Susie Bright's Journal

Segregation Now, Segregation Forever— And Pass the Bong While You're At It

Five to Four. Five to Four.

It's no surprise that every Supreme Court decision these days dismantles equal protection under the law. But it doesn't make it any less depressing, does it?

Let's see: high school students don't have first amendment rights anymore— not even the right to be sarcastic, which goes with teenage territory.

Students also don't have the right to an education uncompromised by racism. And they'd better not try to speak up about it, either!

The SCOTUS majority has a divining rod for pinpointing who the "little people" are in any given situation, and then screwing them to the wall:

Plaintiffs whose health or lifespan have been devastated by malicious products don't have the right to apply punitive damages that would make the manufacturer think twice.

Shareholders who find out that their company is guilty of of long-standing fraud can now just quietly go jump out the window. After Enron, we can't have any more whistle-blowers harshing the capitalist buzz.

Workers don't have the right anymore, according to The Fuck-You Five, to sue their employers for discrimination in pay... because if they don't discover a carefully-held secret that they've been paid less than the dude standing next to them for years, the joke's on them!

Defendants facing cruel and unusual sentences can forget the appeal process— when Scalia wants to lock the door and throw away the key, that's his prerogative. He's special... and YOU aren't.

And taxpayers— you know, those idiots— don't have the right to opt out of being fleeced for Bush's Church-Buddy Fund— also known as "The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives." You're going to pay taxes every year to support gay-bashing, race-hating, misogynist, kooky Christian cults whether you like it or not!

The SCOTUS quints have a special fire in their belly when it comes to second-class citizenship for women. Those five men— whose sex lives would no doubt turn us ashen gray— are going to decide, every step of the way, whether any American woman gets to have extra-special dispensation to have an abortion— and they don't believe all that guff about a women's life ever being in danger.

Meanwhile... things are looking better all the time for corporations. It's so much cooler to be a corporation than a pathetic individual. It's like having the Bill of Rights, for real. I bet  a corporation could even get an abortion whenever it wanted to!

If I was a high school student with a cause and a smart lip— or a woman with a insupportable late-term pregnancy—  I'd file for corporation status, and watch the gates fly open! I bet corporations can even bitch they're being discriminated against, and get special breaks and exclusive opportunities.  ...Oh yeah, they already did that. 

Let's not snooze over the recent campaign finance decision, which allows corporations to run phony "message" ads on TV as close to election voting days as they like.

This is the "control the plebes with TV" provision that's been found to work so well in the past. It's easier to control people by appealing to their hangups about race and sex than  beating them over the head with an expensive item like a baseball bat. Let FOX do the heavy lifting! Corporations want to play the tune that everyone dances to, without news or fact-filled interruptions. 

[The side note that drives me crazy on this particular decision is its framing of the notion that the court is allowing "corporations and unions" to both have this freedom to bombard television with unfiltered propaganda. The language suggests that organized workers have a scintilla of parity in their financial clout with the corporations they work for.]

You can't finish a Corporation Cocktail without price-fixing, so now the court has salted the rim on that glass too. Thanks to the Frisky Five, manufacturers and distributors have done away with nearly a 100-year-old law that prohibits them from fixing the base price of their commodities.

Ordinary human beings simply must rethink their status.

If I was a corporation instead of a person, I could call my readers and say, "Gee, I'm sorry, but the fixed price for every story you want of mine is now one million dollars! And every other writer has gone in on this, so you won't be able to find a better deal!"

That'd fix their wagon! Then I'd call the gas company and tell them my patronage is now only available at a minimum price that I'll be spelling out to them in my next memo.

No wonder all the bees left the building. You see, when The Borg gets its game on, it's just not pitiful homo sapiens running for their lives... The U.S. Supreme Court has also sided with developers and the Bush administration on a ruling that reduces the power of the federal Endangered Species Act to that of a mouse turd. Furry creatures everywhere are filing corporation papers as a last-chance attempt to hold onto their very existence. 

Spoiled: The Dream Birthday Picnic

Today is my daughter Aretha's 17th birthday, and I offered to make a "dream picnic" for her. This is the menu she submitted to me:

Mommy's Breaded Chicken (obviously!) — don't be shy with the salt

Light fluffy GOOD bread to eat chicken with and clam chowder bowls

Cucumbers (lightly salted)

BIG array of fruit that won't wilt in picnic basket

Strawberries a must!

whip cream (for strawberries)
chocolate sauce (for strawberries)

macaroni and cheese (your homemade, the kind with breadcrumbs)

BABY vanilla yogurts from TJ's

Clam Chowder, NOT homemade, from Carniglia's at the wharf— you will be hurt if I don't like yours (I meant this sensitively, not as a threat)

pepper
salt

german chocolate birthday cake with a big 1 and a big 7, not seventeen candles!

pretty white & red checkered picnic blanket (do not want dog's blanket)

my rubber baby spoon

watermelon (seedless and not mealy)

butter
iceberg lettuce
mayo

Isn't that the most "sensitive" list you ever read?

So what is your dream picnic basket? And who, if anyone, in your family/tribe would be the one to spoil you and make the whole damn thing? ...Or is KFC your momma? 

Susie Interviews Jamie Gillis

 

"A man is as faithful as his options" —  Jamie Gillis

Mr. Gillis is a former mime, Columbia grad, Shakespearean actor, and very nice Jewish boy— and better known as one of the most influential actors and innovators in the history of American blue movies.

He also isn't the type to seek out interviews, or spill his life story, so I was honored to have an interview with the legend who's made his mark in the most memorable porn movie of all time.

 

I got into porn to support my acting habit...

Sometimes I think of myself as a straight guy who happens to have had more fag sex than any fag I know.

This business is dick-driven...

I was with Long Jean Silver when she said one day, 'Let's find some boys to fuck...'  and they weren't easy to find! ...Finally we found a group of seven, and I said, 'Look, we're not taking seven, pick three.'

The Navy tried to throw a guy out for being in my North Beach [gonzo] and I said, "But he's not even the one that did the fucking..."

No, you can't live with someone who's straight, who's not in the sex business— if it's a 'quote,' normal girl, it's ridiculous.

If you know Jamie's work, I know you're drooling to hear it all. If you've never heard him, you're in a for an education.

Listen to our interview: Link

Other Notes on this Week's Show:

I couldn't help but sputter my indignation at the Georgia case of Genarlow Wilson, a popular athlete and college-bound senior, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for having blow job with a freshman girl at a high school party.

An appeals judge recently threw the sentence out, after much grassroots outrage (including a plea from Jimmy Carter!)

But get this: the GA Attorney General is insisting that that young man deserved to have his life destroyed and that the sentence be upheld. Let's start taking his life apart, shall we?

Finally, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I answer a letter from a fan of The L Word who wonders if lesbians really do have sex like that.

 

To read the rest of Susie's interviews with Golden Age porn stars, check out: 

The Erotic Screen, Vol. 1: The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core 

 
Available at Amazon, B&N, & Smashwords. Here's the whole Table of Contents.

Stories from the 1980s with legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, Christopher Rage, John Holmes, Marilyn Chambers... and many more.

Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin

I can't move; I'm so sore, and it's all the Family Stone's fault.

I saw The Original Family Stone over the weekend at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk— or, I should say, I joined the Family Stone, because if you get within 100 feet of their company, you are a participant. 

I was on "background vocals," and "background dancing fool," along with a couple hundred other Everyday People, who screamed and pounded the beach into a cake of funkified salt.

There are three 60-year-old-plus original members of Sly's Family leading this reunion tour: Cynthia Robinson, trumpet/vocals; Jerry Martini, sax/vocals; and Rose Stone, keyboard and lead vocals— along with a bunch of youngsters filling out the other positions that the original Family revolutionized.

I danced directly under Cynthia's trumpet because I wanted her horn-spit to to hit me if I should be so blessed.

Cynthia is my favorite. I remember sneaking into my first screening of Woodstock when I was fifteen, and realizing that this commanding woman was the first female performer I'd ever seen in a band horn section.

Woodstock made the Stone Family mega-stars. Sly brought the first multi-racial, gender-blind band to the rock stage. The Family featured women who were ferocious, not fluffy. And when was the last time you saw a white drummer backing a black front musician?

Sly's Family snipped racial and sexual cut-outs to ribbons: Don't call me Nigger, Whitey— Don't call me Whitey— Nigger. Songs like that are outrageous today. It's dumbfounding to consider how courageous this group was— and more's the pity, how radical they still seem today.

It's hard to remember a time when every funk/soul/rock group didn't trade lead vocals like the Family did. The original bass player, Larry Graham, was onto SLAPPING something—  and no bass player ever touched his strings the same way again. This band's funk came out from between their legs, and knocked you upside the head. Even James Brown had to take a deep breath.

After Friday's show, I went home and looked up all the archival material I could find on the Stone Family— it's rich. I recommend viewing their prize-winning gig at the Ohio State Fairin 1968, their early 70s rehearsal footage, and an encore performance from Woodstock called "Love City," which surely could've been included in the main feature except it would've made everyone else look puny.

If you haven't been in the history vaults, your first question might be, "Where is Sly?"

Sylvester Stewart is alive; he supports this reunion group, and this really is his family— Rose is his sister, and Cynthia's the mother of one of his musical daughters, Phunne Stone. Jerry is all the uncle you're ever going to need. Freddie Stone,

Sly's brother, was the original lead guitarist, and now leads a church congregation in Vallejo who I'm determined to go see in their monthly jubilee.

Vet, another sister who used to perform background vocals, has a daughter, Lisa, who's played with the family too. They all came down to the Boardwalk, just to be in the audience. I'm sure I'm missing half the family tree, because the Stewarts rival the Osmonds and Jacksons for sheer genetic musical talent.

People say that Sly fell apart over drugs, notably cocaine. That's true, in a small-fact way, but it's deeper than that. Every superstar of the 60's rock scene fell apart on coke, heroin, and booze. The Stone Family band had its horrible ego/drug feuds, like every other band.

Some died, some survived, and some couldn't survive if they stayed in the business end of what gets called "music." Some have been self-medicating for another angle altogether.

I'd say Sly falls in the tortured genius camp— he's never stopped making music, but he stopped trying to deal with the public. He did time on cocaine possession, and I don't mean Paris Hilton time. His family is protective of him.

When you see the senior Family members step up on stage today, with their chops and charisma, you realize this really is "A Family Affair." We should all be so lucky to kick out jams like this when we're pushing 70. *I* can't lift my tired arms over my head after one measly night, and they're back on the road with a full summer tour schedule: Link.

People in Santa Cruz typically arrive early at the Boardwalk to set their blanket up on the sand for the Friday night music shows. They are maniacal about saving their space, and when the music starts, they get cranky if anyone stands up, or blocks their view.

But Friday night, they were all on their feet:

"Everybody... STAND!...You've been sitting much too long; there's a permanent crease in your right and wrong...Stand!... There's a midget standing tall, and a giant beside him, about to fall— Stand! Stand! Stand!"

It was Panda-Funkin-Monium.

My daughter was running the roller coaster behind the bleachers— she's a ride operator there this summer— and they turned off the ride so that everyone could have as much hot fun in the summertime as they could take.

The teenage boy she was running the ride with, he confounded her: "I don't know how to dance to music like this," he said.

"He's a little hung-up," I said, when she described it to me later. She listened to that word, "Hung-Up," like she'd never visualized the full metaphor before, and nodded her head.

Yeah, there's always someone like that  around; you want to Take Them Higher (Higher!) — but they hold on so tight before they let go!

8 Things I Had No Intention of Talking About

I've been tagged like a flamingo in a fruit fight.

Well, PZ must've known I was sticky for the taking.

"8 Things I Had No Intention of Talking About"

 

8. I spent two hours making labels on my Brother P-touch Label Maker this afternoon, and I became so besotted it with it that I took it into the toilet with me so I wouldn't have to stop for one moment.

7. I get a rush listening to Formula One engines. I have a whole CD of them: audio loops of thunderous high-pitched wail. I put the CD into my dorky Prius sedan, and quietly drive up to a stoplight. ...Unroll my window and put on my shades. I make sure some guy in a muscle car is idling right next to me. Then I turn the volume knob all the way up, wait for the light to barely turn green, and press PLAY.

6. I'm editing a book about organic farming, and there's a chapter in which intrepid field workers aerate the soil with a box of handy whirling battery-operated dildos.

5. I can take a broom in both hands and step over it and wind it behind my body and over my head without ever breaking my grip. I was born that way.

4. I just found my roach clip from the summer of '76 stuck in a vaccination record drawer.

3. If I could live anywhere right now, it would be Vancouver.

2. I used to go target shooting, and I really enjoyed it. The only reason I don't now is because I haven't owned a gun in twenty-something years, and I'm not neighbors with anyone these days who would invite me to jump in the car for a few rounds. I'm in an odd spot, of being in favor of gun control for all the usual reasons— but I'd also relish firing a dozen different guns and getting euphoric over bulls-eyes. Don't let Ted Nugent get his hands on me.

1. I had a chocolate cake tonight, at the UCSC Farm dinner, where the frosting was a ganache made with cocoa, sugar, and avocado, and it was so good I'm still screaming. You would never guess it was avocado. Here's a recipe that sounds close. I may lay down the gun, but you'll never get this bowl of pudding out of my hands.

 

OK, now who shall I put in my sights?

• Chelsea Girl
• Doug Henwood
• Bitch PhD
• Greta Christina
• Avedon Carol
• Ampersand
• Lucy Kemnitzer
• Bitchy Jones

 

Here are the rules:

    1.    We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
    2.    Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
    3.    People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight  things and post these rules.
    4.    At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
    5.    Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and  to read your blog.

 

Illustration: "The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed."

Porn and Booze Banned for Aborigines Only

"Pornography and alcohol will be banned for Aborigines in Australia's Northern Territory," the country's prime minister, John Howard, announced today...

Let me get this right:

1. You enter a new continent and colonize it, murdering thousands with superior firepower;

2. You steal the indigenous people's land, dispossessing them forever;

3. You rape their women, kidnap their children and put them in "homes" to rape them, too;

4.You bring the booze in, of course—

6. And you exclude "the blacks" in every aspect of your new government.

Three centuries later, what do you do for a encore?

Apparently, you announce that you're shocked— simply shocked— by the rampant violence, despair, and alcoholism, in the original people's culture.

It's got to be stopped! It's time to ban pornography! You've finally gotten to the root of the thing!

Police are hired to flush out and imprison those found guilty of "possession." By the time you round up all the offending parents, you can send a new generation into government prisons and foster homes— what a nostalgia trip! You wiped out 80% of their population in the old days, but clearly there's more work to be done.

And demon rum... gosh, it sure can go bad in the wrong people's hands, eh? As one Aborigine critic put it, "If they're going to do that, they're going to have to do that with every single person in Australia, not just black people."

I'd like to see the Prime Minister ban drinking in his neighborhood for six fucking minutes.

Here's the government's report, an epistle of liberal hand-wringing and conservative backlash in bed together at last, titled: Little Children Are Sacred. Gag me now.

Thank you to Derrick, for bringing this to my attention.

Susie's Rail Yard Vibrator Chat in The Virgin Machine

 

From The Virgin Machine, directed by Monika Treut.

All dialog improvised in one take!

Monika fell in love with On Our Backs when she first visited San Francisco from Hamburg, and decided to make a movie about a German naif who gets her mind blown. That's just about our entire staff on the motorcycles— and the wind in China Basin nearly did blow us right off our seats.

Put The Stroke Book Down, Jim!

In the second part of my rivet-to-the-floor interview with investigative journalist Debbie Nathan, Nathan talks about why so many people claim they're addicted to porn, addicted to masturbation— and why the addiction model doesn't hold up.

Listen to the whole show here: Link

I, on the other hand, explain why I'm addicted to reading about a hundred newspapers every morning— which is a lot worse, if you ask me.

Debbie also talks about her new book Pornography: A Groundwork Guide: the first book for young adults about the history, politics, and business practices of porn.

BTW, Debbie welcomes emails from listeners— or your comments here! She was one of the most welcoming people I met in New York, and next time I'm just going to follow her around like a little lamb.  Tell Kurt Eichenwald not to wait up!

In our finale to the show, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I hear from a college professor in Vegas who says her class was more upset than she expected by unleashing Karen Finley and  me on them at the same time.  —It could be unnerving...

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to share with your friends to [email protected] (Episode 296, June 15, 2007).

This book cover is indeed the William Burroughs novel, published under a pseudonym. I would kill, like a crazed dope fiend, to have a copy with this jacket! Ken Lopez has all sorts of 50s and 60s beat classic like this.

Random Honest Porn Review Gets a Place at the Table

I've received so many new random honest porn reviews as a result of my subscription drive, that I've decided to give them their own new blog!

It's called Random Honest Porn Review.

It's bare bones. I decided to use the "food template" design from my blog server, because something about "sticking a fork in it" seemed appropriate. I published all the reviews we've received so far, with little pictures of each box cover next to the plate settings.

New reviews include: the unholy mess that Eddie Van Halen has created: "Sacred Sin," the lesbian-made "Crash Pad," (which sounds incredible)  a new perspective on "Bend Over Boyfriend," Chicago's own "Urban Friction," the classic that gets everyone's panties in a twist, "Anna Obsessed," and something called "Beautiful" which is apparently not.

Thank you to my new subscribers in Dallas and Southern Indiana for keepin' it real! I get the biggest kick out of your candor on this subject.

I looked up all the above movies to compare the official reviews that appeared about them. In the case of the big budget projects (big budget by porn standards, which Van Halen certainly qualified for) every voice was glowing. Porn reviews are the worst case of everyone telling the Emperor his new clothes look swell.

I remember when I first got hired by Forum— many years ago when they were still in business—  to write a monthly erotic film column. This was at the dawn of VHS! My first question to them the editor was, "And if it sucks, can I write about that?"

Now my comment makes me laugh, because he hired me when the porn still had a lot of traditional cinematic talent in it, particularly actors, DPs, and directors. They were shooting on 35mm and 16mm. In any case, he told me to "write whatever you want" —music to the nubile critic's ears.  That's what I'll whisper in your ear, too!

If you want to publish an honest review of a porn movie, on our new blog, subscribe to my journal, (all the details are here, if you want to ponder) and then send me your snail mail to I can send you a free movie from my attic. Watch closely, and email me your review after you've spell-checked your way to infamy!

 

To read the rest of Susie's history as a porn and erotic cinema critic, check out: 

The Erotic Screen, Vol. 1: The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core 

 
Available at Amazon, B&N, & Smashwords. Here's the whole Table of Contents.

Stories from the 1980s with legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, Christopher Rage, Marilyn Chambers, John Holmes... and many more.

Photo: The 500-Strong Orgy in Japan, which coincidentally holds the world's record naked peace signs flashed in one group.

"Child Porn" Panics and Political Agendas

Last summer, an investigative reporter named Debbie Nathan wrote a story about "child porn" for Salon that was yanked off the site in less than 24 hours. What did she say that got her in so much trouble?

It infuriates me that the government prohibits reporters and other legitimate investigators from doing front-line research into child pornography. I'm not talking about obsessive coverage of John Mark Karr and JonBenet Ramsey—

The reporting I'm talking about involves testing government claims about how prevalent child porn really is, and what makes an image pornographic in the first place. To get answers, investigators must look at illegal material - lots of it. Those investigators must also be independent of the government. Otherwise the government can use our fear and loathing of kiddie porn to make false political claims. And to terrorize people like me.

I've been wanting to interview Debbie ever since I read her essay. I decided to kick off my New York City Audible interview series this week with the first of a two-part interview:

Listen to the whole interview: Link

Get a month of my audio show for free: LINK

Nathan is an expert on sex panics and is perhaps best known for her book, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt about some of the widely covered sex panic cases that rocked the U.S. twenty years ago, such as the McMartin daycare case in California.

We recently connected over a shared distrust about former New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald's much-talked about articles on Internet child pornography.

In our "Part 1,"  I asked Debbie why anyone needs examine child porn on the Internet, and why that group might need to include more people than Alberto Gonzales. Her arguments are riveting.

Next week, Nathan talks to me about sex addiction, and where she gets her moxie from in the first place!

Finally, in my Try This at Home mailbag, a woman listener wants to know the nitty-gritty about herpes before she gets goes hog wild with a new crush.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to share with your friends to [email protected] (Episo
de 295, June 8, 2007)

"The Salem Martyr," oil painting by Thomas Slatterwhite Noble, 1869.