It seems that a lot of folks in the United States are getting pounded pretty hard with the white fluffy stuff. So what do you do when you’re snowbound with nuthin’ to do all day? Why not build a “rude” snowman? C’mon, your neighbors will love you for it! Trust.
And not only your neighbors, but your co-workers too! I’m assuming the snowmen and snow-women doing the nasty on the hoods of cars was an unexpected surprise for an office mate.
I’ve collected a few images here as inspiration for you. Now get to it!
Caligula actually had a lot going for it, at least on paper, but it was a doomed film from the start. The original screenplay was by Gore Vidal, but then he disowned it after director Tinto Brass made substantial changes (Brass maintains Vidal’s script was terrible, but it’s entirely possible that it was just too gay for his likings). Brass still could have made a good film though—at this point in his career he was known for groundbreaking experimental cinema (like the notorious “high class” Nazi sexploitation film Salon Kitty)—but producer Bob Guccione (of Penthouse magazine fame) wanted to film actual hardcore (rather than simulated) sex. Brass refused, so Guccione had someone else film the scenes, adding to the disjointed insanity of the whole production. Even the fantastic casting—Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, John Gielgud—was tempered by Brass casting his own bohemian friends as Roman elites, and Guccione throwing numerous Penthouse Pets into the sex scenes.
The result was worse than cheesy pornography—it’s confusing, pretentious, cheesy pornography—a $17.5 million Penthouse magazine-funded boondoggle, and an absolute camp classic that everyone should see… once.
This is why Protest, a 1981 mini-documentary on Canadian decency activists is such a charming relic. On the one hand, it’s always unpleasant to see any impulse to curtail free speech. On the other hand, these dowdy conservative Canucks seem so darn sweet and reasonable compared to their American counterparts. If this protest was in middle America, it would have been a spectacle of hellfire sermons and open hostility! The only altercation you even see is a light slap coming from an irate secularist!The rest is just hilariously polite Canadians campaignin’ for decency.
Why can’t our bluenose Christian pearl-clutchers be this considerate? I know it’s a stereotype, but they really do seem nicer up north!
You will need your 3-D specs to get the most out of these titillating Victorian era entertainments, which offered both the gentleman and the lady users the illicit thrill of espying an intimate boudoir moment between some delightful uninhibited beauties. Such a stereoscopic vision was an aid to the imagination—inspiring a riot of Bacchanalian fancies over the kind of shenanigans young ladies in the first blush of womanhood could get up to behind closed doors.
As we can see, such shenanigans were really quite innocent—mainly talking, gossiping, singing, dancing, drinking—a typical a night out today. Yet, these photos are far more romantic, delightful and playful than all the gigabytes of exposed flesh available today at just a click away.
Of course, as the century moved on the imagery did become more explicit—especially the “dirty postcards” we Europeans enjoyed. Such saucy images go back to earliest times, but apparently the first record of “obscene pictures” was in 1755, with the publication in England of the book The Pleasures of Love: Containing a Variety of Entertaining Particulars and Curiosities in the Cabinet of Venus, which contained sixteen highly explicit woodcuts for the gentleman’s entertainment.
Erotic magazines soon followed with the first Covent Garden Magazine, or Amorous Repository, “calculated solely for the entertainment of the polite world,” being published in England in 1774. There then followed a slew of such top shelf lad’s mags with ever increasing titles: the Rambler’s Magazine, or the Annals of Gallantry, Glee, Pleasure and the Bon Ton; “calculated for the entertainment of the polite world; and to furnish the man of pleasure with a most delicious banquet of amorous, Bacchanalian, whimsical, humorous, theatrical and polite entertainment” appeared in 1783; and in 1795 came the granddaddy of all magazine titles the Ranger’s magazine, or the Man of Fashion’s Companion; “being the whim of the month and general assemblage of love, gallantry, wit, pleasure, harmony, mirth, glee and fancy. Containing a monthly list of the Covent Garden Cyprians; or a man of pleasure’s vade mecum. The annals of gallantry, Essence of trials for adultery. Crim. Con. Seduction. Double entendres. Choice anecdotes. Warm narratives, Curious fragments. Animating histories of Tête-à-têtes, and wanton frolicks. To which is added the fashionable chit-chat and scandal of the month, from the Pharaoh Table to the Fan warehouse.”
These magazines certainly told you what was inside, and are far more entertaining than our modern one-word mags like Playboy or Hustler and alike. Also, note the wording—the use of terms such as “gallantry” and “harmony” and “love,” hardly the kind of sentiments to be associated with say… Shaven Ravens.
Understandably, such gentlemen’s magazines were expensive and were mainly focussed on erotic stories with some handy illustrations. Of particular interest to readers was the reports of “Criminal Conversation”—details of adultery trials, which soon became a source of erotic entertainment for the working class and the “meat and potatoes” to many a tabloid newspaper.
When photography took off in the late 1800s, the “doyen of Victorian pornography” was Henry Hayler, who began producing his own nude photographs from life. Hayler’s work became so popular that he started selling his rude nudes worldwide—a prototype of Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt, perhaps. However, his homegrown industry wasn’t to last, as the police raided Hayler’s studio in March 1874 and impounded more than 5,000 plates and 130,248 erotic photographs. Hayler and his family fled to Berlin, but had they ever appeared in court they could scarcely plead not guilty as a considerable number of the photos contained Hayler, his wife and two sons engaged in incriminating activities.
More stereoscopic Victorian voyeurism images, after the jump….
Taschen has released a titillating title called Psychedelic Sex written and compiled by Yippie co-founder and Realist publisher Paul Krassner with self-proclaimed obsessive collector, Eric Gotland. The racy retro collection is edited by Dian Hanson whose job title at Taschen appears actually to be “Sexy Book Editor.” Nice! Hanson produced a ton of men’s magazines from Juggs to Legshow between 1976 and 2001 and is also responsible for other Taschen titles like The Little Book of Big Penis and The Big Butt Book 3D, so obviously you might want to get your hands on Psychadelic Sex. The addition of Paul Krassner’s penchant for countercultural hilarity makes this kind of a must have in my humble opinion.
From Taschen’s website:
In a brief golden span between 1967 and 1972, the sexual revolution collided with recreational drug exploration to create “psychedelic sex.” While the baby boomers blew their minds and danced naked in the streets, men’s magazine publishers attempted to visually recreate the wonders of LSD, project them on a canvas of nubile hippie flesh, and dish it up to men dying for a taste of free love.
Way Out, Groovie, Where It’s At—each magazine title vied to convince the straight audience it offered the most authentic flower power sex trip, complete with mind-bending graphics and all-natural hippie hotties. Along the way hippies joined in the production, since what could be groovier than earning bread in your birthday suit?
At its height, psychedelic sex encompassed posters, tabloids, comics, and newsstand magazines, but the most far-out examples of all were the glossy magazines from California, center of both hippie culture and the budding American porn industry. It’s these sexy, silly reminders of peace, love, and pudenda we celebrate in Psychedelic Sex.
Do I really need to tell you that these images (except maybe the one of the book cover) probably aren’t safe for work? I’m assuming the little winking smiley faces are added by Taschen for the website and don’t actually show up when you buy the book.
The proper time for sexual indulgence is an important consideration, inasmuch as carelessness in this respect may tend to dyspepsia, indigestion, and other affections of the stomach. Persons who are predisposed to such diseases should never have sexual intercourse just before eating, nor very soon after a full meal. Its peculiar effect on the stomach is calculated to weaken digestion, particularly on the part of the male; and many a miserable dyspeptic might trace his unhappiness to imprudent acts of sexual intercourse. From two to three hours after or before eating a full meal, is the proper time for this business.
Burgers in bed may be poor sexual etiquette (depending on the situation—one wouldn’t want to refuse a dish from one’s host), but I’m fairly sure medical science has since given us the go ahead on that one.
Coition, or sexual union, may be compared to a fit of epilepsy, or to an electrical shock.
Either you’re doing it very right, or you’re doing it very wrong, but I’m intrigued by your description, so go on…
When a man is performing this act, if his thoughts wander, the product will be feeble, and if his wife become pregnant the offspring will be inferior. This fact is applied to the offspring of great geniuses, who are supposed to be thinking of something else when they beget their children, and hence their descendants are often much below them in intellect. In further confirmation of this theory, history informs us that some of the greatest men the world ever saw were bastards—children begotten with vigor, and when the minds of the parents are supposed to have been absorbed in the one idea of a loving sexual embrace.
As a bastard myself, I’m moved to concur, but my commitment to the truth supersedes my ego in this particular situation and I must correct you, sir—I don’t think a man’s wandering mind makes his kid stupid. We live in a busy, modern world, yet it’s not entirely inhabited by idiot distraction-babies.
Amorous females generally breed female children, while those of a colder temperament breed boys. When both are moderate in their desires, children of both sexes are produced. When the female is unnaturally amorous, (and such cases frequently occur,) she seldom becomes impregnated at all. The following mode of influencing the sex of the child, some physiologists assert, is really effective, and it looks reasonable.
I assume boys were considered prefereable at his point, so this line apparently encourages frigidity? Are they trying to sneakily trick horny newlyweds into making babies by promising them they’re too lusty to have children (ha!)? Is this an earnest misconception? So many questions!
The causes of a non-development of the Penis are various. Sometimes a general torpor of the Testes retards its growth. Disease or excess will frequently make it wither and decrease in size; and many a youth by early masturbation prevents the full development of the organ.
Sorry dude, they’re still gonna do it. You can tell them self-love causes instant death, they are still gonna do it.
This is one of the more baffling records I have ever come across. It’s a record album from 1965 with the title Tortura: The Sounds of Pain and Pleasure…., subtitle “A Factual Living Record of Discipline and Punishment,” which of course recalls a famous book by Foucault, who, come to think of it, would probably have dug this LP. The label was called Bondage Records.
After learning of the album’s existence (as well as that of a follow-up), it took me a while to find mp3s of it, in which the individual cuts had usefully been concatenated into simply “Side A” and “Side B” files for ease of listening (see below). The album has very little actual music on it. The record contains a series of untitled tracks, perhaps ten per side, featuring the sounds of a whip in use accompanied by the sounds of a human being cooing or whimpering in intense pain/pleasure. I think most of the moaning is coming from men but not all of it. There’s a common paradigm here of the woman being the one who gets to dole out the pain/pleasure, which possibly is being recapitulated here—it’s hard for simple, wordless audio tracks to convey any information about the power relations being depicted. It’s pretty much what you would hear if you put your ear up against the wall in a dungeon of some sort, albeit with no dialogue, no commands or anything like that. Basically it’s just whip/reaction, whip/reaction, over and over again.
To be clear, there’s every reason to believe that these are simulated sounds, by professional actors or Foley artists at work making a product for public consumption; it does not appear to be an actual record of bondage play.
Playing the record is an interesting experience. On both sides, the tracks are mostly interchangeable. Generally the human is exhibiting some kind of intense but stifled response, basically simple moaning, although some of the tracks unmistakably simulate an intense, er, “release” reaction on the part of the human being. On both sides, with a minute or two to go, some piano jazz suddenly materializes to accompany the moaning and the whip strikes.
Jazz music aside, the alternation of whips and moans has a musical quality all its own, which lends the proceedings an amusing quality in a DEVO kind of way, or possibly a Firesign Theatre kind of way. As the sides progress, however, it becomes a little bit challenging to persist with the listening, or at least I found it to be so. Simply put, it is not easy to listen to the sounds of human beings experiencing pain with complete equanimity.
For some reason there is almost no data about this album. It does not appear in the Discogs listings, and its tracks are almost entirely absent from YouTube. Viewed on a browser, the album cover looks (to my eyes) more like a deftly executed mockup of a 1965 album from recent years than the real thing, but further research disabused me of that notion, and eventually I found actual mp3s as well. There was an auction on eBay about a week ago in which the follow-up to this album (subtitle: “An Evening with the Marquis de Sade”) sold for $171 shipped, and there is an auction going on right now where you can buy this album for a base price of $195.
Curiously, one of the first things to cement the idea in my head that this album really existed was that it pops up in a legal case involving the First Amendment in the late 1960s. In the 1969 U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit case United States v. Baranov, we learn that “the matter found to be obscene consisted for the most part of printed booklets containing photographs and illustrations pertaining to nudity, masochism, flagellation, and lesbianism, together with accompanying text material. One count pertained to a phonograph record entitled ‘Tortura, the Sounds of Pain and Pleasure.’”
According to this helpful BDSM wiki, the album was produced by Flag Publishing out of Los Angeles and San Diego, but the writeup suggests that an LP of this type was not typical of Flag’s product line.
About fifteen years ago, way back when I made my living producing television, I interviewed Mr. Blow Up for a documentary on the rise of Internet fetish sites. He was one of the more interesting characters I met—alongside representatives from the wet and messy (“sploshing”) communities, adult babies, furries and used panty-sellers. Mr. Blow Up lived on a quiet London road amid rows of lace curtained windows and neatly trimmed herbaceous borders and distant towering high rises. His charming wife served cups of tea and chocolate biscuits for the crew while Mr. Blow Up talked about his love of being inside a latex suit that was pumped full of air. Mr. B. explained how he had first been attracted to the idea of being constrained in an air-filled rubber suit when playing with a beach ball as a child. He wondered what it would be like to be inside the ball, as it was thwacked and bounced all over the dunes.
Mr. Blow Up, with the help of his latex-clad wife, slipped into one of his talcum sprinkled outfits and sat on the sofa while she used a foot pump to blow-up his headdress. Just at the very moment I thought he might explode (like some sort of latex Mr. Creosote), Mr. B gave a thumbs up. He later explained how being so constrained made him feel happy, secure and excited.
Relaxing with pals.
It seems likely that Mr. Blow Up’s pumped up peccadillo served as the inspiration for one of the most insane moments of that most insane BBC comedy The League of Gentlemen.
This clip of Mr. Blow Up comes from some flip show where the voiceover has the arched eyebrow of condescension—though it is amusing and a rather good introduction to Mr. B and his inflatable fetish.
There is nothing more inspirational, beautiful and harrowing than an artist who takes true risks. Being an artist, especially an independent filmmaker, is hard enough. It’s not like things like job security, steady paychecks and any sort of proper retirement are going to be a constant. Couple that with being a filmmaker who works within a genre that is often critically maligned and life is suddenly a much more harsh trek to cut through. But none of that ever stopped Joseph Sarno, whose cinematic trail began in the 1960’s, with such arty and dramatic forays like Sin in the Suburbs and Inga, then segueing firmly into being one of the most notable cult directors of the 1970’s and 80’s. His legacy was first covered in print thanks to RE/Search’s seminal Incredibly Strange Films book. However, it was only a matter of time for an enterprising filmmaker to come along and do a documentary on the man and his work.
It took Swedish director Wiktor Ericsson and his film, A Life in Dirty Movies to make this needed venture a vital reality and bless him for it.
Ericsson and company had the chance to delve into Sarno’s rich cinematic past, talk with a few of his key artists and associates, as well as portray a slice of life into Joe’s golden years with his former actress, wife/partner, the lithe juggernaut of a woman, Peggy Steffans-Sarno. But A Life in Dirty Movies is about more than just a man who who forged his own path in the worlds of sexploitation and hardcore cinema and even, to some degree, more about one incredible love story of loyalty. It’s about the heart and soul of an artist in his later years who has given so much of himself to something he truly believed in. There are few things more compelling than a creative person with a “damn the torpedoes” approach, especially when it is coming from someone as emotionally forward thinking and sensitive as Joe Sarno.
A Life in Dirty Movies is an interesting title for this film, since early on, it becomes readily apparent that Sarno’s approach to film was anything but dirty. In fact, a couple of commentators joke about how any raincoat crowd going to see one of Sarno’s moodier character studies would have been crippled when it came to having a private hand-party in the theater. (This all invokes one of my favorite film descriptors ever, courtesy of Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris’ book Grindhouse. The term in question is “a no hatter.” This was a term to describe a sexploitation film that failed to arouse the male audience, since they would often attend wearing hats for them to take care of business in.) But that’s the thing. Simple prurience can become boring quick unless there are other layers going on, which was something Joe often incorporated.
With that, we get glimpses of his work, ranging from his exquisitely lit, black and white art-type 60’s films, like Sin in the Suburbs and Vibrations to his 1970’s color character-melodramas such as Laura’s Toys and Abigail Leslie is Back in Town. Former collaborators, ranging from editors to actors (including the fantastic Annie Sprinkle), noted film writers like Jim Morton, as well as admirers in the form of John Waters, are all interviewed and have similar observations of both Sarno the man, as well as the director. One of the biggest ones was Joe’s emphasis on female pleasure. In a world where male orgasm is king, while pleasure is relegated to borderline incidental for women, Sarno was indeed a rare bird in his time and, to a lesser degree, even now. He definitely paved the way for female-centric filmmakers in erotica, which would go on to include Eric Edwards (an actor who was in a number of Sarno’s films in the 70’s) and another ground breaker in the form of Candida Royalle, whose company, Femme, catered specifically to women. These were just two of many who were able to create what they created thanks to filmmakers like Joe. One impressive tidbit that is revealed within the film is that Joe wrote the scripts for every single film he ever directed and given that his filmography, including both his soft and hardcore work, is well over a hundred, that is no mean feat!
Sarno’s love and respect for women can also be summed up by his decades long marriage to Peggy. Well educated and born from a wealthy family in New York, Peggy’s an absolute lioness to her lion in twilight. Dark haired with piercing eyes and a throaty, yet feminine voice, Peggy’s most striking feature is her absolute fierce loyalty and belief in her mate. Especially given that it is not the blind, Hollywood-variety of faith. She talks candidly about the harsh realities of their financial situation and past deals that did zero to line their pockets. (Talk about the sad, blues-song reality of too many talented and notable artists in their later years.) Their relationship is, in many ways, even more notable than Joe’s impressive filmography because it is so intensely rare.
More sweetness that is captured is getting to see Joe enjoy the beginnings of the revival of his art while he was still here. (He passed away on April 26, 2010.) It is hard to not feel some tremors of heart ache when you hear him say, “I thought everyone had forgotten me,” which makes moments like seeing him enjoy his very own tribute at the British Film Institute all the more resonant.
Speaking of tributes, A Life in Dirty Movies is an honest and loving one to an American filmmaker whose craft was, to quote Peggy, “...in his blood.” It’s a great documentary for fringe film fans and the curious alike. You don’t have to be into adult-themed films to appreciate the real-life story of a director who truly worked hard and cared about his craft and people in general.
Peter Larkin, 88, was, in his day, a Tony Award-winning production designer, who, in the mid-‘50, took top nods for his work on Ondine, The Teahouse of the August Moon, No Time for Sergeants, and Inherit the Wind. He’s also a highly-informed burlesque aficionado. In 1994, he illustrated the book The Best Burlesque Sketches, and in the twenty years since, he’s been mocking up a pop-up book on the subject, with the delightful working title Panties Inferno. The Paris Review published a series of photos of the mock-ups, along with a detailed interview with Larkin.
I started doing pop-ups in 1994. My early ones were pretty crude. I had to figure out the engineering, if that’s what they call it—but I had fooled around with pop-ups before, because I used to make theatrical models for stage sets, so with my experience that wasn’t too difficult. I was a good draftsman and with a drawing board and triangles I could figure it out. You have to use the motion of opening the book to power the whole thing. Nowadays, there are guys who use string and elastic—all kinds of strange things in there, which as a purist, I would say aren’t exactly pop-ups. There’s also a certain amount of tumescence involved there. It’s sort of phallic, the pop-up. Why would you make a book that things popped up out of?
The book is arranged as if it’s a whole evening of burlesque, from start to finish. It always ended with a really awful production number. They got a set of steps—stairs—and covered it with some kind of sleazy material. Then there were all kinds of strange things.
Sadly, due to the complexity of Larkin’s pop-ups, the sheer expense of producing it has led publishers to deem it unpublishable. Mr. Larkin, again, is 88 years of age, so someone please tell him about Kickstarter, and quickly!
If you look carefully at the credits for DEVO’s 1982 album Oh, No! It’s DEVO, you will spot a name that doesn’t ordinarily pop up in the DEVO universe or even the music world generally. The name is John Hinckley, Jr., and he is best known to the world as the man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan in 1981, in a batshit-crazy attempt to win the amorous affections of Jodie Foster, then still a teenager. Hinckley was strongly influenced by The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and, far more pertinently, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in which Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle considers assassinating a U.S. Senator named Palantine but then opts to murder the pimp who has rights over a teen prostitute portrayed by the selfsame Jodie Foster.
When Foster enrolled in Yale University, Hinckley moved all the way from Texas to New Haven, just so he could be near her. He engaged in a lot of creepy, stalker behavior that if you saw it in a movie, you’d think it was overdone, enrolling in the same writing class as her, leaving all kinds of poems and messages for her, and calling her repeatedly. Eventually he would squeeze off six rounds outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, wounding two Secret Service agents and Reagan’s press secretary as well as (via a ricochet) the president himself.
According to Rolling Stone, DEVO got in touch with Hinckley and acquired one of his demented love poems to Foster and adapted it into a song called “I Desire.” Here are some representative lyrics:
I pledge allegiance to the fact
That you’re wise to walk away
For nothing is more dangerous
Than desire when it’s wrong
Don’t let me torment you
Don’t let me bring you down
Don’t ever let me hurt you
Don’t let me fail because
I desire your attention
I desire your perfect love
I desire nothing more
The stunt not only annoyed Warner Bros., who learned that they would be obliged to send Hinckley royalty payments for the song, but also, according to Rolling Stone, won DEVO the official attentions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:
As Mark Mothersbaugh recalled, “[Hinckley] let us take a poem that he had written, and we used it for the lyrics and turned it into a love song. It was not the best career move you could make. We had the FBI calling up and threatening us.”
In November of 1982, Hinckley wrote a letter to the “Morning Zoo” crew of KZEW, a Dallas radio station, in which he professes his love for “New Wave music” (hey, me too!) and requests that the station play “I Desire” a total of “58 times each day.” Here’s the full quote:
I like New Wave music, especially Devo, since I co-wrote a song on their new album. The song is called “I Desire” and I want you to play it 58 times each day.
In the letter Hinckley also writes, “I used to listen to the song ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie when I was stalking Carter and Reagan. It got me in a strange mood. ... In March and April of 1980, I hung out at Peaches Record Store on Fitzhugh.” Peaches, which used to be on the intersection of Cole and Fitzhugh in northern Dallas, has, alas, bitten the dust.
Below, listen to “I Desire,” the only new wave ditty ever co-written by a presidential assassin:
, and in the twenty years since, he’s been mocking up a pop-up book on the subject, with the delightful working title Panties Inferno. 
