Beatin’ on a Budget! with Exxxtasy

A few years ago, a friend of a friend was over at my place and noticed a stack of about ten DVD-R spindles sitting on top of a bookshelf. When I told him they contained digital copies of old and obscure Japanese, Korean, and Polish cinema titles, he couldn’t believe his ears. It wasn’t my questionable copyright infringement that disturbed him, it was the idea that I still kept content stored on physical discs. “Media should be streamed,” he told me, “DVDs just take up landfill space, degrade in quality over time, and are prone to damage.” I defended my burning habit: “But you can’t loan a stream to a friend or throw it into the trash if it’s a shitty movie.” Still, he maintained that streaming was the way to go, a position clearly held by the subject of this week’s Beating on a Budget, the streaming only Exxxtasy.

exxxtasy

Now, don’t get me wrong. If you’re a particular kind of online porn viewer, the kind that keeps an archive of, say, Belladonna’s roughest gangbangs or the complete online works of Alina Li you won’t have much use for Exxxtasy, where downloading is prohibited. Those of you down with HD streams, on the other hand, might not have seen a site this appealing for a long, long time. Exxxtasy has only just begun its assault on your bandwidth, but it’s already a large site hosting tons of high-quality mainstream porn releases that, though not exclusive, are great to see pulled together in one place. Even though Exxxtasy was already dirt cheap to access, the site is celebrating its growth with a discount that should have all you porn-streamers clamoring to think of a totes sweet username. Originally $9.99-a-month, Exxxtasy, home to titles by Elegant Angel, Harmony Films, Pure Play Media, and Killergram, among others, can now be enjoyed for a ridiculously low $4.99 (valid for your first month’s access).

Although it’s by no means a perfect site, Exxxtasy overcomes its detriments (poor navigation tools, no downloading, no photos, no Roku channel… yet) and, quite simply, makes you an offer you can’t refuse: who can pass up 1,500 killer porno scenes starring A-listers galore for a measly $4.99? Hell, I was even granted complimentary access for review purposes and I still bought one month inside Exxxtasy. And here’s why…

THE MATH:
Exxxtasy currently holds a pretty dang substantial 1,547 scenes in its archives and charges $4.99 for one month’s access. This price point means that each individual scene hits a cost of only .3¢ – that’s one-third of a single cent! What more savings does a dirt-poor porn fan need?

Bargains like Exxxtasy don’t come along too often and especially not those granting you access to a hefty award-winning porn archive starring every pornstar worth a damn over the last decade, so (personal opinion alert) I’d pounce on this one if I were you.

Filth on the Canvas

dirty show 16 detroit

The 16th annual Dirty Show wrapped up in Detroit this week, closing out its week-long celebration of all things explicitly sexual, intensely erotic, and outright carnal. After being graced by the endlessly entertaining and enlightening John Waters and seeing performances from all kinds of (performance) troupes and (military-fetishizing) troops, Dirty Show 16’s doors closed for another year. The painters, sculptors, photographers, and printmakers exhibiting in the Dirty halls this year included notable International guests as well as national and local artists. Here we present a small selection of highlights from Dirty Show 16 and hopefully bring to your attention, dear reader, some new artists worth keeping an eye on.

Renowned horror filmmaker Clive Barker contributed this painting entitled The Wolf Behind the Flame that, although tucked away in a corner and easily missed, stopped everyone who passed it dead in their tracks. (Although perhaps Barker’s name was the reason.)
Clive Barker

Cult favorite comic scribe Grant Morrison has said of Gail Potocki that she “conducts seances on canvas.” Bringing to Dirty Show 16 a piece directly recalling Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller’s masterpiece Leda and the Swan, Morrison’s interpretation is more than understandable.
Gail Potocki

Billy Norrby kept his model mostly clothed and instead exposed her not to our eyes but to the swirling energies of the cosmos. Sky Cathedral elevates transcendental self-love to the level of universal, even cosmic love.
Billy Norrby

Portrait of the Artist Entering her Blue Period by Scott G. Brooks placed his model before a glory hole in turn surrounded by messages scrawled into the wall, messages possibly addressing the kneeling, sticky-handed woman, her hair bundled into a pair of classical buns and adorned with (you guessed it) pearls.
Scott G. Brooks

By far the most whimsical piece we spotted on the exhibition walls (or, more accurately, in a cabinet) was Jason Levesque’s gastropod mollusk whose wanderings have left a trail of “grool” in its wake. Surely, that tasty-looking critter is the ultimate overqualified paperweight for the desk of yours truly.
Jason Levesque

Sasha Grey Trolled into Ukrainian Conflict

Former pornstar and current… (what, red carpet walker and cameo role shooter?) Whatever she does for a living these days (an erotic novel, seriously?), Sasha Grey hasn’t shot porn since 2011 and therefore hasn’t been genuinely worthy of a porn industry headline in almost four years. Why, then, did Sasha pop up in news feeds around the world last week?

sasha grey

Major news outlets last week reported that Grey’s name and likeness had been appropriated by the propaganda machine lending support to Pro-Russian Separatists in eastern Ukraine, who had claimed in a social media post that the AVN Winner had died on the front lines of the current conflict. As detailed by the Moscow Times, the story told features a nurse named ‘Sasha Serova’ [Serova is similar to the Russian word for ‘grey’] who was “captured by Ukrainian military forces, who then filmed themselves ‘humiliating’ her before chopping her body up with an axe.” Grey, not known for shying away from controversial topics, quickly addressed the rumors on Twitter:

That’s it, folks! The very same woman a Rolling Stone profiler called “the smartest person I’ve ever met in the industry” has declared the Ukrainian conflict, like, all crapped out ’cause people are lying about her on the Internet. Had Ms. Grey waited a few days before Tweeting, she could’ve saved herself the embarrassment of placing the blame squarely on the wrong shoulders. And, who knows, perhaps she might’ve even reconsidered calling the incident “propaganda” – since, you know, it turns out it wasn’t.

Global Voices Online, among others, saw through the veil of irony and uncovered a plot by users of 2ch.hk  aimed at exposing the insipid gullibility of vatniks (supporters of Ukrainian Pro-Russian Separatists) with a very common and much loved tool: the troll quote. Made by placing a quote or factoid over the image of an unrelated pop culture icon to (intentionally) erroneously conflate the two, the troll quote meme has caused many white-knuckled imbeciles to fly into a rage spiral on 4chan and Reddit. This time, however, the trolling didn’t stop at the intended victim, spreading to the US media and Ms. Grey herself, who both seemed to interpret the alleged Russian propaganda as genuine and not the witty work of Ukrainian meme-mongers with only political satire in mind.

When Pornstars Collide: Lisa Ann vs Nikki Benz

Grab your popcorn, folks, ’cause two of porn’s most larger-than-life women are embroiled in a conflict that’s seen more than its share of catty insults, accusations of prostitution, holier-than-thou pontificating, and allusions to organized crime syndicates. What’s more, the two pornstar legends currently duking it out on social media aren’t about to let their Tweets do all the talking. Now Johnny Law is involved! But let’s rewind…

Lisa Ann vs Nikki Benz

Although now retired from active performing, an apparently disgusted Lisa Ann took to Twitter to admonish fellow performer Nikki Benz, apparently for nothing more than enjoying her birthday in Dubai. The implication from Lisa’s post was that Benz wasn’t simply sightseeing or visiting friends, but doing a little escorting on the side (an increasingly common practice for known pornstars). Considering the other contentious tales of pornstars hooking in the UAE have largely revolved around broken contracts and cancelled appearances, Lisa Ann is no longer an active participant in the porn world, instead getting her fantasy football career in order while doing the odd feature dance for the fans. Why then should she give a shit if Nikki’s off sucking some dicks (or not) in Dubai?

lisa ann tweets

After a period of inactivity, the feud heated up this week with a restraining order granted in Los Angeles for the protection of one Lisa Ann against one Nikki Benz. In her claims to police, Lisa accuses Nikki of attacking her, unprovoked, on Twitter and inciting her 700,000 fans to do the same. Alleging Benz “encouraged and rewarded” those followers who made threats to her business and safety, Lisa appears to be attempting to color Benz as a dangerous figure whose presence at industry events would be disruptive to her own safety. Considering Benz proposed meeting her retired nemesis in the boxing ring to resolve things, it’s somewhat, maybe slightly understandable that the threat of violence might seem real. One claim, however, stretches even the loosest boundaries of truth: Lisa claims Benz’s online attacks made her too afraid to attend this year’s AVN Awards ceremony to receive her Lifetime Achievement Award. The only problems with that claim is that, A) Lisa Ann did attend this year’s AVNs and, B) she was presented with no such award, having already been inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2009. In fact, here she is with her date (no, not like an escort), a contest winner, incredulous at the bravery of her own attendance in spite of Benz’s alleged harassment:

lisa ann avn

And here she is attending the 2015 XBIZ Awards, an event also attended by Benz, who earned cheers and laughter for her Ann-directed jibes tossed casually from the stage. Funny, Lisa Ann doesn’t look very scared.

lisa ann xbiz awards

Boxing bout or not, it seems clear that the winner of this particular pornstar brouhaha (thus far, at least) is Ms. Benz. After all, she don’t need no damn police to do her dirty work for her and she don’t appear to start no shit with no bitches who don’t start shit with her. Benz also won XBIZ’s Crossover Star of the Year award, further cementing the very real professional, not personal, threat to Lisa Ann: Retired (But Still Bitter) Pornstar™.