The initial trailer is ready for Cianna P. Stewart’s new documentary It’s Not Porn: Behind the doors of a modern pin-up company. As a reminder, the basic treatment is as follows:
In the world of erotic photography, sexy women are objects whose pictures garner huge profits for other people. A handful of young entrepreneurs have decided to upset this system, putting control into the hands of the models & photographers, challenging who defines “sexy,” and creating a new revenue model for the next wave of the internet. Will they succeed? And what happens when regular women become known as online pin-up stars?
Cianna is still looking for investors to help complete the film, which she hopes to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March 2010; so if you happen to know anyone willing to buy shares, head over to Thumbnail Productions and get in touch.
The company being profiled, Zivity has been garnering a fair amount of attention in the press lately, and the quality of the photoshoots are outstanding. If you think you’ve got something to offer, then head on over and apply to be in the beta … it’s currently free, but when the site comes out of public beta early next year, it will be subscription-based; probably around $10.00/month.
I’ve got ten invites to give out, and I’ve been hoarding them … but if you want one, let me know (and why).
Customs agents at U.S. airports don’t need any evidence of wrongdoing to search the contents of passengers’ laptop computers, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
Reinstating child pornography evidence against a passenger at Los Angeles International Airport, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a computer is no different from a suitcase, a car or any other piece of property subject to search at an international border.
Although police need probable cause - specific evidence of criminal activity - to search someone on the street, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that no such evidence is necessary for a border search. Courts have also ruled that an international airport is the equivalent of a border.
Border agents would need grounds for suspicion before conducting a body search, but a “piece of property simply does not implicate the same dignity and privacy concerns as highly intrusive searches of the person,” the court said. Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote the 3-0 decision.
Hopefully, when this makes it to the Supreme Court (and I’m sure it ultimately will), they’ll make the right decisions with regards to privacy.
It’s reasonable to ask someone to turn on their laptop to ensure that it’s not a bomb, but what reason could someone possibly have for looking at files stored on the computer without some sort of probable cause?
To me, despite the Ninth Circuit’s decision (which is surprising, since the Ninth Circuit is usually one of the more “liberal” Courts of Appeal), this smacks of a direct violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights.
For those that aren’t familiar, the Fourth Amendment states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In today’s age of electronics, I’d call a person’s laptop to effectively be “papers, and effects” … even if the defendant in this case is a pervert carrying child porn, the Customs officials should have never looked at the the files on the laptop without probable cause.
And nowhere, in any of the articles that I’ve found thus far, has there been any indication that this was the case. Instead, they’re claiming that “hey, we can open your luggage to make sure you’re not carrying drugs, so that means we can search all of your business and/or personal documents on your laptop at will as well.”
Talk about a slippery slope … once again I think that Blackstone’s Formulation should rule the day. As a reminder, Blackstone’s Formulation states, “it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”
I’m taking a few days off from work because, well, I just needed to take a few days off.
I was originally planning to go down to Fountain Hills, AZ (where my mom and stepdad live), to cheer on Kathy Sherwin, et al, at the NMBS race down there, but due to finances (and lack of planning, other than requesting the time off), this didn’t happen.
Now I’m just trying to relax and decompress. Unfortunately, like my normal work week, I’m still only getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night. I need to get out on the bike, and yet, I wasted a perfectly good riding day yesterday.
What’s worse than knowing what the solution to a problem is, and not being able to motivate yourself to do it? My life is so decidedly un-Big Ring these days, it’s unreal. Dysthymia in action (or is that dysthymia inaction?).
I did go to the Bike Porn showing at the warehouse last night; which was really quite interesting in the various ways that bicycle pornography can be interpreted; from the slightly erotic panning of sculpted lugs on a handcrafted steel frame, to the comedic idea of two bikes making love to each other, to a freak-bike builder lusting after high-end boutique racing bikes, to actual hardcore porn involving a bicycle … certain aspects of the latter were erotic and well-done; other aspects were just disturbing, at least to me.
You can view the trailer on Blip.TV … be forewarned, it is definitely not safe for work, or for people who don’t want to see nudity or anything remotely explicit.
Ran into the Wolfe, just after the screening and chatted far too briefly. Sometimes it’s interesting how easy it is to “talk” to people online, yet how difficult it can be face-to-face, when you’re not really sure what to say.
Shortly thereafter was an impromptu running of the Salt City Sprints with a number of exciting match-ups; in a few of the races, in keeping with the theme of the evening, a number of people (men and women alike) stripped down to skivvies, or less in a few cases, to try and gain a competitive advantage over their rivals (or maybe just to give the audience a thrill) …
The most exciting match of the evening was the fully-clothed face-off between Legal Messenger, Inc. (LMI) owner/dispatcher Jason Copier, and LMI messenger Patrick Beecroft which finished in a dead heat at 13.74 seconds. The battle for sprint supremacy between messenger and dispatcher was not settled last night.
The evening broke up about midnight, with many heading off to the Gallivan Center for a Midnight Mass, while I drove home (because, as you know, I drive to bike events rather than actually riding), and sat on the couch for another 3 hours watching stupid late-night television (I don’t even remember what was on) before finally wandering off to bed for a fitful 5-hours of sleep, waking up this morning at 8:30 to face another bleak, boring day … I’ve got to get out on the bike today, even if for only a short 10-miler, before the weather gets shitty.
An old friend of mine in San Francisco, Cianna Stewart (one of the Sexiest Geeks Alive), is becoming quite a prolific independent filmmaker … her latest project, just going into production, will be a documentary about Zivity.com, a new online social network for connoisseurs of pin-up photography.
Cianna’s basic treatment of the film is as follows:
It’s Not Porn: Behind the doors of a modern pin-up company
In the world of erotic photography, sexy women are objects whose pictures garner huge profits for other people. A handful of young entrepreneurs have decided to upset this system, putting control into the hands of the models & photographers, challenging who defines “sexy,” and creating a new revenue model for the next wave of the internet. Will they succeed? And what happens when regular women become known as online pin-up stars?
Now if I can just figure out a way to get an invite to the beta.
Cianna is looking for investors to help finance the film; so if you happen to know anyone willing to buy shares, head over to Thumbnail Productions and get in touch. For those that want to support, but can’t afford to the extent of investing, donations will also be accepted, with a thank you to be determined (I’ve suggested a private premiere screening, or a copy on DVD) …
… I need to take a page from Big Jonny’s book over at DrunkCyclist.com, and start posting porn on my blog. Either that or celebrity sex stuff.
Already the posts which gets the most traffic are a post from this past November indicating that curvier women are smarter (and my attraction to same) which features a vintage photo of a woman’s naked behind, and my celebrity sex list, with a nice photo of a fully clothed Cate Blanchett.
Then, earlier this week, I posted a video from the New Pornographers, and boom … another traffic spike. I still haven’t figured out what search words people are using to find these pages either, because even entering very specific search terms like “Cate Blanchett celebrity sex list” puts me well down the second page of results. I mean, my site is hardly search engine optimized for celebrity porn.
But such is life. It brings me some traffic, and perhaps some of the people who hit the site like it enough to keep coming back and my readership slowly grows. And that can’t be a bad thing.
This was one of the most fascinating movies I’ve seen in a long time …
I was first drawn in by the description of the film on Netflix.com, which describes the film as:
Director John Cameron Mitchell delivers an unbridled look at the New York City underground, focusing on a group of hipsters who frequent a downtown club renowned for its lascivious ways. Through graphic polymorphous sexual couplings — and using an ensemble cast composed largely of first-time actors — the film chronicles each character’s erotic journey of self-discovery in a raw and riveting fashion.
Other than the above description, I knew very little about the film other than that it appeared as a suggestion on Netflix due to other films I have seen, and I just stuck it in the queue because it seemed interesting.
Then, last night, IFC showed the final, “Extremes” episode of their Indie Sex series of short documentaries. The documentary discussed how sex has been portrayed in independent film throughout the years, and how in recent times, filmmakers are really pushing the envelope even further by incorporating unsimulated sex into their films. Some call it pornographic, but others call it art … I think it really comes down to how the sex is portrayed.
In any case, one of the films discussed in this episode was, in fact, Shortbus …
The film itself has an interesting amalgam of characters, including a married couples-counselor/sex-therapist (played by Sook-Yin Lee) who has never had an orgasm herself, a gay couple who are wondering if they should open up their relationship, and a dominatrix who has troubles connecting with people on an emotional level.
I didn’t really expect the sex scenes to be quite as graphic as they actually were; but the manner in which they were filmed really did bring it out of the world of pornography, and into the realm of art. This flim wasn’t your typical XXX fuck-fest, but really explored the characters’ development and motivations; the emotions were very real, as were the orgasms, both male and female.
Included on the DVD version which I watched is also a documentary called “Gifted and Challenged: The Making of Shortbus”, which is quite captivating in-and-of itself.
Cianna’s basic treatment of the film is as follows:
Just got done watching the film 
