LETTERS TO THE EDITOR & SUCH
Featuring: Threats! Gratuitous slavering!
Responses to lesbian porn! Responses to responses to lesbian porn!
let us know what’s on your tweaked-out pile of grey matter. send email to signum@magdalen.com with SIGNUM LETTERS in the subject header. SIGNUM reserves the right to do whatever the heck it wants with any such items you send to us, including editing ‘em.
Return-Path: <president@whitehouse.gov>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 05:55:04 -0700
Subject: Cease and desist
To: magdalen@magdalen.com
Message-ID:
<1249839168-45186959@sparc5.parlez.com> Status:
Dear Ms. Brown:
It has come to my attention that you are publishing literature subversive to the New Economy. As President, I have to inform you that your freedom of speech is limited when it might affect the price of the stock or when you attempt to take any kind of potshot at our great economy. We have spies in Oregon now watching your every, [sic] so I would suggest you be very very careful, Ms. Brown. You wouldn’t want anything *bad* to happen to your little webzine, now, would you?
Sincerely
The President of the United States
The Editrix responds:
Dear Bill~
How ‘bout I just suck on yr cigar & we’ll call it an even deal?
xoxo,
tiffany
Dear Tiffany:
I enjoy SIGNUM very much, and particularly liked Cletus Nelson’s piece on epilepsy in the latest issue. I must, however, take Richard Kadrey’s article on lesbian porn to task. First of all, by way of introduction, my name is Rodger Jacobs. You may recognize my name as the by-line on numerous articles in Eye magazine, Panik, Hustler, Swank, and as former editor-in-chief of New Rave. Under the pseudonym Martin Brimmer I have penned over 100 screenplays for adult films and videos, copping the Best Screenplay trophy at this years [sic] Adult Video News Awards for the Wicked Pictures release Double Feature, and sharing the award last year with Nic Cramer for the film Looker.
Richard’s editorial on lesbian porn was, to say the very least, poorly researched. If he was any kind of student of contemporary porn he would have noted that a fantastic series of porn by and for lesbians, "San Francisco Lesbians," has been on the shelves for many years now. Like the videos Richard essays, "S.F. Lesbians" is certainly not the lipstick lesbian porn the mainstream carnal cinema circle shovels out to the consumer. However, in dismissing all of the "porn with a lesbian bent" that the chums in Chatsworth manufacture, the series of videos called "No Man’s Land" have been unduly overlooked.
"No Man’s Land" is currently up to volume 31. I began writing and co-producing the aforementioned shows with Volume 8, seven years ago. When asked if I wanted to assume the writing chores on "No Man’s Land," I told director Wesley Emerson that I would gladly do so with one caveat: The stories had to be about characters who were lesbians or actively bisexual, instead of the lame ten-otherwise-straight-women -stuck-on-a-desert-island-with-a-box-of-dildos scenario. The NML series is certainly aimed at the mainstream porn consumer but it also remains to this day the ONLY story-driven all-girl series in adult video, and the ONLY all-girl series from a mainstream company such as VideoTeam that features characters who are gay with stories that focus on lesbian issues. If you ever desire to publish an educated, all-consuming look at lesbian porn and the politics of such, instead of the ignorant editorializing in Richard Kadrey’s column, let me know and I will gladly contribute an article on the subject for you.
Thanks....
Rodger Jacobs
Our writer responds:
The reader is partly right. I should have been more clear in my original review. The rule of thumb in life and art is that 90% everything is shit. The videos I was talking about are part of the minority of good stuff. This is the rule I try to follow in all of my columns.
Sincerely,
RK
P.S. Readers are advised not to think any ironic thoughts about a couple of guys debating the merits of lesbian pornography.
Dear Readers:
Please write us again telling us how great SIGNUM looks and how cool it’s getting. I only ask because I, well, I lost your previous notes. We never used to run Letters to the Ed, so I kinda spaced ‘em. All I have now are these scraps I forwarded to our designer:
"Loved the visuals yet again in the new issue." That’s swell! And "The issue looks great. I love the illustrations." That’s all I kept, so you just have to write in and rave, rave, rave about how brilliant we are. And don’t forget to read the archives, even though I still haven’t had time to make a nice, super-descriptive index of the whole thing as many of you have requested. Sorry!
smooches,
tiffany
