One of the first strong porn brands on the web was an outfit called ALS Scan, who, in the middle-late 1990s, pioneered a then-new aesthetic: the girl next door, pretty and fresh and freshly shaved all over, in a brightly-lit photoshoot with vibrant colors, doing astonishingly dirty deeds with whatever fruits, vegetables, or household objects are handy, all with a big come-hither smile. It’s not that other pornographers haven’t done the same thing before or since; it’s that ALS has always done it better than anybody else, for certain values of better.

Take Amy Lee:

She’s a pretty girl. She’s just as pretty with her shirt on (in a photo that proves she actually has arms) especially if you appreciate a girl who can cook:

So far, she’s just like a zillion other pretty internet ladies who prance around in and out of some cute undies, maybe flashing some pink at the end of the photoshoot so you don’t feel cheated out of the price of your subscription. You’ve seen it before, you’ve seen it all, ho hum.

What you’re not expecting — what nobody was expecting until ALS Scan pretty much invented the genre — is that this cute young model (who has not yet starred in half a dozen movies with names like Anal Ass-Bangers #22, and is not yet staring at the looming end of her porn career) will lick her lips with an excellent facsimile of honest lust, tuck her ankles cheerfully in behind her ears, look you straight in the eye, and use four fingers to stretch her pussy open until you’ve got a distinctly gynecological view of her assets. And yet, that’s exactly what she does.

It can be an eye-opener. And, for me at least, it makes every visit to ALS Scan a memorable one.

Here’s another old magazine advertisement to fire your weekend’s fantasies:

One thing I like about writing a sex blog, in this era of increasing porn saturation, is that as the competition heats up, and production values increase, I’m seeing more and more porn that looks like art, especially from the high-quality porn producers like Kink.com or (for your non-kinky examples) Femjoy or Domai.

It used to be that a shot like this one, of Candice Nicole enjoying an enforced contemplative post-ejaculatory moment during a Sex And Submission shoot, would have come only from the studio of one of the “arty” guys like Craig Morey or Richard Kern:

My problem with erotic art photography is that, historically, it has tended to strike me as self-conscious and defensive, and in its defensiveness, it often grew boring. In its worst form, we get that endless flood of semi-abstract nudes that congest web galleries and college sophomore life photography classes. You know what I’m talking about: the curve of a buttock or breast, usually upside down or at an odd angle, often pressed against some random implausible texture like old roofing tin, presented in black and white with funky lighting so as to make the whole project safely non-sexual.)

Luckily, as the standards and technology of porn photography get better, I’m seeing a best-of-both-worlds convergence, with your favorite subscription porn shack pumping out art-quality photos of a volume and diversity and unapologetic lustful sexuality that even the best “erotic art” photographers never seemed to manage. And I love it!

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Some time back, whilst discussing The Great Craigslist Sex Personals Massacre Of 2006 (don’t forget to pronounce it “mass-uh-cree” like Arlo Guthrie Jr. does) I wrote:

Speaking to all men, let me say this: Mailing a potential female sex partner an unsolicited picture of your dick is not appropriate, it’s not smart, it doesn’t work, it brands you as a vulgar idiot, and it makes all men look bad by gender association with your fucked-up self. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I repeat, don’t do it. Man law, got it?

Now, via Viviane, here’s a link to Junkbuzzed, a sharp-tongued blog named after this dumb-assed behavior and devoted to exposing “the grime, grit, humiliation, and degradation that goes into trying to find someone to fuck you online.” They have a LOLcat:

And they have stuff to say:

Yes, on to the man-junk. Look. We know you like the sex. The sex is the bomb. We understand this. I myself am a big fan of it. But a little discretion goes a long way. Put the man-junk away unless it is specifically asked for. Pictures of man-junk are like Vienna sausages at a 4-star restaurant: it only gets served on special request.

Then this very same Junkbuzzed post moves quickly along to another vital bit of advice, which can be summarized briefly as “write like a human being, you moron!”

I have, In The Name Of Science, dutifully read through many a day’s postings from the men to the women. After the first 10 or so posts, it all starts to read like LOLcats….

“o hai! lick mai taint plz i gots 12in srsly 420 kewlâ€?

This is not the phrase one employs in the pursuit of True Love (or To Blave). It is not the phrase one employs even if one is trying to get one’s taint licked (South Carolina, I’m looking at you).

Having a sense of humor helps. Displaying a sense of humor is even better. And not in a “I broke my last girlfriend’s jaw cuz she was a bitch lolâ€? sort of way, either. The ladies, they don’t go for that sort of thing. Just trust me on this one. Ain’t gonna play.

Lots of fun, and that post is #3 in a series.

This astonished nude is from the cover of an old album called “Good Buddies”, as seen in the book Cover Story:

Thanks to a commenter, I realized that the last post was a quite unfortunate thing to have at the top of the page on Mother’s Day. So I quickly cast around for something to put up, and I chanced upon this old magazine illustration, which does a much better job of illustrating how you should be treating the mother of your children, today and probably every day:

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My first thought on seeing this photo (via Lunatico) was that the flower selling dude is an idiot:

My second thought, however, was that maybe he knows stuff we don’t know about the demographic, attitudes, and inclinations of his target market among the men in his neighborhood.

Is he a marketing idiot or a marketing genius? We’ll never know.

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