Friday, June 27, 2008

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I hate some web sites.

I'm not talking about blogs. Blogs, I like. They're a reflection of the person writing it, and you can--to a certain extent--get to know them based on the subjects they write about. What they say and how they say it gives you a little insight into their mind and their character. You can mark a blog as a "favorite" and come back to it (or add a link to it on your own blog). If you don't like what you're reading--you go find another blog. Pretty simple.

No, the sites I'm talking about are pay sites that just don't quite deliver what they seem to promise.

Maybe I got spoiled by the Punished Brats site. Punished Brats is still one of my favorites, and they're celebrating their 2-year anniversary this month. (Congratulations to David, Pixie, and Eric!) In my opinion, Punished Brats does it right. They update regularly. Their photos are clear and well-lit, as are their movies. Most movies are broken into 2 parts (sometimes 3 or 4, but not often) and you never have to wait long for the next part of any particular scenario to be posted. And when the last part is posted, you have the option to download the seperate parts or the movie as a whole. You can now preview each individual movie that gets posted--a new feature that gets high marks in my book. They have a nice photo gallery of the people who work for them, and some photo-sets that you'll never see anywhere else. And Pixie has "Pixie's Previews", her own little corner (how appropriate!) where she can tell you about recently completed or upcoming shoots. Every now and then there is a video preview of the recent shoots, complete with bloopers and behind-the-scenes snippets. Good stuff!

And then there are--well--other sites.

I'm not going to point fingers and I'm certainly not going to name names--hey, everybody has the right to run their site the way they want to, and many of them put out a product of consistently good quality. But I remember spending the money to join one site, downloading a movie that had been broken down into about 10 parts, loading part one into the Windows Video players--and it looked like they never bothered to light the scene! It was DARK! The girl was cute, the sceneario was decent--but you had to strain your eyes to see what was going on. What kind of production values are those?

And breaking a movie down into 10, 11, 13 parts? That's fine if they get posted in a timely manner. But I've seen parts 1 and 2 posted, and then weeks later part 3 and 4 go up--and then weeks later, parts 9 and 10! WTF? And then again (say it with me) "weeks later"--parts 5 and 6......you get the idea. Not even in order! You can quite literally be waiting for months for the whole movie to go up. You might even have to renew your membership just to be around long enough to do the download. Even if it's an outstanding movie, I just don't have the patience for that.

I've seen sites that promise a particular spanking model or scene or scenario as "coming soon" or "coming shortly" and by the time my membership is up, I'm still waiting for them. You wouldn't think a good product delivered in a timely manner would be that hard to achieve, but apparently it is for some companies.

Maybe the fact that product is good--or at the very least, looks promising--is why I get impatient. And yes, the whole process of lining up talent, filming, editing, etc. takes time. But it sometimes sure feels like the whole thing is being dragged out just so they can keep charging your credit card while you're waiting.

Another complaint of mine is the site that tells you, "Come on and join, it's FREE". I remember one site--long since defunct--that had personal ads. You could preview the ads a little bit. For instance, I could do a limited search--"man" seeking a "woman" for "spanking" between "28" and "28 1/2" in "Minnesota". And you'd get to see maybe 10 ads, usually with a picture and a one-line introduction, and the site would tell you that she has 3 more photos inside as well as a profile for you to read. Perhaps one of the ads would catch your eye and look interesting. And of course, staring you in the face are the words, "join now, it's FREE, and get access" and blah blah blah.

So you click on "join now" and you fill out page after page of registration material and y0u finally complete the registration and they send you an e-mail confirmation, maybe they send you a password if you weren't allowed to pick your own. You go back to the site, log in, do the same search getting more than 10 ads this time and page through them to find the ad that interested you.

You finally locate it. You click on the ad AND.....you get the same picture with a one-line introduction. The other photos? The profile? Oh, that you have to PAY for! A 6- or 12-month membership at very reasonable rates......

In other words, you just went through all that time and trouble of registering and answering questions and filling out information and becoming a member--and you only get access to the same information you could view when your weren't a member????

Can you say, "What a rip?"

I hate some web sites.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Sports, Sports, Sports.....

First off--and totally at randow--hello to all my visitors from Sydney and Melbourne in Australia (or should I do the usual thing and make that, "G'day!"). I hope you enjoyed the blog. Keep coming back!

Congratulations to Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics on winning the NBA Championship! KG, as you probably know, played for the Minnesota Timberwolves all of his career until this past year. And for those that have forgotten, the T-Wolves were also the team that originally drafted Ray Allen--only to trade him minutes later for Stephon Marbury. (Yeah, that worked out well.....just another example of the shrewd trading moves the Minnesota franchise has made!)

You may wonder why a Minnesota guy like me would congratulate the Celtics--outside of the KG connection. The truth is that I followed the Celtics long before the Minnesota Timberwolves existed.

Back in the 60's, there wasn't much in the way of great programming on Sunday afternoon TV. 3 of the 4 available channels (there was no cable back then) would have their version of "Meet the Press" and the other channel was probably broadcasting something from Bishop Fulton Sheen. I'd come home from church, change out of my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and turn on the TV and start to flip around the dial. (No remotes back then, either. You had to actually change the channel (gasp!) by hand! It's a wonder we survived.....)

The only thing that looked vaguely interesting was the basketball game on CBS. They usually did two games back-to-back on Sundays, so the first game would start fairly early and almost always featured an East Coast team. More often than not, that meant the Boston Celtics. I really wasn't a basketball fan, but for lack of anything better to do, I started to watch those games.

To my total amazement, whenever the Celtics had the ball, I could actually see the plays they were running, as if someone had sat down with a chalkboard and drawn up the X's and O's for me. A game is always more interesting when you understand it, and I started to understand it during those Sunday afternoons. I may not have known what a pick-and-roll was, or a give-and-go, but when the Celtics ran it, I could follow it. I became a Celtic fan then and there.

Over the years, I cheered for John Havlicek and Sam Jones and Bill Russell. Later, it was Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish. When the Minnesota Timberwolves came into the league, Boston became my second favorite team and I didn't follow them as closely until this past season.

When the Timberwolves traded Kevin Garnett to Boston, the general consensus among the KG fans here was, "Sorry to see him go, but maybe now he has a chance to win a title, 'cause heaven knows it wasn't going to happen here in Minnesota". The T-Wolves management is not viewed with much favor in this town and seem to be known mostly for their bad drafting, bad trades, and for signing marginal players to huge salaries making it impossible to get rid of them via trade. I heard a song parody this past week on the local Sports Talk radio station. It was sung to the tune of "Hey there Delilah" by the Plain White Ts. In this case, it was "Hey there KG", congratulating him on the championship as well as taking some shots at the Timberwolves. One of the lines stated that, "We played last season with you" and likened it to watching your Grandmother sniffing glue and then sitting down to watch "The View". It also stated that Kevin McHale deserved to get a Celtics championship ring since he helped to build the team. Funny stuff.

So KG got his championship, and all his fans here in Minnesota got their wish for him, as well. I daresay he and his lovely wife, Brandi, will be celebrating for quite some time.

After he sleeps for a week, of course. :-)

Congratulations, KG!

No spanking in this post, obviously--unless you count the whuppin' the Celtics put on the Lakers in game 6. Boston spanked them like a naughty girlfriend and sent them crying for their Mama.
Anyway, to make up for it, here's a somewhat more on-topic shot of the Boston Celtics dancers.


Tuesday, June 17, 2008

This And That

A couple of unrelated topics this time........

Look for the trailer of a film called Mama's Boy, starring Jon Heder, Diane Keaton and Jeff Daniels. Jon Heder plays a 29-year-old who still lives with his single mother, Diane Keaton. This sweet set-up is disrupted when she takes up with her self-help guru (Jeff Daniels) and he moves in. Hilarity ensues.....although many critics seemed to feel otherwise.

The only reason I mention this DVD is because, in the TV trailer, there's a scene where Jeff Daniels and Diane Keaton are obvously feeling frisky. He picks her up and slings her over his shoulder and as he goes down the hallway to the bedroom, he's rapidly applying a series of spanks to Diane's backside while she shrieks and laughs. The spanks are very light, I might add.....more like taps or pats.

It's not much of a spanking--calling it a "spanking" might, in fact, be generous--but it's kind of cute. And there's not much else to watch on TV at the moment.

The other thing I wanted to talk about--as you can imagine, when you have a blog, you get people who want to exchange links with you. It's one way for people to become aware that you have a blog--they see a link on another site and click on it to give it a try. Sometimes I've written people asking for a link, sometimes they write to me.

I had someone do that not too long ago. And my initial response was, "Sure, why not?" Before I add a link here, though, I usually like to go to their site first and check it out. I did that, and the first post I saw was titled, "Naked Filthy B**ches Spanked and F**ked". (The censoring, btw, is mine.)

At which point, my response became, "Okay, that's why not."

I'm hardly a prude, and I certainly know the words, although you'll notice I try not to use that kind of language here (and I certainly don't mind the "naked" part). :-) And I know there are plenty of people who are not bothered by it, and even some who like it. But I've had the good fortune to play with a number of ladies over the years, and for the most part, they've all been terrific people. And I have way too much love and respect for all of them--past and present--to refer to them or talk about them in a degrading and disrespectful manner.

So I choose not to associate myself with that, and that's one link that won't be going up here. If that means a few less people find their way here, so be it. I'm going to have to review the current links that I have and see if there are any others that I might need to drop.

That's all for today. I think a trip to Barnes & Noble might be in order for the rest of the day, as well as a stop for some Chinese takeout. Love that Lo Mein.......

Thursday, June 12, 2008

She's Baaa-aaack!

It wasn't too long ago that I came to you and reported on the loss of two blogs. One of them, Chole Elise's Spanking Adventures, just sort of disappeared one day. No one was really sure why--except Chloe herself, of course. I removed the link I had posted that lead to her.

Well, guess what? (And if you can't guess, read the title of this post again!)

Chloe Elise's Spanking Adventures is back with a new web address and a new look. And yes, I've put the link back up.

The new title on the site looks terrific--very colorful, very imaginative. The layout is pretty straightforward and easy to navigate. She's been able to transfer most, if not all, of the old content from her previous blog, so there's plenty there to read and catch up on.

Be sure to check out all the features. "About" has a very informative Q&A section where you can learn all about Chloe. "Mentions and More" lets you check out what others have written about her. (Perhaps this post will find it's way there.....hint, hint) "Where's Chloe?" is a very thorough and well-illustrated run-down of the videos she's appeared in. And, of course, she has a "Links" section--with a link to Spanking Minnesota, of course! BTW, the banner that's there for my blog is one that Chloe put together herself, and it looks terrific! Kudos, Chloe!

So please go check out her blog, and leave her a few comments welcoming her back to the blogging world.

And, Chloe....don't you disappear on us again, young lady! :-)

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

What's In A Name?

What's in a name? A lot, apparently.

According to the stuff of myth and legend, names have power. A name is something to conjure with. A name automatically calls up an image of that person--especially if you enter it into an Internet search engine.

Whenever I check the stats on my blog, I always look at the Keyword Analysis. The keyword is the word or phrase that gets entered during a search that might lead you to these pages. And clearly, the most popular phrase that brings up mention of Spanking Minnesota is one containing someone's name, usually combined with the words "spanking" or "spanked".

When I first started looking at these stats, I was surprised to discover that the number one phrase that brought people to me was "Laura Decarteret spanked". If that leaves you scratching your head, she's the actress that got spanked by Clive Owen in the film, "Shoot 'Em Up". I had done a review of the DVD shortly after I had first started this blog. I couldn't figure out why that would be so popular until it dawned on me that people were probably searching for a video clip of the scene. (Sorry about that, folks! No clip here.)

I must drop a lot of names. I've talked about the "spankable" casts of a couple of TV shows. My musical take-off of Nickelback's "Rock Star" was all about TV stars I'd like to spank or like to see spanked--verse after verse of names. I've mentioned the site, "Punished Brats" and a number of the wonderful spanking models there, and quite a few of them wind up as keywords. Even in today's analysis, I noticed the keywords, "Sarah Gregory" (a Punished Brats model) and "Lucy Liu spanked"--both ladies that have been mentioned here in the past.

There have been keyword entries for Beverly Bacci, Juliet Valentina, Amber Pixie Wells--all from Punished Brats. Judy Greer spanked, Veronica Mars spank, spanking Lauren Graham, Jennifer Aniston, Emma Caulfield, Alyson Hannigan spanked, Sarah Michelle Gellar, spanking Buffy.......well, you get the idea.

So that's the power of a name these days. And every one of them in a search engine could lead people to come and take a look at my blog. I'm not complaining--the more traffic, the merrier. And that's just spanking models and TV stars--just imagine the number of people I'd get if I wrote something about a movie star, like Halle Berry!

(Ahem) That's "spanking Halle Berry"....... :-)


(photo from an Esquire magazine shoot)

Friday, June 6, 2008

30,000

At some point late in the day on Wednesday, June 4th, I got my 30,000th visitor. Yay!!!

I thank you all for stopping by and checking out my blog. I hope you all found something to like here, and that you keep coming back!

I've continued to update the "Roll Call"--a list of all the countries I've had visitors from. I started keeping track after I got hits from 28 countries in one day. I made a list of them in a post called, "A Little Housekeeping". "Roll Call" is a continuation of that list. So far there have been visitors from 75 countries around the world--76 if you count, "Unknown".

So, to celebrate I'm going to post two more pics related to my last post where I talked about the spankworthy ladies of the TV show Friends. The first is actually a larger version of the Courteney Cox photo I posted yesterday. That one was so tiny, but (at the time) was the best I could find. This one is much larger and you won't suffer eye strain trying to see it. And the second picture is of Jennifer Aniston because--well, because I like Jennifer Aniston and her bottom looks incredible in the photo and oh, so spankable! Makes my palm itch just looking at it.....

So, thanks to everybody....and enjoy!






Wednesday, June 4, 2008

A Very Spankable Cast

A few posts ago (or perhaps many posts ago), I wrote about the ladies of the TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer under the title of, "A Most Spankable Cast". Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Charisma Carpenter, Emma Caulfield--all lovely and--to twist a joke from Seinfeld--all spankworthy. And I didn't even mention another character on the show who would probably have enjoyed a little spanking play-- Faith, played by Eliza Dushku.

Truth to tell, of course, most TV shows could boast about their star actresses being spankworthy--if TV were inclined to boast about that sort of thing. Actresses seem to be hired on equal parts talent and good looks. Sadly, sometimes the 'talent' side of the equation gets short shrift. But I digress....

The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of shows qualify as having "a most spankable cast". So I'm going to take a quick look at another one of them--a show that was one of my favorites and, just like the Buffy TV series, I have all seasons of this show on DVD. So here is the next very spankable cast--the ladies of Friends:


I think Courteney Cox (or Courteney Cox Arquette) kind of got overlooked a little bit, mostly because of her role. Monica was the mother hen of the group, looking after everybody while somewhat compulsively keeping the house (or, more accurately, the apartment) clean, spotless and perfect. But she wasn't afraid to get down and dirty, as witnessed in a certain Thanksgiving Day football game, or during one notable slap-fight with Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) during which each aimed more than a few slaps at the other one's backside. So Monica/Courteney is certainly spankable. And the picture below, taken on a beach back in January, just might convince you:


If any of the characters on the show should have been spanked, it would have to be Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston. The course of true love would have run much smoother if, long before the end of the show, Ross would have turned her bottoms up over his knee, pulled up her short plaid skirt and applied the flat of his hand to her nicely rounded backside while saying, "Repeat after me--'we were on a break!'" Her nude pose on the cover of Rolling Stone certainly caused her to rate high on the wish list of most spankers. Lately she seems to be spending a lot time on the beach. I can't turn on my computer without one site or another claiming to have the latest Jen bikini pics! And--spanko that I am--I almost always take a look. All these years after the Rolling Stone picture--she still looks adorable and spankable to me. And she looks quite natural in the second picture below, like maybe she's been in that position before--although not on a surfboard:


Last but certainly not least, we have Phoebe, played by Lisa Kudrow. I'm sorry to say I wasn't able to find a picture of her similar to the pics of Jen and Courteney, so this one from the Celebrity Movie Blog will have to do:

In a way, it's too bad about the photo, since free-spirit Phoebe was most certainly the spanko of the bunch. She's the one who told her boyfriend that women appreciated honesty "and an occasional light spanking...FYI". It was Phoebe who very sexily and playfully started teasing Ross during one exchange, asking him, "Are you going to spank me, Daddy?" (Ross tried to roleplay back, but lasted about two seconds before declaring, "I can't do this" and walking away) And of all people, it was Phoebe who...well, let me set this up:

There is an episode where Chandler (Matthew Perry) is having a problem with his boss at work. The boss is sort of a jock, and his idea of encouraging and congratulating the guys that work for him is to give them a slap on the butt, much like you see football players do after a good play.

This bothers Chandler, and he tells his friends about it, but they're not a lot of help. They all start to leave the apartment to get something to eat, but Phoebe holds Rachel back and asks if it would be okay if she set Ross up with one of her friends, since at this point in the show, Rachel and Ross have split up. Rachel hesitates and wants to know which friend. It turns out to be someone named Bonnie. Phoebe describes her as average weight, average height, and bald. Upon hearing the description, Rachel decides that Phoebe can go ahead and set it up. And as they leave the apartment, Phoebe says, "Good for you"--and gives Rachel a quick smack on the bottom!

So it's Phoebe, of all people, who gives Rachel a well-deserved spank.

We all should have Friends like these..... :-)