Gay porn’s got a lot of problems as of late, but while many of them are recent developments, there’s one that’s always been a real monkey on the medium’s back.

Terrible dialogue.

Now terrible’s a loaded word in porn. Most of us will admit that we get off on cheesy, nasty wordplay that no one will ever actually utter in real life. When I see a guy getting banged from behind bray “Fuck me like the trash I am!” while grasping a chain link fence for leverage, I think Good for him. He deserves it.

No, when I say terrible dialogue I mean hackneyed, dull, uninspired blather, which is sadly the norm in most movies.

It’s actually exceedingly rare to find a real cunning linguist in gay porn, with only players like Sam Crockett, Gino Colbert, Blue Blake, York Powers, and Paul Morgan comprising a very small and exclusive club of dumpster-mouthed wordsmiths. Jon Vincent is arguably the all-time reigning king of filth-speak (not too many men could deliver an enlivened utterance like “Oh, Mother yes! Oh, Mother never!” while getting sucked off), and I’m convinced that he would’ve made an excellent mainstream actor or even a writer.

I don’t know if it’s the actors, the scripts, the directors, or a combination of all three, but bad dialogue is a problem that just keeps exacerbating, and because the business can’t seem to self-correct, we’re here to strongly encourage them to officially retire The Ten Hoariest Gay Porn Lines We Can’t Bear To Ever Hear Again. (read the full article)

There’s Kitsch. There’s Camp. There’s Chintz. There’s Schlock.

And then there’s Cheese.

Like pornography itself, Cheese is difficult to define, but you know it on sight. The garishness. The cluelessness. The depthlessness — it’s all perfect in its velvety edibility. Not all male objection is cheese; even in the goofiest of get-ups, a classically-featured Francois Sagat will still maintain a cool mystique. An Adam Killian or Zeb Atlas? Not so much.

Cheese is about more than just wacky production values and irony-free presentation that results from the aggressive marketing of sex. It’s a state of being. Compare Cleopatra to Kim Kim Kardashian (the Angelyne of her time?) or Michelangelo’s David to a Big John Blow-Up Doll. For every ethereal male icon we gay men put on a pedestal, there are any number of cheesy heartthrobs parked on their asses back in the cheap seats.

What follows is a tribute to the Velveeta Gods who forever spread it on thick and require refrigeration after opening… (read the full article)

It’s an occupational hazard.

Just a few years of writing about sex and porn has really broadened my libido. Things I never really quite got before are now permanent booths in the carnal carnival of my mind.

I probably would be the centerpiece in a Guido gang bang if the opportunity ever arose. I’m now forever enamored of insanely-subtitled Hungarian gay porn. And yes, enough time spent writing about Big Prick Teases, Macrophiles, and Muscle Pigs has left this tall vegetarian with a conflicting taste for bulked-up, ‘roided-out, jacked-up beef.

I don’t think anyone can quite account for why we’re attracted to what we are, but I have to wonder if the decade you’re born into and the beauty standard of the day don’t have a very formative effect on what catches your eye. I think The Hulk, He-Man, Conan, and Rambo must’ve had a profound influence on many a gay man. Porn seems to be reflecting that with the increasing amounts of what’s known as Muscle Porn — a sort of “wink wink” subgenre that’s all about the pornography of the body itself rather than explicit sex. The men featured in these productions are rapidly becoming name stars in their own right, and lately I’ve been frankly astonished by the amount of female-devoted muscle porn graced by massive women. It leaves me wondering if hetero men haven’t gotten a bad rap for too long when it comes to creating the stick figure beauty standard for the ladies.

Anyway, there’s not really one reason why male bodybuilders have always been so easily lured into gay porn, and muscle porn is no different. Bodybuilding is actually quite difficult to make a profit from, so money is surely a factor. Men who put that much effort into their physiques also no doubt get off on being looked at, while others crave physical documentation of themselves at their peaks. Either way, narcissism is a money-maker.

With mainstream gay porn in the doldrums thanks to too many assembly line models, here are ten pneumatic Gigantors with charisma to spare — ready to be drafted and bring star quality back: (read the full article)

Don’t try this at home.

When your average person hears that admonition, they think of the hazards of the latter-day Evel Knievel YouTube generation: teenage skateboarders ending up unwillingly straddling metal railings they fail to clear, borderline personalities with no fear responses leaping from high structures, and devil-may-care d-bags literally playing with fire.

When you write about sex, though, your thoughts immediately turn to the overly-creative, crazy-ass sex positions that directors dream up in fits of inspiration.

In a way I understand the need to push the envelope. There’s so much in the way of porn out there that producers begin to feel the intense need to distinguish their product from the next studio’s. Sometimes porn pairings seem less like couplings than they do the Olympics. See! Talon Cunningham nail a pole vault into co-star Blake Taylor’s waiting ass with a perfect dismount! Half of these guys must be moonlighting with Cirque du Soleil to pull this stuff off without spinal complications.

I wonder: how many injuries are there that arrive in emergency rooms due to aiming too high in the hay? How many occupational hazards in the form of dislocated hips and herniated discs take place on porn sets every day? Does insurance even cover a dick sprain?

So in the interest of the public good, I’ve compiled a list of ten Kama Sutra- (or Zalman King-) inspired positions best left to the professionals: (read the full article)

Authority.

We, the gays, have a complex and even masochistic relationship toward it — especially when it’s embodied in the male form.

Yes, much of our lives come down to rejecting the tyrannical father in his various incarnations, yet so many of our private fantasies orient themselves around carnally collaborating with him, sometimes besting him, but more often surrendering to him. The very institutions — law enforcement, the military, blue collar breadwinning, workin’ man chick-balling, sundry “butch” vocations whose brotherhood mentalities would be violated by a canny, chameleonic queer in their midst — that either oppress us openly or conspiratorially shut us out ultimately prove central fodder in our porn reveries. The dance we do therein is twofold; on one level we delight in an overheated and overblown variation of our oppression in which we’re sluts for authority, while on another we succeed in making the aloof Dude Culture our own by depriving it of its supposed virtues.

Making it our partner in crime.

Uniforms are, natch, obligatory tenants in gay porn iconography, and virtually every feature boasts some kind of fetishization of position, vocation, and the attire that accompany them. In the Village People lineups of our minds, a man in uniform is the human equivalent of catnip. None are so devoted to the job that they won’t bend the rules when an opportunity to unzip presents itself, and the abuse of power therein is a good time had by all.

Now, a catalogue of ten uniformed desires… (read the full article)

Despite one of the most soul-draining years from one of the most horrendous decades in recorded history, there was music. Good music. There’s really no particular order or rhyme to this list, though I’ve rambled out some reasons below. Start 2011 the right way, with some great (maybe new to you) new tunes. Happy New Decade Dudes.

Janelle Monai The Archandroid
Who knew records like this were even possible nowadays? Epic, mythic and tireless — like Prince’s Sign o’ the Times, but meatier and more flourished. Monae possesses rock, doo-wop, opera, folk, cabaret, jazz, quiet storm jams. Everything from Michael Jackson-inspired swing to Sarah Vaughn-cool vocal prowess. Archandroid conjures an entire realm that you’re sucked into, like Persephone or Alice. If you missed this disc I feel bad, sad and angry for you. (Video)

The Radio Dept. Clinging to a Scheme Because I’m still sad that The Sundays retired. Why do gifted artists feel compelled to settle down and have children (I’m talking to you, too, Mark Hollis)? Radio Dept. revel in shimmering, fuzzed-out Jesus and Mary Chain-like could-give-a-fuck tunemanship. Light as a zephyr but serious on hooks and charm. I think I played this record more than any other all year. In fact it’s playing right now. Video.

Broken Bells Broken Bells
True, this is a meticulously egghead-overseen project that hipsters across America hated (a good reason to cherish it) but each tune is really a multi-layered, well-oiled little music box; a sleepy happy gem that sparkles with all the subtle nuance Danger Mouse brought to the marriage. Video

Robyn Body Talk
This is the kind of music Abba would be making today if they matured into even better songwriters than they were. The mega sad club single Dancing On My Own makes you want to cry and shake your ass at the same time. How many artists can make a sound like that? Video.

Four Tet There is Love in You
This and Caribou’s Swim were my two favorite electronic records, well, Alva Noto’s For 2 too, but his stuff is something akin to a soundtrack for the Buddhist bardos, so it isn’t proper on a pop list. Of the lot, Four Tet showed the most deepening with his intricate manuevering of sonic layers and amazing vocal floaters. Lush and compelling. A song. (read the full article)

Porn, to me, can be boiled down to my simple need to admire large, gorgeous cock. I don’t really know what else it’s for, even as the studios labor to ensure that there are impressive train explosions or musical numbers sprinkled throughout the boffing. I can’t be alone when I say "Show me the dick."

Here’s a collection of the current crop of meat-rods that most reliably hold my attention.

Barrett Long has starred in what seems like hundreds of uninspired videos. Luckily, with a dick like his, inspiration is purely optional. It’s best when he’s demanding and talks dirty, of course. I dug his solo scene in Playback (available from Movie Mountain along with tons of his other videos), his recent stuff on My Brother’s Hot Friend (especially the scene where he destroys Kurt Wildwood’s cute little butt) and all that skeevy early stuff for Dink Flamingo.

Anton Adamos (a.k.a. Petri Kent, Axel Cane) is an enigma. I can’t tell you ten words about the man besides that timeless and sort of mysterious art shots of him have drifted all over the net over the past five years, and some of them look like they were taken in the ’80s while others look like modern studio shots. The only commercial video I know of which features him is Bel Ami’s XL Files Volume 3.

Harry Louis, a fixture on UK Naked Men, is known secondarily for his cute, perpetual smile, dangerous body, deep brown eyes, and primarily for his submarine-sandwich-style cock. No matter what strange get-up they put him in, or what sort of gaudy set they film him on, the godly cock is the main attraction. Don’t bother trying to look at anything else.

(read the full article)

I hate ads.

They’re just everywhere, and if we’re not being bombarded with commercials and billboards, then we get sore-thumb product placement and hidden plugs. As a minority, it’s a toss-up as to what’s worse: just being outright ignored by marketers or having people who categorically don’t understand a thing about you try to pander to your perceived interests.

The results can range from the eye-rolling, to the embarrassing, to the cringe-inducing. Just the casual assumptions about what’s universal are bad enough. Your average shaving or shower gel ad aimed at men will assert that men (read: real men) think about sports every minute and about chicks every other minute. I don’t do either, and yet I’m a user of both products. Huh.

Many is the woman I’ve met who complains that her husband can’t multitask or pick up after himself, yet a single gay guy like me doesn’t have a girlfriend or Blue Fairy to waft in weekly and clean my space for me. When’s the last time you even saw an ad for a household product that featured a man in it? Ever see a single father give a kid cough syrup? How come there are no gay couples in erectile disfunction ads, and more pressingly, why the fuck is everyone always in an outdoor bathtub holding hands?

The thing with advertising is that it’s so unnecessary. Ads create needs for products that didn’t previously exist before a team of execs decided they must, they sell unobtainable dreams, and they treat all of us like monolithic demographics with no social overlap. Gay ads — this encompasses not only directly-targeted merchandise like underwear or fitness equipment, but also Public Service Announcements, implicitly gay commercials, and natch, the Gay Panic ad — are often the worst because they tend to play to the lowest common denominator. A virtual porn aesthetic isn’t really pushed to the same degree in hetero-themed ads like it is in gay ones. Why, you’d swear all we do is fuck and work out! (read the full article)

Gay spectatorship: it used to be all about deciphering.

Before True Blood, Glee, Ugly Betty, and Modern Family, gay characters in television tended to be canny in-jokes among writers; the game was to see how far gay signifiers and innuendo could be pushed so as to register with one smaller audience while completely going over the head of another broader one. It’s a certain campy, broad, conspicuous, idiosyncratic, or “colorful” quality that marks these characters as somehow “other.” This is what accounts for the are-they-or-aren’t-they? inscrutability of Crypto-Gay characters — they have to be discerned by those in-the-know, and their natures are channeled through the eye of the beholder.

Mainstays like Dr. Smith from Lost In Space, Batman and Robin, half the cast of Bewitched, hothouse flower Monroe from Too Close For Comfort, and even more contemporary figures like Joey and Chandler from Friends, the Crane Brothers from Frasier, and ball-breaking Xena are likely to come to mind first, but I’ve assembled a gathering of ten characters who’ve hit home with me through the years and remained favorites who’ve largely managed to slip under the gaydar: (read the full article)

You’ve come a long way, baby.

It’s hard to believe in today’s hyper-produced, corporatized porn industry that there was a time when porn really wasn’t that pretty to watch. Gay porn stars may have kicked the ‘roids, tattooing, and manscaping into high gear, but their medium always required a certain level of physical presentability. Straight porn? Not so much. Men — despite the vital purpose they serve — occupy a decidedly secondary position in that product.

Many of the male stars employed as hardcore porn was introduced to the U.S. were not much to crow about, and if anything, their spindly, shag-headed, porn ‘stached aesthetic was deliberately utilized so as to avoid threatening the male viewer’s ego. Today, there are more manly lookers in straight porn than you can shake a dick at — with traditional gay types like spike-haired twinks, tanned frat boys, shaved-down bodybuilders, assertive daddies, and inked-up sex pigs becoming practically common — who are proving that foxy fuckers in skin flicks can actually attract straight male fanfare while garnering appreciative gay audiences.

It’s easy to take a Charles Dera, Evan Stone, or Nacho Vidal for granted, but what about the studs who paved the way for them? Prior to the Web making porn so accessible, many of us relied on our brother’s porn cache or pass-around videos from guys at school, meaning straight stars provided us with our maiden voyages into Smut City. (read the full article)