Thursday, June 10th, 1999

Mimi Miyagi, John Bone and Fantastic

My sponsor Fantasticonline.com recently purchased a CD of porn star pictures from www.mimimiyagi.com. Shortly after the pics showed up on www.l-keford.com, John Bone shot my boss fella Craig Vasiloff an email claiming that he owned the pictures. Craig emailed Miyagi who promptly issued a complete refund. She said she only acted as a broker for www.davidsden.com.

Says the boss fella, "Mimi Miyagi has been completely professional in our dealings. s--- happens!"

As Luke started to investigate this, he received this warning from a porner: "If I were you I would leave Mimi Miyagi completely alone. You have no idea who she is married to or what is behind her. Not worth the risk."

Curious, Luke emailed Mimi, who replied: "Here's a pic of my hubby Gino ya wanted to know about. Gino's the one on the left. Don Frye is in the middle next to my it's his cousin. You know Don? He's that famous Ultimate Fighting Wrestler champ. Really cool guy. His other cousin is Scott "The Pitbull" Ferrozzo, another UFC dude.

"I've been so busy with producing this new [asian themed] movie this month... Lots of fantastic sceneries. I booked our website contract girl Leanni Lei (right, Mimi on left), she's such a sweetheart. Mia Smyles, a new asian hot young beauty as well. Plus Cumisha Amado is back in the business.

"It is for my own company hon. Yes I am doing sex, but only girl/girl stuff with Leanni Lei and Mia Smyles. It's been 5 years since I have done a video. Last time I quit, I promised myself one day I'd be able to afford to make my own movie and earn the royalties off it somehow. Now the internet has made my dreams come true! The movie is mainly for the internet for my members. We have enough members that love and appreciate Asian women, I felt it would be a great thing to give this special video to them in web format. I do have my agent/publicist working on the distribution end of it for video shelves though.

"There is still hope out there, that as an adult film star, you can accomplish to allow porn to be a positive effect on your life. With the website profits, I have been able to accomplish not only this big dream of mine to produce my own movie, but to be able to afford a child, a true love in my life. Plus give all my employees great benefits. When FOX files interviewed me, following me around my life the past month (it airs a special 1 hour show this month they said), they asked how it feels to be one of the most empowering women on the net businesswise. (The show will be titled "Empowering Women of Porn" last time they were here) I still feel compelled to thank God for giving me the doors of opportunities he has blessed me with.

"Along the way, I have had to overcome hurdles because of my pornstar background. With it being people constantly trying to scam me for money. Us girls are prime target I guess. Like recently my bookkeeper stole $24,000.00 I didn't even notice missing until a month later. With my ex webmaster ripping me off $5,000.00 and now I have hosting clients to worry about scamming me. It's a tough business, and only gets tougher. Believe me, once you realize that life is all about challenges, and the one challenge you get faced with. No matter how emotionally hurt you get, it is still just a test. God would never give you a test He knows you can't pass.

"When the E! channel came to my office to shoot the 2 day documentary on me, I tried to let girls out there know that where there is a will there is a way, and to not let your career choice let you discourage yourself from advancing intellectually and spiritually. Hey if Jesse Ventura could be governer, why can't a pornstar run a corporation? Everything is possible my dear. Just make sure you remember karma and stay positive. The benefits we reap are farther than you could ever imagine! We're moving to our 3rd office again. Seems in 2 years on the internet business, we are growing faster than we expected. How wonderful life is, and I'm only 25 years old."

Photographer Johnny Castano says that Rev International, run by Richie Shore out of Farmingdale NY, owes numerous photographers thousands of dollars. A few years ago, Princeton Publishing ripped Johnny off for about $8000.

Sin City Parties

GVA West's production company Sin City has shifted its offices to plusher headquarters on Deering Street in Chatsworth. The company holds a party Friday night July 9th. As with every Friday evening, Luke will be in shul - this time at Friday Night Live at Temple Sinai in Westwood.

Sin City is part of David Sturman's vertically integrated porn empire which also includes interests in the TeN network, I hear, as well as dozens of stores. The son of porn godfather Reuben Sturman creates porn through Sin City, distributes it through GVA West and then sells it directly to consumers at numerous retail outlets. Sturman also owns strip clubs. Being the son of a famously devious porner has it disadvantages - the IRS watches David's every move.

Luke got this email: " "Now...lets talk about anti-trust.Sin City Video, GVA, TeN, and LOTS of video retailers all over the country. All controlled by one guy ( who I happen to like) but isn't this legal action waiting to happen?"

A Sin City insider replies: "Just got back from orchestrating the Sin City office move to Chatsworth. You are probably the most foremost expert in the domestic and international pornography trade in the world so you know the answer, right. By the way, you need some better sources.

"Luke, as always, nothing escapes you. Of course there will be a party and you will be on the guest list. It will be on Friday, July 9th, at about 9:00 to celebrate the opening of Deering Studios. Suitable attire suggested. BYOB (Bring Your Own Bitch)."

Does this email prove that porn desensitizes? That any man who consumes pornography is a misogynist or, at the very least, regards women as less than human (as sexual objects)?

That last sentence came from an article opposing Harvard's firing of its Divinity School dean Ronald F. Thiemann. My hero, Jewish theologian Dennis Prager, writes: "...[N]ormal and honorable heterosexual men enjoy looking at partially clad and naked women. I feel a bit silly having to write in a publication read by college graduates what my unschooled grandmother knew.

"Enjoying looking at pictures of naked women no more means a heterosexual man loathes women or wants them demeaned than looking at pictures of naked men means a homosexual man loathes men or wants them demeaned. In fact, it means absolutely nothing.

"The Harvard affair is an example of heterophobia, the fear and loathing of male heterosexuality - a far more accepted condition among modern elites than homophobia. After all, if the dean had been a homosexual man who had pictures of naked men on his computer, the chances that Harvard would have asked him to resign his position are next to nothing. And if it had asked him to resign, charges of homophobia would have engulfed the university." (Weekly Standard, 6/14/99)

Email: "Read your announcement on ACME, and yes porn can desensitize people. Like alcohol, it's fine if consumed with moderation. When it becomes an addiction, it IS destructive. There is no doubt in my mind that it can twist peoples mind to the point where they lose touch with what sex (was meant to be) all about. Does it make people better lovers? I'm inclined to believe that those who are addicted become worse lovers."

Luke pre-records a 30-minute interview about his new book A HISTORY OF X on the nationally syndicated Todd Mundt Show Thursday morning. It will air on NPR stations around the country in the next two weeks.

Talking Blue Scoops Luke

Luke F-rd Turns 33, Prepares For Crucifiction

"The bad boy of Internet Porn Journalism, Luke F-rd, celebrated his 33rd birthday recently [5/28/66]. Just a few hours before his birthday, Ford, who was covering an industry event that he was supposedly banned from, commented that he was now the age Jesus Christ was when He was crucified. Ford marked his birthday week by also debuting the newest incarnation of his infamous website, www.l-keford.com. Slicker and glossier (if a website can be such a thing as glossy) the new site is promoted and oversaw by Fantastic Online."

Smoking Hot Babes

JCJoe writes: "Luke: Visited your picture site last night and was ELATED to see that you had put up a few pictures from the Hustler Jail Babes party showing ladies smoking or holding cigarettes. As I mentioned to you, knowing a porn star smokes in real life is a turn-on for many of us in the "smokerhood" and brings us a bit closer to our vicarious dream women. I DO hope you continue to post more pictures of this nature. Since you have the rare opportunity to attend any number of media parties for the industry, as well as visit porn shoots behind the scenes, it would seem to me that you would have plenty of opportunities to capture on camera pictures of adult female performers smoking and I SINCERELY HOPE you don't forget that a GREAT MANY men enjoy such pictures. Check-out alt.smokers.glamour when you have the time."

Former Screw journalist Mark Kramer wrote an essay a couple of years ago for Spy magazine about his old boss Al Goldstein. Spy did not print the following section:

Nobody except Al knew more about being Al than Gil Reavill. Widely believed at the time to be penning Al's authobiography, Gil was also getting the big bucks as the writer of Al's monthly Penthouse column and occasional Playboy features-—gigs through which Gil firmly established Al's credentials as a case-hardened magazine journalist.....

Reavill's highly mobile, perc-filled agenda was a context ripe for the festering resentment of Neuhaus', who had a sharply circumscribed routine of regular office hours amid the sooty, fly-spec'd interior surfaces of the Screw workplace. Moreover, Neuhaus had never forgiven Reavill for an evocative published description of Neuhaus as"a s----filled clam" several years previous in a Goldstein-sanctioned “guest”Screw You. This broadside was a response to Neuhaus' attempted censorship in the pages of Screw of coverage on the almost- hardcore newstand glossy Sluts and Slobs. Originally entitled Slobs and Sluts --before knuckling under to mainstream commercial interests-- it was the excrescently crude creation of a team that included Reavill and Josh Alan Friedman...

Prior to my arrival at Screw from out of the stark nowhereness of Dallas, Texas--Gil was being paid in the low three figures as the weekly author of Screw You.

Neuhaus, stewing with resentment at the posh arrangement between Al and Gil, moved stealthily and decisively to convince Al that he could save six bills a month by transplanting the “Screw You” editorial from Reavill's supple intellect into the cheaper vessel of an associate editor too fresh off the farm to know who and what he had gotten into. Me. And disquietingly, it turned out I had the demonstrated skills it took to be Al.

Reavill had bigger fish to fry each month in Penthouse—-and seemed actually relieved at being divested of this low-paying weekly rant. He was less thrilled, however, that the Neuhaus had cunningly cut loose his "Naked City" consumer-sex beat and assigned that to me as well.

“Naked City” was, at this point, perhaps the last stronghold of Screw's credibility-- as well as being the only newsbeat on the planet that regularly requires its correspondent to soak up an intimate range of personal services.

This “Naked City” switch was case-history repeating itself, since two years previous Neuhaus, steamed over the “Sluts and Slobs” affair, had taken "Naked City" away from Josh Alan Friedman and turfed it to Gil. Such was the Oedipal turbulence of Planet Goldstein...

Scene: A typical editorial meeting at Screw...

....Al's voice rose operatically. "Why am I hearing from Ron Jeremy and Bill Margold in L.A., that the Bay Area Spectator is a better paper than Screw?"

A suffocating silence filled the room. Eyes darted in terror. Everyone present except Al knew that Neuhaus had not only been selling unattributed, unauthorized Screw reprints to the “competing” paper but publishing unattributed, unauthorized Spectator reprints in Screw. The fastidiously territorial Al regarded The Spectator as a barbarian at the gates of his Screw's carnal fiefdom. Neuhaus’ reckless, unprotected exchange of Al’s proprietary texts with a competitor was just the sort of thing known to push again over the edge....

Our neural wetware churned desperately. There was nowhere to hide from Al’s displeasure.

Providentially, it was at that moment that Al's eyes glazed over with as his hypoglycemically altered mood de jour swung clear of its moorings--and the Spectator intrigue oozed back into the murky zone of Goldsteinian who-gives-a-f---ness whence it came.

Another hairsbreadth escape....

Nice Jewish Girl writes Luke:

I was at physical therapy when you called and I am trying not to be depressed about my injury. PT was great. I did a bunch of exercises (you know Pilates--pi-lat-eez) stuff. Then after an hour it's lying on the mat with 2 bags of ice, one for each hip. My pilates instructor was a little upset with me for not doing all the other exercises every day, then we went to the Trap, this machine with springs on it, then we did the Reformer and she strapped my legs on this thing, really I thought of you, and I thought, they should make a fetish video b & d with these pilates machines (wonder if someone has already thought of it?)

Wondering whether too, I am being slimed by porn by my assoc. (peripherilly) with it. Only wondering this because I was thinking of the b & d video with pilates machines. Then, I've been thinking, what happened to the girl who loved Andrea Dworkin? And argued with all the men in the world that she was right about Andrea, that Andrea is a goddess...

Catherine MacKinnon though is another story. A f---ing hypocrite and a faux-lesbian. I remember that trial, where HER boyfriend was suing a journalist, funny the same journalist that Courtney Love sued. So here was Catherine (wimmin are always right) testifying on the stand that her FIANCE was right, a guy, against some woman. I guess you can flush any integrity down the toilet after that. Though she was instrumental for some kind of "blue" laws in Canada. And antics like that really destroyed the separatist movement.

I used to consider myself (when I had a bunch of dyke friends, this was before everyone could only socialize with whatever group they identified with) a straight-girl separatist. But you know, I think that battle, though it is quiet is not over and I think I stand on the fence with it. Yes, the people in sex work get damaged. Yes, it is exploitive. But yes, people, many people (men & women) like it. But Andrea's position that every sex act is a rape, well yes and no, and not always, but many times probably yes.

Here's my latest thoughts AFTER watching the Sopranos. Maybe you should tell everyone again why the mafia is a bad thing. What? They're only dysfunctional Italians, like Jews only more violent. So, a few rotten apples get whacked. Money laundering? That's nothing compared to the sickos out there. Italians can't get along with each other, like jews. Ok, so they're into porn, but who isn't, and they might as well use it to launder the money. They kill people for weird/and or dumb reasons. Tony Soprano has a terrible mom. His family is disrespectful. - so these were my thoughts after viewing the Sopranos. It softens you up to these thugs in real life.