The Bad News

Hello, you dearly neglected Money Shot Blog readers. I am not your usual host. My name is Julius Hoffman. But you can call me “Ray”.

I come to this here esteemed porn blog with terrible news. Your esteemed porn-blogger, and my dear friend and business partner, is dead.

Sherman McCoy is dead.

A Chorus for the Dead Hash Smoker

But before we go on… Here’s some transcendental reading music. Yeah, it’s Guns-N-Roses, but also Julian The Angel, which is both like me, since I am Julius, and like Sherman, because he is dead like a fucking Angel.

Perhaps you want to know how it happened…

We were having a fine time in Copenhagen. Smoking lots of hash. Putting together plans for the building of a series of wild and innovative new porn sites. Meeting and chatting with other producers of porn, most of whom spoke with these funny hoodie-hoodie Nordic accents.

What Killed Sherman McCoy

Then Sherman started to feel unwell.

At first he thought it was just some allergies. Or maybe a cold. Or maybe just a physical manifestation of his existential angst– he did, after all, summon up the dead spirit of Søren Kierkegaard and practically beg the old existentialist to pitch him a philosophical fastball.

But by the start of July, he was convinced that he was really sick. More dramatic ideas started to come to mind: Swine Flu? Some sort of nasty, life-threatening virus caught from a Tijuana whore-girl?

Turns out that it was indeed some sort of infection that killed him. Nobody knows precisely what it was, and nobody knows precisely where he got it from. The doctors labeled it a “generalized systemic infection”. That sounds all generalized and systemic and not the least bit like the lethal microbial beast that it was.

Kicked Out of Denmark

As the month of July progressed, Sherman turned into a total mess. He even tried to come back to porn-blogging, but he just couldn’t do it.

He did keep on smoking hash though. Perhaps it was the hash smoking that alleviated his discomfort somewhat and allowed him to convince himself that his health problems were not as serious as they actually were.

He was taken to the Kingdom hospital in Copenhagen on July 22. When the Danish authorities realized that Søren Kierkegaard was about to drag his summoner back with him into the afterlife, they promptly put us both on the next Continental Airlines flight back to Newark.

They even sprung for first class! People get awfully generous when they’re dealing with a walking zombie.

We never made it back to California. Sherman was transported to Mount Sinai in New York City as soon as we got off the plane. All his family from upstate came down to be at his bedside. He expired after a week of heroic efforts by the doctors.

Guess Who Ended Up With His Ashes?

Sherman’s body was cremated. And is it any wonder that yours truly has ended up with his ashes? Here they are, right here in this fucking Folgers Coffee can (à la Lebowski) on my kitchen table, looking at me as I write this to you.

We talked on the plane about what to do with his ashes if he were to kick the bucket. He wanted them spread all over the place, and I am happy to oblige.

Some of his ashes he wanted thrown off the end of the Oceanside Pier at midnight on the date of the new moon. That was the night of August 20, a few days ago. Done and done. It probably looked a little wierd… but, eh, whaddayagonnado?

You can now swim with the fishes for all eternity, Sherman!

He also wanted some ashes sprinkled atop the graves of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Apparently Sherman wants to spend part of the afterlife in good existential company.

Kierkegaard is no problem. I know where his grave is because he’s the fucker who started this whole death-spiral. I’ll be going back to Copenhagen in a few weeks to take care of that.

Sartre should be easy; I don’t speak French but I’m sure I can find it.

Nietzsche might be a little more difficult.

And As For The Porn Blog?

Well, dear friends… I’ve inherited it!

No sense in wasting a perfectly good domain just because the blogger is dead, is there?

So I will, in the spirit of my good dead friend, build this blog up from a very crappy and neglected porn blog into a real good fucking porn blog!

I start with the tagline. You can see it atop this page now.

The Porn-Blogger is Dead. Long Live the Porn Blog!

What more is there to say, really?

For last few days I listen to Super Taranta!. Is from Gogol Bordello– that is hottest Gypsy punk band of… ummm…. 2007.

I am little late. Usual case. Trend train already left station. Arrived at fucking destination long ago while I fucking spend time fucking Tijuana whores.

Guys in band are genius. Totally existential. Confronting serious psychological and philosophical issue with smart analytical rational thinking.

And there even song of Grand Unification Theory. Will titillate your inner physics geek!

Is music that help navigate you the absurdities of stupid modern American life… with vodka and marinated herring!. In face of so much existential absurdity, what can possibly ask of art except that it be helpful?

They become with Silversun Pickups one of my favorite band. Check out performance with Postmodern Queen herself from 2007 (just first part of video). And also session on show of clueless David Letterman.

(I think Madonna performance is one best things I’ve seen in year… I remember Andrew Sullivan blog it many many times ago. I never knew who Gypsy dudes were until now, tho’.)

Totally Unrelated Christmas Harem Pic

Goodie-goodie… Christmas is over. And what a fucking Christmas it has been!

You might wonder why yours truly has not blogged nuthin’ for almost all of this month.

It’s because I was in fucking Iceland! Bankrupt decrepit Iceland!

Early this month my pal Ray, who lives in Oceanside, called me up and asked me to come over. When I got to his Pacific Street place he told me that his ex-wife had secretly upped and moved with his two young kids to her home country of Iceland in order to, essentially, spite him. She took the law into her own hands instead of taking it to Divorce Court, giving Ray an international child abduction as an early Christmas present.

So Ray said he was going to Iceland to get his kids back. And I asked him if he wanted some company. The next morning, we landed at Keflavik with wads of cash in hand, ready to hire a lawyer. I told Ray that we should go all Warren Zevon on that bitch and get some guns too, but Ray is much more calm than I am and decided to cap the effort at lawyers and money.

Anyway… it was not a pleasant experience. It is not so easy to be on the receiving end of an international-child-abduction-for-spite thing. Ray, of course, is the innocent bystander who just got stuck in the mess, and now he’s certainly down on his luck in an emotional sense. And the Icelandic justice system moves slow at Christmastime, mostly because everyone involved is in a stage of either drunkenness or bitter depression.

Icelandic Lawyers in their Natural Habitat

The issue will take months to resolve. Months of legal wrangling. And Ray will be cut off from his children in the meantime. Of course he is distraught about it. I told Ray that he shouldn’t force himself into pain and sorrow like there is no tomorrow. But he should use the pain and sorrow to fill him up with power because, after all, life is both sweet and sour.

Ray gave me an evil look. Must have reminded him of his ex-wife or something like that.

Iceland was overall quite depressing. People there held a general mood as black as the December sky. It’s almost like they had known, long ago, that being the country that incubated Sigur Rós was too good to be true, and that there would be an eventual reckoning.

The “Blue Lagoon” thing was pretty cool tho’. A little touristy but I’d still love to have a geothermal pool like this in my own backyard.

We flew back to the U.S. on Christmas Day. Ray’s kids are still being held as emotional hostages in a country that has been essentially whacked by the financial fallout.

The whole thing was so depressing that I had to go fuck a Mexican street whore (two of them, actually) on the day after Christmas to cheer myself up.

Ray is so depressed that he’ll probably need to buy himself a sex slave. I keep on telling him that he can get one of those barely-legal Mexican girls as a sex servant, and then when he’s tired of her he can just send her back in a taxi to the border. It could be a Christmas present to himself. A little human trafficking and a case of Bailey’s will make the holidays much more bearable.

But for now: I’m back! And there’s plenty of postmodern porno blogging to catch up on! Here goes…

Here is some surfing music by L.A. band Megapuss. The music doesn’t really have anything to do with the holiday; I’m just posting it because I heard the tune on Pig Radio and it got stuck in my head…

Quite catchy, don’t you think?

You American guys can get the whole funky but wonderful album from Amazon’s DRM-free music shop. I did. Well worth the ten bucks.

And here are some galleries from various free sites: