| --Monday, June 16, 2008--
Michael Ninn looks for a more congenial spot
 The director Michael Ninn, known for his artful pornography, last year entered a partnership with the gentlemen's club chain Spearmint Rhino to thematically link those two companies. Ninn has ended his relationship with the fraught-with-turmoil result of that partnership, Ninnworx_SR.
"A Ninnworx movie delivers overwrought porn with a complex storyline and editing that prevents masturbators from getting a good look at the crucial parts," I said in my unsuccessful bid to be Ninnworx_SR's marketing director, "and Spearmint Rhino delivers listless strippers for an outrageous cover charge and drinks minimum.
"You should really get together."
After months of contract stars being announced and then dropping out, a move to the non-strategic Riverside County town of Norco and, according to Ninn associates, checks going unpaid by the Spearmint Rhino corporate office, Ninnworx_SR only remains as a website.
In truth, Ninnworx was never a real partner with Spearmint Rhino. No one visiting any of the club's stateside or international locations would be greeted by Catherine-branded pinball machines, Sacred Sin nonalcoholic cocktails, or Neopornographia lap dances. The Spearmint Rhino customer would never know Ninnworx existed. On the other hand, every Ninnworx movie was labeled with the Spearmint Rhino logo.
In a Camelot-invoking mea culpa that is unusual for porn (but which also left no doubt about where the real blame lies), Michael Ninn changed his name to IMNinn and apologized to anyone who believed his previous press releases.
"I would first like to apologize to the people who believed in me over the last eight months as I made my path through a journey called Ninn Worx_SR. I publicly apologize to Brea Bennett, Cassidey, Jana Jordan, Nikki Kane and Renee Perez, who believed in me and a dream I had, called Ninn Worx_SR. You did not deserve the way you have been treated, the half-truths you were told, nor the lack of respect you were given. My support for you, my crew and every other person that believed in me and my dream never failed. However, because of my belief in what Ninn Worx_SR could be, I find myself on the outside of my own company, looking in. A place I never imagined I'd be, but a fitting place none the less for me. I join you on the outside of Ninn Worx_SR, not a broken man, but a person who choose conscience over wealth, respect over disrespect and truth over half truths," stated IMNINN. Ninn, who has worked in the adult industry for 16 years, then continued with the righteousness of a man burned in a business relationship.
"There comes a time in most people's life when you must make this choice; to put the better good above ones self, that wealth is not as important as well being and doing the right thing makes you a better person in spite of the out come. I say to you today, I stand on the outside of Ninn Worx_SR along with my contract stars and my crew, knowing that I no longer have to live with the lie that the check is in the mail or that the corporate committee will get back to you, as soon as they have reviewed your invoice and have reached a decision on paying you. "I feel this is not an end at all, but just the beginning. I enter the next phase of the Ninn Worx_SR relationship with a positive attitude and a firm belief in our legal system and welcome the challenges ahead." (I especially like the "firm belief in our legal system." That's a badass thing to say. That's something I would say as I dropped my cigarette on the floor and crushed it under my boot. I would also add "Baby." So as I walked away from an onerous business relationship I would drop my cigarette to the floor, crush it under my boot, and say, "I have a strong belief in our legal system, Baby.")
Ninn's straight porn homage to 300, The Four, will be released under the Ninnworx_SR label in August.
Previously: In a wet room with black curtains; Sacred Sin; Brea Bennett a witch; Ninnworx makes squatting sexy; Rhino to get Ninn skin
See also: NinnworxLabels: business, fraught with turmoil, legal, ninnworx, strippers
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, May 12, 2008--
Striking while the iron is hot: Meet Rylie Cyris
 While Gary Glitter did not forward this picture to me, and while I support creative expression as fundamental to maintaining our First Amendment Freedoms and for getting chicks (since cologne won't adhere to my skin, I need to resort to Creative Expression), I am a little weirded out by the fact that a Michigan model has chosen to parody an underage celebrity's name with her nom de porn choice.
Rylie Cyris does not look any more or less like Hannah Montana than did Jessica Sweet or Hillary Scott look like Britney Rears, which just goes to show that there are other things at work in porn marketing than accuracy, but I do think that Ms. Cyris, 20, is the first person to choose a porn name based on the name of a minor.
Previously: XBiz panels tackle piracy, butt piracy; It was you all along, Britney
See also: Alternative ModelingLabels: agency, business, celebrities, commentary, legal, rylie cyris
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, April 30, 2008--
Columbia Journalism Review addresses porn megaconglomerates
 With today's announcement that Magna Publishing, parent company of furtive, raincoat-wearing gentlemen's magazine Genesis, has purchased bestubbled, bathrobe-wearing gentlemen's magazine Gallery, media watchers are concerned that a large segment of print medium porn consumers will no longer be represented at the corner, cheap cigar-smelling news stand.
"This happened in 1994 when Sexonaut merged with Clam," said Columbia Journalism Review manging editor Darren Perch-Tounge, "and suddenly a whole generation of gentlemen who smelled like their dogs and day-old despair was voiceless.
"Notice the number agreement of 'generation' and 'was'," Perch-Tounge added. "That's the difference between us and the Middlesex Community College Journalism Review."
As in the world of mainstream media mergers and acquisitions, today's announcement by Magna Publishing, which also purchased the magazines and websites related to Fox and Lollypops, sent ripples of concern through populations fearing they will be underserved by the new monopoly.
"Mmmmm. Pussy," one vagrant said.
"The vagrant is right," Perch-Tounge agreed. "What does a celebrity publisher like Tera Patrick (Genesis) or Stormy Daniels (Velvet) know about the needs of the average Gallery reader who just wants to masturbate to pictures of Oklahoma housewives?"
Perch-Tounge noted that the decline of the DVD and the increase in oil prices are only going to make mergers more common in the coming months.
"You need trucks to drive those magazines to the nation's 7-11s and Store 24s," he said. "And when Rupert Murdoch buys AVN and XBiz next week, there goes the audience for interpretive DVD sales charts."
Previously: Report: Stormy Daniels appears on magazine cover; Tera Patrick: The new black
See also: Genesis Online, The Gallery of Forgotten Girlie MagazinesLabels: "stormy daniels", business, genesis, hype, jenna jameson, tera patrick, trademags
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, April 23, 2008--
Twilight of the Hustler studio
 Not the Bradys XXX 2 might be the last adult movie filmed in Hustler's warehouse and studio in Canoga Park, a building used for office space and filming for the past 15 years, and which had an in-house stage crew that built sets for dozens of Barely Legals, Hustler cover shoots, and hundreds of movies.
Larry Flynt Publications, parent of Hustler, made the decision to sell the property late last year. Prior to this, when Vivid shifted its distribution from Hustler to Pulse (freeing up warehouse space), and when the few remaining sales staff and office workers were relocated to the LFP "dark tower" over the hill in Los Angeles, the 20,000 sq. ft. facility was still being used as a distribution warehouse and production center.
Now the Osborne Street building on the market for $3.8 million. Built in 1979, LFP purchased the building in December, 1993, well in advance of the DVD era. When LFP bought Russ Hampshire's VCA Pictures a decade later, it assumed some of its staff and all of its catalogue. At that time, Hustler and VCA's warehouse was still chock full of bulkier VHS boxes.
According to L.A. County records, LFP made about $700,000 worth of improvements to the building, and the structure and lot it stands on have been assessed at nearly $1.8 million.
Since LFP's decision to sell the building, however, both California's commercial and residential real estate markets have slid, and the building stands unused most of the time.
Kenny DeMartines, who has been Hustler's set designer for 25 years (and who supplied several of the pictures in this story) has spent the last few months as part of a two-person cleanup crew, getting the building ready for its eventual sale. But when producer Jefff Mullen was looking for a place to film the sequel to last year's Not the Bradys XXX, most of which had been shot in the same location, DeMartines rebuilt the set and added some flourishes.
"They weren't using the building," Mullen said. "That's a lot of money they're spending in other locations that they could save."
 Clearly LFP believed the building would sell a lot sooner and that it would no longer have to pay the maintenance fees on such a large property. Vivid, Digital Playground, Red Light District, Wicked, and Adam & Eve rarely shoot movies or scenes on their own properties, instead choosing to rent space across Porn Valley and Los Angeles like their smaller competitors. Only Hustler had an in-house location and set builder.
The Not the Bradys XXX 2 shoot contained several DeMartines sets, including the (Not the) Bradys' back yard and several bedrooms. Once the building is cleaned out, DeMartines will be out of a job.
"I have worked with a Who’s Who of adult directors from (late Barely Legal director) Clive McLean to Jerry T (Jerome Tanner), and even Ron Sullivan (aka Henri Pachard), John Bowen (aka John T Bone), and Greg Dark back in the old days of the 1980s," DeMartines said. "I make things look the way people want them to look."
For those of you with an extra $3.8 million (sources say the price might come down), the building boasts the following amenities:
Racked warehouse space, ceiling heights between 13' and 17', 800 amp, 3 phase 4 wire delta power and 120/240 volt circuit, controlled parking area, fenced, three 13' roll-up doors, woodshop and painting area with ventilation, five restrooms, washer/dryer hookups, carpeted and sunny reception area and several offices set offf from studio, woodshop, and warehouse spaces.
"In a time when everyone is under increasing budgetary constraints, we were actually able to save a lot of money over the years," said DeMartines, "because we had a lot of our own materials already in stock that other companies would need to go out and buy each time they shot."
 On the set of Not the Bradys XXX 2, veteran performer Mike Horner (he shot his first adult movie in January, 1978), who plays Mike (Not the) Brady, said that the Old Ways Are Changing.
"I got into the business with Ron Jeremy, John Leslie, and Jamie Gillis," he said. "Back when L.A. would be hot for a time and then the police would crack down and we had to go back up to San Francisco. When the state told the L.A. police that breaking up porn sets was infringing on free speech (1993), that's when the Valley became the porn capital."
And that was the year LFP bought the warehouse.
Mullen (using the directing alias Will Ryder) posed with Kasey Jordan (Cindi), Aurora Snow (Jan), Teragan Presley (Marcia) and Alana Evans (Carol) holding a copy of adult trade publication AVN. Its cover story was an advertiser-soothing "Big Budget Is Back." Mullen wanted to recreate the shot with a copy of rival adult publication XBiz, but there wasn't one available.
In an article in adult retailer trade publication Adult Store Buyer, Vivid co-founder Steve Hirsch acknowledged the precipitous decline of the physical movie. "(In 1984), 95 percent of our sales came from VHS tapes," he said. Vivid celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. "Last year, less than 30 percent of our sales came from DVDs."
While many companies make big budget movies (the just-wrapped Pirates 2 cost more than $1 million and standard features like Adam & Eve's Rollerdollz and Dark City had budgets of $75k to $100k), most major studio porn is produced for $30k for glossier vignette films or five or six scene gonzo movies, in which several or all of the scenes can be shot in one day in several rooms of a Porn Valley McMansion rented for about $1200.
 The impending closure of the Hustler studio says only that the the company has made a decision to adapt to the market; an increasingly Internet-driven industry needs fewer people to keep it alive, and less space.
That doesn't mean the DVD or the feature is going away tomorrow, but the demand is shrinking. People with staying power have to make do with less. Contrary to the AVN article, demand for big budget features has also contracted, even though a well-made high budget porn spectacle still has the novelty to draw consumers.
In addition to Horner, the multigenerational Not the Bradys XXX 2 features veteran performer Lynn LeMay (first adult movie: 1988) as well as Aurora Snow and Teagan Presley, who have bucked traditional porn career expectations by staying active in the business for seven and four years, respectively.
On the set, Horner talked about how he has personally adapted.
"When I started I was a college student," Mike Horner said. "Now I'm the one playing the Dad roles. Luckily there's Dad roles ... "
See the gallery here.
Previously: This is how porn guys live; Not the Bradys XXX review
See also: HustlerLabels: below the line, business, hustler, jeff mullen, kenny demartines
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, March 25, 2008--
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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--Tuesday, February 19, 2008--
Porn Screenwriting: Money Can Buy a Happy Ending
I wrote a porn screenwriting article for XBiz and it was published there a few months ago. Since then I got a complaint from a director who felt I misrepresented him, so I've left his name out of my edit of the article.
 How do we recognize good screenwriting in a business that, sales show, has no need to value it? Porn's screenwriters say that there are more differences than the presence of the word "blowbang" between the scripts of Porn Valley and Hollywood.
EXT. CHATSWORTH APARTMENT - AFTERNOON
DICK knocks on door of Apartment 69. Shirt open to his navel, he carries bags of delivery food. He checks his watch, ad libs other impatient gestures (suggestion: watch passage of sun across sky, sigh heavily, look at watch again).
DICK
Damn. I'm impatient.
Door opens to reveal AMBER. She is perfectly made up and in high heels. Otherwise, she is wearing a bathrobe that is threatening to fall open. We can see she is braless.
AMBER
Hi.
DICK
I brought your Indian food.
AMBER
Oh, really?
DICK
Yeah. Really.
THEY exchange smoldering glances.
AMBER
Do they have blowbangs in India?
DICK
I'm Lakota Sioux, baby. (And Yes.)
B/G SCENE ONE The first rule of writing is to write what you know. This either means that fast food delivery personnel across Los Angeles are the luckiest men in the world or that porn screenwriters are breaking the first rule of writing. It is probably the latter, and that is because screenwriting for porn follows a different set of rules.
It is a cliche to deride porn's scripts in the same way it is fashionable to dismiss awards for acting in adult movies. But while it is a disservice to porn to make it play by the rules of mainstream fare - for budget reasons, if for no others - we will see that porn scripts face their biggest challenges when attempting the quality of the least Hollywood script.
This makes it difficult for screenwriters who know the expectations but who stalk the elusive quality porn script regardless; the script that seamlessly blends the required sex with a compelling reason to have it.
"I know that I can write the best porn script in the world and it will still be judged below the lowest piece of Hollywood crap," said director Eli Cross, whose "Corruption" (written with Alvin Edwards) won the Best Screenplay prize at this year's AVN awards. The grim tale of the moral unraveling of a U.S. Senator also picked up numerous acting awards from adult outlets, with Cross routinely recognized as Best Director.
Writing often seems at odds with the goals of porn producers, who strive to deliver as much sex as possible. Managers of several L.A. area video stores interviewed for this story reported that their top ten rentals were all all-sex titles, with couples movies like Digital Playground's "Pirates" far down the list.
Sales of scripted porn movies are far brisker on the Internet, said Ron Austin, buyer for Inglewood's Wildcat Distributors. "The stores are still the home of the raincoat boys," he said, "and they look for theme or girl or sex act, not script.
"People who come to the stores are obviously the ones who are not too embarrassed by it," he said. "But even people who want the tamer Wicked Pictures products tend to go online, as do the people who want the really nasty stuff we can't sell in stores due to local ordinances."
Purveyors of scripted materials also have to contend with the emerging pay-per-scene or, even more threatening, pay-per-minute VOD markets.
But that doesn't mean porn's screenwriters will be out of a job.
"The feature isn't dead," said Vivid veteran Paul Thomas, whose feature "Debbie Does Dallas ... Again" recently won top honors at Berlin's Venus Fair, "but it doesn't have the market share it once did."
Further, fetish stylemaker Ernest Greene, who directed last year's "O; The Power of Submission", points out that "every new technology and format convinces people of the death of the old ones, but that isn't always true."
So if the feature isn't dead and most studios, for reasons of prestige, boredom, or genuine interest, aren't planning to give them up, what are the secrets of a successful porn script?
The most important is that a porn script is a different animal from a mainstream script, a play, an infomercial, or a Powerpoint presentation; it is a genre unto itself.
"We ask, 'How does the sex find its way into this movie?'" said "Upload" co-writer Edwards. The sci-fi script called for a cast of more than 40, and the film was almost a month in production. "'What does the sex reveal about the characters?' 'How do we make sex and the story one and the same, where a deficit of one will mean the deficit of another, and vice versa?'"
Edwards said that "Upload"'s reported $375,000 budget helped preserve the creative elements that would otherwise get stripped away from a standard porn with a budget of $30k.
"The money made it happen," Edwards said.
Indeed, Paul Thomas' AVN acceptance speech for 1996' "Bobby Sox" thanked the money as much as the actors.
"If the right people had the right budgets, as I did here, there would be more great movies," he said.
As a large percentage of today's porns are gonzos with setups as limited in length and character development as the snippet that opened this story, many performers would rather not be bothered with dialogue.
"I show up on set and of course my agent hasn't told me that there's dialogue," said one female performer known mostly for gonzo roles but who lately has been showing up in features. "So I'm not motivated to learn lines; it's not like I'm being paid any more for it."
The actress, who chose to remain anonymous, makes a good point. She can earn just as much money in a gonzo with no dialogue, where she will be in and out, as it were, in a few hours, and possibly even make it to another shoot the same day, as she would in a feature that would require her to turn down other work.
Performers are paid by the blowjob, or the double penetration, or the race of their partner. These are notated as "BJ", "DP", and "interracial" on the various adult talent booking sites. Not one mentions "dialogue". Since performers are not paid to act in this most capitalist of businesses, it is not incredible that they don't.
"So sometimes, when I know it's a feature, I conveniently get sick," the actress said (and this is why she chose to remain anonymous), "and shoot web content instead."
"You have to think of the performers as dollie heads," said director Gazzman, production manager of London's Harmony Films and winner of AVN's Best Foreign Feature for "The Scottish Loveknot". "You're never sure if someone isn't going to be there on the day of filming, so you need to make the parts as interchangeable as possible."
Cross echoes this sentiment almost to the exact wording (except the American says "doll" rather than "dollie"). "One consideration when writing the script is being conscious of the real possibility someone won't show up."
Despite comparatively huge (for porn) budgets for "Corruption" and this year's "Upload", Cross still contended with the no-shows and flakes ubiquitous in the porn industry. "You can have someone locked and then suddenly she'll get a boyfriend who only wants her to do girls," Cross said. "So there goes your anal scene."
This does not happen in Hollywood, where performers would do double, or even triple anal scenes if the money was right.
Porn scripts, once written on doomed napkins the day of filming, are now computerized. Some even make it to the cast before the shoot.
"But it's not like they courier it over," said the actress.
Even though many porn screenwriters type their scripts into Hollywood-standard screenwriting programs like Final Draft and Movie Magic (and Cross and Edwards used the Hollywood term "pink pages" to describe one part of the revision process, which is understandably ambiguous in their chosen industry), most feature porn scripts are 15-to-20 page affairs saved in Microsoft Word.
"I write it down and have my secretary type it up," said one industry veteran who thought I wasn’t painting him in the right light so I took out his name, whose recent feature script ran to nine pages and was filmed in one day, along with most of another movie. "There were sex scenes going on all over the house."
But most feature directors bemoan the limited budgets and tight deadlines of a studio system afraid of breaking the formula of five-to-six sex scenes in a movie in which one needs to be girl/girl and another needs to be anal.
"I know a lot of people who end up putting their own money into their movies (directed for other studios)," said "O"'s Greene, "just so they can retain a semblance of honesty to the script."
Jim Powers makes movies for Sin City and JM Productions. Most are filmed in a day. "I know there are limitations," he said, "and I work within them."
Powers, who is a prolific moviemaker, is representative of porn's writer/directors who aren't aspiring to Great Art.
"Porn is what it is," he said on the set of a MILF movie. "Guys watch porn for five to seven minutes at a pop, then hide the DVD, then watch it the next day. I guess your dialogue needs to fit in there somewhere."
One way to handle dialogue that actors don't want to learn and that directors don't have time to direct is by layering on a blanket of voiceovers.
"It's a shortcut to at least approaching an effective narrative," said Rebecca Gray, whose script (with Ren Savant) for Vivid's "Seven Deadly Sins" won AVN's 1999 screenplay honor. "If you can't get actors where you want them to be, you can solve a lot of problems with a voiceover."
Gray recalls hiring out of work Hollywood voice talent for several films for this purpose. "They charge less than porn actors," she said, "and they're motivated to do a good job because a voiceover is the most anonymous thing you can do in porn and still get to brag about being in porn. It's all the glory with none of the consequences."
And as Hollywood has a fascination with porn, so does porn relentlessly attempt to go Hollywood. Wicked Pictures is the most earnest of the Hollywood wannabes, with director/writer/contract girl Stormy Daniels churning out high gloss porn versions of Hollywood movies, most recently "Operation Desert Stormy", a hybrid of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", and the "James Bond" and "Austin Powers" series. The budget was reportedly $250,000, which Wicked used for screening parties, creative swag boxes for press, and both an airplane and a live camel in the movie.
Daniels, like Paul Thomas before her, maintained that the money was essential to the success of the movie. "This is an expensive movie because it needs to be expensive," she said on the first day of shooting.
Most of the writers and directors interviewed for this story highlighted workarounds like voiceovers and interchangeable characters, and each mentioned money as integral to the success of a feature. Working independently of studios, or working as autonomously as possible within studios, was also considered a plus.
"I appreciate the freedom Wicked gave me," Daniels said.
And it was only when constraints of time and budget were relaxed that some felt they could do their best work.
"We had money, so we could buy time," said Edwards. "And with the time, Eli (Cross) could direct, and the actors didn't have six other sets to go to that day."
"And we had people on set who weren't 'feature' types," Cross added, "who hadn't had the opportunity to do a lot of acting in porn before." Here Cross mentioned Eva Angelina, who he said not only auditioned (this is what a $375k budget buys) but also "did a brilliant job."
Another porn cliche is that of the failed artist who cannot get work anywhere else but who succeeds in porn as the smartest monkey in the zoo. This serves as a cautionary tale to screenwriters writing for their employers and not their audience.
"Porn has become more acceptable to educated people," said Wayne Hentai of Hentai PR, a marketing firm for porn companies and personalities. "The Internet has made porn safe for women and couples who don't want to go into the dirty bookstores. But they come to the picture with higher expectations."
Hentai mentioned misspelled boxcovers and movies with boom shadows and audible offstage banter.
"You can put on airs and talk about Nabokov all you want in your porn movie," Hentai said. "But if you can't get your lead actress to pronounce 'Lolita' properly, the jig's up."
A veteran director says porn movies need to be simple. "You need the hot girl, and everything else is just you winking at the camera. But the viewer is looking at the hot girl."
Everyone agrees that the porn script is its own thing; it has a structure particular to it. Whether that structure is populated with five or six simple setups and sex scenes or if it is, like "Upload", a film Edwards calls "a porn movie for sci-fi geeks, complete with a lexicon on disc four," the structure has to compell viewers beyond those five to seven minutes.
And the script is as important an investment as a perfect under the muscle boob job (though porn scripts are far less expensive).
Justin Kane, the writer/director of this year's comedy "Spunk'd", shopped around the treatment of his "Punk'd" parody to several studios but couldn't get the budget he wanted. So investors who also happened to be friends put up $90,000 for the project and Kane wouldn't have it any other way.
"I wrote (the main part) for Nick Manning, and I'm glad he agreed to it, because he was perfect," Kane said of the ensemble project, uncharacteristic of most porn. "But in retrospect I couldn't have made that movie anything but independently. I think it would suck the life out of me not to have the final cut or to do a job for hire. The extra time was important for the actors to get to know their lines."
Kane said that writing the script presented challenges one would not encounter in Hollywood.
"You'd think that writing a group sex scene would just be about the choreography, right?" he asked. "But each performer is contracted for a certain thing, so I can't have somebody get anal who was only hired for a blowjob, or I'd get their agents mad. I had to be precise in writing who got what, and where. A cock in the wrong place would have meant the difference of hundreds of dollars."
Previously: Gram Ponante announces Oscars of PornLabels: "eli cross", "paul thomas", "stormy daniels", business, directors, ernest greene, interviews, justin kane, xbiz, xbiz articles
posted by Gram the Man
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--Saturday, December 29, 2007--
Dana Vespoli recompiled
 I think I have seen this scene between Dana Vespolie and Mark Ashley compiled in, like, 10,000 movies.
I was talking with someone the other day about how porn directors and talent by and large do not fight to own their own content or at the very least seek residuals.
It might have something to do with the fact that people don't think of making money in the future on something they might find shameful today. But if Ashton Kutcher is still making money on "Butterfly Effect", Dana Vespoli should get a cut of every movie this scene shows up in.
(I encountered this scene the other day in a movie called something like Anal Addicts 5, but Pat Myne's X-Rated is probably the best value.)
Previously: Dana Vespoli from 2004 - just becauseLabels: business, dana vespoli
posted by Gram the Man
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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 Labels: BDSM, business, fetish, interviews, orange county, retail
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, November 26, 2007--
AVN to announce nominees today, grousing set to begin thereafter
 Nominees for the 2008 AVN Awards will be announced today, sources say, with other sources confirming plans for a 45-day stretch of bitching to commence immediately thereafter.
"We usually announce the Awards just before Thanksgiving, then go on vacation so we don't have to listen to the phone calls from irate producers and performers," said an AVN staffer who wished to remain anonymous.
But AVN employees sometimes give out their home phone numbers during less vulnerable times of the year, so they are often subject to bitching during the holiday weekend.
"It's hard to defend your employer's decision to not nominate Gape Fisting Fucktards for an acting category while saying grace over a turkey," the staffer said.
So the 25th annual awards will be announced later today instead.
"I've already got several numbers on speed dial," said one producer. "I plan to start with, 'So this is what a full-page ad gets me?!' and devolve from there. I do this every year."
AVN will announce a multitude of nominees in a multitude of categories, but company president Paul Fishbein noted that "not everyone will be happy."
"You're damn right I'm not happy," said the producer, who expects his Sybian Anime Dwarf series to be nominated in "at least 20" categories, including lesbian, though there are no lesbian scenes in any of the titles.
"I pay money, I expect a lesbian nomination," he stated.
When informed that nominations would be announced later, many AVN employees wished that they would not be announced at all, the staffer said.
"People will complain irregardlessly," he said.
"I AM GOING TO DECRY THE HATERS," stated one male performer on the message board Somebody Fuck Somebody. "IN THEIR GROWING NUMBERS. I HAVE BEEN IN THIS INDUSTRY LONG ENOUGH TO AT LEAST GET A BEST LESBIAN SCENE FOR MY EFFORTS."
Publicist Bill Mullet, who was recently diagnosed with a degenerative condition requiring him to send out no fewer than 50 press releases a week, nevertheless has a plan in place in case his client's film is not nominated.
"If it doesn't get nominated, I will say it is breaking sales records," he said. "If it does get nominated, I will say it is breaking sales records. It is a win/win/win situation."
At least one director is sanguine about the possibility of not being nominated.
"My hart is too big for this buienesss," he said in a prepared statement. "I cannt expektorate to be nomminated by corpirate MSM porn LOL. Thay dont recnize Art or alternativ bodays. The peepul who push things forward are nvr apreshiated in tahyr time."
The 25th AVN Awards will be held January 12 in Las Vegas. I will be co-hosting with Tera Patrick.
Previously: Male Performer of the Year*; Extended XBiz Awards still a fraction of AVN's; Tasteful "Ambition"
See also: AVN Awards, Also-Rannies 2007Labels: avn, awards, business, sic
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, November 21, 2007--
Exclusive: Porn writers' strike enters 30th year
 CHATSWORTH, Calif. -- The corner back booth of this Lamplighter restaurant franchise has, since the Carter administration, served as the war room for San Fernando Valley's former porn screenwriters.
From a dwindling coffer of residuals eight men and one woman purchase coffee and sandwiches while poring over picket sign slogans.
"Back when I wrote The Erotic Moods of Monique for Erotic Moods Video I was assured that every iteration conceivable for pornographic delivery, from movie theatre to second-hand description on the street, would be covered," said Lou Dirigibilio, nursing an omelette with bits of his toupee in it. "I even put in a clause for wax cylinders."
But the porn business has moved on, with the now-famous Invisible Ink Utter Buyout language included in every contract, guaranteeing non-payment to writers for presentation in every past, present, and future medium, from dirty black and red line art delivered in displays on pizza boxes to aboriginal smoke signal porn (including Digital Playground's Maize God Gets Lucky with Sophia Santi).
"These studio moguls continue to make so much money off my words," said Gertrude Sploins, writer of over 400 "erotic mysteries" from the early 1970's. "Just yesterday my grandson showed me a clip of Murder in Her Dark Woman-Grotto on his iPhone. I didn't get paid for that.
"The most erogenous erogenous zone is the mind," she added.
So with the advent of video technology, porn screenwriters went on strike in 1977, promising to hold out until the smut business ground to a halt or paid dividends to writers from profits on the new technology.
"And we haven't worked since," said Harvey Quim, who won the 1975 Philadelphia Porno Critics' Award for his erotic adaptation of "The Joy of Sex", Things in the Erotic Paunchy Man's Beard.
Porn industry insider Loup Perch-Tounge points out that there are no scripts in adult films anymore "the way the general public understands scripts," saying that porn movies are created with a blend of cocaine, Keith Johnstone-style improv, and divine inspiration.
"Have you seen Alpha 15: Reform School Girls?" Perch-Tounge asked. "You can't say someone wrote that."
The striking porn writers have long since abandoned picketing studios because, as Dirigibilio says, "I'd rather eat a reuben than stand in front of a Van Nuys warehouse all day." But socialist fervor still grips the small group, whose median age is 65.
"The other day I popped my dentures out at Sasha Grey," said Quim. "But the nice lady popped them right back in."
In addition to meager residuals from theatre screenings in communities serviced by Peace Corps volunteers, the members of Porn Screenwriters Union Local 2 (Locals 1 and 3, based in New York and Cleveland, respectively, both folded in 1981) subsist on toasting hundreds of teddy bears stolen from Protecting Adult Welfare and pallets stacked with steveporn stickers.
Many adult industry workers have never heard of Local 2, and regularly avoid its members when they stand with donation cans outside Los Angeles area adult conventions.
"These people don't know their own history," said Clevon Pudendiferous, writer of the early Mitchell Brothers' film Through the Red Keyhole. "They're so involved with their own little moneymaking schemes that they pay no attention to anyone else."
In that way the members of Local 2 are true members of the adult community. When asked about the parallels of his strike to the one being carried out by Hollywood writers, Pudendiferous replied, "Who? I thought we were talking about me."
Previously: Don't shit where you eat; One is the gooiest numberLabels: business, hollywood, interviews, lamplighter, strike
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, November 16, 2007--
Male Performer of the Year*
 As a nation is reflected in its pornography, so does its pornography draw from the society that creates it. That is why the country's ultimate arbiter of porn standards, The San Fernando Valley Gaping Collaborative, has decided to place an asterisk next to the award listing of any male porn performer who has used erection enhancing drugs.
"It is time," said Collaborative Interim President Loup Perch-Tounge.
With Home Run record holder Barry Bonds facing an asterisked entry in his likely Baseball Hall of Fame induction, everyone from many of the last several years of AVN Male Performers of the Year to the XRCO's Unsung Woodsmen to the nominees in any of the 40 other adult award shows planned for next year face a qualifying mark after their name.
Veteran porn dude Kyle Stone lauded the measure. "First it was a skill," he said. "Now it's a pill."
The august SFVGC was itself embroiled in scandal this summer when it was learned that president Gram Ponante used Viagra while typing.
"I needed my hands to point and wildly gesticulate," he said at his resignation.
Male performers found to have been under the influence of drugs like Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, Caverject, Caverjet, Cavetol, or "coke dick" while submitting award-winning performances will have their Hall of Fame entries amended and be required to coordinate with their states' Departments of Motor Vehicles to add asterisks to their SWRDFTR license plates.
Several performers, such as Dick Rage, vowed to withdraw their names from the rolls of an awarding body if they had to submit to asterisks.
"It's like you're asking Sherlock Holmes to detect without heroin, Coleridge to write without cocaine, or Our Lord Jesus Christ to commit miracles without the Holy Spirit," he said. "I mean, have you seen Iphigenia Squirtz lately?"
See also: New copy of XBiz World contains mousepad; Industry shocker: AVN redesign doesn't look like ass; Caverject makes women grow; Gargantuan cock public toiletLabels: business, legal, loup
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, September 07, 2007--
Area code impurity to destroy Valley identity, porn
 Since the beginning of recorded time (1984) the area code of Porn Valley has been 818. It is reported that upon beholding the Valley below him in 1769, Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola said, "Reventaré mi tuerca aquí 818 veces," or "I will bust my nut here 818 times."
That proud heritage will be no more if the California Public Utilities Commission has its way, adding a 747 exchange to the mix and destroying Porn Valley's identity.
Read more after the gap.
So associated with Porn is the number 818 that erections have been detected in laboratory rats who have been fondled by unscrupulous assistants 818 times. Indeed, the Tongva Indians, a Shoshone affiliate native to the area, called the Valley Pornga, or "Place of 818 Gapes".
It is whispered that available 818 numbers will be exhausted in two years, and that the CPUC is deciding whether to assign new phone customers in the Valley a 747 area code or to divide the Valley and redistribute 818s according to which side of the divide customers fall on.
Two harrowing scenarios, obviously, but the latter is far worse. I talked with Loup Perch-Tounge of the Chatsworth Fisting Collective, a porn industry think tank.
"People's identities are caught up in their area code," he observed, imagining a world in which performers and porn company owners are not taken seriously depending on the first three digits of their phone numbers. "It's tough enough if Caller ID tags you as living in Vegas or Tampa, which are like porn farm teams."
"Somebody calls from (downtown LA exchange) the 213, I let the phone ring," Vivid co-founder Steve Hirsch did not say, "just on principle."
A coalition not comprising trade magazine AVN, the Free Speech Union, Red Light District, and Pamela Peaks is lobbying the National Park Service to designate the 818 area code a National Historic Landmark, and trade publication XBiz is not using its political capital from the .XXX top-level domain fight to designate 818 as "porn only".
"If someone walked into my office with a business card reading '747'," didn't say porn impresario Max Hardcore, "I'd send her down the street to work at the Cheesecake Factory (after pissing in her eye sockets.)"
Canadian Tina Tyler, quoting Rush's "New World Man", emphasized the need to "keep (our) nature pure."
"You don't want to get a blowjob from someone with a 747 on their Blackberry," she didn't say. "You might as well fuck the carpeting."
Virginia-based NeuStar, which operates the North American Numbering Plan Administration, estimates that 818 numbers will run out by 2009.
Previously: Still, don't expect more for taking one in the ass
See also: 747 to land on top of Valley's 818 (dailynews.com)Labels: business, news
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, August 20, 2007--
AVNAds breaks up with AdBrite
 AVNAds, the completely transparent and bug-free ad-serving program that was the shadowy adult side of AdBrite, has broken from its mainstream partner, which is now seeking adult signups via its Black Label Ads program. Both AVN and AVNads were down over the weekend, but both seem to be functioning properly now. No news as to why Mom and Dad parted ways, but I've got dozens of dollars in allowance at stake here, so I hope things get patched up soon.
Philip Kaplan's AdBrite loses porn-ad network (by Valleywag's Owen Thomas)
When you talk about "the Valley" in tech, it's taken for granted that you mean Silicon Valley. But in the world of porn, "the Valley" is the San Fernando Valley, where the adult-film industry has established itself. Now, as porn goes online, there's a long, drawn-out war for dominance fought by the two valleys. And a tremendous battle has just been lost -- by AdBrite, the online-advertising network based in San Francisco. AdBrite, Valleywag has learned, has lost the partner that gave it an entrée into the business of selling porn ads.
AdBrite is not keen to let people know it's in the admittedly lucrative business of selling ads for pornographic websites. But for some time, AdBrite has had a partnership with AVN, a powerful trade publication covering the porn industry, to sell ads for AVN's websites and many others, through a site called AVNAds.com. Philip Kaplan characterized the AVNAds relationship as a "technology-licensing agreement," though it's clearly more than that; until this morning, AVNAds listed AdBrite's fax number on its contact information, and ads were served on the adbrite.com domain.
This morning, however, AVN has broken off the relationship and redirected the AVNAds.com domain to a new, hastily built, barely functional website. The ads on the host of porn sites contracting with AVNAds, however, continue to be displayed from AdBrite's servers. From what I've heard, there's a legal tug of war over the relationship. And last month's meltdown at 365 Main, the datacenter hosting AdBrite's servers, doesn't seem to have helped matters. The press release announcing the new AVNAds website stresses that the new venture will serve ads from multiple datacenters. AVN's new online-ad network promises to be up and running by September 30.
BlackLabel AdsIn the meantime, though, it seems that Kaplan has a Plan B to keep AdBrite in the porn business under the name "BlackLabel Ads." Until Friday, when I called an AdBrite executive for comment, BlackLabelAds.com displayed a site identical to AVNAds.com except in name. The list of sites on BlackLabelAds.com, and the structure of the site, was identical to AVNAds.com; it even shared the same fax number as AdBrite and AVNAds.com. Today, though the site remains mostly hidden, the logo remains on AdBrite's servers. (The BlackLabel site currently redirects to AVNAds.com, but I believe that's simply because AdBrite execs were hoping to hide the existence of BlackLabelAds.com and were caught offguard by today's move by AVN.)
So here's how the battlefront stands: AdBrite has the actual ads served today on the AVN network; AVN has the AVNAds.com domain itself. The question will be -- assuming AdBrite's not going to just give up on the adult-ads business altogether -- is whether AdBrite can tell customers about BlackLabelAds faster than AVN can sign them up on the new AVNAds website. Like everything to do with the adult-entertainment business, this battle promises to be messy, dirty, and thoroughly entertaining. And it's all just one more back-and-forth tussle in the war between the two valleys of porn.
Previously: AdBrite, AVNAds
See also: Philip Kaplan's AdBrite loses porn-ad network (valleywag.com)Labels: avn, business, trademags
posted by Gram the Man
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--Tuesday, August 07, 2007--
Wayne Hentai: Pornslinger
 Now that Hillary Clinton has stood up for a vilified profession, the "real Americans" known as Washington lobbyists, I finally have the courage to put in a good word for a class of people that, but for several bad apples who smear the whole profession, are hard-working, bright, and conscientious folk: Porn Valley's publicists.
I speak with the Dean of Adult Industry publicists, Wayne Hentai, after the gap.
Only one of the publicists working in the adult business today has a journalism background. Wayne Hentai, director of Hentai Public Relations of Canoga Park, ran the news desk at the University of Hawaii student newspaper and, following his graduation with a degree in journalism, worked as a stringer for Pacific Business News. After a year in Taiwan employed by an export company, he accepted the newly-created DVD editor position at Adult Video News, a trade publication.
"Business reporting is very good training for an understanding of money, retail, law, technology, and distribution," he said, "which, along with naked ladies, is what the adult industry is all about."
In the mid-1990s, when adult company heads realized that competition and cheap, increased replication had increased to the point that porn no longer sold itself, they took a cue from Hollywood and hired publicists to tell the world, which at that time meant AVN, that their product was better.
Prior to this, company sales reps and the owners themselves acted as publicists, but in the face of an onslaught of comparable content from competitors, Publicist became a job description unto itself.
The publicist's job, at first, was to get articles into AVN. The good publicist's mailing list has increased by one with each media outlet that has appeared to address AVN's deficiencies or to take a run at AVN's dominance.
"Respecting the editor's job is the key to getting your client's stories published on a website or print publication," Hentai said. "If an editor has to rewrite press releases because they don't appear to be in English or if there's no news enclosed, that tends to breed ill will."
Hentai is correct, but bad or not, press releases still get printed. Editors have resorted to creating aliases to hide their shame of printing these things as news stories or have, like AVNOnline and XBiz, created a PR ghetto where press releases languish unedited.
At a recent seminar conducted by XBiz editors in Las Vegas, Hentai's work was singled out as the type of material magazines look for.
"I don't care if we get nine press releases from Wayne a day," Associate Editor Anne Winter said. "We print them because they are relevant and well-written."
And because they are not filled with references to Hentai.
"The most important thing to remember is that the person signing the checks should be the person getting the publicity," Hentai said. "I stand in the background. Writers don't want to write 'Lexington Steele's publicist said'."
Then why do publicists get away with that?
"No comment," Hentai said.
I think because porn is a visual medium that adult companies and the publicists they've hired have not emphasized a command of English as a priority of the job. Instead, a steady stream of newsless "press releases" have issued from companies, and because trade publications nominally need words that will go along with the advertising, these press releases provide excellent filler.
So trade publications and the publicists that fed them created a mutually parasitic relationship that threatened the real news editors tried to print. As in the mainstream world, a story unfavorable to an advertiser was toned down or killed. Eventually editors, who were never the managers of the publications, learned to avoid particularly thorny issues within the industry and instead pointed their anger outside, at external threats to the adult industry, such as the government or annoying copyright law.
Most publicists, then, thrive in an industry ducking for cover under a low ceiling of expectations, hence press releases an eighth grader would be embarrassed to write (or for which would at least get a D).
Hentai is different, and frustrated.
"There's no shame in using a spell-check," he said, "but I wonder when people will start connecting poor press with poor sales?"
I think this a long way off. I recently had a conversation with a porn director who said that he reads the various adult sites every day, hoping his name will be mentioned. I had counseled him that I would not run a press release that was written just for the sake of having a press release out.
"You don't invent a reason to send out a press release," I said.
"But everyone else is sending out press releases," he said, and he meant it, and it's true.
"But they look like idiots," I said, and I meant it, and it's true.
"The adult industry is a bubble," Hentai said, "and the people in the bubble aren't the ones buying adult products. Are you getting all your porn for free?"
"Yes," I sobbed.
"Presss releases need to be written for the people actually buying the product, because they are judged by the same standards as any other press release."
"So 'Good enough for Porn' isn't a business model that works anymore?" I asked.
"Five years ago, maybe," he said.
Hentai currently represents several clients, including Lexington Steele's Mercenary Pictures, American Xcess, Third World Media, Sinsation, and Lethal Hardcore. He works for smaller companies on a case by case basis.
I mentioned my conversation with the director who just wanted to see his name in print.
"Can't you feed someone's vanity and take their money at the same time?" I asked.
"I tell my clients that putting them in the best light sometimes means not writing something every other day," Hentai said. "You need a good balance of actual information to publicity or the project is doomed to collapse under its own hype."
Previously: Iran calls porn performers "Corruptors of the World"; Adult industry to sic itself on bad grammar; Passages; Continuing education credits
See also: Hentai PRLabels: business, hype, interviews, lexington steele, sic
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, July 27, 2007--
Rhino to get Ninn skin
 Director Michale Ninn and NinnWorx have been contracted to art up the 34 worldwide locations of the Spearmint Rhino peeler chain, and the studio will function as the clubs' production arm.
I'm hoping that Spearmint Rhinos will become more Innocence Brat and less Sacred Sin, because who wants to go to a strip club and see someone raging around his apartment weeping about the death of his wife?
Full story on the next page.
 Ninn says that this deal, with its roots in meetings between himself and Spearmint Rhino owner John Gray at January's AVN Convention, includes NinnWorx contract performers Jana Jordan and Heather Vuur appearing at the clubs.
The partnership has resulted in the creation of a third company, NinnWorx_SR, which will be headquartered in the city of Norco in Riverside County.
Norco sounds like the soulless name of a company town, but it is actually short for "North Corona" - uninspired, but California is a big place, and you don't get a gem like "Hesperia" every day. In Norco, you can ride your horse to dinner, and many businesses have hitching posts.
Riverside County, famous for being a hotbed of despair, is now changing its image to a porn destination (though it is doubtful you will find that in Chamber of Commerce literature). The headquarters of Pornfidelity are just down the street in Corona.
NinnWorx has recently signed Lena Nicole to a contract, and for a while flirted with the idea of signing former Adam & Eve implosion Sophia Lynn. This will probably not happen due to a recurrence of the same things that scuttled her Adam & Eve deal, sources say.
Recent rumors of NinnWorx' financial instability are exaggerated and incorrect, say company spokespeople. The company co-sponsored its "Gathering" party last year with Eddie Van Halen in support of Sacred Sin. Van Halen went into rehab shortly thereafter, but I should have as well. That's how good the party was.
Previously: An awkward conversation with Heather Vandeven; In a white room with meat curtains; Good Friday at the Filth Factory
See also: Ninnworx, Spearmint RhinoLabels: business, heather vandeven, jana jordan, ninnworx, pornfidelity, strippers
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, July 06, 2007--
XBiz Summer Forum next week
 Because my car has better air conditioning than my house, and because a four-hour drive in a car with leg room is better than three hours waiting for and flying in a plane that has none, I will be driving to Las Vegas next week for the XBiz Summer Forum.
Even though the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino has air conditioning of its own, it is still an odd choice to hold a convention in a city that is officially hotter than Hell in the middle of July, a month Satan described as "a hot, hot month, especially in Vegas. Jesus Christ."
Activities at the XBiz Summer Forum include sweating, parties, and numerous seminars including the inevitable 2257 regulations breakout session, a two-part Distribution How-To, Information and Content Security panels, and How to Generate Free Traffic, at which I will speak.
I'm a little worried about what I'll say. Should I demand that webmasters "Provide quality material"? "More boobs, Less Dumb"? These people don't want to hear that.
XBiz staff will moderate a seminar on How to Write a Press Release. I am looking forward to this. It is understood that |
