One thing that's fascinated me about gay porn since I started writing about it is the way the industry is simultaneously marginalized and embraced by popular culture at large. We've seen fashion designers, artists, indie filmmakers and the like "risk their careers" by courting sex stars with the implied promise of saving them in what is all-too-often an empty attempt to cash-in on their sexual cache. Conversely, lots of models look at porn as a stepping stone to more mainstream work, when more often than not it ends up being the boot in the face that keeps them down.

The allure of Wet Palms to almost everyone involved (Including myself -- I'm not gonna lie) was the specter of it somehow leading to the "bigger and better". It hasn't really. Earlier this week MSNBC posited the day of porn being a hindrance were *totally* over. Case in point? WP alum Dylan Vox (née Brad Benton) and his star turn in "campy cable horror soap The Lair." (Love ya, Dylan, but I don't really see The Lair as a step up from porn.)

And yet, we everyone keeps trying. Collin O'Neal announced this week that he was trying to unload his site and DVD line to work on "mainstream Hollywood projects ... backed by some of [his] celebrity friends." His retirement from porn should come as little shock as he's retired (and un-retired) before, but some of the comments he left here on a recent entry suggest, perhaps, a deeper anxiety).

People might tote the Jenna Jameson's, Jeff Stryker's and Ron Jeremey's of the world as proof that porn has crossed over -- but I argue that they'll never be seem as anything more than novelty acts. Bruce La Bruce tapped Francois Sagat for his (hardly mainstream) Untitled Zombie Porn Project for the same reason Steven Soderbergh tapped Sasha Grey for his new film The Girlfriend Experience: because they are porn stars, not because either could act (and rumors abound that Grey had to fuck Soderbergh to get her part). What Brent Corrigan thought was going to be a speaking part in Milk ended up being just a ploy by Dustin Lance Black to get into the twunk's pants.

My point? Well, I don't really have one, but the one to whom the rules have always refused to apply to, is Gus Mattox, who performed on Broadway and was a successful composer before ever getting into porn. Since he's left porn? He's been featured in the NY Times for doing a few breathtaking home renovations, among other things.

So it would only make sense that Gus (who, like a true superhero, shifts back and forth between his non-porn persona Tom Judson) would sort-of be dipping his toe back into porn waters again. He's taking his one-man show, "Canned Ham" on the tour in October (with Chi Chi LaRue producing). The 45 minute-long piece will include music selections played by Tom himself on the accordion. But then, Tom transcends. He’s time. / I’m just a clock.