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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Being there: "We Did Porn"
 I haven't read many porn autobiographies outside of personal websites; not Jenna's, not Ron Jeremy's, not Christy Canyon's.And this is not because I don't think each will have something interesting to say, but because I have a feeling that each will be uniformly interesting. Is "started her own company and married an MMA fighter" really that much different from "can suck his own cock"? So bios from the top tiers of porn stardom, unless they can actually name names, don't really help as vivid documents of our time, and don't tell stories I can't already predict. But I found Zak Smith's "We Did Porn" a thrilling read. Smith, a Yale graduate and artist, won a date wth Joanna Angel in 2005 and found himself (you'll have to read the book) a staple in the shortlived steveporn phenomenon. With a mohawk, tattoos, and facial piercings Smith, who renamed himself Zak Sabbath, looked unlike any other male performer, and only Rob Rotten and Matt Zane came close. I met Smith in February of 2006, on the first day of his first shoot in Los Angeles, Benny Profane's "Barbed Wire Kiss." I was present for several of the events in the book, which Smith describes in a detail that, if you like this site and its imitators, you'll apprehend and enjoy. He fills the book with science fiction, pop, and art references (those things are mutually exclusive) and depicts the plight of the modern pornographer against the backdrop of America in the Bush II years. But Smith in his way also doesn't name names. Instead, he makes pseudonyms on pseudonyms (I am Monty Pentagram, a hat tip to my dealmaking and Satanism), that are themselves clever but unnecessary, in that the time it takes to figure out who "Gary Slynt" is is roughly double the time it takes to remember that all autobiographies are subjective and Mr. Slynt can write his own damn autobiography if Smith got something wrong. But Smith believes that using "real" porn names would cloud the purpose of the book. "I feel like the audience would be limited to people who wanted to know about those specific people--like you're not going to read a Lillian Hellman bio if you don't want to read about Lillian Hellman--and what I want it to be about is a certain miniculture that exists in Los Angeles in 2009 and which may or may not tell you something about the way the rest of the world works," he said. Smith does not court an audience of people who want to make love like a porn star. "My wanna-be audience is people who like to read good books," he said. "Like actually good books like 'Lolita' or 'Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas'. I have only slight illusions that it will reach this audience, rather than the sort of collegey Museum-Of-Sex-visiting people who want bloggy alt porn gossip and to have crazy sex vicariously while looking for a dentist to marry." Smith sent the above quote to me a month ago when I received the book (it went on sale today) and I took issue with the idea of steveporn girls wanting to marry dentists. But oddly enough, at Erotica LA I met a lapsed steveporn girl (she's in the book, too) who told me that she was looking for a nice rich Jewish guy to marry. Go figure. And look at me with the bloggy alt porn gossip. When I received Smith's book, I looked at its excellent binding and paper stock and saw that it had been published by a company and not Smith himself. I saw that it was weighty and densely written. I realized I would get calls and e-mails from industry people who were jealous and/or felt Smith, toting all of four years in porn, didn't deserve to write a memoir. But he did write one, and it's the best one I've read. "The thing I worry about most, regarding porn-insider reaction is: Who the fuck am I to be writing this?" Smith said. "Pretty much nobody, I know. But I figure though I may know less about porn than, say, Max Hardcore, I know more than George Plimpton or Barbara Ehrenreich ever did when they wrote their books about stuff they wrote about. And way more than most other writers who get flown out to Vegas for a weekend in order to do some 8-page thing for Esquire." Smith will be reading from "We Did Porn" at bookstores around the country starting tonight at Book Soup. He sent me the following poem: 2 Book Soup Los Angeles, CA Wednesday July 1 7:00 pm www.booksoup.com Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Barbed Wire Confidential; I am the world's greatest porn director See also: Zak Smith Labels: "joanna angel", books, interviews, steveporn, zak sabbath ¶ Wednesday, July 01, 2009 1 Comments Links to this post 
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Noname Jane: The cross and the pentagram
 It was a pleasure seeing Noname Jane at Erotica L.A. this weekend. I didn't notice at the time that she was wearing a pentagram, but that might have been the way Satan wanted it.I first met Noname Jane under a different name (I was then known as Ronnie James Dio) in 2006 at the Erotic Exotic Ball in San Francisco. The event is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year so I was looking at my old daguerrotypes.  Here she is being crucified onstage in front of 3,000 people. The more things change...UPDATE: "I wear a pentagram most of the time," said Jane, "and I'm wearing it in most of my movies. That and my butterfly are how my fans recognize me because I change my hair (and with it, my appearance) so much. I almost didn't wear it that day, but as soon as we pulled up to Erotica LA and saw the protesters, I put it on." "You rabble rouser," I said. "They usually won't bother with you if you're wearing a pentagram," Jane said. UPDATE 2: Not to get all David Letterman/Sarah Palin (especially because Noname Jane was not offended by the joke), but Ms. Jane is not a Satanist. Her tastiness might be diabolical, but that is not her fault. Read the comments (thanks, Outis) for a description of what the pentagram means. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Noname Jane to start working with John Does again; Noname Jane is born as Violet Blue departs See also: Exotic Erotic Ball; Noname Jane Labels: BDSM, ela09, events, fetish, interviews, noname jane, san francisco, Satan, WGL ¶ Tuesday, June 16, 2009 4 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Kayden Kross, Tommy Gunn, and "Rawhide II": Aloha spirit in the Vazquez Rocks
 Tommy Gunn offers Kayden Kross a pineapple on the set of Adam & Eve's Rawhide II, which wraps a ten-day filming schedule tonight with multiple land and water-based explosions. Also face-based explosions if you know what I mean."In general, fans don't talk dirty to me," said Kross, who plays the nice girl in this Mysterious Drifter in a Town with a Secret movie directed by Andre Madness. "It's usually Bree (Olson) who gets the dirty talkers. And she talks dirty right back." The action movie, casting Olson and Kross against type as the ruthless conniver and the squeakly-clean homebody, respectively, has been filming in the dusty and vast Canyon Country area north of Los Angeles, a place where blowing things up is not only tolerated but also encouraged. Madness said that Adam & Eve's original Rawhide, starring Carmen Luvana, was one of the company's best sellers. "But that one was a period piece and (Rawhide II) is set in the same area, and Kayden rides a horse, but it's more of a reboot than a sequel."  Kross said that Adam & Eve sells a lot of movies with naked girls and animals on the cover."So we've got me, a horse, a nice dog, and Bree cracking a whip on the cover of this one," she said. I still didn't get the idea of a reboot. Evan Stone also starred in the original but in this one plays an evil sheriff.  "This movie is like Roadhouse-meets-Rambo," Gunn said. "I shoot at people with a crossbow."The set of Rawhide II had not only an excellent barbecue chef ("I'm just doing this on my own today with a little Weber Grill," he said, "but when my company does the X Games we have two trailers full of grills around us. I look like Neil Peart") but also a dedicated pyrotechnics wrangler, who called himself a "powder guy."  "I'm pretty much deaf," he said. "But I've learned to read lips pretty good. I'm better at hearing men than women because women's voices are higher.""That's probably a good thing," said Gunn. Adam & Eve is getting very ambitious with its feature pornos. The company's 8th Day will be released on September 9, in time for AVN Awards consideration, and Rawhide II will be available and hyped by the January, 2010 Adult Entertainment Expo, which will make the new title visible to the most fans. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: On The 8th Day, God blew up Boston See also: Adam & Eve Labels: "adam and eve", andre madness, carmen luvana, Evan Stone, interviews, Kayden Kross, set visits, Tommy Gunn ¶ Thursday, June 11, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Deep end of the gangbang
 By the end of the year, Sabrina Deep estimates she will have been unloaded upon by 2,000 men in 20 cities. And she doesn't mean they will have told her their problems.Nope, those 2,000 Sabrina Deep fans will come on her face, hair, neck, chest, ears, eyebrows, eyes, forehead and, more likely than not, miss her entirely and come on the rug. ("In Italy we say 'Sbrodo!'" Deep said.) Her 2009 World Bukkake Tour, which began in Milan on March 28 and which will wind its way through London, Paris, Budapest, Vancouver, and several stops in the United States, including New York on August 29 and Los Angeles on October 17, is the second such endeavor for Deep, 30, who also holds the record for Most Gangbanged Woman on the Web. Deep was born in Montana, spent several years in Canada and London, and now lives in Florence. Because terminology changes across international boundaries, I asked her for some definitions.  Gram: Is this definition correct: A gangbang is when a group comes on you (sbrodo!) after using your vagina, mouth, ass, or ear as a source of friction whereas a bukkake is where they don't have those options? Sabrina Deep: Technically it is correct I suppose. As a rules breaker, though, I like to have some friction in my bukkake parties at times, while I cut the ear option off my gangbang performances. Gram: So a bukkake can turn into a gangbang at your house? That sounds wonderful. But I'd assume if it started off as a gangbang and then you said, "No, this is now a bukkake," people would get angry. Deep: I don't know if it's an asset or a bad thing, but while I'm having sex I don't see faces and bodies, really; I'm all into the sex and the chemistry of it. Gram: That sounds like a management problem. Luckily you have an interested advocate in your husband. At what point - if any - does your devoted husband say, "Now wait a minute - you are gangbanging my wife incorrectly"? Deep: When I make him a sign that somebody is fucking me wrong; I wouldn't mind much but he can't stand it. Gram: Hygiene tips for potential gangbangers or bukkakistas? Deep: Bleach your parts whose odour resembles a harbour or a piece of French Brie, cut your nails really short (and I mean all nails from all your extremeties), shave your intimate parts and possibly your beard, brush yout teeth, and suck a mint. Oh...and wear clean underwear after you have bleached.  Gram: Your website gives information about providing documentation of age and a clean HIV test, but what about creepiness? Many women have a "No" list of men who they won't work with. How does it work in a bukkake?Deep: I really like sex... Gram: Today a woman followed me into the store and tried to invite me to her Jehovah's Witness meeting. I refused because she was creepy. Do you ever encounter creepy potential gangbangers and what makes them creepy to you? Deep: Yeah you meet a few creepies who wanna fuck your ears, at times. That's why I always keep a couple of well-built guys around. Gram: Other than myself and Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who is the ideal potential gangbanger and why? Deep: The silly one, funny one and big one like you I suppose. Thank God there are a few around who travel and are not as sedentary as you are. Gram: Well I do love my seats and cushions. Gram: Do you take breaks between the banging? And what is the correct verb? "I am gangbanging you" "I am participating in a gangbang with you as the surface"? "I am banging you in a gang"? Deep: I don't like to take breaks...it breaks the good feeling. That's why for my own productions I "use" my fans rather than pro actors: we can go on 'til the fun is there. I suppose "WE are gangbanging you" would work; for the singular, "I'm fucking you" is just fine, no matter if other people are doing the same. But then what do I know. Gram: More than anyone at the Oxford English Dictionary on this matter.  Gram: What would you say is the most important element of Gangbang Etiquette?Deep: Don't fuck my ears. Gram: You are appearing on Howard Stern's show on June 25 - in between your dates in Berlin and London. Will there be some gangbanging with the cast? Deep: God knows. I've been told that I won't know what I shall expect when there. Isn't it exciting? Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Gang bang across the water; Sabrina Deep to (be a gangbang) surface in 12 cities See also: Sabrina Deep's World Bukkake Tour Labels: bukkake, events, gang bang, interviews, sabrina deep ¶ Wednesday, June 10, 2009 3 Comments Links to this post
Sex mit Stoya macht frei
 Stoya is being coy-a about the rumor that Marilyn Manson shaved a swastika on her pubes."Well gosh Grams," she said, "I have yet to see a recent photograph of my vagina and its pubic topiary, so right now it's all just hearsay and rumors, isn't it?" Yes. And that is why I contacted you before writing anything. But is it true that Marilyn Manson, 18 years your senior, shaved a symbol more provocative than the No Fat Chicks t-shirt onto you? If so, how did he do it? "If it was true," she said, "I'd assume it involved some hair clippers and maybe shaving cream. Possibly a stencil and pencil of some sort - " Okay, I get it - " - A bathtub or other source of water would probably come in handy in that hypothetical situation as well," said Stoya.  Oh, Stoya. What has happened to us?I remember my initial rise to fame. I felt like a princess. But then there were detractors who said that Grams, like Icarus, was getting too close to the Sun and would fall! A sacrifice needed to be made. I started dating Lita Ford and staying out late. I appeared on the cover of Adam Film World with Traci Lords. I forgot that my fame needed to be gently shepherded like a bird or, to avoid mixing metaphors, like a bird made of sheep.  Whether it was a publicity stunt, poorly calculated lie, or our friend Stoya caught up in someone else's thoughtless self-promotion, I'll only say that when Stoya showed me her vagina it didn't look like a concentration camp; it looked like an analog playground.Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Stoya in ancient times; Gram Ponante announces Oscars of Porn; Someone's in the shower with Stoya; Stoya finds pierogies in Philadelphia; Does Aryan have the reich stuff? See also: Stoya Labels: celebrities, controversy, hype, interviews, stoya ¶ Wednesday, June 10, 2009 2 Comments Links to this post
Friday, May 01, 2009
Transsexuals and the Girlfriends??? Experience
 Unlike many carnivores, I am interested in how sausages are made. I marvel that there are factories that have created beakless chickens for my McNuggets. I have been known to send back a steak because it didn't have enough of that great Fear taste.But the occasional transsexual movie that makes its way to the (she)mailroom of Gram Ponante Towers, Yurt, Gender Reassignment Clinic, and Helipad is, I admit, an unfortunate aspect of an otherwise fun job. Having sex with a transsexual strikes me as about as much fun as having sex with a griffin. But that doesn't mean that the majestic transsexual is not an object of great marketing potential, like a square watermelon, or that I don't recognize her appeal to a new generation of thrill-seeking porn fans. So, following my review of Third World Media's Brazil-set Girlfriends???, I spoke with its director, Ed Hunter, who has been shooting tranny and "straight" Latin titles since 2000. Gram: I've been to Brazil a few times and recognize the ear-shaped phone booths in Girlfriends??? but nothing else. What cities did you shoot in?This is similar to the mosaicing that goes on in some Japanese porn. Gram: I haven't seen a TS-on-girl movie before and I wonder - and I'm sure this is a naive question - if you encounter any resistance among performers. That said, there are some real enthusiastic performances in this movie that made me think there wasn't any resistance to the pairings. Hunter: When we cast for movies, we find out what the performers like and try to make them happy by pairing them with someone who turns them on. Some like specific things and then there are some who will fuck anything, guy, girl, shemale - Gram: - Griffin? Hunter: Well -  Gram: In Girlfriends??? there are bookend scenes, shot outside and in showers, in which the performers supposedly make arrangements and clean up afterward. I would have also liked a "Crying Game"-type moment where the girl is surprised at what she finds under the hood. In your experience, do girls go for trannies in Brazil? How about here? If this is a normal occurrence, who is usually the aggressor in that type of relationship?Hunter: Mostly girls liike boys and shemales like boys. Some are bi-sexual or tri-sexual. When we find people that like things a little different, we try to hook them up. We have done scenes with four people - two guys, a shemale, and a girl where the guys fuck each other and the shemale fucks the girl in the same scene. We can stack them up where a guy is on the bottom with a guy on top of him and the shemale on top of that guy and the girl on top standing the other three. It looks good until they really get fucking hard and all fall over - Gram: That would be an OSHA violation here... Hunter: ...then we cut and start over again.
See also: Third World Media Labels: brazil, ed hunter, interviews, third world media, transsexual ¶ Friday, May 01, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Anus in Wonderland or: Aiden Starr is Furmented
 That one of Aiden Starr's former porn names is Lolita (for obvious reasons) and because Lewis Carroll just loved kids, it is wholly appropriate that Starr was chosen for a tea party scene in Stormy Daniels' upcoming trip through the looking glass, Tormented.Daniels (more on our esteemed colleague from Louisiana later) suggested that Starr's character, who played a rabbit, have a furry butt plug. "Do you have an anal scene in this movie?" I asked. "No," Starr said. "But the plug holds on the tail."  Starr needed to walk around with the plug, but it hurt."Is that glitter in your butthole?" she was asked. "No, it's probably blood," she said.  But Starr is a trooper, and she gamely posed, butt plug on board, atop and around the impressive set in North Hollywood. As it was Earth Day, I even persuaded her to eat a carrot ("I'm just going to step into the bathroom and paint my penis orange for a minute" director Jonathan Morgan said).Though the 5'0" evil pixie did have a suggestion for Wicked's photographer. "I'm not very long," she said, "so spreading me around on stuff doesn't usually work."  As it came time for her to shoot her scene with Daniels (as Alice) and Mick Blue (as the Mad Hatter), Starr took a long look at the furry butt plug."It looks like I shat a rabbit's head," she said.  She stood next to Daniels, who towered over her but who looked like she wanted to put Starr in her nonexistent pockets."You look like a trial size," Daniels said. Reconsidering her furry plug, Starr said, "I look like a cat that got out of the yard." Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Nerd girls keep on truckin'; Egg Nog latte and Aiden Starr See also: Wicked Labels: aiden starr, interviews, set visits, Stormy Daniels, the ass, wicked ¶ Thursday, April 23, 2009 3 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Kimberly Kane: Rainmaker
 Sweetheart of Portland Kimberly Kane channeled a little bit of the Scottish moors when she shot a scene recently with the UK's Harmony Films, making for a Southern California day that was tinged with mourning, regret, and the faraway bleating of sheep."Shoot it on her pussy hair, rub it up and down, then stick it in her ass," director Gazzman said, sounding just like Robert Burns. "You're a dirtbag," Kane said to her director, sounding like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Kimberly Kane is an excellent director in her own right. If you don't believe me, watch her Live in My Secrets. But she was here as a hired holster on a beautiful Porn Valley day that, by virtue of her pale skin and newly (and originally) dark hair, made it seem like it was raining outside, waves were crashing against barren crags, and lighthouses were illuminating the way for Norman invaders. "You need me to stretch my asshole a little?" she said.  Elsewhere on set, Tori Black was discussing lingerie with Gazzman, who has brought the tradition of eating biscuits on porn sets to America, rather than smoking meth."I find biscuits are an excellent afternoon snack," he said, then put some underwear on his head. Harmony has its own stores in England, where it distributes American porn titles throughout Europe. Here, Harmony has recently begun handling its own distribution after several years with Evil Angel. The company sends a small crew to the U.S. every six months to shoot the dirtier, more glamorous American talent. "We'll also be going to Australia for the Sexpo," said Dave West, a Harmony director from Chicago. There they will shoot a couple of scenes with an Abby Winters girl gone good. And then the company will film scenes for another Porn Week, the event where fans get to interact with adult performers much less expensively than if they'd hired Anthony Pellicano to stalk them..  Back on set, Kane and DeSergio, who is British himself, are finishing up."Your dick is an enigma," Kane says to DeSergio. But she doesn't explain what she means, so it's like an enigma wrapped in an enigma. I became profoundly uncomfortable, as my own laser-focused sense of journalistic procedure behooved me to ask her to clarify, and I just didn't want to spend any time asking questions about penises. Finally I thought of you, and did my job. "Why is his penis an enigma?" I asked Kane. "Have your parts ever been described enigmatically before?" I asked DeSergio. "He was hard all the time he was fucking me," Kane said, "then he popped, and now he's still rock hard," she said. While appreciating that for the compliment I'm sure it was, both DeSergio and I realized he'd have to operate a motor vehicle soon, which would not be pleasant.  Kane stood by the window. She looked a little like Courtney Love playing Althea Flynt, without the Crazy. It was 80 degrees outside but she looked like she would be more at home, just as naked, in a house with rain falling on the roof. But it won't rain in L.A. for the next 10 months.But still... "Don't sit on the couch," Kane said, pointing to where she and DeSergio had just performed marital acts. "It's a little moist."
See also: Harmony Films, Kimberly Kane Labels: abby winters, dave west, england, gazzman, harmony films, interviews, Kimberly Kane, set visits, tony desergio, tori black ¶ Tuesday, March 31, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Pornic Voices: Simply Jimmy D
 James DiGiorgio is one of those guys who has been working in Porn Valley for so long that nothing surprises him. I haven't seen him in a couple of years, but he continues to work as a director and/or photographer for companies like Harmony Films, Teravision, Vivid, and Hustler.(Jimmy would understand that it was incumbent on me to include a naked Kimberly Kane in a story about him. It's the way the business is.) "Don't lower your rate for anyone, Grams," Jimmy said, "or you'll never get it back." "Wait," I said, "people are supposed to pay me?" Jimmy is very likely the originator of an axiom that has been in my mind lately. I got an e-mail from a former porn performer this month on the second anniversary of an event that accelerated the death of his career. He used the free version of an e-mail service that allowed him to write anonymously. The letter was poorly written, threatening, and abusive. The author couldn't resist hinting at his true identity, the hallmark of any cyberstalker, and the letter read like "The Catcher in the Rye" for any borderline retarded self-hating homosexual recidivist thug who should commit suicide to save his offspring the shame of knowing the abortion he has for a dad. Oh well. Occupational Hazard. Anyway, it brought to mind the maxim that you can't flunk out of porn. Could this guy be the one exception?  And as I was talking with Jimmy today we mentioned a few people, some in jail, some out of the business by their own choice, some still working on the fringes, who would have been booted out of any self-respecting business years ago for their incompetence and/or antisocial behavior."You can't flunk out of porn," DiGiorgio said, and I thought of the anonymous letter writer as the exception that proved the rule. "You know, I believe I coined that saying." "You're kidding," I said. It was like meeting the guy who invented "Good enough for government work" or "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers." "Yeah," he said. "It was an interview I did a few years ago." Of any quote from this area code that should go into Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations, it's that one. There is a chance that Mike South first spun that construction. It does seem like something he'd say, too. But Jimmy laid (tentative) claim to it, and I believe him. If anybody was making real money in this business anymore, they should give Jimmy a quarter for each time "you can't flunk out of porn" was used in conversation. He'd be able to buy a Red Sox hat. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Oh JC's Girls, Book II See also: Jimmy D Labels: harmony films, interviews, jimmy d, Kimberly Kane, photographers, pornic voices, veterans ¶ Wednesday, March 25, 2009 2 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, March 12, 2009
If Ryder Skye has you by the frenulum, watch your meringue
 It isn't my penis (mine isn't so small and blue, nor does it fit in a notebook), but Ryder Skye recently drew a penis to illustrate what she was learning in her Human Sexuality and Women's Studies programs at a local university.Score one for the two-dimensional blue male patriarchy, I thought. Me and Dr. Osterman have these ladies coming and going. Unlike porn performers who say they're going to school, Skye is actually going to school. And she is learning that even schools at the center of the porn world are hazy on the subject of pornography. "One of my instructors began a class with 'We all know porn exploits women,'" Skye said. Being a transplant to Los Angeles myself, I am sometimes surprised when I encounter people who don't know much about the porn industry. I just assume every L.A. County resident has a friend, neighbor, or relative who was once a Vivid girl. But Skye says that the amount of misinformation about porn in academia is startling. "We had a woman - kind of a bitter woman - who said 'there is no such thing as real lesbian pornography'," Skye said. "I can't argue with a lot of what people say sometimes without outing myself." "And then someone said that she heard '99 percent of the women in the porn industry had been molested or raped.' Well, 99 percent of the women in America have been molested or raped." (This is a statistic that I have yet to verify.) "'...And I heard there was even a porn awards show,'" quoted Skye. "Stupidity makes me hate humanity." It shouldn't be surprising that, just as there is a new breed of porn-sniffing professors who treat the subject as a publishing platform for suspect theories (see "The Price of Pleasure"), that there are still professors who make damning statements without sampling the material.  And then there are the people who know Skye is a porn performer."I was in a nutrition class with this guy who made a meringue shaped like a penis," Skye said. "He's the type who waits for a reaction. This surprised me. How can you make a meringue penis?" A common misperception of porn performers is that they live and breathe sex. "I didn't think it was possible to be pervy in nutrition class," she said. "But I wasn't surprised, either, when he found 'Ryder Skye' online and started texting me." Skye, who was also a dancer at Hollywood's Cheetahs with former performer Layla Jade, wants to take her work in the sex industry, combine it with her schooling, and translate both into a career as a sex therapist when she leaves porn. She darkens the triangle beneath the glans of the paper penis and tells me it is the frenulum. Jamye Waxman also told me this. Women can't seem to stop telling me this. With all this intimate knowledge of men's secrets, I despair that the time of our hegemony over Earth is running out. I asked her if there was one area where my kind was still dominant.  "The highest rate of AIDS is in married heterosexual white men," she said."YES," I said. "In your FACE." Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Ryder Skye and obsolete technology; The price of The Price of Pleasure See also: Ryder Skye Labels: geekery, interviews, Ryder Skye ¶ Thursday, March 12, 2009 1 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
25 years of Nina Hartley, 50 years of Fantastic
 Nina Hartley, a woman beloved of everyone she meets, turns 50 today."Tonight I've got a hot date," she said. "I'm waiting for the weekend for the fancy dinner." A week seems too short a time to celebrate Nina Hartley. Streets should be closed down. There should be sacrifices or something. But Hartley has always been practical. "I can't have the fancy sex and the fancy dinner the same night," she said. "I'm just not capable." To be fair, "Nina Hartley" is actually 25 this year, which is itself a tremendous achievement in a business one can't even think about until her 18th birthday. But the person who would bring Nina Hartley to life was herself born 50 years ago today. Hartley began performing in the video era, a few years after shooting porn was decriminalized in California. Porn had already changed drastically from its film-only, New York and San Francisco-centric "Golden Age," and Hartley slowly made her name in a world dominated by the likes of Ginger Lynn, Annette Haven, Sharon Mitchell, and Serena. "I was in awe (of the stars) and I wasn't a 'porn star' for several years," Hartley said recently. "Today you make one movie and you get to wear the 'Porn Star' t-shirt. I think you need to get something under your belt first."  Oddly enough, one of Hartley's first movies was the girls-only underbelt romp Anal Annie And The Backdoor Housewives ("Shot Live on Video Tape"), which co-starred Serena. According to the Internet Adult Film Database, Hartley has appeared in 815 movies, which probably places her output well past 1,000. There is not a millimeter of Hartley the world has not seen.But there's still some mystery in all that nudity, which is something the public doesn't seem to apprehend about porn. Things can hide in plain sight. While not every performer can boast of such a rich inner life as Hartley, she stresses the value of not buying the "porn star" lifestyle wholesale. "Go home," she said recently. "Read a book. Open a savings account. Have non-porny friends." Hartley has maintained an admirable throughline in her career, taking every opportunity to educate women in particular and the public in general about porn's role in relationships and society. "The public perception of porn has changed dramatically," she said. "At [porn conventions], at first, it was all guys. Then guys with horrified-looking wives. Then women who would get autographs for their husbands. And then young women who would get autographs for themselves."  Born to well-read parents in liberal Berkeley, the person who became Hartley helped effect that change. She had a strong understanding of who she was at an early age, and a Bay Area vibe still looms large in her conversation. "I'm still the Me I thought I was when I first thought the word 'Me' when I was ten," Hartley said today. And I suspect that her San Francisco attitude helped her weather the changes manifested by an Eisenhower-era birth, her early childhood in the turbulent Sixties, and a Me Decade adulthood that made cynics out of people from other parts of the country. Hartley has always had a positive outlook - or at least gives that impression.  The emergence of the MILF and Cougar genre in porn has been a boon to Hartley, although she is a sought-after lecturer who also hosted a groundbreaking series of How To videos for Adam & Eve and co-authored, with husband and #1 fan Ernest Greene, a sex manual ("Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex") that approaches that act and all its variations with a mixture of science, psychoanalysis, and humor, similar to the recent trend in cookbooks.In fact, Hartley herself is like the hostess of a great Thanksgiving dinner, except it's a sexy Thanksgiving dinner; you show up hungry and leave laden with doggie bags. "No, I couldn't," you say. "Really. I can't. You're too generous. I'm full. Well, one more pie." My friend P. Weasels fulfilled a lifelong dream a few years ago when Nina took a strap-on to him. In a tribute to her on Fleshbot he wrote: "You have been getting off to movies starring the legendary Best Ass In Porn now for at least as long as you weren’t before she got into porn 25 years ago." So if you see Nina Hartley any time this year, buy her dinner. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene - O (the power of submission) the places they go; Sex on the nest with Nina Hartley; O2 - The Surrender of O; These milves are on the move! See also: Nina Hartley Labels: annette haven, classic, ernest greene, fleshbot, ginger lynn, interviews, nina hartley, pWeasels ¶ Wednesday, March 11, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, March 02, 2009
Amy Fisher: It's not personal
 I like Amy Fisher a lot. But I think that's as far as she'll let it go. She's in love with someone else."For my entire life I'd go to nightclubs and men would say 'Your girlfriend over there is beautiful, but you're sexy' or 'I want to marry your girlfriend but screw around with you,' Fisher said. "It took me a long time to get over it, but now I'm cashing in." We were talking about how the adult industry is great for defining one's priorities. The story of Amy Fisher is a timeless one: Girl has an affair with married man, shoots man's wife in the face, serves time in jail, becomes a newspaper columnist, reconciles with married man (now divorced) and his former wife, launches an adult career with new husband. It happened in the Bible, in the Gilgamesh epic, in the novels of Charles Dickens, and is the subject of every Bollywood movie ever released (except for Panjit Yayy!, in which the wife is shot in the foot). But Amy Fisher is not letting her place in history carry her away. Instead, the past 18 months have been a lesson in practicality. "Naturally, I didn't start out thinking 'I want to be a porn star,'" Fisher said. "I got my degree in Business Marketing. The movie (Amy Fisher Caught On Tape) did really well. It told me that people really want to see me in this sort of thing. If it's that popular, the decision gets easier to make."  Fisher and her husband of five years, Lou Bellera, shot what would become Amy Fisher Caught on Tape in 2007 (Bellera is a videographer and appeared with Fisher in some of the scenes) and sold the rights to Red Light District, a company the couple is now suing for breach of contract."How did they breach their contract with you?" I asked. "How didn't they?" Fisher said. "They owe us a ton of money." But Fisher says she owns her website, AmyFisher.com, and is also in control of the content of nine pay per view specials, the first of which, "Amy Fisher: Totally Nude & Exposed," debuted in January as a test of of her staying power, and which did so well it led to eight more being commissioned. I asked what her impression of the adult industry was, 18 months in. "I can't get a job with the average anonymous people," she said. "The past comes up a lot. It doesn't matter how talented I am, or what I can do. They look at me and say, 'You need a job?' Well of course I do. Everybody needs money. "So I've met some very nice people in the adult business. I think it's very exciting. But people forget it's a business and it sometimes makes me laugh." What, in particular? "Girls come up to me and say, 'Oooh, I really want to work with you' and 'You're so sexy.'" "You don't think they mean it?" I said. "They don't get that it's a business," she said. "I look at them like they're deranged. I don't know why they even bother saying it." Fisher has lived a fascinating life, but she has not lived it in Los Angeles. I suggested that there was a chance that the girls crawling all over her, saying they wanted to work with her actually meant it. But she thinks of "Amy Fisher" as a brand and, at 34, is not a barely-legal ingenue who just wants to be on the virtual pages of GramPonante.com. "I'm one sharp lady," she said, "and one thing I know is business. It was the way I was raised (I wanted her to say 'East Coast' but she didn't) and I'm not into this to live the porn star life, whatever that is." What is the porn star persona? "Oh, 'I always wanted to be a porn star.' 'My life is in chaos.' 'I just want a man,'" she said. "That sort of thing." But is there a part that a porn star needs to play in order to get fans? "I wouldn't know about that," she said. "I know people know who I am anyway. I've come to terms with that. But I think people like me, as a person. So after one of my movies I just want them to feel relieved - " "That it's over?" "No (laughs). But they know that I'm a real person and am not their Destiny." Fisher is currently negotiating with a Porn Valley studio for a contract that will require her to do five or six movies a year. She will decide within a few weeks. "Other than a price you can live with, what do you need from a contract?" I said. "The movies need to be the higher echelon kind," she said. "It's not Red Light District?" I said. "No, it's not Red Light District," Fisher said. "You can probably guess which one it is, but I'm not going to jinx it."  "If you take a contract," I said, "What will be your first move?""The first move will be whatever I'm told to do," she said. "I'm a worker. I show up on time. I make the most of the time I'm there. It's going to be of the most benefit for everybody." On her website, Fisher appears solo, with another woman, and as a sort of Mistress of Ceremonies for a Boy/Girl scene that she does not participate in. "Those were shot while I was in the contract with Red Light," she said. But Fisher will be working with men other than her husband in future movies, whether she becomes a contract performer or not. I asked Fisher and Bellera how they arrived at the decision. "Everything comes in steps," Bellera said. "We have a separate life from the porn business. A real life. There's no room for jealousy." "I'm not going to fall in love with someone and go sailing into the sunset," Fisher said. Fisher and Bellera have three children together, the most recent a boy born last autumn. Both talk about the adult business as a way of making money to support their children. The source of Fisher's fame is a double-edged sword. She and Bellera would not have a pay per view contract without it, but both feel they've arrived at porn because other roads were closed to Fisher. "You do what you do to make a living," Bellera said. "You're a proctologist, looking at behinds all day, you're a cop...this might not be what we thought we'd be doing, but I've got to take my hat off to Amy, and support her, and love her." "I love my husband and my children," Fisher said. "[Lou is] someone I can talk to, who will be my friend, who will hold my hand." "Since she did what she did (in 1992), she hasn't got so much as a parking ticket, and people [mainstream employers] still don't give her a chance. They have a notion that she's a maniac from years ago. In the porn business, they did give her a chance, and look how she succeeded."  Fisher has also started dancing. She will appear at Al's Diamond Cabaret in Pennsylvania and at Denver's New Oasis Cabaret. In April she will appear at Chicago's 500-seat Admiral Theatre. She should dance to the song "Maniac.""I see her dancing and what she can do to a crowd," Bellera said, "and I'm just so proud of her." I asked Fisher who was the pursuer in her courtship with Bellera. "Oh, I was," she said. "In the end it was my overwhelming charm that prevailed." Bellera and Fisher still live on Long Island. I asked Bellera about A-Rod, but he might have been talking about Amy. "You can't retroactively punish someone," he said. "He did what he did, let's get over it." Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Amy Fisher and Lou Bellera: How to quit worrying and love your celebrity sex tape; Lou & Amy & Joe & Evanka: Coming to terms with your celebrity sex tape See also: Amy Fisher Labels: amy fisher, celebrities, interviews, lou bellera, new york, sex tape, strippers, vivid ¶ Monday, March 02, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Bobbi Starr: Heart in the clouds, head in the toilet
 Is it a crush if you want someone to put your head down a toilet while he fucks you? Bobbi Starr refers to it as an infatuation."Lorelei (Lee) and I were walking down a hotel hallway in Las Vegas two years ago when I met Rocco Siffredi," said Starr, who recently helped Siffredi come out of retirement by way of an American Standard Cadet Right Height™ Pressure-Assisted Elongated Toilet. "And my knees melted. Just a little." At the time, Starr has just performed a scene with European performer Jazz Duro, who was Siffredi's friend. "Jazz said to Rocco, 'Here's the girl I was telling you about,"" Starr said. "And Rocco actually said, 'The music teacher? Can you teach me music?'" In Starr's torrid and debauched other life, she is a professional oboeist. "I just wanted to shake his hand," Starr said. "There's some people who just touch you and you know that you want to fuck them. I felt the same way about Princess Donna." It is for this reason I never touch Starr. I prefer our relationship to be a Shroedinger's Box of possibilities, and for her to feel down to her netherest tingly parts that the Cat is alive and well. Recently Siffredi shot several scenes in Los Angeles for his comeback movie, and Starr was called. "But I wouldn't be performing with him," Starr said. "I'd just be in the movie. I thought, 'OK, well I'll at least be in the same room, maybe." But Starr's natural NoCal enthusiasm brought a little bit of magic to the set that day. "I was in a boy/girl/girl scene with Mark Davis and, after Mark finished, the other girl went away and I was in the room with Rocco," she said. "And I just wanted to fuck him." "On screen or off screen?" I said, making sure not to make physical contact. "At this point I feel like I can really enjoy sex on screen, too," Starr said. "There are differences, but not so many. I would enjoy having sex with Rocco camera or no camera." So they had sex.  "Rocco always does an intro with a little bit of POV BJ if you're lucky," Starr said. "He started out with me walking back and forth and then he walked up with the camera and started talking to me about how Jazz told him some things about me. He was being vague. Finally, I figured out what he was referring to and I asked, 'Oh are you talking about how I tell Jazz all the time that I want you to fuck me?'(Bobbi Starr seems demure and marmish, but she is not.) "We did some POV BJ and then he moved onto the next girl" Starr continued. "I ran inside and jumped on top of Jazz and JaySin and hugged Jazz and said, 'Thank you thank you thank you!' Mark, the other girl and myself did our scene and then at the end Rocco was supposed to come in and pop on us as well. To my surprise, he walked in and started fucking me. Everyone left the set except for Rocco, myself, and the camera guy. It was incredible! Rocco asked me where my friend went (aka the other girl in the scene) and I said, in a whimpery tone, 'I don't know. I think I scared her.'" I will not bore/titillate you with my own porn star history, but in the period of my life where I sought out and engaged the pornstresses I liked, the results were always great but they still never compared to the non-adult personality interludes I have now. "So how was it?" I said, feeling less like America's Beloved Porn Journalist and more like someone clipping Starr's cuticles at the nail station. "It was awesome," she said. "What will the movie be called?" I said. "When is it coming out?" "I have no idea," she said. But it took a trip to the bathroom for Starr's star-struckedness to be fully realized.  Siffredi had told her about a scene in which he had fucked a partner while dunking her head in the toilet ("He first did it to some French girl," Starr said. "He couldn't remember her name") and he encouraged Starr to talk about it in the scene because he wanted Toni Ribas to recreate it with her."You want that to happen?" Rocco said. "Yes," Starr said. But Siffredi didn't know Starr wanted him to put her head down the toilet, just that she wanted it done. "I suspect Rocco had hoped that I would ask him to put my head in the toilet because there was a moment (in the interview) when I felt he alluded to it," she said. I'll add here that now and then I remember how shiny and new certain sexual behaviors seemed and how, when I first encountered them, I might have been less objective than I should have been. I have learned in recent years to focus on the person rather than the behavior, and that has made for better stories, I think.  But, just so you know, I would never have pegged Starr to be the type of person who likes her head down a toilet, no matter who is putting it there. For one thing, I imagine she's scared that percussive contact with the toilet enamel might impair her ability to handle an oboe reed."Breaking my teeth is one of my biggest fears," Starr said. "This thought passed through my mind the entire time we were working." When she had dried herself off from Ribas, Siffredi asked Starr how she liked the scene. "It was great," she said, "but I wanted you to put my head down the toilet." It was then that Rocco Siffredi understood. He gently took her hand, bent her over, and savagely fucked her while dunking her head in the toilet.  It is so rare that we get exactly what we want. Some of life's beauty is in the compromises we make, the paths we take around what was once our goal. But Starr got just what she wanted that day."Did Rocco whisper endearments to you afterward?" I said. "He said it would take a tank to destroy me," she said. (Images are of Bobbi Starr at Porn Week, at the XBiz 2009 Awards, and at the Surrender of 0 Party between Ava Rose and Mika Tan and being groomed by Aiden Starr [no relation]) Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Lesbians and civil rights infringement; Even professionals benefit from dildo etiquette; The Cropping and flogging of O; Postcard from Porn Week; Defend Our Porn See also: Bobbi Starr on MySpace Labels: aiden starr, Ava Rose, bobbi starr, evil angel, interviews, jazz duro, lorelei lee, mika tan, princess donna, rocco siffredi, toilet, WGL ¶ Thursday, February 19, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, February 16, 2009
Kristina Rose: Eyes, other parts wide open
 Kristina Rose was a receptionist in Orange County when she first got an offer to take off her clothes professionally."Were people asking you all the time?" I asked. "It came up a lot," she said, "and at first I didn't jump at it, but I got more comfortable with the question eventually." Rose is pictured above with all her vices on display. As we were in public, I couldn't get at most of the assets. At first Rose would pose for free and then, as she got more confident, she started taking on porn jobs in earnest, shooting her first movie in 2007 at the ripe old age of 22.  "In school everyone seemed to know what they wanted to do," she said. "I didn't. But I was good at this, so this is what I'm doing."Perhaps because California is in the financial crapper, I have been amazed lately at how many porn performers can be such Negative Nellies. That's right: I said Negative Nellies. All I hear are complaints, backstabbing, and concern masking envy. But not Rose. "I am having a really good time," she said. "[Agent Mark] Spiegler keeps me working. And I'm happy to do it. I wouldn't do it if I wasn't happy."  I asked if she thought her happiness with her job had anything to do with not starting in the porn business until she was in her twenties."Definitely," she said. "I didn't know what I wanted at 18, and I think I might have really become involved in the whole porn lifestyle back then. Now I have fun - it's a fun job - but I don't get carried away." So Rose is not looking at the world through her-colored glasses. "And if it stops being fun, I'm gone," she said. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Kristina Rose - just liked you imagined; This Ain't the Partridge Family See also: Kristina Rose on MySpace Labels: interviews, kristina rose, orange county, spiegler ¶ Monday, February 16, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, February 09, 2009
Filling the holes with Eric Swiss
 Eric Swiss is fast becoming the Yaphet Kotto of the porn world. This does not mean he is chunky, black, and the grandson of the Crown Prince of Cameroon (thus making the analogy awkward) but instead that he appears prominently in a lot of movies and is not yet a big star.Calling Swiss articulate and thoughtful is dangerous because it is like when then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden called Barack Obama "clean": it implies that the object of the compliment is the exception. But the British Columbia-born Swiss, 33, states his case without resorting to anything that requires a suspension of disbelief. This includes his crush on Bree Olson. Gram: Describe the divide between knowing you have a job that many people would like and knowing that it is sometimes not what it is cracked up to be.When asked, Swiss says he got into the business "one inch at a time." GP: I deserved that answer. What about a time when you didn't feel sure about yourself?I met Swiss on the set of Not the Cosby Show XXX. He wasn't performing; he was the P.A. I had seen him in Slave 01 and The Texas Vibrator Massacre. "It's work," he said at the time. "Things are slow. Am I going to turn down work when I can learn about the business from a different angle?" Swiss told me a story of a perennially broke male performer who had recently hit him up for money. GP: Describe the margins male (and maybe female) performers live on. Do you think occasional cashlessness is a symptom of the times or of poor financial discipline? GP: Have you ever taken some good advice from someone in the biz with more seniority?  GP: And what brought you from Canada?The interview had taken a decidedly cheesy turn, having gone from tales of pissing on women in the shower to what amounted to a declaration of love for Bree Olson. But there it was: what fills a hole but a wedge? And what defines swiss cheese but holes? And doesn't brie come in wedges? These two complete each other. It was as if beginning that story with that cumbersome Yaphet Kotto reference wasn't enough - I had to finish the whole thing by going dairy. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Slave 01, Not the Cosbys, Texas Vibrator Massacre, We're all Max Hardcore when we drink; Tina Tyler - only immoral for a limited time; Workingman's Gunn See also: Eric Swiss on MySpace Labels: bree olson, canada, eric swiss, interviews, legal, max hardcore, ron jeremy, urination ¶ Monday, February 09, 2009 2 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Morning Wood with Nicki Hunter
 As Nicki Hunter is a humanitarian, I asked her what she does when she encounters Morning Wood on her partner, Josh."Oh, I rub up and down on it with my ass, like it's a lap dance," she said. "Do you feel a sense of personal responsibility?" I asked. "Yes," she said. "Morning Wood to me is wonderful. If I can jump on that big little pumpstick I just do. I think it's my job."  Because porn performers apply life sciences more aggressively than the general population, I asked Hunter for the science behind the phenomenon, and why we don't hear too much about Night Wood."When you're going to bed," she said, "your body secretes a hormone that tells your non-essential functions to shut down. In the morning you get another burst of chemicals that turns things on." She said she learned this on the Discovery Channel. "...and that includes your penis," she said. In this bicentennial year of Charles Darwin's birth, does Hunter think there is an evolutionary component to Morning Wood that has contributed to the survival of our species?  "I'll take it one step further," she said. "If you're a caveman and you start fucking in the morning, you can have ten females inseminated by the end of the day, as opposed to blowing your whole load at night," she said, adding: "Caveman cock hard."Matutolagnia, which is a medical term meaning increased sexual desire in the morning, is taken from the Latin roots "matuto-" (morning) and 'lagnia" (lust). "Lagnia" is related to the Latin word for wood, which is "lignum." What I'm saying is that this isn't just something that my Close Personal FriendTM Nicki Hunter and I share - it's been happening for, like, decades. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Upstairs/downstairs with Tatiana Kush and Nicki Hunter; PSK gets wood See also: Nicki Hunter on MySpace Labels: "nicki hunter", charles darwin, interviews, MILF, science, the ass, WGL ¶ Thursday, February 05, 2009 1 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tina Tyler: Only immoral for a limited time
 "I'm jumping in with both feet behind my head," said Tina Tyler, retired from performing these past five years but who now, at 43, has returned to selling her body for your pleasure.But why the tiny window? The agoraphobe once described as The Thinking Man's Porn Star will only be on the market and available for scenes until March 31. "In November of 2006 I went to Hawaii for a week," she said. "Prior to that I hadn't taken a vacation in 20 years. On April 1, I will go on a well-deserved vacation." And coming out of retirement for two months is a good way to get lots of cab fare for her trip across America and points Great White North. Public Service Announcement:
Tyler retired in 2003 because it was becoming apparent at the time, she said, that "growing old in porn had become such a huge sin. "And the MILF and Cougar niches hadn't arrived," she said. "It's strange how quickly aging turned into a marketable taboo." Tyler has maintained a Yahoo group for years, and last September decided to test the waters by finally giving in to fans' gentle but persistent prodding. She performed scenes with Jon Jon and Marco Banderas, two performers she'd shot extensively for her "Handyman" series. "After that, I called Lisa Ann and told her to sign me up." Lisa Ann's Talent has become, as Tyler says, "the go-to place for quality MILFs." I asked Tyler if she was going to stand there, look me in the eye, and tell me that she had borne offspring and was officially a MILF. "No, but I'm old enough to be the mother of half the girls I've shot," she said. Or maybe all the girls she's shot - who is she kidding? But when she decided to quit performing, Tyler wanted a safety net. "I took every production assistant job I could find, shot Behind the Scenes stuff, went and picked up every cum rag so that I could effectively transition into a behind the camera role in the business." Then she got a call from Lexington Steele. "Lexington is a dear friend and a sweet, sweet man," Tyler told me in an earlier interview. "We'd just go to movies together. (Regular movies.) And he asked me if I'd work for him." Their friendship led to a successful working relationship. Tyler took over the new girl line "Fresh Out the Box" and created the solo male series "Handyman." "We say we shoot it for women," Tyler said at the time, "but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the main audience is gay men." Tyler would often provide visual stimulation for her solo male performers by directing topless. "It's a service I provide," she said. So what is it like being back in front of the camera? "Well, it's the possibility inherent in all these young men that is so enticing to me," she said. "I think, 'What will this one be capable of doing in 20 years?'" Oh, Tina Tyler, I'm so capable right now. "But it was very strange tapping into that part of me again," she said. "I don't know if you'd call it an affectation, but I really needed to switch gears and remember that I'm sexy."  Her first outing was a P.O.V. blowjob scene with Pat Myne, but I talked with her as she was walking into her first full-on younger man/older woman pairing for a site called CougarsInHeat.com."What's his name?" I said. "Some guy named Alex, I think," she said (already having recaptured the porn star's understanding of the real hierarchy in the adult business). Tina Tyler is famously introverted, and this drives her fans insane. "I really didn't get into this business to become famous," she said. "I honestly thought I'd maintain some kind of anonymity and insulation. "But then Jenna Jameson came along and screwed it up for everybody." But even though Tyler is returning at a time when demand for MILF/Cougar movies is high, she is not looking at this as a long-term comeback. "That's why it's 'Act Now!'" Tyler said. "Because supplies won't last. Mark your calendars, boys." Tyler kept the window short because she knew the temptation to stay longer would become stronger quickly. She also has to juggle performing with her directing duties. "In this business you feel guilty for taking vacations," she said. "You feel bad if you don't say Yes to any work that comes along. So I'm going to work really hard for the next two months until I really feel I deserve a vacation. I plan to be exhausted." So what has the experience been like so far? "How do you think it's been?" she said. "I am sexually voracious. Because I really had to clean the cobwebs off." Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Tina Tyler talks about Angel Dare; Tina Tyler refuses to stop being hot See also: Tina Tyler at Clips4Sale Labels: "tina tyler", cougar, interviews, jenna jameson, jon jon, lisa ann, marco banderas, MILF, pat myne, rush, strippers, WGL ¶ Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Teagan on pizza, being nice to strippers
 "I know better than to piss off the house girls," said Teagan Presley.Since her semi-retirement from performing on camera, Teagan keeps in shape by feature dancing around the country. It is well known that house girls, or women who regularly work in strip clubs, can be resentful of the "feature" talent that jets in from Porn Valley, Las Vegas, and Florida with their 8 x 10s to autograph and DVDs to sell. "I make sure I'm really nice to them and learn their names," she said. Teagan lives in Atlanta but will be moving to Las Vegas soon. Among her favorite clubs in her dancing career (she didn't dance before she did porn) are Atlanta's Pink Pony, Shreveport's Hustler Club, and the Admiral in Chicago. "The Admiral has a huge stage," she said. "You can tire yourself out on it." I asked if she picks her own songs. "Yes," she said, "and I mix them up. I usually do a hip hop song, a rock song, and some girlie song." "In which you put your finger in your mouth?" "Exactly."  Teagan started a website called AdultBluReview in which she and pornstars like Gianna Lynn masturbate while delivering reviews of Blu-Ray movies."Like The Godfather?" "No," she said. "Like Pirates 2." "So your life as a mom and website owner and dancer, etc. is very different from the way you started out in this business." "When you're 18 people think you're stupid," she said. "People tell you what to do and when to do it. I did my first girl/girl scene on camera with a room full of people watching." And how have things changed? "I got better and better at blowjobs," she said. Is there a new humility that has crept into your post-ingenue life? "Especially with the house girls," she said, "I kiss major ass." Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Moxie-ridden devil Roxy makes Teagan, dandling Randall, her collie See also: AdultBluReview Labels: avn09, food, gianna, interviews, strippers, teagan presley ¶ Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, January 15, 2009
No Name Jane to start working with John Does again
 Porn star marriages are tender things. Noname Jane (formerly Violet Blue) is married to a nice guy named Dick Danger, with whom she worked exclusively for a couple of years. She recently decided to be entered by other fellows on film."That must have been a tough thing," I said. "It's funny," she said. "I was always the one who was worried that he didn't want me doing other guys for work, but he really doesn't care about me doing other guys for work. It's not like I'm dating them." Blue and Danger currently live in the State of Washington but plan to move south within a few months. "Dick Danger is an amazing artist and being down in LA would be great for his work," she said. "And I really can't be a porn star up here in the sticks." "You can do whatever you want, whoever you are," I said. Remember Stoya getting this year's Best New Starlet award at AVN even though she's been in movies since 2006? That happened to Noname Jane (when she was Violet Blue), too. "I was in my first porn scene in April 2000, and won Best New Starlet in 2002," she said. "They didn't notice me until I dyed my hair blonde, I think. But one of the editors at AVN brought it up when it happened." And yet they did nothing?  "Then again, I was Violet for my first year of porn and not Violet Blue, so maybe they thought I was someone else.""Well, they didn't think you were a sex blogger, that's for sure." "No comment." (Goat picture courtesy Mark Miller, spread picture courtesy Ed Fox) Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Gram Ponante announces Oscars of Porn See also: Noname Jane Labels: animals, dick danger, ed fox, interviews, mark miller, noname jane, photographers, stoya ¶ Thursday, January 15, 2009 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
2008 in Review: Books about Sex with Strings Attached
 No tampon or puppet-fucking jokes, pleaseAs you can tell from my lack of command of basic English grammar, I don't read much. And when I read, I don't read quickly. So the five books on this list I read for work, and they each happened to explore the dark side of sex for money. 1. John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches, by Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson. A must-read for porn fans and cautionary tale enthusiasts. Buy it here.I also read The Unbearable Lightness of Being this year, finally, and it was a great gift. While there is plenty of sex in the book, I'm not under the impression that there were any conditions. Though Teresa thinks her husband's hair "smells like a woman's groin," this is not the website for my thoughts on Milan Kundera. This site is all about porn kitsch. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Prather prattles, pimps periodically published porn potboiler, Memphis Monroe unpeeled for field manual; Narcissistic Personality Disorder or just two very blonde women getting paid to have sex Labels: "tina tyler", 2008, Apple, books, ed fox, feet, interviews, Jenna presley, jennifer sugar, jill nelson, john holmes, las vegas, milan kundera, natalie mclennan, prosties ¶ Tuesday, December 30, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Jenny Hendrix: The Porn Actor's Nightmare
 "When I was in high school I'd always have that dream where I was naked in front of people," Jenny Hendrix said.I had to make sure of something. "But was it a nightmare?" I said. "Yes, it was totally a nightmare," she said. I caught up with the 105-lb. Hendrix easily, because she had just had an ankle tattoo inked the night before and was still bloody and goopy from it. Now she has tattoos on each of her non-porn-related extremities. There's a Hello Kitty, a Porn Star (with an actual star), and last night's Yin Yang symbol.  "It only hurt when they filled in the Yang," she said."You bet it'll hurt when I fill in the Yang," I said.  Hendrix announced that she will be getting new boobs in New York on December 23, so it is the end of an era, and something she has been threatening for a long time. "When I get skinnier, I lose my boobs," she said."So don't get skinnier," I said. It was more like pleading.  "I like my weight now," she said. I showed her a picture I had taken of her in 2005, when she was 19 and just out of high school."Look at how fat my face was," she said. "But your eyes are still twinkly," I said. Hendrix dealt with her high school fears by facing them head-on. Now that she doesn't worry about being naked in front of people, I asked what frightens her today. "If my armpits stink," she said. Because the TSA frowns on flying with new bolt-ons, Hendrix will be taking a train from New York to Florida for Christmas. A ticket on Amtrak's Boobliner costs $200. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Jenny Hendrix keeps in touch See also: Jenny Hendrix Labels: "the craft", boobs, florida, holiday, interviews, jenny hendrix, new york, transport ¶ Thursday, December 11, 2008 7 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Books: Prostitutes provide great return of investment
 I spoke with Natalie McLennan, formerly Manhattan's priciest prostitute (aside from David Gest) and most recently the author of The Price: My Rise And Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort, from her home in Montreal.McLennan's book is a picture of that era in New York following 9/11 that saw a resurgence in conspicuous consumption that today seems ripe for the backlash that eventually came. In McLennan's case, the life she led as the female face of the escort agency New York Confidential (a name that would prove misleading) was so public that it's hard to understand how it went on so long. After all, offering sex for money is illegal in New York, right? "It was a time of real excess," McLennan said. Her book doesn't go into why post 9/11 New York was such a profligate place, where NY Confidential's owner, Jason Itzler, would brag about his pimpitude on Page Six of the New York Post, but maybe we can draw a parallel to Depression-era Chicago, where celebrities were made of high-rolling criminals like Al Capone. I liked The Price. McLennan goes from broke Canadian expatriate and out of work actress to coke-snorting, expensive shoe-buying, retired NFL quarterback-servicing high-priced hooker. Though the drugs get out of control eventually, McLennan's real downfall seems to come due to the boastfulness of Itzler, who invited scrutiny. Along the way, McLennan met and briefly worked with a woman named Ashley, who would later find fame as the favorite prostitute of disgraced former New York Attorney General and Governor Eliot Spitzer. [In related news, prosecutors last month decided not to pursue Spitzer in court.] A fun airplane read (provided you hide the cover from the person sitting next to you), The Price never gives the reader the impression that McLennan would do things differently (she eventually pleaded guilty to reduced charges of money laundering) if she could do it all again. Natalie McLennan: I was an intelligent girl. I had ambition - which might sound crazy from someone coming from Canada - and I was lusting for something. I just didn't know what it was until I got it. Gram Ponante: You talk about wondering where your rent was going to come from and three weeks later having thousands of dollars of disposable income. But that's how I read the story. Was money ever a real issue for you? NM: Well, I was always very sexual. I always liked attention. And I knew I could be good at what I set my mind to. So I made the leap of faith to escorting when the opportunity came up. GP: So it could have just as easily been anything else, like being the drummer for Rush? NM: That job was taken, but yes, I think so. Escorting was something I set my mind on. GP: 20 years ago this book would be all about your self-doubt and the judgment of others and what it meant to sell your body, but you write as if it is just a job with perks. NM: I remember the job really fondly. Everybody talks about eras in New York City, and I really think that if you weren't there between 2003 and 2007 or so, you missed the party. It was a free party for me. Maybe I choose to be so optimistic about it because I'm Canadian. GP: But toward the end, you were facing jail time, deportation, overdoses, not to mention the disapproval of your family... NM: Well, my family can not read this book... (McLennan's family know all about what she did in New York, but she feels that she can spare them the specifics.) GP: ... was there a "rock bottom" in any of that? NM: Oh, I went through a succession of rock bottoms.  GP: You describe your clientele as mostly handsome, always rich, always successful, often married. Why pay your hourly rate - which at the peak of your fame reached $2,000 - when they could get the same basic release from a lap dance or a $50 street hooker?NM: These guys saw me - us - as both a girlfriend and a porn star. What you're left with at the end, considering that money really isn't an issue, is that you could walk away from it feeling like a million bucks having only spent six grand. GP: That's a million bucks American? NM: Yes. It was all good karma shit. I like to think I left people feeling better than when I walked in. GP: Sex Worker Advocacy is a growing field in the United States, but I get the feeling that the issues common to high-end prostitutes are not in the case files of the street-level sex worker advocate/educator. Do you see yourself dispensing advice to women thinking of this profession? NM: Oh yes. I was at such a level that street-level things didn't really affect me, but I feel strongly that women should have a place to go for legal advice. And it can be a lonely industry without a real support system.  GP: But the overall feeling of the book was that you had fun.NM: It can be a very rewarding lifestyle, yes. Still, it's a huge responsibility to guide a girl toward it. I think about giving that kind of advice to someone and then picturing me smoking freebase while masturbating in my big mirror. GP: That's what I'm doing now! NM: So you're writing a think-piece, Gram? GP: You know it! So now you're managing a spa in Montreal but promoting - I won't say "pimping" - The Price around North America. What's next? NM: I have a fearless gene. We'll see where that takes me. Buy The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort  Previously on Porn Valley Observed: The Delivery Man; The Voluptuous Feet of Ed Fox; Christa Faust's "The Money Shot" (with Tina Tyler) Labels: books, canada, interviews, natalie mclennan, new york, prosties ¶ Wednesday, December 03, 2008 1 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Madison Young turns your guilty masturbation into art
 You might think of Madison Young as a deadly serious redheaded San Francisco porn performer/director with an agenda. But she is actually from Loveland, Ohio.I pinned her down recently and asked her to submit to the patriarchal structure that is the western white male interview. But I learned something about myself as well. Gram Ponante: You’re from the Bay Area and work there quite a bit. Do you see a big difference between LA and SF performers? If so, talk about the differences in the way they look,work and are perceived. Madison Young: I love San Francisco and the Bay Area for its rich culture, diversity, strong sense of community and activism, sexual openness, value on sexual education and sex positive culture as well as its vast art scene. GP: I like the urine smell!  MY: I believe that these qualities in San Francisco are what draw its residents to this colorful city. I think you also find that the performers in San Francisco are more involved in both sex positive communities and art. I personally also find that being a part of the sex positive porn revolution is about more than commercial gain.GP: Not about commercial gain? You're losing me. MY: For me being involved in porn both as a performer and director is a revolutionary act in which I’m increasing the visibility of women embracing their sexuality, owning their desire, and truly expressing their honest sexual selves on film. For many girls in LA they are simply interested in making what they believe is quick and easy money which they spend on a pair of heels or a Prada bag. A lot of these women are still young girls who have yet to really come into their own sexually. They are still looking for direction and don’t really know what they plan on doing after porn. GP: Explain the San Francisco difference. MY: The performers that I direct in San Francisco are mostly queer, sex positive, artists, and activists. They are people that I connect with intellectually and sexually. And they love sex! Real sex! Connected passionate loud sweaty levitating off the bed sex. The performers in San Francisco aren’t just here for the paycheck. We are here to be part of a movement that is much larger than that based on connection and eroticism. We are here because we love sexual connection and want to stand up for and be a part of something we believe in. In LA… it just isn’t that deep. Ice Cube: My jimmy runs deep. So deep. Put your butt to sleep.  GP: There is a growing tradition of sex worker/porn star/educator/activists – Why is this important and where do you fit? Are there differences in the generations in this regard?MY: I do identify as a porn star/educator/activist and feel like porn is a hugely consumed medium which has a vast audience that is continuing to grow and diversify. The female and queer demographic as well as couples are a contingent of valid consumers in the porn world. There is so much lowbrow porn out there and so much porn that consumers just can’t relate to. GP: Surely I don't know what you mean.  MY: By creating porn with honest orgasms, real sex positions, real sexual chemistry, and real bodies we are breaking stereotypes causing some major changes in the industry.I look up to sexual heroes and people I’m proud to call my friends such as Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen, and Nina Hartley. We are all part of the same family. And although generations may separate us we are still united through our activism in sex and art. GP: Power, Sister. Not only do you work with in the LA agent system but you also produce work independently. Has there ever been a conflict there or are there rules that you follow so no conflict exists?  MY: I had been working in the adult industry as a bdsm performer and doing girl/girl performances for around five years before I signed with an agent. So I’m very used to booking my own work. I decided about a year and a half ago that I wanted to start working in LA doing boy/girl performances in order to lessen my travel and to increase my cash flow in order to move my art gallery, Femina Potens, into a bigger gallery in the Castro District. Femina Potens is a labor of my love and is an art gallery funded by my illustrious porn career. My agent - Mark Spiegler – allows me to continue booking with fetish bondage contacts outside of LA that I had before I became a Spiegler Girl and he handles all of my LA bookings.GP: I am glad that Spiegler does not rule with an iron fist. What are the advantages and disadvantages of taking the reins in your own company?  MY: With my own company I’m able to manifest my own sexual fantasies and visions. I enjoy being in control of my films, what festivals they are being screened at, what performers I’m working with or directing, and I’m able to make a clear statement around queer sex positive sexuality. I’m very involved in my productions from writing the script, casting, hiring the crew, performing, and all elements of production and post production. The only disadvantage to running the show ... is that you are running the show and that every one is depending on you to create an amazing production. It can get pretty hectic and stressful juggling our many projects. But I love it.GP: When you are not being Madison the trussed up porn star, what do you do for fun and enjoyment? MY: When I’m not performing for other people or directing my own productions I’m working at my gallery. Peanut Gallery: How many anal scenes does it take to fund a feminist art gallery? MY: I founded Femina Potens in 2003 in order to increase visibility of women and transgendered artists and we currently produce over 50 events each year. We have featured hundreds of artists and educators over the years including porn heroes Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley. I also am a writer and have just finished my memoir “The Tail of a Bondage Model” and I’m currently shopping it around to agents. Both me and my partner are work a holics and with running two companies I don’t have time for a lot of hobbies but I enjoy cuddling up with my love and watching movies, road trips, having dinner with friends, and shopping for vintage clothes. I also enjoy bondage, ds, and protocol with my love, James Mogul. I dream of one day planting a garden. GP: Thank you! MY: Now please loosen these handcuffs. GP: Allrighty. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Madison Young is the perfect date; The Whore Within Me, Without You See also: Madison Young Labels: art, BDSM, fetish, interviews, madison young, nina hartley, redheads, san francisco, spiegler ¶ Tuesday, November 25, 2008 3 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, November 20, 2008
On the Internet, all business is personal
 Webmaster Access is a regular convention of adult webmasters which regularly convenes in Los Angeles. Like many conventions in any hotel or convention center in the country, the morning is filled with seminars, breakout sessions, and blazer-and-dockers networking events, and the evening is filed with drinking.At a morning roundtable on hosting (and I mean this literally: there were about 12 people chatting informally over Sheraton mints around a circular table), I met Brad Mitchell of MojoHost, a Michigan and Florida-based web hosting company. Mitchell's company hosts about 30,000 adult sites in a Tier-4 facility in Miami, perched above the city on 30-foot stilts and sharing space with Google, Yahoo, and the United States Department of Defense. "When we give a tour," he said, "guests need to be on a list beforehand, have passports and driver's licenses, and be accompanied by one security official for every four guests," he said. "There are parts of the facility I have never seen." So the DoD and Google have no objection to sharing space with a Known Pornographer? "Every datacenter in the world is mostly porn," he said. "The Internet runs on porn." He was asked about Denial of Service (DOS) attacks, in which servers are bombarded with information requests that are designed to overwhelm them. A web surfer experiences a DOS-attacked site often enough by not being able to access it. A Denial of Service Attack is not the same as a Cleopatra of the Nile of Service Attack. "DOS attacks are infrequent," he said, "but we sometimes have to rely on our upstream carriers that we have relationships with to help us out and, less often, I'll have to drop a client because he is a magnet for DOS attacks." Why would a client be a magnet for DOS attacks? "Because he has pissed somebody off," answered Ycaza Thrush of Los Angeles' RightHosting. And not only that... "Somebody hacks you and all of a sudden you've got Mexican Donkey Child Porn on your site. And there's a guy from the FBI, a guy from the Secret Service, and a representative of local law enforcement at your door." As a hosting provider, what do you do when confronted by this? "Hand over the hard drives as quickly as possible," Thrush said. Mitchell said that he had a client who was traveling through Thailand and posting his sexcapades with the locals on his blog. "And I guess he angered some of the nationals," Mitchell said, "because whatever hosting company he uses, DOS attacks follow." And what is the busines model of hackers? "What is their business model?" Thrush asked. "Basically to get as much informaion by doing as little work as possible." By holding sites for ransom or by selling customer credit cards to third parties? "Whatever involves the least effort," Thrush repeated, noting that "Russia and Asia-Pacific net is full of hackers with no compunction about fucking you up." And what legal resources do you have when you get hacked? "The Feds will not lift a finger," Thrush said. "Unless they're guys you've helped before." It was interesting that the only red flag these web hosts identified was child porn, but that all other adult content seemed to transcend the moral and ethical objections that would traditionally skeeve out mainstream business partners. I thought about how the mainstream panelists at this week's FSC seminar were antsy about being seen with the adult crowd but, at the terabyte level of datacenters, it just didn't matter. Data was data (unless you piss someone off). Previously on Porn Valley Observed: GP posts tagged "Business" See also: Webmaster Access West, MojoHost, RightHosting Labels: business, events, interviews, seminar, technology, websites ¶ Thursday, November 20, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Palin in comparison: Raquel Devine ups the ante in Rode to the White House
 Sarah Palin has done more for the porn industry in these past few months of economic turmoil and uncertainty than Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco combined (in all things, let us avoid hyperbole)."I feel really good about this/I wouldn't have missed this," said both Lisa Ann and Raquel Devine, both of whom inhabit the role of a Republican Vice Presidential nominee in dueling movies from Hustler and Adultspoof.com, respectively. Palin: Erection 2008 is the second movie to feature a female politician from Alaska mixing her sexual ambitions with her political ones. And, unlike Hustler's Who's Nailin' Paylin?, this movie uses unobfuscated spellings as well as introduces porn versions of Barack Obama and John and Cindy McCain. "We are legally bulletproof, because it's a parody," said a production assistant who called himself Gutzen Stein, who clearly didn't read the parenthetical warning in the first paragraph. Raquel Devine, 41, plays Sarah Palin in a script that features some of the same tropes as Hustler's but benefits from Devine's extraordinary improvisational skills as well as Steve Driver's spot-on, reserved, head-forward impersonation of Obama. The shoot took place last week in a familiar house overlooking Chatsworth and West Porn Valley. Devine retired from porn in 1999 as a blonde. "I wouldn't have come back if it weren't for the cougar movies," she said. Oddly enough, Devine belongs to the porn talent agency operated by Lisa Ann, who played Serra Paylin in Hustler's spoof. "She (Lisa Ann) didn't even tell me what part I was playing when she booked me," Devine said. "I showed up on set and [the cameraman] said, 'There's Sarah Palin'." Devine returned to the adult business in August after stints as an escort, as a white collar worker at a prestigious aerospace firm and, shockingly, as a one-year resident of the State of Idaho. ("I was with somebody from the Chicago Bears," she explained.) The script of Palin: Erection 2008 follows Palin as she is picked by the McCains and schooled by them in proper Vice-Presidential etiquette. Alana Evans plays Cindy McCain. "I haven't seen Raquel in ten years, since she was as blonde as I am," Evans said. "Well, I was always more blonde." Evans performs her first anal scene in three years for the movie opposite (or, at least, at the other end of) Mark Davis as John McCain.  Evans was voting for Hillary Clinton and said she thought of voting for McCain "for a millisecond" when her candidate was not nominated. But now she is an Obama supporter, though she nevertheless believes the Bradley Effect is true."But at least I admitted I had my doubts," she said. "Not like people who say they'll vote for Obama but won't." One great thing about the Paylin/Palin movies is that they have cast many older performers. I took this opportunity to get what I think is an excellent definition in context of milves vs. cougars. "A MILF is the mom you want to fuck," Devine said, looking me directly in the eye and making me feel, er - what is the opposite of uncomfortable? "A cougar is a woman over 35 who's predatory and coming looking for you." "So a MILF is passive and a cougar is active?" I said. "Very active," she said. Then she mentioned how Drew Barrymore, only in her early 30's, calls herself a puma. By this definition, it doesn't matter if a cougar has children so long as she is the one making the moves.  Palin also meets Barack Obama when he surprises her on a wolf-shooting spree, and he doesn't need much convincing to accept her polling invitation.I don't know who I'd give the edge to between Lisa Ann and Raquel Devine, but Devine seemed to be having a lot more fun on the set, and she made the crew laugh several times. Both of the Cougar-in-Chief movies are being marketed vigorously and, by virtue of the immediacy of interest (sales will probably drop sharply after the election), are using the Internet as the main driver of business, with DVDs to be released later. In the case of Palin: Erection 2008, scenes will be available on Adultspoof.com starting at noon on Tuesday, October 28, with new ones being added every few days. Adultspoof is a project of several companies, starting with a Delaware-based and Tustin, CA-headquartered VC group called Adult Entertainment Capital, which has to date funded several websites and owns a part of the gentlemen's club magazine Stiletto. They even funded me, by mistake. I was halfway down the road with $95,000 and a case of Red Bull before the P.A. stopped me. The presence of venture capital firms (another is AdultVest) in the adult world might be a sign that, of any industry, porn is still seen as a low risk. On the other hand, it's not as if a porn company is going to go to a bank. VC firms don't need to justify their moves as much as a bank does. Rock Candy Entertainment is a Portland, OR-based portfolio unit of Adult Entertainment Capital, and it serves as the production wing of that company. Brookland Brothers, also of Portland, is a production house that is currently editing the scenes and hosting adultspoof.com. Since Brookland Brothers needed local talent, Dick Tracy's Stonegate Media was called in, and Tracy is listed as the director of the movie with Sean Brookland as the producer. Because Brookland is from Oregon, he told me how much the movie cost right away. "About $24,000," he said.  A quick calculation (seven cast members, two anal scenes, two days at an expensive house, two production assistants, two round trip tickets from Oregon, publicity, meals, building a site that is, at this writing, not even up yet, editing, still photography, two cameramen) made me think that $24k was a low figure. A Los Angeles company would give me a high figure so I would say things like "Whoa!" and "I guess I was wrong when I thought you were a bunch of losers."But maybe people are donating resources because it's time someone said something. Brookland occasionally flies to Los Angeles to direct movies, but has a roster of Pacific Northwest talent as well. "We get people from Craigslist a lot," he said, "because there are no talent agencies up there. A lot of women come to us in the last three or four days of the month because they need rent. We get some strippers, some escorts, some girls who don't consider themselves to be in 'the industry' at all..." I enjoyed the tranquil Oregonian atmosphere on the set, and would move to that state were it not for the constant precipitation from Darklady's Masturbate-a-thons. The Palin: Erection 2008 shoot took two days, and the tapes were flown to Portland on a 6:55 p.m. flight. Veteran performer Davis rolled in on his Harley to be John McCain. Also featured are Trina Michaels as an intern, Jada Fire as Michelle Obama (she played "Condi" in the Paylin movie), and Derrick Pierce as Joe the Plumber. Hustler's movie might have a finite return on investment if McCain/Palin do not win the White House on November 4, but the Adultspoof crew shot two endings for their movie which, if current polls remain accurate, only means good things for Steve Driver. "I'm voting for Obama anyway," he said. See the gallery here. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Nailin' Paylin for America; Pussy Party via the ass; Lou & Amy & Joe & Evanka: Coming to terms with your celebrity sex tape See also: Adultspoof, Adult Entertainment Capital Labels: alana evans, barack obama, interviews, jada fire, john mccain, mark davis, raquel devine, sarah palin, set visits, steve driver, trina michaels ¶ Sunday, October 26, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, October 20, 2008
Night of Night of the Giving Head
 Caroline Pierce stood at the keg, topless, handing out beer."I'm Queen of the Zombies," she said, drawing a nice head on a cup of Oktoberfest, and the night only got better. I'd been to a couple of events over the past few weeks that ended in tears, the kind hyped by a sleazy promoter as teeming with dozens of porn stars partying on the rooves of Hollywood landmarks but that turned out to be dismal affairs that were moved several times, cancelled before they were started, and uniformly devoid of the people you come to this site to see. (And don't try to placate me by saying "Oh no, Grams, I come to your site to be inspired by your insights into the porn world and its machinations. The pictures are secondary to my desire to glean from your dense words a better picture of our life and times, and in so doing become a better person" because I would only believe you a little.) And so, when I arrived at the original location of porn legend Rodney Moore's party for hisd new release Night of the Giving Head and was met not by fellatio-happy zaftig sweeties but instead by a burly but pleasant security guard named Brian, I thought I should just go home. "Party's been moved," he said. Where? I thought. Somebody's basement? An efficiency room at the Vagabond Inn? I'm done with porn, I thought. I hate these people. They ruin everything. "You know where Andora Street is?" Brian asked. "The party's there."  Usually when a party gets moved the new location is several steps down from the original. Not in this case. When an unbribable L.A. Fire Marshall announced to Rodney Moore's staff that there was no way 250 people were going to have a party in the warren of studio rooms last seen in these pages housing Lisa Ann's boobs, the event was moved four miles north and a thousand feet up to a house atop a hill overlooking Porn Valley from such a distance as to make that part of town look nice.On the way up the hill, I ran over a snake. On the way down, I almost ran over Kylee Reese. What does that mean? Anyway, the first person I saw upon entering was Caroline Pierce, who lives in Las Vegas and who was last in town for the filming of the movie - at that house - in August. "It's cooler, so my nipples are a little harder now," she observed. So did I. Pierce is one of the only porn stars I know who has never thrown in the towel and lived in L.A. Instead, when she works here she couch-surfs and then goes home. But to Las Vegas? She is so pale that I worry. "When you walk out of your house in Vegas in July," I asked, purposely not looking at her nipples because I am suave, "do you ever burst into flame?" "Yes." All right then. It was explained to me that Night of the Giving Head involves some kind of space ray that turns women into fellating zombies. I will review it soon in preparation for my lawsuit, as the story was taken from events in my own life.  Propped against some rocks in the back were Kylee Reese and Claire Dames. While they have not been in the business long, both Reese and Dames (who doesn't look like her one-letter-away mainstream namesake at all, which is fine by me) instantly made out when I took my lens cap off.I think if Ivan Pavlov were alive, he wouldn't need to kill dogs in order to prove his theory of conditioned reflexes. Instead he would just quietly remove a lens cap and watch every woman in the San Fernando Valley push her boobs together and floss her labia with a thong. I asked the two women to pose by the beautiful rocks and soon a ring of cameras formed behind us. This happened throughout the night. Reese and Dames, in red and blue, looked like they were forming a flag for a country I wanted to occupy. I moved away from the camera circle, and Reese and Dames continued posing. Someone was talking to his bros nearby. "It's a pussy, man," he said. "When she puts her pants back on, it'll still be there." I think this comment reflected his ennui with women in general and the porn industry in particular. "Who has hurt you?" I said. "She flashes her pussy and everyone starts taking pictures," he said. Down that road lies madness. She flashes her vagina so people will take pictures. People take pictures so she flashes her vagina. It might not happen (enough) at 7-11, but this was a porn party, after all.  In the door walked Kayden Kross. She's not in the movie but she is like the Sacramento ambassador to Porn Valley. Because she loves me more than any other, we fell into an easy conversation about life, love, the court system, and crucifixion."There were buzzards flying over my head," she said about nothing in particular. I asked to take a picture or three but soon the same ring of photographers was behind me. I excused myself. Soon poor Kayden was squeezing her boobs together and making out with her friend Amber, who demurely showed nothing as the cameras flashed. "I'm sorry you couldn't even get a drink before the paparazzi descended," I said. "I don't drink," Kross replied, "and people taking pictures is why I'm here." "Well, in that case," I said, "How about you [censored] my [censored] and [censored] it until [censored] comes out of your [censored], nose, and [censored]? I've been saving up." "You bet your [censored] that will soon be sticking half way out the back of my [censored]," she did not say. In another part of the property sat dapper Ray of Porn Valley News. He told me a harrowing tale of his site being hacked using iframe-based Trojan Horses. I shuddered and again was grateful that I have built my site using nothing but Silenium electrons and gum. (One atom picks up another atom at the airport. Arriving Atom says, "Damn it. I left my electrons in Phoenix." Atom Two says, "Are you sure?" "Well, I'm positive.") Two people told me about their plans to release porn on mobile phones. One plan sounded plausible. In other news, only one person of the 200 people wearing bluetooth headsets wasn't a douchebag, which was the highest percentage of bluetooth non-douchebaggery I've yet observed. There were many people I didn't recognize, which I like. Even if they're dressed like the old people, seeing new people at a function like this diminishes the recirculated air feeling I sometimes get.  One new person I met was Rucca Page. Page is not new to porn but she is new to me. Every time I write about her I get e-mails from people asking me to write more. She was recently in a movie called Muffintops."Where did you come from?" I asked. A reader named Sherman writes in now and then to tell me to post every picture of Rucca Page that I can. "She is the perfect woman," he says, and then tells me the things he'd like to see her do. Page seems to inspire this. "Las Vegas," she said. Everybody in Las Vegas must be a porn performer or Wayne Newton, or both. Making his way through the background of his own party was Rodney Moore, a very nice man but also very quiet. It's strange to encounter that sort of person in the porn world, where everyone wants to tell you about their cellphone-based porn schemes. Pierce likes Moore but also finds him subdued. Let's face it: a title like Night of the Giving Head implies tortured genius. "Rodney is a little inscrutable," she said. "And I've had sex with him. He once gave me an apron." I was glad I went to the party. Glad that the noble Fire Marshall had refused an implied blowjob and offers of cash and sent the event up the hill. See a gallery here. Watch Night of the Giving Head here Buy Night of the Giving Head here Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Aiden Starr abnd Caroline Pierce - just because See also: Rodney Moore Labels: caroline pierce, claire dames, events, interviews, Kayden Kross, kylee reese, rodney moore, rucca page ¶ Monday, October 20, 2008 2 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Sexy as duck: New York sex writers announce monthly visitor
 I admit that I shouldn't feel offended - but I am - to have not been asked to pose for the The New York City Sexbloggers 2009 Calendar. I am not female, I am not from New York, and I don't so much write about sex as inspire it. Furthermore, whereas there is a sex blogger on every corner in New York, a Los Angeles sex writers calendar probably wouldn't make it past March without going into repeats.Is it because people are too busy having sex here to waste time writing about it (zing)? Is it because people here can't spell "calendar" (counter-zing)? No, it is because people in Los Angeles do not note the passing of time. The weather stays the same for 11 months of the year, then gets slightly hotter and people's houses burn down. At that point a calendar is a low priority. Proceeds from calendar sales will benefit the Sex Work Awareness Project, an organization that trains sex workers in media skills and educates the public about issues that affect people who work in the sex industry.I talked with four of the New York calendar girls, the zesty Jamye Waxman, the frank Audacia Ray, the delicious Rachel Krame Bussel, and the imperious Lux Altpraum. Gram: How did you choose a costume? Lux Altpraum: "Choosing a costume" was more "scanning my closet for something flattering and sexy and then quickly grabbing it." I went with an old standard: black bustier and black frilly booty shorts. Rachel Kramer Bussel: I kinda left my costume planning to the last minute and relied on Victoria's Secret, inspiration, and the instructions to "wear the highest heels you can find." But then I decided that since I write about spanking, why not get spanked for the calendar? Audacia Ray: This was pretty much a no-brainer for me. I'm wearing a custom ceramic that was made for me by Nicole Moan, whose corsets I modeled a few years ago at a fashion show at the Black & Blue Ball. It's not as uncomfortable as you might think, but it's cold as duck when I first put it on. I've got a big poofy black skirt on my bottom half (thrift store find) Gram: Did you say 'cold as duck'? Jamye Waxman: I chose Wonder Woman because who doesn’t want to be Wonder Woman? Originally I was just going to be dressed like a rainbow, but then I thought, I’ve dressed up as Wonder woman before for Halloween and she’s sexy, smart, badass and a lot of guys' and girls' fantasy lay, so why not be her every day for a whole month in calendar form? I sexified Wonder Woman’s outfit though. I gave her frilly blue panties and a bikini top, and some thigh-high stockings and made her my own. Gram: I will make YOU my own!!!  Among the other writers featured are Diva, Elizabeth Wood, Mariella, Riese, Sinclair Sexsmith, Tess Danesi (pictured, with photographer Stacie Joy), and Twanna A. Hines. The calendar was organized by Danesi.Gram: Is the New York sex writer world a close-knit community? Were there any new faces at the calendar photo session? Ray: I think we're sort of tight knit, but there are definitely cliques within cliques -- professional writers versus people who do it for fun, BDSM people versus "vanilla" people, etc. The whole calendar project was actually dreamed up to help heal some of the tension that was brewing in the NYC sex blogger community during the late summer. Gram: Wouldn't you think that 12 sexual dynamos could think of some way to relieve tension? Waxman: The New York sex blogging world may not be small, but those moving and shaking the loudest definitely know each other. I’m probably not even considered a sex blogger by most of the people who read these other bloggers' blogs (phew that’s a lot of blogs in there), but I do think that we all try to help each other out. If we don’t stick together, then the world and the city feel a lot lonelier. Bussel: I hadn't met one of the bloggers, but did know everyone else. It's a pretty small world which I think made it more fun. Altpraum: A lot of the women in the calendar are good friends of mine, though I don't claim to know/be BFFs with every sex blogger in the city. Gram: Well, now that you're the newly-minted editor of Fleshbot, I imagine you will be getting baubles, little tins of salmon, perfume, and student loan deferments from a host of new BFFs. Waxman: I think its the idea of putting the face and body with a name. We can, if we want to, hide behind our computers when we write about sex, but now we’re putting our sexy selves out there for you to masturbate to. Wait, I didn’t mean masturbate, I meant pontificate over. And you can now see some of the body behind the brains. Gram: I am horrified by this objectification of women. Can't you have done a word a day calendar? All this flesh. I feel like I'm drowning. Flesh. Bustiers. Flesh. Cupcakes. Bussel: Spanking.  Gram: What is so appealing about someone else in the calendar that would make you go out and buy it if you weren't a sex blogger yourself?Ray: I am always very amused by Jamye, and it's really worth seeing her outfit and her over the top expressions. It cracks me up just thinking about it. People who are fans of Tess will be excited to see her face for the first time. Altpraum: Jamye Waxman as Wonder Woman is one of the most adorable/sexy things I've seen in my life. Ray: Jamye kept her costume on all day. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Jamye Waxman, the Female You; In the Flesh wants your sex; Audacia goes the extra mile See also: New York City Sexbloggers 2009 Calendar, Lux Altpraum, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Audacia Ray, Jamye Waxman, Sex Work Awareness Project Labels: "audacia ray", interviews, jamye waxman, lux altpraum, new york, philanthropy, rachel kramer bussel ¶ Thursday, October 16, 2008 4 Comments Links to this post
Monday, October 13, 2008
Nailin' Paylin for America
 If Barack Obama had hot daughters of legal age and if Michelle Obama were thicker, would Hustler be speed-releasing a movie called "Baby Got Barack"? Probably not. But in a production cycle with unprecedented turnaround, Who's Nailin' Paylin: Advetures of a Hockey MILF, was written, cast, and filmed in two weeks and will be released, at first piecemeal on Hustler's website and then as a DVD by Election Day."Other projects are on hold while we do this," a Hustler spokesperson said, "and we're getting the DVDs turned around in a week instead of our usual two." Even in that period when everyone realized how effective Bill Clinton really was (this lasted from George W. Bush's inauguration though the outpouring of support following Clinton's heart surgery through his triumphant speech at John Kerry's nomination until when, in helping to manage Hillary's presidential bid, people remembered how shrewish Clinton could be) there was still a time during Lewinskygate when the nation thought of Clinton as an embarrassment and yet a porn retelling of the cigar/blue dress affair never would have happened. Why? Two reasons. 1.) Porn Valley considers itself very liberal. In the explosion of the porn industry during the Clinton administration, which did comparatively little to prosecute adult businesses next to the regimes of Ronald Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, porn experienced its second Golden Age. Both the video and Internet realms of porn flourished, even as the seeds of the video side's destruction were sewn as moviemakers increasingly undersold their content for easy money and neglected to institute anti-piracy safeguards. And one got the opinion that Clinton had tried most of the positions. So a Lewinsky porn might be too "on the nose." 2.) During the Clinton Administration, there was less of a need for gimmicks to sell porn. A decade later, the adult world needs every gimmick it can get.  This weekend Hustler shot Paylin, a movie with a better script than most and a cast that includes veteran pornstress Lisa Ann as "Serra Paylin" ("[Hustler attorney Paul Cambria] suggested we change the names," the Hustler publicist said), Nina Hartley as "Hilly," Jada Fire as "Condi," and Mike Horner as "Bill Orally." Sindee Jennings plays young Serra. In a scene from a classroom at Idaho State, Young Serra gets extra points from her professor (Evan Stone) for agreeing that Satan placed dinosaur fossils on the earth to trick us.As Paylin, Lisa Ann, 36, has a lot of dialogue in a script written by Roger Krypton. With a 17-page script, one of Paylin's monologues has more words than the entirety of most porn movies. This is another change from the Clinton era, when Lisa Ann began performing. "There was a lot more dialogue then," she said on the Paylin set. "And I was one of just a few girls - compared to now - working." Lisa Ann thinks that Paylin will have a cultural impact. "It's obvious who I'm voting for - Obama," she said. "But I wouldn't have done this movie for anyone else but Larry Flynt. He has done so much to fight for the First Amendment - and suffered so much - that I couldn't think of doing this for any other studio." The typical porn movie is shot in a day or two, edited for a week, and its DVD replicated and its boxcover designed over the next three weeks. Then it is put on a release schedule that might see it appearing on shelves three months later. "I got a call on October 1 that they were thinking of doing this movie," Lisa Ann said. "On the third I was told we were definitely doing it, and I started ordering suits online." I asked why she ordered her own suits. "Well, I don't want to trust anyone else to alter them," she said. "I can sew, and I hem things on my own. I didn't want to drop them off somewhere and be at their mercy." The sense of urgency to get this movie out on time is shared by everyone. The man charged with editing the Paylin movie, Sterling, picked up the still-warm DV tapes when production wrapped last night and will be editing them for the next several days. According to Richard Ford, Internet Product Manager for Hustler.com and BarelyLegal.com, the first scene (between Paylin and two interloping Russian soldiers in Alaska) will be available online Friday. "DVDs are dying, and we have to adapt and really sell this one," he said. UPDATE:Part of the selling includes "leaking" the script. If this is your first opportunity to read a porn script, you are in for a treat. Much of Porn Valley's technical jargon is contained herein in a format familiar to anyone who has read a Hollywood screenplay (and no, I didn't write it). You can read it online here. Tuesdays have for years been the days that porn videos are released, or "streeted," to stores. Since Election Day is Tuesday, November 4, the Hustler publicist said that the company is streeting the movie that day, or in a third of the time it usually takes. "When we decided we could do it in terms of time," the publicist said, "we even thought we might get it out a few days before Election Day, or maybe even the week before. But that's if nothing fucks up."  Director Jerome Tanner was in an unusually sunny mood on the set Sunday. The set, constructed within an interconnected warren of three different buildings off Canoga Blvd. in the northwest Valley, contained Paylin's podium, a greenscreen studio for still photos, the Idaho State classroom, and the snowmobile dealership where Paylin would commit an infidelity with her husband's business partner (Lee Stone).Tanner is a veteran porn director whose wife and son also work with him as production manager and cameraman, respectively. He comes from a time when no press was allowed on porn sets to this weekend, when at least ten adult and mainstream "news" outlets covered the event (but none so well as me, because I am a goddamn genius).  "Just sit there, Evan," Tanner says to Evan Stone as Sindee Jennings leaves the classroom set to have her tattoo powdered. Stone and Jennings have just had an extended dialogue scene which ended, inevitably, with the future politician fellating him. But now he is left to sit on a desk, literally with his dick in his hand, as the young Republican's pubococcygeal tat is obfuscated in keeping with her character.Evan Stone has probably appeared in one out of every five major studio porn movies in the past few years. I see him everywhere. He was just at the premiere of Pirates 2, which had the largest budget for a porn film of any movie since its 2005 predecessor (no one has come forward with a figure that agreed with anyone else's figure, so I won't perjure myself. But the budget is likely more than $350,000). Paylin will probably come in for $40-$50k and its window to make that money back drops precipitously after November 4. Stone is a rascal. "Do you ever sleep?" I asked. "Why, do you want to take a nap?" he said. Later, the female publicist walked in. He was still holding himself. "Sit over here," he said. "Just kiss the tip. Please." (She declined, I think, because I had a camera.) Then a male production assistant joined us. Stone was still sitting pantsless on the desk. "Keeping hard?" the P.A. asked. "Just keep talking and I will," Stone said.  During the previous scene, Stone and Jennings repeated their dialogue three different times for different camera angles. Each time, Stone changed his lines a little. Once he said "Thunder Lizards," then he said "dinosaurs," and finally he said "Tyrannosaurus Maximus." This would be difficult for a director of a mainstream movie, but Tanner did not care. So Stone gets to indulge his muse as an artist. Jennings is 22 and has been made up to look like a younger Sarah Palin, rather than a younger Lisa Ann. After leaving her native Texas, Jennings has been in the porn business for two years and is particularly famous for "squirting," the oft-disputed female money shot, which some adherents call female ejaculation and others dismiss as really convenient urination. As Young Serra, she winks at the camera and demands Stone "drill me." Out by the hot food table and seated near a truck filled with lighting equipment, Lisa Ann smokes a cigarette and rehearses her lines. She has one more scene today, in which she avoids questions about her infidelities and engages in a three-way with Hilly and Condi."This movie is going to be part of history," she said. "I'm going to buy a bunch of copies just to keep." I asked her if she thought that this was a dangerous movie. "I'm keeping a couple of extra security people around," she said. "People are crazy. But I wouldn't not do it." Lisa Ann left porn several years ago and has returned now that MILF movies are popular. But she devotes most of her time to her new porn talent agency, Lisa Ann Talent. We talked about the possible market for this movie. I suggested that a lot of people who were vocally against porn would at least statistically have to be closet fans. "I'm from Pennsylvania," she said, "and porn fans come out of the woodwork when I go back east." As with her sewing, Lisa Ann embraces traditional values. "The lady who taught me to sew, Peggy, is 97 years old and I still writes letters to her," she said. Longhand? "Yes. I try to write all my friends a little note now and then. Getting letters in the mail instead of just bills is a great way to stay in touch." Lisa Ann said she has done more than 100 radio interviews since she took the role of Serra Paylin, and she has "been on TMZ twice."  Like the Presidential (or Vice Presidential) debates, I doubt the release of Who's Nailin' Paylin? will change anyone's mind about their choice of candidate on November 4. But most people on set agreed that the movie was, in its way, a political statement. While a fair and balanced subplot could have included Lexington Steele as Barack Obama (or, more likely, James Deen in blackface), instead the lone Democratic target of porn scorn was Hilly. Because Hillary Clinton's style of feminism seems, to the Porno-American community, dangerously close to Sarah Palin's style of idiot fundamentalism.But if you think solid American values have no place in the world of pornography, you're wrong. Corporate porn firms like Hustler are every bit as capitalist as a Fortune 500 company and, unlike them, is not in debt up to its eyeballs to failing banks. Because no porn company could ever go to a bank to finance its fisting opus, most adult companies are either poor or flush, but not in debt. Because who gives a porn company a loan? Richard de Montfort is Hustler's resident still photographer (though he occasionallly directs hardcore videos like Strollin' in the Colon). He is prepping Lisa Ann for a series of photos that may or may not go on the boxcover. In front of the greenscreen she props her foot on a box that will later be Photoshopped away and be replaced with a dead moose ("I'd field-dress her moose any day," said the enigmatic Larry Flynt).  After a cycle of photos with her business suit slowly coming off, Lisa Ann disrobes and puts on an American flag, wrapping it around herself, letting it fall seductively, etc."Can you cup your ass with it?" de Montfort asks and, pro that she is, Lisa Ann does. "Just don't let the flag touch the floor," de Montfort says, and Lisa Ann doesn't. See the Who's Nailin' Paylin? Adventures of a Hockey MILF gallery here. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Democrats do in a pinch; Today in porn swag; Stuffed? I'm Stayin'! See also: Hustler Labels: barack obama, Evan Stone, hillary clinton, hustler, interviews, jada fire, jerome tanner, lisa ann, MILF, nina hartley, politics, richard de montfort, sarah palin, set visits, sindee jennings ¶ Monday, October 13, 2008 3 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Transsexuals: Our secret neighbor to the south
A conversation with Gia Darling
 As you know, GramPonante.com is the one-stop clearinghouse for all your transsexual needs. Today I will introduce you to Gia Darling.After watching her Gia Darling Will Kick Your Ass! (it took longer than usual, because I was grinding my fists into my eyes) I needed to know more about this performer, who emigrated from Guatemala to California when he was 5, and ten years later became a she. Gram: Gia, the straight world is becoming more and more accustomed to transsexual porn, but it seemed that for years that market was limited to Brazilians and Thais. What would you say the difference is between the type of material you shoot in the States and foreign transsexual material?Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Gia Darling Will Kick Your Ass review; Allanah Starr will try anything once See also: Gia Darling, Third World Media Labels: gia darling, interviews, transsexual ¶ Tuesday, September 30, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Viv Thomas is neither about the screaming and bellowing and swearing, nor the hairy bobbing man-arse
 Viv Thomas, 60, is a globetrotting European pornographer whose models are sophisticated but eager, long-limbed but fleshy in the right places, polyamorous and polyglottal. He has created an adult niche safely between the utter degeneracy and the gauzy inaccessibility that bookends Europorn, providing that status-conscious continent with a thriving upper middle class. Of boobs.Born in South Africa, Thomas now makes his headquarters in the Algarve, a coastal region in the south of Portugal, where he and his crew run VivThomas.com.  Thomas began shooting adult material in his 30's following a car accident.We talked about Thomas' aesthetic and the changes he has seen in the adult world since he began working in this arena. Gram: Here in the United States, people get in car accidents while looking at pornography, yet you had your car accident first. Do you think that had something to do with your success?Viv Thomas' crew has a great sense of humor. I started paying attention to the company's boxcover copy when on one title the description of an anus was "a twitching rabbit nostril." Gram: When Americans think of Europe, they often think of the band that sang "The Final Countdown." And for many that is enough. But for those more discerning types there is a kind of girl that you return to over and over. Describe her.(Pictures above courtesy VivThomas.com.) Previously on Porn Valley Observed: When adultery isn't exciting; Jagermeister in porn; Strapped by a ghost See also: Viv Thomas Labels: Europe, foreign, interviews, viv thomas ¶ Tuesday, September 30, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Lexington Steele tries to be all things to all people
 Lexington Steele needs to make a stand. Even though his new movie, MILF Magnet 2, cannily advertises both milves (women who have had children) and cougars (women of a certain age), thus making the statement that there is a difference, it doesn't go far enough.As you can see, the boxcover says "All MILF! All Cougar!" That's a strong statement if it's true. I spoke with Wayne Hentai, Steele's press agent from the firm Plan 9 Media Group. Hentai: From what I understand, MILFs have kids. Cougars do not. Since I don't know the maternal disposition of the women in MILF Magnet 2, anything goes. Me: Well, I'm willing to believe that a woman who identifies herself as a MILF is actually a MILF. Hentai: You trust people. Me: In your opinion is there an age requirement for Milves and cougars? It would seem to me that you could be an 18 year old MILF, technically, but at what age does a non-breeder woman become a cougar, or is it a skin density issue? Hentai: It's more an existential question -- when are YOU ready to be called a MILF/cougar? Me: I'm asking the questions here! Hentai: I'd say a MILF must be over 27. That's about when girls start getting serious about pushing out the puppies and breeding, isn't it? Me: I think it depends on what part of the country you're from and your social/religious/educational/financial status. Also if anyone wants to have sex with you. Hentai: And for a cougar; I don't know. Early-to-mid-30s. You need to ask someone who has sex. Me: Thanks for your time. So according to Hentai, cougars can't be milves. Therefore the legend "All Cougar! All MILF!" is erroneous. Luckily no one cares about this except me. What matters is that Lexington Steele fucks them while wearing his sunglasses while one puts her finger in her mouth and the other recovers from a head wound. Watch Lexington Steele - MILF Magnet #2 Buy Lexington Steele - MILF Magnet #2
Previously: Lex launches latest load litany, lensing lipward-lofting love loogies See also: Lexington Steele Labels: cougar, FitM, interviews, lexington steele, MILF, wayne hentai ¶ Thursday, September 25, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Hell's Kittens preview: Priapic Disorder
 I don't pretend to understand Beat Pornographer Joe Gallant's movies, the latest of which, Hell's Kittens, arrived recently in preview form, but that is always a pleasant experience for me, and much better than the feeling of understanding something all too well. Filmed during February's eclipse while Jack Kerouac's On the Road typewriter scrolls were on display in New York, Hell's Kittens makes use of both those things, as the menacingly erotic 14-year-old's nightmare that is Sarah Jessie lies with her throat punctured in the shadow of both some Hell's Kitchen Port-a-Potties and the darkening moon, and as the movie becomes the first porn flick partially filmed in the New York Public Library. I assumed every one of the performers in the movie, aside from Nick Manning, Darryl Hanah, and Trina Michaels, were shopkeeper/strippers/dominatrices in New York, simply because all the girls have debauched and dangerous looks from having so much sex in alleys."No, I flew most of them out from L.A.," Gallant said. "and one even came from Illinois."  As you know from movies like Avenue X and The Skin Trade, Gallant is often successful in getting some serious verbiage out of people not normally asked to provide it. In Hell's Kittens Gallant standby Dino Bravo (since relocated to Studio City) waxes on about Priapic Disorder and Jessie says things that would make William Burroughs shoot an apple off his own head.Gallant himself is moving west later this year. "I've got to get out there and take advantage of all the space," he said. "I'll always be a New Yorker, I just need to get rid of 80 percent of the people here."  Among the highlights of Hell's Kittens include Tatiana (who says to Bravo, "Get Your Fucking Cock Out!"), Nick Manning's Pulitzer-worthy ad-libs ("Eat Your Shit Off It!"), and the gang's canoe trip across the Stygian Hudson River, which I thought equated New Jersey with Hell, but which Gallant optimistically claimed signalled New Beginnings."What better place to start again than in the Garden State?" Gallant asked, convincing no one.  But, evocative of Gallant's own trip this Fall, consider this:So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it...Hell's Kittens will be released around Halloween.  Previously: Joe Gallant: "The Machinery Is Weird"; Joe Gallant channels Sir Mix-a-Lot See also: Joe Gallant Labels: interviews, joe gallant, new york ¶ Thursday, August 28, 2008 7 Comments Links to this post
Friday, August 22, 2008
Japanese porn exporters put their money where the mosaic is
 While stateside audiences are familiar with Asian-American porn, their experience with porn shot in Japan might be limited to tentacles, underpants, and frogs.And with all those slimy distractions, viewers might not notice the mosaic pixelation of the performers' parts. "You can't show penetration of female genitalia in Japan," said Steve Scott, owner of Third World Media, a company that sells porn shot in Japan (and countries like Thailand and Brazil) to United Staes customers, mosaic-free. "The mosaic is like a psychological barrier," Scott said. Scott's company is based in Chatsworth but the New York native is fluent in Japanese and shot movies in Japan for several years. "Even if we are shooting without anything covering that area, the performer knows that her genitalia will be obscured for Japanese audiences."  Because most movies shot in Japan are filmed with the expectation of a mosaic, the cinematic style is also different, Scott said."They shoot softer shots from a greater distance," he said, "because a close-up would not make sense if the image was just going to be mosaiced anyway." Do non-mosaiced movies ever get back to Japan to shame the performers? "Yes," Scott said, "and the blacklist is pretty fast. If word gets back to performers and agents that a filmmaker is selling non-mosaiced masters over the Internet, for example, people tend not to work with him again."  So the Japanese taboo is penetration, and for the privilege of showing it close-up, American-style, without pixelation requires a rate increase. It just can't be sold in Japan. In fact, Japanese performers tend to make a great deal more money than their American counterparts."For a top-tier performer," Scott said, "they can make up to $400,000 for an 8-picture deal." Scott said that Japan's big stars tend to appear in "single girl" pictures, in which she appears in every scene. "The bigger stars can make between $20,000 and $50,000 per movie." But it's more expensive to live in Japan, what with the overhead involved in making watermelons square. Could American porn stars go to Japan and cash in, like aging NBA players go to Italy? "Japanese audiences tend to like Japanese performers," Scott said.  Third World Media does not use the top tier stars, especially since the lack of mosaic is a detractor."It's not as if [the top-tier stars] don't think they're doing porn since the mosaic is there," he said, "but it is an image thing." I find this fascinating, but only because there would be no porn if there weren't any taboos, and every culture has its own. The company also shoots bar girls in Thailand and trannies in Brazil. "Do Brazilian trannies have any mosaic restrictions?" I asked. "No, they want to be superstars, so they show everything," Scott said.  Nebulous laws about what we can and cannot show on the front page of websites have driven me to cover what the Empire of Japan might obscure with a mosaic with a yellow Hummer 2. I feel it is more patriotic. The images above are from (wait for it) Hello Titty 3Previously: Stephen King's The Soaping; Do they know it's Christmas? See also: Third World Media Labels: asian, interviews, japan, third world media ¶ Friday, August 22, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Meet Sadie West
 "So I guess I'm Sadie West now?"The 5'2" New Sensations contract performer (she joins Ashlynn Brooke) has just finished telling me the origins of her nom de porn, the first part of which is the rejected name for her niece and the second being her region of the United States. Having performed in only seven scenes in the entirety of her two months in porn, she can't keep a straight face when fellow performers introduce themselves with their own porn names. "Really?" West says, "Ashley Cumz?" Sadie, on the other hand, "is Native American for 'Princess'." The Carlsbad, CA native was dancing at bachelor parties and maintaining a low Internet profile when Porn Valley started calling, and she was at first hesitant. There is a difference between performing for a bunch of guys with camera phones and a bunch of guys with actual cameras. And she thought that people close to her might be offended. "But," she said, after three weeks she decided that "I'm sick of living for other people" and signed a contract with New Sensations. As we sat on a bed in Simi Valley (Poltergeist was filmed in the neighborhood), our conversation was constantly checked by West's handlers, who stood nearby, making sure she didn't say anything that would taint her brand new image. Things that would make you fall in love with Sadie West were deemed inappropriate for printing. Sitting next to this petite 20-year-old with perfect boobs, hazel eyes, and a schoolgirl outfit, I never felt more Amish. I asked her if there was anything she had done in her seven scenes that she hadn't done in real life. "Nothing," she said. "Except in porn I do it longer." Before getting into porn, West favored watching porn that was more "aggressive," and liked the more petite and glamorous performers like Jesse Jane and Teagan (who is also from Carlsbad, though West and she don't know each other).  Downstairs, New Sensations director Eddie Powell was getting ready to shoot West and Anthony Rosano (last seen in these virtual pages as Gilligan) in Schoolgirl P.O.V., hence the Britney circa '98 getup. (Charles Manson's caves are in the hills nearby, I thought; she should shoot biker movies up there. But she's a schoolgirl today. What do I know?) Powell has been working at New Sensations for eight years, having worked up from the graphic design and web departments to being head of post-production. He hasn't taken a vacation in several years. It is like that in porn. Why go elsewhere to seek nudity? It is Powell's house we're sitting in, and West goes downstairs to announce that she just clogged the toilet (her handlers are in the next room, so they cannot scold her). "What did you do?" Powell asks. "I put Baby Wipes in there," she says. "Again?" West doesn't look older than she is, but her voice is smoky like a late-night disc jockey and the poses she strikes for our initial photos are each model-perfect. She knows exactly what she's doing in front of a camera. But I don't like model-perfect photos. I like pictures that make the viewer want to show up to West's house with lunch. For a year. You'll see the progression in the attached gallery. West's look is like a cross between Carmen Hart and Sophie Dee. Her mother is Mexican from Baja California and her father is Irish. For a time, she attended boarding school in Ensenada. "Did you go to Papas 'n' Beer a lot?" I asked. "I'd be the type to dance on the tables," she said. Her handlers gave her a disapproving look.  I like Sadie West. I like her a lot. Why won't they let her be free?Since there is nothing that you will see West doing on screen that you can't be sure she hasn't already done, I ask her if all this screen sex has affected her home sex life. "I give a lot more blowjobs," she said. "Do you agree with Bill Clinton that a blowjob is not sex?" I asked. "A blowjob is a form of sex," she said. I agree. The only difference between a blowjob and a 15-person gangbang is that with a blowjob, texting is easier. But both require the same expenditure of warm human regard, if not equal amounts of warm human semen. West appears in a single scene on New Sensations' website so far. The description is as follows: "Sadie West takes matters into her own hands when she can't get her package from the postman. So she offers to suck his cock if he will give her the package. More than willing to comply he whips out his meat and Sadie eats that cock with passion. She wants him in her bad and he takes that pussy head on by slinging his pork sword balls deep in her pumping her full of man. Sadie screams in delight as he fucks the hell out of her then paints her face with his nut sauce!"It is the exclamation point, I think, that will cause US Postal Service applications to soar. West has not yet seen herself have sex, and she's nervous about it, but if there has been one thing she has learned in her first 60 days in porn, she says, it is that "porn stars know how to fuck better." It is time to shoot her eighth scene. Rosano walks in and begins nibbling on parts of her, but she looks straight at you, the viewer, like a pro. You can meet her in January at the AVN Expo. See a gallery here. Previously: Meet Ashley Orion; Meet Rylie Cyris; Fresh off the articulated bus; Casey Parker and California's pioneers See also: New Sensations Labels: "contract girls", interviews, new sensations, new talent, sadie west, toilet, WGL ¶ Wednesday, August 20, 2008 1 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Your day in Creamplosions
 Many times I will go to porn sets and spend hour upon delightful hour listening to the director wax on about his place in cinematic history, watching paint (or other substances) dry, getting physically assaulted by self-fulfilling prophecies, eating Kirkland-brand snacks and, if I'm lucky, experiencing porn.But Anabolic director Ivan was no-nonsense on the set of Creamplosions 3, starring Michigan's own Audrey Elson and Black Forest Sascha. It was not lost on the assembled group that the shoot was happening 63 years to the day that the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk by two Japanese torpedoes, and Audrey Elson was about to have a creampie explode right in her Quint. A creampie, as you well know, is an internal popshot that comes back out on film. So accustomed are porn audiences to the (statistically) rare-in-real-life external placement of male seed across the breasts, hair, face, and back that the creampie was invented to simulate the loving strivings of real couples, in which the male will ejaculate into his partner, she will let it seep back out, and then she will lick it off the floor, much in the same way George and Martha Washington did in the years before Christ.  Audrey Elson is 5'10" and hails from Detroit where, 30 years after the Indianapolis sank, the sailors of the Edmund Fitzgerald were honored.In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayedThe shoot was efficient in that no time was lost exchanging required information. Elson (to Sascha): Are you rough in your scenes? Sascha: Whatever you want. Slap your ass? Elson: Oh, slap that as hard as you want. Sascha: I was on set yesterday and the girl was like, "Don't kiss me, don't touch my face, don't touch me when the camera isn't rolling." Ivan: Will you eat your come out of her pussy? Sascha: I don't think so. Ivan: What about in the heat of the moment? Elson: What if you can't think straight? Sascha: Oh, I'll think straight.  Elson plays chess, is Armenian/Serbian, likes microbrews, the Pistons, and the Tigers, and was the center on her high school's girls' basketball team. But now she doesn't play basketball."My knees are fucked," she said. "Really?" Ivan asked. "Can he fuck your knees?" "I've done some weird shit in my porn career," she admitted, but no patellaphilia was perpetrated that day.  Almost as soon as the sex started, 45 minutes later it was over - just like in real life! I found myself driving back to Gram Ponante Towers, Helipad, Luge Course, and Maritime Sailors' Cathedral in the early afternoon. I hardly knew what to do with myself, so I contested parking tickets.See the Creamplosions 3 backstage gallery here. Previously: Audrey Elson, Odalisque; Kami, Pie; Manufacturing creampies - Noam Chomsky on porn See also: Anabolic, Ivan Labels: anabolic, audrey elson, germany, interviews, ivan, michigan, pop, sascha, set visits ¶ Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Roxy DeVille: Bad couches make good neighbors
 Like the Israeli Army, Roxy DeVille responds with overwhelming force.We were in a rental home decorated, in the way some porn rental locations are, ostentatiously and without purpose. Giant sculpted urns stood empty, wires poked from the walls, and the zesty Roxy DeVille sat in a room full of uncomfortable couches during a break from Holly Randall's photo session. "I've got to get some really hard, painful couches for my place," DeVille said. "You come over my house, you're taking your pants off and putting on sweats, then jumping into bed and watching TV or playing Battleship or something. But the person who overstays his welcome and wants to sleep over? They get the bad couch."  "Who hurt you, Roxy DeVille?" I asked. "Who was such a bad guest that you are going to populate your home with painful furniture just so that never happens again?" "It only happened once," she said. Later, DeVille stepped all over Teagan, but that is a story for later. Previously: Roxy DeVille alive, happy, not dead, bloody See also: Holly Randall Labels: holly randall, interviews, roxy deville, set visits, teagan presley, WGL ¶ Thursday, August 07, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Kiki D'aire back in porn
 Five years ago Kiki D'aire left the porn business to pursue a relationship with a man in New Orleans. The relationship didn't work out - spectacularly - and she has returned to porn while she finishes a degree at a southern Jesuit university."They're making me take everything but Christian classes," she said while hosting Porn Star Karaoke at Sardo's Bar in Burbank last night. Several generations of porn performers have come and gone in D'aire's absence. When she started her adult career in 1999 she was part of the last wave of performers who could conceivably not appear on the Internet. She worked in features as well as the newer series of low-budget gonzo movies. Even her name sounds antique for porn. D'aire, who was born in Memphis, always had a different look from most of her contemporaries. She was full-figured in the 90's style, a look that went away as porn performers got smaller and smaller, until many AVN award winners were actually smaller than the statues that commemorated their achievements. During D'aire's absence she danced, she went to school, and she didn't keep up with what was going on in Porn Valley. "I'd check websites now and then," she said, "but people came and went so fast."  D'aire looks now, as she did then, like the dirtiest girl at the bar. In a white t-shirt and jeans she looks like the Other Woman in any movie featuring a honkytonk gin mill."But now I'm more mature-looking," she said, working the room at Sardo's. "I'm sweating my ass off." "Please don't." D'aire says she has not yet shot a comeback movie, but says it will have to involve a lot of girls. "They won't know what hit them," she said. Still, she is being choosy about how she returns to the camera after being gone for half a decade. "It has to be worth my while," she said, with a slight Ashley Judd accent. "It can't be just anything." Previously: Kami, Kiki, and Anastasia: Battle of the Exes See also: Kiki D'aire Labels: interviews, kiki d'aire, PSK ¶ Wednesday, July 30, 2008 1 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Nina Hartley And Ernest Greene: O (the power of submission) The Places They Go
Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene celebrated their fifth anniversary yesterday.
One of Hartley's favorite questions is "What does your husband say about what you do?" "Action." A version of this story first appeared in The Naughty American.  If there were a porn version of "Fiddler on the Roof" (and who says there won't be – the title wouldn't even have to change), the Yenta would determine that Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene are a good – and not so unlikely – match."We recognize that our relationship is a work in progress," says Nina Hartley of her marriage to Ernest Greene. "But we love each other for our essential natures, which never change." Hartley, 49, is, of course, a major celebrity and sex educator famous to generations of fans, and Greene, 55, directs bondage-themed movies like "O: The Power of Submission." The couple met in 1989 and married in 2000. They live and work in a massive loft overlooking downtown Los Angeles. Hartley and Greene are veterans of several long-term relationships and have deduced that maintaining a successful marriage requires hard work for its rewards. "We maintain really rigorous relationship hygiene," Hartley said. "No matter how frightened or upset, nobody gets to be mean. Nobody's leaving. There's no bringing up stuff from before." One of the defining traits of couplehood is that each member can feel at ease with the other. This has been true of Hartley and Greene since the day they met, albeit with a porn twist. "It was 1989 and I was working as an assistant director to (porn performer/director/screenwriter) Sharon Kane," Greene said. "And there was Nina…" "There was a rape scene in the movie," Hartley added. "And I balked. I didn't want to do it. Ernest worked with me to recontextualize the scene for my character (those were the days in porn when you still talked about character). It was very helpful! Later that night, I was fooling around on the floor with Sharon and I asked Ernest if he wanted a blowjob." "What was I gonna do – say ‘No’?" Greene said. "I pay attention to the way a guy receives a blowjob," Hartley observed. "And he took it well." Hartley was in an unhappy triad marriage at the time. Although the couple she was married to approved of her working in porn ("and its paycheck," she added), she was forbidden to get in an extracurricular relationship. "So I was conflicted," she said. "I was attracted to [Ernest] from the beginning. He had such a big personality, and we clicked, which is something I didn't have at home in San Francisco." So Hartley would stay with Greene when she came to Los Angeles for work, but eventually felt so guilty that she called off their nascent relationship. "I went back to my marriage," she said, "until I just couldn’t take it anymore. And that took seven years." Greene, meanwhile, consoled himself by "being absolutely sure [Nina] had made a big mistake." They would continue seeing each other professionally as they collaborated on a series of educational "Nina Hartley's Guide To … " videos for adult studio Adam & Eve. To hear them tell it, Hartley suffered at their breakup but Greene soldiered on. "I had relationships with several women in the business," he said. "All of them great learning experiences. But all of them transitory from the beginning. I knew that." But then came the fateful day in 2000. "She called and asked me to lunch … " Greene said. "I actually called him and said, 'I've left my husband; are you free for lunch?'" "Now and for the rest of my life," Greene said at the time. "Now where were we?" Greene said he would do anything to keep her. He told her that she was never leaving again. "You won't get out so easy this time," he said. And there, at ages 40 and 46, Hartley and Greene started their life together, which now reflects decades of their own sexual, artistic, and political exploration, and which allows each party room to have sex with other people as part of keeping their own special relationship strong. "The more men I fuck," Hartley said, "the more I love my husband. And if you want a perfect brute in the bedroom, go see Ernest. It's like dancing with the Minotaur." "It's more fun than it looks," mused Greene. "I'm like an old Harley Davidson." But each also has a commitment to making good porn, which they think has something to do with their generation, and the age at which they started in the business. "You had a lot of sex radicals back then [in the 70s and 80s]," Greene said. "Because porn wasn't everywhere, you had to go and find it,” Hartley added. “It seemed to attract the type of person who really believed in it." "And so we try to give people the best we can give them," Greene said. "Consumers are not sheep to be fleeced. The people who are putting down their hard-earned money for a movie should get the best we can give them." The couple feels like they've hit on something, and want to get the word out. "We like spreading the Good News about sex," Greene said. "We want to let people know that 'I've seen sex and I think it's OK’"  One result of that philosophy was their well-received 2006 book, "Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex," with Greene writing as Ira S. Levine, his non-porn name.Greene is also happy to promote the product known as Nina Hartley: Porn Icon. "She's the star and I'm her biggest fan," he said. The longtime executive editor of Hustler's "Taboo" magazine, Greene acknowledges that even Larry Flynt seems smitten with Nina. "After all this time, the invitations to Hustler's Christmas party are still addressed to 'Nina Hartley and Guest,' even though I work there," he said. And Flynt isn't the only one. The artist Robert Williams, founder of Juxtapoz magazine and whose painting "Appetite for Destruction" was featured on the cover of the Guns 'n' Roses album of the same name, greeted his old friend Greene at a gallery opening. Greene recalled the conversation: "You're with Nina Hartley?'" Williams said. "I'm married to Nina Hartley," Greene said. "I've been jerking off to her ass for years," Williams said. Greene is not possessive of Hartley. The emotion is more like pride. "How do I feel with other guys being attracted to my wife?" Greene asked. "Well, a little smirky, actually." Greene said that this is the result of a genetic deficiency uncommon to most men. "I don't get jealous," he said. "I was born without that gene. We recognize that it is healthy for us to now and then get a dose of a different person." Hartley describes her own sexuality as "polymorphous/perverse." Greene clarified, "I call her the Universal Adapter." "I'm dominant, I'm submissive, I like women, I like men," Hartley said. "Most spots on the continuum." Hartley said that their style of open, non-possessive relationship encourages them to be better people for each other. "Ernest says, 'The stronger you get, the more secure I feel,'" she said. "How many men say that to their wives? 'Be as big as you want.' Oh, fuck, man! Now I have to own who I am!" Hartley and Greene do not offer advice for other couples, but point to successful relationship protocols that they arrived at through trial and error. "We're very complementary to each other," Hartley said, "but it was helpful to realize that the ways we are not compatible aren't some plot by the other person to be offensive." Eight years into the second act of their relationship, Greene has only one misgiving. "The regret I have is that we missed some fun by starting later," he said. "What would this have been like in our 20s?" If the relationship Greene and Hartley share seems alien to the average American couple, consider this final, universal tip. "We have a maid come in and clean," Hartley said. "You can really focus on loving your partner by outsourcing the drudgework." Previously: Sex on the nest with Nina Hartley; The Surrender of O first look See also: Nina Hartley Labels: ernest greene, fetish, interviews, naughty america, nina hartley ¶ Tuesday, July 08, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Ask a Porn Guy: Jack Lawrence on Breaking Into Porn
A version of this story first appeared in The Naughty American
 Jack Lawrence admits that he is not in the "top tier" of male porn stars, but maybe that is why he had the time to put together his comprehensive "How To" guide for prospective porn dudes, "Breaking Into Porn." "There's maybe 300 guys working on the straight side of the adult industry," he said. "And of those guys, only about 25 work regularly, meaning that they shoot 20 or so scenes a month. Those are the Tommy Gunns, the Evan Stones, and the Nick Mannings. I'm not up there yet." Lawrence, who has been in a not-too-shabby 600 scenes since he entered porn in 2003, is also modest, and that modesty comes through in the four-disc instructional DVD "Breaking Into Porn," in which Lawrence and adult industry friends Tyler Faith, Regan Anthony, Tommy Gunn, Holly West, and Marcus London break down everything an aspiring male porn actor needs to know, including driving in Los Angeles to executing a flawless anal scene. Self-financed for $20,000, "Breaking Into Porn" is Lawrence's video training manual for prospective male performers as well as a kind of Best Practices guide for existing talent. Lawrence and company outline HIV testing, what to pack for porn shoots, porn performer finances, agents, personal hygiene, and marketing oneself. Lawrence also does the dirty work of demonstrating proper cunnilingus, disrobing a partner ("it's not for you, it's for the camera"), and anal techniques on live porn star models. With his face at Regan Anthony's vulva, Lawrence tells the camera to "never use the same fingers for vaginal as you do for anal." "I've learned a lot from other performers," Lawrence, 41, said. "And career longevity in this business comes down to being considerate of your scene partners and the crew." Lawrence talked about shooting a scene in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley last July when the thermometer topped 119 degrees. "It was the hottest day of the year and we're fucking by the pool, melting in the sun," Lawrence said. "And Evan Stone, who could have stayed inside in the air conditioning, instead cheered up the crew by putting on a fig leaf and climbing in the trees." Lawrence calls the best male performers "gentlemen," and says that the most important thing for a male performer to do on set is to make the girl look good. "She's getting about a grand to fuck you," he said, "so you don't have to seduce her. But you do need to ask her for her personal Dos and Don'ts. Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes anyone who's cocky (pardon the pun). Be clean, smell good, and use breath mints." Lawrence points out that women have a much shorter shelf life in the adult industry than men, but when women are working, they are very important to a male performer's career. "A male performer is like the assistant director in a porn movie," he said. "It is often up to him to move a girl a certain way so she's in the right light or so she's seen in the most flattering way. If she has a little belly fat, he tries to hide it. And if a girl sees you trying to make her look good, she appreciates it. And she'll tell her friends that you're a good guy to work with, and that they should request you." Lawrence said he made "Breaking Into Porn" because he felt that he'd benefited from the advice of others and he wanted to ensure that the porn industry attracted quality people who knew what to expect. "I want to have several more years in this business," he said, "but I also want to pass the torch to guys who are going to respect women and make the industry worth being proud of." The first disc in the set is called The Interview, and is a loose but substantive chat between Lawrence and Boston bombshell Tyler Faith covering the things that future porn studs might not think of. "If you grew up on a farm in Iowa," Lawrence said, "you have no concept of L.A. traffic. In fact, L.A. traffic is unlike any in the world. You're going to be spending a lot of time in your car. So get a GPS." In the video, Lawrence then demonstrates plugging in an address into a portable Global Positioning System, explaining that he has booked gigs simply for the ability to show up on time. "And get an 818 area code," Lawrence said. "Producers need to know you've made a commitment to the business." Being prepared is a big part of Lawrence's porn career philosophy. He unpacks a duffel bag of essentials and contingency items including shower flip flops ("You don't want to walk across a warehouse barefoot when there's all sorts of secretions on the floor"), extra Digital Video tapes for the crew, sea sponges for partners on their periods, purified drinking water ("always stay hydrated"), and Baby Wipes ("we work with body secretions every day, but that doesn't make them any less embarrassing"). Lawrence also talks about "losing wood," or erectile failure, one of the porn industry's scariest occupational hazards. "In my career I have had four complete failures," he said. "And of course I'm embarrassed by that. And it happens to a lot of people but it's in your interest to keep that number down, and to make absolutely sure you don't fail in your first 50 scenes when you haven't really proven yourself." Lawrence says that the use of drugs like Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, and the hypodermically injected Caverject should be avoided if possible, though he acknowledges that a lot of talent use such performance enhancers. "Those things are not known to be safe," he said. "They weren't made for people who would be popping them all the time." Instead, Lawrence recommends Yohimbe Bark Extract to increase arousal, Zinc ("for popshots"), and lots of exercise. A former pro cyclist, Lawrence is a strong advocate of "good cardio." "I feel better now than I did when I was 20 now that I'm back on my bike,". he said, and in the video recommended doing several squats prior to a scene to stimulate testosterone production. All this extra work is needed because, as Lawrence says point blank: "Nobody's sympathetic to a soft dick." The location has been rented, the crew and other performers have been contracted, and "thousands of dollars are riding on your dick working." Lawrence related some good advice Nick Manning gave him about curtailing premature ejaculation, another porn industry (and real life) faux pas. "He said to fuck until you lose your breath," Lawrence said. "It keeps you from coming too soon." Lawrence also relays tips like counting backwards and doing math problems to curb one's enthusiasm. Lawrence and friends stress how difficult the porn industry can be, saying that an adult career is not for the weak. "Breathing Los Angeles air takes four or five years off your life," he says in the video. And he talks about the stigma of a porn career haunting later work. "Every year you're doing porn you're not learning about another career," he says. "And when you get out of porn, you're going to be that many years behind everyone else." In fact, 22 minutes into the first disc, Lawrence says, "Go back to college and get a career. "Don't get me wrong; this job can be a lot of fun," Lawrence says. "But people have to remember that it is a job, and it's slow going sometimes." Lawrence points to the HIV scare in the San Fernando Valley adult business in 2004. "People were out of work for two months," he said. "If you don't have a couple months of funds in the bank, you're screwed if something like that happens again or if it's just a slowdown." In his banter with Tyler Faith, Lawrence says the most important thing for porn dudes to do is to "treat the woman like a Lady." "Otherwise," Faith says, "McDonald's is always hiring." Previously: Godel, Escher, Jack Lawrence; (Pop) Shot in the foot See also: Jack Lawrence, Breaking Into Porn Labels: Evan Stone, interviews, Jack Lawrence, male talent, naughty america, regan anthony, Tommy Gunn, tyler faith ¶ Tuesday, July 08, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, July 07, 2008
Mika Tan Fights for America, Whores, and the Right to Film Sex with Asian Men
A version of this story first appeared in The Naughty American.
 In a business where, for women, a career often lasts less than 18 months, Mika Tan in December will begin her 13th year as a porn star. But the Hawaii native, who now lives in this west San Fernando Valley town, partially attributes her porn longevity to a simple clarification."I'm a whore," she says, "not a slut." As in her business, Tan's sexual activities are goal-oriented. While she may be, in both her public and private personae, a delightful, nerdy, accessible person who hosts karaoke parties at her house, she only gets physically intimate for two reasons. "For me, sex is for love or film, nothing else," Tan said. "I do not believe in casual sex. I perform for the guy or girl at home who cannot get the amount of or the kind of sex he or she wants. Sluts will have sex with you for free; whores require compensation like money, deeds, cars, fame, or jewelry." At the recent birthday party for fetish performer Satine Phoenix, Tan was dancing with a man who wasn't in the adult business. "He leaned in and said, 'My friend just told me you were a big porn star,'" she recalled. "I said, 'Not really.' "Without another word, he quickly untied the back of the bustier I was wearing," she said. "I slowly backed up and left. I will not speak for all porn performers, but people believe that we'll fuck anyone, any time." Tan is a performer's performer. She arrives to the set on time, rolling a suitcase with several clothing choices behind her. If it's an anal scene, she has hydrated and fasted for the previous twelve hours. "As someone that has penetrated, licked, electrified, spanked and spat on Mika's ass," said the bondage performer/rigger Chanta Rose, "I have to say Mika has one of the cleanest assholes of all." "Mika is one of the unsung greats," said AVN Hall of Fame director Roy Karch, who has directed Tan in several movies. "She's a delight to work with." "Unsung" was so often a word used to describe Tan, who at press time has appeared in more than 900 porn scenes, from fetish to anal to interracial to the inevitable "Asian," that Adult Video News presented her with its first-ever Unsung Starlet award in 2007. And it is not because porn so often casts even vaguely-Asiatic performers as mysterious "geishas" that Tan often flies below Jenna Jameson and Belladonna-level fame radar despite all those scenes, partners, and movies. "If you knew me in high school," she said, "you wouldn't believe I would be in this business at all." Despite being very accessible to fans, appearing at most of the consumer conventions the porn world hosts, Tan is a private person who is involved with her work to the point she rarely goes clubbing or engages in the Little Hollywood trappings of the modern porn star's life. "I rarely take breaks and like to keep my time occupied with being productive," she said. "I enjoy taking courses and learning new things. My pastimes are spending time with my relatives, who are spread pretty far apart, and having my extended porn family over for dinner." Tan's need for privacy is relative, of course. She might appear at a porn convention in sexy ninja gear and pasties, or graphically demonstrate dildo techniques on her show on Internet TV station RudeTV, but she doesn't host parties at the Palms in Vegas like Tera Patrick does or pop up at Hollywood hipster hangouts like Jenny Hendrix. So it was during a recent hiatus that a series of rumors about the comparatively reclusive Tan quickly picked up credibility. "My aunt and I were taking care of my grandmother, who had Alzheimer's Disease and dementia," she said. "I was away from the business for several months. When I came back, the life people invented for me sounded so much more exciting." Growing up in Hawaii and on Guam, Tan says she comes from a very patriotic family, many of whom served in the U.S. military. Speculation about Tan's own connection with the military spread during her hiatus. "After September 11, 2001, I did try to sign up for the Army with my sister, but I couldn't serve because of porn. My recruiter feared for my personal safety because women make up a smaller percentage of the military. Because some pornfolk knew I was training heavily to try and sign up for Army, rumors circulated that I was in Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan when I actually was just spending time with my family," she said. "My life is not as exciting as some people would like to believe," she said. And now the outside world looks different to Tan, too. "I used to do mainstream projects since I was in middle school, so when I hit 18 and started doing porn, there was such a drastic change in the way mainstream casting agents and directors treated me," she said. "I was looked at differently. I have yet to be sexually harassed and propositioned by a director or crewman on a porn set. I think it is because they deal with it so much on a regular basis. But it's a different story on a mainstream set." Tan booked non-porn modeling gigs and was a TV announcer on Guam prior to her move to L.A. where, in December, 1998, she responded to an L.A. Weekly ad seeking a non-nude 18-or-over Asian for adult video work. "It was a bukkake and I wore a Japanese schoolgirl uniform throughout," she said. Tan (and other Asian porn performers) are often typecast in submissive roles, such as geishas or … geishas (porn can't handle too many stereotypes at once). But Tan's energy, zest, and sheer dirtiness have made her as popular a "gonzo girl" -- a performer who will not shrink from extreme sex – as she is for fetish work and scripted porn. In fact, it is in scripted porn that a more playful side of Tan emerges. She can regularly be seen on late night cable in movies like "Bare Naked Desires" (where she plays the owner of a bordello catering to men who like Asian women) or in quirkier XXX fare, like the movie "Atomic Vixens – Escape from the Valley of the Sluts." In the latter movie Tan improvised dialogue in a scene with Jade Starr. "I taste like dog!" Tan yelled in Japanese. "I nearly spat out my beer," said "Vixens" director Ron Royster. "Mika Tan should be President." After all this time in porn, Tan doesn't want to be President so much as she wants to direct. And in her directing gig she gets back to her roots. She is producing and directing a series with Asians as the male talent. "I want to make porn for Asian-American men," she said, noting the absence of Asian-American males from the performing end of the adult business. "It is frustrating because none of the porn companies believe there is a large enough market to bankroll it for me." Yet adult stores are as common in Asian-American neighborhoods as anywhere else. "All of my boyfriends before porn were Asian," Tan said. "There are millions of Asians in this world and not seeing them in porn isn't because they don't know how to fuck. I speak from experience." If Tan is a whore but not a slut, are there, for research purposes, Asians who are sluts? If so, what might one say to them to draw out their sluttiness? Tan wouldn't take the bait. "Most Asians I know think very highly of themselves," she said. "They rarely have acceptance issues or negative self-esteem. There is nothing you can say to a typical Asian girl to make her more slutty. They either like you or they don't." What about cars or deeds or jewelry? "A lot come from money so trying to impress them with how much you make just makes you look like an idiot," she said. Previously: RudeTV sprouts from grave of KSEX; The World is your Royster See also: Mika Tan Labels: asian, interviews, mika tan, naughty america ¶ Monday, July 07, 2008 1 Comments Links to this post
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Ed Fox: No mean feet
 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. Previously: The Voluptuous feet of Ed Fox; (Pop) Shot in the foot See also: Ed Fox, Foot Factory, Minna Gallery Labels: Aria Giovanni, art, casey parker, ed fox, events, feet, fetish, interviews, jelena jenson, magazines, noname jane, photographers, san francisco ¶ Saturday, July 05, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Lighter side of the Load
 Now and then I publish articles by readers. In the following story you will find an interview with BBW Trista Lace by contributor Larry Smathers. Smathers writes for the types of publications you'd read while buying a pack of LifeSavers in the checkout aisle just to shut up your retarded half-brother. Look how Smathers masterfully makes his subject come alive like Art Linkletter, Mindy Cohn, or Soleil-Moon Frye.Naughty Big Girls Need Love Too by GramPonante.com special correspondent Larry Smathers Sitting in the back offices at Red Light District is a Rubenesque beauty who works in the Financing Department for the adult video company. Most of her days are spent cutting checks for the talent who collect the loot for a recent girl-on-girl scene or for participating in a raunchy warehouse gangbang, but the unassuming bookkeeper was surprised as directors who came in to pick-up their checks would also try a quick pickup with her. “I kept having directors ask me, ‘Would you want to do a scene?’ she giggled. “I can honestly say, I never, ever, thought of having sex on film. It took about two years, but when Mr. Pete approached me about doing the first big girl video for Red Light and added that he wanted me on the cover I said, ‘Why not?’ There were people in my personal life that were just waiting for the day to come when I would do this; I’m a very sexual person in real life.”  Thus, Trista Lace the porn persona was born, along with a new BBW series titled Heavy Loads. The box tells us her weight is 235 lbs. and the zaftig actress/bookkeeper is certainly not uptight about her size.“I’m very comfortable with myself, because we all know the average girl isn’t a size 0. When I was getting ready to do this I thought ‘No one is going to watch these movies if they don’t like to watch a big girl having sex’,” referring to Communist countries where dissidents are forced to watch BBW 8-millimeter loops in the gulag. Trista doesn’t see her recent turn to starlet as a full-time career move, just a bit of naughty fun away from her desk job, but her big talents are becoming more in demand. She has done her second flick for Zero Tolerance, Waist Watchers 3, and has a photo spread with Plumpers magazine in the works.  As for keeping up her Queen-size appearance Trista plays coy. “I really don’t eat that bad…let me see, chicken salad is my favorite and well, I do love chocolate.”When pressed a bit harder for her favorite brand of high-end confection -- Godiva or Lindt -- this porn newbie laughs. “Oh, no, I go for the cheap stuff; just give me a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and I’ll be a happy girl.” Heavy LoadsPreviously: Mz. Buttaworth, will you be our dirtpipe milkshake? (Heavy Loads review on Fleshbot); Hirsch's Heavies heave haunches heavenward; On the road with Alix Lakehurst See also: Red Light District Labels: "red light district", bbw, interviews, larry smathers, mr. pete, trista lace, zaftig ¶ Tuesday, June 17, 2008 3 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Sherman on Czech chicks, Lorena Sanchez
 Since I live porn, and inspire it, I don't have the chance to watch it for 48 hours straight, like a friend from my home town recently did. I sent my old friend Sherman a box of titles a month ago and he got back to me this morning. He sounded tired."I can't thank you enough, man," he said. "Where do they get those girls?" I didn't know what he was talking about. Last time we spoke, he told me about how there were Cambodians delivering his mail. "The Post Office is hiring Cambodian girls?" I asked. "No," he said. "Red Light District. Where do they get those girls? They blow my mind. Then I blow a load." "Who do you like best?" I asked. "Well, that Lorena Sanchez seems very nice," Sherman said. "She could work as a hostess in an upscale restaurant." "Yes," I said. "She's very clean." "But Red Light is very generous," he said. "They send out bonus discs and sometimes the bonus movies are better than the ones that, you know, on the box - " " - the titles they advertise? - " "The first discs in there. Like, this one was I've Been Sodomized 4. I liked it - " "I've Been Sodomized is one of my favorite porn titles," I said. "It sounds like the first thing you'd say to a 911 operator." " - but the bonus disc was called Fill Her Up," he said. "And there were these Czech chicks, and they were clearly not having a good time." "Why did you like that?" I asked.  "Because it looked real," he said. "These Czech guys blow their loads onto this girl Nina's ass and she drips it onto her face. As the tape ends she looks like she's about to run to the bathroom to throw up."Red Light's double discs are grab bags. A company employee says that the bonus discs are often the first thing available and may change depending on which box a consumer buys. "The customers loved this but the distributors were not willing to pay the added $1.00 we asked to offset the box size/cost/packaging costs, and the stores did not like them because of the thickness of the new packaging since they took up more shelf space." he said. " We thought of that and hoped to sell more because of the bonus DVD and reduce shelf space for other competitors, but that didn't work out." Sherman and I attended sixth grade together. If our art teacher, Mrs. Pappas, only knew of Sherman's newfound appreciation for realism, she'd probably regret having given him a C for throwing paste. Previously: Here's the story of 50 lovely ladies; You can't tell Lorena Sanchez anything when she gets this way See also: Red Light District Labels: "red light district", fans, interviews, lorena sanchez, sherman ¶ Thursday, June 05, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Ryder Skye and Roxy DeVille menage to redeem Sex And the City movie
 When she was a struggling mainstream actress, Ryder Skye said she would be very nervous before auditions."I'd completely psyche myself out," she said. "And for this one, I didn't even know why I was there." Ryder Skye said the casting agent wanted Asian women when she was called to audition for Sex And the City, premiering in L.A. tomorrow. She also wasn't sure there'd be nudity. "But then I saw all these porn girls there," she said, "so I knew something was up." Skye and Roxy DeVille (who is credited as "Roxi Devill') are two-thirds of a menage a trois also involving Gilles Marini, who plays Dante, the lust object of Kim Cattrall's whorish Samantha, one of the four leads in the movie. Extensive exit traffic research for this site reveals that at least five women and one gay man read Porn Valley Observed, thus this feature on a television series and movie very few straight men can explain the appeal of. "The scene was shot in Malibu in January," Skye said, "on the first day of AVN. Samantha is looking through the window and she sees this guy she likes having a threesome." "So a location in Los Angeles stood in for a location in New York?" I asked. "Impossible." "No," Skye said. "In the story Samantha comes out here for some reason." SPOILER ALERT. Damn it. I should have put "SPOILER ALERT" before that riveting factoid. Now I'll never get a job at Entertainment Weekly. "Did you meet Kim Cattrall?" "No," Skye said. "It was one of the last scenes shot for the movie. Everybody else had pretty much gone home. She looks through her window and there we are, but we were never in the same room. They'd cut that in later." Wow. I said. Hollywood is a dream factory. Skye is a wholesome-looking porn star, as opposed to the many talented and friendly women in the adult industry who could never be mistaken for anything but a porn star. "But the chatboards go on and on about how women in porn only play hookers and strippers on film," she said. Yes. Typecasting is wrong. It was always my desire to star in an all-Thai version of "The Odd Couple," but I am neither Thai nor an actor. The world keeps grinding people down. "I don't know if the crew knew what to make of [herself and DeVille]," Skye said. "They asked if we wanted the set cleared for our nude scene, and we just took off our robes and got down to it. It took about an hour." "Did your costar react in any physical way to you and Roxy flouncing around the set?" "If he did," Skye said, "I didn't notice. I think he was a little nervous. But he was really grateful to us afterward. He thanked us for being so cool." Skye saw Marini at the gym last week. "He walked by and I couldn't place him. I thought, 'Have I fucked him?' Then I remembered. He was on his way to the New York premiere that day." Skye had to buy her ticket, but she will be seeing herself on the big screen tomorrow at the Arclight in Hollywood. Skye, who will be credited in the movie as Aricka Evans, struggled to get her Screen Actors Guild card as a mainstream model and actress before this opportunity came up. "I try for years to get my SAG card and then I get it through being in porn," she said. Previously: Energy drink-drinking nudes; Britney Spears continues to hold out hope of immaculate conception See also: Ryder Skye Labels: celebrities, interviews, kim cattrall, mainstream movies, roxy deville, Ryder Skye, WGL ¶ Thursday, May 29, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Enter the Adrianaconda
 Adrianna Nicole wishes, in retrospect, that she'd chosen a different porn name, but at least she can try on a new one when she's wrestling."If I'd only thought of 'Adrianaconda' sooner," she said. Visitors to San Francisco (with the exception of school groups and religious zealots) should make a point of stopping by Kink.com's massive Armory building, built in the early 20th century during a time of nationwide worker unrest and featuring - I'm not kidding - a stream running through its basement for the benefit of a National Guard under siege (hint to disgruntled workers of the future: all you need to do is poop in the water; that's what my coworkers did at AVN). Among the Armory's many charms is an indoor parade ground, dozens of creepy rooms used for water bondage and various flavors of submission with and without straps, and a wrestling ring.  It is there that Nicole, redubbed Adrianaconda, will participate with 15 other wrestlers in the sweaty and pant-astic Ultimate Surrender, fighting against and alongside such bendy and brutal grapplers as Madison "The Butcher" Young, Amber "The Rogue" Rayne, and Ariel X: "The Assassin.""If you win, you fuck the loser with a strap-on," said Nicole, who has made it to this semi-final round in "The Summer of Vengeance." "My incentive to win early on was I had been in a couple of scenes before my match and I just didn't want to get fucked again." The wrestling starts off in bikinis and things devolve from there. I asked Nicole if she ever felt fear. "Well, I'm a little bigger than most," she said. She mentioned Madison Young who, though wily, seemed easy pickings. "I could kick her ass. But her partner is very muscly."  Next week Ultimate Surrender will film matches before a live audience of Kink.com subscribers on specially-erected bleachers, but the matches will be available on line up to and including the final showdown in August.Whatever Nicole is doing with her left arm here doesn't seem like it would be in accordance with FILA standards, but whatever. Other wrestlers in this season of Ultimate Surrender have included Annie Cruz, Delilah Strong, Bobbi Starr, and Harmony Rose, none of whom seems stoppable by mortal hands. See a gallery of Ultimate Surrender's Season 5 here. I am glad Nicole was not "Adrianaconda" from the start; the name seems to negate her sweet and gentle nature. Previously: Back to the Apocalypse at the San Francisco Fetish Ball; Adrianna Nicole is her own massage table; Ultimate Surrender See also: Ultimate Surrender, Kink Labels: "Kink.com", adrianna nicole, annie cruz, ariel x, bobbi starr, delilah strong, harmony, interviews, madison young, san francisco, WGL, wrestling ¶ Thursday, May 29, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Joanna Angel: Bathrooms restore virginity
 We all know that bathrooms are romantic, but Joanna Angel believes that they erase Time. I talked with her about her personal water closet philosophy on the joyful release of her Fuck Me in the Bathroom part DEUX.Angel: It was shot in bathrooms in New York and L.A. And it's much better than the first one. The first one was a practice round.  Gram: Is it true for bathroom water like it is for bagels and pizza, that east coast water is just different and tastes better?Angel: That's gross.  Gram: When someone says, "I want to do do you in the pooper," do you naturally assume that it is in the ass or in the bathroom?Angel: I think the ass. But generally people don't say that. It's kind of rude. Even to a porn girl. It sounds like a Red Light District movie.  Gram: So when someone says, "Fuck me in the bathroom," it has to be the girl saying it or it's rude?Angel: It's OK to say "Fuck me in the bathroom," not "Fuck me in the pooper." Bathroom=hot. Pooper=not hot.  Gram: Do me a goddamn favor and pretend that we're doing this interview in person.Some scenes in Fuck Me in Bathroom part DEUX were shot in the lavatories of a skate park and a school. But not the TARDIS, though that would have made sense. Angel: One of the first times (I had sex in a bathroom) I was really drunk. Which is OK.  Gram: I don't need your permission to be an alcoholic.Angel: It was with this dude in this band.  Gram: Was it Kansas? The Hoodoo Gurus? Was it Sade? Dokken (rhymes with Rockin')? The Everly Brothers?Angel: No. He was married and was having issues deciding whether he should have sex with me or not.  Gram: I would have no such issues. Not because I'm married but because I would need to say "pooper."Angel: So I told him we could go to the bathroom and talk about it. And then we did it in there. And then he ran out and called his wife and wished her a happy anniversary. Gram: So are you saying - Angel: Since it happened in a bathroom, I think it's almost like it never happened. It's the perfect place to fuck someone you aren't sure if you should really be fucking or not. Fuck Me in the Bathroom part DEUX stars Angel, Rebeca Linares, Jessie Lee, Maureen Cross, Audrey Elson, and James Deen. Previously: All the best cowboys play Guitar Hero See also: Burning Angel Labels: "burning angel", "joanna angel", interviews, james deen, rebeca linares ¶ Wednesday, May 21, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Stoya finds cigarettes, pierogies in Philadelphia
 I like Stoya because she reminds me of an Edward Gorey character with all the working parts Gorey himself wasn't interested in. I also think she has a wonderful face, reminiscent of my Soviet forebears. I have recently begun a Stoya immersion program (it's even better than you think) and talked with her via interweb technology at her home in South Philadelphia.Gram: Why have you left me? Stoya: I didn't move to offend you personally. I lived in L.A. for a year a couple of years ago, but I wanted to get back to my friends in Philadelphia. I have locational ADD. If any landlords are watching, I'll probably skip out on you in ten months or so.  Gram: The Man doesn't read this website; only The People.Stoya is in the two-disc DVD Cheerleaders. In the first disc she hangs by a locker and listens to the other girls talk dirty. In the second disc she reluctantly agrees to cheat on her boyfriend with Brianna Love and Manuel Ferrara. Gram: There was some dramatic tension in Cheerleaders that you don't normally see in porn movies. You were what the movie became about. Stoya: Oh, I'd say Jesse Jane was the star. I think you're biased.  Gram: Goddamn right I'm biased. But you knew what Jesse Jane would be up to through the whole movie. You had a character arc.Stoya: Those girls had big breasts. Gram: That they did. That also set you apart. You worked with the only other woman (Brianna Love) whose breasts wouldn't put out your eye.  Stoya: I have breasts. They're not humongous but they're fine. They've done fine for me as an adult in her breeding years. But when they sit me next to a girl who's 5'4" and has a couple of Double Ds I feel like a gawky teenager.Until her wireless signal ran out, Stoya led the computer on a guided tour of her neighborhood. Gram: Do you eat Philadelphia cheese steaks? Stoya: No. I'm not in a vegetarian phase right now, but all that meat still makes me sick. I like pierogies. And spinach nuggets. Gram: What about California? We don't really have pierogies here. Stoya: Well, I like avocados. In fact, I love avocados. Gram: I don't suppose you can go to the beach. You look translucent on this Interweb device. Stoya: I have to cake on a lot of SPF-50. I don't care if I look like a jackass. I just don't want to combust. My mother gave me three rules: As long as you don't chew gum or stick anything in your butt you'll remain a lady. Well, I don't chew gum. Also: Don't use heroin. Check. Finally: Stay out of the sun. Gram: Prior to becoming Stoya of Digital Playground, what did you do, or has your previous existence been suppressed?  Stoya: I shot for GodsGirls.com and Razordolls.com, and I was a go-go dancer at clubs. It was like getting paid to work out while drunk. It was the best job. (Photo by Nikola Tamindzic)Gram: What do you drink? Stoya: Candy drinks and old man drinks. I like pomegranate schnapps. I could drink a whole bottle. And I used to walk into bars and slap my Marlboro Reds down on the bar and ask for whiskey. The bartender would say, "Really, Little Girl? Are you sure you're not an 80-year-old man?" Gram: Well are you? Stoya: Fairly sure. Gram: Because if you were an 80-year-old man, I'd be asking myself some hard questions. Pirates II just wrapped. I would have gone to the set but only a select few were invited. Stoya: People talk about how massive an undertaking it was, but I was only there for a few days. I did get fisted by Belladonna, however, which was magical and amazing.  Gram: In terms of the big Digital Playground movies that are not about pirates, is there a pattern? What's the next logical step in the sequence that goes from Babysitters to Cheerleaders to ... ?Stoya: They don't tell me because they don't want me leaking it, because I would. I don't know. Librarians?  Gram: Not that I advocate MySpace (now that I have reached my early 20s I have settled down for a more Facebook sort of life), but is your MySpace blog really yours?Stoya: At first it wasn't, but now it's all me. Someone was writing it for me. I had to say, "It hurts me to see someone writing with two Ts and eight exclamation points pretending they're me." So I do it now. Gram: That's greatt!!!!!!!! So, you're staying in Philadelphia between movies? Stoya: I even got a bus pass here. Previously: Thomas Aquinas becomes Digital Playground contract saint; Stoya avoids labels; Jenny Hendrix keeps in touch; No Easter for Alix Lakehurst See also: Stoya, Digital Playground Labels: alcohol, Apple, belladonna, brianna love, Digital Playground, interviews, jesse jane, manuel ferrara, pennsylvania, stoya, technology ¶ Wednesday, May 21, 2008 3 Comments Links to this post
Sex on the Nest with Nina Hartley, and some more masturbation
 I love pregnant women. That is why I am so intent on creating them. But National Treasure Nina Hartley, who trained as a midwife before embarking on a career in a different service industry, declares that the road to MILFhood can be both bumpy and delightful. In her Great Sex During Pregnancy DVD, Hartley (who has not been pregnant herself) moderates as two glowing porn stars share their favorite on-the-nest tips and positions. Hartley is joined by Violet Blue and Tiffany Mynx, both of whom happened to be pregnant and wearing lingerie at the time Hartley came knocking. Read more about Great Sex During Pregnancy here. Because it's Nina Hartley Day (except in Tennesee and Canada), Ms. Hartley elaborated on her personal masturbation philosophy that she will share live tonight between 5 and 8 PST. Gram: Three hours. You're masturbating for three hours. Hartley: I've never been motivated to masturbate for three hours, either, so we'll have to see! My orgasmic threshold is quite high, and I'm only really good for one O per session. Gram: You mean O: The Power of Submission (now available on DVD) soon to be a major sequel? Hartley: No. Orgasm. Really, two a week is fine for me, no matter how many times I fuck anyone. The benefits of sustaining pleasure is the reduction in blood pressure, etc., as well as heightened mental effects. Pleasure/orgasm are altered states of consciousness, akin to the drug experience, so the longer you stay "in" it, the more woozy from the endorphins you'll be. The longer you can hold off from coming, the stronger the eventual pop will be. Gram: I'm afraid of my own orgasms. People have died. See Nina's masturbation session here. Previously: Nina Hartley to masturbate for three hours See also: Nina Hartley, Adam & Eve Labels: interviews, MILF, nina hartley, pregnant, violet blue ¶ Wednesday, May 21, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Workingman's Gunn
 Today is Tommy Gunn's birthday. You might say, "Grams, I only visit your site for the trannies, MILFs, and Satan - why confuse things by writing about dudes?"Well, Gunn is one of only a few dozen steadily-working guys in porn, and as such has probably serviced 40 to 50 of your favorite female stars since 2004, and at least 200 more women you're not attracted to. That he has carried on his career by being a genuinely nice and accessible guy is an admirable accomplishment. Also, Gunn is able to articulate the work ethic involved in being a successful male performer. "You should be hard before she's in the room," he said. "It's a job." In the 600-plus scenes he has performed since getting into porn at age 36, Gunn has certain things figured out. "I can tell you how the pop is going to go from the beginning," he said. "I know if I'm tired, or if the chemistry is a certain way, or the way she smells, how far the load will fly." That is exactly like my job. I know that I will end this story with "I want people to look at porn performers and not think they're somebody who had nowhere else to go" and it will be just as satisfying as shooting a ropy volley across the machine-crafted nubs of Jesse Jane.  Writing about porn is difficult sometimes. For me, I had no interest in being a porn performer after the first scene I watched being filmed. Not that it didn't look like fun, but the work involved was considerable: standing in awkward positions under hot lights, the lack of spontaneity, delaying what wanted to come naturally (and then worrrying about aim); the fact that it was such a job became apparent the first day.But even if I knew I didn't want it to be me on camera, my suspicion is that porn dudes in general think that the writers really want to be them. "The media are jealous," says Jack Lawrence in his (otherwise) excellent training video Breaking Into Porn. Not true. At least not for me. Blowjobs are like handshakes in this business, and I'll take mine without the C-light, thank you. Which is why Gunn, who approaches the business with an older man's perspective, is such a good interview; he talks about his job like it's a job. On Respect "When I work with another guy's girlfriend," he said, "I want to deliver her back to her boyfriend unharmed." On Role Models and Cutlery "I admire Peter North, Randy West, Buck Adams, Lee Stone, and Ron Jeremy," he said. "Without those guys chopping their way through the forest, I wouldn't have this path. Now I want the machete." On Competition "I think Evan Stone and I are going to trade that AVN Best Male Performer award back and forth for the next few years." (Evan Stone says this too.) On Scene Partners "The girls have to have sex with someone, but what does it hurt you to be nice to them?" On Career Choices "If I'm lucky the director will ask me if I want to have sex on the couch or on the bed." Gunn was born in New Jersey 41 years ago today, worked in Philadelphia in construction and interior design, and moved to Florida where he became a dancer. Gunn was married to World Poker Tour hostess Shana Hiatt (with whom he appeared in a Playboy Girls of Hawaiian Tropics video prior to his porn career) and, later, to porn star Rita Faltoyano. Currently living with New Sensations contract performer Ashlynn Brooke, Gunn has turned the Woodland Hills home they share into a workshop for his other projects. "When I was a Chippendale's dancer," he said, "I got very good at sewing. I made costumes. I replaced the velcro when the other guys needed to patch their outfits." While working at a Miami bikini shop in 1997, he made swimwear for Janine Lindemulder and Julia Ann that they still remembered when he entered the porn business.  Gunn has a room in which weight equipment shares space with two sewing stations.He has also built most of a deck that features a tiki bar and a trucked-in sand beach.  But the most impressive achievement for DIY enthusiasts is his shopping cart/battering ram for around-the-garage projects onto which he has built a platform for a circular saw."I like to keep busy," he said.  It was in 2004 that Gunn, visiting L.A. with then-girlfriend, met Wicked director Brad Armstrong at the Saddle Ranch."How do I get into this business?" Gunn asked Armstrong, who just cocked his thumb at. "She's your ticket," Armstrong said. "But it didn't work out," Gunn said. "I was back on the plane to Florida. But Brad and I stayed in touch." Gunn's first scene was with Cherokee in Wicked's Fluff And Fold and he has been working ever since. I asked him what he wanted to do next. "I want to win an Oscar," he said. "I'm serious." Gunn has a protective attitude about the porn business that its employees tend to generate after a year or so on the job, when they realize the rest of the world looks at them differently but not always kindly. "I want people to look at porn performers and not think they're somebody who had nowhere else to go." Previously: Backstage at the XBiz Awards:A Night of Heroes; Tommy Gunn casts the first bone; Ashlynn Goes to College 2; Barbara Summer, Rita Faltoyano, and Trina Michaels look frank, surprised, and wary, respectively; Untitled Briana Banks project; O: The Power of Submission See also: Tommy Gunn Labels: Ashlynn Brooke, Buck Adams, Evan Stone, interviews, Lee Stone, male talent, Peter North, Randy West, rita faltoyano, ron jeremy, Tommy Gunn ¶ Tuesday, May 13, 2008 2 Comments Links to this post
Friday, May 09, 2008
Mother's Day with Belladonna
 Most people are here on this planet because their parents have sex. Yet polite society looks down on people who have sex for a living being parents.But at least one porn mom, Belladonna, is proving that being sexy on camera and a good mother off camera aren’t mutually exclusive. "You have to love your child no matter what," Belladonna said. Belladonna, one of the world's most popular porn stars, has spent the last several years directing and starring in films like “My Ass Is Haunted” and “Cock Happy” that have redefined the definition of what is dirty. With jet black hair (when she hasn't shaved it), tattoos and a signature space between her two front teeth, the woman raised in Utah as Michelle Sinclair continues to be the Los Angeles porn world's hardcore ambassador. And Belladonna is also a happily married mother of a 3-year-old daughter. While many porn stars are also devoted parents, most do not advertise it or mention it to fans. Broadcasting their maternity might make them seem less accessible as fantasy material. Also, like mainstream celebrities, they want to protect their children from unwanted attention. One internationally recognized performer declined this interview about juggling her roles as an adult actress and a mom by saying, "People know I have a kid and that's it. They know nothing about him, and I will have it stay that way." Belladonna is different, and it may have something to do with how public her private life has been since a 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer on “ABC News: Primetime.” The protective porn industry called it a "hatchet job," but Belladonna says the tears she cried in the interview were real and the things she said about the porn world's often predatory nature were true, though there was some "creative editing." "[The Primetime special] would sometimes cut me off when I'd actually said a lot more, making it look like things were worse than they were," she said, adding that she would make a statement and qualify it with a "but also…" but that ABC only aired the negative part. Prior to the special, Belladonna had already been noteworthy for the extremity of her performances, delightedly dominating other women and taking all manner of diverse objects in her ass, including baseball bats. To this day, younger porn performers talk of Belladonna with awe. "Belladonna is my hero," said bite-sized dominatrix Aiden Starr. "I would love to work with Belladonna," said Jenny Hendrix, no stranger to matters of the ass. "She scares me a little." But after the show aired, Belladonna received a measure of celebrity that has placed her – along with Jenna Jameson, Jesse Jane and Tera Patrick – on the short list of porn's household names. When she became pregnant in 2004, she moved back to Utah. "I wanted to be closer to my mother and family," she said. Belladonna knew that her mother, a nurse, would probably be a good resource. But she continued to film scenes with women as her belly expanded, flying back and forth to L.A. when work came up. "My family knows what I do," she said. "I've always been up front with them and most of them accept it. I can't imagine not being able to go back home when I need to." And she knew that was a safety net she wanted to create for her daughter. "I knew that I wanted to be a mother my daughter would know was there for her, no matter what,” she said. She was not nervous about the birth. "Since I was pregnant, I was very excited to be a mom," she said. "Being the second of seven, I was never scared about changing diapers." Her daughter was born in early 2005 ("During AVN," Belladonna said. "I missed the convention that year") and Belladonna and her husband and business partner, Aiden Kelly ("you could also call me 'Mr. Belladonna,'" he said), bought a home in Los Angeles. Naturally, Belladonna took a break from performing following the birth, and until recently restricted her on-screen partners to women. But now she shoots scenes at least twice a week in her Studio City office and home, while her daughter is either at preschool or with a nanny. "I can't imagine having kids and not being around for them," she said, and proceeded to describe the non-porn events of her day. "Each morning we wake up at about 7," she said. Her daughter's bedroom is up a short flight of stairs from where Belladonna and her hubby sleep in the modern, several story house. "We go downstairs and she stands on this thing called a Learning Tower where she can be at my level when we make breakfast. We make pancakes and sometimes oatmeal. "Then she takes a bath and gets dressed. The nanny comes in around 10, and any shooting we do usually begins at 11 and ends by 3." There was a time when Belladonna worried what other parents would think. Contrary to what "Desperate Housewives" would have you believe, all women in L.A. do not look like porn stars, and Belladonna stands out. "Sometimes I would take deep breaths when meeting other parents," she said, "because I knew that 'What do you do?' is a question people ask pretty soon. And it's not like I dress with cleavage showing or I wear a lot of make-up, but I've got the tattoos, and I know some of the husbands recognize me…" But the first time Belladonna met another mom and told her, when asked what she did, that she "made adult movies," the response was both a surprise and a relief. "Really?'" Belladonna said, imitating the mother. "'My husband wanted to do that, too! That's great money.'" Belladonna reads to her daughter every day. Among their favorite books are the works of whimsical poet/artist Calef Brown, including "Flamingos on the Roof" and "Polkabats and Octopus Slacks." Other favorites include "P.U. – Is That You, Bertie?" ("It's about farting," she said), "Oh No, Not Ghosts" and "I Like Myself." That her daughter likes herself is important to Belladonna, who went through a period where she didn't like herself. She admits that she once suffered from depression and feels "a little obsessed" about letting her daughter know that anything she does is OK with her mother. "I knew that whatever I did my parents would love me," she said, "and I feel that way about my daughter. This is her life; she can do whatever she wants with it because it's hers." Including be a porn performer herself? "I know that I'm a good person and a great mother," she said. "And I'm a porn star. But my expectations for her are high: I really want her to be herself and be loved for it." Belladonna and her hubby don't have broadcast TV in the house ("I don't want it to be a babysitter"), but among the movies the family watches are "Return to Oz" and "Neverending Story." They sing "You Are My Sunshine" and "There's A Hole In The Bucket." ("And she knows when I get the words wrong," Belladonna said.) And every time her daughter looks in the mirror, Belladonna has instructed her to say "I love you." "Sometimes she goes through a stubborn phase or she doesn't want to listen," Belladonna said. "But I get it; I was that kid too. Patience is really important – for me and for her." On Sunday, Belladonna will be happy if she receives a Mother's Day card, but the family doesn't really celebrate holidays. "Except for Halloween," Belladonna said. "But my daughter is never scared." See a gallery here. Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Belladonna shares views on tank, 2005 See also: Belladonna Labels: aiden starr, belladonna, interviews ¶ Friday, May 09, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Delivery Man: Bodies buried in the desert
 Prior to steady employment as America's Beloved Porn Journalist I parlayed my state-issued Commercial Driver License into a gig driving escorts to appointments.When driving a pro it was as solid a job as working at General Electric; when the escort didn't take her job seriously it was like herding cats. Cats who lie to you and have gonorrhea. "The Delivery Man," the debut novel of Joe McGinniss, Jr. (his father wrote "The Selling of the President 1968  " and the Ted Kennedy biography "The Last Brother ," among other books), tells the story of Chase, a half-hearted artist who takes a driving job for a Las Vegas escort agency.Like any resort town, the desperate side of Las Vegas is never too far away. And that might be its appeal. "The Delivery Man" paints a picture of Chase, the artist, and Las Vegas, his home, in equally somber tones, but no less rich. Read it before your next trip to Vegas. I talked with McGinniss recently. GP: Most novels containing world-weariness usually feature older characters. What compelled you to write about younger natives? JMcG: This is as much a story about the hypersexualization of young people and the rise of sex in popular culture - as it is a Vegas story. Young people had to be front and center of "The Delivery Man" because they reflect society and social mores so clearly. And the combination of young people and Las Vegas was irresistible given the fantastic glittery void and raison d'être of the city. What do the kids who grow up in the spillover from the Strip aspire to? How does living in ground zero of social and moral dysfunction - complete with adult industry annual awards shows and Latino immigrants handing out call-girl flyers offering 'girls in 20 minutes or less' t-shirts - impact kids as they come of age? So this is why I had to focus on the younger natives of Las Vegas. GP: Like Los Angeles, the accepted wisdom about Las Vegas is its artlessness. Chase's pursuit of an art career is one of the many ominous elements of the novel, because a reader has a good idea it won't go well. Where did his half-hearted profession come from? JMcG: There are some wonderful artists in Vegas. And some impressive efforts to develop an art community. But yes, there's a mountain of angst in that place and so few places to put it. So what better then to have Chase channel his personal pain into his art. His favorite painting 'Carly' possesses obvious emotional power for him. But like too many "victims" of a Las Vegas upbringing - Chase never quite gets his ambitions off the ground. He has a sense of what he wants, and even a track record of achieving something (gaining admission to NYU, nominated for Teacher of the Year), but like so many in his hometown, he's afflicted by a paralyzing lack of self-esteem that manifests itself in his half-hearted pursuit of an art career. GP: Lack of self esteem leads to half-heartedness? Don't tell the porn industry. I was happy to see via a trip through your site that there is a screenplay in progress, because Las Vegas needs the treatment Michael Mann gave to L.A. and Scorsese gave to New York and Boston. Who do you see playing the main characters? JMcG: I'm officially an "associate producer" on this project therefore I'm under contractual obligation not to mention specific names of potential directors and talent. I take this job and that title very seriously so I'm afraid I can't offer anything. Kidding. I really haven't given it too much thought but have recently become fixated on a few excellent young actresses out there. I see Lauren London as Julia and Nikki Reed as Michele. Both of them are talented and stunning and have this intangible quality -- a certain sultriness -- that I think would really fit with a film version of this novel. There's no question that the film will give young actors an incredible opportunity to completely bust out with something so edgy and fast and tough. Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) or Paul Thomas Anderson could direct. Are they available? GP: I'll see what I can do. Issues I have with the book (feel free to become enraged; it is your birthright as a writer): The character Julia arrives for a conference in the middle of the year as an adult convention and awards show is going on, porn stars abound at the Hard Rock. Which convention would this be? The AVNs are in January and I can't think of another Vegas awards show. JMcG: Two words: artistic license. And the National Black MBA isn't in the Spring -- it's held each fall as I am well aware because my wife went to that for many years during and just after she graduated "b'school" as they call it (with some of her stories making it into "TDM"). But that timing didn't work for the book. As well, in fairness, I didn't name the AVN's -- just an unidentified adult film convention. GP: AVN's PR firm will be stoked to read this. Who is the actual model for the cover girl? JMcG: Isn't she amazing looking? Her name is Anna Seeberg. An aspiring model who lives with her family in Wisconsin. The picture was snapped by her younger sister -- 16 at the time -- in the backseat of their mother's car. The art director for Grove/Atlantic found the photo on Anna's MySpace page and worked something out with her parents (she wasn't 18 at the time) and we got the rights to her photo. Stunning picture. Urban Outfitters must like her look too because they're selling the book hard in all of their stores. As far as characters in the book -- I don't think she's supposed to be anyone in particular. It's more about the expression on her face, the red glasses, the light finding her hair the way it does, the lolita thing, the back-seat of a car. But if she has to be someone -- I say Aubrey -- from El Cajon -- who weighs 87 pounds and whose favorite food is an Egg McMuffin without the egg. Previously: Christa Faust's "Money Shot" See also: Joe McGinness Jr. Labels: books, interviews, las vegas, prosties ¶ Tuesday, April 29, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
RudeTV sprouts from the grave of KSEX
 It's one thing that adult-oriented Internet TV station RudeTV has taken a good deal of the staff of the former KSEXRadio, but it must seem a little on the nose that the new station has moved into KSEX' old studio.KSEXRadio was a beloved old garage band of a business that was characteristic of the porn industry; often disorganized, brutal on its enemies, forgiving of its friends, and a wealth of information about the porn industry from people getting paid about 20 bucks an hour to run their shows. Nestled for years on the top floor of a nondescript Burbank office building, KSEX was purchased in 2006 and revamped, somewhat, with big plans to move the company closer to the heart of Porn Valley. This eventually happened in May when the company moved its offices to Canoga Park.  Not everyone made the move, however. KSEX program director Wankus, who had been feuding with the ownership, was publicly fired earlier that month. This news was broken when one of the owners called in to a KSEX show and declared Wankus' termination over the air. Bad blood ensued.But KSEX took six more months to die. Though some "Porn Jockeys" resigned in protest of the manner of Wankus' dismissal, others began to see the writing on the wall. The company was being managed from New Jersey and things were falling apart. KSEX struggled to keep talent and original programming, advertisers began dropping out, and eventually the remaining staff was asked to go without pay and do the job for the "exposure." KSEX finally died in late January of this year. Meanwhile, Rude.com, an Internet entertainment site launched by the founders of webcam pioneer Camz.com, heard that there was some studio space available, and called Wankus to be its program director and main host, as he had been at KSEX. "They flew me to Bangkok for the job interview," Wankus said.  Rude.com wanted to expand its market to adult television, and threw tens of thousands of dollars into outfitting the space KSEX had occupied as a TV studio. RudeTV boasts two studios with greenscreens separated by a control booth (in which Powder and Socks, both late of KSEXRadio, dwell), a reception area, a ready room for talent, and a large room outfitted with a stripper pole.But can an adult Internet broadcast site be self-sustaining? KSEX never was, and its short-lived competitor PrimeTime Uncensored also failed. But Rude has a little money behind it, and it is being run by people familiar with the adult industry. Rude.com co-owner Brett LaMar told me he will be 32 in a week. He and his wife, Sammy (of Samm4u.com) live in Thailand, as does Rude.com's other co-founder, Robb. Active swingers, LaMar and his wife also started housecamz.com. "We knew that the KSEX space was going to be available," LaMar said, "and Rude.com was getting ready to make its move to Internet TV." Rude.com has come under attack by adult industry webmasters for hosting stolen content and employing traffic hijacker/adware giant zango (see sample thread). The adult industry will forgive most things, but stealing content is never one of them. I am assured everything is now copacetic and attributable. But after the unpleasantness with KSEX, Wankus is hopeful about his new bosses. "They're putting a lot of time and money into this place to do it the way it should be done," he said.   Last night's opening party was well-attended and, despite the fact that the station went live at 6 p.m. with a show called "Guitarded," in which two pornstars play strip-"Guitar Hero," the mood was laid back. There was also a Make Your Own Drinks open bar, which also helped. Powder told me that there had been a couple of test runs of the new studios and shows, and that he was expecting the evening to be tough but successful. As it happened, the night went off without a hitch, though sometimes callers weren't loud enough and the various greenscreen motifs were a little busy. Mika Tan who, after a family-related hiatus ("No, I wasn't in Afghanistan with the Army or in Iraq with the CIA," she said. I hadn't heard the story about the CIA), has returned to performing, last night hosted "Whispers," an occasional Mika hour in which she uses dildos for callers' enjoyment.RudeTV schedules 20 hours of original programming, broadcasting from 6-10 weekday nights. Currently free, it will soon switch to a subscription model with various free incentives, and will begin archiving its shows for On-Demand access.  Among its shows are "Guitarded," "Smell My Finger" (also hosted by Wankus with a different co-host every night, such as Sunny Lane, Kylee King, and Cleopatra of the Nile), "Penis or Plastic?" hosted by Alanna Thomas remotely from Gilbert, AZ, BDSM-themed "Baadmaster's Dungeon," and "Road Whore," Lexi Lamour's stories of stripping and strippers. Guests at last night's opening party included photographer Ken Marcus, Kylee King, Alanna Thomas (pictured), Trinity Saij (pictured), Cleopatra (pictured), Carrie Moon, Dakoda Brookes, Sammy LaMar, Mika Tan (pictured), and Sunny Lane.Previously: Energy drink-drinking nudes; Wankus out at KSEX, fired by phone See also: Rude TV Labels: alanna thomas, cleopatra, events, interviews, ksex, kylee king, mika tan, rudetv, sunny lane, wankus ¶ Tuesday, April 22, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Matt Zane's irons, immortal soul in the fire
 "I think of it as a Resse's Peanut Butter Cup of Porn," said Matt Zane, the person to thank (or despise) if the recent wave of tattoos and piercings, a punk aesthetic, and the presence of musicians and "alt" in porn don't seem as revolutionary as publicists would have you believe.Zane is a pornographer, musician, suspension artist, and "Trascendental Satanist." I checked this last job against the IRS'list of occupations and couldn't find it, yet another example of how our government discriminates against Satanists. Who has always been there when the phone rings at 3 a.m.? Satan has. Zane, born Matt Zicari, is a second generation pornographer. His father, Chuck, is a producer and distributor and his cousin, Rob Zicari, runs the obscenity-skirting Extreme Associates under the alias Rob Black. His younger brother, Mark, is also a porn performer.  Zane's new project is the Tattooed And Tight series, involving women getting tattoos and fucked at the same time (most of the images on this page are from Tattooed And Tight 3, starring Scarlett Pain, Tera Wray, Nadia Styles, Jandi Lin, and Tricia Oaks). Though Zane has been in and out of the porn business for more than a decade, his current work is topical in that it reflects our need to multitask, even when having sex."I can only couple with women who are talented in that way," I told Zane while channeling the Prince of Darkness. "As I service them they often send and receive text messages, run away, and burst into flame." Zane grew up in upstate New York and became a musician, forming and touring with bands around the United States. He now fronts Society 1, what Rapture theorists call the Anti-Stryper. When Matt worked for his father, the two eventually disagreed about the type of porn they should produce, and how it should be released.  "I was the youngest director in porn at the time," Zane said. "It was 1996, I was 21, and there was rock and roll and tattoos in my movies (like the Backstage Sluts series) and I was pushing to release DVD and VHS at the same time, back before that was a burning issue."Zane saw the rapper-turned actor Ice-T in a Melrose Ave. store, lending his visage to clothing for an MTV spot. "I thought, 'Porn can go this way, too,'" he said. And in the late 90's Zane was the alternative face of porn, even as companies like Vivid and Wicked were defining the contract system and developing high-end features, Zane was pioneering a porn style that incorporated fast-editing, music that he and his friends were making, handheld cameras, and a grunge/punk aesthetic similar to that filtered through MTV. "I saw a hole where things could go," Zane said. "And applied that synthesis." And now, Zane says, "nobody knows who I am. "I quit for a while and went on tour," Zane said, "and ran out of money, and got money, and ran out of it again. And when I came back there were people showing up at the AVN show like Dave Navarro and Gene Simmons and people were talking about tattoos in movies like tattoos had just been invented." Zane is the type of pornographer who fights porn's inherent disposability.  "And I don't want to be one of those old fucks who say, 'You don't perceive my level of importance? Don't you know who I am?' But I'm at the AVN show and they won't let me walk down the red carpet....I've just been gone a few years!"Zane is also shooting Radium, a series that incorporates rock and porn. Like Tattooed and Tight, Radium stars Tera Wray. One of Wray's duties in Radium is to interview bands. The porn ideal has always gone hand in hand with rock (unless you're Peter Cetera) and, like Joanna Angel does with Burning Angel, Kentucky Fried Wray only makes these bands look cooler. "Tera is a hot rock chick who gets it. She likes the bands, she knows what to say to them," Zane said. For publicity, "Anything we can do outside of porn we utilize," Zane said. "MySpace, Youtube, Bizarre Magazine, tattoo parlors..."  I asked if Zane was going for what would sell or what would interest him, and if he wondered if the two were exclusive."If Porn was the only thing I did," Zane said, "I'd slit my wrists. But if you look at any other industry, they all respect their history. The snot-nosed kids in punk respect Iggy Pop, all the metal kids know Slayer. Why does everybody in porn think it started with them? They think they're these ground-breaking geniuses. Not knowing what came before you is native to the porn industry for some reason." So many things work against Porn having a sense of its own history. Only fans can, and their memory is selective. If talent stays in the business, on average, for less than six months, if the workload required values quantity over quality - and the budget for both is the same - and since Porn is an industry where a much larger than average portion of its own employees seek a way to deny their involvement in it, of course there aren't many jobs for Porn Archivists.  This is why Zane relieves stress by hanging from hooks. "I didn't set out to be a suspension artist," he said. "But it's fucking great." In January, Zane beat by 18 minutes a record previously held by "Mind Freak"'s Cris Angel. Zane hung out in the middle of the AVN convention in Las Vegas for six hours, suspended by four hooks. I saw him during this time. He refused my request to pose as if he were inviting people to a barbecue.  "I was in a special space at the time," Zane said. "I hope you understand.""Now I understand," I said. "Four hooks," Zane said. "Angel had eight hooks." I considered this for a few seconds, thinking that eight was better than four. "...four hooks hurts more," Zane added. "because all your weight is on fewer points to distribute it. "It took me a whole month to go back to the gym and do yoga again," Zane said. "But the suspension is more than a body feeling. It's more about psychological distress." But even in hanging from hooks, Zane got other things done. "There was a lot of pain over those six hours," he said. "I was going insane. But then I felt a mental split. I was fully aware of two people." Tattooed And Tight 3Previously: AVN: The only numbers you can trust; Images of heaven (that take me to Hell); "You're not one of us": a steveporn odyssey See also: Matt "The Lord" Zane Labels: "joanna angel", directors, interviews, jandi lin, matt zane, nadia syles, scarlett pain, tattoo, tera wray, tricia oaks ¶ Wednesday, April 16, 2008 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, April 14, 2008
The buttoned-down Ava Rose
 Since it's only April and the heat is already at record-breaking levels here in Porn Valley, what better way to celebrate the slow roasting of the oceans than to talk with Alaska's own Ava Rose, contract star for Adam & Eve and, if there could be a contract star of the pants, well, there too.Rose and her sister, Mia, grew up in Sutton, AK, a town of (then) 400 people just up Rt. 1 from Anchorage. "You know Alaska?" she asked. "No," I said. "But I can see it from Space." "You spend most of the time preparing for the winter there," she said. "It's a good place to grow up, I realize now, but that's why so many adults commit suicide; they work their asses off to get snowed in." Ava and Mia left Sutton for Reno in 1996. When Ava began dancing in Reno at the Wild Orchid, she didn't like it. "I'd make a little money onstage but I couldn't stand to bullshit the guys with the lap dances and steal their money," she said. "It's much easier to spread your legs in porn. "Porn's pretty easy," she said, "if you're clever about things and you know when to say no."  Rose worked for Naughty America, Metro, and Lethal Hardcore before she signed her Adam & Eve contract. Sometimes she would be cast with her sister, but Mia took more gonzo roles and Ava became Adam & Eve's lone brunette. She has appeared in that company's Carolina Jones, Dark City, and just wrapped Roller Dollz.I asked what she thinks about the term "mainstream" as it applies to porn. "Every time a porn star is in a movie she plays a stripper or a prostitute," she said. "I like staying where I am. People seem to always want a way into porn or a way out of it. When porn tries to look mainstream, it just ends up looking like Ultimate Porno." Having a contract allows Rose a lot of time to read. She lives in Hollywood north of Sunset, and her bookcase is filled with true crime novels. I asked if she read them for pointers. "If someone offered me a million dollars to brutally murder someone else," she said. "I couldn't do it. But I like reading about it." What is dating like?  "I don't date exclusively," she said. "It might not be the time in my life for it. It's also a little dangerous emotionally. I mean, open relationships are hard but finding out a lie is harder. Hardly ever do people not cheat."What do you mean? "I can't stand jealousy and obsession." Do people get obsessed with you? "Sometimes. That kind of insecurity is unattractive. But I'm still young and working things out. One thing's for sure: when you plan for a threesome it never fucking goes right." Rose is 22. She gets a monthly check from Adam & Eve, a company that probably pays the highest of the major adult studios. Without makeup and wearing sweats, Rose is indistinguishable from any other young actress in her neighborhood, aside from the fact that she's working. I asked if it was necessary to have an exit strategy from porn. "I'd like to stay in L.A. and study Criminal Psychology," she said. And what about relationships after Porn? "I smoke a lot of cigarettes so I don't know how I'll age," she said. "But I think someone will like me and my loose asshole when I'm done." See a gallery here. Previously: Mia and Ava Rose in Double Trouble; It's w |
