Four on the Floor is the title film on the latest DVD release from the popular Showtime couples porn series, Red Shoe Diaries. It is clearly the best on this DVD. A woman, happily married, saw a porno while in college that has haunted her. In the film, two couples who had been close friends for a long time suddenly found themselves all in bed together. One night, after her and her husband have been out drinking and dancing with their best friends, they have a minor car crash in the rain on the way home, and take refuse in some odd building. They find some blankets, and get out of their wet things.

Rachel tells them a "bedtime story" -- the one in her porno movie, and the four of them end up having sex together. The thing that makes this one a little special is that they end up having sex in a very believable way, and, although they never repeat the experience, it strengthens rather than weakens the friendship. We have full frontal and breasts from Rachel Palmieri and breasts from Dominique Abel. This DVD is a terrible transfer. It is dark, grainy and undersaturated. The special features don't amount to much, and it has the usual artsy-fartsy (to borrow a phrase from Risky Business) photography, camera effects and lighting.

Love and Sex: fundamentally a Sandra Bullock movie with Famke Janssen as Sandra's replacement. If you like Sandra Bullock movies, it's a pretty good one, about as good as a top sitcom episode. The box said "brief nudity", but I guess I blinked and missed it.

Boy Wonderz: avoid this like the plague. Unreleased movie hoping to cash in on the popularity of boy groups. Awful, awful, awful. (No review, male nudity only)

Dirty Pictures: often thoughtful if broadly stroked Showtime docudrama examination of the infamous Cincinnati trial of the museum curator who brought in the Mapplethorpe exhibit. There is a semi-fictional storyline cut in with real footage of commentary by George Bush, Barney Frank, Bill Buckley, Salman Rushdie, etc. Good cast headed by James Woods, and I enjoyed watching it, but it's really a polemic rather than an entertainment. No nudity in the movie itself, but plenty in the artwork, and they do show just about every single picture from the exhibit, including the ones that caused the obscenity arrest. (The non-controversial heterosexual ones are shown below)

Attention Shoppers. Straight-to-vid about a low-tier TV actor who travels to Houston to open a new K-Mart, a trip which proves humiliating. Small and sensitive comedy, with some touching moments, but not really worth a look. His wife (Cara Buono) was seen in transparent panties.

TomCat

The Polish Prince features European music videos today. They like 'em a little stronger there, and they like nudity in their videos. TomCat told me that the French singer Mylene Farmer combines very beautiful music with beautiful videos and nudity. These all contain some nudity, but not all are the singer/artist. In the case of former Johhny Depp flame Vanessa Paradis, I don't know either way. It doesn't look like her, but she's in costume, and I just can't tell from the captures. Let me know if you know.

Moving on....

And bringing up the rear...

* I've been interested in politics since I was a tot (I could tell you everyone running for president in 1968, when I was seven), and I haven't had this much political fun since the Berlin Wall fell.

* I really doubt that anything much positive is going to emerge from this. Already the voices calling 'fraud' have escalated. Once it is settled, it doesn't matter whether we have the mtv attention span. Our fine, upstanding elected officials in the Congress are going to see to it that we don't forget.

* I really wish everyone involved in this would shut up for two or three days and read the two-volume set from the Library of America called "The Debate on the Constitution". I've been doing so. Verrrry interesting.

* I think it would be great if we emulated the Brits - since neither won a resounding victory, and many votes for can be construed as votes 'against the other guy', maybe we should declare them both bozos, take the two weeks until the electors have to meet and allow the parties to field two different sets of candidates. Two weeks, that's it.

* I also think maybe we should reconsider the notions of national unity and national consensus. Living here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, I felt fortunate because I didn't have to confront the 'do I vote my conscience or do I hold my nose' debate that probably so many other people did. We didn't see the candidates hardly after the primaries - Campaign 2000 blew by these parts. This got me thinking about the gymnastics that candidates have to go through to attract the votes, since elections aren't about issues but about 'happy-talk' and what each candidate can do for each individual voter. This in turn led me to wonder what on earth binds the typical Massachusetts liberal Democrat (i.e. voter), who wants government to blow his nose for him, but only after an environmental feasibility study on the impact of soiled tissue on global warming, to a southern religious enthusiast who believes in people following the well-meaning but contradictory instructions in Scripture through government enforcement. What do I, a resident of the Northeast, have in common with the people who live in Salt Lake City? Or in Texas? Or Ohio? Besides the networks and the FunHouse, I mean. Last night's election in Canada involved fewer voters than California, Florida and New York combined. And there are 47 other states. Maybe we as a nation should consider splitting ourselves up into appropriate sized, independent countries. Let Bush be President of Texas. Gore can be President of the South (although he lost there, didn't he?). Hillary Rodham can be President of New York. Ted Kennedy can be President of New England. We all sign a NATO-like treaty, we all sign a Common Market agreement, and we can stop wringing our hands about national consensus. Let the militias be the standing armies in Texas and Montana. Our national legislatures would be more responsive to the individual needs of the region, rather than logrolling and horsetrading Big Digs for nuclear waste dumps.

* I don't know if you fellas saw the election special at theonion.com, but there's a really amusing article about Bill Clinton appointing himself President-for-Life. That, and the article about the arrival of peacekeeping troops from Yugoslavia and their opinions about our elections, are definitely worth a look.

-Flatcat

Gore To Sue Any American Who Failed To Vote For Him

WASHINGTON--Vice President Al Gore's lawyers said Thursday he will initiate a class action lawsuit in Federal District Court against any American who voted for anyone besides himself.

Chris Lehane stated that "Al will not concede defeat in this presidential election, even if he loses." Lehane stressed that the Vice President believed that anyone who voted for Governor Bush was delusional or traitorous, and in the former case could not be held responsible for their actions.

"It's clear that the Republicans will stop at nothing to win this election, including using votes received on November the 7th. What this lawsuit seeks to do, is to sue anyone who voted for Bush on the premise that such a vote denies the right of everyone else to have Al Gore as their president."

Asked if that meant that Gore would not concede even if he lags in votes after certification, Gore campaign spokeswoman Jenny Backus said that was correct, and went on to say;

"We want a full, fair and accurate count, and we will only be satisfied when the will of the people is interpreted to mean that Al Gore is president. The only way left to do that is to file the class action suit,"

From Number 6
Democrat Rules of Golf