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…aren’t the only people who want to put a muzzle on what you can say or do online. Now some aspiring political operatives in the state that gave us our duly-appointed President are putting out the big guns against a website that apparently offered lots of consumer-information posts about escort services and links to the services’ own sites. (The site itself is now down.)
The summer print MISC, which was supposed to be out next week, has been delayed; basically because certain freelance contributions have been slow or nonexistent. Think of this as YOUR opportunity. We need your essays, op-eds, and fun facts (800 words or shorter), particularly about the issue’s previously advertised theme: “More Sex, Less Gender.” E-mail for particulars.
TO OUR READERS #2: We get a lot of e-mails from folx who’d like this site to plug their new Net-based audiovisual technology doohickeys. For them, I have a simple six-word response: Wake me when it’s Mac-compatible.
…to one of the true greats at the still-new art of web writing, Rodney O. Lain, who passed away over the weekend.
Lain, who at various times wrote for nearly every Macintosh-centric website, quickly established himself as an outspoken, well-written, detector of pomposity and dissecter of corporate hype. In perhaps his most memorable piece, he audaciously compared his status as a black man in a white world to his status as a Mac man in a Windows world.
AS WE APPROACH the 10th anniversary of the filmed-in-Seattle semiclassic Singles, Forbes magazine has placed Seattle right in the smack-dab mediocre middle of its listing of “America’s Best Cities for Singles.”
As you might expect from the magazine’s other priorities, its index included “cost of living” and “economic growth” among its criteria–areas in which the Nor’West is admittedly doing piss-poor these days. But SeaTown also ranked less than stellarly in the more subjectively-defined areas of “culture” and “nightlife,” areas in which I firmly believe we’re more than fully competitive with other cities in our population “weight class.”
But then we come to the most potentially damning part of the piece: “Seattle ‘solo artists’ say the town is still a bit tougher than other places when it comes to dating, as denizens tend to be more reserved than folks in sunnier spots…” As one who’s proud to call himself one of those reserved denizens, I think it a badge of honor that I don’t stoop to screaming dorky pickup lines at women; and I enjoy that my taste in the single ladies tends more toward smarties and less toward silicone.
Yes, Nor’Westers might be a little harder to get to know. But, like so many other advanced disciplines of life, we’re darned well worth it.
OPPONENTS OF MODERN ART have a new pet accusation. Instead of calling it obscene, at least one critic is now saying it’s bad for your mental health.
FROM, OF ALL LEAST-LIKELY SOURCES, a straight-talkin’ non-exploitative essay on FoxNews.com:
A TRIBUTE PAGE by a woman who admires “women who have small breasts and still look amazing.”
…or some other equally exotic foreign land, don’t you dare click on this link to a corporate PR document whose “information is intended for U.S. residents only.”
SPICE-O-LIFE DEPT.: From the Toronto Globe and Mail site, a piece praising Internet porn for the sheer variety of tastes and fetishes to which it can cater.
See carefully posed images of faceless art-school wooden dolls having sex.
THE BRAND CALLED THEM: According to a recent cover story in The Economist, “The world is falling out of love with celebrity CEOs.”
As if there was anything particularly lovable about such grandstanders in the first place.
The article, if accurate, reflects the inevitable burnout of a phenomenon that exploded during the dot-com mania of the late ’90s. There had, of course, been famous industrialists and financiers since the dawn of corporate America. But the PC/Internet/tech services/website industries honed and refined the phenom beyond the mere Celebrity CEO, into something approaching religious status.
The Cult of the CEO quickly developed its own rules and practices. Among them:
Now, as you all know, dozens of Cult CEOs have been deposed and desanctified by the whims of the marketplace. Thousands of hyper-loyal followers have been shoved out of the organizations that had been their entire lives’ focuses. These men and women need our empathy; but more importantly they need our help.
This is why MISCmedia.com is proud to announce the first of what will, with all luck and fortitude, become a nationwide circuit of CEO-cult deprogramming centers.
The lonely, the forlorn, the purposeless humans left behind by defunct CEO cults (as well as those who were expunged or escaped from still-extant CEO cults) will enter (either on their own volition or upon interventions by loved ones) for resident stays of one to six weeks, depending on the severity of their conditions. They will learn to respond to their own names, to use common kitchen utensils, to wash and clothe themselves, to write complete sentences without the use of emoticons, and eventually to form and express personal opinions without first asking for permission.
This type of treatment is expensive. But think of it as an investment in our society’s future.
Send your donations now to OPERATION IRL (for “In Real Life”), in care of your local 12-step organization or sex-toy shop. And don’t give ’til it hurts; give ’til it feels good.
Following the spat over Patricia Ridenour’s male nude photos at the Benham Studio Gallery, the space put up another photog’s show full of men for this month. But the personas shown in this show are clearly gay–which makes them actually less threatening than Ridenour’s straight-guy nudes in the topsy-turvy, reverse-double-standard realm of the Seattle art world.
FASHION UPDATE: Artist-designer Godis Nye asked me to tell you she created some of the set pieces seen in the fashion-show photos below.
BRIT VS. BRITNEY: A Londoner taunts the all-too-apparent hypocrisy of today’s poster child for “abstinence education.”
…to the memory of LInda Lovelace, whose topsy-turvy life (now ended with a car crash at age 53) pivoted around her status as the first woman to become an above-ground celebrity for appearing in an explicit sex film.
Hardcore porn on theater screens, and pubic hair in magazines, emerged in 1970-71, which meant the media became obsessed with sex at exactly the same time I did. (But by the time I was old enough to legally view hardcore films, they’d already started to become the formulaic tripe porno videos are now. I preferred softcore, and still do, because it was more attractive to look at and gave me female characters to fall in love with, not just female physiques to hunger for.)
Lovelace’s post-porn memoirs were believed by conservatives who’d never read them to be righteous indictments against the whole genre of sex films. The books could be more accurately described as tales of a personal abusive relationship with a controlling husband-manager and his small-time-hood cronies. (I’ve never heard anyone invoke the marital ordeals of Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner as a pretext to condemn the entire institution of pop music.)
Her private troubles and triumphs aside, Lovelace will forever be the first real Sex Star. There had been famous upper-class courtesans thoughout history; some of whom performed in live sex shows at discreet venues for the decadent rich; there had also been “stag reel” hardcore films screened surreptitiously in private clubs and homes. But those women were still perceived all too often as “fallen women,” unfit to be mentioned in polite society. There had been famous nude models and dancers in North America and Europe for decades, but these were women who proudly displayed themselves with an essence of decorum and dignity. The early-’70s porn queens, in contrast, were shown doing the full down-‘n’-dirty, to the point of total out-of-control mindless ecstasy (or at least imitations of it), in garish color images projected ten feet tall. And for doing this they were marketed as not just respectable ladies but as admirable goddesses.
If you remember that this had never been done before in anything even close to “mainstream” American culture, you might more easily understand how it would rile a lot of people–not just political conservatives but also many progressives and feminists who’d traditionally equated women’s empowerment with rising above such tawdriness. You can also imagine how, when Lovelace had left both the relationship and the business, she could have identified the two as interchangeable incarnations of extreme ickiness.
Nowadays, porn is just another corporate, LA-monopolized entertainment enterprise. There’s also a more “respectable” (though almost as formulaic) parallel genre of woman-friendly “erotica.” (There’s even a whole consumer trade show of middle-class-couple oriented “sex-positive” seminars and merch sales in Vancouver this weekend.)
In her last published interviews, Lovelace claimed to have come to terms with both her porn and anti-porn careers. She said she’d never found anything wrong with being or looking sexy, that she didn’t advocate censorship but simply “awareness,” and that the best sex she’d ever had was in an ongoing relationsip with a guy she liked. She’d finally become an ordinary woman who’d found her peace with the world.
ONE OF THE ODD THINGS about the Net is the way news articles might not appear (or no longer appear) on the site of the organization that originated them, but might still be found on sites that buy syndicated content. Thus, this link peculiarly takes you to a site in India discussing a magazine that, to the best of my knowledge, still can’t legally be obtained there.
The magazine in question, Penthouse, is suffering from the publishing/advertising slump worse than most. Thirty-three years after it first launched as Playboy’s most ambitious rival to date (early slogan: “We’re going rabbit hunting”), and three years after bringing true hardcore porn imagery to regular newsstand-distributed magazines, it’s swimming in red ink and can’t borrow any more money. Bossman Bob Guccione (now a 70-year-old widower who’s battled cancer) has put his art collection up for hock and his NYC mansion up for sale. Circulation has fallen, as all the other skin mags (except Playboy and Perfect 10) have quickly moved to match its sleaze quotient, and as hardcore video and pay-per-view have grabbed a bigger share of American self-loving males’ inspiration budgets. Many of the magazine’s advertisers, meanwhile, have fled to the bureaucratically safer (though ultimately just as stupid) nipple-free “tease” magazines of the Maxim/FHM formula. Penthouse has tried to make some bucks in Net porn, but that effort was undercut by the fiscal troubles at its erstwhile online partner, Seattle-based Internet Entertainment Group.
If Penthouse does disappear sometime this or next year, as some financial analysts predict, it would mean the end to one of the odder experiments in magazine entertainment photography–the ongoing attempt to gussy up porn scenes (up to and including actual coitus) with pretentiously “arty” lighting and composition. (Of course, any aesthetic ambitions in the photo-narratives are immediately negated by the models’ kabuki-like copious amounts of bleach, silicone, and heel lengths.)
There’s still money to be made in 2-D representations of 3-D physiques. But the sleaze side of that market is way too overcrowded. The softcore side is almost totally the property of Playboy, which in its current ossified state is a tired (and not very enticing) remnant of its old formula. What this country needs is a good, respectable hetero sex mag. Those who would wish to help me start one can contact the email address below for investment opportunities.
A LOT OF PEOPLE have told me they read the print MISC in the lavatory, but this is the first pants-down reader I’ve been able to document. Christine was one of the models for a body-painting exhibition last night at the Forgotten Works Gallery. (There were a total of two ladies and two gents with unclad but all-decorated physiques; though one of the guys kept a loincloth on.) All the models were bright and vivacious and (except for the loincloth guy) had no apparent qualms about total strangers seeing their total bodies (even bare feet) live and in person. You’ll be able to meet Christine, fully and fabulously dressed, on April 25 at the Fashion Underground show in the Catwalk club in Pioneer Square. (Yep, she not only wears clothes most of the time, she designs ’em.)
SPEAKING OF THE PRINT MISC, the Science vs. Science Fiction issue will be out next week. (Anyone who’d like to help with distro should email me.) We go straight into production from there on the More Sex, Less Gender issue. (Get your story ideas in now.)
And consider yourselves warned: There will be another public MISCmeeting soon after the new issue comes out. Among the topics: Figuring out how to make this quixotic venture at least a little more fiscally self-sufficient. (Despite apparent rumors to the contrary, I’m not independently wealthy and cannot keep running it at a loss indefinitely.)
CAN WE REALLY think for ourselves anymore after a century of sneaky PR campaigns? (I, of course, will say yes.)
A LUSCIOUS net-radio stream of snazzy lounge and swanky easy-listening music, coming to you from servers in Russia (where, presumably, it might escape the wrathful attacks of a corporate music industry out to essentially quash indie net radio.)
IT’S NOT JUST a dictionary, it’s YourDictionary!
SOME WEBLOGS attempt to be all things for all readers (or at least many readers). A blog called GoodShit simply reflects one man’s range of interests: Philosophical discussion, classical art, political debate, and breasts.
‘A BRIEF HISTORY of banned music in the United States” contains snippets about various censorship drives, conservative and/or “radical” denunciations of songs and singers, and other assorted sanctimonious nonsense (including Wash. state’s thankfully overturned “erotic music” legislation).
…about people fascinated with other people whose sex lives might be duller than their own.
Tablet ran a story (not yet on the paper’s website) about a dispute between Benham Studio Gallery (one of Seattle’s top photo-art galleries) and Patricia Ridenour (one of Seattle’s top art photographers).
Ridenour made a series of 18 (fantastic) female and male nudes, in poses inspired by famous old paintings of women. About half the images include nude male figures in various states of repose. Benham displayed the pix in its front room for two weeks. But some customers of Benham’s portrait-photography service apparently expressed discomfort at the explicitness level of some of Ridenour’s works. (Hey, isn’t that what art’s for?)
One particular image, based on Manet’s painting Olympia but featuring a particularly endowed specimen of masculine desire, turned off so many portrait customers that owner Marita Holdaway felt she had to do something.
Just before the official opening of the show on Feb. 7, Holdaway moved Ridenour’s works to the gallery’s back room. Ridenour thought this was an act of censorship, publicly asked Holdaway about it at the opening reception, then personally took her pictures off the back-room walls.
The Tablet piece tried to interpret this unfortunate series of events as an example of a woman’s troubles trying to confront a male-dominated art establishment–even though both parties in the dispute are female, and Benham (which has shown many male nudes in the past, albeit mostly by gay-male photographers) is more of a feisty indie space than the center of art-world power.
Anyhow, a third woman, fashion-boutique owner Darbury Stenderu, has adopted Ridenour’s show and is displaying it at her store, 2121 1st Ave. Rather than simply denouncing ad-imagery, it posits an alternative vision, a healthier way to look at people and life. I didn’t see it as a work of confrontation but of celebration, of a woman daring to proclaim to the world that she actually likes men and men’s bodies, and wants to retroactively give them the loving display art’s historically awarded only to female figures. Female artists deserve the right to express their loves and desires and joys (toward themselves AND toward others) AS loves and desires and joys.
And you don’t have to be male to find that weird–or even disturbing to your preconceived gender-role ideas.
That’s because an artist like Ridenour faces two, equally restrictive, gender stereotypes–the older one that says women aren’t supposed to espress their sexuality, and the newer one that says women can like sex, but only in lesbian or self-directed contexts. In this restrictive worldview, anything a woman says about men is expected to be critical, even vengeful. Anything less than total negativity toward a woman’s Other was dismissed, in this ideology, as a mark of weakness, of subjugation to male dominance. (Not much different from the previous stereotype, in which a woman who “put out” was condemned as “loose.”)
The Tablet reviewer, Karla Esquivel, appears to have bought into the modern stereotype, by proclaiming Ridenour’s clear adoration of male beauty to really be a righteous attack on what ’70s critics used to call “The Male Gaze.” In the Weekly’s piece about the fiasco, Ridenour said she intended the show to confront both viewers’ body-image notions and the ever-somnombulant succession of “sexy” images in advertising. She did this by employing that one visual element (the male body, without the disarming justification of gayness) already identified as a symbol of threat by many females and some males.
I say “some males,” because millions of men under 35 have come of age with hardcore porn, and have spent some of the happiest moments of their adolescent and early-adult lives with images that included other men’s erections in full view.
And I, for one, am not afraid of the female gaze. In fact, I kind of like the idea that a non-gay male such as myself could conceivably be so pedestaled, openly craved for.
(Which leads to an even more provocative notion: What if the way men depict women in art has really, all along, represented (at least subconsciously) the way (at least some) men wished they would be seen by women?)
But going back to Ridenour’s work, it could very well have a therapeutic value. By showing explicit, photographic phallic imagery in the context of familiar PoMo deconstruction, she might help viewers (of whatever gender) overcome their fear of the phallus; helping, in a small-scale and personal way, to contribute toward a healthier sexual outlook toward themselves and others.
