Before presenting a brief remembrance of the porn performer Haley Paige, who died a year ago today, I'll share with you an anonymous comment I just received on a post about the late Anna Malle:
"hey anna is going to hell by the way..fornication is a big sin to God..she will suffer the blitz of hell fire..pray for other birls in porn also to change."
I have become a heavy comment moderator recently, trashing your First Amendment freedoms, I know, but I choose to leave some hateful comments intact as a reminder of the dangerous regard some fans have for people they think they know.
Maryam Irene Haley was 25 when she died on August 21, 2007 in the Central California town of King City. Three weeks earlier, on August 2, she had married her boyfriend, porn director Inkyo Volt Hwang, in Las Vegas.
From my Fleshbot story last October:
People who see porn as a multi-billion-dollar cautionary tale need look no further than the sad story of husband and wife Inkyo Volt Hwang (aka Chico or Wanker Wang) and Maryam Irene Haley (aka Haley Paige). Hwang was a website owner and director of extreme porn videos, and Paige was a performer who appeared in the gamut of what porn has to offer, from gangbangs to "couples-friendly" films.
Hwang was arrested on suspicion of pistol-whipping Haley in June, they were married at the beginning of August in Las Vegas, she was dead at month's end, and he was found dead in September.
Hwang, 38, had served time in prison before. For two years in the late 90's Hwang was in Chico State Prison on two felony counts of sexual battery and assault with a deadly weapon, charges nearly identical to those that landed him in jail in June. When running a previous incarnation of the site lukeford.com, Hwang was at the forefront of "shocking" porn website content that mixed gallows humor with extreme sex, often forcing his overweight "minion" to sit on reluctant starlets.
Toxicology reports on both deaths have not been released, but Haley's father said that Hwang was in the room with Haley during her overdose, which occurred on August 21. She had said in the months immediately prior to her death that she had left porn and was planning to go back to school. Hwang was found September 29 in a motel in Morgan Hill, CA, south of San Jose.
Many who knew Haley said she was too sweet and too vulnerable to be in porn. Born in Mexico, she claimed that she was molested by an uncle and raped by gang members before moving to San Diego with her family at 12. Seven years later, she was working at a Blockbuster when she answered a nude modeling ad. She later appeared in more than 300 scenes. She was 25 at her death.
On porn message board ADT, Hwang wrote this of Haley in March: "I think we're attracted to each other simply because we have the exact opposite personalities. She's sweet and quiet. I happen to be aggressive and loud. I guess opposites do attract."
I met Paige a few times, and she was indeed very sweet, but also distant. I met Chico Wang (who adopted the name of his prison) a few times, too, and didn't enjoy the experience. But he was distant, too. I have since met a number of friends of both Paige and Wang who say that the couple were very private people, despite the clinical nature of the work they did, and that Wang's public persona masked vulnerability, low self esteem, and shame. And that those things got the better of him.
So many porn performers don't want their families and hometowns to know what they do, and there is such a deep stigma to the job in such a benighted society that only a few people (Nina Hartley comes to mind) can really transcend it. But Hartley actively seeks transcendence in everything she does, and the majority of porn personnel prefer to keep large aspects of their lives under wraps for fear of what confused idiots like the person quoted at the beginning of this story might do.
But by virtue of there not being a continued thread in Porn, a legitimate archive or history that competent people who are proud of their accomplishments can carry on, departures like Paige's get swallowed up in the face of 11,000 new porn titles a year that bring on anonymity far swifter than in Hollywood, and that is a shame.
People loved Maryam and people loved Haley, and I encourage those people who've talked to me privately to leave a positive message in the comments section.
Most of the images above are from I Love Haley Paige, a compilation disc released this year of scenes shot between 2003 and 2005. It does not have behind the scenes footage or anything extra that reveals Haley the person, which I think is a missed opportunity for her fans. But she sure was lovely.
Linguist, MIT professor, and essayist Noam Chomsky said he'd never heard of "The Hustler" magazine, but consented to a 2005 interview because editors had sent him a list of his friends who'd also been featured in its sticky pages.
He said that, after the magazine had not sent him a transcript to approve, he had forgotten about the interview. He certainly would not have consented if he'd known Hustler was a porn publication.
So Chomsky seems irritated to be asked about his views on pornography in this YouTube video, as if that What Porn Does is degrade women and that is a foregone conclusion. In response to the argument that women in pornography concede to and are compensated for filming, Chomsky says that if a sweatshop burns down, are its workers not to be pitied because they agreed to work there?
I'd argue that porn's real victims of degradation are the mopes who make $50 (or nothing) to hang around and jerk off in bukkake videos, but those guys like doing that.
Oddly enough, the issue of Hustler displayed in the Youtube video is not the one that was widely available: both issues featured an embracing Krystal Steal and McKenzie Lee (and Sheryl Crow nude), but the newsstand version bumped Chomsky off the cover for Lesbo Cherry Popping. Maybe that's why he was peeved; he was all set to pose casually by his Hustler cover at Harvard Square's Out of Town News and it was More Chomping, Less Chomsky.
Degradation surely is in the eyes of the beholder. I want to invite Professor Chomsky to an Anabolic shoot to prove my theory of applied generative grammar.
As America's foremost critic of pornographic and pornotextual material (it even says so on my parking space), I am often asked, upon writing an unfavorable review of a movie, what right I have to say so if I have never directed or performed in a pornographic movie?
A reasonable question if one disregards the following two things:
Do I have to be a chef to appreciate good cooking? If I throw up, am I therefore a bad eater?
How come my credentials are never questioned when I give something a good review?
More and more I am falling out of love with porn features, those movies with stories and scripts, because too often the weight of the parts overwhelms the appeal of the movie's basic porniness. The inevitable disparity between hype and substance reveals limitations less ambitious movies don't have. I think a simple, cheap gonzo movie succeeds much more frequently than one that tries and fails.
I even see a little arrogance in some of the bigger feature efforts, as if just trying should be enough to justify and forgive a train wreck's failure. Only in school are we given grades for effort independent of success.
The features that most often fall afoul for me are the serious ones dealing with sexual obsession, darkest desires, and hidden secrets. People who can't act are not allowed to have those things. And sometimes even porn comedies, those things which I think are closest to the spirit of what getting naked on camera should be, also trip over themselves.
Of all the things that get jammed down the throat in a porn movie, the script should not be one of them.
I mention this because, oh man, I really didn't like Carolina Jones And the Broken Covenant, much as I like Ava Rose and Bree Olson. I wish it could have been a bunch of sex scenes with no script, costumes, or foreign locations. The money saved could have gone for a pizza party at the end of the school year.
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.
I and Barely Legal director Erica Mclean were interviewed for the independent documentary American Virgin for our take on how the adult industry handles the notions of virginity and innocence.
Viewers will thrill to see Gram Ponante Towers' Clean Room in which its Porn is kept and preserved with the same techniques as used by the Peabody Museums of Harvard and Yale as well as the Smithsonian. I can assure you that porn off-gasing is far more toxic than any ancient artifact from Mesoamerica.
Brandi Lyons' album should be "Pubes like an arrow"
Brandi Lyons wants you to know something about herself.
Because I was born in 2003, I only know the concept of "albums" as a result of scholarly research in museums. It has been through interviews with ancient and hoary raisin-complected people that I knew to say "should be her album" after I observed "she has pubes like an arrow."
It might sound affected, but I also like to say "dial the phone" and "put the needle on the record" because I think it's cool to sound older than I am, which is 18. Old people are awesome. So wise, you know, with their knowledge and stuff.
Anyway, Brandi Lyons might point her pubes at you for the right price. Her agent informs me that she is available for the following services: Anal, Bachelor Parties, Blow Job, Boy/Boy/Girl, Boy/Girl, Creampies, Deep Throat, Feature Dancing, Fetish (what does that mean, anyway?), Flexible, G/G/Anal (as opposed to GG Allin), Girl/Girl, Group, Hardcore (as if "creampie didn't make that clear), Interracial, Softcore, Solo, Stills, Swallows, and WebCam.
You might be left asking if there is anything this Size Zero dynamo won't do. The answer is this: Her creampies must be of the anal variety only. Sorry, Eliot Spitzer: No GFEs for you.
Laura Albert (right) published three books under the name JT LeRoy and employed others (such as the woman to the left) to adopt the invented persona of LeRoy, a male teen prodigy/prostitute/AIDS afflictee.
When the story broke in 2006 that the 40-ish Albert had invented the whole thing, she was sued by her publisher and shunned by LeRoy's early supporters; they felt betrayed when what they'd been led to believe about the author had turned out to be a lie.
It turns out Albert had fashioned a lifetime of such behavior into a career.
Dave Eggers, interviewed for an excellent LA Weekly story about Albert, said, "I teach writing to high school students, and every year, I have a kid whose writing is great, and I ask myself, is it really great, or do I think it's great because a 15-year-old wrote it? You can never separate it."
Albert herself felt victimized by the ill will generated by her unmasking, but dismissed it as "sour grapes."
Speaking of her entourage and former supporters, Albert told the LA Weekly that "We were really there (to spread) joy and love."
Her work was judged the way it was because people believed she was someone else, rather than on the work itself.
What sort of allowances do you think consumers make when faced with the invented personae of porn?
Report: Purchases of "Gene Simmons" sex tape limited to people who already find Gene Simmons repugnant
The triumph of the "Gene Simmons" sex tape is that, even though the dude in the video doesn't really look like the Kiss buffoon, people believe that Simmons would be delusional enough to release such an unflattering movie, so it might be him after all.
See how it works? Simmons is meta all the way to the bank.
I think of Peter Criss' "Beth":
Beth, I hear you calling But I can't come home right now (You see) Me and the boys are playing And we just can't find the sound (not surprising, considering it's Kiss) Just a few more hours And I'll be right home to you I think I hear them calling - Beth, what can I do?
It is tragic that the only useful member of that band was also incapable of having the balls to stay home with poor, long-suffering Beth. That he "thought" he heard the boys calling and then was spineless enough to ask for her advice only cements my opinion that proximity to Gene Simmons makes everyone abhorrent.
Everyone with a website has written about the purported Gene Simmons sex tape (AVN got it first) but no one has said it was good. The man's partner refuses to kiss him - three times - and both look off to the left side of the bed, perhaps to see themselves in the monitor.
The radio plays power ballads by Foreigner and Steve Perry. Yes, you should've been gone.
But whether Simmons is good at what he does or not has never been the point. Meta celebrity means never having to be good at something.
So it seems that the only people forking over the 30 bucks to the Panama-based site hosting the tryst (allegedly) between Simmons and an Austrian (not Australian) sports drink spokesmodel are pundits, because nobody actually likes the movie, which is like the sexual equivalent of the Daniel Pearl video.
Then we get to wonder if the man in the video is actually Simmons, and with each speculation, somewhere money is accruing interest in someone's offshore bank account. Here is a Terry Gross interview with Simmons, in which the latter just sounds like an ass.
Listening to this broadcast reminds me of people in porn who, like Simmons, chuckle at their own well-rehearsed soundbites while their interviewers throw up a little in their mouths.
It's such a train wreck that Yes, that might actually be Gene Simmons with that poor girl. Either that or a posthumous Wayne Newton.
(ADDENDUM: I contacted Jon Stevens, whose e-mail was provided as the administrative contact of the domain genessecret.com- thought the registrar was listed as Roberrto Rodriguez. Mr. Sevens said:
The man is gene simmons, the girl is one of Franks Energy drink's girls, believed to be Elsa.
we believe gene has given permission to broadcast.) -emphasis added-
I am not saying that the Porno-Industrial Complex does not deserve to honor itself or that pornfolk do not deserve recognition for their hard work, but I can't shake the feeling that adult awards shows, with their Lifetime Achievement honors and Man of the Year trophies, seem like kids dressing up in their parents' oversized sportcoats and ball gowns and putting on a show in the barn.
"...and watching white guys mack their pimpness to doormen isn't how I want to spend my time," added Blueblood.com editor Amelia G. (seen here with the amiable Forrest Black).
I enjoy adult awards shows. They are charming. But last night's XBiz Awards, last month's AVN Awards, the XRCO Awards and all the various Kucinich-level adult award events are all the same gig albeit in different venues with differing amounts of money behind them. The audience's tenuous attention to its host at the inevitably tardy start rapidly unravels by the 20-minute mark.
By the end, most of the audience has drifted away, the presenters are calling for attention, and the majority of attendees remaining are just in earshot in case their award category is coming up.
How often have you heard Billy Crystal tell the Oscar audience to "Shut the fuck up"? It happens all the time at adult awards shows.
That said, I always have a good time, because I'm hanging around with everyone else in back. As Porn's ambassador to the outside world, however, I imagine the wry and winking, bemused and condescending takes visiting mainstream reporters might have on such events - mostly because I hate competition in the Bemused and Condescending department but also because I have tender feelings for this business.
The XBiz Awards were held at the Hollywood Highlands, a popular nightclub adjacent to the Oscars' Kodak Theatre. XBiz Conference attendees needed only to walk across the street from the Roosevelt Hotel and climb the stairs. Inside were several bars and a large VIP area. I heard there were snacks there, but I left coldcut-free because I kept bumping into people I knew.
One was Veronique Vega, whose new haircut reminds me of a healthy Amy Winehouse that I want to debase and hook on drugs. She is part Puerto Rican and part Tahitian. I wonder if we're related?
Here is intellectual filmmaker DCypher getting into a shot of Halcyon Styn and Ashley Steel. It was the couple's six-month anniversary.
"I am a Buddhist," DCypher said.
People might argue that adult personnel are an army of rebels and free-thinkers who can't sit down and shut up due to their boundless energy and First Amendment patriotism. Those people might have been correct about this as few as ten years ago, but if they're still saying it they're dummies. Now it's nothing more than limited attention span coupled with nothing to pay attention to.
Tommy Gunn and Ashlyn Brooke attended the awards, squabbling over who looked better.
"I have full breasts," Brooke noted. "You lose."
Nina Hartley expertly handled three different gan interactions in our two-minute conversation. Each fan left with a remarkable sense of well-being.
Casey Parker pinned Holly Randall to the unyielding brick. She couldn't do it to me becausae I was holding the camera.
When last we saw Tori Black, she was crawling all over Sindee Jennings in pasties. It was a magical time for us. But I finally got to talk with her with clothes on.
"Glad you have your clothes on this time," the 5'9" Seattle native did not say. She has only been in the business for a few months, she said, but wanted to make clear that, though her scenes might be hardcore, she is still a lady.
"People forget that women are elegant," she said.
Svengali in training James Bartholet proposes something distasteful to Veronica Rayne.
It is very important the world sees more of Ava Rose. I hope she's off tomorrow.
This unintentionally arty photo of Michael Lucas and Titan Media's Keith Webb was one of several camera accidents. I explained to Lucas that his excellent Intern was the only gay movie I have seen (other than Quadrophenia)and he quickly suggested several others. He didn't seem to think I should quit while I was ahead.
I told Stoya I would put a picture of her on my website every day if I could. I think she must be some kind of witch; she doesn't take a bad picture.
"People saw my vagina on your site and started e-mailing me about flashing people in Las Vegas," she said.
"It can't be flashing if you took the picture under the table with my camera while I was away," I said. That wasn't flashing; it was a gesture of love.
Here's shrewd businesswoman Shy Love. Shy Love fans will be happy to know she is even prettier in person.
Pride of Nashua Heather Silk was set to appear in a "Pussy Party" before the shoot was rescheduled. I had never met her before but her dress sort of rides up that way, which I think is a plus. We didn't have time to talk about the Orange Julius at the Pheasant Lane Mall.
Finally, Flower Tucci let me know in no uncertain terms that she's into Satan, too.
"Let's get out of here; you're weird," she said, which in that context was a huge compliment. I doubt she remembers it, but I gave up drinking three days too soon.
As Penthouse's Marc Bell walked to the stage amid awkward clapping and the "Rocky" theme to accept his Man of the Year award, I bumped into a little white guy dressed in a pimp suit.
"Pardon me," I said.
"It's all good, brah," he said.
It was all good. (It would have been better with a drink, though.)
Anal scene accounting was a charge long-levied against former AVN editor Mike Ramone. Now, cooling tempers have set the stage for a tender rapprochement, with cum farts playing the part of doves.
There was a time when disgruntled AVN employees would leak information from their Chatsworth stronghold to the likes of Lurk Ford or Rock'n'Roll Gene "Pool" Ross, both of whom would gaily print anything negative or speculative about the company.
I arrived at AVN in the waning days of this distribution system and would occasionally read things about myself on blogs that could only have come from my co-workers.
To a lesser degree, Mike South would also print insider info about AVN. It was South who broke the news that I got fired, in fact, a a tidbit hastily e-mailed by someone in a nearby cubicle the moment I returned to clean out my desk.
Back then there were fewer porn industry news sites, but now the web is lousy with them. (And none is more lousy than mine.) Perhaps because of the competition, by all accounts AVN is a much happier place and more cohesive, with frequent company-sponsored feasts from In-n-Out Burger.
But when Mike Ramone edited the magazine, a put-down of sorts favored by one staffer was that all Ramone did was count anal scenes in movies. Ramone countered that his job was not limited to this. Now that Ramone has exited AVN and become a director, the press release for his Cum Fart Tsunami confirms that indeed Ramone kept a rectal tally.
“Throw in super hardcore ass fucking, d.p.s [sic], triple penetrations, and in Audrey (Hollander)’s case, so many penetrations at the same time that I lost count (emphasis added), leading up to the massive felchings, and wrap it all up in a hardcore BDSM package, with real fetishy sex, clothes and sets (including a seedy, graffiti and glory hole-ridden bathroom stall and a sleazy old school dirty book store), and Cum Fart Tsunami should be a cum farting fan’s ultimate wet dream," raved Ramone. "Raincoats will not be optional.”
I don't know what the significance of this is, other than it proves a softening of ancient rivalries like so much stool.
A retarded man is stalking the transgendered prostitutes, or "transvestitutes", of Atlanta and posting YouTube videos of them.
Steve Gower is a director of the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance (MPSA), a member-funded community policing organization that regularly tails prostitutes in this residential section of Atlanta. It is difficult to know who to root for in this video, in which an Elmer Fudd soundalike taunts bedraggled prostitutes clacking up and down the quiet streets of his neighborhood.
The attention Gower pays his quarry and the throbbing house soundtrack accompanying the video indicates an affinity for his subject.
Gower got into the neighborhood watch game when his pot smoking was interrupted by a car theft. He admits that he just wants to shift the prosties a few streets away.
Tuesday shocker: Prostitutes don't actually like you
Britain's Guardian newspaper printed an "interview with a prostitute" that contradicted what she feels is the empowering feminist myth depicted by the blog Belle du Jour and its spinoff TV show "Secret Diary of a Call Girl".
The 50-ish prostitute says that the recent trend of hookers seeming glamorous is a male invention. The reality is far more sordid, she says. At the very least the life of a prostitute is very rarely like that of Belle du Jour, played in the British show by "Doctor Who"'s Billie Piper (pictured).
This is a shocking distortion of the facts. Who hasn't looked into the vacant eyes of a person one is paying for sex and thought, "I believe she's really into me"? You are always on top in a hooker's hierarchy of priorities.
The real-life prostitute's account is here. I think she has a bad attitude. My impression is that she was probably not of the sunniest disposition when she was working as a secretary, either.
If one were to download the PDF version of this year's AVN nominations in 120 categories it would result in a document 58 pages long. By contrast, the 1984 awards contained only 18 categories.
The big winner that year was Scoundrels, about the consequences of adultery. Today we commit adultery over coffee.
This reflects both the nichification of consumer tastes as well as the need to satisfy as many advertisers with nominations as possible. AVN will officially maintain that advertising within the company's media network does not buy awards, but that is only partially true; advertisers expect more consideration for their products and AVN, XBiz, and all adult trade publications of the past and future would be foolish not to provide it.
Read more after the gap.
But buying awards is an inexact science, and what is successful for one potential winner might not be for another. So I have no advice other than that Superbowl tickets are a great stocking stuffer for people of any faith, and blowjobs are pleasant all year long.
But let's talk about consumer taste. By 1984, when the AVN Awards were announced on paper, "commercial" porn had been around for decades, but it was still illegal in many places and delivery systems like video were not widespread. 1984's 18 categories reflected no fetishes like Asian, MILF, POV, Latina, Interracial, Anime, or Transsexual; those have evolved from availability and saturation (of the market, not necessarily Squirting).
This year's nominations are the most comprehensive in AVN's history, and at no time in the company's 24 years has the list of nominations shrunk from one year to the next.
With the weight of a quarter-century, the nominations have no choice but to get post-modern: awards for marketing movies and performers have increased to nine, the Crossover Star award has been renamed in honor of Jenna Jameson, and companies that make "classic"-style porn or that re-release ancient porn catalogs also have their own category.
This is the second year of the Unsung Starlet and Contract Performer award, which reflect both the hardest and least used talent in the business who haven't otherwise been honored in Best Actress or Best New Starlet categories.
At the 2008 AVN Awards on January 12, most of the 120 citations will not be presented on stage; a video screen will flash the winners in between more significant awards. Last year's presentation, which was the first awards held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center and also the first awards for which regular consumers were encouraged to buy tickets, was also the slickest; still, by awards show standards, the AVN's are a train wreck.
And I like it that way. Long-time attendees will happily claim "but it's our train wreck", meaning that a shambling free-for-all filled with technical glitches, bombast, people playing dress-up, preening, and unintentional humor are a celebration of what Porn Valley is like every day.
If an outside company comes in to "handle" the awards, as might be the logical evolution of porn's mainstreaming, the January adult industry reunion will lose something, even as it gains a larger audience.
I predict the adult industry can sustain a 200-category awards show before things fall apart, but I better make some money off of it.
Susie Bright interviews Laura Agustin, author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labor Markets and the Rescue Industry.
Agustin says:
Traditional prostitution debates are theoretical, focusing on the abstract question of whether selling sex can be considered a job -- or must be defined as violence against women. Often debates seem to be a search for a single moral truth, in which the words of the subjects themselves are irrelevant.
Hooters waitress and San Diego college student Kyla Ebbert, 23, who dressed as a skank for a one-day trip to a doctor's appointment in Arizona, was cautioned by a Southwest Airlines steward onboard her flight that her outfit was too revealing. She requested a blanket to cover the skank costume and disembarked in Tucson without further incident.
She is now thinking of suing the airline.
Upon seeing the skank outfit, Ebbert's mother maintained that all San Diego college students looked like skanks.
NEWS ANALYSIS: People have questioned what kind of medical help might one obtain in Tucson that one couldn't get in San Diego, but that's not the point. Ebbert's Constitutional right to receive medical attention dressed as a skank (I believe that is the Hillary Scott costume Ebbert is wearing) is irrefutable. Myself, I often go to my podiatrist dressed as Chewbacca (and, thanks for asking, my Midi-chlorian count is even higher than Master Yoda's).
Note: Other news reports say Ebbert actually attends college in Mesa, AZ, which requires residents to dress like skanks and douse themselves with melon body spray. Some day I will move to Mesa.
As you know, it is impossible for something to be sexually attractive until it turns 18. The lone exception is this Jagermeister dispenser here in the office.
A Parliament minister in Hungary, which is one of the most prolific porn producers in Europe, has inserted language into a draft of the larger penal code that would make it legal for Hungarians to make pornographic material with teens between 14 and 17, provided the teens are not related to or in the care of the pornographer and the material is not for commercial use.
"If we consider people 14 years of age to be mature enough to consent to sexual acts, then the chance to make picture recordings of this ... can also be allowed," Hungarian Justice Minister Jozsef Petretei said.
Detractors, most of them sputteringly incredulous that the state was even considering this, were able at least to say that the measure would create "a waiting room for prostitution".
This is my opinion, but I would assume that for such a proposal to be made - by the Justice Minister, no less - that porn involving 14-17-year-olds (if not younger) is already being produced to such an extent that the state feels the only way it can be controlled is to legalize and regulate it.
If the age of consent is 14 in that country, the idea of privately-held images of people acting out that consent shouldn't be shocking. After all, it's done that way here.
In the United States, it is illegal to shoot porn with a person under age 18 (and discussing this with a person under 18 is considered pandering), though the age of consent in many states is 17 or 16 (and, in the case of South Carolina, a very Hungarian 14). It is also my assumption that 18, the age of consent in porn groves Florida and California, is what determined the age of porn consent.
Can you imagine what wuld happen if it became legal to shoot 17-year-olds in the United States? Every copy of Barely Legal would spontaneously turn into a MILF title.
Many people in the adult industry believe that the age of porn consent should be 21. They argue that potential performers need a few years of having normal sex so that they aren't put on the fast track to rectal prolapse without having had a little time to figure out what their options really are.
I know plenty of mature and capable 18-21-year-olds, but I agree with this. It's arbitrary and in its arbitrariness unfair (and I know plenty of 30-year-old performers who are just as mature as an 18-year-old), but a waiting period between the age of consent and the age of one's first filmed gangbang is a smart idea.
In Hungary, Minister Petretei's portion of the draft will be voted on next week. It is hard not to make value judgments about this, despite the obvious trump card of having an age of consent that assumes maturity at 14. It's easy to imagine the malt shops and arcades of Budapest filling with newly-minted cameramen who just last week were pedophiles.
It was probably a mistake to invite 18-year-old AVN Best New Starlet nominee Sasha Grey to speak as Porn's emissary at a UCLA class.
Though articulate and precociously filthy, Grey clings to an idealism that everyone in the adult business jettisons as impractical within a year, if they possessed it at all.
It would have been better to have had a performer and/or director who has been in the industry for five years or more, who had watched several generations of newbies pass out of the business, and who knew the practical realities of surviving. Company owners and distributors should not be asked, because it is in their interest to lie.
Because now those poor UCLA students, many of whom are older than Grey, have an imperfect idea of what porn is.
When I moved to Los Angeles, my first job was for a reality TV production company. I distinctly remember telling someone that I'd like to create a world in which these places weren't run by pre-literate douchebags, and my friend just rolled his eyes. How naive I was! When I first worked at AVN I wrote something about bridging the gap between porn and "mainstream" entertainment. What an idiot.
Grey was selected by UCLA World Arts and Cultures department professor John Bishop, who teaches courses in Video Production and Ethnographic Film. His teaching assistant secured Grey, providing new context to the title TA.
Bishop said he chose Grey partially because of her interest in filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. AVN's Peter Warren quoted Bishop as saying, "There are only six people in the world who like Godard, so I knew you must be OK."
The selection of this quote is instructive. It shows that Porn is distrustful of outside attention even as it begs for it, and that that distrust is well-founded as evidenced by Bishop's academic condescension.
(In the AVN article, Warren subtly casts aspersions on Bishop, calling him a "self-proclaimed" ethnographic filmmaker, when in fact Bishop is an ethnographic filmmaker.)
Warren similarly condescends, describing some of the questions Grey fielded as "civilian" ones. It shows a contempt for consumers.
Grey did describe porn directors as "glorified cameramen", which is also naive. I am acquainted with a lot of porn directors who don't even know how to turn on a camera.
Though Grey's vagina, unless it was involved with a creampie, has been blissfully free of sperm throughout her porn career, its owner nevertheless called porn's version of intercourse "the most honest depiction of lovemaking in film today ... almost like documentary."
If that is true, I feel like I am living a less than real existence. From now on, I resolve to only engage in sexual intercourse once I have stripped down to my sneakers and she to her high heels and we do it piledriver style on a couch and then I pull out and come in her eye. I will also make sure to have Robby D.'s hand coming in and out of the frame.
Warren and Grey are made for each other, as is apparent in his final paragraph.
Grey's visit to the class not only served as a crossover event of a heretofore uncharted nature (for a still-fresh porn starlet, anyway) — into the halls of academia — but significantly galvanized adult's status as a valid form of art.
(I don't know about you, but I was significantly galvanized just reading that.)
In other Missing the Point news, Robert Jenson, a Journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin, calls for an "open discussion of mass-marketed pornography" about 30 years too late and disregarding the fact that the Internet is already an open discussion.
While we're at it, let's have a frank dialogue about VHS vs. Beta. Seriously, no one has the intellectual vigor to tackle this issue, and we need to turn to our nation's publish or perish class to sort it out for us.
This message, titled "Porn Star recommend our drugs", made it through my spam filter because I'm Australian:
Hi mate!
Do you want to have erection like porn star fuckers? It's easy! Everyone can be strong. Just use one of our erectional drugs.
I was about to delete it when I wondered if, staganographically hidden in the message, was a commentary about the porn community.
Was this person saying that porn stars are "fuckers"? Is the strength referred to in "everyone can be strong" a negation of the work it takes to create a successful porn scene? Is there a reason that all my spam concerns viagra soft tabs and not mortgages?
I have always felt that January was about AVN and February was about Black History, so let's tie up some worthwhile loose ends from this site and around the web.
I met (for the first time) O: The Power of Submission director Ernest Greene and Nina Hartley at, of all places, the Corruption party after the AVN show.
"Thanks for being a one-man cheering section for O," Greene said. What can I say? Carmen looked good in that sweater.
Jesse Jane came under scrutiny for her thinness, and actually addressed it preemptively long before "skinny" pictures started getting published later in AEE week.
Before presenting a brief remembrance of the porn performer Haley Paige, who died a year ago today, I'll share with you an anonymous comment I just received on a post about the late Anna Malle:
So many porn performers don't want their families and hometowns to know what they do, and there is such a deep stigma to the job in such a benighted society that only a few people (Nina Hartley comes to mind) can really transcend it. But Hartley actively seeks transcendence in everything she does, and the majority of porn personnel prefer to keep large aspects of their lives under wraps for fear of what confused idiots like the person quoted at the beginning of this story might do.
People loved Maryam and people loved Haley, and I encourage those people who've talked to me privately to leave a positive message in the comments section.
Most of the images above are from I Love Haley Paige, a compilation disc released this year of scenes shot between 2003 and 2005. It does not have behind the scenes footage or anything extra that reveals Haley the person, which I think is a missed opportunity for her fans. But she sure was lovely.
I Love Haley Paige
