Actor Julia Fox says working as a dominatrix [sexual actress performing acts of BDSM, "bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism"] empowered her and taught her how to act because of all the men demanding back stories and kinks in the way they were paying to be treated.

The artist, actor, and fashion icon joins Q’s Tom Power (CBC Radio) to discuss her new memoir, Down the Drain

Julia Fox's memoir, Down the Drain, is a candid retelling of her journey with addiction, abuse, and fame. (March Mercanti/CBC)

I'm Italian, he's Jewish, we made it work.

Julia Fox shot to fame after starring alongside Adam Sandler in the 2019 crime thriller Uncut Gems. Now, with the release of her hotly anticipated memoir, Down the Drain, the 33-year-old artist, actor, and fashion designer has added writer to the list as well.

More simply, however, one could say Fox is a pop culture icon for being herself — even if she's often misunderstood.

Manipulative genius or vapid dumb ass?

"It's so funny because I always hear so many things about myself and it's either that I'm like this, you know, mastermind manipulative marketing genius, or I'm like this vapid dumb ass," Fox tells Q's Tom Power in an interview.

"So this is a way I can kind of, like, rewrite my own narrative or set the record straight, I guess, because I think a lot of people have preconceived notions.

"They maybe see the makeup, they see the clothes, and they just don't get it. And so this is a way to just kind of maybe humanize me and show that there's much more than meets the eye, and hopefully people will be able to empathize a little bit more and not project their weird whatever it is onto me.…

"Celebrities really are just people — and I hate that term, celebrity. It feels so icky when people refer to me as a celebrity. I'm like, 'Eww, stop. Like, gross.'"

• Why Julia Fox is spreading the word about the Canadian film Something You Said Last Night

While Fox's debut performance in Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler was her breakthrough role, she truly got her big break when she was just 18. 

She was scanning New York City Craigslist ads when she came across a job posting that said: "Dominatrix dungeon hiring *NO SEX* *no nudity* *no experience necessary." She applied and got the job.

Dated billionaire Kanye West for attention?

"It felt kind of like the beginning of the rest of my life," she says. "It just felt like a no-brainer because prior to that I worked in ice cream shops, shoe stores, pastry shops, I babysat, and it was minimum wage, $7 an hour. It was not sustainable at all….

"When I saw the ad, I just jumped…Like it really felt like I was on the helm of something really major that was going to change my life forever. And I can say that I wouldn't be here today if I didn't go down that road."

Beyond providing her with greater financial security, Fox says one of the positive things that came from working as a dominatrix was that it taught her how to play a character.

"You have five clients come in and, you know, one wants the mean popular girl at school to tease him and call him a loser. Then one wants a nun — I don't know why. One wants, like, a mean older sister, one wants a neglectful mommy, you know what I mean? …So I'd have to be like 10 people every day with a couple minutes notice. And it's all just improv. More

(Q with Tom Power) June 20, 2023. Q Host Tom Power sits down with Paul Simon -- who wrote the hit music for the comedy The Graduate -- at the musician’s home near Austin, Texas, to discuss the inspiration for his 15th and latest album, Seven Psalms, and the Big questions it explores. Podcast: link.chtbl.com.

(The Dick Cavett Show) American musician Paul Simon explains the song writing process for Simon and Garfunkel's hit "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which aired April 9, 1970.

WARNING: Offensive comedy material using crass, coarse, and cuss-filled language

"Comedy Now"

"Outsourced"

"Red, White, and Brown"

"The Green Card Tour"

"Notorious"

"Almost Famous Outtakes"

How hackers could use smart home devices to spy on us

Guest Jon Ronson (The Butterfly Effect podcast), Host Tom Power (Q on CBC.ca, cbc.ca/radio/Q via SCPR.org, Sept. 12, 2017); Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Jon Ronson, in his podcast "The Butterfly Effect," talks about the effects of free online porn on the lives of those who make it in the Valley, in the City of North Hollywood, a sketchy part of Los Angeles far from the actual Hollywood.

Porno has been completely changed by one man who is becoming very rich while impoverishing everyone else. Trump would be proud. This pornographer went and bought up mom and pop business after buying Pornhub, the largest free porn distribution site in the world.

The effects on those who consume it -- many millenials and even younger viewers now suffering form erectile dysfunction and severe social awkwardness, inhibition, and perversion -- may be as profound as it is on young females who, having grown up viewing it free online, when they become teenagers, show up to try to get into the business. What do they find? They get work for a few weeks before a whole new set of younger, fresher faces show up to make their riches. Last week's girl is thrown out with the trash.

 

The conveyor belt keeps turning, feeding the impersonal porn mill, leaving a trail of regret and an uneraseable record of nude pictures, videos, sex acts, drug use, slut shaming, and bad tattoos. But worse than that is the effect on consumers, who think they are getting something for free. One man is growing rich while everyone else is being diminished, like the people featured in the new HBO series "The Deuce."

Complex News; CBC News Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Suspect released! Man accused of murder using car, injuring 19, with racist Christian group

Summary: STATE OF EMERGENCY called

(Complex News) In advance of Saturday's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, racists, alt-right members, white nationalists, white supremacists, secessionists, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and other right wing extremists marched through the  city's University of Virginia campus on Friday night bearing torches.
 

 

(CBC News, Aug. 12, 2017) Violence erupts at white nationalist KKK meeting and neo-Nazi rally in Virginia. Killing, fighting, assaulting, and directed violence kept erupting -- as police mostly let Nazis attack anti-fascist students and community members at a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as hundreds of white marchers clash with counter-protesters. Read more

How South's Gen. Robert E. Lee went from "hero" to racist icon (AP)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; The World Producer Andrea Crossan (PRI.org); Global News; Salon.com; Q 

.

(WQ) First we lose Michel Martin (host of NPR's "Tell Me More") and The San Francisco Bay Guardian for no reason now this. The most compelling voice on Canadian Public Broadcasting Corporation (Canada's version of NPR and BBC combined) is the former host of "Q" -- sexy, smooth Jian Ghomeshi. But there's a problem.

.

White-male privilege? Golden boy?

Accusations surfaced  recently by eight former girlfriends that he sexually battered and/or abused them, "rough but consensual" play he explained. He was fired and has been replaced by a series of guest hosts that cannot hold a candle to his smooth and charming ways.
  

(Global News, Nov. 2, 2014) Jian Ghomeshi: CBC saw "graphic evidence" before firing The CBC released a statement saying they saw graphic evidence former "Q" host Jian Ghomeshi had caused physical injury to a woman. Mike Drolet reports (Globalnews.ca, Oct. 31, 2014).

He is suing the station for defamation of character for slandering him. (Jian, sweetie, send complaints and corrections care of Marco Werman at Public Radio Int'l or Ashley Wells at Wisdom Quarterly if you like). The whole debacle, compounded by the recent loss of the funniest man on NPR, "Click" a.k.a. Tom Magliozi of "Car Talk," is sending shockwaves through the placid world of public radio:

How a Canadian radio host's firing started a global conversation about sexual assault

Former Toronto Star reporter Antonia Zerbisias and Montreal Gazette justice reporter Sue Montgomery were sharing their own stories of being sexually assaulted. The subject came up because of a story that was in the headlines in Canada.

(Q) Girls' Lena Dunham, accused of molesting sister, is Not That Kind of Girl

CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi was fired from his high-profile show "Q" after his employer was informed that a number of women were coming forward with allegations that Ghomeshi had assaulted them. Police are investigating the allegations, though the CBC has declined to provide specific reasons for why it dismissed Ghomeshi. 

• (PRI Editor's full disclosure disclaimer/note: PRI distributes "Q" and other programs from the CBC to public radio stations throughout the U.S.)

In the days following his firing, a number of people leapt to Ghomeshi's defense, and a number of women who claim to be his victims also came forward. Zerbisias and Montgomery expressed frustration with the act of blaming victims of rape [and sexual assault], in general, and the attacks on Ghomeshi's alleged victims in particular.

So they went public with their own stories of rape, using the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. More

  (Anita Sarkessian/Democracy Now!/Free Speech TV) Gamer Gate: critiquing sexism and violence in video gaming and getting death threats for it.


Misogyny? Women are 40% of gamers. Anita Sarkeesian, a prominent feminist critic of video games, was forced to cancel a speech at Utah State University last week after the school received an email threatening to carry out "the deadliest shooting in American history" at the event. The email sender wrote: "feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge." The sender used the moniker Marc Lepine, the name of a man who killed 14 women, most of them female engineering students, in a mass shooting in Montreal in 1989. Sarkeesian canceled the talk after being told that under Utah law, campus police could not prevent people from bringing guns.

• VIDEO: Jian was fantastic, Billy Bob Thornton a jerk
• I knew about Jian. I said nothing. Am I complicit?
• Hot Norwegian 12-year-old marries old man, who are we to judge?
• Female on female sexual abuse is real and awful [Why? If a male or female molests you, you may molest, and whom will you target? The weak, which often means the young, and it is more likely to be a female.]
• White men don't catcall; they harass in other ways 
• VIDEO: Nazis Next Door (Free Speech TV)
• 100 women in Congress for first time ever
• The Secret Genius of "Car Talk" (Slate)
• "Car Talk" was close to necessary listening
• Was Met right to stage "Death of Klinghoffer" if some Jews call it anti-Semitic?
• Indians stage a protest for the right to kiss
• American campaign rhetoric stuns overseas observers
• Breakaway Buddhists take aim at the Dalai Lama
• How did English become the language of science?
• Japan's timid coverage of Fukushima led this news anchor to revolt — and he's not alone
• Canada says goodbye to a hero shot dead on Wednesday 
• Meet the Nobel Peace Prize winner you don't know
• VIDEO: Kendrick Lamar "i" dances through city

The Buddha had blue eyes? It's not so rare in Central Asia extending south from Gandhara/Afghanistan north to Kalmykia/Russia to the Far East of Buddhist Siberia, North Asia

Q's Jian Ghomeshi speaks with Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq about her new album, "Animism," and how she went from being a self-taught throat singing vocalist, honing her skills in the shower, to collaborating with the likes of the Kronos Quartet and Björk. Indeed, it was her lack of formal training that attracted Björk to her, says Tagaq, adding that the Icelandic artist didn't think she was "supposed to" sound a certain way. That's a perspective Tagaq shares.

Shaman medicine (thefederationoflight.com)

"I like to live in a world that's not supposed to be. Or it's just there already as it is. It doesn't have to be anything, you know, because we put a lot of constraints on ourselves everyday in this crazy society," she says, adding that she gives "zero sh*ts about what people" think about her -- even as a trendy rave dancer -- but instead respects herself, her instincts, and her emotions. "And I every day do what I can to be a good person.... That's why breath is so important; it's the common denominator."  More

• VIDEO: Tuvan throat singing of shaman Mongolia
• L.A.'s HAIM shows off Himalayan throat singing 
• Vancouver's Push Festival: From Throat Singing to Puppets
• Science: Native Americans came from Asia
• Afghans and Chinese beat Columbus to America
• Ancient skeleton in Mexico reveals Asian DNA

(GSS) "Tantric Choir": Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist lamas of Gyuto chant in the Mongolian style of Bön "medicine men," shamans, and nomadic reindeer herders.

Standing by her #Sealfie: Manitoba's Tanya Tagaq addresses the controversial anti-Ellen campaign. Despite the considerable backlash after posting a photo of her daughter beside a dead seal, she supports native hunting and "being a part of what you [kill to] eat" (CBC.ca).