CHATSWORTH, Calif.—When Ron Jeremy started getting alarmed phone calls last week from people saying they'd heard he had passed away, the porn legend was dumbfounded.
Little did he know there was an up-and-coming racehorse in Maryland named after him that recently had to be put down due to an aggressive onset of cellulitis.
"My name is on rum, rolling papers, T-shirts, molds, barbecue sauce ... I didn't know it was on a horse!" Jeremy told AVN. "I never knew anything about this! That's pretty nice, pretty classy. Everybody called me on the phone thinking I died. I'm saying, 'I don't know, I feel pretty much alive.'"
Of course this is hardly the first time Ron Jeremy has been associated with animals—after all, he's even nicknamed after one—and that association landed him not too long ago in the center of an international sting operation.
Specifically, he was originally recruited to help nab murder suspect Luka Magnotta when the Canadian gay porn amateur was wanted by animal rights activists for allegedly posting videos online of himself killing kittens.
"I'm a spokesman for PETA, and the Barbi twins contacted me—they run a cat rescue," Jeremy explained. "This guy Luka was killing cats on video, and he wasn't responding to any kind of warrants or arrests or anything like that. But he also had done one or two gay movies. Now rumor has it he wanted to meet me and hopefully work for me, although I don't direct gay films. We were going to put a sting on him and advertise in all the local papers where he was hanging out in Toronto for a porn film, and he'd come down and audition for it. So we had it worked out with a couple of undercover cops, and it was going to be a really good deal. Kind of like when they give thieves Super Bowl tickets and they show up and next thing they know they're arrested for stealing a car. Lure him out with something he wants to do and bust him.
"Now people that are serial killers or mass murderers, they often started on animals," Jeremy continued. "Like in the case of the Columbine guys, the case of Jeffrey Dahmer; I heard of this one guy in Arizona, before he shot up a class, would put firecrackers into the mouths of cows and watch their heads blow up. So after months and months and months have gone by, we were finally going to do it—then I get told I'm off the case because he elevated to a higher criminal, he killed a human. And then I'm realizing how vulnerable we all would have been, because cat killing doesn't even give you more than a couple of days in jail. He could post bail, and now that we've seen what he's capable of, he might have come out of that jail cell and gone right after me. Or gone after the Barbi twins, or who knows who he would have gone after? We double-crossed him, we tricked him. We all could have been in serious trouble."
Very serious, in fact—as Jeremy soon learned, Magnotta "killed his lover and carved up his body into body parts, sent out pieces of the body to parts of Canada, including the Parliament in Canada; I think a couple of nursing homes and police stations all got body parts. And I think the head was in a bucket in Montreal Park. And this is the guy that we were going to bust on killing cats. Oh, and I forgot, he also ate some of his roommate as well. I figured, I feel sorry for the poor roommate, the lover, but it should have been a clue when the guy is putting barbecue sauce on your ass. If someone is putting ranch dressing on your balls, it's time to get out of the room. Zei gesunt, time to leave, have a nice day."
In lighter Hedgehog news, there's been an extension of the deadline to enter the Ron de Jeremy Rum Cocktail Challenge, whose grand prize winner will be treated to a three-day trip to Los Angeles, where he or she will party with Ron and attend a Ron de Jeremy photo and video shoot. Hopefuls have until Wednesday, Aug. 29 to enter. For more details, visit facebook.com/rondejeremyrum.
Photo courtesy of facebook.com/rondejeremyrum.