The world’s first sex robot

The AVN Adult Entertainment Expo was held in Vegas this past weekend, overlapping (not accidentally, one imagines) with the geek-fest Consumer Electronics Show. There were some areas of overlap, with sex booths showcasing 3-D porn, and a sort of “Wii for men” (a box attached to the johnson creates sensations that sync up with dirty scenes on the screen), and what’s being touted as the world’s first interactive sex robot.

Katie Roiphe vs. Steve Almond

Last Sunday, in a big NYTimes think piece, sexual mores writer Katie Roiphe accused Dave Eggers and his fellow male American literary contemporaries of being too into cuddling (like that’s a bad thing):

The younger writers are so self-­conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically un­toward. For a character to feel himself, even fleetingly, a conquering hero is somehow passé. More precisely, for a character to attach too much importance to sex, or aspiration to it, to believe that it might be a force that could change things, and possibly for the better, would be hopelessly retrograde. Passivity, a paralyzed sweetness, a deep ambivalence about sexual appetite, are somehow taken as signs of a complex and admirable inner life. These are writers in love with irony, with the literary possibility of self-consciousness so extreme it almost precludes the minimal abandon necessary for the sexual act itself, and in direct rebellion against the Roth, Updike and Bellow their college girlfriends denounced. (Recounting one such denunciation, David Foster Wallace says a friend called Updike “just a penis with a thesaurus”).

The complicated sex lives (and genitals) of ducks.

Eversion in air: from blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

Competition within–and between–the sexes have long had a way of influencing biology. Deer grow antlers with which to battle each other, peacocks flaunt elaborate tails to attract peahens. But none of these can hold a candle to the wonders that are duck genitals.

Sundance Film Festival’s Top 10 Lessons in Love

The movies are a great place to learn about life, including your love life. Let the characters in these ten Sundance Festival films make the big dating and mating mistakes so you don’t have to:

1. Once: Sometimes the best love affairs are the ones you never have (i.e. the fantasy is often better than the reality).
   
   
2. The Tao of Steve: In order to be successful with women, be desireless, be excellent, be gone.
   
   

Naked News: Sex-positive Streep, gay floral arrangements & safer sex toys

scene from new movie “It’s Complicated”

• Meryl Streep, our new hero, on sex scenes between older people: “”The whole idea that you have to look a certain way and be a certain age to earn love is ridiculous. We love what we love. It doesn’t matter what shape it is. It’s thrilling to see real people on screen.”
  
  
• Canadians are one step ahead of us in the health department again: sex stores are game with regulating the adult toy industry to keep out harmful chemicals found in the plastics used in some toys.
  
  

Hot guys + baby animals = genius

Somebody must have done this before. There’s got to be a 1978 calendar buried in someone’s basement  somewhere featuring topless guys in tight pants with lush mustaches and fluffy wittle kittens. But we’ve never seen it. So we’re kind of getting a kick out of Hot Guys and Baby Animals, the new Recess Peanut Butter [...]

George Michael comes clean about being anything but

George Michael is a troubled soul and a talented musician. Unlike many artists in the same boat though, Michael does not hide his demons. He once famously made a song and video lampooning his taste for public sex and his arrest cruising public restrooms (see the video and song “Outside”). And he remains in the [...]

Happy birthday James Thurber, author of “Is Sex Necessary?”

Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor on NPR today, we learned it was James Thurber’s birthday (12/8/1894-11/2/1961). He was a celebrated American writer and wit, best known for his short stories and cartoons in The New Yorker. While on staff there, he shared a small office and became great friends with E.B. White (hey, just like we became great friends when we worked and shared a desk at the online mag Nerve). Together the two wrote “Is Sex Necessary?: Or Why You Feel the Way You Do” (1929), the first prose book either of them had published (hey, just like we wrote our first book together, “The Big Bang”!). Of course, ours was a true-blue sex manual and theirs was a parody of sex manuals — a hilarious send-up of the new “sexologists” on the scene back then, like Freud and his compatriots. And while ours goes into shameless detail (there’s a chapter on fisting, fer chrisakes), their’s never really gets to the sex at all — and that’s its genius.

How to have sex with a vampire*

image by King Chimp, from “Nosferatu” Don’t eat any garlic for at least 72 hours beforehand. Don’t give blood for at least a month beforehand: you’ll need all your reserves. Get your blood work done beforehand and make sure you bring condoms: while the undead can’t give you any STDs, infections you might have (especially [...]

I just made love

I’m someone who definitely kisses and tells. I have been all my life and usually it turns my partners red with embarrassment and sometimes red with anger. Additionally, I’ve never been popular with guys who seek “discretion” when hooking up. FYI: “discretion” is code word for “I have a boyfriend.” I am really dangerous to [...]

Music video: Cinnamon Chasers, “Luv Deluxe”

This is one of my favorite music videos I’ve seen all week. Slightly NSFW, Saman Keshavarz directed this sexy concept for Cinnamon Chasers’ catchy song “Luv Deluxe.” Shot in HD first-person POV, watch closely as the viewer is presented with three different scenarios of a road trip, which correspond to different personalities. Cinnamon Chasers – [...]

How sexy is your city?

Ever wonder how sexy your city is? Well, if you’re based in the UK, you have a chance to find out: UK sex toy retailer LoveHoney has created the UK Sex Map, which uses data on sex-related spending to determine just how sexy different townships are. For example: the people of red hot Upminster spends [...]

The Snuggie Sutra

Years ago, we were part of the team that created Nerve.com’s Position of the Day. The challenge was coming up with the positions; the fun was coming up with the names: “The Quasimodo,” “The Wet Blanket,” the “I Can See My House from Here.” So we were really curious about the Snuggie Sutra, a website [...]

The Sylvia chandelier

I don’t mean to encroach on our lovely Em and Lo’s territory, but I had to share this neat chandelier available at Culver City, California’s Sundayland. This 26” by 26” chandelier, the “Sylvia” is built from silver plastic vibrators and is sure to “turn on any room.”

Happy birthday, Betty Dodson!

There isn’t better proof that an active, healthy, happy sex life keeps you looking young and vibrant than Betty Dodson, the great American sex educator who basically invented sex-positive feminism and almost single-handedly made masturbation okay for women. She turns 80 today — and doesn’t look a day over 60! It could also be the [...]

MRI sex

Improbable Research is an organization which collects (and sometimes conducts) improbable research (i.e. “research that makes people laugh and then think”), publishes a magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research, and administers the Ig Nobel Prizes. These mock Nobels are held once a year in a fun, goofy ceremony to honor the most unusual recent [...]

Naked news (08-18-09)

photo by babasteve

• In horrifying international news: A new Afghan bill allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands.
  
  
• In no-duh news: Kids use the web to look up “sex.”
  
  

Food for thought (and adult fun, too)

We all know that sex can sell anything from clothes to cars to chewing gum–but what about a chewing gum that’s trying to sell sex? Sexlets is being marketed as a gum with a special blend of ingredients that, ahem, helps with male sexual enhancement. Odd as it may seem, it’s not the only confectionary [...]

Naked News (08-04-09)

photo by yaaaay Yawning before sex may actually be a good thing. Newsweek — yes Newsweek — has a whole polyamory extravaganza online. Yay, another excuse to drink! Red wine may increase a woman’s sex drive. A new iPhone App (illegally?) maps sex offenders. Dubious study of the week: women are getting better looking while [...]

The Ancient Book of Sex and Science

When you, as an adult, spend the majority of your time creating adorable G-rated worlds for kids, that hidden sexual side of you is bound to come out — and probably, shall we say, enthusiastically. (Anyone remember the movie S.O.B. in which squeaky clean Julie “Mary Poppins” Andrews rips her top off and exposes her boobies? No? Good. It’s scarring.) Well, in their spare time, four Pixar animators have been working on a series of cool art books, the second and most recent of which is “The Ancient Book of Sex and Science” (the first was the now sold-out “Ancient Book of War and Myth“).

Things to say during sex: a handy diagram.

Though we’ve been led to believe that pillow talk is something that just comes naturally–that we’ll all just magically know just the right thing to say in the heat of the moment–the truth is often anything but. Sure, sometimes we managed to pull it off, but more often than not, words fail us (or, worse [...]

Ga-Ga for GaGa

Lady GaGa recently turned head’s in London when she appeared at a charitable mural painting donning the most ridiculous hairstyle this side of Cher. Seriously, GaGa is KooKoo.

Digging it

I have a great love of all things gay and also of interior design. So it would make great sense to assume a website that combines the two would get me excited. Lurrid Digs (NSFW) definitely gets a rise out of me, but in that squirming-I-cannot-believe-these-people-are-real kinda way. It freaks me out!

The hanky code

Just doing my bit around here to prepare you for all the upcoming Gay Pride events throughout the month of June. And there’s no better way to prep for such an event than to really learn the hanky code.

Carnalpedia: an encyclopedia of smut

Sure, Wikipedia is there to give you a list of every Simpsons episode ever, or help you figure out when Brigitte Bardot was born–but what if you’re looking to do research of a more, ahem, prurient nature? Carnalpedia hopes to become the go-to source for all your sexy research. Using the same platform as Wikipedia, [...]