Chaim emails:
It hurts to write this, but you’ve really lost your way. Just a few years ago you had a career of sorts, covering a beat – the production of visual masturbation aids – that the mainstream media had overlooked. This gave you enough clout to be their "go-to" guy, the guy 60 Minutes and E! turned to when they wanted a skeptical take on porn. It wasn’t a well paying gig, but at least it supported you in your chosen lifestyle and had the possibility of becoming much more, had you only been smarter, tougher, and more energetic about pursuing the opportunities that were before you. But you were not and you did not.
Instead, here you are, trying to make a living by taking and selling photos of a bunch of F-listers. (" Celebrities expected included Hill Harper [CSI], April Scott [Dukes of Hazzard], Bai Ling [Star Wars 2], B2K, Fonzwroth Bentley, Claudia Jordan [Deal Or No Deal] and many others.") This is not proper work for a man swiftly moving through his forties. You have lost your way.
And then there is your blog. Once upon a time, it was a fascinating mix of discussions about everything from religion to porn to politics. Not any more. You devote far too much space on obscure topics (speed seduction?), engage in too much self censorship (and of the wrong kind at that), and generally don’t seem to have a good eye or ear for what sort of mix of stories might work best. It pains me to say this, but this looks like the real, pure Luke as left to his own devices, without the help of a Cathy Seipp to keep him on the derech tovah. Whereas in the past you spent your time with the Seipp Circle, today you are merely a rootless wanderer in search of a new circle to join (sorry, but Elliott Stein won’t work for you),
I have no positive advice to give you here that I’ve not already given before: your need for a Chinese wife, embracing your true porn obsessed self, the golden once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you had to vault yourself into a decent life through Holly Randall’s womb. My guess is that only Cathy could talk sense into you, and in her absence you are falling back to where you were ten years ago, but now as an older man.
I suggest that the time has arrived for you to try something totally different. Why not become an ordained reform rabbi? Rabbi Luke Ford might yet make something of his life. What Christian ministers do, Rabbi Luke can do just as well. There is room in LA for an all-inclusive Jewish Temple that welcomes non-rich Jews, Mexicans, Queers, renegade hassids, prostitutes, porners, bloggers and the rest of the untermenchen shunned by the Jewish establishment. Celebrities would be targeted for their economic potential, and converted accordingly. (Learn from the Scientologists, Luke!) Think of the sermons that would thunder down from the mount on which you would preach! (And yes, instead of a pulpit, you would preach from a huge mound of dirt heaped up where the stage would normally be.) This business of trying to compete with the riffraff of LA for photos of obscure people nobody cares about is going to end badly for you. Do something different.
