Vintage ashtray, 1950s
 
Back in the 40s, 50s and throughout the 60s and beyond, hotels, diners and and other establishments (especially casinos) used ashtrays as a means to advertise their business. In many cases, the middle of the ashtray contained an image or illustration of a scantily clad and sometimes nude pinup model. As it had also become more acceptable for women to smoke, ashtrays also evolved into beautiful ornate sculptures in order to appeal to female smokers.
 

Ashtray with nude woman, 1950s
 

Vintage topless woman Art Nouveau style ashtray
 
As I mentioned, the idea to put an image of a nude woman on an ashtray was quite the thing for a few decades, and there were a few cool designs. Such as what is often referred to as a “nodder” in the collectable world of vintage ashtrays (below). Contrary to popular belief, I’m no ashtray expert, but if I understand it correctly, nodders generally hail from Japan and were made of ceramic or porcelain. Parts of the piece are movable (as with the legs of the nodder below) and have a hollow core in which to deposit your spent butts in, but by far my favorites are the pinup novelty ashtrays that bore the names and numbers of a local divey hotel or tavern looking to attract new customers.
 

“Nodder” style ashtray, 1950s
 
If you find these kinds cheeky chachkies appealing, they are fairly easy to find on auction sites like Etsy and eBay. Some of the more rare nodders are on the spendy side running a couple of hundred dollars a pop, while the super kitschy pinup ashtrays can be had for around $20 - $50 depending on the state of undress of the illustration and its condition. NSFW images follow, but that’s part of the fun now, isn’t it?
 

Travel Inn Cafe, Harmony, MN pin-up ashtray
 

Aleman’s Club Rodeo, California nude pin up ashtray
 
Many more nudie ashtrays after the jump…

 
I was trying to describe this thing last night to some friends over dinner, but I think you just have to see it… I posted this here a long time ago, but I think this merits posting again for those who missed it the first time around…

Behold the flyer for “The Mary Tyler Moore Masturbation Society” (Click here and here for larger, easier-to-read versions). Apparently this “society” was founded by a fellow named James J. Kagel of Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Kagel is (or was) attempting to connect to others who share his fetish for, in his words, “jacking off” to photographs of beloved actress and comedienne, Mary Tyler Moore’s “beautifully curved, ever so shapely, silken, creamy smooth, seductive, velvety soft, long, lean, graceful, tantilizing [sic], erotic, sinuously sexy LEGS [...] (not to mention her lickable feet)!” End quote.

Kagel goes on to totally over-share about his fetish for MTM’s legs developed as a boy watching her on The Dick Van Dyke Show and her own eponymously-titled, long-running TV series. He mentions that he is “proud” to admit to masturbating to Moore’s gams—I, for one, believe him—and that his wife bears a “slight resemblance” in the face and legs department to the actress. He even asks members of The Mary Tyler Moore Masturbation Society to send him their own MTM leg fantasies! (I wonder how many people joined?!?! Furthermore, what would be the pleasure of sharing such fantasies with James in particular? He won’t judge you?)

You can pretty much tell that it was made with a type-writer, scissors and glue stick. I won’t describe any more of it, you’ll have to read it for yourself, but this truly had us ON THE FLOOR gasping for breath, laughing. This flyer is all kinds of wrong, but my god is it fucking hilarious. Even the oblivious, kooky sincerity of it is mind-bending in the extreme.

And then you have to wonder what Mary Tyler Moore herself thought about this when she saw it, because you just know that at some point, someone had to have shown this to her.

There is also a Yahoo Group called “MTM Legs” that’s “for your jacking pleasure.” It’s just gotta be the same fuckin’ guy. What the odds of two such insanely ardent masturbating Mary Tyler Moore leg fetishists existing in this space-time continuum? It has 155 members!
 

 

 
The generation gap isn’t taking quite the forms it once did, or so it would seem. Today’s kerfuffle involves a group of teenage girls in Sweden who didn’t see any harm in posing for a whimsical menstruation-themed group picture for the school yearbook.

Their principal didn’t see it that way.

According to TheLocal.se, students at a high school in the Stockholm area said that they thought of dressing up in fake blood, tampons, hygiene pads, and chocolate as a “fun thing” to promote free and open communication about menstruation.

The photographer hired by the school refused to take the picture, and then the principal agreed with him, banning the theme from featuring in the yearbook at all. So….. yeah. Lesson learned on the whole open communication concept, right?

Ida Pettersson, a 17-year-old student who was involved in the photograph idea, has taken to Twitter to express her irritation, tell her side of the story, and seek allies in the world at large. On Monday she tweeted, “Har fått så jävla mycket hat pga detta skolfoto men ännu mera kärlek och kärleken vinner alltid! Kampen fortsätter!!! (Has got so damn much hatred because this school picture but even more love, and love always wins! The struggle continues !!!)” (All translations come 100% unadulterated from Google Translate.)
 

Har fått så jävla mycket hat pga detta skolfoto men ännu mera kärlek och kärleken vinner alltid! Kampen fortsätter!!!

— ♀ida♀ (@idapttersson) September 21, 2015

 
The photograph went viral in Sweden after feminist television personality Clara Henry, who has long fought to break the taboos surrounding menstruation, shared it on Twitter. Many people supported the teens in their idea, but a great many also criticized the fake blood as “disgusting.” “Unfortunately we have received a lot of hatred but much, much more love from people,” said Pettersson.

The school refused the picture on the grounds of its policy that all pictures in the yearbook should be “representative and easily accessible to any beholder.” After the picture went viral, the principal told the Aftonbladet tabloid: “I wholeheartedly support what they wanted to highlight. But we have a number of opportunities to raise this issue—the school catalogue is not the right forum.”

Pettersson said, “We really did not think it would become such a big thing, but it did and it is so cool that our story has been spread so much and that we have been able to take up the space we have. We have received so much positive feedback and we are so happy about that.”

In the photo below, the teenagers are dressed quite differently, and the sign in the picture reads, “We are not allowed to have periods.” The text of the tweet translates as “So we took a class photo anyway because many changed their minds and wanted to anyway but we are still our thing and fighting.”
 

Så vi tog ett klassfoto ändå pga många ändrade sig och ville ändå men vi står fortfarande för vår grej och kämpar pic.twitter.com/ILz8fDNWDZ

— ♀ida♀ (@idapttersson) September 22, 2015

 
via Death and Taxes
 

 
Some evil genius by the name of Warm Prawns re-edited the “erotic” 1969 spoken-word album The Way To Become A Sensuous Woman. The album was based on the book The Sensuous Woman by author Terry Garrity AKA “J.” The book version apparently spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and a year on the list overall. There was also The Sensuous Man which probably sold even more copies (albeit to teenage boys). Along with Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask by Dr. David Reuben, M.D.

These books were pretty much the Fifty Shades of Grey of their time. Woody Allen optioned Reuben’s book (well, the title at least) while all The Sensuous Woman got was a somewhat sleazy audio adaptation.

 
Again, what you’re listening to is a funny re-edit of the album. If you’d like to compare it to the original recording, you can click here for side one and here for side two.

 
With thanks to Sam Cook

Above, the defiled playground equipment at Stoke Green Park

A man with a powerful fetish for children’s playground equipment has been banned from going “anywhere which has a slide,” reported the Huddersfield Daily Examiner.

Christopher Johnson, aged 46, of Stoke, U.K., was arrested after simulating a sex act with a slide at Stoke Green Park in Coventry. As the newspaper drily noted, “It’s his second slide-related offence.”

Second!

At Coventry Magistrates Court he pleaded guilty to a charge of outraging public decency by behaving in an indecent manner and received a three-year Criminal Behaviour Order. That order bans him from attending any location, including parks, swimming baths, beaches, or recreation grounds where a slide is present.

Johnson also received a three-year community order, which requires him to undergo sex offender treatment for 18 months as well as a rehabilitation activity. He was fined £55 and had to pay a £60 victim surcharge, £85 costs and a £180 criminal courts charge. All together, the crime cost Johnson £380, which is around $600.

Johnson was arrested at Stoke Green Park on the night of August 18 when four people witnessed him interacting in a lascivious way with the slide at 10:45 p.m. The police were called. As already noted, it was his second offense involving sexual behavior on a slide. On July 1, 2014, Johnson undressed and performed a sexual act on the top of a slide at Coundon Hall Park in Waste Lane, Keresley.

Now, somewhat poetically, Johnson’s fate is to be forever banned from interacting with the one thing in life he loves most. A hard penalty, if a necessary one.
 
h/t reddit

 
If you’re in the market for a giant pink vagina couch, boy do I have the perfect one for you! For sale in Portland for a measly $600 you can now have one of your very own.

From the listing:

Beautiful pink “vagina couch” that I made in art school and no longer have space for. The couch is large: measures 5’ 3” long, 3’ 3” wide at the middle, and stands 2’ 3” tall (and is heavy like a couch). The pics are from my portfolio and are several years old; as a result, the couch has some scuffmarks and stains, but otherwise is in excellent shape. A professional upholsterer helped me build the couch, so it is also functional and durable as a piece of furniture.

If you want to buy it, you’re responsible for hauling it.

 

 
Via Sarah Mirk on Twitter

via Zazzle

It would be impossible for me to summarize research psychologist Dr. Jesse Bering’s sprawling 2010 Scientific American 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 a bare minimum, every 72 hours. And some gents obviously feel that itch much more acutely.

Pair that notion with studies that found women’s bodies actually rejected sperm that had overstayed its welcome in the male testes (had not been flushed out) by 48 hours.

So what are we to conclude? Masturbation is a biological imperative? Well, it certainly looks that way. The male libido has been exonerated! Why, just think about it: Jerking off is the male equivalent of menstruation. Just more fun!

There, I said it.

(Runs away.)

But as the article is, as I wrote above, difficult to summarize, here are the final paragraphs, going straight to the money shot, 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.

One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot. (Scientific American)

Below, the obvious clip to end this post with, the infamous sperm scene from Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (but were afraid to ask)”:
 

 
Teenage Mother is one of a small handful of what could be called “quintessential” or even canonical, if you prefer, sexploitation films of the 1960s. Which is not to say it’s all that “good,” either, but it does have a rather full quota of exploitation staples such as sleazy drug dealers, disapproving parents, gang violence, and of course, a lying slut!  (Film School Rejects called Teenage Mother a “grindhouse Juno”—I’m not sure how true that is, but it sounds good in theory, doesn’t it?)
 

 
It’s also a peculiar cultural marker of pre-“sexual revolution” American history. Beyond the scare tactics and corny drama, the film’s pièce de résistance (and the real reason for this otherwise merely “okay” movie becoming so notorious) was, of course, its full color live birth reel complete with speculum and very close close-ups. You have to marvel at the business genius of director Jerry Gross. His company Cinemation Industries—which would later release Fritz The Cat, The Cheerleaders, The Black Godfather and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song—pioneered an unusual traveling roadshow presentation with this film that included a sex education lecture at each screening. Why? Because it would make it defensible in court. It wasn’t “obscene” it was educational! In a pre-porn era, this stuff was box office boffo. Gross just wanted to show an extreme close up of woman’s vagina on-screen, but the only way he was going to be able to do it legally back then was in the guise of a “sex education” film with a ham-fisted moral message —as if he gave a damn about anything other than collecting the box office receipts—and… medical footage.

The existence of Teenage Mother is a reminder, not of a more innocent age, in my opinion, but an era just more ignorant of sex in general (not all that long ago, either). The film jumps through several very odd hoops at once, but If you know the backstory, it makes it an even more interesting cinematic curio… I guess! Incidentally according to IMDB, Gross paid a hospital just $50 for the birth footage.
 

 
The hottie in the lead role is actress Arlene Sue Farber—undoubtedly a grandmother by now—who a few years later starred (as “Arlene Tyger”) in Gross’s fake Italian sexploitation flick Female Animal (which God help me, I own the soundtrack for). Teenage Mother also has an unexpected cameo from a baby-faced Fred Willard as the gym teacher.
 

 
Motörhead’s first LP had a song called “Vibrator” on it, so what the hell took this long for a Motörhead vibrator to actually exist?

The pleasure-purveyors Lovehoney have launched a line of four Motörhead-branded vibrators, a mini and a full-sized each representing the Overkill and Ace Of Spades LPs.

World-renowned heavy metal legends Motörhead have turned their attention to your intimate pleasure with their own range of branded sex toys. Powerful classic vibrators and bullets are amongst the line up, each packing a powerful punch that captures the rock and roll lifestyle of the band perfectly. Prepare for the sort of mind-blowing orgasms you’d expect from the ‘loudest band on Earth’.

 

 

The Motörhead Overkill 10 Function Bullet Vibrator
 
Continues after the jump…

 
I’m not certain of the provenance of this video, or the context or anything, but holy moly, watching it I learned that there were so many different ways to pronounce “vagina.” Perhaps I’ve been pronouncing it wrong my entire life?

It’s a crash course lesson into the world of saying “VAH-JAY-NUH.”

 
via reddit