than going to the bathroom in a restaurant or club and finding out that there’s some guy whose job it is to stand next to the sinks and hand you paper towels, and he expects you to tip him. :?

The reason I see the bum @ McDonalds as a simliar situation is that he’s attempting to interrupt whatever you were doing, saying or thinking in order to try to get some money for you, totally to HIS benefit, and none to yours. This would be similar to the guy on the street that makes some complimentary statement to a woman so maybe he can ‘get on’ in the near future. The reason it’s NOT similar is that I’m a guy. I have all these fantastic, aggressive male options available to me, such as telling the bum to shut up or mind his business, saying I don’t have any change, or letting him know I take offense to him bothering me and if he keeps it up, I’m going to do something about it.

One difference is that many women are intimidated by male harassers and aren’t willing to attempt to get them to cease and desist. This makes sense, because most men like women that are smaller than they are, so they would be physically intimidating to the women. Another difference is that women can’t act like they don’t have what the guy wants. The fact that the guy has chosen to try to get some from her indicates that he’s already decided she has what he wants. The bum doesn’t know whether I have change on me or not. If I tell him I don’t have it, and he persists, there’s going to be a problem.

This is where I empathize with the HollaBack series the most, because a lot of the women who post there aren’t willing to do anything but talk to or about their harassers. Some guy says something or touches them or does something he knows damned well he shouldn’t be doing, and their only recourse is to talk about how ugly he is or how old he is or how out of shape he is or how badly he smells or how pathetic he is or how disrespectful to women….

The pattern is clear, though. In the vast majority of the cases, by the women’s own posts, the men didn’t give a damn AT ALL what the women thought or wanted, and they still don’t. This is something they understand, but they don’t seem to benefit from this knowledge. Knowing that the guys don’t care what they think or say doesn’t cause them to revise their complaints to a more efficient format that might bring about education and perhaps some degree of change. It’s the same reason why the porno industry is big business. The women look good, do what the guys want them to do, and have ZERO opinions about ANYTHING. It stands to reason that if you take someone whose only interest in women is how good they look and “what they’re good for”, and put him on the street and he does whatever he does, it’s not an effective retort to say stuff like:

“you’re old enough to be my father”
“you don’t even know me”
“your breath stinks”
“you’re disrespectful to women”
“would you treat your mother or sister like that?” (my personal favorite :D)
“have you no home training?”
[flipping the bird or cursing him out]
[some statement to him that she wasn't "dressed sexy" at all]
“did I ask you to talk to me?”
“I didn’t give you any indication I was interested in you”
etc etc etc etc etc…….

I think HollaBack’s idea of the women taking pictures of the range of guys from pervs down to regular guys just trying to meet a woman he finds attractive is a good idea, although a dangerous one, for obvious reasons that I won’t bother to go into. Apparently they also give speeches and have other programs that they do. I think that’s great, because increasing education and awareness is key, IMO. They’re never going to outlaw guys trying to talk to girls… That’s just not going to happen. Society’s set up so that guys have to chase girls, period. That’s why guys court women and take them out to dinner and buy them drinks at the club, etc etc. It’s all an attempt to gain favor with her so he can eventually get whatever it is he wants from her… sex, a relationship, free food, a place to stay, money, whatever. Biologically, women are more of a commodity than men, simply by the incredible difference between how much sperm men have and continually create, and how few eggs women are born with and then they don’t get any more. It’s never going to be different, so the best bet is to increase awareness that women feel endangered when guys press up on them in the street.

So… With my new understanding of what the issues are for women being harassed in the street, I decided to take a walk tonight and pay attention to the interactions I had. I walked to a bar without incident. The male “doorman” checked my ID without incident. The female hostess greeted me without incident. I ordered my beer from the male bartender without incident. The few people that needed to get by where I was standing, some male and some female, excused themselves, I made way for them and they went by without extraneous comments. I left the bar without incident. I walked around the neighborhood some more, passing individuals, couples walking together and groups… no incident. I went into Barnes & Noble. I asked a woman there with a laptop if she was using a wireless connection. She wasn’t. I asked this guy behind the counter if B&N had wifi, he said yes, and got me a pamphlet on it. I thanked him and left. I ordered food from a female cashier and didn’t hear any extraneous remarks from her or from the waitress that was hanging out near the front of the place. I went to another store, then walked back home without incident.

Just about every one of those situations is mentioned in a story by some woman on those HollaBack sites, and I’m sure whatever other support groups that were created for this kind of thing. I can’t imagine how annoyed I’d be if every time I went to do something, someone tried to strike up a conversation with me or get something from me. For me, it would be like bums standing in front of every place that I want to go into and always asking me for change! :D Still, I can’t fully “get it”, because my aggressive nature makes me see situations like that as a challenge, not something intimidating. I don’t feel pressure… I just feel annoyed.

Anyway… Good luck to the HollaBack Girls. Some of the guys on those pages are legitimate creeps and need to be prosecuted. A lot of the guys are just “boys being boys”, and I can tell you, as one of the boys, a lot of them just don’t get it as far how the women feel physically intimidated by their street raps. A lot of guys aren’t going to care one way or the other, and they’re going to enjoy women as they see fit. I think that there are also a lot that would change their ways of being if they received some sort of education that what they consider flirtation and socialization is seen by many women as harassment and physical intimidation.

An interesting difference between doing your own videos for fun & entertainment and creating video for broadcast is that you are forced to become generic. Instead of being able to use anything you want and do anything you want with it, there are many things to be avoided in the production of a video. As a content producer, you have to think about what you might want to do with your work down the line during even the pre-production phase of creating your video.

Let’s say you do a personal interview with someone, and you like how it came out. You can do whatever you want with it, personally, but then, if you want to offer your interview to another group, they might require releases (written documents stating that the subjects in the video gave you permission to use your video of them) from everyone in the video, or they won’t accept it for their production. Even if you have releases for the subjects, you might have done it inside a restaurant, and THAT needs to be ‘cleared’.

You might use your favorite song in a video, but if you want to include that video in a broadcast, you’ll need to re-work it with music that’s cleared for use under certain circumstances (see Creative Commons), like from podsafe music network or IODA. Strangely enough, even music that comes on the radio or that someone walks by could present an issue. These things have to be considered when you’re doing a video that depends on the audio as well as the video. If someone’s saying something important while this uncleared music passes through the scene, there might be no way around it, since re-tracking the person’s dialogue means that you not only cut out the music, but all the other background sounds that make the video sound uniform.

Does this make sense? Yes. :D People work hard on their music or whatever and put their own energy and creativity into it, so they should definitely have rights to determine how their productions are used. There’s an interesting Creative Commons license that allows you to use the work as long as you attribute credit to the creator of the original work somewhere in your video, you don’t use it in a commercial work, and the work that you do that’s derived from their work is also licensed under the same CC license. It’s called CC BY-NC-SA (attribution, non-commercial, share alike). This is interesting because it creates a stream of ‘cleared’ work for people making similar videos to use.

There’s also the internet archive, where there are lots of videos and songs labeled “no rights reserved” that you can use in any way you want, and a lot of Creative Commons videos as well.

What’s “unfair” about this system (not to the creators of the work, but unfair to media creators looking for music or video to enhance their projects) is that money talks. :D If you work for a production company, or you do your own productions, you are subject to the same fees to license “real” music as the networks are. Let’s say you wanted to do a video about something and a network wanted to do the same piece. Even if your footage is better, content-wise, and your written dialogue is better, and your editing is better and your shot selection is better….. your video will have YOU playing your guitar over your drum machine, sounding like folk music from the country :/ while the network blasts “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World” by Neil Young. Your piece IS better, but theirs SOUNDS better, so they have an emotional advantage in the effect their video has on the viewers.

Same thing if you’re a documentary maker. MTV plays music all day and all night on several channels, internationally. If you watch one of their docs, they’re FILLED… I mean *FILLED* with the latest music from the hottest artists at the time. MTV’s in the country, you hear the latest country music. They’re in the city, you hear the latest Hip-Hop. They’re in India, you hear the best mood-inducing Indian music. This is because A) MTV has the money to purchase the rights to whatever songs they want, and B) everybody wants their songs to be ON MTV so they can get publicity = more fame and sales. Nobody wants to be in YOUR PODCAST that 30 people download on a weekly basis! :D So… YOUR video or film or what-have-you is going to sound like what’s really going on… you got the music you could afford to use.

I think podsafe music network and IODA are providing a great service on both sides of this situation. They’re allowing video producers to use music with high production values, as long as the producer complies with the stipulations of the licenses. If your budget is ZERO, or even less than zero… you can still get a fantastic background track for your non-commercial work. For the musicians, they benefit because their music’s being heard by people that otherwise wouldn’t have looked them up on the internet. They’re being heard without having to be ‘hot’ enough to get into rotation on MTV. Also… you never know when a video that someone does might become REEEEEEALLY popular, and then the musicians get to ride the wave. :D

~Bill C.~

http://ReelSolid.TV