Leg Show

     It's bad enough to run in heels when you have to (late for a flight,  chasing a dropped $20 bill, some bitch about to take the last seared tuna from the cruising waiter). Why would anybody do it on purpose??

     To get a $10,000 euros  (about $14,000) shopping spree, that's why. In Berlin this weekend a group of women with shopping fetishes inadvertently likely brought big smiles to people with heel fetishes in Glamour magazine's Stiletto Run . Shoes had to have heels at least 7cm (about 3 inches) high and thankfully none of them (or so this video on The Sun's website suggests) will end up pleasing cast fetishists (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing). Enjoy!

Video: The Other Love Glove

Ever since first trying one on I've been enamoured of the Fukuoku massage glove (which I did a post on back in May) and was lucky to get my friend Naniwa Angel as a willing test model to tell you all about it. Get those finger pads in the right position (I know - it looks cartoonishly big on
my hand on camera) and the results are the kind of relaxation you usually only get with several glasses of red and a hot bath.

(Thanks to Brian Quain for making this film and to Naniwa for a voiceover so beautiful I now want my whole life to be dubbed in Japanese).

Can't Touch This

       There’s a great scene in the movie “Annie Hall” where Alvie and Annie are in bed together and suddenly Annie’s disembodied spirit gets up and decides it would rather draw.

       “You have my body,” she says when he complains.

       “I want the whole thing!” he whines. Without the woman on the inside, the outside is less of a turn-on. 

       This, I think, is the essence of a study on "What makes sex 'great'?" from the University of Ottowa and written up by Dr. Charles Glickman on the Good Vibrations blog. Respondants cited things like “authenticity,” “deep sexual and erotic intimacy” and “connection” as being among the elements that really put the crème in the Oreo, the wasabi in the soy sauce, the proof in the vodka (Glickman talks about technique being important in tandem with these things but they are the engine that drives the car for these couples).

       The groups who answered the study were definitely not comprised of 20-somethings – they were long-long term couples (25 years plus), sexual minorities and sex therapists all of which are bound to give them a unique set of responses. And yet, while it's certainly a lot of fun and worthwhile to explore techniques, props and whatever enhances your sex life, there are intangibles – chemistry, self-awareness and intuition, for instance – that can amplify all those things and it's nice to see some credit go to the abstract, to things you can’t get from reading Cosmo or clicking “add to cart.” Sometimes it's not the rewards we grab but the ones that come to us after practicing a little open-minded patience with ourselves and others that are the best.
        Even if you're not in a relationship at the moment, developing some of these things on your own, i.e., developing patience, coming out to yourself about what works for you and what doesn't, can go a long way to making your sexual future, solo or otherwise, a richer place.
       Or you could just wear some Axe deoderant or go on a reality show. It's all about what works for you. 


      

Asstrology

     

They say that when the student is ready the teacher appears.

     Normally I do not consider myself the dimmest bulb on the marquis and yet recently I found myself annoyed by a general horoscope prediction. I enjoy astrology, especially Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology, because he says juicy, insightful things whether they feel predictive or not (I especially like this ideas of Pronoia). But I know better than to be effected by mass market horoscopes; if you'd ever worked at newspaper and seen someone edit them you'd feel the same way.
      Then just when I thought I was done with the whole thing, along comes a charming new spin, Asstrology, a well-rounded excuse for The Sun newspaper to print a bunch of pictures of naked heinies and tell you that the shape of your ass says something about you above and beyond your genetic makeup and love of exercise. They offer six tushie shapes (all women models, go figure) and give you a few lines of what your butt is telling people. It made me a smile and therefore was useful than a many astrological treatises I've read. From now on when I get bummed out, I'm going to look to the butts instead of the stars.
(the adorable artwork above is by Nina Kuriloff; you can and should see more of her lovely drawings at Nina Kuriloff Fine Art)

Fairvilla University is now in session

         Last Thursday evening Fairvilla Megastore convened its very first session of Fairvilla University – FU – and the report card is in: if all college was this lively, students wouldn’t need to get so goddamn drunk all the time.

         “Keeping Couples Connected” was the inaugural lecture and about 40 pupils, couples and singles, how came to learn how a few simple moves– literally – could make a flatlining love life spike like the unemployment rate. You’ve heard of position papers –we had position demos on a big black queen size bed right in the middle of the store, and we all learned how just a little difference in your angle can go a long, long way (which, come to think of it, is true of everything).

         “The best thing when you’re tied up is that you don’t have to do anything. You’re along for the ride. It’s like Space Mountain,” says Tom Stewart, President of Sportsheets International Inc. and FU’s first esteemed guest lecturer. Tom isn’t talking about bondage in the way its been put forth in popular culture – the dark, scary, black leather-y façade that scares many people away. Sportsheets has brought restraints and slings out of the dungeon and into the light of the department store – they are made of materials like nylon, some not that much more exotic than the straps on your gym bag,  but designed specifically to help with positioning or restraint that can change your old moves into wild new sexual choreography.

         Take the Doggie Style Strap for example (right) – a lovely couple from the student body volunteered to help demo-it for us and I have to say, if Central Casting had sent them they couldn’t have been a more adorable and appropriate pair. Even in fully clothed and just miming the positions in front of an audience they seemed to be having the time of their lives, which means the real thing may melt your bed into the floor. 

        The Doggie Style is a simple padded nylon strap that wraps around the bottom partner’s hip area, right around where a woman’s g-spot is, allowing the top to not only pull you closer but allowing them to avoid rounding their shoulders to grab your hips - straight posture will allows for a sharper thrust. The angle the strap allows, Stewart says “shortens the vaginal canal,” which makes the penis feel bigger, plus the ease of “tilting the angle of the vagina will make sex feel different."

         And if you like that  you’re bound, so to speak, to like the Penetration Station (left), a simple system of straps that fit under the mattress - like sex furniture you could carry in your purse.  The Penetration Station straps allow for more leverage in various positions, keep you from  having to hold your feet in the air  and thus get exhausted and allow you to pull your partner closer for deeper penetration. 

          Now, is there any part of that sentence that wasn't good?

         If you missed class you can go right onto the Sportsheets webite and see some great demo videos that will give you insight into their products and the many way you can use them (be creative – you might find some ways that are not on film).

         Come on – you know there’s going to be a pop quiz one of these days. It might be tonight. It might not even be this year. But it’s coming and believe me, you don’t want to be the dope who can barely do true/false questions – you want to write the poetic essay that knocks them out of the ivory tower.

         So keep your eye our for more Fairvilla University classes and study up! I see you becoming valedicktorian one day. 

What if your nude scene turns out to be a comedy?

       Every once in awhile you see some TV show where somebody gets locked out of someplace naked and has to be rescued by a bemused passerby. Desperate Housewives, An American Werewolf in London….even Garrison Keillor tells a story of being nude in a hot tub and finding himself locked outside. We see and hear these things and we laugh at the awkwardness, thinking they never really happen or at least not to us.

       Well, guess what.

   I now have intimate knowledge of what a singular pleasure it is to give the AAA operator the laugh of the week. There she is, stuck inside on a glorious day, listening to all those sad, angry, exasperated, hot, sweaty, broke people freaking out on the side of the road and then you bob up on the call list. You say you’ve locked your keys in your trunk, hem and haw about where exactly you are then finally blurt out that you’re at a nudist resort, failed to put your keys in your pockets because you didn’t have any and ask her to send someone instanta because the beer by the pool is not going to drink itself. The laugh that tinkles out from the other end of the line is not quite like any other you’ve heard before – it’s effervescent and musical and just when you think it’s dying down it picks up again like a plastic bag in the wind; she is picturing your dumb ass quite literally, as you peer into the windows of your suddenly-obdurate vehicle, realizing what you’ve just done.

It’s a unique feeling to have someone laugh at your naked body without even being able to see you.

   

      Yep, I made a joke awhile back about the crime at nudist resorts probably being low because there are no pockets to secret any ill-gotten booty in and next thing I know no-pockets syndrome has me standing in the parking lot of Cypress Cove Nudist Resort in Kissimmee (above; and no that's not me in the pic) waiting for the locksmith. My friend Sheree, who is far more insightful than I am, says we should be dressed while we’re waiting and despite feeling like an ant under a magnifying glass in the Central Florida heat I have to concur. You know how people inside the gate feel about public nudity but an accidental tourist might be anything from uncomfortable to offended to creepy.

       Our white knight shows up in about 20 minutes and begins, his vibe is as mellow and non-threatening as it can be, like a youngish grandfather. We say we hope he isn’t bothered by the location. Nah, he says, he’s been called out here a lot (see: “no pockets”). In fact, he says, there was no need for us to dress just for him.
                           *         *       *

       If you want to become a footnote in nudist history, put your keys on a lanyard around your neck and come participate in the World's Largest Skinny Dip which will take place on July 11 at 3pm at sanctioned nudist outfits all over North America including Cypress Cove. The Guiness Book of World’s Records will be admitting it’s first ever skinny dip record into their book. If you’re an experienced nudist it should be easy. If not think how fun would it be to tell everyone that the first time you ever took your clothes off in public it make the record books. It’ll give them almost as good a laugh as we gave AAA.

(painting at top: Salvador Dali., My Wife, Nude, Contemplating Her Own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture)

Give 'em the Boots

Awhile back we did a video on the fabulous footwear  at Fairvilla Megstore and invited you to guess which of the shoes in the video I went and bought. Sure, I showed you the boots, the spectacular "Ferocious" design by Ellie but not on me. The perfect boots demand to be captured perfectly and for that I needed photographer Miriam Lorenzi of Miriphoto . An creative and keen-eyed portrait photographer with a show, "People You Know and Things You Shouldn't" currently up at Will's Pub , Mir understands the importance of getting the inside to show up on the outside:
     "A bond must be made between us on the inside in order for a great image to be created, so it's my task not just to get the lighting, focus and angel right, but to receive the person before me, wholly, or they just won't give it [ the great shot ] up," she says.
       "At the end of the day, we're all rock stars and celebrities, saints and sinners, and the sum of those parts add up to so much more. I love my job because it gives me the opportunity to know a person who I otherwise might  never have met, and for that matter, may never have connected to on personal level."
     Miriam did a photo shoot with me and the boots (and yes, they are their own entity; they have more personality than many people) and actually made me feel totally comfy even in three feet of PVC and several inches of heel. One of her photos from this series is currently up in her Will's Pub show along with many other brilliant, funny, surprising shots of some Orlando folks you are bound to know and love. No matter how well you know them, though, Mir captures something in them you've never seen before.

       So go check out Mir and Will's and go check out the shoes at Fairvilla. Both will definitely bring more personalities into your life.