A few nights ago in Chicago, the Naked Girls Reading group sat down to read the classic tale of ghosts and giving, and they plan to repeat the event every year. Yay for new holiday traditions! You don't have to like Christmas, Santa Claus, or even hot chocolate, but everyone loves the promotion of naked literacy.

·: More photos at Naked Girls Reading: Photo gallery (timeoutny.com)

And for those inclined to follow in these readers' footsteps—whether you'd like to hit up the bath house or cheat on your spouse—TOC helpfully offers some first time tips (yes, they offer tips for wouldbe cheaters. Who knew Chicago was so libertine?). Also in the issue: servicey suggestions on hot lingerie, what your bedsheets say about you, and hot hook up hotels—and, of course, an interview with Hugh Hefner (it never gets old, does it).

· There's a First Time for Everything (timeout.com)

Witchy Chicago fetish hottie Morgana Moon gets all sweaty in what appears to be a rec room Dad never got around to finishing, probably because he discovered Internet porn like this.

Moon is driddled with Bacardi prior to being fucked (depriving us of an easy Captain Morgana joke) to the song stylings of the band Serpent Libertine

I cannot escape it
I am under your spell
And a day without you
IS MY PERSONAL HELL!
I stare at this tombstone
And I wonder why
How come everyone that i love
HAS TO DIE!

(Crybaby. Now I need a drink...)

But what about two-time pirate Evan Stone? Will his drink be a Captain and Coke?

"I like frozen margaritas," the dreamboat said, here seen explaining to Tommy Gunn that he, too, likes tequila - he just doesn't want to shoot it.

Salt?

"No salt," he said significantly.

As meaningful as this was, it was Alektra Blue and jessica drake - neither of whom is a redhead - who turned us on to Red-headed Sluts, which is Jagermeister and pomegranate juice on the rocks.

I would do anything drake suggested, so I tried one immediately. It knocked the capital letters out of me.

• Mirth And Beauty: Artistic nudes and emotive portraiture by K Leo (mirthandbeauty.com, via Indie Nudes)
• Thumbnail star: Arwag)

Read about the "Mortified" phenomenon after the gap.

. . .

"As much as we know it runs our adult lives, sexuality is the number one thing kids write about," said David Nadelberg, creator and founding producer of a series of stage shows called "Mortified", in which brave (or terminally narcissistic) adults share their adolescent journal entries, poems, lyrics, videos, and comics in cities across America. "(Sex is) this thing they're not having, and when they do have it, it's this thing that makes them miserable."

While the content of the nine stage shows, two books, and "Mortified Shoebox" webisodes is not limited to sex, that subject is the river that runs through the often poignant, hilarious, and cringeworthy true-life tales of "Mortified"'s contributors, from summer camp crushes, straight and gay blowjob primers, real sex with the football coach to porn fantasies featuring Duran Duran and the foiled masturbatory imagery of Tori Spelling and Anna Nicole Smith (writes contributor MCC, "When Anna Nicole Smith didn't work, I knew I was gay").

And when the teen crush is unrequited (as it most often is) or when things go horribly wrong (as they most often do), readers and viewers can take comfort in the fact that the author has lived to tell the tale. In that way, Nadelberg said, "the happy ending is built in."

But confessional isn't the only criterion, said executive producer Neil Katcher.

"If it isn't both funny and fascinating," he said, "we can't use it."

Local producers solicit and develop submissions from authors who've rediscovered their freshman diaries or shoeboxes of Bon Jovi tickets. Some find their way to the web, stage, and page, and others are best suited for just one medium.

"Some people are natural performers," Katcher said, "where others are shy." Still, Nadelberg said, 85 percent of the books started on stage.

Nadelberg and Katcher also make sure no one "jokes the joke", undermining the efficacy of the tender source material with too many adult asides. "We have to preserve the tenderness, and the humor is a byproduct," Nadelberg said.

"I thought girls had two holes; one for urination and one for sex," reads Leonard Hyman from something he wrote at age 12. "Wrong! The vagina!"

The Mortified stage show launched in Los Angeles in 2002 and was followed by counterparts in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Austin, Portland, Chicago, and Malmo, Sweden in the next five years. The most recent Mortified book, subtitled "Love Is A Battlefield", was released this month.

And the demographics are not restricted to the Livejournal generation. While contributors are mostly in their 20s and 30s, Mortified boasts both performers and contributors in their seventies, and the appeal spans gender and sexual orientation.

"We've seen some amazing and heroic coming out stories," Nadelberg said, pointing out that straight men aren't big contributors of journals, often preferring power chord rock lyrics instead, "but the gay guys are diary-happy."

Katcher added that, while Mortified is often a "manly show", what with its many stories focusing on late 80s/early 90s heavy metal and hair bands, "I am aware that I am involved in the girliest project of my generation."

This does not stop monthly sellout crowds of diverse and delighted voyeurs at the Mortified stage shows, sharing a little bit of the performers' triumph.

"They made it through the rain," Nadelberg said.

· Mortified (getmortified.com)

· "Stories of Oh! Part 2" Trailer (libidofilms.com)

Previously: Porn Of The Moment Archive

If you are looking for porn shot in rooms with hardwood floors, with sounds of the El going by, and between people with just enough paunch and age to be more interesting, check out "Trial Run", in which our heroine submits potential boyfriends to the approval of her take-charge girlfriend before trying them out herself. Personal experience dictates that that scenario is much more likely than dirtpipe milkshakes.

· "Trial Run" (DVD info @ libidofilms.com)

· Breaking: Kate Moss still has breasts. Nipples, too. (egotastic.com)

· GM tries to control its previously unbridled use of auto show booth babes. So their goal is to sell even fewer cars this year? (Jalopnik)

· This interactive map of Tokyo love hotels is totally awesome ... except for the fact that we don't know how to read Japanese. (lovehomap.com)

· Fleshbot Crush Object™ Molly Crabapple take her Dr. Sketchy's Rainy Day Coloring Book tour out to the Western states, starting tomorrow in Phoenix, Arizona. See, some New Yorkers do acknowledge that the rest of the country exists! (info @ drsketchy.com)

· Chicago mourns loss of "Weird" Harold Rubin, pornographer and (apparently) first-class weirdo. Sounds like our kind of people. (chicagotribune.com)

· Finally, be careful who you choose to interview for your "woman on the street" news segments. This is called biting off more than you can chew. (video @ omgblog.com)

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Previously: Morning Wood Archives/Wet Spots Archives

Lusiciously long legged Chicago-based pro domina and performer VonLivid is a writer and until recently was an assistant director for the Women of Color in BDSM Photography Project; no hollow theorist she, however, she also puts her money where her mouth is (or maybe we should say her stilleto heels where your mouth is?) with plenty of time in front of the camera for such photographers as the inimitable Bob Coulter on the soon-to-be-launched paysite AgentFetish.com, where we'll all be treated to more of her enviable ways with all things tight, shiny, lacy, latexed, and corseted. Until then, she invites you to make her your own "visual muse" via her free gallery of sexy photos on her current website, where you can also stay up to date on her many appearances at fetish and burlesque appearances the world over. (How do all these foxy renaissance women find the time anyway?)

· VonLivid: The Visionista (vonlivid.com)
· Agent Fetish (agentfetish.com)
· Thumbnail by Bob Coulter (bobcoulter.com)

When is a gangbang video not porn? Why, when it's art, of course. So don't visit this archive of clips from a film project by Chicago-based filmmaker and artist Kristie Alshaibi hoping for some cheap thrills: near as we can make out, the four videos from her "Other People's Mirrors" that have been posted recently on Insane Films deal with themes like submission, identity, capitalism, religion, joyless anonymous sex, and zit picking. (Yes, each one is introduced by producers who worked on the project, but who has time to listen when we're trying to get to the dirty stuff?) Conceived in 1999 as a web-based "community-online-editing-station-web-cam-performance" experiment, the film was released on DVD in 2004 and spawned a series of websites featuring Alsahibi's sex worker and camgirl alter ego "Echo Transgression" before she gave up on the project citing "mental collapse"; given the fact that what we've seen of the final product (which screened at the CineKink festival in New York last week) is rather muddled and not terribly sexy, perhaps it's just as well, even if its original premise of creating a participatory kind of erotic spectacle is one worth exploring further. And if nothing else, there's always that joyless boardroom gangbang video to get creeped out over.

· "Other People's Mirrors" (video excerpts @ insanefilms.com - thanks Matt)

See also:
· "Other People's Mirrors" (film project site and director's statement @ 12taboos.com)
· Echo Transgression (Wikipedia)
· Echo Transgression and Objectify Me (echotransgression.com + objectifyme.com)
· Artvamp (artvamp.com)
· Learn Dirty Movies (Kristie Alshaibi's filmmaking class info @ learndirtymovies.com)

Previously: Usama Alshaibi Photography, Michele Capozzi: "Pornology", Berlin Porn Film Festival, "Psychopathia Sexualis", Cinekink Kickoff Party

· We're of the opinion that Monica Bellucci is one the absolute hottest women in the whole wide world. If you look at these pictures and don't agree, that's your problem. (But seek help immediately). (idontlikeyouinthatway.com)

· Behold the perfect, mathematically symmetrical beauty of a golden ratio cumshot. And you thought we were geeky? (kzamm.com - thanks Xeni)

· Female genital mutilation is a serious topic, but the "Adopt A Clitoris" campaign (sponsored by the Raelian Movement) strikes us as an odd way of drawing attention to the problem. Even if they are sorta cute and cuddly. (clitoraid.org, via Boing Boing)

· So who knew that Friend of Fleshbot Tristan Taormino was the niece of reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon? Meanwhile, we're still hoping no one finds out we lost our virginity to Eudora Welty. She would've wanted it that way. (nypost.com)

· Here's a better look at that Bettie Page mural we told you about in Seattle. She just keeps getting bigger than ever. (attu-pics.blogspot.com + channelcincinnati.com)

· A college art professor in China took all his clothes off in the middle of a lecture and invited his students to do the same. Of course, we're talking about a 56-year-old college professor so obviously there were no takers. (cnn.com)

· Two trials were held in a Chicago court house on the same day. One was a quadruple homicide. The other was for a female police officer who has sex in her outdoor hot tub in the middle of the day. Which one do you think got more attention? (suburbanchicagonews.com)

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Previously: Morning Wood Archives/Wet Spots Archives

The lovely Janine Lindemulder, one of the few working porn stars who can boast of seeing her movies in actual theatres in two separate decades (she started working as adult cinemas were on the wane in the early 90's and starred in last year's "Pirates", the movie that will not die), will host the Sixth Annual Pimp and Ho Halloween Party in Chicago. Billed as the largest nightclub event in the city, the Pimp and Ho Halloween Ball attracts actual Pimpz and actual Hoz, who invariably find themselvez outnumbered by people who admire their fashionz. Previous hosts have included Seymore Butts and the Tushy Girls.

We try to support Porn Valley's outreach efforts to Middle America, and admission to the Pimp and Ho Halloween Ball (October 28) is about the cost of an apple martini and a long hug here at Fleshbot's Arroyo Division.
- GP

· Pimp And Ho Chicago (pimpoandhochicago.com)
· Janine at the Internet Adult Film Database (iafd.com)

We first noticed the work of Chicago-based independent filmmaker Usama Alsahibi a few years back when our friends at The Modernist featured his photography in their ever-popular Furniture and Naked People series. But Alsahibi is a lot more than just Barcaloungers and side tables: if there's any other theme that runs through his portfolio it's models adorned with bandages, bruises, open wounds, and leg braces ... and of course, plenty of naked flesh. What's the story behind models like Sarah Lynn anyway? Did she just came back from a hard day at the dirt bike track? Or did she have a nasty fall in her kitchen while reaching for a bottle of scotch? We'll leave it open to your interpretation ...
- A. Tolesco

· Usama Alsahibi (solaranus.com)
· Furniture and Naked People #3: Photography by Usama Alshaibi (The Modernist)

Previously: Brazilian Fight Girls, Romain Slocombe: Japan Medical Fetish, Cast Fetish, Crash Babies, Pillow Fight Blood Bath, Photographs by Jenni Tapanila, Recreational Bracing

· When was the last time Stuff put out a magazine that didn't have a Brooke Burke bikini photo in it? Not that we have a problem with it, it's just getting really hard to keep track. (stuffmagazine.com - thanks Sanj)

· If you're going to be on TV in the next couple of days be sure to rock out with your cock out, because it will be ten times more expensive to do so after the president signs the new FCC indecency law. The good news is that all crime and poverty will soon be eliminated thanks to our squeaky clean airwaves! (washingtonpost.com)

· Even nerdy tech company CEO's can find their way into a threesome, but naturally all such encounters must be documented on a webcam. After all, who would believe you otherwise? (Valleywag)

· In case you missed that on-set brawl between pornstars Dillan Lauren and Ava Vincent when we posted the video several months ago, you'll be able to see an(other) "unedited and uncensored" version on Showtime's "Family Business" this weekend, which will presumably put all that hot girl-on-girl buritto -tossing action in its proper historical context. (adultfyi.com)

· We're all for people expressing themselves through the confectionary arts, but things like candy cocks and titty nibblers strike us as a little obvious. Haven't any of these people seen what a plain old lollipop can do when it's between the right set of lips? (chicagoconventions.typepad.com)

· It's not surprising that most women have less sex after menopause, but they're kinda pissed about it. Who could blame them? No one should have to work for Grannysex.com just to get laid. (dailymail.co.uk)

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Previously: Morning Wood Archives/Wet Spots Archives