About an hour after the show was supposed to start, Lisa Ann took the stage at the 26th annual XRCO Awards and said, “Would you all shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down?”
I have been to several of these events and, as director Eli Cross said beside me, “It’s not an XRCO show until a girl starts screaming to shut the fuck up.”
But now the XRCO has shrieking women, which is an improvement over XRCOs past, which had wailing men.
Bobbi Starr won for Orgasmic Oralist and Superslut (I know this because I was sitting with her), but I couldn’t hear most of the show because I was actively prevented from paying attention. Sasha Grey won for Mainstream Crossover star, but she wasn’t there. Nor was Kimberly Kane, who won Best Actress. Jack Lawrence, nominated for Unsung Woodsman, lamented that he got beat by a guy, Sascha, who didn’t show up.
“At least you look dapper,” I said to Lawrence.
“Teen Cream Dream” Lexi Belle did not attend the awards, either.
But it’s more important, I think, that the XRCOs happen. And if they moved to a hall where everyone got there on time and sat with hands in their laps paying attention, it just wouldn’t be porn.
Five minutes into the awards I got antsy, so I left the comfort of my booth at the Highlands, situated at the recently-famous corner of Hollywood and Highland Boulevards in Hollywood, to hunt people down.
Sophie Dee and Kelly Divine compared triceps, Andy San Dimas and newcomer Zoe Voss, friends from Minneapolis, posed with Bobbi Starr in the one instance of good light the whole evening, I finally met Aurora Snow, who won Best New Starlet the first year I attended AVN and is now all growed up, and Aiden Starr and friend January told me about the pet peeves of dominatrices.
All these delightful interactions occurred while people were onstage (or not) presenting and, in most cases, not receiving their awards. It was enough for me to see that reviewer extraordinaire Roger T. Pipe is still alive, Floating World creator Terri Redor hasn’t left the country, Cousin Stevie remains irascible, Sunny Lane and Tom Byron remain cheerful and dour, respectively, and Kristina Rose and Alexis Texas still have their asses in the right place.
I also got to meet American badass Jules Ventura, whom I can imagine is the right person to have on your side when things get rough, saw the new hair color of Lexi Lamour, met a woman named Lexxxi Lowe whom I originally thought said her name was Lexi Love, and nearly popped an aneurysm when Pride of Florida and Colorado Sophia Lynn turned up, post-Jesus Camp. “It’s all still a part of me,” she said.
But I was not always able to communicate at my articulate zenith.
I tried to bust out my Swedish on Puma Swede, who would have none of it. I was only able to mention Abba once before it all ended in tears. Not only that, but during a conversation with dominatrices Aiden Starr and January, I had the impression that they thought I was soliciting them for prostitution.
But I was able to reconcile with Andy San Dimas, whom I’d mislabeled as a “cougar” in a recent review. The DVD broke so I extrapolated a plot out of some stills and – strangely enough – I was not able to put the storyline together.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe it’s because you look so European and exotic that I thought you were sexually precocious,” I said to San Dimas, who is all of 23.
“She’s not European,” said Bobbi Starr,” she’s Cherokee.”
“So are we all,” I said.
Were David Foster Wallace (who wrote a snarky piece about the AVN Awards once and who irritated many in the porn industry who said the same sort of things but they’d earned the right to, God Damn It) or XRCO founder Jim Holliday alive, both would agree that the XRCO Awards, to an outside observer, appear a shambles but still mean a lot to the people who are there, even if those people aren’t paying attention.
Because porn performers are rarely recognized for their work, it seems fitting that this homespun-seeming garage band of an event reflects the quality of the average porn movie. It’s all over the place but enjoyable, until it isn’t, and then you validate your parking and get out of there, swerving a little as you go. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
But as I headed to my car I saw the future, and it was grim.
I am rarely in that part of Hollywood on a Thursday night, but the women going up the escalator to the clubs as I was heading to the garage cashier all looked far more whorish than anyone still at the awards show.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008; Sophia Lynn goes back to the garden; XRCO insta-gallery 2005-2008
See also: XRCO
Firstly, Zoe Voss is other-worldly. I feel like I’m looking at a meteor shower…far too ethereal and lovely and stunning to engage in the base act of masturbation to. But fuck it, I’m sure I will anyway.
But I guess I’m really curious about “Superslut” versus “Best Actress.” Is it like how, in porn’s second cousin, pro wrestling, had in the late 1980s an “Intercontinental Championship” belt, an ersatz “People’s Champ,” as it were (from what I recall, this was held mostly by ‘The Ultimate Warrior’ and Macho Man Randy Savage, two fan favorites–no self-respecting 12 year old truly liked Hulk Hogan by then). Or is “Best Actress,” in a self-satisfied twist, actually intended to solely reflect on the performer’s thespian skills?
And yeah, as per the last time you brought this trope up, I’m still waiting on Scarlett Johansson or Tom Hanks to call upon the audience at the Kodak Theater to “shut the fuck up” before presenting the award for Best Short Animation, who almost no-one in the room and certainly nobody in their cups could give a toss about.
Black Tongue is a damn sexy song. I’ve heard it’s replaced Stairway to Heaven as the last dance at Junior Semis and 6th grade father/daughter dances across southern New Hampshire.
It’s also the song I envision is being played by the female-fronted bar band Alabama Black Snake while the conflicted young widow Kate, heroine of my always-in-progress-screenplay Preservation of the Species, grinds up with a stranger in a bar, looking for anonymous, guilt-free sex.
Well how could we not scan our newspapers for “Preservation of the Species” at our local multiplexes now? Will it be playing at Pheasant Lane Mall?