Greg Zeboray, insurance agent to the (porn) stars and payroll services guy to the porn producers, called me today. Greg says he lost my phone number but happened to be over at Bobby G's stage yesterday and Bobby mentioned that he had spoken to me just the day before and so Greg asked for my number and you can figure out the rest.

When I spoke with Bobby G, by the way, he said that bookings for his facility, "Mid-Valley Stage" are significantly higher since Jim Enright's "The Stage" shut down. Bobby said all the people who had never-ever, or almost never used his facility before, all wanted big discounts. I asked why he didn't purchase some of the set pieces "The Stage" was selling at fire-sale prices (or simply giving away and/or throwing away), and Bobby said no one called him or he would have. Bobby also says he's interested in hiring some of the "The Stage's" now-out-of-work stagehands, but again, no one has called him, but he wishes someone would.

Back to Zeboray.

Greg said his call was just a hi-how-ya-doin kinda thing, but it seems he did want to grouse a bit about the state of the porn biz. Greg says these days he has 8 or 9 toes dipped into other metaphorical bodies of water, other than porn, that is. I'm pretty sure Greg is a ten-toed, bi-ped, at least he was last time I saw him. So being the clever mathematician that I am, I figured that means only ten to twenty per cent of his business still remains in and around the jiz biz.

Only a few short years ago, i.e., two or three, virtually all of Greg's business was in porn. He says he's done some research, and according to that research, over-all sales are still about what they were 2 or 3 years ago. The problem is, the amount of product that supplies the demand has grown exponentially. This means smaller and smaller pieces of the pie to go around; what flavor the porn pie is is anyone's guess, but I'm thinking it's more like a meat pie than a fruit pie, maybe except for gay porn.

Bottom line: A lot of companies ain't doing so well. Especially the bigger, more sophisticated companies. These same companies who were the ones mostly utilizing Greg's services but then claimed they had to cut costs. And Greg, amongst others, took the hit. It ain't like they're going broke, but they certainly ain't doing the kind of sales they used to do and it's hurting them. But one might wonder aloud, "If the shit's so bad, how come so many of these companies are doing these ultra mega-budget projects? (e.g., Rush, The Fashionistas, Paradise Lost, et al.) How come features are supposed to be dead, yet VCA, and Wicked, and Sin City, and Vivid, and New Sensations, and Digital Playground, and a bunch of others keep putting them out? How come I haven't heard of anyone going bankrupt, or losing a house, or having their car repossessed, or simply bailing out of the biz cuz it sucks so bad?"

So I guess what we have here is a genuine mystery: Are many of the bigger companies truly doing that poorly? Or are they simply putting a different spin on the truth (a nice way of saying someone's full of shit), and pockets are being lined just as nicely as ever? One might even wonder if some of these guys took big hits in the stock market (like everyone else who was into it did). And now they're passing off their temporary level of so-called poverty as a porn thing, rather than a bear market thing. (I hope I got that right. I've never played the market, so I might get my bulls and bears mixed up.)

Well, the truth is, I certainly don't know what the truth is. I'm not even sure I'm all that interested in wanting to know. I doubt if knowing any of this shit will change my life significantly.

But the truth is out there, and someone is going to eventually spill it.

P.S. See the new poll and cast your vote regarding this subject.






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