HarperCollins’s Book Expo cocktail party Saturday night, on the Fox film lot (thanks, Rupert Murdoch), was designed to make every last bookseller feel like a star, its red carpet lined with thirties-style stock-character paparazzi. There were a few genuine quasi-celebrities in attendance: Audra McDonald, Muriel Hemingway, Kevin Nealon, and. … Ron Jeremy? Wearing a black blazer, a T-shirt reading “Pay to Play,” dark-gray jeans, and blue Crocs over bare feet, the world’s most famous male porn star was deep in conversation with a couple of Borders sales reps when we caught up with him.

Jeremy was at BEA for his book, Hardest (Working) Man in Show Business, now in paperback, which “didn’t get a single bad review,” and, he frequently reminded us, is a best seller. “Call me anything on the planet but you have to add on ‘and … a best-selling author,’” he said, insisting it’ll be in his obituary. “‘He was this, this, this, this, a lot of dick jokes, now he’s really stiff, and best-selling author.’”

Someday I’ll have to let you read my obit. The double entendres are so fast and furious it’s like Oscar Wilde wrote the thing.

-R