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 This is Gram Ponante with Your Porner's Almanac on January 22, 2008.
I have a manageable crush on Stoya. But she is nowhere in the following text. To hear hear her dulcet tones, listen to the podcast)
I just returned from the AVN Expo and Awards in Las Vegas, where I lost my voice while yelling at people I liked in clubs that sounded like this. This is why people text each other while standing three feet away from each other.
You know, some people say that since the mainstream world is becoming so porny, that porn will cease to be interesting. Luckily, the lack of real human interaction one can have standing in a club with a thousand other people, 15-dollar drinks, and the inability to communicate makes a creampie blowbang seem very intimate by comparison.
Sasha Grey appeared in several of my top picks of movies last year, including Broken, Naughty Flipside 1, and The Skin Trade. In the last two movies Grey's character brandished a shotgun at someone. The world is coming around to this method of dealing with problems now that the porn braintrust has blazed a trail.
(Check here for reviews.)
And Grey walked away with AVN's Female Performer of the Year award, too. Oddly enough, many of AVN's past performers of the year, including Grey, were in their first full year in the business. It says a lot about the amount of work one can get done in the first year. Things tend to drop off after that. But I think Grey will stick around - I just hope she doesn't get typecast as a shotgun-wielding mopey teen out for revenge.
Distinct from Female Performer of the Year is AVN's Best Actress Award. This went to Eva Angelina for Upload, and it was richly deserved. The filmmakers were so serious about making a serious porn movie that they included the word "-load" in the title by mistake.
Nick Manning won my best Male Performer of the Year award, but Evan Stone got it at AVN. If a straight male has to watch a guy in a porn film, that guy has to have the talent to not make the viewer feel resentful. Manning is very good at stealing a scene only when he's allowed to.
With the recent announcement that Warner Brothers and Fox Studios have thrown their weight - and $480 million - behind Blu-ray. Porn will follow suit. Even if porn looks awful in HD. Because it was less expensive, porn companies like Wicked and Digital Playground released titles in HD-DVD, but then a small company called CDGirls released a Jenna Haze movie in Blu-ray and then Vivid made a big splash with releasing "Debbie Loves Dallas...Again" in Blu-ray. Look for more Blu-Ray releases this year, even though you will probably regret it. Porn is one of the only media that would benefit from smaller screens.
One of the tragedies of porn is when your innocence is lost in a place you weren't expecting it. It's great to lose one's innocence in a likely place, like, say, the restrooms at the Bellagio or the ass, but when it blindsides you it can be cruel.
This happened twice, when I met and was charmed by Sapphic Australian barefoot underwear wrestlers the Abby Winters girls, only to find that Abby Winters was an invention and that these Dove billboards gone good were working not for a mythical sex positive lesbian photographer but for a dude every bit as pervy as I am. Does it change the content at all? Not one bit. It's sort of like when Cat Stevens came out against Salman Rushie. We didn't listen to Peace Train any differently. Had Cat only been a juicy Australian underwear model I would have taken Salman Rushie down myself.
The other incident was more terrifying. I met an 18-year-old woman who told me she was in Vegas for the first time. Turns out she had shot before! Lesbian scenes! I can't tell you the sadness that overtook me when I found out the stripper Jean Laconia wasn't taking off her clothes for the first time for me.
The biggest news from the AVN show came from Jenna Jameson who - some say unceremoniously - announced her retirement from porn and her embarcation on a fragrance and clothing career. On the one hand, best of luck to her. On the other hand, a fragrance that will allow you to smell like Jenna Jameson is a joke waiting to be written. Oh hell. I'll write it. Did you hear about the new Jenna Jameson fragrance? It makes men roll over and go to sleep.
Birthdays this week include Sinaloan hottie Sativa Rose, who is 24, Overzealous fan greeter Ava Devine, who is 28, and Jasmine Byrne, who is 23.
The Porner's Almanac is brought to you with the help of the Internet Adult Film Database at IAFD.com. For all your pornographic and pornotextual needs, surf on over to Porn Valley Observed at GramPonante.com. Talk to you soon.
See also: Gram's Dirty Dozen; Gram's Oscars of Porn; AVN Wrap-up; Manning Manning sperm booth (2003)
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Labels: ava devine, avn, bluray, HDDVD, HDTV, jenna jameson, nick manning, sasha grey
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 This is Gram Ponante with Your Porner's Almanac, Number Nine.
The big news this week after Thanksgiving was the announcement of the AVN nominations. Since the early 1980's, Adult Video News has been the main trade publication for the adult industry and people interested in it, and its awards have been getting more comprehensive every year, as new niches become popular and more and more companies and performers enter the market.
AVN has long dominated the adult industry, but of late it has received stiff competition from other companies horning in on its piece of the adult publishing and trade show markets. And while people do complain about AVN, its January trade show and awards in Las Vegas have been an annual reunion of adult video and Internet workers for more than two decades.
AVN announced a whopping 120 categories with as many as 15 nominees per category. To the casual observer many of these categories overlap, and to the jaded veteran many of these categories seem to be an attempt to please every last advertiser with a reward or nomination.
It is actually somewhere in the middle. It has been pointed out that the AVN Awards, often called The Oscars of Porn, are the only popular awards show hosted by a trade magazine; the Oscars aren't given out by Variety and the Grammys aren't presented by Rolling Stone, so you can see the conflict of interest.
Really, the AVNs are the Vibe Awards of Porn with less gunfire but similar clothes. The 25th annual AVN Awards will be held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on January 12.
The most nominated movie for the 2008 awards is Upload. You can see a review on Gram Ponante.com. Made for $375,000 by the producing team of Eli Cross, Kylie Ireland, and someone calling himself Belial, the Other Dark Prince, Upload is a very dirty, very involved movie with a lot of thought behind it. While there are some parts where the special effects are a little cheesy or where the acting is wooden, Upload is above everything a great porn movie that, aside from well, you know, the sex, would fit right in on the Sci-Fi channel.
Here's a blind item. Sort of. Christopher Jack Reid, aka Jack Venice, is free on bail after turning himself in to police in Pullman, Washington for a September incident in which the porn actor was allegedly involved in three burglaries in the first degree and one rape in the second. The incidents occurred on the campus of Washington State University.
A little more information: According to a spokesman for the Pullman police when I asked him what items were burgled, the charge of "residential burglary" in Washington can be any incident in which someone enters a residence without permission and with the intent to commit a crime. In this case, that crime was rape, and the burglary charge was attached afterward. Venice's case has been continued to early Spring.
Venice appears in a movie I just watched in which he was dressed as a priest and was jerking off to porn displayed on, of all things, a 17' MacBook Pro. The film was shot long before the events of this September, but I pointed out in my review how fraught with information it was that this man was in a priest's garb, jerking off to porn, using Apple products, and out on bail for rape. Someone involved with the film called me and said, "Why'd you have to mention the rape?"
The Porner's Almanac is brought to you with help from the Internet Adult Film Database at IAFD.com. For all of your pornographic and pornotextual needs, visit Porn Valley Observed at http://www.gramponante.com. Until next time, find out what computer platform your member of clergy uses to jerk off.
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Labels: avn, eva angelina, jack venice, legal
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 I don't mean to complain (I get blowjobs for breakfast), but it really is hot this week.
Here is today's podcast text:
And this is Gram Ponante with The Porner's Almanac for the week of September 3, 2007.
It is 10,000 degrees in Porn Valley, what the Spanish settlers called "caliente como una entrepierna", or Hot as a Crotch. It is the last gasp of the summer slowdown, in which porn companies either cease filming and/or release compilations. If nipples look more solid in the porn movies you view this week, it is probably because they were filmed last January.
This is the month when many of porn's thoughtful films are released prior to the deadline for AVN award consideration on September 30. We can expect thought-provoking porn with only the most serious public domain soundtrack loops, inevitably dealing with sexual obsession, someone's deepest desires and, without fail, films described as taking place in a "post-apocalyptic future."
The movie title of the week is Red Light District's "Whore Mart". I assume there is a lot of opposition to this title from Mom and Pop Whores.
This week marks the 38th birthday of nude housepainter Nicole Moore. If you go to her website at NicoleMoore.com, you can hear her say "Welcome aboard to my galaxy".
It is also the 37th birthday of veteran male performer and Red Sox fan Mr. Marcus.
Erotic photographer and socialite Holly Randall is 29, Yogi Ann Marie is 26, and America's Sweetheart Kiki Daire, who graced the cover of the first Porner's Almanac lo those three weeks ago, is 31. We understand she lives in New Orleans now.
Our limerick of the week may have something to do with one of the people talked about in this episode, but I doubt it. After all it's porn:
Your vag 'spired much speculation
Of its olfact'ry damnation
Adventurers seek
Your low tidal reek
And reminds me of Cape Cod vacation
The Porner's Almanac was brought to you with the help of the Internet Adult Film Database at IAFD.com. For most if not all of your porn needs, surf over to GramPonante.com, Porn Valley Observed. Until next time, Get wood, keep it up, and drink lots of water.
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Labels: avn, awards, holly randall, kiki daire
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This is Gram Ponante with Your Porner's Almanac on January 22, 2008.
