Are Pubes Making A Comeback?

Fosco has made clear his policy on pubic hair (hint: he likes it animal style). Whether it's women or men, Fosco just can't understand why anyone would want (to have or to touch) the genitals of a ten-year-old. Maybe I'm abnormal, but I like having sex with people who look like adults. And no, the irony that Fosco Lives! is the Google destination-of-choice for Koreans searching for "pubic hair shave" is not lost on him. But last week, for just a few days, it finally looked like someone may have gotten Fosco's message.

That's because, as you probably heard, New Jersey was considering a ban on Brazilian bikini waxing. Granted the ban would have been for health reasons, after two NJ women were hospitalized for infections from Brazilian waxes. And, in a sense, it wouldn't have been a new ban so much as enforcement against an already prohibited practice (genital waxing was never actually explicitly allowed in NJ, but regulators tended to look the other way). But still, it would clearly have been a victory for the forces of follicular rationality.

Of course, this is the kind of story that bad newspapers live for. And so naturally, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post had an early Christmas party. Here are some choice excerpts from their story:

The Garden State may be extra lush this summer.
[...]
Two women were recently hospitalized for infections stemming from no-follicle-left-behind procedure
[...]
But New Jersey spa owners say officials have no business legislating what women do with their Pine Barrens.

Now that's classy journalism! Why do I suspect that there were some pretty sexist lines in the original draft of this article? Because anything that has to do with female genitalia is inherently funny! Women have different genitals! Teehee! Actually, I'll admit I kinda laughed at the "Pine Barrens" line.

But terrible jokes about lady parts aren't the only examples of regrettable rhetoric that appeared in articles about this ban. Consider how cosmetologists, waxers, spa owners, etc. (who, by all accounts, would have lost huge sums of money under the ban) decided to cast the potential effects of the ban on their clients (as per this AP article):

"It's huge," [a salon owner] said, adding that her customers don't think their bikini lines are anyone's business but their own. "It's just not right."

She said many customers would likely travel across state lines to get it and some might even try to wax themselves.

Sound familiar? Yes, standard pro-choice abortion rhetoric has been redeployed to conjure up images of back-alley waxing and home waxes gone awry. Of course, Fosco is entirely sympathetic to this rhetoric when it's applied to abortion; however, there is something about using this argument to talk about bikini waxing that seems a bit trivializing--especially since this is not government telling women what to do with their pubic hair, but rather, the regulation of a specific voluntary hygienic procedure which may, under certain circumstances, be dangerous. Women are free to wax, pluck, or shave themselves however they want; this ban would only affect practitioners who charge for a certain kind of service. In Fosco's eyes, this ban has more in common with the regulation of tattoo parlors than it does with the regulation of a woman's right to choose abortion.

But alas, in the face of opposition from the powerful salon and spa lobby, the NJ ban is dead. We can all rest assured that women in NJ are still allowed to pay people to pull out all their pubic hair by the roots! Hooray! This is a fine day for feminism. Well, except for that part where Fosco suspects that Brazilian bikini waxing is one big male fantasy (and not a very savory one) in the first place.


[Actually, to be honest, Fosco didn't really understand the difference between Brazilian and other styles of bikini waxing until he researched for this post. Shouldn't he have learned all about that in health class? Luckily, Wikipedia has pictures!]

Image Credits. Fosco actually had fun picking out the images for this post. They are

• The album cover to Amorica by The Black Crowes.
  
• Treasure Trail (2003) by fabulous American artist Marilyn Minter.
  
• Bad Boy (1981) by the occasionally hilarious Eric Fischl. And yeah, that's probably like his mom.

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Hentai Goes High Culture

N.B., there are parts of this post (farther down) that might be a little NSFW. Be warned.

Somehow, Fosco managed to ignore most of the hullabaloo around last year's Takashi Murakami retrospective which started at the MOCA in LA and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum (among other places). Sure, Fosco skimmed the New Yorker review, but didn't pay much attention. Murakami just isn't quite Fosco's style.

Takashi Murakami (not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, whose exquisitely beautiful novels Fosco does love) is something of an art sensation. To Fosco, T. Murakami looks eerily like the future version of Hiro Nakamura from TV's "Heroes." Murakami's art, however, is not from the future--it's insistently of the present. I guess you could call his work "pop art"--in that it owes much to popular forms of animation and illustration (especially manga). Yes, there are lots of anthropomorphic flowers, mushrooms, and god-knows-what:

It's like the materialization of an LSD hallucination--at least, that's what I imagine it would it be like.

It's also relentlessly, and intentionally, commercial. You may recall the frisson caused by the inclusion, in the middle of the actual exhibit, of a fully-functioning Louis Vuitton boutique dedicated to selling Murakami's designs for Vuitton. As this piece in the Village Voice notes, the Vuitton boutique was one of the principle draws of the Murakami show in the first place. You may recognize this Murakami design for Vuitton:

If you think this pattern is unforgivably gaudy, you should see this design translated into actual decor in Fosco's December photograph of the Manhattan Louis Vuitton boutique:

It's eye-catching, sure; but isn't it all a little... vulgar?

Apparently, in all of Fosco's studied ignorance of 2008's Murakami-fest, he managed to avoid knowledge of one sculpture in particular. Somehow, Fosco missed (in Peter Schjeldahl's review of the retrospective) this description of

another, “My Lonesome Cowboy,” is of a masturbating boy whose ejaculate twirls upward like a lariat.

If you're wondering what on earth this might look like, Fosco's got your back. Behold!

Hell's bells, that's disturbing! Are you repulsed, yet unable to look away? Well, here are some more views:



The title, My Lonesome Cowboy (referring to an Andy Warhol film), is pretty great. And sure, there's something cute about his face (he is an anime boy, after all); and yes, I would probably kill to have his hair. But that cum lasso? Freaky. Which I guess is the point.

[Note: in the Village Voice piece, the author claims that the boy "has some kind of disgusting gray effluvia shooting out of his wiener." Ummm, I think we call that "semen." Art interpretation: Ur doin it rong.]

Want to know how Takashi Murakami himself would explain this sculpture? You can take an online tour of this room of the exhibition (choose Exhibition Tour, Part 1).

But wait, this story gets even better: the sculpture just sold at auction for over $15 million (when commission is included). As this blog notes, Sotheby's was expecting the piece to go for $3-$4 million, so this was pleasant surprise. As the shape+colour blogger notes, Murakami is so popular right now that he can do no wrong:

And when you can do no wrong, your life-sized sculpture of a bright-eyed anime manga-boy jerking off and whipping his jizz into a gigantic lasso around his head will sell at auction for $13.5 million US.

I guess that's how you know you've "made it."

Thanks to Todd for bringing this story to my attention.

If you want to read more about Takashi Murakami (or read some novels by Haruki Murakami), you can click through on these buttons:

Fosco will receive a tiny percentage and he will be grateful.

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"Wonder Years" Gets More Complicated

This story just gets more unpleasant. So of course, I have to write about it again.

You may remember thirteen-year-old Alfie Patten, the four-foot-tall British Fred Savage-lookalike who impregnated his fifteen-year-old girlfriend. Well, it turns out now that there is some question about paternity. Apparently, Alfie's girlfriend, Chantelle, may be something of what the British refer to as a "slutter." Indeed, there are already two other young men (ages 16 and 14) who claim that they could be the father of Chantelle's baby. And it looks like poor Alfie will have to take a DNA test. If only these kids lived in the US, then we could get Montel to settle the whole thing in one hour.

Of course, whether or not Alfie is the father, he's already won over this blogger with his intelligence and charisma:

Once indoors [Alfie] gave a series of clipped answers to a long list of questions by an eager reporter from The People.

When asked if he loved Chantelle he said: ‘Dunno.

Did you get her a Valentine's card? ‘No!’

Did you know how babies were made before you had sex with Chantelle? ‘Course’.

Do you like changing the baby's nappies? ‘It's OK but getting it back in the clothes is hard - the arms are the worst bit.’

Are you looking forward to getting back to school soon? ‘No, school's dead boring.’

What are your favourite subjects? ‘Dunno. Haven't got any. Not maths.’

What would you like to do when you grow up? ‘Go in the Army, but Mum says she won't let me.’

I'm going to guess that he will be begging to return to school in a few weeks. Something tells me that life with Chantelle and a baby is going to make school look like Free Cotton Candy Day at the carnival. He also sounds exactly like the kind of boyfriend that you'd expect for a thirteen-year-old boy; clearly he wooed Chantelle with his pillow talk:

CHANTELLE: Oh Alfie, do you love me?
ALFIE: Dunno.
CHANTELLE: Isn't my new jumper [sweater] pretty?
ALFIE: [shrugs]
CHANTELLE: Did you remember today is our anniversary?
ALFIE: Can I have a biscuit [cookie]?
CHANTELLE: Will you ring [call] me later?
ALFIE: Maybe. I'm playin "Halo."

And lest you think that conservatives (even the British variety) would let this story pass without making it into an exemplar of crumbling social morality:

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'It exemplifies the point we have been making about broken Britain.'

‘It's not being accusative, it's about pointing out the collapse in some parts of society of any sense of what's right and wrong.'

Of course, the first problem here is the question of the exemplarity of the Alfie Patten case: does this one occurrence really signal a collapse of an entire society? Or, to put it another way, is this kind of thing happening all over Britain? This is an empirical question (and I don't really want to bother doing the required research); however, let me bet that Iain Duncan Smith hasn't done that research either.

The second problem here is the assumption that this incident has anything to do with "any sense of what's right and wrong"--at least in the way that Smith seems to mean it. I think we can all agree that it's better when teenagers don't have babies; but there will then be a disagreement over the best way to make sure this doesn't happen.

On the wrong side, we have the sexual moralists (the "any sense of right and wrong" people). These are the folks who want to teach abstinence-only sex ed and sell purity rings. Which is all well and good--except for the part about how instilling a strong sense of "right and wrong" doesn't seem to have anything to do with teenage pregnancy rates (just ask Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol). If Iain Duncan Smith and the British conservatives find this hard to believe, I think we can arrange a nice tour of Wasilla, AK, or of the more Evangelical parts of the American South for that matter.

Is Fosco claiming to have the answer for preventing teenage pregnancy? Not quite--although contraceptive education is probably part of the solution. As for the problem of thirteen-year-olds having sex (with or without contraception), I think we have to consider the ways in which our culture sexualizes young people. If we are going to continue to conceptualize adolescence as the beginning of full sexuality, we cannot be too surprised when even little Fred Savage does the nasty.

Being Patti Scialfa

Music Monday concludes...

Fosco hopes you watched the rollicking Super Bowl halftime concert featuring the (apparently) ageless Bruce Springsteen (that man has more energy at age 60 than Fosco had at 16). It's a fun set, with smart art direction (the low "video wall" in the background is pure genius--Bruce should use that at all of his live shows). The highlight, however, is when Bruce does one of his trademark knee slides and plants his, er, crotch firmly into the lens of the camera. It happens in this video at 3:19:



Perhaps we have a candidate for a new definition in the Urban Dictionary: "Springsteen Super Bowl Slide: teabagging with a running start." Yes?

Headlines of the Day

By last night, Fosco had a full day of posts planned for today--and then all kinds of great stories showed up in the news today. There is nothing to do but to condense them all into some kind of "Headlines Digest."

• Black support for Prop 8 may have been exaggerated. Is it time to apologize to Sherri Shepherd? (Psst: the answer is NO).
  
• For you parents out there: one in five teens are sending sexually explicit photos of themselves online or via cell phone. Some parents worry whether this will come back to haunt these teens later in life. (Not unless they're stupid enough to include their faces.)
  
• Apparently, Bristol Palin is a teen role model for Alaskans. At least that seems to be the appropriate conclusion for Alaska's nineteen percent increase in teen pregnancy this year. Why is it that the states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy (Mississippi, Texas, Alaska) are also some of the most committed to religious "abstinence only" sex ed? Hmmm. Let's hope that Alaskan teens choose better names than "Twink" for their kids.
  
• Obama will nominate TV doctor Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. Why is this a bad idea? Well, Dr. Gupta may be an apologist for HMOs. He may also be a dick. By the way, does this mean that Greta Van Susteren should be Attorney General?

Bachelorette Party Musical

You may have noticed that Fosco is occasionally obsessed with the teen-ish stars of the High School Musical franchise. He especially likes it when they do things like tan too much, get nose jobs, or show off their naughty bits (while running Windows Vista).

And how cute are ZacFron and VanHudge as a "couple"? They photograph as so very much in love! They photograph so heterosexual with each other that ZacFron could never be gay.

And here's another fun photo:

Yes, that's Zac and Van with a fan in the adult section of a party store, posing in front of mildly-racy kitsch like tiny plastic penises.

What were they doing there? Fosco's sources tell him that Zac was cooking dinner for Van and needed some penis pasta to make with Alfredo sauce. Oh, and he needed a cock ring.

HSM Week: VanHudge Lives Better than You Do

Now that you've seen too much of High School Musical 3 star Vanessa Hudgens, you can imagine that semi-nude teen puttering around her very own house (recession be damned!).

It's in LA, it cost almost three million, and it sounds pretty shmoove:

There are six bedrooms and 6 1/2 bathrooms in 5,200 square feet. The property has a Pebble Tec pool and spa, waterfalls, cabana and a barbecue island. The kitchen has Thermador appliances and copper sinks. There is a wine cellar with glass doors and Mexican wrought iron.

Six bedrooms. Just think about how many scented candles and Christmas lights she'll use to decorate!

HSM Week: VanHudge Revealed!

In honor of HSM Week here at Fosco Lives!, Fosco is pleased to remind you what High School Musical 3 star Vanessa Hudgens looks like with most of her clothes off.


And yes, it's real.

BTW, I think Clarence Thomas would really like her.

The Week That Was

What's new, Pussycat? Whoa-a-whoa-a-whoa.

Lots of titbits over the past week. And what's the best way to deal with titbits? The unordered list!

Things worth considering:

• Canadian Thanksgiving. Fosco had another delicious Canadian Thanksgiving dinner with the amazing Michael and Laurel, just like last year. This year, there was a remarkable pumpkin cheesecake and Fosco's boyfriend Oz was able to join us for the holiday. Sadly, there are no clearly Canadian (giggle) traditions for Thanksgiving--not even curling! But maybe that's not a bad thing, considering that in Fosco's family, holiday traditions generally mean "arguing about religion" or "being diabetic."
  
  
• Can you deal with something funny? And disturbing? Very much of both? Then meet Old Greg:
  
  Trust me. This will haunt you all week. "I'm Old Greg."
  
  
• How hot is it to see pictures of sexy Prince Harry nipple-licking his bud? The answer is "very." You have to love frat boys, even their cross-cultural equivalent.
  
  
• I taught my first section of the quarter last Thursday, for a class called "The Gothic Imagination." It's very dark and it gives me a chance to pretend that I'm a goth kid. Fosco thought it might be funny to make Gothic section more gothic, ergo...
  Of course, unscented candles would have been more appropriate. This week, Fosco's going to wear eyeliner.
  
  
• The Michelin Guide released its NYC restaurant ratings this week. Fosco is pleased to note that he had a meal this year at one of only three three-star restaurants in New York: Jean-Georges. And it was extraordinary (someday Fosco will tell you all about it). Also thrilling: the fact that Fosco has also eaten at Michelin one-star wd-50 (which is still a pretty impressive rating).
  
  And how can you not appreciate the demotion (to 0 stars) of Tom Colicchio's Craft? Apparently he's spending a bit too much time making celebrities of barely-competent line cooks. (Fosco may lose his Foodie Cred for admitting this, but he LOATHES "Top Chef.")

I saw the best minds of my generation...

...censored by the FCC?

There's a great article in SFGate today about the potential for an obscenity fine for airing Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on the radio. As noted in the article, there is particular irony in this, because

fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem "Howl" was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines.

And they aren't kidding about crippling:

WBAI program director Bernard White fears that the FCC will fine the station $325,000 for every one of Ginsberg's dirty-word bombs.

And what dirty-word bombs! Some samples:

• "alcohol and cock and endless balls" (mmm, endless balls...)
  
• "who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy" (wait, is he talking about my college roommate?)
  
• "who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love" (oh god, who doesn't love sailors!)
  
• "who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may"
  
• "the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness" (must restrain self from making joke about "ultimate cunt.")
  
• "The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!" (A-fuckin-men, brother.)
  

You get the point: the poem totally rawks. But there's another reason why this story is close to Fosco's heart. You see, Fosco once aired "Howl" on the public airwaves and got himself into a little trouble.

A number of years ago, Fosco programmed and hosted a twentieth-century classical music show on community radio station WTJU Charlottesville. One Wednesday evening (during drive-time, no less), Fosco aired a work by Lee Hyla which set a recording of Ginsberg reading "Howl" to music. Fosco didn't think about it until the Classical Director showed up at the station... Then, the next day, Fosco had to meet with the Station Manager in order to write up an incident report. By the end of the week, every member of the station had to undergo mandatory obscenity training. The Station Manager was nice enough not to tell everyone who had caused all of the fuss, so it was quite entertaining to listen to the classical and jazz staff speculate as to which rap/rock DJ had caused so much inconvenience for everyone. Luckily, no FCC complaint was ever filed and so there were no fines, etc. However, Fosco did feel simultaneously embarrassed and proud to be (probably) the first classical music DJ to run afoul of the FCC's obscenity policies.

Of course, Fosco still feels that "Howl," as art, should be exempt from all obscenity rules. Come on, people: grow up.

It's like LOLtheorists, but with boobies.

Recent Discovery: You can give the LOL treatment to anything, even dirtee pitchurz (NSFW, from Fleshbot).

Tall Buildings Make Me Hot

In order to increase the inevitable carnage from the almost-assuredly-
sometime-in-our-lifetime Hayward Earthquake, the Powers-That-Be in San Francisco have decided the skyline needs another very tall building. Ergo, the Transbay Terminal of the future: a transportation hub with attached skyscraper. As we've learned in recent years from the MoMA and Carnegie Hall, a building ain't shit anymore if it don't got a tower attached to it. (Hmmm... I wonder if it's an accident that the same firm that built those two towers is building the Transbay...) I'm pretty sure there's an elementary school being built down the street from me in Santa Cruz that has a tower attached. "First Class Residential Living, Within Reach of the First Grade." Anyway...

The Transbay winning design, as chosen today by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, is the not-exactly-iconic glass dildo designed by Kelly Clarkson Kelly Pelli Clarke Pelli. Seriously, I think I've identified the inspiration for this building:

Yes, that's right. The new Transbay Tower is based on a "personal massager" (and no, not all skyscrapers look like one. Would you ever put this in your vagina? Not on purpose, that's for sure. Eek.)

Of course, Pelli Clarke Pelli aren't terrible architects. They are responsible for the Petronas Towers (which actually might resemble another kind of sex toy). There's also something to be said for the pagoda-meets-prison ambiance of their Humanities and Social Sciences Building at UC Riverside (Go Highlanders!). But damn, for a building that is supposed to become the anchor of the SF skyline, the Transdildo isn't very inspired.

It might be argued that the most important part of the design is not the tower, but the public spaces at street level: the park, the terminal, the promenades. Well maybe, but aren't all those spaces just going to be covered with urine and feces?

Thursday Quickies

There is a nasty haze of smoke over Santa Cruz today, thanks to a big (though non-threatening) wildfire over the mountains. Fosco has a scratchy throat today and he's blaming it on the smoke. I don't know how they're going to put out the fire, because it hasn't rained here since April or so. Maybe they'll just let it burn for a few months. I'm starting to feel like I'm living in John Mackey's LA (click on the "Griffith Park Fire" link to see some thrilling pics). But hey--that's LA! LA is supposed to be an inferno. This is the nice part of of California. There shouldn't be smoke in paradise, baby.

Fosco has no energy to write a long post right now. So here are some quickies:

• Speaking of the Inferno, there is a Purity Test based on the sins in Dante's Scholastic hell. Take it here. Fosco gets placed in the Seventh Level:
  

  Beyond the wood is scorching sand where those who committed violence against God and nature are showered with flakes of fire that rain down against their naked bodies. Blasphemers and sodomites writhe in pain, their tongues more loosed to lamentation, and out of their eyes gushes forth their woe.

  That sounds about right.
  
  
• Football-loving homosexuals unite! Outsports has created a head-to-head Gay vs. Straight Fantasy Football Contest. Can the gays play FF better than the hets? Well, Fosco played fantasy football for like eight years with eleven straightish people. He won the championship once, was runner-up once, and finished third twice. That's not bad. Respect the homos, football fans--we know a little somethin'.
  
  
• You may recall that Fosco loves "High School Musical" (and the sequel!). So how irresistible is it that a nudie pic of HSM star Vanessa Hudgens showed up on the internet today [link is sorta SFW, thanks to Photoshop]. Even better, the always reliable TMZ confirms that the pic is real. I bet Disney will be really happy, because any publicity is good publicity, right?
  
  Of course, a nude VanHudge still doesn't compare (in Fosco's book) to a shirtless Zac Ephron.
  
  
  Even better, there is a report that Zac's orange tan is fading.
  
  
• You may remember Ted's infatuation with the line "It was like watching a dog play the piano" (over at the Gideonse Bible). It's a good line.
  
  Now Fosco has come across a similar line that he's pretty fond of. From yesterday's Gawker post on socialite Tinsley Mortimer's new blog:
  

  It's like My Little Pony learned how to type!

  Fosco is thinking about changing his whole blog concept so that he could claim that title.

Sunday Reading: Dan Harper wants your kids to squirt his car.

It's Sunday: time for another column from the inimitable Dan Harper.

A somewhat dull offering today, although it does seem to get away from him toward the end. He starts with "the house that we lived in for 40 years, which we sold a few months ago" and ends with a story about "the family Ford [that] delivered us to California for the last time 50 years ago."

And in between, there's some weirdness with a carwash:

Kids of every age and color swarmed all over it, scrubbing absentmindedly while they watched me through the car windows. For a few minutes I was the fish in a fish bowl.

At one time there were more than a dozen kids scrubbing and squirting my car. After this ferocious drubbing stopped, I rolled down my window and asked a plump little girl if they were finished with me. She thought it over and said, 'Yes, you can go now.'

I wouldn't let my kids wash his car.

Halloween: The Carnivalesque OR The Return of the Repressed

Everyone kept telling me that Halloween in Santa Cruz is a "thing"--as in, a thing not to be believed. This seemed strange to me as I haven't taken Halloween seriously since, oh, around 1985. Maybe five years ago, I dressed up--but that was only to attend a party. So Halloween being a "thing" here is pretty strange to me.

But Fosco is nothing if not a good sport, so he dressed up.

You know those "conceptual costumes" that are really popular with college students? The ones where they dress up as an idea or a pun or a phrase? And all because:

• college students are too clever for their own good.
  
• they're broke and it's easier to make a clever sign than to buy/rent a full sexy nun's habit.

Well, Fosco hates those kinds of costumes. Hates them.

And yet... Fosco is ashamed to admit that his empty pockets (did you know that UC grad students don't receive their first paycheck until November 1? It's true.) and excessive cleverness got the better of him, causing him to resort to costuming himself as... A THEORY. And not just any theory, sadly, but Lacan's Theory of the Divided Subject (the barred S, for those of you who are keeping score at home). I'm not proud of this, but luckily, there are no pictures.

I do have pictures of better costumes, such as those worn by Best Couple Ever nominees Michael and Laurel. As you can see below, Laurel is Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, despite the fact that she is unquestionably lovelier. Michael is tricked out brilliantly as Canadian hockey announcer (and all-around nutjob) Don Cherry.



The Santa Cruz Halloween thing involves going downtown (to the Pacific Avenue shopping district) and people-watching. How could this be entertaining? I guess I forgot to mention that 15,000 other people do the exact same thing.

And it's true: I could not believe Halloween in Santa Cruz could be such an event. For almost ten blocks, Pacific Avenue was packed with thousands and thousands of people in costumes, many/most of them drunk. What were the popular costumes? It varied, not surprisingly, by gender.

Popular Male Costumes

• Nacho Libre
  
• Borat
  
• Ghostbuster (I know! Can you believe it? I think that was my 1985 costume.)
  
• Jedi
  
• sheepfucker (we saw THREE! see one below)

Somehow this guy (whoever he is) fails to be appropriately embarassed. Sigh.

And for women?

• sexy devil
  
• sexy butterfly
  
• sexy angel
  
• sexy cowgirl
  
• sexy woman

Or, perhaps it would be more succinct this way...

Popular Female Costumes

• whore

I really wanted to take a picture that would illustrate this point, but I felt a bit uncomfortable taking pictures of scantily-clad whore-women. Finally, I snapped the photo below from a distance. As far as I can tell, each of the women in it are a different variety of whore...


Does this make anyone else uncomfortable?

As a grad student in literature, there are two ways I like to think about this kind of Halloween event. On the one hand, the downtown scene seems clearly an example of Bakhtin's "carnivalesque"--the state of social disorder/misrule in which authority is (temporarily) overturned. I always thought this sounded like fun; now I'm not so sure. If Santa Cruz Halloween is a good example of the Bakhtinian Carnival, then it's actually pretty scary. Last year at SC Halloween, there were seven stabbings; this year, with increased police presence (and floodlights), there were only two (plus several melees). Although most of the violence seems to be gang-related, it's still pretty scary to be in the middle of a huge crowd where

1. identity is almost totally concealed
   
2. most people are intoxicated or high
   
3. the police (despite being nearby) aren't close enough nor powerful enough to re-install order
   
4. there are plenty of non-costumed middle-aged male spectators standing on the streets ogling the lingerie-clad women

Now, I don't want to live in a police state (did I ever think I would start a sentence like this?), but there is something to be said for everyday norms of public interaction.

The other way of thinking about Halloween is in terms of the Freudian "uncanny"--as the "return of the repressed." But what does this mean for Santa Cruz Halloween? My colleagues and I are puzzled. All of the sexuality on display on Pacific Avenue would seem to be a good candidate for repression IF these costumes weren't so similar to what women wear to go dancing every other weekend of the year. It's hard to consider this spurt of Halloween over-sexuality as a return of the repressed, if sexuality isn't repressed in the first place. Are our notions of Halloween now absurdly out-of-date? Has it become a holiday devoted not to the scary or the uncanny, but to the frankly sexual? I think I would feel more comfortable about this if it weren't just the women who ended up dressing like whores. Can I see some sexy men next Halloween?

Oh yeah, and it was freezing that night (well, actually around 45, but that's cold for here...), so Fosco got a smidge of a cold.

Why Fosco has a cold today

Yesterday evening was the first rain of the semester and so... well... things get a little weird here at UCSC when it rains.

As Gadamer once said: a tradition isn't really a tradition until there is nudity involved.

I think Gadamer also asked (in Truth and Method I believe): how many of your students have seen your penis?

Is Mark Foley just being misread?

So there's this (now former) US Representative Mark Foley who seems to have conducted inappropriately sexual IM conversations with underage (male!) Congressional pages. This is a seamy story with many deliciously juicy angles, including:

• he was a high-ranking member of the Republican Congressional leadership.
  
• his legislative priorities were focused on "championing laws against sexual predators" (NYT)
  
• the House Republican Leadership may have known about his antics for almost a year (and kept it hush-hush).
  
• he is, apparently, that rarest of unicorns: A Gay Republican.

Is it possible to drown in irony? Glub, glub, glub...

But, perhaps we're jumping to conclusions here. As Fosco knows, IM can be a tricky way to communicate. Unfortunately, it is often the only way for one to communicate with anyone under 20. Before Fosco hired his full-time personal assistant Geoffrey, he often employed several teenage interns of his own. And let me tell you, there were some IM-related misunderstandings--often stemming from the fact that specific lines of text were taken out-of-context by concerned parents, FBI agents, etc. Is it possible that the Liberal Media is ignoring parts of these messages--the parts that would reveal that they were actually intended innocently?

To speak to that question, Fosco will present some of his own IMs to his teen boy interns that have been intentionally misinterpreted by his enemies, typically by refusing to notice the second half of each IM conversation:

Case 1
FOSCO: what r u wearing?
CASEY04: tshirt and shorts
FOSCO: love to slip them off of u
FOSCO: cuz its gonna snow
FOSCO: and if u get sick i cant give u time off
FOSCO: put on a coat

Case 2
FOSCO: i want u on all fours on my rug
TIMMY_S: huh?
FOSCO: i lost a contact. i cant see it.

Case 3
FOSCO: bring me ur underwr
HOTWRESTLER06: why?
FOSCO: i wanna sniff em
FOSCO: cuz i thk i may be allergic to ur laundry detergent
FOSCO: and i have to find out before i get hives agin

Case 4
FOSCO: show me ur dick
FOSCO: cheney
FOSCO: action figure
FOSCO: sorry my im is acting screwy
FOSCO: but id love to see that action figure
FOSCO: i hear its funny

Case 5
FOSCO: wanna go to fcuk?
SPICY_TEEN17: u wanna fuck?
FOSCO: no fcuk = french connection uk. its my fave store and i nd u to buy me a coat
FOSCO: cuz its gonna snow

So let's not judge Rep. Foley until we get the FULL transcripts of these "sexually explicit" IMs. Fosco would hate to see another innocent homosexual brought down by a vicious media attack (like how Joyce Carol Oates alleged that James McGreevey killed all those teen vagrants). Shame on you, Liberal Journalist/Short-Story Writer Media Complex!

"It's all right, cause I'm... having sex with two ladies."

[N.B.: all links in this post are Safe for Work--mainly because the naughty bits haven't been leaked yet...]

Fosco is not ashamed to admit that he is a big fan of celebrity sex tapes. At the most basic level, Fosco likes to watch people having sex--what could be wrong with that? And then, if one of those people is either incredibly attractive (as many celebrities are) or incredibly famous... well, it just makes it better.

I think that another reason that I like celebrity sex tapes is that it allows a (somewhat) authentic glimpse into the private life of a person who we tend to encounter under extremely controlled circumstances. When you were in college, didn't you ever wonder what your professors were like at home? Didn't you ever find it titillating to run into them in the supermarket and to discover that they buy "Lucky Charms"? My fascination with sex tapes is similar.

As a connoisseur of celebrity sex tapes, I don't necessarily find all of them erotic, but I do find them all interesting: for every really hot tape (e.g., Colin Farrell), there is one that is unintentionally hilarious (e.g., Fred Durst. Poor, poor Fred Durst) or mildly disturbing (e.g., Tonya Harding). So naturally, I was salivating to see a headline proclaiming a "Saved by the Bell" sex tape!

If you were to hear the words "Saved by the Bell" and "sex tape" in the same sentence, what would you think?

I know that I would have my fingers crossed, repeating over and over again: "Mario Lopez... Please let it be Mario Lopez"

Or perhaps you might think: "This isn't news--I already saw Showgirls."

But no. Apparently the universe has a sense of humor because this newly-discovered sex tape is of... Screech.

The full tape is still not available (not, at least, to my knowledge), but you can see the non-naughty beginning and read some details about the rest of it here (courtesy of TMZ.com).

As far as I'm concerned, there are three juicy teasers:

1. Reportedly, Screech sexually frolics with (my apologies to Kander & Ebb) "two ladies" (Beedle dee, dee dee dee).

2. At one point, Screech gives one of the girls a [shudder] "dirty sanchez"--that disgusting meme of recent pop culture (anyone remember that episode of Veronica Mars last season where a character makes a "dirty sanchez" joke? That may be the filthiest joke I've ever seen on network TV. Not that I'm complaining).

3. In his post-coital monologue into the camera, he suggests that this tape should result in him gaining a certain number of "points" in what is apparently some kind of sex contest with "Mark." The source of the extra points is bleeped in the video, but you can read his lips... (and there is context). More tantalizingly, who is Mark? Could it be his SbtB castmate Mark-Paul Gosselaar? And if so, don't you think that Mark is outscoring him by like a million points?

The whole thing makes you wonder whether, despite the fact that the only appropriate feelings to have toward his character on "Saved by the Bell" were pity and mockery, Dustin Diamond may be having a cooler life than you are. And what do you suppose Jaleel White is up to? I bet it's dirty.

Now, I'm not saying I would pay to see Screech's sex tape. Well, actually, maybe I would. At any rate, if you come across a copy, send it to your Uncle Fosco.

"My truth is that I am a gay American."

Ah, those famous words. Words that will be someday be etched onto the walls of the James McGreevey Monument in Trenton. Or, at the very least, scribbled on the wall of a bathroom stall at Rest Stop 59 (maybe with a phone number?).

Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's book is out today. It's titled The Confession and, judging for the excerpts printed in the Sunday Times, it is indeed chock full of confessing.

Here's a naughty bit:

I visited bookstores in New York and New Jersey and had sex in the small booths there until I became too famous to risk discovery. I lurked around parkway rest stops, exchanging false names and intimacies with strangers.

And here's another:

Moonlight squinted through the stained-glass windows into our garden, catching an inviting eye or a face stretched in ecstasy. I looked forward to my visits there, sometimes two or three a week. I quickly learned whom to approach and whose advance to wait for, when to move quickly, which posture said “no thanks” and which said “please.”

Oh yeah... now who's bringing sexy back?

[By the way, did anyone actually edit this book? "Moonlight squinted?" Ugh.]

And about all that corruption (you know, that non-gay reason he had to resign)? Well, that's mostly his staff's fault:

I tried to stay as naïve about this horse trading as possible. But I allowed my staff to intimate things to donors.

Intimate things? Like what, Jim? That you could get them Streisand tickets?

Strangest of all, it seems that the book doesn't even acknowledge that McGreevey picked up and killed all those teen vagrants. [Hint: follow the link, read the story, laugh at the joke.]

Seriously, though, isn't it amazing that the Oates story appeared only one month after McGreevey resigned? That woman works fast.

"Mom, Dad, I shaved off my pubic hair!"

When Fosco was in college, Playboy did a pictorial feature of the "Girls of the Ivy League." My organic chemistry lab partner ended up being one of the two featured models from the Big H (and she's a doctor now). One day I ran into her in the Science Center and she crowed the news (and showed me the polaroids from her session). I never quite understood why she wanted to do it (and her quotes in this Crimson article make it seem even more confusing--posing nude isn't that much different from posing semi-nude). But it was actually fascinating to see a person that you see everyday (and who doesn't actually look that much like a model, although she's cute) airbrushed into full pinup glory.

I think there are a number of interesting questions when college students pose for skinmags. How can you not be fascinated by the idea of generally enlightened and intelligent college women lining up to pose for Playboy? What is life on campus like for these women? What do their parents think? And, ten years from now, do you worry that it will come back to affect your professional reputation? So interesting!

So let us consider Playboy's "Girls of the Big 12"(link SO not safe for work) pictorial (I don't follow these things, truly, but there's this thing called Fleshbot...). What can we learn from this?
[N.B., I used to have direct links to the individual pix below, but they get redirected. The curious reader will have to go to the "Girls of the Big 12" link above and figure out which picture is being referred to in the items below (it's not too hard).]

• If you pose wearing only a cowboy hat and chaps, it's important to do it tastefully, according to Texas A&M student Tasia Bauman:
  

  Bauman said she thinks the photo is "tastefully done," and her parents and grandparents agree.

  You can tell it's a tasteful photo because she's wearing her dress thong. Read the rest of the story in the local newspaper.
  
• And what if haven't exactly told your parents that you posed? Oh, and what if you're so worried about their reactions that you don't want to reveal their names? Well, then you probably shouldn't do an interview with the local paper.
  
• It seems that future playmates should probably major in kinesiology or exercise physiology. Apparently, knowledge of the physical limitations of the human body is useful when you want to sit in a sink (she's the one from UTexas who is posing with a huge jug of popcorn).
  
• Did you know that, in addition to cattle-rustling, naked women also enjoy making out with each other in the snow? Although such behavior is apparently noteworthy enough to merit a column in the Denver Post.
  

I feel like I've learned a lot from this exercise, but there is still a major unanswered question: why do none of these women have pubic hair? Granted, Fosco hasn't had sex with a woman in a number of years, but he's pretty sure he remembers some hair down there. When did shaving become so standard, so common, that every woman in this pictorial does it? How did this happen?

Heterosexual porn is so strange.