Yours truly made a recent appearance on How Sex Changed The World, a colorful, fast-paced new History Channel series. The topic was Aleister Crowley and basically how his outsized sex drive and compulsion to do whatever his dick desired that ultimately had a great effect on society in the 1960s.

In other words, Crowley was a free-living, free-loving hippie during the Victorian era, lighting the long fuse of a bomb with his “Do what thou wilt” philosophy that would go off with the sexual revolution.

I had fun doing this show and I got to explain a general concept of what sex magic is to middle America! Good times!

The Crowley segment starts at about the 5:50 mark.
 

 

 
Ron Boise’s infamous Kama Sutra sculptures from the early 1960’s look almost quaint now. A series of eleven small (the tallest was a foot high) sculptures depicting sexual positions from the ancient Hindu text on sexual behavior, the Kama Sutra, were formed out of scrap sheet metal taken from wrecked cars. And that’s when the prudish shit storm began.

Boise grew up in Colorado and Montana, where he learned to weld from his father, before moving to California. In addition to being a self-taught sculptor, Boise was one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and even used old tools, car parts, bucksaws and old scraps of metal to create the always-locked front gate on Kesey’s La Honda, California property, on the far side of the rickety bridge that spanned La Honda Creek.

Boise himself lived and traveled in an old telephone company service van which he painted wild psychedelic colors and modified to become a mobile studio and camper.

In 1964 Boise’s Kama Sutra series was shown at the two-year-old Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco, then located in the alley behind Vesuvio Cafe and a few steps from City Lights Bookstore. (Still open, it is now located in the San Francisco Civic Center at 444 Market Street.) Art professor Richard H. Grooms described the pieces:

His sculpture was extremely sensual and the rendering of flesh and texture of the sheet metal made you forget they were scraps of metal at all. He had a sensitive line in his work that made all the metal personages seem to have a personality all their own. They became like real people, but without the idea they were portraits.

The sight of fewer than a dozen small, charming depictions of a man and a woman engaged in various heterosexual activities was enough to completely freak out the upright citizens of San Francisco. San Francisco police raided the gallery, confiscated almost all of the sculptures, and arrested gallery owner Muldoon Elder for offering “lewd objects for sale.” An obscenity trial ensued, where expert art historians Walter Horn and Catherine Caldwell and philosopher Alan Watts testified in defense of Boise’s work. Watts’ statement was reprinted in The Evergreen Review in June 1965:

Ron Boise is a sculptor who is doing something which I call ‘pushing the line back’ – in the same way as great modern writers, such as Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce have been pushing the line back in literature. We haven’t seen much of it in sculpture – or in painting…

Here we see an extraordinary example of getting away with murder but in a fantastically good way. But it’s not actually getting away with murder; it’s something much worse than that; it’s getting away with love…Very rarely, unless we are familiar with Hindu sculpture or Tibetan painting can we see anything like this done with superb mastery.

Elder was found not guilty.  He wrote in 2004:

Thank God the A.C.L.U. defended me at the two-week trial since in 1964 I hardly had a penny to my name to pay for a lawyer and I doubt if the public defender would have been as eloquent as Ephriam Margolin and Marshall Krause were in that courtroom. You’ll have to ask me about the trial sometime, it was a hoot.

During and after the trial, the Kama Sutra sculptures became a rallying point for the local counterculture. Calendars and postcards were sold featuring the sculptures. Hip Pocket Bookstore in Santa Cruz, California proudly displayed one of the original sculptures over the front door. Another sculpture was installed on the roof of the Anchor Steam Beer Factory in San Francisco in full view of the freeway until Fritz Maytag took over the company in 1965 and removed it.

Boise died of the blood disease hemochrotouisis in 1966. He was on his way to Mexico to celebrate a successful show in California, where he sold nearly all of his works. He had told friends that he did not expect to live a long life and wanted to fully enjoy what years he had allotted to him. In a 1968 Martlett magazine article Richard H. Grooms wondered what had happened to Boise’s unsold sculptures after his death. Photographs of the Kama Sutra sculptures that were to accompany Grooms’ article were censored by Martlett’s printers.

Excerpt from a documentary about Boise’s work.  It contains footage of him working on a sculpture shortly before his death in 1966.

Get your mind out of the gutter

Ha ha, very funny, Beavis and Butthead, so you think this Japanese face slimmer is some kind of a typically kinky sex toy? Nope. Not at all. It is the product of rigorously legitimate beauty pseudo-science, and only to be used for its intended purpose. To suggest otherwise undermines our intelligence and demeans our maturity.

To get and maintain the perfect visage, you don’t need the cosmetic surgeon’s knife. All you need is a mouthpiece. Yes, the Face Slimmer is a simple solution to the timeless problem of how to give sagging facial skin and muscles that much-needed daily lift. Just three minutes per day is all you need; pop in the mold and then make mouth movements. The makers recommend you say vowel sounds out loud over and over again, producing regular and methodical exercises that will strength the twelve facial expression muscles in a comprehensive way.

Just don’t forget to say those vowel sounds out loud over and over again… Their words, not mine.
 

 
See?!? It’s a totally nonsexual beauty product! And for a pittance of 61 US Dollars, you too, can look like a beautiful, slim-faced blow-up doll!
 
Via Today I Learned Something New

Photograph of Truman Capote, 1948, by Carl Van Vechten.

Truman Capote is quite adorable in this interview with David Frost from 1969, although the great writer becomes slightly unstuck by his inquisitor’s questioning.

When asked, Capote says love and friendship are the same thing, but that sex doesn’t have anything to do with friendship.

“I think it is very difficult to have a sexual relationship with somebody who is actually a friend, because there is a kind of tension and antagonism that goes on in a sexual relationship that is the antithesis of friendship.”

Though he may have once written that sex was like sneezing, Capote reveals he has had more “love relationships” than “sex relationships.” Which puzzles Frost, as Capote only admits to having been in love twice.
 

 
Passers-by watched in amazement as a woman, dressed as a vagina, stopped an attack on a man, dressed as a penis. The incident took place on a Friday afternoon, last week, in Glastonbury High Street, England.

The Vagina and Penis were performers with the Nomadic Academy of Fools, who were out in the High Street promoting their production Fooling Around, four days of plays at the Glastonbury Assembly Rooms. It is believed that a member of the public took great offense at the actor dressed as a penis and began to attack him. Performer Chris Kelly, who was dressed as the penis, later explained:

“He started shouting at me, saying it was disgusting and children could see us. I could tell by his body language that he was really angry. I tried to calm him down, I wasn’t looking for a fight; but he grabbed my hat, tore it off and chucked it on the pavement.”

Both the Penis and the Vagina then headed back towards the Assembly Rooms. In the meantime, another member of the public had telephoned the police. The actress, Joanne Tremarco, who was dressed as the Vagina, told police they did not want to press any charges against the man.

“Then he explained that I needed to take the costume off, or I could be arrested. They also removed flyers for the plays we were performing.”

Ms. Tremarco understood how some members of the public could be offended by their costumes, but went on to explain:

“We’re trying to highlight the contradiction in society. People were offended by us walking around in costume, but it’s nothing you can’t see in magazines and newspapers that are often displayed in a child’s eye-line. On the whole, the reaction we had was positive from most people.”

The Nomadic Academy of Fools agreed not to give any more street performances, while a spokesperson for the Assembly Rooms said:

“We were deeply surprised by the reaction of the police in this situation. This is not the first time these shows have been performed here. The plays were very well attended and we experienced no trouble at the venue.”

Inspector Mark Nicholson, of Avon and Somerset Police, said:

“We wouldn’t have stopped the play going ahead, but it’s not appropriate to have costumes and swear words like that in the streets where young children and other people could see them and be offended.”

The incident has been the talk of Glastonbury, and led to one of the most bizarre headlines in the local press.
 

 
Via Arbroath, with thanks to Saskia Baron

 
I think you’ll agree, dear discerning Dangerous Minds readers, that this would be difficult to top… either in the near term, or decades from now.

Wow, where to start with this one? Or should I even try? Just hit play, but be SURE to watch it all the way to the end, because it just keeps ramping up and up in the insanity department until the genius ending. It’s laugh out loud funny, but when it’s over your jaw will be on the ground, and trust me, it will stay there.

This is every flavor of wrong and then some.

It will probably not come as a surprise that this well-adjusted young lady also happens to be employed at Dennis Hof’s World Famous Bunny Ranch in Nevada. I wonder if he still gets a cut of that as her “manager”?
 

“Princess, Daddy wants you to wear your pink gown on our date. You look so pure in that one.”

This sort of mindset simply does not compute outside of Christianist fundie circles: The Legacy Institute, run by sexual “purity” advocate Carrie Abbott, is holding a father and daughter “Purity Ball” cotillion in Kenmare, WA next week—it’s already sold out—that promises to be a dads and daughters celebration of intact hymens.

The Purity Ball is only for fathers (or “key male guardians”) and daughters who are aged 12-19. An event celebrating virginity with a strong undercurrent of (hopefully) repressed incest issues. WOW. (Consider for one nanosecond the even WEIRDER proposition of escorting a young virgin who is not even your own biological offspring to such an event as her “key male guardian.” FREAKY DEAKY.)

I get the “good girls” want to meet “fine, upstanding Christian boys” at a chaperoned dance kinda thing, but this? This is fucking demented.

I fervently hope a documentary crew will be on hand to shoot this:

Dads, escort your daughter to an unforgettable event where hundreds of young ladies dressed in formal attire and their dashing fathers will celebrate purity!

This extraordinary evening includes an elegant atmosphere, pictures, gourmet dinner and dessert, flowers, music and other surprises sure to delight both father and daughter.

Legacy’s President and popular speaker, Carrie Abbott, will deliver a unique message to dads and daughters and our Master of Ceremonies will facilitate a purity covenant.

This will be a powerful and life-changing event!

Now that I doubt, but the overall cumulative effect that having this sort of horseshit drilled into their heads for years is probably going to have quite the opposite influence on these young ladies than is intended. Want to insure that your daughter will remain virginal and pure until she’s married in the eyes of God, Christian dads? Then you might want to consider backing off creepy shit like “purity covenants” and breathtakingly twisto events like this one!

Best of all? The tickets were priced at $69.

Via Christian Nigtmares

 
“What a wonderful idea for a gun. Quite mad, but great fun.”

Yep, it sure is great fun, Mr. Hendrik Ball!

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Man outraged after receiving threatening dildo in the mail from tractor supply company

Via Gawker

 
Prostitution is legal in Argentina, but only for what one might call “free agents.” Organized brothels and other attempts to regulate the industry and protect workers haven’t made their way into the law books so the Association of Women Sex Workers in Argentina in Action for Our Rights (AMMAR) has hired an ad company to change hearts and minds. -

The campaign is a simple wheat-paste job. On one side of the corner is the life-size image of a sex worker. On the other side of the corner are her children, with the words, “86% of sex workers are mothers. We need a law to regulate our work.”

The one-two punch effect serves to both startle the viewer with something memorable, and show the personal side of a public profession to which so many would just as soon turn a blind eye.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Yoga came to the West from India, in bits and pieces from the 1920’s to the 1960’s. From the 1960’s to about ten years ago, the only people teaching yoga were more or less hippies. Teachers who emphasized the spiritual aspect of the practice and taught small classes made up of a ragtag assortment of humans beings. Grandmas, new moms, pregnant moms, college students and athletes getting over injuries, wearing loose fitting clothing that resembles nothing like the yoga bras and tight, wedgie-inducing Yoga Tart pants on offer today. Somewhere along the way over the past twenty years the fitness industry and corporations got ahold of yoga (I won’t even go into the whole Pilates fad) and turned it into just another way to get fit. Oh, and look HOT.

Yoga is supposed to be much more than that. In 1997-98 the most sought after yoga teachers were from Golden Bridge in L.A. They were Western Sikh followers of Yogi Bhajan, wore extremely modest clothing and their long hair was tucked up in a white turban. The stars of this yoga school were Gurmukh, who taught prenatal yoga and also helped more than a few people stay sober through yoga, and Gurutej Kaur. Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers was one of Gurmukh’s students. A punk singer and music producer from the Midwest reinvented himself as a yogi named Mahan. They didn’t preach Sikhism, but there was a definite spiritual emphasis, with talk of meditation, chakras, energy, auric fields, and the like. It was cheerful and comforting.

Then came power yoga, Bikram yoga (hot yoga), and provocative yoga, complete with porn soundtrack. Now the women demonstrating yoga positions in magazines (even Yoga Journal) or videos look like (usually white) gymnists.  Or like lingerie models. There isn’t anything about your soul, centering, meditation, union of body, mind and spirit, or communion with the divine. But they make damn sure to use the impressively long original Indian names for every single pose in a stab of authenticity, which gets lost among all the accessories you’re suddenly supposed to have, like “yoga bricks” and special “Toesox” socks.

Kate Potter’s soothing yoga show, Namaste Yoga, once shown on Canadian televison and the cable channel FitTV, used to feature women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, but all pretty much at the same level of ultra-fitness. I’m not asking for robe-wearing sadhus exclusively, but it would have been nice to see a few bigger ladies included as well. Or Chris Grosso wrote for yoganonymous.com, “Unless I missed the memo, spirituality is not just for pretty, clean cut, white folks who have more money than they know what to do with”

There are authentic sanghas who teach “old school” yoga, but they might not be as easy to find if their message and ads are lost among the flashier teachers. Which leads to the fact that teacher training in some states is laughable. Just because someone has a yoga teaching certification doesn’t mean that they are actually qualified to teach.

Julie J.C. Peters righteously ranted about the sexy Equinox Yoga video in Elephant Journal:

“Yoga advertising has been trying for a while now to make me feel bad about my body so that I get insecure enough to buy whatever they are selling.” You mean not everyone works out in Agent Provocateur underwear?

Although Susan “Stop the Insanity!” Powter produced her own down-to-earth yoga video for all fitness levels, Trailer Park Yoga. This DVD did not receive the advertising push that a video like Equinox Yoga or Provocative Yoga received, and so is therefore an obscure resource for women looking for alternatives.

In her article “Tits and Ass in a Mala,” Portland, Oregon yoga teacher Maya Devi Georg asks, “How about featuring non-sexualized images of young women, or celebrating images of older women, women of color, or men at any age?”:

“This is a call to practitioners and teachers to take responsibility for the practice—not just for themselves but those who will follow us. What does the future of yoga hold in the West? Will it be reduced to corporate ownership, making bad classes better, but making great classes extinct? Will it be ruled by greed, glamour, fads and gimmicks? Or will the word yoga become so overused that the inherent meaning is lost?”

Namaste to that!