two-twenty

robotiXXX

Like Dr. Octagon, we at two-twenty are seeing robots every day. First there was an item in our monthly issue of The Face that introduced us to "clunkies" -- people who want to screw robots and/or get off by dressing like robots and screwing, and to roboho, a game that lets you program your own sex-bot in multiple techniques of pleasure (to borrow a phrase from Star Trek's Commander Data). Then today, the Times featured a story about robotic healthcare for old Japanese people on the front page.

Toshiki Shibahara, above, said, "The temperature is just right -- the bubbles are really comfortable". We think something may have gotten lost in translation; doesn't her smile say something more than "comfortable"?

Maybe it was The Face, or just our dirty minds, but there appear to be a lot of people getting turned on by robots. Enough, even, to constitute the beginnings of what Malcolm Gladwell calls a "social epidemic" in his book "The Tipping Point". We looked around for evidence and came up with a load of freaky shit. Usenet -- ever the digital clubhouse for people who can't even tell the old Groucho Marx joke because no one in their right mind would offer them membership elsewhere -- hosts alt.fetish.robot, a newsgroup "dedicated to the discussion of the concept of sex with or sexual attraction to robots and robot-like beings". Self-proclaimed "mad artist" Brent Harris sculpts Robot Chicks that retail for $400. Angel Heartz, a shop in (where else?) Japan, hawks the Vibe-inu, a modified Sony Aibo robot dog that will "come" and make its master, um, you know. Robot porn abounds. "Tomo", a film about a sex-crazed robot, won the jury prize for international short at Sundance. And this woman, The Robot Girl of London walks around like this all the time:

If we're to follow Gladwell's theory, the tipping point may come when "I, Robot", currently in post-production, is released later this year (no doubt on July-4th-Big-Willie-Weekend -- yeah, it stars Will Smith). The only problem is that the only person who seems to be able to tolerate Will any longer, let alone find him attractive, is Jada, and even she didn't look too pleased with him at the Oscars.

Not that it matters, he's not playing the robot.

For the record, the only robot two-twenty thinks is hot is Vicki from Small Wonder.