Sex

As Sexy As Drinking Paint Thinner: I Watch the Gene Simmons Sex Tape

Filed under: Sex

I -- this is not a joke -- gagged even reading the words "Gene Simmons Sex Tape."

"I couldn't bring myself to watch it," my buddy Casey was saying over Instant Messenger, shipping me the URL. "You need to do this. I need to know."

I'm curious, I admitted. I was also revolted. The power of procrastination combined with the power of suggestion, though, and I decided I had to do this. For Casey. For you. For America.

For SCIENCE!

Here's my running diary:

4:03 p.m.:I click the link to Fleshbot, where the sample is hosted. Even the still photo is revolting. I don't know if I can do this. Casey urges me to be strong. I reach for the Dramamine.

4:04 p.m.: I click "play." GenesSecret.com is displayed on the screen. He is, thank the maker, wearing a shirt. The man is almost 60, for crying out loud. Soft, cheesy music plays. It takes me 15 seconds before it hits me.

Holy God. That is Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is."

(Later, I will be a little disappointed it's not "Lick It Up" or even "Love Gun." But for now, I'm bedazzled by this revelation. The 1970s big-hair anthem is disturbingly appropriate.)

4:06 p.m.: Simmons' partner -- who is a much younger blond, in pigtails and a corset -- starts to stroke the Genie Weenie. My stomach starts to rebel against lunch. Casey informs me that the woman in the video is his longtime partner, former Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed. This is not, in fact, true, but it impacts my viewing experience considerably, so I'll note it now. There is halfhearted mouth behavior that used to get you arrested during the time of ubiquitous sodomy laws. It is as sexy as drinking paint thinner.

4:07 p.m.: After putting on a condom (stay safe, kids!), Gene clumsily and unceremoniously rolls the woman onto her back and mounts her. He looks for all the world like an arthritic gibbon. Gene's pants remain around his ankles, as we can see from the edge of the bed. Gene commences The Act of Love as Lou Gramm croons:

I WANNNNNAAAA KNOW WHAT LOVE EEEEEEEES ...

I WANT YUUUU TUUU SHOWWW MEEEEE ...

Her bosoms are not heaving. My stomach, however, is.

4:08 p.m.: The girl is wearing flip flops. Her breasts are disturbingly large, obviously augmented. This is as lustful as watching my neutered dog hump the air, as he sometimes does when disturbed.

Note: I would not blame the dog if he began humping air now. Fortunately, for everyone, he's asleep on the couch.

Gene leans in for the kiss ...

4:09 p.m.: ... SHE TURNS HER HEAD AWAY. The following exchange occurs between me and Casey:

Me: "Holy shit, rejected for the smooch while paying for sex. I have just added Gene Simmons definitively to the list of people I hope to never be."

Casey: "Paying? That's not a prostitute -- she's his WIFE!"

Again, this turns out not to be the case. And Gene Simmons is not married to Shannon Tweed anyway. But keep in mind that during the following sequence I believed it utterly.

4:10 p.m.: Gene goes again to kiss his "wife". Again denied.

She is the Dikembe Motumbo of kiss rejection. It is a marquee performance. Gene zigs, she zags -- it's like watching a bloated Wile E Coyote trying to catch an aging, world-weary road runner. You can't help but think of Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman, who refused to kiss her sex partners because the gesture is too intimate.

4:11 p.m.: The woman compromises by putting her left arm around Gene, the only act of feigned affection he's getting during this mechanical act. She's still visibly ducking the kiss, but is apparently hoping the cursory half-embrace will make him stop.

This is his wife? I think. Really? How bad must Gene's breath be at this point?

4: 13 p.m.: She's still wearing the corset, but her giant breasts are hanging out of it. Perfunctorily, Gene moves off her and lies on his back. She gets on top and Gene honks her breasts like they are twin, silicone bicycle horns.

Finally -- after three sexual positions -- she kicks off her flip-flops.

4:14 p.m.: Now she's squatting on top of him, moving up and down gingerly as if peeing on a toilet seat that is too cold! now just right! too cold! now just right! Finally, she loses her balance and nearly falls off Gene (or is she trying to get off of him and run away?).

Gene reclines, hands behind his head. He has either had an orgasm or is losing interest, and it is honestly difficult to tell.

This site says the woman is an "Austrian energy drink spokesmodel," and as it turns out, her name is "Elsa."

You may draw whatever conclusions from this you like. I choose these lessons:

1. The difference between a loveless marriage and purchased sex is really not much, visually.

2. Never, ever watch a sex tape involving Gene Simmons

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 29, 2008 10:18 PM | Comments (8)

 

Animal bedrooms...

Filed under: Sex

This Valentine's Day, for the fifth year in a row, the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth lured couples to an "adults only" event with the promise of getting "a little dirty as we discuss intimate details of critter copulation" and "venture behind the scenes to one of our animal bedrooms." Oh, and there was wine and fudge.

The event was a success, with the best attendance yet: 16 couples.

In an inspiring moment of patent Minnesota enthusiasm, one attendee, in a Duluth News Tribune story, branded the event "different."

This is a story crying out for a visual supplement--and I can't believe I'm about to do this...

+ + +

What did this staff writer and his lovely wife do for Valentine's day? I thought you'd never ask.

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at February 15, 2008 10:08 AM | Comments (1)

 

Bang your spouse for Jesus!

Filed under: Sex

In honor of Valentine's Day, a Florida church is inviting couples to participate in what it cheekily calls a "30-day Sex Challenge." The church in Ybor City, which is proud of its "edgy" reputation, is inviting married members to screw each others' brains out once a day for a whole month! (Singles get to abstain for 30 days.)

"Of course, all the guys say it's genius," said Pastor Paul Wirth. "The married women think we're out of our minds."

In addition to reinforcing stereotypes about sex-crazed husbands denied sex by frigid women, the church will also generate some homegrown porn:

Church members, most of whom are in their 20s and 30s, will get a journal to track their sexual encounters - or lack thereof - and jot down their feelings. Ranters can vent on the church's blog, which is set to go up after the challenge starts, at www.30daysexchallenge.com.

A billboard advertising the challenge got banned by the billboard company, because it was the creepiest thing since Bob Dole's Viagra commercial:

Even its proposed billboard along Adamo Drive, near 22nd Street, didn't pass the billboard company censors, Wirth said. Posting the 30-Day Sex Challenge Web site was fine. The message, "Are you up for it?" wasn't. Neither was the content of a video linked from the Web site that showed a few bellybuttons and a guy without a shirt.

And if all that wasn't creepy enough, gaze at the look on the faces of these Perverts for Christ:

(Via: Obscure Store)

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at February 14, 2008 3:26 PM | Comments (6)

 

Prairie Homophobic Companion

Filed under: Sex

Garrison Keillor pulls an Ann Coulter in his latest homespun column

Garrison Keillor, the host of American Public Media's Prairie Home Companion, has bloggers fuming over a recent edition of his syndicated column The Old Scout, published on Salon.com.

The March 14 article entitled "Stating the Obvious" begins with Keillor's patented folksy, self-deprecating prairie populism on how neat-o it was to come from a family raised by a plain old mom and dad who put up with each other's shit until they were both in the dirt. Keillor bemoans today's "serial monogamy," where the Thanksgiving table expands to make room for mom's third husband and Grandpa's girlfriend.

Then it takes a sharp right turn. Keillor, possibly on a sugar high from too many Powdermilk Biscuits, worries about that the queers will want to go out and get kids. He ponders how those "sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog," would be able to let their children be the stars of the family.

"If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control," Keillor harrumphs.

Keillor's exasperated vision of a Freddie Mercury/Dame Edna-run household raised the ire of gay political blogger John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, who called the MPR star a "bigoted homophobic pig." Sex columnist and gay parent Dan Savage cited Keillor's Wikipedia entry that divulges his three marriages and notes the "serial monogamy" hypocrisy. Political commentator Andrew Sullivan chimed in as well.

Keillor says the column was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. "I did not refer to homosexuals as 'sardonic fellows with fussy hair,' etc. I was referring to a stereotype," he tells City Pages.

UPDATE: Mr. Keillor's response on the Prairie Home Companion site posted earlier this week:

"Ordinarily I don't like to use this space to talk about my newspaper column but the most recent column aroused such angry reactions that I thought I should reply. The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That's okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple.

"I live in a small world—the world of entertainment, musicians, writers—in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes. Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel beseiged to some degree. In the small world I live in, they feel accepted and cherished as individuals, but in the larger world they may feel like Types. My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I."

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 20, 2007 11:56 AM | Comments (14)

 

Faggot-phobia at the Walker and the Children's Theatre?

Filed under: Sex

Want your band to be on the cover of City Pages? Be careful what you wish for. Last year, confrontational hard rockers Faggot were pretty much unknown outside the local punk scene before they appeared on the cover, timed to coincide with Pride weekend ("Out Loud" 6/21/06). The article described anal sex onstage with a guitar, song-titles including "Have an Abortion," and the personal backstory of singer Tim Carroll, who recalled giving a priest oral sex at age 14, then added, "I'm not going to sue the church. I liked that guy's dick."

Within weeks, Carroll received an email dismissing him from his stage door job at the Children's Theatre Company, where he'd worked for three years. More recently, Faggot was left out of this Saturday's Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council-sponsored rock and roll scavenger hunt March of Madness: Bands on the Run!, organized by artist Michael Gaughan, who had included the band in two previous versions of the event, and had informally invited the group to participate again—until, apparently, somebody read the article.

When Carroll requested an explanation from the Children's Theatre last year, managing director Teresa Eyring sent him a July 26 letter stating: "CTC discharged you because of a recent article in City Pages that contains statements attributed to you regarding your personal conduct. CTC students brought the article to our attention. The quoted statements and the public image of you that the statements promote are inappropriate and unacceptable for an employee of CTC."

She didn't mention the reason why the company might be overly skittish about such matters: 23 years ago, CTC's co-founder was convicted of having sexual relations with three boys at the theater, a scandal that has hung over the place ever since.

Carroll, meanwhile, has let the issue go, though he remains stung. "I never missed a day of work, and I did a good job," he says. "But at the same time, I can understand, given their history. When you go to work there, you have to sign a 20-page document that's mostly about child abuse. But their kids are perfectly safe with me."

As for the Walker, teen programs manager Witt Siasoco says he simply didn't think he could trust the musicians to keep their clothes on during the show. "It's more their live performance, not the name," he says.

Which only goes to prove that even in this un-shock-able age, rock bands can still go too far—even for the Walker.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 19, 2007 9:20 AM | Comments (13)

 

At what point does silicone freeze?

Filed under: Sex

According to a press release from Mass Media Distribution, the "Exotica Swimwear Extreme Bikini Team" will be ice fishing on White Bear Lake, just off the Mahtomedi city beach on Park Avenue at 1:00 p.m. today. Voyeurs can watch bikini-clad vixens such as Valerie Carpender and Whitney Harchanko (pictured left) drill holes, bait hooks, and attempt to catch fish in what's forecast to be flurries and 17-degree temps. "I think people will be surprised by how strong these ladies are and I hope they inspire women everywhere to get out and participate in outdoor activities like Minnesota's great pastime of ice fishing," touts Danny C., one of the "countries [sic] most respected experts on exotic swimwear." The Exotica Swimwear Extreme Bikini Team: showing the world women can achieve anything... if they look good in a bikini.

Posted by Corey Anderson at January 31, 2007 9:00 AM | Comments (4)

 

Maybe Ralph Kiffmeyer was right about dildos

Filed under: Sex

For his one term of service in the Minnesota House of Representatives, Ralph Kiffmeyer is remembered chiefly for a single thing: his failed effort to outlaw the sale of sex toys such as dildos and vibrators. (Oh, to live in Mississippi!) To this day, the mere mention of the name "Ralph Kiffmeyer" leads to sneering in certain libertine circles. And to this day, his name comes up with some regularity because his wife, Mary, is Minnesota's current secretary of state. (I made mention of Ralph in an article about Mrs. Kiffmeyer here).

Now it turns out that Mr. Kiffmeyer's long-ago moral crusade might have had inadvertant merit. At least, if you're inclined to believe the folks at Greenpeace Netherlands. The organization recently issued a consumer alert that warns sex toy fanciers of health risks arising from exposure to high levels of certain plasticisers found in dildos, butt plugs and vibrators.

In keeping with the best traditions of the British press, the U.K. Register renders the story in an amusing manner:

The reason behind the shock advisory is not the possible risk of ending up in hospital with a dildo stuck firmly up your jacksie and having to endure the humiliating laughter of medical staff who avail themselves of the opportunity of grabbing a few X-rays for later dissemination on the internet, but rather that sex toys apparently contain "extremely high concentrations of phthalate plasticisers which allegedly pose a risk to human health and the environment"...

For the record, rodents exposed to high levels of phthalates have reportedly suffered damage to the liver, kidneys, lungs and developing testes. Exponents of phthalate use say the test levels were much higher than would occur as a result of everyday exposure to PVC.

The green lobby says even low levels pose a health risk...We leave it to you to decide whether the undoubted delights of the PVC "Cyber Pussy" are outweighed by the potential risks

Posted by Mike Mosedale at September 12, 2006 4:31 PM | Comments (1)