10:10 AM. Luke crawls out of bed and connects his phone. It rings immediately. Earl Slate and Jasmine St. Clair, porn's most talked about couple, are on the line.
They want to talk about Raven McCall who supposedly phoned me Monday evening. I then wrote:
"Raven McCall is back in porn. She's a contract girl for Jerry Garfinkle's Impressive Video. "They've given me a one-year contract. The price was right. I'm his girlfriend now so he's [Earl Slate] trying to help me out. I had a bad setback a few months ago. But I live with Earl now... We got together a few weeks ago." McCall entered the industry in 1994. She's made her living off escort work the past year. A week ago, Earl told me that he was engaged to Jasmine St. Clair."
Today, Earl Slate denied that Raven was his contract girl and denied that Raven was his girlfriend and denied that Raven lived with him.
"She did five scenes
for me for $1000," said Earl. "She's never seen me anywhere except on
the set. I've never had a date with her."
Jasmine: "Earl and I have had our ups and downs."
Earl: "Luke, did Jasmine tell you that we were not together?"
On Wednesday, Jasmine phoned me and I wrote the following:
"Jasmine St. Clair says John T. Bowen owes her $5000. She congratulates Raven McCall on landing her ex-boyfriend Earl Slate aka Captain Asshole. Jasmine appears in a couple videos for Earl's series. Jasmine still seeks a boyfriend, "someone strong, ambitious, intelligent...maybe European...not in the business [of porno].""
Today, I read that back to Earl.
Earl: "She says that where she told you that where she told you that she's my ex-girlfriend and looking for a new boyfriend, that that is not true."
Jasmine: "Well, yeah, after I read that thing about Raven..."
Earl: "So you did say that?"
Jasmine: "I didn't say that I was looking for a boyfriend."
Earl: "You better get your lies straight because I am not going to be with you if you keep doing this s---."
Phone rings. It's Laurie aka Raven McCall.
Earl to Raven: "I'm talking to Luke F-rd right now trying to find out why you lied about all that bulls---...
"Luke, Raven says she never talked to you."
Raven comes on the line. It's a similar voice to what I heard Monday night.
Raven: "Obviously this guy is somebody who not only tries to dig up dirt but create dirt for people in the industry. That's no way to make a living."
Jasmine to Raven: "I
think you're a f---ing skag. You're not even good enough to be a hair
on my ass."
Raven: "I'm sure that we could resolve this with a conference call."
Jasmine: "Why don't you go back to being a f---ing whore, you bitch."
Earl to Raven: "Honestly, I don't want to talk to you. This is a whole
bunch of s--- that you've created for me."
Earl: "She just hung up on me.
"Luke, she says she does not even know who you are and that you are f---ing insane.
"I know that you [Luke] twist up your stuff sometimes, but I don't believe that you make stuff up."
Luke: "She gave me her number...."
Earl: "That is her number."
Jasmine: "Just write that she has nothing to do with Impressive or Earl... That she is desperate for publicity... And that's the way she's trying to make a name for herself... Do five scenes for a $1000 and a free boxcover."
Earl: "Luke, I don't want you to be responsible for breaking us [Jasmine and I] up. So check your facts man. Before you write something about me next time, call me."
Earl and Jasmine then bicker but Luke is too lazy to further transcribe.
At 10:55, Raven and Earl phone. This Raven McCall says she has never talked to me. Now that I hear her voice more clearly, I hear that it is distinctly different. I now believe that I was had Monday night. The woman on that night claiming to be Raven McCall was not Raven.
According to several sources, Earl's girlfriend Jasmine St. Clair has been largely behind the rumors and gossip about Earl that have killed his performing career.
Raven: "There are lots
of people in the industry who want to be mean and vicious because they
don't feel so good about themselves. This is one of the things that
turned me off about the industry. I did not want to deal with that type
of mentality. I did Earl Slate a favor. He needed to put together his
movie for a low budget."
Earl: "She wanted to be the only girl on the boxcover. So she's the
only girl basically in the movie... I can't afford to put anyone on
contract. I finance my movies out of my pocket.
"I know for a fact that
Jasmine is responsible for most of the rumors about me. I caught her
red handed. I even have a letter signed (notarized) by her, admitting
that she was calling people saying that she was from different production
companies, warning them not to work with me. Because she's jealous.
Not because she doesn't love me. She's so in love with me she can't
stand to think that I'm working with other girls."
Raven: "You need to call her and set her straight on these things or
she will end up losing you."
Earl: "She [Jasmine] does not do drugs. She's beautiful, succesful and intelligent, but for some reason she feels inferior to everybody...which makes her bad talk everybody..."
Earl says that Jasmine has repaid him for much of the money he lost as a performer because of gossip about him from her.
.....................................
Hart Williams writes:
I have a fairly sophisticated program for tracking website hits, and what I've just seen didn't make any sense until I remembered that I've posted here and on ACME that I think a lot of the "Kiddie Porn" paranoia is a smokescreen for a more insidious attack on civil liberties.
(And it ain't the tracking program you THINK it is)
Somebody from the Government has been searching my website for: search="xxx free" "free pics" "porn free" "teens" "hard core" "head" "blow" @rec.arts.movies.erotica&child love @rec.arts.movies.erotica&hart williams
search="child porn"
And hits from several .gov servers. etcetera. You get the picture.
Now, I note a BIIIIG bust of a kiddie porn network made the news today, with 46 arrests in several countries. The interesting fact that caught my attention was that, while the investigation took place in ten or more states, only three arrests were made in the US.
But let me state for the record, in case there's ANY QUESTION about it:
I find the sort of mind that likes kiddie porn to be sick.
I find the concept of child pornography repulsive.
I would turn in ANYone I suspected of dabbling in it in a New York minute, and have called the FBI Internet Task Force in San Francisco about just such material in the past -- as their records ought to show.
I hate shaved pussies in porn because it REMINDS me of underage girls, and my little sisters, whose diapers I had to change.
Got that? Is that clear? Is that explicit enough Big Brother?
Now, STOP SURVEILLING ME!
Luke: "It appears that a government crackdown on pornography-obscenity looms."
Ken DeLucia now works for a one-stop porn distributor (Not Just Another Video Express) in the Bay Area. He says porners should be wary of a porner in Georgia named Victor Belarde. Ken says Victor ripped off Xplor Video and Mike Esposito's Gentlemen's Video. Ken says Victor orders COD, refuses to pay for the boxes with COD on them, and accepts the boxes of video tapes without COD packaging.
AVN's Paul Fishbein does not believe allegations that his employee Gene Ross, veteran porn journalist and critic, has a financial interest in Cream Entertainment.
Paul told me at 3PM Friday: "It's Gene's issue. He's hired an attorney and he'll be coming after you. As far as I'm concerned, I don't pay any attention to you. Any credibility you were building up, you've lost now.
"If I thought that you had anything I would sue you for it. It's [that Gene Ross has a financial interest in Cream Entertainment] flat out not true. If I believed it was true, I would fire Gene immediately. If Gene Ross is lying to me, I will fire him.
"Your sources may have a burn against John Bowen. They have their own agendas. They are using you. You're printing other people's allegations without having facts makes you a bad journalist. And you're dangerous when you do that. I had a feeling that you were cleaning things up a little bit. That you were printing more news and less rumor, and you were talking to people... And then you do s--- like this...
"Get a piece of evidence before you print, then you have a news story. Gene Ross is not a liar. He looked me straight in the eye and said that it was the biggest bunch of s--- that he ever heard in his life...
"Suppose it was going to happen in October [that John was joining Cream], but you printed it as fact. That's bad journalism. Lucky for me, most people in the industry don't take you seriously and they've laughed you off. Eventually you are going to burn everybody, and nobody is going to talk to you, and you are going to have nothing to write about. The list of people in the industry who can't stand you is growing by the day."
In the 9/98 AVN editorial on page ten, Gene Ross writes about his debate with me on the Ed Powers radio show on KSLX FM 97.1 in LA:
"I just wish you hadn't
made that comment about the snuff film."
This was AVN publisher Paul Fishbein cringing the day after my radio
confrontation with Internet gadfly Luke F-rd.
Ford's a guy about whom I wrote a not-too-complimentary AVN editorial a couple of months ago. Which, by the way, I was soundly criticized for in some quarters on the basis that it perhaps lent Ford too much undue credibility. A contradiction in terms, if you think about it, but it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. Still does, as a matter of fact, now that I've been up against Ford in sort of a classic Hemingway situation and have seen what all the hubbub is about.
Though he proclaims himself to be an "accredited" journalist, I still contend that Ford's ione of these smear tactic commandos who deploys cryptic sources to do his dirty work, but, himself, isn't able to discern a fact from a fortune cookie. Which explains, possibly, why Ford's adult industry postings read like the dialogue equivalent of kung fu movies.
Ethnicity aside (a subject which Ford can't seem to relinquish in his own articles) myself, Ford, AVN's Mark Kernes and a couple million other people, including Brooke Ashley, one of Ford's frequent targets these days, were invited to cram into a broadcast booth to be on Ed Powers' midnight talk show. KLSX radio 97.1 FM in Los Angeles on your listening dial.
Bill Margold also was an invited guest on the program but didn't show for reasons particular to Margold. Something about Margold's having an early a.m. call time, according to Ed Powers. The fact that Margold is a frequent critic of AVN, having many times labeled the magazine "Corrupt," was one particular reason why I was psyching up for the show. At the sound of the bell my strategy was to come flying out of the corner of the ring and go straight for a no-holds-barred submission lock on Margold. Except I was denied. My snitches claim there was another story behind the story of the absence, one too good to pass up. Except my tendency as an accredited journalist (unlike Ford, I've been a reporter for real newspapers) is to consider the source and leave unsubstantiated swill to the Luke F-rds of the world. For, you see, has a knack for putting tall tales in their undignified and improper perspective. All of which offers explanation why he curries favor with the yarn-spinning Pecos Bills of the adult industry.
By no means a tall tale considering what she's had to endure, particularly as a result of Ford's callous Internet msuings, HIV victim Brooke Ashley handled herself adroitly and with quit courage.
I, on the othe rhand, lost my cool way before the show even got started and wanted to scramble over the barrier that separated me from Ford to put a "Stone Cold Stunner" on the man. Such is Ford's unenviable ability to make your skin crawl. (Proving I'm not alone in my feelings, Hustler Erotic Video Guide editor Mike Albo called in to the show offering to knock Ford's yarmulke off his head.)
In 20/20 hindsight, I have two, maybe three regrets about that evening. The first one was a decision to wear a "Johnny Bravo" muscle shirt. For whatever aesthetic purpose that achieved, Ford saw fit the following day to comment appreciatively on "my 200 muscular pounds...broad shoulders and thick biceps" for the benefit of the Internet. A simple Sylvester Stallone comparison would have sufficed, but another man's rapt attention to my machismo really wasn't the purpose of the radio debate. (Ford can at least take solace in knowing htat if his journalistic career goes belly-up he can get a carnival job as a weight-guesser.)
My second source of contrition resides in my glib remark about snuff films. I'll explain: For some unfathomable reason, host Powers hurled a question at me about what movie I'd like to see Ford in, as if I'd like to see him in any. To which I snappily replied, "a snuff film." Yes, I would give a word-association psychologist fits, this I have to admit. But, because I assumed, judging by the circumsized expression residing on Powers' face, that my remark got bleeped, I didn't elaborate. Not that I'd want to see anything bad happen to Luke F-rd. How could I wish that on someone who expresses his undying admiration for my creatine-fueled physique? The point I would have made rests in Ford's bizarre fixations with snuff films and the Mafia as inextricably bound to pornography.
The third regrettable issue of the night was the hand grenade lobbed by Powers in Ford's direction, which I failed, miserably, to act upon. Ed asked Luke if he was an "eggplant," a question similarly posed by Dennis Hopper to Christopher Walken in True Romance. As idiotic as all of this ounds, even Ford's own sister tends to discredit him when she writes on the Internet: "He (Luke) was invovled in a motor vehicle accident in which his forehead impacted with a steering wheel...there is medical opinion that this affected his pituitary and resulted in something like a frontal lobe lobotomy...as a result of motor vehicle accident he (Luke) seems to lack a degree of insight and balance in his life."
Idiot me, I never brought this point up.
These gratuitous medical insights, no doubt, come as some small consolation to Brooke Ashley who now says she'd like to "strangle" Ford. Part of Brooke's calm during the radio interview was attributable to the fact that she hadn't read any of Ford's stories about her on the Net. Now she's wiser and mad as hell.
Marc Wallice tells me taht he was on the verge of committing suicide after Ford's railings about his condition, and a performer named Kristen has sought psychological counseling, the result of Ford's erroneous postings about her HIV condition.
Several days after the radio interview, Powers had a chummy lunch with Luke F-rd. I asked Ed why was he consorting with the enemy.
"He's wounded," said Powers. "He's like a wounded cheetah. It's better not to ignore him." Of course Powers also admitted that he was afraid to leave his jacket draped on a chair to go to the men's room.
"I don't want him to know what I pay for my dry cleaning."
.....................................
Page 16 of the 9/98 AVN features a 1/3 rd page ad from Wicked Pictures, mourning the departure of dog Mac, a "devoted companion to Brad and Cynthia Willis, and friend to just about every adult star of the past decade."
An observer: "I hate Pedophiles as much as anyone for the obvious reasons and also the attempt to link with mainstream porn (wrongly) by porn opponents. I thought that this "bust" was well done because it required the "Ped" to jump through a lot of hoops so it wasn't like the "two underage pictures" in the smut directory on the hard-drive" type of bust.
"The US government has
the largest kiddie-porn collection and regularly uses it for "sting"
website. This I don't mind as long as they structure it with enough
"hoops" to get only the real peds and not the casual curious who
won't jump through the "hoops.""