Web Log Archives: January 26, 2003 - February 01, 2003
Saturday, February 1, 2003
Here's a weblog award show where Daze Reader might actually have a shot: the first annual Nude Blog Awards. Should I take out a "For Your Consideration" text ad at Daypop, or just get Ed K. on the line?
Sean Nelson in The Stranger looks at the explosion of "punk porn" or "indie porn" over the last few years. "It's not surprising that there are websites featuring naked indie rock girls, or that they're being run by indie rockers with little experience in the adult industry. What is surprising--to me, anyway--is how many such sites there are, and how popular they've become with the same kind of people (i.e., indie rockers) who 10 years ago would've blacklisted them out of existence." The same issue has a short interview with Spooky from Suicide Girls.
Strippers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco, the nation's only unionized strip club, ratified a new contract earlier this month.
Nerve interviews Bill Landis, onetime Times Square grindhouse projectionist and author of Sleazoid Express.
Friday, January 31, 2003
Ecommerce survivor Drugstore.com, which is partly owned by Amazon and Rite Aid, has opened a spinoff sex-oriented site called Sexualwellbeing.com. "'We do very well with privacy products,' says Drugstore.com Chairman Peter Neupert, noting that sales of products such as hemorrhoid cream, ovulation timers and other fixes for intimate medical problems are typically strong sellers because of the anonymity and privacy buying over the Internet affords. Two years ago the company added a vibrator to its selection, delicately calling it a 'personal massager' and placing it under its nutrition and wellness section. Management then watched as it became one of the top ten revenue-generating holiday items for the year." More.
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Shocking royal sex scandal (from 65 years ago)!
Wallis Simpson took a car salesman as her lover while she was in a relationship with Edward, Prince of Wales, secret government files on the 1936 abdication crisis reveal.
The documents, published by the Public Record Office on Thursday, show that the American divorcee and future King were being watched by Special Branch officers.
They name Guy Marcus Trundle, a married man from York, as the object of Mrs Simpson's affections, describing him as a "very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer".
More and more.
John Halcyon Styn has ended the monthly Globalgasm project. Clean Sheets has a retrospective history of Globalgasm.
Sydney Morning Herald has a first-person account of working as a stripper by a 34-year-old woman who's been doing it for twelve years. (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
Debra has written a fascinating, well-researched rebuttal to the fundi revisionist history critique of Alfred Kinsey.
Internet porn companies have been creating their own "reality shows" — sites built around high-concept, supposedly real-life but obviously staged scenarios. Among the first and most well-known were Bang Bus and MILF Hunter. Now someone has jumped on the latest bandwagon with Who Wants to Fuck a Billionaire? Here's the catch: he's not really a billionaire! (Note: these links all have hardcore content. The Billionaire site has a particularly misogynistic tone. Bang Bus has pop-ups, but the other two links should be pop-up-free.)
Moxie on Joe Millionaire episodes three and four.
Willamette Week has three penis pieces on one page: a review of Puppetry of the Penis, "Meet My Penis" by longtime Daze pal Byron Beck, and "Having a Penis Is..." by Grant Menzies.
The Smoking Gun digs up more dirt about a Joe Millionaire player.
One of the trio of "Joe Millionaire" finalists has starred in dozens of kinky bondage and fetish films that feature her being handcuffed, gagged, hog-tied, or bound with duct tape, The Smoking Gun has learned.
While Fox Television has described Sarah Kozer's occupation as "sales and design," the 29-year-old Los Angeles woman has a far more interesting entry on her resume: in the past few years she has starred in bondage films like "Novices in Knots," "Hogtied," and "Helpless Heroines," an well as foot fetish titles like "Dirty Soled Dolls." The 1998 graduate of Virginia's George Mason University is credited in these films as "Cindy Schubert."
An article at E! calls them "soft-core porn films."
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Christopher Monks comments on President Bush's State of the Union address through fresh, sexy, and scintillating erotic poetry.
Shere Hite talks about the "female sexual dysfunction" controversy and the development of Viagra-like medication for women. "We don't need a pill to arouse women. We need a new approach to human intimacy."
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Mark Morford's latest column consists entirely of spam. "Horny bandcamp girl is here! There is naked flute girl! Need a new driver's license? Too many points or other trouble? Want a license that can never be suspended or revoked?"
Chris Ziegler at Orange County Weekly takes a sympathetic but skeptical look at punk porn, sometimes called alternative porn or alt-porn.
Lakshmi Chaudhry issues a humorously polemical call for better porn. "The unfashionable truth is that I have mostly embraced pornography on principle rather than as a personal practice. The last time I watched a smutty video was as a freshman in college, in the company of giggling, wide-eyed girls. From what I can recall, we were mostly bemused and a little bored – even though half of us were still virgins. Fifteen years later, my sexual tastes are still lagging stubbornly behind my political beliefs. The monotonous blur of clits, tits and dicks, delivered in vivid anatomical detail, quite frankly makes my head ache. Really, who gets off on this stuff?"
Bordello photographs by Vee Speers. (Link snagged from Indie Nudes.)
Michel Houellebecq offers a morbid, deadpan commentary on cloning. "I hate my father, I'm ambivalent about my son and I dislike myself. But I want to be cloned as soon as possible. It is the only consolation that science has to offer me against death."
Though I'm an avowed secular humanist atheist, this church doesn't sound so bad:
Photo snagged from the always profound Uffish Thoughts.
The Sun says miniskirts are back. "Hemlines have never gone higher since the sexy style took centre stage in the Sixties. Now celebs including Victoria Beckham and Geri Halliwell are often spotted wearing the tiniest of skirts."
2, 4, 6, 8, another naked anti-war protest: 22 naked men form a peace sign on a hillside near Gainsville, Florida.
From rec.sport.baseball, the All "Sounds-Like-Burlesque-Strippers" Team. Just sixteen days til spring training begins.
Uffish got spammed about a proposed new holiday.
Monday, January 27, 2003
The Atlantic Monthly has two current articles about modern trends in not having sex. Caitlin Flanagan writes about marriages without sex. "Marriage used to provide access to sex. Now it provides access to celibacy." Cullen Murphy writes about "revirginization" or premarital celibacy, in which sexually active couples decide to stop having sex for a set period before their wedding.
Good New York Times piece about the pharmaceutical companies' drive to develop and market a female counterpart to Viagra. "In fact, part of the problem for researchers is reaching a definition of female sexual dysfunction — but they are eager to do so because some anticipate a $6-billion-a-year market. Still, it may be several years before treatments for women appear on drugstore shelves."
Sunday, January 26, 2003
The 2003 AVN award winners (aka, the porno Oscars) were announced last week in Las Vegas. Village Voice critic Johnny Maldoro attended the ceremony and hobnobbed with stars at the post-show parties.
Pornstar Jeff Stryker is launching a new side career as a country singer. This page has booking information and mp3s of songs like "What a Man Has to Do" and "Pop You in the Pooper". (Link snagged from Jonno.)
Lingam Gnosis is "the ancient art of penis reading."
Another nude anti-war protest in a Marin county pasture.
EuropaWorld: "Representatives from governments and sex workers associations joined United Nations officials in Geneva on 22 January for the start of unprecedented talks aimed at identifying strategies to halt the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Some 35 representatives from the UN, governments and sex work networks and organizations attended a two-day consultative workshop organized by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The workshop was seeking to identify strategies for the UN and sex worker communities to collaborate in preventing the spread and mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS among sex workers, according to UNAIDS."
Chronotope collects several good links related to the Rolling Stone "bug chasers" controversy.
Rolling Stone has published an article by Gregory A. Freeman which claims that 25% of new HIV infections among gay men occur among "bug chasers," men who actively seek out the virus. The article has already been widely denounced and the 25% figure thoroughly debunked. Seth Mnookin at Newsweek tracked down two doctors quoted in the Rolling Stone piece, both of whom say Freeman distorted or fabricated their statements about the prevalence of "bug chasing." Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage both rip the article as shoddy, sensationalistic and inaccurate.
