I’d like to take a moment out from my busy schedule of rolling around on the floor laughing at the recent obscenity prosecutions in the United States, in order to comment on them. Veteran adult video performer and producer Max Hardcore was just found guilty of obscenity in Florida. For those who are unaware of his oeuvre, Max Hardcore was the first guy on the extreme-hardcore-with-teens bus. Whether or not you really want to see gaping anal or watersports or puking in a sexual context or even naked chicks who look younger than twenty-two, Max Hardcore certainly deserves both credit and responsibility for bringing such things into the popular culture. Apparently, along with credit for his ground-breaking work in rough sex on camera comes an attempt by the State of Florida to nail him on 20 counts of distributing obscene materials through the mails and internet. Now I have it on good authority that various government agents have been so anxious to bust Max Hardcore over the years that one such over-eager and nervous gent once accidentally discharged a firearm in Max’s house, during a study of paperwork, such that repairs were needed. Now, don’t get me wrong, Blue Blood magazine in print used to get screeners of Max’s movies way before they got as extreme as they supposedly are now. And I couldn’t sit through one then. At the time, I was just like, how did some construction worker manage to parlay an interest in sex into this huge career?
Now Blue Blood art director Forrest Black and I used to enjoy going to all the adult industry trade shows. We attended the adult video shows in Vegas since the pre-Internet times when the adult video show was a little …
When, in his first inaugural address, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” he wasn’t necessarily talking about the nature of horror in television and film. The main thrust of his speech was that, in wretched economic times, hope and a positive attitude were integral to pulling America out of the Depression. Nonetheless, that one expression has, in the general zeitgeist, outlasted the rest of his speech about how “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.” And it seems fair to say that the line about the only thing we have to fear certainly outlasted FDR’s exhortations that there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.”
Historically, comedy entertainment has flourished in times of economic strife and war and drama and horror have done better when the audience’s day-to-day lives have been more comfortable and free of fear. But we live in interesting times and horror is booming. NBC has an ambitious new television series starting today which showcases the works of thirteen top horror teams. In case this wasn’t obvious from my deconstruction of the origins of the expression about what we have to fear, the name of the series is Fear Itself.
I asked my unsavory pals and I asked the Blue Blood boards and I asked my sixty thousand close personal …
The event was at a Venice couple-oriented adult store called Freddy and Eddy. Freddy and Eddy has the adorable slogan “where couples can come” for their brick and mortar location and I’ve been meaning to check it out forever. I keep getting invited to cool readings there, but it took Rachel’s extra dollop of coolness to get me to venture out to new territory and I’m so glad I did. The reading area is a spacious beautiful patio out behind the well-appointed and very pink store. I enjoyed chatting with one of the owners and the smart sexpert folks who had gathered for the occasion.
Although the video above is what Rachel read at Freddy and Eddy’s, the clip is actually from the most recent right coast In the Flesh reading event. (People say left coast for Cali all the time; can you say right coast for New York?) At the California one, the theme was Survival. The first reader was Willam Belli who is an incredibly charismatic trannie whose reading, about an odd hook-up with a tattooed hottie, connected so much with the audience that it came across more as performance than reading. The way this piece tied into the theme of Survival was more punchline than actual fit, but it was very entertaining. Esteemed anthologist Maxim Jakubowski read a piece about how relationships have soundtracks, which I think is a very true insight. Stan Kent dressed like a rockstar and read an excerpt of a series …
So, after knowing each other for nearly a decade, and working together on multiple projects, over many years, I finally finally got to meet Scott Owens of EroticBPM fame in person! We once almost met in the flesh when he got stuck at LAX on a layover, but I’d just finished being somewhere one good friend of mine was attempting to sleep with the husband of another good friend of mine and having to give a police report on some psycho who was incoherently threatening me outside a nightclub for firing a girl she just met and barely knew but had a crush on or something. So anyway, I didn’t think I’d be at my charming best when I got to LAX, which also happens to be my least favorite California airport.
Anyway, Forrest Black, who is in charge of the look and feel of all Blue Blood sites, and I visited Portland and stayed with Scott and his charmingly negative head coder Antisocial and his beautiful bride (who, in a flash of small world, turned out to be a model from some of the earliest naughty sets I published from photographer Tom Hunscher.) We had an amazingly good time just hanging out in their gargantuan Pacific NW headquarters with them and their three very cute and almost disturbingly friendly and well-adjusted cats.
We also got to see old friends from our DC stomping grounds. We shot new stuff of the always fun Voltaire and of Rachel Face. Rachel has a new clothing line and we shot that, as well as a whole passel of new hotties. Parts of the trip were really bizarrely and gratuitously stressful, but most of it was really super nice. Portland is so beautiful and the air is so clean and we …
Sean Abley is working on a series of interviews for a possible book project entitled People Who Are Cool. The theme is, as you might suspect, people Sean Abley knows who are cool. You can read the two part interview he did with yours truly online now here and here. It is a two parter because, as Sean says, we are a couple of chatty bitches. Seriously, it is very in-depth and his questions were really interesting and unusual and I answered a lot of stuff I don’t usually talk about in interviews. This is going to post to Dark Blue Films in approx six weeks, but you all get the inside-skinny on where to read it pre-publication.
“Somehow Amelia G and I became blog friends about 8 years ago. I’m not really sure how that happened, and when we’ve discussed it, neither is she. But somehow one of us surfed into the other’s Live Journal account and friended same, and we’ve been reading each other’s stuff for years now.When I first started reading her blog, I was immediately struck by the photographs she’d post, taken either by her or her collaborator, Forrest Black. These were semi- (or not so semi-) naked shots of Goth chicks with beautiful lighting, styling and makeup. As I say further down in my interview with her, “[She] took two things I have no interest in – Goth culture and naked girls – and photographed them so I can’t turn away.”Soon I realized Amelia had a mini media empire based on this subject matter, the hub of which is (are) http://www.blueblood.com and http://www.blueblood.net. Start there and you’ll find yourself winding down internet corridors …
So, I think Madonna is pretty awesome in general, but I’m vaguely baffled by her message to YouTube video. In it, she is supposedly vacuuming the set for her 4 Minutes video because apparently other people didn’t take care of it. Then she tells the world of YouTube good job on making tons of videos for her 4 Minutes single. To date, her thanks for making essentially fanfic versions of 4 Minutes video has received 3,175,135 views on YouTube.
The actual official Warner Bros video for Madonna’s 4 Minutes has only received 846,562 views. It opens with a little rap from Timbaland and most of the song is a duet and coordinated dance moves from Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Madonna and Justin Timberlake take off some of each other’s clothes during their choreography and, unlike Janet Jackson, I guarantee Madonna won’t apologize or pretend that her clothing flying off is a wardrobe malfunction.
A search on YouTube for +”4 minutes” +madonna yields 2,860 results, including both the fanfic (or whatever YouTube people call this sort of thing) vids and multiple copies of the official video and various video responses to the go ahead and make videos based on the video video. This sort of viral marketing is all very meta. Will encouraging people to do more of what they were going to do anyway work to Madonna’s benefit? Will it sell more of her music, raise her stock for endorsements, or otherwise make bank?
I don’t know the answer and I’m really interested in hearing what other people think about how this will work as a marketing effort. Do you enjoy fanfic videos? Regardless, you should watch the real official video because it’s fun candy and Madonna and Justin Timberlake dancing is way hotter than most porn.
How do you hack a hangover? Apparently this is one of the most viewed recent YouTube videos in the how-to section. Well, if you don’t count all the ones related to achieving erection, orgasm, or conception. I haven’t watched any of their social relations vids, but, if the advice is as terrible as this hangover advice, I’d recommend steering clear.
Personally, I’ve found that the most effective way to avoid feeling awful in the morning is to sleep late after a night of not drinking to excess. Then start the day with a delicious iced soy latte, a little sunshine, and a well-balanced, high-protein, low-carb, low-glycemic-index breakfast.
Failing that, I never remember to take those RU-21 pills when starting the night, but they are moderately effective. I am a very big fan of alternating beer with sparkling water during the evening and drinking the Function brand Urban Detox beverages before bed.
The first time I ever went to Death Guild was when Forrest Black and I were out in San Francisco for Bat of House of Usher’s Zine Slam. We were there promoting Blue Blood in print and also my antisocial punk rock humor zine BLT or Black Leather Times.
This was like more than a decade ago, so when Vampira Bat and Nixon Sixx suggested dropping promoter Decay a line, I was thinking he might not remember me. Pretty much the first thing he ever said to me in person was to give me grief for not publishing an article he wrote and submitted to my zine BLT. His article was fine and contained some punk education; it just didn’t fit the BLT format. So the first thing he emails back to me yesterday is his cell number and the pledge “I promise not to give you shit about the story I submitted to you guys in 1990.” So we are two veterans who do indeed remember each other.
As most Blue Blood readers probably know, we are celebrating our fifteen year anniversary this year. Death Guild is also celebrating their fifteen year anniversary. Death Guild DJ Margo was even a covergirl for one of the older designs of BlueBlood.net. The moral of the story here is that having perserverence and longevity means that somebody somewhere will always remember it if there was that one night you drank too much, that one person you said that thing to, the time you gave someone a mohawk you were not supposed to, that guy you threatened with a shotgun, or potentially the weird factoid about that person they always confuse you with. If you stick …
The Whitby Goth Weekend began around 13 years ago, and was originally only held once a year in October. It became so popular, that the organizers decided to hold it every six months. It has grown so much that one shop can take enough money over the 2 weekends that it doesn’t need to open for the rest of the year.
People travel from all over the world to come to the small fishing town. One person we met had traveled from Alaska! First time visitors maybe a bit confused when they first arrive in the town, as each side of every street has a different name (due to the person that was asked to draw up plans for the town was paid by the street name, so he named as many streets as possible.)
This Weekend.
Most people start the weekend early, arriving on the Thursday. It’s a night of meeting up in a bar with old friends or making new ones.
Friday is when most of the festivities start, when the Spa Pavilion hosts the first night of the bands, and for those that don’t want to see the bands, there was a burlesque night at the Metropole Hotel. There were several other events like bands playing in social clubs and bars.
Saturday daytime saw the dedication of the Sophie Lancaster Memorial Bench, which is situated near the WhaleBones on the West Cliff. There was also a Charity Bungee Jump called the Dracula Drop, for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. The Goth weekend has got a long reputation of donating to local charities, usually the local Cat & Dog Shelter, but also this year there was the campaign for S.O.P.H.I.E. (Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere) which was trying to get …
So right now FUSE is playing a block of Nelly videos. I find Nelly ridiculously hot. Hot like sexy, not hot like kindling. I’m not even sure if I like his music, but I certainly enjoy his videos. They’ve got productions values! (Bonus cool points to anyone who gets the movie reference there.)
So I was sitting there, letting the purple hair dye set in my hair, watching the Hot In Here video, and I suddenly realized that at least part of the video was shot inside a particular nightclub on Hollywood Blvd. Specifically, it was shot inside the Basque nightclub a couple blocks from me which burned down a day ago. Holy firemen of irony, Batman!
I was all trying to go to sleep at like six in the morning and I couldn’t figure out WTF was up with all the helicopters. I mean, my neighborhood has been a little weird lately, but this was just ridiculous. Turned out they were all the news copters shooting the fire and the literally two hundred and ten firemen and countless arson investigators and other officials dealing with the fire. Apparently, the building’s core was super old and had like poisonous resins or something on some of the burning wood. Not the best air quality where I live in Los Angeles for the past day.
But I really think the copters should have been blasting Nelly singing Hot In Here while they flew over my place. That would have totally made it all okay.
I’d like to take a moment out from my busy schedule of rolling around on the floor laughing at the recent obscenity prosecutions in the United States, in order to comment on them. Veteran adult video performer and producer Max Hardcore was just found guilty of obscenity in Florida. For those who are unaware of his oeuvre, Max Hardcore was the first guy on the extreme-hardcore-with-teens bus. Whether or not you really want to see gaping anal or watersports or puking in a sexual context or even naked chicks who look younger than twenty-two, Max Hardcore certainly deserves both credit and responsibility for bringing such things into the popular culture. Apparently, along with credit for his ground-breaking work in rough sex on camera comes an attempt by the State of Florida to nail him on 20 counts of distributing obscene materials through the mails and internet. Now I have it on good authority that various government agents have been so anxious to bust Max Hardcore over the years that one such over-eager and nervous gent once accidentally discharged a firearm in Max’s house, during a study of paperwork, such that repairs were needed. Now, don’t get me wrong, Blue Blood magazine in print used to get screeners of Max’s movies way before they got as extreme as they supposedly are now. And I couldn’t sit through one then. At the time, I was just like, how did some construction worker manage to parlay an interest in sex into this huge career?
