Nearer My God To Thee

'Does this break your heart?

Kami Andrews emails me: "Whenever my dad would say anything horrible, he would laugh, like that made us think it didn't hurt? By posting this, is Holly [Randall] laughing so we think it doesn't hurt?"

Yes, it is sad. Holly's like that, she has a good sense of humor, which she often uses as a defence.

"I figured as much. She is definitely the smartest chick I've come across."

Serge Trifkovic - Author of Defeating Jihad - Speaks to Breakfast Club

Friday. 8 a.m. Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny Dr. in Beverly Hills.

I note with satisfaction that David Horowitz's assistant Michael Finch (the longest lasting? certainly the most easygoing Horowitz assistant) has ceased cutting himself. But the scars of working for David remain.

Michaels' coworker, Stephanie, is late because she's getting a facial peal.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Michael claims he's never had a facial, facial peal, pedicure or manicure.

He's been sleeping well. It's his wife who bears the brunt of getting up at night to look after their 12-pound infant.

I had a girl who wanted to buy me a lavender facial spray and I really want it but I resist her offer because it's too swishy and my credentials with the Republican Jewish Coalition might be rescinded.

I find it hard to get going in the morning without an invigorating round of, "You know you're gay because..."

I sip my peppermint tea and eat fruit. My figure has been bulging alarmingly around my stomach of late. That damn lithium.

I remember what it was like to be with a woman. It was good. I want to go to that promised land across the Jordan River once more. I thought the LA Weekly cover and VH1 appearance would do it but no luck.

I'm gonna join that immigrant protest Monday because those things attract hot chicks.

I can forgive a woman for her misguided political views as long as she's hot.

Really, you know you're gay when you start refusing hot women because of their politics.

I'm practicing my Spanish-language rendition of the U.S. national anthem.

I'm determined to raise the tone of political discourse on the web.

The Prostate Cancer Review meets in the grand ballroom where the Wednesday Morning Club meets. Shelby Steele speaks to the WMC May 18.

Despite advertising to the contrary, Center Breakfast Clubs are not great places to meet hot chix in their twenties. But they are great places for a free prostate exam and to compare notes on dribbling vs a full healthy stream.

There's a full healthy stream of people pouring into our breakfast looking for the prostate cancer meeting. At least one person signs up for our breakfast.

I'm able to provide moral guidance to an impressionable friend that the hotties at our breakfast are very married.

I make a gentleman's wager with a mate over who will be the first to seduce Tammy Bruce the lesbian (she interviews Dr. Wafa Sultan May 3 for the WMC, four security guards have been hired for the evening).

Dr. Trifkovic says that no religious Muslim can be fully loyal to the United States and its oath of citizenship because Islam requires him to give his utmost loyalty to Sharia (Islamic law) and Islamic world domination.

Couldn't you make a similar argument about religious Jews? Their ultimate loyalty has to be to God, Torah and the Jewish people? We don't seek world domination except for ethical monotheism, which should rule.

Ethical monotheism rules, baby!

Serge says that in France more people will go to mosque on Friday than church on Sunday.

Serge says porn and decadent western values won't moderate Muslim immigrants. In their search for meaning, in their frustration at being on the bottom rung of Western society, they're more fanatically devoted to their religion than their Arab/Muslim brothers in the homeland.

"When a Christian returns to his religion, he finds the prince of peace. When a Muslim returns to his religion, his finds Mohammed the Terrorist.

"...More democracy in the Middle East means more political Islam and more death sentences for apostates. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan..."

Serge says the riots in French suburbs were Muslims self-rule according to Sharia.

He says we should refuse citizenship to all Muslim activists. "No Muslim can take the US oath of allegiance in good faith. A faithful Muslim can't help but strive for the introduction of Sharia. Islam introduces a cataclysmic mindset of us vs. them. It cannot rest.

"No law enforcement agency can function effectively if it admits Muslims."

We should reform immigrations laws to refuse Jihadists.

Serge is Bosnian. He says we should embrace Russia. He advocates surgical airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. No use of ground troops.

"Nothing short of a cataclysm will help the West realize the war its in [against Islam]."

Serge says we have to get over this notion that Islam is the religion of peace and our real war is against terrorism. Nope, it's against Islam.

Instead of invading Iraq and guarding the Euphrates, we should've used those resources to guard the Rio Grande.

Serge speaks for just over 30 minutes and then takes almost 30 minutes of questions.

He says the debate on immigration is depressing because everyone is talking about the economy and nobody is talking about identity and the quality of life.

I ask: "Why should we become friendlier with Russia? Isn't it becoming more of a dictatorship?"

Serge: "Let's stop once and for all judging our external affiliations on the basis of the domestic nature of that regime. The messianic notion that only with democracies can we can be friends should be denied by Brussels (center of the European Union), because the EU is becoming a dictatorship. It is mandating gay marriage, totally bypassing national assemblies. The Czech Republic four times rejected that proposal but now a court in Luxembourg is overriding that.

"Russia is not becoming a dictatorship. It's becoming more authoritarian. That's neither here nor there in the American security calculus, which supported South Korea, Singapore, Chile under General Pinochet, and various unsavory characters around the Middle East such as General Musharraf [in Pakistan]..."

Luke: "What do we get from being friendly with Russia? What's in it for us?"

Serge: "Alternative sources of energy. After Saudi Arabia, Russia has the biggest oil reserves in the world. There are enormous natural resources in Siberia. We have common [Islamic enemies]."

My friend tells me I've matured since he met me eight years ago.

I ask him if Reform Judaism was responsible for the Holocaust.

He gets all offended and claims it was Hitler's fault.

In the mens room, I shoot him a glance and ask him if he's considered doing movies.

It takes him 15 seconds to get it.

As we walk out, my friend says, "Did you see that Asian girl? Did you see how she looked at me?"

I get anxious when I arrive home and see that I'm overdue with the following library book -- How to Control Your Anxiety.

180 Degrees to Jerusalem By Robert Raphael Goodman

On a Friday night in March 1995, I met Leonarto August aka Shimon Saadi at the Westwood Chabad. He was an Israeli movie director who made his living selling electronics. I lived with him until May 31, 1996.

He often told people he was from Italy, thus the fake name Leonarto August.

Shimon (1994-95) said he sensed something sweet about my aura. I was living out of my car at the time. He invited me to move in with him in exchange for helping him twenty hours a week with a screenplay.

Shimon (1994-95) in LA Shimon Shimon Shimon Shimon

I was amazed by Shimon's success with women. They flocked to him. I heard he had a prodigious endowment.

A couple of times I got Shimon's leftovers, for which I'm eternally grateful because these ladies were hot.

He was also blessed with some keen perceptions into life. He had a mystical gift. He taught me many practical things, including that I could call my credit card company if I felt I had gotten ripped off on a purchase (this saved me hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars).

I helped him too. One Shabbos afternoon, I bailed him out of jail. He'd been pulled over by the cops and because he had unpaid traffic tickets, he was jailed.

He had a daughter (circa 11yo) from his first marriage. She lived in South Africa.

Shimon said he'd been with about 500 women in his life.

We'd go to Jewish singles events and I'd get nothing and he'd get blown in the parking lot.

I've never been blown in a parking lot.

Shimon returned to Israel in the summer of 1996. Essentially secular when I met him, he eventually became Orthodox. He davened regularly at the Kabbalah Centre (picture) on Robertson Drive and took classes in Jewish mysticism.

Shimon had a friend named Robert Goodman, who was vastly more successful and classy than we were. Robert was finishing off a documentary (1996's Choke) on no-holds-barred fighting centered on Rickson Gracie.

Shimon borrowed Robert's money and his Mac computer which we used to write a never-finished screenplay. I also used it to write most of my first book.

After Shimon and I moved, I rarely saw Rob (the last time was probably 1999).

I always felt out-classed when I talked to him. I felt like he was leagues above me socially.

He had a girlfriend that I still see in Jewish life. I feel like she's leagues above me socially.

Shimon had a girlfriend who married a friend of mine.

Rob Goodman and I met up again Wednesday night, April 26. We talked for almost two hours at my hovel.

He gave me a copy of his 24-minute documentary 180 Degrees to Jerusalem. It's hilarious.

The old hustler Shimon, now about 46, has turned charedi (ultra-Orthodox) and now goes by "Shimon Sade." He's remarried and has four kids. He looks as grumpy as ever. In his own way, he's probably still hustling the Israeli welfare system to get by financially. The clothes change but Shimon's tendencies to mysticism and fanaticism don't.

The Hebrew version of the documentary played on Channel 2 in Israel. Now it's seeking an English-language American release.

Rob's the narrarator, and strictly speaking, most of the documentary is about him, though it's posed as a search for his old friend Shimon.

I don't have a lot of friends, so I hope nothing here costs me my chance at a new one in Rob.

"Wow," he writes me Thursday morning, "I don't think I've ever been blogged."

Rob begins the documentary: "Page one. The family photo album. My great grandparents escaping Europe."

Rob was initially going to do a documentary on the visit to Israel and search for spirituality by the adopted daughter of Roseanne Barr. He got 40 hours of footage of her over two weeks but it was dull. So by piecing together his family's photos and home movies with his wedding video and a few interviews, Goodman made something completely different.

It works.

Rob: "They came for the promise of the new world. The irony is that they only exchanged one ghetto for another. My grandfather...was just another immigrant kid trying to get uptown. And that he did. He never looked back.

"By the mid-thirties, he and his brother were the biggest rubber importers on the East Coast.

"Sidney Segal had arrived.

"Fast-forward to the sixties. My turn. [Rob's born around 1963.] Long Island homes. Summer camp. Games at the club.

"Religion? My grandfather and his pals invented the three-day-a-year Jew thing [Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur]. And that's what he passed on to us.

"The American dream -- make up the rules as you go."

The screen flashes to pictures of LA highway interchanges.

"So of course I ended up in LA -- the world capitol of calling your own shots, inventing myself as I went along. That's where I met Shimon Saadi, an Israeli ex-pat living on nothing but balls and an expired Israeli tourist visa. My grandfather all over again. I couldn't help but look up to him."

Shimon's friend: "Shimon's out there hustling around, trying to scrape together money. He thinks he's going to come over and get over. Everyone's a millionaire. He's going to outhustle everyone. But this is a city built on hustlers."

Rob: "I swore that if anyone was going to pull it off, it was him. And for a while, he did. Then it all went to hell.

"Shimon and a few of his Israeli buddies tailed a group of starlets to the Kabbalah Centre. The beginning of the end."

Shimon's friend: "He would probably tell you himself that in the beginning it was so he could meet chicks. So he could hang out. And then it took over and he was hooked."

Rob: "Was it something they were putting in the water? Because after a month at the Kabbalah Centre, the chicks were out, the Zohar was in, and Shimon wasn't returning my calls.

"From there, it was only a matter of time until he was keeping kosher, wearing a yarmulke, and praying non-stop. And before I knew it, he was on a plane back to Israel.

"That's not the way it is supposed to happen. What if my grandfather had given up and gone home? What happened to Shimon?

"I dropped everything and followed Shimon back for some answers."

Rob visits the town where Shimon grew up and Shimon's old shul. The town is a dump. Only old men go to the shul.

Rob visits "what everyone says is the heart of the new movement -- The Purple Festival [at Atlit Beach in Israel."

We see separate streams of naked men and naked women (some wear bathing suits) running into the ocean. They were organized and directed by Rabbi Mordecai Gafni.

A wave hits some of the women and they start choking on sea water. The men, 20 feet away, rush over and help their big-breasted Israeli sisters and bring them to shore.

Rob: "No wonder the old synagogue is empty. I'm all for smoking weed and dancing but when did that become religion?"

This festival is filled with hot chicks. It's presided over by homely old folks such as Gafni. Why must he get all the hot chicks? What happened to "From each according to his ability to each according to his need?"

There's great video of Gafni dancing around, waving his hand, and singing "L'cha dodi."

Gafni: "Let's say, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Shabbat shalom."

Rob: "Me and my friends chose Disneyland over Jerusalem for our bar mitzvah trips. All Yom Kippur meant was sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway and going to our cousins in the city.

"My grandparents died maybe 20 blocks from where they landed."

Aish Ha Torah Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser (formerly Johnny Glaser, surfer): "This is Judaism and there's nothing else really. You're either in or you're out."

Aish Rabbi Avi Geller: "What do you really know about the essence of God?"

Rob: "Mix an identity crisis, a slick talker and a few select Bible quotes and the statistical chances are 23.7% that you'll succeed in adding a member to the team. And that's the program whether it is Aish Ha Torah, the Kaballah Centre or Scientology. Belonging feels good."

Rabbi Moshe Zeldman: "A Jew has a more sensitive soul."

Rob: "It's not breaking news that my friend Shimon became religious after he woke up one morning in LA and saw 40-year old hustler staring him in the eye. And didn't like him."

Rob marries in Petach Tikveh, Israel. (His bride, bride, bride and groom)

Rob: "It gave Shimon shivers that men and women weren't separated and women were singing and other things that weren't by the book.

"He made his choice. And I made mine."

Shimon Saadi aka Sade (in center in black suit) in 2002 at Rob Goodman's wedding (Shimon on left). He's glum.

From Phoenix New Times 7/30/98:

Nikki Lynn was born Tammy Hallen in Torrance, California, 24 years ago, the eldest of five children. She moved to Phoenix when she was 12. Her first high school was Independence, but she soon transferred to Glendale High, where she became captain of the cheerleading squad.

...Tammy dropped out of school in her junior year and got her GED. In late '91, while visiting Kingman with her erstwhile boyfriend, Tammy met her soon-to-be-husband, an affable truck driver named Richard Schaffner, who was living in Kingman with his 7-year-old son, Ricky--a boy who had been in a tragic car accident that claimed the life of his mother.

...In late '92, while vacationing in Tucson with Richard's relatives, Tammy started working at a topless club called TD's West for some "extra Christmas cash." She had never stripped before, but on her first day she took home $350. The money was too good to pass on, so Tammy remained in Tucson while Richard continued working and maintaining their Kingman home.

...In January '97, Tammy went to porn's biggest event, the Consumer Electronics Show and Adult Video News Awards (the Oscars of porn) in Las Vegas, dolled up in full adult-star regalia. There, she nabbed attention away from some of the biggest names in porn who were there signing autographs.

...Nikki starred in her first adult video just two weeks after the CES convention, and since has graced glossy covers of hard-core porn videos released through some of the biggest production companies in adult video, such as VCA, Sin City and Wicked. (Titles include Lapdance, Spinners, Hot Seat, Babewatch 7.)

...She has also appeared in more than 100 adult magazines, including Cheri, Oui, Hustler, Penthouse (three times this year), Swank, Club and High Society.

..."We love Kingman," says Nikki. "It is a great place to raise children."

...Nikki introduces their son Brandon. He comes in wet from jumping through the sprinkler. Brandon is a beautiful 4-year-old with big blue eyes and a blond Ringo bowl cut. He's always laughing. He farts and it just kills him. And like his mother, he's a ham in front of the camera. He mugs up to it and gives it a big world-revolving grin. Then he turns to his mother and tells her he loves her. She squeezes him tightly and tells him how much she loves him back. It's a tender moment.

Says a source: "This a tragic story. One day about two years ago, she up and left her husband and her son Brandon and his son Ricky from another marriage. She left without providing any means to contact her. When her husband tried to contact her, when he heard she was working at a strip club, she wouldn't return phone calls to him or her son.

"Brandon became sick. He tried to contact her. She needed to come home to be there for him. She wouldn't take anybody's calls. It turns out the son had stomach cancer. The son died a month later. She never saw her son from the day she left till the day he died. She didn't come to his funeral.

"Brandon was twelve years old."

Luke: "You thought she was one of the great girls of the industry?"

Source: "I did. And so did her husband. Her husband sat there crying with me. He said she turned into a person he never knew existed."

Richard's first wife died.

"One day Brandon had told his father he had an upset stomach. Richard took him to a doctor. They found out he had cancer."

Luke: "Can a woman do porn and not be mentally ill?"

Source: "No. There's no doubt in my mind that it f---- people up."

Pastor Craig Gross (with Carter Krummrich) writes in their new book (full disclosure: I get a thank you in the back of the book for my "kind words and attention to details" because I read two previous drafts of the book and submitted factual corrections) The Dirty Little Secret: Uncovering the Truth Behind Porn (published by Zondervan, the major evangelical Christian publisher)

The porn industry and the secular culture have embraced us. ...[T]hey are all just sinners like you and me, desperately looking for someone to love them. (p. 18)

I realized Erotica LA 2005 was my sixth porn show... I saw the banner hanging from the ceiling. One of the girls pictured on the massive piece of canvas, Sara [Stephanie Swift?], stood out in contrast...because I knew her.

...I gave one last look at the banner of thought of the two phone calls I had gotten from her in the last week. She wanted out. (p. 31)

Heather, one of the porn stars selling DVDs at the [Dane] booth, knows better now. This is her last day working in the porn industry.

Mrs. Dane was Heather's boyfriend's aunt. She told her about their little family business. Initially, Heather said no, but they persisted and she got drunk and comfortable with the people. Six months later, she had filmed seven movies. Now she is jaded... (p. 44)

Jimmy D sauntered over to our booth and sat down on our couch. He took his sunglasses off and made sure he was comfortable. He said he enjoyed our website and thought it was great that we were there. We could not say the same to him. We watched in utter discomfort as his hardcore videos played on two large plasma screens the rest of the weekend. By day two we were sick of his videos. A year later we received a confessional email from Jimmy D; it turned out he was disgusted by his own product as well. (p. 45)

Craig writes that the porners have yet to hit rock bottom. "They will get there, and from our point of view, the writing is all over their faces."

I agree that porn tends to wreak a toll on people's faces. By middle age, people tend to get the faces they deserve. I think of various holy people in my life and I just have to look at them to feel inspired.

Innocence can never be regained. Once you've done porn, you've lost something you'll never regain.

The worst part of porn addiction is that you can tell a complete stranger what you're dealing with, but you won't say anything to those closest to you. (p. 49)

As a child, [Heather] had dreams of being a lawyer, a massage therapist, and a veterinarian. These dreams disappeared when she got into porn.

When Heather initially started, the environment was comfortable and the people were funny. The environment was relaxing for her. She was talked into it. What she saw was a family... (p. 74)

"A lot of these girls will say that they like the porn lifestyle, but they're all drugged up when they're on shoots. They're either drinking or they're getting high. So if they can't do porn sober, then why are they doing it?" asks Heather.

"If you don't want anything stable in your life whatsoever, then this is the business for you. I had a lot of fun partying...but I was all messed up. There have been shoots where I don't remember half of what I did."

"You can't have a serious relationship and do this, because if you really care about someone, you're not going to want them to continue in this." Heather thinks that all these girls really want is love, but they're just in the wrong place. That's all she wanted. Her father left her mother at a young age and she'd never had a father figure step in. She found it at Dane Hardcore, but the experience ruined her life.

"I can't be involved with my real family when I do porn. When I'm in the porn lifestyle, I am lying to my family." (p. 75)

Amber [ex-porn star Autumn Rayne] is very close to her thirteen-year-old daughter and began to realize the effects of her legacy shortly before she left the business for good. (p. 76)

Amber's daughter is not a virgin. "[T]he boy talked to her daughter about things and actions only seen in porn films." (p. 77)

Amber knows girls who have been coerced and set up for a shoot, and when the girls showed up, there were six guys instead of one. The producers will harass these girls, most of them ninteen or twenty years old, if they refuse to continue. "And these young girls are doing it because they're so insecure about themselves and they let these people take advantage of them." (p. 77)

...[Amber] worked as a prostitute for a year before a breakdown rendered her emotionally unstable. "...I think a lot of it was the abuse I've been through in this industry and then doing everything I've done." (p. 78)

"Once you've done porn," Amber says, "you don't really know anything else, and you're afraid to really try anything else because you don't have the confidence that you are better for anything else."

"Adrienne" is a life-long Christian who became a porn star with her husband to make extra money. Now they are separated and talking about divorce. "The hardest thing for me is the fact that our marriage started with God as our Rock." (p. 80)

As Shelly [Lubben] puts it, "When we were little girls, we wanted to play with dollies and be mommies, not have big scary men get on top of us. And we were taught at a young age that sex made us valuable. The same horrible violations we experienced then, we relive as we perform our tricks in front of the camera. And we hate every minute of it. We're traumatized little girls living on antidepressants, drugs, and alcohol, acting out our pain." (p. 81)

Shelly remembers...having to explain to her daughter why Mommy was kissing another woman...

As Shelly reflected on children of porn stars, she writes, "We are the world's worst mothers. We yell and scream and hit our kids for no reason. Most of the time we are intoxicated or high and our four-year-olds are the ones picking us up off the floor. When clients come over for sex, we lock our children in their rooms and tell them to be quiet. I used to give my daughter a beeper and tell her to wait at the park until I was finished." (p. 82)

[Autumn Rayne's] husband downloaded porn continuously during a time in their marriage. He stopped paying attention to her so she started flirting with another guy openly. (p. 83)

Shelly [Lubben] writes: "A closer look into the scenes of a porn star's life will show you a movie porn doesn't want you to see. The real truth is we porn actresses want to end the shame and trauma of our lives, but we can't do it alone. We need you men to fight for our freedom and give us back our honor. We need you to hold us in your strong arms while we sob tears over our deep wounds and begin to heal. We want you to throw out our movies and help piece together the shattered fragments of our lives." (p. 84)

These web guys aren't just nice people, and that's why they are giving you three days free. They realize that you're going to want more. That you are going to want the hardcore stuff. You're going to want the full streaming video. (p. 89-90)

James DiGiorgio says: "...[W]hile my sexual drive hasn't been negatively affected by the business, the things that appeal to me, that turn me on, have been narrowed considerably. They are much more specific and focused."

Pastors Craig Gross and Mike Foster officiated at Jimmy's daughter's wedding.

So Josh started attending "Porn Star Karaoke," an event at a Los Angeles bar where porn stars party. Josh started getting to know everybody in the business, learning how to operate in this world. ...On the side, Josh tried his hand at filming videos for churches.

AVN Editor Mike Ramone writes:

Gross should really get off of his high horse. Christianity's been responsible for millions of deaths in the name of Jesus and God over the centuries, as compared to a handful of porn-related suicides. I would suggest that Gross just might know more about the porn industry than the history of his own religion. Here's a couple of titles, all available on Amazon, he (and many other Christians as well) might consider reading to remedy that: The End of Faith, The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read, The Dark Side of Christian History, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ, the Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold and finally, of course, The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say?, the seminal work of the Jesus Seminar, a large group of New Testament scholars who know more about that largely fictional work than you, me and Gross ever will, and who have concluded that something like 82% of the sayings ascribed to Jesus in the NT were fabricated by his followers after the fact.

Christianity, like the other major religions, simply falls apart under the hard, unblinking glare of logic, reason and scholarship. And compared to its horrific history, porn is a quite innocent enterprise.

Tara writes: "'Sara' is not Stephanie Swift. Stephanie is still feature dancing. I talked to her three weeks ago. Furthermore, Stephanie was not featured on any huge banner at Erotica LA 2005!"

Well, 'Sara' was in porn for 11 years. Sounds like Stephanie to me.

If You Want To Write To Porn Star Farrah Who Languishes In Los Angeles County Jail

Joy Marquart
8922657
Terminal Annex
P.O. Box #86164
Los Angeles, CA 90086-0164

Her date Of birth is 05/24/1975. She's 5'9" and weighs 130 according to the LASD.org search. It says she was booked on a citizens arrest February 9.

Her next court date is May 3. The case number is PA05427502. The court is NO. VALLEY SUPERIOR CT DEPT D at 900 Third St in the city of San Fernando.

You can purchase care packages for her here.

Mary Carey For California Assembly?

Mark Kernes writes for AVN:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - She started out the day planning to run for governor of the state, but by the time her flight was about to leave at the end of the Free Speech Coalition's annual lobbying day in the capitol, Mary Carey had a new plan: Run for the California Assembly as the representative from Beverly Hills, Westwood, West Hollywood and West L.A.

The Dirty Little Secret: Uncovering the Truth Behind Porn:

She mostly preferred to stay inside and read or watch TV, but today she'd earn her paycheck, making what most people make in weeks or even months. As a child, Ariana excelled as a gymnast but gave it up for her current job. Her parents still accepted and supported her, making her a rarity in her profession.

No, Ariana had chosen to be in this profession of her own will, but sometimes she wondered what her life would have been like if she had chosen a different path. Would she have more friends, be able to sustain normal relationships? Enjoy leaving her house more. She had lost her passion to live life. The fact that she owned the mind of a fifty-year-old man made it hard to have friends her own age.

Ariana had a boyfriend, an older guy in his early thirties. He was an adult film actor too, but they didn't have sex. The relationships was mentally monogamous, but they had sex with many other people. Lately he had been getting on her nerves though. He was too negative, too jaded. He had been in the business too long. ...She didn't even want sex anymore. It was rare when she had sex off the job...

...Ariana lay on the bed in a fetal position with her thumb in her mouth.

Sky Lopez Finds God

She blogs April 19:

I have had a dramatic change of life-style. I am finding myself doing more and more soul searching and self evaluation. For those who do not know I am in the beginning stages of writing a book about my real life, and my many struggles. The what's and why's, and how I simply became to be SKY LOPEZ. Also the person who I really am, that the public does not get to see or know. I am looking forward to sharing my story of survival and revival with you.

Also, many of you have asked me where my Album is, when will it be done and what it is about? Just so you know, this project is still in the works. I was halfway through when I couldn't sleep one night and didn't know why, but very upset inside. I woke up and listened to my songs and realized, yes they sound great and could go strait to radio, but they were not coming directly from my soul! And I don't want to give you anything else but that! So to answer your questions, I am also reevaluating my Music and it will be delivered to you in a manner in which I want the World to hear it.

She writes on her MySpace profile:

Hello everyone, Some of you may know me as Sky Lopez, but in fact we all Know that is not my biological name. Actually that is a BIG personal topic right now; whether I should go by my real name or Sky in my future Ventures.... Let Me know what you think! This topic Needs Prayer. But you may always, always, call me Springbreak! You may know me from Many Industries. Playboy Magazine, Penthouse, Club, XXL (Yep!), Revolver, Playboy TV, E-Channel, VH1 Etc., Etc., and many other places. I was at one time in the Adult Industry. Praise Jesus, a wake up call from God Almighty and alot of Soul Searching later I realized that I should get my act together, cuz there is a better road, a better way, and another life for me. So Yes, now, everyday is a struggle and I do know the word TEST in TESTimony so very well. Those of you who make negative comments to me about this and that, Listen Up! Christians are NOT Perfect, Just Forgiven. What are you doing to better yourself today? What are YOU doing to better those Lives around you? It's a hard road, but the only one to take. Because Jesus, is the Real Spring Break! My love and Prayers to All of you and if you think of anything we can do to make the world a better place then let me know, I have alot of people who have my back on this.... One Reason, One Life, One God. Some of You are Asking, "S-K-Y, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?" Well....... To sum it up! My life was just gettin crazier! My stomach aches got worse. I started Praying, Had dreams for six strait months where I was getting saved then I was the one preaching..... I just got up and left EVERYTHIING! Moved into a Ministry home for six months. Got Right! And Got Jesus! Now..... I gotta Plan!

Who I'd like to meet:

Jesus one day, but till then, I Need help Spreading the Word...... You see Jesus is Real! And if you would like to know that then pray to him. Read my first Blog... It's kinda like that santa song, "He see's you when your sleeping, knows when you awake, knows if you've been bad or good, etc.... Sing that whole song in your head but think Jesus. It is a batlle between Flesh and Spirit, and you have to feed your Spirit. By getting in the word, Prayer, or/and fellowship (bible study) in order to fight off the Devil and his Ways.... And his way only leads to distruction and hard ship! GOD offers forgiveness, Peace, Love and Eternity! There is Nothing better here on this Earth than the Holy Spirit! If you too want this, Just Pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart and to be your light, to guide your path and lead your Way. To Cast all that is from Satin and for you to be filled with the Holy Spirit! I wish you the Best of ALL GOD Really has JUST for YOU!!!

Sky Lopez blogs April 20:

If I could show you how to make a fortune off the internet by working from home and giving yourself the time freedom you have always desired, would you want to know about? Its a legal, ethical, and moral way!

I'm working with people that are making a six figure a month residual income and they are willing to teach anyone to duplicate what they have already accomplished.

Why Does Rob Rotten Have Swastika Tattoos?

From lukeford.com:

Fayner, Even through the drug fog I can tell you are an intelligent person. Yet, you keep promoting Rob Rotten. He has a swastika on both legs and you don't say s---.

Fayner Says: Listen, I'm an American Jew before I'm a Jew. In America we tolerate other's opinions. And although I was not aware of Rob's swastika tattoos as I try not to look at men naked, Rob is a stand up guy in my book and has never treated me like a lesser species. There was that one time Rob did try and push me into a giant oven, but I forgive him for that. Can't you?

Rob Rotten emails me back: "That little tattoo that you are talking about is a small piece of a big painting by Manuel Ocampo. Jesus is a cockroach holding a Nazi flag, a bottle of Tut whiskey, a giant 'F--- You' cross. It's not a pro-Nazi thing. It's just symbolization of how f----ed up organized religion is."

I call Rob in San Francisco.

Rob: "This [controversy] is a recent development. I know where it is coming from.

"I'm trying to decide whether or not to get the tattoo covered up. We got approval from Manuel Ocampo for the tattoo [applied by Tim Lehi]. Tim's wife, her parents are Holocaust survivors. She's really Jewish."

Captain Carmen writes:

I was flipping channels last night, and I happened upon the following: A 15-year-old Asian girl. Long black hair. Golden-brown skin. Naked. She had a beautifully high, firm breasts. And she was swimming in a river. Lunging out of the water with her hair flying back. It was a lovely discovery.

So - what do I have? Illegal channels? Super-premium-porn channels? Broadband porn streaming directly to my bedroom?

Nope - I have basic cable. And this show was on the Discovery: Travel channel. It's called Simatalu: House of Spirits, and it features a bunch of very topless young women of the Siberut variety.

Do I care? They're not saggy and they haven't mutilated themselves with ritual tattoos and lip plates and neck rings and so on, so they're just hot, naked, underage teens. All in the name of science and anthropology.

I guess TV really is a horrible influence.

Kendra's never had a girlfriend. She doesn't like girls. But now I read her MySpace page and it appears she's in love with a lesbian (24 yo model $huga $hay, who's MySpace page plays Kendra's song 'Girl, I'm Going To Miss You').

(Kendra's 19 yo sister Sam. Kendra's 17 yo sister Tommi.)

While the Torah forbids man-on-man sex (Leviticus), it is only in recent rabbinic writings that woman-on-woman action has been forbidden (making that prohibition less severe than a Biblical or Talmudic one).

Therefore, I'm better equipped emotionally and morally to deal with Kendra's latest perversion (yes, I was upset by that anal gangbang she did eight years ago, but let's not go there).

On Kendra's birthday, April 19, $huga $hay posted to KJ's site:

Did you get all your belligerence out last night? Hope you didn't party too hard to properly celebrate with your wife tonight. Enjoy today, caz it's YOUR day!

By the way, when do I get my CD of Kendra J's greatest hits so i dont have to listen to the same song over n over like an OCD idiot?

Kendra calls me back at 1:29 p.m. Tuesday. She sounds horrible. She says she's recovering from a sinus infection. "I've been on antibiotics for a week. It's all breaking up now."

Luke: "How did you hook up with $huga $hay?"

Kendra: "I met her through a mutual friend at a Lakers game. It just happened.

"I still don't know if it qualifies as a lesbian relationship as we have not [had sex]. I love her. We've been together a week. She's a model.

"My friend Alisan [Porter] is moving to New York. She's my best friend. She's got a one-year contract on Broadway."

Luke: "Are you reading again?"

Kendra: "I read all the same stuff all the time. I haven't found anything new.

"What's going on with you? How's Holly?"

Luke: "She's good. She promised her therapist she'd be celibate for six months. I respect that. If she's banging some other guy, she's his girl. I don't want to hang with her, or chitchat with her. I wouldn't like other guys hanging with her if I was doing her."

Kendra: "My therapist suggested the same [celibacy] thing but I'm not down with that.

"How come it's always Holly buying you stuff?"

Luke: "I don't have any money. I only have debts. So if I were to take $20 to spend on Holly, that's not my money. That's money I owe somebody. It wouldn't be right to spend somebody else's money on Holly or anyone. I never ask her for anything. This is all her idea. I'm happy to take."

Kendra: "I got my friend Alisan [Porter] [Alisan's MySpace] a $6,000 purse she's been wanting."

On Kendra's MySpace profile, she writes:

If you know me from my previous life, I probably don't like you. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. I am high maintenance. I am brutally honest and even confrontational.

The first thing I notice about people is thier eyebrows and their teeth. I like people with perfect teeth. But I'll still be cool to you if your grill's f'd up.

Turquoise is my favorite color.

I have obsessive compulsive disorder and I cry if my house is messy. I hate rain.

I'M A SHOPAHOLIC.

I am half Puerto-Rican and half Italian.

I like to spray tan instead of lie in those nasty beds.

I am a clothing obsessed label whore with a very big taste for Balenciaga , Fendi , Chloe, ...oh screw it ...Mostly ANY bags. I dont wear underwear, I'm not sure I even own a pair... But I have a lot of shoes!

I had a boyfriend once and he was nice but then he wasnt nice anymore so we broke up. I think we still hate eachother. But I'm not really sure. I stopped keeping track. I think he left me for Jamie Kennedy. But I'm his number one friend on Myspace so you never know.

Various porn girls who've worked for Redlight District have gotten creepy phone calls from fans Monday who said they knew their social security numbers, drivers license numbers, and her home addresses because ClubRedlight.com publicly published the information. Monday, if you clicked on "trailers" on ClubRedlight.com, it went to every single person's model release, scans of their IDs, passports, drivers licenses etc... As of Monday at 10:40 p.m. PST, ClubRedlight.com was down to fix the problem.

Captain Carmen writes:

There are millions of lonely, unhappy people in the world. I'm one of them. The Internet has given us a 'line in the sky' to reach out and touch one another's lives. This blog is dedicated to exploring online relationships, sex, and society.

I saw a sefer over yomtov that asserts, quite boldly, that the reason men have unhappy marriages and are preoccupied with sex is that we were and are exposed to women. Either at an early, impressionable age (if you're modern) or during the dating process (if you're yeshivish), you've engaged and interacted with more than one or two women, and this will leave you with 'hirhurim,' or 'thoughts.' The implication is that these are impure thoughts which may lead to more serious transgressions.

The author avers that the chasidish method, where one is completely sheltered from any and all external stimuli, and married off young to the first girl deemed an appropriate match, ensures that the man will not be spending the rest of his life wondering what could have been. He'll know that there's such a thing as sex, and it's for procreation and it's a mitzvah, and that's it. He won't know anything beyond that, and his ignorance will be blissful. The assumption is that he'll remain in the sheltered community for the rest of his natural life, and will remain thus protected until 120.

My question is: Is this author correct? Can I blame my 'problems' on exposure?

Chaim Amalek blogs:

Look at that picture of me over on the left. Look at it - if you looked like that, how much of a social life would you have? Exactly - and that's why I pursue mine by living through others, on whose behalf I occasionally appear to do good deeds.

And that's what I'm doing right here. I wish to make the case that my friend Holly (at least I hope she's my friend, although she has not marked me as such on her profile) should marry Man of the Hour Luke. I first met Holly at a Halloween party she threw last October. I will admit to having made a pass at Holly (as well as at her ultra hot friends), knowing that my chances were slim and none because, well, my chances were between slim and none, so that there was no possibility of her ever discovering any of my shortcomings. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When those of us there first saw the two of them chatting, I could see that they were a couple, and meant together for life's journey. And I know I wasn't the only one who thought that - since their first mating, the internet has been ablaze with commentary that these two were meant to be joined together and would be, but for the terrible systemic self doubts (I suspect Thetans at work) that afflicted them. So perhaps they need to be told this, and with greater specificity than can be had in casual social intercourse.

TEN REASONS WHY LUKE NEEDS HOLLY AND HOLLY NEEDS LUKE

(OK, to be honest, I could think of many more of the former than of the latter, but love is never perfectly symmetric.)

1. Holly gives Luke gets erections that do not require any medications. And Luke can fulfill Holly sexually like no other man.

2. Luke thinks about Holly all the time, and is in love with her. Holly is in love with Luke, and suspects that she was born to be Luke's wife and soul mate.

3. Holly is juiced in by birth to a world Luke had to fight to join. Just think what the two of them could accomplish if they joined their strengths to one another? The first couple capable of spanning all of popular culture and faith in one dinner party.

4. Luke is just days away from his 40th birthday, and obviously is in need of a wife to cook for him, dress him, buy his clothes, advise him on the social aspects of life, and otherwise take care of him. Holly would be a natural for this role, as she grew up watching her mother do the same for her father. And Holly has grown tired of her endless dating, and is in search of mating. She wants to settle down just like her mom and dad did when they were young.

5. Luke wants children. True, he wants Jewish children and Holly would not provide him with any of those, but she is young and fertile and full of life. A happy home full of little goyim would be much better than an empty hovel full of bad JDate memories. And Holly wants children, too. Not for her a future of Craigslist dates or adopting unwanted chinese girl babies. She wants to put her womb to good use on behalf of her nation and her race (pace Yggdrasil), and knows now is the time to start. Holly's eggs want good goy sperm, and Luke has the good goy genes to turn them into fine children. 6. Money. Luke needs more, Holly has more.

7. Safe, disease-free sex. Luke moves in a demimonde that is rife with more forms of pathogenic microbes than ever were part of the former Soviet Union's germ warfare program. To date, prudence, condoms, and luck have protected him against viral infection (so far as he knows and has related to me). But it is only a matter of time before his luck turns, and he encounters a vagina with his name on it. Holly too, is free of infection, but it is only a matter of time before she encounters a penis that's a smoking gun, ready to shoot sickness into her womb. I say these two disease-free people should marry and settle down with one another before either of their luck runs out.

8. Both have parents who worry that their child is still single. This union would fill each side with immeasurable joy.

9. Politically, it would heal certain rifts in the world that need not be discussed at this time..

10. Because if they don't, they each will spend the rest of their lives wondering "what if", poisoning every other relationship that they might have with others.

There it is. Luke and Holly love one another, and for that reason they should throw caution to the wind and marry - now. There would be problems, but what young couple has no problems? Luke would be without Jewish children, but he could always console himself with the thought that just as the adult Luke chose to become a Jew, so too might the adult children of Luke and Holly. Holly might be fearful that marriage to Luke would disrupt some aspects of her relationship with her parents (and their friends), but there comes a time when a woman must leave her mother's nest, and for Holly, the time has come.

Each has strengths that mask the other's weaknesses; each has weaknesses that could be healed by the other's strenghts. Separately, they are each weak creatures, riven with self doubt. Together, they would forge a tool for changing the direction of both their lives that in future times might be needed to do the work of empires. Holly, please say yes, and drive out to Las Vegas to marry Luke this weekend. (And Luke, don't queer my work by bringing up that Jew crap with her. Jewish men from Moses have found happiness in the arms of gentile women, and so too can you.)

Holly Randall Chat

I return her call Friday morning, April 21.

Poe barks loudly.

Holly: "He barks whenever that ring tone goes off."

She used to have a ring tone for me that said, in effect, "Here's trouble."

Luke: "I've still got my own ring tone?"

Holly: "You did before I dropped [her cell phone] in the toilet at the AVN show. I haven't gotten you a new one. You don't call me any more.

"Hold on. Let me just blowdry this one hair."

Twenty seconds later.

Holly: "Looking at your pictures from the XRCO, it makes me feel better about myself. Brea looks great. Who's the blonde girl you took more pictures of than anyone?"

Luke: "Vivid girl Stefani Morgan. She's stunning."

Holly: "She's cute. Not that it matters. If she's a Vivid girl, we can't shoot her."

Luke: "What was I going to say?"

Holly: "Anything brilliant?"

Luke: "A lot of people asked after you. I said it wasn't your scene."

Holly: "I'm not nominated for anything.

"Can I call you right back?"

Holly's famous last words. Forty minutes later, she calls.

Holly: "I figured I'd wait to call you until I was in the car."

Luke: "Do you look stunning now?"

Holly: "I do my hair these days. I don't wear any make-up. My hair is a nightmare if I just let it dry naturally. It looks like a bad eighties perm. I have the worst natural hair.

"Who got the drunkest at the XRCO Awards?"

Luke: "I don't know. I couldn't tell if you had ten drinks or zero."

Holly yells about the driver in front of her: "Lady, if you don't go, I'm going to kick your ass.

"I'm in the drive-through at Coffee Bean [Holly prefers Starbucks].

"Who won Teen Dream?"

Luke: "I don't know any of the winners."

Holly: "What are the categories?"

Luke: "I don't know."

Holly: "What happens?"

Luke: "There's no entertainment. People start showing up at 7 p.m. They start at 10 p.m. They're over by 11 p.m."

Holly: "Is there a bar there?"

Luke: "Yes. There's a lot of drinking."

Holly: "I've been told I should go just to watch everyone get wasted."

Luke: "Why?"

Holly: "That's what I said.

"I'm shooting Jenna Presley Monday. You have to book that girl a month in advance.

"I'm taking my friend to yoga tomorrow morning. I don't like being close to people I don't know, particularly when I'm doing yoga or trying to meditate. You know I don't like strangers touching me. I dont' like crowds.

"Have you done yoga?"

Luke: "No."

Holly: "The first time I went, they were lame. It was too spiritual. I started giggling.

"In bootcamp this morning, Chris took these awful photos of me running with buckets of sand dragging a parachute behind me. He comes up with exercises to make us look like the biggest idiots on the planet."

Luke: "A lot of people have abused me for that harmless line I wrote about you swallowing semen by the gallon."

Holly: "I thought it was funny. 'I love what you did to her.' What did you do to me? It was a joke. People take themselves too seriously. People get offended too easily."

Luke: "You are the one woman in 10,000 who would not get offended by that line."

Holly: "I love that thing Kevin said, 'You should keep quiet [about dating Holly]. She could lose a lot of work.'

"People are going to stop joining my website? High Society is going to stop buying my sets? How could I lose work?"

Holly orders: "Could I get a large non-fat sugar-free vanilla latte please? And a bottle of water?"

Luke: "You had similar concerns back then."

Holly: "Yeah."

Luke: "You thought I was out to destroy the industry and you couldn't be associated with that."

Holly: "Yeah.

"You obviously have a negative attitude towards the industry. I'm supposed to have a positive attitude towards it. It's mixed.

"Oil and vinegar."

Luke: "Did you get any guys emailing you for a free BJ?"

Holly: "No. I'm very offended. Nobody wants blowjobs from Holly Randall."

Luke: "I had readers who didn't realize it was a joke."

Holly: "My parents are going away on another trip.

"What are you guys doing? Rekindling romance?

"It's creeping me out. They're acting like normal parents. I'm not used to this.

"I remembered the funniest story about another humiliating experience I had as a child.

"When I was ten, my parents insisted I attend the Beverly Hills Cotillion to learn proper ballroom dancing -- foxtrot, etc. Because I was the oldest child, my parents tried hard to instill a great deal of culture in me.

"My mother used to always say that I had to learn horseback riding, tennis, good table manners 'because you never know when you're going to be dining with the president of the United States.'

"This is a formal stuffy thing.

"Looking back, I can't comprehend what was going through her mind when she put me in this outfit and what was going through my mind when I allowed her to.

"She sent me to cotillion in a bright hot pink spandex jumpsuit. There was a skirt ruffle two inches long.

"My mom used to shoot for Swimsuit International, a clothing catalogue. I guess she got this clothing from it.

"It was the weekend before Halloween. The woman who ran the class came up to me and goes, 'Halloween is next weekend.' I said, 'I know. My mom put me in this.'

"They made me leave.

"That had to be one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.

"After that incident, I made my mom go out and buy me a dress.

"I'm trying to remember all these humiliating experiences for my book."

Luke: "By the time I'm done with you, I'm going to have my own book on you."

Holly: "A friend of mine wants to write a book on my mom and me. It was her mom's idea.

"People are so fascinated with our story, and promise to pitch it to HBO, and nothing ever comes of it."

Jim writes me: "My partner says you need to stop giving Holly such attention! You need to ignore her if you want her."

Sundays With Plain Jane

I nurse my sore elbow (too many hours on the computer with bad ergonomics, going to the doctor this week) with a frozen bag of peas Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Then I stop by Holly's house.

We hug and kiss on the cheek.

"You look great," I say.

"Yeah, my hair's in rollers," she says. "But you like Plain Janes."

"Beggars can't be choosers," said my friend KB last week.

On the plus side, Holly's dressed (no bra).

I follow her into the bathroom while she curls her hair. I wrap my arms around her while she works.

"You better step back, I'm going to put on hairspray.

"We're going to find you a domestic submissive Jewish woman today," says Holly.

In my mind I sing to Holly:

I could change the world
With my little songs, I was wrong
But she has faith in me, and so I go on trying faithfully
And who knows maybe on some special night, if my song is right
I will find a way, find a way...

On our drive west, Holly tells me, "I'm glad you're OK with Plain Janes."

"I thought a dozen times before I included that comment on my blog," I reply. "I knew you'd see it. You're a woman in a thousand to not take offense."

"I get enough compliments on my looks to know that I'm desirable," she says. "I don't need to hear it from you."

We run down a list of guys trying to ---- her.

We find Santa Monica's farmer's market on Main St. "I'm feeling organic today," says Holly. "Do you think they take credit cards?"

"I've got cash," I offer.

"Not enough for me," Holly laughs.

We head for a liquor store and Holly hits up the ATM.

"Who's that man on the cover of the LA Weekly?" I repeat throughout the day.

"Are you going to pick up a copy and carry it around?" she asks.

"Yes."

I pick up a copy and carry it around. Nobody notices. I don't see one hot chick reading the mag.

Holly buys me a purple orchid and a carton of strawberries. She wants to buy me a lavendar water spray.

She gives me a sample on my face. I love it but say no.

"Because it's gay?" she asks.

"Yes."

"Try this," says a man and spray me with sagebrush water. I don't like it as much.

Noon.

"I'm hot," Holly says.

"I'll be the judge of that."

"According to you, I'm a Plain Jane."

We pass a booth protesting President Bush's wiretapping.

"You just wish I'd stop tapping our phone calls," I say.

"Joanna Angel really has it going on," says Holly. "You blog that she has a column in Spin. You blog that I have a vegetable garden."

We have lunch at the World Cafe. I get a two-cheese pizza and Holly has a Greek Salad and an orange juice. Holly shivers. Her nipples tighten against her white top and thrust out.

She pays the bill in a hurry.

We drive back to her place.

I ask her if she's got a steady dealer for her dope. She says yes but might give it up soon (she's been saying that for months). She's noticing big gaps in her memory.

"You have a huge drug tolerance," I say.

"Yes. I went to have four wisdom teeth removed by my dentist. He gave me one shot and said, 'I'll come back in a minute and check on you. That should numb you.' He came back. My mouth was still not numb. He had to give me three shots.

"He asked my mother afterwards, 'Does your daughter do a lot of drugs?'"

Suze said no. That Holly only smoked pot.

The dentist said Holly had the highest drug tolerance of any patient he's had in 30 years.

That makes me proud.

Holly might get a t-shirt for the next AEE in Vegas that reads: "I gave Club Jenna 40 sets and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."

They offered her Club Jenna merchandise for all her photo sets of their girls. No content exchanges. No money. Just merchandise.

I know Holly's not a rocket scientist, but she's not that dumb.

Holly writes later:

I just planted my gourmet lettuce. I can't wait for it to grow! And my first strawberry appeared! Of course it's not ripe or anything, and it's still small, but it was an exciting discovery nonetheless.

...Beauty is a very transient quality and I'm so happy that I don't have to depend on it. I wouldn't trade any of my intelligence, creativity, sense of humor, and a bit of craziness for a model-quality face/body. I decided the other day that if I died tomorrow, I'd be happy with the life I've lived.

Do I Have A Chance With Vivid girl Stefani Morgan?

Stefani is a deadringer for Holly Randall.

I met Stefani at the XRCO Awards Thursday night and we had a deep and meaningful exchange of ideas. In between, I took these photos:

Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan Stefani Morgan

Luke: who was the gorgeous blonde vivid girl?
Jane: Stefani Morgan
Jane: She used to be brunette
Luke: I love her
Jane: yeah, I read that on your site
Jane: Are you going to try and hook up with her?
Luke: no, that would be unprofessional
Jane: like that stopped you before
Luke: I would if I had a chance, I don't mind following Tommy Lee.
Jane: do you think she'd be interested?
Luke: I dunno, please God. Maybe if she picked up the LA Weekly.
Jane: do you like how she looks or is it the combo of how she looks and that she seems very normal even though she is in porn?
Luke: both
Jane: I don't think she associates with the porn crowd too much.. she just seems very nice and normal and classy
Jane: I wonder how she got recruited for Vivid.. just seems weird Jane: I think she is someone they are breaking in gently, like they did with Chasey Lain
Jane: they are grooming her
Jane: They've got something up their sleeves at Vivid with Stefani Morgan.. I'd bet you money on it
Jane: it might even be them that got the 'gossip' about her and Tommy Lee planted on Page Six
Jane: I don't think it would be farfetched to think that they are looking past the Jenna Jameson years and wondering about who they can put in that spot after Jenna winds down.

ChaimAmalek: She does look a bit like Holly.
ChaimAmalek: You should rent Vertigo. That's what this is about.
ChaimAmalek: Stefani is fated to play the role of the beautiful Carlata Valdeez
ChaimAmalek: It must be great knowing so many hookers.
Luke: You don't hate me for it?
ChaimAmalek: I think you'd make a great pimp
ChaimAmalek: Emoboy as pimp.
ChaimAmalek: "if you don't do this one last trick, I'm going to cry"
ChaimAmalek: "Bbbbbut, you want me to fornicate with your 400 pound friend Chaim Amalek. that's disgusting"
ChaimAmalek: Fat men need love too.

HollyRandall: hey it's funny when i first saw those pics of Stefani i also thought how she looks like me, but prettier
Luke: great minds
HollyRandall: c'mon, boost my ego and tell me that's why you took so many shots of her
Luke: She fills the hole in my heart you left.
HollyRandall: lol
HollyRandall: aawww

Stephen Michael Cohen's Former Attorney Leonard D. Duboff Sues Playboy Magazine, Author Michael Gross Over February Issue's Sex.com Story

DuBoff served as Cohen's lawyer when Stephen sued me in 2000. The case was dropped after Judge Ware ruled that sex.com belonged to Gary Kremen.

Here's the paragraph in question (the seventh in the story):

By that time, Sex.com was making a fortune, so much so that Cohen was able to hire one of the best-known trademark attorneys in the country, Leonard Duboff, a disgraced academic with a shady past. (Duboff declined to talk to Playboy, calling questions about his past insulting.)

Here is Michael Gross's declaration from April 4, 2006:

6. During the course of researching the Article, I also obtained and verified certain information relating to Leonard Duboff. I wanted to learn more about the lawyer whom Cohen chose to represent him. Specifically, I obtained a set of documents that indicated that Mr. Duboff had been a tenured professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, in the 1980s and early 1990s. The documents I obtained further indicated that Mr. Duboff ultimately resigned his professorship amidst allegations of plagiarism and dishonesty and evidence that he engaged in the practice of law in violation of his contract and in contravention of American Bar Association accreditation standards.

8. ...I attempted to contact Mr. Duboff to inquire whether he cared to comment on the circumstances of his departure from Lewis @ Clark. I had also been made aware of an allegation that Mr. Duboff was attempting to build a bomb when the explosion occurred which blinded him and I wanted to ask him about that. In late August 2005, I phoned Mr. Duboff in his office and left him a voice mail message...

Mimi Miyagi Running For Governor Of Nevada

Here's my long profile of her and her troubles.

Last Week's Porn Star Karaoke Pictures

Tara writes:

It was the worst of times (my Canon 20D suddenly stopped working and I had to use a $5 instamatic camera to take pictures coupled with being grabbed by disgusting old man, James Bartholet, at the end of the evening and having him shove his tounge in my mouth and rub his old dick on me while begging me to go home with him) and the best of times (Pure Play Media publicist April Storm arranged a huge whirlwind of publicity from two mainstream documentary companies to cover the Tushy Girls having fun at Sardos to promote upcoming Seymore Butts titles).

James Bartholet's MySpace page. Here's an excerpt of his self-description:

I'm fun, sexy, with a great sense of humor, passionate, creative, a great friend, and loyal. I need to be appreciated not alot, just a little LOL. an idea man, inspirational, motivational, and humble too, LOL Always up, always ready to party, and always looking for new enriching and fun experiences. Besides television and radio hosting, I also promote niteclubs and specials events, The main reason I'm here is to get people to my events, and promotions, and to keep in touch with friends and fans. So visit my site, or check the blogs to see what's up next. I'm secure, and stable Financially, emotionally, physically, and religuosly Please come to my promotions and parties, I'd want to meet you. One thing I've learned here on myspace is not to get your hopes too high. No promises, no guarantees. Keep it causal, and have fun.

Luke Ford Appreciation Day Coming May 28th

Chaim writes me: "Do you want me to agitate for a Luke Ford Appreciation Day to coincide with your birthday? Now I want you to hype it, and bring it to the attention of all your friends in ---- and your nonfriends in Judaism. If anyone calls you on the errors, tell them you were typing through the tears of loneleeeeness."

It was recently brought to my attention that I am going to turn 40 this May 28, and that nobody was planning on doing anything to help me celebrate this special - and grim - day. Not my kids (I don't have any); not my wife (I've never been married); and not my girfriend, either (I don't get any GF these days). Not my coworkers and not my neighbors and not . . . you get the picture. In short, if I don't do anything about it, nobody in the world is going to help me usher in this special day. I will spend it all alone in a state of morbid self-attention.

Thankfully, I have a life coach, Chaim Amalek, who tells me that if people won't come to my side on their own initiative when I need them to, I will just have to browbeat them into doing so using my media powers, which is exactly what I am doing here. All of you people who know me and enjoy my company are on notice: you have between now and May 28 to prepare suitable birthday celebrations for me. Buy gifts if you wish, but it is your time and love that I especially seek (especially if you are young and fertile and female and available for marriage). Advice too, will be welcome, especially if it leads to more gainful employment that I currently know through my blogging efforts.

Don't let me start my fifth decade on earth all alone like I was when my birth mommy died when I was but a helpless little boy. I want to know the milk of human kindness on my big day, and there are oh so many ways for you to show it to me.

The Luke Ford Gift List

What can you get the birthday boy who has everything that he needs, but not everything that he wants? Plenty.

For starters:

1. A job that fully exploits my talents and pays me accordingly.
2. Better housing.
3. A nice car. A '74 Lincoln with few miles on it would be fine.
4. New teffilim.
5. A shiny new esrog.
6. A wife.
7. A big screen TV for viewing my religious themed DVDs.
8. Morally sound DVDs.
9. A new set of clothes.
10.New Gillette shaver (kosher).
11.More underwear.
12.Spoons and forks.
13.Jewish books.
14.A holiday in Aruba.
15.A kitten.
16.A rope.
17.Gardening tools.
18.A set of capons.
19.Someone who is willing to translate my work into Tagalog.
20.Plant seeds.
21.Gift certificates to kosher vegan restaurants.
22.A trip home to visit my family in Australia, whom I miss.
23.Luggage.
24.Dental work.
25.Golf clubs.

Chaim Amalek: 'Which mitzvahs did you perform today that you did not perform yesterday?'

Nothing.

"You are like a rock hurled high into the sky, now in midflight, awaiting the downward part of its trajectory. Why oh why didn't you make more of an effort?"

"At the moment one prays the Amidah in his worship he intends the true unity, and the action that a person does below causes an act above, resulting in the copulation and union above. A person must hide out of shame for his Master and close his eyes in order not to look at the moment of copulation." (Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, p. 230)

Saintliness

Rabbinic literature is largely indifferent to the presentation of distinctive individuality. No document pays homage to a particular rabbi; none celebrates one man's virtue, reflects his thoughts, or recounts his deeds.... In all of the literature no rabbi emerges as central, dominant, or determinative; none appears to symbolize, guide, or shape rabbinic destiny....the virtual anonymity of person in rabbinic literature reveals a powerful cultural disinclination, perhaps an incapacity, to construct rabbinic culture and religion as the work of powerful individuals. (William Scott Green)

Charisma is not a personality attribute, but a successful claim to power by virtue of supernatural ordination. If a man runs down the street proclaiming that he alone can save others from impending doom, and if he immediately wins a following, then he is a charismatic leader: a social relationship has come into being. If he does not win a following, he is simply a lunatic. (Bryan R. Wilson)

(Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, p. 78)

The Los Angeles Times and Pellicano

Nomi Fredrick writes:

David Garcia, the Los Angeles Times’ director of media relations actually made a statement to Nicki Finke today, after refusing to respond to numerous other reporters’ queries: “The Los Angeles Times, including its legal department, has never hired Anthony Pellicano ever. This includes in-house legal counsel as well as any outside legal counsel working on behalf of the Times.” Nicki is polite in attributing the response to a “semantics game”. I’ll be so politically incorrect as to call it a likely bold misrepresentation of the truth.

Dan Kapelovitz writes in the April 20, 2006 LA Weekly:

Often called “the Matt Drudge of Porn,” Web gossipmonger Luke Ford is trying to distance himself from his triple-X past. “My life will forever be associated with the writing I’ve done on the porn industry,” laments Ford. “I still do everything I can to build up a name writing on other topics.” Ford’s other writing obsessions include the Mafia, the media and the mellow sounds of Air Supply.

Ford moved to Los Angeles in 1994. Three years later, after failing to become a successful actor, Ford became famous (at least in smut circles) for his porn-gossip Web site, LukeFord.com.

He quickly earned a reputation for his willingness to post almost anything about anybody, fact-checking be damned. He thrilled to print controversial items, and pissed off porno people when he revealed the real names of blue-screen thespians. The climax of his porn-blogging career was breaking a story about an actor infected with HIV.

“I interview pornographers,” explains Ford. “It’s kind of like a grad student sticking a stick into a cage of insects and seeing how they react.” Unlike most grad students and their insects, however, Ford has had sex with some of his subjects.

Born in Australia 39 years ago to the son of a Seventh-day Adventist minister, Ford has since discovered the joy of Orthodox Judaism. His religious conversion originated from an unlikely source: annoying talk-show host/moralist Dennis Prager.

Ford keeps kosher, observes the Sabbath and attends synagogue every day, but admits that his behavior often falls short of what his adopted religion requires.

After learning of Ford’s Web site, various rabbis banished him, an ordeal he details in his self-published memoir, XXX-Communicated: A Rebel Without a Shul.

Ford gets death threats, and often sleeps with a loaded gun under his pillow. No one has murdered Ford yet, but he has been physically assaulted twice. One porn journalist repeatedly bashed Ford’s head against a light pole.

Ford’s fast-and-loose blogging has also brought him some legal woes...

To move beyond porn and get in good with his coreligionists, Ford sold his Web site for $25,000 and created LukeFord.net. What he did to pornsters, he now does to journalists, clergymen and Hollywood producers, one of whom is in the process of suing him.

If that’s not living dangerously enough, Ford is working on a book about Orthodox rabbis who are sexual predators.

God help him.

Dennis Prager writes:

Five years after the most devastating attack on American soil, people are asking if Americans are ready to see a film -- not some fictional, politically driven, reality-distorting film by Oliver Stone, but a film based on the phone conversations of the passengers and flight attendants, on the flight recorder tape, and approved by the families of all 40 passengers -- one of the most terrible and heroic events in American history.

Did anyone ask in 1946, five years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, whether Americans were prepared to see a film about the Japanese attack?

If anything should be controversial, it is Hollywood going AWOL while its country fights the scourge of our time, Islamic totalitarianism.

I call Rebecca Goldstein's eldest daughter in New York Monday morning, April 17, 2006.

I emailed Yael's father Sheldon April 11, 2006:

Dear professor Goldstein,

I'm writing up an interview I had with your ex and I had some questions for you if you would be so kind:

* Do you believe in God?

* Why are you an Orthodox Jew?

* Was it difficult being married to an apikoros?

* Was it painful that your New Jersey Orthodox community did not embrace you and your family (perspective of your ex and your kids)?

* Why did that happen?

I got no response from Sheldon.

Luke to Yael: "I'm rolling tape. Everything you say will be used against you."

Note to self: Never say this again to start an interview. It casts a pall.

Yael: "Thanks for the warning."

Luke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Yael: "A balancer [her ambition between the ages of two and five]. Someone who balances. I really liked to balance on things."

Luke: "Can you make a living at that?"

Yael: "I don't think that's a career, but my mother was too kind to tell me there was no such thing."

Luke: "From age six onward, how did your ambitions change?"

Yael: "I wanted to be everything there was -- certainly writer. In highschool, I wanted to be a [philosophy] professor. Pretty lame. Everybody in my family studies philosophy."

Luke: "Did you have philosophy classes at your [coed Syrian] yeshiva [in Highland Park, New Jersey]?"

Yael: "God no. I discovered Descartes on my own [around age 15] and I tried to reconstruct his arguments. I found a notebook where I had tried to do this a few years ago and it was amazing what a muddle I made of it. Nonetheless, I got a lot of out it on an emotional level."

Luke: "What did you love and hate about Orthodox Judaism until you were 18?"

Yael: "I loved all of it. It's a great way to raise kids. I felt safe. I never felt pressured to do anything I didn't want to do. I never had to contemplate sex or drugs before I was ready to contemplate them. I loved the education. I loved studying the Bible. I loved how social it was. You could wander around and find everyone your own age and go from group to group. It just so happens that I don't believe in the things one has to believe to be a part of that community. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it now."

Luke: "Your mother said, 'We were living in suburban New Jersey in a claustrophobic Jewish community.' Did you feel you were living in a claustrophobic community?"

Yael: "Not at all. I liked the smallness of it. Now I would probably find it claustrophobic. As a kid, when everyone is in each other's business, that doesn't seem bad."

Luke: "Your mother said: '"It seemed to be a wholesome warm environment to raise a kid. My kids don't think so nowadays. They don't thank me at all.'"

Yael: "My sister [Danielle] certainly doesn't. She really hated it. There's nothing I regret about having grown up there. Maybe I'm not as cosmopolitan as I would've been otherwise but it is not clear to me that I would rather be cosmopolitan than to have had a happy childhood."

Luke: "Did any of your teachers say to you, 'You think you can do anything you want because your mother is famous'?"

Yael: "No. My sister had to deal with more of that. I don't know why. I think in part because my sister made clear that she didn't like being a part of the community. I can't think of any time that a teacher was mean to me because of that."

Luke: "How are you ever going to be a writer if you can't think of examples of suffering?"

Yael laughs. "Luckily, I can imagine them. I think I'm supposed to be truthful here, right?"

Luke: "Yes.

"Your mother said to me, 'They did not regard us as part of the community.'"

Yael: "That's definitely true. That I definitely picked up. Every Shabbos everyone else's parents would be invited to everyone else's houses and we were never invited anywhere except for my cousins. I was definitely aware that my family was not a part of the community in the way that everyone else's family was a part of the community."

Luke: "How could that have not bothered you?"

Yael: "I liked my family. I like that they had these other interesting aspects to them. The other families seemed boring to me. The parents all talked about boring things at the dinner table. They gossip. My family talked about interesting things and had interesting people over for dinner parties. That compensated."

Luke: "You're basically a happy person?"

Yael: "Yeah."

Luke: "Which period of your life would you say was the happiest?"

She sounds intrigued by the question and thinks for a few seconds. "Maybe college [she graduated from Harvard in 2000 with a degree in Philosophy]. I just loved every aspect of my days. I loved going to classes and having knowledge put into your brain as you sit there. I was dating a guy that I was crazy about. There were always friends around who were interesting to talk to. It seemed like everything was perfect."

Luke: "When did you develop an interest in boys?"

Yael: "I've always had one. During nursery school, everyone has an interest in the opposite sex. You all have your little boyfriends and girlfriends. I had a string of three who I was madly in love with.

"In first grade, people start to lose that interest. I never lost it. I always had a desperate crush on someone. I remember telling myself, 'You have to wait this out.' I wanted to talk about my crush to my friends but I knew they weren't going to be receptive. I waited it out for a few years because I knew starting in sixth or seventh grade, everyone else will redevelop an interest.

"I don't think I never had an interest in boys."

Luke: "Were these interests requited?"

Yael: "In the fallow period when people weren't interested in the opposite sex, they were probably unrequited because they probably felt that girls were gross. My nursery school romances were incredibly successful."

Luke: "What does that mean?"

Yael: "We planned to get married. These were the first men, maybe the only men, who were willing to make solid commitments to me."

Luke: "Was the love of your life in college Jewish?"

Yael: "No. He had an Irish-Catholic name and he was raised in an Irish-Catholic community. It turned out his mother's mother was Jewish. He was the most unJewish Jew you could imagine."

Luke: "How would you compare dating identifying Jews to dating non-Jews?"

Yael: "I haven't dated that many people. I'm a serial monogamist. Since I was 18, I've had three relationships [two identifying Jews] but I've never been out of a relationship for longer than a month.

"I'm dating someone Jewish now and it's easier because I never have to worry that anything he says is anti-Semitic."

Luke: "How old were you when you first published?"

Yael: "I was 17. It was a dialogue I wrote with my mother -- The Ashes of the Akedah, The Ashes of Sodom in the book Beginning Anew: A Woman's Companion to the High Holy Days. I was still in my Orthodox phase. It shows up in the dialogue in embarrassing ways.

"I published on my own in Commentary in 2004."

Luke: "What kind of crowd did you hang out with in highschool?"

Yael: "There wasn't much of crowds. The Ashkenazi kids hung out together. By the end of school, all the kids in honors classes hung out together."

Luke: "Were you always a teacher's pet?"

Yael: "No. I wasn't always a great student as far as being well behaved. If I was interested in something, I would really put effort into it. When I wasn't, it was really hard to get me to put effort in. I'm very talkative. It was hard to get me to shut up in class."

Luke: "How did your mothers novels affect your life?"

Yael: "When her first book came out, people were definitely talking about it. I wasn't thrilled. It was the cover that made my life difficult -- it had a naked woman on it. All the little boys in my class would say, 'My mommy has a picture of your mommy naked.' I'd say, 'It's not my mother who's naked.'

"I found that mortifying."

Luke: "I guess with the other novels, most people couldn't understand them."

Yael: "What?"

Luke: "I guess with the other novels, they were increasingly complex."

Yael: "Yeah. I didn't read any of my mother's books until I was in highschool."

Luke: "Which is your favorite?"

Yael: "Properties of Light. It has this incandescence. It sounds the most like my mother even though the main character is nothing like my mother. I hear my mother's voice most clearly."

Luke: "How did your parents talk about God to you?"

Yael: "They didn't. I can't remember God ever being mentioned in my house. I don't even know if my dad believes in God or not."

Luke: "I emailed him: 'Do you believe in God?' He didn't reply."

We laugh.

Yael: "That would've been great if I had got an answer to that one."

Luke: "Did you have difficulty relating to non-Jews after you left your Orthodox day school and environs?"

Yael: "No, not at all. I wasn't nearly as insulated as most of my peers in Highland Park. I had a number of non-Jewish friends as a child -- children of my dad's colleagues, mostly."

Luke: "Was God talked about in your religious world?"

Yael: "In a vague way. God was a hanger that you would hang things on. 'We do this because God wants this.' 'God says blah blah...' But the important thing is not the God part but whatever he says part. There was no real exploration of who is this dude God."

Luke: "Did you have a relationship with God?"

Yael: "I did. I still do. When I'm not paying attention, I might fall into having a relationship with God despite the fact that I don't believe in him. I always talk to God directly. Make little yells."

Luke: "Have you spent time in church and how does that feel to you?"

Yael: "I've been a few times, particularly with my ex-boyfriend, going to Christmas services etc. It was mostly boring. It felt like synagogue. Paging through the pages and wondering when it would be over. The first time I went to church, I felt really guilty. I went with a friend from college who was Armenian Orthodox. That is a cool service. It was all in Armenian. It really puts the Catholic church to shame the way it has been watered down.

"I started feeling weird, that I shouldn't be there. I was a freshman in college."

Luke: "How did you feel about the statutes, idols?"

Yael: "They were quite pretty.

"I don't think any of us understand idolatry and what the urge was to bow down to idols."

Luke: "Do you have any Christian envy?"

Yael: "I don't think so."

Luke: "So what do you miss about believing in Orthodox Judaism and practicing it? And not miss?"

Yael: "I miss Shabbos. I really liked Shabbos, not only about not having to work and not feel guilty about it, but the social aspect. Knowing that you're going to have this long lunch with friends and you're going to go to synagogue and see all these people.

"What I don't miss is the smallness of it. Having to believe certain things that you don't want to believe. That's what started to drive me away in highschool and college."

Luke: "How did your novel come about?"

Yael: "I got the idea for it in college with the movie Amadeus and these Thomas Mann books that talk about art vs. life. There'd be this artistic hero who venerates art above all else. He sacrifices everything for his art. How much do you sacrifice for people who depend on you?

"My mother takes art seriously.

"I thought it would be interesting to explore this from a woman's point of view. A woman has all these people who depend on her in a different way and she's so concerned for other people in her life. Her concern for the people in her life can be different from a man's concern for the people in his life.

"I wanted to write a book about a woman who took her art as seriously as any Thomas Mann hero but who's also an incredibly good mother.

"I started writing it right after I graduated college. I worked on it for five years. It changed a lot. The plot changed. Characters came in and out.

"My main character is a better mother for being an artist and a better artist for being a mother, which is something my mom accomplished too. I was trying to figure out how did my mother accomplish this."

Luke: "Your mother was very honest in her interviews about how bad reviews drove her out of writing novels. Did you see that?"

Yael: "I saw that very much. It amazes me that I want to be a writer given the extent to which I was aware that negative reviews affected my mother. I remember that when we were aware that a review was coming from The [New York] Times, this whole pall would fall over the house. It was like we were getting a death sentence. She was assuming it was going to be terrible and she was going to be really depressed."

Luke: "How good a medium do you think the novel is for exploring the type of philosophical ideas that your mother explores, particularly with her later novels?"

Yael: "It's a very good medium. See how abstract ideas function in a human life can be illuminating. I don't know if we get any answers that way, but we can view the question in different ways."

Luke: "What role did your mother play with the various drafts of the book?"

Yael: "She read many drafts. She's a good reader. She can be brutal, but you know she loves you no matter what. She would never impose what she wanted the book to be."

Luke: "Has God ever spoken to you?"

Yael: "Never."

Luke: "What have you loved and hated about your decision to live your adult life for your art? What type of real world jobs have you had to take to do that?"

Yael: "I've had to take many jobs. I was a bartender, waitress, secretary, wrote Spark Notes study guides to philosophy, did online editing, and was the publishing assistant at the literary magazine Paris Review. Only the last one would I want to put on my resume. They were all fun.

"It's hard when you see your friends having adult lives and their careers are going well and they have nice apartments. I still feel like a kid. I don't have a regular income. For a while, I had practically no money. If my book hadn't got published, I would've been at square one again."

Luke: "And if your friends want to go out to an expensive restaurant, what do you do?"

Yael: "I go."

Luke: "Are you an agonized atheist?"

Yael: "I'm an agnostic who has a really strong hunch that God doesn't exist. 'Agonized' is too strong. I think about it. It's not as though I've closed the question. I would like God to exist. I don't see it."

Luke: "Do you want to marry a genius?"

Yael: "No. This is something I've been dealing with for a little bit of time. Like my mother, I was always drawn to the men who seemed the most like a genius. My last boyfriend was of this mold. I realized what's the good of being married to someone who takes themselves and their own mind so seriously. Now I think I want someone who is going to be fun and kind. They just have to be smart enough that I find them interesting."

Luke: "How will you feel about taking your husband's last name?"

Yael: "I would like to take my husband's last name. This is not so much a feminist stance. I don't like the name 'Goldstein.' It reminds me of a butcher with a bloody apron.

"I like 'Yael.' It's unusual and pretty. It has an exotic Jewishness."

Luke: "You could never merge into the goyim."

Yael: "That's true. I don't think I would want to."

Luke: "Are you a feminist?"

Yael: "In the sense that women should be able to make their own choices and enter any field they want to. I don't think I'm a feminist in the sense of thinking men and women are entirely equal. There's no unified school of feminism any more."

Luke: "Did you take part in any 'Take Back the Night' marches?"

Yael: "No."

Luke: "Do you think Judaism is any more rational than any other religion?"

Yael: "It's more rational than Christianity."

Luke: "Do you have any close friends who are Orthodox?"

Yael: "Yes. I have two close friends from childhood."

Luke: "What did your parents expect from you aside from being happy? Can you put them in order?"

Yael: "Let me put my father aside. My mother foremost wanted me to be a good person. After that, she wanted me to live up to whatever promise I might have. I was a terrible student in elementary school, particularly in my Judaic studies classes. I would sit and play with my hair. My mom was worried.

"As a kid, I felt no pressure. I thought that all that was expected of me was to play and have fun and also be nice, but that wasn't pressure."

Luke: "What did your dad want from you?"

Yael: "I don't know. He wanted me to be well-behaved and talk to him about math."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about Jewish life?"

Yael: "The holidays are fun. I don't like the food. I don't like having so many dishes on the table at once. It overwhelms me because I feel like I have to eat all of them."

Luke: "How much do you care about what happens to the Jews?"

Yael: "I care a great deal though I don't know exactly what it means to care about what happens to the Jews."

Luke: "Is there anything you do about it? Say, read The New York Times about Israel?"

Yael: "I follow the news about Israel closely. I worry about Israel actively."

Luke: "Is there anything else you do because you want to contribute to the well-being of the Jewish people?"

Yael: "No."

Luke: "Do you want to lead a life filled with conflict or a peaceful life?"

Yael: "Peaceful."

Luke: "Your mother loves people being racked by doubt."

Yael: "That's true."

Luke: "I told her only some intellectuals want to live that way."

Yael: "Yeah. Not many."

Luke: "How would your closest friends describe you?"

Yael: "Short."

She's 5' tall.

Luke: "How has that affected your personality?"

Yael: "It's allowed me to get away with a lot. I'm just this short cute little thing and people let me get away with murder. I act younger than I would otherwise if I were 5'6"."

Luke: "Aside from short?"

Yael: "Enthusiastic, with a lot of time on my hands so everybody bothers me when they have problems."

Luke: "What do your closest friends have in common?"

Yael: "They have this intelligence that focuses narrowly on human emotions. They put enormous effort into being sensitive to and understanding of the behavior of people around them."

Luke: "What did you think of the TV show Sex and the City?"

Yael: "I did not like it. I was completely addicted to it and watched every episode. I found the characters flat except for Carrie, until she cheated on Aiden. I couldn't forgive her for a while. I thought it was fun brain candy but it was being treated as something profound. That irritated me."

Luke: "How many people react to you primarily as Rebecca Goldstein's daughter?"

Yael: "Very few.

"I'm highly protective of my mother."

Luke: "Are there any highly acclaimed writers you think are crap?"

Yael: "I don't want to get myself in trouble by saying that."

Luke: "Do you miss being around people who live their lives for God?"

Yael: "No."

We laugh.

Luke: "How often have you experienced the consolation of philosophy or are there other things you find more consoling, such as friends?"

Yael: "I do find some consolation in philosophy. Thinking things through clearly always makes them seem better. Maybe because no situation I've been in has been that terrible."

Luke: "How do you like the siddur [Jewish prayer book]?"

Yael: "I don't have much of an opinion on it."

Luke: "What about as a kid when you were forced to daven from it?"

Yael: "I found it long."

Luke: "What do you think of Wendy Shalit's article in The New York Times book review last January?"

Yael: "It made some points that were not overly generous. How's that for a cagey answer?"

Luke: "And to think that you were a troublesome talkative student. Now I'm getting the careful philosopher."

Live-Blogging My VH1 Appearance

My friend caught the East Coast feed three hours before me.

ChaimAmalek: Did any bleeders rub up against you at your seders?
Luke: I hope so
ChaimAmalek: Were there openly gay men at these events?
Luke: yes
ChaimAmalek: Did they make passes at you?
ChaimAmalek: Or are you too old for that?
ChaimAmalek: You know, in a few weeks, most women you don't know will think that the reason you never married is that you are gay.
ChaimAmalek: I know how you will respond. You will withdraw into the one world that understands you. ----.
ChaimAmalek: Do you want me to lobby Holly to throw a big party for you?
Luke: no, have pride
ChaimAmalek: Pride is for lions.
ChaimAmalek: There might even be a pity ---- in it for you
ChaimAmalek: You have nothing to lose.
ChaimAmalek: From what one can read in the press, Irans efforts to build an industrial base for the manufacture of atomic weapons is very impressive. And likely would be very hard to knock out. ChaimAmalek: But I still don't think they will nuke Israel. The odds of that are no better than 40%
Luke: are you watching me on VH1 right now?
ChaimAmalek: did I miss you?
ChaimAmalek: when are you up?
ChaimAmalek: Why aren't you more of a success?
ChaimAmalek: Shouldn't you have more to show for your forty years on this earth?
ChaimAmalek: I hate to watch this nonsense for a full 40 minutes, and I missed the first 20.
ChaimAmalek: JUST HEARD YOUR VOICE "sex has always been bla bla form of extortion" but no pic of you
ChaimAmalek: you in red tie
ChaimAmalek: white shirt
Luke: how do I look?
ChaimAmalek: bill mahr crap
ChaimAmalek: Not that good.
ChaimAmalek: But i did get a hardon
ChaimAmalek: Your tie is not tight.
ChaimAmalek: No suit
ChaimAmalek: Slovenly appearance. To lackadaisical
ChaimAmalek: Plus this black chick is nasty
ChaimAmalek: OK, you look ok
ChaimAmalek: LA-ish
ChaimAmalek: Not New Yorky
ChaimAmalek: You are racking up time now. Louis Anderson
ChaimAmalek: Fag rumors, etc.
ChaimAmalek: Very serious looking
ChaimAmalek: This should get you laid by young white shiksas.
ChaimAmalek: You need to make a tape
ChaimAmalek: You on extortion...once you pay...you never know when they will reappear.
ChaimAmalek: What's with the star of david?
ChaimAmalek: Looming in the background.
ChaimAmalek: And why weren't you wearing pants?
ChaimAmalek: What exactly did they tell you they wanted from you in advance?
Luke: they gave me a few pages
Luke: I memorized my facts and moralized it and spit it back
Luke: I tried to shine the light of Torah
ChaimAmalek: Is there are place more in need of light that the haredi communities of Brooklyn, where rabbis suck baby boy penis?
Luke: Would you say I am the moral center of this piece?
ChaimAmalek: Lashon horah [gossip] has no moral center.
ChaimAmalek: Why weren't you wearing a yarmulke?
ChaimAmalek: This would have been a golden opportunity for you to witness to the goyim.
ChaimAmalek: You just don't have confidence in your belief in God or in Judaism.
Luke: As long as this gets me laid
ChaimAmalek: Yes, it will.
ChaimAmalek: You can get laid by Liza Minelli, if you want it bad enough. You looked a little soft in those shots. Puffy. Like a man who had spent the previous night drinking heavily. Too many shiksas for you. They are ruining your health. Time for you to settle down with a fabulous woman your own age and watch one another grow old together. You can look at pics of her taken from when she was young and hot, close your eyes and imagine. Yes, you can think about all the men who got to ---- her back when she was young. I will do anything to win your soul over to Jesus. I am a pimp for Christ.

Broadway Producer/Attorney Abraham Borenstein

I call him Monday afternoon, April 17, 2006. He's in his New Jersey law office.

I know Avi's son and daughter from Orthodox life.

Luke: "How were your [Passover] seders?"

Avi: "Very late, very loud, very nice."

Luke: "When you were a kid, did you ever think of getting into Broadway?"

Avi: "When I was a kid, I starred in musicals in summer camp."

Luke: "In Orthodox camp?"

Avi: "In those days, the concept of women not singing publicly was not yet developed. In Orthodox camps, particularly Avi Weiss's family's camps, it was not usual to have stage productions where boys and girls sang together. I played in the major leads in West Side Story, Oklahoma, King and I, South Pacific. That's how I developed my love of theatre."

Luke: "Did you always want to get back into it, even after you became a lawyer?"

Avi: "Always.

"I went to a black-hat yeshiva, Mir on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. Even then I would sneak into Manhattan and see Laurence Olivier in Hamlet at the Paris Theatre. He won the Academy Award for that production. [It was filmed with stage values for the most part, so it felt theatrical.] That was a major rebellion.

"When I first started working as a lawyer, the firm that I worked for (Proskauer-Rose) represented the primary theatrical interests in Manhattan. They are one of the most prominent labor relations law firms in the country.

"There were various clients who gravitated towards them because they were so well known but they couldn't afford the partners. The American Dinner Theatre Institute came to Proskauer. I was a junior associate. I was assigned to handle the account.

"In 1980, when I started my own firm, they stayed with me as a client. The executive director of the organization was Jane Bergere.

"Between 1986-1991, I represented her Darien Dinner Theatre.

"We lost contact for a couple of years.

"In 1993, she called me. Did I want to represent her in Broadway productions? I said 'No, I don't want to represent you. I want to be your partner.'

"I got involved with a show called Houdini. I wrote some of the lines. I helped produce the show in the Goodspeed Opera house and theatres in Chicago and other places.

"Jane and I co-produced Metamorphoses (based on the work of Roman philosopher Ovid). The entire stage was a swimming pool. The water was used by the director as a metaphor for things that change and things that never change. It was nominated for a Best Play Tony.

"Two years ago, I was involved in a musical called Caroline or Change. It also had some Jewish themes. It was nominated for a Tony Best Musical. It was well received. It broke even, which is a good thing.

"This year we were involved in a revival of Glengarry Glen Ross."

Luke: "Why would you invest your money in something where breaking even is a good thing?"

Avi: "You do that for the love of the theatre."

Luke: "Why do you love theatre so much when there's film and television?"

Avi: "My experience with theatre is analogous to my experience coaching basketball [at a yeshiva]. When the personalities are in front of you and the emotions are so real, the possibility of making a mistake is so real, and the professionalism is so high, that it becomes a real experience. In movies (my one movie was 2002's Topa Topa Bluffs and my involvement was very limited), you don't have any real connection to the piece or to the performers."

Luke: "Most of the time, don't you wish you weren't dealing with real people because they are difficult?"

Avi: "I specialize in difficult people and difficult situations."

Luke: "How many Orthodox Jews are there on Broadway in any capacity?"

Avi: "Must be ten people. I can't name them off the top of my head.

"Broadway is a little inconsistent with today's Orthodoxy.

"I try to stay away from difficult themes that might be too overtly in conflict with Orthodox Judaism."

Luke: "How much does that limit you?"

Avi: "About 25% of the time. I don't have a problem with love issues or religious issues. I try to stay away from sexual issues and anti-Jewish issues. I don't have a problem with controversial Jewish issues. Houdini represents a controversial Jewish issue because Houdini (Eric Weiss) was the son of an Orthodox rabbi who married a Gentile woman. The theme of that marriage is presented in that show and is almost accepted in the show. I don't have a problem with the presentation of it. If the show became more dialectical about that subject, I might have an issue. There are several Yiddish expressions used in the current version of the show that I wrote."

Luke: "Do your peers in Orthodox Judaism give you a hard time?"

Avi: "I have not had a problem from the Modern Orthodox community. I don't think people I know in the charedi (fervently religious) community who know about it have an awareness of what it really means.

"I went to see the show Yentl on Broadway preceding the Barbra Streisand movie. I went on opening night, a Saturday night.

"There were busloads of Orthodox people in attendance.

"There was a mikveh scene with the redhead they [in the yeshiva] fix up with Yentl as her potential wife. The mikveh the girl is dipping in on stage, is on a turntable. She turned around, faced the audience and was completely nude and I can assure you that the carpet matched the drapes.

"There was an audible gasp from the audience. Half the crowd walked out.

"The very next week, they stopped the turntable from turning. You couldn't see it anymore.

"My lesson from that is that we are not going to do anything sexually adventurous. Let some other producer do that."

Luke: "Most of the plays I've seen on Broadway (all one of them) do have nudity."

Avi: "It's not that common today. You are going to see people in skimpy outfits but you are not going to see nudity, certainly not in mainstream Broadway shows.

"The theatre knows that a high proportion of its audience is not New York. It's the tourist crowd. In general, the tourist crowd does not want to go to Broadway and see nudity. They want to see high-level talent. The shock value of the nudity is 20 years old and not necessary. There are shows off-Broadway where you can see that, but Broadway is like Disney -- pure entertainment."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about your involvement in Broadway?"

Avi: "I hate that I don't do it full-time. No matter how inept you feel the person is that you're working with, even they are extraordinarily talented. You are dealing with the top one percent of performing talent in the world."

Luke: "What have been the highlights and lowlights of your Broadway career?"

Avi: "The lowlights have been that every time we've had an opening night, I couldn't go because it was on Friday night and I'm an observant Jew.

"The highlight was the first time that Houdini opened in community theatre in Connecticut. I was a producer and I sat there and sold T-shirts."

Luke: "Didn't you have a play that closed in one day?"

Avi: "I only lost $10,000 on that one. That was The Last Confederate Widow Tells All starring Ellen Burstyn. I knew during previews we were in deep trouble."

Luke: "How?"

Avi: "Because I kept on falling asleep. I have a pretty good sense of what will work. I have a good feeling for how long something will run. Just because something won't be a smash doesn't mean that my partner and I won't do it. Sometimes we'll do a piece just to be active in the theatre. Sometimes we'll do a piece just because we think it needs to be seen."

Luke: "Does theatre matter and why?"

Avi: "Theatre matters as a developmental process of a wide range of skills for the wider media. I don't think that theatre changes anybody's life other than the people involved in the theatre. But it also matters because there is something about a live performance that cannot be duplicated. Creating something out of nothing is a Godlike thing."

Luke: "[In his book Intellectuals,] Paul Johnson calls theatre the most influential artistic medium [for the beginning of the 20th Century anyway]."

Avi: "I don't think that's true now.

"You can only sell 1100 seats a night, at most. You can gross at most a million dollars a week. A movie can make $40 million over a weekend.

"I think movies have been [the most important performance artistic medium] of the past 30 years."

Luke: "Is there a generational thing with theatre?"

Avi: "Unfortunately yes. Younger audiences are not much for theatre and I don't think they're crazy about musicals."

"Musicals, and I mean this in a good way, are the dumbing down of opera. It makes opera accessible to middle-class taste.

"That's why you have all the controversy over the Rents of the world and the rock musicals. Andrew Lloyd Webber is controversial because he takes an operatic sound but the music is simple. He's trying to make it palatable to the middle class. The people at the top level feel it's too light, it's like fluff. People at the bottom level feel it's too rich for them. But there is a wide middle."

Luke: "Do you think Andrew Lloyd Webber is an abomination?"

Avi: "Hardly. If the King James Bible is an abomination for making the Bible accessible, then he's an abomination. But if it is the ability to disseminate, then it's the opposite of an abomination.

"It is like, l'havdil (as it were) some of the Art Scroll translation works of classic Jewish texts. To the Charedi crowd, they are the dumbing down of classical Jewish works for the masses. To the less educated, they open the secrets of Jewish education and have the natural tendency to expand interest and learning. I do not think the Daf Yomi (daily learning of a folio of Talmud) and Siyum Hashas would have the incredible worldwide impact they are having without the Art Scroll Talmud translations. Webber has had the same effect for music appreciation. I think if Webber knew he was being compared to Art Scroll, he would plotz, and Rabbi's Zlotowitz and Sherman (the General Editors of Art Scroll) might find it amusing to be compared to the composer of Jesus Christ Superstar."

Luke: "Are we living in a golden age of Broadway?"

Avi: "No. That was in the 1950s. We are living in the middle age.

"Live performances have become much more dramatic, more flashy, but nevertheless there's a limit to what you can do in a live performance. You have special effects but they are significantly reduced from a movie's special effects. On the other hand, in movies there's a sense of dehumanization from the film because the special effects have dehumanized the characters. All the fast-cutting has dehumanized the characters. You don't have the camera slowly going into the actor. That has taken away from the dramatic focus on the actor. That's one reason why the HBO series are so successful because they give the actor more opportunity to act."

Luke: "How do your kids feel about Broadway?"

Avi: "I took them to see their first Broadway show when my son was nine and my daughter was six -- Les Miserables. They saw it three times. They loved it. They did a lot of Broadway. As the eighties became the nineties and the music changed, they began to feel not as close to it."

I Read A Novel That Reminds Me Of Holly

Binnie Kirshenbaum writes in A Disturbance in One Place about a married woman who carries on simultaneous affairs with a professor, a multi-media artist and the love of her life:

If there is one thing I excel at, it is giving head. I give good head. No, I give great head. I'm a professional when it comes to performing oral sex.

...Giving great head compensates for giving a lousy hand-job.

...He moans, and my mouth, open, wet, and eager, swoops over him.

How gratifying to have my praises sung! Cries of ecstasy! He pleads for me to stop, to go, more, oh please, and his eyes roll back in his head. "I can't hold it, babe," he says, and his gob jets into my mouth. I swallow, and it shimmies down my esophagus the way an oyster would. Like the oyster, it, too, is an acquired taste.

...Find a husband who is absorbed with his career, with a sport, or with a mistress.

Adultery is next to impossible if your husband is like a pet ferret, snooping, sniffing, curious. Also, it won't work if your husband is possessive and insecure.

Find a husband with a cold streak.

Keep your adultery clean, your stories streamlined.

Mosquito Coast

I'm reading Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast. It's terrific. The movie should've been terrific. It was directed by Peter Weir. But it doesn't work. Sorta like the relationship I had with the woman I took to this movie in my 1966 VW Bug on the evening of Jan. 1, 1986.

We both worked at this AM/FM radio station in the Sacramento area.

I was 19. She was about 29 and the married but separated mother of a toddler.

My station was covering a basketball tournament at my former highschool. I felt like a big shot as I walked around. I got more respect then than I ever got while in highschool.

The woman flirted with me. She'd only come to the tournament at my invitation.

She was hot. She was sexy. She was brunette.

She confided in me about her marital troubles and why she was getting divorced.

She told me to call her when I got back to the station that night.

I called. She invited me to the apartment.

It was New Year's Eve.

All evening I'd been sure I was about to lose my virginity.

Because of my nerves, I kept drinking water.

When I got to her apartment, my hands were like ice (because my adrenalin was pumping, my blood had pooled around my heart and fled from my extremities). I had to keep using her bathroom. I tried to warm my hands under the hot water. It didn't work.

We watched Dick Clark's New Year's celebration on TV. I had no interest in the TV program but I had every interest in losing my virginity.

She checked to make sure her baby is asleep. She put on dance music. Then she stripped for me.

I was awed. No woman had done this for me. The furthest I'd gone with a woman was briefly rubbing her breast over her clothing at an INXS concert in the summer of 1985.

"What do you think?" she asked after her strip show.

"You're amazing," I stuttered.

I lay on the couch. She jumped on me.

I turned her around and went right for her breasts with my hands of ice. She screamed and moved me off.

I got no further.

The next night I took her to Mosquito Coast but all I got at the end of the night was a chaste peck on the cheek.

We'd earlier made plans to have dinner at my place Friday night (my parents were out of town). I had asked several of my friends about the risk of heterosexual AIDS. I was sure this evening, this Sabbath evening, would end my unwanted virgnity.

She left a message with a vague reason for not making it.

In reply, I left her a message of sexual yearning.

At the radio station Monday morning, she pulled me aside and said her husband heard my message and that he had a gun and he's looking for me because he wants to kill me.

I never met her husband. I never have sex with her. In fact, I don't have sex for more than three years. It's eight years until I have my second sexual partner. Then in a year I had about 20.

I say I respect women and value them for their values and conversation and all that, but unless I exclusively penetrate a woman I want, I can't bear to spend that much time with her.

I'll Be On VH1's Hollywood Blackmail Special Monday 9pm

In our celebrity-obsessed culture, people will do anything to infiltrate the world of the Hollywood elite. But for some, getting inside that sacred circle isn't just about seeking autographs and snapshots of their favorite stars. They're searching for a shakedown.

In VH1 News Presents: Hollywood Blackmail, VH1 News goes inside the shadow world of extortionists and con-men who prey on the rich and famous. And we show what celebs are doing to protect themselves from being victimized.

How do potential blackmailers infiltrate the celebrity world? How can a trusted employee become a celebrity's worst nightmare? How does a sexual dalliance turn into the ultimate "dangerous liason"?

Celebs ranging from Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis, celebutante Paris Hilton, singer Celine Dion & husband Rene Angelil, and Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley have all been targeted by greedy predators looking to score a buck.

An Orthodox friend writes me Wednesday afternoon: "I hope... this will be the year that you will break free from the bondage of, well, you know."

Wednesday evening. I step into a home for the first Passover seder. It's filled with strangers. Only my host have I spoken to -- and that was over the phone.

I look around the room and feel rising panic as I can find no books (there are huge picture books but nothing I can take with me to the table to help me through the long meal). I'm such an idiot for leaving that Binnie Kirshenbaum novel (A Disturbance in One Place) at home.

I sit by guys from a gay synagogue. Instead of the traditional four types of children in their seder, their gay shul has evolved a ritual of the four different types of parents (based on how they react to their children coming out).

The host explains that the inserts in our haggadot (books telling of the order of the meal and how it symbolizes the Jewish exodus from Egypt) came from a particularly PC time of her life.

I sit near three guys who are converting to Judaism.

During the seder, we're required to drink four cups of wine (though grape juice is allowed as a substitute). I only drink grape juice. "I'd rather date a young beautiful shiksa than drink a cup of wine," I explain to widespread laughter.

When the food comes out (about two hours into the ceremony), I explain that I'm a vegetarian and would rather kiss a beautiful young shiksa full on the lips than eat meat.

When the vegetables come out, I explain that I'd rather run my fingers through the silky golden locks on a shiksa than eat vegetables.

By this time, I'm feeling good. The grape juice has gone to my head. Every five minutes, I announce specific variation of things I would rather do with hot young shiksas (of legal age) than the odious option before me.

"You'd rather slip into a hot tub with two beautiful young shiksas and sip champagne than..." says a wife getting into the swing of things.

I seize the opportunity to discourse on my history with shiksas. "Every time I kiss a shiksa," I wail, "I feel my yiddishe neshama (soul) dying" (Chaim Amalek).

"I date Jewish women. I try to meld my life with theirs but they won't put up with my poverty, my hovel, my serial-killer van and my scandalous reputation."

When I finish, a mother says there is no way she's introducing me to her 19-year old daughter. It's the "scandalous reputation" bit that most bothers her.

"If You Don't Offer Your Daughter Up To Me, You're Giving Hitler Posthumous Victories," is not exactly what I replied, but that's the essence of it.

"I've made some mistakes," I admit, "but it was from a misguided enthusiasm for God and Torah. I realize in retrospect that some of the ways I went about repairing the shattered vessels were not quite kosher but I am a different man now. I can see clearly now the rain is gone."

Our host skips my favorite part of the seder -- where we open the door and ask God to pour out his wrath on the goyim.

("Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not, and upon the kingdoms that call not upon Thy name. For they have devoured Jacob, and laid waste his habitation" [Psalm 79:6-7].).

"That's the philosophy behind my love life," I explain. "By dating shiksas, I'm executing God's wrath on the goyim. I am delivering divine karma (Rabbi Mordecai Finley)."

"I'll never forget this seder," says a man.

We open the door for Elijah and, in a feminist touch, for the prophetess Miriam.

"Enough about me," I say. "I don't like attention. In fact, I'd rather embrace a hot young shiksa and lock my lips to hers and intertwine my limbs with hers and interpenetrate our lives than talk about myself."

Thursday. 7 p.m. Temple Sinai in Westwood. I'm here for the ATID seder (21-39). I've shelled out $36 for the dinner. I have six more weeks before I turn 40.

I look around at all the women and start approaching some. The first one turns out to be a rabbi newly married to Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei. She's taken his last name. That's true love.

The second and third ladies I chat up turn out to be the girlfriends of the two-man band Justin and Jared Stein.

Then I find a group of academics. I get excited. "I have a fetish for academics!" I announce. They look at me strangely. I stick to them like a loser for the rest of the night. I volunteer to get the jug of water and conduct the hand washing. I spill lots of water on the chicks. It's part of my evil plan. Two of them get up and leave.

I get stuck into one PhD in the sciences. I barrage her with questions until she breaks into tears and flees from the room. Her fellow PhD friend leaves with her.

I then hit on fitness model Ilyse Baker. I announce that I can kick her ass. I probably meant "kiss her ass."

She blows me off.

Undiscouraged, I hit anew on a PhD who blew me off definitively at the time of my first 60 Minutes appearance (November 2003). She's polite to me. She says she's polite to everyone. Then she gets up and politely leaves.

Rob writes:

Rum and I've been talking and we agree that you as a game show host would be a natural. You're an affable, well-spoken chap who could easily fill the void left by the late, Richard Dawson.

Of course, the show would have to be salacious. No one would ever watch a Jewish game show. What would you call such a thing -- "You Paid Retail?"

The ultimate Luke Ford game show would be the "What Crowd Did You Hang Out With In High School?" game. It's his favorite question next to, "You don't expect me to pay for lunch do you?"

Friday, April 14. 6:50 p.m. Evangelist Heather Veitch (hot blonde shiksa from JCsgirls.com) and I walk up to Sinai Temple. It's only her second time inside a shul.

Men who would otherwise not talk to me come up and make conversation with us. Heather is married and wears a big fat ring.

There seem to be a disproportionate number of retarded men at Friday Night Live. They are understandably desperate for female attention but have no chance of any except the negative kind.

Tonight's its Jewish gospel music with Joshua Nelson and his band. The five new blacks on the bima (pulpit) liven up the honky davening (prayer).

"Jewish gospel music just like you remember from your childhood," jokes Rabbi David Wolpe.

With the big crowd on stage, the microphone situation gets muddled.

When Rabbi Wolpe walks into the audience to deliver his sermon, he wears one of those microphones that Britney Spears and other singers use -- hooked on the ear with a slender mic attachment near the mouth.

Rabbi Wolpe detached the mic from his ear and held the mic near his mouth. "I don't want you thinking -- why is the rabbi trying to look like Britney Spears?'"

He connects the welcoming of Elijah to our Passover seders to our welcoming of the Sabbath bride...and the importance of the invisible as a way of unlocking ourselves and others.

After services, a hot Jewish chick gets in my grill over my brief blogging of her.

"Jewish women are feisty," Heather observes later.

"I like 'em strong and feisty," I say. "I'm passive except for work. I like my women organized and outspoken. I like Jewish women."

Joshua Nelson gives a concert and there's stand-up comedy from Joel Chasnoff (the bloke is about 5'9" but says he played power-forward for his Jewish basketball team) and kosher-for-Passover food. While waiting for Joshua and company to come on stage, ATID director Stacey Zackin does an impromptu stand-up routine which bowls me over. I had her pegged as a summer camp counselor type.

She asks the crowd: "Anyone here from Pico/Robertson?"

A bunch of hands went up.

She asked, "What street?"

Somebody says Alcott.

"What's your favorite part of Alcott?" she asks.

"Where I live," came the response.

For some reason, I find that hilarious.

Stacey taught comedy traffic school.

Walking out after 10 p.m., I warn Heather that most synagogues don't have gospel music and stand-up comedy as part of their services.

The Dominant Woman

I interview author Humphry Knipe (husband to photographer Suze Randall and father of Holly Randall) about his book The dominant man: The mystique of personality and prestige:

* What are the implications for politics from your book?

HK: Profound. We have to be aware of the pecking order instinct that is wired into us and which makes us such easy prey to authoritarianism, whether religious (Islam) or secular (fascism). As long as we are human we will never be able to shake this thing off.

* How has it stood the test of time? Has new research validated or invalidated it? How so?

HK: Actually, when it was published in 1972 it was still widely held by liberals that the infant mind was tabula rasa - a blank table - on which anything could be written. The instinct theory was discredited by, for example, by Ashley Montagu in his influential "Man and Aggression" which was published in 1973.

The modern view is that we are, in fact, soft wired - we have an inborn propensity to behave in a certain way, but culture can modify that to some extent. However atavistic instinct remains only a heartbeat away. Why? Because it's the tried and true fall back position.

* Are humans just another animal? What distinguishes us from animals?

HK: Of course we are animals, smart animals although maybe not smart enough to deal with the power of destructive technology.

* What about the women? Your book is largely about men. Do women demonstrate status differentials in the same ways as men?

HK: We had a chapter on women but this grew into such a page consuming monster we dropped it. Thought of writing "The Dominant Woman" (I'm married to one, Holly is another). Could have, should have. Would have made me rich and famous by now and getting interviewed by the NY Times!

Novelist Rebecca Goldstein - The Mind-Body Problem

I spent 90-minutes over the phone with her Tuesday afternoon, April 11, 2006.

Luke: "I've read all your interviews. I'm going to try to not repeat anything.

"When you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Rebecca thinks for about ten seconds. "I don't know that I really thought about it. I didn't want to be my mother. Probably a scientist from about age six. I liked rocks and stars. I read science books."

Luke: "At what age did you begin to have an erotic interest in boys?"

Rebecca: "Oh gosh. My first love affair was in second grade."

Luke: "Was there an erotic component?"

Rebecca: "No. I just fell madly in love. It was requited. We were quite the item. All we did was blush furiously."

Luke: "What about as a teenager? Were you falling in love then?"

Rebecca laughs. "You really aren't asking me any questions I've gotten before.

"I was always in love with someone or over. I met the man I married when I was 15. We married when I was 19. We're now divorced. We've been separated for seven years."

Luke: "You guys became a couple when you were 15?"

Rebecca: "I was quite Orthodox at the time but for what passes as coupling..."

Luke: "When did you get divorced?"

Rebecca: "Recently."

Luke: "Tell me about you and God."

Rebecca: "I lived Orthodox for a long time. My husband was Orthodox. Because I didn't want to be hypocritical with our kids, I kept everything.

"I was torn like a character in a Russian novel. It lasted through college. I remember leaving a class on mysticism in tears because I had forsaken God. That was probably my last burst of religious passion. Then it went away and I was a happy little atheist."

Luke: "You haven't had flirtations with God since then?"

Rebecca: "No. My agonized conflicts have been focused on why should I care so much about the Jewish people. Why do I have such a strong residual attachment to this particular people? But no, God has not entered the picture."

Luke: "What was it like being married to an Orthodox Jew? You went along with the observance but you didn't believe in it."

Rebecca: "Since I was brought up in it, it was natural to me, but it is intrusive and makes life complicated, especially since I was a professor and needed to take all these holidays.

"I don't enjoy, nor did my husband enjoy, the Jewish community.

"We were living in suburban New Jersey in a claustrophobic Jewish community. Our kids went to the day school.

"It seemed to be a wholesome warm environment to raise a kid."

Rebecca laughs ruefully. "My kids don't think so nowadays. They don't thank me at all.

"My older daughter, Yael (a bartender and does other 'iffy' work), is about to publish her first novel (in January 2007). She has warmer feelings.

[The novel is called Overture. "It is about a mother-daughter relationship written from the mother's point of view. They are in the same field -- music. I read every draft and I think it is wonderful."]

"My younger daughter is in her junior year at Brown. I don't think she sees anything positive in the [Orthodox] experience.

"I tell myself there was a warm and intimacy to the [Orthodox] community. At least for the kids."

Luke: "Were you integrated into your [Highland Park] Orthodox Jewish community [where her husband Sheldon Goldstein still lives]?"

Rebecca: "I was peripheral even though I really did walk the walk. I didn't talk the talk but I did do everything.

"People were suspicious.

"When I'd bring up to my youngest daughter, Danielle, that it was a nice warm community, she'd say, quite the contrary. Sometimes teachers would get angry at her and say, 'You think you can do anything you want just because your mother is famous.'

"They did not regard us as part of the community, which was sad.

"I thought whatever sacrifices I was making, the kids were coming out good because of this embracing community."

Luke: "Did your husband believe in what he was doing? God and Torah?"

Rebecca: "My former husband, Sheldon Goldstein, is first a profound physicist. He doesn't talk about his religious beliefs. They don't seem to really fit in with his general outlook. I don't know. He is observant."

Luke: "He never spoke to you about the hakadosh barchu (God) once?"

Rebecca: "Oh gosh no."

Luke: "HaShem (God)?"

Rebecca: "No. Oh Lord. No. Nor does he seem to particularly enjoy life in a Jewish community. It could be just plain old stubbornness [sticking to Orthodoxy]. I don't know what it is. I lived with him for all those years and I still can't figure it out."

Luke: "How did you talk to your children about God?"

Rebecca: "They were going to [Orthodox] school. When they asked me questions, I would respect what they were learning and where they were at. My younger daughter was always very skeptical. She'd say, 'This doesn't make sense,' and we'd talk about it.

"Yael liked it. She's more gregarious. Wherever she is, she finds things to like.

"In fifth grade, Yael said to me, 'This doesn't make any sense. What do you think?' I looked at her and said, 'Do you really want to know what I think about this?' There was this long pause. We looked into each other's eyes and she said, 'Not yet.'

"So, on some level, I guess she knew.

"I wasn't trying to cause dissonances."

Luke: "What about disciplining? Would you say, 'God doesn't want you to do this'?"

Rebecca: "Never."

Luke: "God says, 'Respect your parents.'"

Rebecca: "I should've used that one a little more.

"I tried to reason with them. Or, 'This is the way we're doing it in the family.'

"They never questioned too much the laws. All their friends were doing it. It was a social thing. We're completely indifferent to food in the family. Kashrut never bothered us. For a long time, the girls and I were vegetarian. On Shabbos, they were off with their friends.

"Yael remained Orthodox until she left for college. Danielle left it much earlier. I had no quarrel with her leaving it."

Luke: "From Yael's essay [published about three years ago], she does not believe in God."

Rebecca: "No? I think she did in highschool. We wrote something together -- The Ashes of the Akedah. She was taking an Orthodox line there."

Luke: "Are you an agonized atheist?"

Rebecca: "No. The universe is fine the way it is.

"I never liked the idea of an afterlife. Everlasting consciousness is not for me. Let's just get it over.

"I have lost a lot of people I love, including my sister. I find myself thinking, 'How could such a huge thing as that spirit disappear?' I find myself puzzling over it.

"I adored my father. I believe he was a believer."

Luke: "How much of The Mind-Body Problem is autobiographical?"

Rebecca: "The most autobiographical part is my father. I wrote it right after he died. His dying had a great deal to do with my turning to writing fiction.

"Renee Feuer was not me. She was not even me philosophical. I was a heavy graduate student. I did the sort of philosophy Renee didn't do and hated."

Luke: "Were you married to a genius [as Renee was]?"

Rebecca: "He's awfully smart. I was never asked what's it like to be married to a genius. He wasn't a public genius. It's only in his old age that he's become more prominent. After that book was published, he was often teased.

"He's definitely not Noam Himmel.

"Renee is frivolous and narcissistic. I wrote that book after I had a child. I was a serious devoted professor and mother and not running around as she was.

"When Shelly [her ex] first read the book, he said, 'Renee's so funny. Why can't you be more like her?' I'm more solemn."

Luke: "Did you have any second thoughts about taking your husband's name?"

Rebecca: "Funny you should ask. I didn't want to take my husband's name. He asked me to. I was touched by his asking me to and I did it and always regretted it. I don't like the name Goldstein. It never felt like mine [her maiden name was Newberger]. It's a cliché.

"My latest book [Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity] I wanted to publish under Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. I had visited my father's ancestral schtettle this past autumn and I discovered that Newbergers had lived in the area back to Napoleon.

"Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is on the back cover. They won't put it on the front cover.

"I got a Guggenheim [prize]. The Times had the list of people who had it and it's Rebecca Newberger Goldstein."

Luke: "Are you a feminist?"

Rebecca: "I don't know. What does that mean?"

Luke: "Whatever it means to you."

Rebecca: "What do I believe? This is complicated."

Luke: "You don't believe in God, feminism..."

Rebecca: "There are differences [between men and women including] in our emotional make-up. I don't believe we should be circumscribed by our gender.

"I've always been in classes and places where I'm the only woman. I feel like I belong there because my interests lead me there. Maybe there are some statistical differences but we shouldn't judge the individual by those differences."

Luke: "Do you think Judaism is any more rational than any other religion?"

Rebecca: "It certainly puts a high premium on thinking, at least for men. Notice the slight bitterness. Talmudic thinking is rational and logical. Obviously you're not questioning [the premises]. Whether the rational basis [for Judaism] is any more rational [than for another religion], I don't think so.

"I admire its view of the good life, that it doesn't ask you to renounce anything good in life but to go with the conflicts. We're not asked to renounce sensual joys but to make them kosher. It asks us to wrestle with the contradictions in our nature."

Luke: "Do you find more to love [in the Jewish tradition] than to hate?"

Rebecca: "Yes, especially when I'm not living in a Jewish community."

Luke: "Do you have any close friends who are Orthodox?"

Rebecca: "My sister. Do I have any Orthodox friends remaining? Probably not."

Luke: "Were there any Orthodox Jews in the departments where you taught?"

Rebecca: "No."

Her brother is an Orthodox rabbi serving a traditional congregation.

Luke: "Do you discuss philosophical issues with him?"

Rebecca: "No. He only calls to remind me we have a yartzheit [memorializing the death of a family member]."

Luke: "How have your looks affected your work? If you were even more beautiful, would you have done so much work?"

Rebecca: "I don't think it's affected me. I'm interested in the phenomenon of beauty. A lot of my characters are beautiful. I've been criticized for that. I had the very ugly one in The Dark Sister. It's interesting to me the power that beauty has over other people and the opportunities it opens up."

Luke: "Has your body bothered you?"

Rebecca: "My body?"

Luke: "Were you obsessed or unhappy with it?"

Rebecca: "I've been lucky with my body. I'm very fit."

Luke: "You've never been obsessed with your appearance?"

Rebecca: "I don't think so. I've been accused of being vain by my daughters. I love physical exercise."

Luke: "Most of your characters are either brilliant or beautiful or both. Surely that's more fun."

Rebecca: "It is more fun."

Luke: "It's certainly more fun to read."

Rebecca: "I'm interested in the inner life and brilliant characters have more inner life. There are more ideas and more conflicts. There's no way I can be interested enough to write about a character who doesn't have a tremendous inner life going on. That's all that really interests me in my writing."

Luke: "Is there anything you want from your kids aside from their happiness?"

Rebecca: "I want them to be good people. It would upset me if they were unkind or selfish. They're not. They're lovely. I want them to be productive. My greatest happiness in life comes from my work."

Luke: "What's number one? That they be happy? Good? Jewish?"

Rebecca: "Jewish is not on there. That's their choice. At one point, I said, 'As long as you are conflicted about it, that's all I care.' Happiness and kindness [are her twin priorities]."

Luke: "Did any of your philosophical training help you raise happy mentchy kids?"

Rebecca: "Yes. I believe in objectivity, in trying to see one's own life as objectively as possible, and not give too much weight that you happen to be yourself and want the things you want, but to be trying out different points of view and seeing how things look to different people."

Rebecca recommends Thomas Nagel's book The Possibility of Altruism. "Nagel may be the preeminent philosopher of his generation.

"At whatever level the [children] were at, I would share more of my ethical outlook. I never mentioned where it came from.

"When Yael was in her sophomore year at college, she took a tutorial that was highly influenced by Nagel. She called me up one day and said, 'Did you raise me according to that book?' I had to confess I did.

"When I told Tom Nagel, he wasn't all that pleased. He didn't want anyone to take him that seriously.

"Her intuition was so in line that she could always guess the next move, better than the guy who was teaching it."

Luke: "I was amazed that you almost gave up writing after Mazel got mixed reviews."

From the Nov 8, 2000 Princeton Alumni Weekly: "I had decided to give up writing. I was very demoralized by the reaction of some critics. To me they just felt malicious and cruel. I felt so exposed to ill-will, which is something I avoid like the plague in my life."

Rebecca: "I said that after [2001's] Properties of Light too. I haven't written a novel since then. I felt that this is not a rational thing to keep doing, to keep writing these novels. Since then, I've written two nonfiction books.

"I do keep having ideas for novels. Some day.

"The novels I was interested in writing were getting more and more complicated.

"People have talked about adapting Properties of Light for the stage or the movies.

"You are so exposed [when you write novels]. It's excruciating. It gets worse and worse. I get more and more sensitive."

Luke: "You've seen a bit of Jewish life around the world and around the United States."

Rebecca: "I've even been a scholar in residence at various synagogues."

We laugh.

Rebecca: "I always feel like a terrible fraud."

Luke: "Judaism's in trouble.

"What fills you with optimism and what fills you with pessimism when you see Jewish life firsthand?"

Rebecca: "Things seem to be getting better for women. Some of the best new Biblical criticism comes from women. There's also a move towards fundamentalism. I don't like to see Jews not wrestling with faith. I don't like to see them withdrawing from the world. The minimizing of conflict is a bad sign. As much as one believes, it's always a bad thing to lose the ability to imagine what the world is like for someone who does not share your belief."

Luke: "When you say that you wished Jews wrestled more with their religion, you are wishing that they'd be more like you. Only intellectuals struggle with these things."

Rebecca: "Maybe. Jews have an intellectual religion."

Luke: "Only a minority of intellectuals will want to struggle about their religion."

Rebecca: "To the extent that you don't struggle with your religion, that's not a good thing. There's an absolute statement. When it just becomes a set of answers... Certainty doesn't belong [in religion] except for the moral laws between man and man. Frankly, I don't think we need religion for that. We need The Possibility of Altruism."

Luke: "Very few people want to lead lives filled with conflict."

Rebecca: "True. That does sadden me. Any attempts against ghettoization make me happy. It may not increase our comfort but rather our humanity."

Luke: "Only intellectuals are going to go for that."

Rebecca: "I have a high estimation of people's abilities. People need encouragement. Being beaten by the drums of our leaders, our politicians, this absence of all questioning is having a bad effect."

Luke: "You think people are not questioning because George Bush and our political leaders don't question much?"

Rebecca: "It's reciprocal. They need one another.

"It's a scary time.

"Twenty years ago, when I was teaching philosophy, the cultural outlook was different.

"There seems to be a retreat away from large questions. It particularly upsets me when it comes from Jews, chauvinistically more. I'm still a chauvinist when it comes to Jews."

Luke: "How much of your life have you been happy?"

Rebecca: "For most of my life, I was fairly miserable. I was only happy when I was deeply involved in a book or in work. I'm a workaholic. When my children were young, that made me very happy.

"I'm very happy now. I feel like I'm living an honest life now. Even though I could tell myself I was doing [Orthodox Judaism] for high-minded reasons, I was living a tremendous lie and not able to say it because it would embarrass people I loved. I finally feel like a complete grown-up. I'm making my own choices.

"I have very few close relationships but the ones I do are very intense. But most of all work [as a source of happiness]."

Luke: "What are the qualities of your closest friends?"

Rebecca: "They have vastly different intellectual attainments. They're all funny. I prize a sense of humor ridiculously high. They don't take themselves seriously. They take other things seriously. I like a little bit of earnestness.

"I'm earnest. I'm not postmodern.

"I have a partner. He's very funny. He doesn't take himself seriously even though he has every reason to. His lack of self-aggrandizement is all the more laudable. He's very kind."

Luke: "Why do you ask so much of your reader?"

Rebecca: "I love novels that are always giving you more each time you read them. I'm only interested in novels that I would want to reread. It is my great hope to produce novels of that sort. There's a great moral quality to paying attention to something that is not yourself. Art ought to demand great outputs of attention."

Luke: "You're really demanding."

Rebecca: "I'm not going to apologize for that."

Luke: "I want an apology."

Rebecca: "Sometimes a piece of art takes a tremendous amount of attention and it's not worth it. I hope that is not the case with my work. Maybe that's why I stopped writing novels.

"I stopped reading a lot of novels when I started writing them.

"You're magnificent when you're writing one and a petty little creep when you publish one."

Luke: "The Mind-Body Problem was linear, but then you became increasingly nonlinear."

Rebecca: "I don't know why the stories took that form. I've always been interested in time. When I was interested in the philosophy of physics, that was one of my major preoccupations -- time, linear time, relativistic time and the emotional aspects of time. That's why so many of my novels have become nonlinear."

Luke: "Were you cognizant of how much more difficult that made it to read your books?"

Rebecca: "Sorry."

She laughs. "Now I really am apologizing."

Luke: "I could sail through The Mind-Body Problem. All the others, I'm pulling my hair out."

Rebecca: "When I wrote The Mind-Body Problem, I was primarily a philosopher and I just took this fling and wrote this novel and tossed it off. I wrote it in eight weeks."

Luke: "It was so fun. That's my favorite of your books."

Rebecca: "Thank you. Oh God, that doesn't make me feel good."

Luke: "It was linear."

Rebecca: "Then I wanted to do more and more [experimentation]. I didn't want to write philosophy in the way I had been trained to write it but that I could do something by writing novels. That I could bring some of my philosophical passions to bear. My novels became more and more reflective of the philosophical ideas that I am interested in. Maybe that is why they became more and more..."

Luke: "Difficult?"

Rebecca laughs. "Now I'm trying to bring what I learned about novels to writing about philosophy, meaning I write heavy novels and light philosophy."

Luke: "I have a friend in academia who argues that the Holocaust has made linear narrative impossible. Has the Holocaust changed literary structure?"

Rebecca: "I don't think the Holocaust is reflected in everything that everybody writes, not even everything that Jewish-minded Jewish writers write, though it weighs heavily.

"When I wrote Mazel and a few short stories that refer to the Holocaust, I was influenced by Aharon Applefeld who never writes about the Holocaust, only before and after. Also, Ida Fink.

"It's too enormous to deal with directly."

Luke: "Did you get dissed by your philosopher peers for being a novelist?"

Rebecca: "Yes. I had a promising philosophical, but when I wrote The Mind-Body Problem, I couldn't be taken seriously. I'm not sorry that it prevented me from having a linear academic career."

Luke: "Did you get tenure?"

Rebecca: "I did not. I believe the novel had much to do with that."

Luke: "Thank you so much."

Rebecca: "You didn't ask any questions..."

Luke: "That had already been done."

Novelist Rebecca Goldstein

I spent 90-minutes over the phone with her Tuesday afternoon.

Luke: She's a famous philosopher and novelist
Amalek: Why these interviews with boring Jewish women?
Amalek: Nobody cares what they say. Their day is over.
Amalek: I want to hear what the novelists and thinkers of the ethnic groups of tomorrow have to say: the Mexicans, the Palestinians.
Amalek: Not Jewesses.
Amalek: Ask her how a Jewess can be relevant.
Amalek: When she possesses neither pulchritude nor genes that other men covet.
Amalek: How old is this woman? How many children has she birthed?
Amalek: That is all I need to know.
Amalek: The rest is nonsense.
Luke: 56yo, two kids
Amalek: Why would you want to talk to her? Is this just to impress Monica?
Luke: she's a good writer
Amalek: But who cares what writers have to say?
Luke: tell me that is not a good story
Luke: to understand literature is to understand ourselves
Amalek: "The page cannot be found"
Amalek: So no, that's not a good story
Amalek: She has a really good rack.
Amalek: I've concluded that the only way for a woman to grow old with dignity is to have a really good and natural rack.
Amalek: I'd do her.
Amalek: Has she got a daughter for you to date?
Amalek: Be sure to tell her that Amalek likes her rack.
Amalek: I've always envied academics. At least those with tenure.

I interviewed sexy novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum Monday morning.

Binnie complains that people can't get past her sex scenes. That they are metaphors for loneliness et al.

She and anyone else with the same complaint don't want to face reality -- that once you introduce sex, that is the primary thing people will think about and remember from your work. Sex as metaphor only works for intellectuals and professional writers. Sex overwhelms everything else when you employ it in your writing or art.

Have writes: "Metaphorically representing sex as anything becomes more difficult when in the visual realm, sight is our most powerful sense and sex is such a fundamental part of human nature that subtlety of message is easily lost. This is the reason I dislike features and alt-porn. When you add more than just sex into your porn it becomes just a big waste of time and money."

Bornyo writes:

If as an author you want to use sex as a metaphor you should use the mating of animals or insects to illustrate your point, not sex between attractive human beings.

Most men, if we think about sex at all beyond how to get more, think of it in animalistic terms anyway: "black widows", "donkey punch", "doggie style", etc.

WillieD writes: "When Annette Haven got cast then booted from Brian Depalma's Body Double because of her porn past, I'm sure she was real serious about not wanting the part anyway because her part was "too gory.""

Amalek writes: "Sex has about as much relevancy to my life as does poodle tossing."

Fred writes: "I view sex as a metaphor for existential angst and eternal nothingness. Doesn't everybody?"

Amalek writes: "If I were you, I'd be making more direct deposits at the First National Bank of Holly than there are Mexicans working at Taco Bell in LA."

Robert writes: "Her sex scenes are metaphors for her moral laziness. Nothing more."

Novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum

She calls me back Monday morning, April 10, 2006.

Luke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Binnie: "Nothing. No job at all.

"There was one point when I was six that I wanted to be a doctor because I thought I got to see as many naked people as possible. Then I realized there were other responsibilities attached to that.

"I wanted to be a writer by the time I was ten."

Luke: "What were you expected to become aside from mother?"

Binnie: "I wasn't expected to become a mother. They didn't think I'd be good at that either. A teacher or a lawyer."

Luke: "Because your mother was [an English] teacher."

Binnie: "I was a smart kid. I did well in school. I was good with language. I could argue well."

Binnie grew up in Westchester, an affluent suburb outside of New York City. She has an older brother and a younger brother.

Luke: "Were you the overshadowed child?"

Binnie: "You could put it that way."

Luke: "Are there any similarities in the feedback you've received from childhood to today?"

Binnie: "Weird. I'm actually not weird. I'm perfectly sane and bourgeois. Some of my friends still say I'm weird."

Luke: "In what respect do they say you are weird?"

Binnie: "I'm not quite sure. When I was younger, it was because I did not always want to do what my friends wanted to do. The girls I grew up with, if they were not beautiful by nature, they were beautiful by the knife. Their whole lives revolved around boys. They didn't have any interests of their own. All they wanted to do was watch the boys play basketball or hang out while the boys played football. I thought it was absurd that the boys did things and we watched them do things. I'd have ideas about going places they thought were strange. They would want to go to Florida on Spring Break and I'd want to go to Romania.

"I love to travel but I don't go where people would normally think of as vacation spots. I don't like those things. I pick places at random. That strikes people as odd.

"The way I dress. I wear what I like, not necessarily what's fashionable. I dress up a lot. I'm not casual. I just bought my first pair of jeans in 25 years.

"I copy Sophia Loren. I wear really high heels. I call it 'Italian slutwear.'

"Sometimes we get attached to things we see at a certain point in our lives and this registers what is beautiful. I remember seeing those Italian films [in Binnie's early teens] with Sophia Loren or movies with Elizabeth Taylor and thinking they were absolutely gorgeous."

Luke: "What kind of crowd did you hang out with in highschool?"

Binnie: "Yech. My friends were popular, though I wasn't. A lot of my friends were cheerleaders. They were all popular with the boys. They were all [white] princesses, though not all Jewish. Everybody had lots of clothes and their own cars. I never learned how to drive. I still don't know how to drive.

"They were my friends but I was always aware of not liking them all that much and not having their values. I wanted to get away from them.

"They all had boyfriends and I didn't. I did their homework for them.

"I was in a [highschool] sorority -- Zeta Phi. I was even president. I didn't belong to a sorority in college.

"I wasn't a well-behaved teenager. I didn't become a junkie or go to jail but I was a fairly bad kid.

"My parents went away for the weekend. I asked if I could throw a party. They said no. I thought, 'They won't know.' There were something like 500 kids in my house. It was completely destroyed.

"I got suspended from school for mouthing off to teachers and cutting classes and letting people cheat off me."

Luke: "Do you stay in touch with anyone from highschool? Did anyone you knew in highschool become famous?"

Binnie: "There's one woman who I speak to once a year or so, but that was after lots of years of no contact, but then she came to a reading I gave and we picked up a little. The guy who started Priceline.com went to my highschool, but I think that's the whole of it."

Luke: "Were you cute in highschool?"

Binnie: "I don't know."

Luke: "At what age did boys start finding you hot?"

Binnie: "College. I looked the same but something changed."

Luke: "Maybe you don't see yourself as men do."

Binnie: "I never thought I was attractive. I thought I had an interesting face that it took people who were older to appreciate that it was interesting."

Luke: "At what age did you become erotically attracted to boys?"

Binnie: "Nine. That they didn't like me didn't mean that I didn't like them."

Luke: "Did you transfer those unrequited feelings to writing?"

Binnie: "I didn't begin writing anything sexually graphic until I was in my twenties. When I was younger, I was embarrassed by it."

Luke: "At what age did you lose your virginity?"

Binnie: "Eighteen. It was boring. I was in Europe."

Luke: "What gave you the courage to start writing frankly about sex?"

Binnie: "People often think that I write more graphically about sex than I do. I'm never terribly explicit. Any sex scenes I do write tend to be brief.

"I read Henry Miller for the first time [circa age 22], who I don't think is a great writer, but I found him liberating. I thought, 'You really can say anything.'

"I had a conversation with a friend about the same time about masturbation. We were laughing ourselves sick about it. I thought, 'Nobody ever writes about [female masturbation].'

"We realized that neither one of us had had that discussion before. That women don't talk about it the same way men did.

"That's changed.

"I thought I wanted to write a story about that, all the components, whether it is the joy of it or the loneliness of it. There's a whole compendium that is attached to it.

"After I wrote a story about it, I felt like I could write about blowjobs."

Luke: "Many of the blurbs for your writing stress that you are a writer on sex."

Norman Mailer wrote: "Not many young female novelists can deal with sex, the appetite for it, and the loss of such appetite, with such candor, lack of self-protection, and humor as Binnie Kirshenbaum."

Binnie: "I don't object that people say it, but I don't like when people can't get beyond it.

"My sex scenes are brief. They're never erotic. They're always either pathetic or funny. If they are meant to be the least bit erotic, they never get more than a sentence or so. I worry that people don't see beyond that.

"I use sex as metaphor. Sex is just one more way we communicate. Instead of talking, sex will say what I want the characters to say.

"That I'm an erotic writer or that I write about sex, that that's the main theme of what I write about, is just wrong and probably insulting."

Luke: "Sex is so powerful that people aren't going to see the metaphor in it."

Binnie: "I don't see how they couldn't. That's what it is. It's powerful in the moment but what it represents and why we do it and the range of emotions that go into it, both proceeding and following it, are just as strong... There's nothing sadder than sad sex. There's nothing more degrading than having sex that you don't want. There's nothing more comical than when sex goes wrong. It does stand in for all these other emotions. It all boils down to sex but that doesn't mean its only sex."

Luke: "I'm wagering that only professional writers and intellectuals are going to see the metaphors in sex and your average reader is just going to see the sex."

Binnie: "Sure. In the later books, less so. There's less sex. I hope that readers are better readers but I can't control the way people read. I would hope they could get more from it than just that. If you're reading just for sex and you're choosing my books, that's pathetic. There's better sex out there than mine."

Luke: "Do you ever get dissed for being too much fun to read?"

Binnie: "Yeah. That's a sore point. I'm starting to see this as a gender issue. Across the board, women writers are not taken as seriously as men writers. We don't have the same gravitas. That men write about war and women write about children.

"Often people have said to me, 'Are we supposed to take your book seriously or not? Are they comic novels?' I'll say, 'They're dark comedy.' Then I'll get a quizzical look. I don't necessarily liken myself to Philip Roth, but if I do, I'll [explain that] he's funny but he's serious.

"They can make that leap if I push them there.

"The better critics see it right off.

"Some read me and just see the humor. I don't think there's anything in the world that's funny that isn't sadder than it is funny. All humor is tragedy but we don't want to go there because humor is a more comfortable place to be. If we explore what causes us to laugh, we'll see it is quite tragic."

Luke: "Are female writers and critics any different in their reaction to your work?"

Binnie: "No.

"I'm down on chick lit. It's not that one shouldn't read for pleasure. I'm happy to pick up a mystery or thriller. Women especially (this comes from Oprah and the talkshows) have come to read looking for self-help and identification in the comfortable way, not in the examined life way. They're looking for inspiration. I think any book where the hero or heroine triumphs is by nature not a good book. They look for identification that is cosmetic. 'Oh, she gets depressed and eats a quart of ice-cream and so do I. She makes me feel better.'

"That's a dangerous way to read because it shuts us off from the true purpose of literature."

Luke: "Which is?"

Binnie: "To expand our world. To inspect the world and to find sympathy, empathy and compassion...

"This [Oprah approach] closes off the world. We want nothing but ourselves reflected back in the best light possible.

"The ghettoizing of literature has done the same thing."

Luke: "Do you want your books to be perceived as serious literature?"

Binnie: "Yes. I think I write serious literature. There are lots of great books that are funny. Nabokov was a riot. There is a ton of serious literature that is funny. I hope I fall into that camp.

"I write about alienation and loneliness and a loss of a sense of place in the world and things that are ultimately serious."

Luke: "How much of what you write about is a working out of your own personal themes?"

Binnie: "Everything one writes is a working out of personal themes. I rarely have autobiographical components. Making things up is one of the real joys of fiction. I'd be more inhibited if I used my own life. I don't think my own life is as interesting as the lives I've given my characters.

"Many people assume that all fiction is autobiographical. I don't care that people think that."

Luke: "What are the biggest prices you've had to pay for your writing?"

Binnie: "I'm not rich.

"I don't know that I've had to pay any prices. I love what I do and I like my life. I don't have any children and I don't care."

Luke: "Have you had any lovers get furious with you because you used some part of your experience with them?"

Binnie: "No.

"If I do use people, they either really like it, no matter how they are portrayed, or I've had people think they're in there when they're not... My mother got mad at me over a short story I wrote about a greedy family fighting over a will. I said to her, 'That's not our family.' She said, 'You and I know that but nobody else is going to know that.' She was right but there was nothing I could do about that."

Luke: "What are the biggest surprises you get when people read your work?"

Binnie: "With An Almost Perfect Moment, many people thought it was about a Jewish girl who wanted to be Catholic. It amazed me how many people did not know that the Virgin Mary was Jewish. Or that they did not understand the end and thought she had gone into a convent.

"In Hester Among the Ruins, too many people did not understand her anger towards Germany and they saw the final exchange as her being vindictive. I saw it as a justifiable vindictiveness. People saw him as somebody who tried hard to make amends for the way and she wouldn't let it go."

Luke: "These would have to be non-Jewish reactions?"

Binnie: "Yes. There were Jewish reactions -- how could she do this at all? How could she go to Germany?

"Some people just saw A Disturbance in One Place as a sex book, just a woman who had all these affairs..."

Luke: "Have you had the humbling experience of encountering people who understood what you wrote better than you did?"

Binnie: "Yes. I once did a book club that was all shrinks. They were insightful. There have been times when I've taken what other people told me and then when I was asked about my book, I used it.

"I didn't know why I had the ending of 'A Full Life of a Different Nature' about masturbation. Somebody talked to me about the end and I remember saying, 'Thank you. I didn't understand what it was about.'

"There's a degree of idiot savantism in writing."

Luke: "What infuriates you about some of the books these days getting rave reviews?"

Binnie: "It drives me crazy that the characters have to be likable [and the protagonists triumphant]. If we held up this standard, there would be no literature until the 1980s. People can accept that MacBeth was not a nice couple but in contemporary literature they want to read about nice couples.

"I don't want to read about people I want to be friends with. I have friends. I want to read about people who are going to show me something I don't know.

"When comparisons are made and it's said that this is the next Dostoevsky and you read it and it is a good book but The Brothers Karamazov it isn't. That hyperbole will bother me."

Luke: "What about these complex novels that only an academic can love that get rave reviews?"

Binnie: "I try to be open-minded. With all experimental fiction, no it is not necessarily a good yarn and you can't get lost in it easily. Most experiments fail.

"There should be some degree of difficulty in reading. This should come from pondering the characters and the dilemmas and the moral questions questions posed, not just from getting through it. I'm looking to morally and emotionally connect the dots. Other people are looking to cerebrally connect the dots."

Luke: "Do you want to call out any authors whose work you think is crap even though they are acclaimed?"

Binnie: "No. I don't review books. As much as I will privately say things, I feel that everybody has worked hard, even if the person is a jackass. It's always painful to see that about oneself and I don't like causing pain to others."

Mike Ramone writes:

For years, I'm been hearing sexually repressed religious right types throwing around the concept of "porn addiction," which earlier this week led me to posit (see Kudos to Kernes blog) - why don't we ever hear about religious addiction, if indeed such a thing exists? Apparently it does. Or at least the argument can be made that it does. Some quick Internet research turned up numerous links/articles on the topic.

There's nothing wrong with being addicted as long as one is addicted to good things. There's nothing wrong with hatred as long as it is directed towards things and persons worthy of hate. There's nothing wrong with violence as long as it is directed towards those worthy of violence. There's nothing wrong with sex so long as it is in the right context (one example of sex in the wrong context is rape).

Ira Levine responds:

Luke:

Though I rarely agree with you about anything, I seldom have occasion to dismiss an idea of yours as utterly meritless and nonsensical, and even more rarely feel motivated to comment on those of your views I find disagreeable. I respect you for your intellectual rigor regardless of the subject under consideration.

Today, however, you crossed over into the land of formal non-logic with the following statement: "There's nothing wrong with being addicted as long as one is addicted to good things."

Addiction is, by definition, harmful. It is that very quality that defines a specific repetitive behavior as addictive. Below, please find Webster's definition of the term: "Addiction is considered to be compulsive use of an element known by the subject to be harmful. Both impulse - control disorder and addiction involve loss of control, preoccupation with activity, developed tolerance and withdrawal symptoms following activity cessation" (Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1992)."

There are no "good" addictions. We might reasonably contest the matter of what behaviors could accurately be characterized as addictions, but once so defined, no behavior can logically be considered in a positive light.

Addiction is not a cafeteria from which we may choose healthy or unhealthy selections according to taste. It is a specific pathology offering no benefits whatsoever. To characterize it otherwise out of personal preference for a particular form of compulsion fails the test of intellectual integrity.

Luke says: That's not the only meaning of "addiction." That's "addiction" understood as "pathology."

From dictionary.com's second meaning for "addiction":

The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something. An instance of this: had an addiction for fast cars.

I remember when I was addicted to jogging every day. I know some people who are addicted to helping people and volunteering in soup kitchens and the like. I am addicted to reading books. These are good addictions.

Any time you develop a habit, you are developing an addiction.

Ira Levine responds:

This is what I call "The Humpty-Dumpty Approach" to lexicography. If you define any sort of habit as an addiction, we're all addicted to oxygen.

This way of thinking trivializes the devastating consequences of true addictions and strips the term of of its deserved gravity, which is one reason I cringe when I hear it applied to everything from shopping to ice cream to porngraphy.

When I see someone fall down, vomiting in convulsions, from the denial of any of these things, I'll be more inclined to see the word thus construed.

Luke says: I have no experience with these types of pathological addictions. I've never had people in my life who use or abuse drugs.

The Prestigious Thane Rosenbaum

When I read his books, I noted he kept mentioning he worked as a lawyer for a "prestigious" law firm. A Google search of his name and the word "prestigious" mentions he wons the "prestigious Wallant Prize for Elijah Visible."

Enough. If you feel your old firm or literary prize has prestige, simply state the name of the firm or the prize. The definition of the word "prestige"; is: "Widely recognized prominence, distinction, or importance."

If your law firm or prize is not prominently recognized, then it probably does not have the prestige you claim for it.

If you feel you have the truth or the fact, simply state it, do not give it advanced billing (E.B. White). If you feel you or your accomplishments have prestige, simply state them, do not give them advanced billing as "prestigious."

Fox Dramatic Series Faceless About LA Crime, Porn

Series Regular; Langdon Fox: 40s, feral, smart, wealthy, confident, with the messy haircut only serious money can buy, Langdon is a criminal attorney par excellence, specializing in working the system in favor of the criminal hierarchy of L.A. - in particular, Bailey Hughes, the owner of a huge pornography empire whose interests are well served by Langdon - who may not be working for Bailey but above him. Expert at pulling strings at all levels the criminal spectrum, Langdon handily gets both Lucas Reynosa and Bailey out of hot legal water.

Babydoll Update - Michelle St. Marie

She blogs on MySpace Nov 13, 2005:

I am a couple weeks away from homelessness. I will be putting my worldly possessions into storage in a couple of days and after that, I will be open to relocation and paid work pretty much any place I can afford to get to. I've kept this information to myself because I figured I'd sort it out before it came to that. I need a few things and I'm reaching out to my network of friends at this time for suggestions or connections or whatever. I need paid work. I can do lots of things.

Here is a smattering of stuff I've done. I've mostly included things I've done for a sufficient period of time. I've been to college for art and English. I've been a model and actress, I've been a pro switch; a retail manager; a merchandiser/art director; a bookkeeper; an office manager; managing editor and calendar editor for an art magazine; shipping manager; vault manager for a wholesale jewelry company; I've done video camera work for adult sites; writing and editing for adult and events web sites; I've managed my own adult site including doing updates, some site design, image editing, link exchanges, marketing., etc...; worked in restaurants and soda fountains; I am a master Photoshopper, I've been a cook and housekeeper; I've done maintenence and updating of toplists and other marketing type stuff. I have musical and artistic abilities and a ridiculous knowledge of trivia and a knack for research and fact-checking.

I'm people friendly, outgoing, and make friends pretty easily. I am smart, discreet, kink-friendly, honest to a fault, and I work my ass off. I'm dedicated and (probably way too much so--) loyal. This is embarrassing, but if you can't reach out to your network, what the ---- good is this Internet anyway? If you want to respond privately, please write to babydoll@babydollbound.com Hello Universe!!! I'm offering myself up to you!! Show me your stuff!!!!

Nina Hartley writes March 23, 2006: "Babydoll is, for the moment, living in New Mexico with her mother and step-dad, and is trying to find work. I don't know when she'll get to come back to Los Angeles. She had wanted to maybe live here but, without a car, it's really impossible to do so. It totally sucks, as I don't get to see her! We do the emailing thing, and I wish I had a job to offer her, but I just don't."

Nina Hartley writes March 30, 2006:

There will be no union in porn, at least not in our lifetimes.

Yes, the business is very crowded, but that's really not the problem here. One problem is the structure of the business: an ever-churning population of eager women and a dismissive attitude toward them. It's hard enough on one's ego when a womanis barely out of high school, and it gets worse the older she is when she enters. You should hear some of the stories that Vicky Vette has to offer about her early days in porn and the rejection she got for being over 35, and she's willing to shoot b/g hardcore.

Babydoll, through no fault of her own, ran into that implaccable force of age prejudice. Few people can triumph over that. There would be no way in hell that I would enter the business after thirty. At 25, I was almost too old, which is why I took two years off my age for the first 15 years of my career.

Babydoll posts April 4, 2006:

My mom's little dog is dying.

He is very old (120 human years). He's been my only steadfast friend since I was exiled here. I'm the only one who can get him to come out from under the bed. He can no longer control his bladder, and the vet says his quality of life is not very good. He doesn't seem to be in pain, but he does get very embarrassed and hides when he has an accident. We don't want to put him to sleep. I've been crying all night long.

My fingernail fell off this morning--I've been mutilating them so badly and this one finally just ----ed off.

I like my solitude so much that it really wears me out when I have to be social all the time and I tend to need to drink to become gregarious enough to do it.

 

On his revamped website, he bills himself as "Actor, Model, Musician, American Hero." Check out Kurt's Art page.

Jed writes:

I've been aware of Lockwood's site revamp for a while now and had been waiting for you to pick up on it. My favourite part has always been in Lockwood's bio where HE gave the finger to Hollywood!

I beg to differ, I think Hollywood might have given Lockwood the finger. However, after reading Lockwood's LA Vice script I've been tempted to steal it and submit it to the Nicholl Felowship in screenwriting, something of that quality should at least break the quarter finals.

Lockwood's 'artistic' pictures show even more promise, it reminds me of a time when I'd just bought my first digital camera and felt the need to put obscure ---- on record, light coming in a window, droplets of water and some out of focus crap that I thought looked cool, luckily I had sound enough judgement that I'd never show them to anyone and then eventually deleted them.

I'd love to comment on Lockwood's lyrics, but I just couldn't be arsed reading through them. Lockwood still has that artistic wonder most people left behind at 15.

Charlie Laine Interview

The Penthouse Pet for the February 2006 issue calls me back at 4:50 p.m. Tuesday, April 4, 2006.

Luke: "What did you do today?"

Charlie: "I did a catfighting scene for JenzDollhouse.com."

Charlie yells at her Italian greyhound Kobe: "You do not eat your treats on my bed."

Charlie returns to me: "Kobe is the sunshine of my life."

Luke: "Do you take him for walks every day?"

Charlie: "I take out to go to the bathroom but I don't walk him around the neighborhood. I don't live in the best of neighborhoods. I try not to go outside.

"I have my own studio apartment [in the Woodland Hills, Chatsworth, Canoga Park area]. It's small but it's mine."

Luke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Charlie: "I wanted to be a child counselor. That was because I didn't think modeling was going to go through. My dream since I was two was to model. I did mainstream until I was about 12 (TV commercials, catalogues, beauty pageants, dance competitions). At least in porn people are getting ----ed and they're open about it. They're ----ing their way to the top. They have problems. They don't give a ----. They don't try to be somebody they're not.

"Porn gave me self-confidence. Mainstream ripped me apart because of my ass. I have such a tiny frame and a big butt."

Luke: "How did mainstream hurt your self-esteem?"

Charlie: "Instead of hearing about how beautiful I was... When I first went to work for Suze Randall, I was scared ----less because I did not have good self-esteem about my looks. I knew I was cute as a kid but as I got older in mainstream, you start getting ripped apart more. 'This is wrong with you.' 'This is wrong with you.'

"In porn, they were like, 'Wow, that's great.' 'Wow, that's great.' I wasn't hearing all the negative all the time. They pointed out the positive in me. And I kept hearing it.

"I guess some guys are assholes and some guys have good taste.

"I have the polaroids from my first shoot [for Suze Randall]. You can see the fear in my eyes. I was like, 'Why do these people want to shoot me?' I was waiting for something bad to happen. My worst fears were ready to come true. Instead, everything I've ever wanted, especially since Penthouse came out, has been happening. I've travelled and seen the US. I have the recognition of that name behind me.

"I've only done five scenes in five months. I was doing two-three a week, making my living from doing girl-girl. I've been doing a lot more modeling the past few months. It's a breath of fresh air, even though I love the porn side. I love licking pussy. But my passion is modeling."

Luke: "Have you ever worked with guys on camera?"

Charlie: "I did one a long time ago. It came out on some porno gossip website a couple of years back. It was devastating. [The scene] was probably one of the worst experiences of my life. I had to get wasted to do it. It was strictly for the money. It's not something I'm proud of. It wasn't what I wanted to do with my life.

"If I could do boy-girl, I'd be making a lot more money but I take act between a guy and a girl so personally that the minute a camera's around or there are other people, ohmigod, what's going on.

"I get more pussy than my guy friends."

Luke: "How old were you when you got into nude modeling?"

Charlie: "Eighteen.

"I started nude modeling on the East Coast. I did a couple of workshops. Those gay workshops where you go to this big house and 12 different photographers shoot you.

"I had those pictures up on a profile page on 1modelplace.com. John Stephens emailed me. 'I can guarantee you magazine work in Hustler, Cheri, Penthouse...'

"I wanted to do more like mainstream and swimsuit stuff, but I realize now that I look better with my clothes off.

"My grandma knows what I do. When I go home, she's like, 'Have you done any clothed jobs lately?' I say, 'No, grandma. I look better with my clothes off. Sorry.'

"I came out here in November 2002 for three weeks and shot with Suze, Earl [Miller] and Stephen Hicks. I worked for Ed Powers and first did girl-girl. I moved out here in February 2003."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about being a part of the Adult industry?"

Charlie: "I hate the assumptions that other people make about you. I hate that just because we do what we do for a living, we're automatically judged.

"I do like the ability to be who you are. I don't have to fake anything around people at work. Everybody knows that I'm a pothead. Everybody knows that I'm goofy. I don't have to be Miss Priss. 'Oh, I'm so perfect.' I'm a dork and I'm proud of it.

"It was hard coming out here from a small town [in Wisconsin]. But the great people I met [in Adult] made me realize that we're all misfits. We all come out here. We all got no families.

"The industry is only as bad as you make it -- if you get into the drugs, the parties, and you do stuff you don't want to do.

"My famous saying is, '---- the industry. Don't let the industry ---- you.'"

Luke: "What have been your best and worst experiences in the industry?"

Charlie: "My best experience by far has been Penthouse.

"The worst experience was my original test shoot for Penthouse with Earl Miller. He made me ball my eyes because I was 'fat and a pizza face.' I was 18. Of course I had a couple of zits. I'm sure you've never seen me fat. I was 98 pounds. He's quite an asshole. He made me cry. I refused to work for him anymore.

"I'm at my heaviest now and I weigh 112. I'm almost 5'4.

"I didn't grow up dreaming about being a porn star. I grew up dreaming about being a model and traveling around.

"When I do promotions for Penthouse, I get picked up at the airport by a limo. When I go to my hotel room, there's flowers or cheese or wine waiting for me. Everybody treats you with respect."

Penthouse Pets often note that fans are more respectful towards them than they are towards porn stars. Porn stars at conventions get grabbed and pinched and groped and commented on.

Luke: "How did your family react to your choice of career?"

Charlie: "My whole family knows. My mom is proud of me. She's seen my life. She was bi growing up as well. When I told her what I was going to do, she said, 'As long as it makes you happy. As long as you are not doing anything against your own morals and you're making bank, then go for it. If I had the body, I'd be doing it too.'

"My little cousins know. One is sixteen. She sat me down one day. 'How do you do it? Isn't it weird, all those people looking at you?' I said, 'It is weird at first. Either you enjoy it and get comfortable with it, or you realize it is performance.' It's both for me. I'm not as noisy in real life as I am in my scenes.

"It's great that I am getting guys off without them even knowing me. They've never touched me. Just by looking at me, they get a hard-on. That's rad."

Luke: "How has it affected your love life?"

Charlie: "For the first two years I was in porn, I was in a relationship. It was very hard on it. You're still ----ing someone else, be it a girl or a guy. If they're not in the industry, it is hard for them to understand. It's hard for them to separate work from real life. That judgment is there that this person is automatically a whore. They do this all the time. It's not just their job.

"On the other side, there are a lot of people who want to sleep with Charlie Laine, but there aren't a lot of people who want to sleep with [her real name].

"It has been hard but it's given me the self-esteem not to settle. I don't bang random. I think that's disgusting. A guy has to work to sleep with me.

"Through porno, I've realized that girls have a lot of power when it comes to that.

"If I'm going to give you that side of me, you have to earn it. You have to make me feel good about me as a woman. I don't have to hear that I'm beautiful. You don't need to tell me I'm sexy. I hear that all the time from my fans. If someone is to sleep with me, they have to make me laugh. They have to make me comfortable. They have to make me feel at home with myself."

Luke: "What type of men do you find yourself attracted to?"

Charlie: "Bad boys, but they have to be funny. I love baldheads, goatees, broad shoulders. A guy with an edge. But he has to be a dork. He can't be conceited."

Luke: "What kind of crowd did you hang out with in highschool?"

Charlie: "A mixed crowd. I had a couple of friends in the popular group, and the dork group, and the pothead group. I still talk to all my friends from highschool."

Luke: "How do you spend your spare time?"

Charlie: "I smoke pot. I watch cartoons. That's pretty much it. I'm not that active."

Luke: "What are your ambitions?"

Charlie: "To run this out as long as I can. Once I'm done, I want to be a mom. I've gone to make-up school, so if I have to, I have something to fall back on. I plan on going back and getting my GED. I want to make something out of porn because for the past three years, I've blown my money. I'm glad Penthouse came when it did because otherwise I'd be going out broke."

Residentially-based Porn Companies Face Restrictions

XBiz.com reports: "PALMDALE, Calif. — In what could create a potential domino effect for California-based adult companies, city officials are looking to restrict the operation of adult businesses in residential areas and plan to beef up local ordinances to account for changes in technology."

XBiz reported Sept 19, 2005:

OTTAWA, Canada — Jim and Jenni Deans have lived in a quiet Ottawa suburb for more than 10 years and have operated the amateur adult website TheHiddenWife.com and affiliate program MyWifeBucks.com for three years without incident — or even a single chargeback, they say.

But all that changed recently after a neighbor joined the site, recognized features of the Deans’ home and decided to launch a campaign to harass the couple out of what Jim Deans describes as a postcard-perfect small town.

Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied And Survived Saddam Hussein

Wednesday Morning Club. 11:35 a.m. March 16, 2006.

I run into Michael Finch at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. His hand is bandaged.

I inquire about his injury. He unpeals the bandage. There's a nasty cut.

"Michael, when did you begin to cut yourself?" I inquire.

"I just did it today opening boxes."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Since I started working for David [Horowitz]."

"Michael, this is an obvious cry for help. I know a lot of Jewish psychiatrists. I can fix you up with one. I think it is time for an intervention."

I discuss this troubling matter with Elizabath, Horowitz's assistant.

"I think we should support and empower Michael to do whatever he wants," she says.

"I just don't think that cutting yourself is a healthy way to express your feelings," I whine.

Whenever I become emotional, I feel an Air Supply song coming on.

It turns out that Elizabeth (her husband Sean is the tall skinny guy behind the WMC camera) was the 16-year old star of the 1985 Air Supply music video "Making Love Out of Nothing at All."

I can make the run or stumble,
I can make the final block;
And I can make every tackle,
at the sound of the whistle,
I can make all the stadiums rock.
I can make tonight forever,
Or I can make it disappear by the dawn;
And I can make you every promise that has ever been made,
And I can make all your demons be gone.
But I’m never gonna make it without you,
Do you really want to see me crawl?
And I’m never gonna make it like you do,
Making love out of nothing at all.

I'm disturbed by the number of people who worked for Horowitz and cut themselves. There should be a congressional inquiry. I'm willing to testify. I'm willing to name names. I'll out every cutter. I think it's gross. It's not the Torah's way.

I did not care for today's lunch -- it was filled with flavor and ingredients. I approve of neither.

I scan the room and see no single chicks under 40. I don't approve of that either.

I sit next to Hyman Jebb Levy of Lastar.org (Sephardic Tradition And Recreation). I volunteer to come say a few words of Torah to his kids.

My friend Jeffrey tells me to save him a seat. Then he runs into my friend Marie, a tall blonde, and they run off together to their own table and I'm left making love out of nothing at all.

Jeffrey is so supercial. He sees a pretty face and then he forgets all about me and everything we've shared.

Where was Marie when I was helping him get that monkey off his back? Who held his hand when he was throwing up in the toilet? Who bailed him out of jail when there was that morals charge?

According to the PR email:

Saddam's Secrets: He was Saddam Hussein's top military advisor and a truth-teller in a regime where truth was relative. He was also a devout Christian in an anti-Christian country. For the first time, General Georges Sada shares his amazing journey and speaks of the military secrets he was asked to keep. Secrets that only those closest to Saddam would know. In this exclusive book, the General paints a picture of Hussein, his regime and his country that is at once personal and truthful, compelling and sobering.

General Georges Sada graduated from Iraq's Air Academy in 1959 and was trained by elite forces in Great Britian, Russia and the U.S. An Ace fighter pilot who trained other pilots, he went on to become air vice marshal in Saddam Hussein's military. His acts of bravery, including saving the lives of forty downed coalition pilots in the gulf War, have earned him hero status. Now retired, Sada is director of the Iraqi Institute for Peace and also serves as spokesman for the newly elected prime minister of Iraq.

General Sada (who trained in the US, USSR, France and England) says he retired as a two-star general in 1986. "I was supposed to be promoted to three-star general but I had to join the Baath party. I refused. When I was asked why not, I said there were two essential principles of the party that I did not agree with. The Baath party is dedicated to the Arab cause and to Islam. I am Assyrian and Christian."

After Iraq annihilated Kuwait in 1990, Saddam brought Sada out of retirement to advise him about the capabilities of the Allies air forces. On December 17, 1990, Saddam said he wanted to send 86 planes to attack Israel with chemical weapons if the Allies attacked him. General Sada argued against this. He said most of the Iraqi planes would be shot down on the way to Israel, and if they released any chemical weapons on Israel, Israel would respond with nuclear weapons.

Saddam wanted to send 12 divisions into Saudi Arabia to destroy its infrastructure. Sada argued against this.

Sadam's people wanted to kill captured Allied fliers during the war. Sada said this was a violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, and that America would go after personally anyone who did this. The prisoners were not killed. Sada was imprisoned for about two weeks because of his stand, but on February 5, 1991, he was freed on Saddam's order.

General Sada said the Allies air forces would destroy Iraqi forces and communications. Other Iraqi military leaders disagreed. It turned out that Sada was right.

After the war, Saddam said he did not want to see Sada's face again. He did not want him in the Iraqi military. But he didn't want him harmed.

Sada said Saddam killed more clerics, more Baath party members, more Sunnis (his own people), more Tikritis (Saddam's home town), more military officers, and more Kurds (203,000) than anyone.

General Sada thanked the United States for liberating Iraq (a country of 27 million people).

I can sing and dance, play with the kids and teach Torah. I don't eat much. All my Passover meals are open, including the two seders on the evenings of April 12 and 13.

If I don't get what I seek, I'm relaunching PityPoorLuke.blogspot.com.

Of late, it seems I've been losing more friends than I've been gaining through my relentless pursuit of truth.

Stand up for the truth. Stand up for the Almighty. Invite Luke to your seder.

(It would need to be within walking distance of Pico/Robertson Blvds).

Amalek writes: "Which would you rather have, sex with a 19 year old shiksa, or invitations to a seder?"

A seder of course.

The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt By Ruth Andrew Ellenson

I felt ambivalence through the introductory essay of this book by its editor Ellenson (she refused my interview request) but then came to love many of its essays (particularly those by Tova Mirvis, Dara Horn, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Lori Gottlieb, Rebecca Goldstein, Katie Roiphe, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Lauren Grodstein, Amy Klein, Daphne Merkin and Susan Shapiro).

Ruth begins in a muddle:

For Jewish women today there is a fundamental struggle: Where do we end and where do our people begin? Even more confusing, when our needs are pitted against those of the community, who's right?

This is muddled because these questions can just as easily be posed for members of numerous other groups, including Jewish men.

As for the first question, anyone who is truly a member of a group tends to identify at least some of his being with that of the group. If you are a committed Jew, then the Jewish people are a part of you. There is not a perfect demarcation because you are in the dance.

As for the second question, there is no answer. Sometimes the community's needs are more important than yours (if the community needs you to do something that would save a life while you would rather watch television) and sometimes they are not.

Ruth writes: "I couldn't help but feel a nagging guilt that our people's future was all up to me..."

This is a classic delusion of grandeur and the sufferer needs therapy.

A foundational myth about modern Jews is that they suffer disproportionately from feelings of guilt. As someone who was raised Christian, let me tell you this ain't so. Judaism teaches Jews to feel guilt only about their deeds while Christianity induces guilt over motives. Judaism is much easier. If someone practicing Judaism is feeling guilt this is probably a healthy reaction to his not living up to his ideals. It means that he believes he can do better.

Most of the writers in this book are not practicing Jews and their thinking, while entertaining, is muddled. They don't have a clear sense of priorities and responsibilities, only wildly diverging feelings.

I believe Tova Mirvis is the only orthodox Jew in the book while Dara Horn and Sharon Brous practice non-orthodox Judaism. It's no accident that their essays have the most moral clarity. These three women believe themselves responsible for more than just their own happiness and their own feelings about right and wrong (they receive guidance from an external and transcendent moral code).

Erica Jong's daughter Molly writes: "I am sexually repressed."

Jennifer Bleyer, hottie and former Heeb magazine editor, writes:

As an NPR-and-Pacifica kind of gal, I had actually never heard Howart Stern before and didn't know what to expect. It was basically like being stuck in a room with a bunch of fourth-grade boys making fart noises and sex jokes for forty minutes -- more bizarre than insulting, really. Howard railed against my magazine, commenting on the unforgivable offensiveness of its name...and making various tangential remarks about gas chambers and the ovens at Auschwitz... He also got me to show my ass.

Back home in Ohio, my proud and defensive parents had to fend off the inquiries of people at their synagogue on Shabbat, asking if that had really been their daughter on Howard Stern. I received shocked emails from friends I'd known in junior-high... They knew nothing of what I had done with my life except that I'd lifted my skirt (under truly irresistible pressure) on Howard Stern.

Why Do People Read Blogs?

Is there not enough in the Torah to occupy them?

I'm reading Thane Rosenbaum's first book Elijah Visible. It's thinly disguised autobiography about a lawyer named Adam Posner (read Thane Rosenbaum), the child of Holocaust survivors who turns his back on the moral demands of his tradition and bangs shiksas.

Now, before I truly understood the profundity of the Torah, I enjoyed banging shiksas as much as anybody. But that doesn't mean I want to read about such behavior when it is excused by being the child of Holocaust survivors.

When I get married, sex is going to be special in a way that secular people such as Thane Rosenbaum will never understand.

If Luke Ford does not stand up for the sanctity of marriage, then who will?

I'm tired of writing about lawyers imagining themselves stuck in a cattle car instead of an elevator or spoiled brats drifting away from a Passover Seder and finding themselves in the Holocaust.

I'm tired of Jews (be they literary characters or real people) who weren't in the Holocaust using the Shoah as a get-out-of-jail card for their own bad behavior.

I'm tired of all the people begin their rants with "I'm a child of Holocaust survivors." Being a child of Holocaust survivors does not give you any moral standing beyond that of children of divorce. You are not special because you are a child of Holocaust survivors. You are not a better Jew and you do not deserve easier access to shiksas.

Jane writes:

Elijah Visible is an important book for a couple of reasons.

First, it's one of the first "post-holocaust/second generation" novels. In a sense, he has the authority to write about the effects of the Holocaust because his parents survived it, and their legacy left a lasting impact on Thane. He's part of a new trend of second generation writing (Art Spiegelman and Melvin Bukiet are the other two heavy hitters in this area).

Second, it's interesting in terms of its literary structure -- it's been written about as a "short story cycle" narrative, in which all of the Adam Posners are different parts of the fragmented identity of the main Adam Posner -- the point is that this is the effect of the legacy of the Holocaust on its survivor's children. He has more authority than someone like, Dara Horn or even Cynthia Ozick for example, who are not second generation writers. The point of "Cattle Car Complex" is that Adam cannot see what needs to be seen because he can't separate his parents' trauma from his own; he's drowning in his parents' memories, to quote Janet Burstein. And his obsession with shiksas disrupts his memorialization of his mother -- it's like he's stuck in the web of Holocaust history and literature.

The main character has taken on the burden (taken responsibility for) of a past that is not his, but nonetheless haunts him in ways only second- generation writers can understand. And, finally, remember that this was published in 1996 -- so it's not like he's doing what a lot of other people are already doing -- he precedes them in many ways.

His next books -- SECONDHAND SMOKE and GOLEMS OF GOTHAM -- are much different and more sophisticated even though they address the same theme of the effects of the Holocaust on survivor's children -- the gift that keeps on giving.

Thane Rosenbaum's Big Cry

I read four books by Thane Rosenbaum over Shabbos. The essence of his work is a big cry.

His words are easy to digest but their moral import is odious -- that anyone who has suffered gets a free pass to do what they like.

It's hard to think of a teaching more contrary to the Jewish tradition. Surviving the Holocaust and other horrors does not entitle one to steal (either property or persons) or commit other sins.

What's particularly disgusting is that he seems to think that as the child of Holocaust survivors, he too deserves a get-out-of-jail card.

His novels are thinly-disguised autobiography about superhuman, super-successful, narcissistic rageaholic rock-star lawyers who become writers.

Here's the essence of Thane's personal philosophy in his own words:

Survivors had the right to do whatever they wanted with their lives. They had earned at least that much. They could live with abandon, or they could simply choose to abandon. The old rules don't apply, as much as they didn't apply to anyone anymore. That's because the Third Reich had killed off all the old biblical commandments, wiped the tablets clean; the Golden Calf has been the right religion all along. Mankind was left to finish out the century without any moral landmarks and signposts, forced to thrash and stumble about in a new world empty of faith, kindness, and love. (The Golems of Gotham, p. 3)

The "world empty of faith, kindess, and love" is the one Thane chooses to believe in. There are plenty of more uplifting worlds for him to inhabit but they don't allow him to screw around.

The notion that God died in the Holocaust is absurd but it is Thane's. The one benefit of such nonsense is that you can bang shiksas with impugnity.

Millions of innocent people were murdered before the Holocaust. Does the murder of millions of Jews particularly deny God's existence? What about the murder of Gentiles? What about the murder tens of thousands of Jews before the Holocaust?

What was God supposed to do during the Holocaust? Suddenly remove human freedom and stop people from murdering one another? God should only stop Jews from being murdered? That people exercise their free will to murder one another -- that denies God's existence?

Thane Rosenbaum makes a nice living from the Holocaust and resents those who intrude on his turf, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and the 1997 allegorical film Life is Beautiful (about a father who goes to great lengths to protect his son in a concentration camp).

Rosenbaum writes:

Schindler's List, the movie, had become required viewing, with all its good-guy-triumphs-over-bad-guy sanctimony, its ultimate feel-good imperatives, its insulting inversion of contrasting truths. The Holocaust isn't about the fortuitous rescue of twelve hundred Jews at the hands of a repentant, benevolent German. That story line has mass appeal, but the Holocaust is about mass death. It may not do as well with test audiences, but it is the unsentimental grand narrative of why there is a severe shortage of Jews on the European continent. Some stories are morally entitled to be told in a certain way or not at all - even if unappealing, even if the world won't buy it. (Golems, p. 292)

At least Spielberg's stories aren't centered on a child of survivors who feels entitled to act as he pleases and screw as he pleases. Out of those two possible stories, the Hollywood one is more moral.

Thane's protagonists (read Thane's view of himself) love to play the tortured artistic genius, the sacrificial redeemer of us all. Because their insights into life are so keen, they get to trample on people with impugnity.

Thane's character in Golems, Oliver Levin, a bestselling author, is told by his literary agent: "Oliver, you're playing with fire."

He replies: "I know, literally."

That's how Thane views himself -- as a heroic moral crusader who plays with fire because of his obsession with genocide.

Not only do children of Holocaust survivors have no more inherent moral credibility than anyone else, nor do Holocaust scholars, Holocaust popularizers such as Thane, nor even Holocaust survivors.

Thane's protagonists, like Thane, have delusions of rockstar grandeur. Here are the thoughts of Thane masquerading as his protagonist Adam Posner in Elijah Visible: "My students themselves never know what to make of me..." (p. 167)

The word "themselves" is superfluous.

The students probably don't care. Most people don't think about you as much as you do. Few students care about their professors. It's a professor's delusion of grandeur to think that they do.

Thane writes: "The professor masquerading as Robert Plant."

A professor who tries to dress like a rock star is screaming for attention.

For some I was the window, the man with the law degree and the rock-star persona, a taunting reminder of the racy outside. For others, I was to be viewed with mistrust and suspicion. The green monster, tempting their most craven impulses, laying out land mines that might sabotage their mission. (p. 168)

Or they just don't care.

Like myself, Thane has wasted much of his life in delusions of grandeur that sabotage his relationships. He's a walking talking case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a crippling problem (take it from me who suffers from it) that isolates one from that which gives life meaning -- others.

I enjoy reading Thane. He goes down easy. My favorite character of his is Rabbi Vered:

Openly he boasted of having his way with the ladies -- Jew and Gentile alike. Beautiful single women -- many of whom half his age -- took turns escorting the rabbi as he entered the ballrooms of hotels along Collins Avenue, making his grand appearance at the various ceremonies of his growing congregation... There was even some talk of infidelities with married women -- members of his own congregation, no less. A shande like this was unthinkable -- even for him; so most people chose to focus their attentions elsewhere. The litany of allegations was so prevalent, it was best to just close your eyes and hope that the next morning's edition of the Miami Herald didn't have a front-page picture of Rabbi Vered embroiled in a sex scandal. (Elijah Visible, p. 130-131)

He ate rye bread during Passover and shellfish from Joe's Stone Crabs on Yom Kippur. After Saturday services, he hustled tennis matches from younger opponents, faking a bum hip... He played high-stakes poker with the synagogue's building fund, and was known to bang strippers -- and preferably not even Jewish ones -- in his office at the synagogue. (Golems, p. 6)

Once you learn that Rabbi Vered is a Holocaust survivor, you are supposed to understand his indiscretions.

Thane's most ridiculous book is The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right.

Moral Justice depends on the supposition that there's a widely-believed mythology that our legal system does what is right and that what is legal equals what is moral. That is absurd. Who believes that because adultery is legal, therefore it is moral?

Like Karl Marx, Rosenbaum's work is one big cry best worked out through his own therapy self-discipline, and ethical regeneration, not through his moral prescriptions for society. Why doesn't he take his dreamy ideals and try to implement them in his own life?

On the back of Moral Justice, luminous legal mind Sidney Lumet (yes, the movie director) writes: "This deeply felt book..."

That's Thane Rosenbaum's work in a nutshell -- "deeply felt."

Everybody has deep feelings, even the most stupid football player. That does not make those feelings profound or moral.

The writing that lasts does so, not because it is deeply felt, but because it is deeply thought.

On page seven, Thane writes: "I spend my days writing fiction, but I also teach American law students how to enter their chosen profession with a deeper spiritual and moral awareness of what the law lacks."

Oy ve, if Thane Rosenbaum is teaching morals, then we are in big trouble (and he does teach morals and gets paid well to do so).

Rosenbaum ridicules belief in God, the one source for transcendent morals. All that's left are individual opinions and feelings about morals which are never going to corral the mass of people into decency.

His constant invocation of spirituality is another giveaway of Thane's moral worthlessness. "Spirituality" is what people claim when they want to avoid the hard work of participating in an organized religion.

Thane ends his first chapter complaining that American law "relies too much on logic and not enough on love."

Legal systems can not rely on intangibles such as love. Individuals can not rely on feelings of love to do the right thing.

Christianity trusts the heart, notes Dennis Prager. Judaism trusts the law. Thane's writing is profoundly unJewish.

Though couched in rational terms, Moral Justice is just a big cry about the cruelty of reality.

On page 12, Thane writes: "Law and religion are, in fact, largely and unfortunately not inspired by the same values..."

He obviously knows nothing about his own Jewish tradition where law is interlocked with values and continually demonstrates them.

Here is Thane's paradigm for a new legal system:

1. The law would strive to achieve moral outcomes.

2. The human spirit would also receive protection under the law, and the law should scrutinize the actions of those who are responsible for causing spiritual violence, indignity, and neglect.

3. Courts would provide moral remedies, such as in acknowledging the harm that was done, seeking apologies for them, and restoring relationships -- for the benefit of the entire community. (p. 33)

These outcomes are best achieved through religion. What kind of legal system would punish people for relaying true gossip? For committing adultery? Only a religious one.

Thane laments: "Stealing someone's wallet is a crime, but, for some reason, taking away their dignity is not." (p. 34)

I suspect that if Thane's legal paradigm were enacted, this blog would be a crime.

What a wonderful world that would be.

On page 43, Thane writes: "My father had been a lawyer, in Poland, before the Holcaust. After the liberation of the camps, he was never a lawyer again. Justice became a joke. Laws were used in the service of annihilation. Judges and lawyers were complicit in mass murder."

There is no profession that has not been complicit in mass murder, including plumbers. Did Thane's father stop using plumbers after the Holocaust because many plumbers became Nazis and killed Jews? Did Thane's father stop going to doctors? Mengele was a doctor. Ergo medicine is invalid? That is absurd.

On page 48, Thane writes:

The pain of injustice and unacknowledged loss does not disappear within the colorless, soulless ether of silence. Instead, the pain returns renewed, in another form -- with a vengeance, and in vengeance.

We see this in race riots and localized conflicts, when the prolonged suffering of an entire group leads its members to turn their experiences with economic and ethnic injustice into riotous, sometimes murderous, rage. The result is broken glass, property damage, and sometimes dead bodies.

How come only certain groups do this? How come Muslims tend to murder more people when they riot than do Christians and Jews? How come most of the perpetrators of the LA Riots were Blacks and Latinos (who I bet were not church-going Christians)? How come Christians and Jews suffer but don't go out and destroy the property and lives of others in their riots?

How come people like Thane Rosenbaum who tell endless tales of their own pain don't turn out to be any better human beings than the most silent repressed construction workers?

On page 277, Thane writes: "Those who hold absolutist positions with regard to the First Amendment -- believing in its sanctity and inviolability, asserting that it is the most fundamental of constitutional rights -- are grossly unmindful of the harms that insults and slurs can cause, or perhapys they simply believe that the body is more precious and fragile."

Or they simply believe that the harm of censorship outweighs the harm of free speech. Those who disagree with Thane are not necessarily unmindful of the soul.

Thane writes: "Words are not actionable when they are merely hurtful and offensive. This is the bizarre litmus test of the conventional legal paradigm..."

So Thane would like to see hurtful words made actionable? He'd like to be able to sue for his hurt feelings after reading this blog?

Thane writes on page 280: "The fact is, the legal system is kryptonite to the human soul. And it shows no interest in the soul."

If there is no God, there is no soul. Thane denies God. Why is he whining about the soul? And why is he employing useless conventions such as "The fact is." As E. B. White put it, "If you feel you are possessed of the fact or of the truth, simply state it, do not give it advanced billing."

Thane should do his own soul work, not wreck the legal system to fix his own shortcomings.

A legal system without interest in the soul is like a fish without a bicycle.

On page 289, Thane writes another cliche: "Most students attend law school for the wrong reason."

The reasons that people do things are generally not knowable (including to the persons acting) and not of much importance compared to what people do. That's why the law should only judge actions, not souls.

On page 299, Thane writes: "A novel is a work of imagination. What lawyers do is often a failure of imagination."

What would Thane know about works of imagination? His novels are pedestrian reworkings of a single odious theme -- that those who've suffered (particularly Thane Rosenbaum) are free to do what they like.

I've lost respect for the writers who blurbed Thane's books including Chaim Potok, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Rebecca Goldstein, Henry Roth, and Elie Wiesel (not that I ever had much respect for Elie's writings).

Janelle Brown writes for The New York Times:

The wedding ceremony was strictly Orthodox, except that the bride and bridegroom entered to the music from "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Their 134 guests watched as the couple met under the wedding canopy — after not having seen each other for a week in Orthodox tradition — and received blessings in Hebrew, Aramaic and English.

The bridegroom covered his tuxedo in a white robe, and the bride, whose beaming pink face was concealed by a veil, valiantly tried drinking the ritual cup of wine without spilling it on her borrowed beaded white dress. A second rabbi, Chaim Tureff, who wore a pink and black zoot suit, provided the final link between tradition and irreverence.

Holly Randall Visits The Hovel

Holly emails me Saturday:

"I'm dashing off to Bed Bath & Beyond -- they close at 9 p.m. and I'm going crazy trying to organize my bathroom, which I can't do without those little plastic baskets I store odds and ends in. A few years ago, I never could have imagined myself doing that on a Saturday night.

"I really AM going crazy. All I need now is crazy hair that I only half pin up with a scraggy clip, 10 cats, and I'm set."

Holly finally shows up at 10:11 p.m. Saturday April 1, 2006, carrying two boxes of her photography work from highschool, lentil and tomato-basil soups, a container of sour cream, a copy of her dad's 1972 book The Dominant Man: The pecking order in human society and half a packet of chocolate-covered raisins.

I refuse the raisins so Holly finishes them. It's her dinner.

I make her lemon zinger herbal tea. She asks for two bags. She likes it strong.

She sits on the floor. I looks through her photos. Then I get her to give me an interview about being asked to pose nude when she was 14.

I give her my digital tape recorder and move it close to her mouth.

Holly: "I have to hold it?"

I nod.

Holly: "Hi machine that I will regret saying words to later."

We laugh.

Luke: "When did you first want to become a model?"

Holly: "Oh God. You know I'm terrible at remembering exactly what age...

"Yeah, my mother was a model. When I was much much younger, I wanted to be a veterinarian. But I was always fascinated with photos and fashion magazines and the images of beautiful girls and exotic settings."

Holly reached her height of 5'7" when she was 12, about the time she was first told that she had "a nice ass" -- a comment that persists to this day.

Holly: "There was a contest for YM (Young & Modern) magazine. I still have it. I wanted to enter... Are you going to take photos of me with this?"

As she starts talking, I assemble my camera and start taking photos. She puts down the tape recorder. I ask her to hold it close to her mouth. She refuses.

Holly: "I blinked in one of them."

I play the photos back.

Holly: "Do I still get editing rights?"

Luke: "Yes."

We erase a couple of photos. Then I put her on my chair by my computer.

Luke: "How do I get you in focus and the Jerusalem poster in focus at the same time?"

Holly: "You need a large depth of field."

I give up on that.

I give her the latest issue of Brooklyn's Orthodox weekly The Jewish Press. She hates it. She doesn't want to pose with it. She has no interest in the things of God.

I try to give her The Consolation of Philosophy.

Holly: "I'm not going to pose with that and be like all the porn stars you photographed. If I had read the book, I'd pose with it."

I give her the consolation of my attention and we finish the interview about photographer Rich Leon.

Holly: "Rich claimed he was Domonique Swain's agent and got her the lead in the remake of Lolita.

"I ran into him in Malibu six weeks ago.

"I was hanging out in front of Ben & Jerry's in Malibu [at age 14 when she was 125 pounds, about 15 pounds less than she is now] as I always did with my friends on the weekend. He came over to us once. He told me that he thought I was very pretty and had I considered modeling. That he had connections. He was an agent. He'd get me on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

"You tell a 14-year old girl that and she's like, 'Yay.' You're so stupid you think the guy is legit. He's the creepiest looking person I've ever seen.

"I said, 'OK. Let me talk to my parents about this.' I talked to my mother about it. She was dead-set against it. My mother has never encouraged me to model because she was a model. She warned me that it was a brutal job. There's a lot of rejection. It's very hard going on a lot of auditions and not getting jobs. So few make it. The rest struggle. It's damaging for your self-esteem.

"But I insisted and insisted. Finally she agreed to let this guy photograph me. He wanted to take test shots of me to send in. But only at my parents' house.

"I refused to let my mother be there watching. She and my father were home but I wouldn't let them follow us around the property and watch while he shot me because I'd be too embarrassed. At that age, you don't want your parents involved in anything.

"I'd seen my mother's photography. My mom had had one of her assistants help me out on a shoot and teach me stuff and light stuff for me. I had friends. We played in the studio. She made sure all the porn was put away. I knew something about equipment.

"He came over with just this rinky dinky camera. I remember being surprised. I thought he was this professional photographer. We took the photographs. He kept trying to get what he called a panty shot.

"He would put me in dresses. I was wearing underwear. He'd try to get me to open my legs in such a way that you would get that suggestive panty shot.

"He was taking photos of me in this little pink dollhouse. He said, 'Open your legs wider. Let's get a panty shot.' I said, 'I don't think so.' I didn't know how to say no but I pretty much said no.

"He got me to wear this see-through dress with only my underwear underneath. He tried to get me to take the underwear off. Then he told me he wanted to shoot me naked on a gravestone with just a scarf.

"I remember the last part of the shoot, the last look, we were shooting against this wall. I was getting more nervous. He was making me feel so uncomfortable.

"He was this beer-bellied guy in his mid fifties and he had acne scars and slightly cross-eyed and he comes up to me and takes my face..."

Holly scoots up and takes my face in her hand and squeezes me cheeks. She stares in my eyes like a creep.

Holly: "He said, 'Feel your beauty. Feel it come out of you. Loosen up.'

"It was such a horrific experience. Finally he left. My mom did not like him at all. When he left, she said to me, 'I do not want you to have anything to do with that guy.'

"He had this old beat-up white Cadillac. Everything was in the trunk. It was full of all this s---. He was obviously such a poseur.

"Then he came back with a book full of photographs. He said he wouldn't charge us because he wasn't happy with the way the photos turned out.

"He had never said anything about charging us in the first place. He said he wanted to shoot me to submit me, not that I had to pay him for it.

"The photographs were horrible. They were horribly lit. He had this strong flash-on-camera that made my face look red and shiny and brought out every single blemish. I looked nervous.

"The photos are at my parents' house.

"He showed his portfolio afterwards. It was basically 12-year-old girls in bikinis.

"I still see him in Malibu. I imagine he's still doing the same things.

"He shot the younger sister of my friend Katie. She had the same creepy experience wtih him.

"That whole thing pushed me towards photography. I thought that if this asshole could make a living doing this, I could do much better. I would make it such a better experience for the girls. It shouldn't be this old man leering."

Holly shot children for the Ford modeling agency a couple of times.

Luke: "If you could make equal money shoot kids for Ford or doing what you do now, which would you choose?"

Holly: "Doing what I do now. I love sexuality. I love making women look beautiful. Porn girls are far easier to work with than kids."

Luke: "How often do you have girls refuse your photo shoot requests?"

Holly: "I've only been turned down a few times for photo shoots -- and it was always because they didn't want to do explicit work or be associated with a website that does. I totally understand."

We sit back and sip our tea. Holly talks about putting her dog Poe on anti-anxiety medication.

Luke: "But you won't go on such medication."

Holly: "Even at my worst, I don't bite people."

At 11 p.m. she leaves. I give her a chaste peck on the cheek. Our honor remains in tact.

A Setback for Anti-Porn Pastors

Their Corona-based ministry wanted to put 'Jesus Loves Porn Stars' on Bible covers. No way, said a publisher.

Handing out free Bibles to porn stars and their fans at adult film conventions isn't as hard as it would seem. Pastors Mike Foster and Craig Gross say they typically give away 1,000 copies of the New Testament at the multiday conferences.

Even so, the founders of XXXchurch.com — a Corona-based anti-pornography Internet ministry — thought a hip cover could easily triple their distribution.

But the pastors' brainstorm to put their "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" brand on covers of the New Testament was rejected by the American Bible Society, the publishing company that XXXchurch.com paid to print 10,000 copies of the Scriptures.

The publisher said that while it applauded the outreach to those who make a living off pornography, "the wording is misleading and inappropriate for a New Testament," according to a letter the pastors received from Barbara Bernstengel, the executive in charge of standards at the nonprofit Bible publishing company.