ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

No pun intended …

It’s that time of year.

The time of year where two conventions jump start Las Vegas convention season, and set the tone for the rest of the year.

I am referring to the Consumer Electronic Show, and the Adult Entertainment Expo.

For years these conventions have been running in tandem, and while they may seem to be polar opposites and contradictory to each other … nothing could be further from the truth.

I may be showing my age, but I got my first modem in the early 1980′s. The modem ran at a screaming 300bps.

It took me three days to download what I can download over my DSL line in 1 minute today.

Nonetheless, even two decades ago, do you know what people used to spend days downloading?

That’s right … pictures of naked females.

The pursuit of female nudity always has, and always will be the most prominent aspect of human culture. One might argue that there is nothing more important to the survival of the species.

Anyway, 300bps was not too bad when I wanted to send simple text emails … but it was wholly insufficient to download low-quality “.gif” files of scantily-clad women.

And so technology matured.

Did technology mature because people needed “better access to professional data”?

No.

It matured because people needed faster access to porn.

People can deny it until they are blue in the face, but the fact is that porn has driven technology more than any other factor in existence.

VHS won the war over Betamax almost solely because the adult film industry adopted the former standard.

The reason that Hollywood released all of their motion pictures on VHS, and the reason we all transferred our home movies to them, was almost wholly due to the decisions of the Adult Entertainment industry.

Sure … we found tons of non-porn uses for these technologies once they were adopted, but they were adopted because of porn.

Porn has been on the bleeding edge of everything technological. Graphics, animation, streaming video, and every kind of interactive content used today, was probably created by the Adult Entertainment industry.

And make no mistake about it. Were it not for porn, there would be no broadband. There would be no YouTube, no iTunes, no Web 2.0, and few Internet advancements at all would have been made were it not for the Adult Entertainment industry.

If you want to know where technology is heading, look to porn.

Adult Entertainment is also a wildly profitable business.

Adult Entertainment outsells all of Hollywood’s distributed Entertainment. Via sales, rentals, and cable TV charges, the Adult Industry grosses around $12 Billion Annually while Hollywood grosses about $9 Billion.

That being the case, the Adult Entertainment Expo, and its companion award show “The AVN Awards” are every bit as legitimate as The Academy Awards.

People can turn up their noses and question the morality of the business model, but money talks.

There is a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to porn. Most of the people who have objections to Adult Entertainment have no qualms about seeing the latest Motion Picture depicting graphic violence, murder, and mayhem.

Films like “Goodfellas” and “The Godfather” are classics, but they more or less show people running around killing each other in ethnically stereotypical fashion. Even though the dialog could be written by anyone who spent an afternoon in a Bensonhurst pizza joint, the writers and directors are lauded as geniuses.

Throw a couple of chicks up on the screen rubbing their breasts together, however, and many of those same people feign disgust.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and if I had to choose one … I would take breasts over Joe Pesci.

I think it is very cool how CES and the AEE have come to share the same space in recent years.  It’s almost as if they are tacitly acknowledging their importance to one another.

What are you going to watch on the cool new plasma TV?

Porn.

What are you going to browse on that cool new Netbook?

Porn.

The two industries are really co-dependent on one another.

Not everything is going swimmingly, though.

This year, what strikes me the most about CES is the relative lack of crowds. I don’t want to say the place is dead … but parts of it definitely are.

I haven’t seen such a lack of enthusiasm or lack of attendance for this event since I have lived here.

There are some interesting things coming out of CES like Windows 7, Palm’s WebOS, and 3D TV, but nothing that I would consider game changers.

This year’s CES is about as lackluster as conventions get.

In 2009, if I want to find out about a gadget, I can find everything I want to know about it and more with just a few mouse clicks on the web. I can find videos of people demonstrating the devices, and I can read all the rumors and news that my brain can handle. I can even read transcripts, summaries, or watch recordings of most of the keynote speeches while sitting at home in my boxer shorts.

This begs the question … is CES still relevant as a whole?

It’s a valid question.

As time goes on, the Internet may reach a point where in-person electronics conventions are moot.

I think this fact is starting to occur to more and more people.

As a matter of fact, Apple declared that 2009 would be the final year for their annual “MacWorld” show. There is just no reason for it to exist any longer.

I’m getting that exact same vibe from CES this year.

You are going to sell a lot more gadgets by having a cool website and launching a clever advertising campaign than you ever will by buying a booth at CES.

Irrelevance is setting in.

The same cannot be said for the Adult Entertainment Expo. There is a definite excitement for fans in seeing their favorite adult stars in person, and this is definitely one that must be experienced in person in order to be fully appreciated.

There is a novelty in having a one-on-one, in-person chat with your favorite adult film star that webchats and online videos will just never be able to replicate.

The “human” factor is what makes the AEE incomparable with other shows, and the energy of this show is unlike any other.

I’ve already completely gone through the AEE once, and I have stopped and spoken with just about every actress at the show. Contrary to what you may envision, the conversations don’t all revolve around sex and perversion. One actress asked me about my camera, and actually pulled hers out and showed it to me (her camera). Another was a fan of my website and asked me a dozen questions about myself. Another said “hey cutie” and grabbed my testicles.

Okay, there is some sex and perversion, but there is so much more.

It is interesting exploring all of the different personalities of the girls, taking their photos, and of course … getting the inside scoop of what we can expect to see from the Adult Entertainment industry in the year ahead.

The product booths are also fascinating. There are all kinds of products, potions, and “toys” to sample and buy.  Sure, the new Palm device is cool, but the glow-in-the-dark solar powered dildo is something you wouldn’t believe unless you were standing there looking at it.

I’ve been to many conventions, and at most of them, people walk around with kind of a blank look on their faces.

At the AEE, everyone is really excited to be there, and it shows. The actresses, the press, the fans … nearly everyone has a smile on their face throughout the show.

Contrary to what some might think, it’s not really all about raunch or obscenity. There is a lot of humor and general goofiness in the AEE. The event doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s more funny than erotic, and the entire event even emphasizes fun.

Of course, you won’t get freebies like this anywhere else either.

An Intel keychain is all well and good, but a free porn sampler disk is the gift that keeps on giving … if you know what I mean.

Both CES and the AEE started yesterday, and they run through Sunday.

I have passes to both, and will be spending time in each of them throughout the rest of the week.

I won’t tell you which convention I will be spending more time inside, but I’m sure you can probably guess. 

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