Porn Valley- They got the wrong nominee this year. In the category of female performer of the year or for best actress, the nod should have gone to Nicole London.

Because when it comes to collecting money from her, London of Outback Productions can come up with more stories than Charles Dickens. More spin than a convention of top makers. And more unavailability than a DMV clerk. And London’s good. She’s really good. On the phone she lets out well timed sighs of exasperation to suggest that the world at large is convening acts of sabotage against her. The performances really are quite remarkable- bruised and utterly compelling renderings- and I have marvelous bits of audio that I’d love to be able to share and download on this site in the future.

London, you see, has owed me money for a couple of months. Under ordinary circumstances I’d say, okay, mitigating circumstances. Let’s work something out. But work what out?

London is bragging that she’ll be making $65,000 on the sale of her house in Lancaster and is touting the production of 8 movies back to back the beginning of the year. Doesn’t sound like someone who’s hurting for cash flow, does it? But London keeps making excuses. When I called her in October and asked about the status of an invoice her comment to me was: “I’m surprised you didn’t get it.” It, meaning the check. I called a week later. Couldn’t reach her. Still no check- the one she was surprised I didn’t get.

It was only last Friday, a month and a half of one-way phone tag, that I was again able to contact her with London telling me, “I was just going to call you.” [Great timing on my part, huh?] London’s excuse this time was that she was going through a lot of drama. London could teach William Shakespeare drama.

In this conversation, however, London again attempted to comfort me with the false notion that the matter was going to be finally resolved, then she pulled the ultimate rabbit out of her ass. London told me she’d have the check for me on Tuesday of this week and would personally meet me that afternoon to hand it over.

“But it’ll have to be sometime after 3,” she said, creating at the same time a miasma of scheduling intricacies that would frustrate an airport terminal and afford her an escape hatch for a future round of seamlessly woven excuses. With all that being said, it didn’t take a genius to figure that London was going to do what she does best, the razzle-dazzle.

[London in my experience with her has flaked on at least four different occasions besides this one but money wasn’t involved in those meetings.]

Knowing full well what the outcome was going to be, I re-arranged my afternoon schedule to accommodate our meeting. When I called her house at 4, realizing full well this wasn’t going to happen, I was told with mysterious fervor she was “out” and that she couldn’t be contacted. But that’s London specializing in the art of the dodge and the escape. Ask her former webmaster and lover Danny Wallace what it’s like to get her to return a phone call. Their little drama subsequently played out on a daytime court show with London blabbering like an ADD poster girl about how Wallace had fucked things up with her website. But Wallace wasn’t doing much better to present his case. Consequently, London won a judgment against him. A rotten call by the judge, to be sure

I guess I should have seen all of this coming last December, though, when London handed me a bum check on the set of a shoot she was doing with rapper EA Ski. When my checks, in turn, bounced like a reverbing boom box, London went into this act of denial like she, first, didn’t know what I was talking about, then portrayed utter disbelief that she could possibly have given me a bum check. Then for the first three months of 2004 when I’m supposed to be billing her, London went into hiding. Disconnected her phone. Disconnected her e-mail service. Couldn’t be reached. Finally blamed it all on her then Australian business partner for her drama.

I was ready to write London off as the consummate flake when she contacted me again this April. Now she had a new business partner, lending the impression that there was loads of Brazilian money backing her rejuvenated company and wanted to resume our business relationship now that the other business partner was out of the picture. Sap that I tend to be, I bought it. And, sure enough, in a couple of months, London was back to her old tricks – delays in payment, blaming the girl at the office, etc., or just not returning phone calls. That particular matter was actually resolved but not after some degree of exasperation, until this latest bit of business brought the parlor tricks and sleight of hand magic of Nicole London back into focus.

Yesterday I called and left her a message. I insisted [yeah, okay] that a check be overnighted to me, no more excuses, no more bullshit, that I was through with this nonsense. But London’s also got an exit strategy for situations like that – she’ll swear she never got the message. I know because I’ve already had that one pulled on me by her.

And through all of this I’ve got to think to myself that Nicole London’s got to be the dumbest fuck on the planet. What? She never thought this was going to get out?