If you like your production values high, your contract stars blonde, your islands Tera Patrick free and your trailers hi-def you’ll enjoy the new Island Fever 4 website.

I still think Jana Cova’s a Bugatti to Jesse Jane’s ex-rental Ford Mustang but regardless of your opinion, there’s plenty of both here. I always thought island fever meant malaria, apparently, it’s also code for beach-bound-artcore-fuckfest. See – porn IS educational.

Get your high-Def trailer goodness here.

Popularity: 45% [?]

There are no bisexual women in porn. At a secret meeting held in Geneva in 1985 Interporn, the Earth’s flesh-flick governing body, unanimously decided that ‘Chicks wanna do chicks’ that ‘We’re totally cool with that.’ and that ‘It’s totally not gay.’

This of course is bollocks, but somehow, today women who sleep with their girlfriends are shocked if you suggest they might be lesbians and dykehood seems to be conferred only one women of specific politics and a predictable taste in reproductive organs.

Frankly, I don’t care. Though think sexual labels are useful – it makes avoiding being in a relationship with someone who’d rather I didn’t have a penis easy to avoid – the idea we all have to defend our sexual turf is antiquated. In porn however, erroneously seen as a bastion of ‘Just do it’ mentality, malleable sexuality continues to pose a problem for men.

It’s impossible to be a lesbian in mainstream porn. There are women who perform with both sexes, who the jizz-bizz calls ’straight’, and women who perform exclusively with women, who are expected to get round to men when the money they’re offered makes a quick dunk worthwhile. Janine and Devinn Lane both ‘went straight’ (while never claiming to be either lesbian or bisexual),Tera Patrick shocked the industry by refusing to perform with women at the start of her career, and Justine Joli is widely expected to start doing men soon by those who find the lack of penis in her performances perplexing.

The default state of female performers is bisexuality and all female performers are considered to be bisexual regardless of their behavior. Bisexuality is treated as ’straight with sprinkles’ and lesbian tendencies are assumed to dissipate at the merest whif of musky ball-sack. It’s weird but at least it’s unrestrictive. Men don’t have it so easy.

For years a single on-camera homosexual experience has been enough to detonate a males career. Kiss a guy, you’re a queer. Rub your cock against another guys until you both come in a ‘double-vaginal’ or ‘double-anal’, you’re just getting the job done.

The stigma against bisexual men in porn is based, like porn’s racism, in a pseudo-reasonable distortion of the facts. The claim is that when men have sex on camera the risk of HIV infection is so high that any woman performing with a bisexual man is endangering the happy, diseases-free world of ’straight’ pornography.

But like so much prejudice that assumption’s based in hard guesswork. Not fact. The mainstream gay industry views condom use as the only protection from infection and eschews testing as a diversion. Though critics claim that allows HIV positive performers to work with impunity, studies show that condom use protects the partners of HIV positive people with effectively 100% efficiency. You’re safer with someone who’s HIV positive and wearing a condom than with someone holding a test that says two weeks ago they didn’t appear to be infected. Meanwhile the straight industry continues to preach that insisting on condoms will kill a career in ’straight’ porn faster than halitosis induced impotence.

When men do cross the rubicon and move from working with men to working with women, reactions range from surprise to disgust but men like Maxx Diesel/ . I can only assume it’s motivated by vanilla homophobia. It wasn’t long ago that anal sex was ‘a gay thing’ and now it’s the basis of the majority of mainstream pornography. Is there any real reason to discriminate against men who like both mussels and oysters?

Christian XXX is beginning to break down the wall. Christian’s good looking in that way only gay men can be and proudly, publicly, bisexual. What’s new is the response he’s getting from the newest generation of female performers who are charmed by his honesty, turned-on by his looks and keen to mount his frankly impressive trouser-crane. Once his past would have been a titanic barrier but Christian is being given the same leeway women have long taken for granted.

To my mind that seems smart, fair and reasonable but the industry continues to differ. I don’t see any choice long-term but for the industry to wake-up. The questions are will they move fast enough and what long term effect will male bisexuality have on pornography?

Popularity: 36% [?]

Pieces like this are a real primer in modern PR.

Porn Show Lands In Miami Beach

There’s no story here. Trade shows happen all the time and reporting on an ‘erotic’ expo is in itself as newsworthy as reporting on a car-chase. It’s part of the news because sex-sells and on a slow-news day sexy stories can pull viewers with Germanic efficiency. Normally they ‘tease’ pieces like this for hours and save them to the very end of the show in order to keep news numbers up.

So what’s there to learn?

Jenna gives good interview. Her style is a mix of summer-dress and glamour wear which manages to sell her sexuality without making her look like the whore of Babylon. She consistently has the best make-up of anyone I’ve ever seen (mainstream or jizz-bizz). She’s not so glamorous that women immediately react against her and when she speaks, she talks about Miami, telling the local-news crews exactly what they want to hear and she’s not trying to sell anything. Once you know Jenna’s name, she knows Google will do all her marketing for her.

By rights Tera should be a media darling. She’s got a better story than Jenna (ex-Ford model, trained nurse, Thai-English heritage) but she’s doing it all wrong. She looks intimidating (who suggested her signing booth put her in the sky like some kind of skin-flick St. Peter?), she doesn’t smile (beautiful women who don’t smile get called bitches), and when she speaks she reels off a list of things she’ll sign. I suspect that the rest of her interview was deemed ‘too commercial’, i.e. she spent all her time discussing upcoming ‘projects’ and thus got edited away to nothing. Her PR people need to be lined up and shot.

Ron’s a natural of course. If there’s any doubt about him being more famous than Jenna it should be assuaged by the fact he’s the only performer who needs no name for the CBS audience – who are in their 50’s – to recognize. There’s no real way to contain a personality like Ron and the rounder he gets, the less threatening and funnier he becomes. Can you imagine a 6′4″, buff Ron Jeremy with Brad Pitt’s physique AND a ten inch cock? He’d be terrifying. The only multimillionaire I know who lives in logo T-Shirts and is therefore in line for a state funeral.

Of course the real winners are the people organizing the show. For the cost of a press-pass they’ve got a three minute ad on their local CBS affiliate from reporters kind enough to include opening times and prices in case anyone’s too busy to look it up. Don’t worry, this doesn’t make sex acceptable, in a week or two these shows will be running some scare-story about the danger bikini-shots on MySpace pose to American youth but, thanks to capitalism as long as it sells ads they’ll put as much porn on air as they can get away with.

Popularity: 73% [?]

I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure that any presentation of explicit sexual material needs to be bookended with relevant 2257 information. Simply having a warning on a website’s not enough for video, it needs to run in the video itself. Hell, I have a 2257 warning tattooed below my navel just in case someone whips out a camera at a party.

If I’m right (and I almost always am) Tera’s new trailer website isn’t legal, and that mistake is enough to get Tera’s crew arrested by the Gonzale’s Porn-sicution Force.

If I’m wrong about this feel free to enlighten me. If I’m not, Tera needed to fix this yesterday.

If you just like to see fast cut money-shots set to nu-metal, get over there now and thank me for the link over a drink.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Why are people making movies like Donkey Punch (pictured)?

Fact 1 – All pornographic movies are made with profit in mind. The all-time top sellers from Adult DVD Empire (one of the largest online adult movie stores) are:

1. Flashpoint
2. Award Winning Sex Scenes
3. Island Fever
4. All Star
5. Dream Quest
6. Island Fever 3
7. Virtual Sex with Jenna
8. All Time Best Teen
9. Brianna Loves Jenna
10. Virtual Sex with Tera Patrick

The list is comprised of movies which are notably free of degredation or violence – consensual or otherwise. If we were to throw in other known top-sellers (Comstock movies, 1 Night in Paris, Pam and Tommy, Deep Throat) the observation regarding tone stands.

Fact 2 – (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Donkey punch is a slang term for a sex move performed during doggy style or anal sex. The move involves the penetrating partner punching the penetrated partner in the back of the head or neck. The term may refer to the surprised party “bucking” like a donkey.

The practice of hitting one’s partner for sexual enjoyment is familiar (see Sadism and Masochism), but in the various joke-descriptions of the donkey punch more exotic rationales are often given for it. For example, sometimes it is said to cause the muscles around the vagina or anus to contract around the penis, giving enhanced pleasure to the active partner. In some exaggerated tellings this phenomenon is of such great force as to result in the inversion of the rectum (which may then be described as a “pink sock”). Sometimes the active partner is said to punctuate the technique with a victorious cry of “Donkey punch!”

In reality, punching someone in the back of the head (rabbit punching) can damage the brain stem, causing death or permanent injury. It is illegal in professional boxing for this reason. The donkey punch may also be prosecutable as assault or sexual assault, in some jurisdictions even if consent is given.

Fact 1 tells us that every dollar spent by the producers of violent pornography could be invested more profitably by adopting a softer tone. Fact 2 tells us that some scenes are either genuinely dangerous to the performers involved or suggest that potentially deadly activities (donkey punches, ‘erotic’ axphixiation etc.) are safe.

Thirty years ago ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ contained scenes of oral, anal and vaginal sex. With only a handful of stunts most people don’t want to try at home added to that in the past decade, every sane sex act is already on film. Have some producers turned to violence as the only area in which they can break new ground?

Here’s a quote from Max Hardcore’s website:

“Hairless Hillary just wants a friend, but I fuck her face so hard she pukes out her nose! Then I jack my rod in her ass & blast her throat with goo!”

The accompanying clip shows Hilary crying, gaging, puking and drinking urine from her rectum via a clear tube while being called a dirty whore. Are we watching a scene from a violent sex movie, or a scene from a movie about violence with some sex in it?

If there’s reason to draw a line between violent movies and sex movies, should we be drawing it now? If not is there anything that we shouldn’t allow others to package as entertainment? When violence, fear, implied lack of consent and sex are rolled together how do we counter accusations of fetishizing rape? How comfortable are you with the crying edge of pornography? How comfortable do you think you’ll need to be?

Between 1992 and 2004 the only procecutions for obscenity within the US were brought in conjunction with child pornography, and the porn industry (particularly online) has become overconfident. With the government having publically declared that obscenity is a priority, should the adult industry distance itself from the excesses of ‘porn’ to ensure its survival and the well-being of performers?

Popularity: 44% [?]

The most important part of any porn movie is the cast – specifically the women (or men If you’re working the homosexualist/gaysexual tip.) Your cast will determine what happens in your movie, and the kind of success you can expect to have. Anything, however poorly shot, which features Jenna Jameson or Tera Patrick is worth thousands today; if you cast your movie right, the only thing left to worry about is screwing (oh! I’m punning) things up.

• Ladies first. Start by casting your female leads. If that’s your other half make sure you discuss what’s going to happen and what’s expected.  Asking your wife how much she likes the postman three minutes before a scene isn’t going to work. If you’re not working with your partner, a talent agency is going to be easier and quicker than advertising (ads can work but, outside LA, the chances of finding the right sort of people are slim.) Going to an agent gives you more choice, and more protection, than asking members of your AA group.
• Choose men based on reliability. Looks and size are nice (thank you, it’s a gift) but choose male performers for their ability to get wood on demand and keep it for extended periods (unless the theme of your movie is ‘getting toothpaste back into the tube’). If you’re the male talent, expect erectile dysfunction and have a plan B. Plan B can be a sex-toy, another performer or a ’stunt cock’ – i.e. a guy whose reliable cock stands in for yours.
• Get tests. Everyone you shoot needs to be tested for STD’s, even if they’re ‘just’ sharing toys (anyone who comes into contact with body fluids has to be tested and clear). The industry expects performers to pay for their own testing (unless they’re under contract to a studio). Make sure you know what a real test looks like – call the testing center to verify if you don’t. Using condoms is a really smart idea.
• Prep in advance. The camera sees detail you ignore in the heat of the moment, i.e. freshly waxed flesh looks like cold chicken peppered with tiny scabs, and bra’s leave dents in boobs for up to an hour after they’ve been removed. Speak to your performers so they can wax a couple of days before the shoot, and arrive for work braless. If guys are going to shave, make sure they have adequate time to heal/get stitches. Few people outside porn spend much time staring at their exposed ass – ensure everyone checks their airlock for Klingons.
• Confirm ID. Traci Lords had a real passport which showed a fake age, there’s nothing you can do about that, you will go to jail however if you accept a third generation Xerox of a video-rental card as proof-of-age. Insist on originals and check carefully, any mistakes made will be your problem. Don’t even take a test shot until you’re sure the ID’s good, and remember that in the US today, it’s effectively illegal to shoot anyone who doesn’t have a US ID (i.e. a foreign passport won’t work). Take a picture of each performer with their ID so you can prove they gave it to you.

Sam’s Swollen Tip: Whatever your plans, make sure everyone you cast knows what you plan to shoot and has agreed to it. You’ll be surprised at what people are sensitive about (the standing joke in porn concerns how much pickier people are about who they kiss than who they screw). If your plans and your cast don’t mesh, change something before you’re on location wasting time and money.

Popularity: 29% [?]

A sex podcast presented by: Sam Sugar

Podnography #10.mp3 (128kbps – 51 MB) or (48kbps -19 MB)

(show notes (.pdf))

Podnography #10 includes:

The Week at Fleshbot

• Foot fetishes courtesy of Serafina (no – not the Latvian Witch)
• Pornographic Japanese office supply store, which simply had to exist, does
• Alt porn it’s okay to like for Suicide Girl refugees
• Burlesque performances captured on camera because stripping + French accent = art
• Union of one, Gram enters the world of porn character acting

Review

• Podcast – Open Source Sex

Music

• ‘Misty Rowe’ by Young Heart Attack

Interview

• Tera Patrick (pictured), adult movie superstar.

Guest Segment

• Dancing With Myself by Lumpesse

Contact Sam: Email podnography@gmail.com, or phone (310) 933-5993.

Subscribe to Podnography

(Podnography respects copyright. All content property of Sam Sugar, or used with permission)

Popularity: 20% [?]

If you want people to look you in the eyse without laughing, consider your porn name carefully.

We’ve all heard about making up a porn name by combining our pet’s name with the street we grew up on but since 1986 that’s been illegal. Seriously, try it and porn commandos will bury up to the neck in sand and bukkake on you until you apologize.

A professional name is a serious thing. You have to live with it, it’s your calling card and it has to grow as you do. It’s also the first major decision you make on entering the industry, and shouldn’t be made when confronted with a release form in a photographers studio. If you leave it until then you’ll end up with a name the photographer came up with. You don’t want that, get any jizz bizz professional drunk enough and they’ll rattle off a list of ridiculous porn names they’d love to saddle someone with.

A number of European performers use their real names, though it’s rare in the US (a dissertation on guilt and morality is waiting to be written on that). The problems with using your real name are:

1. It may not be memorable.
2. You probably won’t be able to buy it as a URL for your website.
3. You won’t be able to check into a hotel without getting calls from horny fans who know you’re in town.
4. If you have children they’re going to have to justify your lifestyle every day in school. Of course, if you home school your kids and work in the adult industry, your kids are social outcasts already. Go back to worrying about Arab homosexuals with AIDS being paid, with your tax dollars, to take our guns away and force us all to be Buddhists.

Like everyone else in the public eye, including William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton (so named because he’ll drop trou’ for a dollar), you also want a porn name to create an impression.

Newcomers frequently try to choose names that sound similar to other performers they admire. That’s a mistake.

The more successful you become, the shorter your name will become. We naturally shorten names because we like the people we’re referring to. It feels friendly and the public’s reliable ability to sniff out killers and pederasts before they’ve done anything obviously wrong is why Michael Jackson, even at the height of his fame, was never just Michael, why O.J Simpson never lost the Simpson, and why Jack the Ripper was never simply Rip.

If I say Jennifer, Brad or Angelina you’ll think of specific individuals (naked, a messy pile of limbs, oil everywhere – or is that just me?). If your chosen name is shared with someone more famous than you it’s a certainty that you’ll be mistaken for them in print. In the porn industry any names which include: Ron, Jenna, Danni, Tera, Nina, Seka, Aria, Veronika (and many, many more) are going to be an uphill battle.

Some amateur website owners try to solve the problem of having a non-unique name, and a decent URL, by tying a description of what they like to do the name they want. It’s where we got ExtremeHolly.com (she’s extreme) and NaughtyAlysha.com (a very naughty lady) from.

NB: If you’re going to visit either of those URLs remember there are some things you can’t un-see.

The problem with descriptive names is that they can be restrictive and give the impression you’re a one trick pony. Flexible names are as desirable as flexible dates.

Unless you’re looking for legal bills don’t choose anything that includes a trademarked phrase. That means you Dr. Whopper (catchphrase – Extra mayo? UARRRGH!)

Most importantly, choose your name before your first professional engagement and choose carefully. Some directors refuse to put ‘cheesy’ names on their boxes and I know models who are called different things according to where they appear because of that. Name changes are a marketing nightmare.

Don’t tell anyone your professional name until you’ve bought a URL, and perhaps started a trademark application. Otherwise when you try to buy that domain you might discover someone else is pretending to be you. Unfortunately it still happens a lot.

Personally, I love names with a touch of retro humor. Beverly Center, Dana Point, Jerry Curl and Bill O’Goods are all high on my list of too-good-not-to-be-used porn names. Which is why I’ll never venture in front of the camera (besides, until wide angle lens technology catches up with my size I’m doomed to appearing blurry.)

The key to picking a great professional name for the adult industry is to forget you’re in the adult industry at all. The best-known nude models and performers have names that would work just as well if they were fronting a rock band or acting in mainstream movies. Your name shouldn’t be something you might ever be ashamed of – you’ll have enough prejudice to counter if you become successful.

Even if you leave the adult world, think how much easier it’ll be to discuss your ‘lost’ past and religious conversion if you don’t have to refer to your former self as ‘Goldie Cumfish’.

Pick something that sounds cool and is non-porn specific. By the time people see your website they’ll be aware of what you’re involved in. If your name sounds ‘porny’ it’ll only make you seem cheesy and out of date.

Rule #1 – Porn and cheese don’t mix.

Popularity: 30% [?]