Web Log Archives: June 02, 2002 - June 08, 2002
Saturday, June 8, 2002
Modern Humorist has an alternate version of the R. Kelly sex tape.
Laura Sinagra reviews two recent books of interest to Daze readers, Catherine Millet's The Sexual Life of Catherine M. and Dennis Cooper's My Loose Thread. She's lukewarm about both Millet's "earnest discernment" and Cooper's "teen-sex brutalism."
Dave Birch argues that widespread broadband access won't necessarily benefit online content providers, based on the early experiences of porn site operators. "Now that their consumers have broadband, it has become possible for them to download the entire contents of naughty websites in a reasonable time and with reasonable convenience. On a typical cable modem or ADSL link, downloading 600Mb of website content and then burning it on to a CD might take three or four hours, but that's no longer a big barrier. Consumers log in, sign up with their credit card, fire up some shareware to hoover up all of the content on the website and rebuild it locally, and then go out to dinner. When they come back, they cancel their subscription."
Libby Brooks casts doubt on the common belief that women today are more sexually liberated than their mothers and grandmothers. "Chastity and passivity may no longer be feted but both men and women continue to view women who appear at ease with their sexual selves with suspicion. The traditional codes of pursuit and denial are defunct - nobody knows whether playing the tease is bad behaviour or a role we can relish. Is it any wonder that anxiety about sexual etiquette is rife?"
Libida interviews David Steinberg about his foray into erotic photography after thirty years of writing about sex. "What really fascinates me is the idea of photographing people being sexual with each other, in a way that conveys something about what is most personal, most intimate about how people connect with each other during sex." Nine of Steinberg's photographs accompany the interview.
Friday, June 7, 2002
From the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle: "Local school district officials in Moravia, Cayuga County, are prohibiting a high school senior from displaying charcoal drawings of nude females at a districtwide student art show. In response, Moravia High School senior Sheila Albanese said she will hang the drawings at Thursday's show with black strips with the words "censored" over parts of the drawings that could be considered offensive." . . . UPDATE: The Moravia student art show was held last night with nine nude drawings by two artists. "Each drawing of a female had a black strip placed over the breast and genital areas, and the genital area in the male drawing was covered in the same way. Three drawings had the words 'censored' on the black strips." This article quotes several attendees who found the nude drawings "tasteful" and criticized school officials' decision not to let them be displayed openly.
An Oslo taxi company is handing out free condoms to passengers. Each of the company's twenty cabs has a sign on the back of the driver's seat reading, "Forgot condom? Ask the driver!"
Thursday, June 6, 2002
Robert Wilonsky reports on changes at Playboy Home Video, which has recently faced declining sales and huge losses. Among other things, it has launched a line of Girls Gone Wild knockoffs called "Playboy Exposed."
R. Kelly was arrested on child porn charges Wednesday in Chicago, then released on bail Thursday. Kelly allegedly videotaped himself having sex with a 14-year-old girl several years ago. Someone anonymously mailed a copy of the 26-minute videotape in February to the Chicago Sun-Times, which turned it over to the Chicago police. Copies of the tape are widely available over the Internet and from city street vendors. Johnny Maldoro described the tape's contents in detail as part of his regular Village Voice porn video review column.
Heather Kohlmann talks about growing up with and accepting her itty bitty titties. "Ok, first, you have your Pamela Anderson-Lees; after that are the Britney Spears; next there are some - average‚ people; then there's me." (Link snagged from The Breast Chronicles.)
Suzan Sherman recalls her summer internship at Penthouse at age 19. "My first day, I wore a pressed skirt and blouse, though when I emerged from the elevator into a corridor hung with framed posters of naked Pets on Bob Guccione’s knee, I wondered whether the dress code was 'Nothing At All.' The editor in chief looked me over as if I were Snow White fluttering into his den of perversity. I was certain he could discern, with his pornographer’s X-ray vision, that I was still a virgin."
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
Good article by Lisa Anderson about how caregivers deal with sex among the elderly. "Senior citizens don't automatically check their sex lives at the nursing home door, a fact most nursing homes don't address and many younger Americans don't even want to think about. But dealing with the pleasures and problems posed by sexual behavior among the elderly is receiving heightened attention as the long-term care industry braces for the arrival of the Baby Boom generation."
The Smoking Gun prints the complete Newton South High School scavenger hunt lists. Organizers actually prepared two lists: a fake, relatively tame two-page list to be turned over to police if you were stopped, and the real eight-page list. (Full story about the scavenger hunt is here in case you missed it.)
Valeria Lambert tries out her new optical mouse as a sex toy.
Rave review for Lynn Breedlove's debut novel, Godspeed, which chronicles the adventures of a butch lesbian bicycle messenger in San Francisco. "Godspeed is sure to burnish the reputation Breedlove has earned as a guitar god in the ferocious grrrl group Tribe 8 and as a luminary in the local spoken-word scene. You'll see every third girl on the street reading this book within the next month, so get ready." Reviewer Dodie Bellamy calls the book "intensely smart and funny" and Breedlove's prose style "as vibrant and in the moment as Kerouac's 'spontaneous bop prosody.'" (Link snagged from Pursed Lips.)
Oxford-Yale grad and published novelist Helena Echlin offers a first-person account of working as a phone sex operator. "The ad, which quaintly described phone sex as 'erotic conversation', offered $20 per hour or $25 per hour during the graveyard shift. It was substantially more than I would make as a temp, and I couldn't even get work as a temp. The man on the phone wanted to know if I had any acting experience." (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
A positive review of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. from Laurie Stone. "Millet has much to say that the world needs to contemplate. Her book talks about what is, not what is wished for, and challenges all kinds of romanticized beliefs about what sex should be."
Nerve has an excerpt from Dennis Cooper's new novel, My Loose Thread.
Stacey Richter is also unenthused by The Sexual Life of Catherine M. "Catherine Millet is an intelligent libertine who had sex with thousands of men. So why is her memoir so dull?"
Federal prosecutors have indicted a dozen prostitutes and madames from an upscale New Orleans brothel. The charges spring from intensive FBI wiretap surveillance over the last year, initially motivated by suspicions of mob ties and major drug dealing at the brothel. 5000+ phone calls revealed no such evidence, but the U.S. Attorney's Office decided to use the amassed evidence to file trumped-up "conspiracy and racketeering" charges against the prostitutes and madames. A prominent New Orleans criminal defense lawyer says, "The whole thing is an incredible waste of federal resources. To make a federal offense out of it is like using an elephant gun to kill a fly." The brothel's customers won't face charges, because paying for sex is not a federal offense and the local DA has chosen not to get involved in the case.
School administrators and local police are cracking down on the annual senior class scavenger hunt at Newton South High School in Massachusetts. The decades-old tradition has lately evolved "from a quest for silly and obscure items to an X-rated game of sex, drinking, drugs, and vandalism." Participants in this year's event earned points for things like stealing road signs and highway barrels, getting a middle-schooler to drink beer, finding a cab driver smoking pot, taking a Polaroid of yourself standing naked outside school and performing assorted sex acts. The school principal sputters, "Evidently in years past it was much more innocent. However, it has evolved into an event that is at a minimum disturbing and at the other end certainly criminal.... A whole bunch of kids sit around and try to think up the most outrageous things they can, and that's a very, very dangerous situation to be in."
Judith Thurman reviews The Sexual Life of Catherine M. in the latest issue of The New Yorker. She's not impressed. "Lust is a great and inexhaustible literary subject, but writing graphically about what excites one isn't literature. The same stupid things excite everybody." I don't know about that — for example, Millet doesn't mention the Olsen twins even once in her book. Thurman also complains that the English-language version has been translated "carelessly and in places incoherently." (Note: articles on The New Yorker website tend to disappear quickly.)
Tuesday, June 4, 2002
Mark Morford calls for more male full frontal nudity in Hollywood movies. "Naked women are everywhere in media and naked breasts are more common than clunky line deliveries on Walker, Texas Ranger and it's certainly not uncommon anymore to bear witness to the fully exposed female genital region in casual lighting in even the tamest of Hollywood fare.... But this is what you don't see very often: the naked man. The buff decidely handsome male of the species, en flagrant, full on, frontal shot, unblinking, enthusiastic."
The East Bay Express profiles the new owners of The Spectator, Dara Lynne Dahl and W. Vann Hall, who bought the Bay Area sex paper from its original owners in January. There's some fascinating background on the paper's history and philosophy.
[Founders] Penny "Kat" Sunlove and Layne Winklebleck ... sought to mold the Spectator as a porn publication for literate men -- less gross than most, and more humanistic. The idea was a radical departure from many of the lowbrow raunch rags then on the market, which treated sex as mere filth. The Spectator tended to take a healthier view of the subject, with articles on transsexual, bisexual, and polyamorous lifestyles in addition to the standard smut. The tabloid also began sponsoring monthly salons where porn stars, writers, photographers, and even professors would all get together to talk about sex. The salons, which became all the rage in some circles during the '80s, continue to this day.
This article also covers a vindictive lawsuit being waged by local rival Yank, which accuses the Spectator of methodically vandalizing its news racks. Dahl and Hall deny the charge and insist that, in fact, Yank's owner has methodically vandalized Spectator news racks.
Catching up on an older story . . . Three weeks ago, a private Christian school in Sacramento expelled a kindergarten girl with only three weeks left in the school year after discovering that her mother worked as a nude dancer. The mother, Christina Silvas, used to be a Sunday school teacher at the church-run school. Silvas and the school then came to an agreement: the daughter could complete the school year if the mother quit her strip club job. Just a few days later, however, Silvas posed nude for Playboy, which published the pictorial and interview last week on its website. Silvas said, "I believe posing for Playboy is the American dream for a woman." Church officials were understandably peeved but opted not to re-expel Silvas's daughter. Playboy.com has the interview with Christina Silvas in its free area. Meanwhile, FilePile has scans of her Playboy pictorial (though the pictures might disappear as soon as Playboy's lawyer find them).
Scotland Yard's vice squad is investigating an exhibition entitled Porn? at the Proud Camden gallery in London. The show features 280 photographs, some explicitly depicting sex acts, which the gallery owner describes as ranging from "low-brow pornography to high-art erotica."
Nerve has a humorous, cringeworthy and educational piece about
rectal foreign objects. The moral of this story: "If you engage in erotic play, then use a vibrator or erotic toy designed for the purpose of insertion into the rectum. These items usually come with a flange to prevent them from slipping into the anus."
Monday, June 3, 2002
Anne Semans recommends vibrators as bridal shower or baby shower gifts. "Now you're recoiling in horror-imagining your best friend's expression when she opens your gift after cooing over rattles or gushing over scented candles. But public humiliation doesn't have to be part of the package-present your gift in private (I always say I left it in the car when all the others are being opened) along with a thoughtful letter and preferably some instructions for how to enjoy it. You will cement your status as best friend (or sister, or mother-in-law) when your gift works its magic on the recipient."
Charles Taylor reviews Ian Littlewood's Sultry Climates: Travel & Sex.
Littlewood's subject is the Grand Tour, the tradition that began in the 18th century of yearlong Continental sojourns undertaken by young Englishmen as part of their education and seasoning. The official accounts have stressed the Anglo traveler being introduced to foreign customs, foods, manners. And maybe because sex -- or, more to the point, pleasure -- was (and is) thought too frivolous a subject for serious intellectual consideration, the sexual pursuits of these English travelers have been relegated to journals and letters while art and culture take preeminence in the histories and guidebooks. Drawing on those journals, Littlewood has attempted to rectify the imbalance.
Wai Wai runs another article about Japanese schoolgirl prostitutes, who hook up with clients through online personals sites. "About the only way for a junior high schoolgirl to make money is to sell sex. Our school doesn't let us have part-time jobs, so we do this (sell sex) once a week or so and that makes us enough dough. If you're a junior high schoolgirl, you can say you're a virgin and sell your virginity for a high price. I got 350,000 yen [approximately US$3000] for my virginity once. The guy was some sicko of about 40 who said he ran his own company. I've sold my virginity three times so far."
The New York Times profiles two Russian scholars on opposite sides of the obscenity-censorship issue. Aleksei Plutser-Sarno has just published The Big Dictionary of Obscenity, Volume 1, a 390-page study of a single word. (The Times adds, "The one-word subtitle of Volume 1 cannot be repeated here. Not even in Russian." Daze Reader would love to print the word, in English and Russian, but doesn't know what it is. Google has no other English-language references to this book.) Meanwhile, Vatanyar S. Yagya has launched a crusade to outlaw swearing in public, which he hopes would "force citizens to turn to Russian's trove of expressions to make their points and help keep the language rich."
Anne Semans, co-author of The Mother's Guide to Sex, offers ten sex tips for moms at Libida.
Mark Frauenfelder, one of the editors of Boing Boing, has a great feature article at Yahoo Internet Life about teenage cam girls and their admirers who buy them stuff from their Amazon wish lists.
The cam girls phenomenon could not have happened before this moment in history. It's the result of a combination of specific ingredients: inexpensive yet powerful technology to send and receive video images over the Net; a culture that places a higher value on fame than on the skills and talent that make people famous; teen celebrities who happily flaunt their bodies on the covers of national magazines; and the timeless rite of passage that is a teenage girl's search for identity and blossoming awareness of her own sexual power.
Frauenfelder draws connections between the "cam whore" phenomenon and the practice of enjo kosai or "compensated dating" among Japanese teenage girls.
Sunday, June 2, 2002
Rebecca Tyrrel interviews Catherine Millet and her husband about erotic bestseller The Sexual Life of Catherine M. This article is inappropriately headlined "Memoirs of a sexual predator" — in what sense was Millet a "predator"? The article proper calls Millet "an apparently insatiable sex maniac" and "a nymphomaniac of Olympian stature," more accurate epithets at least.
Matthew Flamm explores the subculture of sex writers writing for adult magazines, "once a thriving New York demimonde, it is now a world in its twilight." The writers profiled reminisce about the glory days of the 1970s.
New [porno magazine] titles appeared almost monthly, writers mingled at klieg-lighted Times Square premieres (before sex films went straight to video) and editors had leeway in what they assigned. . . . "Later on, you had to limit the complications, and there was like a checklist of things the stories had to have," added Mr. Moody, whose name is a pen name. "That was the big irony. The porn, which was supposed to be so exotic, became more and more bland."
Long, fascinating feature article; highly recommended.
Jody Wheeler reviews Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors at his excellent blog. "The more controversial the book the more necessary it is to actually read it." Amen.
