Before presenting a brief remembrance of the porn performer Haley Paige, who died a year ago today, I'll share with you an anonymous comment I just received on a post about the late Anna Malle:
"hey anna is going to hell by the way..fornication is a big sin to God..she will suffer the blitz of hell fire..pray for other birls in porn also to change."
I have become a heavy comment moderator recently, trashing your First Amendment freedoms, I know, but I choose to leave some hateful comments intact as a reminder of the dangerous regard some fans have for people they think they know.
Maryam Irene Haley was 25 when she died on August 21, 2007 in the Central California town of King City. Three weeks earlier, on August 2, she had married her boyfriend, porn director Inkyo Volt Hwang, in Las Vegas.
From my Fleshbot story last October:
People who see porn as a multi-billion-dollar cautionary tale need look no further than the sad story of husband and wife Inkyo Volt Hwang (aka Chico or Wanker Wang) and Maryam Irene Haley (aka Haley Paige). Hwang was a website owner and director of extreme porn videos, and Paige was a performer who appeared in the gamut of what porn has to offer, from gangbangs to "couples-friendly" films.
Hwang was arrested on suspicion of pistol-whipping Haley in June, they were married at the beginning of August in Las Vegas, she was dead at month's end, and he was found dead in September.
Hwang, 38, had served time in prison before. For two years in the late 90's Hwang was in Chico State Prison on two felony counts of sexual battery and assault with a deadly weapon, charges nearly identical to those that landed him in jail in June. When running a previous incarnation of the site lukeford.com, Hwang was at the forefront of "shocking" porn website content that mixed gallows humor with extreme sex, often forcing his overweight "minion" to sit on reluctant starlets.
Toxicology reports on both deaths have not been released, but Haley's father said that Hwang was in the room with Haley during her overdose, which occurred on August 21. She had said in the months immediately prior to her death that she had left porn and was planning to go back to school. Hwang was found September 29 in a motel in Morgan Hill, CA, south of San Jose.
Many who knew Haley said she was too sweet and too vulnerable to be in porn. Born in Mexico, she claimed that she was molested by an uncle and raped by gang members before moving to San Diego with her family at 12. Seven years later, she was working at a Blockbuster when she answered a nude modeling ad. She later appeared in more than 300 scenes. She was 25 at her death.
On porn message board ADT, Hwang wrote this of Haley in March: "I think we're attracted to each other simply because we have the exact opposite personalities. She's sweet and quiet. I happen to be aggressive and loud. I guess opposites do attract."
I met Paige a few times, and she was indeed very sweet, but also distant. I met Chico Wang (who adopted the name of his prison) a few times, too, and didn't enjoy the experience. But he was distant, too. I have since met a number of friends of both Paige and Wang who say that the couple were very private people, despite the clinical nature of the work they did, and that Wang's public persona masked vulnerability, low self esteem, and shame. And that those things got the better of him.
So many porn performers don't want their families and hometowns to know what they do, and there is such a deep stigma to the job in such a benighted society that only a few people (Nina Hartley comes to mind) can really transcend it. But Hartley actively seeks transcendence in everything she does, and the majority of porn personnel prefer to keep large aspects of their lives under wraps for fear of what confused idiots like the person quoted at the beginning of this story might do.
But by virtue of there not being a continued thread in Porn, a legitimate archive or history that competent people who are proud of their accomplishments can carry on, departures like Paige's get swallowed up in the face of 11,000 new porn titles a year that bring on anonymity far swifter than in Hollywood, and that is a shame.
People loved Maryam and people loved Haley, and I encourage those people who've talked to me privately to leave a positive message in the comments section.
Most of the images above are from I Love Haley Paige, a compilation disc released this year of scenes shot between 2003 and 2005. It does not have behind the scenes footage or anything extra that reveals Haley the person, which I think is a missed opportunity for her fans. But she sure was lovely.
SHOCKING: Sex store catches flak for its "Adopt A Child" program
Sinless Touch, a Kansas-based adult e-tailer specializing in today's brand of couples'-friendly adult products, reports that it has received criticism for a portal on its site that will send money to childrens' charities.
Amid threats of lawsuits and the loss of business, Sinless Touch representatives maintain that a children's charity banner is an appropriate image on an adult website.
"It's [neither] unethical nor inappropriate to help," said Jessica Blake, Sinless Touch's Vice President of Corporate Communications, "just because we sell adult toys it doesn’t mean we’re heartless."
The Adopt A Child program is a change-rounding formula similar to that used in Superman II. Online customers can choose to "round-up" their purchases to the next dollar, and the change will go to the charity.
The American Beef Council faced similar controversy last year and eventually abandoned encouraging carnivores to donate to Soylent research.
Brian Surewood reckless driving case continued to May 14
Sitting side by side in orange jumpsuits at the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse, Van Nuys, yesterday, Brian Barnes (aka Brian Surewood) and Armando Ayon listened to the testimony of six prosecution witnesses in their second degree murder trial for the car crash death of four-year-old Ayman Arif.
In addition to talking with various of Barnes' friends in putting together this story, I also consulted Mark Kernes' article in AVN and Rachel Uranga's in the L.A. Daily News.
On October 9, 2007, Barnes was driving along Sherman Way in Van Nuys, returning from filming a scene he'd performed in for the porn company Vouyer Media. At a stop light, sources close to Barnes say, he and Ayon began racing their cars when Ayon heckled Barnes, saying he looked like a pirate.
Barnes (seen behind the wheel of his Camaro in better times with his dog, Rex) allegedly responded that yes, he did look like a pirate.
The first witness was Syeda Arif, wheelchair-bound and speaking through an interpreter (she is a recent immigrant from Pakistan). Arif was standing by the trunk of her car and holding two-month-old daughter Ikra when, witnesses agree, Ayon's car slammed into the parked car behind her, which then struck Arif and sent her, her daughter, and Ayman, who had been standing nearby, onto the grassy area of Sherman Way abutting the sidewalk.
"She was very stoic through her testimony," said Barnes' friend, director David Aaron Clark. "Brian stared at her and started crying."
Ayman and his younger sister were airlifted from the area immediately, and the boy died the next day. His sister has been in and out of intensive care and now carries a shunt in her skull to drain fluid and relieve pressure. Their mother lost her left leg, among other injuries.
The main issue yesterday, the first of two Discovery days held to gather evidence, was not whether the men were racing each other (that was not disputed), or which driver directly caused the Arif family's injuries, but whether or not Barnes' driving caused Ayon to lose control of his vehicle.
Sherman Way west of Amestoy and east of Lucille is, as you can see from the picture above, a three-lane road. The lane closest to the sidewalk is also used as a parking lane in many areas, and this is where Syeda Arif was standing when the accident occurred, behind the second car in a row of three. The police report said that the collision knocked the last car into Arif's vehicle, which then hit the vehicle in front of it.
Peter Korn, Barnes' attorney, cross-examined LAPD traffic collision expert Detective Dagoberto Espino, who arrived on the scene 20 minutes after the accident.
Espino's report indicated that a skid mark on Sherman Way belonged to Barnes' Camaro, and inferred that Barnes' had cut off Ayon and slowed down just beyond north/south street Amestoy, thus forcing Ayon's Maxima into the lane of parked cars on the north side of the street.
Korn asked if the tire mark had been matched to Barnes' Camaro, but Espino said that it hadn't, that determining that was not part of his duties. Korn also asked Espino if he was aware that Barnes' Camaro had anti-lock brakes, thus making it difficult for that car to have caused a skid mark. Espino said he was not aware of that.
Among the other witnesses were a mother and son who had been driving near Barnes and Ayon, and Porter Miles, a man who talked with Barnes when the latter stopped his car farther down Sherman Way.
"Why the fuck did you do that?" Miles testified he told Barnes, who had stopped to call 911. Miles said that was all he said to Barnes before he, Miles, returned to the accident scene, where Ayon's Maxima was perched on the median of the east/west road, having crossed two lanes after striking the car behind the Arifs.
According to sources close to Barnes, Barnes said that Miles also told him to "get the fuck out of here." Clark said that that Miles appeared proud of the fact that he knew Ayon's car was "a 4.3" (liter) Maxima and that he was familiar with "high performance vehicles."
Miles testified that, from his rear-view mirror, he saw Barnes tap his brakes in front of Ayon's vehicle.
Barnes and Ayon are charged with the same things but Barnes has three additional charges of leaving the scene of an accident (one for each victim) because he returned to his Northridge apartment, where he saw the accident footage on the news. Barnes then turned himself in to police.
Eyewitness Roger Cook was passed by the two cars about two blocks before the collision site, and said at the time they were going about 55 miles an hour and "racing." He also said that Ayon, who sustained minor injuries in the crash, made a call on his cell phone, resulting in the arrival of various friends who removed things from Ayon's car. Cook did not testify what those items were.
Barnes and Ayon are being held in protective custody at the Men's Wing of the L.A. County Jail in downtown Los Angeles.. Two additional witnesses, Armenian Americans excused to take part in events commemorating the 1915 Armenian genocide, will testify when the case resumes on May 14.
Ayman Arif had recently entered first grade at Northridge's Lorne Elementary School, which will plant a tree in his memory tomorrow (April 25) at 8:30 a.m.
UPDATE: I visited the accident scene and Ayman Arif's school less than a mile away. Arif's tree is planted in a quiet garden away from the recess yard.
AVN laid off 16 employees today, including senior editor Mike Albo, long a fixture on the adult reportage scene, having previously edited Hustler's Erotic Video Guide.
Also let go were AVN's receptionist and employees throughout the company, from Art to the warehouse.
News travels fast. An AVN employee asked how I knew, and I remembered how I'd read about my own firing five years ago on Mike South's blog.
That's 16 employees set adrift through Porn Valley. I recall no severance package when I was let go (that might have changed or maybe it was because I'm an asshole; word is that there was no severance package and that I am an asshole), and I only survived due to my substantial trust fund, so if there are adult companies seeking to absorb former AVN employees, now is the time.
UPDATE
Hire them, or the alternative is clear: 16 new porn bloggers who used to work for AVN.
While neither mentioning it had sent 16 employees packing nor announcing what the company would actually do to remain competitive, AVN nevertheless posted an unprecedented "restructuring" story on its website that, according to one former employee, lacked only the use of phrases like "paradigm," "thinking out of the box," and "moving forward" to be interchangeable with "any other instance of corporate bullshitspeak in America."
That said, AVN was bloated and it needed to cut somewhere. No one who watches this sort of thing is ever satisfied with the choices made or how they were executed, but it is important to point out that AVN finally has a better website and, though its magazine is shrinking, it still has more of a presence as it "streamlines" than does its main competitor expanding.
But looking at the higher-profile departures from AVN of the past few years, each was kept long after the individual had severely damaged the company's reputation via the three bugaboos of the adult entertainment industry: cocainery, chicanery, and incompetence, whereas the poor slobs let go today on the whole did not know what was coming and did not get a parachute like their higher-profile former superiors did.
Laura Albert (right) published three books under the name JT LeRoy and employed others (such as the woman to the left) to adopt the invented persona of LeRoy, a male teen prodigy/prostitute/AIDS afflictee.
When the story broke in 2006 that the 40-ish Albert had invented the whole thing, she was sued by her publisher and shunned by LeRoy's early supporters; they felt betrayed when what they'd been led to believe about the author had turned out to be a lie.
It turns out Albert had fashioned a lifetime of such behavior into a career.
Dave Eggers, interviewed for an excellent LA Weekly story about Albert, said, "I teach writing to high school students, and every year, I have a kid whose writing is great, and I ask myself, is it really great, or do I think it's great because a 15-year-old wrote it? You can never separate it."
Albert herself felt victimized by the ill will generated by her unmasking, but dismissed it as "sour grapes."
Speaking of her entourage and former supporters, Albert told the LA Weekly that "We were really there (to spread) joy and love."
Her work was judged the way it was because people believed she was someone else, rather than on the work itself.
What sort of allowances do you think consumers make when faced with the invented personae of porn?
The Desiree Alliance, a volunteer foundation of sex workers and sex worker organizations based in Henderson, NV, will host its annual conference July 16-20 in Chicago.
The conference, titled "Pulling Back the Sheets: Sex, Work, and Social Justice" continues the Desiree Alliance's commitment to sex worker rights and education.
Recent conference subjects included Internet-based marketing of services, the treatment of disabled clients, and How to Handle Arrests.
A retarded man is stalking the transgendered prostitutes, or "transvestitutes", of Atlanta and posting YouTube videos of them.
Steve Gower is a director of the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance (MPSA), a member-funded community policing organization that regularly tails prostitutes in this residential section of Atlanta. It is difficult to know who to root for in this video, in which an Elmer Fudd soundalike taunts bedraggled prostitutes clacking up and down the quiet streets of his neighborhood.
The attention Gower pays his quarry and the throbbing house soundtrack accompanying the video indicates an affinity for his subject.
Gower got into the neighborhood watch game when his pot smoking was interrupted by a car theft. He admits that he just wants to shift the prosties a few streets away.
Industry shocker: Jenny Hendrix to not get new boobs
"I will not be getting new boobs for the time being," said Jenny Hendrix this weekend.
This really has been an emotional rollercoaster. I don't know if America will still trust wholeheartedly in the integrity of Porn Journalism if I keep printing retractions.
Tuesday shocker: Prostitutes don't actually like you
Britain's Guardian newspaper printed an "interview with a prostitute" that contradicted what she feels is the empowering feminist myth depicted by the blog Belle du Jour and its spinoff TV show "Secret Diary of a Call Girl".
The 50-ish prostitute says that the recent trend of hookers seeming glamorous is a male invention. The reality is far more sordid, she says. At the very least the life of a prostitute is very rarely like that of Belle du Jour, played in the British show by "Doctor Who"'s Billie Piper (pictured).
This is a shocking distortion of the facts. Who hasn't looked into the vacant eyes of a person one is paying for sex and thought, "I believe she's really into me"? You are always on top in a hooker's hierarchy of priorities.
The real-life prostitute's account is here. I think she has a bad attitude. My impression is that she was probably not of the sunniest disposition when she was working as a secretary, either.
Surewood pleads not guilty as murder case continues
Brian Barnes, aka the adult performer Brian Surewood, pleaded not guilty to second degree murder charges Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Van Nuys.
His case continues until January 8, at which point his defense team and prosecutors are expected to have gathered enough evidence to try him in the road rage-related death of five-year-old Ayman Arif of Northridge.
Surewood, 44 and also of Northridge, was involved in a moving dispute with 19-year-old Armando Ayon of Pacoima on Tuesday, October 9. Both raced their cars east on Sherman Way, police said, "jockeying for position". Ayon's car lost control and smashed into a parked car on the south side of the street, crushing Arif, his infant sister, and his mother.
Ayman died October 13, his sister Ikra only recently returned from the hospital, and his mother, 31-year-old Syeda Arif, a recent immigrant from Pakistan, lost a leg and is still hospitalized.
Amir Arif is Ayman's father. He has started a foundation in his son's name to create awareness about aggressive driving. He has been quoted as saying the drivers should be hanged. He wrote me recently:
I am in need of fund to take care of heavy hospital and other expenses that I am currently struggling due to this accident. As you know my wife is still in hospital & my daughter came home with special care need. I had to stop working to take care of her. I am in need of your donation. Please help.
Donations can be set to:
Amir Arif 19100 Napa St. Northridge, CA 91324
or
Ayman Arif Memorial Fund Bank of America Account # 03326-70877
News Analysis: Porn personnel 8 percent of Dumb Hollywood
People associated with porn comprise less than ten percent of Hollywood's 50 Dumbest People, according to a recent survey published in the New York Daily News, but porn's boosters see their inclusion as a victory.
Kim Kardashian, Tom Sizemore, and Dustin Diamond, all of whom have released sex tapes (sort of), and "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis were each singled out for his or her poor choices and behavior.
While Sizemore and Francis were voted numbers 49 and 50, and Diamond was solidly in the middle of the list, Kardashian was ranked as the second dumbest person in Hollywood, after Lindsay Lohan.
"Sizemore and Francis could be construed as Hollywood's 75,611th and 75,612th smartest people, based on the recent census, but Kardashian's berth at #2 Dumbest is clearly a milestonic achievement in porn's acceptance in mainstream culture," said Loup Perch-Tounge, chairman of adult industry thinktank The Creampie Group.
"It takes some effort to be dumber than Kevin Federline," he noted.
Still, a number of porn luminaries are grousing that they were unfairly overlooked.
"I have been in this business for decades," said one director. "I even sent the Daily News the script to my last production. And nothing? They give me nothing?"
Indeed, entertainment sociologists point out that porn performers must be extra dumb in order to be considered among Tinseltown's least stupid, due to porn's small population relative to that of mainstream Hollywood.
"Indeed," said Gram Ponante, repeating the word "indeed", "pornfolk lose out not because they haven't done tremendously stupid things, but because the rest of the world doesn't pay them the attention they think it does. You can be the stupidest person in the world but if your movie only sells 740 copies, no one will ever know how stupid you really are."
Perch-Tounge has high hopes for 2008. "I want us to be in the double digits of dumb next year," he said, holding up a button with words to that effect. "I hear some people are coming out of retirement."
There are creepy people in porn, to be sure - I'm thinking of some now - and, while it is certain that their creepiness has adverse effects on, say, people attending the consumer-based adult conventions and/or award shows they run, their range is limited. It is not often that one encounters such mass-market perviness as what I saw in the Washington Post yesterday.
In a piece titled "Farewell to Arms (...and Legs and Ankles and Toes and Shoulders and Necks and...)", Baby-Boomer Stephen Hunter laments the arrival of autumn and the disappearance of female flesh from public places.
Brother, sister, child and pet, do I mean the taut glory of the outer thigh? Do I mean the curves where it's all streamline and suggestion, where the promise is the faintest vapor on the air? Do I mean a neck? Take it from me, brother, necks are okay. Oh, and what about that meadowlike expanse across the back, from the shoulder line down, with its muscular tides, its shallows, its occasional pools of limpid viscosity. Do I mean that?
At least if a woman were reading this in the pages of an old man's porn mag like Nugget, that paid $10 for such eloquent masturbation fantasies, she would feel that the sentiment had found its perfect medium. But this is the paper that brought Nixon down.
Splurge of thigh
What about the way they sit, legs crossed, one foot loose, its little ersatz shoelet all a-dangle, perhaps oblivious to the message the whole construction of bone and joint and dangle and tight knee and splurge of thigh is putting out...Now they go by, the girls in their summer dresses, and we stand on the corner and watch and marvel at the liquefaction of their clothes and the glory of their flesh.
There's a place for this sort of creepy voyeurism; it's called Porn. (I hear Sex Z Pictures is in trouble - and they're right down the street from Washington). In the meantime, I'm going to have to have my Washington Post delivered in a brown paper bag.
A "bondage parlor" called Dominion is being called a "good" adult business while a strip joint proposed to open in a former meat warehouse 1,000 feet away is being fought by residents of an area in the shadow of the 10 Freeway in Culver City.
I side with the residents; patrons of bondage parlors are usually more restrained.
(Thanks Jay Moyes for the L.A. floggo-geography lesson.)
Brian Barnes, 44, also known as the performer Brian Surewood, turned himself in to police following what is alternately described as a road rage or a street racing incident that killed a five-year-old boy and critically injured his mother and two-month-old sibling.
Surewood is being held in Van Nuys pending a bail reduction hearing.
Barnes, driving a red convertible Camaro, and 19-year-old Armando Ayon were seen to be "jockeying for position," according to witnesses, on Sherman Way in Reseda Wednesday afternoon.
It is reported that Surewood passed Ayon while both were driving at speeds upward of 50 m.p.h. on the Valley boulevard, and then Surewood jammed his brakes. Ayon lost control of his car, a black Maxima, which then hit a parked car, sending it into the family. The mother and younger sibling were crushed against another parked car and the five-year-old was either similarly pinned or sent into the air, depending on testimony.
Sources say Surewood pulled over, called in the incident to emergency services, and left the scene. He returned to the licensed medical marijuana dispensary in Canoga Park that he co-owns, a second story business farther west on Sherman Way, before turning himself in hours later. Ayon was arrested on the scene.
{ADDENDUM}
According to adult industry bloggers Gene Ross and Scott Fayner, both of whom wrote stories folowing the incident:
Gene Ross: "Brian Surewood and this other guy Gamboa Ayon are at a stop light and there’s an altercation. Surewood and Ayon are playing some game of chicken. Surewood was in front of Ayon and to fuck with him, jams on his brakes. Ayon was following too close behind and to avoid hitting Surewood swerves and hits a family.
A crowd of people immediately descended upon Ayon and held him for the cops. In the meantime, Surewood takes off. He goes to his pot store and lights up and tells people about this because he’s all shaken up and trying to mellow out. Surewood’s told you’ve got a very distinctive car. It was Surewood with the red car and the Times got that wrong. So Surewood’s told you’ve got to turn yourself in. He gets a lawyer and turned himself in last night.
Scott Fayner: "Sources close to Surewood tell us that the driver of the other car heckled Surewood, saying he wished he looked like a pirate. "Fuck that! I do look like a pirate!" witnesses say Surewood was heard shouting before both cars took off down the street headed for disaster."
I was told by another Surewood friend that none of this is true, that Surewood did not have the "pirate" exchange, and that Surewood talked to "very few people" between the accident and turning himself in.
{/ADDENDUM}
The family were recent immigrants from India. Each member was driven or airlifted to a different area hospital. The mother, 31, has had a leg amputated due to the incident and is in danger of losing the other. Her five-year-old son struggled for 36 hours and died yesterday around 11 p.m. The youngest of the three is in critical condition.
Surewood and Ayon are being held on $1.5 million bail. When the five-year-old died, the charges against the men were increased from attempted murder to second-degree murder.
Because this is a porn site, I will now talk about Brian Surewood and his job.
Surewood is known as a well-liked, laid back, and dependable performer, a veteran of more than 1,000 movies in an 11-year career. He is a character who used to take lead roles in movies but, now that he affects the dress of a San Fernando Valley pirate, gets parts that are crazier. It is reported that he was leaving a porn set when the accident occurred, and what set off the flight down Sherman Way is unclear.
Surewood is loyal to his friends and has often volubly interceded on their behalves (I once saw him shouting at a porn convention functionary who wasn't letting an adult industry friend onto the premises). This is the extent to which I have seen a dark side to his character.
As LAPD Capt. Ron Marbrey said, "This incident did not have to happen." It is a tragic end to something that happens in Los Angeles every day. I feel sick about it.
If readers know of a place where donations may be sent to the family, whose name is Arif, please let me know via gram--at--gramponante.com.
Stories tagged "brian surewood" and "legal": http://www.gramponante.com/labels/brian%20surewood.html
Hungary's tax authority will allow sex workers (or Budaprosties) to apply for permits and pay taxes on their earnings, adding legitimacy to an occupation that is already quasi-legal but not part of the Hungarian tax base.
Opponents say this move will allow Hungary to capitalize on human trafficking without improving conditions for sex workers. It also doesn't address how johns might declare "Fellatio Services" on their taxes.
Read the full article after the gap.
Hungary Gives Permits to Prostitutes By PABLO GORONDI, Associated Press Writer Monday, September 24, 2007 (09-24) 14:29 PDT BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) --
In an effort to bring prostitutes into the legal economy, officials said Monday that Hungary will allow sex workers to apply for an entrepreneur's permit ˜ a move that could generate government revenues from an industry worth an estimated $1 billion annually.
Human rights groups often have criticized European Union member Hungary for legalizing prostitution ˜ which has been fully allowed under certain conditions since 1999. Opponents say legalization does not help prostitutes.
The permits allow prostitutes to give receipts to customers and become part of the legal economy by paying taxes and making social security contributions, said Agnes Foldi, head of the Hungarian Prostitutes' Interest Protection Association.
Hungary's sex industry ˜ including prostitution and the production of pornographic materials ˜ generates an estimated $1 billion annually, said Agnes Bakonyi, the spokeswoman of Hungary's tax authority APEH.
"It is one of the leading sectors of the shadow economy," Bakonyi said. "With this project, APEH is trying to help a group of professionals, in what is called the world's oldest profession, who have never paid taxes in their life."
Prostitutes in Hungary, can work legally only within certain zones ˜ distant from schools and churches ˜ and must get regular medical checkups. Pimping and bordellos are banned.
Prostitution is legal in most of the EU with a few exceptions such as Ireland, where it is banned. The Netherlands has legislation comparable to Hungary's, where prostitution has a similar status to other jobs.
Foldi said about 20 prostitutes already had been issued permits and more than 500 had applied to attend counseling sessions organized around the country with the help of APEH on issues such as financial planning and accounting, as well as legal matters.
"Our aim is to make sex work become accepted as any other job," Foldi said. "Prostitutes come from the poorest sectors of society ... and it's very hard for them to, for example, get a loan to buy their own home."
Foldi's group received a grant of $86,000 from the government's National Development Plan, which includes EU funds, to advise prostitutes on the licenses.
"It is important for us to have as many participants as possible," Foldi said, adding that there are about 7,000-9,000 full-time prostitutes in Hungary, rising to as many as 20,000 during the summer tourist season.
One of the prostitutes who already has been granted a permit said she applied for it in an effort to improve her future and self-image.
"From now on, no one will be able to ask me where I got the money to buy my house or my car," said Rebeka, who would not give her last name. "Now we are also part of a taxpaying group and we too are making a contribution to society."
Hungary is a signatory of the 1950 United Nations convention for the suppression of human trafficking and prostitution. But officials claimed the program did not go against the spirit of the convention because even though prostitutes would now be able to get licenses, the government would not keep a separate registry of them.
Critics say many prostitutes in western Europe are foreigners often lured there under false pretenses. They link prostitution to human trafficking.
Human Rights groups have said legalization and decriminalization of prostitution and the sex industry does nothing to address the violence of prostitution and does not help prostitutes.
Janice Raymond of the U.S.-based Coalition Against Trafficking in Women said by issuing entrepreneurial permits to prostitutes, Hungary is violating its international treaty obligations under the U.N. convention. She said countries such as Hungary that have ratified the convention agree not to regulate prostitution or subject women to any administrative controls such as registration and taxation.
"Hungary is not issuing entrepreneurial permits to aid the women in prostitution but rather to increase the state coffers with the additional taxes to be gained," Raymond told The Associated Press by e-mail.
Hooters waitress and San Diego college student Kyla Ebbert, 23, who dressed as a skank for a one-day trip to a doctor's appointment in Arizona, was cautioned by a Southwest Airlines steward onboard her flight that her outfit was too revealing. She requested a blanket to cover the skank costume and disembarked in Tucson without further incident.
She is now thinking of suing the airline.
Upon seeing the skank outfit, Ebbert's mother maintained that all San Diego college students looked like skanks.
NEWS ANALYSIS: People have questioned what kind of medical help might one obtain in Tucson that one couldn't get in San Diego, but that's not the point. Ebbert's Constitutional right to receive medical attention dressed as a skank (I believe that is the Hillary Scott costume Ebbert is wearing) is irrefutable. Myself, I often go to my podiatrist dressed as Chewbacca (and, thanks for asking, my Midi-chlorian count is even higher than Master Yoda's).
Note: Other news reports say Ebbert actually attends college in Mesa, AZ, which requires residents to dress like skanks and douse themselves with melon body spray. Some day I will move to Mesa.
Area code impurity to destroy Valley identity, porn
Since the beginning of recorded time (1984) the area code of Porn Valley has been 818. It is reported that upon beholding the Valley below him in 1769, Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola said, "Reventaré mi tuerca aquí 818 veces," or "I will bust my nut here 818 times."
That proud heritage will be no more if the California Public Utilities Commission has its way, adding a 747 exchange to the mix and destroying Porn Valley's identity.
Read more after the gap.
So associated with Porn is the number 818 that erections have been detected in laboratory rats who have been fondled by unscrupulous assistants 818 times. Indeed, the Tongva Indians, a Shoshone affiliate native to the area, called the Valley Pornga, or "Place of 818 Gapes".
It is whispered that available 818 numbers will be exhausted in two years, and that the CPUC is deciding whether to assign new phone customers in the Valley a 747 area code or to divide the Valley and redistribute 818s according to which side of the divide customers fall on.
Two harrowing scenarios, obviously, but the latter is far worse. I talked with Loup Perch-Tounge of the Chatsworth Fisting Collective, a porn industry think tank.
"People's identities are caught up in their area code," he observed, imagining a world in which performers and porn company owners are not taken seriously depending on the first three digits of their phone numbers. "It's tough enough if Caller ID tags you as living in Vegas or Tampa, which are like porn farm teams."
"Somebody calls from (downtown LA exchange) the 213, I let the phone ring," Vivid co-founder Steve Hirsch did not say, "just on principle."
A coalition not comprising trade magazine AVN, the Free Speech Union, Red Light District, and Pamela Peaks is lobbying the National Park Service to designate the 818 area code a National Historic Landmark, and trade publication XBiz is not using its political capital from the .XXX top-level domain fight to designate 818 as "porn only".
"If someone walked into my office with a business card reading '747'," didn't say porn impresario Max Hardcore, "I'd send her down the street to work at the Cheesecake Factory (after pissing in her eye sockets.)"
Canadian Tina Tyler, quoting Rush's "New World Man", emphasized the need to "keep (our) nature pure."
"You don't want to get a blowjob from someone with a 747 on their Blackberry," she didn't say. "You might as well fuck the carpeting."
Virginia-based NeuStar, which operates the North American Numbering Plan Administration, estimates that 818 numbers will run out by 2009.
People concerned with this sort of thing In New Zealand report that there is an increase in "vegansexuals", people who choose not to have sex with carnivores, even human ones.
"I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance," said one Christchurch vegan.
Read the full story after the gap.
Oddly enough, "You wouldn't believe how many carcasses are inside me" is my most effective pick-up line.
Carnivore sex off the menu By REBECCA TODD - The Press | Tuesday, 31 July 2007 No sex, please, you're a carnivore.
A new phenomenon in New Zealand is taking the idea of you are what you eat to the extreme.
Vegansexuals are people who do not eat any meat or animal products, and who choose not to be sexually intimate with non-vegan partners whose bodies, they say, are made up of dead animals.
The co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Human and Animal Studies at Canterbury University, Annie Potts, said she coined the term after doing research on the lives of "cruelty-free consumers".
Cruelty-Free Consumption in New Zealand: A National Report on the Perspectives and Experiences of Vegetarians and other Ethical Consumers asked 157 people nationwide about everything from battery chickens to sexual preferences.
Many female respondents described being attracted to people who ate meat, but said they did not want to have sex with meat-eaters because their bodies were made up of animal carcasses.
"It's a whole new thing – I have not come across it before," said Potts.
One vegan respondent from Christchurch said: "I believe we are what we consume, so I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually."
Another Christchurch vegan said she found non-vegans attractive, but would not want to be physically close to them.
"I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance," she said.
Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek has been married to her vegan husband, Hans, for nine years.
She would not describe herself as vegansexual, but said it would definitely be a preference.
She could understand people not wanting to get too close to non-vegan or non-vegetarians.
"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," she said.
I got a message this morning from a person who sent me a MySpace blog post that he said was written by the performer Donny Long.
Long often recruits new female talent to the adult industry, rechristens them with his last name, and shops them around to producers.
The blog post dealt with some of the pitfalls of that approach but ends with a success story. The Weinstein Company should option it for its positive arc.
Because I am currently at the Vatican, however, my immediate thought was "Cui Bono?" - it concerned me that someone else was sending this message around. I contacted Long, who said that the blog post was indeed his.
The person who sent it to me identified himself as a male performer who has worked with several women who have also worked with Long.
"This just proves that Donny is just in this all for himself," he wrote. "What do you expect when you bring such young talent on board?"
Many people in the adult industry believe that the minimum age for porn talent should be raised three years to 21. They feel that, while some 18-year-olds are very mature and while many 37-year-olds still have a lot to learn, that teenagers in general should get some sexual experience under their belts before they start getting paid for it.
"It all depends on the person, and if you (are) a good judge of character you should know who is mature and dependable no matter what age they are," the anonymous source wrote.
Long's full post is below, unedited. What do you think?
agents and their pimp hands
I tell you what I have no clue how agents do the things they do and put up with the things they put up with from these back stabbing flaky whores and make any money. I take my hat off to any agent that tries to manger girls and make money doing it!!!!!!! I have not been doing it for the money but would be nice to recover sometimes what you invest like aim testing time and so on. I think my problem is I am too much of a nice guy and put up with too much shit from these girls. I never wanted to open a agency and still never plan on doing so. I have been getting a lot of girls into the biz and out of like 11 in a little over a month ever single one of them have fucked me over and not came through or did what they said they would do. I am a very busy guy and between being talent shooting 2 scenes a day sometimes and trying to help these bitchs and its just a nightmare. I have been doing this for a lot of reasons first its kind of nice you got to admit to have a bunch of horny girls around sometimes and the whole thing of having a bunch of girls take the long name but the down falls of it are just not worth it. My house has been a mad house of girls fighting over everything especially the bathroom. sometimes 3 girls at a time.I think one person told me a very smart thing tonight and to think about. Most of my girls have been 18 and 19 years old. They said remember when you were that age you didn’t give a fuck about anything true? well that’s what I forget is 18 is a age that a girl just could care less about anything anyone has done for them and has no morals. Sort of like my xgirlfriend that fucked me over after I helped her have everything she wanted for over a year.
I have put money out of pocket, drove these cunts around on go sees and helped them in every way possible every free min. I have and the only thing I get out of them is ungratefulness. Most of these girls come into the biz because there life is all fucked up as it is and they need help. A lot of them are on drugs and trying to keep them off it just does not work long term either. Problem is when you try to help them they are so use to people trying to screw them over they just don’t realize what you are doing for them. One of the big things is a lot of them walk into the biz wanting to do everything anal dp and have no idea what they are in for and when you try to explain it to them and limit them to come into the biz slowly, they don’t listen. These bitchs think they know everything and don’t want to listen to anyone that tells them they are wrong and that we know better and we have been in the biz longer. This goes for everything agents tells the girls from not giving there numbers out to not trusting anyone lol. I have noticed one thing about the industry, agents and all the girls. Comes down to one thing the agent with the biggest pimp hand wins. That means who has the most power over a girl and can scare a girl the most with money contracts losing work and so on. Its simple look at the biggest to the smallest agents and compare who has the flakiest girls. Why are they the biggest and look at how long girls stay with the bigger agents. Why is that because the biggest agents have the most power.
Example 1 Candy Long 20 years old A girl I brought in and put money out for to get tested and let stay at my house and so on. I signed her up with goldstar and they got her working and one morning I get a call from Joel and he is telling me she is flaking on a shoot and this was not her first shoot! We are both pissed and call her telling her if she does not so up to set we will send her movies to her real job witch she works for the government lol. She claimed to be sick throwing up in riverside without a ride to the shoot in Malibu. After the threats to tell her job she showed up to the shoot. I get a call later from a friend of mine thats male talent jenner asking if I knew where candy was. Guess what she was not in riverside she was at his house because he was nice enough to let her stay there becuase she had nowhere to go. He woke up and her and his new truck were gone! Bottom line seems like ever time someone try’s to be captain save a hoe we get fucked.
Example 2 Vicky Tones 18 years old I brought into the biz also and still owes me 400 dollars for testing and what not she needed. She was a hard headed one that also had to learn everything the hard way. I took her to a red carpet event and told her how important it was not to get drunk or make a fool out of yourself or me because all the media was there and I had brought her there. Well guess what she made a fool out of herself not worth going into details. Second time take her onto primetime with some of the other long girls and guess what someone there gets her high before she goes on the show and sits there on the couch with me and 2 of the long girls and veronica and when people ask her questions she goes uhhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh stoned out of her mind while Jene Ross is sitting there writing about it for his site. So after that I should have told her to fuck off but no I hook her up with number1models because Joel wont take her and what does she do? 2 and a half hours late for the first shoot and 1 and a half on the second. "FIRED" and still leaving me messages to help her!
Example 3 Lexi Long 20 years old A girl that her boyfriend came to me and wanted to bring her in doing only g/g. Long story short spent a lot of time and got fucked on that too. 5 days before the shoot wont even return calls. Like I said no morals or marbles for that matter.
Example 4 Roxy Long 20 years old another vicky tones that was a lier and had to learn everything the hard way and still owes me 400 dollars. This girl never got to shoot because she had some loser that was married that she was in love with effecting her job that she lied to me about also.
example 5 Angelina Long my favorite 18 years old also fucked me over really bad. This is the most resent and the worst one. She was a fan that fell in love with me and fucked me and Joel over really bad with her lies and all her bullshit and then I was dumb enough to believe her lies and give her a second shot and put her with lighthouse and 3 days later gone! Her responce is I she does not give a fuck about anyone or anythjing anyone has done for her. She just wants to go back to her druggy life in Oregon.
NOW FOR THE POSITIVE GIRL Hottie Hollie 22 years old porn star from Canada that has been trying to get usa ids and come and work for a while. She came down to stay with me and I got everything taken care of for her and I put her strait with ladirect. She should be back in a couple weeks when her ids get here. we will see but looks good.
Bottom line is I think I have learned to let the agents do there job and take the fall for these crazy bitchs. My days of helping them and putting my neck on the line is done the way I have been is over. I will still bring a lot of girls into the biz here coming up but things are going to change. Either I will bring them right to a agent and not bother trying to help them get a couple bookings first with the easier companies to work for or plan b is I am going to contract them for a period of 2 weeks then send them to a agent.
Before presenting a brief remembrance of the porn performer Haley Paige, who died a year ago today, I'll share with you an anonymous comment I just received on a post about the late Anna Malle:
So many porn performers don't want their families and hometowns to know what they do, and there is such a deep stigma to the job in such a benighted society that only a few people (Nina Hartley comes to mind) can really transcend it. But Hartley actively seeks transcendence in everything she does, and the majority of porn personnel prefer to keep large aspects of their lives under wraps for fear of what confused idiots like the person quoted at the beginning of this story might do.
People loved Maryam and people loved Haley, and I encourage those people who've talked to me privately to leave a positive message in the comments section.
Most of the images above are from I Love Haley Paige, a compilation disc released this year of scenes shot between 2003 and 2005. It does not have behind the scenes footage or anything extra that reveals Haley the person, which I think is a missed opportunity for her fans. But she sure was lovely.
I Love Haley Paige
