News

Porn actress uses former schoolmate's name

What's in a name?

As told to Richard Connelly 

Courtney Cummz, call your lawyer.

Well, only if you're not the Courtney Cummz who stars in Young Cheerleader Swap ‘n' Swallow 2.

If, however, you somehow got through high school as Courtney Cummz and have now discovered someone's using your name as a porno actress, you need to sue.

That's what's happening to one of Ms. Cummz's Young Cheerleader costars, Syvette Wimberley.

Syvette is actually Lara Madden, from Kingwood. You think you're gonna get anywhere in porn with a name like "Lara Madden"? Guess again. So Madden picked a new name. Unfortunately for Syvette Wimberley, her former classmate in Kingwood, she picked...Syvette Wimberley.

Caj Boatright, the real Wimberley's attorney, says the whole ordeal has been "kind of a nightmare" for his client, who is not doing interviews. "Syvette wants this to pass as quickly as possible...her goal is to get her name away from the adult industry," he adds.

"[S]he wanted a name that sounded unique," says Madden's attorney, Kent Schaffer. It wasn't done out of spite, he insists: "If she were doing it to be malicious, she would've made sure that this girl knew she was using the name two years ago when it occurred."

The real Wimberley eventually found out when she started getting weird questions from friends. (How does that go? "Hey, Syvette — I saw you in this great double-penetration scene last night! Well, I didn't make it through all of the scene, but what I saw was great!!")

And in case your porno mind is envisioning some sweet young lesbian love affair that caused Madden to adopt the name, forget it: "They were never good friends," Schaffer said. "They were acquaintances."

The Smoking Gun Web site was first to note Wimberley suing Madden; we blogged about it at our Houstoned blog and now it's gone worldwide. Which, ummm, really is serving to ensure that the 99 percent of people who never heard of either of the Syvette Wimberleys will now always associate the name with porn.

"Nobody comes out a winner in this deal," Schaffer says. Madden no longer does porn and Wimberley's lawsuit "has caused her a whole lot of embarrassment," Schaffer says. (As much as starring in Big Cocks 5?)

Yet, Boatright points out, "Movies are still being released or have been since she...allegedly left the business that she [was] in...And there's still obviously tons of content on the web that has that name on it...[the movies] are still very accessible to the public."

The really bad part about the suit is that Schaffer's one of the funnier lawyers in town, but he's playing all this absolutely straight, droning on about what a shame it is that all of Kingwood now knows Lara Madden did dirty movies.

How did the flashy Schaffer end up with a porno star as a client? He says merely that she was referred to him by a fellow attorney.

Lawyer Brian Wice, who teamed with Schaffer on the recent Montrose gang-fight-murder case, says he's not surprised by Schaffer's clientele.

"He obviously is attracted to difficult, high-maintenance women — after all, he married three of them," Wice says.

Different Bang

Jim Henley, the legendary debate teacher at Lanier Middle School, wanted to go out with a bang by getting elected to Congress (see "Getting Schooled," November 2, 2006). That didn't happen, but he did manage to go out with a bang of a different type.

Once again he took an eclectic bunch of initially disinterested urban kids, put them up against elite prep schools and he whipped their butts.

Lanier won its fifth consecutive title at the National Junior Forensics League Tournament this month, topping teams from New York, Massachusetts and California.

As always, the adults who were spellbound Henley students years ago came back to help coach. "They volunteered many hours in preparing our team to dominate the debate events and break ahead of the prep schools in events such as poetry, prose and humorous interpretation," Henley says.

(What he doesn't mention, of course, is that it's his inspiration that creates the kind of students who come back to volunteer years after they've left middle school.)

Henley's retiring after 20 years. He'll spend some of his time in Mexico, where he plans to help small coffee-growers form a cooperative to export beans to America.

"I love coffee, and I'll be roasting the beans here in Houston," he says.

He may have some other plans in mind, too. "Everyday, someone encourages me to run for office again," he says.

Maybe this time he'll find a candidate willing to debate him. Then again, probably not.

Tunnel of Love

The Tunnel Mole at our Houstoned blog is the authority on Houston's subterranean pedestrian system, but she's been tied up.

So she hasn't noticed the tidal wave of grinning, eager white folks energetically handing out small pamphlets filled with lightbulb jokes.

Why lightbulb jokes? Because, as the pamphlets go on to say, "All kidding aside, there is a darkness in our lives...Jesus...[yadda, yadda, yadda]."

The folks from a church called The Apple of His Eye have been thrusting these things at passersby like they were Chinese menus in New York.

We couldn't reach the head of this effort, but the church's Web site offers updates on the project. They've given away 16,000 pamphlets. "We continue to encounter opposition from people that call themselves believers and from some of the authorities," the Web site says.

They seem to be a little obsessed with Jews. "There will be much follow-up — many of the believers we are meeting have unbelieving Jewish friends," the site says.

It's not that they hate the Jews, mind you. They even include a Jewish-mother lightbulb joke (Answer to "how many, etc": "None. I'll sit in the dark. I'll be fine. Don't worry about me!")

So hey, all you Christ-killers — head down to the tunnels and make some new friends!! You guys love jokes, right?

Tales from the BBB

There are a million sad stories in the files of the Houston chapter of the Better Business Bureau. Well, maybe not a million, but there are quite a few. And some of them offer religious and moral parables for our time. Like the Houston company known as Gospel Music Store Online. Witness the struggle here.