The Many Faces of Seth Rogen . . .

I like Seth Rogen. I like him, even in spite of the mondo overexposure. Well, I don't like the way he overexposes himself in that way, since he could really use a trainer, but I like him. I've liked him (and James Franco and the gang) ever since Freaks and Geeks. And don't even get me started on how the crew at ER has gone out of their way to ruin Linda Cardellini's good looks.

So being a parent with three young kids, who hasn't seen a movie in the theater since Thomas Edison was making them, that means I recently had a chance to catch up with Seth's movies from last fall on DVD. No spoiler alerts here, buster. I mean, my grandma has even seen these dusties.

The movies that Mike and I watched this week were Pineapple Express and Zach and Miri Make A Porno. Yeah, they were entertaining. Yeah, Seth Rogen busted up the place with his usual shtick.

But I kinda had a problem with both movies. The same problem, even though the movies came from different directors. And maybe the problem isn't so much the actors's, or the writers's, or the directors's. Maybe it's our problem.

Basically, you have one movie about making porn movies, and another about dealing drugs. So there's this "countercultural" angle (boy, do I sound like a Nixonian press secretary, or what?) to both movies. But what bugged me about both of them was that there was still this whole relative morality thing going on with both movies.

So in Pineapple Express, there're a lot of pot jokes, and we're all supposed to laugh at them, 'cause we're in on the jokes. But the really bad guys in the movie deal in harder drugs, and they're the ones that the movie judges with its peculiar morality. So basically, pot's cool, but everything else is way bad.

Which I hate. Not because I'm against drugs - I've done them on more than one occasion in my life. And I'm kind of a Libertarian, so whatever people do with their bodies, I don't really care. But please, Mr. Moviemaker, don't get all moral about the relative merits of various drugs. Because if you want to be honest, there has been plenty of collateral damage from the pot trade. So it's okay to say, yeah, let's legalize it, but let's not pretend that plenty of people haven't been hurt by the pot trade.

Same goes for Zach and Miri. Not in the sense that the porn trade is illegal. But again, there was this relative morality laced through the movie, and it felt like it was aimed right at middle America. Basically, Zach and Miri have this unrequited love for each other. But they want to make this porno, so they hire some porn actors to star alongside them in this venture. So while they're making this porn movie, the other actors, the sluts of the movie, have sex with all of the other actors in the movie. But after a bit of did-she/he-sleep-with-someone-else misdirection, Zach and Miri break the rules for making the porno, and they only have sex with each other. Yeah - monogamous pornography.

And what really irritated me was that at the end of the movie, Zach and Miri are rewarded with true love for their monogamy. And all the other characters in the movie are left to drift along from pointless sexual relationship to pointless sexual relationship. Just because they're the sluts.

In other words - sluts are bad, but monogamous people are good. And as a once and future slut, I resent that I'm not allowed by Kevin Smith to feel love. And I know that these movies come together through test screenings and focus groups, and all that, but really, Mr. Director: if you want to pose as an "indie" or "hip" or whatever, please have some balls and take a really controversial position, and not some studio sanctioned version of potheads or porn stars. Give me the likeable heroin addicts from Drugstore Cowboy and Trainspotting. Let me fall in love with Ron Jeremy and have his grandkids. And enough with spoonfeeding us what you think middle America will respond to, okay?

And as the late, great Paul Harvey would say, "Goooood Day!"

Checking In . . .

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful comments lately. I vacillate over where to go with this blog, but maybe it doesn't have to go anywhere. I like sex blogs, and I like writing about sex. I also like being able to write about everything else in my life (yes, even Real Housewives of NYC, which I am loving/hating as I write).

I love the thoughtful discussion in the comments section, and as a sometimes lurker myself, I think it's okay to just look on silently from the corner. So if you're here for the witty banter, that's cool. And if you're here for the sex, well, I've got an adventure involving Mike, a roll of Saran Wrap, and an amateur porn website called www.windycityxxx.com. More to come . . .

HNT - Not . . .

Angie here - I'm back, but still stuck in some late winter doldrums, I guess. Feeling guilt about not posting, but not feeling particularly inspired by anything enough to write about it.

I was catching up on some blogs, and was over at Broadening Our Horizons reading some very open and honest posts on sexuality, including some very thoughtful discussion on marriage and what it's like to not feel sexual when everyone expects you should.

And one of the things that struck me was that all of this thoughtful writing, over a period of a few weeks, merited only one comment - from his lovely wife. Yet the one HNT picture (of the aforementioned lovely wife) generated nine comments.

Now, I'm not trying to be a comment-whore here. And I'm not against naked pictures - I'm actually one of the few women (0r not-so-few women - I honestly have no statistics to back this up) that enjoys watching porn. But something feels wrong when a couple expresses some of their deepest thoughts to the world, and the best that the audience can do is to say, "hey - nice titties!"

Suburban Hotwife is also kind of feeling around the edges of this subject, and she raises some excellent points about the nature of the audience as well.

I don't know where I'm going with this, and I have a toddler screaming at me to get him out of his crib right now, so I'll have to leave this topic unfinished. Maybe part of it is that I realize that things like HNT, or TMI, or whatever are good prompts to get us all writing, but in some ways, they make me feel like I'm catering to the prurient or voyeuristic side of the audience.

Anyway, I'm all mixed up, but I'll post this just to start the conversation . . .