Web Log Archives: December 07, 2003 - December 13, 2003
Saturday, December 13, 2003
Coffeetable book of the year: Tart Cards: London’s Illicit Advertising Art. "Tart cards are the means by which providers of sexual services advertise, and they have become as ubiquitous a symbol of that city as the red telephone boxes in which they are found. Since the early 1980s these advertising cards, posted in public phone booths around London, have evolved with technology into a sophisticated graphic and sociological form." The form has apparently spread to Japan.
(Links snagged from Boing Boing, Fleshbot and Geisha asobi.)
Lawrence Walters, a lawyer who specializes in adult industry free speech issues, discusses the Tammy Robinson obscenity case. Robinson and her husband ran an amateur pornsite from their Florida home, before the county sheriff's office investigated and arrested them in 1999. Walters helped them fight the case and get the charges dismissed. The good guys won, but the case is still disturbing. Robinson has her site back up, including a daily journal.
Friday, December 12, 2003
Fourteen people are on trial in China for organizing an orgy between 400 Japanese tourists and 500 local prostitutes. The three-day sex party took place in September at a hotel in Zhuhai, "ending on September 18 — the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden Incident, when Japanese forces attacked a city in the north-east of China."
China Daily reports that the defendants include "a manager of the hotel where the incident occurred, night club bosses, pimps, prostitutes and the employees of a local Japanese-funded tour company." This article also notes that "the prostitutes earned between 800 yuan (US$96) and 1,800 yuan (US$216) a night."
The orgy has sparked a massive cultural snit in China. According to Japanese news service Mainichi, "The hearings are grabbing public attention in both China and Japan, as the allegations that Japanese tourists used the service of many Chinese prostitutes sparked anti-Japanese sentiment among Chinese people." The Chinese state-run newspaper People Daily ran an editorial in September entitled Japanese orgy hurts feelings of Chinese.
CNN discovers that internet porn is big business. "It's difficult to derive reliable figures from an industry that, despite flirtations with the mainstream, is made up of many small shops that prefer to keep a low profile. But the figures that exist paint a picture of a booming online field, fueled by the relatively low costs of setting up shop, fickle consumers in constant search of new thrills and the promise of quick profits."
Thursday, December 11, 2003
From last weekend's Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon interviews Paris Hilton about her family's hotel chain.
FALLON: Is it hard to get into the Paris Hilton?
PARIS: Actually, it's a very exclusive hotel, no matter what you've heard.
FALLON: I hear the Paris Hilton is very beautiful.
PARIS: I'm glad you've heard that.
FALLON: Do they allow double occupancy at the Paris Hilton?
PARIS: No.
FALLON: Is the Paris Hilton roomy?
PARIS: It might be for you, but most people find it very comfortable.
FALLON: I'm a VIP. I may need to go in the back entrance.
PARIS: It doesn't matter who you are. It's not gonna happen.
Wow, she wins "good sport of the year" award. Prince Charles should do something like this. This unofficial SNL site has an interview transcript and the whole "Weekend Update" segment in RealVideo. . . . Also pretty clever, the Paris Hilton sex tape Barbie.
(Links snagged from Cup of Chicha.)
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Ewan McGregor does a full-frontal nude scene in his new movie Young Adam, but his penis has been edited out of the US release version. Fortunately for lusty Americans, someone has compiled several frames from Young Adam into a looping Flash animation of the noted thespian pene.
Jack Boulware, The Joie de Vivre of Alan Greenspan.
Tuesday, December 9, 2003
Asia Times: "A succession of 'kiss and tell' books and 'one-night stand' diaries, full of what officials call pornographic detail, have both fascinated and shocked Chinese readers in recent months, marking the emergence of the topic of sex out of the closet. Long a social taboo, sex has somewhat overnight become a boldly public subject, drawing attention from university auditoriums to press rooms and publishing houses. Scholars on sexology and sociology have just unveiled their list of China's 'top 10 sex-related news stories in 2003' and announced that they will make their evaluation an annual event."
Literary scholar Betsy Prioleau has written a book called Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love. It's both a learned historical study (mercifully free of academicese) and a dating self-help book.
Reading Prioleau's fascinating new book, which features profiles of 50 of the world's most famous seductresses -- from Cleopatra to Catherine the Great to Mae West -- it becomes clear that physical beauty was not -- and is not -- a required attribute in the arts of seduction. Many, if not most, of the women she writes about were not beauties. Far more important are the gifts of wit, brains, empathy and self-sufficiency -- the opposite of neediness.
"Women in this country need to be deprogrammed and detoxed!" Prioleau laughs dryly. "They are going about this love thing all wrong. If the first thing you said to a guy was, 'Let's not have a real relationship, let's just have fun' -- and maybe even tell him that you're allergic to marriage -- I promise you that in Week 2, that man will be on his knees wanting to know where this relationship is going."
David Bowman interviewed Betsy Prioleau at Salon, accompanied by a slideshow gallery of legendary seductresses. More and more.
"Using software processes of his own design, Jason Salavon generates and reconfigures masses of communal material to present new perspectives on the familiar." Pieces include: 76 Blowjobs and Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades.
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Adult Video News has announced the nominees for the 2004 AVN Awards. The winners will be announced January 10 at an awards ceremony in Las Vegas, hosted by Jenna Jameson and comedian Jim Norton. The equivalent of "best picture" nominees are:
Best Film: Compulsion; Heart of Darkness; Heaven's Revenge; Looking In; Snakeskin; Sordid
Best Video Feature: Acid Dreams; Barbara Broadcast Too!; Beautiful; Improper Conduct; Little Runaway; Magic Sex; New Wave Hookers 7; No Limits; Not a Romance; Perverted Stories The Movie; Phoenix Rising 2; Rawhide; Riptide; Stud Hunters; Tricks; Young Sluts Inc 12
Someone made a sequel to Barbara Broadcast 25 years later?
Carly at Pornblography has a must-read, info-packed post about the awards. She used to work at AVN, and she provides a behind-the-scenes account of the how the staff decides on nominations. She then comments:
That being said, I think porn awards are hilariously funny. The thing is, I recognize that they have some kind of importance because how else are the people who work so hard in this industry going to be formally recognized for their achievements? But at the same time, we’re handing out awards for the girl who takes it up the ass the best. Certainly a skill, but does it really need to be recognized with an overpriced Lucite mantelpiece?
Finally, she decides to launch the First Annual Pornblography Awards for achievements overlooked by the official awards. Categories include: Best Drool; Performer Whose Sex Noises Most Closely Resemble The Sounds Of A Tortured Farm Animal; Most Retarded Use of Technology; Best Orgasm Face; Most Gaping Asshole To The Point It Stopped Being Sexy And Started Being Gross; Stupidest Boxcover Misspelling; and many more.
