Daze Reader

Weblog Archive: February 17, 2008 to Feb 23, 2008

Friday, February 22, 2008

http://www.dazereader.com/24001090.htm Gene Simmons is a pig. Daze Reader usually adores flamboyant, cocky rockstars who flaunt their superhuman libidos, but Simmons' boorish, joyless demeanor ruins the effect. He's the Mike Ditka of rock and roll.

And he's an unoriginal pig. He has spent the last decade latching onto lame pop culture trends, hoping to cash in with crass knockoffs. He joined the lads-mag craze with a Maxim clone called Gene Simmons' Tongue, which lasted five issues. After boasting that he'd slept with thousands of women and would never get married because women just wanted his money, he signed on for an Osbornes clone "home life of aging rock star and his family" reality show.

And now he's jumped on the ultimate 00s pop culture bandwagon with his own unauthorized celebrity sex tape. There's a website based in Panama where you can pay $10 to watch it, or you can scour the bittorrent sites where it's bound to show up for free, or you can watch three minutes of excerpts at Valleywag. Highlight: classy Gene doesn't even take his shoes or pants off for the quickie; he climbs onto the bed with his pants bunched around his ankles.

Simmons' lawyers have sent cease-and-desist letters to assorted sites, arguing that the tape was made surreptitiously and illegally, that Simmons bought the copyright to the tape years ago, and that humorous use of Kiss face-painting imagery and "stylized printing" infringes the band's trademarks.


Thursday, February 21, 2008

http://www.dazereader.com/24001089.htm Unzipped historian Tony Perrottet offers a short history of castrati, including their surprisingly scandalous sex lives.

For Europe’s high society women, the obvious benefit of built-in contraception made castrati ideal targets for discreet affairs. Soon popular songs and pamphlets began suggesting that castration actually enhanced a man’s sexual performance, as the lack of sensation ensured extra endurance; stories spread of the castrati as considerate lovers, whose attention was entirely focused on the woman. As one groupie eagerly put it, the best of the singers enjoyed “a spirit in no wise dulled, and a growth of hair that differs not from other men.” When the most handsome castrato of all, Farinelli, visited London in 1734, a poem written by an anonymous female admirer derided local men as “Bragging Boasters” whose enthusiasm “expires too fast, While F-----lli stands it to the last.”

Don't miss the mp3 of a 1902 recording of the last prominent castrato, Alessandro Moreschi.


http://www.dazereader.com/24001088.htm The Onion has countless imitators but no real challengers in the funny fake news biz. Its secret: it's actually funny. For example: Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At. Anyone can take a promising comic premise and beat it to death with witless, hamfisted, predictable gags, and the internet is full of "humor" sites that do just that. The Onion piece is sly, insightful and brilliant, and still made me laugh out loud on third reading.

Another classic from last fall: Use Of 'N-Word' May End Porn Star's Career.