We are a species full of judgment. We judge one another on how we look, what we drive, where we work out, who we know, where we work, what OS we prefer – if it exists, we’ve judged it. And no judgment is as harsh as that which is attached to attempts at seduction. You can imagine our horror when we ran across an old post on Spike listing James Brown’s “Sex Machine” and Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” at numbers one and two on their Top 10 Best Songs to Have Sex To list.

And my “old” we don’t mean decades ago. We mean a few years back. Listen — “Sex Machine” came out in 1970. “Sexual Healing” came out in 1982. We’ve had plenty of excellent tunes since then to get the mood going in our bedrooms. Surely we can find something a little more contemporary to get the party started?

To that end, we offer Obliterate, our very own collection of nothing but moody, panty-dropping tunes, ready for you to blast on your Sonos immediately, thanks to Spotify.

Enjoy it, or make your own Spotify playlist and share it in the comments. Just one thing: if you put “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails on it, we’re totally going to judge you.

Header image by masochismtango.

Let’s play a theology game. I’ll make an argument, and then give you words to substitute into the argument. It’ll be fun!

The case for Biblical vegetarianism is found in Eden, the paradise of God’s original creation, where God created people as vegetarians (1:29). God only changed things after the situation went horribly wrong and as a condescension to the new reality of sin (9:3). As holy people we should be like those in Eden, which is like Heaven. Therefore, we should be vegetarian.

Now substitute in the following: nakedness, naked 2:25, 3:21. (Told you it would be fun.)

Nakedness is a powerful symbol, and one that God used through the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 20). In our own day, we are even seeing nakedness used as a sign-act against the TSA scanners. The naked body confronts the viewer with their own social assumptions and restrictions: here is the human form, which God created and declared Good — what are you doing with it? Why are you so shocked to see it?

At the same time, it is a profound expression of our utter helplessness, our utter dependency upon God to care for us: we are born naked, and we can’t bring our clothes with us when we die. Jesus was crucified naked while the soldiers gambled over his clothes, and left his clothes behind in the tomb when he rose from the grave. So if Christians are to be like the crucified and risen Jesus, what have we to do with clothes?

The Bible backs up this point: we are at our most holy only when we are clothed in God’s clothing — in righteousness — for anything else is vanity or distraction (5:10). Associations between nudity and sanctity are found in Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, and Taoism. In fourth century Christianity, there was even a movement called Adamism that saw these connections — but suffice it to say that Adamism wasn’t popular with the dominant church. The Christian tradition has tended to shove this connection firmly under the rug.

But you can’t keep such a power constrained forever. In 17^th century England, a new group of Christians — called Quakers — seized upon the inner light and followed that light instead of the Christian tradition. The result was a shocking reinterpretation of what it means to follow God, and that lead some particular prophets of the 1650s and 1660s into “Going Naked as a Signe”. Through their nudity, they shocked and challenged the artificial sense of propriety and the domineering social structures and they seized dignity in their own form.

Quakerism still holds many members today (including your humble author), although the history of going naked as a sign doesn’t get a lot of play even among them. Jon Watts, a Quaker musician, is out to change that: he’s working on an album called Clothe Yourself in Righteousness about early Quakers and nakedness as a witness, based on a paper composed for the Earlham School of Religion. The album just reached its crowd-funding goal, and we’re looking forward to it!

Our favorite anti-feminist feminist, Camille Paglia goes to town on Lady Gaga in The Sunday Times magazine, questioning whether the rise of Gaga indicates the death of sex. Those of us who enjoy Gaga are “marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty,” Paglia says — are we?

Despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all — she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…

Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…

… Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions. Gaga’s fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina.

It’s a deeply disturbing look at an icon that has come to partly represent our generation.

First up, is Christina Aguilera with her new single Not Myself Tonight a carnival of sex toys and BDSM themes to enjoy at our leisure!

If that’s a little hardcore for you (don’t tell our editrix), just skip over to Miley Cyrus’ wild child anthem Can’t Be Tamed.

“I go through guys like money flying out the hands. They try to change me but they realize they can’t and every tomorrow is a day I never plan. If u gonna be my man understand: I can’t be tamed, I can’t be saved, I can’t be blamed, I can’t can’t…”

Sing it!

(Hey, doesn’t Miley kind of look like our editrix? JUST KIDDING, AV, OMG, PLEASE DON’T HURT US.)

You know, if you look hard enough under the VersaSpa tans, over-processed vocals, and senseless Top 40 hits.

Oh, who are we kidding? You can’t. It’s mostly shit. Glittering, beautiful shit, but shit. The only motif that persists is drugs, but even that doesn’t really hit us the way it should — the paparazzi bulbs are too bright. It’s an expected disaster, all of it.

Other generations were defined by their music — it was the battle cry, the unifying force. We’re too bored, ADD and apathetic. It’s like we have nothing to fight for; we grew up with too much handed to us and now all we can do is sit around and bitch on Twitter. That’s our legacy. Bitching on Twitter.

Yeah, we saw your Grammy tweets. At least Taylor Swift is singing. At least Pink is swinging. At least Lady Gaga is pounding a piano and Beyoncé is hair-swishing.

We here at Sex and the 405 have an assignment for you today: do something. Actually take a stance by doing. Kiss someone, punch someone, make something.

Just, you know, don’t stab anyone.

Image from Mudkiss Magazine. Reminder via Robert Ebert.

Directed by Gerard Damiano, who had worked on Deep Throat a year prior, The Devil in Miss Jones is a perverse tale of abandon and despair that perfectly encapsulates my greatest fear: a life of release that meets a tragic end in the eternal fire of indifference.

Spelvin, now 73, is back, in Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus” video. Toby Dye creates a masterful montage of an interview with the porn actress and scenes from the film, where she is 36.

It is a bizarre mind trip buoyed on the sweet vocals of Massy Star’s Hope Sandoval that exposes an aspect of the adult entertainer in a way no music video ever has.

Watch for yourself (or, if you’re at work or otherwise unable, read the transcript below):

Massive Attack Paradise Circus from sabakan on Vimeo.

Spelvin: I, at one time tried my hand at being a prostitute–you know, doing tricks for money with a very nice madam and just completely bombed. I just was no good at it. I absolutely could not manufacture the excitement, the sexual excitement i needed in order to have sex. So plenty people would ask me how could you do it in front of a camera then? The truth of it, when there is a camera running, it is so thrilling. God help me, I love the camera.

Sandoval: It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm, we can roll ourselves over ’cause we’re uncomfortable. Oh where the devil makes us sin but we like it when we’re spinning in his grip.

Spelvin: The fact that it was a fuck film–I was frightened to begin with. But there is something about making a movie when you are in the film set. Anything is possible. The narrative of sex–of course first there is attraction: our hearts beat fast and our palms get sweaty and I get a tingle on the outside of my arms. Foreplay: getting to know each other, and knowing exactly what the other person’s sexual triggers are, whether it’s the little spot behind the ear, the inside of the elbow, the kiss on the neck, the flittering of the tongue across the clitoris.

Sandoval: It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm, we can roll ourselves over when we’re uncomfortable. Oh, well the devil makes us sin but we like it when we’re spinning in his grip.

Spelvin: Oh, boy. An orgasm is that point in time that can’t be measured. A mystical instant that doesn’t really exist in this dimension.

Sandoval: Love is like a sin, my love, for the one that feels it the most. Look at her with a smile like a flame–she will love you like a fly will never love you, again.

Spelvin: I will have to confess that the eroticism and excitement being expressed was very deliberate. It’s not something that I said oh my god this is the most wonderful thing in the world, I can’t wait to do this again. Probably the most uncomfortable and humiliating thing I’ve ever done on film. But nonetheless there I was because the truth of it is: I love the camera. We are our own devil.

This is a single from Massive Attack’s album Heligoland, due out February 9.

Image from IMDB.

A product with a local fare, the calendar features twelve local independent bombshells who want to use their talents and smashing eye candy power to raise money for a recycling campaign as well as to fund a scholarship for a young girl to attend Silverlake Conservatory of Music.

For 20 bucks, you get a calendar and a killer compilation of music with tracks from each calendar girl. Not that you needed any more incentive to see these ladies up against your wall all year long.

Recently several news outlets reported that Lady Gaga had once been afraid of sex. Or intimacy. Or both. They’re not the same thing and anyone with an ounce of gray matter knows it, but because the media is either terrified of talking about sex truthfully or eager to exploit a juicy headline, we’ll never know which.

A cursory listen of Gaga’s albums suggests she has no issue with sex (how many women do you know will so readily admit they wanna take a ride on your disco stick?). Songs like “Poker Face” and “I Like It Rough” off The Fame, on the other hand, clearly illustrate a fear of intimacy:

Your love is nothing I can’t fight,
can’t sleep with the man who dims my shine.
I’m in the bedroom with tissues and when
I know you’re outside banging but I won’t let you in.
‘Cause it’s a hard life, with love in the world
and I’m a hard girl–loving me’s like chewing on pearls.

On her new album, The Fame Monster, the track “Bad Romance” also alludes to this fear–and don’t get me started on the music video. Following an oversexualized walk down the aisle, Gaga and her groom are consumed by flames, which leave the man a charred skeleton.

I want your love and I want your revenge.
I want your love, I don’t want to be friends.
I don’t want to be friends.
No, I don’t wanna be friends.
I don’t wanna be friends!
I want your bad romance.

The cat’s out of the bag. I love Lady Gaga because every little girl who’s terrified of intimacy needs an anthem. So much the better when an artist gives you a handful.

I wanna roll with him, a hard pair we will be.
A little gambling is fun when you’re with me–I love it.
Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun
and baby when it’s love if its not rough it isn’t fun.

A morbid part of me can’t wait to hear her fall head over heels. I’ll tell you one thing–I won’t be satisfied unless it’s as bloody as Courtney Love’s “Uncool.”

Image from Lady Gaga’s shoot with for Elle magazine. Information from Entertainment Daily and China Daily.

There is a mix for every brand of passion, you’ll realize, if you take enough time to think about it. But if you’re not the sort of person with that kind of time on your hands (i.e., funemployed like moi), you’re in luck.

Introducing 30 Seconds to Mars’ This Is War: hands down the sexiest album of our time.

“We spent two years of our lives working on that record, and it was us against the world,” frontman Jared Leto told MTV last month. “There were times that it was overwhelming. Everything that was going on was brutal, but there were beautiful moments as well… It was a case of survival, to tell the truth.”

I had the pleasure of meeting Leto on Dr. Drew’s Loveline earlier tonight. During a break, I asked him whether he realized 30 Seconds to Mars was creating the ultimate soundtrack of desire.

“Well, a lot of songs are very sexual in nature,” he told me. “I think rock and roll has gotten really asexual.”

That’s something he felt 30 Seconds to Mars should take on.

“That’s obviously a big part of all of our lives, and I thought it important to address some of that,” Leto said.

They did a good job. Never has an album so powerfully mixed animal desire, desperate want, angst and fantastic soul licking as This Is War does.

“We were literally having to kill ourselves at times. I had it written on the wall: ‘Kill yourself to finish.’ There were no other options,” Leto said. “So we did that. It was a time to redefine, rediscover, reinvent, reinvest in each other.”

Spoken like a true lover.

Get the album on AmazonMP3 for $9.99.