A review mighty seriously. Farrell Timlake of Xplor Media remembers one involving former AVN managing editor Mark Kulkis that had some amusing repercussions.
Timlake: "Back in the days when we were working with director Frank Thring, Thring went to Hawaii and he took Mark Kulkis along as an AVN person. What Frank was doing for us was creating the double anal series - the first of its kind.
We thought we'd get some good press on it. And we thought Mark would be sufficiently smooched to make that happen. We took a 2 * hour drive [from San Diego], brought a special disc of a boxcover and surrounding photos hoping to get a great review - or something additional that said, hey, this is double anal, the first of its kind by Frank Thring this famous Private great who's now working for Xplor. We felt that was newsworthy because here was our first big director.
"The issue comes out and I think it was like a three star review with not even a boxcover. That was the first glove being thrown down with Mark. Then I came up to talk about Orgazmo. I thought Orgazmo was newsworthy because a lot of people were making these overtures like they were on the threshold of the mainstream. Here I was not only on the threshold, but bridging it. I had half the pornworld coming into this mainstream feature, and I really thought it was an article. We sat down with him and he said, well, I don't know if there's much of an article here. Which blew my mind. At this point I thought the thumb was down on top of us. We stopped respecting him and started making heavier calls. I don't think we got nasty with him at that point, but we went hard and started being a little rough. He recognized that he was starting to use the editorial power against us. The next big thing was Homegrown 500. We hit this milestone in the business and we felt like this was a story.
"But we get a little paragraph and it says, 'Big Fucking Deal.' The headline on the paragraph. An obvious double-meaning. At this point it was total war. When he left the magazine he said my stay at the magazine was fun EXCEPT for those guys with the Dr. Seuss-sounding names from San Diego.
"At that point we had to get him back but didn't know what we were going to do. We ended up at CES. We made up all these stickers, and we got everybody that we knew to slap Mark on the back with a sticker [reading xplormedia.com]. If he'd walk through a crowd he couldn't help being pasted with a sticker. He was a walking advertisement for our website. Then we also went and got a thing of ham and eggs and green food dye. We sprinkled it up and put on the inside of a styrofoam food container: 'I do not like them here or there; I do not like them anywhere.' We sent them over to him. He was sitting there with Rob Black and a couple of people. The lunch was delivered and he was really scared. That was the thing we found out later. He was terrified to even open it. He thought he was booby-trapped. Finally Mike South who was sitting there, too, opened up the container. We had a videocamera on the whole thing. We got his shocking surprise. We were happy at that point, but it wasn't enough.
"Moffat and I wearing black sweat shirts, came up to Mark saying let's let bygones be bygones. It's all cool. Let's be friendly and get a photo for the press. So we both stood on either side and shook hands. Kulkis was in the middle smiling. Then we got Mike Albo to put in I'm with stupid, and I'm with idiot captions and they ran that photo in Hustler Erotic Video Guide. "I don't know if it had to do with our product or our attitude. I'm not sure. We never understood it. I have a real hard time kissing ass, and I couldn't get that taste off my lips for fucking six months."
Mark Kulkis responds: "Child psychologists have cautioned that severe inferiority complexes are common among children burdened with silly names. The kind of names, for example, that sound like they could be part of the Oompa-Loompa rollcall in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
I am still amazed that, during my nearly three-year tenure at AVN, I only made three real enemies: Chuck Martino and Moffitt & Farrell Timlake. Assuming that it takes a very high IQ indeed to have detected the subtle and nefarious ways I was undermining their skyrocketing careers, I will leave it to your readers to decide which of these three is most deserving of the title "super-genius.
\n"Elegant Angel GM Dion Giarusso reports on the signing of a new contract girl named Jewel.
Giarusso: "We signed her last week [end of April]. Pat's thinking about making her Buttwoman. He likes her. He likes her a lot. She's about 5'9", a blond and has that big healthy butt. She's been in Cumback Pussy 17. That's how Pat seen her. He was in our art department and saw the chrome of her. He asked who the hell was this girl. We had to call Brian Williams who put her in Cumback Pussy. Pat had her come in. She worked in an adult bookstore up in Sacramento and has a real good attitude. She's pretty and, hopefully, she'll be good and nasty. The camera loves her. I think she'll be great."
Talk about role reversal, Ed Powers got a cab driver in Cancun to give him a lift into town. The cab driver had his share of stories to relate to Powers whom he thought he recognized. "What a minute, you're one of the Warner Brothers!" the driver said. "No, NASTY Brothers," Powers corrected him..
