Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business | David Paster | LinkedIn 8/17/15, 9:14 AM Search for people, jobs, companies, and more... Advanced Home Profile Connections Jobs Interests Business Services Upgrade IT Openings - Kansas City - We specialize in IT recruiting. View openings... Pulse Publish a post Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business David Paster An Amazonian's response to "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" Nick Ciubotariu These Tweaks To Your Morning Routine Will Make Your Entire Day More Productive Dr. Travis Bradberry How Accenture and Deloitte Got Rid of Performance Reviews — David Paster Edit post View stats And You Can Too Principal Consultant with Yarborough Planning, LLC Bernard Marr How to Negotiate with Yourself Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business Daniel Goleman Mar 4, 2015 206 views 4 Likes 3 Comments How to Overcome the Title: Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business Naysayers Brigette Hyacinth By: David J. Paster, Principal These Startups Ride The Next Big Wave Of Disruption Yarborough Planning, LLC Andreas von der Heydt 4599 North Washington Street 7 Ways to Jump-Start Your Apartment 20D Stillwater, OK 74075-1299 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-adult-entertainment-really-david-paster?trk=mp-author-card Page 1 of 131 Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business | David Paster | LinkedIn 8/17/15, 9:14 AM [email protected] (702) 813-5062 LinkedIn ™ David Paster; http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-paster/48/234/190 Text: Editorial Note: For the sake of anonymity, some names and some identifying details in Part I have been altered. Part I: What the Adult Entertainment Business Is NOT Joe, a hiring manager with a major United States domestic commercial banking operator, bluntly inquired during a job interview with my friend Merl, “So, your last fifteen years of work experience has been within the adult entertainment field?” My onetime work colleague and longer-term pal was somewhat taken aback by the seemingly accusatory line and tone of what commenced to feel like a quasi-interrogation. Merl responded that for the previous decade and a half, he was an employee of a mid-cap legacy casino operator; working at the corporate level within the marketing department. The gaming hospitality entertainment organization to which Merl contributed was, until its acquisition and subsequent dismantling, well respected amongst pivotal members of the gaming hospitality industry and by Wall Street analysts, perceived as an efficiently and effectively operated mid- cap, multi-state licensed corporation. Joe somewhat dismissively retorted, “So, your business experience has been with adult entertainment?!” Merl was clearly not going to obtain this super straight-laced position! For this interview at least, it seemed an unwarranted Hawthornian scarlet letter of “A” for “A”dult Entertainment was proverbially pinned to Merl’s chest, and he found himself in a Kafka-esque situation of absurdity trying to explain a matter that would have been comical if a desperately needed position of employment was not on the line. Until I had heard Merl recall this scenario with regret, I had not considered https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-adult-entertainment-really-david-paster?trk=mp-author-card Page 2 of 131 Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business | David Paster | LinkedIn 8/17/15, 9:14 AM casino gaming to be a form of an “adult entertainment business”. Yet, upon further consideration, I could almost recognize a sliver of merit with Joe’s insinuation. As Sheldon Addison, aspiring political kingmaker and overlord of the Las Vegas Sands corporation, will tell anyone he pays to listen, casino gaming remains a vice that should be disseminated with prudence. Various forms of gambling, including but not exclusive to commercial, Indian, limited stakes, historic, racino, horse/dog racing, lottery, charitable and even Internet facsimile have evolved over the last few decades until reaching a contemporary status of near socio-cultural ubiquity. This wagering activity, partially legitimized by government codification, is sanctioned in 48 out of 50 states and the condoning and vested interest government even cooperatively promotes varying forms of wagering partially as a means to reap a voluntary / regressive tax, too often derived from a populace that is profoundly limited in terms of discretionary expenditure. Gambling has, with it's growing presence, become normalized from a taboo vice isolated to the middle of the desert to merely another hedonic hospitality recreational activity. Void of even a minuscule tinge of irony, the Simpsons' spiritual leader Reverend Lovejoy interjects on the debate on whether to bring gambling to town in the 1993 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-adult-entertainment-really-david-paster?trk=mp-author-card Page 3 of 131 Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business | David Paster | LinkedIn 8/17/15, 9:14 AM episode $pringfield (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gabling), "Once the government approves something, it's no longer immoral!". Six years later, the Simpsons creators brewed up an even more black comedy than the titular inspiration for the 1993 episode Dr. Strangelove with the episode where neighbor Ned Flanders engages in a road trip, buddy adventure with Homer to imbibe "white wine spritzers" and learn to free himself via the "Homer Method" in Las Vegas during "Viva Ned Flanders". For the record, between casino focused follies, during 1996 in the "Bart on the Road" episode he encapsulates Flanders' anti carpe diem mindset, Bart claims Homer says, "Branson, it's like Vegas, if it were run by Ned Flanders". The inclusion of gambling, in the collective mindset, as an activity to be understood as fundamentally no differently than a day at the ball game, evening attendance of a concert, or a trip to an amusement park, has allowed casino gaming, as an alternative outing, to shed a proportion of its historically inherent taboo or stigma. By regulation, to participate in casino wagering activity, an individual must be of majority age (i.e., 18 or 21 years old, depending upon the jurisdiction). Therefore, technically Joe was correct in his congregation of casino gaming activity as an adult entertainment entity. Yet, this particular amalgamation is still normatively suspect. The philosophical extension, as will be provided as follows, is not quite robust enough to pass a litmus-type test of societal reasonableness. Following the logical path of age limited participation as the primary defining https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-adult-entertainment-really-david-paster?trk=mp-author-card Page 4 of 131 Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business | David Paster | LinkedIn 8/17/15, 9:14 AM element differentiating adult from populace inclusive or general attraction entertainment, it may be contended by (adamant prohibitionist) Carrie Nation types that individuals bellying up to the bar and imbibing a beer at family friendly chain restaurants like Chili’s, T.G.I.Friday's or Applebee’s are just as much participants with a variance of adult entertainment as the patron sipping a libation and passively viewing the stage show at a gentlemen’s club. This is assuming that there is no gradation of situational based “vice” or the belief that a "sin is a sin". That is, having an alcoholic drink at a chain restaurant is no better or worse than partaking of a beverage at a gentlemen’s club. The adult entertainment activity in question is the consumption of inebriates, not the environment in which the activity occurs. By this logic, the flare bar tending extravaganza and shot downing at T.G.I.Friday's could be considered a format of adult entertainment. Yet, except for those whose perceptions are radically conservative, located at the far right of the societal behavior continuum, chain restaurants bars are not considered by the majority populace to be locales of adult entertainment business. Out of the public hospitality realm and into the private, if a hotel guest is able to order a pay-per-view “mature” movie to be watched in the assumed privacy of his or her own rented quarters through a service such as third-party contracted, in- room entertainment providing and profit sharing with hotel vendors like LodgeNet Interactive™ or Spectravision™, does the presence of a means of delivery designate major hotel chains to be in the same collective as porno theaters as purveyors of adult material? As an aside, the choice of some hotel https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-adult-entertainment-really-david-paster?trk=mp-author-card Page 5 of 131 Delineating the Adult Entertainment Business | David Paster | LinkedIn 8/17/15, 9:14 AM chains such as Omni™ and Marriot ™ to discontinue offering “dirty movie” fare via its television systems may have been more motivated by economic realities wrought by developing personal technologies than the proselytizing of corporate citizenry constructs. Intermittent economic trends, reflective of the elements comprising the Bass Diffusion and Product Life Cycle Stages models, are adequately disruptive to create situational openings for business practice change (i.e., lodging facilities can, with minimal negative effect, discontinue an established amenity). The relegation of surcharge soaking in-room telephone and pay-to-use Wi-Fi devolve to novelty amenity relic rank for the majority of individuals that come prepared for myriad forms of communications. Adult movies steered through in house entertainment systems with sometimes less