In a rising mist of righteous hypocrisy and God-fear, a lone spear carrier walks across the field and scraps a line into the moist earth.
We stand and await the first real battle.
(to be continued)
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Saturday, January 15, 2005
I Was An Internext Stuff Slut
(Las Vegas) January 6, 2004 - The Mandalay Bay Island Lounge. A band was actually playing The Girl From Ipanema. The free Flirt4Free Internext Expo bag, which had started off with a few sheets of sponsor literature and an official show guide, now bulged beside my chair with promotional items from the convention floor. My feet hummed a song of numb and my throat sizzled cool from draft administered in micro-sipped doses.
I had spent two full days hunting. The Internext Expo was over the hump of its 3 day run and still it felt as though the thing was just cranking up. I still had't gotten everything.
Though the CCBill PayDay candy-bar did the trick for a little, it was exhaustion that crushed my hunger until all I craved was beer. I waited as I crunched my last from the flatbox of HotMovies.com breath mints.
Actually I craved the girl from Ipanema, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Tomorrow would be the last day of the expo. From the booths on the floor, the call of stuff. Promo stuff. Much of it surprisingly useful and practical. Some silly. But it didn't matter. I had to have it all.
I had set off on day one with absolutely no criteria or strategy to amass the largest collection of promo stuff to be had at Internext, and now I feared I would fail at my goal. There was just too much stuff. And much of it alike, but I was bound by duty as a journalist and free stuff slut (a common journalist's trait) to get it all.
Some booths "sold" you their stuff by insisting on spieling, but most were peopled or organized by folk who know the value of advertisind and stuff sluts like myself. These happily delivered the goods with little struggle.
The Adult Internet Business has always been on the ball: on top or ahead of the game when it comes to online marketing. But is it at the same level when it comes to free stuff? Does it matter? Flesh Partners bowling pin keytags, enormous Club-XStream ball-point pens and Choopa.com t-shirts are tried and true, classic promo items and there's nothing wrong with that.
Every once in a while new-school web ideas such as RedRoomMedia's or GeorgiaAdair's free content disks landed in my bag, but most of the marketing stuff was carry-home traditional.
The most impressive booths were the big ones, with chill areas, or bars, with free stuff and services like chips and Budweiser at the Private booth, free Internet access at the SpaCash terrace, all of which kept me away from the overpriced food table at one corner of the floor.
My daily routine could consist of having eggs in my room with the OrderMachine.com habenero sauce, then lighting a cigarette with my Cyberotica lighter, and heading off to the booths. After lunch, I'd open my first Corona with the SpaCash lighter's other business end and settle down on a couch or stool to review some literature when my feet couldn't take the beat anymore.
Platinum Bucks had a classy booth serving free capucinno and espresso, and they seemed to have the corner on practical stuff, with calendars and notebooks topping my list - but also funky pens in snazzy felt holders, free-content CDs, and more.
At least my second goal was reached here in Vegas: with all the functional and useful free stuff from the last convention running out, I managed to fill up again. So I replaced my worn and scribble-full Epoch notebook from Florida for Platinum Bucks', got a few more pens, a new calendar, fresh t-shirts. And my last convention lighter ran out a little while ago, but Sex.com has a nice four-inch long one for me here. That's going to last at least to next year's Vegas show.
###
I had spent two full days hunting. The Internext Expo was over the hump of its 3 day run and still it felt as though the thing was just cranking up. I still had't gotten everything.
Though the CCBill PayDay candy-bar did the trick for a little, it was exhaustion that crushed my hunger until all I craved was beer. I waited as I crunched my last from the flatbox of HotMovies.com breath mints.
Actually I craved the girl from Ipanema, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Tomorrow would be the last day of the expo. From the booths on the floor, the call of stuff. Promo stuff. Much of it surprisingly useful and practical. Some silly. But it didn't matter. I had to have it all.
I had set off on day one with absolutely no criteria or strategy to amass the largest collection of promo stuff to be had at Internext, and now I feared I would fail at my goal. There was just too much stuff. And much of it alike, but I was bound by duty as a journalist and free stuff slut (a common journalist's trait) to get it all.
Some booths "sold" you their stuff by insisting on spieling, but most were peopled or organized by folk who know the value of advertisind and stuff sluts like myself. These happily delivered the goods with little struggle.
The Adult Internet Business has always been on the ball: on top or ahead of the game when it comes to online marketing. But is it at the same level when it comes to free stuff? Does it matter? Flesh Partners bowling pin keytags, enormous Club-XStream ball-point pens and Choopa.com t-shirts are tried and true, classic promo items and there's nothing wrong with that.
Every once in a while new-school web ideas such as RedRoomMedia's or GeorgiaAdair's free content disks landed in my bag, but most of the marketing stuff was carry-home traditional.
The most impressive booths were the big ones, with chill areas, or bars, with free stuff and services like chips and Budweiser at the Private booth, free Internet access at the SpaCash terrace, all of which kept me away from the overpriced food table at one corner of the floor.
My daily routine could consist of having eggs in my room with the OrderMachine.com habenero sauce, then lighting a cigarette with my Cyberotica lighter, and heading off to the booths. After lunch, I'd open my first Corona with the SpaCash lighter's other business end and settle down on a couch or stool to review some literature when my feet couldn't take the beat anymore.
Platinum Bucks had a classy booth serving free capucinno and espresso, and they seemed to have the corner on practical stuff, with calendars and notebooks topping my list - but also funky pens in snazzy felt holders, free-content CDs, and more.
At least my second goal was reached here in Vegas: with all the functional and useful free stuff from the last convention running out, I managed to fill up again. So I replaced my worn and scribble-full Epoch notebook from Florida for Platinum Bucks', got a few more pens, a new calendar, fresh t-shirts. And my last convention lighter ran out a little while ago, but Sex.com has a nice four-inch long one for me here. That's going to last at least to next year's Vegas show.
###
Friday, December 31, 2004
Kirstie Alley: Revenge of the BBW
Kirstie Alley is about to do for porn what Madonna did a few years ago.
BBW love and the public profile of BBWs is about to go through the roof, much like leather, bondage, tattoos and piercings sizzled across the gap between Alternative and Mainstream around the time of the Cicconne Epiphany.
She was one of the smartest, sexiest women icons on the tube. A boss-lady with sexy gams and a hand-hug waist who took no shit and gave where it needed giving.
Then Kirstie Alley got fat. Everywhere she went, her photo was taken and tabloids published only the most face-squished sun-bleared, half-eyed grimaces she made, annoyed by their presence. Until recently.
Taking a page from the No Publicity is Bad Publicity handbook, Alley took to turning full-on to face papparazzi and give them the finger. Laughing.
What happened was she got a great idea, and kept it a secret, and made them come after her. She must have made more magazine covers than younger, thinner stars, as she turned the Hollywood hate machine on itself. Because she came up with a t.v. show called fat actress.
In the mould of the reality comedy mode, but with seriously brilliant fuck-you attitude, the show manages to be a shameless Hollywood gimmick as well as the shameless self-revelation of a woman who has to deal with the youth and beauty industry cults. In the process of spoofing Hollywood, Alley even subverts the very notion of what is and isn't "appropriate" to laugh at.
Alley's adverts and credit sequence for fat actress feature her fully made-up in curve-hugging dresses moving, dancing, acting coy and sexy and beautiful.
And confident.
Note that the show is NOT called "Ugly Actress". It's about a BBW, baby.
The BBW niche, which was a soft, undermarketted sub-niche until very recently, will never be the same again.
From now on it's going to be OK to love Big Beautiful Women. More than OK. It's going to be normal, the way coming out or piercing your nipple is normal. Or much more, perhaps as normal and as much of a "standard" as skinny chicks are now. Plump women maybe return to the status they enjoyed for hundreds of years, from Earth Goddess types to Renaissance Painting porn, before societal biases squeezed big fat charms into a cultural closet.
And that will be good. The (North) American Psyche needs all the healing and balming it can get right now. After 9-11, George W. Bush, Columbinesque massacres, the relentless guilt inducement of doctors, nutrionists and filmmakers everywhere proclaiming the shame of the tv/fast food diet, something had to give. And it certainly wasn't going to be Donald the Burger Pimp.
The guilt and shame of our fatness and our lust will implode over the coming year, and the twain shall cease to exist in their present form. And by the time Alley gets skinny again (come on, like she won't) it might be too late for the BBW niche - it will swell and spike, then take a dive and could lose much value. As a market.
But oh, those beaches in summer...
###
BBW love and the public profile of BBWs is about to go through the roof, much like leather, bondage, tattoos and piercings sizzled across the gap between Alternative and Mainstream around the time of the Cicconne Epiphany.
She was one of the smartest, sexiest women icons on the tube. A boss-lady with sexy gams and a hand-hug waist who took no shit and gave where it needed giving.
Then Kirstie Alley got fat. Everywhere she went, her photo was taken and tabloids published only the most face-squished sun-bleared, half-eyed grimaces she made, annoyed by their presence. Until recently.
Taking a page from the No Publicity is Bad Publicity handbook, Alley took to turning full-on to face papparazzi and give them the finger. Laughing.
What happened was she got a great idea, and kept it a secret, and made them come after her. She must have made more magazine covers than younger, thinner stars, as she turned the Hollywood hate machine on itself. Because she came up with a t.v. show called fat actress.
In the mould of the reality comedy mode, but with seriously brilliant fuck-you attitude, the show manages to be a shameless Hollywood gimmick as well as the shameless self-revelation of a woman who has to deal with the youth and beauty industry cults. In the process of spoofing Hollywood, Alley even subverts the very notion of what is and isn't "appropriate" to laugh at.
Alley's adverts and credit sequence for fat actress feature her fully made-up in curve-hugging dresses moving, dancing, acting coy and sexy and beautiful.
And confident.
Note that the show is NOT called "Ugly Actress". It's about a BBW, baby.
The BBW niche, which was a soft, undermarketted sub-niche until very recently, will never be the same again.
From now on it's going to be OK to love Big Beautiful Women. More than OK. It's going to be normal, the way coming out or piercing your nipple is normal. Or much more, perhaps as normal and as much of a "standard" as skinny chicks are now. Plump women maybe return to the status they enjoyed for hundreds of years, from Earth Goddess types to Renaissance Painting porn, before societal biases squeezed big fat charms into a cultural closet.
And that will be good. The (North) American Psyche needs all the healing and balming it can get right now. After 9-11, George W. Bush, Columbinesque massacres, the relentless guilt inducement of doctors, nutrionists and filmmakers everywhere proclaiming the shame of the tv/fast food diet, something had to give. And it certainly wasn't going to be Donald the Burger Pimp.
The guilt and shame of our fatness and our lust will implode over the coming year, and the twain shall cease to exist in their present form. And by the time Alley gets skinny again (come on, like she won't) it might be too late for the BBW niche - it will swell and spike, then take a dive and could lose much value. As a market.
But oh, those beaches in summer...
###
Monday, December 13, 2004
God Loves Porn
It was a summer of Hurricanes, tornadoes, Papal trips and the Declaration of War on Porn. Even though John Ashcroft sang for Eagles and covered up statuary, child porn was unaffected by God's Government.
The signs were all there, while attempts to reign in porn with feigned-in anti-child-porn declarations failed, but St-John the Ashcroft, George "W for War" Bush and the boys did not see... The President held prayer meetings in Congress and St-John held up his unenforced statutes as needing revision, the world frowned as both claimed God Made 'em Do It. Go to war. Lie to the people. Fine CBS for that black woman's breast being shown to white children.
But while Bonnie and Charlie were ripping the roofs off churches and high schools all over the State of Florida, on a Friday the 13th, the whole of the porn industry gathered in the city called Hollywood at an event called the Black Circus and did the schmooze. And God spared them.
Hollywood FL was not spared later by Hurricane Frances and others which came along. Only when the porn people were there did the benevolent eye of the Creator not blink.
The Pope was at Lourdes that weekend. He was not healed. God is not in Government, and the crusaders should turn their swords to the real scourge: child abuse, which is not to be found on our naughty but consensual sites.
God let Bush and the Boys play for another four years to give them the chance to prove themselves ridiculous before all. Have faith, oh ye of porn persuasion. Know that they will come as thieves in the night, but the Supreme Court, though it hates you for a Plague on the Homeland, will protect your rights as it will your lefts, and strike down the so-called Protection which could even whittle their wood down to nothing.
See the signs. We are witness to divine approbation. God loves porn.
###
The signs were all there, while attempts to reign in porn with feigned-in anti-child-porn declarations failed, but St-John the Ashcroft, George "W for War" Bush and the boys did not see... The President held prayer meetings in Congress and St-John held up his unenforced statutes as needing revision, the world frowned as both claimed God Made 'em Do It. Go to war. Lie to the people. Fine CBS for that black woman's breast being shown to white children.
But while Bonnie and Charlie were ripping the roofs off churches and high schools all over the State of Florida, on a Friday the 13th, the whole of the porn industry gathered in the city called Hollywood at an event called the Black Circus and did the schmooze. And God spared them.
Hollywood FL was not spared later by Hurricane Frances and others which came along. Only when the porn people were there did the benevolent eye of the Creator not blink.
The Pope was at Lourdes that weekend. He was not healed. God is not in Government, and the crusaders should turn their swords to the real scourge: child abuse, which is not to be found on our naughty but consensual sites.
God let Bush and the Boys play for another four years to give them the chance to prove themselves ridiculous before all. Have faith, oh ye of porn persuasion. Know that they will come as thieves in the night, but the Supreme Court, though it hates you for a Plague on the Homeland, will protect your rights as it will your lefts, and strike down the so-called Protection which could even whittle their wood down to nothing.
See the signs. We are witness to divine approbation. God loves porn.
###
Thursday, November 11, 2004
St. John The Ashcroft Steps Down
John Ashcroft has resigned and left us all porn panderers a little bereft. After all, he was the best and most ridiculous enemy we’d had for years.
We saw him sing a song he wrote himself, cover up art that made him blush with its classical nudity, heard him thump his chest and declare war on porn with the same gravity his boss declared holy war against the oil pirates.
Now he’s gone. And that’s maybe a little scary. Because Ashcroft wore his morality as a badge, we knew where we stood with him.
Who will replace him, now? What new, unknown factor is going to propagate the war against our businesses?
It took a crafty accountant to bring down Al Capone, crafty and creative justice carried out fairly and justifiably. But that kind of cunning can just as easily be borne wrongly against anyone perceived as an enemy – including we the people.
The Ashcroft resignation is nothing if not odd, even suspicious. And the new AG head of the DOJ will have to put up with great scrutiny and screening by the adult industry, if only to understand where the next attacks will be coming from.
After our collective sigh of relief, we cannot afford to breathe too easy.
We saw him sing a song he wrote himself, cover up art that made him blush with its classical nudity, heard him thump his chest and declare war on porn with the same gravity his boss declared holy war against the oil pirates.
Now he’s gone. And that’s maybe a little scary. Because Ashcroft wore his morality as a badge, we knew where we stood with him.
Who will replace him, now? What new, unknown factor is going to propagate the war against our businesses?
It took a crafty accountant to bring down Al Capone, crafty and creative justice carried out fairly and justifiably. But that kind of cunning can just as easily be borne wrongly against anyone perceived as an enemy – including we the people.
The Ashcroft resignation is nothing if not odd, even suspicious. And the new AG head of the DOJ will have to put up with great scrutiny and screening by the adult industry, if only to understand where the next attacks will be coming from.
After our collective sigh of relief, we cannot afford to breathe too easy.
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