Belladonna and Jenna Haze to usher in Year of The Ass at 2009 AVN Awards
It seems like only a week has passed since I finally finished running stories about the 2008 AVN Awards (at which another Jenna daintily crossed her legs and said "No more"), but you can rest assured that today's announcement that Belladonna and Jenna Haze are to host the 26th AVN Awards on January 10, 2009 in Las Vegas will be the last thing I write about them.
Obama on orgasm donations: I'd much rather have the money
Destin Gerek, a San Francisco-based Certified Somatic Sexologist and self-proclaimed "Erotic Rockstar"* is raising awareness and erectile tissue for his presidential contender of choice by spearheading O's for Obama, a series of live and web-streamed events.
"If you care about the future of this country and this planet you won’t want to miss this,” said Gerek, who begins his campaign on Friday, October 24 at the San Francisco club 1015 Folsom.
But will Obama reject the endorsement of a group of juicy-handed, writhing San Franciscans in the same way he eschewed the help of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright?
An anonymous source within the Obama campaign explained it this way:
"It would be like your loving girlfriend made you a pot roast that you knew would kill you if you ate it, and that smelled like feet. You suppose the intention was good, but that won't matter if you're dead, or if Sarah Palin becomes President."
"This is about more than Obama becoming the next president of the United States,” Gerek responded. “On his website Barack Obama assures us that he is asking us to believe not just in his ability to bring about real change in Washington but ours. I agree with him. This is our time to create change. This is our time to create the world that we want to be living in. Barack Obama is a piece of the puzzle. We are the rest of the puzzle. Change is coming, so let's come together."
Obama was heard to mutter "Yes. But could you please come over there, behind that wall? Or maybe can you stage an 'Orgasms Against McCain' rally and leave me out of it?"
The O's for Obama press release described what would be expected of participants:
Participants will be guided into using breath, sound, and movement to access their erotic energy, raise its vibration, and circulate it throughout their entire bodies, culminating in a simultaneous group energetic breath-gasm.
I imagine that Darklady and Halcyon "Pinkgasm" Styn and any number of Burning Man types will read this press release and think, "Goddess Damn It - my life coach said that I'm the one who's supposed to be cashing in on masturbation this year."
*there are various publications that, when referring to me, will write "self-proclaimed 'America's Beloved Porn Journalist'" and it always offends me - now I'm doing it. But come on.
Henri Pachard memorial: "He was one of the greats"
Proud pornographer Ron Sullivan, known professionally as Henri Pachard, was remembered today at a well-attended Buddhist ceremony in the Panorama City section of Los Angeles. Sullivan, who died September 27, succumbed at 69 to a three-year struggle with cancer.
Veteran performer Herschel Savage moderated the two-hour ceremony, held at the Soka Gokkai International Friendship Center. "Ron and (wife) Deloras embraced Buddhism about two years ago," Savage said, shepherding the group of about 200 attendees through a hybrid ritual of chanting, incense burning, and bell ringing combined with a traditional - and often boisterous - wake.
I'd estimate that more than 90 percent of those who attended knew Sullivan from the adult industry, which he'd been a part of since the late 60s in New York. Sullivan directed, wrote, appeared in, or otherwise worked on thousands of adult movies (as well as, as director Jane Waters remembered, in-house documentaries for Colonial Williamsburg). The remaining ten percent appeared to be members of the SGI Center and the family of Deloras, who was Sullivan's fifth wife.
"Ronnie was one of those people who would stand up and say, 'I'm a pornographer,'" said director Freddie Lincoln, looking cool and trim in long white hair and jeans. But Lincoln was representative of most of the guests who, unless they were the children of people who knew Sullivan, all appeared to be older than 35.
Sullivan's was the most recent funeral of men who were integral to this region's fame as Porn Valley: directors Jim Holliday and Clive McLean and performer Jon Dough were all waked within the past five years.
Anyone who harbored fears that the decorum of the tranquil Buddhist ceremony would be shattered by the pornography crowd was quickly proved right.
"I was Ron's penis," said director Paul Thomas, who began as a performer in the 70s. "We started a line of cocaine that didn't end for twenty years. And Ron, I'm still your penis."
But the crowd didn't appear scandalized. As a video montage played, a porn pantheon took the stage to pay tribute to Sullivan. Among them were Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene, Randy Spears, Sullivan's son Jason (a much sought after porn cameraman in his own right), performers TT Boy and Valentino, and former performer and founder of Adult Industry Medical - the de facto Porn Valley STD testing clinic - Sharon Mitchell ("Then I was Ron's vagina").
In the audience were veteran directors Roy Karch, Cass Paley, Jace Rocker, Bud Lee, Rob Spallone, and David Aaron Clark; performers Lynn LeMay, Don Hollywood, and Cameron Cain and Aiden Starr (two exceptions to the Over 35 demographic I saw); agents Mark Spiegler and Derek Hay; and screenwriter/costumer Raven Touchstone, who remembers a time when one could make a living writing porn scripts (hint: it was long ago).
Sullivan was remembered - fondly - by many as a womanizer. Sharon Mitchell said that Sullivan was the first person she called in 1996 when she was attacked by a crazed fan and needed a ride home from the hospital. "And he didn't hit on me," Mitchell said. "He said that he wanted to but he could see I was too fragile."
Another hospital story (as well as numerous video clips) revealed Sullivan's loopy sense of humor.
"I was recovering from an operation and told him that my sides hurt to laugh," Sullivan's younger sister recalled. "We got in the cab and Ron told the driver to go slow and avoid all potholes 'because all ten of her toes have been amputated.'"
Deloras took the racy anecdotes from Sullivan's porn friends in stride, and received glowing tributes herself. "We were all so lucky to have Ron," said Tammy Behan. "But Ron was so lucky to have you."
Sullivan's final years were painful. If the primary theme of the service was what a delightful person he was, the secondary theme was the ugliness of his cancer.
"It was like a fire inside him," Deloras said. "But he doesn't have that body any more."
"I have to admit I'm relieved that he doesn't have to go through this anymore," Sullivan's son Jason said.
For those of us who didn't know Sullivan well, this was a "good funeral." It left us wishing we'd known the departed better.
Director Ernest Greene was one of many who described Sullivan as a mentor.
Greene also said that Sullivan was a great source for the history of the adult business. Even though that history is brief and the business is comparatively small, there isn't really much more than an oral history, whose few remaining interpreters have been reduced by one.
In my own (brief) experience, this has resulted in a reactionary culture of "Don't you know who I am?" among some long-time adult industry personnel, fearing marginalization in an already marginalized business.
But Sullivan was not like that. He was just friendly and supportive.
And humble. David Aaron Clark put this better.
"(Sullivan) never said, 'Don't you know who I am?' He was the guy who you'd be talking to for 45 minutes and then someone else would say, 'Don't you know who he is?'"
It was an uncharacteristically rainy day, so naturally it was a porn screenwriter who said "the heavens are crying." But Deloras Sullivan, who took care of her husband from hale to hollow, was relieved and hopeful, even as she cried.
"He's back," she said.
Update: Toronto-based artist Denise LaFrance painted the 2004 likeness of Sullivan displayed at the top of this story and on the program for Sullivan's memorial. It and several other paintings of adult industry notables appear in LaFrance's upcoming coffee table book "The Golden Heart & Soul of XXX ~ A Celebration of People."
I first met Krissy Leigh on the set of Adam & Eve's The 8th Day, where her ability to fall out of her clothes was inspiring. The other day I bumped into her at the Pirates 2 premiere.
"What are you up to?" I asked (because I am America's Beloved Porn Journalist).
"I signed with Spiegler," she said.
Spiegler Girls handles, I believe, the adult industry's most sex-ready performers.
"Great choice," I said. "And have you been keeping busy?"
"I do anal all the time now," she said.
If this had been a phone conversation, I would have said, "I'll be right over." As it was, she was standing right in front of me. Thank you, Jesus.
See the full Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge gallery here.
Today is Talk Like A Pirate day, so even people from Massachusetts are adding Arrs to their conversation.
BlueBlood.com's Lenka commemorates the day that was first celebrated in John Adams' report to the Continental Congress in 1786, when Tripoli's ambassador explained away the Barbary pirates thusly:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.
The United States continued paying tribute to the Barbary States until 1805, Lenka said, and these early national humiliations led to the current sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Pictured are director Benny Profane and coverpatient Mandy Morbid at tonight's release party for the movie Hospital, starring Morbid as the amnesiac and trepanning-happy Lucy.
I look forward to seeing this movie (as I look forward to seeing all Vivid-steve movies) not only for the cast (which includes Caroline Pierce, Zak Sabbath, a Mexican enchantress named Sochee Mala, and Indiana's own Marie McCray), but also to see what Profane did with a larger budget than his self-produced Psychocandy movies, which he described as "dates that ended up going really well."
Industry spokesperson Sabbath said that "there are parts of [Hospital] that we're like, we know, but it's all intentional" and Profane said of McCray and Mala that they are "devastating."
I can't watch movies at 11 p.m. with spilled beer on me, but I will say that the cover art of this movie is simple and effective. It makes me want to know about the past Morbid has forgotten, especially if she has the same breasts in that past.
The party was at the Redwood in downtown L.A., a place that looks like it has been there for a hundred years but was probably redone a few years ago (with a nautical theme) to look that way. What is reality? A young woman flirted with me until her girlfriend told her that I was the AntiChrist.
Speaking of divine intervention:
The flash on my camera wasn't working, as if the Intelligent Designer Himself had decreed that there would be no more fitting a picture heralding an amnesia movie than one in which its subjects were fading away.
I received a purloined copy of the movie and will review it soon, but in the meantime, you should buy it.
"Life is old there," Courtney Cummz didn't explain of her return to West Virginia to dance tonight. "Older than the trees."
Cummz headlines tonight at Divas Club in Kearneysville, on a country road between Virginia and Maryland, and also between the Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Tomorrow she will sign autographs at Bunker Hill's Sensual Nights so that all your memories can gather 'round her.
Cummz is an oiled and dangerous Zero Tolerance contract star who loves meeting her fans.
"I am also delighted that the ghost of John Denver has reached from Hell across the centuries to bestow his icy finger of favor on me," she most certainly did not say.
McCain to take the world in love embrace at Sturgis Rally
John McCain, Republican candidate for President, will open up for Kid Rock tonight in Sturgis, South Dakota, as part of its annual motorcycle rally.
"All we represent to them, Man, is somebody needs haircuts," McCain will not tell revelers at the Black Hills two-wheeled debauch-a-thon, not adding, "I like smoke and lightning - heavy metal thunder."
The Senator will participate in the Tribute to American Veterans and Active Duty Servicemen at the Buffalo Chip, a performance venue and campground in Sturgis, prior to ceding the stage to Kid Rock and, later, the semi-finals of the Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Contest.
Democratic candidate Barack Obama will not be speaking at the Rally, though the values expressed in movies like Easy Rider don't have much room on the McCain platform. It is a risky move either way, and it takes guts to align oneself so publicly with Kid Rock, as I found when we went in on a failed school lunch venture together, Bawitabaloney.
Naturally I would think better of McCain if he began his speech this way:
My fellow Americans, I was coming back from a motorcycle classic in Sturgis, South Dakota, on my motorcycle on U.S. Highway 14. Just outside Spotted Horse, I ran into a deer. I had no chance. Even though the highway people had mowed the sides, they couldn't mow around the culverts, and the doe jumped right in front of the bike. I had a chance to say one word, "Fuck!", and then I hit it. I know this: If a bullet has my name on it, I won't be calling for my mother. But the only reason I'm alive and telling this story, is because of the big FL front end and that solid tire on my Fat Boy. God Bless You and the United States of America.
Pictured with McCain is Miss Sturgis 2008, Rachel Reilly, and the local florist.
Nina Hartley: "I inserted a thumb and she perked up immediately."
Last night's In the Flesh reading was really a good time. As always I was impressed with the hospitality of Freddy & Eddy's Venice store and the groovy group of people it attracts, and the readers were an eclectic and entertaining group, including Seth Greenland, Nina Hartley, Jeff Miller, and Colleen Wainwright.
Pictured above are Hartley, me, and Freddy and Eddy themselves, Ian and Alicia Denchasy (photo credit Abraham Zapruder, Bigfoot Labs).
Greenland, the writer of the group who most looked the part, read from his book "Shining City" a passage about redemption via a singing vibrating vaginal egg. Thrillist's Jeff Miller told a story about his mother catching him masturbating to his father's porn stash (1988's Hitler Sucksstarring Mike Horner and Alicia Monet), and Communicatrix.com's Colleen Wainwright sang a ditty about her website's most frequent search terms accompanied by L.A. theatre icon David Bickford, whose name is now on a porn site.
Host Carly Milne began the night with her account of posing nude in Calgary. Had it been Banff, it would have been dirtier. Everything's dirtier in BanffTM.
But it was Hartley for whom the most audience members traveled, to whom people listened with jaws agape, and who could have read a soup can and done just fine. Instead she told a story of how fisting a woman, after a point, becomes less about your pushing than her sucking you in.
From there Hartley turned the story, as she often will, into a gentle reminder that we should all love each other. Nina Hartley: National Treasure, Goddamn Hippie.
I read two stories, one of which I've reprinted (with permission from the author) below.
What We Know About Cheyenne
There was once a man who maintained a small household by a northern shore. He had a long, sturdy stick to steady him as he roamed the hills by the coast. His food was the animals of the sparse forest and whatever vegetables were in season from the little garden behind his home. He never thought about whether or not he loved his life, so you could say he was happy. He had a dog who visited him daily, meeting him as part of its own wanderings, and the man missed the animal on the days it didn’t arrive. Whatever you might say about him, the man certainly appeared contented.
One day, the man went to town to barter some rabbit pelts for sugar, salt, and matches. He had quite a collection with him that day: there were voluminous white coats and jet-black silky ones, there were velvety calicoes and even some leathery brown pelts, taken from older jackrabbits. While the shopkeeper was assessing the man’s trades, the man walked through the bustling Saturday morning in search of conversation. Approaching the post office, he saw the sheriff and the telegraph operator engaged in a friendly argument.
“I tell you it’s round, like a watermelon round,” the sheriff was saying.
“It’s flat as the gallows’ board, Old Tommy,” replied the telegraph operator.
(At this point I could feel the tension in the audience. "This isn't sexy at all," they were thinking. Fools! It was about to get horrifyingly sexy.)
On the other side of the street, women were drawing water from the well, turning to maneuver back up the street with sloshing buckets. The man saw an opportunity to get close to the widow Becky, so he eased beside her and took one of the water pails.
“Much obliged,” she said.
“Anything I can do for such a nice lady.”
The man found himself blushing, much to his surprise. The month before he had given a peppermint stick to the widow’s son Caleb, and he saw the boy now, smiling at him from behind his mother’s skirts.
“How do you do, Caleb?” the man asked, tousling the boy’s hair.
“I sure am fine, mister, and I thank you for the sweets last month,”
“Well,” the man said, fishing through his pockets for some trinket to give the boy, “I just might have another stick of peppermint for after your Saturday chores.”
The man saw the look of delight on Caleb’s face. How many times had he rode his uncle Jack’s coattails to get a fireball or a handful of licorice when he was the boy’s age? The widow Becky smiled at him warmly, peering up at him with dancing brown eyes. Maybe she would invite him over to supper on the pretext of teaching the boy to box or how to build a treehouse? He smiled back.
His heart thumped warmly – he liked the boy. He probably could teach him a thing or two, like how to trap a raccoon, or how to get a horse to cross deep water. But the boy was screaming. The man jumped out of his reverie. The widow Becky was now staring at him with an appalled expression, her cheeks pink with what looked like indignation.
Instead of licorice or a peppermint stick, the man had pulled from his pocket a 21-inch black reflective rubber dildo. In his sudden embarrassment he tried to stick it back in his pocket but mistakenly shoved it up the ass of the pastor’s Irish Setter as both walked by.
The dog reared up and mounted the pastor as if the latter were a 3-D vagina exhibit at a museum for the blind, and soon the pastor’s plaintive if furtively exultant bleats brought the men of the local volunteer fire department, who in their zeal hosed down the gingham aprons of the local maids, already writhing in the dust like pungent jackhammers.
The man stepped back in frank amazement at the size of his gaffe and fell into the horse trough. The widow Becky was on him immediately, leading with her teeth, soon pulling every shred of his clothing away in her long-gestating want of a man. “I hear them grinding together in the barnyard,” she kept moaning, her mouth filled with him.
Caleb stood by the hitching post and wept until the sheriff, his face glazed with the spendings of Miss Nellie the bar wench, neatly put a bullet into each of the boy’s eyeballs, then shot himself, his final seed arcing in a languid volley over the brow of Mr. Barney, the postmaster, whose fists were filled with the tender, willing flesh of the sapphic orphanage girls.
"More holes," the blacksmith said, driving what the National Park Service would years hence call his "Manvil" into the roly, pliant piano teacher. "Got to bang more holes into you."
Everybody laughed when the man got up from the horse trough, brushing himself off. He leaned over, picked his duster off the ground, and took some rock candy from the pockets. He’d bought a whole package on a whim, visiting his schoolmaster brother in Cheyenne. He looked around for Caleb. He bet the boy had never even seen rock candy.
Women could trust a man who had seen the world. Clearly, the man had been around.
The stories got a good response, I think, because a woman later gave me this drawing on a napkin. It is a self-portrait of her masturbating on a ladder.
I will be reading two of my brief, brilliant, and poignant classics dealing with Lincoln Logs, anal sex, and the American West tomorrow night at Freddy & Eddy's Emporium as part of the "Surprises" edition of the In the Flesh reading series, hosted by Carly Milne.
Q. But I hate you, Grams. I mean, I really hate you. Are there any other reasons I should go? A. Yes. Not only will there be free cupcakes and (aside from me) a witty, engaging, and attractive audience, but there will also be Nina Hartley reading from her own work, "Shining City" author Seth Greenland, Thrillist.com's Jeff Miller, and "Communicatrix" Colleen Wainwright (I don't know what this means, but it sounds dangerous).
The fun begins at 7:30, way down in Mar Vista on Venice Blvd., and there is a cupcake-defrayal charge of $10.
Porn Star Karaoke remains the best thing to do anywhere near a Von's supermarket anywhere in Southern California, and tonight is the fifth anniversary of the venerable institution, which in its half decade has seen the rise and fall of three generations of porn talent. Remember Brooklyn? Jersey Jaxin? Keiko?
At least Flower Tucci is still around.
I don't attend PSK as much as I used to because I'm training for the Olympics, but I will be there tonight in a rare personal appearance.
The newly-remodeled Sardo's Bar is a Fantasy Island of porn's great expectations, and proprietor Seymour is both Mr. Rourke and Tattoo. Come down to the junction of the 134 and the decline of civilization and bring some money.
It was a different time when porn movies were shown in theatres, and they created an uneasy community of people with a common secret, and a similar residue on their shoes. But after a generation of porn for personal devices, porn movies are creeping back into theatres.
I watched Bill Lustig's 1977 film The Violation of Claudia at the New Beverly Theatre this weekend. Part of a midnight series that will include a tribute to John Holmes, Claudia pulled in an audience of about 30, including director David Aaron Clark, who filmed part of his Asia Noir 5 at the New Beverly in 2006.
10 bucks took care of admission, a coffee, and Junior Mints, and the show started following giveaways from Hustler and an autographed poster of Sharon Mitchell, who played Claudia. Unfortunately neither Lustig, who had the flu, nor Mitchell could be there in person.
Lustig (who wrote and directed the movie as Billy Bagg) would later become a cult icon for his trio of Maniac Cop movies, the first two of which starred Bruce Campbell. He now runs Blue Underground, a national treasure of a company that re-releases forgotten and cult movies.
I was not prepared for the Violation of Claudia for several reasons. The story of a repressed trophy wife who tries her hand at affairs and prostitution, Claudia was shot well and acted well. Both Mitchell, who looked at the time like an attractive cross between Ellen Barkin and Joan Cusack, and tennis pro/pimp (not enough hours at either job, I guess) Jamie Gillis were believable and intent on their roles. And there was a twist ending that literally made the audience shout.
I told Clark I liked the ending, and he said, "That was the seventies. You expected better."
The audience was a mix of hipsters, thirty-something film fans, and the occasional person stereotypes dictate encountering in an adult theatre at midnight. When a particularly egregious hairy bush or set of hairy balls appeared on screen, parts of the crowd shrieked.
Pornsaints, the quasi-religious outfit that makes today's porn stars look like Patrick Nagel paintings, is hosting its second art show in conjunction with Hotmovies, a porn e-tailer, at Philadelphia's Transit nightclub on August 2.
"Art needs something naughty and porn needs something classy," demanded Pornsaints founder Francesco D'Isa, fists clenched. Works by D'Isa, Katelan Foisy, Jeff Faerber, Julio Aguilera, Molly Crabapple, and Jorden Hale will be displayed at the party, which also celebrates Hotmovies' 100,000th movie sale.
The evening of booze, burlesque dancers, and boobs will be hosted by Joanna Angel and Re-Penetrator director Doug Sakmann.
Did you know that Edmonton, Alberta, is the northernmost North American city with a population of over one million? Neither did I. Nor did Nikki Benz.
But I know we feel a lot closer to Edmonton now that I know Nikki Benz is going there for an in-store appearance. It is as if Benz, born in Toronto, is our gateway to the mysterious North.
"This will be a great chance for me to meet more of my Canadian fans," said Benz, who will be appearing this Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. (Canadian) at the new Hush Adult Superstore at 9876 63 Avenue. "Even though I'm from Canada, the only places I've been are my home town of Toronto and Vancouver."
So Benz probably did not know that citizens of Edmonton are known as Edmontonians (though, as a Torontonian, she probably could have guessed) and that the city is host to North America's largest mall, the West Edmonton Mall. In fact, Benz could drive the 17 km across the Saskatchewan River to the mall after her appearance.
I'm really excited for her. I hope she brings me back a caribou or some socialized medicine.
Even casual observers of adult awards will notice that the same people and projects tend to be nominated over the course of the several annual trophy presentations, from the AVNs in January to Tampa's NightMoves in October. This not only squeezes every last cent of possible revenue from the same movies, contract stars, and sponsoring studios, but it also provides an opportunity for regional adult biz personalities to get together.
Like many of the other award shows, the NightMoves event is the high point of an accompanying convention. Among the dozens of porn personalities committed to this year's NightMoves is the sturdy and capable Veronica Rayne (pictured).
But since NightMoves is the only significant east coast awards show and because it originated from an erotic dancer magazine, the 16-year-old show does have its own style and flavor and, because it is still well under the radar of consumers who only think of AVN and Las Vegas when they think of adult awards, the hijinks in Florida are allowed to be more raucous.
Plus, Florida is like Mecca for strippers. Going there is like a pilgrimage for them.
Here are the nominees for the 2008 NightMoves awards, to be presented October 13:
2008 Finalists BEST FEMALE PERFORMER Ashlynn Brooke Belladonna Bree Olson Eva Angelina Jenna Haze Jesse Jane Kaylani Lei Penny Flame Sasha Grey Stormy Daniels
BEST MALE PERFORMER Barrett Blade Evan Stone James Dean Manual Ferrara Marco Banderas Marcus London Randy Spears Shane Diesel Tommy Gunn
BEST DIRECTOR Belladona Bill Fisher B. Skow D.Cypher Eli Cross Jules Jordan Robby D Stormy Daniels
BEST NEW STARLET Alexis Texas Audrey Bitoni Kayden Kross Moxxie Maddron Ryder Skye Stoya Tera Wray Tori Black
BEST FEATURE DANCER Carmen Hart Gina Lynn Jesse Jane Lexi Lamour Stormy Daniels Sunny Lane Teagan Teri Weigel Vivian West
BEST FEATURE PRODUCTION Black Widow - Wicked Pictures Cheerleaders - Digital Playground Dark City - Adam & Eve Fashionistas Safado: Berlin - Evil Angel Oracle - Wicked Pictured Twins Do Science - Vivid Entertainment UpLoad - SexZ Pictures
BEST COMEDY / PARODY Bree's Slumber Party - Adam & Eve Carolina Jones & The Broken Covenant - Adam & Eve Not Another Porn Movie - Bad Seed / Burning Angel Not The Brady's XXX - X Play / Hustler Video Operation Desert Stormy - Wicked Pictures Spunk'd The Movie - 6969 Entertainment (EDITOR'S NOTE: This movie has not won a goddamn thing this year. Not to slam any other movie on this list [because who has the time?], but it is much better than any of them) Stood Up - Vivid Entertainment
BEST SERIES Bang Bus - Bang Brothers Productions Big Wet Asses - Elegant Angel Chica Boom - Kick Ass Pictures Couples Seduce Teens - Pink Visual Flesh Hunter - Jules Jordan Jack's Playground - Digital Playground Meet The Fuckers - Zero Tolerance
BEST ALL SEX / GONZO RELEASE Big Wet Asses #13 - Elegant Angel Bring 'Um Young #26 - Anabolic Chemistry 3 - Vivid Cock Pigs - Evil Angel E For Eva - Evil Angel / Jonni Darkko Jack's Teen America #20 - Digital Playground Teradise Island 2 - Teravision / Vivid
BEST ALL GIRL / GIRL RELEASE Belladonna Fucking Girls #5 - Evil Angel Bree & Kayden - Adam & Eve Intimate Moments #12 "Sensual Intimacies" - Abagail Productions/Abby Winters Lesbian Daydreams "Older Women / Younger Girls" - Sweetheart Video No Man's Land #43 - Video Team Predator 2 - Wicked Women Seeking Women #40 - Girlfriend Films
BEST PRODUCTION COMPANY Adam & Eve Digital Playground Evil Angel Hustler Video Jules Jordan Video Pink Visual Productions Red Light District SexZ Pictures Vivid Entertainment Wicked Pictures
Photographer Ed Fox (whose picture of the newly-minted Noname Jane debuted on this site a week ago) is displaying his work for Garage Magazine at a group show at San Francisco's Minna Gallery.
"Full Custom Living: The Art of Garage Magazine" is a group show featuring 26 contributors to the magazine devoted to custom cars, hot rods, and the art they inspire.
Fox' book "Glamour from the Ground Up" is, for lack of a better phrase, hands-down the most popular coffee table book on display in my office, attracting even the people who say they don't like porn. Fox' depictions of fleshy, hot-blooded vixens - each of whom has feet - are frank, compelling, and accessible with just enough professional affectation to make the viewer comfortable that he paid for a work of art.
In other words, you'd hang these pictures in a garage, but they don't look like they were shot in a garage (except for the photos that were actually shot in a garage).
As Governor of the State of California and one of its largest landowners, I was interested in how Fox, a Mexican-American and native Angeleno, approached his work, which seems to be particularly reflective of Los Angeles.
Gram: What do you think makes an L.A. setting instantly recognizable in a photograph?
Fox: The traffic and smog? Since I don't visit many other places, it's hard to know. Maybe it's the whole package: the models, their clothes, and the architecture.
Gram: You can see why L.A.'s architecture is a certain way, and even how the clothes reflect the environment. But the models are particular to L.A. as well?
Fox: You just know how nice it would feel to squeeze them. It's the same reason I like a meaty foot, because there's more to squeeze. it's 'fleshy' instead of hard. I don't like it when the models start approaching 30 and start getting worried so they feel they have to work out extra hard and end up too lean and muscular. I think we are attracted to the fleshy girls because we are so used to seeing fake, overly manicured models (bleached hair, fake tits, tans, piercings etc.) that when these natural beauties come along, our jaws drop and we say 'where did you come from?'
The pictures on this page are of Jelena Jenson, Aria Giovanni, and Casey Parker.
Gram: You get day laborers from Home Depot to pose with the likes of Kelly Madison, Tall Goddess, and No Name Jane (the former Violet Blue). I can imagine this beats low-cost caulking for Glendale slumlords.
Fox: Since I speak Spanish fluently, I kind of had a leg up which also allowed these guys to trust me or maybe feel more comfortable. The models just go with whatever I tell them and the ones that go with it always turn out the best results. Tall Goddess I remember always wanted more. She'd round them all up like cattle and everyone just had a great time. I don't know who got more out of it, the workers or her!
Gram: How much did you pay the Home Depot guys?
Fox: Are you kidding? Being in the presence of these lovelies was payment enough. I thought of it as me bringing them these gifts. Like the 'untouchable' girls from the magazines would just fall out of the sky and land in front of them.
Gram: In the foreword to "Glamour," (Leg Show editor) Dian Hanson makes note of the shyness of some fetish photographers. What is that about?
Fox: We foot fetishists come in all different forms. Some are blatant and others are more secretive, for a few reasons. I feel uncomfortable talking about it because people think it's weird and just don't understand. "Why feet?" "I don't know; why breasts or why blondes versus brunette?"
...If anything, foot fetishists have that one extra female body part to appreciate when those who don't get it are missing out.
...Also, it's a little more exciting or 'dirty' to keep the fetish on the down-low. it then becomes more of a voyeuristic thing.
Gram: How do models who don't know you respond to "Take off your shoes," or, is there an attitude a good foot model shares with the photographer?
Fox: If a girl knows I have a foot fetish and in public says "oh here, look at my feet" and throws her shoe off and puts it in front of my face or on my lap, it totally ruins it. There's no going for the kill. Most likely that girl will not have nice feet anyway. Just because a girl takes care of her feet and gets pedicures weekly, doesn't mean she has nice feet. It's about shape, or size, odor or even how she teases you with it without her even knowing she's doing it.
The AVN Awards show gets bigger every year, and this January the event was covered by Showtime, which is getting chummier and chummier with the adult industry and which recently broadcast the event.
Here are some images from the show.
"You're one of those people I want to rescue," Dave Navarro said to Joanna Angel.
"I'm actually doing quite well for myself, thanks," said Angel.
When he's not hawking New Balance footwear, Navarro has been working with Teravision as a director and appearing at adult industry events.
People in the adult industry have varied reactions to Navarro. Some welcome his Jane's Addiction/Red Hot Chili Peppers fame but others say he is another mainstream celeb who has not "paid his dues" to the porn business.
This sentiment isn't exclusive to porn; it's just more noticeable. Success breeds contempt, especially when you're not "one of us."
A similar contingent within the business begrudges outsiders making money from their takes on porn. The writer David Foster Wallace was beset upon by calling an often vulgar industry "vulgar" and pointing out spelling errors in AVN magazine {excerpt}. "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk had some factual and logistical inaccuracies in his porn-themed book "Snuff" and porn blogger Gene Ross said this:
But in Palahniuk’s novel titled “Snuff,” fiction, it seems, is stranger and, apparently, a whole lot better than truth. Such is the basic fact - that most of what Palahniuk writes about here, bears little resemblance to what you’d come across in the real porn world.
If that’s the case, why should we quibble about minor details getting in the way of a good story, you might ask? Well, for Doubleday to cash in on a really bad, tedious book with Palahniuk’s name attached to it, for one thing. Although I've yet to come across a review that hasn't gone out of its way to kiss Palahniuk's ass which was one of my reasons, aside from the obvious, for grabbing a copy to begin with.
Or put it this way. If some Joe Blow nobody had submitted this idea, the publishing company would have been firing off rejection slips faster than premature ejaculation.
I say that overcoming heroin addiction has allowed Navarro to test in to the porn business. But Joanna Angel does not need rescuing.
Teagan Presley returned to the AVN Awards after bouts of having a family. Red carpet co-host Kirsten Price said, "You look so beautiful! I can't believe how tiny you are!" or "You look so beautiful; I can't believe how tiny you are!"
It looks as if Navarro is talking with a cardboard cutout of Tera Patrick, the way I often talk to a cardboard cutout of Chewbacca. The reality is that Patrick is ready for a pose a millionth of a second before a camera flashes.
Jenna Jameson and Tito Ortiz stop by. Jenna is chipper and talks about the future, what with her company being nominated for 52 awards. She does not tell Navarro of the bomb she will drop onstage.
Jameson's speech, as captured by the Showtime coverage, seemed rambling. Prior to announcing Stormy Daniels as the inaugural Jenna Jameson Crossover Star of the Year, Jameson said, "It's apropos that this award is named after me."
She also talked about being battered in the mainstream press, which had called her skinny and divorced. "But I'm not divorced," she said, and thanked boyfriend Tito Ortiz for taking care of her.
Then she said, "Everything's beautiful...I want to be honest for a second. Honesty is key. Honesty is key. I will never, ever, ever spread my legs again in this industry, ever." (In a previous report I got the number of "ever"s wrong, but I had quoted from AVN).
She moved on after this, and declared Clubjenna to be an adult industry powerhouse. It was an odd moment. Two months later, Clubjenna released a five-year-old "new" Jenna movie.
Navarro with muse Sasha Grey. I am in the background of this sho
It seems like only a week has passed since I finally finished running stories about the 2008 AVN Awards (at which another Jenna daintily crossed her legs and said "No more"), but you can rest assured that today's announcement that Belladonna and Jenna Haze are to host the 26th AVN Awards on January 10, 2009 in Las Vegas will be the last thing I write about them. 
