Thursday, May 28, 2009

Excerpt - Good Girls Don't Growl

“Look,” Lexie sighed, “I’m not interested.”

            “Why not?” Garrett asked, tilting his head slightly as he watched her closely, “You’re as attracted to me as I am to you.”

            Lexie started to refute his declaration then decided why bother. He had eyes and could see the obvious signs of arousal. His grip on her hand had relaxed so she snatched it back as she replied, “I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all that but I’m not interested in dating. Anyone. Ever.”

            “Ah... the old I’ve sworn off men tactic.” Garrett nodded sympathetically, “No wonder you’re a little uptight. Maybe if you talked to someone…hey, guess what! I’m a good listener…”

            Lexie gave him an exasperated growl of annoyance, “Grrrr! It really is none of your business!”

            There. She’d been rude. That would chase him off.

*

            Garrett struggled to maintain a bland, nonthreatening expression, while inside everything heated up another notch. That little growl she’d tossed at him had been sexiest thing he had ever heard. Oh yeah, the feisty woman wanted him regardless of her denials. He could smell her arousal as it coated her panties. And he could easily read the hungry need in her pretty eyes. But she wasn’t going to submit easily. Thanks to some dickless wonder in her past, she was skittish. That growl that had stroked his cock as surely as if she had taken him in her hand proved she would fight their attraction tooth and nail. Lucky him. He loved a challenge and even better – he loved a chase. His cock swelled and pulsed, threatening to tear out the front of his jeans. His prey was tagged. It was time to back off until he had a strategy planned.

            Garrett knew his smile was on the feral side as he slowly rose out of his seat. Lexie’s eyes grew wide and she pressed back against her chair as he towered over her. Sliding casually around the side of the table, he stared down at her flushed face, tilted up toward him.

            “I’m making it my business, sweetheart. Do you know why?”

            Lexie shook her head, cleared her throat nervously before she said, “Ummm… no?”

            Garrett leaned down and pressing a quick kiss to her mouth. It was over almost before it started. Her lips were soft and sweet nearly causing him to groan out loud. The taste of her clinging to his mouth as he pulled away.

            “Because sitting there all shy and blushing, you look like the sweetest angel the goddess ever placed upon this earth. But honey, good girls don’t growl and I aim to find the bad girl you’re hiding deep inside.”

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

DAMage Report - Ain't your mama's Etch-a-Sketch

The nature of an artist is to explore, try new things, set trends, and sometimes even create art using unconventional methods. Technology continues opening up new avenues of communication for everyone and in the hands of artists even becomes a new and unique tool for creativity. It seems fitting when you consider that art was the first forms of communication. Artist Jorge Colombo has broken new ground with his cover of the New Yorker, proving that art can be created in a mobile environment, using an iphone. Article Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/media/25yorker.html?_r=1

I don't know about you, but in 
my opinion that had to have taken an extraordinary amount of patience. Just texting can be taxing to my fumble fingers - i'm all kinds of impressed that someone could create a lovely digital painting using just his cellphone and a simple drawing application.

We seem to have entered a creative phase where art is being created from everything and anything. 
I've seen drawings done in coffee grounds and a velvet elvis made with cheetos (i was impressed even though i'm not an Elvis fan).

This link provides numerous visuals of unusual art: UNUSUAL ART

"Who would have thought toothpicks could be turned into incredibly intricate sculptures, that nails could be used to hammer out a gigantic portrait or that packing tape could be transformed into compelling layered portraits? One painter uses hands as his canvass and creates beautiful animals by using a combination of paint and proper shape and angle for photo-documenting his creations. Another raises awareness about trash and reuse by shaping used cell phones into strange sculptures. Yet another takes everyday push-pins as the basis for composing pointalistic portraits of friends and family."

In 1911 Wassily Kandinsky wrote "Every work of art is the child of its age" and "Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age". 

I can't wait to see where the creative is going to take us.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Link to news article for Arts Day Topic on DAMage Report tomorrow

"New Yorker Cover Art, Painted With an iPhone"

Women We

Women We 

Aspirations so simple
Wanting nothing more
Than love and joy,
To dance through life
With an enchanting smile.

Tears bleak in confusion
Tear endless holes
As they fall through our lives,
Oh, was it really asking too much
Just to be happy?

Choices made
With hopes held high
Until the complications,
Tumble down the incline
Threatening to bury us alive.

Where is the line
Between wrong and right 
And whose fault is it anyway,
When the bubbles burst
As everything falls apart?

The romantics never told us
Not once was it ever said
That life would be so cruel,
Devouring indiscriminantly
Even the simplest of dreams.

Friday, May 22, 2009

I've sunk my teeth into this

i just got the DVDs of the first season of TruBlood, the made for HBO series based on the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris.  Loved the books for years and now i'm enthralled (vamp joke) by the show. It has the right mix of tackiness, humor and horror to keep me completely engaged. Certain characters annoy the hell out of me in the show (ironically, ones that aren't featured in the books) but maybe i'm more tolerant, since i haven't sat down and watched television in four years, because i can ignore them and not let them detract from my enjoyment of some damn fine entertainment.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

DAMage Report Topic - Twitter Art?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/18/AR2009051802870.html?wprss=rss_technology

I don't know that I would go so far as to call Twitter art or even a platform for art... but i'm willing to be convinced. This article was fascinating and provided a view of the twitter phenomenon that I wasn't aware of. I have thought a lot recently about the evolution of language that is resulting from technologies such as texting and twittering. On one level, it appears we are developing a universal language - a massive amount of abbreviated words such as LOL and BRB and <3>

Twitter as performance art?
Twitter is a flood of 140 character shout outs of the minutia of tweets who just want to be heard. What they have to say is often not important - the only important thing is saying it, putting it out there. Verbal aknowledgement of receipt isn't even required. If you have followers then by god, someone somewhere will have heard you... even if it is only your quick note that says "my eye is twitching." The audience is there. And the players are on the stage, laptops and iphones and blackberries flinging out words like pearls before swine. Yeah.... I would say that twitter could conceptually fall into the realm of performance art.


What makes it different than some of the other "social" platforms?
"(There is) a primary difference between Twitter and, say, texting or Facebook status updates. Both of the latter are based on reciprocity and personal knowledge. Tweets, on the other hand, are one-sided -- sent out to people you may not know, with the goal of attracting more people you may not know. "It's more of a performance," Allen says."

Twitter as LITERATURE?
A twitter novel? Now that is taking flash fiction to a new level. From the article:"Writer Matt Richtel recently tweeted an entire novel (a "twiller," he called it) about a guy who wakes up with amnesia and begins to think that he might have committed murder. Its brief installments read like disjointed interior monologues, peppered with the misspellings common in real tweets (sorry, Oscar de la Renta!): "back to blond. inhale her oscar de la rente. memory pierces amnesia; saw her once with bloody hands. Where? Jesus. Gin please. Please."
""Every new medium has the potential to be an art form," says Tim O'Reilly, co-author of "The Twitter Book." "It just takes a while for [the medium] to adapt. Why do we think that literature won't change, too?"

"The best twitters are intimacy wrapped in aphorisms topped off with self-deprecation and a dash of ambiguity. They capture individual moments in time, but allude to past and future. They are not memorable quotes so much as they're miniature stories.... if Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde were still alive, they would probably all be on Twitter."

So what is your take on twitter? What do you gain from it? Do you consider it a tool to CREATE? Do you find yourself following the words of others because they ARE creative? Or do you abhor the twitter craze? And do you find yourself using the abbreviated texting language at times when you aren't limited to 140 characters?
_____
Catch me today on the DAMage Report with Johnny Dam, LAtalkRadio.com at 2:30pm PST/ 5:30pm EST / 10:30pm GMT

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

DAMage Report - Erotica versus Porn

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=30650

"In 1979 the as yet unknown 20 year old Madonna posed nude for just $30 for New York photographer Martin Schreiber. Later when she had become a global icon the shots appeared in Playboy, catapulting Schreiber to fame. The Madonna Nudes are featured as part the Brighton (England) Festival Fringe and runs until June 28."

Listen up my peoples.... nudity does not equal pornography.
Nudity doesn't even equal erotic.

It is easy enough to roll our eyes at the extreme prudes, who brandish a labeling gun to slap "porn" on anything that shows a bit of flesh. Some of them advocate banning nude paintings by the Masters as inappropriate and lavacious. On the opposite side of the spectrum are the people that believe anything and everything is acceptable including beastiality, pedophiles, scat, etc. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle - a little to the left of the sexual tolerance line (also known as the missionary position line) or to the right of it, in varying degrees. In that middle ground there continues to be some confusion as to what constitutes porn and what constitutes erotica. Even the Webster dictionary makes almost no distinction between the two:

Pornography:
1 : the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement
3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction

Erotica:
1 : literary or artistic works having an erotic ( tending to arouse sexual love or desire ) theme or quality
2 : depictions of things erotic

Wikipedia (stop your groaning) has a more clearly and more accurate distinction between the two.
Porn - the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexually exciting the viewer. Pornography makes no claim to artistic merit, unlike erotica which does.

Erotica - works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions. Erotica is a modern word used to describe the portrayal of the human anatomy and sexuality with high-art aspirations.

Why is the distinction necessary? Because alot of people will summarily dismiss out of hand any erotic books and art, believing it is nothing more than "porn", not realizing that there is alot to learn (and enjoy) from erotic works. In a repressed society (and i'm sorry y'all, but Americans can be surprisingly repressed regarding their own sexuality) one of the "safest" avenues of exploration to awareness of things outside of one's own experience is through reading and arts.

As women, in particular, move more and more towards embracing their own sexual empowerment, erotic novels are an entertaining and safe way to walk a mile in someone else's stilettos. Erotic photos are another way of learning how to be comfortable in your own skin. Seeing and accepting the beauty of the human form without embarrassment.

Until we change how we view ourselves and feel comfortable in our own skin, we will never feel truly comfortable with others.

Think of it this way... Porn equals an anonymous quick fuck in the alley while erotica equals seductive foreplay with someone you like and are attracted to. Not that there isn't a time and a place for that quick fuck in the alley, mind you... i would just prefer it with someone i know and like. ~wink~
__________

BOOK PIMP: Lauren Dane's Relentless (ran out of time to pimp it last week)
AWESOME book btw. But then all Lauren's books always are.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Research Links for DAMage report topic: Erotic versus Porn

















"Exhibition of Naked Madonna Photos by Martin Schreiber Take England By Storm!"
The series of black and white photographs of Madonna show her as the exceptionally beautiful young woman she was. Modelling to pay her way through dance school, her toned body, perfect breasts, great skin, luxuriant pubic hair and mop of curls were a draw for several photographers.
http://www.impureart.com/





Wednesday, May 6, 2009

DAMage Report: Is the crime writing an erotic romance or trying to promote the book to other teachers?

http://wbztv.com/local/lawrence.principal.sex.2.996143.html
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=79780698927&h=JKI0a&u=8tKOO&ref=mf

It's like a freaking soap opera. The news started with Teachers' Union demanding that school principal Beth Gannon be fired for "peddling her porn" romance novel at the school. The outrage seems to be more about the type of book than the fact that she was trying to sell her book to other teachers. But it gets better. Apparently the teacher that filed the formal complaint against Ms. Gannon was reassigned from her classroom to detention hall and her daughter received a threatening note. Meanwhile the author has been put on indefinite medical leave for being "fragile." (insert eyeroll for the diva.) The community is up in arms and breaking out the pitchforks and torches. Even the head (literally) of the school superintendent is being tossed up for suspension over the controversy.

Give me a pen, this stuff is just too good to make up.

Several questions arise:
1. Was it inappropriate for Ms. Gannon to hawk her novel (self published before she became an principal) to other teachers? And with that same question - what consitutes promoting her novel? Did she bring them in and encourage teachers to browse the book for possible sales? Or did she mention in passing, to another teacher, the book she had published two years ago and offer to let someone buy a copy? Hmmmm....

2. Would there be as great an uproar if Ms. Gannon had written a mystery novel or scifi novel.... or would the community be celebrating that their school principal was an author? (Whether the book is good, bad, or nausea inducing being beside the point.)

3. And finally did Ms. Gannon, in spiteful retaliation, use her position to reassign a teacher to a crappy position and then threaten another teacher with an anonymous note? Because if she did, then her character is called into question and it is more than likely that she DID use her position for self promotion and deserves to be ousted as a bully.

The interesting thing to me is that the catalyst for ALL the outrage was someone writing a "porn/romance" book, as evidenced by the repeated mention of passages in news stories. And if she mentioned her book and offered to let someone buy it, is that REALLY grounds for dismissal? Even if she brought several copies to a teachers meeting (no kids there, right?) - it might be inappropriate, but is it really deserving a big scarlet letter on her forehead? Why is the topic of sex and relationships so offensive to so many?
___________
Today live at 5:30pm EST on www.latalkradio.com DAMage Report.
ALSO - Book Pimping: Megan Hart's Strangers and Lauren Dane's Relentless