Sunday, 29 June 2008
| 12:00 am
| Toys
Unicorns too floofy for you? Have a thing for hentai? Enjoy texture, but think you have tried them all? Ah, well, the Tentacle Silicone Dildo is sure to please even the most novelty-seeking of your tendencies. With 19 little suction cups that sort of swirl up the inside of this fantastically curved dildo, you’re definitely going to feel the texture on this squishy silicone tentacle of love. The curve is much steeper on this than most other G-spot dildos, and instead of being a barrier to entry, this means you hit that G-spot without hardly twisting your wrist at all! Since it gets much wider towards the base, as you insert this toy you get that full-up feeling that stretches your senses in the best possible way. And those amusing suction cups aren’t just good inside — try rubbing them over your clit, labia or, for the boys, along your shaft, over the head, etc. 6-1/4″ tall, 1″ wide at the top, expanding to a 2-1/4″ wide base. And, as if all that’s not enough, there’s a notch in the base for a bullet vibrator (not included). No matter what form your tentacle fantasies, take, the Tentacle Silicone Dildo is sure to hit the spot!
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Saturday, 28 June 2008
| 12:00 am
| Toys
Some weeks are all about fucking mythical creatures. Our new line of silicone sex toys are not your typical dildos. Made from a softer silicone than many other toys, these toys have a squishy give to them that makes them incredibly comfortable, yet are still firm enough to get busy with. And they come in some of the prettiest colors we’ve seen.
First up is the Unicorn Horn Silicone Dildo. Looking for all the world just like what you’d imagine a horn of that loveliest of mythical creatures would look like (seriously, I half expect to see it used as a prop in a local play, but then again, I do live in San Francisco), this dildo shimmers in opalescent white along its 7″ length, ending in a deep bronze base. The shaft has a slight spiral, adding not only to its verisimilitude as a horn, but also to its texture as you ride it. It has a notch in the base where you can insert a bullet vibrator (not included) or, y’know, a dingus to keep it on your headband. And the best part? You don’t have to be a virgin to ride this unicorn.
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Friday, 27 June 2008
| 12:00 am
| Culture
Funny thing. When I wrote my recent Blowfish review of the “Sex and the City” movie my friends all had just one question:
What did you think of “Swingtown”?
(I guess they figured out what I thought of “Sex and the City” without need of any more questions . . .)
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but until I started getting these questions, I hadn’t even heard of “Swingtown.” I’m not sure how a prime- time major- network TV show about swinging escaped my notice. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to let my lack of pop- culture coolness slide for the moment, and just talk about “Swingtown.”
And “Secret Diary of a Call Girl.”
And a new face of sex on television.
To some extent, I’m reserving judgment on both shows. I’ve only seen a couple episodes of each, and it’s way too early to get into the serious socio- politico- sexual analysis of either one. But it’s not too early to say this: I’m watching. I’m curious. I care about the stories and the characters, and I want to see what happens next.
And that’s because the characters are — dare I say it? — human beings.
Which is an exciting new development in the relationship between alternative sex and television.
Let’s take “Swingtown” first. A new prime- time drama on CBS, “Swingtown” is about Susan and Bruce Miller, a couple who move to a nice Chicago suburb in 1976 and are introduced by their neighbors to the world of swinging. They’re clearly intrigued by these new possibilities; at the same time, they’re clearly freaked out, and not at all sure where they want to go with it or even if they want to go with it at all. Adding to their confusion are their old best friends, Janet and Roger, a more conservative couple who disapprove heartily: of all these new ’70s shenanigans in general, and of their friends’ new friends in particular. Susan and Bruce — especially Susan, who’s clearly the central character — feel increasingly torn between the old friends and the new . . . a conflict that symbolizes, and gets tangled up in, their conflicted feelings about the new sexual world that the decade is offering.
I’m not sure where the show’s going with this. And I’m not sure what its attitude toward swingers and swinging will ultimately be. On the one hand, the swinging neighbors, Trina and Tom, are a little too evangelical about swinging: a little too convinced that it’s the solution to all life’s problems, and a little too cool-kid superior about people who don’t want to play. On the other hand . . . well, that is a reality. I’ve met people like that. I’ve been people like that, in my younger days. And while Trina and Tom definitely have a high- school cool- kids vibe, they also come across as very genuine, complicated and three-dimensional, with honest affection for Susan and Bruce, and a strong marriage that works for them.
And while the show may be a little pissily judgmental about Trina and Tom, and may even be gearing up to play them as sophisticated seducers who blindly fuck up a happy marriage, it isn’t playing Susan and Bruce that way at all. It may be setting them up for a fall, but it isn’t being judgmental of them for being curious and open- minded and willing to try new things — and new people — in bed. They are the moral center on which all these social changes are pivoting . . . and they’re making friends with committed swingers, and taking baby steps into trying out that world for themselves.
“Secret Diary of a Call Girl” (Showtime) is nowhere near as complex or subtly shaded as “Swingtown.” It’s definitely a bit in that lurid, gratuitous, “how can we put sex on our network today?” vein that Showtime is so good at. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that . . .) But it also shows its characters — prostitutes and customers alike — as very real and human indeed: funny and poignant, anxious and clueless, selfish and touching.
The show is based on the blog of a real (or supposedly real) high class London call girl, Belle de Jour. And reality is a major player in the story. While it definitely shows the sexy, entertaining, soft- core- pornographic side of Belle’s work, it also shows her as a thoughtful, quirky character, someone who basically likes her job but has issues with how it affects her non-working life. And in these early stages of the show, it’s not yet clear how that conflict is going to play out.
In fact, in the first five minutes of the first episode, Belle puts it this way, in what may amount to the show’s mission statement: “There are as many different kinds of working girl as there are kinds of people, so you can’t generalize. But I can tell you about me.”
And that, folks, is what I’ve been waiting to see in mass- media depictions of non- mainstream sex. Not role models; not shiny happy people with perfect lives. Just people: people who want freedom and who want security, people who love sex and who are cautious about its power, people who think carefully about their sex lives and who make hasty, impulsive decisions about it. People who aren’t based on stereotypes or formulas, and whose actions can’t always be predicted.
Like I said, I’m still reserving judgment on both programs. I’m waiting to see whether “Swingtown” goes for the easy and predictable arc of seduction and ruination — which it might be doing — or whether it goes for a more complex, ups and downs, plusses and minuses vibe — which it might also be doing. I’m waiting to see if “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” comes up with any real analysis of sex work, or just winds up showing pretty pictures of sexy people.
But the point is that I’m waiting. So far, both shows have been about human beings, every bit as unpredictable as non- fictional human beings are. And I’m just going to have to watch, and wait, to find out what happens next.
Which is one of the biggest compliments I can pay to any show on TV.
Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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Thursday, 26 June 2008
| 12:00 am
| Videos
The film under discussion is Boot Camp: Sex Survival Weekend. First off, the name’s a bit unwieldy — it really should have just been Booty Camp, you know? Steven St. Croix stars as the sergeant — or, as it’s spelled in the movie, “sargent,” because this particular production does not feel the need for copyeditors, or, indeed, a spellcheck program — in charge of the traditional Band of Misfits, in this case a ragtag Marine squad sent into the woods for a weekend of survival training. Do not expect much in the way of military verisimilitude. Let’s just say the uniforms the ladies wear are, uh, not regulation, and would almost certainly promote fraternizing. Also: expect a lot of fraternizing.
It’s a silly movie, and I shouldn’t mock it for that silliness. In fact, I wound up liking it quite a bit, certainly more than I expected from the rather dull sex-on-a-car-hood scene that opens the film. This is in a grand tradition of movies that parody military life, only those other films usually do it with less sex. Poor copyediting aside, some of the writing is quite funny, as when the hard-assed colonel (or, as they’d surely spell it, “kernel”) declares the troops are “as green as that shit that came out of Linda Blair’s mouth,” and then mentions, offhandedly, that he hates split pea soup. St. Croix has fun hamming it up in screaming drill sergeant style, and it’s a surprisingly enjoyable movie.
To my disappointment, there’s never a full-squad orgy, which seems a bit of a waste, but so it goes. The bit with Allison Pierce and Lexi Belle fucking the paratrooper they find stuck in a tree is the hottest scene, with a fantastic double blowjob, but in general the performers are gorgeous and the sex scenes mostly good. It’s a fun flick that doesn’t take itself seriously, with some decent writing and a plot that (unfortunately) doesn’t make a lick of sense except as an excuse to string together some sex scenes. But, hey, all’s fair in love and war . . .
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Seriously, my friends, I could do a geek-related Caught in the Net column every single week. My bookmarks folder runneth over. But I’ll limit myself only to the most sexy, strange, and delightful links:
Have you tried the Spore Creature Creator? Basically it’s a free downloadable program you can use to create strange alien creatures for the upcoming super-cool sandbox game Spore (where you follow the course of alien evolution from a single-celled organism to a multicellular creature to a tribal organization to a global civilization to a spacefaring society). But, anyway: a lot of people playing with the Creature Creator are using it to make creatures that look like walking boobs, or that have giant malevolent schlongs with spikes on the end, or toothy vaginas. And then they upload videos of said creatures to YouTube. These oversexed alien creations are known as “Sporn,” and even though YouTube tends to take the videos down pretty quickly, here’s a great compilation video. Download the program and create your own!
Onto a more venerable game — World of Warcraft. Or, in this case, World of Wifecraft. The video features a bunch of women who hypnotize their WoW-obsessed husbands into thinking their marriage is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game — and the poor guys don’t get to have sex with their wives until they hit level 40. (Which, in the real version of WoW, is when you get your “mount.” Heh.) How do the guys earn experience? Oh, backrubs, attending baby showers, doing the shopping, etc . . . It’s funny stuff, though not explicit — you have to go elsewhere for hardcore elf porn, alas.
Finally — and I feel bad for linking to this, truly I do — I present The Area 51 Love Doll, perfect for the xenophiliac science fiction lover / conspiracy theory nut in your life. A three-boobed alien blow-up doll with “3 out of this world love holes” and “free alien lube.” Sadly, Amazon.com is out of stock and does not know when they’ll have more. Too bad. Even more sadly, there are no reviews for the product! If any of you have in fact already gotten down with the inflatable alien loving, you should leave a review letting prospective E.T.-fuckers know what to expect!
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Tuesday, 24 June 2008
| 12:00 am
| Industry
Stage magicians and devoted skeptics Penn & Teller made headlines in the adult industry this past week when their Showtime program “Bullshit” took on the War on Porn, asserting that “Porn is part of what makes us great; it’s as American as B-movie actors and pilgrims.”
But what is all this doing on a show about skepticism? Penn & Teller made their career by doing stage magic and then revealing the secrets behind it. They laughed their asses off at the old credo that a magician never reveals his or her secrets — “We don’t give a damn!” I remember Penn saying in the ’80s as he showed David Letterman how to surreptitiously replace a bag of jellybeans under his derby hat with a writhing mass of cockroaches, which did not lessen Dave’s discomfort when the non-ectoplasmic bugs flowed out of the headwear in a great writhing mass and made friends with his crotch. Once Penn & Teller came of age as Showtime skeptics, they seemed more interested in debunking Chinese medicine, cryptozoology and detox programs. But they also focused on Western Medicine’s sacred cows — the “obesity epidemic,” anger management programs, and more. They also argued against the war on drugs on practical grounds; surely the “war on porn” could fall into the same category, since, like the war on drugs, it’s a battle that looks pretty unwinnable to anyone viewing it objectively — rather than through the foggy lens of a scary Utopian belief that a future world could ever exist without sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Nonetheless, how did two stage magicians end up poking their way into the culture wars on porn? The answer lies in science, and the claims made by anti-pornography speakers. Penn & Teller have already addressed explicitly sexual topics before on “Bullshit,” arguing against circumcision, for decriminalizing prostitution, and against abstinence-only sex education. In all of these topics, the claims of the haters often rely on “measurable” scientific results to the topic. With circumcision, one can debunk its safety by pointing to the infant mortality rate; one can attack the watered-down claim that nonconsensually slicing off a part of a baby’s dick makes “cleanliness” easier. Similarly, those arguing the evils prostitution and the effectiveness of abstinence-only education often grab bits and pieces of dubious science, or make them up wholesale, to support their claims.
But as wacky as abstinence-only claims are, it’s with anti-porn arguments that the science really gets stinky. Those “measurable” claims quickly disintegrate into innuendo, prejudice and sexual determinism. There’s a rogues’ gallery making bizarre claims about violence and porn, including Diana Russell, who claims that “men become predisposed to rape from viewing pornography,” XXXChurch, which calls itself the “#1 Christian Porn Site” (Google must love that), Dolf Zillman, who asserts that porn makes viewers no longer want to be monogamous or breed, and Gail Dines, author of “Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality,” who asks “Is it OK to become aroused by images of sexual torture, which is what pornography is?” Clearly Dines has been watching plenty of mainstream porn, though she fails to mention that it’s only the audience being tortured. Of course, let’s not forget Catherine Mackinnon, who may not think all sex is rape, but certainly thinks pornography is.
These varying claims are often supported by dubious science, which becomes particularly irritating once one actually reads the assertions. For instance, Zillman claimed, in a 1986 paper published by the US Public Health Service reporting on the Surgeon General’s Workshop on pornography:
The values expressed in pornography clash so obviously with the family concept, and they potentially undermine the traditional values that favor marriage, family, and children . . . Pornographic scripts dwell on sexual engagements of parties who have just met, who are in no way attached or committed to each other, and who will part shortly, never to meet again . . . Sexual gratification in pornography is not a function of emotional attachment, of kindness, of caring, and especially not of continuance of the relationship, as such continuance would translate into responsibilities, curtailments, and costs . . .
. . .to which I (and others) say, “of course it does,” because pornography is a fantasy. But there’s more to it than that, because many if not most radical sexual advocates believe that the sexual choices offered to all of us should look more like porn than like the monogamous model that most anti-porn advocates are pushing.
I remember hearing Patrick (then Pat) Califia speak in 1990, during the time I was really getting involved in the leather community. Califia praised porn “because it sends the message that the nuclear family doesn’t work,” which it doesn’t. If that’s a fundamental difference between anti-porn people and my ilk, whoopee — but no amount of arguing about rape and objectification is going to change my belief that people should do whatever the fuck they want. The rampant popularity of porn would seem to indicate that the last thing most people want to do is be stifled by sexual restrictions, whether that means monogamy, heterosexuality, or the missionary position. Any ambivalence that I have for pornography — and I have some, believe me — is about the unrealistic nature of it. It troubles me that while I got into porn because I believed it encouraged people to be sexually adventurous. While anti-porn forces claim that porn makes people sexually weird, I’m not sure it makes them weird enough. Too often people fall into a limited sexual repertoire, which can include watching plenty of porn — and the figures on the screen are doing the work for us, making real-life sexual adventures less of an option.
The potential of porn to encourage sexual variation is a very real one — I see it everywhere, every day, the ubiquity of porn helping erode social restrictions that never should have been there in the first place.
That’s what anti-porn forces are really against. Whether their view is that porn inhibits “real intimacy” by making boring sex seem boring, or destroys families because it makes adventurous sex seem adventurous, they’re afraid porn will help destroy society as we know it — and maybe it will.
Good riddance, I say. I hope porn can help open the doors to a wonderland where strangling sexual restrictions are no longer anybody’s problem, and we can all do whatever the fuck we want.
Thomas Roche writes about sex, science fiction, Bigfoot and complicated weaponry at thomasroche.com.
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Sunday, 22 June 2008
| 12:00 am
| Toys
OK, so graduation season is just about over, but you can keep celebrating your accomplishments with this pretty little glass dildo. The Graduate Bubble Head Glass Dildo is actually named for its seven graduated bloops, ranging in size from 1″ to 1-3/4″. The bloops, up until the last one, increase in size in tiny intervals, making it easier for your body to adjust to the new size as you insert the bloops one by one. The last bloop is big enough to use as a flange for beginner and most intermediate butt-play afficiandos; be careful never to insert that last bloop anally, though, as you don’t want to lose something this pretty where the sun don’t shine. Speaking of sun, it comes in two colors, one of which, the colbalt blue, is so mysteriously dark that you’ll have to hold it up to light to actually see the blue (otherwise it looks rather black). It also comes in a delicate pink, which makes the toy look like a line of soapy bubbles. The firm texture of the glass is just perfect for sliding over your bits, especially if you let those bloops bounce over the more sensitive areas (over the clit and through the labia). The gentle curve makes G-spot play possible, especially when you’re using it with a partner. Pretty, practical and pink (or blue)!
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