Blue Blood’s SpookyCash webmaster affiliate program sent yours truly and Forrest Black to the XBiz Hollywood show. As the XBiz show was this past weekend, I was reminded that I had some entertaining snapshots to post of the fun we had. (Footnote: Webmaster affiliate programs are what people with sites reaching thousands of visitors use to, ya know, make money.)

The first night of the webmaster show, we went out to dinner with my friends Lange and Warren. I tried to convince them to go to a restaurant called Koji’s. Koji’s serves sushi and shabu and features pretty good food in a kind of weird mall setting. Some of the same folks who Disneyfied Times Square built a structure called Hollywood and Highland adjacent to the venerable Mann’s Chinese Theater and across from the Disney one and the historic Roosevelt Hotel. Hollywood and Highland features a variety of paid street performers dressed as costume characters and it is a mall, but Koji’s is tasty. Nonetheless, when Lange and Warren realized I was directing us through a mall, they nixed Japanese food and peer pressured me into going back across the street to Hooters.

I’ve never been to Hooters before, but there had been an open bar by the Roosevelt Hotel pool earlier, so I was feeling tipsy agreeable. At the time, we all thought our waitress was super hot. Warren offered to put her in Penthouse and she giggled and he was like, “no, seriously, I’ll put you in Penthouse.” It seemed like she thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. Warren really does shoot for Penthouse. Actually, come to think of it, Forrest Black and I have both shot for Penthouse as well, but Warren has the uber hook-up there to the point where a party at his house isn’t over until the pool is chock-full of Penthouse Pets. Some place I have the snapshots to prove that too. But not at Hooters on this particular night. Now that I look at the Hooters snapshots, the waitress looks only okay. Maybe she smelled really great. Maybe Lange just had her keep the beer flowing to the point where I also thought Hooters food was surprisingly delicious. (More on this later.)

We went to a party after this at The Ritual Supper Club. I think the primary occasion for the party was the CyberSocket gay web awards, but Stella Artois says I may or may not be particularly specifically accurate on this point. The Ritual Supper Club has been known variously as Ritual, White Lotus, the local bus station, etc. and is a Hollywood hotspot where A-listers like Mark Wahlberg can go to bang porn stars cast for the next season of Entourage on HBO. Luminaries in attendance included Chi Chi LaRue, Anders Manga, Joanna Angel, Mario from Stockroom, Halcyon Pink, Ashley Steel, and of course Forrest Black and Amelia G.

XBiz then threw a really cool seminar with talented filmmakers Joone and Andrew Blake. I tend to be really turned off by most of what the mainstream of Porn Valley churns out, but Joone and Andrew Blake are seriously good at what they do and bring a real artistry to their work. Later there was a really painful speech from one of the guys responsible for the Penthouse acquisition. He was going on about his mainstream credentials and, although he has an impressive background in some respects, I just think of maintream as a pejorative. And I find it really tiresome when people make a huge distinction between what they perceive as their adult work and their “mainstream” work. I always wonder if they just think they can phone it in as soon as exposed breasts are involved. Monetizing media is monetizing media. The reason so few adult videos produced can touch Joone or Andrew Blake is that some people think they do not have to bring their A game if nudity is involved. Heck, some people even believe they should not. I’m personally a fan of doing a good job of whatever one does.

I certainly know some club kids who are fucking awesome at being fabulous club kids. Forrest Black and I ran into journalist Gram Ponante as we snuck out of the Penthouse keynote. We had a conversation about some of the more wannabe upscale webmaster events. I have started skipping this variety of velvet rope-oriented shindig, even though I adore some of my friends who attend and throw such parties. I’m fine with genuinely upscale and I’m fine with a real velvet rope whether it is glam rock disco or casino VIP, but I only enjoy such things if they are the real deal. I tell Gram that I like my club kids to be professionals and that watching internet professionals mack at being club kids is not my idea of a good time. This lead to me being horrifically misquoted, but, hey, at least I made the front page his site and it was kinda funny and we were all operating on not a lot of sleep.

For an example of an event I was definitely down for, Vic DiCara from the seminal Hindu-infused hardcore punk band 108 took a whole bunch of us out to dinner afterward and we had a really great evening. Ross Horowitz of Shoot Out the Lights fame drove me, Forrest Black, and his beautiful companion over to Koji’s. Now you all might be recalling that I mentioned walking to Koji’s at the beginning of the weekend. Yes, it was walking distance and, no, we were not that partied out, but Ross just bought a black Rolls Royce, so it was imperative that we drive to Hollywood and Highland. After making me go to Hooters, Lange of course was the first person I saw when we got to Koji’s and I gave him grief about it, but forgave him when he introduced me to photographer Chris Cuffaro whose band photography I had published in Blue Blood magazine in print years ago, but who I had never met in the flesh before. Unsurprisingly, given the proclivities of the guest list, we all talked about music most of the night. At one point, Vegas Ken from The Best Porn told an anecdote about working in an emergency room and maybe not being startled by the horror in the same way that probably no one at the table was startled by naked people any more. But mostly we chatted about music and music biz.

I forget whose party we went to after that, but the next afternoon found us at Hooters again. I had not been to eat at Hooters twice in my entire life. We had lunch with a plethora of cool folks on the various days of the XBiz webmaster conference, but Hooters made the buffet brunches at the Roosevelt Hotel seem yummilicious. And they were not particularly gourmet buffets. Hooters food is absolutely revolting if one has not consumed the proper number of refreshing adult beverages beforehand. The weird MSG-style flavor enhancers at Hooters made my tongue swell and the flavor of everything I tasted there seemed sickening. Forrest Black consoled his annoyed tummy after Hooters with the purchase of a stuffed Kuromi plush. In the unlikely event that you are somehow unaware of this, Kuromi is Hello Kitty’s new punk rock gal pal with the fetish hat.

In conclusion, after enough beer, Hooters chicken wings and shrimp are tasty and Hooters waitresses are delicious, but you really need serious beer goggles to eat that food. Well-prepared Japanese food, Rolls Royces, and Hello Kitty dolls may be enjoyed while entirely sober. I think this may illustrate some of the quintessential truths of the universe.

There are a few porn movies which most people have heard the names of — Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Debbie Does Dallas. Add Cafe Flesh and maybe Caligula to the list if you are a science fiction dork fan like me. You can enjoy smut without ever having seen any of those flicks. You can make smut without ever having seen any of those flicks. But, if you have not heard of them, then you are missing a piece of the cultural zeitgeist that most people are in on.

Adult industry professionals and critics have a number of theories as to why the original Debbie Does Dallas movie was so popular. Some people think it was because a lot of people are hot for cheerleader porn and the Dallas Cowboys (and their cheerleaders) were practically America’s team at the time. I’m not really a football person, so I can’t comment on the veracity of that claim. Some people think Debbie Does Dallas was just a really catchy punchy title that was fun to say. Kind of like Snakes on a Plane, but with, you know, naked people. Some people believe that Debbie Does Dallas rode the initial wave of Betamax production, being one of the very first adult titles available on that videocassette format. Yes, I said Betamax. For those of you who are like “WTF is Betamax?”: It was a videotape format which competed with VHS to be the industry standard when VCR’s or video cassette recorders first came out. Betamax was generally considered to be a higher quality format, but VHS embraced the porno market. Guess which one ended up more popular? A VCR was expensive when Debbie Does Dallas first came out, so being one of the only options for an underserved and overpaid market was probably an advantage. Some experts on adult video opine that Debbie was just really really really incredibly hot. Whatever the reason, Debbie Does Dallas was one of the best-selling skin flicks of all time.

So what happens when a director or producer has the hook-up to make a movie with a decent budget, but they don’t actually have anything much to say personally as an artist? That’s right, they do a remake. Don’t get me wrong. Some remakes are enjoyable. I liked the Dennis Quaid-starring version of the classic thriller movie DOA better than the original, and the more recent one was probably able to have a more interesting and less Hollywood ending because the creative team could excuse it by pointing out that they were staying true to the original. In general, though, I am a fan of artists trying to do something new. I do understand that there are some people in the movie business and in the adult video business who just want to make a dollar and their only question is ROI. I can respect someone who is purely about business, so long as they don’t try to convince me they are something other than what they are.

I’ve never seen the original Debbie Does Dallas in its entirety. By which, I mean I may or may not have walked through a room where it was playing while at a party at some point. I’ve never even seen a boxcover for the — yep, you guessed it — remake of Debbie Does Dallas, the over-heralded recent release of which provided the impetus for this article. Although the current crop of Porn Valley faux auteurs often ask people to praise their films sight-unseen, I feel unqualified to review something I am totally unfamiliar with. So I’m going to let America’s beloved porn journalist Gram Ponante do it for me. Here are some excerpts from his Fleshbot review of the DVD:

“An altporn reimagining of the 70’s porn classic “Debbie Loves Dallas”, [Emo McCry]’s version is not going to make any converts to the altporn stable of stars, all of whom do an amazing job of telegraphing how not seriously they take their jobs. The eye rolling, gum smacking, and bad posture, the delivery of every line as if it had a question mark at the end of it, and the relentless irony of the performances made me think less like I was watching a porn movie than I was substitute-teaching an eighth grade class . . .

Back at Debbie’s place, Cassidey makes James Deen fuck Pixie as punishment for not cleaning the apartment. I don’t understand Altkid anthropology; if Deen had cleaned the house, would he have got to fuck Pixie twice? . . .

In the end, Cassidey gets her man. Punky, played by Alex Gonz, and Cassidey provide a sweaty and messy ending to the movie, real porn as opposed to metaporn, which is a welcome relief. Still, we could hear an offstage voice yell “Two minutes!” as Gonz worked up to his pop shot. I asked [Emo] if things other directors might smooth over – like stage directions – were included purposely in this movie.

“Truth to materials,” he said, quoting the architectural fad that prohibits gussying up building blocks. If that is true, why not have a split screen at all times showing what the crew is up to? What about a CNN news ticker or real-time L.A. traffic reports that would give insight into conditions on the set? Sometimes I think Altporn means never having to admit you’re phoning it in.”

Okay, having seen one other movie (on fast forward) by the same emopompous (I’m inventing words, but only good ones) director, I am inclined to think Gram’s review is probably right, but I’m not really the market for vanilla porn, so it doesn’t much matter if this sort of movie speaks to me. Sometimes Fleshbot runs reviews which are humorous and not wholly positive. Heck, Fleshbot poked fun at us the same week for being excited about award-winner Funkatron wearing a shirt for Blue Blood’s SpookyCash at the Adobe Max 2007 show for the future of the internet. Guess what I did when I read that? I laughed because it was well-written. I said, “ouch,” because it was well-written. I asked a co-worker if I should read anything into the fact that Fleshbot never links BlueBlood.com when they mention it, although they will link BlueBlood.net. We decided it probably didn’t mean anything, but I could always sacrifice a goat later and read the entrails, if I really felt the need. Then I got back to whatever I’d been working on at the time. I definitely did not do what the emopompous director of Debbie Wants a Mulligan On Dallas did.

That kind, friendly, sweet, sensitive (to his own needs), gentle soul who always remembers anything good anyone has ever done for him . . . Okay, I don’t think I can maintain a level of sarcasm here which could remotely communicate Emo McCry’s hysterically overblown ridiculous overreaction. Keep in mind now that Gram had given Emo McCry a ton of positive press in the past and that, although Emo McCry would like to get a discount for being all indie, he, in point of fact, works for a one hundred million dollar corporation. So, as the representative of a hundred million dollar a year business, one of the most established companies in adult, Emo McCry apparently shrieked in a completely juvenile way at Gram, calling and texting Gram’s cell phone over and over again to swear and indicate that he was owed a glowing review whether or not he bothered to make the slightest effort to do a good job. Emo McCry rounded out his businesslike presentation by adding harassing emails to the mix. Oh yeah, and he tried to get Gram fired. Mistakenly believing he actually had the juice to force Fleshbot to fire a popular writer like Gram Ponante over one review the director of a DVD didn’t care for.

The absurd but typical overreaction to the mildest slight is comedy gold. Apparently Emo McCry was under the impression that Gram didn’t even need to view the movie to proclaim genius, which, in all fairness, I know other people have done for this guy. I’m certainly long past tired of theoretically creative people, in this age of hype, who want to be congratulated on their brilliance without having to actually try. I’m sick of being asked to praise (or dis) projects I have not yet seen. How fake is this hype going to get before it entirely kills journalism? How un-American is it for publicists to try to run what journalists say down to the last semi-colon? The most annoying thing to me, as a creative person, is how hyper-sensitive these corporate sell-outs are. They whine hysterically over the smallest imagined insult, even though they are totally insensitive to anyone else’s feelings. Have they never heard that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones? And, if they are going to take money from big business, I think they have an obligation to do a good job. A remake might not be art, but it ought to have good production values and be a quality product. But these emo manchildren seem to think it is their raison d’etre to lash out and try to damage everything and everyone around them. Guys, you are not “sticking it to the man” by taking corporate money and giving, both your corporate masters and the viewing public, laughably amateur productions in return. What are you people spending all that corporate dough on anyway? And, incidentally, companies do not usually grow large by having stupid people at the helm, so they are going to eventually notice you are excusing laziness and poor performance as irony and hipness, whether or not you can convince journalists to say you rock. Sometimes I worry that a small crew of disingenuous ripoff artists have fed the whole scene figurative luminous toxin and it is going to kill everything which matters, but at least we have time to figure out who the murderers are.

At any rate, after all was said and done, Gram Ponante is, of course, still writing in the same humorous style for Fleshbot and the emopomous director of Debbie Does Derivative is still hilarious too. Only Emo McCry is solely unintentionally hilarious. I don’t usually pull aside the curtain, but, if you feel like reading the entire email barrage from an apparently grown-ass man who is very very sensitive, then you should check out where Gram Ponante posted the entire exchange on his site. Perhaps the truth of Emo McCry’s materials is just very painful.

I had dropped the luscious Michelle Aston off at Bar 107 in downtown Los Angeles before, but had never gone inside. For some reason, I had assumed it was a teensy hole in the wall dive. I figured I’d stop in anyway to help Julie Simone celebrate the 12th DVD Release by her company, Julie Simone Productions.

I was happily surprised when the inside of Bar 107 turned out to be larger than expected, with red plush booths and a small stage in the back. The bar could have had more of a selection, especially in the sparkling water department, but it was still very cool.

Julie Simone’s new flick, Audition, was playing on televisions mounted up high by the ceiling. I’m not sure if that violates some sort of zoning ordinance, but I always wonder about such things and the crowd was sufficiently naughty all on their own.

Luminaries in attendance included, of course, the woman of the hour in a black cocktail dress, the aforementioned Michelle Aston, Blue Blood art director and style editor Forrest Black, sexy Aiden, writer/director David Aaron Clark, KSEX and BaadMaster’s Dungeon host Mistress Genevieve, Music+TV and Aural Salvation host Rev Mitcz, and America’s Beloved Porn Journalist Gram Ponante.

Audition is written and directed by Julie Simone and features Gia Paloma, Master Liam, Krissy, Lystra, and, you guess it — Julie Simone.

Gritty nicely-distressed design movie promo bondage posters were on hand for revelers seeking a collectible keepsake. The promo poster implication is that Audition is like Captivity with less ick and more sex, but that’s just going on the nice marketing swag.

I was super psyched to see notable writer Gram Ponante join the Blue Blood forums this week. His writing cracks me up. I was also super psyched by his recent press mention of Blue Blood where, among other things, he said:

“Part of the 1300th photoset hosted on pioneering punk erotica site Blue Blood.com, the photos of Sara X remind me that I really need to watch my diet.“

Gram made the interesting point that he feels labels have to constantly be defined and re-defined because of the human “tendency to aggressively misunderstand.” This was primarily apropos of whether or not I could talk about feminist issues which matter to me and not have my existence become unmitigated hell.

But Gram has, for quite some time now, been promoting the notion that the annoying altporn terminology should be changed to steveporn because steveporn is a term which comes without the baggage. Now, it is my impression that some of the support for the steveporn terminology comes from the same divisive, art-destroying, and scene-damaging camp which coined the altporn terminology in the first place, and that the main point of using the term steveporn is in the hopes of mollifying famous director and writer David Aaron Clark. DAC’s objection to altporn is complex. I should probably have him explain it here some time, but perhaps his view can be summed up as generally feeling that, as an adult video genre, it is neither an alternative to anything, nor particularly quality pornography, nor generally being produced by the best that industry has to offer.

I’ve known David Aaron Clark for many years and I adore him and I respect his opinions. I agree with him on many things and enjoy debating the topics on which we do not agree. And I feel qualified to say that dressing up the same problem with a new name is not going to fool DAC.

Nonetheless, I am entertained by Gram’s blog and his suggestion that perhaps altaltporn could be termed steveporn. Sadly, a rose by any other name and all that.