Review: The Crash Pad Series: Volume 5 (DVD)

Posted on December 2, 2009 in swag | 1 Comment

Another quick little DVD review, this one of The Crash Pad Series: Volume 5 which is just now released by Blowfish.

cpv5It is no secret that I am a big, big fan of The Crash Pad Series. Shine Louise Houston and Pink & White Productions have raised the standards in porn film making so high, I think the porn industry in general will be struggling to catch up for a while. (In fact, Kristen and I just sat down to watch a couple films that a particular unnamed (unmentionable) company sent me to review recently, and I was slack-jawed in awe of just how bad bad porn can be. Holy. Crap. No wonder most people have such awful associations with porn, if things like THAT are what they think of or see!) Shine has spoiled me, big time – I expect the porn that I watch to be respectful, hot, full of desire and chemistry, smart, skilled, diverse, queer, and beautifully filmed … I know that sounds like high standards, but blame it on The Crash Pad! They DO that, constantly!

You can get subscriptions to The Crash Pad Series website, or you can purchase the compiled DVDs by volume. This is the fifth DVD, and though it isn’t the one I would recommend if you’ve never seen The Crash Pad before, it’s got some very interesting scenes and one in particular that I would definitely watch again.

Here’s the description:

The Crash Pad Series: Volume 5 returns to the titular no-holes-barred sex space that caters to an ever-changing group of sexually voracious dykes, femmes, butches, and bois (and even the occasional lucky bio-guy) under the ubiquitous secret surveillance of a mysterious voyeur played by director Shine Louise Houston. This installment features five scenes of wall-to-wall sex, including some dripping candle play, a little bondage, tattooed beauties, strap-on fucking and sucking, and other sundry delights. One standout scene features Kuma (a trans leather daddy with a shaved head and goatee) topping the curvylicious Julie Warren with a pair of floggers, some lashing canes, and an extremely hot choking strap-on blowjob sequence. The final scene has the always-enjoyable Shawn fucking a guy, something of a novelty in the Crash Pad series, though Mickey Mod isn’t averse to sucking Shawn’s big strapped-on cock when the time comes. She rides him vigorously and later rubs one out over his face while he jerks off beneath her — a good time is had by all. The Crash Pad series continues to set the standard for queer indie kinky excellence.

And, though that description of the five different scenes is pretty thorough, here’s my take on ‘em:

Scene 1, August and Stacy Staxxx, features hot wax and some switching. Scene 2 is the porn debut of the Essin’ Em we all know and love, under the name Scarlett Chaos, with the cute toppy boi Rex – make note of Essin’ Em’s fabulous femme red heels that she leaves on, I liked that. Scene 3 features Red and Cyd Loverboy, who are both pretty genderqueer and boyish and I liked the top/bottom dynamic here especially.

Scene 4, however, was exceptional. It features Kuma and Julie Warren, who appear to have a fairly strong daddy/girl thing going on, and definitely seem to have played with each other before. There is a beautiful two-handed flogging, and some lovely caning that made me wince (and also made my inner sadist grin). I liked the sadism and masochism in this scene, more pain than sex really, though Kuma does wield a cock very very well. I loved the skill, and I will watch this one again.

The last scene, 5, features everybody’s favorite queer porn star Syd Blakovich in a scene with cis guy Micky Mod. Interesting, and unusual for The Crash Pad Series, but it is very queer and very well done, and clearly they are both enjoying each other.

It’s not my favorite of The Crash Pad Series, but it is quite good, always beautifully filmed, and interesting.

Buy The Crash Pad Series: Volume 5 and other volumes at Blowfish or your local independent feminist queer-friendly sex toy shop.

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Review: Strap On Motel (Film)

Posted on December 1, 2009 in swag | 3 Comments

straponmotel1It’s time for a little video review from VOD.sugarbutch.net!

This one is Strap On Motel, directed by Maria Beatty and produced by Bleu Productions (same with Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls and The Black Glove & The Elegant Spanking).

After I reviewed Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls and was, ah, less than enthusiastic about it, Dylan Ryan mentioned (on twitter? I can’t remember) that Strap On Motel might be more my style. And I mean, just right there it’s got a lot going for it – strap ons, and Dylan? – YES PLEASE. Definitely sounds like my kind of porn.

Here’s the description:

2009 Feminist Porn Award Nominee – LA, on the west coast, along a humid motorway enlightened by the red neons of the strip clubs. London, a gorgeous and wild brunette, arrives. An erotic dancer in a club, she remembers this particular night where she has been struck by her desire for another dancer, Dylan Ryan, tall sculptural blonde who knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it. Hallucinated flashbacks of their nights of fever at the clandestine and muggy Strap On Motel, haunt her. The chemical reaction of their bodies is explosive, and their desire insatiable! Their mouths devour each other and their burning hot caresses explore all the lesbian kama sutra spiced with dildos. Strap on lesbian sex will never die.

Okay, that sounds alright … I don’t like all the fluff really, “devour” and “burning hot caresses” and “spiced with dildos” … uhwhut? But, whatever. Beatty’s asthetic is beautiful, and Dylan is beautiful, and yay lesbian fucking.

Aside from Dylan, this film also features London, who was also in Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls.

The film opens with a shot of Dylan walking outside, at night, with some commentary that is a little ridiculous and rather forgettable. There are some beautiful scenes. I love the blow job in the beginning. But then, the commentary starts in, completely unnecessarily, and kind of ruins the moans and heavy breathing that was building.

For example, during that gorgeous blow job scene, the narrator says, “She was exciting me so much that she made a huge sticky cock grow from me, erect and ready to satisfy her. A man would have died under her sucking and devourous mouth. But, my cock was the best cock in all the galaxy.” (9:34)

Sorry, but no. I really don’t find that sexy. Later she describes someone’s “deep vagina” and that nearly made me cringe (and made Kristen and I laugh). Tight, yes; wet, yes; deep? Makes it sound like a well or a cavern or crevasse or something.

So, I muted the sound when the narration came on, which unfortunately means I couldn’t really hear the kissing or the gasping, but generally worked to not completely lose my boner. The narrator has a fairly distinct accent, so perhaps it’s a translation issue?, though I think it is more just trying too hard to be sexy.

Regardless, there are some really sexy scenes, and it’s beautifully filmed, as seems to be Beatty’s style. Dylan Ryan (who doesn’t have a website yet, but you can be a fan on Facebook or follow her on twitter, not that I’m stalking her, I’m not, really) is fantastic – it was filmed back when her hair was still blonde, and she even has it back in pigtails in one scene, kind of like how it was in episode 1 of the Crash Pad Series (which still is my favorite porn scene of all time), and I just love that style on her, probably because that’s how she looked when I was introduced to her work.

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Strap On Motel is worth seeing, definitely my favorite film from Bleu Productions that I’ve seen so far, though you might have to put up with the unsexy and slightly annoying narration now and then. It’s occasional, though, and only lasts for a few sentences, then it gets back to the very good and rather beautiful fucking.

Watch Strap On Motel at Sugarbutch’s Video On Demand site through Hot Movies 4 Her.

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World AIDS Day: Safer Sex, History, and Interconnectivity

Posted on December 1, 2009 in activism | 3 Comments

To be honest, I don’t use Sugarbutch often enough as a platform (ahem soapbox) to preach about safer sex practices, and I should. It is fucking important. Since I came of age in the ’90s, pretty much after the Lesbian Sex Wars and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the people in the queer and kinky and sex-positive community I came into pretty much see safer sex as a given, which is what I learned early on in my process of coming to my sexuality. I am unapologetic about my use of safer sex practices, and while some folks I know have that pang of “oh crap I have to put a damper on the mood and go get my gloves and condoms,” I think that’s just part of the fucking.

I do get occasional comments about my stories on Sugarbutch and how the characters do not use condoms or other barriers. There are a couple reasons for that (in my head) but ultimately, whatever excuses I have for it are kind of futile. It doesn’t really matter if I understand it – the point is, I need to be modeling safer sex, so I will make a commitment to do so.

HIV and AIDS are obviously just one small part of what safer sex means. Honestly I’ll have to do some particular research if I want to make a whole safer sex post – I think in a nutshell it means a) use condoms, dams, and gloves and b) talk to your partners about their sexual history and c) get tested.

It also means, however, sexualizing the act of using barriers. Condoms are still seen as ugly, stifling feeling, and inconvenient – and if we can remake that sexy, more people will practice safer sex. I don’t particularly know how to do this, but I do know that in my own sex life, adding condoms into the process of strapping on a cock feels very gendered in a really hot way, and I have sexualized that act quite a bit. I have more to say on this, but until I get my own thoughts together, think about it: how would it look to sexualize safer sex practices in your sex life? How could you model safer sex in better ways?

If others have suggestions on important things to tell readers about safer sex, please let me know in the comments.

But: back to World AIDS Day. That would be today, December 1st.

wad
more World AIDS Day materials for download

Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. The World AIDS Day theme for 2009 is ‘Universal Access and Human Rights’. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done. According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.4 million people living with HIV, including 2.1 million children. During 2008 some 2.7 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated 2 million people died from AIDS. Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35. The vast majority of people with HIV and AIDS live in lower- and middle-income countries. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world. – World AIDS Day text from avert.org

I don’t really consider myself an AIDS activist, not specifically. Indirectly, though, yes – through safer sex advocacy, and through my ever-evolving knowledge of gay history – but I haven’t been heavily involved in a lot of direct AIDS activism.

When I think of AIDS, I always think of the history – specifically, the gay history, the ways that in the US, AIDS has been associated with gay men since the early 1980s. In fact, the first name for the disease, in 1982, before anybody knew what it was, it was called the “gay cancer” and then GRID – “gay related immune deficiency.” That turns my stomach, even now.

I identify more as the child of the AIDS activist movements rather than part of it myself; the activism has significantly declined since the 1990s, probably because the treatments have become more and more effective and the stigmatization around AIDS has lessened.

I often feel a really specific loss when thinking about this epidemic and the direct effects in the GBLT communities. The estimated number of men who have died from AIDS by contracting it through male-to-male sexual contact is more than 22,000 (according to avert.org’s transmission stats).

The LGBT communities lost thousands of people.

I remember meeting some older gay guy in college who was a guest speaker at one of my queer classes. He came in with a photograph of a big group of gay guys at a retreat weekend they’d been on, horsing around and cooking and having a great time being with each other. He said, of all of these guys, I am the only one left. I am the only one who made it beyond 1992. There is no reason it should’ve been me – I was no more or less careful than any of them. But for whatever reason, here I am. They are all gone.

And the absence was so tangible, in his voice, in his stories. He pointed them out, one at a time: this one was in grad school to be a social worker, this one worked with kids, these two were a couple who dreamed of adopting a baby, this one was an amazing writer, this one a pianist. There was so much talent, so much activism, so much potential, lost.

When I think of AIDS, I think of that history. I think of that scar left on the LGBTQ communities that I have inherited. I think of how scared some young queers are of sex, having been brought up on all this knowledge of disease and death. I think of some of my mentors, whose eyes still get glossy with tears when they talk about some of their dearest mentors, lost to this disease.

And now, in the 2000s, AIDS is portrayed pretty differently: a lot of the focus is on Africa and the rate of infection over there, and the rate of apathy over here. This is partly where this topic gets huge and nearly incomprehensible to me (like the difference between five hundred million and five billion dollars. I know there is a difference, I can do the math, but I can’t actually comprehend those amounts in worth and money):

Two-thirds of all people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, although this region contains little more than 10% of the world’s population. During 2008 alone, an estimated 1.4 million adults and children died as a result of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the beginning of the epidemic more than 15 million Africans have died from AIDS. (source)

Sometimes it seems like this is so far removed from me, but because of globalization and our increasing interconnectivity, and because of the injustices of a system which turned a blind eye to thousands of GBLT deaths, I still know I am connected to it.

I still wish I knew more about what to do about it. It feels like such a big, huge thing, and all I can do is scream into the void and pretend like my voice will do something. Ya know?

It seems like all that anybody’s doing in the US these days are those various (RED) campaigns – I think Starbucks has one, and The Gap, and somewhere I read today said Nike is selling red shoelaces – and I feel kinda torn about the way corporations do that. I think on the one hand, raising awareness, and using an already established brand to get information exposed to all sorts of people, is good, and raising more money is good. I feel like it’s not “real” activism, though, and not very effective, and often thinly veiled attempts to get more sales (because really, these are capitalistic corporations who honor the bottom line of making more money, no matter what their occasional campaigns to help humanity might be). So, I’m skeptical, but I suppose any money at the issue is good, and any awareness raised is good.

Alright, </soapbox>. Thanks for reading.

A few notable links I’ve run across today, also relating to World AIDS Day:

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A New Sex Blog Roundup – e[lust]#2

Posted on December 1, 2009 in miscellany | No Comments

e[lust] has come along to fill the void left when Sugasm closed down. I’ve had a lot of comments from folks saying that the Sugasm posts I used to post were probably the things they skipped most often – and I do understand that, it’s not my original writing. But I continue to participate in the link roundups because it’s good promotion for Sugarbutch, and because I often also hear from folks that they found this site through one of the link roundups. It’s useful to reach the sex blog readers who haven’t meandered over to this place yet. Plus, I like to keep up with the good sex writing going on in the blogs, and this is a great way to do it. I do encourage you to read the top featured posts, at least, as they are usually above average quality.

And thanks, e[lust], for all the work (and it is a lot) of compiling the list.

Welcome to e[lust] - your source for sexual intelligence and inspirations of lust from the smartest & sexiest bloggers! Whether you’re looking for hot steamy smut, thought-provoking opinions or expert information, you’re going to find it here. Want to be included in the next edition? Start with the rules, check out the schedule in the site’s sidebar and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

This Week’s Posts

  • The Heart of Darkness - ”I swear that man can sense my fear like a hound scenting a rabbit, and just like the hound, his blood rises to it.”
  • Forever… - ”Forever is a beautiful idea, a wonderful goal, but it’s not a magic spell.”
  • His First Fuck - ”He stood there, obviously nervous, obviously aroused by what he had been witness to seconds earlier.”
  • e[lust] Editress: I Dare You - ”Aided by our clutches of printed papers, me hiding my nipples that could cut glass and him hiding the hard bulge in his dress pants, we scurried back to our cubes where the messages flew back and forth.”
  • Featured Post: Who am I? - ”I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life and couldn’t fit it all on one piece of poster board.”

See also: Pleasurists #55 for all your sex toy review needs

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!
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