Tinder screenshots

Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Mateen knows a whole lot about your dating life. He knows how old you are, how many Facebook friends you have and what physical characteristics you're most attracted to in a potential mate -- that is, if you're a member of the nationwide, L.A.-made dating app, Tinder, which uses GPS to locate potential matches nearby.

The iPhone app's addictive, game-like premise is that users anonymously reject others almost solely based on their profile pictures. They can also initiate conversation with only those they're actually interested in, under the condition that the interest is mutual. There are no personal statements, compatibility quizzes or rating systems.

Since launching Tinder in September 2012 with CEO and fellow USC alum Sean Rad, Mateen says the app has made more than 40 million matches -- or, two people who mutually click the "heart" button on each other's profiles -- plus eight marriage proposals and counting. Not bad for a free app that was locally developed less than a year ago.

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Drew Barillas

Mary Roach at the Natural History Museum

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When organizers of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum's First Fridays series asked the public what sorts of programming it wanted to see, people overwhelmingly said that they wanted (a) sex, and (b) science author Mary Roach. Oddly enough, organizers found they could kill two birds with one stone.

So, on a rainy Friday evening in February, Roach, having just flown in from her home in the Bay Area, is sitting in the Hall of North American Mammals, waiting to talk about her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. As sound techs fiddle with microphones, Roach looks around and declares the stuffed badger to be "fabulous."

People who love dioramas and museums and dark stormy nights also love Roach for her deeply, and humorously, reported stories about bizarre subjects. Roach is the kind of person who will figure out exactly how much food it takes to make a stomach burst. She is the kind of writer who will eat boiled rodent knees with a blow dart–wielding tribe in the Amazon, just to tell the tale.

"You really have to choose carefully," she says. "If you're not interested in something for 2½ years of your life, it's gonna show in your book. You have to ask, will your readers read 300 pages of it?"

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Staci Silverstone

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*Veruca James, Accountant Turned Porn Star: "I'd Always Been Wild"
*Top 10 Strip Clubs in L.A.
*Porn Star Tasha Reign's Secret Life as a UCLA Student
*Marilyn Monroe's Seven Never-Before-Seen Mostly Nude Photos
*10 Bars Most Likely to Get You Laid in L.A.

Los Angeles is home to lots of dreamers; would-be actors, musicians and writers all flock to our golden shores trying to find their place in the sun. But a little-acknowledged subculture of fame-seekers are those who hope to make a name for themselves in front of the camera, with their clothes off -- guys and girls who want to be porn stars.

Like in any industry, some will make it, some won't. Here are the most promising newbies in adult entertainment.

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W.B. Fontenot

Veruca James

On a cold, bright day, Veruca James poses in a stark spotlight on a stage in a downtown L.A. warehouse. Her black bob is perfectly straight, her almond-shaped eyes perfectly made up. Her breasts challenge the strength of the zipper on her shiny black half-shirt.

She tucks her thumb into the waistband of her skintight leggings and pulls the top of them down, then gazes up at the camera as if she's going to fuck its very lens.

But between clicks of the shutter, the seductive look falls off her face.

"Should I take my bra off here?" she says, in the way a mid-level manager might ask if a memo is needed by the next morning.

"Nah, leave it on," says photographer Kelly Lind. "But let's start displaying the vagina."

James' professional attitude comes naturally. A relative newcomer to the adult film industry, her pre-porn career was decidedly corporate: Before starring in triple-X films, she used to be a certified public accountant.

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*5 Nude Photos from Suicide Girls: Hard Girls, Soft Light (NSFW)
*10 Sexy Photos From the History of Pornography (NSFW)
*Porn Star Tasha Reign's Secret Life as a UCLA Student

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Anne Fishbein

A nice, fat, thick, juicy beefsteak -- perfect for celebrating gender equality!

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*10 Best Places in L.A. For a First Date

So believe it or not, today is actually an obscure holiday; but we're not talking Festivus or National Pancake Day here, people...

The increasingly infamous "Steak & BJ Day" doesn't require a whole lot of explaining. "Invented" by a Tom Birdsey (whose online presence seems to be limited to this Myspace profile), the idea behind the celebration is simple. Very simple. Conceived (however poorly) as the man's version of Valentine's Day, the holiday is described on one of two supposedly official (and NSFW) websites as such:

Over the years, Valentine's Day has become a commercial holiday for women. On February 14, intimate couples celebrate their love with candy, flowers, greeting cards, and other gifts of affection. Men do not want candy. Men have no need for flowers or teddy bears. There are two things men want: steak and a blow job.

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Got Your Eyes

TigerLilly chokes out "pipsqueak" Sam.

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*Competitive Ladies Arm Wrestling? Yes, Indeed
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On Saturday night, in the protected brick-and-mortar bosom of Lacy Street Studios in Downtown L.A., a MMA training enterprise called Ultimate Female Fitness launched Beat Down Girls, a "female supremacist" wrestling studio and collective, with a four-match, mixed wrestling tournament. Cassandra Lee, the company's founder and madame of fetish clubs past, describes the Beat Down Girls as an athletic "girl gang" that champions the physical, mental and sexual superiority of women over their estrogen-challenged cohorts -- and aren't afraid to get in the ring to prove it.

Several of the fit and fiercest from various corners of the women's fighting world, including pro boxer/Penthouse centerfold Hollie "Hotstuff" Dunaway; darling of online BDSM porn emporium Kink.com, Rain DeGrey; former competitive body builder Jennifer Thomas; and buxom-legged newcomer TigerLilly were there on Saturday to spar with more-than-willing male victims.

For those out of the professional fighting loop, this event involved "mixed fighting," meaning men and lady folk in the ring, together, mixing sweat and guff and grunts. One catch is, the ladies always come out on top -- each fight is thrown to the fairer sex to propagate an illusion of impervious female strength. Literally, the champion would, in the immortal words of Mortal Kombat, "finish him" by digging a dainty foot into a helpless lad's ribs and flash her biceps for the crowd. This is prime wank material for a large subculture of fetishists who prefer women of the Amazonian variety, and the fetish hinges on a flawless victory for the ladies.

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Courtesy of Taschen

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*10 Artsy Photos of Boobs From Taschen's Little Book of Big Breasts (NSFW)
*Big Book of Pussy: Taschen Tome Celebrates the Hole Truth (NSFW)
*The Big Penis Book 3D: Big Book. Bigger Penises. (NSFW)

Taschen, the publishing company with bookstore outlets in Beverly Hills and the Farmers Market at the Grove, continues to tantalize audiences with its recent book The New Erotic Photography Volume 2. With more than 400 titillating pages, this book brings together 50 photographers from across the globe for the art book publisher's continued exploration of desire.

Check out a preview of 10 images from The New Erotic Photography Volume 2 here:

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Silent James

Tawkify is like an exclusive dating club full of accomplished friendly people.

Recently, on a blind date arranged by the matchmaking service Tawkify, I blurted out the last thing any sane man in his twenties wants to hear, gesturing to the bald ball of joy in a high chair a yard away as we approached our table:

"I'm going to sit on this side, so I can stare at that baby!"

To be clear, I am a decade away from even beginning to consider having children, and I often maintain I don't want kids at all. This announcement had less to do with my motherly urges and more to do with my foggy tendency to say exactly the wrong thing. Recently I greeted a good friend at her birthday party with a hug and an inexplicable "Nice to meet you!," flummoxing everyone within earshot.

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Photo Courtesy of La Luz de Jesus Gallery

The Plot Against JFK by Hudson Marquez

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"I can talk about the people in the paintings or the things in the paintings, but as far as talking about art, I think you just look at it," says L.A.-based artist Hudson Marquez, whose new series of paintings depicts people like Jayne Mansfield, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sophia Loren and Ray Charles and things like stilettos and Cadillacs. "Anybody who talks about their own art is, like, full of shit," says Marquez. "They should just be quiet. Let people look at the art."

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UCLA Newsroom

OH HAI! Didn't see you there. You just happened to catch us reading this paper. You know, together. Left: Martie Haselton, right: Christina Larson.

Blaming your girlfriend's mood swings on her period is so last century. According to UCLA psychology and communications professor Martie Haselton, ovulation is "the new time of the month."

"This research... [has] been sort of a mini-revolution in understanding women's sexuality," Haselton says, referring both to her own work and to studies done by fellow evolutionary psychologists. Just before ovulation, she's found, women avoid contact with male kin. Their voices rise in pitch. And most recently, in a study published in November's Hormones and Behavior journal, she and graduate student Christina Larson determined that during this highly fertile window, women devalue relationships with partners that have long-term potential and feel closer to partners with more sex appeal.

Because, according to Haselton's dual mating hypothesis, women have evolved to want a hot, masculine lover and a high-status, caring husband -- and few men are both.

If that dichotomy sounds unreasonable or offensive, join the club. Evolutionary psychology remains a contentious discipline, seen by some as a legitimate field of study and others as a murky pseudoscience.

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