Friday Fluffer - Make Love Not Porn

Ashley Tisdale

The crack-addictive nature of porn for guys is the never-ending stream of new, easy trim. Just one more pussy can be more tempting than any woman will ever understand.

Until now.

I think Cindy might have run smack bang into the middle of something sticky that she didn't like.

Cindy Gallop's TED talk.

And here's her (awfully designed but interesting) website. Make Love Not Porn.



Bottoms Up, Pron-Stars.

Information Age with Larry Flynt

Image credit.

Larry Flynt. I heard part of a Larry interview on BBC radio, an unlikely combination if ever.

The topic was along the lines of the social value of pornography, another unlikely combination.

Questions about (and to) porn stars and their problems with STDs featured along with Larry, a critical mistake by the man from the Beeb. When did porn promoters like Mr Flynt concern themselves porn feedstock's medical issues? Frankly, the Limey's line made him sound like an effete wanker, and Larry effortlessly took him apart at each turn.

Oh, that's right. I have a point. When Mr Elite Reporter asked Mr Flynt about the redemptive value of porn, he replied in the following way: (I'm paraphrasing.)

Sex is the most primal and most direct way by which we communicate with each other. It also happens to be the means of communication we least understand and talk about the least.




Bottoms Up, Communicators.

Prisoner of X

Prisoner of X: Twenty-Two Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine, by Allan MacDonnell.

ISBN: 1-932595-13-9

Right here, I shall make the case that a book cover can determine its commercial success. It's not true all the time, but this is the latest in a line of books in which the quality of writing, the way the book feels, is so much better than the cover suggests.

I'm disappointed on behalf of the author, Mr MacDonnell, because his book is worth the money and the time. The subject matter won't be to everyone's taste, but if you can get over the background, the foreground of his description of life working at a porn magazine makes for good reading. An undertone (and, now I think about it, an overtone) of snark inhabits Mr MacDonnell's writing, but he's equally snarky about himself as all those around him in Larry Flynt's business empire.

For the unfamiliar, Larry Flynt is the publisher of Hustler, the apogee of skin-mags. His empire (Larry Flynt Publications) is a grab-bag of flesh-driven enterprises that made him a centi-millionaire. "Prisoner of X" is an insider's story, a tell-all of the ridiculous ways men like Larry Flynt make a fortune despite themselves.

Do I sound envious? Well, kinda. I was a fan of Hustler in its heyday, the 80s. Then it was the dirtiest of the big three news-stand-type mags, considerably to the south of Playboy and less air-brushed than Penthouse. (That's a figurative concept, less airbrushed, not a literal one, because...well, you know, they all do it.) A subscription to Hustler said: He'll Do Anything. Subscription to Penthouse said: He'll Do Anything (mostly). And a subscription to Playboy said: He'll lick your tits.)

Larry Flynt started in Lakeville, Kentucky and ended up in Los Angeles, California. That's the architecture of success in America, or was, until recently. Our protagonist, Mr MacDonell, started in LA, first as a copy-editor on Hustler, so his story's different from that of his boss. The concept of a copy-editor at Hustler is mildly disconcerting, like the idea of quality control in China. Nevertheless, such jobs exist, which makes my Hustler subscription vaguely mainstream.

So the take-down is that Mr Mac starts at the bottom (ahem) at Hustler, and ends up at the top, the executive editor. In the intervening period his personal and buff life make for a good if not great book.

If only he'd insisted on better cover art-work, this thing might have been a best seller.


Bottoms Up, Airbrushers!




Also published here [link]

Rock Her World.

At first it's amusing, this habit of porn stars taking nominative determinative screen names. There's Anna Malle (RIP), Chesty Larou, Busty St Clair, and Shy Love, to name a few women. Nothing malign in that, of course, the history of false nommes is long and illustrious. George Eliot's successful books were written not by a man, but by Mary Ann Evans, who, amongst several other reasons, wanted to keep her affair with a married man secret.

Even bloggers sometimes choose to supplant their real-life tag with something more evocative. Ahem.

So it's not the fact of taking a fanciful name that plants the seed of doubt, it's the quality of the name. Really: John T. Bone?

This whole field speaks to how The Industry looks upon us, the end-users of porn, or 'mooks'. That's how they refer to you people who like a bit of video filth, by the way, which leaves even the cynics and manipulators from Hollywood looking like soon to be beatified saints - at least they call us 'the audience'.

The difference between The Valley and Hollywood is only a small range of hills and a slight shift of attitude. They're both after your wallet. One takes what they think is the high road, and the other one shows you the pussy. One makes you go to the movie theater, and the other has the decency to allow access from your computer. One says "...fuck you, this is the way you should think..." and the other one says...well, just choose your preferred hole.

Which brings us to Mr Seymore Butts. First negative: that name. Had he chosen 'Seymour', we might assume a modicum of cleverness. But he didn't. Which is the nub of porn's problem, that it's a caricature, a two-dimensional medium just close enough to possibly reflect real life, and yet it so obviously doesn't. He's a porn star of some standing apparently, boasting over six-hundred notches on his bedhead. That gives him more insight that the average mook, and he chose to let us all know how much insight in his recently published 'Rock Her World: The Sex Guide for the Modern Man.'

Mr Butts' book is a how-to for guys wishing to become as good a lover as its author. It's his way of giving back, I suppose, but giving back in the same way that the IRS gives back tax refunds; it's all your dough to begin with. Yes, he steps out in logical style running through the equipment and various techniques in the three sections of the book: About Him, About Her and About Sex. Diagrams and humorous quotes pop up at odd times (reflecting a porn shoot perhaps?) but the Kama Sutra this ain't.

His description of the Missionary position "Allows for total access to both her pussy and ass, plus it is perfect for eye contact!"

Or in About Her: "3. Knowledge of Your Anatomy. The more you know about your body and how it works the better!"

Frankly, I did not read every word in this opus. It's the same principle I use when playing Russian Roulette with a loaded revolver. Sometimes less is more. This is sexual information written by someone who has literally seen it all, but seen it all through the mindset of a thirteen-year old. And a myopic, anal-obsessed thirteen-year old at that.

Which is pretty much what porn is. It's Warner Brothers with an orgasm, Saturday morning cartoons on Viagra, or two-dimensional voyeurism watched on the basis that VH1 is only showing repeats today.

Seymore Butts? No thanks.



Rock Her World, The Sex Guide for the Modern Man, by Adam Glasser, AKA Seymore Butts. Published by Gotham Books, a Division of Penguin. ISBN 978-1-592-40447-6



This review is part of the Blogger Critics Network. (Note the name change from Blogger Review Network.) Next to review will be 30ty, of her Life Begins at 30ty blog.[link] Yes, I know this is a book designed for men, but you never know, she might pass it on to a male blogger after she's critiqued it for us.

Send me a good real-life mailing address, Doc30ty, and I'll send you this magnificent work.


Bottoms up! (Quietly.)


My pic.

Friday Fluffer - The Rise of the Hedgehog

If anyone is qualified to write about Fluffers, it's Ron Jeremy. [Wikipedia link] This is his autobiography which, as you can see, didn't sell at full retail price. The publisher's loss is our gain, because this isn't a half bad read.

Ron tells the tale of his loves and likes in fine style. He started out as a legit actor, but then his penis got in the way.*

In case you don't know, Ron is one of the universe's most prolific porn actors. His curriculum penii includes more than 1,750 films, over 4,000 sex partners and the dubious boast that the oldest women with whom he had sex on video was Rosie, aged 87. They co-starred in 87 and Still Bangin'.

Describing how he separates sex with women on camera and sex with girlfriends, Ron says that "sex is like" leaving us to draw the conclusion that romantic sex is something else. Presumably, if a man walks up to a woman and says:

Hi. I like you. Let's have sex, she'll react positively.

Yeah. Only on porn sets.









*For the record, Ron's penis is 9.75 inches long.

The Hardest (working) Man in Showbiz by Ron Jeremy. ISBN: 978-0-06-084082-2

Friday Fluffer - Who's a lesbian now then?

Like anyone cares, but Meredith Baxter* (pictured) has found the confines of her closet somewhat restrictive, and exited with a new title: lesbian. Yay her. I mention this only because of the article in which I read this news, which quoted an academic person thusly:

While evidence is anecdotal, "the consensus in the field is that these late-life transitions are more common for women than men," said Lisa Diamond, a professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah. Her book, "Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire," posits that women's sexual feelings are more complicated than straight or gay, and may change over a lifetime. [link]

It reminded me of some other research in which I personally participated:

While evidence is anecdotal, "the consensus in the field is that Wombat attracts more women after he's had a glass or two of red wine," said a source. "It's more common for women to realize they want to bed a burrowing marsupial once his tongue's loosened by alcohol." The source, a graduate student of Wombat Studies, said "Marsupials are complicated. It's not as easy as you might think, what with the nocturnality and so on. The women often change their minds in the morning."

Or this, sent to me by a friend:

While evidence is anecdotal, "the consensus in the field is that girl-on-girl action is more likely to occur when money changes hands," said Maria Sappho, an associate professor. Her thesis is entitled 'Hookers and Poon: why guys have to pay professionals to live out their fantasies.' "Threesomes involving one man and two women are more complicated than pornographic movies suggest," Maria said. "Cash probably works, unless one of the girls has a credit card reader. The guy often feels regret when he checks his credit card statement."





Quote of the day: Gardening experts Mary Henry and Margaret Purcell like to joke that "we slept together for years before we realized we were lesbians."

*Meredith.[link]

Pic of Meredith direct from her agent. And pretty much everywhere on the internet when you search her.

Friday Fluffer - Rock Her World

One advantage of writing a blog vaguely about sex is that people send me interesting things. Like this book. I quote from the back-cover blurb:

"...women were asking me how they could get their men to be better lovers. It didn't take me long to figure out that 2+2=69 and that there was a need for a book like this."

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, porn arithmetic.

Review follows.

You are the best, darling.

In our porned-up society, sex-competitiveness has taken hold.

I give the best blow-jobs. Evah.

We screwed for hours man, hours!

Yeah, I'm a bit tired. Five times last night.

Boasting about length, volume, longevity, quantity or dirtiness of one's coupling is a kind of national vanity. One day the National Sex Directorate Czar will arrive to pin a blue ribbon on your chest: First Prize for Bonking.

Unfortunately, the Sex Directorate neglects to publish standards defining good and bad sex. It's the kind of basic oversight you'd expect from another dopey government department, so we naturally turn to the private sector for guidance. By default, the porn industry and its denizens give us the thumbs-up or -down for sexual behaviour, which leads us neatly back to where we started. If you want to know how to do something, seek guidance from specialists.

Ergo, porned-up world.

This is a notion utterly divorced from the truth. A big lie, if you like, that's all too easy to adopt. It's way simpler to discern good from bad sex based on porn criteria than to use our minds. Good sex begins and ends in the mind. Our bodies are the medium through which many layers of drives and emotion are expressed.

In the afterglow, when someone says to you: You're the best (pant, pant) darling, consider asking against whom he or she is measuring you.

Let me see your vagina

The major reason sex works is because men have an insatiable desire to see vaginas.

No matter how many one might have seen in the past, the next one that comes along is the one we want to check out.

Mick Jagger has probably seen 657,335 vaginas, and yet he still wants to see yours.

Pornography and the internet allow me to see exponential vaginas while writing this post. And yet I, too, want to see yours.

This, in summary, is what it's like being a man. A head full of vaginas, and none of them yours.

Yet.

Foreplay Part 1, Foreplay Part 2, Foreplay Part 3, Foreplay Part 4.