Artist Worship

I don't typically bow down too much in supine position to worship celebrity ground. I don't even look at TMZ or Perez Hilton anymore, or flip through People magazine in waiting rooms. I guess I just went into sugar coma over all the high fructose corn syrup false pleasure I received from it. I follow a few working actors and writers on twitter, but it's mainly those that share interesting links and stuff. I think they're the bees knees still, of course (I'm looking at YOU, David Lynch), but I try not to allow such activities to take up too much of my limited time. I'd rather be pretend-shopping on etsy or World Market or something. 


But there are some. Some beauties that just entrance me. Like the Sigur Rós Official Site, Eighteen Seconds Before Sunrise.  I don't know what it is with me and Iceland, but ever since we moved up in latitude I am flat out obsessed. I even discovered a story in my brain about some kids in 1940's Iceland. It was turning into a young adult novel until it tumbled back down the well of my imagination. Here that is if you're interested. Anyway, Sigur Ros' site is totally beautiful, mesmerizing, and well designed. I can't read a lot of it. I love Sigur Rós, but if I didn't? This site might be just another boring something that I barely glanced at. 

Another love, as I've said above, is David Lynch. I've been circling around his site for years, contemplating joining to get all of the dark, eerie, and sometimes epiphanic photography and video inside. But I usually forget about it and watch his weather report.

I just really love his brain, you know?


Another well designed site with good layout is Augusten Burroughs'. If you're a fan of his work (and God knows I am), please do yourself a favor and play around here a bit. Especially his photo galleries. Especially, ESPECIALLY the Dry: In Pictures section.  Broke my heart and put it back again, it did. Follow him on Twitter and you'll sometimes get little Augusten-sized chunks of insight. You know what's weird? I totally thought I saw him at the Bear Tooth the other week. I know it wasn't him. Because why? Why on earth would he be way up here? Maybe as a tourist. Maybe he was doing an Alaskan adventure trip or something.



And I have time for one more tonight. The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights  is a Jack White-agasm for me. Although (sorry Meg), I wish he had some sort of central location where I could sometimes just see stuff about Jack and Jack only.  A central place where all things Dead Weather, Raconteurs, It Might Get Loud, and White Stripes are joined in harmony, so I don't have to take five minutes to google search and click them all.  But I'll take what I can get, central location or no. And this site is pleasing in so many ways. Here's an interesting interview with Jack on Relevant magazine: Relevant - Jack White's Many Sides. I just really, really am enamored with him, too.



So celebrity worship and celebrity sites. I guess I could justify by saying that these folks are all serious artists, that I enjoy keeping up with their body of work. Or I could simply label myself an obsessed type person who has what I feel is good taste in music, film, and literature. Maybe part of me is still a twelve year old girl with Johnny Depp posters on the wall. 

Relations

     So if you're uncomfortable with me referring to the most human of our human acts, click out now. I'm not going to get personal tonight but I am going to spread some of the love around about everyone's favorite topic: sex. If we're related or you've known me forever, please be advised, I'm not going to get embarrassing here. Just sharing some of my favorite blue-toned jewels on the internet that I've been told about, found on my own, or learned about in Bust. 
     Now, breathe easier: I'm not here to give you potentially viral porn sites or preach at you about sex ed in schools. I'm not speaking clinically or ethically. I'm talking about the whispers and the cackles. Of a group of women or men (or a mix of both) in the corner during a party spinning yarns. Stories are what I'm interested in. Advice. What's odd and what's becoming blissfully more out in the open. Of blaze freedom and humorous teenage repression. The entertaining and the ridiculous. The everyday and the totally out there. 
     I'll keep this simple, people. I'm not shy talking about it, but I do respect that some of us have deeper puritan ties and feelings, but still like to read and think about it in a private, totally educated and curious manner. So without further you know what, here are my favorite places to read about real people, and their real sex. And wasn't that a great show (Real Sex)? 


Scarleteen: I wish this was around when I was a teenager. The internet was barely around when I was a teenager. Although we did have a kind of wonderful sex ed program if I remember, at least things weren't all hush-hush then - it was the nineties so it was open if not a little scary and clinical. Anyway, Scarleteen talks about anatomy, self-esteem issues, gay/lesbian/trans-gender/bi topics, periods, and frank talk about more serious sexual issues. It's an open, healthy, honest place and if you have a teenage boy or girl (or are a teenage boy or girl) it's a valuable SAFE place. 
Inside/Out - from Scarletten
Deflowered: Abby Kincaid has created a small empire around the stories that we women have about our "first time". There's been a live show, a blog, and if I had a crystal ball I'd wager a book in the near future. You can submit (anonymously or openly) your own story, and read well-written accounts from women from varying backgrounds. 


The New York Times: Oh yes I said it. Find interesting and academic tinged sex-related news and commentary by searching here. Oh, look I went ahead and did it for you! There goes your guilty conscience. There's everything from gender and equality issues in the US and abroad to book reviews to dissertations on the impact of everything from wartime pinups to The Arabian Nights on our collective psyches. Smart and sexy!


Savage Love: I know you read the column in your town's weekly indy paper. But have you ever strolled through the site? You'll find the archive of questions and answers, good links from Dan and links to other sex columnists, and miles and miles of comments to anger and entertain. 


The Frisky and Jezebel have taken the guilty pleasure of fashion rags and morphed them with online zines to create a gratifying, veritable treasure trove of advice, humor, and insight in all things women's sexuality. This is far from Cosmo, people. This is honest, groundbreaking, and fun. Fun is important! There's even loads of thoughtful and sociology-bent articles for those who enjoy their sex-ed more Kinseyan or Masters & Johnson-ish. 


Since I'm in that vein, here are links to those above-mentioned pioneers' respective institutes (or what remains or is being said about them, in the case of Masters & Johnson). 
Kinsey Institute
Human Sexual Response (Masters & Johnson's trailblazing study)


Le mariage païen. - Courtesy NYPL Digital Archives


Now listen. Most of these are safe, free-thinking, broad-based resources. We're all aware that the internet is rife with some dark things and some light things when it comes to sexuality (and everything in between). To foster a healthy attitude about what makes us who we are, these are decent "jumping off points". I'm particularly interested in sex on a sociological level as a lover of all things anthropology. I don't claim to be an expert and I know for a fact there there are more frank sites than these. As a general audience member, these are good though. If you want more, I have more! You just have to email me for them, as I know that my family reads this so I'm not letting on which ones I know about! So there you have it.
From the Kama Sutra 
(PS - I've read that Mallanaga Vātsyāyana, the Hindu philosopher who wrote the Kama Sutra, was a lifelong virgin...discuss)