Lunch With Playboy TV (American Sex Star) Producers Eric Mittleman, Derek Harvie

I show up to the Playboy TV studios in a 90065 industrial park in Glendale.

12:20 p.m. I walk up to the receptionist. She's on the phone. "He doesn't say on his voicemail that he's Hugh Hefner, does he?"

I sign in behind Hugh Hefner's brother Keith Hefner (about 60 yo) who does voiceovers.

Eric's assistant leads me on the long walk to his office past dozens of cubicles.

On Eric's wall, Sasha Grey and a couple of other girls are scratched out from the American Sex Star show. Most of the girls are from LA Direct Models and none have of them have dropped out.

Mittleman's on the phone. "This is a real voice-over just like the first one," he says.

Playboy TV's employees have the relaxed manner of most people in porn who realize they aren't rocket scientists and they aren't curing cancer. They're in the business of stimulating masturbation, about the lowest of artistic endeavors.

Derek Harvie joins me in Eric's office.

He says Ann Marie hosts the 30-minute Night Calls Hotline show which follows the regular three-hour Night Calls (hosted by Kirsten Price and Jesse Jane).

"It's half an hour of phone sex with Ann Marie," Derek says as he leads us on a tour of the studio. "We take a couple of girls from Night Calls and they take phone calls."

Luke: "Do you give spread-legged action? Girls going down on each other?"

Derek and Eric say that Night Calls and other Playboy TV productions are officially X (single girl action) with XX clips -- meaning everything but anal and a pop shot.

Derek: "Night Calls is single action except for special occasions."

Eric: "We broke down a wall last week."

Derek: "We had sex toys. We had the f---ing machine guys come in. Unfortunately the giant robot malfunctioned."

Only on clips is there a penis entering a vagina.

Next door are the Spice studios and they show hardcore (but not anal nor pop shots).

Eric: "When we go to porn sets to shoot the girls, we have to shoot it soft, Austin-Powers style."

Playboy radio (broadcast over Sirius, with over one million potential listeners, perhaps one or two thousand of them actually listen at any one time) studios are down the hall. They provide about 14 hours of original programming a weekday. Ann Marie hosts a show.

Christy Canyon and Ginger Lynn do three hours a night of Night Calls Radio.

If you have a Sirius subscription, you don't automatically get Playboy Radio. You have to call and opt-in.

None of the programming on Playboy TV or Playboy Radio is gay.

Eric, Derek and I have lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. I eat some rice and tofu. I don't want to even name the strange little critters going into the mouths of my mates.

I want to develop on my theme from last week (and over the past decade) that porn is a refuge for the lazy (in many ways, I am lazy and slovenly and porn suits this part of my personality).

Luke to Derek: "How would you compare the stress levels of working at MTV and Playboy?"

My thesis is that all achievement comes through stress.

Derek: "Playboy is much more relaxed. At MTV, people were always fighting because everyone had conflicting visions and everything was subjective. At Playboy TV, we ask ourselves two questions: Do we have naked girls? Check. Are they naked? Check.

"A former producer at Playboy TV said, 'Give me a hot chick standing next to a bag of s---, and I'll give you a TV show.

"We had so many rules at MTV. At Playboy, the basic rule is no anal.

"I didn't think I'd be here [in porn] this long but at this point I can't see myself going back to the real world.

"My wife and kids are gone for six weeks. I'm going to turn my home into the Playboy Mansion - Encino style."

I ask the gents if Playboy requires drug tests. They say no. "But what if you were drug-tested?" I persist.

Derek: "I'm clean."

Eric: "Depending on the month."

Mittleman says he has a doctor's note to smoke pot. Derek says he's allergic and throws up if he smokes pot.

Penny Flame was interviewed on American Sex Star and on the first question she says she didn't finish college because of cocaine. She goes into detail about her drug problems.

She showed a level of honesty that can inspire all of us to be better people.

The girls take it hard as they get eliminated from American Sex Star. They start crying. They can become vindictive.

Codi Milo was balling up. Jenna came up to her backstage and hugged her.

Jim Powers plays the Simon Cowell role on the show, a porn ripoff of American Idol. He teased Angie Savage about the wing tattoo on her back.

Last year, one girl got a pail of water and was going to dump it on Jim Powers. She was intercepted by McKenzie Lee who ended up receiving the pail.

Neither Eric nor Derek fear obscenity prosecution for their work.

Many of the rockers who come on Night Calls end up with the porn stars. They have a higher rate of success with the ladies than the stand-up comics.

Eric's creepiest shoot for American Sex Star was at an extended stay hotel where numerous out-of-town porners reside. The hallways were lined with garbage and dirty linen.

Eric remembers a sweet little Playmate from the mid nineties who opened her purse and a .38 special popped out.

We discuss the explosive relationship between hot chicks and firearms.

Eric: "When I was in Scottsdale, I wanted to get footage of Jenna at a shooting range. Her brother owns one. Jenna's a phenomenal shot."

Derek remembers shooting at Taylor Rain's house. Taylor, the longtime queen of porn's potheads (though she may have brought this under control over the past few months, since her retirement, and gained 20 pounds) reached under the bed, and instead of producing the expected sex toy, came up with a shotgun three feet away from Derek.

Another time Derek took four porn chicks out to the desert and got video of them shooting off automatic weapons.

Eric says he wants nothing to do with porn stars and automatic weapons.

Eric: "I should add that question to their profile -- what kind of gun do you own?"

There's no pot smoking nor drinking at the Playboy studios.

Derek: "Our show is like a day off for porn stars. They don't have to have sex. We bring them in in the morning. We dress them up. We put them in make-up. We feed them. We have a chef. They play all day. We look after them. Our host arranges play time for them. It's like day care.

"And we pay them."

Eric: "It's like Burke Williams (day spa) for porn stars."

On the drive back to the Playboy studios, we stop at the lights and an army of kids in school uniforms cross the streets.

Derek says this afternoon he has to shoot Roxy Jezelle doing man-on-the-street interviews about anal sex.

I hope they leave the kids alone.