Porn and Sex Toys: Amusing Opinions and Top Whatever Lists

So I was writing my year-end “Top Five Sex Products” piece for my online magazine column, when I realized that I’ve been writing this column for the last ten months and have neglected to actually mention it to y’all.

Oops. My bad.

Here’s the deal. I’ve been writing an every-other-week column since March 2005, reviewing porn and sex toys and such for the Adult Friend Finder magazine. (Adult Friend Finder is sort of like Friendster, but for sex.) I’m enjoying the gig hugely. They’re a cool magazine, with other good writers; they give me a lot of leeway to write what I want to write, in the style I want to write it in (within the column’s basic parameters, of course); the editor is easy to deal with and clear about what she wants — and they pay like Swiss clockwork, which, as any writer will tell you, keeps the creative spirit flowing like nothing else in the world.

So here’s a quick index of the columns I’ve written for them (including the Top Five Something-or-Other List), with teasy little pull quotes to give you a flavor of each piece. (FYI, you don’t have to be an AFF member to click these links. You do have to join if you want to surf around and visit the rest of the magazine, but joining is free, so why not.) I’m also putting this index on my Website, in case you want to find it later. Anyway, here goes.

Year End Top Something-or-Other List (Jan 5, 2006)
“I deeply respect the eternal human yearning for the sense of order and completion that year-end Top Whatever lists provide.”

Cheese Factory:
Dream Quest (Jan. 14, 2006)
“See, in the midst of all the zany Tolkein-in-Vegas costumes and sets and makeup jobs, someone forgot to come up with the zany sex.”

Learning Can Be Fun:
Nina Hartley’s Guide to Spanking (Dec. 20, 2005)
“I love it when information makes me want to whack off.”

Is the Pyrex Half Empty or Half Full?
Vibrating Blue Swirl Pyrex Dildo (Dec. 6, 2005)
“There’s nothing that makes you feel more like a sensual, decadent libertine than taking an exquisitely-made art object and sliding it into your lover’s cunt.”

Art or Sex: Pick One:
True Porn 2 and Dirty Stories Volume 3 (Nov. 16, 2005)
“It seems clear that these are meant to be serious comics about sex., not sexy comics about sex. (Well, except for Sam Henderson’s stuff, which nobody would accuse of seriousness — but even his pieces aren’t meant to be sexy.)”

Artburn:
Art School Sluts (Nov. 4, 2005)
“I had no idea that watching a girl with dyed black hair in Japanese rope bondage getting spanked by a guy in a Mohawk could be anywhere near this boring.”

Shock Treatment:
Electric Paddle (Oct. 21, 2005)
“Yes, it looks doofy as hell. It looks like a racquet from a cheap backyard badminton set. You just have to get over that.”

Playing the Race Card:
Caribbean Heat (Oct. 1, 2005)
“Unlike most adult videos with a non-white cast, this movie treats its Latino characters like… well, like characters.”

Try, Try Again:
The Butterfly Effect (Sep. 13, 2005)
“It was surprisingly liberating to have a vibrator that just went about its business without me having to screw around with it.”

Mighty Real:
9 Songs (Aug. 30, 2005)
“By the second or third scene, the fact that they’re having sex is no more surprising than the fact that any two people in a relationship are having sex.”
(P.S. Yes, unlike every other critic in this or any other universe, I actually did like “9 Songs” a fair amount.)

High-Speed Wireless:
Wireless Vibrating Nipple Clamps (Aug. 29, 2005)
“I could jerk myself off, or fondle my partner, or just keep my hands submissively behind my back… all without having to carry around some stupid battery pack.”

More Talk, Less Rock:
Orgasm! Faces of Ecstasy (August 11, 2005)
“Maybe I’m too bourgeois in my sensibilities, but it seems to me that a ‘making of the video’ video shouldn’t be three times as long as the actual video itself.”

A Hankerin’ For Some Spankerin’:
Spank Me: The Art of the Spirit (July 28, 2005)
“This is erotic art with nothing at all to say apart from ‘Girls getting spanked are hot.'”

Fashion Police:
The Fashionistas (July 13, 2005)
“It’s that rarest of gems, a porn plot that makes the sex more interesting by making you care about who’s fucking and why.”

Gag Order:
Rubber Penis Gag w/Airway, a.k.a. Inflatable Rubber Gag with Breathing Tube (July 13, 2005)
“I like this sex toy because I have chronic allergies. No, really.”

Comic Relief:
Casual Sex Comics (May 31, 2005)
“Comic artist El Bute has an eye for the casual encounter that means something: the slight acquaintance who winds your balls into a twist, the complete stranger who makes you stop dead in the street.”

Finger on the Pulse:
Pulse-Right Bullet Vibe and On Porpoise Sleeve (May 21, 2005)
“When I was whimpering and writhing and begging for it to stop, I was also spreading my legs as wide apart as I could, which I suppose casts some doubt on the sincerity of my pleas…”

For Better or Worse:
Taboo: Forbidden Fantasies for Couples (May 6, 2005)
“‘Taboo’ is so interestingly uneven that you could almost use it in a writing class, an object lesson in what makes porn fiction work — and what doesn’t.”

When Art Porn Works:
Ecstasy in Berlin 1926 (Apr. 28, 2005)
“Watching it made me feel like a wealthy sybarite in an elegant bordello, with lovely and expensive girls performing a series of degenerate sex acts carefully staged for my benefit.”

Hide and Seek:
Dirty Found Magazine, issue #1 (Apr. 13, 2005)
“Dirty Found is like a secret spy camera in a motel room, like being a fly on the wall in dozens of bedrooms at once.”

Ramp It Up, I’ll Take It:
The Ramp (Mar. 26, 2005)
“When I bent over the Ramp for the first time, I was immediately filled with a warm, glowing sense of well-being and the rightness of the universe.”

Throat Culture:
Inside Deep Throat (Mar. 16, 2005)
“My personal favorite was the grandmotherly old lady coming out of the porn theater, saying firmly and with great spirit, ‘Yes, I enjoyed it. I wanted to see a dirty movie, and I saw a dirty movie. I should have the right to do that if I want.'”

Home is Where the Naked Girls Are:
Stripped Naked (Mar. 4, 2005)
“They seem like real people, with real personalities, real sex lives, real pleasures and kinks. And consequently, they seem like women you could actually fuck.”

The Adult Friend Finder magazine has also been kind enough to do some interviews with me, on the occasion of the publication of my books. They’re good interviews, with smart questions that I actually had to think about before answering. Check them out.

The Bent World of Greta Christina, Part 1, Jun 28, 2005
“I had this strong visual image in my head of a woman bending over, with this very insistent, hungry quality to her. Everything else grew out of that image.”

The Bent World of Greta Christina, Part 2, July 13, 2005
“Writing smut is like digging down into the bones and muscles of my libido, and while that’s difficult, it’s also exhilarating. I want more.”

Paying For It (Behind the Scenes), Feb. 26, 2005
“I didn’t just want to talk to regular customers of prostitutes and pro dominants — I wanted to talk to folks who go to strip clubs now and then, or who like to check out interactive Webcam porn, or who might hire a stripper for a birthday party.”

Watch this space for future developments. And have fun!

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Porn and Sex Toys: Amusing Opinions and Top Whatever Lists
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