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Songs To Die For As I was driving home Thursday night, I took a sudden turn through the 405 traffic. A friend saw his life flash before his eyes and he started singing a song that I could not quite make out. Dear readers, if you were on the Titanic and the ship was going down and you knew you were going to drown with your mates, what song would you like the band to play? What did they play on the Titanic? I fear I'd choose a Christian hymn, Abide With Me. Or, Nearer My God To Me. Or Losing my Religion by REM. Or, Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver version). Or, (I Just) Died In Your Arms. Or, I'm Still Standing (Elton John). Or, Who's Cryin Now (Journey). Or, Keep on Loving You (REO Speedwagon). Or, He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. Evan Seinfeld Puts Gun To Tera Patrick's Head
Webmaster Joseph Elkind And Those Who Enable Him
Scott Fayner To Direct Blowjob Series Jamie L. Brian writes on RAME:
Mike Albo Clarifies His Position On Lara Roxx Mike Albo writes: "I never said I'd marry Lara Roxx. Only that I wanted her to be the mother of my dog. I mean, she's a fine young lady, but I'm not ready to settle down just yet. That, and I have a morbid curiosity to see what a human/dog hybrid would look like. Please note that I would be supplying the human DNA." A Lara Roxx emails Mike: "Real funny. You're an asshole. You say I f-cked a dog? What's your problem? This sh-t better stop, or you'll be sorry." Correction From AJ Benza AJ Benza writes: "Luke.... Please, my man, make sure you stay current with the Lloyd Grove/Razor Magazine nonsense. If you heard Stern this morning and yesterday morning you'd know he told his listeners that I never claimed my speaking to him was an exclusive. It was, as Howard said, Razor Magazine trying to drum up publicity for the issue. Other than that...I always enjoy reading your stuff." Don't Hate On JoeE Joseph Elkind was recently jailed for assault and marijuna possession.
Mike Albo Will Marry You Lara Roxx complained to ABC's Primetime: "Who's going to want to marry me? Who's going to want to have a dog and kids with me, you know, and a house? No one." There is always Positivesingles.com. To chat with Lara, click here. Mazer Rackus writes on GFY: If she wanted to stay marriageable, maybe she shouldn't have become a double-analled porn slut. Evil Guy writes: Amazing how fast she used up our good will with her idiocy. Easton writes that Lara Roxx is working the streets in Montreal. FletchXXX writes:
MikeSouth.com says: "They painted Laura Roxx as this poor Canadian girl trying to earn her way through college. Never mind the fact that she hasn't been enrolled in any college. They didn't mention her drug use, they didn't mention the fact that she was turning unprotected tricks out of that 44.00 a night hotel room she was in. Ya know, now that I think about it, they probably did us a favor after all that IS the kind of girl that many people in this business prey on. Many of the scumbags in this business can smell desperation in a girl a mile away. Primetime said she was expecting to do only regular sex, Dugmoor was advertising on GFY that she would do double anal." Lady Mischief writes: "I feel VERY VERY bad for her situation, but I must say nobody appreciates the way she painted the business in the media, and kind of used her misfortune as a way to turn a quick buck. She was very fast to get in on every interview she could, without even all the facts, and that I think is what's jaded a lot of people to her situation, not just callousness. When people do what she has done, and make it a media circus, they do make it harder for everyone in the industry to operate." Judge Refuses To Admit Sharon Mitchel Testimony From the LA Times:
The Daily Pilot:
Launching A Competitor To AVN I have friends who want to launch a competing magazine to AVN. They're willing to invest about $50,000 and are looking for someone else to invest. Email Luke IBill Problems Devastating letter to the CEO of the most mismanaged adult CC processing company.. Drugged Out Contract Girl Porner calls: "Before the next show, I'm going to make these DVDs of her all drugged out, peeing in a public place... I'm going to hand them out for free in front of her company's booth. I'll give you exclusive rights." Porn actresses may testify in O.C. rape trial Inland Valley Daily Bulletin:
Angry porner phones Duke: "She got paid to testify in a rape trial on the side of the guys charged with raping a 16-year old girl? What's up with that? She's saying that porno people like to pretend like they're sleeping, like they're drugged out, and then film it?" Duke once made a porn film. He remembers all the actors, without his prompting, said to the camera while showing off their IDs "I was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol in the making of this production." Angry porner: "I've never seen anyone shoot s--- like that. She testified at this Orange County trial on Tuesday about the filmed rape of a 16 yo chick. She says it is common for porn stars to appear like they are asleep or drugged up when they have sex. "How can she says she's a friend of the industry when she's okaying child rape? Every guy I know in porn would think it wrong to shoot the rape of someone who's drugged or asleep. We never tape girls who are unconscious." Mike Albo writes on AdultStarsNews.com:
Webmaster Joseph Elkind In Jail He's charged with battering somebody over 65 and possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana. Picture. Mike AI writes on GFY: "I have told JoeE to clean up his life many times. I harassed him. I told those who tried to coddle him because they thought they would get something from him ( business, drugs, money, women) they were wrong. This is ashame. Those who helped encourage him should feel some resposniblity." Am I So Wrong? I'm having chest pains. I saw the movie Supersize Me last night. I fear I'm going to have a heart attack. Is it so wrong of me to live off women? When I had money, I always picked up the bill. Now I'm poor again. A woman bought me lunch yesterday. Another woman took me to the movies. Is it so wrong for women to give me plane tickets, accommodation, massages, spending money, tickets to Broadway shows? Is that so bad when I devote my every spare minute to study of sacred text? In the Jewish tradition, women would often support their man so he could study Torah all day. I just want to sit around and read books and write about my feelings. Is that so wrong? Do I not deserve support? I need a patron. I'm a national treasure. I want to be America's blogger laureate and receive a nice fat check from the government every month. XRCO Ready To Roll Jared Rutter and Tim Connelly have been running the XRCO for years. This year they moved to AVN and for the first time in 20 years, there has been no XRCO Awards this year. I believe Paul Fishbein, Tim Connelly, Jared Rutter, Bill Margold, and Jim Holliday met or at least communicated and worked through their problems.
I believe there will be an XRCO Awards show later this summer. Triumphant Kevin Blatt On Mancow Show Mancow is about the rudest talk show host I've ever encountered. The first time I was on his show, he kept me waiting on hold for an hour. Then he allowed me one sentence on the air before hanging up on me. The second time, our conversation ran about six minutes before he hung up. I refused to do his show any more, though I got a lot of calls. Other porners have found him the most obnoxious show they've done. He keeps you waiting and he hangs up on you abruptly. When you are on the air, it's hard to get a word in edgewise. Mancow once pulled a stunt in San Francisco, I believe, where he got a haircut on the Bay Bridge and held up traffic for an hour. His station was fined about $50,000 and he was fired. Wednesday morning, Kevin was on hold for about three minutes before Mancow came out of the commercial and right to Kevin. Blatt had no idea he was live on the show. Mancow: "This video is going to huge, huh? I saw the video last night [on Evan's site Hotelheiress.com]. The boots she's wearing are unbelievable. What do you think?" KB: "After seeing her on the cover of magazines and in major motion pictures, and now that she's got a recording contract, next week she's going to be the biggest porn star of all time, whether she likes it or not." The whole show cracked up. Kevin couldn't talk about the contents of the Paris Hilton tape, given FCC concerns. After five minutes, Mancow cut him off. Kevin could barely get a word in edgewise. Howard Stern lets you get your point across. Mancow is a one-sided show. Sheriff Deputies Leave Rob Spallone's Office 12:20PM. Rob: "Two sheriff's deputies just left my office. They were here to serve me with some [divorce] papers but I told them I already got served on Friday." Duke: "You haven't been in prison lately?" Rob: "No. "I'm shooting Thursday at 10 a.m. Bang My Tight White Ass. I've been so busy with this court s--- and classes." Duke: "Anger management?" Rob: "I had to miss that yesterday because I had a [parenting] class from 4-7:30 p.m. When you get divorced, it's a law now that you have to go to this parenting class." Duke: "Did you enjoy it?" Rob: "No. It was interesting. I've got to hold my cool. "Lowdown is moving next week to Winetka in Chatsworth. "There's a meeting with a congressman and Cal Osha about AIDS on June 4th at 10AM near the Van Nuys courthouse on Van Nuys Blvd." A Functional Look At Porn's HIV Problem I remember taking a sociology class in college and learning about a functional approach to studying social problems. Functionalism in this context meant learning who benefits from disfunction. Who benefits from poverty? Who benefits from high crime rates? Who benefits from rampant disease and drug addiction? So I've been talking to porners about who benefits from the industry's latest HIV problem. Frankly, I do not think anyone in the industry benefits from our latest HIV crisis. But several porners had other ideas. "Who's benefitting?" asks a porner. "Who's making noise?" Duke: "Adult Video News (editor/publisher Tim Connelly) and Adult Industry Medicine (Dr. Sharon Mitchell) have been making the most noise in the mainstream media. They are the ones who get quoted the most, always in a respectful way. I just don't see how AIM is making any money off of this. They are a non-profit. I don't see how AVN is making any money off this crisis. They laid off seven people last month because of budget over-runs. I don't think they are bringing in as much money as they projected. The production slowdown means that fewer companies will buy ads." "What about TT Boy?" Duke: "I don't see how TT Boy benefits. Some fingers have been pointed his way, though his treatment on the porn gossip sites and in the mainstream media has been gentle. I don't recall him giving any interviews." "The industry is terrified of TT Boy. He has powerful friends. He threatens to beat people up who bother him and he might do just that. For the longest time, when the Industry has needed something done, TT Boy was there. He's got Tim Connelly in his corner. "Any time, the Industry wants to keep something quiet, or to keep the Industry under control, AIDS rears its ugly head again. It's no coincidence that a black guy (Darren James) caught HIV in Brazil and then he supposedly, according to AIM, gave it several foreign girls (Lara Roxx, Jessica Dee). "People were whispering six months ago that the AIDS thing was going to hit again. This was all set up. "Who benefits from an industry shut down?" Duke: "Beats me." "The Industry's largest players want the Industry to have AIDS." Duke, incredulous: "What? Why?" "It clears up a lot of problems. It shakes the tree and knocks people out of business. They're are a lot of old guys in the industry who are not impressed with black guys on top of white girls. They're not impressed with double anal. It's no coincidence that a black guy was the first person to come down with HIV. We're now getting into third generation pornographers out there. They want to keep porn mainstream while the gonzo guys and the Rob Blacks keep pushing the envelope. "I bet they sent TT Boy down to Brazil to get somebody with HIV. Go through AIM's door on any day they are always having people testing positive. But it's always brushed off, 'Oh, they never worked in the industry. This was their first test.' "There's big money involved in this HIV crisis. It's a great way to get rid of people you don't want in the industry any more. It makes people toe the line. "I wouldn't be surprised if people were sent to Brazil to catch HIV. Who sent them? That's the million dollar question. Who would have the most to financially gain?" General Media Buying Fewer Stories General Media owns The National Enquirer, The Star and The Globe. "American tabloids are going under," groused a porner the other day. He'd tried to sell them several good stories and they just weren't buying. "If you look at the past front page stories for The National Enquirer, they're running nothing. They run false stuff sometimes. They ran a false piece about Julia Roberts that blew up in their face over the weekend. They claimed she'd never be able to have a baby. Guess what? She's having twins. "It seems that the only stuff they want to buy these days is stuff on Christina Aguilerra and Brittany Spears. "They brought in Bonnie Fuller (profiled in Vanity Fair recently) to convert The Star into a rival with People. "They have nothing to put on their front page, so their sales are plummeting. Last week their front page was, 'What stars are anorexic?' Who cares? They haven't broken a major story in a couple of months." "Hollywood Confidential" columnist Jose Lambiert recently quit The Star for The Palm Beach Post. Rod Lurie exposed the tabloid National Enquirer in Los Angeles Magazine in 1990 and 1992. In 1989, Lurie got a hold of a list of the Enquirer's paid tipsters. Soon after, Anthony Pellicano called Lurie, and according to Rod, became "very threatening [and] told me in no uncertain terms that he was working for the Enquirer and he was being paid a lot of money to get this file back." Pellicano called Lurie's editor Nancy Griffin and warned, "Bad things can happen to nice lady editors." Kim Masters writes in the March 2003 issue of Esquire: "In March 1990, Lurie was knocked from his bike by a hit-and-run driver, breaking some bones. He doesn't claim that Pellicano was somehow involved in the accident, but Lurie says Pellicano may have wanted him to think so when Pellicano called him shortly afterward. "Pellicano knew about it awfully fast," he says. "But that could be drama-queen stuff - on his part or mine." An entertainment journalist tells me: "Don't forget that Rod Lurie was writing this series for LA Magazine 'To get the National Enquirer out of my Gelsons [supermarket chain]', said the editor at the time." From the February 1992 issue of Los Angeles Magazine: Now they're playing dirty! Hey, if you thought the Enquirer was sleazy before, look what it's up to now - using everything from mail theft, false police reports and even blackmail to set up the town's biggest superstars. My wife's private line rang. A minute later she returned, slightly ashen, and said an "old friend" was calling. When I took the phone, he didn't introduce himself. He didn't have to - I recognized his voice immediately. "I thought I'd never have to call you again," Anthony Pellicano said. The last time I heard from Pellicano was a year and a half ago, while I was working on a story for this magazine called "I was on the Enquirer's Hit List." Pellicano, a notorious private detective, had been hired by the National Enquirer to "discourage" my story. He was the man who Assistant U.S. Attorney James Walsh claimed had intimidated government witnesses in the John DeLorean case and who, in a recent issue of GQ, bragged he'd beaten somebody with a baseball bat on behalf of a client. Pellicano had said he'd killed "hundreds" of stories and strongly suggested I drop mine. "What do you want?" I asked him. "What do I want?" he said, as if the answer were ludicrously obvious. There was a small pause. "'Don R... [Pellicano's attorney Don Re?] whore...Don...Pellicano wants his job...call Patrick about Norm and relationship to Pellicano....'" I was stunned. Pellicano was reading from the notes I had compiled during my current investigation into the Enquirer. "This is libelous," he said with a drawl. "I spoke to Don. R. He's one of my best friends. He says he never spoke to you... I'm going to subpoena all your notes... You've brought yourself a lawsuit, pal." "Where did you get my notes?" "Would you tell me your sources? So why would I tell you mine?" As I was soon to find out, Pellicano had paid my research assistant $3000 for the notes. Not only that, the Star, which the Enquirer had purchased in 1990, had given my assistant a check for $500 to monitor the progress of my article. For the record, Michael Boylan, a high-ranking executive of Macfadden Holdings, a publishing-investors group that owns a dozen magazines, including the Enquirer/Star, insisted Pellicano was no longer in the company's employ when I called to complain. A few days later, I learned the Star not only had paid my assistant to spy on me but was allegedly researching a story linking me romantically to a celebrity who was married to an actor the tabloid had previously "outed." So here we went again. Round two. That first time out, I had uncovered what amounted to a sourcing scandal. Tabloid reporters were falsifying sources as a way to meet the publication's three-source requirement and back themselves legally. The Enquirer had gone into a frenzy, hired Pellicano and hit me and Los Angeles Magazine with a barrage of calls and letters, charging, among other things, that I was harrassing and threatening Enquirer employees. Ultimately, the piece became the basis for dozens of TV shows and articles, including segments on 60 Minutes and Entertainment Tonight. NINE MONTHS AFTER Lurie's article appeared, he got a phone call from an employee at the tabloid's headquarters in Lantana, Florida. Then the employee faxed Lurie dozens of pages of private hospital records of Richard Pryor, Carol Burnett and Burt Reynolds. It's illegal to have those. The Enquirer's public policy is that it does not purchase or accept those that have been stolen. Over the next six months, Lurie's source would put him in touch with 75 other sources who all had some horror story to tell. Under pressure from their bosses, Enquirer and Star reporters had run amok, getting involved with not only invasion of privacy, filing false police reports, mail tampering and theft but, in some cases, out-and-out blackmail, forcing stars to collaborate with the tabloids on a long-term basis. ROD LURIE TALKED TO Jim Cruse, who was fired after three years as an Enquirer reporter. Cruse believes the Enquirer fired him when it found out about a book he was planning to write. According to Cruse, star Enquirer reporter Brian Williams made-up a story about Roseanne Arnold beating her daughter. Williams has broken such stories as Jill Ireland's "bizarre" cancer treatments and the discovery of Roseanne Arnold's long lost child. Cruse says Williams telephoned the Child Protection Services unit in Van Nuys and reported Arnold had been abusing her. Brian knew the CPS is required to investigate all charges of child abuse, even anonymous ones. "He said he was a parent of a classmate of Jessica Pentland's [Arnold's daughter by her first marriage] and reported that she came to school with bruises, and that maybe Tom Arnold, supposedly on drugs at the time, had [done] her harm," Cruse stated. Cruse, another reporter and a photographer, staked out Arnold's home for two days until the social-services representative showed up, talked to Arnold and her family and concluded there was no basis for the allegation. The Enquirer shortly thereafter ran a story that Arnold was being investigated for child abuse. Cruse said on May 10, his editor, Steve Coz, told him to go to the Benedict Canyon home the Arnolds had been renting. Cruse determined that Tom and Roseanne were packing. Two days later, Cruse returned to the property with another reporter, Robert Jordan [aka Robert Hudson], to see if the house had been trashed. "What Coz wanted was a pigsty story," Cruse said. The two reporters wandered the house and could find no damage. When the story appeared in the Enquirer July 17, 1990, it reported broken windows and ruined rugs in almost every room, a shattered $5000 antique chair, a giant tic-tac-toe board drawn in black paint on top of expensive wood paneling, holes punched in walls and moldy, half-eaten pizzas. What happened? Cruse says Jordan returned to the house and trashed it. "[Jordan] said he'd taken garbage cans and emptied them all over the house and the pool area," Cruse said. "He photographed it right after he had hit set up." The photos were never published. ROD LURIE discovered that manufacturing stories was common among tabloid reporters. According to one tabloid editor, to add a little zip to one story, an Enquirer reporter informed the police that he'd heard screaming and furniture braeking in Fawcett and O'Neal's home. Though the police found nothing, the tabloids reported the police investigated disturbances at the home. Stringer Bob Daniels remembers how in late Spring 1989 reporter Neil Hitchens and paparazzo photographer Phil Ramey tried to get photos of Farrah in a compromising position with a carpenter who claimed he was banging the actress. Three sources corroborated the story to Lurie. Why the need for such photos as the Enquirer does not publish such material? "My understanding," Daniels, said, "Was that we would get the photos to use as leverage with Farrah on future stories." BY THE END OF ROD LURIE'S investigation, it was clear that Enquirer and Star reporters "blackmailed" a number of major stars into becoming "friends" of the tabloids. One instance involved a major - and wholesome TV megastar. The Enquirer got photos of him in a compromising position. The Enquirer wouldn't run the story because the actor was too popular. To bash him in the paper might backfire, alienating readers. But the photo and story were too good to waste. The Enquirer used them to blackmail the celebrity. Cruse said he was present when Coz called the star. "Coz told him about the photo," he said. "He also made up some things. He said the girl had told us about bondage and drugs and things like that. It was all a bluff, but he bit." The star agreed to be accessible to Enquirer reporters. Soon after, he was on the Enquirer's front page, lamenting the drug problems of a family member. MIDWAY THROUGH LURIE's INVESTIGATION, he began hearing stories that U.S. Postal Service investigators had begun looking into allegations that Enquirer reporters were stealing mail - a federal offense punishable under U.S. Code 18, Section 1708. The press agent who had set up the purchase of Madonna's stolen medical records, in fact, admitted that a few years ago, when Faye Dunaway was going through her divorce, it was his job to stake out her mailbox. Each day for about a week, he would wait for the mailman to arrive, then check all the envelopes in the box. If there was anything of interest - say, a letter from an attorney's office - he would pluck it. Another Enquirer staffer said rifling mail was routine practice and that reporters even had a name for it: "Playing Mailman." Here's how it worked: A reporter would go to a celebrity's local post office and fill out a forwarding-address form for the celebrity, rerouting the star's mail to a prearranged address. The reporter would then pick up the mail and peruse it for any usable information. (When I asked paparazzo Phil Ramey if he had ever heard of "Playing Mailman," he chortled, "Yeah, yeah. But they do it just to f-ck with people. What's the big deal?") One of my sources, whom I'll call Jerry, a three-year veteran of the tabloid, also admitted he had been involved with mail theft. "We paid a live-in friend of Tony Danza to steal one specific piece of mail...a letter from the Screen Actors Guild," he said. "My bosses felt it contained information we needed. We made arrangements through one of Danza's employees to have this friend pick up the mail when it came in and bring it to me." Dr. Park Dietz, an expert on obsessed fans and the prosecution's psychiatric expert in the John Hinckley trial, once said that obsessed fans have an "unholy alliance with the tabloids." Many rely on the tabs for personal details and the latest information on their celeb idols. For their part, the tabloids don't seem averse to exploiting these delusions - or, in fact, aiding and abetting them. According to Cruse, on several occasions Enquirer reporters allegedly sold the addresses and phone numbers of celebs to overzealous fans. According to a friend of Greg Louganis, a mentally ill man who had approached the Olympic diver said he had gotten his address from a reporter at the Enquirer looking to make a few bucks. The Star and Enquirer sometimes print the delusions of fans as facts (e.g.the claim of a San Diego photographer he had an affair with Kirk Cameron's bridge Chelsea Noble in 1991). According to Dr. Walt Risler, a University of Indiana professor and a nationally recognized expert on the subject of obsessed fans, playing into the fantasies of an obsessed fan is not only shoddy journalism, it's potentially dangerous. "Tabloids are already part of the lives of celebrity stalkers. When they validate their delusions like this, they are lighting a fire under a combustible situation." Why are tabloid reporters running amok? ROD LURIE concludes it's because the tabs went public in 1991 and are driven to find sensational stories to attract readers, advertisers and profits. Journalist Stuart Goldman writes on tabloidbaby.com about a 1990 incident: The Enquirer's chief goon, Anthony Pellicano, ("The Nation's Most Publicized Private Investigator") began a nonstop campaign to hound [Rod] Lurie, [Gavin] de Becker and myself. Pellicano was right out of a bad Fifties B-movie. He loved to do the good cop/bad cop bit. He threatened, he bullied, he wheedled, he cajoled. (At one point, Pellicano sent me a personal check as "hush" money to keep me from incriminating the Enquirer.) When I changed my private telephone number -- which I did frequently -- he'd call just to let me know he'd made the new number (Pellicano enjoyed a rep and expert bug/wire man). On March 11 [1990], Rod Lurie was riding his bicycle near his home in Pasadena. An unmarked car (no plates) drove up behind him, suddenly sped up, and whacked Lurie fifty feet into space. The bicycle was instant scrap, and Lurie wound up in the hospital with two broken ribs and a busted back. When I called him after the accident, Lurie was resolute: "It was no accident," he said hoarsely. "That car hit me on purpose. There's absolutely no doubt about it ... I saw the the guy veer over and go right for me." I asked him if he had any idea who was behind it."Lemme put it like this," Lurie said. "The tabloids warned me if I didn't back off I'd be sorry. I think they just made good on their threat." John Connolly writes in the February 1994 issue of Los Angeles Magazine about Anthony Pellicano: ...[In] 1990 when Rod Lurie was researching his Los Angeles magazine piece on how the National Enquirer gets its information. Lurie got a call from Pellicano, who identified himself as a private investigator working for th Enquirer. Indeed, as Lurie recalls, Pellicano said, "I am the Enquirer." He demanded to know the identity of Lurie's source at the tabloid. When Lurie wouldn't cooperate, Pellicano said he would find out, adding, in what Lurie termed in the article a threatening manner, "I am relentless." In the ensuing months, Pellicano lived up to that image. He called Lurie on his unlisted phone number, bad-mouthed him to his sources, accused him of extortion and threatened him with a "nuisance suit" to block the article's publication. The piece was published without further incident, but the following year, when Lurie was working on another Los Angeles story about tabloid dirty tricks, he again crossed paths with Pellicano. Lurie was told by his assistant that Pellicano had approached him and asked him to spy on Lurie. Although the assistnat said he turned Pellicano down, Lurie remained suspicious. The next day, he fabricated some notes about the Enquirer and asked the assistant to type them into the computer. Two days later, he got a call from Pellicano, who smugly read to him the very notes he had written. Late last summer, I tracked down the assistant, who admitted in a taped interview that Pellicano had paid him $3,000 for the notes. But Pellicano wanted to be sure he was getting his money's worth. To guarantee the assistant wouldn't try to pass off counterfeit information, Pellicano threatened him. According to the assistant, Pellicano said, "I make a living knowing if somebody's bullsh-tting me! I can look up a bull's asshole and give you the price of butter." Then, pointing to a blue aluminum baseball bat in the corner of his office, Pellicano told the assistant, "Guys who f-ck with me get to meet my buddy over there in the corner." State of the Industry Rick Latona writes in the March issue of Klixxx:
If I Were A Jill Kelly Productions Girl... I'd earn $5,000 a month for doing eight scenes. That's $3500 after taxes. If I sleep with JKP owner Bob Friedland, I might even make more. Not that Bob has much money. Certainly not in his wallet. He does pack about 15 credit cards. It's embarrassing, however, when we go to dinner and several of his cards get declined. I might enjoy a trip to Las Vegas with Bob. Not that Phoenix Ray did. She got so mad at Bob, she removed all his favored Sweet n' Low from where he was staying. At least I am not a popular blond ingenue, who caught gonorrhea from her porn director boyfriend. I understand that Jill Kelly has minimal ownership interest in JKP. Chargebacks At FDR
Stunning Curves From Stunningcurves.com: "StunningCurves.Com has changed focus to being a catalogue of photos rather then news and interviews. We will be showcasing photos from various industry events and parties. Some of our photos will be completely exclusive and unique. For any questions about our photos please email kevin@stunningcurves.com." Chargebacks Rick Latona writes in Klixxx magazine: You don't have to be unethical to have chargeback problems. Sparse content and aggressive marketing methods are only two potential causes of chargebacks. The bottom line is that any program doing significant joins has to deal with the issue. There are a number of factors that can cause you to go above the 1% chargeback ratio that Visa allows, including natural attrition, your members' area, webmaster fraud, support issues, cross sells and your price point to consumers. If you want to stay below the 1% mark, you'll need to deal with every one of these points. The other day I was reading the Terms and Conditions for processing through Jettis and I noticed a clause in their contract that required you to phase out processing over a 6 month period if you wanted to leave them as a client. This is because people rarely get notified each month when they are billed. It is quite common for a customer to notice that they have been getting billed recurrently only after some time has passed. If you don't send new charges through the same IPSP account over and over, natural attrition of your customer base will put you over 1%. I know of one very high volume and well-known sponsor program that processed through Jettis for years and then switched to Epoch for various reasons. Recently that sponsor has had to start sending charges through Jettis again because they went over 1% by not sending them new joins. Now they will need to go back to Epoch for new joins because they will have the same problem there. What's the solution? Get your own merchant account and run all of your primary processing through it or rotate two separate IPSPs so you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Technically, customers aren't supposed to chargeback fees just because they don't like the product. However, in reality this happens all the time. Having a great members' area will not only decrease chargebacks but will also increase your total billing! At CJ Bucks, we do everything we can to keep the customers happy including separate members' areas for each of our sites and tons of well-organized content. This may come as a surprise, but there are many fraudulent webmasters! All program owners regularly cancel webmasters for pushing through fraudulent transactions. The frauds want to get a check from you before you've noticed so the key is to notice and catch them before you send the check. Most IPSPs will inform you of fraudulent webmasters, but you can always catch more than the processor by taking ownership of the issue yourself. Some methods are easier than others. One easy way to catch the crook is to look at their conversion ratios. If you have a webmaster pushing through joins at 1:3, the odds are that they are frauding you. If you show me a traffic source that converts at 1 in 3 I'll buy all of the traffic for sale because such a thing just doesn't exist. A much more difficult technique would be to build a system that checks to see if members login to their members' areas. If a webmaster sends five joins to you and none of those joins login to the sites, odds are that its fraudulent. The bottom line is that you must have a system in place to protect yourself against fraud. At CJ Bucks, we have many, so most crooks look for an easier target. Your support systems can make a huge difference. When a pay site member needs support or chooses to cancel, they have two choices: go to your site and look for support channels or go to the emails they received when they joined the program. Those emails most likely came from your IPSP and contain email addresses, links and/or phone numbers. Your IPSP couldn't possibly answer questions about your members' area or the encoding of your videos. I know of at least three sponsors who have asked their IPSP to change the information on those emails so that all requests funnel through the sponsor who actually sold the membership. Cross sells are often blamed for the chargeback problem. Again, it's how you use the cross sells that counts most. Some programs bury in their terms and conditions that the end user is joining more than one site while others use check boxes or even pre-checked boxes on their join page. Clearly there is a middle ground here -- your job, as a program owner, is to find that balance. I prefer the pre-checked boxes, but I leave the recurring monthly price for those memberships at 24.95 or less. I think that hooking someone up with two separate 39.95 a month memberships is just a bit too much, and, besides, the CEO of a major IPSP assures me that many banks won't chargeback charges of less than 25 dollars. Chargebacks are obviously an important concern of everyone involved in a sponsor program, but the issue isn't as cut-and-dry as simply offering better content. Of course, when selling an intangible product, it never hurts to deliver above and beyond your customers' expectations, but unless you efficiently shore-up all points of potential chargeback leakage, you still might find yourself running aground with the 1% policy.
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