Before I get too bookish, let's throw in a little smut (thirdhand, unfortunately). DFW writes about the porn equivalent of the academy awards. Here are a few random bits:

Probably the most neutral and economical thing to say is that large parts of the ceremony are unintentionally funny. Winning woodmen extend earnest thanks to directors and execs for giving them "an opening" or "a shot" or "my big shot" and seem wholly unaware of the carnal entendres involved. Back at the journalists' table with us is a 40ish woman in two-piece Armani who's doing a spot on the Awards for ABC Radio; she spends most of the evening hunched over with her head in her hand and her tape recorder not even on.

Rob Black's Miscreants keeps getting nominated in category after category, and time and again there's a frantic caucus at the podium about the correct pronunciation of miscreant, complete with a couple of presenters audibly whispering what in the fuck is the word even supposed to mean.

Ms. Stephanie Swift wins Best Actress/Video and tells the crowd: "Thanks, everybody. My gang bang was a blast."

An actor named Jim Buck wins AVN's Gay Performer of the Year Award, and you better believe yr. corresps. sit bolt upright when the person who appears onstage to accept the award is a pink and leptosomatic 4'10" and is wearing an Eton collar and appears, even under 125X binoculation, to be a twelve-year-old boy. And it turns out it is a twelve-year-old boy: It's Jim Buck's little brother. "Jim can't be here tonight because he's performing in a Shakespeare festival in New Orleans," the little boy says (correspondential expressions of bug-eyed inquiry at Hecuba and Filth -- ”Shakespeare festival? sending a prepubescent relative to collect your excellence-in-filmed-sodomy prize?" -- are met with bemused shrugs), "but I'm here to thank you on his behalf, and to say that I taught Jim everything he knows." [Enormous audience laugh and ovation, single spasmodic shudder from hunched ABC Radio lady.]