There seems to be Mormonism and polygamy in the air lately (at least for us), so we wanted to spread the love to you and you and you and…:
Escape — Just finished this crazy page-turner of a memoir from Carolyn Jessop, one of the few women to escape The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS (of Warren Jeffs infamy) with her 8 kids (and 8 is a low number for this radical polygamist sect). She recounts how the cult basically imprisons women as sex/baby-making slaves — you’ll boggle over how something like this could exist in America in the 21st century. Katherine Heigl is slated to make the movie version of the book (which, we hate to admit, we’re morbidly excited about).
Sister Wives — This TLC TV series is in the middle of its second season. With only 4 sister wives (who seem allowed to express their opinion) and their mere 16 kids, the Browns look like the Cleavers compared to the FLDS clans. Still, we really wish the show would delve a little deeper into the religious justification for the double standard of multiple wives but not multiple husbands (in Season 1, when his first wife of 20 years asked him to imagine her taking another husband, husband Kody admitted the thought sickened him — hmmm, funny how that works).
The Book of Mormon — Everyone’s raving about this new Broadway musical by the dudes behind South Park, including Jon Stewart, who said it’s “so fucking good it makes me angry.” Think Urinetown and Jerry Springer: The Musical rather than Wicked or Brigadoon.
At least, that’s what Ling’s new show on OWN (Oprah’s new tv network) should be called, instead of “Our America with Lisa Ling.” After all, four of the first five episodes focus on matters of sexuality: There’s “Pray the Gay Away,” “Transgendered Lives,” “The State of Sex Offenders,” and tonight at 10pm “Online Brides” (all re-air several times over the next week). The first three (which we’ve seen) all take a very personal and intimate look at how these issues are affecting real people — it’s fascinating stuff, all shot very cinematically. The only drawback is how each episode is framed with a series of rhetorical questions posed by Ling’s stiff narration — a voice that mistakes monotone for gravitas…
Last week, the Onion News Network premiered on IFC and artfully accomplished what The Daily Show tries to: mercilessly skewering the 24-7 cable news industry (the subtitle is, after all, “News Without Mercy”). It’s exactly what a fake news show should look like, adopting all the slick, epilepsy-inducing bells and whistles of cable news shows and featuring beautiful, dead-behind-the-eyes presenters. And since this is cable, they take full advantage of their ability to throw a lot of inappropriate sex into the mix: don’t miss their “This Day in History” segment on the invention of the handjob. It’s all online, but you can catch their second TV television episode tomorrow night in their regular Friday-night 10pm/9pmC slot on IFC.
Somehow in the post-holidays hangover, we missed the fact that Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi — a.k.a. the Jersey Shore star with a pouf — made her debut as a novelist earlier this month, with A Shore Thing. Yep, she’s the one who once admitted she’d only read two books, Twilight and Dear John. (Which might explain why Snooki’s novel contains both a Bella and an Edward — not exactly the most common names overheard on a Jersey boardwalk.) We’re too busy reading George Eliot right now to actually read her entire snook, as we like to call it, but we have been enjoying reading the following brief excerpts out loud while lounging around in our silk pajamas and feeding each other grapes. Just in case you were expecting Hemingway, the cover helpfully explains that the novel is about “a girl [named Gia] looking for love on the boardwalk (one full of big hair, dark tans, and fights galore).”
“Gia danced around a little, shaking her peaches for show. She shook it hard. Too hard. In the middle of a shimmy, her stomach cramped. A fart slipped out. A loud one. And stinky.”
“He had an okay body. Not fat at all. And naturally toned abs. She could pour a shot of tequila down his belly and slurp it out of his navel without getting splashed in the face.”
“Only several months old, her boobs were virgin territory. She was eager for Tony to touch them, curious if it’d feel sexy, despite a slight post surgical loss of sensation.”
“Any juicehead will get some nut shrinkage. And bacne. They fly into a ‘roid rage, it is a ‘road’ ‘roid rage.”
“I love food. I love drinking, boys, dancing until my feet swell. I love my family, my friends, my job, my boss. And I love my body, especially the badonk.”
If you’re a fan of the first two episodes of AMC’s new conspiracy thriller series, Rubicon, what you probably like is what makes it different from your typical television drama: its slow pace, its subtlety, its intelligence, its lack of glitzy pizazz, even its muted colors. Well, that’s why we like it. And it’s why there was one element of the second episode that was so out of sync with this vibe we just couldn’t get past it: the assistant’s cleavage.
In the first episode, actress Jessica Collins plays a nice, sweet-looking, demurely dressed (consistently so in several outfits) character poised to be the main character’s love interest. Even her name — “Maggie Young” — is nice and sweet and demure-sounding. And in the first episode, she was styled to reflect this — not a hint of cleavage or skin anywhere. Which for television is refreshing; it’s actually reality-based. Most business offices — especially those filled with uber-smart nerds working on top intelligence secrets for the government, one imagines — aren’t filled with a lot of sexily dressed vixens; it’s just not professional.
So it was with great disappointment that we were bombarded with the over-the-top cleavage Ms. Young was suddenly sporting in episode two (which must have been created by the most high-tech push-up bra available and perhaps a little duct tape, for Jessica Collins is not what you’d call buxom). It was so incredibly distracting because it was so out of character for the assistant — and the office — we were introduced to in episode one.
So here’s our theory: The producers, after signing off on the pilot, were like “Great, let’s green light this project, but we’ve got to sex it up, get a little more skin in there. We don’t have too many female characters to work with, but how about the assistant — let’s tart her up a bit.” Buy why? Why, oh why?! Can’t we have a smart and subtle show without being force-fed a standardized quota of female sexual objectification that does nothing to further the plot? It’s so pandering, but to whom? Would hetero men really be inclined to cancel their Season Pass to this cool new show simply because it lacked any daring decolletage? It’s like the bullshit sexist theory that people won’t pay to see movies with female characters with names who talk to each other about stuff other than men.
Yep, Rachel Maddow’s. Out and proud Rachel Maddow of MSNBC’s kick-ass liberal politics show “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow, who wears as little makeup as the producers will let her get away with, who would never be caught dead in feminine jewelry (let alone pearls!), who’s always in jeans and sneaks under her television desk, who gets her haircut with what looks like a Flowbee. Don’t get us wrong — none of that is a dis. We love, love, love that Maddow refuses to abide by the strict beauty rules set for women in our society, especially in our society’s television media. Which is perhaps why this picture is so striking — it’s such a 180 for her, the epitome of the feminine ideal, even today: blonde, long-haired, tan, make-up-ed, and accessorized. We admit, our first reaction was: OMG! But why?
She posed in a bee costume for the cover of her new memoir, i know i am, but what are you? And still manages to look kinda hot in it.
She’s a fan of pubic hair. “Our body looks weird without it,” she told The Frisky. “Vaginas don’t look that nice to me without it. Like, little girls have cute vaginas. But lady vaginas, you need a little hair. It makes it look better. I just resent being told I’m supposed to do something with my pubic hair. Fuck off! It’s my thing. If you don’t like it, let’s move on. I don’t like you.”
She’s 40 and sexy in a totally non-cougarific kind of way. (If we find out that she owns any animal-print clothing, we might cry.)
She’s currently heavily pregnant on TV for the third time and her career is taking off more than ever.
She once worked in an erectile dysfunction clinic.
You can play the new trailer in the right-hand sidebar of this site for our 10-part television series, SEX: How to Do Everything. It’s now available on DVD! Each 45-minute show tackles a specific topic (seduction, oral sex, kink, anal play, etc) with detailed tips, on-the-street & in-studio interviews, silly segments like our confessional booth in the middle of Times Square, and how-to demonstrations from various models illustrating a variety of different techniques, from the ordinary to the super-scandalous. (For example, there’s a guy in one episode who can, um, go down on himself — needless to say, we declined to be in the room when he demonstrated.) The show was made in the UK, where they can get away with a lot more on television. Seriously, there are parts that are even too graphic for us! So don’t let the PG-13 trailer fool you.
Being innocent television ingenues, we didn’t get a lot of money for this project. The only way we’ll see another cent for our efforts (which basically involved humiliating ourselves in order to help spread sexual education and inspiration) is if you buy the DVD using this link. So if you like EMandLO.com, the information on it, and the fantastic community that’s grown within it, please consider supporting it with the purchase of our show SEX: How to Do Everything — we’re sure you’ll get something out of it, whether it’s a new technique to try, a different way to think about sex, a giggle, or just great fodder for your next cocktail party.
Mattel is set to release four new Barbies ($75 each!) based on characters from “Mad Men” this coming July to coincide with the start of the show’s fourth season. There’s main character Don Drapper and his soulless wife Betty, company head Roger Sterling and his one-time mistress and office manager extraordinaire, Joan Holloway. While Mattel chose to leave out the “inappropriate,” sinful accessories like martinis, packs of Lucky Strike, and silk panties in suit pockets that are ever-present on the show, it’s still a bold choice for the company to celebrate such a debauched group of alcoholic adulterers. But then again, Barbie was created in 1959, right around the time Mad Men takes place — a time when women were expected to simply look pretty and shut up, make a nice home, and expect their husbands to cheat. So maybe this licensing agreement is not so bold, maybe it’s just eerily perfect.
Our 10-part television series, SEX: How to Do Everything, is now available on DVD! Each show tackles a specific topic (seduction, oral sex, kink, etc) with tips, on-the-street & in-studio interviews, silly segments like our confessional booth in the middle Times Square, and how-to demonstrations from various models illustrating a variety of different techniques, from the ordinary to the super-scandalous. (For example, there’s a guy in one episode who can, um, go down on himself — we weren’t entirely happy about his inclusion in the show, but it undeniably has a certain, fucked-up, car-crash appeal.) The show was made in the UK, where they can get away with a lot more on television.
Being innocent television ingenues, we didn’t get a lot of money for this project. The only way we’ll see another cent for our efforts (which basically involved humiliating ourselves in order to help spread sexual education and inspiration) is if you buy the DVD using this link. So if you like EMandLO.com, the information on it, and the fantastic community that’s grown within it, please consider supporting it with the purchase of our show SEX: How to Do Everything — we’re sure you’ll get something out of it, whether it’s a new technique to try, a different way to think about sex, a giggle, or just great fodder for your next cocktail party.
CHECK OUT THE DVD TRAILER IN THE RIGHT SIDEBAR>>
The trailer for the show is in the right hand sidebar and below is a clip from the oral sex episode, in which famous sex guru Midori gives two women some tips and tricks with a lollipop demo — just remember to use this link should you decide to order the show. If you do, we’ll be your BFFs. Thanks!
photo by Stephanie Sinclair for the New York Times Magazine
Last week, the 
March 31, 2011
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