We’re all Max Hardcore when we drink

Max Hardcore will report to California’s Lompoc Penitentiary in eight days, finally convicted of obscenity. You don’t have to like what Hardcore does to find this ridiculous.

That Hardcore has detractors in the Department of Justice is clear, but he also has a number of them in the adult industry, who draw a line between Hardcore’s work and their own.

While Hardcore’s work is indeed extreme, the problem with separating it from other material on the spectrum is that, to the audience one might be trying to convince, all porn looks the same.

What do we do in a situation like this? Well, we drink.

Searching the web for commentary on Max Hardcore, I found this podcast link of an interview conducted by Andrew Octopus with my old friend Bill Margold, in which the venerable porn fixture revisits several themes familiar to anyone who has ever been in the great man’s presence for 30 seconds or more.

The interview reveals that the two men shared more than a common hallway: Margold accuses Hardcore of messianic aspirations that only Margold has the right to lay claim to, and both men are very concerned with children: Hardcore in making women look like them and Margold in constantly evoking childhood in a porn context.

So in an era of tightened finances and heightened personal responsibility, I introduce the Bill Margold Drinking Game, because sometimes you can’t scrape together enough for Quarters.

Players only require a 40 of Colt 45, a box of Blue Nun, or a bottle of fortified wine. That and an Internet connection reveal a treasure trove of drink-worthy quotes.

Have your libation of choice? Good. Click “Play” and take a drink every time you hear:

• Condescension toward interviewer (“it seems like you’re on top of the news”)
• Suggestion that interviewee is a sought-after expert (“It’s the first time I’ve been interviewed about this”)
• Inserting oneself into someone else’s narrative (“people will say, ‘How dare you turn against your own?’ and ‘I warned Max…'”)
• Declaring candidacy for martyrdom while dismissing anyone else’s claims to it (“I would proudly die for this business…Max is not worth the price of nails, hammer, and a cross…one day society will act out against you because it will give you the notoriety you’re so desperate for…Max pretends to be some kind of hero”)
• Self-quoting (“a lot of what everybody says comes from what I originally said”, “what I call ‘unlocking the zipper of the mind'”)
• Reference to something named Viper
• Reference to the nonexistent “Family of X”
• Repeated connection between porn and children (anything that mentions teddy bears or “my kids”)

I can’t tell you how proud I am to be in this business sometimes.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Max Hardcore’s bumper sticker for a car I won’t drive; Account of a visit from federal agents
See also: “Gram violated the honor of this industry“