For the first time I feel I can put Erotica L.A. in perspective: It’s about the kids.
I was as surprised as you when Eon McKai, a posse of underfed blinking steveporn functionaries, and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders burst onto the L.A. Convention Center’s floor to the strains of “My Humps”, but if you can’t beat ’em…
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This adult convention is particularly local and particularly consumer-oriented. The trap is to compare it to the January Adult Entertainment Expo and, though there are similarities, it is more the difference in attitude that makes this convention what it is.
Vegas has its own energy. Each year people expect to get sick and expect to lose a lot of money with the further expectation that if they hand out a lot of business cards they will eventually make more money. Then they grumble about whether it was all worth it.
The emphasis there is on business contacts where the emphasis this weekend was getting six porn DVDs for 20 bucks.
At Erotica L.A., expectations are lowered and people mill around in manageable lines. When I would leave the building, I’d walk up the street to The Pantry and eat without the worry of waiting in a long line at Margaritaville. At night, I’d drive to a party and wouldn’t be too irritated if it was disappointing, because I could always drive home and shoot up drugs or discharge firearms in the comfort of Gram Ponante Towers & Aviary.
The fact that most of the events in Las Vegas are in conjoined hotels makes it appear as if things are easy to get to. This is not the case. With the understanding at Erotica L.A. that this is L.A. and therefore one needs to drive places, expectations were managed all around.
Exit interviews revealed that more people were satisfied with the business they did at Erotica L.A. than what they did in Las Vegas. It was a show that provided a nice mid-year breather for a lot of the adult industry.
Studios
There were few big studios in attendance. Wicked and ClubJenna had the biggest real estate, followed by Red Light District and Naughty America. Adam & Eve had a rear corner booth, similar in size to those of Nectar and Team Tyler. The latter did what a lot of smaller companies did by splitting booth costs among several brands. So some booths looked like NASCAR vehicles with multiple slogans and banners. There was a steady flow of traffic.
I met a Playboy employee and golf buddy. The big old news was that ClubJenna and Playboy had finally admitted to being in bed together.
“Is Jenna cashing in this year?” I asked.
“Jenna is cashing in this year, and next year, and for years to come,” the person said, adding that ClubJenna was going to be the fourth tier of a structure that started with Playboy magazine and progressed through Playboy TV and then the Spice channel in increasing gradations of erotica.
And we’re looking toward the next generation, too,” the person added cryptically.
“Playboy’s buying MySpace?“
“Ohhh, I don’t know,” the person said. “Let’s just say that we are looking to future generations of porn buyers.”
You heard it here first. The next time the Jolie-Pitts adopt a baby, they will be competing with Playboy.
Other companies didn’t bother with booths at all, and representatives staked out places on the carpet or walked around. This was the case with JM Productions, Platinum Blue Productions, and Billy Glide Productions.
(Come to think of it, one of the main differences between companies that had booths and those that were forced to walk the floor was the lack of the word “Productions” in the title.)
Meanwhile, companies like Hustler and Digital Playground didn’t have an official presence at all. Paul Thomas and Vivid commandeered a stage for Debbie Does Dallas Again cheerleader auditions, but there was no Vivid booth.
Exhibitors
There seemed to be a lot of wheelchairs around, carting differently-abled fans. There was a booth offering Escorts for the Disabled. The few times I went by there was a paraplegic man behind the desk. I wondered, “Is he the escort,” or are there hotties with special skills particular to the needs of the disabled functioning as the escorts, or both?
My lack of understanding filled me with fear that any questions would sound offensive. I was forced to turn to the InterWeb for answers.
Fringe elements really were kept at the fringes of the show floor and, as usual, the more aggressive hucksters for vacation packages and t-shirts tried to catch the averted eyes of passersby. It was sad to see booths with no traffic and the expectant faces of people behind the table, but it also seemed apparent that the booths with the biggest traffic had more than just a table; they had booth girls or free things or flashing lights to lure people in.
Some exhibitors, too, were nomadic. IPTV provider Entice.tv sponsored gift bags and was touting its new contest, whereby consumers could win a year of Wicked, Digital Sin, or Sinsation programming via HD-quality broadband.
“Wicked is really taking the lead on getting content delivered this way,” a spokesperson said, “and the smaller studios see IPTV as a good way to shore up DVD sales against the perception that VOD can’t be high quality.”
Yes, but couldn’t they also throw in a Dalek?
Satan
Unlike other years, there were no protesters outside.
“I guess the Christians have ceded Los Angeles to Satan,” said my attorney, Wayne Hentai.
But there were Christians inside, in the persons of the XXXChurch people and JC’s Girls.
I asked XXXChurch leader Mike, whom I’d talked with at my first AVN convention a few years ago, what the difference was between XXXChurch and JC’s Girls.
“We minister to the consumers whereas their approach is more toward people already in the industry,” he said. So it was a B2C model as opposed to JC’s Girls, which was a B2B model.
I’d been told recently that some of my Thomas-like skepticism about JC’s Girls (who blocked me in in the parking garage with a large SUV and appeared to have cleansed their ranks of non-blondes) had made the group exclude me from their “trust circle”.
I will not tell you what Tara from FreePornStarPix said. Just trust me that she’s the first of us who is going to Hell (after Lurk).
Girls
Pride of Saugus Tyler Faith introduced me to East Boston’s Own Tristan Ryan. The huge difference between Los Angeles and Anywhere Else is that in L.A. there is a much greater chance for the fantastic-breasted to make a living on the merits of their fantastic breasts, whereas the same people back home would have to make do as police dispatchers who moonlight as strippers, high school teachers who have sex with their students, or Woods Hole Steamship Authority mates who blow Falmouth.
Tristan Ryan currently has the look of someone who has a day job as the secretary the UPS guy invents deliveries for.
“I’m easing her in slowly,” Tyler Faith said. Ryan said she’d only been in L.A. for a few months. Every time I talk to Wankus, he tells me that Tyler is naked in the front yard and Rebecca Love is lounging around topless on the couch. I assume Ryan is now staying with them, too. I really need to buy in that neighborhood.
I went to a pretty tough school. For some reason, though, I was the lone person who took Latin that the wrestling and football teams did not try to kill. Instead, I went to their parties. I always felt that at any time they might forget themselves and sucker punch me, as if waking up from a dream and not understanding why someone who looked like me was tapping the keg. It never happened, though, and soon I learned to live among them and understand their ways. Sure I’d have some remorse as I beat up the band kids, but I considered myself an anthropologist.
I have that feeling whenever I hang around with the Billy Glide staff. Right-hand man Oliver Bone, like Joe Piscopo’s gun in Johnny Dangerously, looks like he can punch through schools. Yet every time we see each other all we do is drink. This is a good person to know. Billy Glide himself seems like he’s more hesistant in coming around to the Gram phenomenon. If he were a Terminator, his screen might read “Kill Gram? Y/N” at all times.
Glide’s free-roaming promo girls are pictured above.
Paul Thomas was casting cheerleaders for Vivid’s Debbie Does Dallas Again remake (there have been at least two other Debbie Does Dallas Again movies). For some reason he thought I had power of attorney over the Billy Glide girls.
“Can you ask them to audition?” he asked me.
“You should ask them,” I said.
“You girls should audition for this movie,” he said to them.
“I don’t think so, but thanks anyway,” Wendy replied.
“Come on; it’ll be great,” he said.
“No,” they said.
You need to understand that Paul Thomas was in one of my favorite movies, Jesus Christ Superstar, as Peter, and we had just denied him three times.
“Sorry it didn’t work out,” I said.
“Could we start again, please?” he did not say.
I saw Mika Tan outside the Adam & Eve booth. There was a huge line. “Gram!” she said. She’s a national treasure. I said to myself, “Oh, I have thousands of pictures of Mika Tan. I’ll get one later.” But I never did. Now my ancestors are angry with me.
Same thing with Sunny Lane, who was signing outside of Red Light District. “Gram!” she said. “Sunny is everywhere, like the air I breathe,” I thought, but I never saw her again.
How we hurt the ones we love.
Vixen was signing at the Pink Visual booth. I had met her on the set of the Black Widow (Productions = no booth) pegging movie, a minor life-changing experience for me. She didn’t remember me.
“I met you on that pegging movie,” I said.
“Pegging?” she said.
“The, uh, strap-on, uh, guys movie,” I said.
“Oh yeah.” She looked weary of the attention she was receiving. If she were not six feet tall, I would have cut and run like a bunch of Democrats. But I stupidly persisted like a bunch of Republicans.
“You weren’t pegging me,” I said. “You were pegging some other guy. I was covering it. For the media.”
I asked to take her picture and she began to stand up.
“Don’t stand up,” I said. “You’re perfect the way you are.”
Vixen’s eyes filled with love for Gram.
“That’s great,” she said, “because I did a DP this morning.”
(These are the moments I cherish.)
Paul Thomas, unbowed by the rejection of the Billy Glide girls, had managed to score Hillary Scott to audition for his movie. Scott was put through her paces against a football stadium backdrop with a set of pom poms.
I talked with Stefani Morgan, who is playing the title role.
“Have you seen the original Debbie Does Dallas?” I asked. I have not.
“Yup. I even own it,” she said. I told her about how at the AVN convention I asked 25 people if they had seen Deep Throat, or if they knew what it was, and how 23 of them didn’t. She said she’d seen that, too.
Morgan had been leading the auditioners in cheer practice. Everyone loves her. I wish I’d remembered to tell her not to break Tommy Lee’s heart, but I was clueless as to who she was until I just asked someone right now. It is I who am the fool.
As I made my way out, I saw jessica drake dressed all in white like a pornish reimagining of Boss Hogg.
“Only you remember to not capitalize my name,” she did not say.
She was nice enough to pose beneath her giant poster. As was common on the few occasions this weekend when I had a good idea for a photo, a line formed behind me of guys with camera phones. I always felt bad at such moments because the person who had consented to my unorthodox photo was then stuck posing for a bunch of other people.
I asked Kirsten Price how many autographs she’d signed over the weekend.
“About a million,” she said.
“Can you do sort of a ‘love/hate relationship’ pose with your Sharpie?” I asked, part of the problem.
“That’s easy,” she said.
Previously: F.A.M.E.
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