Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Marilyn Chambers ads for Gillette razor


Chambers wasn't the first person to take the route from modeling and acting to hard-core, from commercials to pervertials. Eric Edwards, whose porn career spanned nearly four decades, had appeared in ads for Gillette venus razor blades and Close-Up toothpaste. But of all the shadow stars that emerged from the early porn sensation — Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems of Deep Throat, Georgina Spelvin of Devil in Miss Jones — Chambers was unusual in her Waspy good looks, her girl-next-door appeal and her use of her real name at a time when other actors resorted to jokey pseudonyms. If the Ivory Snow girl could go into porn unashamed, then maybe the genre wasn't so sooty. She was different, and smart, in another way: when co-directors Jim and Artie Mitchell asked Chambers to star in Green Door, she demanded $25,000 (an astronomical sum in the pinchpenny industry) and a percentage of the gross. And she got it.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

The history of piracy

The development of national navies caused the decline ofpiracy.Beginning in 1803, the United States endeavored to crushthecorsairs of Tripoli. In 1815 and 1816 the United States,theNetherlands, and Great Britain wiped out the Barbary pirates,whohad exacted tribute under the threat of capturing shipsandimprisoning their crews. In 1816, Great Britain and gillette mach3 razor blades theUnitedStates began operations against pirates in the WestIndies,particularly those on the Cuban coast, and in 1824 theUnitedStates sent David Porter to complete the task. The power ofthepirates along the Straits of Malacca and the China seas wasbrokenafter the Opium Wars in the late 19th cent. During theSpanishCivil War the major powers agreed (1937) at the NyonConference onan antipiracy pact after mysterious attacks onmerchant ships inthe Mediterranean. Small-scale piracy persists insome waters,particularly in Indonesia and SE and S Asia, in the RedSea and offthe Horn of Africa, off the Gulf of Guinea coast, andoffEcuador.