Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey NSFW

Well, Christ, this is dull. I bookmarked it a few days ago, got around to reading it, and felt like if I pressed my ear close enough to the screen, I could hear a conceptual erection deflating. The premise is interesting. A Wired/wired individual considers what NSFW means today. Forget NSFW, he says. The answer:

"Here's my cutting-edge solution: How about if we actually describe things? This isn't semaphore, people. Unless you routinely blog in the middle of a desperate escape from a burning building, you've got plenty of time to say something like: 'Warning: visual depiction of pert nipples and raspberry jam' or 'Beware: contains pictures of Drew Barrymore in a business suit, eating ice cream and giving the camera that look' or 'Cuidado: cloacas!'"

Ugh. As a writer, I feel I can safely say there is nothing less sexy than words. Besides, part of what makes the internet hot is clicking on words that will take you to the unexpected, what you have not yet seen, and sometimes what you haven't yet seen is a naked woman painted like a cow. (Nice... milk jug?)

I'm well aware of this whole NSFW concept, seeing as NSFW will probably be stamped on my gravestone. I ignore it. I, for one, am not at your place of work, and how you choose to navigate those waters is your business, not mine. To self-censor, to even self-label in a way that promotes your self-censorship, goes against whatever mutagen lodged itself into my DNA and made me this way.

This entire blog is NSFW, I suppose. But the fact of the matter is that I'm well aware that's part of its appeal. And the idea that I would pretend it's not, by somehow indicating what's here is in some way oh-my-gosh taboo, when the fact of the matter is that what was once taboo is now a matter of course, is hypocritical, backwards, and, well, idiotic. NSFW is a game people play with themselves, the same kind of thing the New York Times and the LA Times do when they peek at sex and hide their eyes at the same time.

Radosh: "How can it be inappropriate for a young person to read that someone their own age said 'fucking awesome' about a museum exhibit, yet be perfectly fine for them to read about a 'half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal'?"

It's this kind of ridiculousness--"I'll show you bestiality while pretending I'm not"--that I'm not interested in engaging in. Instead, bosses needed to grow up. After all, it's our minds that are NSFW.

AVN.com: "Roger Jon Diamond, [Ira] Isaacs' attorney, has told KNBC.com, 'This is a sad day for our country when zealots in the Department of Justice can try to destroy the reputation of a fine judge by threatening a recusal motion,' and has said that he will attempt to prevent any judge who doesn't look at pornography from presiding over the case."

Good luck.

Obscenity Trial Judge Recuses Self

Alex Kozinski, the obscenity trial judge who presided over the Ira Isaacs scat 'n' bestiality trial of Ira Isaacs, has recused himself.

"'In light of the public controversy surrounding my involvement in this case, I have concluded that there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial,' said Alex Kozinski, chief judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. 'I will recuse myself from further participation in the case and will ask the chief judge of the district court to reassign it to another judge.'"

Boy, Yale must be in a lot of trouble.

Related: "Who Watches the Porn Watchers?"

"Who Watches the Porn Watchers?" I Do.

Balk asked me to write something about The Scat Video Case That Has EVERBODY Talking! So, I did. It's "Who Watches the Porn Watchers?"

"Without a doubt, whether or not Laurie's Toilet Show is art is highly debatable, but Isaacs has found himself center stage in what appears to be the great shit debate of the 21st century. From CNN to the New York Times to the Times of London, the only-in-America tale of the pervert judge presiding over the obscenity trial taking place in the home of the movie making business has captivated the world."

You have to appreciate an editor who lets you get away with referencing the "great shit debate of the 21st century." Not everyone, you know, understands.

I Hate It When That Happens

"The LA Times's Scott Glover dug up Kozinski's site on Tuesday, later getting an acknowledgment from the judge that the materials — 'which included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal' — indeed belonged to him..." -- "Obscenity Trial Judge Was Pretty Sure That No One Could Access His Personal Porn Website"

You Can't Make This Shit Up

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Looking for the Poop on Ira Isaacs?

Since Googlers are still coming here in droves looking for links related to Ira Isaacs, the coprophagy and bestiality pornographer currently on trial in Los Angeles thanks to a federal obscenity indictment, my interview with Isaacs is here and the outtakes from that interview are here. The UK Times chimes in here, the New York Daily News here, and the AP here.

"Mr Isaacs has on many occasions compared himself to James Joyce and D.H.Lawrence, both of whom faced obscenity trials in their day. Indeed, Mr Isaacs has chosen to ignore the community standards defence and will instead argue in court that his 'shock art' deserves First Amendment protection.

But can a porno flick involving human defecation seriously be compared with Lady Chatterley's Lover?"

Pictured: The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (2nd Version), 1998, by Chris Ofili

Tucker Max Is Blogging the Making of "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell"

Fratire king Tucker Max is blogging the making of the movie version of his bestselling boobs-populated and booze-saturated fuckmoir, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. On location in Shreverport, Louisiana, Tucker and his production team post enigmatic photos of the film's stars, discuss working with Donnie Darko, and reveal exactly how many penises will be in the movie.

"From: 'Production Attorney'
To: Production Team
Re: IHTSBIH Actor Offers

Nils/Tucker/Bob - While I will need to have a longer discussion with Bob to get the full extent of how he plans to shoot the scenes that would require some nudity, for now I just need to put in a general description of the level of nudity and simulated sex scenes e.g. 'we will need the actor to perform wearing only a frontal covering in __ scenes and to engage in simulated sex in ___scenes'. We have to give them the scenes and [make sure they are] okay with showing their rear end and 'side buttock on screen'. If I can tell them we can agree that we will not show [their] genitalia or pubic hair that would be good..."

To which Tucker responds: "I will burn the movie to the ground before I put a dick in it."

Apparently, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" it is not.

New Reverse Cowgirl Poll: Should Spitzer Be Indicted?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ira Isaacs Obscentity Trial Starts Today

Ira Isaacs, who was named last year in an eight-count federal obscenity indictment, heads into the courtroom today, and the LA Times has a profile. Since it appears by my referrer log that people are coming here looking for Isaacs-related information, you can find my interview with Isaacs at Radar Online, "But Is It Art?" My outtakes are here.

The Times reports: "In a statistic that some may find every bit as shocking as his work, Isaacs said he was selling about 1,000 videos per month at $30 apiece before being raided by the FBI early last year. The number has since dropped to between 700 and 800 per month, but they still generate enough money to pay the rent on a house with a pool in the Hollywood Hills.

Isaacs predicted that many jurors would not be able to stomach viewing the movies, some of which feature acts of bestiality and defecation.

'It's going to be a circus,' he said of the upcoming trial. 'I think I'd freak out if I had to watch six hours of the stuff.'"

It's difficult to know what will happen in the courtroom. The incredibly intense nature of the videos will be hard for jurors to navigate their way through, and Max Hardcore's verdict last week doesn't bode well. But as Scott Glover points out in his story, the judge presiding over this trial is a truly unusual character. Alex Kozinski presided over the case of Mattel v. the band Aqua in a dispute over the song, "Barbie Girl," and opened that trial by stating, "If this were a sci-fi melodrama, it might be called Speech-Zilla meets Trademark Kong," and concluded, "The parties are advised to chill." Ultimately, LA may be more liberal than Tampa, but what we're talking about here is coprophagy and bestiality, subjects most Americans have a hard time being objective about, to say the least.

Quote of the Day: Jeffrey J. Douglas

"'Max Hardcore,' he said, 'is barely a cartoon of a human being...'" -- Jeffrey Douglas (See: "Max Hardcore Found Guilty")

Max Hardcore Found Guilty

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Quote of the Day: Paul Cambria

"'It's the same test, but obviously a much more difficult case,' noted First Amendment attorney Paul Cambria told AVN. 'Not that they haven't been won in the past. It can be defended, and they're not impossible to win. My former partner won [an obscenity case involving bestiality movies] in New York City about 20 years ago involving a German shepherd. I remember the case: "Every Dog Has A Bone."'" -- lawyer-to-the-pornographers Paul Cambria

Max Hardcore on Trial in Tampa, Florida

Thank goodness for Mark Kernes, the only reporter on the planet who has the temerity to go traipsing around the country, attending every obscenity trial that Porn Valley hath spawned. This week, Kernes is reporting live from the frontlines of the Max Hardcore obscenity trial in Tampa, Florida: "The Max Hardcore Obscenity Trial: Day 1."

The judge is a woman. I don't now if that bodes well for Max. (Real name: Paul Little.) Hello, Judge Susan C. Bucklew.

On the first day, everyone debated whether or not the jurors were going to have to watch all eight and a half hours of Hardcore entertainment. Why? Because of the Miller Test, which says the work must be evaluated "as a whole." But then "Judge Bucklew stated that she would have to watch the DVDs in their entirety before she could make a decision, and the prosecution handed the five DVDs to her as court recessed..." Is Judge Bucklew watching "Golden Guzzlers 7" right now?

After that, jury selection began. You know you are talking about some seriously hardcore movies when one juror is excused after stating "she was unable to look at anyone vomiting without getting nauseous herself..."

The chosen jurors include a museum worker and a pawnbroker.

DC Madam Charges Dismissed

In an interesting twist, the NY Daily News reports the charges against Deborah Palfrey, aka the DC Madam, have been dismissed.

As the WaPo explained in the wake of Palfrey's death: "It is standard practice for authorities to file an 'abatement of prosecution' motion with a court if a defendant dies before the end of a criminal proceeding. Palfrey's case had not ended because her sentencing was pending and she had filed a notice that she planned to appeal her conviction."

My Salon story on Palfrey: "Death and the D.C. Madam."

Porn Law 101

$pread Magazine's blog is the go-to spot for sex worker related links and the like. A recent find there that interests me hops from Polymorphous Perversity on the UK's ban on "extreme porn" to the letter of the law itself: "Possession of extreme pornographic images."

So much for I know it when I see it.

"(7) An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following—
(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or
(d) a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive)..."

Well, barring the corpses and the animals, if we adopted such a law in America, that'd be the final nail in the coffin for the porn industry right there, wouldn't it?

The Week in Porn Indictments

1. Karen Fletcher's pleading guilty.

"'I have always been afraid of monsters. The monsters in my life had always been real; for too long they were always there with unlimited access to me, and I was helpless to do anything about it,' she wrote. 'In my stories, I have created new monsters.'"

2. No retrial date has yet been set in the case of Extreme Associates.

Lizzy Borden: "When I was a child, my step-father was an alcoholic. So I think I had deep issues, and this is kind of therapeutic for me, to take my aggression out on other people. So in a way, I'm exploiting people, taking all my inner demons and aggression on them. But it's good for me. So I guess that's all that matters."

3. Max Hardcore is slated to go to trial on the 27th in Tampa, Florida.

"Most of the girls then go along with the program, although they don’t have any idea how hard it really is. But almost all make it through the scene. Some come back again, and some don’t. But that’s about how it works for any porn, so it really doesn’t matter what you make them do."

The 2 Girls 1 Cup Defense

Not long ago, I read an interesting interview on AVN.com--Adult Video News is the trade magazine of the adult video industry--by Mark Kernes--the Walter Winchell of Porn Valley. The subject of the interview was Ira Isaacs, an adult video director, producer, and distributor who was named in an eight-count federal obscenity indictment handed down last July. While the Department of Justice has made a habit out of targeting extreme adult videos--take for example, John Stagliano's indictment of last week, featuring "Milk Nymphos," "Storm Squirters 2," and "Fetish Fanatic 5"--the ouevre of Isaacs is without a doubt the most hardcore of all the DoJ's recent targets. To wit, Isaacs trades in shock videos, including fecal-themed features like "Laurie's Toilet Show" and "Hollywood Scat Amateurs No. 7" and bestiality videos like "Gang Bang Horse (Pony Sex Game)." A spokesman for the US Attorney's office in Los Angeles described the content of these videos as "unsavory." And I'm not going to dispute that. When the indictment was first handed down, I googled several of the titles. They aren't very pretty. I'd suggest you not follow suit. Years ago, I got Dan Kapelovtiz at Hustler to loan me a compilation coprophagy video. Why? I do not know. I sat on the edge of my bed and watched it. It was hard to describe. I've seen a lot of very, very hardcore adult videos, but this one beat all. There was a scene in a dungeon with a shouty German dominatrix and a submissive woman who looked to be out of her mind made to lie on the floor, and a line of men there, and there was this way the body of the woman on the floor seized up in horror when it happened... If only I could unsee what I've seen. Last month, Kernes interviewed Isaacs, and the interview is interesting. According to Isaacs, he's an artist, a "shock artist," who compares his work to that of Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Chris Ofili. "[P]eople don't buy my videos because they want to watch people having sex," Isaacs opines. "Regular porn does that. I need to convince people that mine is serious art." And perhaps most interestingly, Isaacs and his lawyer, he says, intend to pursue an unprecedented legal defense. The 2 Girls 1 Cup defense, that is. Isaacs explains: "'What it is, is, there's videos all over the internet of millions of people watching this [Two Girls, One Cup] video, and it's a shock video, and people record their reactions...' '[T]he idea is, millions of people are watching this video about girls shitting in each other's mouths, vomiting in each other's mouths, and they are not, I think, obviously looking for prurient interest to masturbate. People are trying to shock themselves, because in today's world, everything is shock on TV... People need a lot to be shocked these days... What I've done is, I think, really shocked people, and I think that's why the federal government is on this case.'" While it remains to be seen how the 2 Girls 1 Cup defense will play out in court, Isaacs is right about one thing. In the 21st century, adult videos may be more hardcore than ever before, but so is the American public's taste for it. "It's making people ask a lot of questions," he says. "If you look at this Two Girls, One Cup stuff, you're going to see people like you've never imagined watching it, and they don't look away; that's the funny thing about it."

Update: On Boing Boing, UNDERGROUNDBASTARD writes:

In United States v. Gugliemi (819 F.2d 451), the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals considered the legality of bestial pornography, sided with Alan Dershowitz' contention that the grossness of the events depicted in the defendant's film, "The Snake F**kers" was so extreme as to not appeal to the prurient interests demanded of the pornography standard. In short, it was so gross it was beyond pornography, which is what the defendant here is arguing.