Last week, I directed my first porn film. It was a complete blast; I had a great time. I also did a bunch of things that . . . well, things I would have done differently.
For the benefit of any porn directors out there, here are the things I made notes of.
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat . . . once I get this huge pile of tape edited.
By the slimmest of margins (5-4), the Supreme Court sent the rancid Child On-line Protection Act (COPA) back to a lower court, and continued the injunction against it.
This is a victory, but not a huge one; the lower court can still decide that the law is fine as written, and back to the Supremes we go . . . And we cannot guarantee a good result, then.
Why is this such a problem? Why would anyone not want to protect children? (After years doing this, anytime someone talks about protecting children, I immediately get extremely suspicious.) Because it is not the function of the government to create a world in which parents do not need to exercise their discretion about their children‘s behavior. Besides being sops to an ultra-conservative base, the only function these laws have is to create the illusion (never the reality) that children can surf the web with no parental intervention.
The web being international also does create a small problem for the enforcement of such a law. Of course, all of those Russian porn sites will be sure to comply with a US law, even though ignoring it will give them a competitive advantage.
In chatting with many friends left-of-center lately, a single theme has started to repeat itself, over and over again: There’s no point in voting. The Republicans, the story goes, have the election tied up. Even if Dubya appeared on Fox announcing his conversion to Islam with bin Laden next to him, Diebold has the election preprogrammed with compromised voting machines, and Bush would still walk home with 75% of the vote. Stay at home, and complain on your blog about the stolen election, appears to be the message.
I’m not quite so gone on conspiracy theories to think that this very rumor is a result of RNC plants, but the self-fulfiling nature of it is obvious. Let’s be clear: Diebold trickery or no, if everyone who thinks that Bush is a moron stays home, he will walk home with 75% of the vote. So, don’t do that, OK?
Just when I think that the United States Postal Service has reached bottom, they manage to come up with something new. The latest one, just discovered today, is that they have contracted out Express Mail delivery in Canada (and probably lots of other countries as well) to a courier company that can’t deliver to Post Office boxes, because they’re a private company, not Canada Post.
That’s right, you can’t send Express Mail to a PO box in Canada. Only the USPS could come up with a way that you can’t send mail to a PO box.
If there was ever, ever, a government monopoly that should be privatized, broken up, and sold off for scrap, it is the USPS. (Yes, I know that technically the USPS is a private company, but as long as the Private Express Statutes granting them an effective monopoly on letters are on the books, they’re effectively a government agency.)
It’s not the unions; UPS workers are in the Teamsters, and they make postal unions look like complete wimps. It is not the universal service commitment; UPS and Fedex both deliver to more delivery points than the USPS. It is stupid management, pure and simple; a classic example of how a long-term monopoly can rot the competitiveness of an organization.
E-mail is killing the USPS, and I for one will not cry to see it gone.
It is not often, thank goodness, but sometimes I have an interaction with one of our customers that leaves me scratching my head, wondering exactly what planet this person is from.
Recently, I had a call escalated to me by customer service because an angry customer was demanding to know where the order he had paid for by money order was. Our extremely polite customer service rep had searched and searched for this order, but we had no record of it. None. Of course, I took the call; one of the things that isn’t so hot about being the company owner is the buck does indeed stop with me.
Let’s say that it wasn’t a particular satisfactory conversation for either one of us.
“So, let me get all of the information so I can help you. When did you place this order?”
“Three months ago! It’s been three months, and I want my order!”
“And we want you to have it, but I’ll need some information to get it to you. How did you pay for it?”
“A post office money order! Is there something wrong with that?”
Oh, great, it’s going to be one of these. “No, that’s fine. We’re happy to take orders paid for by money order. Did you call and place the order with us, or send it in on paper?”
“I didn’t call . . . I paid for it by money order!“ Now, this is starting to be a bit odd. Since January of this year, we haven’t accepted orders that are just scribbled out on a piece of paper and sent in. We ask customers to call us, get the total and an order number, and then send us the payment. If we had gotten an order like that, we would have just sent it back. But we also keep a log of those orders, and his wasn’t on it.
“OK, did you check with the post office to see if the money order has been cashed?” We put the order number on every incoming check and money order. We’ve never in the history of the company cashed a check without processing the order it came with, but there can always be a first time.
“No, the receipt was just a little stub at the end of the money order, and I sent that in with the money order by mistake! Where’s my order?’ Now, this is getting a bit stranger: that’s not a postal money order he’s describing; PMOs have a separate carbon sheet, not a stub.
“It’s possible that we didn’t actually receive the order, then . . .”
His next statement comes out in a rapid fire burst: “I know you got my order because I got a call from a woman at your office on February 17th telling me she couldn’t read my handwriting and I gave her the right address! The bottom line is you have my money and I want my order!” I’m starting to wonder if this guy has the right company. We’d never handle something like that in the way he’s describing, but . . .
“Could you hold for a moment?” I wander over to our phone system, and scroll back to February 17th. Not a single call to the area code that this customer is in, not on the 17th or on any dates around it . . .
“Sir, I’m back. I’m sorry, but unless you can get us a copy of the cashed money order, we won’t be able to do anything for you.”
(Sputtering on the other end of the line.) “You know what I’m going to do! I’m going to write to the Federal Trade Commission!”
I’m terrified by this, of course. “I’m sure you will. Be sure to send us a copy of the letter. I have to take another call now, sir. (This is, of course, a lie.) Goodbye. *click*”
We’ve never heard from him again. But I still wonder: What in the world was going on?
We may never know. But I can hardly wait to see what the letter to the Federal Trade Commission is like.
DVD cases suck. Big time. They are cheap, nasty things with completely inadequate central hubs that allow the DVD to come loose and rattle around inside, scratching the sucker up and making it completely unplayable: In the jargon of the industry, what you then have is a “shaker.” Shakers are defectives, even if porn video manufacturers, skinflints one and all, try to persuade you otherwise. (“Oh, just push it back on. It’ll be fine.”)
At Blowfish, we inspect every single DVD that comes in to make sure it isn’t a shaker, and even so, some manage to get on the shelf (we also check them before we pack them, just in case). We get about 1-2% shakers, which is a ton of returns we have to send back to the manufacturer. DVD cases suck.
It looks like these cases may not suck. They certainly look cool. I’ve ordered some, and we might use them for future Blowfish Video productions. And if you need to re-box a DVD or CD, or put out a short-run title (attention, Apple Garage Band users!), this may be just the thing for you.