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Web Log Archives: June 22, 2003 - June 28, 2003

Saturday, June 28, 2003

Orange County Weekly looks at a new anti-porn TV ad campaign created by xxxchurch.com and starring a dwarf.

Poor Eddie. The midget with the spiky blond hair, soul patch and multiple hoop earrings tries with all his might to jump up and reach the skateboard hanging on the wall, but a taller shopkeep has to pull it down for him. Then Eddie tries to accept a ride in a jacked-up pickup, but he can’t clear the bottom of the door. . . . "Poor Eddie. He thought he could look at all the porn he wanted to without any apparent consequences to his life. If only someone would have told him, if only someone had warned Eddie that porn would STUNT HIS GROWTH!"

They've been running the spot on shows like Jackass, The Howard Stern Show and The Man Show, which have all featured dwarf/midget humor recently. OK, I'm glad so many little people are getting work in Hollywood, but is the very presence of a dwarf really all that funny? I don't get it. The second half of the article profiles the two pastors behind xxxchurch.com and describes some of their new TV spots in the works.

David Chess does a close reading of Scalia's dissent in the Texas sodomy case.

Friday, June 27, 2003

The Lusty Lady in San Francisco was the world's first unionized strip club. Now it has become the world's first worker-owned co-operative strip club. A group of employees purchased the club after the previous owners shut it down earlier this year.

This article also describes the Lusty Lady layout: "It's one of the few nude venues that uses the 'Peep-show' arrangement. The dancers work in a small semicircular room. There are windows to the room, and those windows open to small booths. The customers enter the booth and drop in quarters, which raise the curtain to the dance room for short periods of time. There are no lap dances, no sticking dollar bills under (tax deductible?) G- strings, no physical contact." Damn, that sounds even more depressing than normal strip clubs.

Today the Supreme Court set aside the 17-year prison sentence imposed on a Kansas teenage boy for having consensual oral sex with a younger teen boy. Under Kansas law, all sex between someone aged 14-16 and someone older than 16 is statutory rape. For boy-girl sex the maximum penalty is fifteen months in prison, and probation is more common; sentences for same-sex couples can run much higher, and probation is not available. The ACLU took on the case and challenged the legality of the disparity in sentencing. The Supreme Court ordered Kansas courts to review the case in light of yesterday's landmark ruling overturning sodomy laws. More.

Elsewhere, a small Kansas anti-gay group flew to Massachusetts to demonstrate at a Harvard graduation ceremony. The photograph accompanying the article is scary and heartbreaking.

Evening Mail: "A burning cargo of sex toys closed one of the country’s busiest sections of motorway and brought the Midlands to a standstill today. Paraphernalia including whips, plastic breasts and dolls spilled from the wagon and onto the road as fire crews sought to make the lorry safe."

(Link snagged from Penda's Realm and Die Puny Humans.)

Laugh-out-loud funny line from Anthony Lane's New Yorker review of 28 Days Later.

The rest of the city—and, we gather, of England and other nations—has been blighted by an enraging plague, helpfully described as “something in the blood.” More often than not, you catch it from a bite, and then, within twenty seconds, you start frothing at the mouth and try to bite the person next to you. Anybody who has ever tried speed dating will recognize the symptoms.

I managed to catch an advance screening of 28 Days Later last night, and am happy to report that it rocks. Not as good as Shallow Grave or Trainspotting, but better than any Hollywood horror film in years. They really should have thought up a better title though, if only to avoid the "so it's not a sequel to the Sandra Bullock movie?" confusion.

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Today is not only Sodomy Day (which henceforth should be a national holiday, doncha think?), it's also Appropriate Michael Savage's Name For Your Own Purposes Day. Neal Pollack has links to all the participating sites as well as the man himself's kickoff contribution, My Name Is Michael Savage, And I Am A Homosexual Who Enjoys The Private Company Of Immigrants.

More talk about the Supreme Court decision on sodomy at Andrewsullivan.com, Metafilter and Slate.

As most court-watchers expected, the Supreme Court has overturned the Texas sodomy ban. However, the extent of the ruling isn't clear yet. This MSNBC story states:

Similar laws outlawing sodomy — defined as oral or anal intercourse — between gay or lesbian couples are on the books in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri and apparently were invalidated by Thursday’s ruling. Nine other states have banned sodomy for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. It was not immediately clear whether the ruling also would strike them.

However, the Dow Jones newswire story states:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday used a Texas same-sex sodomy law to strike down all sodomy laws that remain in 13 states. The surprise ruling went further than the legal question presented in the case and invalidates laws that bar both homosexual and heterosexual anal and oral sex.

I'll try to track down more info. Either way, it's a glorious day for sexual freedom in the United States.

UPDATE: This Christian Science Monitor story also says the Supreme Court decision strikes down all thirteen state sodomy laws.

Although she joined in the judgment of the court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor did not share in the majority's endorsement of a bedroom privacy right. Instead, she said that in her view the Texas law was unconstitutional because it violated equal-protection principles of the 14th Amendment by requiring gay Texans to face criminal penalties for conduct that was not illegal for heterosexual couples. [...]

The landmark ruling invalidates similar anti-sodomy laws that apply only to homosexuals in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. It also strikes down anti-sodomy laws in nine other states that criminalize those same sexual acts for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Those states are: Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Utah, Virginia, Idaho, and Mississippi.

So O'Connor would have preferred to strike down only the four homosexual-only laws, but the other five in the majority — Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer — supported striking down all sodomy laws. (Unless I'm misreading this or missing some legal nuances, which is certainly possible.)

Elsewhere, a collection of quotes from various Justices, lawyers and activists.

UPDATE: Here are the majority opinion and dissenting opinion in PDF.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Great, long feature article in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday magazine: Young lesbians transitioning into men are shaking the foundation of the lesbian-feminist world.

A boom in the number of people transitioning from female to male (referred to as FTMs) has been stirring up controversy, even within the lesbian community. There are those who are feeling curiously uncomfortable standing by as friends morph into men. Sometimes there is a generational flavor to this discomfort; many in the over-40 crowd feel particular unease. Having lived through the fiery feminist years, when challenging male power was central to a particular agenda, some lesbians have gone so far as to say they feel betrayed by those "transitioning" - the street parlance for crossing genders. Twenty years ago life as a butch lesbian seemed the obvious path for a masculine- identified gay female. Now, young lesbians immediately enter a community in which the option to change genders is readily available - an option that some say they might be taking up too lightly, injecting their bodies with testosterone and having radical breast-reduction surgery before they've had time to explore who they might be as adults. (Very few FTMs undergo genital reconstruction: The operations are costly, painful and have yet to produce a fully functional penis.)

(Link snagged from Rose, who notes, "Now that's a headline.")

Wired: Filter-Bashing Alive and Well.

Filtering opponents criticized the ruling on the grounds that even if the practice is constitutional, no one seems convinced that porn-blocking programs actually do their job. . . . "The errors go both ways," Weingarten said. "First, it does not catch all pornography. How could it? And secondly, it blocks a lot of non-pornographic material." [...]

Another concern libraries have with blocking software, Weingarten said, is the lack of information about the methodologies used to categorize sites. "Companies treat both their stop lists and decision matrixes as trade secrets," he said. "Libraries are instructed to install these filters and they don't even know what's on the block list and what the criteria are for blocking."

David Burt, spokesman for N2H2, contends that filtering programs have improved substantially in recent years, with better blocking of obscene content and fewer instances of faulty filtering.

Hopefully this ruling will spur the development of smarter, more customizable, more flexible, library-friendly filtering software. The programs on the market now are like AltaVista and Excite circa 1998, and it shouldn't be that hard to build the Google of filters. If filters worked properly and allowed adults to easily and discreetly disable them for misblocked pages, CIPA wouldn't be all that bad. Keeping children away from internet porn is a reasonable policy goal (though grouping 7-year-olds and 17-year-olds into one category called "children" is problematic). And browsing pornography on public library computers is tacky and creepy; I have no problem with "no pornsurfing" policies, though this seems a matter for library administrators to decide rather than the federal government.

Fascinating MSNBC exposé: Anatomy of a penis pill swindle.

Court documents filed in the case show that the company’s big money-earner was the Longitude penis-enlargement pill, which it described in advertisements as “a breakthrough product that will make your penis grow until you are satisfied with your new size.” The ad recommended that users should discontinue the pills after reaching nine inches in length to avoid discomforting sexual partners.

The company also offered a breast-enlargement pill — Full and Firm, advertised as an “implant in a bottle” that would increase the bust size of the consumer by “two or three cup sizes” in a matter of weeks — as well as other capsules said to perform their own medical miracles: Follicure (grow hair), Stature (increase height by up to four inches) and Long Jack (improve golf game).

The company sold $74 million worth of pills before Arizona officials shut them down.

Recently in the Daze Reader mailbox:

how would i g oabout trying out to be in a porno?

hi, im a bi-sexual male, who is looking to get into the porn industry, i am willing to do anyhting it takes, gay, straight, fetish porn it doesnt matter to me, if you could please send me some info on how i can go about auditioning fo parts or what have you, it would be greatly appreciated thanx.

I thought maybe you could help me. I have searched all over the internet and the local paper and I seem to have no luck. I came across your website and thought it was an interesting news website with lots of links but I still didn’t find what I was looking for. I live in Texas in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and I am looking to get into the porn movie industry.
  I had a friend that was starting in that line of work awhile back and I thought he was somewhat crazy but he moved out to California and I haven’t talked to him since. But because of that ideal it has always been stuck in my head for a long time now and I think I am ready to try and pursue that as a type of job I just don’t know where to start. I was wondering if there was anything or any information you could give me for a place I can go or contact here in Texas that might need a 24 year old, blonde hair, blue eyed boy to begin there first step in the adult industry. Any information would help and thank you for taking your time to read this I appreciate it.

I want tobecome a male porn star.   please check me out at www.geocities.com/shizzy4u

How can I get into porn with Seymore Butts or any one [this was the subject header; the message had no text, and there was a zip attachment that I didn't open — ed]

Hello I am a white 29 year old white male and I was wondering how do I get in the porn movies I am very well hung and I really would like to get into the movies if you can help me in anyway please let me know. D**** P********* (###)###-####

Aspiring pornstars should check out the (mostly discouraging) advice from Dave Cummings and Carly Milne, both listed on Daze Reader's own So You Want to Be a Pornstar page.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Library group targets secrecy of filters. "The nation's librarians, set back by a Supreme Court ruling upholding requirements for Internet filters to block pornography, plan to step up pressure on software vendors to disclose more about how their products work. . . . Filtering vendors have historically given few details about their criteria for blocking sites, saying the information is proprietary. That has raised concerns private companies will be implementing public policy in secret now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can force libraries to install the blocking software or forfeit federal funds. . . . The library association and other critics fear that some filters have been designed with politically conservative or religious biases — a charge denied by leading vendors like N2H2 Inc."

More commentaries from the Christian Science Monitor and Fortune; a pretty fairminded Q&A about the issues; and a good followup NYT article quoting activists from both sides.

Lifestyle journalism on the cover of Newsweek (must be a slow news week): We’re Not In the Mood. "Lately, it seems, we’re just not in the mood. We’re overworked, anxious about the economy—and we have to drive our kids to way too many T-Ball games. Or maybe it’s all those libido-dimming antidepressants we’re taking. We resent spouses who never pick up the groceries or their dirty socks. And if we actually find we have 20 minutes at the end of the day—after bath time and story time and juice-box time and e-mail time—who wouldn’t rather zone out to Leno than have sex? Sure, passion ebbs and flows in even the healthiest of relationships, but judging from the conversation of the young moms at the next table at Starbucks, it sounds like we’re in the midst of a long dry spell."

Shifted Librarian has compiled a useful roundup of links about the Supreme Court decision on library internet filtering. That site also reprints a mailing list commentary about likely consequences for libraries. Elsewhere, Zeldman weighs in.

Business 2.0 has a long feature article about Vivid studio chief Steve Hirsch. "Borrowing tactics from the old Hollywood studios, Vivid Entertainment has ditched the plain brown wrapper and is taking the multibillion-dollar sex-film industry mainstream."

Monday, June 23, 2003

Slate advertising columnist Rob Walker examines Golden Palace's experiment in nude branding. As you'll recall, the online casino hired a pornstar to walk around topless (with pasties) at the U.S. Open.

The annual Erotica LA convention took place over the weekend. The LA Times previewed the festivities last thursday. Carly at Pornblography writes about her day working a booth on the convention floor.

Two great pieces from the archives: Erotica LA 2002 reports from Danny at Puuba and the antiporn hipsters at XXX Church (dead link — guess they're not so hip after all).

The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 today that the Children’s Internet Protection Act is not unconstitutional. CIPA requires public libraries to install filtering software on internet-access computers or lose federal funding. The law was passed in 2000, but hasn't been enforced until now because of legal challenges. More.

The Washington Post prints excerpts from the Supreme Court decision. Or you can read the complete ruling in PDF at supremecourtus.gov.

UPDATE: Commentary on the Supreme Court decision on CIPA from Metafilter and Eugene Volokh.

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Bert Archer at Eye (Toronto alt-weekly) editorializes in praise of fuck after an outrageously petty tiff over the word. "Fucking hell. Rafe Mair, a fine BC radio host with two decades of experience and a whole lot of talent, integrity and devotion to his craft, was fired June 9 for saying 'fuck.' And it wasn't even on the air. It was in his fucking office. Some co-worker complained, feeling it was 'inappropriate.' Mair had, it seems, related a story that featured his dog fucking a rag doll. Mair was spoken to, things escalated, and Mair's radio career was, at least temporarily, fucked."

Top Tory aide is king of the urban swingers.

By day Dougie Smith, 41, is the respectable co-ordinator of Conservatives for Change (Cchange), the influential Tory think tank . . . However, by night Smith runs Fever Parties, a London-based organisation that hosts "five-star" orgies for swingers.

The revelation that Smith is promoting orgies will anger those on the traditional wing of the party. It will also test to the limit the social liberalism of the modernising Tories that Cchange represents. [...]

Smith, himself a swinger, confirmed he organised the parties but insisted he had done nothing wrong: "I have never made a secret about the fact that I run both Cchange and Fever. The two things don't overlap and therefore do not pose a problem. Fortunately we're living in the 21st century and even naturally censorious people tend to feel slightly self-conscious about wagging their fingers at what consenting adults do behind closed doors."

Cool. Titillating accounts of Fever parties follow. (Thanks, Jeremy.)