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)

* * * * *

Previously: Morning Wood Archives/Wet Spots Archives

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