Storm blogs, ” Seriously, “8 Miles Wide” would still be just a big big idea (and the occasional outburst from friends and family members in the know) if it weren’t for the tireless creative megawatt team at Sockeye Creative. James Westby, Tom Grissom and Katie O’Grady, especially, kicked so much ass on this goofy little ditty born in my twisted brains.

Also important to thank – Wilf’s, Mary’s Club, Portland Parks and Rec., Mark Acito, Rick Emerson, Byron Beck, Kevin Morris, Laura Domela, Mary Urbanski, Brenda Casebeer and her trusty steed Brego, Kavita Jhaveri, James Beaton, Davey Nipples, Scott Weddle, The Jim Brunberg, Adam Lundeen, Steve Sharp and all the brilliant extras and personalities who so generously donated to the cause.

Last, but not least, thank you, Portland, Oregon. Your endless support of all things weird will always make you the coolest city on the planet. Bless your rainy and rosy wild heart.”

Check out the behind the scenes videos:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArNMGsigq4

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCz8PwSRZoU

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GanA1cnxIPE

As Amara says, “It’s fun and healthy to flirt!” …but what happened to subtle? She turns the tables on Woody in describing her encounter with a younger man in… Reverse Flirting; The Unlikely Tale of an ‘Older’ Woman.

“With 4.3 million babies born in the U.S. each year it’s time to reexamine what we’ve been told and look to what is possible,” says director Debra Pascali-Bonaro, an internationally renowned childbirth educator and doula who witnessed so many ecstatic births she was inspired to begin filming them. “If you don’t know all your options then you don’t have any. Orgasmic Birth will strip away your fears and reveal how to create a powerful and transformative experience. It is time to reclaim this sacred event.”

Five years in the making, Orgasmic Birth has had an international impact on the film festival circuit and was screened this year at the prestigious Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, Baltimore Women’s Film Festival, Usti Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and Festival Caminhos in Portugal, to name a few. It won the Audience Choice Award at the 2008 MotherBaby International Film Festival in Bermuda.

Dancer and educator, Annetta Luce spent several weeks living with a Maasai family while teaching in Kenya recently. What she experienced as “traditional” African tribal practices will be vividly remembered for the rest of her life. Jane Kamuasi is a Maasai woman here in America seeking amnesty, a mother determined to protect her 12-year old daughter who remains in Kenya, from the traditional Maasai rite of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Because I live in a Global Village I have clients all over the world… and the Web keeps extending. Amara Charles and Anna Venice are two such people, teachers of Daoist Tantra in Arizona. They filmed a video interview and sent it to me for production. I got so involved in learning about the Maasai people and FGM as it is known at WHO and the UN – where November 25 is remembered each year as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women – that I am now knee-deep in producing a 30-minute documentary on the subject.

Here is my 3-minute intro, a director’s cut that I have rushed to the Web because of the timely nature of the subject and the season for giving thanks. I know it will take a generation or more to possibly eliminate FGM and educate people bound by religious tradition in a culture far distant from my own but… if everybody just throws a few bucks in the kitty we can make a profound difference in one young girl’s entire life.

Magenta Pixie says, “These are channeled messages coming from a collective energy who present as 9 White Winged beings. The channel has been receiving this information since 1993 but has now been told to release this information to other like minded souls and those known as ‘Lightworkers’ They say ‘United we stand, Divided we fall’ and that it is time for the lightworkers, the mediums, the researchers, the scientists and all those with differing perspectives on the 2012 Earth changes to come together as a collective force and bring forward their knowledge in whatever way it may be.”

I am pleased to discover that Pixie has a very theatrical background and lives in England. I like to think of her means to unleash her creative spirit as a “method,” similar to the schools of acting theory. No matter how she does it, the results are inspiring and I will continue to track her work.

But, it certainly wasn’t always like this. The Chinese have been steadily emerging since the days of Chairman Mao toward becoming a hybrid society, one in which the best of all worlds is adapted and employed to serve the needs of the people. The following episode of Sexy Beijing provides a glimpse of what sex and dating was like in the 1980s as experienced by best-selling Australian novelist and China expert Linda Jaivin.

Much has changed in just a quarter of a century…
In 2003, China’s infamous Sex Blogger, Muzi Mei, set the blogosphere afire with her candid narrations and personal on-line sexposes. With her screen name muzimei, claiming top honors for China’s most popular search term in 2005, Li Li – as she is known in “real life” – was also covered in a Time magazine feature, Sex and the Single Chinese.

“I express my freedom through sex,” says Li, defiantly. “It’s my life, and I can do what I want.”

Here’s a recent Muzi Mei interview done for the Danwei TV Hard Hat Show…

Time explains the dramatic attitude shift that has taken place in post-Maoist China:

“Today 70% of Beijing residents say they have had sexual relations before marriage, compared with just 15.5% in 1989, according to Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A survey taken last January of seven major Chinese cities found that among those 14 to 20, the average age of first sexual experience was 17.4, while those 31 to 40 had lost their virginity much later, at 24.1 years old.”

While China is rapidly moving in the direction of ever-increasing sexual freedom, it seems that we Americans are suffering under the continuing heavy-handed and hypocritical influence of Christian fundamentalism. I’ll be blogging on it here and continuing to work for the evolution of an “adult” culture here in the USA… and I don’t mean porn!

Marty publishes a new article once a week and at the end of each month he e-mails them out to subscribers. His short letter to Barack Obama offers 10 suggestions on how to restore all that we have lost in the past 8 years and move our nation to adult status… one in which we have the rights to make individual choices rather than having them legislated upon us. Dr. Klein has written several books, his latest an award-winning title that I intend to review here in the coming months: America’s War On Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust, & Liberty.

Dr. Klein on Reason.tv

Dear President Obama:
For months, I’ve been predicting that when you win, nothing will change regarding sex. I’ve said you won’t stop the government’s War On Sex; you won’t demand respect for sexual rights as human rights; you won’t prevent religious fanatics from controlling non-believers’ sex lives.

You now have your big chance: prove me wrong. Here’s what you need to do:

• End funding for abstinence-only training in public schools.
• End the Department of Justice’s war on adult entertainment. Keep the war on child porn. Make it clear they’re two different things.
• Decriminalize all consensual sex that teens have with other teens. Decriminalize teens sharing photos of themselves having sex.
• Increase financial support for Planned Parenthood, an investment proven to reduce poverty and domestic violence.
• Take the moral leadership to decrease abortion – by funding contraception services and comprehensive sex education, not by criminalizing abortion.
• Require all sex education programs to be scientifically accurate. Isn’t that required by the policies of car manufacturers, meat-packing plants, and toothpaste makers?
• Require all municipalities that want to restrict commercial sexual expression (strip clubs, adult bookstores, swing clubs, etc.) to actually demonstrate a need to do so, rather than simply claim “effects like crime, disease, and blight are well-established.” Because they’re not.
• Require all federal judges to take a Continuing Education course about sexuality – healthy sexuality, not “sex addiction” or child molestation. Make this education mandatory for anyone aspiring to be a judge.
• Get the FCC out of the censorship business. Let Americans use the “off” and “change channel” buttons on their TV remotes whenever they want; it’s good practice for voting.
• Remove the blocking software from every federally – funded computer in America – libraries, universities, airports. Start with the computers in the White House and Congress.

I’ve said in dozens of lectures this year that you won’t make a difference in America’s War On Sex.

Please, prove me wrong.

America's War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty (Sex, Love, and Psychology)

Dr. Marty Klein is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Sex Therapist, and sociologist with a special interest in public policy and sexuality. He has written several books and white papers and hundreds of articles about sexuality. Each year he trains thousands of professionals in North America and abroad in clinical skills, human sexuality, and policy issues.

Marty sees men, women, and couples in his Palo Alto office for psychotherapy, couples counseling, and sex therapy. For an appointment, write Klein@SexEd.org or call 650.773.2425.

For an archive of his original articles, lots of Q/A about sexuality, and other material, see his blog: www.SexEd.org.