Archives - Friday, June 25th, 1999

Knickers in a Knot

Vivid Turns Up The Heat

Luke's sponsor Craig Vasiloff writes:

Hi Luke, I have received countless telephone calls and faxes the last two days demanding that I read your site immediately and force you to remove this latest content concerning Vivid.

1. I do not exercise editorial control over your website 2. What I did read appeared to be satire. 3. The industry has to understand that it is just these type of controversial postings that bring them attention FROM THOSE OUTSIDE THE INDUSTRY!!!

Your site, though I may disagree with it from time to time (like publishing real names - but I hope that is one area that will not be so fearful in the future) is of great interest to the layperson or adult video buyer. Much like the National Enquirer or People Magazine or countless other 'gossip' magazines and television shows out there; your website does in fact promote the industry.

The adult world is one that has lived under the blanket of a dark cloud. Sin, crime, corruption, whether true or not have created an industry that 'legitimate' money fears. I think what your website, and your column does is to add a farcical (is that a word) tone to the industry. It makes the players 'real' and really does help to lessen the 'evil' of the empire.

The goal here for me is to widen the scope - to take the adult world mainstream. To make money, not just for myself but for all the players on both sides of the camera. I want to hear the performers saying loud and proud that they are stars in the industry, I want to see the quality improve and the bad weeded out. I want to see the industry grow and I think that once everyone learns that your 3,000,000 unique monthly visitors really does ADD to the value of the industry, they will learn to at least tolerate your endeavors (as I do).

Luke F-rd Shanked Over Price of Blowjob

Rodger Jacobs aka Martin Brimmer, veteran porn screenwriter and journalist, writes:

Hey, Hot Shot. When you choose to denigrate the law firm representing Vivid Video and Steve Hirsch as Mafia shills, did you happen to notice the name of Paul Cambria there? Paul's one of the leading First Amendment attorneys in this nation. If not for the pioneering efforts of men like Paul Cambria you would not even be allowed to write the material you write. Think about it. I know that your answer must surely be that you wish there were no pornographic industry for you to cover but let's be honest --- what would you be doing otherwise? Standing on a street corner in the rain talking to yourself?

When you say that you refuse "to let up on them" (the porners) I say go for it, pal, if you have hard news to report, not vicious slander and innuendo and satire that is not labeled as such. Your obsession with labeling the men of this business as "pansies and poofters" and crossdressers and homosexual hedonists bespeaks something disturbing about yourself. C'mon, Luke, think. One doesn't need to study Psychology 101 to figure this riddle out in the span of time it takes an average housefly to live out its life. Luke F-rd, in sheer homosexual panic, focuses his journalistic skills and immerses himself in the world of heterosexual pornography as a way of affirming his own confused sexuality. I'm not inventing this, Luke, and I don't mean to be cruel --- honestly I don't --- but it's just there all over your page, bleeding like some West Hollywood male hustler shanked over a dispute on the price of a blowjob.

I know you're going to write back accusing me of "attacking you from afar", as you have done in the past, but the written word seems to be the only thing you understand or respect, even if those words are man-made myth as so much of the text appearing on your site lately is and so much, paradoxically, of religious doctrine.

Luke: "I find it hard to believe that I would not be able to write the stuff I write without the "pioneering" First Amendment efforts of Mafia shills like Cambria and Fahringer? Is this true?

"I don't see why I should confine myself to hard news. Why? Why can't I write satire or soft news or diary entries or muse about God and religion on this site?

"I don't ever remember, Rodger, accusing you of attacking from afar. In fact, I don't ever remember complaining about any of your criticisms, or anyone's criticisms. I think you, now as usual, make strong points that I will ponder. Proverbs says, 'Do not reprove a fool, for he will hate you. But reprove a wise man, and he will love you." Rodger, I want to love you! But not that way...

"Also, I want to know, since when has Fahringer's Delaware law firm handled Vivid? And are Cambria and company licensed to practice law in California?"

NJG: "As far as attacking your heterosexuality, that's just a gay tactic that they always use. First of all, most gay guys say that most men are bi (not true), and would be gay under certain circumstances (?, I'm not a guy so I don't know). So what if you say that certain evil porners wear dresses. It might even be true! Luke is just your typical straight male who doesn't feel all that comfortable around the gay scene. So what? Not everyone is so p.c. enlightened about gays.

"And don't tell me they don't recruit. B.S. There's plenty of recruitment going on in the gay scene, there's lots of pressure to be gay. I have been friends with so many lesbians and gays (though I am not one iota, not one molecule a dyke), but I was always pressured. Well, you should be a dyke NJG. No! Ewww! Why should I? Just because I think men are scumbags? Just because I hate men? Ask ANY hetero girl, She hates men more than any man-hating dyke does. That's because straight girls have to deal with men and you men are just horrible. True, some women become dykes intellectually because they can't deal with how men treat women. I understand completely."

Mike South Writes

Hey Luke, LOVED the satire on your site, just when I think you have lost your balls, you prove you indeed have them, though maybe not your mind. Regardless any moron that did not see that as satire, well enough said. BTW, when are you going to slam me with some of that...I am feeling left out...

Tell all the insiders that are whining about that satire to call someone who gives a f---, like Jerry Falwell, he can clue them in as to the legalities of even vicious satire. All those same guys were probably cheering when the Supreme Court ruled against Falwell...They feel differently when it is their ox getting gored huh?

It's official now, I am shooting three music videos for a local hip hop act called "Dirty." Dirty is reportedly backed by Elektra and we expect big airplay on the video channels, the working title of the first song is "Somebody Shoulda Told Ta". Lisa "left eye" Lopez of TLC is expected to appear. Speaking of appearing, the production company liked the opening footage on Southern Belles 2000 and Georgia Peaches so much that they contacted me. They were also interested in casting Sana Fey in at least one of the videos due to her appearance in the Georgia Peaches rave scene. I tried contacting her but she didn't return my calls result being that they replaced her with someone else. We start production on the first one Saturday.

BTW, your love is not sweeter to me than the love of women. Anyone who speaks like that is a poofter.

Vivid owner Steve Hirsch writes:

"Dear Lukey. In the immortal words of Johnathan to David in the holy book of First Samuel, 'your love is sweeter to me than the love of women.' No matter what legal conflicts arise, no matter what nasty things my lawyers Herald and Cambria and Lips---z write to you, I want you to know that l-keford.com will always have my heart. Those other websites mean nothing to me. Even my own seem so shallow and superficial when compared to the depth of communion that we enjoy here.

"I wanted to promote my new movie from Vivid Man - The Uninvited. "Over six sex scenes, there's a good variety of fantasy," writes the 6/99 AVN, "included the French artist and model, the violinist and admirer, Roman emperor and slave, and stable boys." Congrats on your autobiography "Lucky Lukas" from Bel Ami - number four on the AVN Top 50 Gay Rentals chart. I whack off to it every night."

Oy writes about David Aaron Clark

Lukeleh, re: adipose tattooed hairbag and failed journalist David Aaron Clark's statements on your site yesterday, let me say this about that: Clark sure can talk the talk...but can he waddle the waddle? Take for instance, recovering heroin addict and habitual marijuana user Clark's published books, two of which are published by Masquerade/RhinocEROS, which exists as the "literary" component of porno kingpin's Carl Ruderman's endlessly laughable attempts to polish his image. John Strausbaugh, writing in New York Press, issue dated May 4-10,1994, described Clark's Masquerade paperback "The Wet Forever" thusly, "I found his novel unreadable."

Since this promising authorial debut, the dangerously overweight Clark would go on to become a one-man slime wave: sucker-punching journo Mark Kramer, ripping off photographer Charles Gatewood for $1200 dollars and conning thousands of dollars out of John T. Bone and other porners who were taken in by Clark's "literary credentials". And what about the flubbery Clark's Runyonesque self-description as "New York-bred, buddy." *FEH*! I am quoting Salon magazine online here: "David was raised in southern New Jersey...David studied journalism at Rutgers, the New Jersey state university. In the words of Firesign Theatre, "How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?" Stylus virum arguit, fatso!

Pat Riley - I Don't Work in the Industry

Prometheus Books porn critic Pat Riley writes on RAME that he does not work in the industry:

This thread started with Peter Ramezap posting a list of people who post to rame and "who work for [the] industry in some way or other" among whom my name appeared. Let's try a point by point analysis:

- The industry we're talking about is the porno industry. No dispute there I hope.

- The porno industry produces tapes (and other visual media) of persons copulating and performing related fetish activities. I don't.

- To produce these tapes they use performers, directors, screenwriters (sometimes), editors, duplicators, guys who pack the boxes, accounting staff, salesmen, etc. I don't do any of these tasks nor work for anyone who does nor do I derive any income from these activities.

- They also employ publicity people (sometimes just an employee wearing another hat) whose job it is to promote the company's product by sending out press releases, screeners, and trying to have their "star" appear in the media, etc. I don't do any of these things.

- You may consider magazines such as HEVG and AFW because of the explicit stills they reproduce as being porno (primarily intended to sexually arouse) magazines (I do) and therefore part of the porno industry. None of my books include explicit pictures and anyone buying them as a masturbatory aid for the could-appear-in-Time-magazine pictures in the insert needs his head examined. Similarly the descriptive prose ranks far below (say) the current best seller "Memoirs of a Geisha" in terms of pornographic content.

Just in case you have some wild ideas, no porno company has ever offered to pay me in cash or in kind for writing my reviews, nor do I enjoy any favors in kind other than the trivial "free movie" in the form of a screener for a small minority of the movies I review. Most reviews are based on rentals, the same tape everyone sees in their video store. I do not accept any advertising of any sort and receive no other income from companies in the industry.

Apart from wild assertions from Mike South and the inference from your emotional outburst, is there anything above or that I've forgotten that would lead a disinterested observer to presume that I work for (or in) the porno industry? Ah, yes, actually there is, but the association is based on a fallacy. The independence of most porn reviewers (except some on this group) is so compromised by acceptance of advertising revenue and/or stills from the movie companies or simply friendship with the people in the industry (particularly true of Screw and Hustler movies of late) that a person from outside the industry could well be forgiven for concluding that most porn reviewers are industry promotion people in disguise. With inadequate knowledge, the outsider could then conclude that Riley is one of the "them".

I am, however, in the porno movie review business just as Fine Woodworking for part of their magazine are in the "woodworking tools review business" and Consumer Reports are in the "washing machine review business" but no one would accuse them of being in the "woodworking tools business" or the "washing machine business". They too make money from people buying woodworking tools and washing machines respectively. I make (a tiny) income from people buying/renting porno movies.

Look at it another way. Ann Rule writes books about serial killers and the like (true crime) but no one would ever accuse her of being in the serial killer business. Many writers pen volumes about the mafia without being lumped into the same category as the filth they're writing about.

As to your accusations about having a personal agenda and ensuring that it is reflected in my reviews and on my postings on rame, you're absolutely correct. I praise movies and scenes that correspond to my personal views of how the world and porno movies should be. I denigrate movies and porn consumers who see the world differently and try to educate them to change their minds. What the hell is wrong with that?

The only way to avoid doing that is to write reviews and postings that run counter to my personal views and indeed then I would be open to your much-asserted charge of "hypocrisy". If the major thing were to sell more books (the implication of your complaint) wouldn't I be better off taking a line that corresponded to a large known segment of the porno viewing public and write my reviews and posts accordingly?

If I'd have run with Rimmer's viewpoint I wouldn't have written the review of "Still Insatiable" describing MC as fat and old. Instead I would have glossed over her physical defects in favor of discussing how she was still an icon and praising her for having the courage (really stupidity or desperation) to recapture the energy of her youth. I would have a steady market for my books among the touchie-feelies and might even be invited to pontificate at some new age seminar.

Alternatively, if I picked the raincoater segment, I would be reviewing all the Private tapes in great detail, lovingly describing the A2M's and the glorious copious facials one finds there. All of the women in such tapes would be portrayed as gorgeous and I'd be waxing on about how they just loved every minute of their anal excavation.

Instead I write from the perspective of the traditionalist guardian male searching for the nubile youngster to add to his fantasy harem because that's what I personally want to get out of it. However this is probably the smallest segment (my guess) of the marketplace. Real smart if my main objective were to sell my books!

Of course traditionalist males, most of them anyway, also take a dim view of the dishonesty endemic in the porno industry as well as its excesses and at the same time try to speak from a position of knowledge. As a result all groups profit to some degree.

Do I care about the anonymous porn consumer in the sense that I'd be visibly upset if he perished? Of course not, nor do you, unless your even more gullible than I take you for. As a general rule, I do care in a vague humanitarian sense if something bad happens to another human being who I don't personally know. I do care very much in an angry sense when another consumer, even a raincoater, is defrauded. And, I do care also in an angry sense when the traditionalist male can't procure the type of porno movie he requires because of the proliferation of raincoater, touchie-feelie, and juvenile porn.