| --Saturday, March 29, 2008--
Voices from the Tempe Phoenix Forum
 So I was able to sneak into Tempe's Phoenix Forum with the help of trusted associates and, after twenty minutes, determined that it was just like XBiz Hollywood except with nowhere else to go. While a couple of friends reported the sealing of long-germinating business deals at the Forum, I was most impressed with the number of stray cats on the grounds of the Mission Palms Hotel and the following snippets of conversation:
"This is a fantastic Flash-based application."
"But what does it do?"
"Well, it's Flash-based."
"You need to work on your pitch."
"Don't take it personally. She doesn't even call people back who paid for their admission."
"It doesn't do much for the cause when six yahoos go strolling down Mill Avenue with 'Pussycash' lanyards."
"The party's at Hooters."
"Hooters? Those girls hate me more than hookers do."
"I hear next year the Phoenix Forum will be in West Covina."
"How'd you get past security?"
"These guys like to pretend they're not making money the way they're actually making money."
"Then how do you explain naming your business 'SexSearch', 'Pussycash', or 'BangBucks'?"
"That's not what goes on the tax return. You only see those names when they're sponsoring an open bar."
"You're making this more complicated than it is. See you at Hooters."
"It was the most useless meeting I've ever been to, and I've been to some useless meetings. I wonder if she knows she probably shouldn't have showed up drunk."
Previously: Lockdown at the Tempe Phoenix Forum; XBiz panels tackle piracy, butt piracy, Mylie Cyrus
See also: The Phoenix ForumLabels: arizona, events, outrage
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, March 28, 2008--
Ava Rose: It's what's for dinner
 Here is Ava Rose on the set of Rollerdollz. I want to create a series of pictures of America's porn stars in front of price lists, like menus, gas station marquees, and Sotheby's auction items to make a statement about relative worth in 2008. I will submit this as both a doctoral dissertation and as applications for an NEA grant and a MacArthur fellowship.
I think that this is the kind of art that really needs to be made, that makes people feel guilty for not liking it for the reasons I demand but instead because it features Ava Rose's boobs. Then I will say, "This is not porn, it's art; you're not supposed to be sexually aroused by it. You're a bad person because you find boobs compelling. You should really be looking at how much the hot dogs cost at Glendale's Moonlite Rollerway. I'm not actually a pornographer. I'm using these boobs ironically. You don't get my work. Stop looking at it!"
Next, I will create a short documentary of cropping and uploading this photo while sitting at a Starbucks in Tempe, AZ.
Previously: Ava Rose at home; Bree Olson's future planningLabels: Ava Rose, glendale, personal philosophy, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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Lockdown at the Phoenix Forum
 From a distance, Tempe's Mission Palms hotel looks like an ant colony. We adjust our binoculars and see that the ants are all wearing goatees and Hawaiian shirts. This is the adult webmaster convention known as the Phoenix Forum. Even though it's in Tempe.
Distance is required because my name is not on the press list. Unlike the AVN convention, which is like a Middle-eastern bazaar of haggling and texting people to vouch for you when your name isn't on the list, my experience this morning was a lot more like dealing with VA hospitals; a very curt and military "No."
This is understandable, as 80 percent of the local population is actually a patient at a VA hospital.
I decided I'd attend two weeks ago and started sending e-mails to the Forum's Info address listed on its website. When I didn't hear back, I didn't worry, but instead called friends to give me the contact info of someone in charge. When I got those names, I e-mailed and didn't hear back yet again.
So this morning I piloted my Hummer 3 (I bought it for the convention to fit in, even though I can see over the dashboard) past two levels of security; Tempe's Mission Palms hotel, in the shadow of Arizona State University Mountain, was locked down for the webmasters.
A table outside the registration area was laden (as tables tend to be) with copies of XBiz. I grabbed one because I knew I had a byline or two this month. I fired up this laptop and tabbed several instances of my articles around the web. I paperclipped my business card with my nom de porn to my California driver's license bearing the name Ronnie James Dio.
"You're not on the list," the temp at the registration desk said. She was very nice otherwise.
I went out into the lobby to make some calls. Everyone with decision-making power was somewhere else. A security guard asked me to leave.
"If you don't have a wristband, I'm afraid you're going to have to leave the property," he said.
"The property?" I asked. "I can't just sit over there and e-mail an outraged letter or two to the people irresponsible for this convention?"
"No," he said. "Well, you can stay there for a few minutes."
"Thank you."
"Grams," you might say. "You didn't pay an admission fee for the right to wear a 'Pussycash' lanyard. Do you really expect to just waltz in there with a pile of adult business articles under your arm after only sending four e-mails over the past two weeks?"
Well, yeah.
"And doesn't the fact that no one responded to you tell you anything, like that they didn't want you there?"
Wait a minute - are you saying that my trenchant and thoughtful take on the adult industry is irrelevant?
"If the shoe fits..."
After about twenty minutes of making calls and not raising the right people, I gave up and came to this Starbucks, where blue-haired snowbirds wonder over my shoulder who "Joey Buttafuoco" is.
I'm in the state anyway for the Great Gape Off at the Grand Canyon, in which several Red Light District starlets will compete with the Natural Wonder to see who has the largest capacity. The winner gets the Colorado River.
Previously: Nicole Moore goes streaming
See also: Tempe's Phoenix ForumLabels: events, outrage
posted by Gram the Man
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--Thursday, March 27, 2008--
Lou & Amy & Joe & Evanka: Coming to terms with your celebrity sex tape
 Two couples, both alike in dignity
In Chatsworth and Long Island where we lay our scene
From ancient scandal break to new celebrity
Which one deems wholesome and the other obscene
Joey Buttafuoco said, "I didn't know the place was wired for cameras."
Lou Bellera, husband of Amy Fisher, said, "We wanted to make a video of a couple in love."
Both men and their wives were the stars of sex tapes released within three months of each other, distributed by the same company, Red Light District, that sold sex tapes of Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson, and "Saved By the Bell"'s Dustin "Screech" Diamond.
But only one couple admits they did it on purpose. Bellera and Fisher shot their movie in front of a stationary camera Bellera had set up in their home and rented ones on Long Island. The Buttafuocos claim they were literally caught on tape in May, 2007.
"Here's how it happened," Evanka Buttafuoco, 45, told me. "Joseph had been out of jail for a month and we went over (adult director) Rob Spallone's house for a barbecue. (Spallone) was shooting something down by the pool and he had release forms that everyone entering the house had to sign. So we signed them. It was a standard thing like when you go to a club and have to sign a 'You may appear on film' form."
Evanka told me this after I had already watched the movie and had determined that it had been staged.
"So - and this was my fault - I wanted to take Joseph upstairs for a quickie, and we just searched around upstairs," Evanka said.
"And that was the room (Spallone) had set up with webcams or whatever," Joey Buttafuoco said.
The couple have a 40-minute sex scene, Evanka in high heels and leading the action. Joey, 52, seems grateful. He says "I love you" several times. This is the part that's real.
Spallone, so the story went, later combed through the "webcam" footage and discovered the Buttafuocos' tryst, and sold it to Red Light District using the blanket permission of the releases the Buttafuocos had signed on entering.
 I met the Buttafuocos on Hollywood Boulevard. We talked outside the Jimmy Kimmel Show theatre.
"So that wasn't staged?" I asked.
"No," Joey said. "We had no idea."
Joey met Evanka when the latter brought her friends' Land Rover into his Chatsworth car shop. He gave her his card, which didn't list his last name. Having worked for 17 years in car repossessions, Evanka exhausted most of the means at her disposal to turn up any information about him, but found nothing. Finally, when he took her to dinner, she first heard the story of Amy Fisher, "The Long Island Lolita."
"But that is so far behind us now," Evanka said. "Everybody is friends now. We just had dinner with Lou and Amy and we wish them the best."
Since losing his business for insurance fraud - resulting in the jail time that ended just before the filming of their tape - Joey has been a host on the Internet radio station Let's Talk Recovery.
"I've been sober since 1988," Buttafuoco said. "I didn't even use (drugs) all through 1992 and everything that happened then."
Because of the tools he learned to use in his recovery, Buttafuoco said, the release of the sex tape hasn't sent him over the edge.
"I'm the only one who's mad at Rob Spallone," Evanka said. "Joey's still friends with him."
Rob Spallone did not respond to e-mail requests for his side of the story.
After meeting the Buttafuocos, who were a charming couple, I watched the tape again and knew without a doubt that it had been staged. Webcam technology has not evolved to the point that it is capable of complex zooms.
"Yeah, they had a guy with a camera at the foot of the bed," a source with knowledge of the filming of "Joey Buttafuoco: Caught on Tape" said. "Maybe they just wanted some documentation of this time in their lives. Evanka's pretty hot."
Celebrity sex tapes are cheap to produce and, by virtue of their "caught on tape" marketing, are forgiven for any technical glitches. Paris Hilton's 1 Night in Paris sold millions but appeared to have been shot using the night vision goggles from "Silence of the Lambs." Vivid's Kim Kardashian: Superstar tape sold very well for the company despite having very little actual sex in it.
One element of celebrity sex tape culture is deniability. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton both have disavowed knowledge that their tapes were being marketed by the rapper Ray J. and Rick Salomon, respectively.
Accepting money for appearing in a sex tape can be swept under the rug by denying you knew the tape was being made (Hilton) or that it would be sold (Kardashian and the Buttafuocos), because the bigger shame in a cool-obsessed culture is appearing to be attention-seeking.
 But Fisher and Bellera embrace their sex tape, as evidence by quotes like the following:
"I look even better in person than I did on the video," Bellera, 55, said. "But Amy looks great no matter what."
Every commercial porn title must gather signed documentation that its stars are over 18 and that they have agreed to be filmed for the working title of the movie in question. They must also provide identification like driver's licenses. Every "reality" porn, from Couples Seduce Teens to Bang Boat to (to a lesser degree) Girls Gone Wild has a file cabinet full of performer releases stating that each actor knew what was happening.
That the Buttafuocos didn't knowingly provide this information would have been grounds for a fantastic lawsuit if the events of May, 2007 had happened as the couple said they had.
"We came to a settlement (with Rob Spallone and Red Light District)," Joey Buttafuoco told me that day. "That's why we're more or less actively promoting the movie."
 From Long Island, Amy Fisher talks about her own sex tape (which, according to the managers of several local video stores and online outlets like Gamelink and Adult DVD Empire, is easily outselling the Buttafuoco tape) as a cathartic experience.
"People come up to me and tell me how good it was," she said. "People seek me out. A lot of my publicity because of 1992 (both couples use "1992" as shorthand) has been negative, but this has really been positive."
Bellera and Fisher have promoted the tape extensively and in only a few occasions, Bellera says, have interviewers failed to be polite.
"We tell people that we want to talk about today and to be positive," Bellera said. "And I establish ground rules before every interview." Fisher walked off the set of the Howard Stern show when the shock jock took a call from Joey Buttafuoco's still-sngry daughter.
"But we cleared that one up later," Bellera said.
 Both couples know that their celebrity is not from Buttafuoco's Internet radio job or Fisher's post-prison stint as a Long Island newspaper columnist, but both try not to dwell on the source of the celebrity that made their sex tapes a marketable commodity.
"Anything having to do with my 'story', so to speak, I can never earn a dime on," Fisher said. "I have learned through the years to make lemonade out of those lemons. I keep a positive attitude and make the best out of what I have to work with."
But why the Buttafuocos denied knowing their romp was being recorded and the Lou Belleras freely admitted it seems odd. Maybe the Buttafuocos weren't happy with the finished result and wanted to disavow it? They shouldn't have - they seem like they're very happy together.
"I suppose it'll be good to look back when I'm 70 and say 'My 45-year-old ass looked good,'" said Evanka.
Previously: Kim Kardashian Superstar; Screeched; Joey Buttafuoco Caught on Tape; Amy Fisher and Lou Bellera: How to quit worrying and learn to love your sex tape
See also: Amy Fisher, Joey ButtafuocoLabels: "red light district", amy fisher, celebrity, evanka buttafuoco, hype, interviews, joe francis, joey buttafuoco, kim kardashian, legal, lou bellera, paris hilton, vivid
posted by Gram the Man
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Bree Olson's future planning
 On the set of the Adam & Eve/Zero Tolerance co-production Rollerdollz at Glendale's Moonlite Rollerway, Bree Olson improvised a line in a scene with Mikey Butders that told me she will have a long career in this business.
"Fuck that little hole," she said. "Loosen it up for the next guy."
In the same way that I feel porn shot in Glendale is a triumph for that city's large population of off-the-boat Armenians, Ms. Olson's realistic prediction that her vagina might at some later date be occupied by someone other than Mikey Butders should give this site's older readers assurance that the future is in good hands.
Previously: Free to Bree O or E
See also: Bree OlsonLabels: "adam and eve", bree olson, zero tolerance
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, March 26, 2008--
Report: Anti-909 sentiment rampant in stripper community
 Precious, a stripper and stripper agency owner from California's Inland Empire, told me that strippers from Los Angeles and Orange Counties are prejudiced against people from the 909 area code.
"They look down on us," she said. "They think we're not on the ball."
Precious runs a company called Precious Entertainment, which sends peelers throughout the greater Riverside and Pomona areas.
"People in L.A. and Orange County have so much going on," she said, "that they think people from around Riverside can't get it together."
 Anyone dialing a 909 number on a rotary phone would know how silly that is. It's easy to call someone else lazy when you're dialing 323.
Precious told me she's looking for additional strippers. Oh, I don't know; I think the current lineup has a lot going for it.
Previously: Area code impurity to desroy Valley identity, porn; 37 tips from a stripper
See also: PreciousLabels: Inland Empire report, interviews, precious, strippers
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, March 25, 2008--
Casting Call: Romona sought for probing, suppression
 Rarely are you allowed inside the dream factory that is the adult industry. Only I provide you this service. Only I can pull back the curtain to reveal the throbbing brain trust that gives life to your masturbatory fantasies, and other mixed metaphors.
Vien Savio, ace production manager on several Adam & Eve movies, is directing his first movie for the company, Shades of Romona, and needs someone to play the title character, Shades. No, I'm kidding. The title character is named Romona.
Savio sent the following plot description. Do you see yourself interpreting this role? If so, contact Vien - the adult industry's only living Southeast Asian director - at surdalis (at) gmail.com.
SHADES OF ROMONA (synopsis)
The setting is a futuristic metropolis, circa 2028. Romona
is a famous film actress, whose career is in jeopardy
from a looming sex tape scandal involving a predatory stud.
Paparazzi are hounding Romona outside her door, waiting to
photograph her every mistake. At one time very outgoing, Romona has now
become reclusive, eventually developing a multiple personality
disorder. She seeks help from a new age Doctor (Zak). The
Doctor has created a machine that can cure all forms of personality
disorder through erotic brainwave stimulation. The Doctor uses the
machine to get inside the patient's mind and have sex with each
individual personality as a form of radical therapy.
To start the therapy, the intern plugs the Doctor and Romona into the
machine. The first of the three personalities, Zophina & Staza (the Love Twins),
are time travelers from a parallel universe. They come to
Earth to seek man's creation. Unfortunately, they are only able to find
man's desire. They fuck him anyway.
The second personality is a leader of a revolution (Sasha Grey) who is fighting to
overthrow the government. The president (Tony DeSergio) gladly tests
her revolutionary fervor. The last personality, Alice (Alexandra), is
a direct reflection of Romona's personality after the sex tape scandal.
Alice has always been bound and trapped by herself in a white room,
emblematic of Romona's repression. Eventually, Alice is able to wriggle
out of her restraints and she celebrates her freedom by
masturbating. The Doctor's treatment has been a success and Romona's
personalities have been permanently suppressed. She thanks the Doctor,
and suddenly Romona has an uncontrollable urge to give the doctor what he
wanted all along. The intern (Mandy Morbid) joins in. I know what you're thinking. "Grams, this is pretty lowbrow compared with Dirtpipe Milkshakes." I agree. But the common people have to jerk off, too. Else how will we keep them from having children?
Previously: Stagger Lee
See also: Adam & EveLabels: mandy morbid, sasha grey, sex tape, vien savio, zak sabbath
posted by Gram the Man
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Happy Birthday, Adrianna Nicole
 Today is Adrianna Nicole's birthday, as you probably guessed from the subject heading. Her birthday is exactly eight months before mine, as you probably guessed from her level of maturity.
She is spending the day at Disneyland. I don't know if she got the park-jumper pass, so information is unavailable as to whether you can goose her on the Tower of Terror.
Previously: Young Hollywood and the birth of the United States; I am the world's greatest porn director
See also: Adrianna Nicole, Life in a Porn Dorm Isn't All Pillowfights And Orgies (thenaughtyamerican)Labels: adrianna nicole, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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XRCO voting: One patriot's story
 The conversation went like this:
"Grams," said a director, "I see you're on the voting committee for the XRCO."
"Do you mean the X-Rated Critics' Organization which, since 1984, has been a true critics' organization like the Golden Globes?" I said, "Not susceptible to politics and suspicion of venality?"
"Yes," he said.
"Then Yes," I said.
"Which movie do you think is most likely to win top honors in the (omitted) category?" he asked.
"Why, (omitted 2), of course," I said.
After five movies or performers are nominated in each of the XRCO's 26 categories, voters then arrange the five in order of preference. There is no "#1 with a bullet" option, so the fifth choice simply receives the least preference, rather than no preference at all.
"Would you mind voting for my movie first and putting (omitted 2) last?" he asked.
That's how it is around here. The director didn't even offer to send me a fruit basket or reload my Starbucks card.
"That might work in Hollywood," I said, draping myself in a nearby American flag, "but it doesn't work in Porn Valley, U.S.A. Now get off my plane. I'm President of the United States."
I only had trouble voting in the categories Orgasmic Oralist and Best Male Performer. "I like all these people equally," I fretted, "and their achievements are uniformly towering, if you were to consider 'towering' as not a comparative term."
In these cases I consulted the ghost of Arthur C. Clarke. "Go for the people who have blown you personally or given you cigars," he said.
"Rebeca Linares never gave me cigars," I said.
The XRCO Awards will be announced April 30.
Previously: XRCO Night: A night to Rememb
See also: XRCOLabels: business, events, personal philosophy, xrco
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, March 24, 2008--
Porn stars to return to Porn Star Karaoke tomorrow
 According to independent auditing agency The Merkin Group, women are labeled "porn stars" upon their first appearance in a pornographic movie, whereas their mainstream counterparts often struggle for years to be known as "stars," sharing trailers and being hit on by Tim Allen.
That is why it is appropriate to call an event Porn Star Karaoke even if many of the individuals attending are not recognizable from masturbatory fantasies (aside from the waitresses). Tomorrow, however, there will be no question.
Kylie Ireland and Tom Byron will be stopping by Sardo's Bar in Burbank in support of Byron's latest MILF movie, Seasoned Players 4, which also stars Ginger Lynn and Amber Lynn. Byron has been performing since 1982, which means that women who are now MILFs were not even born when he began having sex on film.
Ireland won AVN's Best New Starlet award in 1994, which means that men who began their masturbation careers to her can now legally rent cars and drive to Sardo's.
Ginger Lynn's first scene was with Byron in 1984, when she was 22. I'm just full of information today.
Previously: Beyond the Valley of Porn Star Karaoke; Billy Glide Night at PSK; Nina and Kylie's Perfect Orgy
See also: Sardo's Bar, Kylie Ireland, Tom ByronLabels: events, ginger lynn, kylie ireland, MILF, PSK, tom byron
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, March 21, 2008--
No Easter for Alix Lakehurst
 Alix Lakehurst is Greek, and lives in Chicago. We talked by computer, the way they do in Space.
One thing about Alix Lakehurst (who interviewed me for Mr. Skin), is that, like Mike Wallace, she conducts her interviews topless. I, on the other hand, wore a full iron diving bell.
I asked what she was doing for Easter, because topless girls in bonnets is a multi-million dollar niche for my Caymans-based affiliate program.
"Greeks don't celebrate Easter until the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox," she said. "So it won't be until late April."
"Oh," I said, thinking: What will I do with all this spanikopita?
Previously: Alix Lakehurst: Riding on the Metro; Jenny Hendrix keeps in touch
See also: Alix Lakehurst, Mr. SkinLabels: alix lakehurst, Apple, bbw, chicago, interviews, jesus, technology, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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Paul Thomas Superstar
 Long before he was raising Debbie from the dead, Paul Thomas was professionally denying Jesus Christ. Above is a picture of the man who would become "PT" alongside Yvonne Elliman in Norman Jewison's 1973 production of "Jesus Christ Superstar," in which the future Vivid director played Peter.
The above might be the scene in which Thomas claims he taught Mary Magdalene that everything was all right, everything's fine:
"Yvonne Elliman (Mary Magdalene) had just seen 'Deep Throat' but wanted to know what one was like," PT said of his time shooting the Norman Jewison classic. "So we went off to the desert and she practiced her deep throating techniques on some of the, er, saints." I have been listening to Thomas saying "I don't know him!" for many Good Fridays before I ever met him, although Jewison claims in the movie commentary that he dubbed Thomas' voice for the few speaking parts in the film.
Jesus, there's been a lot of Jesus this week.
Previously: Is the feature dead?; Vivid does Kim - again
See also: "Could We Start Again, Please?"Labels: "paul thomas", jesus, vivid
posted by Gram the Man
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Young Hollywood and the birth of the United States
 HBO's "John Adams" miniseries is pretty compelling, though it inaccurately places the man who would become our second President at the scene of the Boston Massacre. Tom Wilkinson is brilliant as Ben Franklin, David Morse engaging as George Washington, the guy from "Oz" excellent as the guy from Pennsylvania, Laura Linney wonderful as Abigail Adams, and Paul Giamatti way better than he was in that god-awful pool movie with Opie's daughter.
As I sat at home considering these things a thought came to me:
"I have to go take another picture of Adrianna Nicole in a parking lot."
My collection of pictures of Adrianna Nicole in parking lots is among the major achievements of my career as America's Beloved Porn Journalist. Tonight, while I watched John Adams wrestle with Philadelphia's horrible plague of dysentery in the summer of 1776, I knew that one of the freedoms guaranteed by Adams and the founders was manifested in Carlos Batts' Young Hollywood, in which Nicole has sex by venetian blinds.
"Yeah, man," Batts said. "Adrianna's a trip."
 The party was at Safari Sam's on Sunset Blvd. Guests listened to live music from bands featured in Young Hollywood and Batts' next movie, Kiss Attack, including a set from Batts' friends from Baltimore, Dirt & Bank.
"Yeah, man, "Batts said. "Dirt & Bank are a trip."
Mandy Morbid proved that her default setting is winsome as she posed with Pride of Oregon Kimberly Kane. Kane, who is Young Hollywood's boxcover model, has yet to see the movie.
 "You should," I said. "You're really naked in it."
"I see all my movies," Morbid said. "I've only been in one."
Because of "John Adams", I'd missed the bands. Apparently Glenn Danzig was there, as his yard had been used for Mandy Morbid's car-top tryst with Lystra, or trystra. But I didn't see him.
"He was standing about one millimeter away from you," Batts told me. (Danzig is kind of short; Mika Tan told me this.)
 A drunk and vaguely surly Benny Profane was on stage. He played Martin van Buren in the Adams movie.
 I saw Clown Porn's Dick Chibbles and Daisy Layne.
"Why clowns?" I probed.
"People having sex is funny," Chibbles said (he lives in San Diego). "Clowns having sex is funnier."
Actually, clowns having sex is horrifying. But not more than the atrocities committed by the British in its colonies, or what the Sons of Liberty regularly did to the Crown's tax collectors.
 Also on hand were performer Van Damage and his wife, let's call her Cynthia Damage. I approve of this marriage.
"My girlfriend brought me to a swinger's party and I just found myself blowing him," she said, echoing Martha Washington.
 Off in a corner representing Los Angeles were April Flores and her friend, La Cholita. Flores did much of the behind the scenes work in Young Hollywood and stars in Kiss Attack, where she leads a fleshy vampire army. How La Cholita figures into this I'm still unsure, but I'm glad she does.
"Looking good is being deadly," La Cholita said.
 As I was about to leave, a parking lot materialized around Adrianna Nicole for her photo opportunity. It made me think of the tax collector in "John Adams"; she looked like she should be tarred and feathered, except not with tar and feathers, if you know what I mean.
Read the Young Hollywood review here.
Previously: Kiss Attack (but not the Kiss Army)
See also: Carlos Batts, Adam & Eve, HBO's "John Adams"Labels: "kimberly kane", adrianna nicole, april flores, carlos batts, daisy layne, dick chibbles, events, la cholita, latin, mandy morbid, pinups, van damage, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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--Thursday, March 20, 2008--
Thomas Aquinas becomes Digital Playground contract saint
 Digital Playground, the award-winning studio and leading provider of world-class content to Aristotelian reasoning, is pleased to announce it has signed an exclusive deal with Thomas Aquinas(TM), making the Doctor Angelicus the studio's newest contract saint to illuminate the prestigious roster.
Aquinas will make his Dominican/Franciscan debut in second quarter 2008. The portly, dark-complected theologian will also star in the upcoming "Summa Theologica II: Summa Summa Theologica," the highly anticipated treatise published by Digital Playground's award-winning Eclesiastical Philosophy division in collaboration with the University of Naples.
"Sounds like 'Nipples,'" joked Pope Urban IV.
Samantha Lewis, Digital Playground CEO comments, "When I initially encountered Aquinas' teachings about the nature of angels I loved that he had such clear cut and defined ideas about their ability to move from point A to point B without passing through anything in between. We strive to make all our contract saints to not appear like they've sustained any damage. Aquinas is simple, a methodical thinker, and has no qualms about all that it takes to make his case before the Second Council of Lyons, where me and Joone hope he will reconcile the Greek and Latin churches and Tera Patrick. I look forward to working very closely with St. Thomas and helping him to grow a prestigious career at Digital Playground along with Sts. Augustine(TM), Ambrose(TM), Jerome(TM), Gregory(TM) and Riley Saint Eele(TM). We welcome Thomas Aquinas as our newest contract saint and look forward to presenting him to the canonical court at Avignon."
Thomas Aquinas(TM) comments, "Digital Playground is the only company that can launch my career almost overnight. Its owners and staff are dedicated to creating saints. I'm impressed that quality and branding are the objective; our goals are the same - to define the Trinity in simple and unconfusing terms, free of the Sophia Santi heresy. This is a dream come true, I am so happy to be Digital Playground's newest theological scholar and to have the opportunity to work with Samantha and Joone on 'Pirates II.'"
Joone, Digital Playground Founder and award-winning director confirms, "A truly unexpected find, Thomas Aquinas(TM) is the total package. He is smart, pious, overflows with self-confidence, and knows that nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, as we ourselves have stated in the series Jack's Big Ass Show. We love that he is fresh, ambitious, and has goals that pertain to international acceptance of Christ and Blu-Ray. We are pleased to have Thomas Aquinas(TM) as our newest contract saint and encourage our fans to have a beatification-off in his honor!"
Added Aquinas(TM), who died in 1274, "I'm wondering how many starlets can dance on the head of my cock."
Previously: Digital Playground's cavalcade of synonyms
See also: Digital Playground announces exclusive deal with Gabriella FoxLabels: "contract girls", Digital Playground, hype, jesus, riley steele, stoya
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, March 18, 2008--
Sophia Lynn goes back to the garden
 On again/off again porn performer Sophia Lynn has once more been saved by the church.
Lynn, the former contract girl whose career imploded prior to the 2007 AVN convention and who was depicted in an ABC PrimeTime special having serious doubts about her fleshly job choices, has accepted both a South Dakota secretarial position and Jesus Christ as her savior.
I called Lynn at her new job at Sioux Falls' Celebrate Community Church, an evangelical parish with a congregation of 2500.
"It's hard to keep your faith in the adult business," she said. "When all your friends are saying 'Let's go to Les Deux tonight!' rather than 'Let's go to church!'"
After leaving the porn industry for the first time in 2007 - or, just prior to her duties signing for Adam & Eve at the AVN Expo - Lynn returned last summer as a prospective NinnWorx contract performer. She did not get that gig, sources say, because her attendance was "erratic" and there was talk of "drugs."
"I had developed a real tolerance for Oxycontin," she said, but also used cocaine and "Narcos."
When Lynn said "Narcos" I thought she'd said "Norco," the town where NinnWorx has its office.
"No, I was always clean when I was with NinnWorx," she said.
I met Lynn last summer and didn't think she was any more or less druggy than I was, but her ambiguous feelings about the adult industry were apparent. Each time we'd see each other, including at this year's AVN show, where she was hanging around the Sex Z Pictures booth, she would say, "we should really do an interview" and then not respond to followup questions.
"I know," she said. "I'm in, I'm out, I'm in, I'm out."
Missionary and ex-stripper Heather Veitch, founder of adult evangelical unit JC's Girls, brokered a deal by which Lynn would leave the adult industry and take a job at the evangelical church where she has been a secretary for the past week.
Celebrate Community Church sponsored Lynn's flight and housing.
 "(Celebrate) had been trying to get in touch with me since the PrimeTime special," Lynn said. "As you know, I am hard to get in touch with. But they started praying for me. Then they called Heather (Veitch) and then I happened to call her. It was the answer to my prayers."
Lynn told me that she'd decided to leave the porn business again after this year's AVN show.
"I went back to (family in) New Jersey and got clean," she said.
Lynn is now living with a church family and plans to get her own apartment in Sioux Falls next month. "This is home now," she said. She also said she plans to go back to school.
Lynn has a three-year-old child living with her ex-husband.
I visited the church's website and asked Lynn, who is comfortable using her legal name, Crystal Bartolome, what she thought about Celebrate's views on Marriage and Family:
"God's plan for human sexuality is that it is to be expressed only in a monogamous lifelong relationship between one man and one woman within the framework of marriage. This is the only relationship which is divinely designed for the birth and rearing of children and is a covenant union made in the sight of God, taking priority over every other human relationship." Lynn said that the adult industry fills holes for people. "Financial holes, self esteem holes," she said.
But does Celebrate's views on marriage and family square with Lynn's own?
"It's not our place to judge," she said. "God and Jesus love everyone."
Lynn said that everyone at the church knew who she was and how she had until recently earned her living. "And they're very accepting," she said. "It's nice to see Christians acting like Christians."
Lynn had been a Sunday school teacher in Florida prior to embarking on her adult career. I asked her if her previous strain of Christianity was like her current one.
"No," she said. "A lot of churches are very judgmental and unforgiving."
I noted Lynn's many comings and goings from the adult business and asked if her new gig was going to stick.
"South Dakota is home now," she said. "Though I had to look it up on freaking Google."
Previously: Oh JCs Girls, Book II; Sophia Lynn makes three; Night of 101 Girls
See also: JCsGirls, Celebrate Community ChurchLabels: interviews, jesus, sophia lynn
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, March 17, 2008--
Podcast: "I Jerked Off Instead"
 Now and then a recording artist comes along who single(handed)ly captures the zeitgeist. Such is the case with Fogelfoot, whose "I Jerked Off Instead" is probably the most important song of the 21st century.
Hear it in the podcast.Labels: podcast
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, March 14, 2008--
Audrey Hollander cares enough to replace the roll
 ...and if you invite her to your house? She will always bring a nice cake or something, or a mix tape.
Previously: In every Cum Fart Tsunami, a tacit confirmation; Barely Legal: Generations
Labels: "set visits", audrey hollander, redheads, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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Jameson further distances herself from adult industry via spelling
 "Club Jenna CEO Jay Grdina is enthusiastic about the soon-to-be-released, all-new title from his company, Jenna Loves Diamonds. The movie stars, of course, the biggest adult performer of all time, Jenna Jameson." It seems trifling to point out that this is not a new movie. It was filmed in 2002. I wouldn't mention this if its press release didn't say that it was a new movie. If it were a new movie, Tito Ortiz would probably be wondering why Jenna Jamesont was on film having sex with her ex husband, Justing Sterling.
Club Jenna has released and will continue to release several Jameson movies posthumous to her career as a performer but, probably respecting her wish to distance herself from the porn world, the movie's website spells both her and her then-husband's name incorrectly.
I thought I knew what "no flaws" and "all new" meant, but I guess I don't. It seems to me that the shrewd effort to mine Jameson's stockpile would carry with it a commitment to quality control. Unless - now bear with me - no effort was made because porn fans are stupid.
That said, it is nice to see Jenna back in "I like porn" mode. A review will follow shortly.
Previously: Jenna Jameson and the future of the porn superstar; Back(draft) to Flashpoint
See also: ClubJenna, Jenna Loves DiamondsLabels: jenna jameson, sic
posted by Gram the Man
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Kissy Kapri has a secret
 In porn, the person with her legs crossed has moral authority over the person who doesn't.
Britney Stevens wonders why Kissy Kapri got the corner office, the promotion, and the archdiocese in Otto Bauer's Hustler movie XXX28, or LVIII.
"I'm the good girl in this equation," Kapri did not say.
Previously: Reform School Girls 2; You be the judge: squirting or urinating?
See also: HustlerLabels: "set visits", britney stevens, directors, kissy capri, otto bauer
posted by Gram the Man
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Adrianna Nicole and Annette Schwarz - just because
 There was no reason for them to be standing in that parking lot, and yet there was every reason.
I asked the first thing that came to my mind:
"When you have to oil your asses, what do you use?"
"Baby oil," Schwarz said.
"Olive oil," Nicole said. "Well, basically whatever is available."
Previously: Lorelei Lee and Adrianna Nicole - just because (same parking lot, different Gram)
See also: Adrianna Nicole, Annette Schwarz, Spiegler GirlsLabels: adrianna nicole, agency, annette schwarz, because, fotos, germans, spiegler, WGL
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, March 12, 2008--
Back to the apocalypse at the San Francisco Fetish Ball
 You know when Carmina Burana starts playing that scary things are about to happen.
"Fate is against me/In health and virtue/Driven on and weighted down/Always enslaved."
So when I heard the first strains of that piece of cheery music at last weekend's San Francisco Fetish Ball, I instinctively covered my soul.
Questions I asked of God at that time were:
- Why is that man wearing a horse's head?
- Why is that woman 20 feet tall?
- Why are those ladies breathing through gas masks?
- Why do I have an erection?
The companies Stormy Leather, Syren, and J.T.'s Stockroom put together a showcase of their fashions using Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and, just as appropriate for a fashion show featuring floggings, worship, and submission, The Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane."
 The Scorpions are more important to Germany than Hitler or David Hasselhoff, and for the first time I realized how important German culture was to the fetish scene.
There were a lot of jackboots and Nazi-suggestive outfits at the Ball, held at the massive Grand Regency Ballroom, and the very theme of the event was "Metropolis," Fritz Lang's 1927 movie that inspired everything from "1984" to "Brazil" to a famous Apple ad to a Queen video that was way better than the song it promoted.
The SF Fetish Ball capped three nights of events; a gallery show, a smaller, more physical party called Club Enslaved, and the seventh annual Ball itself, organized by Paige White.
White is the Kansas-born dominatrix and director of Uber Ego, a company that makes sparse, brutal, and lifestyle-accurate BDSM movies. She used to work for Mr. S Leather with her partner, Tchukon Hunter, but left to take over the Ball (Mr. S had run the affair since its inception, and is still a major sponsor).
 White awarded the Ball's Best Costume award to Santa Monica's Eban (pictured).
"We started in 2000 in a much smaller venue, the DNA Lounge," White said (the DNA Lounge is where the gallery show was held this year), and we expanded for the past several years."
The Fetish Ball was not held last year, and organizers attribute this year's exponentially larger attendance to the fact that people missed the event.
Over the three nights I saw a lot of the same people, but each party had its own distinctive feel, with the hardcore aspect dwindling each night as the audience increased. By the Ball on Saturday night, with more than 2,000 people attending, there was little that seemed outlandish (although there were notable exceptions).
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