Web Log Archives: July 07, 2002 - July 13, 2002
Saturday, July 13, 2002
Humor columnist Liz Langley expresses skepticism about that semen-as-antidepressant scientific study in the news. "First, let's look at the no-condoms-ever group. Women with partners who never use condoms might be in a longer term relationship, long enough to seek a birth control method that feels more serious and adult, as opposed to one you can fill with water and lob at a car. Some women are happier in relationships like this as opposed to ones they're in doubt about. Or maybe these women were just too damn dumb to use condoms. Stupid people are always happier than smart ones." (Info on the actual study here and here.)
The LA Times untangles the mysterious non-release of Michael Jackson's 9/11 celebrity charity single, entitled "What More Can I Give?" (Registration required, or try this alternate URL which doesn't require registration.) Jackson's main collaborator on the project was a little-known personal friend named Marc Schaffel, who did most of the legwork lining up participants and recording vocals around the country.
The singer's handlers were as bewildered as everyone else--so much so that they set out to learn more about Schaffel. What they discovered would trigger a major damage-control effort and bring a halt to a project that some of the country's top performers had hoped would help the grieving families. Schaffel, it turned out, was in the gay pornography business--and Jackson's people did not want him linked to the self-described King of Pop, whose legacy already was tarnished by allegations of sexual molestation in 1993.
Given the high stakes for Jackson--and the high visibility of the charity project--his aides quietly asked Sony Music Entertainment Inc. to bury the single, according to documents obtained by The Times and interviews with those familiar with the deal. The record suffered yet another setback when McDonald's backed out of a multimillion-dollar proposal to sell it at its franchises, fearing fallout from customers who would be unhappy with the chain's association with Jackson, sources said. [...]
Among the key players, only Schaffel is talking. And he says he feels wronged. "I believe this charity single could still generate lots of money to help those in need," said Schaffel, who has produced and directed dozens of gay pornographic videos. "Why shouldn't it come out? Because of something I did in the past? I mean, this is an industry in which rock stars date porno queens. Adult film doesn't have the same stigma it used to. So really, what's their excuse?"
This article doesn't mention any titles of Schaffel's videos, but rest assured the Daze research department is on it.
In the Washington Post, David Hoffman discusses the controversy surrounding Vladimir Sorkin's Blue Lard in a good feature story about the "literary spring" in Russia. The post-Soviet "decade of revolutionary change has calmed a bit, and a writer's spring is unfolding. Every few months an author captures the country's imagination, and bookstores are jammed; tables are piled high with inexpensive paperbacks. Moreover, a new generation of popular writers has appeared, and they reflect the enormous changes that have swept the country in the last decade." A nice photo of Sorokin holding his dog accompanies the article. The Post also runs a short excerpt from Vladimir Sorokin's novel Ice. . . . Vladimir Sorokin's personal site is pretty cool even if you don't read Russian.
Rose from Sex Geek writes about her adventures at a sex party for women. "All women. Only women. No men allowed!" (Scroll down to the June 24 entry.) . . . Meanwhile, Chris from Uffish Thoughts tells a long story about kissing girls. . . . And Tristan Taormino fists a straight girl at a sex party.
Friday, July 12, 2002
From CBC News: "Gay activists celebrated Friday as a panel of judges ordered the Ontario government to register gay and lesbian marriages, the first decision of its kind in Canada. . . . In a unanimous ruling, the panel of three judges said that prohibiting gay couples from marrying violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Some constitutional experts predicted the decision would have a ripple effect across the country." (Link snagged from Soapboxgirls.)
Prosecutors in Arkansas, Missouri and Colorado have filed charges against operators of "child model" sites, which charge subscribers to view non-nude photos and videos of under-18 girls. Mike Brunker at MSNBC reports, "Some in the fledgling 'non-nude' niche are hopeful that the criminal cases will provide clear signals where the legal boundaries lie as they seek a degree of legitimacy for what one operator compared to the 'pin-up' calendars of his youth. . . . But it is likely that any line drawn by the courts will be blurred, given the differing circumstances and venues of the three cases to be decided in the coming months."
The financial scandals are starting to get serious: Britney Spears Restates Earnings, Investors Call for CEO Spears to Step Down.
The Guardian has three articles on the 25th anniversary of the Gay Times blasphemy trial, when a jury found editor Denis Lemon guilty of "blasphemous libel" for publishing James Kirkup's poem "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name." Kirkup's truly awful poem combines mawkish, messagy proclamations of gay pride with explicit descriptions of a Roman centurion ravishing Jesus's corpse. Margaret Drabble recalls the trial, in which she served as an expert witness for the defense. "The fact of the trial seemed far more shocking to me than the poem." Blake Morrison does a retrospective close reading of the poem, concluding that it's daring but not very good, a "propagandist intervention, not a work of art." And Kirkup himself tells a Guardian interviewer that he's angry at free speech advocates using his poem as a protest symbol. "They are using it for political ends and I disapprove of all politics and all politicians."
The poem has repeatedly been the subject of censorship struggles in England. In 1996-97, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement came under investigation for merely linking to a non-British web page containing the poem. Earlier this year, TV presenter Joan Bakewell came under investigation for reading the poem on her program Taboo. Read the whole poem and earlier Daze items here.
Longer AP story about the investigation of Vladimir Sorokin's novel Goluboye Salo, quoting responses from several Russian free speech proponents. This article proposes Blue Lard or Gay Lard as translations of the title; apparently "Goluboye" literally means "blue" but doubles as slang for "gay." Also noted: "Some Russian literary critics have complained that the quality of the books Russians write and read significantly deteriorated after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Several post-Soviet writers have won readers with works that mix literary style with profanity or graphic descriptions of sex." Sounds like progress to me.
Moscow prosecutors have charged writer Vladimir Sorokin with "spreading pornography" for depicting Stalin and Khrushchev as gay lovers in his satirical novel Goluboye Salo (translated as Blue Bacon Fat or Blue Lard in different sources). According to BBC News, "Mr Sorokin's book enraged members of Walking Together, a youth group which wears tee-shirts bearing President Putin's portrait. In June, they publicly ripped up copies of Blue Bacon Fat in central Moscow and threw them down a mock-up of a toilet bowl. . . . Since coming to power in 2000, Mr Putin has been accused of seeking to rehabilitate Stalin, at one point unveiling a bust to him as a war leader." More.
Three people are on trial in Hong Kong for hosting private BDSM parties last year at the Fetish Fashion shop "near the city's trendy Soho entertainment district." Reuters reports, "Local tabloids have splashed eye-popping testimony across their front pages in recent weeks, complete with graphic details and even computer-generated images of alleged sadomasochistic acts, shocking many readers. . . . The case has sparked a rare debate over modern morality and whether the public interest can be harmed by what goes on between consenting adults behind closed doors."
Thursday, July 11, 2002
British transsexual Christine Goodwin has won her battle in the European Court of Human Rights to be recognised as a woman and be allowed to marry. The ruling does not override UK law, but Goodwin's solicitor called it a "milestone." The UK, Ireland, Andorra and Albania are currently the only four countries in the Council of Europe which don't recognise a sex change as legally valid. According to BBC News, "The judges said the ruling was based on a continuing international trend in favour of the social and legal acceptance of transsexuals." . . . UPDATE: There's a Metafilter thread about this case and transgender legal rights in general.
Julia Scheeres at Wired reports on free hosting services deleting sites without notice based on controversial content. Yahoo-Geocities recently deleted a two-year-old site called Guerrilla Queer Bar, "the virtual meeting place for a large group of San Francisco gays who are bored with the Castro scene and organize field trips to drinking holes in outlying neighborhoods," then relented and reinstated the site after a phone complaint campaign. The organizer is moving the site to Weblogger.com anyway. Scheeres also discusses similar cases involving anti-death penalty and anti-abortion sites.
The Moscow, Idaho, city council is still trying to shut down those crazy kids and their topless car wash. "Five times in the past month, the epidermal entrepreneurs -- including several topless men -- have set up shop on the streets of Moscow with hoses, rags and soap. They don't have set hours, but once they tack up a few 'Topless Car Wash' signs, the customers appear. Patrons are asked only for donations, with most paying from $15 to $20, Mace said. There is a party atmosphere, with barbecue and music."
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Naomi Darvell explores the erotic appeal of popsicles and ice cream cones. A playful sidebar links to more popsicle and ice cream-themed pages.
On Our Backs has a photo spread and playmate questionnaire-style interview with Corey Parks, ex-bassist for Nashville Pussy. Followup surfing led me to the All Music Guide's very entertaining review of Nashville Pussy's first record, Let Them Eat Pussy.
As everyone knows, the alternative era loosened society's taboos, forcing new bands to go even further then their predecessors. That's where Nashville Pussy comes in. Nastier than the Rev. Horton Heat in every sense, from their sex-drenched lyrics to their fire-breathing live shows, Nashville Pussy became a minor media sensation in early 1998, partially because there hadn't been a new psychobilly band in five years and partially because rock journalists just get off on writing the word "pussy." Nashville Pussy was smart enough to exploit the segment of the indie-rock audience that's sexually frustrated and perpetually horny — the kind of guy who doesn't want to buy a copy of High Society, but is more than willing to put their hard-earned money down on a record entitled Let Them Eat Pussy that sports a cover photo of two trashy chicks shoving two guys' heads into their crotches.
Italian police have wiped the content from five websites that violated the country's blasphemy laws. The sites, apparently all run by one Italian man, combined pornography, religious imagery and sacrilegious text. Visitors to those sites now see the crest of the special police unit that wiped out the sites. More.
Julian Guthrie looks at modern swinging. "Gone are the big-hair, gold-chain '70s-style swingers who gathered in suburban tract homes. Today's energetic couplings have made their way into mainstream resorts and upscale commercial venues. . . . The movement has changed in other ways. Experts who have studied swingers say women now are the ones running clubs, organizing events and embracing this newfound libertinism."
Someone has created "a simple and cheap pub game" called Prostitute Trading Trumps, sort of like Magic: The Gathering played with prostitutes' callbox cards. "Getting into Magic requires spending several quid on a starter pack, then several more quid in the vain hope of getting any decent cards in a booster pack. Building a starter pack of Prostitute Trading Trumps involves going into a few phone boxes in the West End of London. Each cards you collect is guaranteed to be a rare limited edition, perhaps available for only a few days." This site includes its own starter pack with 24 sample cards.
The Virtual Prostitution Museum run by Magdalene Meretrix features a gallery of London prostitute calling cards. More cards here.
From September 2000: Good article by Jill Eckersley about the phenomenon of prostitutes' callbox cards around London and recent crackdown efforts.
A Cairo court has found Shohdi Naguib guilty of "possessing immoral materials" for posting a poem written by his late father, Naguib Surour, on the website wadada.net. The poem came from Naguib Surour's poetry collection known as the Ummiyat, roughly "Mother Verses." (The collection's full title contains an obscenity which none of the sites I found printed; one site lists the title as ***-Ommiyyat.) The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights called the ruling a "new setback for freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt." An earlier Cairo Times article about Shohdi Naguib's arrest last November notes that Shohdi Naguib is a webmaster at Al Ahram Weekly.
The site in question, wadada.net, has a page devoted to the life and work of Naguib Surour. Most of the material is in Arabic. The English-language material includes a translation of his poem Drink Delirium, and an article about Surur's theatrical work which discusses Al-Umiyyat near the end.
Tuesday, July 9, 2002
London police continue their crackdown on prostitutes' cards in phone booths, often using the cards to get prostitutes evicted or even deported. They have also arrested about 60 "card boys" or "tart carders," who distribute the cards to area phone booths for a fee. Local authorities have pushed British Telecom to disconnect phone numbers listed on cards. The Guardian reports, "Westminster council wants to rid the borough of prostitutes' cards as part of its initiative to make London's west end more family friendly. They are keen to avoid a repeat of events last summer where school children were removing sex workers' cards from phone boxes and swapping them in the same way as Pokemon cards."
Older, established male performers in the Los Angeles porn video industry resent the impact of Viagra in the industy. "Viagra has had a skyrocketing effect on the numbers of men able to react adequately on the usually crowded, bustling and extremely unerotic sets of porn movies in this dowdy suburban epicenter of the global erotica industry. The drug has left a stark division between the hard core of 20-30 'original' male porn stars who had carried the industry and their hundreds of often better-looking new rivals." The oldtimers spitefully refer to the newcomers as "Viagra Boys."
The Texas Board of Education has rejected the history textbook Out of Many, A History of the American People from use in state high schools. The Board objected to a section about prostitution in early Western towns. "In cattle towns, many women worked as prostitutes. Like most cowboys, most prostitutes were unmarried and in their teens and 20s. Often fed up with underpaid jobs in dressmaking or domestic service, they found few alternatives to prostitution in the cattle towns." The Board complained that the section exaggerates frontier prostitution and is inappropriate for high school students. One of the book's authors calls the decision "right-wing political correctness."
A new study finds that one-quarter of UK companies have dismissed an employee for misusing the Internet at work, and 69% of cases were linked to internet pornography. The study was conducted by Personnel Today magazine and software filtering firm Websense. More and more.
South Carolina prosecutors charged a Clemson undergraduate with "mailing indecent and filthy substances" for selling her used panties over the Internet. The woman pled guilty and now faces up to five years in prison or a $250,000 fine. (Link snagged from Aberrant News.)
Photo of Spencer Tunick's latest photo shoot in Santiago, Chile.
Maxim has a handy guide to the best sexual positions for "humping away from home" — in the woods, a bar bathroom stall, a deserted section of the stadium, the Oval Office, etc.
Monday, July 8, 2002
Pornstar Jenna Jameson has signed a two-book contract with ReganBooks, which also publishes the work of Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and Douglas Coupland. Lots of other fun gossip here. Jameson claims that she turned down an offer to replace Brooke Burke as host of Wild On. Jameson also showed up at the opening of Britney Spears' new New York restaurant, but "Britney's horrified handlers refused to let Jenna approach her, fearing they'd be photographed together."
Renowned streaker Mark Roberts streaked the Wimbledon men's tennis final on Sunday. The Sun reports, "He had scrawled 'I use Daz' on his chest, a dig at Tim Henman’s advert for rival washing powder Ariel." That's one theory — I prefer to think he meant "Daze" and simply ran out of room.
Sunday, July 7, 2002
A Harvard cancer researcher claims that Greek cuisine and plenty of sex help to ensure a long and healthy life. Elsewhere, two British bug scientists claim that having lots of sex reduces your lifespan (their research used beetles, but they figure the same principle should hold true for people). Until they get this straightened out, I'm going with the Harvard guy.
British police have launched an investigation of teen "cam girl" sites, out of fear that pedophiles are "targeting" these sites and/or girls. Meanwhile, the Observer has a sensationalistic article about teenage "cam girl" sites, which their reporter calls "every parent's worst nightmare." There are certainly legitimate safety concerns with the "cam girls" phenomenon, but this sort of hysterical scare-mongering serves no purpose. For a much better recent article about cam girls and their fans, check out Mark Frauenfelder's piece from Yahoo Internet Life.
The Biography Project has an excellent page devoted to Iceberg Slim, aka Robert Beck, including a biographical profile and several reprinted articles and interviews. Beck was a pimp from age 18 to 42, then went straight and became a writer specializing in portrayals of the criminal underworld he had left.
He published his first autobiographical novel, Pimp: The Story of My Life in 1969 published by Holloway House. He found his book being shelved next to other black authors of the angry 60's like Eldridge Cleaver's Soul On Ice and Malcolm X's The Autobiography of Malcolm X. As the climate shifted to the more militant black political movements in the 1970's, Slim had an opportunity to meet Huey Newton and other members of the Black Panther Party, whom he admired greatly. He considered his success as a pimp as a blow against white oppression. The Black Panthers, however, had little mutual regard for Slim, considered his former profession as little more than the exploitation of his people for personal gain.
This site reprints two interesting pieces from the peak of Slim's literary success: (1) a 1972 interview from the Los Angeles Free Press, in which interviewer Helen Koblin both praises Slim as "a strange mosaic of a hideous past, an optimistic present and a prophetic future" and chides his "vaguely condescending attitude toward women" (that "vaguely" is polite); and (2) a 1973 interview from the Washington Post, in which interviewer Hollie West writes, "Iceberg Slim may have done for the pimp what Jean Genet did for the homosexual and thief: articulate the thoughts and feelings of someone who's been there."
