Some Kindred Spirits

Although you haven't necessarily gotten to expect a daily entry from me, I feel bad that I will be out of town this week and not at all able to contribute to myblog here, especially when I always have so much to say and so little time to say it. Anyway, in case you ever find yourself wishing that I would post a new blog, when I'm not, here are a few other places you can go for Pleasure Domes-type material, by which I mean generally intellectual musings about sex.

V is for Vixen is a good sex column, sometimes great, sometimes not so much, but on the whole, one I'd definitely recommend. Written by a smut distributor/former sex worker, this column is generally one that I can get behind, from its first entry on what happens when a girlfriend discovers "the stash," to the column I first came across, entitled "titties galore," it tackles many of my most relevant sex issues, often with some humor, and pretty much always on target.

Sexuality in the Arts is nicely divided into two parts. First, there are some long, somewhat interesting discussions in the blog about art & sex-related posts, some maudlin, some intense. Then, this blog has a huge image gallery of all kinds of sexy art works that range in tempo from smut to toon to mere suggestiveness. A good range.

Mr. Satanism's 500 Coolest Chicks Ever certainly leaves a lot to be desired, like the rest of the list, but for a quick discussion of some pretty hot chicks, it's entertaining.

Hope you enjoy. I'll be in Kuai enjoying the company of my beautiful wife.

Movie Review: The Flesh and Blood Show

I decided to watch The Flesh and Blood Show on the basis of a trailer in the compilation 42nd Street Forever. The trailer has almost wall-to-wall nudity and hints of lesbianism and voyeurism. It also promises murder and horror. The actual movie is different, surprising, in a generally good way.

First, it certainly delivers on the flesh angle. The movie begins with two actresses asleep in bed together when someone comes to the door. The one who decides to get the door is, of course, the one not wearing a nightgown (Carol, aka "the wanton"), nor does she fell compelled to cover up to get the door. Nice. although not much in the face department, this actress has what I consider to be a great body. She has ample flesh, wonderfully distributed, so she had beautiful round buttocks, good-sized, dynamic breasts, and curves all around. She's nubile, too, still young enough that her skin is tight and smooth, as with most of the other actresses. It's a pleasure just to watch her walk and move. A great start to the movie, although our director (Pete Walker) doesn't film her to full advantage, giving full nudity fromt he rear, but from the front keeping the camera on the shoulders and above, making one wonder just why he didn't just have her cover up.

Anyway, the man at the door has been stabbed, and he staggers in, to the shrieking horror of Carol. But it turns out he's just acting. He's a damn good actor, too, to keep up the ruse despite Carol's nudity. He follows her around for a lot of the movie, but, to my mind, it's just the regret of a fool who didn't get an eyeful when he had the chance!

It turns out that all these actors and a few others are going to put on some weird hippie-ish freeform play at an abandoned theater at the end of a pier in a deserted British seaside resort. It's hard to tell what, exactly, the play is about, because the director's style seems pretty eclectic. It seems to involve dancing in caveman furs and go-go boots, then a scene with a satanic ritual. This may be a commentary on modernist theater, as the basic plot of the movie involves the death and disappearance of Shakespearean actors, whose work certainly seems more credible than that of the young and sex-crazed actors being murdered.

Overall, despite the poor opinion most people seem to have of this movie, I found it to be surprisingly good. The acting is fair, especially considering the genre, and the plot is actually pretty good. The mystery surrounding the identity of the killer is ok--they throw you a decent red herring for a while before it becomes obvious who the culprit must be. Even then the why is interesting. The use of Othello is very good. There's not much blood, no scenes of extended violence, but there is plenty of flesh, & it's mostly good looking, young and taut, a little surprising considering the date.

Sarah, who takes the place of the first actress casualty (who is believe to have just gone home) is pretty. She has really nice eyes and a winning smile, and, we later learn, really great tits. Smallish, but pert & perfectly shaped. her nipples are dark, small, pleasant. The actress who plays Desdemona in the flashback is a little older, and maybe the least attractive of the bunch, but her great, heaving bosoms made me wish I could watch the conclusion in its original 3-D.

Although I would not exactly call The Flesh and Blood Show a good movie, it is good for its genre, one of the few that's still interesting through its entire length, even when there aren't naked women on the screen.

A Contest for Our Mutual Friend "Brazil"

KU Tribute

It may not seem a fitting tribute to the basketball team, but we do what we can. Here's some images from the Women of KU calendar over a few years. Interesting to see how the aesthetics of the calendar have developed over the years.

Above is an image from 2002, one of the calendar's first years, when it was still regarded with skepticism and sometimes downright hostility noto nly by the administration, but by some of the student body. Speaking of which, this woman's body is a somewhat traditional representation of an "athletic" woman. The photography in this calendar does not show either her or any of the other women in it to best effect. First, the setting is terrible. Second, she has a really fake smile. Smiles are good, but it looks like she's been holding this one a while. Her posture is really unnatural, too, although it does a good job of making her flex, which might be a plus if you're into body builders.

Here's a more recent image, from 2007 in fact. It's hard to find "historical" pictures from the calendar (if anyone has some they'd like to submit, feel free), so we have to skip a bit. Here we've moved toward a more natural setting, and local, to boot. A much better choice, I think, and the pose here is a little more natural (but still a pose). The composition of the photograph is much better, with a good asymmetry of both color and substance. I like the sunflower/yellow bikini combination. It's a simple trick, but it works. Her expression is not exactly inviting, but that's okay. My main gripe's that she seems a little on the thin side. Nice breasts, good thighs, but her neck seems too taut, and the angle doesn't let us appreciate the curve of her hips.

Here's a picture from the most recent calendar. I picked this because it's very similar in some ways to the picture from 2007, and it better shows the trends in the calendar. The woman who was slightly thin in 2007 has become downright beanpoley, with little in the way of breasts. Skinny arms, skinny legs, tomboyish hair. Not, I think a good direction, but a similar one to the dominant aesthetic, I think, which has been moving increasingly toward androgeny lately, from both sides.

Male models are increasingly thin and teenish, along with movie stars, where Hollywood is trying to move away from the hypermasculine muscled hero to a more lanky teen type. One of our earliest indicators of this, I think, is Kate from Lost, played by Evangeline Lily, a thin, small-chested athletic woman, promoted not simply as a strong woman, but, because women are not allowed to avoid it, as a sex symbol as well, roughly contemporary with the symbolic dumping of Lake Bell's character from Boston Legal for a series of less curvacious lawyers. Or at least so it seems to me.