If you want to put a real, fine line to the Michael Ninn, Spearmint Rhino break up, the handwriting was already on the wall last October.
That’s when a story came out that Otto Bauer had supposedly been fired from Ninn Worx_SR. I talked to Otto who, like a lawyer, parsed the language of the story to refute it.
“I haven’t been fired by anybody,” Otto told me at the time but wanted to keep things off the record because of the underground turmoil at Ninn Worx_SR.
“I own my titles,” stated Otto. “You’re going to fire me for having my own titles? Another thing is Ninn Worx_SR does our distribution. We are not employees.”
Another part of the story had Otto ditching the Tampa Show in favor of the IVD show which was also being held that weekend. But Otto pointed out that IVD was a major customer and that he was caught between a rock and a hard place.
“We have a standing invitation to the IVD shows every year,” Otto explained. “But we didn’t get wind of that this year. I called Spearmint Rhino several times. This wasn’t a Ninn Worx issue. I called Spearmint Rhino when I heard we had been booked to go to the Tampa show. We were excited to go.”
Then someone from IVD called Otto asking if they were coming.
“She finally gets a hold of me and I learned that I had been scheduled to go to IVD. No one told me. They asked me what was going on. You’re going to the Tampa Show- what are you talking about?”
“So I called the P.R. people at Ninn Worx, meanwhile I’m having conversations with Pierre Woodman over the last few weeks. Some things are going on. This is real serious shit- I can’t just say everything, otherwise I’m swimming in water that’s too deep for me to hold my breath if I have to. Shit’s pretty fucked up.
“Accidentally some pieces have been getting into my territory overseas. Nothing substantial but just to fuck shit up in my foreign territories. Those are sacred to me. I do a licensing with somebody it’s the real thing. That’s a pretty fucked up thing because I said no pieces, anywhere, ever, overseas, nothing.
“There’s a new cowboy in town as you know and it’s not Michael,” Otto continues. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Michael Ninn. Poor Michael Ninn-I could tell you some stories.”
“So we’re talking about John Gray?” I asked.
“I’m not saying anything right now,” says Otto. “Poor Michael- put it this way, I’d rather be me right now. And I know it’s fucked up not to go to something after you’ve been scheduled to go. Tell you the truth, I thought we had been snubbed by IVD and I was getting a bit of an attitude.
“But all of this has been manipulated not by Michael Ninn. And not really John Gray, either. John Gray has been going through some personal shit. There’s been some behind the scenes people at the upper level at both Spearmint Rhino and Ninn Worx. I know the names and we’ll talk about it later. It’s not only fucked up me but some other good people, too. And some other people that are not so good.”
“Nevertheless there’s some backhanded shit that’s going on. It’s fucked up.”
“But I haven’t been fired by anybody. What I’ve done is picked up my shit and left. There’s a big fucking difference, isn’t there? I own my titles. Are you going to fire me from my own titles? What the fuck is that? But as a producer that owns his own product where did you have to go this past weekend if you plan on existing in this market?
“If you’re invited to go to the IVD show, you better fuckin’ go. Because there’s only a handful of people invited in the first place. And it’s an exclusive invitation. What I was representing was the Supercore masthead. Leave poor Michael out of this. Michael’s being fucked in his own right lately and doesn’t need me to say anything about it. If I had been fired, why in the Sam Hill was I travelling my ass off over the weekend?”
“Michael Ninn doesn’t have the authority to fire anybody,” Otto went on to say.
“And there’s no authority to fire me because I don’t work for them. They distribute for me and for that matter I’ve got a contract. Unlike Michael Ninn, I’m not an employee of Spearmint Rhino. I apologize to everyone- the fans and the media in Tampa. I wish to God we could have been there but we took a red eye flight to get to New Jersey.”
As a sidebar Otto said one of the porn stars signing at the show went to a party with cocaine on her lips announcing that she’d turn tricks at a certain price.
“And another one had her Tequila bottle sitting at her signing table- a classic.”