Gram’s Dirty Four: Porn To Remember 2010 By

Fake boob, semen-lobbing, and vaginal rejuvenation technology haven't changed that much in recent years, so can we really know something about 2010 by its pornography? Sure! Why not? Here are some standout pieces of popular pornography and why they mattered.

"Spartacus: Blood And Sand" (or, as we called it around the Ponante household, "Partsacus").

This very accessible and gleefully gratuitous marriage of swords-and-sandals epics with softcore porn was a soap opera that didn't apologize for its carnality or graphic novel carnage. Instead, it reveled in both and told a solid (albeit purloined) story vividly and with balls.

Andy Whitfield, playing the title character, is battling non-Hodkins Lymphoma and won't be back for Season 2, so instead Starz will run a prequel featuring the cunning Batiatus couple, John Hannah and the fearless Lucy Lawless.

"Spartacus" is guaranteed to be a guilty, gory pleasure for all the groovy adults in your arena.

The Human Sexipede

This was Lee Roy Myers' year, and we can't emphasize enough how important this unassuming dude and his crackerjack crew are to keeping people at work and keeping the bar raised in Porn Valley. "Sexipede," made in a weekend for a low budget, might not even be Myers' best this year, but it is representative of the fact that, just because it's porn made by people who dump (and have dumped on them) hundreds of gallons of jizz week after week, that they don't have great senses of humor and like the same things you do.

Sanatorium

Husband/wife team Gary Orona and Tabitha Stevens' "Sanatorium," on the other hand, is an epic that took five years and more than $100k to film, and all that money is up on the screen (rather than $100k porn epics of yesteryear, where it tended to disappear up folks' noses).

"Sanatorium" might be a throwback to a more profitable time, and centered around a familiar earnest theme of sexual hypocrisy is bad, but the photography is glorious, and there is something in it for long-time Tabitha Stevens fans (actually, there's a lot in it for Tabitha Stevens fans) as well as newly-minted fans of the likes of Kagney Linn Karter.

An Open Invitation

Oh, to be timid and innocent India Summer, initiated into the rites of swinging by lush, lewd, and literate Lorelei Lee. Add to that a nod to just how weird swinging can be and a Renaissance Faire of an orgy at Kink.com headquarters in San Francisco and you have a movie that really does capture the zeitgeist, at least of a 3-block radius in the Mission District.