Show us your hits!

     Just found out that as of Sunday evening our Rock the Monkey adult toy video from Fairvilla Megastore in Key West (shot last April) has gotten a kind-of-stunning 25, 543 hits! And why yes, I am available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other commercial appearances where I giggle constantly into the microphone. Thanks fer asking!

Help Send Rush to Costa Rica

It seems like no coincidence that the health care reform bill finally passed after Rush Limbaugh said he would go to Costa Rica if it did. For nearly 100 years Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt on forward have tried to make inroads in this direction, but it almost seemed that the promise of Rush taking a hike was the magic shove that made it happen. I could see it.
And two guys from Brooklyn want to help us help Rush get packing. Salon.com's 3/23 story Go to Costa Rica already, Rush Limbaugh details the rich, ironic goodness of A Ticket for Ru$h which is asking for $1 donations to buy a first-class one-way ticket for Limbaugh; if the talk-show host refuses the donations will go to the Planned Parenthood Action Center. If they don't raise enough - hardly likely since according to the 3/23 Newsweek blog they had raised $1,158 - the money will go to Planned Parenthood.
Newsweek also says that Rush claims to have been "quoted out of context," though you can hear it right here. Now, it could be that he meant that if US health reform passed he would go to Costa Rica for health care - they do have universal health care (the link is from International Living, also from the HuffPo website) - you can have a listen and decide.
The only bad thing? He could still broadcast from there. Well, you can't win 'em all.

My chimps in the OWeekly

     OK, they're not my chimps...but I felt like they were when I went to the Save the Chimps sanctuary, the largest facility in the world for chimps  retired from the labs, the pet trade or entertainment and the abuses that tend to go with those businesses. The lovely girl in this picture is Tammy, social butterfly, impressive spitter and descendant of the original Air Force chimps used for space research. She was the first ape we met in doing the story Rescued from the Brink about the sanctuary, which originally ran on Alternet and am so happy to say was picked up by the  Orlando Weekly this week.
       If you want to see more pics of the chimps - and a video of them figuring out how to use a blanket to carry a baby (or a baby figuring out how to get herself a ride) click on the Save the Chimps link above. And if you're able to afford a contribution they could use the help: blankets, bananas and contraception ain't cheap (tell me about it...)
      Thanks, OWeekly! I'm one happy primate.

Diverse genes - diverse spins?

       If you’re the kind of girl who likes a little diversity in your love life, new research shows that it may reflect the diversity in your genes.

       The journal "Animal Behavior," reported that scientists from the University of Australia studied the DNA of 150 college students, primarily looking at the genes influencing their immune system since more diverse genes there the stronger the person’s immunity. They also quizzed them about their love lives and found that those with more “varied major histocompatibility complex (MHC)” also had a more partners.

       Sweat also plays a part in a girl’s ability to reel ‘em in. The scent of a woman’s sweat also holds clues to the strength of her immune system, signaling to potential partners that her offspring would be more resistant to illness.

       So could it be that the need for variety is more nature than nurture? How much influence does our upbringing and culture actually have over our romantic proclivities?

      

       Very interesting stuff, but even more interesting are the ways the story was delivered from source to source. The New York Daily News headlined the piece with Secrets of attraction may lie in immune system DNA that's sensed through sweat: scientists,  focusing the piece on the way sweat that signals disease resistance attracts partners and consulting a relationship expert. Where I first read about the reserach, on My Fox Atlanta, the headline was Study: Women's Gene's to Blame for Short-Term Relationships, a very different spin that decides short-term relationships require  “blame” rather than being a choice or just a trait that might have a genetic basis. It’s illustrated with a mosaic heart, which implies multiple breaks. The subsequent text from MyFox National, starts out with "Unlucky in love? Blame your parents," but then goes on to be ambiguous about whether attracting more partners is the unlucky or the lucky part, but the damage is done with the headline.

       The London Daily Telegraph was the worst, though, with Parents to blame for women 'unlucky in love', claim scientists, with the subhead “The reason why some women remain without a long-term boyfriend appear to have been solved by Australian scientists.” Now not only is having more partners a cause for "blame" but the woman who commands it is also “unlucky,” a hapless pawn of her potluck lineage. The unlucky woman they use as an example? Jennifer Anniston.

       Let’s see….beautiful, talented, wealthy, well-thought-of, stylish, bankable, with long-term popularity and a romantic past that includes Brad Pitt, Paul Rudd and Vince Vaughn. If that’s bad luck put me down for a two cases. I wonder if she blames her nightmarish life on that lousy DNA of hers.
       On a nicer note, London's Daily Mail saw the research thus:  'Irresistibility' gene that makes the fittest's sweat smell sweet to the opposite sex, and showed a voluptuous pic of Christina Hendricks on the cover of New York magazine. Like the Daily News, this piece touched on the theory that maybe women with more diverse genes seek out more diversity in partners and that it might make them more picky about their ultimate choice.
         Interestingly, these stories all worded much of the research in similar ways. It just shows that news reading has become a game of  pin-the-tail: if you're going to keep your bearings, you have to stay conscious of how you're being spun.

         By the way, it's theorized that the reason we're attracted to people with different sweat smells than our own is so people wouldn't be attracted to family or others who are too similar genetically.
        Men's MHC doesn't effect their attractiveness.
        I'm going to totally avoid spin here and let you decide what does. 

Free movie - 1966 Oscar-Winning Sci Fi Classic: "Fantastic Voyage"

Tomorrow night (Thursday March 11) Enzian Theater's Popcorn Flicks in Central Park (7pm; free; if it's cancelled due to rain day the alternate date is March 25) will present the1966 sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage, about a medical team (and their submarine) shrunk down to microscopic size in order to enter a human bloodstream and save the life of an assassination victim. The film won Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Effects and stars Raquel Welch as Cora. Check out the above trailer – this movie has it all. Sexiness, sexism, 60’s aesthetics and the first film venture into the human body – and the underlying implication that we know a lot of other irrelevant crap but most of us still don’t much about how our own bodies work.

Many other films have gone into the human body since Fantastic Voyage - if you count porn, probably millions. My personal favorite is the Futurama episode Parasites Lost. And I can’t hear the title without hearing the Lakeside song from 1980; since I want you to have the same songs stuck in your head that I do, here it is:

Liz story: Rescued from the Brink: Inside the Chimp Sanctuary

 There are dog and cat people, parrot people and even arachnophiles. I’m a primate person. I’ve never owned one cuz I’ve still got all my marbles, but I could watch them all day, maybe because they’re so like people only they never say anything stupid.

If you’ve been reading my work for awhile you know I sneak in a primate piece when I can and a little over a week ago I was lucky enough to get a press tour of Save the Chimps a huge chimpanzee sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida. Here’s the piece on Alternet: Rescued from the Brink: Inside the Chimp Sanctuary. No one wants to see animals suffer in labs or as pets or entertainers. Save the Chimps is the answer to “OK…where do we send them now?”

I hope you enjoy the piece and considering donating to Save the Chimps if you can – 600 bananas a day ain’t cheap!

(This is Roxy, STC's only baby. Like looking into a mirror, isn't it?)

Movie Mondays: Alice in Wonderland, an X-Rated Musical Fantasy (reposted)

On April 22, 2009 I posted this review of "Alice in Wonderland, an X-rated Musical Fantasy," and am reposting here in honor of the fact that everyone in the world went to see the Tim Burton "Alice" this past weekend and might enjoy a parody.

Of all the stories that have spawned copious adaptations, “Alice in Wonderland” has to be one of the leaders of the pack. You’ve seen the Disney version, await Tim Burton's take with baited breath (with the lovely Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, no less) – you might have even gone to the mad extreme of reading the book. But one Alice you might have missed is "Alice in Wonderland, an X-Rated Musical Fantasy."

This 1976 treasure directed by Joe Osco in 1976 and starring Kristine de Bell, an adorable blonde and playboy cover girl from that same year ( who also did a guest spot in “David Cassidy – Man Undercover”) is a treasured period piece which I found at Fairvilla on the very night I later attended on the now-legendary surprise screening of "The Four Dimensions of Greta" at Enzian Theater. There’s no escaping destiny and when the universe wants you to have cheesy 70’s porn, cheesy 70’s porn you shall have. ‘Alice’ is weird, hilarious, embarrassing, clever, dopey, uncomfortable, bizarre, wild film and god help you - you won’t be able to help getting these dumb songs stuck in your head.

The X-rated Alice is a grown-up librarian whose boyfriend is pushing her on a variety of matters, including kissing, dancing and essentially coming out of her shell, but Alice is having none of it, happy in her own little world. She muses on how little experience of life and love she actually has, and wonders if she could get a jump on it now. While mulling it over and leafing through a copy of “Alice in Wonderland” she’s suddenly confronted with a white rabbit (Larry Gelman ) with a thick Brooklyn accent. Once she starts following him, well…let the nudity, hardcore sex and production numbers begin.

In this version, when Alice sips from the bottle on the table marked “Drink me” (and who among you would do less?) and she shrinks down to hamster size her clothes do not shrink with her so she has to run around naked for awhile. After a couple of sensuous encounters with a pair of cats and a talking rock who’s very happy to be sat on by a beautiful woman, she gets her first taste of fellatio via the Mad Hatter and we find, forthwith, that the larger number on his hat band does not indicate the large size of his hat.

And so it goes, with Alice having a variety of sexual encounters – in fact, she has enough liaisons with creatures that aren’t quite humanoid to give Captain Kirk a run for his money. This whole thing is punctuated by musical numbers that are kind of like a combination of Benny Hill, Ken Russell and “A Chorus Line” if it was all done in your backyard and some of your neighbors understudied for the real cast. It’s fun - not in the sense of “fun” porn usually is - but a hilarious experiment. There’s some brightly cheeky dialog as well like the young girl who just looks at the camera and says (in French) “Who do I have to fuck to get out of this movie?”

C’mon – don’t tell me you don’t have days you feel exactly the same way.

After a Wonderland orgy events begin to wind down and though I won’t tell you how it ends (seriously – you might want to see it one day) I will tell you that for al the wild oats Alice sews she stops short of having actual intercourse with a man and will remind you it’s a fairy tale and those have to end well. It’s the law.

The X-rated musical Alice is worth seeing as a window on an era, an homage to the kind of free-spirited, goofy, optimistic experimentalism of the 70’s. It was a time when people seemed to think everything would benefit from a little more sex and a little more music.

And frankly, even the Queen of Hearts couldn’t argue with that.

Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease in the Bedroom

  

       For the person who is leery of doing a serious workout what could be better than knowing you can start getting in shape without getting out of bed?

       That’s part of the beauty of Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease In the Bedroom. It’s the first in her striptease workout series and was in the how-to area of Fairvilla's movie section about three weeks ago. I want to say up front that it’s a tape I’m still working with –I decided to take it in ten minute increments, trying to learn it the way I would any dance routine (get the first16 counts down, move on….get the next 16 counts down, move on….) but frankly, I really like Carmen Electra and her teaching style is polar opposite of the boot camp approach to fitness (which I truly hate), so I’m enjoying the process. She says right up front that she doesn’t take herself too seriously, so if you’re just getting started or restarted, which I am, it’s a fun and novel way to go.

       Parts of the routine are actually done on the bed, so you have to make sure your TV or computer is in viewing distance from there (it doesn’t really work with a couch). This was a little frustrating; the layout of my apartment wasn’t Carmen-ready and having to stop and scramble up to see the next thing she’s doing on the screen has made for slow progress, but it’s progress I’ve been willing to keep attempting, which is the bulk of the exercise battle.

       The first 30 minutes is all stretching and toning which was all I did for the first three days and in that short time I felt a difference, specifically in my arms, quads and belly. The second part of the tape is the strip tease which oddly I liked a little less, probably because I now know the stretches better but partly because of the previously mentioned awkward TV set up. That said, any workout where you can wear heels in bed and throw your hair and legs around a lot has something to be said for it, like “you can wear heels in bed and throw your hair and legs around a lot.” It’s fun and sexy, makes me feel fun and sexy and I’m looking forward to trying the next steps. I will not be ready for Vegas…ever…but I will be more ready to move along to other kinds of exercise in prep for bathing suit season and Carmen definitely helped.

.       So, while I go attempt to learn the last part of her  bedroom routine, you can watch her teach some to Ellen (above); the moves she does here aren’t from this DVD so they must be from a subsequent one. They’ll give you the idea, though. Plus Carmen and Ellen make an awfully cute couple.  

Liz story for Sexis magazine: Women, Culture & The Pill

     

 Now that there are even easier ways to avoid pregnancy than the birth control pill it’s easy to take the impact of oral contraceptives on our culture for granted. In my latest story for Sexis magazne: "Sex, culture & The Pill," I got to take a look at the history of this amazing little invention and how it’s advent combined with the sexual revolution to change the role of women in the world. Enjoy! 

"The only typeface that's NSFW"

My friend Dave passed this adorable link on to me, a project from the porfolio of graphic designer Alex Murto described by one website as “The only typeface NSFW.” Click the link to check it out – I thought M, S and Z were the cutest, so make of that what you will. It gives a whole new dimension to that sweet little song that goes "It's fun to wander through the alphabet with you to tell you what you mean to me...”

Movie Mondays: Pre-Code Hollywood

     Every generation thinks it invented sex, drugs and scandal and every generation produces a new wave of moral Chicken Littles to try to squash it. Over the weekend my bridesmaid Jimmy posted this film on his blog  What Can I Say? and I loved it so much I had to repost – it’s a promo by Matthew C. Hoffman for a library series on “Forbidden Cinema” the fiery films of pre-code Hollywood. Before censorship and self-censorship became a Hollywood norm, films with titles like “Safe in Hell” and “She Had to Say Yes!” promised enough sensationalism to distract a depression-weary public (sound familiar?). This film gives a little taste of the free atmosphere in which the film industry matured and the stars who made it what it became.

            The film is a great example of how history repeats itself and I love that  it showcases women like Mae West and Marlene Dietrich who were the Lady Gagas of their day, the smart self-assured groundbreakers who weren’t going to let little things like conventional standards get in their way. After all, who wants to be standard?