Friday, April 30, 2010

Non, je ne regrette rien, Dept.

The love affair is over. Not by choice. Not mine, anyway.

The object of my affection is leaving me.

Not for someone else, but, painfully, for no reason I can see.
Not yet, anyway.

I know that the next time we meet, things will definitely have changed. Perhaps for the better, but that's so hard to imagine.

We'll see.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Listen to the Swallow, Dept.

As you may know, on rare occasion and for fact-finding purposes only, your sobsister visits Web sites that feature, gratuit, short erotic films, and by "short erotic films," I mean five-minute unSteadicam sextravaganzas with descriptive titles like "Russian facial slut" and "Little but a huge dick." Which, coincidentally, is also a new biography of Mickey Rooney.

Redtube, YouPorn, xhamster, PornHub, it's all one dizzying blur of ejaculate, silicone and salon tan. The pro material I won't touch. If I want to see grotesque tits, I'll watch a Teabagger debate. *ha ha* I don't joke. No, I cast a glance, instead, at those done by "amateurs." Some of whom are "amateur," while others are simply amateurs. I favor the latter, mainly for their "authenticity," a word that, once quote-bracketed, refutes itself. Like those downmarket burger joints that splash a quotey "Best Burger in Town" on their façade, wholly unattributed, so that one can only imagine the hipsterish quote-fingers and rolled eyes of it all. "Oh, yes, it's the 'Best Burger in Town.' Just like I have 'hope for the future.'"

I myself ask why any of the nice ladies in these films--all of whom get the big DeMille closeup as they work the boyfriend's/husband's/filmmaker's balls like Captain Queeg on the witness stand--would allow themselves to be filmed when, within minutes, their eye-bulging gag and eyeful of spunk will be fodder for every wanking cretin on the planet. Clearly, I do not share their view of the appropriate and desirable. But, for good or ill, it is they who drive the proceedings. The men are merely semi-erect offscreen voices, like Charlie talking to Sabrina, Kelly and Jill, except through a glory hole.

The semi-erectness, in fact, is notable, as a number of these auteurs can't quite manage a honest hard-on before the camera's unblinking eye, yet inexplicably want to make that fact known to all of us, even as they're being energetically serviced by reasonably attractive women who one would hope might've had something else to do that afternoon. Finish À la recherche du temps perdu or make a cup of chamomile tea or alphabetize their nail polish or, really, anything other than, as mentioned earlier, get an eyeful of semen.

Parenthetically, I can't imagine why everyone feels the need to have the television on in the visible background while they film themselves fucking. Is it a soundtrack thing? Like, were it silent, the blonde smoking her boyfriend's pole would be unspeakably loud? Or do they really, really not want to miss that Chris Rock concert film? For that matter, I also can't imagine the presence of mind that would allow one to operate a camera while being serviced. All of which explains why this site isn't called "The Sobsister's Porn-Cam Bloopers and Boners." And "Boners" would be in chubby fuchsia type.

At any rate, let me circle back to what might be the point of this lengthy meander: my inability to understand why someone would consent to have a sex tape made of herself for the benefit of an invisible but inescapable leering world.

I've tried and failed to find a passage I read sometime in the dim and distant past. I thought it was the porn actress Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse-Five who said it. Something to the effect of feeling sometimes like the attentions of all the unseen men who saw her in the dark were drowning her in semen. Maybe it wasn't Vonnegut at all, but it's still a useful image to capture the mood of displaying oneself for an anonymous, insatiably concupiscent audience. I don't doubt that, for some women, it is that display and desire that constitute the attraction, but, given the toxic levels of cretinism and creepiness in many corners of the Internet, it's not like George Clooney and Brad Pitt are leading a circle jerk in your honor on the other side of the screen. I suppose it's much to do with how one feels about drowning in semen of uncertain provenance. If you're thinking of having a bukkake bachelorette party, then five minutes of Internet time might not be such a big deal.

At any rate, the world of amateur short-form porn. Where on a clear day you can see Alcatraz. If you can't stand the meat, get out of the genre. And other pre-dinner aperçus.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

YouTube - Fiona Apple - Criminal

Bad bad girl, Dept.

This video, as I recall dimly, was criticized at the time for featuring the, politely put, lean and waifish Fiona Apple en déshabillé looking like a horny death camp survivor. Which, grouped "horny death" "camp survivor"--27 Across, eight letters--is "Liberace." Viewed at 14 years' remove, that aspect is ineluctable, but I can close my eyes and hear someone who sounds like the Black Crowes at their prime.

Further, the Mark Romanek-directed video is visionary for capturing the poses not only of the heroin chic of the '90s, but the paparazzo-upskirt of the '00s. Ms. Apple didn't flash pink, but the same manipulative vulnerability is at work, a LiLo construct avant la lettre.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Vierhundertzwanzig, Dept.

So, d00ds, it's 4/20, that day on which we commemorate one very important thing: our Beloved Führer turns 121 today! Or at least his brain does, issuing orders to the Fifth or Sixth Reich--I forget which we're up to now--from a wired jar in Henry Kissinger's rec room.

*ha ha* I joke, of course. On this day, we remember the day the governor of Caracas declared independence from Spain. And smoked a lot of weed.

Excuse my levity, if not my brevity. What I'm trying to say is take the time today to roll a fatty. Just take his money and invest it in plastics.

And on the more-serious note I eventually had to reach, today, the DC Council approved a medical marijuana bill that will allow chronically ill patients to obtain marijuana from city-sanctioned distribution centers. And this is progress that I wouldn't have thought possible two years ago.

So, cheers, dears. Here's something to close out your evening.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

YouTube - Godspell - 04 - Joanne Jonas - Turn Back, O Man!

Jesus Is Just Alright, Dept.

At the same time that I have a nostalgic semidemiquasi-affection for parts of Godspell's score, I also understand why people hate hippies.

And I never understood Jesus as a clown. I mean, what the fuck was up with that? All those grammar school nuns who waxed wroth or wrothed wax at Jesus Christ Superstar had clearly spent their fury by the time this made it to the silver screen.

"Turn Back, O Man" is, at least on record, a cute number. The Mae West-ish asides mark it as a Nostalgia Era production, you know, from that period between the late '60s and mid '70s when the styles, music and films of the '30s and '40s informed a substantial segment of contemporary pop culture. The hippie Imogene Coca who performs it here is heavy on the whimsy, light on the sexy, in contrast to the vivacious but nameless teen from a nearby all-girls high school who pitched in on my all-boys high school's production. There was plenty of lap-sitting as she made her way up the center aisle during her performance of the number. It was like Joey Heatherton entertaining the troops in Viet Nam. Only an order of magnitude more fraught with forcibly suppressed sexual tension.

And if you call within the next 30 minutes, you can enjoy the following number, my other Godspell favorite and another Nostalgia Era throwback that reeks of Rudy Vallee crooning through a megaphone to ukulele accompaniment, "All for the Best.

The film adaptation of Godspell is, at best, weirdly entertaining; at worst, twee and misconceived. But it does offer top-notch footage of NYC's cityscape ca. 1972, particularly the latter number, wherein New York's streets and skyline are more the star than the film's protagonists.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Driving Me Mad, Dept.

Do you know what scorches my permanent-press? Well, actually, if you've frequented this space for any length of time, you know the correct answer is "pretty much everything." But one thing that extra-specially ticks my box?

Say we're driving here in Choc City. And someone comes screaming the wrong way down a one-way street at 30 miles over the speed limit with the headlights off at night. We honk the motherfucking bitch because, you know, she's not observing either the letter or the spirit of the rules of the road. And the piece of shit honks back. As if we were engaged in a debate rather than my expressing disapproval with the car horn because, at that moment, I can't drop a 16-ton weight on her head.

I do not understand this. If you're driving so fucktardedly badly that I have to honk my horn at you, you should meekly accept your reprimand and resolve to improve your driving skills, not chestbump me and say, "Oh, yeah?"

Honestly.
I regularly wonder how it is, exactly, that we survive as a species.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Hulu - Glee: Vogue

Hulu - Glee: Vogue

Game, Set, Madge, Dept.

Beauty's where you find it
Not just where you bump and grind it


Glee's Sue Sylvester--or is it Jane Lynch?--makes next week's Madonna-themed show a must-see. If it isn't already.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

It's Got a Groove, It's Got a Meaning, Dept.

Look at me, I'm Sandra B.,
martyrdom's celebrity.
Won the award, learned my husband
had whored.
I'm just poor Sandra B.


Oh, she truly is Sandy Dumbrowski! Her man tempted away by a tattooed Cha-Cha DiGregorio who offered him G*d only knows what forbidden pleasures and satisfactions!

Cute and smart and sweet and frank,
Yet my husband bangs a skank.
Take him to court, where I'll rip him a tort.
The mark of Sandra B.


No, but really. "Jesse James"? Professional ooh-bad-boy! on his third marriage, number two having been to a porn actress who was arrested after beating him; who made a homemade sex tape featuring herself, Crüe vocalist Vince Neil and a Penthouse Pet; and who did federal time for 300 large in tax evasion. Vewwy classy. Here's an example of her work. And here's a site dedicated to her time in the slammer. This is a lady who knows how to monetize her situation. As well as her willingness to pretend-fuck on camera.

So, given how well ol' Jess did with one tattooed trainwreck, he clearly decided to extend his streak, pro forma marital vows notwithstanding, with Michelle McGee. And, no, I won't stick "Bombshell" between her Christian and given names. Mainly because I don't quite see how this faux Goth who must've flunked the Suicide Girls entrance exam and whose FB page features a graphic with the legend "Fuck Me Love Me Leave Me Oh Well Fuck Off and Die"--oh, a writer and a role model--could ever be considered a "bombshell." A "bomb-cratered village on a fault line," maybe. You doubt me? How about a white-power photo shoot in Nazi regalia? It's as tacky and obvious as you would ever hope to malign her for being.

So, I leave you to ponder the attraction. Any of them, actually.

Never twice the river same!
Torn between a life and fame!
He's just a fool.
Every man his own tool.
Fangool, I'm Sandra B.!


janine lidemulder


The former Mrs. James shows how she gets and keeps a man.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Pomes Penyeach, Dept.

As a younger sobsister, considerably younger, I heard two works of poetry that have remained with me to this day, some 400 years later. The first was titled "The Good Ship Venus." Anonymous in authorship. Its first quatrain unfolded as follows:

It was on the good ship Venus,
by Christ you should have seen us;
the figurehead was a whore in bed
sucking a big red penis.


The refrain consisted primarily of repetitions of the phrase "frigging in the rigging," presumably lustily declaimed in performance. So, yes, you understand.

The other, same provenance--an Albanian--was "The Ball of Inverness," which began,

Four-and-twenty virgins at the ball at Inverness.
When the ball was over,
There were four-and-twenty less.


I've always thought about that. "Four-and-twenty less." Wrong, really. And, so, today, I remedied that solecism:

Four-and-twenty virgins at the ball at Castle Dewar.
When the ball was over,
There were four-and-twenty fewer.


Actually, in most sources I've found the poem is titled "The Ball of Kirriemuir," although the tone is identical (and the rhyme would work for my purposes equally well). It begins:

O the ball, the ball, the ball, the ball, the ball
at Kirremuir,
there were four-and-twenty prostitutes a-lying
on the floor.


Here's an online version that features such lovely versifying as the following:

There was dancin' in the meadows,
There was dancin' in the ricks,
Ye could nae hear the bagpipes
For the swishin' o' the pricks.


As you might imagine, much better with a stage Scot accent. I don't do accents or dialect humor. In the best interest of all concerned, trust me.

It's a' the ladies back,
Wi' yer arses tae the wall;
Gin ye can't get fucked at Kirriemuir,
Ye'll ne'er get fucked at all!


So say we all!

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Photobucket

True to Form, Dept.

Every song, no matter good or crap, eventually comes true.

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart
[1]

The dramaturges of the Absurd could not have crafted a better scenario than this. Allison Meyers, the twit-twat director of the Republican National Committee's "Young Eagles" program for post-pubescent, pre-sclerotic conservatives, was shitcanned for approving a two grand reimbursement for a donor event at a high-end bondage club in West Hollywood that features an Eyes Wide Shut vibe and faux-girl-on-girl action.

I mean, really, it's just too goddamn easy. Obvious, even. Were this a screenplay, it'd be bluepenciled to death. The far-right conservatives who, on the DL, indulge in decadent, kinky fun...CLICHÉ!! And, yet, it's twue, oh so vewwy twue.

Meyers has thrown herself in a hole and pulled it in after her, deleting her Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media profiles. No photos of her are known to exist. She hunts by night and sleeps by day. Mothers tie leeks around their children's necks to ward off her long and gory teeth. Her real name is known only to her Dark Master, the Lord of the Flies.

Naaah...I'm just foolin'...she's a subcompetent gladhander who attended Florida State and who maybe thought she'd figured out how to get ahead in the doubtless-womyn-friendly RNC. She's fucked for now, but maybe she'll "reinvent" herself and run for governor of Alaska.

Hey, it worked for the stupidest woman north of the 49th parallel.

Oh, and Michael Steele is so clowny, Ringling Brothers is considering suing him for IP theft.

1. Lou Reed, 1967.