A rented powder blue Hummer branded with XBiz stickers is parked amongst the Bentleys in front of the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills.
“It’s on my credit card,” an XBiz employee told me, “and it’s going back spotless.”
The Sofitel is an elegant place. Courteous stewards hold the door for me and make sure that the rain I tracked in doesn’t contribute to my injury on the polished marble floors.
“Watch your step, Sir,” they say.
“You watch your step,” I say.
The Hummer, on which GM has halted production pending the division’s sale to a Chinese company, is an apt metaphor for the state of the adult industry in recent years: bloated and humbled. As I was riding it down Beverly Blvd., topless girls making devil horns out of the moon roof I thought, “God Damn It, I’m still here.”
***
I like XBiz functions because they are manageable and convivial. The couches are comfortable, there is always abundant Internet, and the catering is heavy on healthy salads and seasoned chicken breasts. Sitting in one place, which is what I have learned to do, attracts friendly people.
A man from Extreme Restraints asks me, “I’ve got a metal cock ring with a stem that loops around and goes in your ass.”
“Are you wearing it now?”
“No, but I can send you one. It’s elegant.”
I could probably upend two Thai ladyboys and carry them like cases of Bud with such a cock ring/prostate stimulator contraption, if I had a mind to and if they were small enough. But I don’t know how committed I am to my career.
A woman from TopCo tells me of an upcoming Kayden Kross-branded product.
“It’s a blowup doll that you put on a table,” she says, “and the head arches back and hangs off the table.”
“And you fuck the head?” I say, taking copious notes.
“Yes,” she says. “There’s a tunnel.”
I understand that Kross herself did not pose for this, but that members of TopCo’s staff did, and then sent pictures to the blowup doll manufacturer.
“But I think we really captured her eyes well,” she says.
***
Inside a conference room, lawyer Greg Piccionelli (who, like a werewolf of London, has perfect hair) is moderating a panel about consumer trends in the adult industry. Some people are talking about coming to terms with the abundance of free porn on the Internet.
“i’m one of those guys who has to be convinced of the validity of free content,” said parody director (and by this I don’t mean parody of a director) Jeff Mullen. ” I think it sucks.”
The strenuous opposition to tube sites evident at adult conferences past has given way to a kind of very reluctant acceptance, as if porn producers are resigning themselves to the inevitability of free porn.
“Ever since there has been porn, there has been free porn,” Brian Shuster, director of virtual adult community Red Light Center, said.
“I call bullshit on that,” said Mullen.
The conversation shifted to the means by which the elusive adult paying customer could be cultivated and maintained.
Shuster said that contemporary narissism could no longer be served by simple social networking.
“If you logged into [our] virtual world existence, it’s so much more real than Facebook,” he said. “It’s much more akin to real life.”
And pixels can’t get herpes.
A RealTouch spokesman pointed out that the combinaion of proprietary technology and key-framed content was particularly pirate-proof, in that RealTouch uses its conveyor belt masturbator along with videos specially designed for the device.
“But I’d be worried about part of me getting flattened in that conveyor,” said a panelist.
See my exhaustive review of the RealTouch here.
“Where do you think we’ll be a year from now? Piccionelli asked the panelists. I really wanted someone to say, “soliciting bus fare,” but no one did.
***
I have grown as a person since the last XBiz Hollywood event, much of which I spent in a bathroom stall. I shook hands with several people who promise to give me money in exchange for writing I’ll do for them. Let’s hope the money materializes. If money were handshakes, I could buy that Hummer factory.
***
I bumped into XBiz owner Alec Helmy on the way to lunch. I don’t think he got to eat. I thanked him for choosing me as a presenter at tomorrow’s XBiz Awards. I have already received several suggestions on how I should behave.
“Just don’t slam XBiz,” Helmy said, then reconsidered. “But I know you have integrity.”
I don’t know how to interpret those seemingly-opposed intentions but, like the Hummer parked outside, I took it as a sign of optimism.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Porn Valley signage – which is real?; Prod of the O.C.; Kayden’s shitload of butt plugs; Porn industry making strides in MILF compliance
See also: XBiz
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