EWU taking porn actor’s visit in stride

With a visit from Ron Jeremy a little over a week away, Eastern Washington University seems ready to roll out the red condom for this very large star of such XXX-rated epics as: “Ally McFeal,” “Twin Cheeks” and “Hung Frankenstein.”

Hi, Doug Clark here. I’m coming to you live from the campus of my alma mater, where I’m asking students for their take on what we in the entertainment press have dubbed “Porn Storm 2005.”

You can’t have a good crisis without a good media moniker.

“There’s definitely some excitement,” says 18-year-old freshman Nick Small. “I hear a lot of the girls talking about it.”

The student-run Eagle Entertainment is paying Jeremy $6,500 to (hopefully) keep his trousers on while delivering a speech on obscenity laws and other porn-related topics in the Pence Union Building on Feb. 16.

This development has whipped up some members of the community, like the unidentified male caller who left the following message on my Monday morning voice mail:

“I’m so (bleeped) off I can’t talk straight,” he says, after failing three times to correctly pronounce Jeremy’s name.

It’s a different attitude on campus. Yes, the enthusiasm for this icon of 1,700 flesh flicks appears to be mounting.

Small says he may attend the event for laughs even though he is unfamiliar with Mr. Jeremy’s work.

Young people have it so soft today.

Back when I found Eastern to be a great place to gain an education and an even better place to avoid the draft, we didn’t have the luxury of porn stars just dropping by for a chat. We had to use our imaginations to find titillation.

Like when a pal and I decided to sit in on a life drawing class after we heard it featured live nude models. We didn’t let a little thing like not being able to draw get in our way.

I don’t want to go into all the hairy, scrawny details. Let’s just say our idea was far more stimulating in the planning than in the ugly realities.

Thoroughly embarrassed, we never returned for a second session.

Letting Eastern students have a close look at Jeremy may have that kind of reverse effect, too.

“He’s a pretty gnarly looking dude,” says Shawn Sorey, 22.

Jeremy isn’t nicknamed “The Hedgehog” without very good reason. I know. I interviewed him in a Spokane nightclub after a 2001 comedy show. The flabby Jeremy sat in a back room, ramming pizza down his pie hole and looking about as sexually appetizing as Jabba the Hut.

Or Pizza the Hut, as Jeremy has observed himself.

Jeremy has never shied away from making fun of his looks. He’s also gained a kind of cult status by appearing in non-nudie venues, like television’s “The Surreal Life.”

“A lot of people will go because he’s Ron Jeremy,” says Marshall Hollingsworth, 19.

I’m out here talking to students on the sidewalk near Pearce Hall. This is the silo-shaped dormitory where I proudly held my only political office: ninth-floor president.

The students seem to like the fact that a geezer like me went to Eastern. It shows them what a college degree and a life of low achievement can do.

They all seem like good, fresh-faced kids. Their interest in Jeremy is just a natural curiosity.

Briana Bekkedahl, 18, for example, says she will attend the Jeremy event if she can work it into her schedule. No big deal.

The only controversy to be found is at the espresso stand inside the PUB. The baristas, Zanon Schmidt, 27, and Virginia Baxter, 23, get into a good-natured point/counterpoint over the visit.

Schmidt believes bringing Jeremy to EWU promotes the porn industry.

“No, it’s not,” counters Baxter.

Back and forth they go. Then they laugh.

“I came to college to get a multi-view on life,” Baxter tells me.

Same here, Virginia. It’s where I learned I’d never be an artist.