American Former Gay Pr0n Star Is Big In Japan

Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture - he also works part time for the empire.

Billy Herrington (born July 14, 1969, Long Island, New York) is a bisexual American actor best known for his work in gay pornography. Herrington began his erotic career when a friend surreptitiously submitted his nude pictures to Playgirl magazine. The photographs won him a "Real Men of the Month" contest and a $500 prize. His appearance in the magazine caught the eye of famed photographer Jim French but it would be two years before Herrington would shoot his first Colt calendars for French. Soon after that he would be shooting hardcore gay pornography for All Worlds Video. Herrington became one of the more well-known gay porn stars of the late 1990s, even appearing on mainstream talk-show "Ricki Lake."

And why is Billy so immensely popular with the Japanese folks and why has he been made into a Japanese action figure too?

Herrington has also become an internet meme among the Japanese community after a clip from one of his videos 'Workout' was posted on Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese video sharing website. Over 3000 parody videos of him have been made, many of which utilizes deliberate mishearings of his lines in the porn flick. He is affectionately called "Big Brother" among the Nico Nico Douga community, and most of his videos are deliberately tagged with "Forest Fairy", "Philosophy" or both.

Photo taken last night where I provided the translations for Billy's first ever live internet broadcast in Japan - see more photos and videos from behind-the-scenes. An example of one of those parody videos below - you cant really see any dolphin waxing so it should be safe for work.

Blockquotes from Wikipedia.

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cyberscythe

I thought I’d be in for a treat when I saw Cirno (or anything else Touhou-related) on Boing Boing… but not this way. =\
Mantari

I CAME!!!
dizzyjosh

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess, based on Nicovideo’s videogame-friendly fanbase, that one of the things referenced by use of the ‘Aniki’ nickname is ‘Cho Aniki’, a scrolling shooter game with lots of camp visuals that’s been a popular joke in gamer circles for a while.

The series mascots, Samson and Adon, are big beefcake dudes in thongs who shoot white beams out of their foreheads.
David D.

I’m not sure that even the Japanese understand the Japanese at this point.

That said, the video captures the complex eroticism of gay porn quite nicely. Kudos!
minTphresh

if his lif3e story were made into a movie, instead of ” American Samurai” it would be called “American Salami”. or maybe “American Plumber: Laying Pipe”.
Xopher

Hmm. Well, that video definitely wouldn’t be safe for work where I work. It’s got naked people in it, albeit seen only from the back.
Anonymous

7 posts about Japan on the front page, I’m starting to see a pattern.
George Curious

I’ve never before been so glad to be unaware of an obscure euphemism. “Dolphin Waxing”? The mind boggles.
tikal2k

Video no longer available, but here is another link to a clip with Big Jim Slade and the Heiveinu Shalom Aleichem theme song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRr9C6o06_E
SC_Wolf

American Former Gay Pr0n Star Is Big In Japan

At eight inches, it ain’t just in Japan.

(This is the second time I’ve gotten to use this joke now. Last time, it was commentary on how chubby Maru the Cat is.)
RichSPK

Wow, that video doesn’t help me understand the meme at all. Maybe it helps to be Japanese or gay?
Brettspiel

Um, yeah.. covering the dangly bits of two naked buff dudes having buttsecks does not make it work safe in corporate America.
Teller

Wasn’t my head supposed to asplode?
greensteam

I think i like pron better anyway…..
dimmer

“Waxing the dolphin” is slang for a very common, mostly inoffensive, practice. To surmise: it only needs one person, and has never hurt a dolphin.
mdh

That video… wow. Wow. Whaaaaaahw.
joelogon

I swear I can hear “Heiveinu Shalom Aleichem” in there (a.k.a. Big Jim Slade’s entrance music in Kentucky Fried Movie) — it’s really prominent around 1:20
eustace

Truly mindblowing. Japanese television can be so beautifully intense.
Brute force visuals. Reminds me of this; the intense pace…
Manooshi

Forgive my ignorance, but is there any type of reason why some people spell porn as ‘pron’ on the internet? Is it a purposeful misspelling resultant of overly-accidental misspellings like ‘teh’ for the word ‘the’? Just curious…
marcuscram

Weird…I would love to sit down with the creators and get inside their heads and RichSPK, being gay doesn’t help
gothicgeek

The Video!

hahahaaaaaa

creepy or what?

but thanks for posting it, i’m more puzzled than ever

:)
pAULbOWEN

Please, I can’t be the only one who finds the juxtaposition of baby faces and wrestle/buttsex vidz icky? And, is it okay to say that the more I see and learn of Japan and the Japanese, the less I like them?

@Manooshi, don’t know for sure but I always assumed pron and pr0n were spellings adopted to prevent the post being stopped by automod rude word detection software.
Danny Choo

@Manooshi,
Its bad for Search Engine Optimization to have such words appear too many times on your site – affects page rank. Thus similar words or spellings are used – well thats just one reason ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
SC_Wolf

@#23 posted by Manooshi
Forgive my ignorance, but is there any type of reason why some people spell porn as ‘pron’ on the internet?

Yes.
Manooshi

@ PaulBowen, Danny Choo, and SC Wolf:

Thank you all so much for the clarification and links. It makes complete sense now. I’m glad to not be in the dark anymore about this purposeful misspelling.

And thank you Danny for providing some [offbeat] glimpses at modern Japanese culture. It has been educational, to say the least.
tengu99

That clip melted my brain
The Promiscuous Reader

“Japan’s weird, you know that?”

Japan’s weird?
robulus

Ouch.

*Dazed. Confused. Slightly more prone to seizure. Urgently requiring aspirin.*
stegodon

Why the detached floating baby heads? Is that a kid milking a cow at 1:14? So many questions, but summarily – WTF?
Anonymous

Danny is the son of Jimmy as well
noen

What, no lucky Stalin?
nach0s

I just had a seizure.
Anonymous

And I thought American internet memes were confusing O_O
iamcantaloupe

And here I was thinking that Ronald McDonald Insanity was the most absurdly insanely Japanese thing on YouTube.
Jason Rizos

Dang, removed? I wonder if some BoingBoing reader ratted them out for a violation of nudity policy?
Anonymous

http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm6153351

Here is some of the event with Billy
Jason Rizos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQGxvP3Ujc

There is something truly artistic gained in the jarring combination of hyper-real electronic synth music, slapstick comedy, mock homo eroticism, genuine homo eroticism.
Shay Guy

“Japan’s weird, did you know that?”

Also, I like the TV Tropes term “Widget Series” — “widget” as in “WJT,” for “Weird Japanese Thing.”
mstoddard

I love Japan.
Bender

Sort of like watching scrambled porn while listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks. People find all kinds of things entertaining, I guess.
pipera

I think you should blog more about your Good Smile Co. etc. not just COPY/PASTE from Wikipedia
dreamshade

Oh God, they remixed it with a Touhou Project video. Word of note – there are no fans more incomprehensible or peculiar in this world than Touhou fans.
J France

Oh dear God… Billy was part of the first bit of gay porn I ever got my hands on as a teenager, this brought back some really weird memories – and the Touhou Proj video made me feel funny in the pants…. which just made me feel funny.
Anonymous

Which came first? This video style in Japan, or animutations?