Web Log Archives: February 02, 2003 - February 08, 2003
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
Very clever little web game: Hunt the Peach.
Paul Fisher at Haypenny: My Very First and Most Recent Experiences With a Nude Girl and How I Tell Them Apart.
Philo at East West writes: "A little over two weeks ago I made a conscious decision to put an end to ejaculation! It could continue for days, it could even last a lifetime. What started as an adventure in simple personal curiosity, a what would happen if I changed how the clock ticks experiment, has resulted in something wonderful and a brand new awareness of sex, sensuality, masturbation and the holy temple that is my body."
Amy Sohn in New York writes: "If the lipstick lesbian was the gay icon of the nineties, these days she’s been replaced by her more controversial counterpart, the hasbian: a woman who used to date women but now dates men. Though Anne Heche is the most prominent example, many hasbians (sometimes called LUGS: lesbians until graduation) are by-products of nineties liberal-arts educations. Caught up in the gay scene at school, they came out at 20 or 21 and now, five or ten years later, are finding themselves in the odd position of coming out all over again—as heterosexuals." (Link snagged from East West.)
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
The PornOrchestra project is devoted to "composing and improvising new soundtracks for existing porn films." The new music will be performed as live accompaniment during screenings in the Bay Area. artsflow interviews Shannon Mariemont about the project.
So the PornOrchestra in this incarnation is attempting to radically reinterpret pornographic soundtrack, first by simply being present; secondly by creating sounds that recontextualize the visual events; thirdly by inviting people from diverse backgrounds to reflect openly on this enormous, and enormously closeted, cultural form. One of the participating musicians told me for him this project is "an experiment in subverting the commercial element of the original to present the inner world." Another mused that it could just be "really hot, or really evil, or both and sick, or maybe a little beautiful."
PornOrchestra's premiere performance will be held March 22 in Oakland. (Thanks, Chris.)
Another group is doing something similar at the incredibly fantastic Alamo Drafthouse theater-restaurant in Daze Reader's hometown of Austin. The troupe led by Buzz Moran performs live dialogue, music and sound effects to accompany movies screened with the original soundtrack turned off. They started with 1970s kung fu films, as described in this local alt-weekly profile.
While the Kung Fu Masterpiece Theater's closest comparable antecedent may be Woody Allen's 1966 Japanese spy spoof What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Moran and company are actually doing something quite different here, deriving their humor not from overdubbed gags but from a combination of virtuosic foley work and a poker-faced reading of the films' original English dialogue, inscrutable translation quirks and all. And so, as the Golden Arm Trio's Graham Reynolds performs an original live score to the film, Moran and his fellow actors Shannon McCormick, Chad Nicols, and Chris Meister reverentially intone such awkward lines as "He won't escape, not after I blast him with my great undefeatable solar ray!" while simultaneously providing sound effects through such unlikely methods as leaping up and down in troughs of gravel, shaking huge sheets of galvanized metal, and banging coconut halves on a thin strip of wood.
The group later applied the same approach with 1970s porno films, starting with Disco Dolls in Hot Skin 3-D. (Unfortunately, during the run of Disco Dolls, Alamo management was informed that Texas law doesn't allow pornographic films to be screened in establishments that serve alcohol. This forced the theater to substitute their original 35mm hardcore print with an edited Cinemaxesque video version.) Next month, Moran and company will screen and perform the porn parody Fantasex Island. "By some odd coincidence, all of Mr. Rourke's guests on Fantasex Island seem to have fantasies involving sexual intercourse. What are the odds?"
Courtney Love did a bizarre nude photo shoot for Q magazine, and some enterprising fan has posted full-page scans: one, two, three.
In court filings to the California Supreme Court, Network Solutions claims that holding it liable for the 1995 sex.com domain theft "would cripple the Internet and jeopardize the national economic benefit for e-commerce [and] threaten all Internet registrars' survival". The Register doesn't buy it.
Monday, February 3, 2003
Deirdre Dolan in the New York Observer delves into the world of pro-anorexia or "pro-ana" websites. "They are places where girls at every stage of the disease go to seek out sympathetic sufferers and feel accepted. But what worries doctors is that the sites often encourage girls to embrace their disease, to lose even more weight, rather than seek treatment. Some of the sites describe themselves as 'pro-choice' or 'pro-tolerant,' and have names like 'The Thin Page,' 'Starving for Perfection' and 'Ana by Choice.'"
Dolan previously wrote a much-linked piece about casual high school lesbianism. After that article appeared, the increasingly sex-obsessed Bill O'Reilly picked up the story and interviewed Dolan on The O'Reilly Factor.
The National Abstinence Clearinghouse will be holding its 2003 conference in Las Vegas. According to the organization's newsletter, "we were certain that the abstinence message must be brought to this region. . . . Also, our research confirmed that Las Vegas is most accommodating for our affiliates' travel."
wKen is skeptical about various wild sex stories in the news lately. "If you believe half of what you read, it will seem like everybody is having sex with everyone else, except you. The whole world’s an orgy, and you are the only eunuch. Sucks if it’s true, but I’ve never lived in that kind of world."
ABC's Primetime Live ran a critical segment on the porn industry two weeks ago, recapped at abcnews.com with a feature article and video clips. Though the intro stressed the fact that "some of the nation's best-known corporations are quietly sharing the profits," much of the segment dealt with the treatment of performers in the industry. A lengthy section dealt with the career of pornstar Belladonna. Many in the porn industry considered the Primetime Live segment a sensationalistic hatchet job. Mark Kernes at Adult Video News wrote an angry rebuttal. Carly at Pornblography blasted the piece here and here, and later addressed what she considers legitimate problems in the industry.
Quality nude blogging from some of the web's finest nude bloggers:
Links snagged respectively from Geisha asobi, Attu Sees All and Aberrant News.
