The brilliant Ellen Von Unwerth shot an extensive pictorial of Lady Gaga in vampire drag for Out. The exclusive Out feature is called The Lady is a Vamp. The shoot styling is credited to someone named Nicola Formichetti who is seriously talented and who Bing informs me is the creative director of Dazed and Confused and is responsible for some of the fashion in Vogue Hommes Japan, V, Arena Homme, and others, as well as of course out. Always fun to discover the work of creative people I have not come across before.

Out calls Lady Gaga “Pop’s newest — and gayest — superstar”. One of the things I like about Lady Gaga is that I feel she is someone post-orientation in her approach to sexuality. She has stated often in interviews that she is attracted to women physically but only has romantic relationships with men. I’m not sure if that makes her super-gay, but maybe I am just feeling cantankerous today about people being so bent on labeling sexuality. I do not feel that an individual’s sexuality generally belongs in a tidy little box with a label stickered on it.

Then again, from an editorial perspective, I’m pleased that Out indentifies Lady Gaga as gay, however she defines herself. Because this gave Out reason to publish a beautiful portfolio of images of Lady Gaga shot by Ellen Von Unwerth. They did a ton of different set-ups and have both black and white and color and a whole spectrum of spooky themes. Lots of vampire and gothic tropes photographed appealingly. Smoky dark eyes, coffin, sunglasses at night, blood, nudity (probably sfw nudity) fangs, and cute skeleton in combat boots. Definitely worth checking out.

The end of this month, Combichrist will kick off a world tour in Los Angeles. The name of the new EP from Metropolis Records is Sent to Destroy and the industrial dance club favorite Andy LaPlegua will be sent to destroy everywhere from the UK to Sweden to Spain to the Netherlands to Poland, France, and beyond. European readers should keep an eye out.

To get you all pumped for the EP release on July 10, Blue Blood has a few sexy photos of lead singer (and lead pretty much everything) Andy LaPlegua in the Combichrist Frost EP Sent to Destroy gallery.

You can’t go wrong with Japanese schoolgirls, big boots, and a nice iced beverage. Can you?

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.

And, to the desperate, sell-out assholes who will say that Madonna’s boots in the video mean fetish is crossing over to mainstream, I have a couple of things to say. First of all, why do you hate yourselves so much? What, besides self-loathing, could make someone put huge effort into being a fetish star while believing that being somehow mainstream would be preferable? Lastly, Madonna is successful, not mainstream. I’d be pleased to help anyone who thinks success=mainstream or mainstream=success in busting out a dictionary.

For those I need not whack with the legacy of Noah Webster and those more familiar with Justin Timberlake, I’d like to leave you with some vintage Madonna sex music video. Her Express Yourself video on the official Madonna channel has only received 6,440 views to date, so I thought y’all might feel like giving it a boost.