After much thinking and much talking it over with friends and colleagues, I have decided to step down as editor-in-chief of WHACK! Magazine as of this week. It’s been about three and a half years now since my buddy j. vegas and I started WHACK! Initially it was all a big joke–we were going to run a fake porn news magazine (think The Onion of porn) to help promote a webisode we were working on together, and write as some of the characters on the show. But as things got rolling, we realized that we were really on to something. The adult industry didn’t have much in the way of news outlets at the time, and certainly none with a sense of humor. Before we even took stock of what was happening, we were running a fully functional half-news, half-parody online magazine that poked fun at performers while also doling out honest reviews of DVDs, interviews with the stars, press releases, product reviews, and scathing yet hilarious op-eds. We collected a cohort of the smartest and most deranged writers we could find, from the razor-witted Maxxx Peters to the sweet yet filthy Lolly Gagger to the passionate yet pervy Christian Madsen, and soon we were getting press passes to conventions, VIP passes to events, and requests for interviews from everyone from newbie performers to porn legends.
It’s been a fantastic experience, and many of my greatest professional achievements so far have come as direct results of my involvement with the “provocative periodical for the cultured degenerate” I oversaw. The contacts I’ve made and the good times I’ve had have been many. But to every thing, turn, turn, turn, and so on; for the past year I have had less and less time to devote to WHACK! as I have pursued other creative projects. It has gradually become clear that while I love my magazine very much, I don’t enjoy administrative roles. I’d rather be writing or interviewing or painting or curating than handing out deadlines, editing, posting, formatting, and networking about advertising costs. Likewise, my cohort in crime all this time and my editorial director, j. vegas, has begun work on some other projects, gotten married, and had a baby, and has found less time available to work on the magazine. And so, as of this week, we will be both be turning over the magazine to our indomitable friend Christian Madsen, who will become the Freak in Charge at WHACK!
I will continue to write reviews and conduct interviews for the magazine, and to help Christian out during the transition. I’ll still be showing up at industry events and shoving a microphone in people’s faces, waxing philosophic over movies with titles like “Ass-Eaters Anonymous #32,” and ranting about pubic hair, but as time goes on I will be working more on my graphic novel, taking “Consent” out of New York to conventions and museums all around the country, and pursuing my other creative projects on my own.
It’s been a wild ride. To quote the late great Doctor, “I never knew where I was going, but I ripped the tits off everything that got in my way. By the time they figured me out, it was too late.”