So, in the face of floating embers and rolling blackouts that actually darkened our Valley apartment, Saturday I dragged my sorry butt to downtown Los Angeles to join a massive gathering of Prop 8 opponents gathered at City Hall for speeches before embarking on an energetic if somewhat ragtag march through the streets.

Wow, what a day. LAPD says the crowd was about 15,000 strong, but I think it was much larger and closer to the 40,000 expected.

All I know is that more and more people kept showing up and when the speeches were done and it was time to march, it took about 15-20 minutes for the crowd to loosen up in order for people to have room to even take a step. I learned that large crowds are like aircraft carriers in their inability to maneuver quickly and adroitly.

For all the crush, however, and despite the emotional weight of the issue and moment, it was a perfectly well-behaved gathering of Angelenos of every age, ethnicity and sexual orientation, all of whom exuded a very positive feeling throughout the day. Many of the signs were witty, many of the chants were funny and creative, and I think that anyone who showed up had to realize that the breadth and depth of the solidarity exhibited that day can only be interpreted as a portent of positive things to come.

In other words, I think anyone who showed up feeling isolated and forlorn had to come away with the belief that the future belongs to citizens whose natural bent is to accept, embrace and include rather than judge, tolerate and exclude.

I don't really like explaining what to me is a no-brainer opposition to something as pathetic as 8 but perhaps it makes sense here. As a straight married man, my feelings on the subject are simple. I cannot possibly categorically deny to others what I have for myself, but even more important, in accepting others' commitments to one another I believe that my own marriage is not weakened but rather strengthened. Love binds us, after all.

As good as it felt to be there among so many strangers of like mind, the day brought me a special surprise. Shortly after arriving, I turned in search of a better shooting angle and there standing before me flashing a broad beautiful smile was our dear friend Aly Drummond, ex-Cruise Director for Python and a beloved member of the industry for several years.

We'd been out of touch and so spent the day marching together and commiserating. What a joy. As one of the more thoughtful members of the business, Aly had always been one of my favorite characters, a real live human being in a sea of poseurs. We'd served together on the ASACP advisory council for a few years and also worked together at AVN, though not for very long. Now that she's been away for a few years, it was interesting to hear her perspective on her time in the industry. Distance is a great equalizer, and most of us would benefit from a similar adjustment in perspective, whether we plan on staying in the game or not.

But make no mistake, should you so choose there is life beyond porn. For her part, Aly has had great adventures over the past two years and her enviable ability to live an interesting life is very much in play. Healthy and thus resistant to any return to the trenches of adult, she is working and has personal projects in development, and I suspect that those among us who miss her engaging wit may very well be able to benefit from it again in one form or another.

We can only hope.

Talk about good timing.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments in the Fox TV v. FCC indecency case, and all but simultaneously Microsoft has been awarded a patent for an automatic censoring filter.

According to the article linked to above, "The invention is intended to act as a filter for live broadcasts where it is impracticable to delete or make inaudible certain undesired words or phrases."

Following the oral arguments, Microsoft is probably feeling pretty good about having the patent, but a decision one way or the other is far from certain.

I'm reading the transcript now and will comment on it later. It's interesting, of course, but also relevant to this industry, not least because the FCC's authority to regulate the presumably "patently offensive" F-word and S-words across broadcast mediums derives from their association with sexual or excretory acts.

I wonder if many Californians will vote no on 8 but yes for McCain. I'd like to see those numbers afterward. Seems like it would be an odd thing to do, but I have a funny feeling more than a few people will do it and some of them will come from our industry.

I suspect that those who do "split" their vote will have done so because they still hew to the fantasy that Republicans protect free markets more diligently than Democrats. But they need to get over that hoary canard, which was finally shot dead about a month ago.

They also need to realize that even if Obama wanted to dismantle the free market system, which he doesn't, it would be an impossible task. If anything, he'll put some refs back on the field, which is what we really need. If he tries to go much further than that, I suspect even a filibuster-proof Democratic Congress will bite his hand hard. (Unless they're the ones that instigate it!)

As far as taxes go, I've been alive long enough to know better than to take the promise of raising or lowering tax rates as anything but campaign sloganeering. Candidates always promise one or the other but often have to eat their words. Basically, I think voting for or against a presidential candidate because of taxes is myopic and self-serving (in a bad way.)

My hesitant suggestion is that socially progressive Republicans take another look toward the future and keep their minds fixated on the role the courts will play in the protection of our civil liberties. It is in that arena that our vulnerable rights will be brought to ruin faster than any outside threat could possibly accomplish.

*UPDATE*

Looks like I may have had it backwards and a lot of people, including perhaps a majority of African-Americans, voted yes on 8 and yes on Obama. I voted no on 8 and yes on Obama, which I feel was more consistent and far less ironic.

At any rate, they still haven't called it, even though the latest numbers, just pulled of the County Registrar website, are distressingly close.

SAME-SEX INITIATIVE
YES 1,317,125 - 50.4%
NO 1,296,319 - 49.6%

It's over. Intolerance prevailed once again. One of the last great battles for universal civil rights goes on. I am deeply ashamed for California, Florida and Arizona, but especially California! We should be leading the nation in this great struggle, not pandering to those who would deny to others what they have always had for themselves.

Here's an interactive map that shows the geographic breakdown of the vote.

Famed director Gerard Damiano died Saturday after having suffered a stroke last month, and the mainstream press is covering his passing in a big way.

As the director of the 1972 cultural phenomenon "Deep Throat," Damiano deserves the attention. Shot for 25 grand over 6 days, the success of the seminal porn flick is often pointed to as the tipping point moment when adult entertainment became an accepted, if often shunned, member of the artistic community.

Thus far, Google News has identified several hundred news sites around the world that have posted stories about Damiano death at 80, including BBC News, The Associated Press, Time and even The Houston Chronicle's Spanish edition.

It's funny. I remember when "Deep Throat" came out, I think I even went to see it in a theater, which was probably the first and maybe last time I watched porn publicly like that. I remember thinking that the production quality was pretty shitty throughout, but I'll never forget Linda Lovelace's insane deep throating abilities. Even years and thousands of scenes later, that early exposure to such natural talent is still seared into my brain. Something similar happened on a national, maybe international, level.

Thanks for the memories, Gerard. May the angels transport you swiftly and sweetly toward your everlasting bliss.

Vote NO on 8 and NO to the theocratic totalitarian base of the McCain/Palin ticket!

The grotesquely misnamed Focus on the Family is at it again. They have been circulating a letter from the future that describes the results of four years of an Obama presidency, and the picture isn't a pretty one. The execrable screed is called "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America," and one wonders why they didn't go all the way and make the "c" a "k."

The feeling that Focus on the Family and all such groups want to both generate and exploit is one of victimization, the idea that as Christians they are a victimized people. Under siege by godless liberals and others who would use "hate speech" as a reason to drive Christian speech into silence or oblivion, they claim with a straight face that four years of Obama will undo the previous two centuries of American tolerance for all expressions of religious belief and practice.

Not surprisingly, it is the homosexual agenda that is the linchpin of many of the ills the writer from the future describes.

"The most far-reaching transformation of American society came from the Supreme Court’s stunning affirmation, in early 2010, that homosexual marriage was a 'constitutional' right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws barring same-sex marriage violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution," states the incredulous witness. "This was a blatant example of creating new law by the court, for homosexual marriage was mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, nor would any of the original authors have imagined that same sex marriage could be derived from their words."

As a result of that decision and others by the courts and government agencies, a shaky edifice comes crashing down in short order as the America we thought we knew becomes intolerant of Christians and supportive of a range of freedoms that include an enthusiastic wave of infanticide and euthanasia.

And of course, all current restriction on the public showing of sexually explicit content was immediately done away with.

With Obama in the Oval Office, "The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and TV broadcasts, and television programs at all hours of the day now contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts... the Court essentially found that any pornographic work had some measure of “serious artistic value,” at least according to some observers, and thus any censorship of any kind of pornographic material was an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of the press."

Even child pornography gets a new lease on life. "... Law enforcement officials can no longer stop the distribution of child pornography, after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the such distribution violated freedom of speech and interstate commerce laws."

These people have descended into utter paranoia due to a divinely-inspired intolerance of others and are dangerous for it. I seldom worry about extremist kooks like this, but I have learned to watch them closely. Their inane tracts are rhetorically sophisticated enough to always contain just enough plausible elements to make them sound reasonable to an audience of people who are comfortable being told what to think and believe.

Usually, I could care less who they hate or whose rights they want to deny, because I think they're a bunch of fringe hate-mongering wackos without a fraction of the political power they think they have, but one can't be too complacent. The fact that a vice presidential nominee is on the same page as the letter writer should alarm even the most hardcore of Republican-leaning libertarians.

Vote NO on 8 and NO to the theocratic totalitarian base of the McCain/Palin ticket!

I prefer the term stimulus package to the word bailout. It’s sexier and implies a positive outlook and outcome. A bailout is something you do when the ship is sinking, with the express goal of keeping the thing afloat. On a more visceral level, most people like to be stimulated but few get excited about propping up something that is failing. It’s only human nature.

In the case of the legislation defeated yesterday in the House, I think it is safe to say that either term is applicable and probably others as well. The bill was presumably crafted with several goals in mind: to save threatened institutions, restore a semblance of confidence in Wall Street, add liquidity to jump start the flow of credit and perhaps most important of all, send a message domestically as well as internationally that the United States still knows what it is doing when it comes to the exercise of free market capitalism. [insert laugh track here]

Not surprisingly, even as the bill was being rejected the market went into a free fall, losing well over 700 points and more than a trillion dollars by the close of trading. Commentators this morning questioned whether the $700 billion in spending contained in the bill now looks like a deal, but I’m not so sure the losses yesterday were real. In the same way that the value of so many homes has been so gratuitously inflated over the past several years, is it not likely that yesterday’s “losses” are more a correction than an actual loss, a reflection of reality rather than desire?

In truth, I could be way off-base with that. I'm not an expert, but one fragment of truth that I have taken away from all of this is that when we can no longer trust the value of things, the first casualty is confidence. It’s only human nature.

This brings us to pornography, the value of which has always been more or less apparent. Whatever else one might say about the interaction between provider and consumer, a porn transaction has historically been a relatively straightforward proposition whose desired outcome is rarely unclear. The trouble usually comes with the mechanics of the deal, such as being overcharged by fraudulent billing practices, not receiving in a member’s area what was promised in a tour or actually being ripped off for goods being sold under false pretenses. But these rip-offs happen in every business, and porn consumers have long since been trained to exercise caution. This is not meant to excuse the perpetrators of these schemes, of course, but to propose a realistic picture of the marketplace.

Today, however, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the industry to establish a predictable valuation of many of its products, with good reason. Adult fare now can be viewed in so many different formats and mediums across so many delivery platforms that getting a reliable gauge on worth is almost impossible. In lieu of valuation the market rules like a benevolent dictator, which is preferable from a consumer’s standpoint but somewhat problematic for a potential investor. Add in the stampede to free content, and the value of the content must now be evaluated against the value of the traffic, whether any sales are ultimately forthcoming or not.

Ironically, the time is ripe for more rather than less investment in adult entertainment. After all, if you can’t trust Wall Street, the housing market, banks or your mattress, where are you going to invest?

I would argue that with due diligence, adult entertainment is not the worst place to put some money that is looking for a return. Let me repeat, with due diligence money can and will continue to be made in porn. While not recession proof it is recession resistant, and if an investor is serious about finding and working with people who take a long view of the industry and bring professional values to bear, the potential to realize returns or better is as real today as it will be tomorrow.

Even in the presumably barren arena of free, new revenue-generating models are being conceived that show a way to the future. You will need to stay ahead of the curve to exploit them successfully, but isn’t that often the safest place to be, as long as you are not under or overestimating the value of the products and service you provide, even if it is human nature?

The odd thing about living in a constant state of chaos is that one gets used to it. Many of the people who work in adult know what I mean, especially those who toil online.

Our landscape is always changing, the ground beneath us always shifting and the quality that many people seem to cultivate and admire most is the ability to adapt quickly and efficiently to ever-evolving market realities. After all, those realities don't ask for our permission to exist; they don't care. It is our job to serve their needs.

One wonders, then, if in light of the recent economic meltdown whether the mainstream captains of industry are sufficiently versatile to be able to stay abreast of market realities. Indeed, they really need to be ahead of the game rather than abreast, but for argument's sake let's hold them to a slightly lesser standard.

Unfortunately, even with such largesse the nation's leaders appear to be seriously, perhaps fatally unable to... lead. Instead, they are acting as if the failure of commercial and investment banks and the bursting of the housing bubble took them by surprise. I say acting as if because I don't really believe that many of them did not see it coming, though one is hard pressed to explain why dire warnings were not sounded much sooner.

I believe similar impulses have been at work within the adult entertainment industry, where market forces that are for all intents and purposes obvious and unavoidable have been essentially ignored for far too long. Perhaps it's normal behavior to stick with what's worked in the past, but I am here to say that in a digital economy praying for the old days to return is tantamount to suicide.

The problem is that we are all in uncharted territory, and no one has a rule book that outlines how to proceed. Instead, we have to resort to basic economic fundamentals combined with a ruthless ingenuity and fearlessness. These are I believe the current requirements for success in business.

But even with those qualities, the challenges that face us are monumental. The value of products and services is uncertain precisely because of the changing relationship between producers and consumers; add to the mix a world market that encompasses different economic structures and it becomes even more difficult to create a reliable picture that allows for confident predictions.

One of the pundits presented it this way on one of the TV news programs this weekend; there are two basic reactions to the credit and housing disaster. The first are people who announce with certainty what has happened and what will happen. The second are people who try to explain how we got here but have no clue what will happen. The first group hasn't a clue what they are talking about, the second a realistic grasp of the situation.

It is at times like this that I am glad to have spent the past 9 years working in the adult Internet industry. I believe I am better equipped because of it to deal with the meltdown of the old system, which is what I think we are seeing.

It doesn't mean I will survive it, but it may mean that my sense of comfort with utter chaos will hold me and those who share that comfort in much better stead than the traditional old-school types who are now running around like chickens with their heads cut off, asking us to trust that this time they have finally learned their lesson.

The quote comes from a recently published editorial in Scotland's Sunday Herald, written by Brian McNair, a professor of journalism and communication at the University of Strathclyde, and the author of Striptease Culture (Routledge, 2002) and Mediated Sex (Arnold, 1996).

He's upset that hoary old U.K. has decided to enact an The Obscene Publications Act, which outlaws the possession of "extreme pornography," defined as images which portray "in an explicit and realistic way" acts that "threaten a person's life", or that could likely result in "serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals."

Yes, it is somewhat ironic that England, Orwell's home and the country in which 1984 is set, has chosen to pass such a law, though considering the number of security cameras throughout the country, this action can hardly be seen as a first step toward taking "the ‘thought police’ out of the realm of fiction." The nation long since started down that road.

So it's not like the state is entering your mind, mate; it is entering your mind, mucking around to find our what you're up to and into, then passing judgment on you, your mind, your behavior and all the other stuff that makes up your sense of self, and then maybe throwing you into jail.

God save the Queen.

Big D of Bangin3D.com is at it again. This time he thinks he's the Illustrated Man, or rather, the Illustrated Banner Man.

He just posted up a thread on GFY offering up his right arm as a banner spot for some edgy flesh-loving marketer, or marketers — it's a big arm. (see photo of his left arm)

Some respondents to the post think that at $10 a centimeter he's selling tat spots too cheaply, but I'm not sure how one calculates the value of something that never existed before.

Actually, now that I think about it, as the test case he probably should err on the high side. But it's his arm. This is very subjective territory.

Will it catch on? Like reality porn and tube sites, will body advertising sweep the industry?

Big D says there is already interest. I don't doubt it. Who wouldn't want to own a piece of Big D?!

The New York Post this morning reported the possible existence of God.

Well, not literally, but certainly figuratively if it is true that a 15-minute, 16-millimeter film exists that shows Marilyn Monroe performing oral sex on a man whose face is obscured.

"An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel... was just sold to a New York businessman for $1.5 million, said Keya Morgan, the well-known memorabilia collector who discovered the film and brokered its purchase," the article reads.

The writer of the story, Hasini Gittens, says that such a sex tape would only continue the "sordid tradition of peddling raunchy video footage of celebrities à la Paris Hilton...," but I would have to disagree with that clearly moral judgment and the ease with which it unifies the various participants throughout history without regard to pedigree.

Set aside the fact that one cannot truly assess the sordid nature of anything without having first seen it, heard it or experienced it. Even if it is sordid, It's Marilyn Monroe, so it can only be so sordid, and maybe it is perfectly sordid.

Because it presumably still is contraband, the footage may only ever get to be seen by a privileged few, but just knowing it's there makes life a little better; sort of like knowing that extraterrestrial life exists because you have had a close encounter, even if no one believes you.

The story also said that Hoover's men exhaustively investigated the "ownership" of the male parts - I wonder if Hoover himself lent a hand - hoping to find them attached to one of the Kennedy brothers, but apparently came up short.

Of course, who but a Kennedy could endure Marilyn for fifteen minutes of unendurable bliss? Mailer? Maybe, he was a novelist. DiMaggio? Baseball player, not a chance. Giancana? Big time mobster, so yeah, maybe. At any rate, the forensic anatomic investigators will have a field day with this one for years to come.

There is a lot more info in the article and to the story, which will surely have legs. Check it out.