| --Thursday, November 01, 2007--
Halloween leftover: Ashley Laurence vs. Britney Spears in Hell
 "We have such sights to show you."
Feeling poorly and doubting the power of any Halloween party to approximate the costumes I see all year long, I watched the 20th Anniversary Edition of Hellraiser last night and realized that Cenobite-buster Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) foreshadowed Britney Spears' look by 15 years.
Despite Kirsty's strivings with Pinhead and other members of the Lament Configuration to protect her immortal soul, she showed no flesh whatsoever, despite audience demand. Why? Clive Barker is gay.
What does this have to do with Porn?
Well, perhaps if Britney were sent "The Box", she'd stop flashing her own.
Previously: SugarDVD tries to enter friend-of-celebrity sex tape market; Britney Rears: Time Lord
See also: The Hellraiser CollectionLabels: celebrity, cenobites, geekery
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, July 30, 2007--
The Butt Wax has exploded, or: shoving trans fats up your ass
 Every day I receive boxes of excellent adult products that I mention on my global network of sites in reviews, casual allusions, paid advertising, or as simple prayers the faithful may use in novenas. Most of these products are very compelling.
But sometimes they are horrifying. Read more after the gap.
 The first thing I noticed when I opened the Topco box was that it was heavier than normal. Inside were two weapons-grade grrltoyz vibrators that I immediately dispatched to likely lady reviewers (read the review here) as well as a large tub of something.
That something was Bottoms UpTM Butt Wax Anal Balm, and it had leaked all over the box, sullying the vibrators.
"What's all over this box?" my vibrator test subject asked.
"I couldn't stop thinking about you," I said. That line even gets me out of paying my electric bill. You should try it.
Why Bottoms UpTM is trademarked and not Butt Wax was a mystery to me, as was the fact that the company had decided to go ahead and put anal balm in the title, too.
The tub contained 46 ounces of white goop (there were supposed to be 47, but one leaked out) and the directions were as follows:
Scoop it up and apply to desired area for lubrication and to ease discomfort. In this case, "desired area" means the ass. And this is, of course, fine, but where is the romance when you have to scoop something up and slap it like mortar on your intended's desired area? Maybe if you're a Mason...
But where this product just became wrong was when I searched for its ingredients, which consist entirely of partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Using this anal balm would be like shoving a super-sized package of McDonald's french fries up your or your partner's ass, minus the potatoes.
As any resident of the Castro will tell you, the nation's gay men have been using Crisco, which is mostly partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, for generations. But the rule of thumb (or whatever) should always be: If you wouldn't put it in your mouth as food, don't put it in your ass.
Finally, if you are to use a product like this, remember that it is not safe for latex condoms; you'll have to go bareback with it, just like a real porn star!
Previously: Products for your down under from down under; Ladyboy or Cenobite?; The sacred semiotics of the stigmafoot
See also: Partially hydrogenated oils, CriscoLabels: cenobites, commerce, gay, marital aids
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, July 02, 2007--
New Porn Daily: Sex Secrets of the Yeti
 I consulted my 12-year-old self, who proclaimed Private's Sex Secrets of the Yeti "even better than Krull".
It hasn't snowed in Los Angeles since 1962, so the idea of porn shot in the snow almost seems like science fiction. Leave it to the wacky Europeans to make Sex Secrets of the Yeti, in which different men dressed in gorilla suits for no good reason couple with ski-suited Euro-hotties atop an alp.
This movie is tremendously stupid, but that matters little in a porn movie. I only mentioned it was tremendously stupid because I pay myself by the word. Still, it bears mentioning that at one point a ski bunny and the Yeti have been walking toward each other for about 30 feet before she even slightly registers apprehension.
Then there's the scene where the Yeti and a not-Yeti bang their sweethearts side by side. That we see the guy in the Yeti suit's t-shirt all the way through makes me think that Private had blown so much of the budget on the location and keeping the ladies in chapstick that the company paid very little attention to explaining why the Yeti did not rip his conquests limb from limb afterward.
But maybe that's one of his sex secrets.
Previously: Every picture tells a story; Ladyboy or Cenobite?; Private introduces first hybrid synergy porn star
See also: PrivateLabels: cenobites, geekery, new porn daily, private
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, April 24, 2007--
Counting floggers on the wall: Mr. S Leather
 Once upon a time, when I lived in New York, I bought a pair of leather pants on Christopher Street. They cost more than I could afford, but they more or less fit my massive yet svelte frame.
Because I took the occasional large amount of drugs, I could sometimes be found staying up all night and arriving at my world's worst band gig at a Greenwich Village theatre right around showtime at 8 p.m. the following day. On one such occasion I showed up in my party clothes and quickly changed, leaving my three-weeks-old pants in the dressing room.
The theatre backed up against an area known as Cracked-Out Drag Queen Alley. I believe it is on the National Register of Historic Places. Each night I would say hello to various cracked-out drag queens as I made my way into the theatre. A few nights we'd go into the alley and share food.
Anyway, this particular night I got offstage and the pants were gone. I was told that one of the cracked-out drag queens had snagged them. I never saw her again, or the pants, but I'm sure that until she sold them she probably accessorized a lot better than I had.
I always wanted to get another pair, but I put it off. I had been wounded, and needed the time to heal. How could I be sure I could keep my pants?
Well, time has made me strong again, so recently I traveled to San Francisco to get refitted.
The journey was important. I needed to see the cows whose hides would be sacrificed for my vanity. I drove up the mighty 5 freeway, through an area between the Tejon Pass and the 580 that is known as Cowschwitz. There I regarded the cows, and they regarded me.
"What up, cows?" I said.
"Word," they said gravely.
Just as cow-fear makes meat taste tangy, I wanted the cows to smell like love, fear's opposite. Instead I smelled manure. Does love smell like manure? It is impossible to tell. In my business, Fleet enemas mask the scent of much.
 I was headed toward Mr. S Leather in San Francisco. Mr. S occupies a sizable chunk of the corner of Eighth and Harrison Streets, a two-story building in which the ground floor comprises a workshop and huge showroom and the top floor is soon to be converted into studio space for Uber Ego/Slave Labor Productions, a company that makes tasty BDSM videos.
It was through Uber Ego that I heard of Mr. S. I'm not into bondage - at least my own - because, you know me, I'm a free spirit. But I do like wielding crops and floggers now and then, if anything to get to hard-to-reach places at the top of cabinets.
Richard Hunter purchased Mr. S in 1991. The company was founded by Alan Selby in England in the early 1980's as a high-end but individualized leather gear store for hardcore leather dudes. Imagine the Village People's Glenn Hughes mixed with Rob Halford of Judas Priest and, perhaps, Satan. Hunter opened his shop in San Francisco and began marketing to a younger demographic.
"You entered the (original San Francisco) building through an iron cage," Hunter said. "Over the years, the place became very dark and foreboding."
Hunter's son, Tchukon, joined his father in the business in 1996. Tchukon grew up on a commune in upstate New York and, despite everything he had ever learned, sold cars until he joined the family business.
The Hunters opened their present location in September, 2005. It is bright and roomy. I asked if the accessibility took away some of the menace some of the company's older clients might have enjoyed about the previous location.
"I do think that some people were sad that it didn't seem like there would be gang rapes in the dressing room," Tchukon admitted, but it still can get pretty wild around here."
 We passed a collection of glass butt plugs and Tchukon was inspired to tell a story. The story was called Why Butt Plugs Now Have Bases.
"My father knew a guy who had himself trussed up and was videotaping himself playing with a butt plug," Tchukon said. "So he's watching himself in the monitor and he slowly watches the butt plug disappearing into himself of its own accord. At the hospital, a Chinese lady with very small hands was the only person who could get it out."
I tried to respond with why 13 is known as a baker's dozen, but it just wasn't as good a story.
Tchukon now runs the company which includes a shop for leather and PVC-aware ladies, Madame S. His partner, the no-nonsense Kansas-bred domme Paige White, features the products in Uber Ego/Slave Labor videos.
Tchukon and Paige live in one apartment upstairs while Richard lives in another. My father probably would have frowned on my living with a woman out of wedlock under his roof, but he was also not into hardcore leather bondage, probably because the gas company didn't accommodate that lifestyle.
 I met Skeeter, Mr. S' leather baroness. She came to the company in 1993, getting a job working the hides through her girlfriend. When they broke up and her girlfriend left the company, Skeeter stayed. It was she who took my measurements and introduced me to the hide that would become my pants.
"The first thing you need to know is that Levi's lies," she said. "They add an inch to your leg and they take an inch from your waist, so you think you're slimmer and taller."
This was tough love, and I didn't like it. "People come in here insisting that they have a 32 inch waist," Skeeter said, "and I have to gently convince them that they are quite a bit fatter."
I was quite a bit fatter, which didn't bother me as much as being told I didn't really have a 38" inseam, which is a source of pride in my family.
"Wicked Skeeter," I said.
 In the workshop people were at work at weapons-grade sewing machines. Skeeter pulled out a bunch of cow hides and unrolled them. They come packed like fruit rollups, except if you ate them at recess you'd die.
"What you're smelling when you smell leather is really the work of the tannery," she said. "We buy from a select tannery, so we know, usually, where a hide comes from."
She said that my pants would probably come from either a California cow or a Texas cow.
"All my exes live in Texas," I noted.
 Ignoring me, she said that sometimes it was even easier to identify a cow because the brand was still on it. "Naturally we don't use the brand," she said, "but if the brand gets through you know that cow really felt it."
Skeeter unrolled the hide. It smelled like love.
Skeeter explained the process of getting the hide from the cow. It is too sexy to describe on this family website. But she said that the best leather comes from the cow's back and sides, rather than the baggier area around its udders.
"So if you see someone wearing baggy leather, you can call him Cow Udder Ass?" I asked.
"Yes, you can," Skeeter said.
Upstairs I checked out the apartments and the massive construction area for the studio. The elder Hunter's area looked like it would intimidate a Cenobite. A genial, trim man in his sixties, Richard Hunter just didn't look like the type of fellow who would have a massive customized leather padded isolation chamber in the corner of his room. But he does.
 "He kept a partner of his in there for 31 days once," Tchukon said. "He was getting a little feisty."
Mr. S supports the annual Folsom Street Fair and is a pillar of its south-of-Market neighborhood. Maybe because that city is a contained, 49-square-mile thumb that it has a sense of itself and its community more so than Los Angeles and the porn industry therein. It is just as easy, though, to look at the fundraising efforts for Nicki Hunter and sense a community spirit that is also admirable. Still, I don't see dads and their sons in L.A. living in places that look like the House Hellraiser Built.
 My pants will be ready in a few weeks. It is an unexpected pleasure to know where they came from and the people who made them.
Previously: Perfection review; Pornhounds; Whither Coke Chain?; 2006 Erotic/Exotic Ball Report (fleshbot); Perfectly Cruel to be kind; Trouble x 2 review
See also: Mr. S LeatherLabels: "uber ego", BDSM, cenobites, fetish, san francisco
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, April 02, 2007--
Every picture tells a story pt. LXI
 Like the Second Amendment, most porn boxcovers are straightforward and don't require expert interpretation. This is unfortunate, because my MacArthur Foundation grant was hustled secured for the very purpose of explaining Porn to a benighted public.
But this one is puzzling. Hustler's All Time Best XXX (anal edition) not only introduces yet another brand of "Best Of"s (that includes "Larry Flynt's Private Collection") to a confused marketplace, but also seems to cross over into the "Married Sex" genre. I don't know whose hand that is, but it's got a wedding ring on it.
"If I buy this," my member of Congress asked me, "can you assure me that this is the all-time best XXX I will ever see?"
"I don't know," I said, noting that the most recent scene in this movie, to be released next week, was shot in 2003, making me wonder why anal sex has so deteriorated that no scenes from the past four years merited inclusion. "I don't know anything anymore."
Another thing I don't know is how many people are in this picture. There might be as many as four. That's someone's knee on the right side of the boxcover. Squinting into the sunlight, covergirl Amy seems surprised, as if God has appeared and she is trying to explain that doing anal with a married man doesn't count as adultery.
Previously: O: The Humanity; Tori Spelling mourns loss with porn; Archaeological porn; Ladyboy or Cenobite?
See also: HustlerLabels: cenobites, dvd, God, hustler
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, February 14, 2007--
Ladyboy or Cenobite?
 As you well know, Gram Ponante.com is legendary (even in Hell) for its top notch Cenobite/ladyboy coverage. Who would have thought these diverse but wholesome species could ever come together?
Platinum Blue's Ladyboys in Latex seamlessly bridges the gap between Thailand's most famous export and the Lament Configuration, revealing that it is not hormones that call us; it is desire.
Previously: The jellied hand of destiny; Intending to bring rain, Sunny Lane stumbles, incurs wrath of corn god; Doc Johnson releases Hellraiser line of marital aids; 2006 Erotic/Exotic Ball report (fleshbot); DVD: "Memoirs of a Ladyboy" (fleshbot); Private introduces first hybrid synergy porn star
See also: Platinum Blue Productions, "The Female"'s other gig
Labels: "platinum blue", asian, cenobites, dvd, transsexual
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, December 08, 2006--
Perfectly Cruel to be kind
 Platinum Blue Productions is debuting the kink line "Reversed Flesh" in January with its first offering, Perfectly Cruel.
As you know, everyone from Ivan Pavlov to the Cenobites used flesh reversal to turn a profit, so Mistress Aradia's new imprint has a fine pedigree.
Perfectly Cruel stars Aradia and Dana DeArmond, who learned to turn her skin inside out at Disney.
Previously: Eve Lawrence: feels like home; Diver Down; Miamiteurs
See also: Platinum Blue ProductionsLabels: "platinum blue", BDSM, cenobites
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, September 18, 2006--
Intending to bring rain, Sunny Lane stumbles, instead incurs wrath of corn god
 The delightful Sunny Lane is here seen posing on the red carpet at last night's Island Fever 4 release party at Sunset Beach, the former Dublin's, on Sunset Blvd.
While Lane is not in the Digital Playground movie, she was on hand to demonstrate several martial arts/tribal poses, including this one in which she accidentally summoned Cthulhu and some Cenobites.
I was recruited to interview various porn stars by G4TV, a basic cable station geared toward 18-34-year-old men who like video games, computers, and the type of women who show up in video games and on computers.
I asked her why she was one of the few adult stars who smiled, rather than chose to look menacing and inaccessible.
She free-associated for several minutes. The upshot involved believing in oneself, working hard, and striving for goals.
 Her love for Gram is palpable in the above picture.
"I get to fuck all day," she said. "Why shouldn't I be smiling?"
I neglected to tell her my Minneapolis hotel room story.
Previously: Dreams really do come true for AdultDVDTalk; The Playboy Mansion in a nutshellLabels: cenobites
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, February 22, 2006--
The jellied hand of destiny
 Because North Carolina's Adam & Eve is an educating, sex-positive company, they make customers feel good about the decision to stick their products inside themselves.
Take this vibrating blue jelly hand, for example.
If your girl is into The Other (and whose girl isn't?), you are guaranteed that your eager mail-order bride/"person you're showing around the industry" will not substitute her love for you with desire for the company of a novelty.
Were this a flesh-colored device crafted from some kind of "realistic" material, how soon do you think it would be before she fled to Oregon with the lady next door who has a wood shop in her garage?
Instead, the Helping Hand Vibe looks like something sealed underground at Area 51 after the alien autopsy. You can say: "You into extraterrestrials, baby?"
I cannot tell you how happy I am that Adam & Eve has sent me not only this horrifying jelly hand but also a way for you, the consumer, to buy one your own damn self. I will not mention other companies who just send random e-mails without links just daring me to Photoshop Cenobites in.
Previously: What, no tentacles?; Mounting Malezia just got ezia; Doc Johnson releases Hellraiser line of marital aids
See also: The Helping Hand VibeLabels: cenobites
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, May 04, 2005--
Doc Johnson releases Hellraiser line of marital aids
 Indulge the Leviathan in your pants by purchasing Doc Johnson's new Enspiral Vibrating Love Glove, sure to bring a little bit of the underworld to your masturbating experience.
GramPonante.com's roving reporter, Pamtrona Eng, interviewed a group of Cenobites hanging out by Home Depot.
PE: Laslo, you are the eyes-sewn-shut underling of the Lament Configuration and now I am your publicist. Why are Doc Johnson's products so popular wth demons?
Pinhead: I'll take that question, Pamtrona. It is not the Enspiral Vibrating Love Glove that calls us: it is desire.
PE: So Doc Johnson only facillitates your sexual pleasure, rather than substitutes for it?
Pinhead: Yes, Pamtrona. That is the healthiest thing. I merely use these devices when The Female is not present, to stir my horrible wanting of her.
PE: Thank you.
Pinhead: Peace out.
Use Doc Johnson's products or your suffering will be legendary - even in Hell.Labels: cenobites
posted by Gram the Man
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While GramPonante.com is written for a tenth-grade reading level (in some countries), you must be 18 years or older to visit this site. Sorry.
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