Porn Valley- Skeeter Kerkove’s bringing sexy back to porn, and The Grand Vizier’s bringing cigarettes back to smoking.

Skeeter called me the other night wondering if he could hang with me and The Vizier some weekend afternoon, smoke lavender-scented cigarettes and drink Pinot Grigio. The Vizier’s all for it and he’s honored that Skeeter would want to hang with us.

Meanwhile, The Vizier and I have been talking about this big time porno company that can’t seem to come up with a lousy $150 check they owe me.

“Didn’t you get it up front?” the Vizier wonders.

“No, I trusted them,” says I, telling the Vizier it wouldn’t have been so bad if the matter hadn’t been treated like some idiotic joke.

“When I’d ask about it, I’d be given the usual bureaucratic hoo-da: I e-mailed the invoice to somebody who called somebody routine. But never a straight answer.”

“That’s where you made your mistake- you didn’t get the money and be done with it,” advises the Vizier, telling me about some more of the drama going on the business.

The Vizier’s referring to porn’s wife beater up, www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=27003 mentioned a couple of days ago on this site.

The Vizier refers to him as “Mr. Jibs” and explains why the name.

“A hundred here, a hundred there- it seems that he was pretty good at padding his budgets,” explains The Vizier. “He would include extra costs for specious things like jibs [a boom device with a camera on one end, and a counterweight and camera controls on the other]. Of course he never used those. Hence, he got the name Mr. Jibs.”

According to The Vizier, Mr. Jibs’ porn-performing wife/girlfriend isn’t even allowed to have a bank account. Her money goes directly to him. But as far as padding budgets, Mr. Jibs is very much in the thick of the game. This time with another company which is his new benefactor.”

“They’ll figure it out,” predicts The Vizier. “The last two companies did.”
The Vizier also tells me that Kelly Wells and Jon Strong are a rumored item.

Another story, says the Vizier, involves Coca Cola and a wrestling company-Coastal Championship Wrestling. Coke didn’t like hearing how they were supposed to have some alleged porn connections.

The Vizier says the story has it that Coke pulled sponsorship from a Luchador show that was happening in Miami this weekend.

“A competing promoter apparently sent a nasty e-mail to Coca Cola hoping to stir some shit up,” relates The Vizier, explaining that Coca Cola puts out an energy drink called The Blue Demon and a famous wrestler in Mexico is known as The Blue Demon. I’m telling The Vizier this is getting too complicated and that my brains hurt from all this back story.

“It’s just the fact that this promoter started screaming porn, and Coke overreacted,” smiles The Vizier.

The Vizier says the fact that some porn companies are weathering the current crunch better than others brings up the old chatter about money laundering and who’s involved in it.

“This is how one company owner did it,” says The Vizier. “You get a hundred grand, go shoot a movie for twenty. How did you launder it? You just didn’t put it on the books, paid everyone in cash- put it through the system and when the thirty or forty grand came back now you have the twenty to give back legally and you made a profit because you shot the movie.”

The Vizier’s also got some friends who can’t seem to get return calls from Dream Zotic, a VOD company.

“It seems to be a family operation,” says The Vizier, noting that one company hasn’t seen money from them for at least a year and half.

“Won’t return phone calls,” says The Viz. “They don’t return-emails. It’s the new business model: it goes into the irretrievable voice mail box.”

The Vizier asks me about the Sandy Bunz story that was posted this morning www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=27065 regarding the Shoham Brothers, not to be confused with The Coen Brothers.

The way I’m told the story, Bunz met some guy named Jim McCracken who used to work with Digital Playground then went on his on. McCraken apparently vouched for The Shohams. Bunz signed a contract then never heard from them. Bunz eventually met one of the brothers at The Berlin Show, asked about his money and was told, yeah we owe you 3,000 pounds. In a subsequent e-mail inquiring about that money, Bunz was told that he typed up an invoice wrong and that’s the reason why he hadn’t seen any dough. After waiting months for his money, Bunz told the company he was posting the story.

[Evidently Jonathan Shoham took it seriously enough to leave me this voice message Thursday afternoon from England:

Shoham feels that Bunz was “defamatory” about the company along with his claims of not being paid. Last time I checked, not being paid is not being paid. But Shoham wants to give his side of the story.

“I don’t want to get into a pissing match with him- it’s not my intention,” states Shoham. “It’s not of any benefit- certainly not to him and not to us.” According to Shoham, Bunz’s comments aren’t based on any truth whatsoever and Shoham said he’d be happy to explain the issues and why Bunz hasn’t been paid.]

According to The Vizier, the buzz on the street is about this AVN interview. He shows me the mag.

“They interviewed a buyer for GVA Cleveland,” says The Vizier. “The buyer –Debi Yoskey- said, basically, we’re not taking on any new accounts, I only buy from my friends.”

“What if somebody’s got new product?” asks The Vizier.

“Which is the Catch 22,” I say. “You have to buy it in order to sell it, so how could it sell well if you’re not buying it?”

“That’s the new buyers in the business for you,” replies The Vizier. “They don’t want to buy, they don’t want to return phone calls and they don’t want to take on any new lines.”

“Yoskey is quoted as saying she doesn’t like to do business via e-mail. ‘Don’t IM me to place an order,’ she adds,” says The Vizier. “She goes on to say in the interview how she didn’t go to AEE in search of new product.”

“ ’We’re not really looking to pick up any new vendors,’” quotes The Vizier continuing to read from the piece. He’s finding all of this very amusing.

“Yoskey goes on with how she feels the way of the DVD is going and that she’s not missing anything if she doesn’t pick up anything new,” adds The Vizier. “She feels that no one in the business is reinventing the wheel and that no one is coming out with ‘must have’ product any more.”

“If the DVD’s going to be dead in a year,” wonders The Vizier, “what are people like Yoskey going to do? And if Yoskey didn’t go to AEE to buy anything as she says in the interview, why did they send her? She’s a buyer. You buy. Isn’t your job as a buyer to get new product in, keep a diversity of product on the shelf and get the best price possible for your company? Good buyers grind you down and are not in the business of making friends.”