Greetings from California and welcome to a special edition of Porn Star Confidential.

HX magazine's sister company, CMA unveiled it's latest brainchild at the LA Convention Center this past weekend, September 20, 21 for the first ever Gay Erotic Expo in So Cal. The first ever Gay Erotic Expo started in New York last autumn to a crowded Webster Hall. This year, CMA is producing both an LA and the 2nd annual NY event.

The LA event drew a guesstimated 2000 people (an official count wasn't available at press time - it does take time to fly back from LA folks) and featured a number of erotic sponsors and stars making appearances. You can see some great pics of the weekend only in the members area of Cockring.org starting later this week.

You'll see yourself, despite a scathing "review" from a porn industry columnist who wasn't even there, that the event was a lot of fun.

I spent the two days hosting entertainment blocks bringing up stars and sponsors promoting their businesses whatever they may be (and there were a lot)!

Kudos to Rik Jammer http://www.rikjammer.com who showed up from Palm Springs at the Expo for a bit Saturday night (despite getting lost!). There's a trooper!

Rik has finally completed his move from Detroit to Palm Springs and has a line up of appearances this autumn including Man's Country in Chicago and a benefit for Under One Roof in San Francisco. He's just finished making REAR END COLLISON #1: POP A GASKET for (who else?) Raging Stallion http://www.ragingstallion.com which features Steve Cannon and Simon Cox http://www.simoncoxxx.com (who I thought retired but I'm sure glad not!) � he has three "ass-jamming scenes" in which he tops and bottoms and he even was awarded his first box cover. And this will be just part 1!

Rik writes a well written newsletter called Jammer News and you can write to Rik at Rik@rikjammer.com to find out how to get on the email newsletter list.

While I'm thrilled to have seen Rik, the winner of the "Michael Brandon Showing Up is Everything Award" goes to Dillon Press who also drove from Palm Springs to join us for not just one but both days!�

Dillon Press, a gay man through and through - and well, hell just a man through and through - muscular, ripped, shaved head, little chin goatee and I'm sure everything else is pretty great too. Woof. Dillon was the much ballyhooed spontaneous signer at the Grabbys this past spring and made an appearance at the Bad Boys By the Bay event in San Fran this summer.

But his appearance at the Expo was pretty hot - first, admittedly he was a little nervous but the minute I got him to strip and he put on a brand new swimsuit from Jocko (or was it N2N?) he loosened up and then spent a couple of hours getting frisky with fans and taking Polaroids with them (courtesy of the Expo �. This is a great op for me to mention my assistant Lambert who generously spent the entire weekend working the music as well as taking freebie Polaroids for our guests.. thanks Lambert!). He had such a great time that he came back around on Sunday and did it all over again except this time he got all fitted up by our new friends at Koala (another maker of underwear and swimwear)� Yum.

Dillon has just finished work for a number of companies including Catalina and Blue Blake.. when I get a complete listing of his credits I'll be sure to run it in this column. With some luck, we're sure to see Dillon at future events as he really loves working with the charity things that I do and has expressed an interest in joining us for future events. The door is wide open Mr. Press. (And for you all just waiting for an icky scandal, yes, it's unfortunately true that Dillon has made some rather unfortunate choices regarding early video work, but he's sincere and passionate about making better choices now. I won't embarrass him by writing much about it but I for one am a supporter after the trio of appearances he's made the past few months).

Despite the tangles and problems, both Rik and Dillon came through and I know I'm grateful - neither of them had to come through on their commitments, after all, we screwed up - but wow, those guys are amazingly professional!!

Jet Set exclusives Tag Erickson, Connor Banks and Lorenzo Vargas also joined us for the weekend and came up to the stage to take off their shirts and have some fun with us throughout both day.� Tag and Lorenzo will be featured in Jet Set's upcoming AMERICAN PORN IDOL which was previewed exclusively at the Jet Set booth.

As with the recent release of THE HOLE, AMERICAN PORN IDOL will be packaged as a "big movie of the year" and will feature a promotional trailer off a API website (that launches in a couple weeks). Tag plays a Simon Cowell type character and Lorenzo is one of the judges (and I'm not talking Paula Abdul here). Connor meanwhile graces his current promotional pictures with a very sexy "le bret" - that's the piercing that one gets between the lip and chin. Turns out that he's not wearing that anymore but if you find piercings sexy (and woof, I do) you can see him with it in his upcoming first release (something about hot athletic fuckholes or something.. I was kind of getting rocky with the Banks man there and not really paying attention to what he was saying).

You can find Jet Set at http://www.JetSetMen.com or http://www.jetset2000.com.. and in a week or so there will be a website for the AMERICAL PORN IDOL flick (and by the way, you KNOW that there was some funky stuff going on with the producers of the reality show but thankfully it's all settled down now).

In a phone call to me this morning, Brett Drysdale, promotions director at Jet Set, said that he was "disappointed by (said columnist's) hearsay article" and that he and the owners of Jet Set (at least one who was present at the Expo) "couldn't have been happier on a fan and business level". They are reporting that they gave away over 1000 free DVD samplers which have trailers for all of their product from more recent times and box covers from all their older stuff. It's sort of like a Jet Set encyclopedia!

Lest you think that the Jet Set people have a skewed vision of the Expo, I stood on the stage and watched the All Worlds (featuring Cameron Fox) and NakedSword/Hot House booths (featuring Hot House exclusive Dick Wolfe) mobbed throughout both days. Jeff Stryker's booth was mobbed, Movie Mountain's booth was mobbed and even better for an activist like myself, the booth where the group CHEST was consistently crowded throughout the weekend.

For those of you who don't know, CHEST is an organization out of New York which studies social and psychological factors that contribute to HIV and AIDS transmissions. The folks from the group came dressed in wacked out drag and consistently had 15 to 20 people filling out surveys throughout both days. On both days I brought the group up to the stage to talk about the surveys and on Sunday they remarked that Saturday had yielded over 500 finished surveys! .. Hoo Ray!!

Other non profits that joined us were LifeBeat, LAShanti http://www.lashanti.org, http://www.Safesexcity.com (more on this next week) and Adult Industry Medical (AIM) http://www.aim.org . CMA gave free booth space to So Cal non profits to make sure that the message of healthy living and erotic condom use is still getting out there! Of course the booths all gave out freebie condoms and Eros was on hand to sell and give away lube.

King of All Porn, Jeff Stryker http://www.jeff-stryker.com gave away copies of his latest song - a bubble gum country ballad called "Pop You in the Pooper" Smooth talker, good looker and great abs (which he cheerfully showed off to the crowd) Jeff showed some real class by donating one of his action figures as a prize� one lanky, stringy haired fan who was clearly all about being as trashy as he could get (and I actually mean that as a compliment) jumped up on stage and volunteered to 'do anything'. Well, we're not too mean at my events so I let him off easy - all he had to do was strip in an erotic fashion and at the end say "suck that dick" Jeff Stryker style! He did it and did it surprisingly well. (and yes we played the "Pooper" song at the Expo - what could be more appropriate?)

Thanks to Jeff and his manager, I now have about a dozen copies of the "Pooper" song to give away at future events.

Also thanks to New York's Martian Entertainment who threw us a dozen copies of the NAKED BOYS SINGING CD to give away as well as four tickets to the San Diego production of the show which opens October 7th.

Hot House star Dick Wolfe (YUM� Mohawk and piercings.. woof) thrilled the LA Expo crowd with his rough n ready look and continuously had guys swarming around him while he sat at the NakedSword/Hot House booth - you can catch him in Hot House's latest, SKUFF 2. http://www.hothouse.com and http://www.nakedsword.com

Hot House's casting director Brent (who should do porn himself) announced that they are looking for a hot new model to bottom for Aiden Shaw's project filming in San Francisco in January 2004. If you think you have what it takes, go to http://www.hothouse.com and send 'em your pics!

Legendary director Steven Scarborough was also on hand throughout the weekend hanging out in the booth with Sister Roma who stradled three 'callings' by representing Hot House, NakedSword and the San Fran Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.. go Roma!!!!

Hot House and Stryker contributed to a bag donated by AIM which was presented to the stage by newcomer star David Verando. What with two Hot House DVDs, the Jeff CD, the Naked Boys Singing CD and two of the tickets to the San Diego opening of the Naked Boys show, it was a pretty sweet deal and seemed that it should go for more than someone pulling down their pants. In fact someone shouted out an opening bid thus prompting me to start auctioning it off to benefit AIM.

While it didn't get nutty, we did raise a quick $100 for the fine folks over there - and they were way grateful. AIM does great work - testing not only for HIV but for just about everything else as well as alcohol and other drug testing and counseling.

David interrupted the bidding at one point and offered to go to dinner with the highest bidder - "if I take you out, it's McDonalds or Burger King.." he said as he trailed off to which I added "and if you take him out, you can go wherever you'd like!"� It was a happy man who dashed the cash to AIM and everyone had this "wow, that was kind of neat and unexpected look on their face".

As I wrote above, Cameron Fox hung out at the All Worlds booth for hours on end both days and came up on stage to show off his great big cock.. Fox was clever enough to figure out a way around the 'no nudity' law by wearing a sort of short sarong that bunched up with a tie in the middle which covered his cock - and he was bonerific both days especially when he did a little hip swivel action to show off his royal topness - that dong went a dingalinging to the delight of fans throughout the Expo.

Then there was Adam Wilde - a fixture at Vivid and other straight companies. Wilde is an enormous bodybuilder who was modeling a swimsuit Koala which is an underwear company. He was a little nervous coming up on stage with all those photographers (and there was a fucking wall of 'em, man) but hey, straight guys .. what can you do with 'em? Straight College Guy.com star Dean also made it to the stage for a bit on Sunday and corrected me when I made the statement that the models were a mix of straight and gay - nope, all straight. Straight guys who play with straight guys. Well, OK. We have a term for that in the AIDS service field (and no, I'm not talking "in denial") and that is "men who have sex with men".

BuyGay.com's Zeb Atlas, Falcon Exclusive Brad Patton (at the Cybersocket booth), Damian Ford (at the BuyGay.com booth) http://www.damienford.com , Sam Tyson (at the Jet Set booth) http://www.samtyson.com , and Lex Kyler http://www.lexkyler.com and columnist Mark Kleim (LavenderLounge.com) who together do a fun offbeat review show on http://www.reelguys.org

Zeb seems to be the It Boy this season.. even Kleim who often (and almost obsessively) writes about Mark Dalton had to admit that the bloom is off that rose and the new man to watch is Atlas. (Maybe Mark will do a Roxy and get pregnant to draw the attention back to him. Ok that was good for a laugh but that doesn't even make sense.. I did it because I had to include at least one CHICAGO reference! LOL). Anyway, Zeb hasn't got a website yet but I don't think that's going to stop anyone from going to the Buy Gay site and finding his solo/posing videos. For those of you who don't know Zeb, he's a mountain of muscle. No really. Seems decent too although I've seen a picture of the two of us together and my God, I'm a munchkin in comparison. (OK so I'm kind of a munchkin at 5' 8" anyway but you know what I mean).

And what event would be complete without mentioning the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from Los Angeles (http://www.lasisters.org) who came down late Sunday afternoon and did a fabulous blessing of the event! Thank you "ladies" .. thanks much to Sister Buffy who looked more than pretty in pink, he looked woofy! When the guys from Latinguys.com came up to the stage Buffy perked up (his last boyfriend was porn star Victor Rios) �. Nice to know the Sisters are perpetually indulging! LOL The Sisters borrowed four glass cocks from one of the exhibitors, Phallix (they make all sorts of fine glass erotica - which is not only art but can be used as a dildo as well!) to use in their invocation - and then wouldn't you know it, the guys from Phallix gave us one to give away - one brave soul wanted it so bad that he deep throated the object. His name is Vladimir, a big burly guy whom I later got to make out with (as the way to win one of the other giveaways). Vlad owns a shop in WeHo that sells erection enhancers� see the kind of things that you learn when you get to know the fans (and oh by the way, yeah, great kisser).

I haven't even mentioned the "feels like skin" boobie and cock models from realdoll.com nor about the friendly guys from Interactive Male.com or the hot men at the Ponce jewelers booth or the interactive porn booth, or the Butt Boys music, nor about the cool conversations that I had about fans and what they are loving (and hatin') in the world of gay porn this year.� There was also the AVN folks, the new gay bi editor, Doug who wrote a real nice recap of the day (and I'm sure remembered things that I've forgotten).

But what I will never forget is the sight I saw towards the end of the day. Cockring's Harry Bitsch and I grabbed a bite to eat at the cafeteria across the hall from the Gay Expo and were sitting there just kind of taking a break from porn (it can happen you know).

Well, the LA Convention Center seems to have a fairly wicked sense of humor and in the other conference hall across the hallway from the Erotic Expo, there was some sort of religious event happening. This would have been odd, strange, kooky enough, but the Sisters decided that they needed to go to Starbucks which was located on the other side past the cafeteria we were at and past the wide open doors to said religious conference.

Like Enoch Snow's children in CAROUSEL, the Sisters trailed each other led by Buffy in shocking pink.. did I mention that three of the four Sisters wear habits? The fourth, an initiate brought up the rear although that wasn't the end of the sight - oh no. Behind them, a friend dressed in leather and behind them a guy with a dyed red Mohawk wearing torn clothes toting a camera. Bringing up the end of this merry band was a 40 something prim and proper white guy dressed from head to toe in black rubber pulling by a chain and collar his "boy" who was a 20 something guy of Asian descent wearing head to toe red rubber.

Strangely no one made a fuss and there was not one peep from the passersby� I guess it is, after all, LA.� LOL

So the rest of us had a lot of fun and people enjoyed themselves. I guess it's just a matter of how you want to see the world. If you want to be bitchy and negative, you'll have a bitchy and negative life. Being involved with the event myself hardly makes me objective, but hell, at least I was actually there so I know what I'm talking about.

Some say that said columnist is simply bitter because CMA didn't bring him in to pull together the entertainment or have him host the event. He certainly has a history of not promoting or covering events that he's not the center of attention for.

I think it might be because CMA rejected his bid to get a freebie booth just to bring in a few porn performers. Everyone else paid to be a sponsor or rent a booth, and they brought stars on top of that.

Apparently his sources are a few fans that were there and grumpy porn stars who felt as though they'd been cheated out of their due - and decided to take it out in trade by slamming the event even though two of them were barely there (and I mean that in all senses of the phrase).

One of the tragedies of the Expo was a problem that we had in the 11th hour with stars' promotions. When I started working with the Expo late last spring, I asked a lot of the stars in So Cal to join us for the event. "Payment" would be in the form of promotion in the program books printed up by Frontiers magazine.

Unfortunately some of the stars became upset a week or so before the books came out when, due to space considerations, some pictures were left off the promotional cards (which was always an "extra" and not part of the original promotional plan) and the program books were delayed. Then, when the program books finally came out, a flurry of emails to yours truly exploding (and rightly so) that there were no website or bio information in them as promised. Of course I had posted all the pictures with bios in numerous columns and on cockring.org but there was understandably an angry contingent of stars who then refused to appear "for free" at the Erotic Expo despite mea culpas from me and offers of additional advertising in the New York Expo program book from the folks at CMA to try to do something because of the gaffe.

You know what? I wasn't in the best of moods at the start of the Expo myself after the icky snafu with the models. I clearly have a vested interest not only from a business standpoint, but many of these guys are my friends. I was upset that a company I work for had, well, screwed up.

But in the end, I made the best of a bad situation and you know what? I got over myself and had fun.. and while said columnist can carp all he wants about the event being a "disaster" after (supposedly) talking to a couple dozen fans, there were about 2000 other fans who seemed to be having a great time. And any way you slice that my dear readers is no disaster at all.

The 2nd annual New York Gay Erotic Expo http://www.gayeroticexpo.com will take place at the Copacabana on Sunday October 12th and Monday October 13th. The event features appearances by Michael Brandon, Bret Wolfe and a cavalcade of stars from around the country including the aforementioned Tag Erickson, and fellow Jet Set Exclusive Seth Hollister. Michael Lucas will also appear with his exclusives Rob Ramos, Rick Gonzales and Wilson Vasquez and frequent Lucas star Chad Hunt. Also scheduled to appear are Rod Barry, Enrico Vega, Gino Romano, Tony Serrano, Rob Romoni, Felipe Carson, Andy Dill as well as Ethan Marc & Dean Edwards and Michael Starr from Showguys.com. The lineup always changes for things like this (as if you didn't know that!) so check out www.cockring.org for full details of appearances.

I'll be M.C.ing both days and will host Jet Set's "Who Wants To Be A Porn Star" contest which will feature Expo guests vying for the opportunity to be flown to LA to appear in an upcoming Jet Set flick in a non sexual role. There will be some fabulous second and third prizes .. check out (what else?) www.cockring.org for full details closer to the date of the Expo! Jet Set is expected to debut it's latest extravaganza, AMERICAN PORN IDOL at the Expo (cross your fingers).

There will be an appearance by gay disabled comic Greg Walloch, cast members from THE DONKEY SHOW and a few things that we're still trying to iron out at press time. Also at the New York Expo, CHEST will continue to do their sex surveys and afterwards will compare/contrast the two cities' responses.

But more on this in the next couple weeks. Another column follows on Thursday with some really fabu stuff including a director is puzzled by a stars freaky behavior, a complete Folsom weekend update and much more�. It's the Folsom edition of Porn Star Confidential.