Shame was basically made for me. It’s intensely slow-moving, there’s full-frontal male nudity within the first two minutes, there aren’t very many characters, and more attention is made to arty cinematography than to keeping the audience happy. I like all of those things. We also get to watch the man who played both Magneto and Mr. Rochester this year fucks a bunch of people, which is not a small thing, either. As with the Marvel antagonist and the Bronte character, we are attracted to his charms even though we’re constantly reminded that he’s kind of a dickbag.

Or is he?

The beautiful Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a successful New York businessman. Society and economics and Michael Douglas movies have all trained me to understand that New York businessmen are all kind of jerks. But Brandon’s not a bad guy, or at least he’s better than his young boss, a married lecher who wears expensive hoodies under his sportcoats and hits on women like a tenth-grader would. Just because Brandon has a fancy apartment and a delightfully long penis and a suave ability to nail roughly 50% of the women he sets his eyes on doesn’t make him evil, or even particularly troubled. He’s single, happy that way, and consensually doing what he wants to do with women who also seem to like what he’s doing.

But actually that isn’t even what the movie is about. Early reviews of Shame suggested a twenty-first century version of Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet, an unsexy drama about people have on-screen sex so troubling to look at that it takes years after viewing to look at a jar of peanut butter without squirming. Entering the cinema I expected a bleak drama about addiction.

But it’s not, really, despite what the press kit might say. Shame is about the relationship between Brandon and his troubled sister Cissy, played admirably by Carey Muligan. If anything, it’s a bleak drama about families and, more generally, about wider gender disparities in America. Because Brandon and Cissy are presented as two sides to the same person. Except that he’s smart, successful, and able to get laid without much effort, while she’s sexually confused and barely employed, a victim of some unspoken past that we as an audience never really fully understand. From their first interaction, when he stumbles upon her naked in the shower and she makes no effort to cover herself, we are uncomfortable with their own physical comfort with one another, even though emotionally there’s obviously a lot of fucked up history between them.

And that’s where Shame goes where I wish it hadn’t.

I had a conversation about sex addiction with a friend a few months ago, and how what’s pathologized in straight men (and women) is basically what a lot our gay friends consider routine behavior. Yes, promiscuous fucking can have consequences sometimes, and those deserve to be addressed. But the idea that a fondness for sex is necessarily rooted in some kind of fucked-up upbringing is just dumb. Have you ever had casual sex? It’s fun!

I hope that’s not what Shame is doing, although I’m still undecided. Are Brandon’s urges to pick up married women on the subway the same as Cissy’s urges to constantly leave needy answering machine messages. (Relatedly: do real New York businessmen even have landlines in 2011?)

The vagueness works pretty well, though. Details aren’t explained any more than they need to be, and I like that. Brandon says that he was born in Ireland and moved to the US as a teenager, while Cissy describes herself to Brandon’s boss as a Jersey girl. Is he really that much older than she is? Is one of them lying? Does it even matter? At least once, during a failed hookup, there’s even some intentional confusion about what’s happening.

I do like the movie, though, for its atmosphere and, let’s be honest, for the movie’s treatment of Fassbender’s body. His sex face is 99% less silly to look at than most porn performers’, and also I like how the movie gets all the dick shots out of the way at the beginning. We don’t need to fantasize, because we see it right away. And it is magnificent, especially during a gratuitious(ly awesome) rear-view pissing sequence.  The only flaw, visually, is a really brief scene where we’re introduced to Brandon’s porn collection.  It’s jarring and unnecessary.  But it’s also about ten seconds in a hundred-minute movie.

Fassbender’s suave performance is really good, actually, as is Mulligan’s in what is probably the tougher role. She’s troubled and needy without being condescending or trite. The music is all spot-on, the editing works well, including the lengthy scenes of Fassbender running and of Mulligan singing a rendition of “New York New York” so slow that even Cat Power would be embarrassed.

If you get a chance to see it, go. I had to drive to Boston, because Providence is a backwater sometimes and also one of our only two art-house screens has been showing My Week With Marilyn for two fucking months now.  It was worth the drive, though.

Just a quick reminder about a bunch of stuff I’ve got going on in the next 48 hours:

1. Tomorrow (Thursday) night I’m reading with Conner Habib at the AS220 Project Space in downtown Providence.  7pm.  I’m very excited to meet Conner in person finally, and also excited (yet nervous!) to be reading a story in front of some people I actually see regularly but who maybe don’t know as much about me as they think they do…

2. Friday I’m helping njoy throw the official after-party for the Fleshbot Awards at the G2 Lounge in New York (9th Ave @ 14th St.)  The party’s free and open to the public and will be really fun–awesome music, drinks galore, and one njoy eleven (a giant, 2.75 lb. stainless steel toy with a retail value of about $300) will be given away to one lucky partygoer.

3. I’m still working on my month-long photo project, documenting guys in my apartment as I prepare to move out and move in with my boyfriend after six years of living apart.  Preview images–basically untouched/barely-touched photos that may or may not end up with the final portfolio–can be seen on my Tumblr.

4. I’m blogging about fashion, still, and just today I posted a piece about what to where when you’re a couple and you’re performing at the Eurovision Song Contest.

[photo: Italy at Eurovision 1984.  Not the best look.]

Just thought I’d mention that I’m helping to plan the 11.11.11 celebration of the njoy Eleven, which is taking place next Friday at the Gaslight Lounge in New York.  It’s also the official after-party of the Fleshbot Awards, which are taking place earlier in the evening at the Highline Ballroom.  Expect to see porny celebrities, hear good music provided by the ever-skilled (and dreamy) HARSHBOYS, and possibly even win an njoy Eleven of your own.

In honor of the weekend, here is the boob tape-heavy video for Linda Sundblad’s “2 All My Girls,” which was a big hit in my head about a year and a half ago.  In addition to donning an American flag singlet cover thing, Sundblad manages to evoke a nostalgia for all parts of my elementary school career, from her Jane Child hair through her New Jack fire escape dance moves.  It’s even surprisingly Mapplethorpe-y!  (Actually I really love this video, because it’s 23 different kinds of retro, but without beating you over the head saying REMEMBER THIS THING!  AND THEN THIS THING!  THESE THINGS HAPPENED!  It’s basically the opposite of my least favorite video of 2011 thusfar.)

Linda’s just released a new single, the (ugh) Robyn-esque “Intim (Sanningen)”:

The title translates as “Intimate (The Truth)”, though the song isn’t nearly as goopy as you’d expect from a song with a title like that.  I actually like it, and hate that I can’t listen to certain female pop singers without internally comparing them to Robyn.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy your weekends.  I have vague hopes of getting some beach time in, but I am super swamped with, uh, something that I will be announcing shortly, so I probably won’t get a chance to get to the water until at least Tuesday…

In May 1981 an exciting sound was coming out of Scotland.  Altered Images had recently released debut single “Dead Pop Stars” on Postcard Records, and labelmates Orange Juice were preparing to put out a few singles as well.  And there was NME with the cover story.

I’m going to be thirty in… two weeks, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at some magazine covers from the month of my birth.  Here are thirteen of my favorites, starting with teenaged Bow Wow Wow singer Anabella Lwin on the cover of The Face:

I think the Cosmo cover may be my favorite of all.  While ridiculously text-heavy (and generally ridiculous) as ever, this one deserves special mention for the use of five separate parenthetical remarks, including the very oddly worded “celebrated hunks (of man)”.  Of course, Susan Sarandon, the De Lorean, and Turkish boobies are all notable in their own right.

I apparently have 84 tabs open in Firefox right now, and less than 1 gig of space left on my hard drive. Here’s some links, so I can maybe clear some of this up:

Oregon State University uninvited feminist pornographer/university lecturer Tristan Taormino from speaking at their Modern Sex event. Taormino cried censorship, but the university says the blame lies on student organizers who requested the wrong type of funds. I have mixed feelings about this, I guess, but this Examiner article (!) seems pretty thoroughly researched.

Peggy Scott-Adams “Bill,” a mid-nineties bluesy R&B song about a lady whose man is busy doing it with his baby’s god-uncle, re-entered my memory the other day.  It terrified me as a teenager, though now it’s kind of hilarious.

Bobby Farrell, the male face of cheeseball music group Boney M, passed away on December 30th, though I didn’t see anything about it until the other day.  The group, best known in the US for their Christmas staple “Mary’s Boychild,” had four members officially, though only Liz Mitchell actually sang on their most popular recordings; male parts were done not by Farrell, but by producer Frank Farian.  Farrell did, however, move on to a later solo career.  Here is his first single, 1981′s Grace Jones-ish “Polizei.”

“It had cost her lots of hundreds of dollars, as did everything she owned.”

My boyfriend bought a Volvo this week, and so in celebration we have been listening to a lot of ABBA.  Molly Lambert has also been listening to a lot of ABBA, it seems.

This NBC-Comcast merger is some crazy ish, huh?!

I’ve been kind of geeking out over the Open Air Library in Magdeberg, Germany.  It’s up for a Brit Insurance Design Of The Year Award.

Finally, speaking of libraries, some British folks were upset about the potential closing of a local library and they responded by checking out every single book.

[image: Italian model Sasha Marini by Monica Antonelli for denim label Q-ZEE; it's from last summer, though I've been, uh, looking at a lot of photos of Marini lately.]

As it turns out, the World Cup didn’t have much of an impact on South Africa’s sex trade.

A message from Pat Bohannon?

I recently learned about The Incomparable Hildegarde, a Wisconsin-born cabaret singer who performed for about seventy years and who inspired much of Liberace’s act.  She was wildly populat in the forties and, it should be repeated, went by the name The Incomparable Hildegarde.

Tess Lynch on smoking electronic cigarettes, something my friend Kerry recently described as “all the ritual of heroin addiction without actually having to do heroin.”  Unlike Tess Lynch, I’ve only heard good things about the Jupiter Hotel.  But, you know, different social circles, maybe.

When I was thirteen I’d get a boner from pretty much any man who was on my television and wearing a sleeveless shirt.  (Which also explains why I tolerated professional basketball for so long.)  But this week I was reminded of the video for “Whipped,” one of Jon Secada’s less-remembered steamy Latin hits of 1994.  I’m totally ready for a Secada revival if you are, by the way.  (I even sang “Just Another Day” at karaoke recently…)

New Yorkers can’t stop touching Adam’s golden penis.

Someone recently directed me to this athletic uniform blog, which is reeeeeeeeally thorough.

I’ve been thinking about joining Netflix, because I’m kind of a dullard about movies lately, and also because it would give me an excuse to spend more time at home.  If I do, Visconti’s Death In Venice would be at the top of the list, because I (somehow?) didn’t even know it existed until this week.

In the Books That Sound Really Interesting But Which I’ll Probably Never Get Around To Because I Never Read Books Like That category:  Cutting The Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How To Stop It.

Finally, The British are finally starting to appreciate Twin Peaks again.

[video: Army Of Lovers' Jean-Pierre Barda advertising vegan Swedish condoms]

Because it was asked, and because I can’t sleep, and because I am currently full of beer and chatty (yet alone), I will tell you the story of the first time I ever went to a strip club.  At least, the first time I went to a strip club where ladies dance.  (Previously I had attended an all-male event called Lube Wrestling, about which the less said the better, probably.)

It was 2007 and I was in Las Vegas tagging along with my boyfriend to the AVN show.  I was really into straight porn at the time and even started a blog about it (which lasted two weeks, but hush.)  We went to a strip club party after maybe the third day of weird Las Vegas-ness (ie, watching giant-boobed women wearing pasties, because that is the law, while enormous jumbotrons projected scenes of the same ladies in really intense hardcore scenes, because that was okay.)

But you know who is not excited by strippers?  People who spend all day wheeling and dealing with (or at least gawking at and ogling) the ladies of the porn industry.  The club was really crowded but you could tell it was kind of the slowest night ever for the staff.

One dancer came up and asked me, or maybe my boyfriend, if I’d/he’d like a dance; we declined, and she left in a huffy way.  Meanwhile, someone on the stage was dancing to, I don’t know, “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi, which was really disappointing to me because all the strippers during the day were dancing to songs like Portishead’s “Glory Box.”  Which is just as cheesy, don’t get me wrong, but which is a far better song outside of the pole-dancing context.

Anyway, a few minutes later another dancer came up and asked if either of us wanted a dance.  We declined again, because Las Vegas is fucking expensive and also because, you know, the gay thing.

“Hmmm, I don’t know if you belong here,” she said.

I was nervous, like I’d breached some unspoken hetero strip club rule on my first visit.  “No?”

“No,” she said.  “Actually, I know exactly where you should go.”

I was more nervous, like she was going to tell me to go to hell, and like I might cry once she said it.  She continued.

“It’s a bar called the Double Down, it’s in the gay part of town, the Fruit Loop.  I think you’d really like it there.”

We thanked her, and she moved on, because the first stripper we turned down was giving her the evil eye from across the room.  And shortly after our party moved on, leaving the club for a Chi Chi LaRue party which, as it turned out, was in the Fruit Loop, just across the street from the strip mall that housed the Double Down.

That stripper, it turned out, was completely right.  The Double Down was far and away my favorite part of Vegas.  They had bacon martinis.  They sold puke insurance (for $20 up front they wouldn’t make you clean up your own vomit!)  Their drinks were not a million dollars and there was at least 50% less fakeness than in the rest of the city.  Plus they had a real jukebox, stocked with CDs by bands I knew (even the Midnight Creeps, who I thought were just a Providence thing!)

Anyway, the whole point of this story was to explain how my first-ever strip club experience involved Pulp’s “This Is Hardcore.”  But now I realize that that story is my second-ever strip club experience.  So stay tuned for that one…

Here’s a photo of me and the boyfriend at the Thompson last night.  That’s where we went after the Sexblogger Calendar Party.  After the jump, some more photos from the evening.  For whatever reason I didn’t get a single photo with any of the other models, including Nina Hartley, who I stood next to for a long time but was too shy/full of prosecco to introduce myself to.

Here’s Princess Kali from Kink Academy.

Me and my one eye with Ginger from Whore Magazine.

Vera from For Your Nymphomation

Self-portrait in the bathroom of the dumpling place across the street from the party.

Jamye Waxman with a man known only as “the new Jorge.”  We were with our friend Jorge, and then he left, and then this guy showed up.  Yep.

Mr. Calendar Designer with JD from Hot Movies For Her.

The view from the Thompson.  New York is pretty.

This week Rhode Island’s hateful governor vetoed a bill that would expand the state’s list of hate crimes to include crimes based on gender identity.  Tony Perkins and his horrid Family Research Council approved.  (The governor of Rhode Island will be gone in January, thank the lord.)

The Village Voice writes about “straight bears.” I feel like this warrants a whole post of its own, and it’s not a bad article, but my main gripe is that the (totally skinny) writer calls professional rugby player Ben Cohen “portly” just one paragraph before he calls Kevin Smith “portly.”  Also, no article needs to have the word “portly” in it more than once, anyway.

Jezebel says that sex workers’ rights are rights for all women.  Which, duh.  But it’s true.

The 100 best websites for women.  Umm, 100 is a lot.  Also Feministe is not the best anything for anybody.

Miss this Times article from last Sunday about Lady Gaga’s Telephone video.

Texas Republicans hate sex and want to ban strip clubs and porn and gay sex and whatever.

A 65-meter long dick draws some attention.

Kok is the name of a nerdy new homo blog that posts vintage-y porn illustrations and photos of Captain Kirk in bondage gear (see above).  I like it!