Here goes…

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today,
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn…
With every goodbye you learn.

Three of tonight’s panelists: Candida Royalle, Nina Hartley and me!

Tonight I’ll be at the Pleasure Chest in LA (7PM) on a panel with some of my favorite women who work in the sexy sorts of filmmage (not a real word perhaps, but go with it, okay?)

Jane Hamilton had to pull out at the last minute – yes, ye olde withdrawal method – and in her place we’ve been blessed with another gifted filmmaker, one who’s leanings are slanted towards the east, even if she lives out west.

Today, I’ve decided to share something with you about each of the panelists. Something that I love about each of these women and a reason why, when creating this panel, they were who I wanted for the sake of contribution. I think this panel could have had Dana DeArmond and Joanna Angel on it too, since they’re both cool women making porn here in LA, but alas, or until next time…

So here’s something about each of the panelists:

Candida Royalle. Truth be told, Candida is family to me, and there are lots of reasons I admire and love this woman. But one of the things that I will always remember is that she is a bad ass in the best of ways. She went on Phil Donahue’s show in the 80s with her spiked hair and “no one can fuck with me” attitude and showed the world that women make porn – although she doesn’t like, or use, the term herself. And she didn’t make excuses or apologies back then. She just made her mark.

Nina Hartley has starred in over 650 films. She truly loves being in front of the camera, and just as important as that, she really loves her fans. She’s made this her life’s work, and you can’t find a more honest woman in the industry. And the stories she can share, well, you have to be there to believe some of them. The time she mentioned the pee bowl in one of our workshops, that was an interesting “teachable” moment.

April Flores, a “Mexidorian” beauty (she’s Mexican and Ecuadorian), was recently on the cover of AVN because she’s one of the sexiest women in adult movies today, and she’s part of a pack of full-fleshed voluptuous vixens. That means she’s no skinny bitch (it’s a book, not an insult) and the confidence and message she promotes, the one about embracing our bodies and our selves, well, that’s what she gets across on camera, the camera that’s often held by her partner Carlos Batts or by the sexy babes at Good Releasing.

Jaiya Ma and I first connected a few years back in Las Vegas. The woman behind the RedHotTouch video series, her brand of education is eccentric and sexy, and Jaiya’s hands on in everything she does. She recently gave birth to her first son, and videotaped her attempt at an orgasmic birth for the whole world wide web to see.

So that’s it. In a nutshell. For info on tonight’s panel at The Pleasure Chest, click here.

• More couples are shacking up and making babies. A research round-up from the fine folks at Gawker. (Gawker)
• PS1 Censors Performance Art, but not because of peeing, spitting or masturbating. (Gothamist)
• Bonking the stewardess is a huge turn-on. Japan Airlines is facing a boom in black market demand for flight attendant uniforms. (TimesOnlineUK)
• Topless hunk of frozen ice forced to put some clothes on. (TheFrisky)
• Campus Atheists gone wild. Free porn for bibles in Texas. (BoingBoing)
• Alabama continues to ban the sale of sex toys. (WAFF)
• Zoe Williams does chatroulette, strolling for wankers.  The odds of onanism online are 1 in 4. (Guardian)
• Circumcision in Massachusetts – can the state criminalize your mohel’s scissor? (VIDEO: FoxNews)
• Meet Death Bear, for times when breaking up is just too hard to do. (ModernLove)

Darth Vader’s not “up” for any awards this year. Downer.

With the Oscars only days away, and with this being my first experience of living in LA and actually having to deal with Oscar traffic in the middle of the day, and because I was reminded by the ever thorough and on-topic sex educator and researcher Cory Silverberg at about.com that this is the biggest movie week in Holly-wood, I’ve decided to share (yet again) two of my favorite sex scenes on film, one of which is already old enough that John Cusack’s about to star in a movie that brings him back to the 80s, where Revenge of the Nerds take place only two years prior to the year of “hot tub time machine” travel. And neither of these scenes has likely been nominated for anything other than corny goodness, but still, I do love them.

Okay, that was the longest sentence ever…

The first one is the Darth Vader/Cheerleader Moon-Bounce sex scene in the original Revenge of the Nerds. That’s the scene between nerd Louis and super sorority chick Betty. They get it on because Betty thinks that Louis is her boyfriend Stan. Afterwards she decides, and we cheer, that he’s better than Stan. I love that he doesn’t take his mask off for a while and the scene leaves the really hot stuff to our imagination. At the tender age of 10, that’s how old I was when the movie came out, that scene turned me on big time. It was the kind of sex I one day wanted to have, and still actually want to have. I think next time I’m in love I’m going to rent a moon bounce.

The second is a solo sex scene, since I’m a big time advocate of the self love. It’s the masturbation scene in Pleasantville, because a) Joan Allen’s character – also named Betty – has never touched herself before, b) it’s after she has her first orgasm that the entire world around her explodes with change c) it’s a masturbation scene set in a bathtub – which makes it much steamier, I mean there is hot water in the bath. Betty’s front yard goes up in flames when a fire bursts forth from a tree, and this symbolizes the power of female pleasure, and really I see it as showing us how magical we are when we allow ourselves to experience pleasure. Again, it’s not an overly explicit scene, and although a lot of it is left to the imagination (the brain is the most powerful sex organ), the message is hot, literally.

I’m trying to think of a sex scene that has really struck me in the past six months. I haven’t seen enough film that isn’t animated to choose wisely, and although there’s that Avatar love, eh, and that Jell-o awkwardness in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, it’s those two above scenes that have stuck with me through the years.

And YES, it’s best to cover one’s willy with a latex or polyurethane “raincoat,” however, when you’re doing it with a myriad of faceless fucks, you’ll need more than one condom, one for each vagina (or bum), which, sadly, you don’t learn dick about from this video.

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• PETA uses Tiger Woods image to remind pet lovers to spay and neuter their cats and dogs. (NYDailyNews)
• The challenge of marketing small condoms. Hey, I know, what if we packaged small condoms as large ones? Would guys buy them then. Actually, it’s not my idea, and it makes me think of the truth in advertising. (TheAtlantic)
• Does having one partner make men smarter? Maybe, or maybe it makes them more focused on other things. (CarnalNation)
• Maryland becomes a little bit cooler by recognizing same sex marriages from other states. (EqualityMaryland)
• For the uber environmental sensualist – a wooden vibrator. (BooshPLR)
• New Jersey’s “red” governor goes “blue” with his nomination for head of the Department of Children and Family Services. It’s Janet Rosenzweig, a member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. While I think that’s fabulous, I’m wondering can we all agree? (Gawker)
• Rapper 50 Cent may lose way more than that. He’s being sued for editing himself into someone else’s sex tape and putting it online. (Reuters)
• Attention college students! One of your peers has graciously written a list of places to have sexy time before you graduate. (CollegeCandy)
• One more sex advice article. This one is about hot sex for Christians. (FreddyandEddy)

I just finished shooting what should be a fun educational video for the new glove harness, La Palma, from SpareParts HardWear. It’s a cool project, one I don’t think I can disclose anything about until the video is done, but the fact that a sex toy company is dealing with one of my biggest pet peeves, which is lack of instructional materials when it comes to what comes with sex toys, this makes me super happy. However, the production itself was a little stressful. For starters, I was afraid I’d have a lot to memorize, but that fear was eradicated with the help of my new favorite website, cueprompter.

However, once we got on set, the makeup artist, who is also about to become a porn star (ya gotta love LA) made my eyes so black that I looked like I had just lost a fight after 36 hours without sleep. When I asked her to remove the excess darkness, or what I am now referring to the ring-o-not-so-rosy-around-the-eyes, she did so by placing lotion on a Q-tip and then proceeded to put that in my eyes! IN MY  EYES! Like seriously, the lotion touched the actual whites of my eyes. I was so afraid of the redness that would ensue, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep my contacts in, and I had no glasses with me. My eyes hurt all day. They were tired. Slightly blurry and heavy. The girl was nice, but really, who puts scented lotion in someone’s eyes?! It took me a moment to realize what was happening, I was so shocked that I didn’t do anything at first. And finally I said something fairly obvious. I asked “did you just put lotion in my eyes?” When she said yes, I told her I don’t think you should do that. I mean, I thought that was common sense, but maybe I’m just picky. I don’t think I’ll be letting her near my eyes again. Ever.

Then there was the set. When you only have four hours to film A LOT of dialogue, things can get tense. I’m trying to learn to control my control issues, but sometimes they get the best of me, and while I think Morty Diamond is the bomb and I think the world of him, we got into it (meaning brawled) a bit too much at times. He was the one who helped write the script and co-hosted with me. We spent years selling dildos together, but by the end of the shoot we weren’t truly getting along, not in the nice sense of the word.

Also, we thought we’d have a model there, at least one, to help us demonstrate positions, but when we realized we’d be the ones simulating sex, and we were already simulating friendship at that point, it got more than just a little uncomfortable. So I wound up having sex for the camera, but not the kind of sex you see in adult movies. I was fully clothed and sort of acting like a dead fish when I wasn’t laughing really hard at the whole shebang.

But that’s just TMI. I can’t wait for you to see the clips, and the final product. Until we get into editing, one never knows how it’ll look, but I now know more about glove harnesses than I ever thought I could. And I learned a neat trick, involving a plastic bag, to help insert big harnesses into dildos. All you need to do is place the plastic bag so that it’s about an inch and a half above the base of the toy. That will help slide it through the hole, and then with the space at the bottom designed to allow the harness to fit all the way down, you can easily remove the bag.

• Another recent survey by the British based Netmums says that 76 per cent of women use porn, french maids are big in bed and women may be having less sex than last year, but when they do it, they’re wilder in bed. (TheSun)
• While British women are getting wilder, 43% of Canadian men would choose bacon over sex (HuffingtonPost)
• After John Mayer most recent Rolling Stone interview, he’s been offered a chance to fulfill his dream job with Vivid. (TMZ)
• Sometimes sex doesn’t sell. Sex.com, the web domain that should sell itself is up for sale again (cnet)
• Billboard’s sexiest 50 songs of all time. (Billboard)
• The sexerati comment on Tiger Woods apology. (Examiner)
• Jamie Gillis, RIP. (SusieBright)
• Analyze this. Sex toy store names that can turn you on, and off, to shopping. (CatchThis)