I Played in Glenn Branca's Hallucination City and All I Got Was Mass Hypnotic Transcendence

After nearly a century of being ritually smashed, set on fire, and wielded as a phallus, the electric guitar has lost some of its subtle mystery. The notes had seemingly all been played. Yet, on a certain high-school evening, some Thurston Moore­–loving, prog-rock-leaning friends introduced me—a child reared on guitar heroes of all varieties and learned in the various show-off techniques of butt rock and bebop—to Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies, and the mystery was forcefully, harshly restored.

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Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

Shigeo Tokuda is, in fact, his screen name. He prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 films over the past 14 years. And in his double life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan's sexuality: in surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. Those figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest-growing genres.

Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he has just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.

Tokuda's exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an "old man" series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. "The adult-video industry is very competitive," says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. "If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers' hearts."

Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers. "I think that, as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them," says Kono passionately.

But Tokuda stresses the appeal of his work to an audience of his peers: "Elderly people don't identify with school dramas," he says. "It's easier for them to relate to older-men-and-daughters-in-law series, so they tend to watch adult videos with older people in them." The veteran porn star plans to keep working until he's 80 — or older, as long as the industry will cast him. Given the bullish market for his work, he's unlikely to go without work.

"People of my age generally have shame, so they are very hesitant to show their private parts," Tokuda says. "But I am proud of myself doing something they cannot." Still, he says, laughing, "That doesn't mean that I can tell them about my old-age pensioner job."

Japan's adult-video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year, according to industry insiders, with the largest video-store chain Tsutaya releasing about 1,000 new titles monthly, while the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month. Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward "mature women" has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are "mature women" films.

Ryuichi Kadowaki, director of Ruby Inc., which specializes in mature-women titles, says that when the company started offering the genre a few years ago, the term referred to actresses in their late 20s, and that last year it was expanded to those in their 70s. The company believes the advantage of mature titles is their enduring appeal. "Adult videos with young actresses sell well only in the first three months after the release," Kadowaki explains. "On the other hand, mature-women films enjoy a steady, long-term popularity, which after 10 years or so might lead to a best seller." And then there are the cost savings. A popular young actress can earn up to $100,000 per film, while a mature actress is paid only $2,000.

The market for elder porn has doubled over the past decade, according to Kadowaki. "In view of [Japan's] aging society," he adds, "I think that in the future, we will see a steady increase in demand."

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Jack Nicholson says he's looking for love, but 'can't hit on a girl in public like I used to'

Jack Nicholson, the legendary ladies' man, says he'd like to fall in love again.

"I never minded being a fool for love," the 70-year-old Oscar winner tells AARP The Magazine. "It's nice to have a place to be foolish. Ask any old friend of mine, they'll say, 'Jack's pretty smart, but in this area the man is beyond the pale. Don't ask him anything about love. Or if you ask him, don't listen to him.'"

Nicholson says getting older has changed the way he woos women.

"I can't hit on a girl in public like I used to," he says. "I never thought words like 'undignified' would come into my own reflections on myself, but I can't do it anymore."

Nicholson, whose past flames include Anjelica Huston and Lara Flynn Boyle, explains: "I feel uncomfortable. I don't think anybody cares what I do in these areas, but it feels a little bit off to me."

He says he'd date a woman close to his age — or younger.

"In fact, every year I like to cover a very broad spectrum," he says. "But you know? I've been single for quite a long time. I've been invested in my teenage children" with ex-girlfriend Rebecca Broussard. (He was married to Sandra Knight in the 1960s.)

Nicholson says nearly all his contemporaries tell him they want "that one last big romance."

"I don't do a lot of original screenwriting anymore, but if I were, I'd find a way to make this the dramatic narrative of a movie, because it's one of those silent yearnings of my own age group," he says.

Nicholson co-stars with Morgan Freeman in "The Bucket List," about two terminally ill patients on a final fling. The film is the winner of "Best Buddy Movie" in AARP The Magazine's Movies for Grownups awards, which will be presented Feb. 4 in Los Angeles.

Nicholson has received 12 Oscar nominations, winning for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good as it Gets."

The March/April issue of the magazine will be available the week of Jan. 24.

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On the Net:

AARP The Magazine:

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/

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Interview with Claudia Morgado Escanilla

Producer/writer/director Claudia Morgado Escanilla took home the PlanetOut Short Movie Awards Grand Prize for "No Bikini," a delightful -- and truly amazing -- short film about a little girl who abandons her bikini top and spends weeks in swim camp passing as a boy.

As the Grand Prize winner, Escanilla takes home a $10,000 cash prize -- the world's largest cash prize for a LGBT film competition -- and her film will screen at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival this April (all winning films will screen in Miami).

“I had a sex change once, when I was six or seven years old.” The opening line of No Bikini introduces us to a young girl who defies convention during her summer swim class. Filled with humour, this film is less about defining one’s gender than it is about discovering personal strength.

Escanilla is a Vancouver, B.C., filmmaker born in Santiago, Chile. We recently spoke with an excited Escanilla about the film, winning the Grand Prize and her future as a filmmaker.

"No Bikini" is incredibly original. How did you come up with the idea? Was it autobiographical?

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but about 10 years ago I read the short story "No Bikini" by Ivan Coyote. In 2004, I contacted her to get the rights. It was great to work with Ivan because she encouraged me to make it my own, went with the changes I made as I was writing the script; plus we collaborated on the VO, which she recorded.

Read the full interview here.

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Earl Anthony vs. Charlie Tapp (Part 2)

Earl Anthony vs. Charlie Tapp (Part 1)

Designed to last: Richard Rogers

At 74, Richard Rogers is as busy as ever shaping the future. Slippers are not an option

By Tom Dyckhoff

And before you ask, no, I’m not going to retire.” You can forgive the preemptive strike. Richard Rogers, Lord Rogers of Riverside to give him the grand title he rarely uses, has fielded a lot of questions about the “r” word lately. The young Turk who gave the world those once futuristic, still shocking buildings with their guts hanging out – Paris’s Pompidou Centre, London’s Lloyd’s Building – nowadays, at 74, looks like nothing more radical than your favourite grandpa, the one with the twinkly eyes and endearingly rambling tales about the war – the war against the Prince of Wales, architectural conservatism and cities gone to the dogs.

He’s reached “that retrospective time of life” – later this month a massive exhibition of his life’s work opens at the Pompidou, marking the building’s 30th birthday – so “they expect you to pop off at any minute”. Rumours mounted after a remarkable year so backed up with plaudits – the Stirling Prize last autumn for his Madrid airport, the Pritzker Prize, and the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, for starters – you half-wondered if the juries had got wind of his imminent demise. Final proof? Last year, the name of the firm he established 29 years ago, Richard Rogers Partnership, was changed to Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and Partners, to honour the next generation of young Turks – Ivan Harbour and Graham Stirk – increasingly taking the reins. Slippers and cocoa seemed certain. “Can you imagine?” he breaks out into one of his guffaws, as if the very idea was the most ridiculous thing in the world. “Which it is.” That’ll be a no then. “

I enjoy life too much,” he says. And Rogers really does seem to have a lovely life. His place in history is guaranteed by the Pompidou and Lloyd’s. He still has fulfilling work – more than ever, with Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opening next spring, a City skyscraper, Leadenhall Building, in the offing, and his largest building to date, the Javits Centre in Manhattan, on the drawing board. It’s a buzz of activity in an office which, a few years previously, seemed in hiatus compared with that of his friend and eternal rival, Norman Foster.

His treasured roles as Ken Livingstone’s adviser and Labour peer mean he is still hard-wired into politics, taken seriously. There’s the big artsy family: still on good terms with his first wife Su, five sons all in influential, creative, fulfilling jobs (one, Abe, has designed the exhibition). There’s the lovely office by the Thames in Hammersmith, filled with 180 reverential staff. And, icing on the cake, there’s having the River Caf� for your staff canteen just by the front door. The cherry on top? Your wife, Ruthie, runs it! Extra portions of chocolate nemesis all round!

With nearly 50 years of hindsight poured through the exhibition, his life’s work seems less about architecture than selling this Pollyannaish, liberal lifestyle to a mercenary, puritanical world. Born to creative, professional, left-wing Italian parents who escaped fascist Italy for Britain in 1938, his view of life is distinctly Italian – “Where public life and family are entwined,” he says, “as long as I was sitting at the family table everything was OK. I was very affected when I was 5, in Florence, and I’d look across the street and see this caf�, and every morning I saw what I assumed was an accountant, who’d come in, they’d put a table on the pavement, they’d give him a phone, and he’d do his job. And I thought that’s what I want to do. Not to be an accountant, of course. But the idea that you could mix in your lifestyle, your work, your city, your quality of friendship.”

His wish came true. There are few architects who live the worlds they espouse quite so wholeheartedly as Rogers. Foster – with whom he started in business in the early 1960s – may now have the thousand-strong design-factory, but Rogers, you suspect, has the nicer life. Rogers’s high-tech, drenched in old-fashioned modernist optimism for this thing called “society”, has soul and colour, Foster’s has rigour, but no passion. Indeed, once you get past the shock value of his eviscerated buildings, Rogers’s architecture isn’t really about looks at all. He despises the word “style”, instead his buildings – and this is what was so radical about Pompidou – are basically big family tables, public spaces in which people come together arguing, sharing, resolving differences, given form by the life inside. His vision for cities, now applied patchily as government policy, is all about public space, generosity, tolerance.

Not everyone has shared the Rogers vision: the architecturally conservative, for instance will never warm to his Heath Robinson buildings. There are those who quite rightly state that his “guts on the outside” aesthetic was never very practical (he hasn’t used it himself in a while).

Last year his support for Palestine nearly cost him the Javits job in New York. “The office constitution states you have to think before taking on work which is antienvironment, military, and so on. But then people say ‘airports?’ In that case, since an architect alone cannot stop airports being built he should make them as good, as environmentally sound as possible. But it’s a difficult excuse to make. All architecture is political. All work involves debate, compromise. You’re always juggling, questioning yourself.” This is what makes him unique in Britain, where architects, eyes on realising their monuments and plumping the bank balances tend, as far as possible, to eschew politics.

Rogers marched for CND in the 1950s, against Bush in the Noughties. When Margaret Thatcher started dismantling the public realm so dear to him, private politics became professional. The crux came while designing “London as it could be”, highlight of the Royal Academy’s 1986 exhibition, Foster Rogers Stirling, which envisaged London as a Thames-side playground – fantastical at the height of the no-such-thing-as-society era. Thereafter, building took a backseat to campaigning for Britain’s “urban renaissance” through the Reith Lectures, new Labour’s Urban Task Force, battling with John Prescott, and, today, Livingstone. He concedes that he is somewhat on his own: “I do sometimes feel like an eternal refugee.”

When he arrived in 1938, “there was only one espresso machine in London”. Now, he thinks, we’re at last starting on the right road towards civilised life and decent coffee for all. . . Pollyanna again? “There are a lot of big ifs: the distribution of wealth is horrific. But overall, what an evolution – life is a lot better, especially for those of us who are more fortunate. For those who are not, life is tough. But what can an architect do for them?” his voice trails off. “I don’t know... ”

Richard Rogers + Architects, Pompidou Centre, Paris (www.centrepompidou.fr 00 331 44 78 12 33), from Wed, until March; the exhibition moves to the Design Museum, London SE1, in April.

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Tecno Brega

A music scene called Tecno Brega making use of an alternative business model has emerged in the city of Belem in Brazil. This parallel music industry has been active for years and has achieved great success. Several hundred new Tecno Brega records are produced and released every year by local artists, with both the production and distribution taking place outside of the mainstream music industry. The tecno brega model is simple: the music lies outside the realm of traditional copyright and is used as a method of marketing events. Every weekend the “sound system” parties attract thousands of people to the outskirts of Belem to listen to the Tecno Brega music. The parties are advertised by the distribution of the music itself. The numbers are incomplete, but the Belem scene alone brings in yearly revenues of several million US dollars.

The Tecno Brega music is “born free” in the sense that copyright protection is not a part of the business model developed by its creators. The CDs sold are utilized as marketing material– advertisements for the highly popular weekly “sound system” parties. The Tecno Brega CDs are sold by local street vendors as per arrangements with the local recording studios. At a mere US$1.50, the CDs are highly affordable by the local population, thus providing greater access to the music at a grassroots level.

The goal is not for artists to make money on conventional CD sales. Instead, the price charged works exclusively as an incentive for the local vendors to sell the CDs and in effect market the tecno brega parties. The artists thus make money through innovative business models related to the sound system parties. One such example consists of artists recording their live concert sets at the parties in real time and then selling the recordings at the conclusion of the event. This enables the audience to go home with a souvenir of the concert they have just attended. Another technique utilized by the artists is to acknowledge the presence of various people and neighborhoods in the course of the live presentations. Hearing such acknowledgment is greatly valuable to the audience– naturally people want to hear a “shout out” to them, their friends, or their neighborhood. As a result, thousands of people buy copies of the live CDs to have a permanent memoir of this form of homage.

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I have 200 orgasms every day...

PRETTY Sarah Carmen is a 200-a-day orgasm girl who gets good, good, GOOD vibrations from almost anything.

The rumble of a train on the tracks, the purr of a hairdryer, the rhythmic drone of a photo-copier are all enough to make her go oh oh oh, ahhhhh.

She had FIVE orgasms during our 40-minute interview. But I can't take the credit—it was just talking about her sex life that set her off.

Sarah, 24, suffers from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), which increases blood flow to the sex organs.

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OF SARAH’S INTERVIEW
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She said: "Sometimes I have so much sex to try to calm myself down I get bored of it. And men I sleep with don't seem to make as much effort because I climax so easily."

As she chatted, Sarah became increasingly flustered.

"Sorry, you'll have to excuse me for a minute. I'll be with you in a sec," she mumbled before letting out a long sigh.

Sarah, from London, developed PSAS after being prescribed anti-depressants at 19.
Stunned

She believes her condition was brought on by the pills.

She said: "Within a few weeks I just began to get more and more aroused more and more of the time and I just kept having endless orgasms.

"It started off in bed where sex sessions would last for hours and my boyfriend would be stunned at how many times I would orgasm.

"Then it would happen after sex. I'd be thinking about what we'd done in bed and I'd start feeling a bit flushed, then I'd become aroused and climax.

"In six months I was having 150 orgasms a day—and it has been as many as 200."

She and her boyfriend split— and new partners struggle to keep up with her sex demands. "Often, I'll want to wear myself out by having as many orgasms as I can so they stop and I can get some peace," she said.

Sarah is a beautician and working in salons filled with whirring hairdryers and skincare gadgets can cause problems.

"If I start coughing and run to the loo, the girls know to fetch the client a magazine or a cup of tea," she said, adding, "Sometimes I'd like to just have a normal life."

All together now, aaaahhhhh!

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Ever Wonder What the Staff Eats at a Chinese Restaurant?

A little after nine o'clock, Ricky Ker sits down for dinner at a back table of Goodies, his restaurant on East Broadway, with a waitress or two. The only customers in the plain, small dining room are a young couple and a few Russian tourists—they might have come because the Shanghainese food is recommended by Zagat, and the soup dumplings are a must-order. The staff, however, is dining tonight on winter melon soup and a plate of stir-fried pork liver and stomach. "We always have one soup and one dish," head waitress Jojo explains. Ker likes white pepper in his soup, and shakes some into a visitor's cup as well. The winter melon, a big, bland fruit, has been shredded and boiled in water and salty chicken stock, with a healthy dose of cilantro tossed in at the end. It's simple, cheap stuff, but tasty.

When it comes to the various pig elements, Ker grins and offers just a taste in case it doesn't go over well with the outsider. But the innards, particularly the tripe, are delicious. The liver is aggressive, cut into thin, triangular, iron-intensive slabs, but the pieces of stomach are tender and mild, tasting fatty and carrying the soy sauce and ginger nicely. Slices of hot green pepper break the intensity, and the visitor has seconds. Jojo, who has been at Goodies for two and a half years, says she tries not to eat too much organ meat anymore because "you get everything the animal ate, and they have chemicals now." Ker laughs at this, pointing to her plate. "You're eating liver, though." Yes, she giggles, "but not every day."

The staff communicates mostly in Mandarin, but Ker and Jojo, plus two of the three other waitresses, are from Malaysia. Ker came to New York in 1998 and, through an employment agency, got a cashier job at the original Goody's in Rego Park. When the owners opened a Manhattan location in 2000, Ker was transferred to Chinatown, still working as a cashier. But four years later, when the place was struggling financially, Ker saw an opportunity and worked out a deal to take over the lease. He changed the spelling and even had it trademarked last year, but, wisely, he kept the cooks.

Ker's oldest daughter now has a master's degree in global economy, and he sounds like he's been studying the same subject. He talks a lot about marketing and came up with a slogan for the place: "Good food, good times, good luck, at Goodies." When diners get their bill at the end of a meal, it's delivered with a scratch-off lottery card—that's the luck part. Once, someone won $500. The Russian tourists win some money, but they leave it for the staff.

Tonight, Jojo and another waitress, Kimberly, feel like making dessert for family meal: a room-temperature soup of oats, brown sugar, and water. At a quarter to 10, when all the customers are gone, Jojo divvies up the tips. But the food is good to the last drop: The newest waitress stands in the back, draining the last of her sweet soup from a plastic container.

[via villagevoice.com]

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