Hardcore Since '74 : The Hustler Helmet

[the end of Addison Rose's signature over the Hardcore Since '74 slogan]

Larry Flynt, as most of us didn’t already know, founded Hustler Magazine in July of 1974. The magazine was a bit of a trendsetter at the time. Super Mario (not to be confused with the other Super Mario) was born one month after that. He somehow managed to mysteriously link himself to the Hustler genre somehow. Super owned more Hustler shirts than Larry Flynt, so I'd say that ranked him up there pretty high.

Anyone with half a brain knows that a helmet presides over any other protection when riding, and yet people go without them here all the time. Arizona does not have a helmet law for riders under 18. Eyewear is the only thing required to keep the bike on the road supposedly, but what happens when the bike leaves the road? Too many people think that they'll have time to react and guard their noggins. Such. A. Shame.

I remember back in 2000 when Mario first referred to a helmet as a lid. “Super, why do you call it a lid?” Because it keeps things from spilling out when you lay your bike down. The harsh warning that many riders do not heed. Anyone riding without a lid is a fucking jack-off. Trouble waiting to happen, man. So true. Mario was one of the safest riders I’d ever known. He had full Dainese Leathers and gloves, the jacket to match, as well as 4 different helmets. He wouldn’t even cross the apartment complex parking lot without wearing one of his helmets. I think that precaution was the result of getting into a nasty wreck when he still lived in Wisconsin (on a Yamaha YZF test bike from the dealership), but still, safety first. Jeff told me that Mario was so excited when the Hustler Helmet came in that it sat in the living room like a centerpiece for days before he decided to wear it out. Just like a kid who didn't want to scuff up his new Christmas shoes. (Truth be told, Mario never wore a helmet with a clear visor on it. He was waiting for a tinted shield to arrive that would fit the new helmet.)

I could have just as easily titled this blog "I'm going to make sure you realllly really reallllly get the point," but I digress. Outside the safety of wearing one, I’ll go over the importance of the 56 other aspects of this specific helmet by explaining in detail as much as I can about the man himself. If you have issues reading adult-like content, you may want to call this the end and wait for a post of a different title to come out. Things could get a little risqué, but I’ll do what I can to try and tone it down.

As anyone well knows (except for perhaps Mario’s parents – surprise!), Mario was a fan of the adult industry. He was a serious fan. How do I compare one fan to another? That would be an interesting question, for which I’ll try to answer. Imagine watching Disney on Ice as a kid, being brainwashed to the point of insanity by the Disney Channel, and then being taken to Disneyland or even better, Disney World. As a kid you’re crazy high with excitement, right? That was comparable to Mario and his collection of porn, knowledge of female starlets (lots and lots of knowledge people), and even a pseudo stage name he had created for himself: Kile Driver. He also had a method for his researching madness by using askjolene.com and freeones.com to pinpoint the names and best scenes of each starlet. I'll make sure there are several (editted) pictures to back this up. Just listening to him talk about it could get exhausting, but at least he had a part-time hobby. : ) I also want to mention that I think it's only fitting that Disney and Porn are mentioned in the same post. They've long been accused of sneaking in adult content right under our noses.

Some people would call Mario's "porn escapades" an addiction, but really it wasn’t. To Mario it was just a fun habit, sort of like breathing. Hey, I enjoy beautiful women and sex just as much as the next person, but I didn’t even scratch the surface compared to Super. The man was just on a different level. I can’t defend his appetite but just to say that it was there.

One of my favorite memories, as many of them as there are, is the sound Super would make when he’d see a gorgeous woman (er, women....plural) across a room. “Uhuuh.” Like you gave him a small punch in the breadbasket. “Uhuuh.” It was like a combination of a gasp and a sigh while pretending to be on the verge of fainting. In the car, the store, the gym, anywhere where there was the slightest possibility of physical attraction....... uhuuh! A Mario-ism for sure!

People who knew him for less than a few minutes could pick up on that Super-vibe. It was a guy thing sure, but as I said, it was always out in the open. Sure he was a man’s man; he could talk women, sports, bikes, and cars like the best of them. He could get his hands dirty changing the oil in his bike or something, but he cleaned up well. Nine times out of ten, any time he met a girl he could wander around the conversation like a champ. He was also really good at adjusting his demeanor for any setting. Goodie two-shoes type? Check. Hot goth chick? Check. Smart and sophisticated? Check. Dumb blonde bimbo? Check. He knew how to sensor his language and specific Mario-isms like they were on a switch. First impressions and Super, uhuuh, he just had that effect on people. Or vice versa!

His attitude towards meeting women was way beyond what most guys would consider “normal.” But then again, what’s really normal? Maybe attempting to meet every attractive woman in a 50-mile radius is everyone’s goal for all I know? For instance, my mission while out at bars is to enjoy myself without the distraction of booze or women (as few and far between as when I am out), his was literally the exact opposite. I’ll always be able to remember him as the guy with a drink in one hand, posted up at the bar, talking to anyone about anything. He went out more in any given month living with Jeff than I would in a year. Easy. He was the social end of the duo for sure. He and I would joke behind Jeff’s back about how uncoordinated Jeff was at talking to women, which isn’t a shocker to Jeff (sorry for ripping on you man.) On the flip side, Mario once said, ”whenever you and I go out JC, I never hook up. It’s like we get in each others way.” To this day I’m not sure what he was talking about, and had Jeff not defended me he may have gone on thinking I was the anti-poon or something. I just think that my presence in the social scene with him just reinforced a smidgen of responsibility, which you usually want to leave at the door the moment you walk in to the bar.

Mario was ahead of the social curve when it came to talking with the fairer sex, but he also looked really good when you put him in a room next to Jeff. Again, Jeff being one of our dear friends, I really only bring it up because in reality it is funny. And Super himself would laugh.

Having said allll that, add to the fact that you couldn’t take him anywhere without him bumping in to someone he knew. The funny times were when he’d have an entire conversation before realizing whom it was he was talking with. Shit man, where do I know that dude/chick from? Classic Super. I could never understand how drinking was synonymous with meeting women. Again, Super was the polar opposite. It was a characteristic that was synonymous with Super.

Anyway, back to the helmet. Through some close connections I was able to get Mario into the Adult Expo and AVN in Las Vegas. This was the beginning of his kid-on-the-playground adventures. Mario was so hyper and ramped up to see the stars that he was about ready to just fall over. We couldn’t get out of the airport fast enough. It was quite a scene! The ultimate for any people watcher who wanted to watch a person who could watch people like a machine. Did you follow all that? Good. Let me know if you fall behind, we don’t want any stragglers in here.

About 7 weeks ago Mario went with a guy he had met from the SoCal area to the L.A. Erotica convention. He sent me a bunch of text messages while I was in Vegas that weekend. Typical Super, he even called me to have a 7-second convo and in those 7-seconds crammed in enough words to make it seem like he was ready to spin right out of the planet's orbit. I had every indication that he was enjoying himself thoroughly so I waited to get the pictures first, and then got the stories when I saw him a week or so later. He never stopped learning about porn. Really! It turns out that Mario was going to a bar where Serena South was a waitress, and the two of them ended up chatting it up quite a bit. Through another person, Mario ended up becoming quick friends with Amber Rayne, at which point I told him that he better get his sh*t in gear and use his head brain.

The photos of said convention went up on photobucket, and a small mass email went out to the lucky recipients. (Thank goodness for that email in hindsight. That's how a few of us were notified of Mario's accident.) He bought a 3-day pass to the show, which was fucking money well spent, of course. The last day of the convention, Super wore his new Hustler Lid and decided to have it signed by every porn starlet he could. He had his picture taken with some women signing it, him holding it, them.....doing other things to it. For him, the experience would have been like a sugar junky in the Wonka Factory. I swear. You can tell by scrolling down through the pictures. Mario was more than happy to volunteer for....well, anything.

What I found particularly peccant about all the photos wasn’t what, say, the innocent bystander would find. I was COMPLETELY SHOCKED that Super was wearing a Beanie and Oakleys in some of the pictures. Not just any Oakleys, big ass Oakleys I hadn’t even known he had bought yet. All the sudden he was a Super-sized doppelganger! He finally started to accept (nay, steal) my style. I was torn between WTF and Nice!

[Super & Teagan Presley]

Super was big on surprises. At this point I’d say we’re all aware of that fact, and that should go without contest. However, in order to surprise the likes of his closest friends usually took a little something more. For instance, him agreeing with Jeff for years that my Oakley fetish was pretty gay, only to go out and buy a pair of Oakleys I would have worn myself. Not only that, he specifically wore them to L.A. Erotica, a place he knew he’d have his picture taken a hundred or so times.

At some point he could have thrown out a few names for me, ya know, just to let me know who he did and did not meet. This time though he went out of his way to get a picture taken with someone that I saw in Vegas a year or so ago. When I saw the picture, I knew for a fact that he had it taken specifically to mess with me. I just knew it. He also hung out with Erik Everhard for a few minutes and got the chance to talk to him mostly about hockey. Another shocker! Talking hockey at a porn convention, hell all they had to do is bring in a few Ducati 1098 R’s and some astroglide and Super would have lost his mind.

Deciphering the signatures was a difficult task even for the trained eye. (Not that I spend a lot of time doing this, ‘ya know.) However, I feel compelled to be sure everyone knows the who’s who of silver pen on the helmet. I just have to. Super said to me the last day that I saw him that he would have to go back and look at the photos to try and compare some of them to the location of the signature. I figure staring at the helmet for the next half an hour is the least I can do for the guy. There are 56 signatures on the helmet if you can believe it. Out of 56, there are only 5 John Handyeah’s that are not legible. Thankfully not everyone has their own website, wiki, or myspace page, but I decided to compile a list of most of the women Super mingled with at the convention.

I will spare you the actual fan sites at the moment, but the SAFE wikipedia pages for the following signatures are for Teagan Presley, Sasha Grey, Jessica Drake, Heather Vandeven (uhuuh), Ashlynn Brooke, Kiki Daire, Michelle Michaels, Jenna Haze, Kayden Kross, Sunny Lane, Katja Kassin, Jenny Hendrix, Alexis Texas, Stephanie Swift, Nikki Benz, Aurora Snow, Taylor Wane, Sophia Santi, Gina Lynn, and Amber Rayne.

Divinity Love has a wikipedia commons page with a photo and no bio, but I’d be smitten if I didn’t mention it because I know someone thought she was super smokin’ hot. Worth a google image search for sure, or just wait for me to eventually post her photo with Mario Frassetto.

Mia Presley has a fairly interesting blog that I just spent a few seconds perusing. Apparently she does more than pose nude.

The myspace pages for Tori Black, Chayse Evans, Chanel-Renee, Kelly Divine, Addison Rose, Kaelyn Landers, Angelina Valentine, Ann Marie Rios, and Allie Foster are clickable. Because it is myspace they are pretty clean (or less dirty, how’s that?)

Last but not least, the thing I warned you about earlier. I wouldn’t click any of these links unless you’re curious AND perhaps in the comfort of your own home with a firewall on or something: Rachel Roxxx, January Seraph, Lexi Belle, Lux Kassidy, Louisa Lanewood, Laurie Vargas, Alyssa Reece, Ashley Fires, Samantha Sin, Faye Valentine, and Serena South.

Only one guy signed the helmet. Guess who? The Hedgehog himself, Ron Jeremy (which is on the inside of the black, upper left air vent).