It would sound somewhat strange to say it, but right around the moment when Borat and his manager were in a drag-out naked wrestling match on their hotel bed over a pinup of Pamela Anderson, and Borat had his moustachioed face stuffed right into the voluminous folds of his manager's flabby ass crack, something like a great cosmic tumbler clicked into place in my soul. In some way, I knew immediately, I have been travelling my whole life to get to this moment. And now that I'm here, I can see filthy Kazakhstani butt-hair for miles.

I watched I Am Curious: Yellow last night, a film that was seized by American customs and labelled obscene when it was brought into the country in 1969, because it showed penises and pubic hair and oral-genital contact. I published my first sex column today on blogTO about how you can't buy Lost Girls in the city any more, but I can look over from where I'm lying in bed right now and see my copy of that naughty, dangerous work on my shelf. Over in the Goo, some or all of the Box girls are going to see Shortbus at the Book Shelf, because they can. Shortbus will be on my list of the best films of the year and will be marked alongside all these other beautiful, treacherous things that are doing more than just treading the status quo on the planet Earth. Real art still breaks like VCRs, and the noise still gives me THE SHIVERS.

And in its way, Borat is in there too, because man howdy, you can't do that shit on television. But you can do it somewhere, and I can see it here, and not get shot. Pretenders beware: when someone really cracks the mold, it is readily apparent not just that they have done it, but that everyone else has not. Thank goodness we still get to see things like this, and all the nauseating brilliance of their ruined flesh.