When Blowfish’s benevolent ruler asked me to do a year-in-review column, “defined however amuses you,” I considered many different options. I thought about revisiting •the best and strangest places I’d visited online, but I hate to play favorites (and, alas, porny links have a tendency to wither and die and throw 404 errors after a while anyway). Then I got to thinking about the calendar, and about holidays (having just emerged from a slew of holidays, with New Year’s — in many ways my favorite — still to come), and remembered all the odd and wonderful sex-related holidays I’d chronicled, and the ones I never got around to chronicling, and decided to look back at a year full of very special days. Plus, since •most of these are annual holidays, this will serve to get you excited about next year, too!
January starts a bit slow, since it takes a while to get over that New Year’s hangover I guess — but in Japan there is a scantily-clad New Year’s ritual.
In February we’ve got Horny Werewolf Day (as Warren Ellis suggests calling Valentine’s Day, to remind people of the holiday’s wolfy pagan roots) on the 14th.
March 14 is Steak and Blowjob Day, a sort of flowers-and-chocolates-free Valentine’s Day analogue for men (and, of all the fringe holidays listed here, the one I’d most like to see attain vast popularity). Before that, we’ve got International Threesome Observance Day on March 3rd (3/3, of course).
April 14 has Cake and Cunnilingus Day, a more carnal counterpart to Valentine’s Day (and a clear reaction to Steak and Blowjob Day). AKA Muffins and Muff Diving Day, Pudding and Pussy Licking Day, and Candy and Clit Licking Day. And, though the exact day varies, April also features The Festival of the Steel Phallus.
May is National Masturbation Month, noted for the Masturbate-a-Thon, in which people all over the world come together in order to, ah, come together. And the first Friday in May is No Pants Day, in which people the world over come together in the not wearing of pants.
June appears a bit bereft of sexual holidays (do correct me if I’m wrong), but July has National Orgasm Day in the UK and August 8 is International Orgasm Day (the more venerable of the two orgasm days). Summer is for orgasm, apparently, so beat your meat to beat the heat.
September is also a bit light on the non-traditional holidays (perhaps, in honor of all the Back to School sales, there could be some kind of National Schoolgirl Roleplaying Day?). October doesn’t need any help, as it has Halloween, and the wonderful parallel holiday, “Slutty Halloween” (google that phrase for lots of panicky articles about the sexualization of the holiday, and also pictures of girls in slutty costumes, starting with this exhaustive list of the same.)
November 23 features Fuck Like a Pirate Day, infinitely superior to the better known Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s all about rum and plundering booty, as it were.
And finally December, which, apart from assorted Christmas porn, also boasts Global Orgasm Day on the 21st (some years the 22nd), in honor of the solstice. And, also, in honor of getting off.
So there you have it. Start marking your calendars. This list isn’t intended to be complete, and notes about additional holidays are welcomed in the comments. Here’s hoping 2009 is the best year ever for all of us.
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Tuesday, 30 December 2008
| 2:25 pm
| Industry
Wow, what a strange porn year it has been for me. Is it true what they say, that porn years are like dog years — seven porn years for each normal year? It certainly feels like that, and a lot has changed since last I took stock of the porn industry in December, 2007. Back then, I was a writer and commentator in the adult industry, and I reviewed at least 300 DVDs from a wide variety of production houses. I knew porno like the back of my hand; I breathed the rank stink of stale sex 24/7; I ridiculed dumb stage names at breakfast, marveled at stupid dialogue for lunch and got squicked by fake tits both before and after dinner.
It was an easy life: get turned on, get turned off, get outraged, write something snarky. It was kind of like falling off a log.
For most of 2008, on the other hand, I was a publicist and “porn insider” — and while I saw just as many titles, they were almost all from the same producer: my day job. Ridiculing it would be improper at best but then I’m left with the age-old porn reviewer’s question . . . How the fuck is one supposed to review porn if one cannot make fun of it?
Asked what the state of the industry was at the end of 2007, I held forth with an avalanche of observations based on an endless parade of facial cumshots, ass-to-mouth acrobatics, piss play, tranny porn, and wretchedly terrible role play darkening the DVDs of a double-dozen distributors.
Asked that same question here at the end of 2008, I could instead come up with a complex insider’s view of the business forces that are profoundly changing the industry at this important time. Nobody wants that.
Therefore, I’ve instead opted to wrap up 2008 by summarizing the twenty strangest and most unfortunate moments in my personal porn life. To wit:
- Good News: Moving out of my old office at Eros Zine, I processed thousands of porn DVDs, tearing them out of their plastic cases and filing them in black file boxes by theme. Have you ever tried to recycle a couple thousand DVD boxes? It’s not easy. Have you ever tried to decide whether this stack of facial cumshot compilations should be consolidated with the stack of tit-cumshot titles and maybe even with the stack of ass-cumshot compilations over there on the water cooler? Sometimes you pause in the midst of your daily routine and ask: What the fuck am I doing here? There were many of those moments in January and February — many of them indeed.
- Bad News: At Internext, the international meeting for people who sell porn on the web, I listened in horror as CEO Jay Grdina of Club Jenna ridiculed people who jerk off to porn. I doubt he even knew he was doing it, since the contempt of the porn industry for people who, you know, masturbate is endless. I quote Mr. Grdina here: “Duhhhhhhh,” a sound he attributed to people who watch porn to jerk off, rather than to marvel at the stunning sets, gorgeous costumes and brilliant acting. Duhhhhh, Mr. Grdina. Duhhhhhh indeed. And no, I’m not over it yet.
- Bad News: The science fiction movie Cloverfield made me dizzy. How is it these people made a POV horror movie and didn’t make at least passing reference to shooting homemade porno? Christ, what were they thinking? Did it seem as obvious an omission to other people as it did to me? This is far from the largest of the many problems with this flick (the violent nausea being a larger problem), but in many ways it’s the most outrageous.
- Good News: I got a new cell phone plan. You would be amazed at what this can do for one’s sex life.
- Good News: The San Francisco Fetish Ball actually happened this year, which was pretty cool. Is it happening next year? I have no idea. Who would expect San Francisco to be one of the towns in North America that can’t support a yearly fetish ball? Let’s hope it ain’t so.
- Bad News: BellaVendetta.com closed down — purportedly because all the blood, needles, and necrophilia squicked the bankers. Bankers are weird that way. The good news? It’s back!
- Bad News: Max Hardcore was found guilty of obscenity. The interesting thing here is how passionately many people in the porn industry exclaim: “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy! I hope they give him thirty years in Sodomy Prison!!!” immediately before they express their outrage that the government is prosecuting anyone, ever, for porn. So I guess this was good news to some of them. Apparently Max Hardcore also inspires passionate feelings in people who do not work for the Justice Department. Amid other federal obscenity cases, John Stagliano also got indicted, portending terrifying things — or not; nobody really knows. Then there was this presidential election and . . . oh, you already know that part, don’t you?
- Bad News: Somebody tried to extort a measure of fame out of the porn industry, using Verne Troyer as her only bargaining chip. It was weird. It did not work. She did not become famous. I’ve already forgotten her name, and if you’ haven’t, you oughta.
- Good News: It turns out that Greta Christina writes porn in public, too. She seems to be on some level titillated by the surreptitious exhibitionism of it; with me, it’s the only way I can keep my brain from providing my body a reacharound, in which case I will immediately stop having any interest in writing porn. Different strokes for different folks; huh huh, I said “stroke.”
- Really, really good news, actually fantastic news: Sunny Lane lost her anal virginity. Then I got some terrible, almost apocalyptic news: I didn’t care. I have a longtime obsession with the stunningly beautiful and charmingly flirtatious Ms. Lane — she’s one of the few porn performers who managed to give me an erection when I met her in person, which seems like it should be more common than it actually is. This occurred for no good reason other than that she flirted with me. I also have a passionate and sometimes downright weird obsession with girls getting it in the poop chute. So add a dose of anal to a big fat steaming mug of Sunny Lane, and you’d think you’d have a rapturous 20 minutes of profound love for the universe, right? Wrong. I think I’m getting old.
- Speaking of getting old, I got some more Good News: Ernest Borgnine jerks off.
- Good News: So did Kafka, and not, as might be expected, to tentacle porn.
- Good News: I chatted with some barely-legal robots, that is to say, artificial intelligences created with the sole purposes of providing companionship to lonely weird old men who are creeped out by talking to actual people online, but not creeped out by talking to barely-legal robots. How does a robot become legal, anyway? Can she really be undressed in front of Hustler’s cameras on the morning of her 18th birthday? Does she even have a birthday? I have no idea, but “What? LOL” seems to be a popular phrase among the youngsters nowadays, as is “I dream about fucking monsters . . .buckets of monster piss and sperm . . .huge tentacles in my body . . .split by slimy, dripping beaks . . .green monster shit . . .share my fantasy . . .grow with me.” Huh? What? Huh? I wish I could offer some sort of insight, but I just can’t. The world of artificial intelligence is a world of challenging moral conundrums and, apparently, green monster shit.
- Good News: Jimi Hendrix apparently fucked on camera. Huh? Yes, it’s real. I understand he could also play a mean guitar.
- Bad News: A non-MILF ran for Vice President, and everyone seemed all worked up about it, especially the liberals. Christ!! You could almost see Arianna Huffington stroking herself as she talked about how sexy Sarah Palin was. I half expected the Nation to run an all-Palin issue, with one section dedicated to each breathtaking part of her fantastically attractive body, with special attention paid to her booty just, you know, to keep it intellectual. Palin’s presence in the race inspired erotica websites and, of course, multiple porn movies attempting to cash in on the fad before said non-MILF vanished into the dustbin of history. Speaking of which, since Palin is already threatening (Promising? Threatening.) to run for President in 2012, which is appropriately enough the year the world ends in the Mayan calendar. If that happens, I’m moving to Sweden for the sole purpose of avoiding the resulting porn movies. I mean, seeing hagged-out skanks in porn movies is pretty much de rigeur, so I shouldn’t get all that worked up about it. But seriously, people, Sarah Palin. Seriously.
- Bad News: BDSM writer and gay activist Larry Townsend passed away — it is a smaller world without him.
- Good News: They found the G-spot. Apparently it was easier to do it with an ultrasound machine than with a rubber glove, some KY Jelly and a willing female volunteer, which is how I’ve been doing it all these years: that “Oooooh!” sound she makes, when her eyes go all crossy and her tongue starts to hang out? That’s the G-spot, people. Not really all that complicated, but thanks for the verification.
- Good News: Maria Beatty is still making porn.
- Good News: Shine Louise Houston is making porn, too — in fact, lots of it.
- Good News: 2008 is over; every year comes with new promises for sleaze. Bring it on!
Thomas Roche blogs about cults, crime, and appendectomies at thomasroche.com.
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Friday, 19 December 2008
| 9:25 am
| Culture
So when do you have the right to absolutely refuse a certain kind of sex to your partner?
There was a recent letter to Dan Savage that got me thinking about this. A woman who’s a rape survivor has a boyfriend who wants to act out a rape fantasy with her. A serious, hard-core version of a rape fantasy, too, in which he could spring it on her at any time, and she wouldn’t get to use a safeword. Not surprisingly, she said “No” — and instead of dropping it, he’s continued to pressure her about it, accusing her of being manipulative and having no regard for his needs, and bringing it up again and again.
Dan’s advice: Dump the motherfucker already.
I totally agree with Dan’s advice, as far as it went. A rape survivor absolutely has the right to say “No” to acting out a rape scene that they think will traumatize them . . . and to drop the partner who won’t take that “No” for an answer.
But I’d actually go further than that.
I’d say that anybody has the right to say “No” to any particular form of sex, for any reason whatsoever.
This isn’t just about pressuring a lover to do a heavy-duty edge-play scene, a lover for whom that particular scene is an emotional minefield. Yes, that raises giant red flags for me. That definitely makes me agree that his ass should be dumped; that the letter’s author is entitled not only to keep saying “No” to his request, but to kick him to the curb and never look back.
But if someone had written to Savage Love saying, “My lover is pushing me hard to give him oral sex, I’ve been willing and happy to try other stuff with him but I really really don’t want to do this, and he’s pressuring me hard about it and is refusing to drop it and is saying I’m manipulative with no regard for his needs” . . . my reaction would be more or less the same. Not as extreme, and shaded with several Ifs and Buts and waffly equivocations . . . but more or less the same. My red flags would not be waving quite as high, or as frantically. But they’d still be waving.
Now.
Here, as promised, are some of those Ifs and Buts and waffly equivocations.
If the things on your “No” list aren’t actually going to cause you trauma — if they’re just things you’re not that crazy about — then I do think it would be sporting of you to give them the old college try. To say the least. When we’re looking at our sexual likes and dislikes, I think it’s important to sort them into what I call broccoli and tofu: the things that make us want to hurl just thinking about them, and the things that simply aren’t our favorites. And if something simply isn’t your favorite — or you’ve never even tried it and you just think you won’t like it — then I think it’s more than a little selfish to not even consider it. I don’t think we have a right to expect our partners to give us anything and everything we want in bed . . . but I do think we have a right to expect that they care about our sexual pleasure and want to help us get it. That’s sort of the point.
I also tend to agree with Dan Savage that there are certain basic sex acts — oral sex, say, and light bondage — that are . . . well, basic. Things that most people assume will be on the menu in a sexual/ romantic relationship. If you’re going to say “No” to rape fantasies or diaper play, I don’t think you need to say anything else . . . but if you’re going to say a permanent, non-negotiable “No” to giving oral sex, I think you need to be aware that you’re stepping outside the common expectations for a relationship, and should perhaps show some extra flexibility in other areas to make up for it.
And if you have an insanely huge laundry list of things on your “No” list, none of which you’re willing to negotiate or even consider, then that’s definitely a problem. If you’re saying “No” to oral sex, that’s one thing . . . but if you’re saying “No” to oral sex, and manual sex, and tying each other up for sex, and dressing up for sex, and sex outside the bedroom, and so on and so on and so on . . .. that, in my opinion, is seriously obnoxious.
Any or all of this may make you unreasonable. It may make you inflexible. It may make you unsporting. It may make you not exactly the best lover on Loki’s green earth. It may make you, in short, a jerk. It may make sex advice writers everywhere advise your partner to dump your sorry ass and move on.
But you still have a right to it.
Ultimately, you get to be the one who decides what your hard “Absolutely not” list is.
And if there’s just a couple/few things on that “No” list? If you’re generally good, giving, and game in bed, if you’re generally interesting in pleasing your partner and open to trying things they like, but there’s just a couple/few things that really just gross you out? You know you’re not being rational, but they just do?
It doesn’t matter what those things are. It doesn’t matter if the thing you don’t want to do is a hard- core no- safeword rape scene or a garden variety blowjob. You still have the right to say “No” . . . and to have that “No” ultimately accepted. And it doesn’t make you unsporting, or unreasonable, or selfish.
Yes, we have a right to expect our partners to take our desires seriously. Yes, we have a right to assume that our partners want to give us pleasure and are willing to be flexible to make that happen. And if the sex is really not working — whether it’s because our partner is an unreasonable, selfish jerk or the two of us just aren’t sexually compatible — we have the right to end the relationship.
But we don’t have the right to get the exact sex we want, from the person we want it from.
So I ask again: When do you have the right to absolutely refuse a certain kind of sex to your partner?
Always.
You always have that right.
Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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1950s pin-up model, burlesque pioneer, early Playboy Playmate, and bondage model Bettie Page died last week at the age of 85, and it seems only fitting to offer a brief tribute to her here. Bettie all but created the “naughty girl next door” look, posing in lingerie (or rope, or both) all with that sunny smile, and her signature look (long dark hair, bangs cut straight across her forehead) is one I still see on hipsters everytime I go into San Francisco.
Bettie’s story is a long and complicated one (she was famous for years in the ’50s, then vanished from the public eye, developed a cult following in the ’80s, and started giving some interviews in the ’90s, when it was revealed she’d become a Christian, been married a few times, and spent time in a mental hospital). My favorite (possibly untrue) story about her heyday is that she was hired to do a private show for German rocket scientists at a NASA facility in Alabama, where she re-enacted Fritz Lang’s science fiction movie Woman in the Moon with help from scientists (and science fiction writers) Werner von Braun and Willie Ley. But enough with words: Bettie was always best known for her pictures.
Here’s a gallery with wallpapers and such from a Bettie fansite, that also has lots of info about her. There’s more material at her official website, including a nice slideshow of photos and artwork featuring Bettie right on the front page.
For the naughtier side, here’s a gallery of photos featuring Bettie in Bondage, and a gallery of girl-girl wrestling in lingerie.
For much of her career Bettie worked for photographer Irving Klaw, who did photo shoots and films to order for his clients, with models acting out whatever scenarios they wanted — but though there was occasional nudity, there was never any actual sex. Many of those films survive, and lots of them have made their way onto YouTube. Here’s Bettie doing burlesque in 1950, and a much more niche-fetishy clip of Bettie as a lady’s maid, complete with apron, helping another woman get dressed.
Bettie has been portrayed by others, both officially (as in Gretchen Mol’s role in the film The Notorious Bettie Page) and unofficially (as in Bettie Page Look-A-Like Contests and models replicating her look). Her influence is still felt today, more than 50 years after she quit the business.
Rest in peace, Bettie. Nobody looked as good in leopardskin as you did.
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Tuesday, 16 December 2008
| 12:00 am
| Industry
I have a female friend with esoteric tastes in porn. What she wants is far from illegal and certainly beloved of many other porn connoisseurs, but for various reasons it’s difficult to do well. For years she depended on a little place on the interwebs called Yahoo Groups to deliver to her all the porn she ever needed to match her particular desires. Yahoo Groups was one of the first social networking communities, providing an almost entirely uncensored place for people to post messages, images, videos and other content. The topics ranged from fine dining to basketweaving — but really, most of them were about sex. I have no idea what percentage of Yahoo’s Groups were porn-related during its glory days of 1998-2004 or thereabouts, but it was a whole lot of them, covering most sexual obsessions, including a few that featured more than a little illegal media — but, contrary to press hysteria, those usually tended to get reported and shut down.
Then one day in about 2005, Yahoo shut down most of their adult-related Yahoo groups, about the same time they started pulling all of their user-generated adult-themed chatrooms in Yahoo Chat, on charges that they were serving as a meeting place for pedophiles and other people who wanted to break the law. The Yahoo Groups began vanishing willy-nilly, with almost no discernible pattern except that sex-related Groups were likely to get pulled fast . . . or maybe not. Yahoo seemed to go by whim, randomly deleting some while leaving others intact. Attrition destroyed most of the rest of them, since nobody knew when their posted photos might be yanked.
After a few years with Yahoo Chat limping along having a few non-user-generated BDSM- and fetish-related Yahoo chatrooms survive — where occasionally some pretty lively “social networking” could get down, including not infrequent real-life hookups — Yahoo recently pulled those as well. Yahoo Chat still exists, and sex still happens on it, but fuck if I can figure out where to get to it. It seems like Yahoo is trying to force Yahoo Chat and Yahoo Groups to focus entirely on gardening and Life in Christ . . . which means mostly dead groups and groups on even more stultifyingly boring topics than before.
Yahoo’s reasons? Not that a business needs reasons to stop offering services, but it was all blamed on child porn, which was reportedly being traded on Yahoo, both in Chat and Groups. The real reason was probably that Yahoo’s shareholders, advertisers and business partners didn’t like being associated with a service that offered groups like FLORIDA BUKKAKE PARTIES and FACIAL ENEMA HUMILIATION, plus about a dozen other reasons that letting people trade free porn online is a problematic idea for any mainstream business.
Fast-forward to the current situation involving a latecomer to the social-network gangbang: relatively new social networking site Ning. There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle around the site in the adult press recently, since this month Ning announced that it would eliminate porn and sex-related groups from its social networking tableau, permanently, as of January 1. Previously, Ning had been porn-friendly, resulting in a huge number of Ning groups that were themed on BDSM, fetish, and a zillion other flavors of sexual exploration, including interracial porn, swingers, blowjobs, and about everything else you could think up.
Remember how I said there was no money in porn? Well, there might be money in porn, but it’s not the kind of big money that technology companies are after, at least not above the table — and at least not when you’re talking free porn. Ning, like Yahoo groups, seemed to exist primarily as a venue for people to trade sexual fantasies and erotic images. This made them the target of venom not only from those who publicly disapprove of porn — the business community, the religious right and other community groups — and those who publicly disapprove of free porn — the porn industry. Ning, like “tube sites” YouPorn, PornoTube, RedTube, and their ilk, was seen as a terrifying threat to the solvency of companies and people that produce porn for a living.
Free porn is the badboy of the porn industry right now; online sites that distribute free clips have been striking terror into the hearts of the army of porn entrepreneurs who are wondering why they’re not rich yet, or why they’re not as rich as they used to be. There’s no question that revenues in the adult industry have been going down, and people in the industry are ready to blame the dispersal of free porn via tube sites and social networking forums in the same way that Hollywood is quick to blame video piracy for its lagging profits. Some commentators in the industry take Ning’s move as a great sign.
But while the “battle” against free porn is important to businesspeople who produce content, the moral issues involved are unimportant to social networking concerns like Ning.com. User-uploaded porn is, quite simply, a cost liability without attendant benefit for any company looking to break into the gravy train that is mainstream tech development. But there are a lot of other concerns competing in the case of someone like Ning.
First, there’s the fact that revenues generated by mainstream advertisers — Nike and Tmobile and NBC — are what really drives free content and free services on the web. Without those revenues, MySpace and Facebook couldn’t live. And those advertisers are not interested in seeing an ad for 30Rock, say, or Gallo wine, alongside a facial cumshot. Any idiot can see that would be bad for their branding. This reticence of mainstream advertisers to see their ads next to JPGs of ass-fisting little people greatly limits the number of ads that can be shown on porn-related networks. Bruce Cam claims in XBiz that the average non-adult site can get anywhere from $5-$100 CPM from an advertiser — that’s “cost per thousand,” a measure of the amount paid for thousand click-throughs. For an adult site, you’re lucky to get $1. According to Ning, it just doesn’t make sense to cultivate that kind of business; it doesn’t even pay for it’s own bandwidth.
And speaking of bandwidth, have you noticed how everyone’s obsessed with sex? Yeah, I’d noticed that, too; MySpace and Facebook are likely to generate an enthusiastic community of frequently-posting social networkers, but they can’t even begin to compare to Jerkoff Central. Maybe it’s because consumption and sharing of porn encourages one to engage in sort of, shall we say, “obsessive” behavior — but whatever the reason, adult sharing sites reportedly require an enormous amount of bandwidth compared to non-porn sites. The cost of running a porn-related site, in bandwidth terms — not to mention the added liability of denial-of-service attacks, which seem to hit adult sites at a greater frequency — is higher than for non-porn sites.
Then there’s another important reason sex-related social networking is a challenge: most user-generated content, let alone user-generated porn, isn’t actually user-generated; it’s user-stolen. Or it’s user-purchased and then illegally distributed by users who think “Hey, it’s mine, I bought it!” so they can post it to an online service without violating copyright. This means that porn sites generate a crazy number of “takedown notices,” sent under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when someone believes a copyrighted piece of content has been posted online by someone other than the copyright owner. These notices are very time-consuming to process, because they can’t be automated. That means more actual human hours spent processing accusations of improperly posted content . . . we’re talking money, money, money.
I find it, and have always found it, depressing how many problems crop up when businesses try to work in erotic social networking. But there’s plenty else depressing about human sexuality, and a few companies are making sexual social networking a pleasure.
The takeaway here? Fuck Ning; forget they ever existed. Add me on Fetlife, will you?
homas Roche is hosting Christmas Sucks, a performance of holiday horror stories and yuletide sleaze, at the Center For Sex and Culture on December 19, with Charles Gatewood, Simon Sheppard, Sherilyn Connelly, and Carol Queen. Find out more details at thomasroche.com.
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Monday, 15 December 2008
| 3:39 pm
| Champion
The website for Champion is now live! Trailers, story synopsis, cast and crew bios, and everything else you’d love to know about the movie.
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Monday, 15 December 2008
| 12:00 pm
| Toys
Battery vibes come in all shapes and sizes, and when I saw the shape of My Little Buddy Elastomer Vibrator I admit, at first I was scratching my head. Then I gave it a whirl and my “ah-a!” moment was only eclipsed by, well, you know. My Little Buddy works well as both an innie and an outie vibe (although, alas, not both at the same time). To use it as an outie, simply arrange the two lopsided “ears” on either side of whatever you want buzzed (clit, labia, dickhead), twist the bottom, and a high, tight buzzing will surround you in bliss (well, depending on the size of what you’re buzzing). The round disc at the bottom is more than a handy base, too, as it fits in the palm of your hand perfectly, making it easy to hold in just the right spot for as long as you need to.
As an innie, those little oblong ears function as just the thing to focus vibrations on the G-spot. The shaft is about 5-1/4″ insertable and 1-5/8″ at the widest point (towards the bottom), so it’s a nice and filling experience to work My Buddy inside, and the ears seem to hit just about where the G-spot is on most of us, taking some of the guesswork out of finding it. The slightly rounded base is flat enough that you can sit on it once the vibe is fully inserted, letting you rock back and forth for some hands-free fun!
Do note that, although it probably would be a great p-spot toy, we’re not recommending it as the base twists off (to put the batteries inside) and if that happened while it was all the way up your tush, you might have some trouble getting it back out. That said, if all you can get is the ears (or even just the first part of the shaft) inside anyway, that’s safe enough for some fun anal explorations. My Little Buddy is sure to be the best kind of friend!
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Monday, 15 December 2008
| 12:00 am
| Videos
It takes a little while to figure it out, because director Paul Thomas has fun with some weird narrative structure, but Sordid is the tale of a sexually-obsessed man (Eric Price) realizing there are limits to his own depravity. For the first twenty minutes, the film looks like a compilation video where the only common thread is the leading man, as sex scene follows sex scene without set-up or context.
The first is barely a scene at all, just flashes of a hardcore office dalliance intercut with the opening credits as Price fucks a busty blonde over a conference table. The next, longer scene is better, with a brunette in nice lingerie consenting to some bondage games — she gets her hands cuffed behind her back, and wears nipple clamps, and gets her ass paddled lightly. It’s not a full-on BDSM extravaganza, but a plausible scene about spicing up playtime with a little leather and metal. Next Price plays the voyeur while two blondes make out on a couch, though it doesn’t take long before he chooses to insert himself into the scene (among other places), ending with a hot double facial.
Just when I’d settled into what I thought would be the rhythm of the film, it shifts. We get essentially a short art-film with Eric Price making himself breakfast, with voice-over narration about his inner life, which is rather narcissistic and perhaps a touch misogynistic; he loves fucking women, but doesn’t want to let himself be controlled by them, and never intends to let any woman violate his inner sanctum, signified by the way he always eats breakfast alone.
Then he meets Cassidey, the lean brunette headliner I’d been waiting for. At first she’s just another hookup, but she stays the night, and makes him breakfast in the morning — she’s apparently a terrible cook, which he finds weirdly endearing, and before long, they’re an item, and he’s opened his heart. But when he inadvertently takes Cassidey to a swinger’s party, she gets a taste for fucking other men, and that’s something his narcissism just can’t endure. (It does lead to some nice scenes, though, especially the final one, which includes some very hot anal.)
When I got to the end, I opened the case to make sure I wasn’t just looking at the first of a two-disc feature — the finish is quite abrupt, and credits don’t even roll at the end, it just . . . stops. That sudden finish is more of Paul Thomas’s artsiness, one assumes, and it’s fitting that a film that begins so strangely should end strangely as well. Though the end doesn’t have to be the end — there are five bonus scenes, four of which include Cassidey, which greatly add value. It’s sordid in the best way.
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Sunday, 14 December 2008
| 12:00 pm
| Toys
One of the things that I hate about the holiday season is trying to wrap oddly shaped packages. Your choices boil down to re-boxing the whole thing or having it look lumpy. Well, with that in mind, I’ve put together a list of some of my favorite toys that happen to come in easy-to-wrap square or rectangular boxes, sure to make a pretty package under the tree!
These rechargable vibrators are high-end, beautiful options, perfect for those who are environmentally aware or simply don’t like to fiddle with replacing batteries.
Our plug-in vibes offer some of the strongest vibrations available today, and are long-time favorites.
Battery-powered, reasonably strong and budget- conscious, these vibes still make impressive and thoughtful gifts.
And, finally, these toys don’t turn on anything but you! Our gorgeous My Semi-Precious Cock-Ring is just the thing to wrap your favorite package (read: his), and each one of our new Alumina line of dildos is exquisitely lovely and highly functional.
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Sunday, 14 December 2008
| 12:00 am
| Videos
Ah, the humble handjob. A second-string sex act seemingly best suited for long car trips, gropes under a cloth-draped table, budget-minded Johns, or a compromise to get the guy to go home from your date happy. At best, the handjob is usually foreplay, an appetizer before a main event.
Vivid’s educational series seeks to counter that perception in Penny Flame’s Expert Guide to Hand Jobs for Men and Women, and they couldn’t have picked a better spokesperson — Penny’s simply one of the most adorable and watchable women in porn today. The creators even have some fun with the whole infomercial vibe, with cheesy voiceover and canned audience applause during introductions and transitions, and Penny is happy to ham it up.
She demonstrates assorted techniques (the back-and-forth flutter technique, the lemon juicing technique, others with less picturesque names), and gives a lecture on the importance of communication, cleanliness, and choosing the right lube. She does some hands-on demonstrations, and then we get the demonstration scenes, which are more traditional sex scenes, albeit with a greater emphasis on handjobs than usual.
Fortunately we get to see Penny get it on, in a scene with Anthony Rosano. He apparently wasn’t paying much attention during the how-to-please-a-woman portions of the program, since his fingering is workmanlike at best, but Penny shows off her wide array of cock-milking skills to his evident delight, using lube, hand-over-hand stroking, hand-and-mouth combinations, and myriad other tricks before he fucks her vaginally. He pulls out and pops on her ass, which is traditional, but it’s a bit odd that in a film devoted to handjobs you never actually see a man brought to orgasm by hands alone; at least the women appear to get off from the rubdowns alone.
This is an admirable piece of boosterism for the underrated act of stroking your partner, and you’ll come away with a new appreciation for the noble art of mutual masturbation, and eager to take matters into your own hands.
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