Web Log Archives: September 08, 2002 - September 14, 2002
Friday, September 13, 2002
Wai Wai explores the phenomenal popularity of "tamakeri", a new Japanese fetish porn genre that features guys getting kicked in the groin. Some quotes from the article:
[Fan:] "I recently asked my girlfriend if she'd kick me, but she looked at me as though I was some sort of weirdo. All I can do is watch the videos. The more painful it looks, the more excited I get."
[Intellectual:] "Why do movies that involve harming a man's penis sell so well in this country, which runs on an ideology of 'penisim?' It's because there's some sort of latent masochism in every man."
[Producer:] "You can't use professional actors, because you're making films about men being kicked in their most vital organ. If you did use them, they'd soon be put out of work. So we advertised in S&M magazines and over the Internet to find guys to appear in tamakeri videos. We had over 200 applicants. There weren't any particular standards regarding who was hired. I suppose the only requirement was an ability to stand erect after being kicked in the balls."
Oooooh oooooow.
BBC News has two good articles dealing with sex and the elderly. The annual meeting of the British Society of Gerontology will be devoted to sexual issues, aiming to dispel the myth that old people have no interest in sex. The second piece is a "real people tell their own stories" column by a 78-year-old great-grandmother who still enjoys sex. "I do still see myself as a sexual being, even though I no longer get wolf whistles in the street. I've never been particularly hung up on my body image, but I am sometimes surprised that Sam finds me attractive.... I do have to listen to a lot more moans and groans of the 'Ow, my aching back' variety; and we both suffer from cramp from time to time, which always sends us into fits of giggles."
New Scientist has a more detailed account of the franken-penis research study reported earlier. "In a remarkable feat of tissue engineering, major parts of the penises of several rabbits have been replaced with segments grown in a lab from their own cells. The animals were able to use the reconstructed organs to mate. The next step is to try to recreate the entire organ from scratch. The technique could make it possible to reconstruct the penises of men who have suffered injuries or those of children born with genital abnormalities."
Brian Buck, the Arizona State student who showered with pornstars for the video Shane's World 29, became executive vice president of the student senate before the scandal began. The other student senators voted Tuesday to condemn his actions and ask him to step down, which he so far refuses to do. What a bunch of dweebs.
Private Media, a publicly traded adult entertainment company based in Spain, has made an offer to buy part of Napster for one million shares of stock. Private apparently has no interest in restoring the old Napster; the company's CEO talks about using Napster to sell material from its large porn library. Private stock closed at $2.41 on Thursday, but reached a high of $3.44 today after this news broke.
BBC: "Scientists believe they may have found a safe and more effective way of increasing the size of a man's penis. . . . The discovery raises hopes of improved treatments for infants born with ambiguous genitalia or those in need of penis reconstruction after an accident. It could also one day help those men who want a larger penis."
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Emily Dubberley wants to get the word "cliterati" into the Oxford English Dictionary as a positive alternative to "slut". Here she explains what exactly sets "cliterati girls" apart.
The weekly pro-wrestling show Smackdown has recently featured a plot line involving gay tag team champions Billy and Chuck. "It was a whirlwind engagement: In front of God and everybody last week in an arena in Green Bay, Wis., Chuck got down on one knee, pulled a diamond ring from his tights and popped the question. Billy wept with joy, and accepted. Two and a half millennia after the Greeks first grappled with the curious homoerotic aura of wrestling, Billy and Chuck have spent the current WWE season overtly flirting with one another -- delighting the audience and taunting their opponents with their blooming togetherness." They plan to get married in the ring in the episode airing Thursday night. (This great article by Hank Stuever contains detailed spoilers for tonight's episode, so Smackdown fans may want to wait and read it tomorrow.) More and more. And the WWE website offers you a cordial invitation to the ceremony.
Mark Athitakis praises Elimidate as the best of the current dating shows precisely because it tosses out any concern with romance or finding The One. "You've probably already seen the show that 'ElimiDATE' models itself after. Not 'The Dating Game,' not 'Survivor.' No: Without apology, 'ElimiDATE' takes its cue from a pioneer in television history: 'Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.' True love's nice, sure. But, for our human specimens here in the jungle, a nice pooper will do."
Mistress Matisse explains the difference between "slave" and "submissive" in BDSM lingo.
Byron Beck conducts a hilarious interview with Bobby Trendy. "The swishiest queen to hit this summer's small screen, Bobby, claims to be 24, is an interior designer who's been summoned to decorate the former Guess model's mansion on E!'s 'reality'-based The Anna Nicole Show. Though a refreshing antidote to the clenched-ass gym rat who refuses to be a flamboyant fag, Bobby has set the g/l/b/t movement back at least 30 years with his limp-wristed ways. As for his look, his specialty is creating what he calls 'luxurious,' over-the-top designs (think pink, fur and gold ...together)." Willamette Week also has a much longer version of the interview online. . . . UPDATE: Check out Bobby Trendy's personal site, which has dozens of high-resolution images of his luxurious creations.
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
The Internet Archive has a catalogue of ephemeral films (advertising, educational, propaganda and industrial shorts) from the Prelinger Archive online, with descriptions and film stills for each title. Included are several sex education films from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, as well as Perversion for Profit, a 1960s "anti-pornography film produced by financier Charles Keating, linking pornography to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization."
The British Library has purchased copies of two rare US pirate editions of Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence.
The library has discovered that even the pornographers practised censorship. Among their "many deletions" are a 200-word passage where the lovers use flowers. Instead of "he fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden hair were forget-me-nots and woodruff", the passage is rewritten simply as "he decorated her with them". Cut altogether is the line "she threaded two pink campions in the bush of red-gold hair above his penis. 'There!' she said. 'Charming! Charming!' "
The Library's curator explains the acquisition of the unauthorized, expurgated editions: "Lawrence was one of the most censored English novelists in the 20th century. The way in which his books were published betrays the intricate relationship between censorship, profit, and popularity."
Adult Video News reports: "Male porn newcomer Azael is attempting to break a world record by having sex with twenty women in a row, without use any tantric meditations or special techniques according to Sexual World Records. They say he was born with the ability to have orgasms with full ejaculations one after another, with no male refractory period (down time) in between." (Link snagged from Reverse Cowgirl.)
The Village Voice has a profile of actor James Spader that reads like People-style puffery written by a film studies graduate student. "Strewn with all manner of kinks, hang-ups, and fetishes, James Spader's films add up to a sexual biography of alienated modern man. . . . His signature roles have fearlessly staked out the far corners and sweaty undersides of human carnality." Spader stars in the upcoming Secretary, a "sadomasochistic office romance" in which he plays "a stern lawyer who plays hanky-spanky with a revolving door of submissive typists."
BBC: "South Africa's Constitutional Court has ruled that gay couples have the right to adopt children. The highest court in the country said on Tuesday that people in 'permanent, same-sex partnerships' could provide children with a stable home and the support and affection necessary. Under South Africa's constitution, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is illegal, but provisions of the Child Care Act banned gay couples from adopting children."
200 people attended a public meeting in Montgomery County, Texas, to debate a proposed public library ban on two sex education books: It's Perfectly Normal and It's So Amazing, both by Robie H. Harris. The local taliban want the books removed because of Harris's so-called "pro-homosexual stance." The Houston Chronicle reports, "Most of the speakers -- many of them members of the Republican Leadership Council, the Christian Coalition of Montgomery County and area Christian churches -- called for [library director Jerilynn] Williams to be fired, for the creation of a citizen review panel and for the county's withdrawal from the American Library Association. Some even attacked the county's $10 million bond proposal, scheduled for a November election, to build three libraries. They said the money would help to purchase unwanted books."
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Boyd Tonkin reviews Platform by Michel Houellebecq, and he's not as impressed as some other critics. "His fans routinely hail Houellebecq as a fearless, and fearsome, Sade or Céline for the age of dial-up porn, designer fetishism and long-haul package tours. For me, he can sometimes look more like the Ozzy Osbourne of modern French letters." Not that being "the Ozzy Osbourne of X" should be considered an insult, but you get the idea.
The Brooklyn Museum of Art is importing the exhibition of Victorian nudes put together by the Tate Britain museum in London last year. British reviews of the Tate show were mostly negative: bad, bad, good.
Monday, September 9, 2002
Sports Illustrated ran a hoax article this week about non-existent new tennis teen sensation Simonya Popova, a ravishing blonde from Uzbekistan with "skills to compete with the Williams sisters and a celebrity force field to rival Kournikova's." The article was intended to criticize the Women's Tennis Association for marketing its tour based on the sex appeal of its players. The WTA responded angrily to the hoax: "We're a hot sport right now and we've never had to rely on good looks." More.
Tim Harris profiles legendary eighteenth century libertine Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Society of Dilettanti and "The Order of the Friars of St Francis of Wycombe, better known as the Hell-fire Club."
The young Sir Francis was interested in art and culture. He was also just as interested in alcohol and women, and did as much drinking and fornicating as art appreciation. His personal mission was "to taste the sweets of all things".
Sounds like my kind of guy. (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
Clean Sheets ran pieces on food and sex throughout July. Some highlights (the first five are nonfiction, the latter five fiction):
Liz Langley writes in praise of wanton women. "Women may be more selective; they may not behave like jackasses at strip shows in the numbers that men do or catcall them on the street, but women have extremely healthy, horny, voracious appetites for skin, just as men do."
Declan McCullagh provides a thorough overview of debates over anti-spam legislation in Washington.
The Indian film Ek Chhoti Si Love Story (A Short Love Story) opened on Friday to sellout crowds and protests at some theaters, both due to two brief sex scenes with mild nudity. The film's star is seeking a court order to get those scenes deleted. "The row erupted after Manisha Koirala, the lead actress who plays a woman subject to a 15-year-old youth's infatuation, asked a court to order the removal of explicit scenes shot involving her character but with a substitute actress. . . . [Director Shashilal] Nair maintains that all the film stars, including Koirala, were told about the film's story before the shooting began. He says the film was seen and approved by Koirala twice." Indian Express critic Shubhra Gupta dismissed both the film and the controversy: "Without them (the scenes) the film would have no legs. There is more vulgarity in the song-and-dance sequences our movies are littered with. Koirala herself has featured in scores of such numbers uncomplainingly in the past."
Sunday, September 8, 2002
Mim Udovitch explores the subculture of Internet anorexia cultists in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, called "A Secret Society of the Starving." (Thanks, Gary.)
Daze doesn't usually cover sex crimes, but this case warrants attention. Manhattan prosecutors are reinvestigating the infamous Central Park jogger rape case from 1989. Five black and hispanic teenagers were convicted of the crime after a highly publicized, racially polarized trial, but another man serving life in prison confessed to the crime earlier this year. An anonymous source told the New York Times "that the DNA tests proved beyond question that the convict, Matias Reyes, 31, had raped the jogger, who was found battered and near death on the night of April 19, 1989, when bands of marauding youths attacked nine people at random in the park. But the official said that the proof of Mr. Reyes's involvement did not necessarily have a bearing on the convictions of five young black and Hispanic men who were found guilty in 1990 of attacking the 28-year-old white investment banker, largely on the basis of their own graphic, detailed confessions. . . . In recent days, lawyers for three of the five youths convicted in the case have contended that Mr. Reyes's confession — and especially his claim to have acted alone — proved that their clients had been wrongfully convicted. They insisted that the youths' confessions had been coerced, and noted that no DNA or other conclusive forensic evidence against them had ever been produced." More.
Edinburgh police charge man over sex with traffic cone.
According to a survey conducted by a French broadcast watchdog organization, 64% support a ban on hardcore pornography on French cable and non-cable television (76% of women, 51% of men), while 35% oppose the ban. This survey sounds too black-and-white for a policy matter with plenty of middle ground. Why not bar hardcore pornography from broadcast channels, but allow it on subscription cable channels?
