There’s nothing like a loud, snarling film to bring out your deviant inner fist pump. Ever since Bill Haley hit the big screen urging kids to rock around the clock, we’ve been relying on movies as vicarious views into rebellious rock, meaningless sex and recreational drug use. (And perhaps a few of us have even tried one or two of those ourselves…)
Photo credit: Listal
It’s mid-August and Hot Summer Nights is in full swing on Sundance Channel. Some of the upcoming movies featured in this “steamy” series focus on sexual extremes: There’s sex addiction in John Waters’ outrageous comedy A DIRTY SHAME and also in the autobiographical tale I AM A SEX ADDICT; AUTOEROTIC follows the sexual obsessions of four Chicago couples; the compelling (but unfortunately named) documentary SEX MAGIC: MANIFESTING MAYA follows the polyamorous life of a sex guru; and INDIE SEX: EXTREMES looks at independent cinema that pushed the boundaries of sexual content in film.
Photo Credit: Everyday Should Be Saturday
Funny sex scenes — at least, those that are meant to make you laugh — are often our favorite kind. Ironically, they tend to portray much more realistic onscreen sex than their serious, sultry counterparts. In funny sex scenes, you get weirdness, kink, awkwardness, jealousy, fantasy — oh yeah, and condoms. For some reason, the only time you see latex onscreen is when the sex is supposed to be funny. Here are ten of our favorite funny sex scenes — though not all of them were initially intended to be funny (we’re looking at you, Clive Owen). By the way, if you’re wondering where AMERICAN PIE and PORKY’S are: We took the liberty of limiting this list to scenes that made us laugh. And we’re not — nor have we ever been — 14-year-old boys.
CDZA (short for Collective Cadenza) is a group of mostly Juilliard-trained music geeks (and we use that term in the most loving and respectful way) that “creates musical video experiments” — in other words, fun viral vids that play upon all sorts of musical themes and genres (think “Evolution of Dance” but with live musicians and no dancing). Ten months ago they created their inaugural “History of Lyrics That Aren’t Lyrics” (i.e. Sha na na na, doobie doobie doo, etc). Then a few months ago they started producing these videos regularly, one every other Tuesday. Some recent examples: “Mark Zuckerberg: The Musical” (“This is the dawning of the page that you share with us”) and “Aces of Basses” (a literal tribute to the Swedish pop sensation using five acoustic upright basses).
Image from Em & Lo’s sex manual, SEX: How to Do Everything
You’ve probably heard of the Coital Alignment Technique. It was all the rage a decade or so ago. But have you ever actually tried it? Have you tried it again recently? It takes patience. It takes practice. And it goes against everything you’ve seen in porn. But since when did porn cater to what women want? Beyond just following the specific steps below, mastering the C.A.T. requires a philosophical readjustment. Abandon your assumptions that intercourse automatically means a piston-like motion, lots of flailing about and a rush to climax. For the C.A.T., you’ve got to take what some might call a more “feminine” approach to sex: think small subtle movement, full-body contact with a focus on the clitoris and the pelvic mounds and a Buddhist-like repetition of steps that may very well get her closer to Zen (i.e. orgasm) better than any other hands-free intercourse position out there.
Jacqueline Samuels has become an overnight sensation. Last month she opened “The Snuggery,” a little cabin in Penfield, NY, where she offers private cuddle sessions for $60 an hour: no nudity, absolutely no sex, just platonic touch that she says studies have shown can have a positive effect on your mental and physical well-being. (She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Brain and Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester and is currently completing her Master’s Degree in Social Work). Well, the Internets eat this kind of thing up, and within days, she went global, appearing on CNN (without her knowledge) and getting inquiries from abroad. Apparently the world needs a hug. So we contacted Samuels via her tasteful little website and asked her about it directly:
This week, a gay Episcopalian who fell in love with a one-night-stand-turned-fiancé can learn how to survive a hurricane barreling through her upcoming wedding nuptials.
Model Anja Rubik’s new editorial endeavor just launched: 25 Magazine is a high-end fashion magazine, out biannually, that’s dedicated to the erotic perspective of women. In an interview with New York magazine, Rubik explained the sex concept:
Or maybe we should say “great music to make love to” (though we’re loathe to use that terminology). It definitely works for making out to. Not frantic rip-off-each-others’-clothes sessions, but more deliberate, sensual interludes that last longer than an hour, the kind earnest teenagers in love engage in. Patrick Watson, the Montreal-based band (fronted by singer-songwriter Patrick Watson, natch), create songs that are ethereal, haunting, and heady — with upright pianos, weepy violins and saws, quirky percussion, guitars occasionally strummed with toothbrushes…
All top ten lists are, by their nature, subjective, but this one is especially so — because one person’s “WTF” sex scene is another person’s monkey spanking material. (Exhibit A: we’d qualify a lot of porn as WTF.)
A few qualifications: David Lynch probably deserves a place in this list (okay, David Lynch definitely deserves a place in this list!), but because we already wrote an entire post dedicated to his effed up sex scenes (you can read it here: Top 10 Effed Up Sex Scenes), we left him off this time. And LAST TANGO IN PARIS should probably be on here, but we are just so damn sick of talking about that freakin’ butter scene. The SHOWGIRLS pool scene is hilarious and weird and WTF hall of fame-worthy, but we already covered that one.
Ever feel like you could benefit from a therapist but you don’t have the cash or you can’t travel to sessions or you just don’t wan to make the commitment? Now the magic Internet is bringing the therapists to you for only $9.99 per hour-long sesh. Talktala:_ is a brand new site (so new they’re still in the beta stage) that democratizes therapy by providing it in small groups for a low price.
Spider-who? Bat-who? Bourne-who? Forget the summer action blockbusters. This season we’re much more interested in the softer, sassier, saucier flicks. Instead of aliens, action and adventure, sex, love, family and friendship are the big themes with these movies. Women make up a majority of the lead roles (for a change). Most are indie. And for some reason they all come out this month. Guess it makes sense to get your summer love on early.
A reader just tipped us off to this 99 cent app called Peek: it lets you take naughty pictures of yourself and send them to the object of your affection with a little less risk. The recipient can only view the picture once, through a small circular moveable “keyhole”, for only 30 seconds before it disappears (from both your phones). Peek encrypts the picture, then decrypts it once when the recipient views it. The image is never uploaded to a server anywhere.
Tonight’s episode was called Everyone Stares. And that’s a fact. Get ready to see a whole lot of sexy on PUSH GIRLS, because the premiere episode was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to frank talk on dating and relationships for women thinking about issues like finding life partners and choosing whether to have children (btw, sponsor a lady’s uterus, why don’t you). One of the things I loved about the first episode was the unabashed exploration of sexuality for wheelchair users, since it’s such a taboo topic, something we’re not supposed to talk about; everyone assumes wheelchair users can’t or don’t have sex.
Yep, we just referred to ourselves in the third person…again. Remember a few weeks ago we told you we were going to be on The Interview Show in Brooklyn? No? Well, here’s the video of us on Chicago comedian and humor columnist Mark Bazer’s show anyway. We thought he was going to be asking us things like “What’s the weirdest advice question you’ve ever gotten?” or “What’s the best/worst thing about writing about sex?” You know, the fun cocktail conversations we never seem to have in real life. Instead, Mark asked us real, honest-to-God sex advice questions. The nerve! It was like work, except without the benefit of us being able to pick and choose the questions we want to answer and spending hours polishing our responses to make ourselves seem effortlessly witty. The veil has been lifted:
Not all news has to have gravitas. Not after this week’s zombie apocolypse. Sometimes the weird, the wacky, the big wastes of time are just what you need to start the weekend right:
This video of a North Carolinian pastor spewing homophobic hate has been making the rounds. Made “pukin’ sick” by the thought of men kissing men, Pastor Charles Worley comes up with a big idea to get rid of homosexuality once and for all — a “final solution,” if you will:
Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce.
This week, homophobia is down, gaydar is up, female objectification is over the top, and home HIV tests are around the corner. Oh, and a mankini is on the way:
It’s not the slickest website, but we love the idea of RockTheSlutVote.com — embracing the insult that’s meant to dismiss, discredit and silence “uppity” women in order to increase voter turn-out for political candidates who respect women’s rights. Yes, the art-work is cheesy (stock illustrations of impossibly thin, pretty, sexy fashionistas all apparently wearing miracle bras for the most part — we guess they’re trying to project the slutty stereotype???); and yes, it could all just be a cover to sell poorly designed CafePress merch (their logo is a cheesy lipstick imprint, ugh); but it does make it fairly easy to get registered to vote. Plus, we love the list that rips off the “You might be a red neck if…” format on their homepage — here’s a sample:
Last week, GetSTDtested.com released their list of the Top 100 Sex&Love&Dating Blogs, and our little ol’ humble home site EMandLO.com not only made the top 10, we were ranked third! (Excuse us while we do The Running Man.) Only OkCupid’s OkTrends(#1) and EmpowHER.com (#2) beat us out. Now, we know this was just a clever…
Having a bad day? Don’t worry, this week the news is light and airy: panda inseminations, professional mermaids, Hooters Heismans and creepy cuddle phones, yippee!
Apparently, your dating success depends on how you use pronouns. Funny, we thought it ha to do with appearance, hygiene, education and sense of humor.
In no duh news: Park Slope says no to a Hooters.
It’s been a busy week for porn:
A recent study in the Netherlands found that for women, watching pornography reduces blood flow to the visual cortex, indicating that their brain has decided that focusing on arousal is more important than fixating on exactly what’s occurring on the screen in front of them (which could be one reason why the book “Fifty Shades of Grey” is such a hit and being dubbed “mommy porn”).
If you forgot to celebrate Earth Day this past Sunday, Black Label is giving you until May 31st — from now until then, this online sex toy retailer with a fabulous no-phthalates policy (which stocks only items from our favorite quality manufacturers, like Lelo, Fun Factory, and We-Vibe) says they’re committing to planting a tree for every rechargeable sex toy they sell. They’ve already made their operation 100% carbon neutral by voluntarily purchasing Voluntary Carbon Units (VCU) to offset the greenhouse gas emissions their company produces, but they’ve also partnered with Carbon Neutral to take that a step further:
Check out this amazing PSA — we can’t even get into half of these positions! Their enthusiasm, willingness to experiment, and flexibility is something we — no matter what age — can all learn from.
We’re not big into comics, but apparently that’s where you have to go to find interesting, three-dimensional female characters who take center stage. Because you won’t find them in Hollywood (take the Bechdel Test) or at the theater. But you will find them in Danielle Corsetto’s strip GIRLS WITH SLINGSHOTS. A reader recently tipped us off to the site because “it’s closely related to the stuff you guys talk about all the time” — we’re guessing she meant it’s about real women who are their own sexual agents, who don’t fit a preconceived notion of femininity, who pave their own individual romantic paths, sometimes faltering along the way, but always trying to learn and progress as they go while maintaining a healthy sense of humor (and a sex toy drawer).