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Sex!
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Laughing Stock: Going with the flow
Posted By Linda Ray on Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 3:28 PM
“I like how shocked people are when you say 'c*nt.' It's like I have a nuclear bomb in my underpants, or a mad tiger or a gun.” So says Caitlin Moran, London Times journalist and author of "How to Build a Girl." She recently confirmed that "Lady Bird" star Beanie Feldstein will play the lead in that bestseller’s film adaptation.
While we’re waiting for that, we can continue to enjoy Tucson comedy's celebratory riffs on a girl’s anatomy.
Mo Urban and Steena Salido present another in their series, C*nts being C*nts Talking About Their C*nts! at 8 p.m., Friday, July 13. The show is 21+ and admission is $5 at Can’s Deli, 340 North 4th Ave. A portion of the proceeds goes to the YWCA of Southern Arizona Project Period, a program that provides sanitary menstrual products to those who can’t afford them. Donations of sanitary products for the program are also welcome.
Standup comedians include imports Amy Blackwell, who performs regularly at the Scottsdale Laugh Factory; Phoenix area favorites Leslie Barton, April Walterscheid and Kerrilynn Gallagher plus Hannah Tighe of Gilbert and Nikki Dinnella of Chandler. Tucson newcomers Chinna Garza and Megan Gossen make their C*nts debut.
Tucson Storyteller Gina Grande Santos and music by DJ Plastic Disease round out the show.
Estrogen Hour Remembers J-Fin
On Sunday, July 15, The Estrogen Hour, launchpad for a dozen or so women now prominent in Tucson comedy, honors one of the funniest, Jennifer Finley, who died last month of cancer.
Organizers Nancy Stanley and Mary Steed launched the Estrogen Hour a decade ago to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. According to Stanley, “We're departing from our usual fundraising to celebrate the life and comedy of our late friend whose candor and creativity made her a crowd favorite.” Proceeds go to Finley’s family to help defray her funeral expenses.
Stanley will host the show, a lineup of top local women comics and one featured “Guestosterone,” Dominic DiTolla. Comedians include Amber Frame; KXCI’s Bridgitte Thum; Cindell Hanson; Edna Meza Aguirre; Jessica Stapp, who also performs with Tucson Improv Movement; Mo Urban and Steena Salido, co-hosts of C*nts being C*nts Talking About Their C*nts!; Noel Hennessey of FST (Female Storytellers); and Suzie Sexton, host of the annual Comedy for Charity show at the Fox Theatre.
The Estrogen Hour takes place at 6:30 p.m., Sunday, July 15 at Laff’s Comedy Caffe. Tickets are $15 and there is a two-item minimum. The show is 21+ All proceeds benefit Finley's family.
Friday, February 9, 2018
Laughing Stock: Marga! Plus Parts and Flowers
Posted By Linda Ray on Fri, Feb 9, 2018 at 11:17 AM
Marga!
“I grew up thinking I'm an artist because I didn't know any other way,” says actor, stand-up comedian and writer Marga Gomez. “My parents were both creative. All their friends were performing artists, so I was very comfortable in this world.”Thus did Gomez become a Cuban Liza Minelli, only lesbian, del pueblo and a lot more savvy.
Her mid-century upbringing, although periodically rocky, surrounded Gomez with humor and filled her with drive. Her mother was a professional dancer; her father was a comedian and songwriter, and a producer of popular, Follies-scale variety shows for New York’s large community of Spanish-speaking immigrants. The hustle to stay on top of the entertainment business defined her family.
Between them, her parents have inspired half Gomez’ output of a dozen popular solo stage shows. The latest is Latin Standards, her tale of the father-daughter entertainer dynamic. Its title refers to the genre of her father’s music; “The comedy is a survival tool,” Gomez says. The New York Times named the show a Critic’s pick when it opened last year at The Public Theatre (Hamilton).
Borderlands Theatre presents Gomez performing Latin Standards February 14 through 18 at the Steinfeld Warehouse, 101 West 6th Street. The run opens with a Valentine’s day fiesta, including live music and food. Details and reservations are available at tinyurl.com/LatinStandards.
“I started writing solo shows because my parents were important but forgotten,” Gomez says. “I wanted the Latino community to know about these people and their times.
“At the end of the show, the great thing that people tell me is, even though I'm a Latina, I'm a lesbian, I'm from New York and I'm neurotic, people can totally relate to the father-daughter story, and they see their own father.”
Parts & Flowers
Mo Urban and Steena Salido bring their third C*nts Being C*nts Talking About C*nts Comedy Show to Flycatcher, free, at 9 p.m., Sunday, February 11 (after the Estrogen Hour benefit at Laff’s at 6). C*nts, etc., features seven comedians, including Genevieve Rice from Phoenix; poet Janet Spencer, and the all-woman rawk band, Sugar Stains. The event benefits the YWCA’s Project Period.For Valentine’s Day, Hotel Congress presents Rebecca Tingley’s talk-show-format comedy show, Let’s Talk About Sex Baby, also featuring Randy Ford and Tammy King. Local comedians play truth or dare and answer audience questions.
Also on Valentine’s day, comedy siren Lisa Landry headlines a show at Laff’s where every woman will get a rose. Visit laffstucson.org for details.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Tucson Novelist Thinks Maybe It's Time To Just Start Writing Porn
Posted By Jim Nintzel on Mon, May 9, 2016 at 2:00 PM
Over at Salon, Tucson novelist Lydia Millet offers a modest proposal about giving up on literary fiction and jumping into writing porn:
So we’ve got the unmoving words on the page. That’s the first black mark against us. Second: do we get to the point? How soon? Here’s the answer: no. We don’t get to the point, not for 200 pages at least. Sometimes 3,600, if we’re Knausgaard. At writing workshops they taught us to show not tell — well, showing takes time. We paint a slow picture. You can see the brushstrokes. We don’t get to the point, and sometimes when we do our readers don’t notice, in fact. It’s so couched in nuance it can fly right over a person’s head. What was that you said? I couldn’t quite make it out.All joking aside: Millet's new novel, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, continues to draw rave reviews. At Slate, Laura Miller writes:
Third, sound bites. We don’t have them. No pull quotes. No celebrity names. Few if any pictures. The list of what we don’t have is a long one. Our tools for captivation are few, and often ungainly.
Which is why I’ve settled on porn, come to a decision that my next book after this one will be devoted to relentless, often hardcore pornography. I can’t give you an exact preview here on the pages of Salon, of course: this is a decent website. Plus that would be a spoiler.
Monday, February 1, 2016
PETA: Vegan Men Are Better in Bed Than Meat Eaters
Posted By María Inés Taracena on Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 12:15 PM
Disclaimer: If you feel uncomfortable about sex scenes, don't watch the video. No nudity, just a lot of moving and moaning!
The secret for men to have longer erections—and a better sex life overall—is to go vegan, according to animal rights group PETA.
PETA 's commercial proposal for Super Bowl Sunday—which is no different than past campaigns by the group that use nudity and sex to get attention—was banned by executives, because it is sexually explicit and left execs "speechless," the group says in a press release.
The online publication Mic makes a great point about this ad:
The secret for men to have longer erections—and a better sex life overall—is to go vegan, according to animal rights group PETA.
PETA 's commercial proposal for Super Bowl Sunday—which is no different than past campaigns by the group that use nudity and sex to get attention—was banned by executives, because it is sexually explicit and left execs "speechless," the group says in a press release.
Meat-eaters across the country are feeling the effects of a “deflategate” crisis taking place right on their home turf, in the bedroom. More than half of men between the ages of 40 and 70 have to throw the game because of the difficulty they have even getting started. Turns out, the cholesterol in meat, eggs, and dairy products slows the flow of blood to all the body’s organs—not just the heart.Oh PETA, where do I begin? I stopped taking you seriously the minute you decided to compare the Holocaust to animal cruelty.
Vegan Lovers Satisfy
Guys driving for the score can tackle impotence by trading in their unhealthy eating habits for vegan meals. Plant-based foods can help take your sex life into overtime.
Low-fat vegan meals tackle all the physical causes behind the vast majority of cases of impotence: high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, prostate cancer or inflammation, and hormonal imbalances. A new study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition also suggests that men who couple regular exercise with a diet rich in flavonoids, found in fruits like strawberries, blueberries, and apples, may reduce their risk of developing ED by over 20 percent. And each person who goes vegan saves more than 100 animals a year from suffering and a terrifying death in today’s industrialized meat, egg, and dairy industries.
The key to a long lasting, hot love life is to start with delicious vegan meals in the kitchen.
The online publication Mic makes a great point about this ad:
While the foods we eat may affect our erections, young men who can't get it up could be struggling due to psychological factors or medications that have nothing at all to do with diet.
Either way, lots of men have complicated relationships with their penises. When erectile dysfunction enters the picture, they're likely to feel insecure and ashamed — and exploiting that insecurity to promote a vegan diet probably won't help them feel any better. So let's all eat tons of sliders and chicken wings during this year's Super Bowl in protest.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Into the Mild: Sorry, Prostitutes Can´t Stay in the Dormitory
Posted By Jason P on Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 10:00 AM
Santiago, Chile
Was I bored or hungry? My night shift at the hostel seemed to be moving in slow motion that night. I stepped away for a couple of minutes to grab food from the staff refrigerator in the back yard. A coworker, Julie, watched the office for me.
I returned to an empty office and an open door. I went out to see why the door was open and found Julie talking to a man through the fence. The man was around 45 years old and needed a bed for the night for a friend. He didn’t have a reservation but claimed to know the owner, Jon. Jon would vouch for him. They were friends. I talked with the man as my coworker went back inside to call Jon. The man asked again if he could have a room and then gave us 10,000 Chilean Pesos (15 dollars), said he didn’t need the change, and signaled to the car across the street.
When the man brought his friend out, I immediately saw why he had left her in the car during our initial conversation. She was roughly 45, distraught, and wearing a very short skirt & very high heels, one of which had a broken strap. A strong limp and eyes that told of recent drug use came into focus as she got closer. I stepped inside for a minute to brief my coworker. Neither of us knew what to do. Our daily workload focused mostly on arranging reservations and giving tours. I must have missed the training session on dealing with battered woman escorted by their abusers.
I stepped back outside, opened the gate, and let the woman in. The man tried to follow her in, putting his hand on my shoulder as he talked to me. I told him twice not to touch me, each request followed by him removing his hand for five seconds. The third time, I told him very colorfully to leave, pushed him out, and slammed the gate as he yelled at me.
The woman obviously needed help so I led her in and took her to the dining room. I then found Julie and told her “She’s pretty f***ed up, we should call an ambulance.” I then saw the two guests in the same room and regretted not pulling Julie to the side to say it. We went to a smaller room near the kitchen. The woman said that she was hungry so I brought her bread and butter as Julie began asking her what had happened. Julie was Latina, charismatic, and spoke Spanish as her first language. The woman warmed and opened up as she spoke with Julie.
I felt that they would be more comfortable in private so I left them and grabbed the phone in the office. No one picked up the emergency line for the hospital, so I gave up and called the police instead. They told me they would send a unit by soon.
I went to update Julie and hoped that things weren't how they looked. They were. In addition to the bad ankle, her speech was slurred and she had a long red mark on her face that she earlier tried to hide with her hair. She eventually opened up and said that the man had been beating her and she didn’t want to return.
What to do?
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
STD Rates in Tucson Aren't the Worst, But They Aren't the Best
Posted By Jamie Verwys on Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:30 PM
As a city we have received some big time press lately from the likes of the New York Times heralding Tucson as a hip place to live. From our vintage neon signs to rapidly growing Downtown, to our fine food and local beer establishments, we have gotten some pretty cool accolades. We were named fourth biggest city of book lovers and received numerous praises for our biking/cycling friendly community.
But, to be clear, there are some lists we don’t want to rank in the top five. Or even in the top 100 for that matter. We can all wipe a bead of anxious sweat off our brows because we did not rank as one of the Top 100 Most Sexually Diseased Cities in the United States. The data, released by rentapplication.com, compiled the latest STD statistics, in 2013, in the states by the Center of Disease Control and created a list of the towns that have the highest number of STDs.
Show Low was the only Arizona city to make it onto the list, coming in at number 49 with a rate of 1,036 reported STDs per 100,000 people.
While we might not have received the dubious honor, it’s not time to start making it with our neighbors sans rubbers. Show Low is the only city in good old’ AZ that has a higher STD rating then Tucson. We even far beat out Phoenix in our instances of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis.
It was reported that our rate of STDs per 100,000 people was 608. That includes 5,192 cases of Chlamydia, 795 cases of gonorrhea and 53 cases of syphilis. Our grand total for 2013? 6040. That’s quite a number of uncomfortable diseases that can all be treated if dealt with promptly.
Thankfully, for those of us who want to get tested, or perhaps just students in Arizona, which does not require sexual education be taught at elementary, middle and high schools, there are options available.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
This Swedish Kids' Song About Genitalia is Both Important and my Favorite Thing
Posted By Chelo Grubb on Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 3:00 PM
So, this is a Swedish kids' song set up to teach the kiddos the basics of genitalia. And I love it.
"Here comes the penis at full pace," and "the vagina is cool, you better believe it, even on an old lady. It just sits there so elegantly" are the only verified translated lines I've been able to find thus far.
The video has been viewed 1.5 million times and it's garnered some mixed reactions, from "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" to "what a great song about the most natural thing there is."
My love for this song is about 30 percent the intense joy I get from singing "snippity, snippity, snippity snop," 20 percent how adorable that grandma vagina* is and 50 percent the cool factor of sex positive parenting. It's really great that Swedish kids are being given this sweet introduction to a part of their bodies that is so often stigmatized.
♬ Snippity doooooo ♪
*"Adorable grandma vagina" is a thought I was not expecting to have today.
"Here comes the penis at full pace," and "the vagina is cool, you better believe it, even on an old lady. It just sits there so elegantly" are the only verified translated lines I've been able to find thus far.
The video has been viewed 1.5 million times and it's garnered some mixed reactions, from "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" to "what a great song about the most natural thing there is."
My love for this song is about 30 percent the intense joy I get from singing "snippity, snippity, snippity snop," 20 percent how adorable that grandma vagina* is and 50 percent the cool factor of sex positive parenting. It's really great that Swedish kids are being given this sweet introduction to a part of their bodies that is so often stigmatized.
♬ Snippity doooooo ♪
*"Adorable grandma vagina" is a thought I was not expecting to have today.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Get Your Free Condoms on New Year's Eve!
Posted By Jim Nintzel on Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 9:00 AM
Cynde Cerf, director of communications and marketing at Planned Parenthood Arizona, sends along an op-ed reminding those who are going to get busy during the holiday season to remember to use protection. Planned Parenthood will be supplying free condoms on New Year's Eve for patrons at Hotel Congress, The Shanty and Pastiche.
The holidays are upon us—time with family and friends, parties, champagne, and, even romance. At this time of year there can be such an overwhelming feeling of joy and happiness that when you add twinkling lights on a tree and a sprig of mistletoe, who knows where the evening could go?Campaigns about watching one’s alcohol consumption during the holidays are prevalent and serve as wonderful reminders to celebrate responsibly. But, when we are finding ourselves “in the mood” at this time of year, another way to celebrate responsibly is to use a condom when you have sex.
In the United States, about half of all pregnancies are unintended and each year there are 20 million new sexually transmitted infections (STIs). As the largest provider of sexual health care in Arizona, we want to remind everyone that if there is a chance you may have sex on New Year’s Eve, make sure you have a condom in your purse or wallet. The condom should be one of your most essential holiday accessories and that’s why we created the Party Prepared community health initiative.
To make it a little easier to access condoms, we have partnered with restaurants, bars and clubs in across Arizona, making 15,000 free condoms available on New Year’s Eve to communities. In Tucson, you can find free condoms at the following locations: Hotel Congress, Pastiche and The Shanty.
Condoms are not the only way to party prepared. Another way to make sure you are off to the best start in the New Year is to have emergency contraception on-hand. Condoms can break and sometimes, even with the best of intentions, they can be forgotten. If you need a primer on how to put a condom on correctly, we have you covered. Go to ppaz.org for more information and answers to questions you may have, as well as a full list of locations participating in this year’s campaign.
We wish everyone a safe and happy New Year’s Eve filled with fun, music, good food, flirting and romance. Here is to a healthy 2015!
Staff Pick
Brew Haha Comedy Showcase Presents: Chris Thayer @ Borderlands Brewery
Brew Haha at Borderlands Brewery is Tucson's longest running independent comedy show. It features nationally tour headliners… More
@ Borderlands Brewing Company
Mon., Aug. 20, 8-10 p.m.
119 E. Toole Ave.
