Image: Photographer Hal

Photo: Rae Threat/Fleshbot.com

It pretty much started with Stoya and a shaved head, in bed. January was the 2011 AVN Awards and I was happy to travel to Las Vegas to attend, thanks to generous supporters: Njoy, ASLAN Leather, TwistedMonk, and several fans who bought autographed films to help pay the way of myself and several members of the Queer Porn Mafia, including: Shine Louise Houston, Syd Blakovich, Dylan Ryan, Courtney Trouble, and Tina Horn. Your help allowed us to travel, sleep, and eat. I was proud to walk the Red Carpet with Shine, who’s website CrashPadSeries.com was nominated “Best Alternative Website”.

Photo: Jeff Koga

2011 was a pivotal year for my college travels. I joined forces with some other queer porn performers such as Sophia St. James and James Darling to speak on the topics of Queer Pornography at Evergreen. I also traveled to speak about my experiences in porn, present screenings, and teach queer sex at Scripps College, UC Davis, Long Beach LGBT Center, and Harvard University. Other travel brought me to Good For Her’s Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto — to my surprise, I was featured in TWELVE nominations! I also traveled to Germany for the Berlin Porn Film Festival, where I was featured in SIX films and was also a panelist on queer and lesbian pornography, as well as participating as a celebrity judge for the Short Film Competition.

Photo: Nick Strite

2011 was a big year for fundraising, as local women/trans health clinic Lyon-Martin had a desperate call for help, and I was able to donate over $1200. I also was able to participate in the Shibaricon fundraiser for the Red Cross to help aid Japan with a signed framed image of myself by Shilo McCabe, as well as gift $1,000 to a girls’ program in Oakland through my work with Girlfriend’s films donation program.

My own philanthropic porn experiment Karma Pervs saw several updates benefiting programs such as SWING (Service Workers in Group, Thailand) with images by twincest (RIP), the LGBT Center (SF), a ghost shower for The LGBT Center, autofellating for the Center for Sexual Health & Pleasure, piss and brick for the Leather Alliance, masturbating in the Pacific Ocean, and posing as an angel for 3 secret organizations (2 youth projects and a wolf & wilderness organization). Thanks to photographers Tristan Crane, N. Maxwell Lander, Micheal Rosen, Shilo McCabe, and Aeric Meredith-Goujon. I’m going to consolidate Karma Pervs to quarterly updates starting 2012 so that I can spend more time helping to promote the cause. It’s still a really great project and I’m thrilled with some of the creative collaborations so far.

Photo: Michael Rosen & Karma Pervs

I fell in love with Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, taking to the stage to pose as Spider Jerusalem in a Transmet Tribute with proceeds going to the Comic Legal Defense Fund, and joined by the lovely Ryan Keely. Turns out a snippet from backstage appears in Patrick Meaney’s documentary on Warren Ellis, Captured Ghosts. Shortly after, I returned to pose again with Stoya for a Jack the Ripper themed Dr. Sketchy’s, using the topic to bring awareness to violence against sex workers.

Major porn productions in 2011 included Rough Sex 3: Adrianna’s Dangerous Mind, with a really fun release party in NYC with Adrianna Nicole, Tristan Taormino, and Danny Wylde. I also got to see Adrianna, Tristan, as well as Sinnamon Love and others at Cinekink, where we spoke on an Ethical Porn Panel. I also had the pleasure of working with Kay Brandt for Jewelbox Films and Digital Playground on Cherry. It was great to appear with a major porn studio as an androgynous DJ and pick my co-star Andy San Dimas.

2011 also saw a lot of Nina Hartley. I was thrilled to invite her to Crash Pad Series to film the site’s 100th Episode, streamed live to level 3 members. Then recently this year, another live scene I performed with Nina was released, Courtney Trouble’s LIVE SEX SHOW which is a fundraiser for the Center for Sex & Culture, and the FIRST explicit vaginal fisting scene I have on DVD.  [If you want to buy this DVD from me, or others -- let me know!] Courtney and I collaborated on FISTING DAY, an international online and live day to honor, educate, and get off fisting. I’m very proud of our success, which includes many people being more accepting and sex positive about the act, as well as the DVD being sold by 5 courageous feminist sex toy stores: Tool Shed, Early to Bed, Fatale Media, She Bop, and Smitten Kitten, as well as directly from Courtney and myself.

A good year for art, I had the pleasure of being invited to be a co-curator of THIS IS WHAT I WANT, a guest celebrity judge of “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze” exhibit at the SomARTS Cultural Center, and a moderator for Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens Ecosexual Symposium on “Ecosex & Art”. Other artful moments included Molly Crabapple’s 66 Portraits of Sixty-Six friends who Awe, inclusion in the Blindfold Project Book, reading from my blog at Writers With Drinks, and a new pornsaint rendition by Ale Senso. Aaaaand, I got to buff up my drag chops as Ritchie Valens in Rob Fatal’s “LA BAMBA 2: Hell is a Drag” campy sci-fi gore sequel.

I also did a fair share of modelling; for May was Masturbation Month I posed for Shilo McCabe’s Sex Positive Photo Project. I also posed for RH Denim, a new fashion company in Los Angeles. And a rarity for me, despite my dance degree and performance art background, is dancing on stage these days. Yet in 2011, I did it a few times. I performed a Black Swan inspired solo at a sex club called Velvet. And during SF Pride, Dylan Ryan and I collaborated to create a performance for QUEERLY BELOVED. In fact, we got so excited about it that we even made a trailer (thanks to Mickey Mod and Malory!).

The year is ending with a swell crescendo as I enjoyed my time in tights at the Fleshbot Awards, with lots of photos to prove it… and am pleased to be twice 2012 AVN Nominated for the AVN Awards as well as featured in several films and series recognized for AVN and XBiz industry awards.

I’ll wrap up this post with a New Year’s image for you all, a design from my special holiday cards, which I sent to the addresses of those who have supported my work through becoming members of Karma Pervs or purchasing DVDs and other items through me, as well as some co-stars and peers. The image below is based off a Karma Pervs photo by Courtney Trouble taken at EROS, visually redesigned by the clever and talented Vinh Luan Luu.

Happy New Queer!

Image: Vinh Luan Luu, Courtney Trouble & Karma Pervs

I’ll be sending a card to everyone who has purchased one of my films, or who has signed up for Karma Pervs. A little way to say thanks for your support!

Being as there’s still time before the end of the year, I wanted to share this opportunity with those who may have wanted to help me out but haven’t yet — it’s not too late to get a card!

Any DVD purchase or sign-up before December 1st will be added to my mailing list.
(And if you only want the card, let me know and I’ll send you one for $5.)

I’m so excited to send out these cards… but for now, I’m keeping the super fun and clever design a surprise… You’ll just have to wait to open your mail!

She’s working on her lookbook now, and I was lucky to be able to join the shoot, with photographer Roman Cho.

It was a really fun shoot and it was so nice to meet such sweet and beautiful people, inside and out.

While the jeans are designed for women, I was able to slip in as I do my genderqueer stylings. They’re fun jeans to pack in, too!

Check out her blog, and if you’re interested in helping her get her company off the ground, please consider supporting her project.

Be a backer on Kickstarter!

Visual artists have contributed portraits of many porn performers. Browse their gallery for images of performers such as Stoya, Syd Blakovich, Kimberly Kane, Buck Angel, April Flores, Bobbi Starr, and myself — and many more. I also appear in their pornsaints catalog, and if you feel inspired, each print is for sale through the site.

My first pornsaint image was created by visual artist Jeff Faerber. This newest image comes from Ale Senso.

Check out the full size image on Pornsaints.org!

Here’s more info about the film, which is now in production (more photos coming soon!). Throw down a few dollars, there’s lots of fun perks.

The Story

La Bamba 2: Hell is a Drag is a camp, trash, sci-fi, horror, avantguarde, DIY dark comedy sequel to the 1987 film La Bamba. The film is set 62 years after the ending of original La Bamba and centers on the journey of artist Rob Fatal [played by up and coming burlesque dancer extraordinaire Tara Lihn], an obsessive fan of Ritchie Valens [played by queer performance artist/scholar/adult actor Jiz Lee].

On the Day of the Dead 2021, Fatal is pulled into the underworld by Donna, Ritchie’s girlfriend in life, who tells Fatal that Ritchie has been kidnapped by a band of jealous rock stars. Fatal, Donna and the Valens family including Connie, Bob and Rosie [played by the neo-Chicano art collective the Piñata Brigade] set out on a mission to rescue Ritchie while encountering along the way a barrage of challenges that put to the test the constructs of domesticity, gender, fantasy, celebrity, sexuality, high art culture, violence and obsession.

The Impact

La Bamba 2 is a collaborative film effort from a band of social minorities: women, queers, ethnic minorities. We aim to put our confrontational vision back into the world; to turn a mirror on the world whose structures and policy aim to hold people in a constant state of self-doubt, self-questioning, normality. Particularly as a work of Chicano film, La Bamba is a missing voice. In the 1980 and 90s, the only representation of any queer or gay people in predominant Chicano film was in the violent rape scenes of prison movies like Blood In Blood Out (1993) and American Me (1992).

In the last few years films like La Mission (2009) and Gun Hill Road (2011) have put the topic of queer/trans/gay in the forefront of the Chicano film and as such in the forefront into the minds of the Chicanos [well, those who have actually seen the films]. Still though, these films’ stars are straight Chicano men dealing with the problem of gayness or queerness in their lives. And while they eventually come to terms with their children’s queerness in the film and kind of begin to love and accept their kids for who they are, it is usually after some violent, rage, gun shooting, crazy gang related shit, blah blah blah.

La Bamba 2 is perhaps the first queer-made Chicano film. Definitely the first avant-garde, underground Chicano made film. La Bamba 2 is very simply making history and re-visioning history, present and future. Building from filmic works including Pink Flamingos (1972), Flaming Creatures (1963), Holy Mountain (1973), Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Suspiria (1977), Mi Vida Loca (1993), Un Chien Andalou (1929), The Watermelon Woman (1996) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), La Bamba 2 is a personal work that opens and extends the conversations of queer and minority identity in film, surrealism, trash, camp, and genre deconstruction. The film is also just plain funny, scary, and damn beautiful.

Help us reach this goal by Halloween! Pssst… my birthday is October 30th, so consider it a birthday present! Your money will, in all honesty, help etch a new era in Chicano film and a new voice in radical underground cinema.

Contribute Now at IndieGoGo!

The newest update for Karma Pervs benefits the SF LGBT Center. I’ve performed there a number of times with twincest and other groups, and on the 21st, Shine Louise Houston will be screening clips and doing a directors’ Q&A as part of the Good Vibrations Independent Erotic Film Festival — I’ll be there, and Shine will screen one of my scenes in CHAMPION: Love Hurts. Besides a slew of great events, especially during June for Pride month, the center is a huge resource for thousands of queer artists, groups and fiscally sponsored projects. They offer services such as grant writing workshops and are a real backbone in the SF Arts scene, and many other areas of the Bay Area queer community.

I shot the photo set with N. Maxwell Lander, who you might recall from my Karma Pervs for Femina Potens (which happens to be a fiscally sponsored project of The LGBT Center). A few of the images from that project are part of her Blindfold Project and Coffee Table Book, which you can still pre-order. Max is also involved in a new project max&g.na which you can learn about via Maxandgna.tumblr.com or twitter (@@maxandgna).

Joining me in the shoot is Varina Adams. Several of these images were edited on Max’s iPad while still in the NYC hotel. I’ve also included some bonus images of myself which Max took while I was visiting Toronto for the 2011 Feminist Porn Awards. Here’s a peek.

The newest update for Karma Pervs benefits the Center for Sexual Health & Pleasure (CSHP) run by sweet-sexy-smart sex educator Megan Andelloux.

I shot the photo set with Michael Rosen, an established and culturally significant photographer in the Bay Area. Michael has documented queer/kink communities, and in recent years photographed people in his contact sheets series.

While shooting the contact sheets, I noticed the easily recognizable photograph of late gay porn star Scott O’Hara in his infamous Autofellatio pose, a well-known portrait Michael had on his wall. I pulled out my dildo and suggested we recreate the image. The image appears in Sexual Art, the third of Michael’s five photography books. Here’s this teaser from the shoot. Join Karma Pervs to see the Contact Sheet and other images, and support The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health… and enter to win an autographed DVD from me!

Quinn Valentine as Michelle Tea. Photo by Tristan Crane: See more photos from behind the scenes.

In this first chapter, Quinn Valentine (psssst sexy sexy) stars as Michelle, and Courtney herself as Petra (one of the first introductions I had as a reader, to safer sex, fisting, and knife play). If you’re interested in contributing to the cost of the production, here’s Valencia Chapter 1′s Kickstarter. You can also Like Valencia: The Movie/s on Facebook, read an interview with Michelle and Courtney about the project, and help spread the word in general. In the meantime, check out this teeny tiny sneak peek and consider digging into your money pocket (no, the other one…) to donate!

Says Molly:

“In mid June, I threw a party to celebrate the death of my social life that would result from having to draw a graphic novel. The next morning, picking through the wreckage, I started feeling really lucky to know my guests. Here was this group of extraordinary people: writers and artists and porn stars and firebrand journalists and rockstars. I thought that maybe I should draw them. What resulted was the Sixty Six Project, a series of 66 portraits of folks I adored, including Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Warren Ellis, Margaret Cho, Stoya, Bre Pettis, Douglas Rushkoff, Zoetica Ebb, and several dozen more reprobates.”

Also available as a print (click for large size):

See all the protraits of the Sixty Six Project.