WordsByNowak

A quick follow-up to Friday’s post on porn parodies - a reader brought to my attention that not every mainstream producer is allowing porn companies to riff off their intellectual property. 20th Century Fox has issued a cease-and-desist letter against porn producer New Sensations over its upcoming spoof of The X-Files.

The film features everybody’s two favourite paranormal investigators and promises to, as Examiner.com put it, fill “in some of the blanks many X-Files fans had previously left to the imagination.”

New Sensations decided last week that discretion was the better part of valour and said it “does not believe that its intended product infringes on the rights of Fox. However, in the spirit of cooperation, the company has decided to respond to Fox’s concerns by adapting the title to The Sex Files: A Dark XXX Parody.”

The characters names have also been changed although viewers shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out who’s who. Judging from her picture at right, porn star Kimberley Kane is pretty much the spitting image of Scully.

I wonder if they tried to cast David Duchovny to star in the parody? The guy certainly has the resume for it - not only did he get his start on Red Shoe Diaries, a soft-core cable show, he’s also a well-known sex addict.

You may remember a little while back I posted about the trend in porn regarding sitcom parodies. Well, it looks like Newsweek has picked up on the phenomenon too. The magazine’s Pop Vox blog has an interview with Jeff Mullen, who writes and directs parodies under the oh-so-clever porn name Will Ryder.

Ryder is turning out to be the go-to director of the porn parody world, having helmed spoofs of The Brady Bunch, The Cosby Show, Three’s Company, Bewitched and even Married With Children. He’s quoted as saying that porn parodies are the current “gold rush” of the business. You know he’s got a point when even Saved By the Bell is being turned into a porno.

Here’s a trailer from Ryder’s version of the Cosby Show (completely safe for work). Check it out, as it’s completely hilarious - Thomas Ward (whoever he is) does an awesome Bill Cosby:

Newsweek’s interview addresses the burning issue I’ve had in mind: why aren’t these parody makers getting sued by the original series’ producers? Here’s what Ryder had to say:

There are tons of legal precedents for this type of speech. But really, the truth of the matter is, the mainstream companies are too damn smart to sue us. Because they know if they sue us, they are going to draw this huge mainstream spotlight on us, which I want. But they’re too damn smart to do it.

As I said back with the Saved By the Bell post - I’ve never seen one of these parodies but I must admit they are pretty intriguing. Not so much for the sex, but more for the sheer audacity of taking such a sacred American cultural institution - the sitcom - and turning it completely upside down. I mean come on, we all knew Jack wanted to do Janet and Chrissy, but to actually see him do Janet and Chrissy? That’s just something you never thought you’d see but always kinda secretly wished you could, isn’t it?

Here’s a funny tidbit courtesy of Wired’s Danger Room blog. The U.S. Air Combat Command is looking for a corporate sponsor for a Halloween party at the Sather base in Iraq. More than 300 guests are expected at the “Halloween Monster Bash” on October 31 and the sponsor will be allowed to plaster its logo everywhere in exchange for funding the gig.

It’s good to see the U.S. military trying to curb runaway spending under its new tighter fiscal mandates from the Obama administration, but the hard sell to corporate sponsors is a little over the top. As the solicitation says, “Your sponsorship is guaranteed to generate smiles in bringing the fun activities of being a kid again to Victory Base Complex.”

Celebrating Halloween on a military base in Iraq also brings up a whole bunch of logistical questions. Exactly what kind of costumes are the soldiers supposed to wear? I know I’ve dressed up as the prototypical “army guy” before, so are they going to go as the “civilian guy?” And how many Americans-dressed-as-sheiks is it going to take before the idea gets really tired? Or will they go for awkward laughs and dress up as bin Laden?

So far we’ve got Viagra in a pill and we could soon have Viagra in a cream, but are you ready for Viagra in a cone? The Icecreamists, a weird group of people that have something to do with ice cream, seem to think so.

On their website, the Icecreamists describe themselves as “an anonymous troupe of provocateurs and iconoclasts with a background in staging dramatic high-profile events.” Okay, so pretentiousness aside, what they really do is serve ice cream.

The group will be opening a short-term ice-cream stand at London’s prestigious Selfridges Ultralounge department store starting on Sept. 11 and running till Nov. 1. Other than selling what will undoubtedly be over-priced ice cream (given the locale), they’ll also be peddling a flavour designed to boost the libido.

The “Sex Pistol,” as they’re calling it, will contain ginkgo, biloba, arginine and guarana, all of which are supposed to boost sex drive, as well as a shot of La Fee Absinthe, which is booze that is supposed to… well… mess you up. Never ones to give up a good pun, Australia’s Daily Telegraph has dubbed this particular concoction “vice cream.” Not bad Aussies, not bad.

There’s no end to the wonderful studies that scientists will perform. From the recent research into what would happen if there was a zombie outbreak to figuring out that cows naturally face magnetic north, scientists have for years been finding out the things that we as a people really want to know.

Well now they’ve discovered that male fruit flies, like their male human counterparts, are hornier than females. Yes, it’s true - Swiss researchers have found that after about a minute and a half of mating, female fruit flies start kicking and struggling. Apparently, if the action goes on for any longer it limits the amount of time the female can mate with other males. Ouch. Boy, those female fruit flies sure are slutty.

What makes the study even more bizarre is that researchers somehow managed to prop up dead female flies to look alive - as National Geographic puts it, “Weekend at Bernie’s style” - to see if it would make a difference. It did. Sex with dead flies lasted 1.5 times longer than with live ones. Who knew male fruit flies were sicko necrophiliacs?

One expert, not involved in the study, said the flies are similar to humans in that it’s all about the foreplay. “I don’t know you could say human females want longer copulation, per se,” said one. “It’s really the foreplay, not the actual act of copulation. In the insects, prior to that, there’s courtship going on, and that’s like foreplay in humans.”