Las Vegas Weekly

A red carpet recap from the AVN Awards

The parade of AVN nominated porn performers, directors and industry luminaries walking the red carpet inside the Palms Hotel and Casino last night was a sight to behold.

There was rock star glam, beaded evening gowns, figure-hugging latex and fetish shoes so high they seemed impossible to stand, let alone walk, in. Old-timers like Ron Jeremy, who’s been in the business now for 32 years, shared the red carpet with first-time nominees, some of whom have been working in the industry for less than a year.

There were even a couple of surprise appearances, including Joslyn James, Tiger Woods’ former mistress who made her return to porn last spring with the release of the 11th Hole for Vivid Entertainment, and Jesse James’ tattooed mistress, Michelle “Bombshell” McGee. McGee appeared on the carpet alongside Noel Biderman, the founder of Ashley Madison, the social networking site for married people looking to have affairs, and a sponsor of this year’s AVN Awards Show. (The company’s tag line is: “Life is short. Have an affair.”)

Here are some snippets from the red carpet:

• Performer and Fleshlight Girl Jesse Jane described to me — in a way that involved a lot of animated gesticulating — what it was like to have a mold taken of her vagina for a Fleshlight in her likeness. “It’s weird,” she laughed. “You go to this complete stranger, sit in a chair and lift your pelvis. They give you a vibrator so you get really engorged, then they put this jelly paste on you to make the mold. After about a half hour, it’s all done. But everything tingles for a while.”

• Transsexual performer Bailey Jay, a resident of Las Vegas, took home top honors as Transsexual Performer of the Year. If you can picture Hannah Montana in pig tails with breasts and a penis, and a butt-load of natural charm, this is Bailey, who rocked a quirky Hello Kitty kind of look on the red carpet.

• Performer Jack Lawrence, who garnered a Best Actor nomination for his performance in Reno 911: A XXX Parody, shared his thoughts with me about why porn parodies are so hot right now. “They are really the only things selling,” he said. His theory is that because porn parodies are fun and playful, many men feel comfortable bringing them home to watch with their wives and girlfriends. Someone else I spoke with offered a different perspective: people have a connection to the television shows and movies they grew up with. “Who wouldn’t want to fuck Marcia Brady?” one female performer remarked. As for Lawrence, he showed up to set with his pubic hair dyed red when he played Ralph Malph in a Happy Days parody.

• I asked Derrick Pierce, one of my favorite male performers, if there’s anything that he won’t do on camera. He said that it’s the aftermath of sex that he likes to keep separate from his onscreen performances. This, he said, is what made his performance in Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry series — a gonzo series that takes a handful of performers to a secluded house for 36 hours and records their sexual encounters — so interesting. “In Chemistry, you didn’t shoot your scene and go home. You’d fuck, have coffee, chill out, and fuck again, so it was impossible to keep the aftermath of sex separate from the encounters.”

• Best New Starlet nominee Raven Alexis looked ravishing in red latex as she made her way down the carpet on a pair of crutches. When I asked what had happened, she told me she broke her hip. “Having sex?!” I said somewhat incredulously. “I wish!” she laughed. (For the record, she fell.)