Investors searching for the next big thing should look at vibrators and sex-ed talks, according to this starry-eyed business manifesto.
Debut author Barrica, a former venture capitalist and CEO and founder of the website O.school, argues that the world is sunk in a mire of sexual ignorance and dissatisfaction thanks to inadequate school sex-ed courses and society’s embarrassed reluctance to talk about sex. She sees a crying need for private companies to step in and supply a market for “sexual wellness” that she estimates could be worth $122 billion by 2026. Barrica extols business opportunities in two sectors: nice, respectable, female-friendly retail outlets selling sex aids like vibrators and pre-warmed lubricant dispensers—she praises San Francisco’s pioneering Good Vibrations boutique—and media sources providing frank but nonpornographic information on sex. (Her O.school site offers videos, livestreams, and comments by sex educators on many topics, including sexually transmitted infections, BDSM–related topics, and proper cunnilingus technique.) To get there, she warns, investors and entrepreneurs must surmount barriers, including venture capital firms’ limited-partner agreements with morals clauses and wary payment processors. The book concludes with a savvy primer on growing a sextech startup, including advice on scoring venture capital (“it takes 100 meetings for every one million dollars you want to raise”) and keeping your bank from freaking out about your business. (“Keep it vague.”) Barrica’s prose has the flavor of an investment prospectus—“By shifting the message away from prurience and toward wellness, it allows us to access a much broader market”—written from a very woke-capitalist perspective. She offers tips on trans-inclusive sextech terminology—don’t say “women,” say “vulva owners”—and bemoans the “orgasm gap” that sees straight women climaxing just 65% of the time compared with straight men’s 95%. Barrica’s unblushing confrontations with sociosexual issues—“No one is talking to their kids about responsible consumption of porn”—may make readers squirm, but they also remind us why we might need a website to talk about these things with kids so that we don’t have to. An impassioned and cogent, though boosterish, case for market-based sexual therapeutics.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0491-9
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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