July, 2013 | Mr. Pink's Blog

Local Artist Fists Bankrupt Detroit

Artist and provocateur Jerry Vile, known to his parents as Jerry Peterson, was born and raised in the Motor City. With news of Detroit’s bankruptcy causing a swell of concern, derision, and support from all corners of the country, Vile decided to take action. While Detroit residents buckle down for what will likely be an even tighter and less forgiving financial state from here on out, Vile rode up to a local Hart Plaza landmark, a suspended statue of Joe Louis’s clenched fist, and installed an object he believes will make Detroit’s bankruptcy filing move along more easily and less painfully.

Called “Vessel of Hope” and intended to “grease the wheels of justice” as Detroit attempt to reestablish itself as a viable economy and community, Vile’s creation keeps his public persona firmly ensconced in the kinkier side of art. Also the creator of the annual Dirty Show, a celebration of erotic art, Vile responded to city officials’ announced intention to remove the giant Crisco can by refusing to participate in said hauling away: “I should go pick it up. But it might be a trap.”

The fist, known officially as ‘Monument to Joe Louis’, may have been created by sculptor Robert Graham in honor of the power held in the former heavyweight champ’s fist, power that led to his success in the ring and his contributions to the destruction of Jim Crow laws, but now thanks to Vile’s temporary addition – it was removed mere hours after installation – it’ll forever be seen as the royal fisting given to the people of Detroit by its government and the hopefully smoother ride ahead of one of America’s great cities.

Literature Lust – Mr. Pink’s Sex Advice

Dear Missy Pink,

I’m a female, 40+ in age, married to the same man for 21 years. Life has become comfortable, yes, routine and at times feeling a bit of a rut has taken over, but still, comfortable. We’re the typical next door neighbor, we both work, empty nesters, are in bed after the nightly news and Saturday nights are reserved for sex. My one relaxing act through the week is reading, and, I enjoy the dirty paperback books that need to be hidden between reading episodes. That’s how I put myself to sleep at night, dozing off between chapters. My husband recently picked up one of my books for the first time and read through a few pages. Now he’s thinking I want what’s written on the pages and he’s excited about trying different types of sexual fetish acts, and I don’t want that at all, it’s fun to read about, but, that’s where it stops. How do I tell him without him thinking I’m just not interested in getting kinky with him?

Literature Lust

Dear Lust,
Well, it’s a fine pornographic pickle you find yourself in! If you were to ask 10 women if they’d be game to follow his excitement or would they be more apt to agree with you, where reading about it is enough, I would have to first ask, how many of those 10 women are single, how many married. I say that, for a good reason.

When a couple get together and everything is new, exciting, abundantly wrapped in flirting and innuendoes, they enjoy the naughtiness of reaching an orgasm. The acts of hardcore pleasure, fetish filled moments that make them think about what’s transpired until they have the next erotic escapade. It’s all consensual and sensual when it’s fresh and new, but, as you mentioned, you’ve been married for over twenty years, so, there is this sort of adult image, an aura of being a responsible pillar of the community, things have settled down to a pace you feel good about. For singles, there is still that wildness of exploration and experimentation, for married people, it’s familiarity.

Men are visual creatures, so, as he read the pages of your book, he imagined seeing you in a sexy bit of lingerie, stockings tied around your wrists and ankles, your chest rising and falling from hard breathing as you anticipate the fetish act he’ll bestow upon you. In his mind, he may have only read a few pages, but, his imagination has taken him through volume two and three already. It may be too, he believes since that’s what you’re reading about, that’s what you want, and he’s happy to comply.
For women, we seemingly enjoy wrapping our minds around the written word. Anything can be sexy to us if it’s narrated from the pages in a manner that leaves us feeling as though we can become one of the characters….and that is the key. We place ourselves in the book, we become who we’re reading about, it’s an escape from the everyday life of who we are, and it will make for some very passionate and wet dreams through the night, but, when the alarm goes off, we return to our own bed, our own life, and our own way of feeling comfortable.

With kindness and compassion, explain to your husband that you love him, and you lust after him, but in the manner as things are now, that is what you find sexy. Tell him the books are merely fantasy, and reality is much better in your opinion. Just as he watches football every weekend and imagines himself on the field, grunting and sweating and scoring the winning touchdown, it’s a great dream, but he wouldn’t really want to take that brutal punishment each weekend. Once you make him understand he scores highly every Saturday night in the bedroom, he’ll feel like the most valuable player of your life.

Ballet and Porn: Curious Bedfellows

What makes ballet so boring? According to Tamara Rojo, the newly appointed artistic director of the English National Ballet, it’s men. Men often approach dance in much the same way they approach pornography, Rojo told Time Out magazine, suggesting that she and her female fellows would bring a more sexually egalitarian sensibility to a world of dance currently overrun with male perspectives and attitudes. “Female sensitivity is different,” Rojo said. “And there are issues that I want to see on stage approached by women. Very often we see relationships approached from a male perspective. Like in porn, it shapes the way you look at things.”

Asked to elaborate on her ballet-porn analogy, Rojo told Time Out “It tends to be a more physical approach. Men start with the steps. I find women start with the emotional landscape. They say, ‘This is the situation; let’s find a language for it.’ With men it tends to be, ‘This is the language,’ and then you try to work out the situation through the steps.” Before you cry “artsy-fartsy” at her, though, give Rojo’s observations some credence. How many times have you seen porn briefly revolutionized by a woman? Directors like Belladonna and Dana Vespoli and Bobbi Starr, adventurous and daring performers in their own right, broadened the palette of mainstream hardcore porn almost immediately upon taking up the camera. Belladonna brought more powerful performers to the fore in an often all-female pantheon of decadence involving foot fetishism, tender lovemaking, brutal fisting sessions, and, oddly enough, frank conversation. Starr and Vespoli have followed Belladonna’s lead and are now producing movies far more expressive and original than most of their orifice-obsessed male counterparts. Although, I’m afraid, nobody seems to have alerted Rojo or her dancers.

The recent surge in feminist attitudes in hardcore pornography also seems to have been missed by Guardian columnist Judith Mackrell, who notes some major exceptions to Rojo’s description of methodical males and emotional women choreographers, exceptions like Twyla Tharp and Russell Maliphant. Mackrell continues, “The more important truth for Rojo is that with about 90% of today’s ballet repertory [and pornography -ed.] being made by men, as well as a disproportionate percentage of modern dance repertory, we have only a limited idea of the kind of work that women might make.”

So (continuing the ballet-porn analogy) now that Rojo has essentially landed control over the nation’s foremost adult film studios and while that might be a considerable step above Belladonna’s station as an Evil Angel director, it’s certainly not far off in terms of potential for an artistic, sexual, and industry revolution.

Tanya Tate: Superhero

We all know (and presumably are attracted to) Tanya Tate, right? She’s that dynamite blonde Liverpudlian who recently branched out from performing in adult films to directing adult films (Tanya Tate’s Runaways and Tanya Tate’s Tea & Muffin Party, anyone?), and the latest in a continuing line of adult performers immortalized in comic book superhero form. After Pamela Anderson’s and Stan Lee’s Stripperella, Penthouse Comix, and numerous “parody” publications filled with explicit Fantastic Four-ways comes Tate’s very own creation, Lady Titan launching this weekend at San Diego Comic Con.

After building a thriving fanbase with her combined careers in hardcore porn and cosplay modeling – the latter sending many geeks plotzing with her renditions of Emma Frost, a foxy female Green Lantern, Catwoman (the Julie Newmar version), Black Canary, and She-Ra – Tate now moves more directly into the world of genetic mutations, freak biological accidents, villainous monsters, and caped crusaders of justice. And she’s doing it at the world’s annual comic-fan clusterfuck: San Diego Comic Con 2013.

Created with artist Mikel Harvey and colorist Simon Gough, Tate’s titular heroine has an origin steeped in live-action superhero television lore. Lady Titan begins as an out-of-work actress finds her recently acquired vintage costume outfits her with the powers of the 70’s TV superhero that once wore it onscreen. Tate boasted, “The character herself is not a ‘Superhero’ but someone thrust into that role; partly because of her sense of what’s right, but also her own survival. I think readers will have fun with Lady Titan.”

Tate will be appearing at Geekscape’s booth (#3919) at Comic Con all weekend, so if you’re in San Diego for the festivities, be sure to stop by and check out Lady Titan in flesh, in print, and in limited edition 11×17 poster form (autographed by the lady herself, of course).