So apparently, while I wasn’t paying attention, best-selling author Tucker Max challenged Nick Denton’s huge blogging empire’s flagship Gawker to a $10,000 bet over the likely domestic gross of his upcoming movie and Gawker declared Jihad on Tucker Max over everything. Not in that order.

Full disclosure: I have drunk beer with Tucker Max and I’ve shaken hands with one of the Rudius Media bloggers. I have partied in Vegas with large portions of the Gawker staff, enjoyed Gawker’s hospitality in Austin, and shaken hands with Nick Denton. I think it is fair to say that I don’t have a horse in this race because I genuinely like and enjoy the work of people in both camps.

Now, Fleshbot is the main Gawker blog I read with any regularity, although, given that I quoted ValleyWag earlier today, obviously it is not the only one I read. So I don’t know how I missed the Gawker flagship’s 20 entries this month about how much they loathe Tucker Max. I worried that I might be being too rough on Joshua Todd and Buckcherry earlier this week, but, damn, compared to Gawker, I am sweetness and light and the personification of all that is gentle.

I wrote a thing a while back where I praised Tucker Max’s writing and general brilliance, but I mentioned that he was coy in his stories about use of cocaine. Tucker Max is very sensitive to people having misimpressions of him and he explained to me that it was important to him that he was about hanging out with beer and hot chicks and not about hookers and blow and that he felt beer and hot chicks were more fun. I’ve never been big on choosing just one scene, if more than one has something to offer, and there was probably more blow than beer in the room we were standing in, so I told him I’d have to contemplate that. I then printed a retraction of my implication that he might do drugs. And Tucker was still stressed out that I might not have been clear enough.

At the time, I thought he was being more sensitive than he needed to be, but, having read through some of the Gawker articles where everything the guy does is put under such a microscope, it makes more sense to me now. Wikipedia, which almost never takes any responsibility for how badly someone is being falsely maligned or lauded, actually locked the Tucker Max entry about a week ago. If Wikipedia actually makes any effort to control the rampant wikiality of an entry, then you know it is serious. Either that or Tucker Max has superpowers. In addition to pointing out that editing Tucker Max’s Wikipedia entry must be a full time job, on their site, Gawker assassinated everything about Tucker Max from his writing to disgruntled former employees to what swag he gave away at his movie’s wrap party to how cutesy he is with his dog to entries friends of his have written about him during arguments and since removed from the web.

As a big fan of Tucker Max’s book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, I don’t get what it is about him that drives some people into a complete frenzy of hate and disgust. Folks who are allergic to him generally complain about frat boy something or other and refer to his work as fratire, but Tucker Max says he has never belonged to a fraternity and I believe him.

I’m not excited about I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell being made into a movie. I recently watched the Augusten Burroughs Running with Scissors flick on TiVo and it was painful, even mostly fast forwarding. The problem with bringing memoir to the big screen is that the aspect of high quality memoir which is most interesting is the memoirist’s perspective. I have read almost all of Augusten Burroughs‘ books and enjoyed them, but the Running with Scissors movie was wretchedly unwatchable. And Running with Scissors had Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Evan Rachel Wood in it.

Tucker Max quotes Eminem’s lyrics “I love being hated, it’s great, let’s me know that I made it” when talking about the Gawker month-long hatefest. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a sociopath. The line between self-actualized individual and sociopath is soooooooo thin. But I think being vilified bothers both Tucker Max and Eminem, especially being vilified inaccurately. People always like to laugh about the idea of someone getting upset over something on the internet, but we live in a digital age and everyone needs to get their heads around the fact that what happens on the internet is real life now. You can step away from the keyboard, but something that tens of thousands of people read is still going to have an impact.

Sometimes you just have to live your life on your own terms and deal with the fallout. In this case, Tucker Max says that his film needs to do about $20 million gross to definitely be in the black. He has invited Gawker to wager what they feel will be the movie’s earnings and they win if it comes in beneath their bet and Tucker wins if it does better than they gamble. I’d say that a 20 entry media blitz on Gawker might be worth a few grand, but Hamilton Nolan and the rest of the Gawker crew write too well for a hostile deconstruction from them to equal good publicity. I’m very curious to see if Gawker will accept Tucker Max’s wager, all proceeds to be donated to charity of course. After that, I’ll be very interested next spring, when I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is released, to see who wins the bet. I hope I haven’t offended any of the involved parties, but, if I have, I’m okay with dealing with the fallout.

When I was a little kid, my compatriots would frequently use the expression “I don’t care”, but I was always careful to say “I care, but not enough to change my behavior.” Everybody likes a smartass, right?

Full disclosure: I kind of liked that Buckcherry song “Crazy Bitch” when it briefly played on the radio in Los Angeles. Not sure if it played elsewhere or not. As I recall, Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” only got airplay in limited markets, so not sure if the word bitch impacts distro. Given that their label Eleven Seven Music is some sort of Warner subsidiary or other corporate term meaning a certain kind of backing, I guess they might not have had that much trouble with distro in 2006, but I didn’t note it at the time, so I don’t know. New factoid I learned today: Apparently, Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue is at least the nominal president of Buckcherry’s label Eleven Seven Music, which was founded by longtime music industry guy and master of marketing innovation Allen Kovac, a man who can probably think of the way to backdoor distro, even if a major label backer is gunshy. (Now I get why Motley Crue would tour with Buckcherry. That Nikki Sixx is smart. One of these days, I need to get with the program and start collecting royalties off of people who wish they were me.)

Although the “Crazy Bitch” song has some lyrics about enjoying an insane lover’s cat scratches, Joshua Todd has reiterated in various interviews that he does not actually like it when groupies come up to him and trying to put scratches all up and down his back. Seriously, people need to think about what they are doing before they start putting marks on someone with extensive body art. Yeah, they may be more likely to be into it, but they may also be stressed out about damaging their skin decorations. Additionally, even touring musicians, who look like they like to hang with the ladies, may not appreciate being sent home with marks of their guilt.

I have not watched the “Crazy Bitch” explicit version video carefully enough to pick out whether I know anyone in that one, but I remember when they were recruiting for it. Unlike their “Too Drunk to Fuck” song, Buckcherry actually shot an entire different video for the boobies version of “Crazy Bitch”. I am deeply not someone who normally thinks it is better to leave something to the imagination, but the nonnude version of “Crazy Bitch” is simply way way way hotter. It kind of fits better too because the nonnude version features the band being rounded up and dominated by naughty policewomen and the topless version features strippers dancing unenthusiastically in a strip club, while Buckcherry’s lead singer hangs out in the bathroom by the urinal.

When Forrest Black and I shoot naked people, we always try to stay way inside someone’s comfort zone. I like to stop short of what I think is the farthest someone would be comfortable and way short of the farthest they could be pushed to. Having thought about it for a day, I think that part of the problem is that Buckcherry’s management or record label or both are pushing them beyond their comfort zone. Joshua Todd looks almost charismatic when he is being dominated by a clothed policewoman, but he just looks scared and uncomfortable with naked breasts in the room with him. (Example linked after the jump in the comments, only for board members who have filled out the free signup and are of age.)

Then again, he did still participate in what I believe may be the absolute most pathetically awful example of a rock ballad ever performed. The only reason I say “may be” is that I can’t stand to listen past the first couple of notes, but it is the “OFFICIAL Sorry” video.

“Most of us are just living a lie
That’s why we get fucked up every night”
–Buckcherry, “Too Drunk To Fuck”

Please forgive me, but I like to fantasize that my dirty glam rockers are never too drunk to get it on. Well maybe occasionally, if it makes a really good story. But I can’t help wondering if Buckcherry don’t have some kind of problem with women. I don’t mean that I suspect they might not be thoughtful feminists. When, circa 600BC, I masturbated approximately 80,000 times to the “Welcome to the Jungle” video, I never once fantasized that Axl Rose would be perfect for a relationship. Or even an interesting dinner conversation.

The reason Motley Crue did an album like Girls, Girls, Girls is that the job of properly utilizing a pole while dancing is very similar to the job of being a dirty glam rocker. They felt an affinity. Whatever else one might think about the Crue, I don’t think anyone wondered whether they feared the vagina dentata, or worse yet, were frightened of the boobies. As a teenager, I saw Vince Neil ask the New Haven Coliseum (it could have been the Hartford Civic Center, but I think it was New Haven) who was the best piece of ass in the building. I was vaguely unsettled when the biker next to me appeared to be offering up his girlfriend and I went back to my dorm room and wrote an ethnomusicology term paper about how I wouldn’t fuck Vince Neil with someone else’s pussy, but, damn, that was some fine showmanship and entertaining rock and roll.

The thing is that good music should transport one and good musical showmanship should go even further towards that goal. I think the only Motley Crue video I ever masturbated to was “Looks That Kill” (and that was really more about the chicks than the band members), but, as a frontman, Vince Neil had more than a good rock and roll voice and a cute outfit. Vince Neil could rock a stadium because he could sell the fantasy. As alcohol is reportedly Vince Neil’s poison of choice and he has done time for drunk driving and all, I would guess he has had occasion to be too drunk to fuck. But he doesn’t sing about it. The dirty glam rock fantasy is one of a party which never ends, where the titans of rock are always down for one more round. I’m sure Vince Neil has also caught a cold before and been too feverish to get out from under his blankie. But he doesn’t fucking sing about it.

This is why, no matter how expensive Joshua Todd’s ink is and no matter how many sit-ups he does, he will never be as cool as Vince Neil. What kind of emo ridiculousness is it that the record labels are trying to sell Buckcherry as raunchy current hard rock and they turn around and try to foist this whiny nonsense on us? Do the record labels really understand that little about what rock fans look for in a band?

If you are wondering why I actually watched a Buckcherry video on purpose, I confess it is because I heard that Blue Blood hottie Bella Vendetta was topless in it. Don’t bother pushing play on the YouTube version, though, because apparently the part with the breasts is only on Playboy. I thought nudity in a video like this would be pushing the envelope, but I was just disappointed. The naked girls are actually never once in the room with the band and the dressed girls are frankly also pretty far away from the musicians. In fact, the house party Buckcherry are playing in for the vid appears to be quite the sausagefest. All put together, there are only maybe half a dozen females anywhere in the building. They try to get some alt-y MySpace cred by having a somewhat scene-looking girl as the viewpoint character in the video, but she shows up with a homely dude who passes out on her, and I assure you that that is no girl’s erotic rock and roll fantasy.

Apparently, the nude parts of the video were shot in a hotel room far away from the guys in Buckcherry. I know at least one person who has had sex with a member of Buckcherry and didn’t hate it. I’ve photographed this Buckcherry-boning individual naked, so I can affirm that she has girl parts. But what band avoids being present when the video babes are shooting? It is part of the job, when fronting a hard rock band of this stripe, to at least be able to fake like you enjoy the rock and roll party.

Director/pornstar Joanna Angel gamely offers up a press quote about the directors of the Buckcherry video being nice enough to let her shoot some of the breast footage. Now I don’t follow adult film closely, but I’m 100% positive that Joanna Angel has won AVN awards for either her porn direction or her porn performances or both. In my opinion, she is the one doing Buckcherry’s lame directors a favor by providing them with footage of boobies, including her own. Unfortunately, whoever edited the topless bits into the original cut of the “Too Drunk To Fuck” video, didn’t really include anyone’s faces. For example, I am familiar enough with Bella Vendetta’s body that I can assure you she is in the video, but her head is cut off in every shot. WTF? Who directed this this anti-rock, anti-woman, sex-negative video screed anyway?

I don’t generally mind it when dirty glam rockers dehumanize women. They are supposed to be about a certain sort of wild sex fantasy and not necessarily about progressive thinking. But, if they are both shallow and sexist and unable to keep the party going, what is the point?