If I were in Portland for NYE, I can guarantee that I would be at Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure New Year’s Eve. If you’ve ever read the words in an adult publication, you are most likely familiar with Darklady’s work. She is a successful prolific journalist and sexpert and knows so much about so many of my favorite things. She describes her areas of expertise as “adult entertainment industry, free speech, internet technology, and alternative sexuality” and I’d have to agree that is deliciously accurate.
What you may not know is that Darklady Productions, Inc. also produces a series of good events for the perverse. We’ve got a little taster gallery of event photos from her Burlesque-a-thon themed 2008 Portland Masturbate-a-thon and her 2007 NYE Masquerade. I’m always down for wearing giant hoop skirts which knock everything over, although, because I don’t have a real hat head, sometimes crowns can be difficult to fit. Tiaras work fine though. Yes, I’m planning an outfit in my head for an Empire of Pleasure themed event I probably won’t be in town to attend; I work too much, but it sounds really fun. Darklady described the theme, saying:
“The snows are melting and Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure has physical, emotional and spiritual warmth to spare. Pay homage to empires past, present and future while lovingly indulging your senses in celebration of life and the coming New Year. Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure pays homage to days past, present and future that shape us. Whether your favorite “imperial” spreads like butter or starred Shaka Zulu, the Son of Heaven, the Chrysanthemum Throne, Imperium Romanum, Stormtroopers or genuinely Byzantine thinking, Darklady invites you to lovingly indulge in a celebration of the senses and New Year.”
They will also have giveaways from Big Teaze Toys, Topco Toys, Taboo Video, Stockroom and Astroglide too if you count the fact that Astroglide is sort of sponsoring the play room. They take their play seriously in the Pacific NW. Plus all you can eat Mediterranean buffet. Mmmmm.
You can get more info at Darklady’s site and RSVP to Darklady@darklady.com.
The sexy lead-off picture for our Darklady photo gallery is of her and Dale the Nail from this year’s Portland Masturbate-a-thon, photographed by Bryan Grimes. Darklady and I were chatting about her party and just random stuff going on and this photo made her think of a great story she shared:
“It’s so weird about Dale and I. We were punk teens back in the 70s/80s and hung out downtown — then dropped out of contact until after 2000 when we discovered I was writing throwing parties and writing about sex for a living and he was hanging from hooks and creating weird “guerrilla art.”
Nice to know we didn’t all grow up to become accountants and housewives.“
I don’t usually share shoot stories from BlueBlood.com on the front page of BlueBlood.net, but this one is just too good not to share. You’ll have to be a member of the free forums to see sample shots though and only paid up members of BlueBlood.com get to see the whole set in all its naughty glory.
It was one of those beautiful wet Portland days when Voltaire, Forrest Black, and I drove all around town looking for a good spot to shoot. Voltaire guided us to this railroad crossing underpass, but it turned out to be under construction. Never ones to be daunted by such a minor inconvenience as heavy machinery and tons of people around, Voltaire and I made a beeline for the bulldozers while Forrest stayed in the rental car as lookout.
Voltaire had just handed me her underwear and lifted her neon green skirt, when a construction worker waved me over. I was bummed because we were not going to have good light to shoot by the time we found a new location. But I came when he beckoned because I’m a nice girl like that. I think he was the construction foreman and he told me it was cool if we wanted to shoot pictures to our hearts’ content, but please do not actually climb up in the seats on the trucks because the city’s insurance won’t cover that. The guys working construction didn’t even roll up on us to ogle. The foreman and everyone was so nice that I actually asked Voltaire not to get in the seats.
I think that, even with our good behavior, she looks most excellent in the big gravel shovel and in the danger zone and I’m really pleased with how these shots came out. I hope you all enjoy them too. It was quite an adventure and, yes, I did just give yours truly and Voltaire good girl points for shooting erotic nudes in public but only near the seats of trucks and not actually in them. Full series available on BlueBlood.com. This is Voltaire’s 17th appearance on BlueBlood.com and it definitely won’t be her last!
The vid features interviews with designer Rachel Face and model London Lunoux. You will see in the interview with Rachel that she definitely uses the word stripper bunches when talking about this project. (Etiquette note to the boys in the audience: You are still safer in cities which are not Portland, if you go with the word dancer, rather than stripper.) You can spot me shooting the aforementioned photo gallery in the video and see Forrest Black’s back over by our video camera. And, of course, you can see some of the stripping dance routines, as the models show off the clothes.
Yes, I know that Rachel Face is called Rachael Reckless in the video and you all can ask Voltaire yourself why she is called another name. Sometimes strippers will dance under different names at different clubs. Sometimes models will use different names on different sites. Sometimes the punk rock nickname someone is using in 2001 or 2002 might evolve into something else by 2008, as they get new tattoos. This is all normal. Like the bard says, a Briar Rose by any other name will still smell as sweet.
Note to RIAA: I have no idea whether the songs used are licensed and, although Blue Blood did shoot some video that night, this is all Sean Strauss and hosted by YouTube, so all credit goes to him.
I have had a lot of fun in Portland before and I’ve shot a bunch in Portland before. So I was down for a trip, a few weeks ago, when long-time Blue Blood hottie Rachel Face called me up and said that she’d been designing disposable clothing made out of trash and she was having a fashion show she’d love me and Forrest Black to come up and do some press coverage on. She had messaged me online about shooting some new sets for BlueBlood.com and I often enjoy shooting trips more if there is an event to shoot. Rachel invited me and Forrest Black to stay at her place, but we figured she would be crazed getting ready for her fashion show, so we stayed at EroticBPM HQ instead.
It’s not that Rachel didn’t tell me excitedly about how there would be all these strippers there. Hot girls who dance in Los Angeles usually prefer to be called dancers, but Portland cuties throw the word strippers around all the time. Yet I hadn’t quite grasped the nature of the venue. The Trash Factory fashion show was at a club called Devil’s Point. Portland peeps are probably starting to smirk now, as it occurs to them what I did not know. Never having been to Devil’s Point, I had assumed the Trash Factory fashion show venue would be a nightclub with maybe some go-go dancers or maybe a place full nude dancers went to get a beer . . . when not actually, ya know, nude.
Humorously, I had not realized it was an actual strip club. Doh! Nonetheless, the Devil’s Point people were helpful and nice and the photography did turn out awesome, if I do say so myself. Check the photos out here and check the club out when in Portland.
So, after knowing each other for nearly a decade, and working together on multiple projects, over many years, I finally finally got to meet Scott Owens of EroticBPM fame in person! We once almost met in the flesh when he got stuck at LAX on a layover, but I’d just finished being somewhere one good friend of mine was attempting to sleep with the husband of another good friend of mine and having to give a police report on some psycho who was incoherently threatening me outside a nightclub for firing a girl she just met and barely knew but had a crush on or something. So anyway, I didn’t think I’d be at my charming best when I got to LAX, which also happens to be my least favorite California airport.
Anyway, Forrest Black, who is in charge of the look and feel of all Blue Blood sites, and I visited Portland and stayed with Scott and his charmingly negative head coder Antisocial and his beautiful bride (who, in a flash of small world, turned out to be a model from some of the earliest naughty sets I published from photographer Tom Hunscher.) We had an amazingly good time just hanging out in their gargantuan Pacific NW headquarters with them and their three very cute and almost disturbingly friendly and well-adjusted cats.
We also got to see old friends from our DC stomping grounds. We shot new stuff of the always fun Voltaire and of Rachel Face. Rachel has a new clothing line and we shot that, as well as a whole passel of new hotties. Parts of the trip were really bizarrely and gratuitously stressful, but most of it was really super nice. Portland is so beautiful and the air is so clean and we got to go up on the volcano which is the largest within city limits in the USA.
But the point I really must make here is that, when I wanted to connect to the internet from EroticBPM HQ, one of the networks was named Quark. I asked Anti if this was after the software, the TV show, or the actual thing. Having a background in particle physics, he didn’t mean the software or the show, but I told him I was going to pull his Dork Card for being unfamiliar with the show. Rather than having to resort to such extreme measures, modern technology allows me to share the show with you all.
I first saw Quark on the US Military television stations while living in Germany, on either ACTA I or ACTA II I believe. Basically, the Department of Defense at least used to provide American television channels to US servicemen and diplomats abroad. I wasn’t really allowed to watch TV, so I didn’t see much, but I did catch some re-runs of a sort of Star Trek spoof called Quark which struck me as absolutely hilarious at the time. I admit it doesn’t really stand the test of time and might seem a little, err, dumb now. Anyway, without further ado, I present Quark for your viewing pleasure and personal edification:
To a current sensibility, the BBC’s Hyperdrive is really probably a better bet.
You all will be pleased to see that Blue Blood hottie and Community member Halcyon Pink’s HugNation project is getting great props as he tours the country. The basic concept is that every Tuesday at 1pm Pacific time, you should hug who you are with or hug yourself. This could get dicey depending on where you work, but the idea is to get in touch with being a part of humanity and commonality with one’s fellow man. Halcyon says, “Think of it as a sort of prayer — a communal expression of compassion. It is a weekly reminder that we are connected and we all far more similar than we are different. Everyone can use a hug.” Halcyon picked up an old RV and painted it pink and put pink fun fur in it and generally made it cool enough that his neighbors complained about it. He is just finishing up a six city Hug Nation tour in the pink RV. There has been a bunch of local press as he has gone through Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Sacramento, culminating with the CNN report posted here. This weekend, Halcyon hits Los Angeles and then heads back for one last stop in San Diego.
If I were in Portland for NYE, I can guarantee that I would be at Darklady’s Empire of Pleasure New Year’s Eve. If you’ve ever read the words in an adult publication, you are most likely familiar with Darklady’s work. She is a successful prolific journalist and sexpert and knows so much about so many of my favorite things. She describes her areas of expertise as “adult entertainment industry, free speech, internet technology, and alternative sexuality” and I’d have to agree that is deliciously accurate.
