Porn Valley- KSEX boss Jon Belinkie was in town this week cleaning the station out. Judging from the latest story, someone may have cleaned out one of Belinkie’s bank accounts.
The latest development in the sordid saga that’s KSEX, is news this week that company owner Belinkie, who likes to refer to himself as “Da Bossman” bounced checks to a couple of employees.
Or former employees is more accurate to say.
According to the story, Belinkie wrote on-air personalities Powder and Heather Pink checks on a closed bank account. Belinkie had come up with some newfangled rule this year that KSEX hosts weren’t to get paid for doing their shows. However Powder and Pink were covered by “the old rule” before Belinkie made the switch.
Subsequent to Lorrainiac’s on-air resignation last week, Powder and Pink issued a press release to say they were leaving ther station.
I spoke to Powder Thursday night about it.
“Actually Heather Pink knows more about it than I do,” said Powder. “Because she had two checks bounce on her. I don’t know that amount on the top of my head. But I had a check bounce on me for $100. I had deposited it on the 16th. I went to cash it, and they took it out of my account saying it was insufficient funds on the writer of the check sent.
“Heather’s bank did some investigating,” Powder went on to say. “They said that the account the checks were written for was closed.”
Powder said he was waiting for his bank to send a copy of the check.
“Heather’s really unhappy at the moment,” reflects Powder. “It caused a lot of problems with her account more so than mine, because since I cashed the check, it was simply they took the money out. But on hers it caused her quite a bit of trouble.”
“My check was made out for January 1,” Powder said. “The check was waiting for us on our last show a week before we gave our notice. I don’t know what happened to the account and I’m waiting for the documentation to come in the mail. And Heather has been talking to her bank about this.”
“It’s just unfortunate,” states Powder. “With that press release [about the resignation] I sent out, I sent a copy to Jon so that he didn’t hear about it through the grapevine. He wrote back and said thank you for handling this a classy way and not bashing us. He made it sound like everything was fine. I don’t know if that was in part because I cc’ed the rest of the KSEX peejays or if he genuinely meant it.
“But I’m assuming since the problem with the bank account has come up, he was either stalling or being disingenuous.”
Otherwise, Powder said he’s been able to go to the studio and get the rest of his belongings.
“There hadn’t been a problem until this happened,” he adds. “I’m hoping that there’s no other peejays that have run across this same issue. But if there are, I’m hoping they come forward. You can’t pay somebody and just because they’re no longer in your employment take the money back or whatever may have happened. It could honestly be a mistake, but I just have the feeling it’s not. But reading everything that’s been happening at KSEX on your site, nothing surprises me right now.”
“I’m really surprised that as the weeks have gone on that KSEX is still around,” Powder goes on to say. “Part of me is happy because it was such a part of my life for six years. But it’s like watching a rabid animal or a lame horse. You just want to see it put out of its misery.”
“Unfortunately Joe Brandi is getting blamed for a lot of the [business] decisions Jon made,” Powder contends. “I talk to some people who comment, boy, that Joe Brandi came off as such an ass. Unfortunately I think that had to do with Joe wanting to make a strong impression on the adult community when he first came in. Actually, Joe ended up doing a lot. It took awhile but he brought in a really good core group of sponsors and we were almost breaking even from what I understood.”
With Belinkie taking over the ownership of KSEX, Powder observed that there were significant changes in the morale.
“Wankus didn’t seem nearly as happy because he was arguing with Belinkie a lot. It was such a different environment.”
Powder started off as a fan and heard his first KSEX show perhaps eight months after the station had first launched.
“I heard Tales of Tail with Jacklyn Lick- she said I need a computer. I had been a computer tech at the time for about ten years. I put one together and brought it down. She invited me to the station to watch the show. I met Rainy [Lorrainiac]; I met Wankus and I got invited back several times when they figured out I wasn’t the crazy stalker-fan. I was a semi-recurring guest on Rainy’s show Friday nights. Eventually about two and a half years of knowing everybody they offered me the job as a tech. It was a great job, too.”
“By that time Wankus was running the day-to-day operations of the show. It was a really good core group – this was really a good team. Unfortunately the last couple of years it whittled away.”
“Mudshark has done a real bang up job taking over as the tech,” Powder says.
“He’s done incredible work in such a short time. But I miss that group of me, Soxxx and Splooge quite a bit because we worked really well as a team. And it’s interesting to see who’s come and gone and who’s no longer in the industry. Just to watch that much of the adult industry just dwindle away, that really makes me sad.”
“I remember meeting Bisexual Britni when she was absolutely nuts,” Powder laughs. “And I remember seeing her absolutely calm. It was night and day. Things like that.”