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Web Log Archives: June 01, 2003 - June 07, 2003

Friday, June 6, 2003

A celebrity photo broker is shopping nude photographs of Amber Frey, the other woman in the Laci Peterson murder case, to Hustler. According to one report, the broker asked for $500,000, while Larry Flynt offered $50,000.

Liam Neeson visited the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University this week to prepare for his lead role in the Alfred Kinsey biopic.

Thursday, June 5, 2003

The Globe and Mail previews an adult webmaster convention in Montreal this weekend, and explains why Montreal has become a "major hub of the Internet pornography business."

Much ado about smut-free DVDs. "Three small companies that manufacture technologies that filter out the sex, gore and violence from DVD movies are hoping to avoid a protracted legal fight with Hollywood. . . . The companies sell hardware and software applications that allow consumers to automatically skip or mute obscene or sexually explicit content in movies. They claim that the technology does not alter the movie itself, but customizes the way the film is viewed."

Fun NY Times item about a book party held at a strip club, for Ian Spiegelman's first novel Everyone's Burning. Spiegelman explains, "I've gone to a lot of book parties and I almost never have fun at any of them. My personality really isn't Elaine's. It's more Privilege."

Nerve has an excerpt from Everyone's Burning in its Sex & Drugs Issue.

From the archives: Will Wank for Food: The Slacker's Guide to Porn Stardom. "The plan occurred to me while I was between jobs, reading through the New York Times classifieds. Remembering the old adage, 'Do what you love,' I quickly concluded that none of the described professions fit the bill. I was forced to ask myself what it is, exactly, that I love. The answer came back very clearly: Interacting with naked women." Make sure to read the many clueless "how can I break into porn too?" responses below the article.

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Rolling Stone has a feature article about Jonah Falcon, with a lengthy excerpt online.

Jonah Falcon's penis is 9.5 inches flaccid, 13.5 inches erect. Tense your forearm. Now wrap your hand around the middle of the muscle. That is the girth of Falcon's erection. Those who have witnessed it describe it as "grotesque," "gorgeous," "hideous" and "stunning." Falcon, who stands five foot nine, thinks his penis is perfectly formed, with a fifteen-degree downward curvature at the six-inch mark and absent the blotching, lumpiness and sudden bends that mark some oversize sex organs. A penis this size functions, physiologically, like any other, according to urologists, a claim substantiated by Falcon. His balls are proportionately huge, each the size of a grade-A jumbo egg. When erect, Falcon's penis generates enough heat to warm hands -- campfire style -- from a distance of six inches.

Rolling Stone provided a "see it for yourself" link to Falcon's personal site, but his free-hosting service has already shut down the site for excessive bandwidth. Photos of Falcon's penis have apparently made the funny-forwarded-email rounds. Here's the only photo I could find via Google.

Jonah Falcon previously got a spate of press in 1999. Michael Musto ranked him #1 on a list of crassly self-promoting New York scenesters.

Jonah Falcon: Self-described actor-screenwriter who parades around in seemingly painted-on spandex shorts which highlight his gargantuan shlong, thereby giving one the willy ("It's 13-and-a-half erect, nine-and-a-half soft," he informs). Leaves me messages like "I want to tell you about how I showed my penis to Leonardo and his friends" and "I'm the guy with the large penis. I'm sure you noticed me dancing in the audience at the Donna Summer concert last night. I made quite a scene." Showed up 90 minutes early for our photo shoot and got into a verbal tussle with Voice doormen over whether he could eat in the lobby. Lately, he's been faxing and enthusing about his appearance on HBO, in which he talks about his burgeoning drama career. Kidding — he talks about his penis.

Amy Reiter mentioned him in her Salon gossip column a few years ago.

Jonah Falcon, 28, is so proud of his 13-inch-long, three-inch-wide member, he's writing a screenplay (non-pornographic, he insists) chronicling its ups and downs (and you thought the creators of "Boogie Nights" had already done that). He's calling his flick, charmingly, "Jonah: Confessions of a Horse-Hung Boy."

He was also mentioned in this Village Voice review of the HBO documentary called Private Dicks.

Internet Battle Raises Questions About the First Amendment.

Katy Johnson, who was Miss Vermont in 1999 and again in 2001, uses her site to promote what she calls her "platform of character education." "She is founder of Say Nay Today and the Sobriety Society," the site says, "and her article 'ABC's of Abstinence' was featured in Teen magazine."

Tucker Max's site promotes something like the opposite of character education. It contains a form through which women can apply for a date with him, pictures of his former girlfriends and reports on what Mr. Max calls his "belligerence and debauchery." Until a Florida judge issued an unusual order last month, Mr. Max's site also contained a long account of his relationship with Ms. Johnson, whom he portrayed, according to court papers, as vapid, promiscuous and an unlikely candidate for membership in the Sobriety Society.

The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson's, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints. [...]

Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use "Katy" on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson's last name, full name or the words "Miss Vermont." The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from "disclosing any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by" Ms. Johnson. That prohibition is not limited to his Web site. Finally, Judge Lewis ordered Mr. Max to sever the virtual remains of his relationship with Ms. Johnson. He is no longer allowed to link to her Web site.

Count me among the alarmed First Amendment non-experts.

Tuesday, June 3, 2003

Debra Hyde discusses sex and literary fiction, in response to the Duane Kuiper article linked in yesterday's Daze. Meanwhile, Susannah Breslin cruises BookExpo America.

ifeminists presents a Sexy Manifesto by "Jenny".

You know what I mean. The angry "women's libber" with the crew cut and khakis and the non existant libido, above all else. This asexual, curmudgeony creature has been trotted out since the days of women's suffrage, when editorial illustrators would create woodcuts of dour, cigar chomping "suffragettes" complete with facial stubble and warts. This fictitious person who's...I dunno, running around setting porn shops on fire or lobbying to have the male race banned, or whatever it is the patriarchal opposition is afraid of. Apparently since I'm wont to rail against rapists, anti-abortionists, stalkers, and the like, I'm supposed to look this way. And I'm supposed to never crack a dirty joke or flirt with a cute guy either. Trouble is, I just don't see what one has to do with the other. Or more precisely, I don't see what believing in equality has to do with compromising one's sexuality.

The Icelandic Women's Rights Association and the Centre for Gender Equality are suing Icelandair over what they consider sexist advertising to promote Iceland tourism.

Perhaps it was the new game on the airline's website in which points are scored by snatching the bikini tops off giggling girls that brought the rage to a Geyser-like eruption.

Or maybe what set them off was the ad in the London Underground calling on travellers to go to Iceland to "pester a beauty queen", topping off a long series of similarly ambiguous invitations. [...]

"One-night stand in Iceland" reads one infamous slogan from the past, inviting Americans and Europeans to stop over for a night on trans-Atlantic flights.

In another ad, an image of a young couple taking a mud bath was accompanied by the caption offering Britons "a dirty weekend".

Not to mention the one where three, obviously naked girls cuddled each other in a ridiculously oversized Icelandic sweater.

This all sounds titillating and playful and not particularly sexist, except for the "snatching bikini tops" game, which sounds nonconsensual and violating. I couldn't find this game at Icelandair's website.

Reuters: "High-speed Internet access in Europe continues to grow at a healthy rate, boosted by consumer demand for file-sharing, pornography and music, a new study said on Thursday."

Money: "Though porn and music downloads may be the driving force behind broadband growth in Europe, high-speed Internet users in the U.S. tend to be more ordinary -- using the higher speeds for such basic computer tasks as checking e-mail and weather reports. . . . 'The motivation for most people to get broadband in the U.S. is for the more mundane tasks,' said Jed Kolko, principal analyst with Forrester Research. 'Broadband is more widespread and mainstream in the U.S., so it caters to a more basic user who's not as interested in music downloads or adult sites.'" Americans (and "ordinary" people in general) aren't interested in porn and music — what a load of crap.

Adult Video News has more background on the Jennifer Dute case.

The court of appeals found that judge Patrick Dinkelacker had committed two major errors during the trial: A refusal to admit Gangland 17, an interracial video that had been found not to be obscene during the Elyse Metcalf trial, as comparable to the tapes at issue here, Jennifer 2, 3, 6 and 7, which starred the defendant, a Caucasian woman, having sex with various black men, and a failure by the court to allow defense counsel to question jurors as to their awareness of prejudicial local news coverage that occurred during the trial, or in the alternative, to have declared a mistrial based on that publicity.

So why have Cincinnati prosecutors been targeting interracial videos? Is interracial sex more obscene than the same sex acts performed by people of the same race? It doesn't surprise me that there are still people who think so, but it's an outrage that prosecutors would try to exploit that prejudice in seeking convictions.

AVN reported on Jennifer Dute's trial and conviction last October (unfortunately before they discovered the <p> tag).

Amazing science from the Annals of Improbable Research: Jennifer A. Zimmerman analyzes The Effect of Television on Sexual Behavior. "Prior research strongly suggests that sexual intercourse is a cause of pregnancy. Therefore, if television prevents people from engaging in sexual intercourse, it might also prevent pregnancy. Furthermore, a decrease in the number of pregnancies might produce a lower birth rate. With that in mind, this study set out to determine whether television-watching is an effective form of birth control."

Monday, June 2, 2003

Dean Kuipers complains that there's not enough good sex in modern literature. "Sex in literature, like sex in real life, doesn't mean what it used to mean. In the post-feminist and post-postmodern world, sex is so loaded with assumption (who's being exploited? who empowered?) that writers and readers censor themselves, regardless of gender or who (or what) we eroticize. We've reached a point where, in an orgy of political correctness, everything is true, and nothing is permitted." Grad studenty quibble: doesn't "post-feminist" generally mean accepting feminism's goal of social equality while rejecting its politically-correct and victim-oriented strands? I have no idea what "post-postmodern" means. (Nosy LA Times registration required.)

The East African Standard (Nairobi, Kenya) runs two columns about sex education today by Catherine Wanyama and Hydin Gethin.

Cincinnati Post: "Because jurors who convicted Jennifer Dute last year of pandering obscenity didn't get to see similar porn videos declared not obscene, her conviction and one-year prison sentence were thrown out Friday by a divided Ohio appeals court panel. . . . Dute, 33, was convicted of four counts of pandering obscenity by a Hamilton County jury last year that reached its decision after watching four of the home-made porn videos Dute made and starred in. Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Dinkelacker, who presided over that case and sent Dute to prison, ruled porn videos declared not obscene in another trial couldn't be presented as evidence in Dute's trial. The appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, said the other porn videos should have been shown to the Dute trial jury and cited that as an error that gets her a new trial."

Spent much of my long, lazy weekend listening to the new Led Zeppelin live CD.

Squeeze my lemon til the juice runs down my leg. I think you know what I'm talking about.

Susan Fast, "Rethinking Issues of Gender and Sexuality in Led Zeppelin: A Woman's View of Pleasure and Power in Hard Rock" (American Music, fall 1999).

LedZeppelin.ru has 4000 band photos, sortable by year or person, including a small section devoted to Led Zeppelin with groupies.

Damn, how come internationally renowned sex bloggers don't get groupies?

"Tijuana Bibles were pornographic tracts popular in America before the advent of mass-market full-color glossy wank-fodder such as Playboy. A typical bible consisted of eight stapled comic-strip frames portraying characters and celebrities (eg. John Dillinger, Popeye, Disney characters) in wildly sodomistic situations. Many could be considered grossly racist, sexist, and otherwise wholly 'politically incorrect.'" This great site has complete scans of several dozen Tijuana Bibles.

A few years ago, The Position ran a short article about Tijuana Bibles and reprinted the epic 32-page In the Old Town Tonight. No celebrities or comic strip characters, but lots of hot girl-girl action.

The coffeetableish anthology Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s, edited by Bob Adelman, came out in 1997. Salon published Art Spiegelman's introduction and an enthusiastic review by Susie Bright. "Even though the book is filled with top-quality scholarly research and analysis from the finest minds in funnies, with beautiful reproductions on smooth creamy paper, the end result of perusing this bodacious collection of old-timer erotica is that I feel horny, mischievous and irrepressibly rude."