For seven years I had an apartment on Christopher St. and Bleecker in New York’s West Village just one and a half blocks from the historic Stonewall Inn, site of the first riots for gay rights and birthplace of the Gay Liberation Front. Although there was a pretty good drama (Stonewall) that came out 15-years ago, it’s great that a proper documentary finally got these stories on tape to set the record straight. I really look forward to seeing this film.
“It was the Rosa Parks moment,” says one man. June 28, 1969: NYC police raid a Greenwich Village Mafia-run gay bar, The Stonewall Inn. For the first time, patrons refuse to be led into paddy wagons, setting off a 3-day riot that launches the Gay Rights Movement.
Told by Stonewall patrons, reporters and the cop who led the raid, Stonewall Uprising recalls the bad old days when psychoanalysts equated homosexuality with mental illness and advised aversion therapy, and even lobotomies; public service announcements warned youngsters against predatory homosexuals; and police entrapment was rampant. At the height of this oppression, the cops raid Stonewall, triggering nights of pandemonium with tear gas, billy clubs and a small army of tactical police. The rest is history.
I’ve written here before about how I used to go fanatically out of my way to collect memorabilia related to the movie Candy, in particular items emblazoned with photos of the film’s titular heroine, who was played by the comely Ewa Aulin, a one-time Miss Teen Sweden. Candy, which I didn’t actually see until much later was a “holy grail” movie for me, but when I saw it, my opinion was not favorable. (Nothing could have lived up to my high expectations to begin with, but Candy really sucked. But this isn’t about Candy, you can read what I wrote about that film here).
Another 60s goddess who I have a ridiculous amount of photos, movie posters, picture sleeve records, sheet music and even fine art photographic prints of, is Marianne Faithfull. Of all of my pantheon of 60s goddesses (Ursula Andress, Paula Prentiss, Francoise Hardy, Racquel Welch, Jane Birkin, Sandie Shaw, Joni Mitchell, P.P. Arnold, Claudine Longet) I’d have to say that Faithfull is, by quite a wide margin, my #1 favorite. Quite simply, there was no female anywhere on the planet as cool and as sexy as she was during the 60s. She was born with one of the most classically beautiful faces of all time and she just had that look which embodied the era as no other woman’s look or style could. A goddess, she was and still is.
A film titled Girl on a Motorcycle, alternatively known as Naked Under Leather, was made in 1968 to capitalize on Faithfull’s libertine reputation, acquired as the result of her having only a fur rug wrapped around her otherwise naked body during a drug bust at Keith Richard’s home the year before. In the film, Faithfull famously wears a black-leather catsuit with fur lining. Meow.
There’s not a whole lot of dialogue and even less plot in Girl on a Motorcycle. In a nutshell, Faithfull plays a young woman bored in her marriage who decides to escape, riding through the European on a motorcycle to meet her lover (Alain Delon). The audience hears her thoughts and existential musings. There are some spicy sex scenes with Delon that earned the tame-by-today’s-standards film, an X rating. It’s a little hard to follow and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but who cares? That’s not why you’re watching it anyway.
What we basically have in Girl on a Motorcycle is one of the quintessential Swinging 60s time capsule relics of psychedelic sexploitation. Is it a “good movie”? No. Is it a feast for the eyes. YES, indeed it is, and not just because of the gorgeous Ms. Faithfull, either. The European scenery is also brilliantly captured by director Jack Cardiff, a well-respected cinematographer who also shot classic films like The African Queen, The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus (Not to mention Rambo: First Blood II). There’s also the psychedelic jazz score from Les Reed to recommend the film.
In summation: Girl on a Motorcycle, it’s 90 minutes of great shot after shot of one of the hottest women ever born riding a motorcycle in a leather catsuit or else having that same catsuit removed by a Frenchman’s teeth. With great music and some solarized psychedelic stuff thrown in for good measure (and to foil censors). The end.
This is the trailer for Girl on a Motorcycle. Picture this going on for about 90 minutes and… you’ll get the idea:
Here’s a page with lots of photos and scans of the many, many different movie posters that were made for this film. I have owned many of these myself. Note, in particular, the Czech and Japanese ones mid-way down the page. This is the kind of thing that I set up Ebay alerts for. (Cinebeats)
When I posted here in March about Zak Smith’s blog, Playing D&D with Pornstars, it was a merely a popular blog, but now it’s a Internet video series called I Hit It With My Axe, with a couple dozen episodes released so far. In the below clip you will witness Sasha Grey, Kimberly Kane, Mandy Morbid, Satine Phoenix and others, including Smith himself, participating in the favorite hobby of geeks everywhere. (Er, maybe their second favorite pastime, I guess, but this sort of incorporates both interests, doesn’t it?)
See all episodes of I Hit It With My Axe (The Escapist)
As some of you reading this might recall, in the old Disinformation TV series, I devoted the next to last episode entirely to the topic of the potential for harm that easily available Internet porn, in particular the extreme variant called “gonzo porn,” might have in store for an entire generation of (mostly) young males. The piece left the question open ended, but it was clear that neither I, nor most of the people I interviewed (including porn actresses and producers) had any hope that much good would come of adolescent males spending their free time having images of violent sex seared onto their eyeballs at the point of orgasm. And besides that, what were they learning about human sexuality at the hands of twisted psychopaths like Max Hardcore and Rob Black? That their girlfriends would like them to invite 10 of their friends over for a session of tender love-making or perhaps that shoving a girl’s head in the toilet during sex was a suave move?
Well, the verdict is starting to come in that we’re—literally—raising a generation of… wankers. An entire generation has had their sexual fantasies hijacked by this stuff. This quite good 2007 BBC documentary Teens Hooked on Porn, is a disturbing look at what’s happening to Internet porn addicted kids. The pimple-faced young men portrayed in this documentary, sad to say, are going to have no idea what to do with a real girl when they have the chance. And frankly, what girl would want anything to do with them?
As you watch this, imagine their lives at 25, 40 and well beyond. It ain’t a pretty thought…
I am a 45 y/o karaoke singer from the Sacramento area looking for a woman to go out and sing some songs with. i would like to try working on some duets because that would be fun.
if you are a woman between the ages of 37 and 47 and are interested in calling me after viewing the video you can call me at…
I’ve got to give this dude credit for “breakin’ new ground in karaoke” and risking extreme ridicule back at the warehouse. He’s either a hopeless romantic or just plain hopeless. I admire his balls….and erect nipples.
He’s an electric cowboy and he’s damn good at what he does, workin’ that forklift all day, liftin’ piles of toilet paper, 96 cases of tea, water, eggs, chips and milk and stuff, droppin’ huge pallets all day long, and he’s lookin’ to be Marvin Gaye to your Tammi Terrell. He’s got no criminal record, none at all, you can check it out, just a DUI back when he was a kid in his 20s and he’s lookin’ for someone, some rock and roll chick, to sing with, a simple duet, some rock, maybe some alternative, blues, r&b…but no country cause he’s had bad experiences with country girls. Those country girls don’t understand his feminine side.
Although today we think of Betty Boop as little more than a trademark seen on various items, or in advertisements, at one time, Betty Boop, a creation of Fleischer Studios (who also created Popeye the Sailor) was looked upon similarly to the way we regard The Simpsons or South Park today, animations where much of the humor is aimed primarily at the adult viewer.
First of all, unlike Daisy Duck or Minnie Mouse, Betty was drawn with cleavage and frilly panties. And she was a human girl, not a duck or mouse girl. Modeled on the archetypal 20s jazz flapper, singer Helen Kane and the “It Girl” of the silent movie-era, Clara Bow, Betty Boop’s sex appeal was seen as somewhat upfront for a cartoon character. She was also seen, in the course of her adventures in less than savory situations, squalorous nightclubs and against run-down backdrops. Barely disguised sexual innuendo abound in Betty Boop cartoons and images of gambling, drug paraphernalia and alcohol abuse are seen in a vivid nightmare sequence. One cartoon showed Betty and Koko the Clown getting high on Nitrous Oxide. Eventually the gas escapes outside and even the mailboxes have a giggle fit. In two others, she is topless. By 1934, Betty’s bohemian antics were toned down to appease the National Legion of Decency and the Production Code.
Some of the best-remembered Betty Boop cartoons are the ones featuring jazz legends like Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway. In 1932’s (I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead) You Rascal You, Armstrong appears in some of the earliest footage ever seen of the great musician as a menacing, disembodied floating head, chasing Betty, Bimbo and Koko the Clown through the jungle and with his orchestra. (“The High Society Rag” is also performed).
Although it screams of rip-off in flashing letters each the size of a New York brownstone, James Cameron’s Avatar is being re-released with eight additional minutes. Eight measly minutes? Shouldn’t there be some kind of ten year rule before “Director’s Cuts” get to pick our pockets again? And then I saw these two words “Na’vi Sex.” From MTV:
“You mean the alien kink scene?” [Cameron] joked. “It’s been restored, every last frame of it. Seriously,” he said, adding that the scene in question won’t break any records — it lasts all of about 20 seconds. “I would say, just so that we correctly manage people’s expectations,” he explained carefully, “it does not change our rating at all. I would call it more of an alien foreplay scene. It’s not like they’re ripping their clothes off and going at it.”
This languid and dreamy, heavily phase-shifted late period mid-tempo disco masterpiece was released on the storied Casablanca Records label in 1979 by one Dennis Parker, better known as ill-fated porn and soap opera actor Wade Nichols. I guess the below clip is a fairly recent discovery which offers not only an oddly affecting melodramatic performance from Parker, er Nichols but also a gorgeous look at late 70’s mid-town Manhattan.
The girl in a cage is one of the most mysterioso slices of vintage exotica I’ve encountered. This jungle Barbarella has penetrated my consciousness like a switchblade made of pink flesh. And man, what a groovy soundtrack.
Nothing like a good banning to warm an old gay punk’s heart—especially in the internet age. Looks like Australia’s classification of Toronto-based filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s latest bit of hardcore underground gay gore, L.A. Zombie as pornography has prevented it from being screened at the Melbourne Film Festival. According to Melbourne talk-radio station 3AW, LaBruce couldn’t be happier:
‘‘My first thought was ‘Eureka!’… I’ll never understand how censors don’t see that the more they try to suppress a film, the more people will want to see it. It gives me a profile I didn’t have yesterday.’’
Virtually all of LaBruce’s films—from the skinhead-fetishizing No Skin off My Ass from 1991 through to the political-porno-zombie flick Otto; or Up With Dead People—have managed to shock and scandalize straights and gays alike with their violence and satirical stereotyping. It’s good to know there are some areas in the Western world that aren’t immune.
Andrés Duque’s great Blabbeando blog has provided great coverage, including some enlightened sport-star involvement in the issue and the segment below featuring baby-dyke blogstar Cumbio. In a report for Buenos Aires TV magazine Vertigo, homegirl and her camera crew walk right up to participants in an anti-gay marriage demonstration and starts engaging them, taking in a bunch of the usual insulting arguments against equality. But in a startling scene that you couldn’t imagine in a similar segment here in the US, she’s actually embraced and kissed by some of the maternal types among the evangelicals who insist on the old cliché that “it’s the sin, not the sinner.” Cumbio comes out of it a little annoyed, but notes later that they “didn’t treat [her] badly.”
Kinda refreshing, eh?
Bonus clip after the jump: Federacion Argentina LGBT’s simple and powerful ad for marriage equality…
Oh dear me. Hermann Nitsch‘s bloody/Dionysian/biblical/medical performance art rituals have haunted me since I first learned about them via my high school library’s unusually well-stocked art book section (thanks Mr. Allen !) so I’m amazed to finally see great quality footage of an aktion that I’d previously only seen hazy stills of. I think it’s the combination of the studious manner of the participants and observers and the all out bloody fucking (literally) insanity taking place that unsettles me the most. This stuff causes all sorts of conflicting emotions, and that’s probably the point. See for yourself but only if there’s no kids or really anybody with delicate sensibilities around, alright ?
It would be impossible for me to summarize research psychologist Dr. Jesse Bering’s sprawling essay, One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot, so I won’t even try. However, amongst the more interesting things discussed in the article—trust me, it’s a great read—is the fact that most men basically need to spill their seed, drain the vein, etc, at minimum, every 72 hours. Pair that notion with studies that found women’s bodies rejected sperm that had overstayed its welcome in the male testes (had not been flushed out) by 48 hours.
Masturbation a biological imperative? Looks that way. As Bering points out in the article, imagine if only our parents had known this! The male libido has been exonerated!
But as the article is, as I wrote above, difficult to summarize, here are the final paragraphs, going straight to the punch line, so to speak, where Bering ties together all that had come before quite nicely:
The Psychological Bulletin article on sexual fantasy is chockfull of interesting facts, and those with a more scholarly interest in this subject should read it themselves. [...] But Leitenberg and Henning’s piece was written over fifteen years ago, summarizing even older research. The reason this is important is because it was still long before the “mainstreaming” of today’s Internet pornography scene, where zero is left to the imagination.
And so I’m left wondering … in a world where sexual fantasy in the form of mental representation has become obsolete, where hallucinatory images of dancing genitalia, lusty lesbians and sadomasochistic strangers have been replaced by a veritable online smorgasbord of real people doing things our grandparents couldn’t have dreamt up even in their wettest of dreams, where randy teenagers no longer close their eyes and lose themselves to the oblivion and bliss but instead crack open their thousand-dollar laptops and conjure up a real live porn actress, what, in a general sense, are the consequences of liquidating our erotic mental representational skills for our species’ sexuality? Is the next generation going to be so intellectually lazy in their sexual fantasies that their creativity in other domains is also affected? Will their marriages be more likely to end because they lack the representational experience and masturbatory fantasy training to picture their husbands and wives during intercourse as the person or thing they really desire?
I’m not saying porn isn’t progress, but I do think that over the long run it could turn out to be a real evolutionary game-changer.
So-called “slash” fan fiction has been around since the 1970s and is usually written by women. Slash fan fiction is notable for taking characters from popular TV shows, movies and books and imagining them in romantic and sexual situations... normally sans the involvement of any female characters. For instance, slash fan fiction written about characters from Twilight probably underplays Belle or leaves her out entirely in favor of some hot mano a mano action with the male characters? Why? SImply because the average (lonely?) author of sexually charged fan fiction tends to be so besotted by the objects of their affections that they want no competition from other females, even if they are fictional!
So, as must seem pretty obvious by now, this leaves only the male characters to, er, indulge the sexual fantasies of the slash fiction writers. Starksy and Hutch, Batman and Robin, Sawyer and Jack from Lost, even Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy get it on in the pages of fan fiction. (I’ve seen Master and Commander slash as well).
Here’s a fun slash music video that examines the love that dares not speak it’s name between Kirk and Spock(at least until they repeal DADT on the Starship Enterprise).
label in 1979 by one 
, better known as ill-fated porn and soap opera actor 
