Sweet Radicalism (BigCutie Jacki "Plays" The Violin)

Sometimes we do forget about such an epic-ness. And have to go through older pictures or videos to rediscover it.

I wonna talk about a video (#19) that BigCutie Jacki released at the end of 2007. Jacki does the violin!!! (The related photo set doesn't include the violin unfortunately). Now there's always something iconic about a model doing a set with string instruments. So naturally Jacki's take on it doesn't fall flat in visual terms as well. Quite the contrary, she just looks too sexy in that pose. A special 'note' however is added here with the audio part: Jacki apparently never has received any violin training. So imagine her delivering the most horrifying scratching sounds your fantasy can fathom. OMG. How hilarious and unforgettable is that!

(My capture. Her video quality usually is better)

Cut.... Instantly shots that other models have done are populating my memory. Jolene aka Angelica Lopez posed for a few photos with a violin, although rather adding it as an exotic flavor. Still fabulous. Wonder what became of her. She seems to be quite unknown nowadays. Jolene was an early internet favorite of mine, with charms similar to the uber-legend Angel aka Dancehall Girl.

Most iconic definitely was Tasha Addams with her cello set. Another model who has retired much too early.

Back to Jacki. I know, not all of you are grown up with Art Ensemble of Chicago or Sun Ra. Some of you prefer your music more conventionally performed hehehe. So i can see you hastily muting this non-generic "assault". Jacki of course does her 'scratch-posure' not to annoy anyone of us (as it is a quite unique thing in her way over 100 videos). She delivers it in the cutest and sweetest way! Thus just showing her uninhibited natural playfulness. It made such a strong impression on my memory, so, when i watch other scenes with her, her violin session easily comes into my mind, that way loading those up with an extra swing or flavor - her love for PLAYING. What gives me this general idea: It sometimes can be a good thing to let playfulness cross custom borders.

(My capture. Her video quality usually is better)

Kiki Kakuchi has resurfaced

Kiki Kakuchi certainly is one of the hardest to describe models. If there is one category she fits in, that would be the category named Kiki Kakuchi.

She has been featured with the most diverse types of content, some of it extremely niche and 'controversial'. At the same time she has some of the most loyal fans. She has worked with or submitted content to roughly two dozen companies. She even allowed somebody to register the site KikiKakuchi.com and sold him about 24 photo sets (i got this information first-hand from her). Not the most forward thinking career decision. Apparently it was never her focus to build up her modeling career in some sort of consistent process and work. Instead she kept shooting content with very different companies, for very different audiences, with periods when she disappeared or took her breaks. More recently she sold photo sets to sites like ThickNBusty, at a loose rate.

Talking to her privately is a joy - always friendly, with a smile on her face it seems, and with a fast, sharp and playful brain that doesn't take prisoners - still with a (twisted) smile - but without being full of herself. Last summer i started doing an interview with her. It was supposed to be huge, to give full room for her multiple sides. We only got a few questions done - till she told she wouldn't be online for a while. Haven't heard from her since then. So, Kiki, if you read this, i'd always be ready to continue that milestone.

As a surprise, she now has resurfaced on WorldWideWives. Is she testing if she still got the attention? She certainly does - as she looks sparkling as ever. Provided it's not an imposter behind that account. But i don't think so (despite the profile info), as i haven't seen these photos before. Although it's hard to keep track with x-amount of content she has shot. If i'm wrong, somebody drop a note.

Why does Scoreland make models look older?

In other words: Why do the stylists hired by Score often apply makeups and hairdos that make the models 5 -8 years older? Quite unlikely this doesn't just happen because it's the stylists' personal decision, because they think the model simply looks better or hotter that way. Throughout the years, photo sets and videos published by the Score Group always had quite consistent esthetics. And when they changed a bit, that change happened across the board, on all their sites like Scoreland, XLGirls or the sites dedicated to particular models. It's safe to assume that such fundamental decisions are made in the upper management. Are the stylists working without general instructions? I doubt that.

I'm not saying that this 'more mature look' is applied all the time. I've started to notice it occasionally - often enough to see it as a recurring pattern. But what's the reasoning behind that? Does it look more 'porn'? Do they want to cater the older subscribers? Or is it something like: A model either has to look really young or more mature? I have no idea. I wished somebody, probably working for Score, could clue me in.

But it's not only the direct effect of the stylist's work. The models also seem to make rather 'hard', not to say 'frozen' expressions. What makes them look older as well.

Rather randomly i collected a few examples and show them back to back to photos these models did for other sites. In other words i did not try HARD to find the best examples to support that 'pattern'. They still should be revealing enough.

My first example shows April Mckenzie.

She was 23 at the time of both shots. On the Score example i would estimate her over 30. Of course these are very different pictures, in various aspects. Like the shot from her personal site is more 'amateur'. What matters is that she looks so much older (then she is in reality) on the Score shot . Why in the world?

Second example is Sienna Hills.

FeedHerFuckHer sample versus PlumperPass sample. Again there seem to be ages between these shots. Certainly her more lively expression on the shot for PlumperPass makes her look younger as well.

Jade Parker aka Jade38H is the most striking example. Thus i had to make two comps.

Actually i had to look twice to recognize her, even after being a many times recurring member of her personal site. Can this be true? At the time of both shots Jade was 26, what she looks like on the sets from her own site. On the basis of the XLGirls shots i would guess she's much older, probably in her mid or late 30s.

I have to mention however that Jade currently is listed as the most popular XLGirls model!!! But does that suffice to say that they must have done something right? As somebody who rather would consider a glass half full than half empty, i'm tempted to say: She is that popular not because but despite setting her in scene that oddly.

What happened to Kristina Milan? Pregnant? Turned into a BBW? No longer Modeling? [Update]

Not instantly, but for a while now i have a weakness for this 23 year old voluptuous beauty from Puerto Rico. I took my time not necessarily because i'm allergic against hype (it was huge when she made her debut). But the sole news that a model has 42K boobs ain't enough to get me started. And her being the PROPERTY of TitsAndAssPass, a subsidiary of IncrediblePass, who are notorious for displaying their models in a grimly derogatory style, didn't help either.

There's something about her. Obviously her large bouncy boobs on her soft, slightly plump body. But there's also something very unique about her appeal. That, despite her being on a 'porn-porn' site where a model just gotta have the right assets and totally to serve as a 'vehicle' for gonzo-style fantasies, like submissively suck & getting taken from all angles. And, at the end of a scene, has to take a spoon to swallow the cum that hit her. Showing something like a personal style or even personality is the least thing required or tolerated. Rather the model has to fake her excitement constantly, like making carried-away faces and moaning, even before the signs of any action - EXCESSIVELY, even compared to regular porn sites

Kristina Milan's talents as a performer in hardcore scenes have been the subject of various discussions. Some guys mercilessly voted her as one of the worst performers ever. I can see why: unlike an established pornstar, who would go through such scenes with cold-blooded & smooth routine, plus a convincing smile, Kristina always has something hesitant, mildly-clumsy and dorky in her performance - paired with those 'funny' expressions. The evangelists of 'proper' porn certainly do disapprove that. On the other hand it gives her a personal quality of ... well, not innocence, but genuineness. She comes across as a real character. Probably she was discovered and got into the biz as a total amateur, got not proper guidance except a few harsh instructions, and she locks herself totally up during the scenes, as some kind of protection to let things not get too close to her. That prevents her from becoming a 'pro' but, indirectly, makes her quite cute and adorable - a quality you wouldn't expect on that type of network.

For a while now she is appearing on various webcam networks as well. Being on her own, with nobody barking instructions at her, her peculiar look, something between a bit distant (but friendly), curious, mildly bored, cute, but also totally real becomes even more apparent. Those few captured camshows from mid last year are serious fan material.

In the last months a real tsunami crashed over TitsAndAssPass and IncrediblePass: Accusations of credit card fraud, affiliate sites pulling out and the huge controversy over getting Miosotis over from Miosotis-Claribel to ClubMiosotis. For reference, check discussions on ChubbyParade here or there. Or the extensive blog by Titstoknees. But what happened to Kristina Milan in the meantime?

After constant updates on her site (part of the TitsAndAssPass network), the gaps got longer this year, with updates completely drying out after April 2009, according to my sources. Of course they advance-shoot her content in batches, so that they usually have content for 6 months to come i reckon. Quite likely her last material was shot way back in 2008. Occasional speculation came up: Kristina got knocked and/or gained lots of weight. No hints whatsoever, till these webcam captures emerged:

My first impression: sure thing, she is preggerz. This video, apparently from the same time, seems to confirm that. But then - she always had a lil belly sticking out!! And some girls, after gaining a bit of weight, tend to look 'pregnant'. Making a few screen captures of this clip doesn't help the decision either.

This poster on Curvage claims to have chatted with her:

"I'm not sure she's pregnant, I chatted to her on the cam site where that video is from and she just looked fat. And huge, very, very huge! She also looked very bored! Was strange seeing such a massively voluptuous woman live in front of me and being strangely turned off, she could not have looked more disinterested.

I have no proof mind so she could well be preggas."

I can't decide either. And leave the speculation to others. Or till more evidence shows up.

Confusing as well is her repeated change of chathost names. On IMLive she started as KristinaMilan1. This account still exists but her last activity was early September 2008. Later in 2008 she opened another account on IMLive as F4nnyHill, where she showed off her expanded curves. That account is deleted now. VERY strange!!!

From the end of 2008 til (at least) springtime 2009 she was active as AngelMilan on Lives.Net. She looks bigger than usual again but hasn't grown compared to the IMLive shots - although the release date of pics of course isn't a real proof. The tiny video there looks like a sample from a so far unreleased scene. Pictures from Lives.Net:

Webcams.com lists her as well as AngelMilan, has the same pix as Lives.net and claims her latest activity as yesterday (August 8th). Not sure if that info is trustworthy.

Remains as well the question what is going on with her site on the TitsAndAssPass network. She continued to do cam shows, so she hasn't left the biz. Not unlikely that she split from the ChimpCrew, as people have started to call BossXXX's company. Like Maria Moore did. So they lost 2 of the most popular models. But what will that mean for Kristina? She definitely will get offers by Scoreland and others. But that will not bring her a new personal site. A model that already had a site, with lots of not so attractive content being released, is never the first option for an established company, even if the model's name is Kristina Milan. Her being located in Puerto Rico might be another hurdle. She needs a dedicated webmaster who believes in her and is able to provide valid guidance. And probably somebody local to shoot consistently good content with her - exceeding the standards of TitsAndPass isn't that hard though. I would deeply regret to see a model with her potential disappear form the scene.

I wonder if she will reappear at Myspace. Okay, she would get BOMBARDED with questions, offers etc. Her old profile (if it wasn't a bogus account) saw me stopping by regularly. She updated her blog frequently, mainly with sharing her insights about everyday life questions. Sometimes a bit generic but with a very positive attitude. It's nice to see when a model has a big natural confidence, beyond her modeling work. Hopefully that will help her find ways for her career as well.

[Update Sep. 5th]

Titstoknees, who has done serious investigations about Miosotis and other models working for IncrediblePass and TitsAndAssPass and published the results at various places, told me in a reply on ChubbyParade that Kristina indeed had a baby. As well he added that the sites of Kristina Milan and Vanessa Del on TitsAndAssPass "are as good as dead".

Video Format War is over. And where's the Adult Industry?

Remember the first Video Format War? VHS won, and it's a common opinion that the adult industry was the decisive force, by flooding the market with VHS releases.

But this time? H.264 aka AVC has become the de facto video codec standard. Most portable players have it, it's the default codec on YouTube, nearly all satellite TV stations are using it, it's the standard for HD camcorders, and most Blu-Ray Discs come with it. Filesharers have started to embrace it as well. And it was suggested as the default codec for the coming HTML 5 specification. H.264 is everywhere.

Everywhere? But where is the adult industry? Well, they are slowly picking up. At least more and more of the larger sites (the ones who offer more than one video format to chose from) are adding H.264 encoded videos. Although a good percentage of those comes as low resolution versions for portables like the iPod. After all, H.264 has become a common format on adult sites. But, in sharp contrast to the other areas, on adult sites WMV still is everywhere, either as the only format offered or as the only high quality format. That situation is a thing of the past.

So we're talking H.264 vs WMV here. On a side note: To prevent members from saving the videos to their harddrives, a few sites only offer so-called "flash video streams" (the proper term is HTTP Progressive Download). That quality usually is even another quantum jump worse than WMV. And looks downright HORRIBLE on 24" display, something people can buy for only a bit more than $200 now.

Why is WMV a thing of the past? A rough explanation: for the quality of a video, the most decisive part is the bitrate it's encoded at, measured in Kbps (kilo bits per second). 1300 Kbps look better than 600 Kbps, 2500 Kbps again look better than 1300 Kbps. Next comes the video codec. Some codecs are better than others - they apply better and more effective tricks to deliver more detail and less graininess. For testing you can take high quality footage and make 2 test encodes, f. ex. at 1100 Kbps. First with a H.264 encoder, then with a WMV3 encoder. Then compare the results.. Even a half-blind will notice that H.264 clearly wins. Easy as that.

Further variables, just to avoid eventual misunderstandings: Such a comparison of course has to be done under fair conditions. I. e. with comparable settings (like 2-pass, advanced profile). Which means that a given codec like H.264 can be applied with different settings - f. ex. a simplified setup in order to save encoding time and/or processing power, resulting in lower quality. In other words, a H.264 clip running at 1100 Kbps can look different, depending on the encoding setup used. Same thing with WMV3 or other codecs. As a summary, your video encoding mainly depends on:

1) - the bitrate

2) - the video codec

3) - the other settings of the encoder

To break things further up - because from here even more confusion derives: A video codec is only a complex set of standardized instructions. And tells per se very little about the file type aka container or file extension of a video. A H.264 encoded video usually comes as .mp4 or .mov, but .avi and various flash video types are around as well. So when you see a .mov video, chances are good that H.264 is inside. But not necessarily. With an .avi file you simply can't tell. Windows Media (.wmv) can be WMV1, WMV2, WMV3 or VC-1, all different codecs. A small software like MediaInfo can show you the details of a given video.

A quick word to VC-1. It is dead! Developed (mainly) by Microsoft it was meant to be H.264's main rival. Its quality comes quite close, but the codec is not well optimized (it makes even fast computers bog down, much more than H.264). And its support in the 'wildlife' is almost zero (like mentioned above). It comes as no surprise that Windows 7 will offer native H.264 support. Very few sites are offering VC-1 - as .wmv - nonetheless. Scoreland is one example - makes me shake my head. Apparently the belief that Microsoft is written over it motivated that choice. An option that has nothing but disadvantages.

So, adult industry! You didn't have anything to do with the last Video Format War. But for how much longer do you want keep sitting in your easy chair, and stay in the grainy and bleached-out looking technological past?

Here's a little sample from browsing GingerBBW's site: Original screen capture in maximum quality DV quality (27,000 Kbps), encoded to comparable 1100 Kbps, H.264 MP4 vs WMV3. Okay, to be fair, WMV looks a bit less 'crass' when you chose one of the pre-defined setups (while H.264 doesn't need such pre-defined settings, it scales seamlessly and you can enter any preferred bitrate). But then again: video stills give very indication about the actual differences of video codecs. Because one of the biggest advantages of H.264 is motion precision, something you see only when the video is actually running. Just run a WMV3 clip that shows boobies bouncing. Notice how DISTORTED that looks? With H.264, that's a thing of the past.

To be continued. Next: playback and best ways to encode H.264 (PC and Mac).

Bing(e) is not a search engine. At best, it makes a playlist.

After beating its main shortfall with adult content and using it a bit, Microsoft's redesigned search engine shows two particularities.

Do a search f. ex. for *videos* with Gianna Michaels. Give it a short loading time...

Then you can roll your mouse pointer over any preview thumb, and the frigging video will instantly start to play! That looks like a killer feature. And surely is the main reason why Microsoft's new product is getting some attention. That means though that they are hosting smaller versions (even of 43 minutes videos) on their own servers. I'm sure this will end in legal trouble.

Let's check the *images* search. "Gianna Michaels" right now digs up 529,000 results.

Not bad. Now let's try "April Mckenzie".

33 results, but only one actually showing her.

In comparison, Google gives us 16,800 results with April. A number that i'd have expected because there are tons of galleries out with her.

Such inconsistent search results are not acceptable. Thus my advice: Use Google when you want to perform a real search. Go to Microsoft (or PornTube etc etc), when you want to play a few clips.

And a warning: According to this report, Microsoft is back at their dirty tricks. Without asking, the default Search can get changed from Google to Binge. If it's true (i haven't researched any further), that would be darned cheek per se. But not just that - calculating that they wouldn't notice it (Google & Binge do look so similar... Harr! Harr!) this makes an insult to the user's intelligence and will come across as a major annoyance. Plus the waste of time for changing back to the previous settings.

Finally, the Binge part lol Microsoft shot a video clip (although pulled now) basically telling that users who are surfing the net with other browsers than IE might end up puking... Big fail of an idea! Actually, puke in an IE ad, people might take that the other way around: Binge search & Puke browser - the glorious bundle. D'oh!

How Microsoft's Bing hides uncensored porn search (full tutorial)

Dumbness has a name, again. Microsoft. When you're a US citizen, you may not realize the full extent of this disaster (but still wonder). Peeps from other places can only shake their head.

Today i am in Germany and, no surprise, using a German ISP. Going to bing and searching for Gianna Michaels gives me this

Yes!! ZERO results. Not even her non-adult results are showing up. I'm sure some do exist. But peeps going to those might find links to her adult works. So better kill the whole bloody thing, the makers of bing probably have thought. I'm sure the Chinese censors will look with much interest at this approach.

In the FAQ bing advices to go to *Extras*/Preferences and to turn *Safe Search* off. Good joke! There is no such option as you can see here.

However, after spending CONSIDERABLE time on the stupid site, there is a (kinda hidden) way. Clicking on *Germany* (or your respective country) shown on top will open a new site. There you can define a new "country/region". Change that "United States - English"

Clicking THEN again on "Extras/Preferences" will give you a whole new "General Settings" page. And voila, now you have the option to turn "SafeSearch" off

Let's try Gianna Michaels again... looks much better now