In case you’ve missed it, our friends over at Fleshbot recently held their first annual Fleshbot Awards in a stylish New York club called The Box, and from all Twitter reports it was an entertaining if a little bizarre night. Sasha Gray (not attending) shared crossover porn/mainstream honors with Levi Johnston (attending). Yes, the non son-in-law of the former governor of Alaska Sarah ‘Nailin’ Palin and future Playgirl pin-up was there to enjoy the smutty accolades along with the rest of the usual suspects. Sexiest advertising award went to American Apparel and sexiest TV Show went to True Blood, so make of all that what you will. Congratulations do go out to Joanna Angel who was there along with her sexy party girls and walked away with the Fan Choice Award for being this year’s Sexiest Female, although I’d hate to see what would happen if a site’s Supreme Commandress didn’t get a win. Here is a video. It’s almost like you got an invitation!

I know some of the APN boys have little crushes on Fleshbot’s newest editor Lux Alptraum, so I am probably going to take some heat from them for pointing this out, but I don’t mean this article in a bad way. Posts like the most recent altporn-tagged one (below) on Fleshbot make me wonder if Vivid purchased Fleshbot from Gawker back when original editor John D. left. The gist of the Fleshbot article is that Club Jenna is totally ripping off Vivid-Alt by launching some sort of altporn line and including Joanna Angel in one of their titles. First off, Club Jenna has worked with alt superstars like Belladonna in the past, and Janine has more ink than Joanna Angel and Belladonna combined these days, so this is not Club Jenna’s first foray into altporn. Okay, I’m just going to stop and roll my eyes for a moment. Although APN covers Vivid-Alt releases, I have never been assigned one for review, but I still have a clue.

Has Joanna Angel ever worked for Vivid-Alt? I am 99% sure the answer is no. I think Joanna Angel did work for Vivid’s more gonzo lines in non-altporn roles, but she definitely worked in an altporn capacity for VCA after Hustler purchased the company. VCA was candid about getting inspiration for their alt titles both from original VCA titles like Cafe Flesh and from Blue Blood and SuicideGirls, going so far as to explicitly name their inspirations in DVD extras and press releases.

If Fleshbot had asked whether Club Jenna called their altporn imprint Undrgnd without vowels to avoid a trademark infringement lawsuit from Penthouse, that would have been a valid question. Penthouse did launch their largely unheralded Penthouse Underground altporn imprint some years ago. I’m not defending Penthouse as Penthouse Underground did tap porn director Guy Capo to direct for them and he was responsible for Gothsend, possibly the most awful embarrassing example of video altporn ever created. I have never seen a Penthouse Underground video, so they could be great, but the pedigree is questionable.

Back to Joanna Angel. Burning Angel has released video of her directly. Other more mainstream video companies with Joanna Angel in releases they have distributed include New Sensations, 3rd Degree, Digital Sin, Adam & Eve, Diabolic, Zero Tolerance, Video Team, Digital Playground, Mile High Xtreme, Red Light District, 5th Element, Evil Angel, Wicked, and even Penthouse, and of course Vouyer Media who is putting out her upcoming L.A. Pink feature.

Joanna Angel is a successful pornstar, so how is it derivative of Vivid-Alt for Club Jenna to hire her to do her job, a job she has already done successfully for many companies?

I caught this hilarious post by Lux Nightmare on Fleshbot the other morning and thought it was just too funny not to share.

The underlying story of how Philip Warner, AKA Lithium Picnic is back to cheerfully promoting and defending SuicideGirls however is really disappointing. When he found himself at odds with his exclusionary employer SuicideGirls, he cried far and wide, pleading for everyone in the scene to take up his cause with his ‘Free Lithium Picnic’ merch machine and calls for benefit art shows and donation drives, etc. There wasn’t a place on the internet that someone could mention that they kind of think maybe altporn bully SuicideGirls is a ‘blight on our scene’ or whatever without at least a handful of LP supporters and questionable sock puppets interjecting ‘Free Lithium Picnic’ at every turn. Yet somehow the rhetoric seemed mismatched with what few facts had emerged about the $100,000 breach of contract case SuicideGirls had brought against Philip. Although we have been supportive of getting the facts out there as best we can in the past, we’ve never really bought in to the ensuing hype, despite the well intentioned efforts of sites like DeviantNation, who went so far as to pass along a neat little ‘Free Lithium Picnic’ chipin donation flash widgets that they wanted sites like APN to to run so that Philip could generate more funds.

One of the main reasons we do not cover SuicideGirls more often here at APN is that we’ve seen SuicideGirls notoriously controlling contracts and frankly, they don’t look that difficult to find yourself in breach of. I could see participating in legal fee fund raisers and other charity events once the court found Philip Warner not guilty, but if he was guilty of breach, then giving him money would just be a waste. APN attempted to interview Lithium Picnic about what the fight with SG was actually over, but we were informed that we would only be able to interview Apnea instead, as he was not supposed to discuss legal issues pertaining to the case. Not that we ever mind talking to hot and adorable Apnea and she was very helpful and informative in every interaction. However if, like APN, you have been wondering about the actual details of this legal battle, Lux Nightmare’s Fleshbot post links to where Amelia G over at BlueBlood.net wrote SuicideGirls vs Lithium Picnic Lawsuit Settled, which is an excellent deconstruction of the lawsuit and the community’s response to it. The feeling over there seems to be that Apnea is innocent, but LP is at the very least guilty of selling out the principles he asked so many to sacrifice for and support. Not that we mind if ultra sexy and cute Apnea turns out to be the only good guy in the whole legal mess.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve never been 100% convinced Lithium Picnic was actually innocent. He worked for SuicideGirls for a long time. He was there when they we’re pulling all sorts of shady business with their models. One falling out among a clan of bad people doesn’t suddenly transform someone into being the good guy. It would be nice if he were innocent, but there was a strong chance he actually wasn’t. We were looking forward to the court’s decision to make everything clear.

Amelia G and Forrest Black from Blue Blood teamed up with one of AltPorn.net’s biggest crushes, April Flores, AKA FattyD, for this postcard perfect holiday series, and we at APN have to agree with our friends over at Fleshbot and declare her to be this years hottest Santa, hands down. The whole set is great and I love the nearly Norman Rockwell vintage fantasy feel, with just an edge of sinister. There are some more samples along with a very entertaining personal reflection on the holiday season over on BlueBlood.net, all free, and written by one of our favorite sex bloggers from Eros-Zine, Thomas Roche. I feel like Jimmy Steward at the very end of It’s a Wonderful Life. Merry Christmas everybody!

The Blue Blood crew recently returned from a fun trip to to the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, where Amelia G got to speak on a panel covering the ethics and history of Alt-porn. She was joined by her friends Halcyon, from Pinkgasm, and Jonno, from Fleshbot. A lot of philosophy and funny anecdotes about the origins were covered, as well as some of the newer artistic and business developments.

Austin was a blast, and everybody had a good time. Going to this show reminded us to post some sexy pictures of cuties from Texas, so we thought it would be fun to share this sexy little set of Katie Kat over on Blue Blood’s GothicSluts.com. Hope you enjoy it.