Blat sex

(based on the novel Push by Sapphire) 

"Neco (Caio Blat) se surpreende quando a amada Violeta (Maria Flor) diz não ser mais virgem e o seduz".  I think that means he's surprised to find she's trying to seduce him out of his virginity.

 I can't say I was ever a very diligent blogger to begin with, but lately, much more of my tepid blogular energies are being spent over at NBSigns, where a friend is encouraging me to engage in a sorta rudimentary "social network marketing" campaign.  Thus far, it mostly involves my blogging at least once a week, and then her linking to the post from our Facebook page.

So, it's funny to me that, in a brief fit of wanting to write about something not directly work related, I put up that last C'mon, Live a Little! post, only to have gotten something like triple the page views I've ever reaped.  I mean, we're still talking under 3 figures, but it even got a complimentary comment from Derrick Bostrom himself!  Granted, it's sort of a closed loop of inter-referential compliments, there, but hell!  It's weird and exciting to get called out by such an esteemed fellow.

Anyway, amidst the torrential hub-bub, I spent some time scrolling through my slim stats, on StatCounter, where I learned a lot more than expected, about the tiny spot of traffic I've attracted.  I picked up that, besides commenting on my own blog post, Mr. Bostrom had also Tweeted about it, and that led to a number of visits.  I learned that someone in Canada had searched for "recalcitrant bohemian" and my post about starting the NBSigns blog, came up as a result--but they didn't click through to it.  A couple of Israelis were interested in my Shabbos recipes.  And I learned that the top result in a Googling of "blat blog", leads to a NY trombonist's blog.  Sensible that.  Seems I might have hi-jacked some Czech traffic that might logically have been looking for him (seeing how big brass bands are in the Czech Republic of my imagination).  FWIW, he plays ukelele, too.  And people in Lesotho might be looking for him, as well.

Perhaps least surprising is that, besides the C'mon, Live a Little! post, my distant second most popular post is, naturally, Sex Movies.  There are, however, a couple of unexpected details in that: most of its traffic came as a result of Google searches for some combination of the words "blat" and "sex"; and the blat sex searches seem geographically centered in the middle east.  On the west end, there's someone in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and a couple folk in the Netherlands.  Way back east, there are hits from Thailand and Sri Lanka, but in between, you'll find Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan, all host at least one seeker of blat sex.


Now, to my mind, "blat sex" sounds like it would involve something akin to santorum (which I'm surprised now to note, doesn't yet glide past the Blogger spell checker).  What would it mean to you?  What would you be searching for, in blat and sex together?  Near as I can figure, they all might be fans of a 30 year old actor from Brazil, named Caio Blat, who may or may not have been involved in either a sex scandal and/or some kind of porn venture (translated).  I can't decide whether I'm glad or disappointed that it wasn't santorum.

On a side note, prob'ly as a result of being reminded of the Sex Movies post, we got 'round to seeing Humpday, on the Netflix Instantwatcher, this week.  Shrug.  Well acted, but I can't really recommend it.  My favorite movie about Portland DIY porn, without actually being porn, is still, by far, Made in Secret.  I guess my takeaway from Humpday, is that without investigating one's motivations, one is bound to encounter creative dead ends, and that working may be the only way through them.  But that's really extrapolating a lot, here, on the spot.  I just kept asking, during the film, roughly the same question Ben's wife asks him--only not so much, "why do you need to do this?", but rather, "what is making you think that filming two straight guys having sex with one another would constitute art?".  It occurs to me to ask, too, "why would you be trying to make 'art' for a porn fest?", but I know how delightful a string that is to pluck, for both artists and pornographers.

This is a print, given me by one of my instructors at Pennsylvania School of Art & Design, Bob Patierno, in 1991, after I'd spent a couple of years there, drawing lots of nudes.  Its title is something like "art vs. pornography", and I remember the binoculars are there for those who can't see the difference.  But I'm still not sure which one has the close ups...  Another version of the same print, is up on his website.

There's some kind of relationship between this movie and the phenomenon of "bro slaps" or "man smacks", and maybe that's where I can imagine the art is introduced: in illustrating our methods of insulating ourselves from intimacy.  That's where this movie is perhaps most like Made in Secret: in illustrating that creative idea which the movie-within-a-movie might be trying to address, the framing device allows the real world filmmakers a much rounder point of view.  Or it could just be that I'm most easily taken in when an artist circumscribes the subject at hand.

Anyway... thus concludes my crass attempt at search engine optimization by concocting a post all-but-guaranteed to direct all blat sex traffic my way!  Screw you, Caio Blat!