I know you’ve been losing sleep and freaking out worrying about the fate of Al Goldstein. After all, he personifies a kind of brash sleaziness that’s an essential part of the American character. He’s like the George Washington of porn! Okay, maybe not Washington. Madison? Hamilton?

Back in the early 90s, the main reason to visit NYC was to see people like Al Golstein and Robin Bird acting like complete maniacs in between ads for 970-PEEE. Al Goldstein would froth at the mouth and scream at various federal judges who had wronged him, while some poor ignored stripper posed in his lap. The Al Goldstein show was basically one long obscene rant-a-thon about his divorce cases, his tax cases and his obscenity cases. Al also published some really freaky avant garde comics by people like Peter Bagge and Tony Millionaire, in Screw magazine. (It’s worth hunting down a copy of Screw Comics, the reprint collection published a few years ago.)

But a couple of years ago, the NY Times reported that Al had fallen on hard times. He’d declared bankruptcy and was basically homeless, plus he was on probation for harassing his third ex-wife in the pages of Screw, his former porn newspaper. Then a few months later Al got a job working as a greeter at the Second Avenue Deli. I’m not sure what that would have done to my appetite, to be honest. Al himself had had a stomach-stapling operation, so he could only extol the virtues of a giant club sandwich in the abstract.

But the Second Avenue Deli closed a while back. What is Al up to now? Well, he’s got a blog, and he’s looking for work. (Warning: his blog may not be quite safe for work.) He also wants desperately to prove that even though his brain is covered in plaque (his word), he still knows how to lick pussy. Here’s Al reviewing the latest porno DVD from Hustler:

Frankly, I won’t be satisfied until one of the scenes shows me pulling Flynt out of his gold wheelchair, rolling him in flour, covering him in chicken feathers, lubricating his ass with Crisco and then fucking him. Then pulling my cock out and shooting my load in his red neck mouth while Hustler editor Bruce David jerks off in my right ear.

It’s nice to know that not everybody mellows with age.