Homegrown remembers when...
 

Time for a good ol' fashioned nostalgia thread...

Since I haven't been around these parts for a while, and I started the dang thread, I will go first:

Serge and FM used to fight for pages and pages about which came first, the chicken or the egg, the program or the affiliate

Ynot was a dirty toilet for pissing rather than a tidy desk for study

Evil Chris was doing his show with Dugmor at WRP (ahead of their time when you think about it)

Throwing a webmaster party actually brought in affiliates

Seth still had an office in Seattle... and Flying Crocadile was still run by an expert on shrooms

(add some of your own faves)

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All night drunken brawls on Amateur Masters.....

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lol, I resemble that remark...

The greatest of all those rants was the world war three of Cam wars.

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I have foggy memories of that. Something to do with who was going to broadcast from Internext or something. Before Dan Hogue bought the board.

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.....when Homegrown was only a magazine

....when a guy named Farrell posed nekkid for a series by Giffy Girls

....when the debate was gif or JPG / PCboard or Wildcat

....when status was owning a HST Dual Standard

...when Jim Maxey was king of the world

...when Lee Noga was busted for scanning nekkids from magazines and reselling them on CD for BBS.

....when the real show was called OneBBSCon

...when an elderly pirate couple called Rusty and Edie were busted by axe wielding Feds for piracy.

Welcome back my oldest online friend. Im pretty sure there are less than a dozen of us that understand the above ramblings but remember that we were there as this began.

Im pretty sure Dennis Hayes, Ward Christianson and Phil Katz never knew who Ron Levy or Serge were either. But then again they probably dont know them either.

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lol, yes, that is the way, way back... don't forget theGeneral bbs

... and the day a kid walked in to our San Diego office offering to sell upskirt pics from Mission Beaches unsuspecting bathing beauties -a kid who we turned away and told him to check out this thing called the internet and when we saw him a month later he had a site called "busty amateurs"...

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The General... hes either in jail or in mexico still I think.

Look on the bright side ... you could have bought that content and he would have found God and wanted it all taken down.

Good to see your legal issues have fully closed and to have you back around.

Danny Cox says Ive lost my goddamn mind by going into the webcam biz.

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...Big dickin' was RLL'ing your drives to get 50% more storage.

...A couple of hundred megs and a couple of pioneer 6 CD changers full of Lee's stolen images and Giffy Gold was big time.

...traffic generation was putting obnoxious watermarks on your stolen jpegs. McHenry was the king of obnoxious.

...good parties and dinners weren't populated by kids who were scammers and dopers instead of businessmen, but instead were occupied by the likes of Dennis Hayes, Ward Christiansen, Phil Katz, George Peace, Fred Clark, Chuck Forsberg, Jim Harrer, Andy Keeves, Bob Mahoney...and yes even Jim Maxey....complete with his white linen suit. This would've been at the Broadmoor circa 1993-1994.

I could go on about that last one for a while because that was a dinner that took competitors and got them working together and ultimately led to some standardization, ongoing open communications between principles, and even the early foundations of an industry lobby (which still exists in form of USIIA, but is woefully underfunded).

Dont see it ever happening in adult, the true businessmen will always be undermined by the rogue elements.

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When Homegrown launched Steve Sweets video line and the Sweets threw that crazy party where there was naked sushi girl "platters" and live fisting sex shows and that insane pornstar was getting gang banged in the muddy back yard...

"shaving" was the operative term for scamming

Brian Muir and those genius amateur site tours

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... when phone sex was a bigger business than the internet.

... when 2 cents a click could make you millions.

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Far L where do you see this crazy ride in 3 years?

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Good stuff. I don't understand 90% of it but I like reading about it. :-)

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Hey Far-l

I remember all this shit....damn Im dating myself.....I been at this way too long.

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fifteen years...a decade and a half. Pretty soon you will be shooting girls that weren't even born when you started.

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lol, to quote a fave Dead tune, "too much of everything is just enough"...

This thread is all about us old timers patting ourselves on the back for staying alive, staying alive, ah, ha, ha, ha staying alive... and educating the newer arrivals to the game about the fact that we have survived not only the bad times but in some cases the good times too.

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And when a click bot would do all the work, lol.

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oh and lest not forget when there was one industry publication and it didnt suck the cock of its advertisers or try to get them over with the rest of us.

Ole Jack Rickard cashed out way before us all and took his Hummer and said fuck all of us.

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Here you go Steve... let me connect all the dots from 1993... a panel discussing dealing with adult pictures online .... with Jim Maxey and Oprano alumni Lee Noga.

http://www.archive.org/download/bbsc...-ryan_64kb.m3u

This is back when I formally registered gonzo.com yet you can see now in 2010 some of these issues are still with us.

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You are a master historian... time to bust out that Lee Noga video clip where she went after the panel at that internext way back when.

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Downstairs, in New Orleans... we all egged her on to do it too :)

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And we had the Internet rights to the first three Sweets videos (then STP Productions). That "insane pornstar" was one of our girls (that Steve destroyed)! ;)

I remember talking in the phone with some guy names Moffitt from a little company called Homegrown. That was back in 1996 when I was working with Trans-Video with setting up on-line stuff. We talked to Moffitt about selling HGV on-line and he laughed at us, saying the Internet was just a flash in the pan and we wouldn't make money (I always have to bring that up when I see him!) ;)

Then there was the huge gang fight at my studios with the Homegrown and Wild Rose boys taking on all the Italians that tried to crash the party! That was F'n wild, even when the gun fire started!

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Orlando, 1996, JoeE puts on the very first big webmaster party at a convention. When he goes to pay for it, his credit cards are maxed out and they wouldn't take his company or personal check. They were going to toss him out of the hotel until Pushrod and I chipped in to cover him.

I remember the first Vegas show when ScottPB puked all over some guy in the elevator. Not pretty. That was the same show where he had the shit kicked out of him by someone who I can't remember!

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Yeah, I was right next to Lincoln when that cat pulled the gun and pointed it in his face before pointing it up at the ceiling and firing. (Right after Michael Moore said how guns were no big deal in Canada, lol) I knew we were in Canada though when a couple of those bastards went to their car and came back with sawed off hockey sticks.

You know how to throw one hell of a gang bang / orgy though my friend.

And please, always remind my brother about that... he said the same thing about DVD too btw... the list goes on but it is too embarrassing to continue, lol... until I start sobbing.

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We are forgetting one of the early classics... The Kremen vs. Cohen battle for Sex.com - back when that domain was pulling millions per month.

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Ah.....the when we stories. Like the old dogs playing poker. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Like a buncha old journalists telling expense account and bang bang stories from the middle east....the generation after the Viet Nam vets....who followed the WW2 vets...
Its a sign of aging gracefully when everything was much more fun....when we. You all need to join the Legion and go bowling on Friday nights.

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Its not quite the same when the biggest drama is "will sleazydream return?" or will Internext crash and burn in pile of ashes and no one can afford Grey Goose anymore. And if you can pay your mortgage, you are in the top 3 per cent.

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I remember when being 30 was old for this industry.

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I think it still is....

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Oprano has been accused more than once of being a dinosaur museum .
Funny though... it didnt take me a bad board skin and selling out people to try to turn to doing business though.

I wonder if Eric will post a tutorial on how to pose as a model like Sunny Leone on ICQ and the steps to successfully stealing affiliate traffic?

I figure it will go over as big as the secret anti piracy forum they have.

And dont worry the piss will continue to flow here so no worries about the call of the pussy... "POST PROOF OR BE BANNED"

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I guess I was born a generation early. I was 37 when I got started in this biz, about 13 years ago.

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lol, so well put. Forget the legion and bowling though... I play hockey and still resist belonging to any sort of clubs like that. Of course, I also have all my old movies when I was in front of the camera that I can bust out to show my fellow geezers when I get to that point too.

Really, the reason for this thread is twofold.

First, to tip a hat and shake the hands of all my old compadres and maybe even a few arch nemesis' from back in the day when I used to be a regular on this board.

Second, to show the newer generations that the more things change the more they stay the same and the few tried and true players that lasted through it all, weathering the storms of shit that raged continuously, tend to offer the best contrast between good and evil. There are always going to be "sky is falling" doomsday prophets so it helps every now and then to give it all a frame of reference and provide some insights on how to survive the apocalypse.

And of course some of these stories can be pretty entertaining if you haven't heard them 10 times before already... ;-)

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My first when we porn story, but you guys were still jerking off to Sears catalogues so it is kinda hard to share was a movie called "The Wrong Time, The Wrong Place, the Cockney Rebel Special" shot in 1983 in Wales on a budget of 125 thousand pounds with 12 feature magazine girls and the guy who went on to be Ben Dover. We all got busted and tossed into the Blackwood nick. The lighting director was shit scared cause he told his wife he was shooting a wildlife film for the BBC. We all lived to tell the story.

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ya know Im betting everyone here has homegrown stories....me i got lots of em

a hotel shoot that went bad in vegas, another where we shot Anna Malle and melissa Hill in their first scene ever. toymaster and his girl...I forget her name...man those were the days. I remember moffet telling me I needed to shoot more "gaping assholes" and I was thinking yall distribute Max you have all the gaping assholes ya need LOL

i remember mark kulkis taking a shot at farrel and moffet by saying they sounded like names out of a dr suess book.

But how many here know the REAL history and the tie in between Moffet and Farrel and the Movie ( and book) Walking Tall?

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lol, make sure you clarify the original "Walking Tall" and not that unfortunate Rock remake... and actually the original tale was told in a book by the title "12th of August" that was made into the grindhouse classic "Walking Tall".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Line_Mob

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Nah... I got into this biz in 2000 and was 31 and the vast majority of the people back then were still in their 20s. Go to a show... look around on the boards in threads where people ask you their age... look at all the newbies and startups getting into the biz nowadays... the majority now are 30 and up.

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Wonder why? They pissed away their twenties and didn't learn anything and this is all they got?

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For all the "when we" stories we have at Homegrown, goodness knows there's just as much recent fun. We don't mess around when it comes to having a good time! :)

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Not sure that is the case. I remember when the adult industry (pre-online) was dominated by people that never went to college and maybe didn't even finish high school and if not definitely then probably had organized crime connections and failed actors and actresses that were desperate for a buck. Now, I look around and see plenty of folks with high degrees and even substantial mainstream work backgrounds. Hell, my own bro/partner is a Stanford grad - not that it means much when clobbering time comes around.

Surely, besides the celebrity videos, the fact that the industry has become so much a part of mainstream western culture is also largely due to that participation from "the heartland" and the "middle of the road" and the "normal" people. I know when I did my first tv interviews on the "Joan Rivers" show and the first episode of HBO's "Shock Video", the reaction to us being a couple of college educated, not drug addicted, from nice middle class families, with no history of abuse, and completely unembarrassed about our choice of vocation, young adults made a huge impression. We expected to be vilified and instead they were like, "wow, how interesting, good for you".

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Three years from now...

GFY will be sold to the Church of Scientology and being changed into "GoFindYourself" a self help site designed for enticing people to buy in Dianetics and will sell L.Ron Hubbards books.

R_n will announce that CE is back... again. Under new management with a completely revamped design.

Mike South and Peter North will start a website called North vs. South, the civilian porn war

Paris Hilton will convince me to finally return to amateur porn to make a video sequel to "One Night in Paris" that will be called "Can't Forget Paris"

Serge will return to Oprano to chastize Gonzo about his choice of wines served at the after party following the Academy of Cams Award ceremony.

I am sure there is more but let my crystal ball cool down for a sec.

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dude yer a riot...you kill me....I miss you guys man say hello to moff for me....

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and aI predict that Moffet and Farrel will sue the makers of the walking tall remake for defamation, I mean that was an abysmally bad movie, yall should sue...LOL

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Ahhh.. great memories.... good stuff in this thread...

I remember when I was still married when I first got into this biz in the late 90's lol

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Why do I always think I can just pop by Oprano in the AM before starting work and ever actually get OUT of one of these threads? OMG - a decade + of memories... some of my personal faves:

- going to my first event (ia2000) and meeting people in the elevator... trying to quietly nudge my husband and go "OMG that's so-and-so..." without acting like a spaz
- packing only "business" clothes for that first trip because I had no idea it would be a casual "come as you are" type event and trying to find a store to buy some jeans/t-shirts that first evening so I wouldn't look like a dork all week
- when Lee Noga flipped out as "host" @ the Atlanta AWE and we replaced her with Dokk (and he did an awesome job from there on out)... that was also the event where I first met Mr. Gonzo and the Atlanta crew - talk about life-changing!
- getting "crabs" from JoeE for Christmas - I thought I'd "arrived" LOL
- the super-networking events like the penthouse NatNet parties @ Cybernet Expo in New Orleans - that whole New Orleans trip was a blast, unlike the poor Internext copy that followed...
- the dreaded/beloved boob wars following every event, especially that one in Vegas where I "accidentally-on-purpose" whacked my then-boss @ the CE/ANS booth in the back of the head with a whole box of boobs after BigB taught me how to really make them "fly"
- but especially working with so many genius minds over the years, brain-storming over dinners, lunches, coffees and drinks @ industry events... some of them are out of the business, some of them I've lost touch with over the years and a few that I sorely miss...

Damn it... I need to get back to work - thanks for the trip down memory lane, hope I can get back to 2010 in time to start the day - LOL.

:okthumb:

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Boob wars! The best part of any trade show and something that I can genuinely say that even after all the trouble we had with CE back in the day that I still thank them for.

Recalls back when all the amateur girl solo sites used toplists and fought endlessly over who was syphoning traffic, bad trades, etc. and when so many would send their exit traffic on the "no thanks" link to places like disney dot com.

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How about some of the classic meltdowns...

Hanco...the company that spent millions throwing parties before they even made a penny and was done before any would could say "hanc-who?"

Joe E, legendary, say no more

Busty Amateurs! Holy crap... but couldn't it be... born again?

Many more...

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I think the biggest meltdown I ever saw was more like a crash and burn.

I cant remember the guys name but he was and early paysite owner and was building up to be a content provider. He also considered himself a player and a pimp.. so much that he had porn star tattooed across his knuckles.

Anyhow this guy was making a lot of noise and bragging how he always was banging and filming these very fresh faces. And keep in mind he could have been a potential FFN.

He was writing all of these educational pieces to make a name for himself until it all ended. "Porn Star" got popped for shooting and fucking underaged girls. Seems like he was trolling the Greyhound station and picking up hungry runaways. [see every joke here has a reference to a fact]

He was convicted and went away for a few years ...came back and was offering to consult since he couldnt own an adult site anymore as part of his probation.

Now you know why the faces were so fresh and how another asshole fucked it up for the rest of us with more 2257 pressure.

Never did hear how those "porn star" tattoos worked out for him while he was in the cell with Big Dick Black.

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Two words: tom blanchard.

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Greg Lasrado

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Is he in jail?

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I think I read that Shiraz is out with his fellow inmate ScottPB.