The non-phenomenon of altporn has so saturated adult culture that 1.) AVN is just getting ready to cover it now, and 2.) that every conversation I had with director Eon McKai or producer Malachi Ecks quickly turned to other subjects entirely.
GP (to Malachi Ecks): Are production costs for future films going to remain stable or ... hey, that's a great hat.
McKai: What our community of kids is trying to accomplish with smut is ... hey, check out Malachi's hat.
KGK3's Dana Dearmond was there. We didn't talk about altporn, either.
"I have over 80,000 friends on my MySpace profile," she said.
"The new Jagermeister bottles come in an aluminum enclosure," I replied, "like Mordred in Excalibur."
"You're different."
I also spoke with indie-rock role model Vena Virago, who art-directed Neu Wave Hookers and McKai's first porn film, Art School Sluts. We didn't talk about porn. Instead, we discussed the trailer she abandoned in New York.
"There's a place in Moorpark where you can buy antique trailers," she said. "I want to go see them."
"There's an old Airstream up at the top of Runyon Canyon, just as you're coming down," I said. "It looks like Mordred in Excalibur."
"Do you think pornography is on its way out?" Lurk Ford asked me. He's always seeking my counsel.
"If it is, we can move to Byron Bay, Australia. It's a hippie surfing community."
Tara Nicole, the lady from FreePornStarPix, wants to develop a reality show about Lurk Ford.
"I would just follow him around with my camera. It would be called 'I Dated A Porn Star'. You'd see him asking his girlfriend if she enjoyed her DP scene that day."
"Would you sing the UnFAITHful Secrets theme song with me?" I asked.
"What?"
I suggested that for any reality show to be successful it would have to have an arc, rather than just lurking behind Lurk with a camera. In the beginning, we would need to see Lurk struggling mightily to maintain his goal of destroying the porn industry from within, all the while monetizing his website. This love/hate relationship, fraught with a desire to make money, would be a perfect encapsulation of the porn industry for cable audiences.
Then he would meet that one special porn star who would upend his sensibilities.
"I tried to hook him up with Lexxi Fox but he wasn't interested," Tanya said. "She's blonde, after all."
"Shikse golem," I said.
Lurk had only one suggestion for a costar. He was quite insistent. I shot him down.
"Shut the fuck up," I said. "You're talent." The show would end, of course, in their ritual suicide. I would need to be the creative consultant until my entourage started doing rails off the interns.
I met Kristy Shields, Hustler's official buyer of dildos. Her business card was strangely asymmetrical. I suggested she talk with Alaska, who makes the adult industry's business cards and is responsible for most of its art. Luckily he was standing right there.
"Why does Hustler only have stores on Superfund sites and rural backwaters?" I asked.
"Because they buy a lot of porn," she pointed out. "But we're opening a store in South Beach, Miami. I'm going out there tomorrow." She also said Hustler has a store in the former New Orleans, which I didn't know.
There were a couple of women, Darcey and Ann, who were dressed like the original New Wave Hookers. Neither was in porn, though Ann had the right attitude. They both work in burlesque revues around Los Angeles. I am filled with information about L.A.'s burlesque scene. We talked about the tribulations of the Velvet Hammer and Lucha Va Voom. Had I not become America's Porn Journalist I would have been America's Mexican wrestling/Pasties-fueled burlesque show Journalist. But the scene holds too many painful memories.
"Our websites are down, but we're both on MySpace," Darcey said.
"No kidding?"
"If you make out with this guy," Ann said, "I'll give you a drink ticket."
"No," I said, but suggested she try her scheme on one of the strolling photographers. "Gram don't roll wid no dudes."
I kept passing Joanna Angel but kept not taking her picture. "You're becoming like Bad Company's Johnny, Foreigner's Jukebox Hero, Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" guy, the guy in Kiss' "Beth", and Bon Jovi's steel horse-rifing cowboy," I didn't think to say at the time because I just remembered the "Beth" guy right now. "Don't become so overexposed that no one wants to see Chlamydiodrome."
I ended my evening, as I do every evening in the company of the Steveporn kids, by taking a picture of Alice Suicide doing something for the greater good. Here she is adjusting the ceiling tapestry.
Gallery Here are some pictures from soon-to-be-full-time rock promoter Sean Carnage.
Here are some of Tara's pictures.
