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--Friday, June 06, 2008--

Max Hardcore could have used Hera or: The whip is mightier than the gavel

There is a place in the porn world for lawyers (there is also a place in Hell, but that's not the point I'm trying to make).

There's L.A. public defender Ron Miller (aka Don Hollywood), there's a host of attorneys who date porn stars, and then there is the small group of First Amendment attorneys who have had nothing but work, work, work in the recent spate of 2257 and obscenity charges.

So German "Lawyer by Day, Domina by Night" Hera is nothing new, but her book, Hera: Rechtsanwaltin am Tage - Domina in oer Nacht, has contributed to her porn career, as the fetish crowd are big readers. They also like coffee table books, as those leave the most distinctive bruises.

It would be tempting to ask which tactics Hera employs as a mistress also make appearances in her day job, but that would be too easy; let's just hope "Guilty" isn't her safeword.

See more here.

I mention Max Hardcore because the Altadena resident was just found guilty of ten counts of distributing obscene materials. It is a ridiculous conviction, especially in that the material was not sent unbidden. Hardcore is free on bail and will be sentenced in Tampa on September 5. He will, of course, appeal. Read my story on Fleshbot here.

Previously: Life in a porn dorm isn't all pillowfights and orgies
See also: AEBN

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--Friday, May 23, 2008--

The Surrender of O first look

The sequel to O: The Power of Submission will be released in September, just in time for submission for AVN award consideration. The new version stars Bree Olson as the title character, and I think her facial expression here says it all.





Two angles of the same picture. Either way there are some strong adhesives at work.


My O2 Gallery
.

Previously: O: The Power of Submission
See also: Adam & Eve

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--Tuesday, May 06, 2008--

Natali Demore demonstrates the difference between dommes and subs

Natali Demore, right, who will be appearing this weekend at DomCon at the LAX Hilton, shows that dommes don't have to wear clothes at all if they don't choose to, and that they can humiliate their submissives simply by clothing them in useless garments.

You know what's another useless garment? A tie. I see someone wearing a tie, I think: "That guy wants some five-foot-tall domme to smack him with a riding crop." The last time I saw you in a tie, I thought that.

Q. Grams, what is Domcon?
A. Imagine your standard airport hotel with weary travelers arriving at all hours just trying to get some sleep before they are shuttled back to the airport the next morning. You see, their airline bumped them and gave them a night at the hotel and a $20 meal voucher. Now imagine these people co-mingling with an army of leather and PVC-clad submissives (wearing collars) and dommes (dragging collars) on the muted carpeting of the hotel lobby, as each group attempts to fit crumpled dollar bills into the Pepsi machine. That's Domcon.

Demore will be appearing at the Hottbonds booth doing unmentionable things.

Previously: Haley Paige video surfaces posthumously; It takes more than a sexy nurse's outfit and nipple clamps to make an effective universal healthcare program
See also: Natali Demore, Domcon Los Angeles

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--Friday, April 11, 2008--

New Haley Paige video surfaces posthumously

Even as porn prematurely ages its performers, the effect is countered by the constant recompilation of previously-published scenes or, as in the case of Jenna Loves Diamonds, the release of a movie completed five years before.

Haley Paige shot a movie called Electrical Bondage Orgasms for director Natali Demore in November, 2006, and the girl-on-girl BDSM video recently arrived in stores. "She was such a sweet person," Demore said of Paige, born Miriam Haley.

The movie is probably the last original footage of Paige to be released.

In June, 2007, Paige's then-boyfriend, porn director Inkyo Volt Hwang, aka Wanker Wang, was charged with pistol-whipping her. He had previously served time for kidnapping and sexual assault. Two months later the reunited couple married in Las Vegas. Less than a month after that, Paige was dead, and Hwang was a prime suspect.

In late September, Hwang was himself found dead in a hotel room in the Central California town of Morgan Hill, the victim of a self-administered methadone overdose. Investigation into Haley's death is ongoing.

"You know you're a little piece of meat for me to play with, don't you?" Demore asks Paige before applying electrodes to her thighs.

Don't read anything into that; it was just porn. Real life was much worse.

Previously: The Da Vinci Load; Miriam and Inkyo: A tragedy
See also: Bondage Orgasms

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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).

The crowd was overwhelmingly white and the couples in attendance were mostly straight and appeared to be under 40. But that is not to say the Fetish Ball was not inclusive; huge rainbow flags fly over San Francisco neighborhoods, and the Grand Regency itself was lit with spotlights like a film premiere.

At no other place in the country would motorists pay no attention as they drove by a dominatrix, smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, who was simultaneously ordering her pastie-d slave to do pushups at her feet.

But as groovy and tolerant as San Francisco itself seems toward all stripes of sexuality, it is just as fun to hear lesbians talking smack about transvestites, gay men turning up their nose at butch women, submissives topping from the bottom, and wholesome straight girls, observing for the first time someone getting flogged at a post, saying, "that looks like it hurts."

Over the weekend I also toured the Armory, the new location of Kink.com. This place blew me away. Built in 1912 for the National Guard, the Armory was designed to withstand a siege during a time of labor unrest. For this reason the 200,000 sq.ft. building has a branch of Mission Creek running through its basement.

"...in case the troops needed fresh water," said Thomas Roche, Kink.com's publicist and former editor of Eros-Zine.

The Armory had been vacant for more than a decade before Kink.com purchased it in 2006 for $14.1 million. And that was a steal. Inside is a parade ground, a gymnasium, and dozens of rooms to film everything from standard bedroom scenes to water bondage, and everything in between. There is no studio or shooting location in Porn Valley that matches the potential of this building.

Since Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, I was pleased to see my friend Abby Ehmann at the Ball. How she gets the jobs she does I don't know, but now she is marketing one of the three brands of absinthe that are legal in America. Unfortunately she was not allowed to give out samples, but I used to drink absinthe when it was illegal and recommend its despair-inducing, hallucinogenic effects.

Made from wormwood, absinthe provides the drinker with a distinctively apocalyptic feeling.

"How are you supposed to drink it?" I asked.

"There's this thing you do by pouring cold water over a sugar cube in a fancy glass," she explained.

I bumped into Satine Phoenix and she invited me to her afterparty, which is described elsewhere.

The music on the dance floor was at times so loud that I could feel the bass in my teeth and stomach. Neither a sweaty bondage club nor a snooty and distant scene out of "Eyes Wide Shut," the Bondage Ball was instead like "The Vampire Lestat" meets the Third Reich by way of "The Shining" (especially this individual), something that was not only sexy and menacing but also comforting.

See the gallery here.

Previously: Counting floggers on the wall: Mr. S Leather; Trouble X 2
See also: San Francisco Fetish Ball

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--Thursday, February 28, 2008--

Madison Young is the perfect date

I usually encounter Madison Young when she is being smacked, humiliated, or otherwise being dragged around by a chain. I should not have been surprised to see her at a poetry slam.

"Well, I made the movie to promote literacy," she said.

The short Writers And Rockstars, available on her website, is as close to perfect as a porn scene can get, and it pulls off something remarkable: with an airy chick rock soundtrack and its female-centered story, it is ostensibly a female-friendly movie that nevertheless caters to a singular male fantasy.

Read what that is here.

Previously: Perfection
See also: Madison Bound

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--Thursday, December 27, 2007--

Simply having an assless New Year

Syren Couture, designer of this ass-free pant, is co-sponsor (with Stockroom.com) of tomorrow's West Coast Fetish Ball at Hollywood's Henry Fonda Theatre.

Henry Fonda, star of such films as "The Grapes of Wrath" and "On Golden Pond", would probably have choked on his Lifesavers and terrorized his childrten more had he known such an event would be held at a venue bearing his name, but if ever there's a cop beating a guy, chances are he's probably wearing leather.

Masuimi Max and Emily Marilyn will co-host the Ball, with a special appearance by anguished performance artist (that's redundant) The White Bunny.

Previously: April Flores: Diva; Fetish Ball; Prod of the O.C.: eXtreme Restraints
See also: Syren Latex, Stockroom

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--Thursday, December 20, 2007--

Mean Bitches aren't, really

The website Mean Bitches, which features bitches being mean, either to other bitches or men who are bitches, but never to actual bitches, is doing a decidedly non-bitchy thing for Christmas, like dressing Germany's own Annette Schwarz in festive holiday heels.

Also, company president Glenn King is giving his employees some cash for the holidays.

"Each one of them is going to receive $300," he said. "They will then use $200 of the money to help someone in need. It can be a homeless person, a friend in the hospital, a neighbor who lost his job, or anyone else in need. They can give the money to one person or spread it out among worthy recipients."

And because nothing actually happens if it is not documented -

"They will videotape the giving, with either a cell-phone camera or by video camera. I will then judge the videotapes to see who came up with the best use for the money. The winner will then get an extra $200 for themselves.”

More documentation of people doing good deeds after the gap.




Satine Phoenix paid it forward by removing her shoes in the house.


Harmony paid it forward by shaving this guy's moustache.


Daphne Rosen ... well, Daphne wasn't nice to anyone.

Previously: Skateboard Kink Freak; Fetish Ball; Prod of the O.C.
See also: Mean Bitches

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--Tuesday, December 18, 2007--

Prod of the O.C.: eXtreme Restraints

Because I am the coolest person you know, I knew that my trip yesterday to the Orange County headquarters and warehouse of hardcore adult products purveyor Extreme Restraints would not yield medieval scenes of people zapping each other's nipples while archiving QuickBooks files.

Still, in the way certain people will make a show of wiping their hands upon learning that I am America's Beloved Porn Journalist, I felt compelled to be That Asshole when I walked in.

"Don't tase me, Bro," I said.

Read more about my visit after the gap.



Extreme Restraints was founded in 2000 by Ari Suss and Kelly Eberhard. Both are knowledgeable about the BDSM lifestyle but both, contrary to popular depictions of BDSM fans, are approachable, businesslike, and not terrifying.

"I was living in Oklahoma and he was in Maryland," Eberhard said. "I was doing the sales and he was doing the shipping."

"...and our first warehouse was in a 10' x 10' spare room," Suss added.

The current warehouse occupies 15,000 square feet of XR's building in Huntington Beach. Warehouse Manager Corey Jarvis has added seasonal help to his regular staff.

"From around November to Valentine's Day is our biggest time of year," he said.

"Not Halloween?"

"No," he said. "People into this stuff don't keep it to one day a year. This is a big time because people are giving these products as gifts."


I took a hog crop, a sturdy cane staff with two leather flaps at the end, to maintain discipline at the office.

"The two flaps make a really satisfying sound when they connect," Eberhard said. "They get you a little red."

"Do people use this on hogs?" I asked.

"No," she said. "The hog refers to being a Pain Pig."

"Gotcha."

In addition to the lubes and jellies, standard issue and high-end vibrators, and a small cache of DVDs from enema movies to Pirates, XR specializes in heavy duty bondage gear and, more and more, muscle stimulation, TENS, and electrosex devices adapted from less sexy pursuits, like cattle drives.

"They got me with this when I started," said Jarvis of a three-foot cattle prod. "They got me right in the neck."

I looked at a stack of cattle prods and pulled one down. The four-"C" battery tool was made for cattle but appropriated for BDSM enthusiasts. What was weird is that the prod is sold by veterinary supply stores as the "Magic Shock Cattle Prod" and XR simply calls it the Large Shock Prod. I noted the lack of taffeta and prettification on the products.

"Naw, the people who buy from us are serious," Jarvis said. It is fun to imagine a leather-clad vegetarian dominatrix in her L.A. dungeon and George W. Bush on a whistle stop to Crawford using the same device at the same time.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the adult industry is its extraction of the sexual from everyday life. No longer do all porn stars look like hookers; niche porn capitalizes on the people in your neighborhood who might not be hookers. And now cattle prods have moved from factory farms to the bedroom, where they should be.

I asked to see some of XR's bondage models but they more than often contract out for them, using sites like Fetish Nation. A couple of the guys in the warehouse now and then model some of the products, but I am not a groovy enough person to want their pictures.

I asked about demographics. Who buys what kind of products?

"We send a lot of butt plugs to military addresses," Jarvis said, the top two branches being the Navy and Marines, respectively.

The rest of the office looked like any corporate office. Cubicles, carpeting, a water cooler, strap-on phone headsets for the call center. There was a room with a plasma TV and a Wii setup that "the warehouse guys monopolize." No one hanging from the ceiling.

"Is everyone here into BDSM?" I asked.

"Not everyone," I was told, "but no one hates it."

Marketing director James Medina summed it up. "We're the same type of business you'd see anywhere else, except with huge dongs."

Previously: Counting floggers on the wall: Mr. S Leather
See also: Extreme Restraints

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--Wednesday, November 14, 2007--

Believing the strangest things, loving the Sex Mannequin

The beauty of Maria Beatty's simple Sex Mannequin is that there is just enough left unexplained in the movie to make the subtle, naturally lit scenes between Dylan Ryan and London more meaningful.

The rule in porn (and it's a good one) is that it's a good idea to not leave anything up to the imagination. Sex Mannequin is a nice exception. The choice to leave something out is different from leaving something out by mistake and then saying it was a choice.

Like Pinocchio and Andrew McCarthy, Ryan's mannequin comes to life as London and immediately begins topping from the bottom. "Harder!" she yells, before the pair reverse roles. The role reversal is important because, well, the movie ends sadly.

Previously: Beating Up Amber Rayne at the American Hotel
See also: Bleu Productions

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--Thursday, October 25, 2007--

"What has it got in its pocketses?"

The last time I went to San Francisco I asked Tchukon Hunter, manager/co-owner of Mr. S Leather, "What's with the gays?"

In particular, I was referring to the complex series of colored handkerchiefs they wore in their back pockets to signal their preferences to others of their kind, in much the same way I will put on my right or left directional to indicate which way I want to go on the 118.

In the case of the gays, substitute "118" for "the ass".

Read more after the gap.

I apologize for sounding anthropological (and some consider a lack of comprehensive knowledge of hanky codes homophobic), but I was unaware of all the permutations.

Hunter handed me the following helpful guide:

And don't try to interpret the "Born in the U.S.A." cover.

Previously: Counting floggers on the wall
See also: Mr. S Leather

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--Monday, October 15, 2007--

Aiden Starr and Caroline Pierce - just because

I went to Rodney Moore's Vampires party the other night and, in a corner behind the bar, encountered Aiden Starr and Caroline Pierce. The balloon contained something like 30 or 40 souls.

"I met her in Tampa," Starr said of Pierce. "She told me she was an excellent bottom."

"That's nice," I said. But what am I supposed to do with that information? Everyone's a bottom when you're Grams.

Previously: Erotica L.A 2007 in review; Barbed Wire Kiss
See also: Rodney Moore

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--Friday, October 12, 2007--

Meat and hooks in Culver City Adjacent

A "bondage parlor" called Dominion is being called a "good" adult business while a strip joint proposed to open in a former meat warehouse 1,000 feet away is being fought by residents of an area in the shadow of the 10 Freeway in Culver City.

I side with the residents; patrons of bondage parlors are usually more restrained.

(Thanks Jay Moyes for the L.A. floggo-geography lesson.)

Read the L.A. Times article here.

Previously: Counting floggers on the wall; Medical Pain Sluts
See also: Strip club is planned near bondage parlor (latimes), Dominion

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--Wednesday, October 10, 2007--

Beating up Amber Rayne at the American Hotel

Michelle Aston paid a crackhead $150 for the use of her corner room in downtown L.A.'s American Hotel, a single room occupancy building now being used for lesbian BDSM movies.

Aston was the star and line producer of Maria Beatty's Skateboard Kink Freak, which is less about skateboards than it is about Aston tying up Amber Rayne and doing wonderful, terrible things to her.

"I had to make the crackhead stay in the room, but she wanted to wander off," Aston said. "Because if the police came, I needed her there to say she had given permission."

Read the review of Skateboard Kink Freak here.

Previously: Why is this man staring at Amber Rayne's shoulder?; Michelle Aston will eat your girlfriend like fried chicken
See also: Bleu Productions

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--Friday, September 07, 2007--

Julie Simone's method

Aspiring actress Gia Paloma (center, gagged) gains insight into her character under the patient instruction of Julie Simone (center, impersonating 100 Franc note) in Audition. I especially liked the work of supporting character Krissy (cage left) and I felt that (CR) Lystra's performance was nuanced and opaque.

Read the review here.

Previously: Lystra is cage candy; Something is about to happen to Lorelei Lee
See also: Julie Simone

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--Wednesday, August 29, 2007--

Lystra is cage candy

One comes across an image like this and is incapable of thinking, "Did David Aaron Clark have a fire sale?"

Previously: Gia Paloma's fan letter
See also: Julie Simone

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--Tuesday, August 14, 2007--

Gia Paloma's fan letter

Last week I went to the launch party for Julie Simone's Hollywood-gone-right casting couch movie Audition. The event was at Bar 107 downtown, and in attendance were the director and her star, Gia Paloma.

Just a day before Van Damage had told me that Paloma, not of her own accord, had almost bit his dick off. I forgot to ask her about this because I'm drinking again.

Read more after the gap.

Watching porn in a bar is becoming something I'm used to. If you would have told me as a boy growing up by the banks of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg that one day I'd be drinking Jagermeister in downtown L.A. watching Gia Paloma get beat up with the sound turned down I'd have said, "Jagermeister?"

The movie looked good. It is amazing how much context you can get out of a porn movie by watching it several times on end, muted, in a bar. Apparently Paloma, a struggling Hollywood actress, answers an ad and goes to a place run by people not interested in her well-being and they fuck her. I don't know if she gets the part or not.

I found this movie quaint and Paloma's breasts large. It was quaint because getting fucked in Hollywood is the least of your problems.

Anyway, there were posters available and they were not characteristic of porn posters in general. The spelling was correct and there was no gaping. Since the director and star were there, I thought I'd get one autographed.

Simone wrote:
To Gram. Julie Simone
I find this reflects her austere filmic vision.

Paloma wrote:
Graham, tie me to your darkest desires, your deepest fears. Gia Paloma
I think there is about a 98 percent chance that Paloma writes this to everyone, especially people named Graham. But just in case, from now on I am going to think of Gia Paloma every time I'm cavorting with "Valley Girl" era E.G. Daily, "Dangerous Liaisons" era Uma Thurman, and any era Carla Gugino while drowning.

Previously: Pabst Blue Ribbon night with the steveporn kids
See also: Julie Simone

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--Tuesday, August 07, 2007--

Your week in suspensions, bondage

Aerialist, gadfly, and Satan enthusiast Matt Zane will present a suspension demonstration for Dave Navarro's Spread Entertainment program on Mania TV Thursday night. The event will be simulcast from the Dragonfly at 5 p.m. PST.

Also in attendance will be tattooed Kentuckian Tera Wray, who is altogether too sweet to be mixed up with Satan. She will be promoting Zane's series Tattooed And Tight, of which she is a star.

Wednesday night cage-y auteur Julie Simone will host a party at Bar 107 promoting the release of Audition, starring herself and Gia Paloma. She is newly sober, so she'll probably want to beat the shit out of you.

Previously: XBiz Summer Forum in review; Images of heaven (that take me to hell); Medical Pain Sluts
See also: Spread Entertainment, Julie Simone, Interview with Tera Wray on FoundryMusic

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--Tuesday, July 03, 2007--

It takes more than a sexy nurse's outfit and nipple clamps to make an effective universal healthcare program

...but who are we kidding? If there's never going to be an effective universal healthcare program, we might as well have sexy nurse's outfits and nipple clamps.

Read the review of Medical Pain Sluts here.

Previously: Products for your down under from down under; Viv Thomas' Pink Velvet Trilogy; Mission Accomplished; Getting the most out of your slave
See also: Bondage Orgasms

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--Monday, May 28, 2007--

Mission Accomplished

Without meaning to be political on this Memorial Day, "Mission Accomplished" was the first thing I thought to use as a headline for Uber Ego's Scaring Michiko, starring the appropriately scared Michiko Minx and the unnecessarily-named Scary.

My sympathies lie with Michiko in this movie. One reason is because she is refreshingly free of stereotypes. Not only is she an Asian and not wearing geisha makeup and a schoolgirl outfit, but she also does not once address Scary as "Joe", even as he works her over with some zappy thing.

My problem is with Scary. He does everything right, but it's the outfit and name with which I take issue. Wasn't the Gimp mask made obsolete with Pulp Fiction (1994)? And isn't naming yourself Scary an easy target? I felt the same way about Scary Spice. He should just call himself Dave; that way no one can say "Well, he wasn't that Dave." Here Scary does to Michiko what my dog does to me.

What truly terrifies Michiko, as you can see, are the vinyl sheets. It's these that finally force her into submission. She and Scary drive to Bed, Bath & BDSM after the movie and pick out something with a thread count that doesn't require a safe word.

Previously: Counting floggers on the wall: Mr. S Leather
See also: Uber Ego

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--Friday, May 11, 2007--

Even professionals benefit from dildo etiquette

Kylie Ireland demonstrates the preferred underhand method of holding a dildo on the set of her Submitted for Your Approval. In the background is Eli Cross.

Accepting instruction are Lorelei Lee and Princess Donna. Tremendous things happened to them that day.

"Eventually I was fisted with 75 needles stuck in my breasts and thighs," said Lee. "Then I wrote Donna's name on my belly in blood. Then I got down off the table and jumped on Donna and dp-ed her with my hands."

A manual DP, such as the one Lee described, is how I think of making turkey meatloaf. You really have to get your hands in there. This is odd because Lee is a strict vegetarian.


"We did some other things too," she added. "A good time was had by all."

Yes, because you were genteel.

Previously: Something is about to happen to Lorelei Lee; Ireland overwhelms Interweb;
See also: Kylie Ireland, Lorelei Lee, My Day at the Porn Palace (Salon.com)

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--Tuesday, April 24, 2007--

Counting floggers on the wall: Mr. S Leather

Once upon a time, when I lived in New York, I bought a pair of leather pants on Christopher Street. They cost more than I could afford, but they more or less fit my massive yet svelte frame.

Because I took the occasional large amount of drugs, I could sometimes be found staying up all night and arriving at my world's worst band gig at a Greenwich Village theatre right around showtime at 8 p.m. the following day. On one such occasion I showed up in my party clothes and quickly changed, leaving my three-weeks-old pants in the dressing room.

The theatre backed up against an area known as Cracked-Out Drag Queen Alley. I believe it is on the National Register of Historic Places. Each night I would say hello to various cracked-out drag queens as I made my way into the theatre. A few nights we'd go into the alley and share food.

Anyway, this particular night I got offstage and the pants were gone. I was told that one of the cracked-out drag queens had snagged them. I never saw her again, or the pants, but I'm sure that until she sold them she probably accessorized a lot better than I had.

I always wanted to get another pair, but I put it off. I had been wounded, and needed the time to heal. How could I be sure I could keep my pants?

Well, time has made me strong again, so recently I traveled to San Francisco to get refitted.

The journey was important. I needed to see the cows whose hides would be sacrificed for my vanity. I drove up the mighty 5 freeway, through an area between the Tejon Pass and the 580 that is known as Cowschwitz. There I regarded the cows, and they regarded me.

"What up, cows?" I said.

"Word," they said gravely.

Just as cow-fear makes meat taste tangy, I wanted the cows to smell like love, fear's opposite. Instead I smelled manure. Does love smell like manure? It is impossible to tell. In my business, Fleet enemas mask the scent of much.

I was headed toward Mr. S Leather in San Francisco. Mr. S occupies a sizable chunk of the corner of Eighth and Harrison Streets, a two-story building in which the ground floor comprises a workshop and huge showroom and the top floor is soon to be converted into studio space for Uber Ego/Slave Labor Productions, a company that makes tasty BDSM videos.

It was through Uber Ego that I heard of Mr. S. I'm not into bondage - at least my own - because, you know me, I'm a free spirit. But I do like wielding crops and floggers now and then, if anything to get to hard-to-reach places at the top of cabinets.

Richard Hunter purchased Mr. S in 1991. The company was founded by Alan Selby in England in the early 1980's as a high-end but individualized leather gear store for hardcore leather dudes. Imagine the Village People's Glenn Hughes mixed with Rob Halford of Judas Priest and, perhaps, Satan. Hunter opened his shop in San Francisco and began marketing to a younger demographic.

"You entered the (original San Francisco) building through an iron cage," Hunter said. "Over the years, the place became very dark and foreboding."

Hunter's son, Tchukon, joined his father in the business in 1996. Tchukon grew up on a commune in upstate New York and, despite everything he had ever learned, sold cars until he joined the family business.

The Hunters opened their present location in September, 2005. It is bright and roomy. I asked if the accessibility took away some of the menace some of the company's older clients might have enjoyed about the previous location.

"I do think that some people were sad that it didn't seem like there would be gang rapes in the dressing room," Tchukon admitted, but it still can get pretty wild around here."

We passed a collection of glass butt plugs and Tchukon was inspired to tell a story. The story was called Why Butt Plugs Now Have Bases.

"My father knew a guy who had himself trussed up and was videotaping himself playing with a butt plug," Tchukon said. "So he's watching himself in the monitor and he slowly watches the butt plug disappearing into himself of its own accord. At the hospital, a Chinese lady with very small hands