America’s Raunchiest Home Videos From America’s Finest City
Mr. Libido’s Neighborhood. Or: America’s Raunchiest Home Videos.
The latest American trend: X-rated videos done by real people in their real homes with their own camcorders. No actors, no plots, just Mom and Dad, or Mom and Somebody.
No one has tallied how much of the adult video market is composed of such cinema verite pornographicus, but it’s enough to pique the interest of Sally Jesse Raphael, Joan Rivers, “Hard Copy” and various high-toned newspapers.
And--wouldn’t you know it?--one of the largest distributors of we-did-it-ourselves videos nationwide is in San Diego: Homegrown Video Inc., in Mira Mesa, in an office with no name on the door.
Homegrown will pay $250 to $1,500 for a good video, with one or more acts. The rules for amateur erotica are simple: no minors, no animals, nothing dangerous or harmful.
The film is touched up only slightly; the participants are asked to sign release forms.
Then Homegrown mass-produces and distributes the result for rental or purchase.
“The Hollywood-style film is declining,” Homegrown President Michael Sisson said. “People want realism. It’s like getting to watch the people next door in their bedroom.”
A Homegrown catalogue lists 400 titles. Sisson expects more soon; an outfit in Anaheim called Lifestyles teaches people how to film their own live action.
The kick, of course, is exhibitionism for the makers, voyeurism for the watchers. The latter are willing to overlook occasional waffle rumps and pot bellies.
Sisson sees Homegrown as the guardian of the First Amendment and the free enterprise system:
“We are the extension of the American people who are exercising their freedom of choice and freedom of expression.”
And you never realized that “Hot Tub and Group Sex in Oil” (No. 42, $25, audio and video) is actually an act of patriotism.
And Furthermore . . .
Dancing with items.
* North County bumper sticker: “AIDS, Drugs, Abortion: Don’t Liberals Just Kill You?”
* Administrators at San Dieguito High School in Encinitas are being bedeviled by an underground student newspaper.
* Mixed message.
The San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council is sending out flyers urging a “no” vote in the April 9 recall election of Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt. The flyers also endorse Floyd Morrow as Bernhardt’s replacement, on the same ballot.
* Howard Greenebaum, the retired jeweler who has lost three elections for Congress (two in Maryland, one in North County), is off on a two-month tour to promote his new book warning about Japanese influence in the United States: “Free Elections??”
* How serious are the Soviets about winning the America’s Cup competition off San Diego next year?
The Soviet boat, the Red Star, set to arrive next month, is being built at the same plant near Moscow where Sputnik and other Soviet space vehicles have been built.
Creep With a Creed
Be prepared.
Mike Dean, a detective with the fugitive apprehension unit of the San Diego Police Department, thought he spotted a guy wanted for parole violation, sitting in a car in Logan Heights.
Sure enough, the guy was wanted for a return engagement at the Metropolitan Correction Center, so away he went in handcuffs.
But another fellow in the same car was more slippery. Early 30s, all sorts of identification cards and birth certificates, all with different names and ages.
Then Dean found a card that looked real.
He ran the name through the computer and, bingo, the guy was wanted on a $250,000 warrant from Northern California: He had fled to avoid trial in 1987; three co-defendants are already in prison.
The card that Dean found so interesting?
A picture ID issued by the Boy Scouts of America.
The fallen Scout has now been shipped back to Sonoma County, where they do not give merit badges for armed robbery, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon.
