Going into a porno shop/ smut hut/ whackin shak or whatever you call it is a pretty interesting adventure these days. Since the advent of video in the mid 70's, those making porno's have been able to venture into the most fragmented fetish that you can desire. If you have a thing for Hispanic women who suck on toes, there's probably a tape or two out there. If you want "All lesbian AND all anal", it's out there too. I can't help but to wonder what On Our Backs would have to say about that.

At any rate, the point is that whatever you desire, foot fetishes, silicon filled peroxide blondes with an IQ of a roll of Duct Tape, gay, bi, straight, transvestites, pregnant, lactating, black, Asian, interracial, women with toys, anal out the wazoo, etc... there's a tape and or DVD out there for you.

Unless, you're looking for something arousing that is.

Today's porno's have the overall erotic value of getting a handjob from a clawhammer. For all the graphic depiction, for all the catering to the most detailed fetish, today's porno's, more times than not, utterly fail at having the slightest thing to do with eroticism.

For the true fetishist, that won't be the case. The true fetishist only requires that the object of their fixation be present when they're in a state of arousal. For the rest of us fairly-well-adjusted souls, there's a surgical removal of anything remotely erotic from the vast majority of porno's on the market. There is no sense of seduction, there is no playing-hard-to-get, there is no sincerity and more times than not, the actress' look diseased, anorexic, drugged out, their breasts pumped with so much silicone that they look as though they'll burst and their lips so inflated with collagen that you'd think Sugar Ray Leonard had spent an hour punching their lips.

There are a few exceptions to that description. Tara Patrick comes to mind; a Thai/ American beauty who is 100% natural but apparently likes to be slapped around and choked during sex. She comes to mind, as do a few others, past and present like Kelly O'Dell, Diedre Holland, Flame, Aria Giovanni, Kelly Havel and others [which i may or may not decide to list here eventually].

So here i have a collection of thoughts regarding porno's; things that i like and that i dislike.

Porno's have no plots. This is a good thing in my opinion. If i wanted plot, i'd watch Masterpiece Theater or more than likely, Homicide: Life on the Streets. One of my biggest pet peeves about porno is when they TRY to have a plot. Why? Because a good porno should be about sex and sexuality and about catering to the emotions and NOT to the mind. The most successful porno's i've seen have been vignette's doled out in 15 or so minute servings. There's nothing connecting the scenes together; and that works out quite well. Nothing is more laughable than some Paul Thomas-like director trying to make a series of scenes of cocksucking and pussylicking into a cerebral affair... especially when the acting is about as convincing and sincere as Robert Tilton trying to preach morality or George Bush talking about ethics.

Camerawork? Please ! These are drug-addled jackasses who have the camera skills of a retarded monkey on retalin. There is no skill here, just a hard light strobe on top of a video camera and set to zoom in so close that you're not able to tell if you're watching people have sex or if you're studying for an anatomy final.

One exception to this is Andrew Blake. Andrew Blake is responsible for churning out high budget porno's (don't call them 'Adult Entertainment', btw. They're porno and even though they're far from obscene, they're still porno) on film. He uses beautiful and mostly natural models and his settings are posh, elaborate and sometimes sensual in and of themselves. Unfortunately Andrew Blake's best work is far behind him. Night Trips, Secrets and Hidden Obsessions, to be specific. For someone who started off making some of the most erotic and sensuous visual encounters ever captured on film, it's difficult to understand how he devolved to what he is today: a director who tries so hard to be erotic by hamfisting a bunch of artsy fartsy images together like a masturbating drunk making a collage. Imagine watching a combination of a porno with beautiful women, but with the directing mayhem of Oliver Stone's JFK. It's dizzying, it's disorienting and it's about as much fun as drinking too much and being duct taped onto one of those amusement park rides where you spin round and round and round and then the bottom falls out but you stay stuck to the walls.

You can also count out any hopes of watching good sex in a Blake production. His favorite model (don't call them actress'; they aren't acting any more than Matt Drudge is a journalist), a woman named Dahlia Grey, is a beautifully sculpted woman who exudes sexuality from every pore of her body. But never in any of the DVD's i've seen her in does she actually have SEX with anyone. It's all touchy-feely in a retarded Earl Miller* way [yes, "retarded" and "Earl Miller" is an oxymoron]. She never puts her mouth down on another woman's cunt like a horse eating a bag of oats,[take it from me, this is the proper enthusiastic way that one is supposed to devour a pusssy], she never takes a cock into her mouth to savor it and i've yet to see her have a cock inside of her. This is generally the sort of thing you can expect from Andrew Blake... a lot of pretty images, a lot of teasing and you can be guaranteed that you're going to watch something a little more "real" once you're done with one of his movies... men and women alike.

But where Andrew Blake gets it right, everyone else seems to get it wrong. Everyone else is so wrapped up in churning out quantity over quality. No one cares if the performers are actually enjoying it; no one cares if the models are natural, or at least look decent.

But then someone figured it out... they figured that maybe audiences [again, men and women] wanted something with some emotion.

Some years ago, amateur porn made a big splash on the scene. I mean, a HUGE splash. These were everyday couples and threesomes who were sick and tired of the factory processed sterility of porn. They'd set up a camera, roll, then fuck like sex starved weasels coming out of hibernation... or like i probably will once i can find someone i can connect with. The end result was that the Porn industry fought back in a major way. The major porn vendors started cranking out "amateur porn" using their models, while using them to discover "new" talent. One of the most successful two people to define a middle ground of this genre was Seymore Butts and his ex-girlfriend/ business partner, Shane.

What Seymore and Shane did was basically blend professional porn with amateur. The settings and encounters are strictly amateur, as is the sound, lighting and camerawork, but the girls are strictly there for the money... and it shows. While they've both done a pretty good job of having fun with sex on the camera, the sex is about as sensuous and passionate as anything else you should expect from an American porno. I mean, what you get with Shane or Seymore Butts is people having fun while fucking and i like this. Unfortunately if you're looking to enjoy the depth and passion that can be shared by two or more people on video/ film, then it falls short.

There is light on the horizon, though. American's tend to be so caught up in image that it takes someone very far removed from the tried and true to bring something innovative. While Seymore Butts and Shane brought spontaneity back to porno, they utterly fail at developing a sense of erotic seduction, passion and frankly, their models tend to be either undeveloped (i.e.: lacking in hips, breasts, butts, etc...), and are just unappetizing in general (there are exceptions, btw). Looking at European porn, things are a little better.

And a little worse .

Where European porn succeeds is that the models are RARELY modified. They tend to not have too many piercing, tattoo's and seldom have hatchet jobs on their boobs or clogged lip injections. Many of these models are truly feminine and are a real pleasure to watch.

But having said that, here's where European porn fails: anal's and threesomes. Anal now and then is fine. I think i'm too empathic to enjoy watching someone have anal sex because i just think how much that would have to hurt. Besides, i just enjoy watching vaginal sex. I think it's a lot prettier, sexier and since i enjoy vaginal sex, i identify with it. The other place where i see European porn failing is the prevalence of two men (or more) on one woman. It would be one thing if it were a true threesome, with all involved with each other. Unfortunately, what happens is the guys basically take turns, or ends, at drilling some poor girl. The guys never do anything with each other and the overall impression is the girl is there only to be degraded by having multiple guys plow her mouth, then vagina, then her anus, then shoot their sperm all over the girls face.

I don't get it... i just don't get it. It would be fine if it were a true threesome and being who i am, it would be fine if there were variations on the threesome idea [MFM as well as FMF], but so much of European porn concentrates on having two guys hammer the dogsnot out of some poor porn star with the emotion of what you'd expect from a gang bang.

Surprisingly one of the publishers i've seen churn out sex that's 1) Beautiful, 2) Spontaneous, and 3) Erotic, is from companies like Hustler. Of the few vignette's i've seen from Hustler, the couples seemed to really be enjoying themselves, the energy was strong and it was great sex. Unfortunately i've also seen my fair share of pissing scenes from Hustler as well as the standard guy-shoots-sperm-on-girls-face "money shots". If the scene of someone urinating is arousing to you, you've got problems, buddy.

All of this segue's nicely into my list of rants of things that i CANNOT stand to see in a porno. Trust me, i've got plenty of them.

Why WHY WHY do i need to see another man ejaculate? If i wanted to see gobs and gobs of thick hot ropes of piping hot mangravy shooting out of some guys dork, i'd go rent gay porn. No offense to gay porn, mind you. Heck, i've seen some gay porn and thought, "Wow... too bad that mainstream "straight" porn was this hot !" -As a side note, why is it "straight porn" when there are scenes of girls eating pussy?

At any rate, let me rewind time for a minute and tell you about one of the shows that i did while i was on ACTV. Basically i explained to everyone watching that guys who get off on watching other guys ejaculate were experiencing a homoerotic connection. I don't care how you rationalize it, i don't care how you justify it to me, the truth is that a man watching and getting off on watching another man ejaculate is a homosexual experience. This falls in nicely with the standard repressed backward ass thinking of most American men. That is, things like the NFL and the WWE are brimming over with homoerotic energy. Big, sweaty strong men holding and playing with and dominating each other are homoerotic images that most of mainstream America has embraced as "normal heterosexual male bonding" stuff. I'm sure that if someone tells himself that enough times, he'll eventually believe it, too.

Imagine the ire i garnered when i started talking about this on live television. Any time i hit a nerve like that on the air, the prank calls went down, the serious calls went up and i was usually the ripe target for a lot of guys with a lot of angst looking for a way to take it out on me. "What part of watching a guy ejaculate his sperm didn't seem homoerotic to you, sunshine?" The answer, when i got one, was usually that the viewer was engaged in a vicarious experience, to which i say that to imagine yourself as another mans cock is probably even more homoerotic than just wanting to watch him ejaculate.

Wow. That took a lot longer than i thought it would. I'll try and keep this shorter by listing a series of those things that if i could, i would absolutely do away with in porn.

Nasty-ass insincere tongue-tip kisses

I want to see people devouring each others mouths. Not in a frenzied kind of way, but just kisses that are the kind of kisses you'd like to give... and to receive. That swirling tongue tip kissing bullshit is disgusting. Have you ever felt another persons tongue like that? It's fucking gross.

High Heels and Whorish Jewelry

Again, why, why, why ? Why do i need to see someone fucking while wearing shoes? Answer: I don't !! Neither do you. If you have a foot fetish, great... go find a foot fetish film. But given the fact that most porno's don't really give a flying fuck about toes, even if it's just some mild toe sucking as foreplay, shoes don't belong. They don't make a woman seem more womanly, they don't make an unattractive woman attractive [unless you're a foot fetish freak, that is] and if i'm to believe that one or two [or more] women are in bed having sex, why the fuck would they be wearing their shoes? It's such a silly standard and a double standard at that. Guys, if you want to realize how fucking silly and contrived this bullshit is, imagine a world of porno's where all the guys have to fuck on camera wearing nothing but loafers. "Pathetic" doesn't start to cover how idiotic this technique is.

Likewise on the trashy jewelry. I mean, trashy jewelry simply looks whorish. If you want that kind of experience, go rent a whore. End of conversation.

The lack of seduction

Well, it's not as though i rent porno's to see GREAT sex. I mean, it'd be nice to see now and then, but honestly i'd just settle for GOOD sex. Again, i don't want stories, but what about some sense of foreplay other than a starlet dropping to her knees and gobbling some dorks dork for a few seconds before he starts to poke her cervix ? One of the most erotic vids i ever saw was when i was in college. It was two women sitting by one another. One was making advances by putting her hand on the others thigh, then sliding the other girls dress up. I remember being mesmerized by the chemistry of this scene. The recipient pushed the other woman away at first, but as she kept talking and getting closer, the woman being pursued was slowly breaking down to the point where she let the other woman explore, kiss then taste her. It was HOT... absolutely fucking HOT. Not that there's anything wrong with spontaneity either. It's just that spontaneity in pornography seems to be a formulated procedure instead of something based on the principle that when two or more people get nekkid together, they should start having fun. Spontaneity just seems to be mechanical in most of porn and it shouldn't be. I guess what it comes down to is whether it's an actual scene of seduction or spontaneity, there should be some sense of genuine seduction involved.

Hatchet Jobs [used to be Boob Jobs]

Guys and gals are guilty here and the finger needs to be pointed. Guys, get over your fucking mommy complexes. I like breasts as much as the next guy who likes breasts, but what i do NOT like is being fake. Just like that nasty ass buffet they have at the White Trash Corral, you should be smart enough to know that quantity and quality have nothing to do with one another. If you're such a bloody wanker that you can't get over your mommy complex, if you're such a tosser that you can't find a woman attractive until her chest has been so inflated that it looks like her chest is housing two bloated and deformed tumors the size of your head, then you're a sad sad little man.

And women... unless it's for reconstructive purposes, such as a surgery or extreme asymmetry, get over it. You have what you have. I have what i have. If you're willing to pay someone to carve you up so that you look like an artificial piece of meat, you're stupid. Don't do what you think guys want... use your confidence and common sense. I mean, do you really want to be found by a guy whose primary attraction to you is related on his inability to get over his mommy?

Let me offer you the following. I had two different lovers many many years ago. One was a AA cup, one was a very beautiful and perfect D with very little sag [the way i prefer]. The one who was a AA once told me during one of our sessions how wet it made her to have me suck on and play with her nipples. The other one didn't care one way or the other. I could suck, nibble or bite her nipples and she didn't care one way or the other.

Now, which of the two women do you think i had more fun with?

Heck, truth be told, the most beautiful breasts i've ever had the pleasure of touching and tasting were a B cup.

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Ultimately, i'd LOVE to do porno's. It's not a matter of thinking i'm better than most of the porn industry; it's KNOWING that i'm better than most of the porn industry. The advent of video was great for porn in general but the recent emergence of digital video and the plummeting costs of hard drives has been a boon for the individual filmmaker for both porno's and other types of films. If you're a couple or a woman and would like to help me, let me know.

updated :: 15 september 2002