MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE at the New York Press suggests last week’s Drudge Report attempt to jump-start a Kerry sex scandal just might have been a Republican smear attempt. If so, it was a particularly pathetic such attempt. But don’t worry. I’m sure the GOP Sleaze Machine will try far worse things as it gets ever more desperate–up to and including some of the shticks of its role models Pinochet and Marcos.

…here’s an essay by a career woman who claims to have gotten an empowering ego boost by looking at tasteful nudie pix online.

Someone at Slashdot, in a comment that seems to have scrolled off the site, wrote:

“In a country where it’s okay to fry mentally ill people to death, let any eejit carry a gun, consume a huge proportion of the world’s resources and invade a country for dubious reasons, exposing a bit of human flesh is greeted with the sort of outrage that you’d think would be reserved for the end of the world.”

Of course, that’s the whole point. The right-wing sleaze machine loves violence (physical, verbal, emotional, etc.) and loathes sex (especially pleasurable, loving, or otherwise “girly” sex).

And the youth-marketing industry, which devised the Super Bowl halftime and most of the Super Bowl commercials, loves everything hard and “edgy” and hates anything soft and subtle. Faced with record-low TV viewership levels among the corporately-prized young male demographic, marketers are trying to outdo one another in vulgarity and desperation. It’s not that their audiences want this; it’s what they, the marketers, want their would-be audiences to want.

So, in the commercials, we got “jokes” about the following: A farting horse, little children saying a bleeped-out cussword, a wheelchair crash, a dog biting a man’s testicles, a talking monkey hitting on a woman, an old man beating an old woman, a football referee refusing to talk to a nagging wife, a man getting an unexpected bikini wax, and the very idea that a skinny man could love a heavy woman. All of these were just fine-‘n’-dandy with CBS and the NFL. (As were the two erectile-dysfunction-drug commercials, one of which included explicit language.)

In a further attempt to attract young nonviewers, CBS turned the halftime festivities over to sister company MTV. It staged a predictably rude and trite affair with mercifully short performances by has-beens Kid Rock, P. Diddy, Justin Timberlake, and Janet Jackson. Aside from Jackson’s reprise of the oldie “Rhythm Nation,” all the lyrics were about rude dudes boasting of their sexual-conquistadory prowess. Again, all that was OK’d in advance by all concerned.

Then, in the last dance move of the show, Timberlake (a mediocre dancer-singer known primarily for his write-ups in the gossip pages as the first boy to spear Britney) ripped open Jackson’s tear-away blouse and, officially “accidentally,” slipped her bra off as well.

This is far from the first “costume accident” on broadcast TV. (Remember Lucy Lawless’s rendition of the U.S. national anthem at a hockey game back in ’99?)

And CBS has been willing to show seminude women in recent years–as C.S.I. corpses, or as Chicago Hope hospital patients. And the network runs the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but that’s all edgy and teasy, the way the Super Bowl was supposed to be.

But, like that other youth-marketing vehicle Maxim, rude-‘n’-crude’s OK, but pure physical beauty’s taboo beyond taboo.

Jeff Laurie at Sex News Daily claims the Jackson flash was newsworthy because “like most breasts, it’s scarce, and seeing it is getting a sneak peak at the forbidden fruit.” Uncovered breasts, of course, are far less scarce than they used to be. They’re in fashion magazines, in Oscar-winning movies, on Emmy-winning cable shows, and all over the Internet. But they’re not in “edgy” youth marketing, which is all about forever teasing and never pleasing.

And they’re not in the right-wing bombast culture, forever stuck in the sixth-grade notion that boys who like to blow stuff up are Real Men, but that boys who like girls are faggots.

So now we have, as a blatantly cynical election-year stunt, the Bush FCC promising a swift and thorough investigation into the incident; all while the Bushies keep stalling about 9/11, the Cheney energy plan, and the lack of real causes for invading Iraq.

What does it all prove? That in a supposedly sexed-up pop culture, one of the purest, simplest forms of sexual expression still threatens certain powerful interests–precisely because it threatens the premises of their power.

IF TOMORROW, “Super Sunday,” is America’s biggest day for macho horseplay, last Friday night was Seattle’s night to celebrate beauty.

First, there was the lavish opening party for Spa Noir, a new posh pampering palace in the former Confounded Books space at Second and Bell. Above, owner Jessica Norton receives a bouquet of flowers and a socket wrench to celebrate having finally gotten the space ready.

Spa Noir offers all the favorite day spa services (facials, massages, manicures, etc.), but offers them until 10 p.m. Appointments can be made for even later at night, so bar and nightclub workers will have something to go to after closing time besides the suburban casinos.

Just a block away, the Rendezvous hosted the Nerd Rock Fashion Show A Go-Go, a sprightly little fashion show featuring local designers and benefitting the fledgling DIY arts orgalization Hometown Gravy.

Then, down by Terry and Mercer at Consolidated Works,, came the lavisher-than-lavish opening night gala for the second Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. You’ve got to get there this weekend. It fills Conworks’ cavernous exhibition space with hundreds upon hundreds of paintings, drawings, sculptures, Etch-A-Sketches, installation pieces, and more. They mostly are figure studies of lone females and males in provocative poses. There are also many fetish action scenes, some gay action and lesbian action scenes, and even three or four images of heterosexual coitus (the one category noticeably missing at last year’s festival in Town Hall).

It was often hard to see the beautiful art because of all the beautiful people in the way. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of flirty gals and dashing guys swarmed the joint, reveling in their fabulosity.

The festival organizers didn’t let me take pictures last night. (Hey, some of ’em are BDSM people, so you have to expect they’ll love to make rules.) I did, however, persuade a finely-coiffed party attendee named Alisha to pose outside the building. (Her outfit was designed by print MISC contributor Jen Velasco.)

As Seattle’s winter overcasts continue their reign of darkness, something like Beauty Night should be an annual ritual.

…coming this weekend to Consolidated Works. But the video promo for the event, which asks the question “What Is Erotic?”, isn’t erotic. But, natch, the promo was meant to be non-erotic. It was made by a bigtime ad agency and aimed at the same target audience everything in Seattle seems to be aimed at (squarer-than-square baby boomers).

…behind Wonder Woman. Really.

“Clinic,” the weekly live-music showcase at Re-bar, is still going on, despite the decline and fall of its co-sponsor Tablet.

Tuesday night’s edition went like they all did. Three bands played (pictured below: the unabashed loudness that is The Octabites). An improv troupe of “naughty nurses” told a few jokes and mingled among the crowd, passing out promotional tchotchkes for Tablet and Toys in Babeland.

After three years and change, the last fortnightly Tablet tabloid is out. Officially, the soft ad market did it in, along with its also-ran status in the local “alt” media universe and its confusing every-other-week schedule. But I’d add that the paper’s concept was contradictory from the get-go.

It never paid its writers a cent; expecting them to work just for the privilege of getting their statements made.

But, aside from a few political conspiracy-corner columns (which never challenged the orthodox-“radical” views of the paper’s target audience), its content was almost uniformly perky and light. The rag acted as if it was daring and rebellious by printing only positive reviews and by running lotsa puff pieces for advertisers.

In the end, Tablet had become a thin publicity sheet, not a true “alternative” at all. Its instigators plan to resurface later this spring in a monthly “magazine” format (no, I don’t know what that means) selling ads to both Seattle and Portland youth-culture businesses. I wish them success, and hope they’ll use the opportunity to reformulate their approach.

LET’S TRY to figure this one out: A 19-year-old woman claims to have been date-raped at the “Watts Motel” in north Everett. (There’s a “Waite’s Motel” in north Everett, but not a “Watts Motel;” but let’s continue.) She puts up a few web pages of semi-incoherent poetry and prose about her violent ordeal, and about her still-ambiguous feelings toward her assailant.

But here comes the weird part. She puts all this material on ThePlunge.com, a party-planning website. She adds bikini pix, supposedly of herself, and invites her readers to sign up for a gangbang orgy party (billed on her main page as “hot wild passionate sex”), in the same motel room, on the one-year anniversary of her date-from-hell. (She writes, “i am interested in men, women, sex, pleasure, sex toys, getting naked, walking around naked, touching you, feeling you…”)

Part of me wants to think, or to hope, it’s all a hoax. I want to reach out to either the victim or the hoax-writer, whichever is real, and tell her/him/them/whoever that life isn’t really so totally bleak/sick as to require either really planning such a “party” or joking about one.

But another part of me wants to go to the party.

FOR MEN, the “Boobie Flask” (a real invention, soon to be for sale online) combines two (or should that be three?) of the all-time great objects of desire. For women, the liquid-fillable bra’s an opportunity to sneak some of the strong stuff into football games (or movie theaters, or business meetings). Its female inventor probably wouldn’t mind if you made up your own “nip” puns.

IF YOU BELIEVE a Murdoch tabloid’s account of a Stanford research study, women are indeed turned on by porn videos after all! Just not by skanky, silicone-y ones.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE bad sex scenes in literature? Almost nobody, that’s who.

BRITAIN’S NEW STATESMAN has a cool li’l long piece by Simon Blackburn in defense of lust.

“Trag” writes:

“Hey Clark,”I agree about escort services being harmless (not sure how “essential” they are, though … :-)), but wonder how you can assume it’s conservatives and ‘right-wingers’ out to shut them down? My experience as a reporter and editor convinces me that it’s the most uptight folks who are most likely to be using these services! They can’t get it any other way.”

The latest King County Police crackdown on escort websites.

Despite the best efforts of the police PR flacks and their media friends (particularly at KIRO-TV and the P-I) to make it sound like a noble crusade against a horrible-horrible criminal gang, even the quickest between-the-lines read shows it’s just about the most victimless “crime” you could think of. It all takes place in private quarters, far from the offendable eyes of conservative civilians. It provides a vital service, safely and discreetly. The practitioners are paid well for their work, and are well appreciated by their clientele.

The “escort review” websites, such as the one mentioned in one of the P-I stories (and which is now down, apparently because its server host didn’t want to be associated with the publicity), make the profession even more professional. Clients can be warned about ripoff providers. Providers can be warned about abusive clients. Providers tastefully advertise their specialties.

A community, a subculture, has developed around a ritual of brief encounters. What had been a shadow world, prone to threats of disease and physical assault, became (at least on this “high end” level) an honest, respectful, even loving endeavor.

Could anybody, other than prudes and right-wingers, disapprove of that?

P.S.: The cops claim they’ve got a “little black book” listing hundreds of clients of the escort agency under investigation, and claim they’re gonna make unspecified “calls” on these guys. I don’t know if any of those guys or their service providers are reading this, but if they are, remember: Innocent until proven guilty, Miranda rights, don’t let The Man scare you into submission, etc.

THIS PAST FIRST THURSDAY, the Forgotten Works space found a way to become a little less forgotten. It held a big, wide-open holiday art sale, with as many works (all limited to 8″ x 10″) as would fit on the walls.

The previous first Thursday, the Nico Gallery space (where my own City Light, City Dark premiered) held a live dance/performance/whatever event entitled Flipeography. Seven dancers, spaced around the room, held static poses until passersby touched them to cue a “flip” to a new pose.

Castle, the multi-state sex-shop operation we once described here as “buying chains from a chain store,” opened a new outlet on Broadway, in a former Wherehouse music store. (Just think: They could’ve kept the old sign and just changed the third letter.)

Most of Castle’s branches are self-contained big-box (pun unintentional) buildings with plain storefronts. Its first Seattle store, on Fairview between the Seattle Times and Hooters, is so minimally marked you essentially have to already know it’s there. But the Broadway store’s got a big open display window, inherited from its prior tenant. Everyone who passes by can see what’s in the windows (so far, fetish wear and Xmas decorations). Everyone who passes by can see when you enter and leave. (But they don’t have to know what you bought.)

Still, for intimate goods I’d still recommend a more intimate store, such as Toys in Babeland.

Meanwhile, Abercrombie & Fitch announced this week it won’t make any more of its wacky catalogs, infamous for their use of naked models to sell clothes.

Say what you will about the chain, but its catalog was the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It taught a generation of iron-jawed frat boys to think of themselves as objectified sex toys; as exemplified by the photo-op models seen here at the downtown Seattle store on the day after Thanksgiving.

ON NOV. 30, Doug Nufer emceed the final installment in the Titlewave used-book store’s monthly live reading series, after nine years. We’ll miss ’em.