The Tudors from Showtime has season one and season two out on DVD and season three starts today. You can view the first episode of the new Showtime season for free at this special link, albeit with one scene involving breasts blurred out. I’m assuming you all already know where to find delightful breasts anyway. If you watch the free episode of The Tudors, you will see a “previously on The Tudors” segment which, if you did not pay attention in eighth grade history, will contain spoilers.

Although show creator and writer Michael Hirst takes some creative license with the back stories for specific lesser-known characters, most of the plotline is set by history, so the really fascinating aspects of the show are how it explores the nature of power conflicts and how visually stunning the whole thing is. The Tudors highlights that King Henry the VIII’s efforts to, not only support the Reformation, but practically claim Protestantism as his own creation, was largely a matter of asserting his kingly power. King Henry wanted, as king, to be able to marry whomever he pleased and it did not hurt that looting the churches of England would be helpful for the sovereign’s war chest. Some characters, such as the queen’s minstrel Mark Smeaton, played by David Alpay, are embellished beyond what history knows about him, but it all serves to make the story very compelling watching and to explore how different people use different tools at their disposal to grapple for what they want.

This is all played out against beautiful scenery with impossibly sumptuous Tudor costumes, all selected to express both the individuality of the characters and the time period. The outfits are so impressive that the wardrobe and costuming team lead by Joan Bergin won an Emmy for an episode in season one and another Emmy for an episode in season two. One detail of the costuming which is inaccurate is that men in Tudor England wore tremendous codpieces to emphasize their manly packages. According to Joan Bergin in The Tudors: Royal Stylemakers, this was deemed likely to be too distracting to modern viewers. We do know how much modern viewers fear the cock. I wish folks would get over that, but the outfits in The Tudors are so lush and gorgeous that I covet them every episode for everyone I know. I would surely appreciate an invite from anyone who wants to hook me up with a private studio sale of costumes used on The Tudors. I will totally start dressing like either a dude or a chick from the 1500’s.

King Henry VIII is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Since the first time I saw him, I have thought Jonathan Rhys Meyers is simply one of the best looking men who ever lived. On first meeting Jonathan Rhys Meyers, my brother commented that he actually is what so many leading men actors are described as being. For quite a while, Jonathan Rhys Meyers only seemed to appear in things where he played characters with drug problems and/or ambiguous sexuality who were always supporting roles. Although he made a good Elvis, Velvet Goldmine and B. Monkey are the two movies I would most expect Blue Blood readers to be familiar with. Shortly after appearing in The Lion in Winter, where Jonathan Rhys Meyers ironically played the effeminately alluring yet scheming youthful king of France, he hit the gym to get a more manly body so he could play more manly roles. He is quoted as saying, “At some point in your career as an actor you’re going to have to get on a Stairmaster. The days of Harris and O’Toole are gone. If you want to be at the top of your game, you can’t be out partying with your friends, or having six pints a night down the pub.” The results, displayed to pleasing effect in The Tudors, appear to have been quite effective. Although “I am the King of England,” might at first seem like an unlikely catchphrase, Jonathan Rhys Meyers manages to deliver it with such impact that he communicates the essence of being a ruler and intending to command all he surveys and more.

I’d never seen Natalie Dormer, who played Anne Boleyn before, but with her creamy complexion, raven hair, and twisted little smile, she was completely convincing as the seductress who could change the course of world events. All the casting in The Tudors is really excellent. It is one of those shows which becomes very engrossing. Peter O’Toole, brought in late on as the Pope in Rome, was fabulous as a counterpoint character who also believed in his absolute power.

Aside from being so visually beautiful and compellingly sexy that it demonstrates why mainstream adult video porn will ultimately lose in the mainstreaming of naughtiness (yay!), The Tudors asks the interesting human question of, What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

The end of Spring was approaching in San Francisco and that meant that the annual Emerging Illusions Alternative Fashion Show was soon to happen. For those unaware, Emerging Illusions is meant to showcase up and coming fashion/costume designers from the Goth, punk and industrial scenes.

Again, I was honored to be asked to set up a mini studio backstage and shoot the models and designers, make-up artists and hair stylists and anyone else who wanted to pose.

The smell of make-up and hair spray filled to backstage area. Nearly every square inch of floor was covered by people, clothes and props. Activity was everywhere. Make-up being applied, hair being styled, models dressing and undressing, dancers stretching out. It was more difficult to negotiate than the dance floor when the DJ plays everybody’s favorite song.

And it was no wonder that it was packed. Each designer is limited to only five or six models and provides their own hair and make-up people. This year, saw 14 designers: Somnabulance, Wisp-her Wear, Gibbous, Severd, Eirik Aswang, Lisa Goblin, The Window Lady, Dragoness, Chelsea Aragon, saKAna Desgins, Larvae, Shawk Designs, Shadow Bound and Clotho Constrictor. Plus there were stage crew running the show, photographers & videographers and the occasional friend of someone.

As I set up my equipment, I looked over the outfits being worn by those already dressed. With fourteen designers, their designs were as diversified as you would imagine with outfits ranging from everyday wear to clubwear to costumes to things you’d probably only wear at Burning Man if you wear anything at Burning Man.

Though I really enjoy the energy backstage, my only regret in being backstage is I don’t get to see the show. This is because Emerging Illusions is not a simple fashion show. One thing that the organizer, Miqua, has done, is to add broader appeal by eschewing the catwalk. No models simply strutting up and down the stage in this fashion show. The designers are encouraged to create mini performance pieces to showcase their creations. So rather than a fashion show, you get a show that has fashion.

Luckily, after I had everything set up, I had some time to watch some of the rehearsals. And again, the range of performances varied as vastly as the style of clothes. From dolls coming to life and turning their little girl owner into one of them to handmaidens who feed their queen to sea demons to a post-apocalyptic, spy-thiller demon hunt amid snowing fallout. I was even asked to stand in for Vampirabat and Nixon Sixx during one rehearsal. Not an easy task, as I am the opposite of what comes to mind when the names of Vampirabat or Nixon Sixx even come up.

Even before the show started, I was taking pictures and shot nearly continuously for the next six hours. And with the exception of a wayward mannequin punching a hole in my backdrop and fisticuffs nearly breaking out between two groups of models over who was going to shoot next, it was a pretty fun-filled evening.

The show for 2009 is already looking to be the biggest of them all.

If you’d like more information on the show or the designers or where to purchase clothing, visit the Emerging Illusions website.

Last week I had the curious privilege of seeing Pirates 2: Stagnetti’s Revenge on the big screen at the posh Orphium Theater in downtown Los Angeles. For those of you who don’t know Pirates 2 is the biggest budget adult movie ever made. Produced by Digital Playground and directed by Joone it features a cast of A list adult talent and a bevy of Hercules: The legendary journeys grade special effects. I was a guest at the premier because I and my girlfriend Kitty were extras in the movie. Being an extra in the biggest budget adult film ever made is kind of a strange honor and a little bit surreal. I had this opportunity because a good friend of mine was the assistant casting director on the film who one afternoon sent me a text out of the blue asking; “Do you have any pirate gear?” Of course I did. He wanted to know if I wanted to make a few bucks and be in a movie, so of course I said yes. He told me after I agreed what I had signed up for which only made me more stoked. The first day I was on set I was crazy. I had driven up from San Diego to Van Nuys for filming kitted out with my pirate gear and when I showed up was told that they needed 18th century-ish British Sailors. I’m fine with changing what I’m wearing but at the time my hair was two tone black and platinum and my nails were half an inch black acrylics which sent the costume director into fits. After I was hatted and be gloved (I think I just verbed two nouns) I was sent in to the set for filming. The set was absolutely the best thing ever. It was a life size mock up of a pirate ship up on scaffolding in this huge green screened sound stage. I then spent the next few hours driving the boat through a storm on the opening scene. Look in the background between the bishop and the young man. That fuzzy back of head? That’s me! That young man awkwardly asked me if I was one of the people who would be “taking their clothes off.”

I wound up briefly meeting Katsuni who was pleasant and Evan Stone who wasn’t actually filming that day but had come to play pranks and get into mischief.

Later in the filming I went up with Kitty as the scene we would be filming that day called for female extras for the crowd in the Pit fight with the giant slug thing. You can see kitty and I pretty clearly for a few seconds in this scene. Can you guess which one I am? This day was a tough one for me as my two favorite adult entertainers; Belladonna and Sasha Grey were on set together and in the scene with us. Both of these ladies are absolutely adorable and Belladonna was smart and fun. Unsurprisingly Kitty and Belladonna hit it off during the filming with light flirting back and forth. Later one of the male actors was flirting with Kitty and lifted her skirt and was so impressed with what he saw that he called Belladonna over to inspect. Belladonna told my girlfriend “You have a beautiful Ass and Vagina; you should join my porn family.” To which my girlfriend said no. I didn’t really catch much of what happened after that as I was too stunned to take anything in. My girlfriend said no to Belladonna. I’m still not sure I’ve forgiven her.

So filming is over. I’ve been on set several days and in front of the camera a fair amount and made enough money to make the excuse to come to LA more than worthwhile.

A few months pass and I get an email from Digital Playground inviting myself, Kitty and two guests to the premier. I call up my friend the Assistant Casting director to find out what his plans for the evening are. Turns out that he is renting a party bus which he’ll be taking from Long Beach to Downtown and he asks if we’d like to join. Something in the back of my mind tells me that this is a horrible idea but I go along with it anyway. My friends and I drive up to Long Beach and hop on the Party Bus which was supposedly stocked with alcohol only to find a half a liter of Popovs and 6 coronas. I start to get a bad feeling. The other guests pile on and it’s 18 guys and 3 girls. I’ve got a really bad feeling. One of the guests asks if we can detour into Hollywood at 7 o’clock on a Saturday night to pick a “Hot” girl up. I have a Star Wars scale C-threepeo flying into the Deathstar bad feeling. We get to the Orphium at 9:30. Showing starts at 9:30. We get in have no time to socialize and have to find seats almost immediately. Happily I ran into the assistant Physical Special Fx artist from film who happens to be a cute redhead to whom I am attracted. I find seats for my group which now includes redhead and a date that she is less than pleased with and we sit through the movie.

This was my second experience watching Porn on the big screen. It’s been really weird both times. The first time was “Lollypop Girls In: Hard Candy in 3-D” complete with John Holmes in your face 3-d moneyshot. This time I’m in the fucking movie, which was pretty good by the standards by which you judge adult content. The sets were cool, the dialogue funny, the acting actually pretty freaking good, and the special effects were hokey in a fun way. The only thing I had a problem with was the amateur Foley effects, and the horrendous editing of the sex scenes. It was also weird to be watching porn and have it be inappropriate to masturbate or fuck. It was like going to a buffet and watching other people eat while you’re hungry.

So the movie is over and credits roll and there’s Joel Awesome (thanks Amelia for the lamest Porn name ever) and Ashley Fields (Kitty used her real name for some reason). Seeing my name in the credits was a surprisingly big thrill. It was the first time I’d ever seen my name on the big screen. Ok, the silly name Amelia gave me, but still it was cool.

So the movie is over and we mill around in the lobby for a bit trying to figure out what were doing. I’m keeping an eye out for the talent because I’m now working for a San Diego based Halloween Prop and Sex toy maker. One of the products we’re developing is a life sized sex doll that utilizes technology to make exact replicas of people and my boss wants me to pitch being scanned to the girls. My girlfriend meets Jenna Haze and flirts with her for awhile and secures us an invite to the afterparty at an upscale LA club a few blocks away. My plan is to start the dialogue on licensed products at the afterparty.

We pile into the party bus and somehow the driver manages to get us lost for 20 minutes when we were only going 4 blocks. It was downhill from there. Apparently the party bus was only reserved for 6 hours, which put our Times-Up at 1:45 am. We arrive at the afterparty at 1:00 am. We were all told by someone onboard that we had the bus all night.

My friend Elvis (everyone should have a friend called Elvis) has some pull in the LA bar scene and scored us a 10 seat table with two bottles -for free- that we wound up not getting to use because we had to leave as soon as it was ready for us.

I had already started the ball rolling on the introductions to the girls from running into Ron Jeremy who at a previous party had fallen asleep on my shoulder (long story). THEN some idiot drunk somehow managed to drive his car through the gate in front of the club, and when he realized that he was driving in a walkway gunned it into the velvet ropes and tried to drive away down a blind alley. He clipped two of my friends with his bumper (no real injury) and was then caught and cuffed by security. The Owner of the club comes out and offers us more free drinks and better accommodations than what we’ve already got as an apology just as we find out that we’ve got to go. This would have been fine if the return destination hadn’t been in Long Beach. It took about an hour for us to get back to our vehicles and by then we were too exhausted and irritated to contemplate going back for more. Lesson learned. Do not take a party bus unless you are going from somewhere fun, to somewhere fun, and back again and make sure you have it rented for the entire time you might want it, not just the time you need it.

It was a fantastic experience and I hope that I have many more opportunities to do more crazy shit like it and Belladonna if you’re reading this, I’ll happily join your porn family.

I think Mad Men was probably my favorite television show last season. The show name Mad Men is derived from the ad men who worked on Madison Avenue in New York. The first season of the show revolved around the lives of people who work at a fictional ad agency called Sterling-Cooper in 1960. Despite the fictional nature of the agency depicted, the modern ad industry trade magazine Advertising Age put together a whole fictional issue with news bites, interviews, and profiles of fictional industry professionals. That is some mighty creative marketing.

Don Draper, the primary character on the show, is always quick with a clever word and a creative approach to marketing at work and coming up with the best personal presentation personally. In describing him, one of the his coworkers says, “nobody has ever turned over that rock; he could be Batman.” So his carefully-constructed persona has worked for getting his dream job and dream house and dream woman and dream family and a number of spare dream women, but the people he knows both professionally and personally sense that Don Draper is holding back to the point where he is somewhat unknowable.

Show creator Matthew Weiner also wrote a dozen episodes of The Sopranos and produced thirty-three episodes of The Sopranos, so it should come as no surprise that his baby Mad Men is about a lot of things with interlocking multiple storylines and complex and deep characterizations. It is always difficult to make a period piece come across as both convincing and relevant, but Mad Men succeeds brilliantly. In addition the the snappy dialog and strong set design, Katherine Jane Bryant’s costume design is nothing short of amazing in its variety, beauty, and attention to detail in character development. The award winning costume designer is best known for her work on another impressive period show, David Milch’s delightfully foul-mouthed HBO western Deadwood.

On a macro level, Mad Men is about a moment in time when America, as a nation, felt optimistic and almighty but was about to feel less so. Mad Men is about a place in American history where the role of women in society was in dramatic flux and the general population’s views on bigotry over race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation were all changing or about to be challenged. Many historians view the early 1960’s as when the country collectively held its breath before the tumultuous late 60’s clashed with the previously ordered world of the man in the gray flannel suit. Sort of a time when everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On a micro level, Mad Men is about the ways in which human relationships make us vulnerable, force us to expose ourselves, and create strife when we want a little extra privacy. On the surface, a number of the characters look like they have perfect lives, but they all struggle to keep what they have built together. Whenever the characters in Mad Men feel envy of one another, the viewer cringes, knowing what discomfort is behind those facades. This will resonate if you have ever gone to a corporate office job and done your best to make the right impression, all the while worried that somehow people can tell that you have to make the effort to come across like they do naturally.

While pitching Kodak at Sterling-Cooper, Don Draper explains that, in Greek, nostalgia means the pain from an old wound. According to the Advertising Age, err, articles, Sterling-Cooper got the account for the Kodak slide carousel after Don Draper said, “This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel; it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels around and around, and back home again. To a place where we know are loved.” This pitch is from a man who has erased his early personal history and has no one left to share most memories with.

The two most common responses Mad Men evokes are laughter and a certain deep ache sort of pain. It is not entirely a feelgood series, but it is aesthetically lovely, verbally witty, and emotionally moving. New season starts tonight with a dateline of 1962, two years after season one ended. I hope season two can live up to the high expectations set by season one.

The conventional wisdom is that more people were forced to present a false front to the world in the early 1960’s than now. I’m not sure whether that is reality or wishful thinking, but I’m looking forward to season two of a show which makes me think about important questions like that.

Special occasion nights in Hollywood generally involve a lot of party-hopping. Sure, there are the people who have to get back in their car and go to the next event every twenty-six minutes because that is how long it takes for the last bump of cocaine to wear off. But it really does make sense to hit as many shindigs as possible in an evening. First of all, Los Angeles is such a vibrant city with so much going on at once, at any given time, especially on a holiday like Halloween. I know I don’t want to miss a thing. The hardest thing about going out at night in Los Angeles is blow-drying my hair. And the whole having to wear pants when outside of the house thing. Once I’m not naked and I’m wearing eyeliner, I feel like I might as well get full value out of having gotten dressed and a lot of my fellow Angelenos feel the same way.

Los Angeles tends to have a dress code where it is important to look good but not to look like you tried too hard. This means club-goers do not dress up as much here as I might enjoy. Happily, when it comes to any special event like Halloween, the dress-down rule goes out the window and everyone is encouraged to really do it up.

For this past Halloween, Blue Blood sponsored a whole lot of parties, in a whole lot of cities, in addition to doing a full on media sponsorship arrangement with the Hex Halloween event in Hollywood. My old housemates Perish and Eden Muse (pictured above and in our Halloween picture galleries), were the flyer models and Perish’s costume concept was to embody the future. “For me,” he says, “it wouldn’t be computer parts and neon colors, rather, a personal functionalism mixed with individual ornamentation, recycled and re-articulated through experiences. Don’t throw it away just yet, turn it inside out and tell a story, the concept evolves.”

Forrest Black and I set up a location studio at the event and photographed literally more than seventy of our fabulous friends and compatriots (pictured in our Halloween picture galleries). DJ Xian, who was in charge of the event, is totally cool; it was just a new and gigantic venue and things were a bit snafued and the mix of people in the crowd just did not quite gel, so that there were also some kind of mean people there (not pictured) who made it a bit less fun than I would prefer. Fortunately, Area 101 with Federico Zignani and Apollo Starr had an incredibly awesome afterparty that most of the people pictured here were also at and so we all ended the evening on an up note.

When Forrest Black and I shoot an event, we seek to photograph the people who are the most stellar examples of whatever the event is about. For example, we are going to be looking for couture latex and corsets at a fetish event, tasteful use of sequins at a burlesque event, artistic original ink at a tattoo event, great costumes at a Halloween event, etc. And, like anyone with a camera, professional or amateur, we enjoy shooting our friends. Additionally, Forrest Black and I are artists so we need to be inspired. If we are just not feeling someone’s vibe, we are not going to be into photographing them. I mean, people do hire us to shoot things that might not be our first choice, but, when I am wielding my camera for art and for the scene, I just kind of expect people to be I just kind of expect people to be appreciative and cool and understanding rather than demanding and hostile and envious.

It is funny looking at these photo galleries because I remember it not being the most fun shoot I ever did, only the people we actually did photograph were the ones I feel warmly towards. So we’ve got some totally kickass pictures for your viewing pleasure. You may recognize a number of members from the Blue Blood forums and Blue Blood hotties Michelle Aston, Aiden Starr, Natalie Addams, Zoe Matthews, and Vima. If I did the complete luminaries in attendance list, it would be like a phone book. Suffice it to say that a real night on the town in Hollywood should always involve multiple events, but, if you picked the right shindigs, you will probably see some of the same usual suspects more than once in an evening. And that is generally a source of good fun.

I’m not generally a fan of anything which uses the expression “white trash” because I’ve lived in the American South. Pig ignorant people there will generally excuse racist nonsense by explaining that they also have issues with “white trash” like being bigoted on the basis of class, as well as race, is somehow more reasonable than being merely racist alone.

Due to the humorous intent of the occasion, I made an exception, however, for Miss Kitty’s White Trash Ball at Dragonfly this past weekend and, damn, but I had a good time. My homeboy Lange and I hit the Cat and Fiddle beforehand. Having been a fisherman in Alaska after art school (yes, like the TV show), Lange is not such a big fan of crab and raw fish, so I felt it was high time I chose a restaurant with cooked non-seafood items on the menu. The Cat and Fiddle is a music industry hang which bills itself as an English pub in Hollywood, although I am personally partial to the New Orleans fare like their uber-buttery crab fingers. In fact, I ate brussel sprouts and crab fingers and I was thinking that this would be a kinda healthy meal without the butter and Stella Artois. Kind of representative of Los Angeles really, something which looks healthy on the surface, but something just underneath which could probably kill you. Fun fact to know and share: Parts of Casablanca were filmed at the Cat and Fiddle location. When I first saw Casablanca as a teenager, Humphrey Bogart’s Rick was not pretty enough for my taste, but, these days, I have enough pretty in my world that I’m more impressed by force of personality and strength of character.

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.

Despite my best efforts to alternate with water, the Stella theme continued at the Dragonfly where my friends kept plying me with high quality beer and low quality water. Given a choice between sparkling Voss and Stella, I will generally choose the water over the beer. Given a choice between Stella Artois and flat Arrowhead, the beer is going to win most of the time. I would like to particularly point the finger at Lange and Blue Blood hottie Joel Awesome for enabling my wayward ways. When Scar called Lange an enabler, totally independent of having heard me call him one, he claimed not to know the meaning of the word. I am skeptical on this point, but was happy to give him the benefit of my otherwise useless over-education.

The really cool thing about the evening was that people dressed really tongue-in-cheek. Instead of being all doing their little turn on the catwalk (on the catwalk, yeah, on the catwalk), everyone was dressed silly and laughing and having a good time. The only difficulty was recognising everyone I know under tooth black or without makeup. Perish, who I once shared a house with for a month, generally dresses like the demon prince of elfland (or at least a fetish-y goth boi) so I didn’t recognize him at all in his faux beard and flannel and jeans. Embarrassingly enough, not even when he hugged me and said hello. I was all faking like how’s it going and he totally knew and told me who was under that hair. I was very entertained. The winners of the costume contest were a gentleman dressed as a farmer with a date dressed like a sheep. Ya gotta love any event which involves sheep-fucking. My costume was blue eyeshadow and a limited edition Alabama stagehand T-shirt I got for working for the band about a million years ago, in a land far far from here. Although I know the band has had a couple dozen #1 hit songs, Alabama fans who are impressed by my collectible T-shirt will be less impressed when they find out that my best guess at what a song by Alabama might be was “Sweet Home Alabama” which, according to the interwebs, is actually a Lynard Skynard ditty. (I also kind of think Alabama has done a song for Sesame Street.) That’ll learn me not to guess.

My knowledge of things a person could put in her cunt is far more extensive than my knowledge of Southern fried rock and country music. Thus, I was pleased to impress my friends when a gentleman named Craig wandered in wearing little besides a towel and a gigantic fake cock. “Ask him if that is the Dick Rambone,” I told Scar. “What?” she said. “Ask him if that is the Dick Rambone.” “Is that, uhm, the Dick Rambone?” Indeed it was the dildo modeled on legendary 80’s pornstar Dick Rambone. Dick Rambone has one of the largest cocks ever to appear in porn, so the Dick Rambone plastic cock has little real world application. I used to manage an adult boutique where I often fantasized about beating shoplifters (and a prudish wife who came in to complain about her husband’s female-orgasm-inducing-oriented purchases) with our larger plastic appliances. Apparently the knowledge from that particular weird job has stuck with me better than the knowledge from my gig as a stagehand for Alabama.

Other Blue Blood hotties in attendance included Kitty Von Klau, Damon Knight, Tassy Pink, and Nikki 666, who told me that her outfit, like mine, was just kinda what she would normally wear to kick around work, as opposed to go out on the town. I’m only posting a small gallery of pictures from the festivities because, for some reason, most of my photos appear to just be of people’s asses. Also of people’s asses being spanked. One of the great truths of life is that sometimes what looks hot as fuck in photos is sorta off in person and sometimes a really hot live sex show watched while tipsy doesn’t totally translate to snapshots. Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, people with appealing and frequently visible asses tend to walk into whichever one I’m at.

The following are the top three definitions of Halloween, as voted on by the users of Urban Dictionary:

”(1) An annual excuse for girls to dress like sluts and get away with it.

Girl 1: I’m going to be a ______ for Halloween.
Girl 2: What’s your costume look like?
Girl 1: I’m wearing my ______ underwear and _____ bra and heels.

(2) celebration where little kids dress up and get candy, teens dress up, get drunk, and go get candy, and adults dress up, get drunk, and give out candy, funny how things all work out.

im dressing up as a farmer for halloween. im so cool.

(3) the day that makes the other 364 worth living.”

For a lot of people Halloween is the one day out of the year that they can truly be themselves. It was always my favorite holiday and then one year it seemed like almost a let-down, like it wasn’t really any different from any other day. Which, in a way, meant that I guess I’d made the right life choices to get to be who I wanted to be all the time, but, since then, I try to pull out the stops when October rolls around, so it still feels special. Sometimes trying to pack so much into one short time period makes me melancholy and high strung around Halloween, but I generally end up feeling good about it, after all is said and done.

As usual, this year, Blue Blood is the media sponsor for a ton of events. The ones Forrest Black and I will be personally shooting at include the just passed Release the Bats Nine Year Anniversary and the upcoming Hex Hollywood Halloween 2007. You can see what we shot last year in the Hex Hollywood Halloween 2006 photo gallery.

”well I live with snakes and lizards
and other things that go bump in the night
cos to me everyday is halloween
I have given up hiding and started to fight
I have started to fight

well any time, any place, anywhere that I go
all the people seem to stop and stare
they say ‘why are you dressed like it’s halloween?
you look so absurd, you look so obscene!’ . . .

well I let their teeny minds think
that they’re dealing with someone who is over the brink
and I dress this way just to keep them at bay
cos halloween is everyday”

That is a quote from the seminal Ministry song Every Day is Halloween, by the way. It was actually first released in the early 80’s, although most people will guess later than that, even those somewhat versed in their goth-industrial trivia. This week, I recommend you give candy to drunk girls in excusable slutty costumes and quiz them about the origin of the expression “Every day is Halloween” and win barroom bets, with an assist from your pal Amelia G.

All I have to say is, “woot!” Well, really I’m going to say a bit more, but my cell phone and email have been blowing up with pals who assume I am at the San Diego Comic Con. But I am not and I am quite pleased that I am not. We had a lot of fun last year and I didn’t want to criticize in advance because I didn’t want responsibility for people deciding not to go, but . . .

The cons I initially loved were these amazing (at least for my teenage self) events. Authors and artists I looked up to would share their wisdom on panels during the day and hang out and socialize at night. There were masquerade balls for really doing it up, but lots of people, myself very much included, would run around in crazy costumes all weekend. There was a sense of fun and community and I met tons of new people every time. Occasionally, a convention hotel would give me less than stellar service for wearing (hypothetically) nothing but pins with clever sayings on them over my nipples or not peace-bonding my weapon. But there was always a chick in a corset and elf ears or a guy in painted black leather with a mohawk to agree with me that the hotel was totally unreasonable. Friends of mine who worked con security may recollect slightly differently, but only slightly. The important thing was that the events were extremely social. There was always a dealers room with unusual hard-to-find (especially pre-internet) wares. Eventually, I acquired a lot of items I treasure from exhibitors and BLT and Blue Blood both exhibited at many of those conventions, so I don’t object to a dealers room by any means.

But the San Diego Comic Con is just such a store. And it feels very stratified. I think part of the problem is that San Diego is so close to Los Angeles and comic book tie-in movies are hot at the moment. So Comic Con attracts various people who feel they are movie stars or big wig producers, who feel they should have a portable velvet rope between them and the great unwashed at all times. It is like there is this huge dichotomy between people who are trying to sell movies and people who are expected to empty their wallets. There is not even that much conversation between attendees or between guests. I think fandom should be more sociable and open and more about community than that. I live blocks from Whiskey Bar and similar haunts, if I want to have to go through a doorman. Frank Miller or Alan Moore could walk the Comic Con floor and go completely unnoticed. But Rob Zombie will bring a security detail and Steven Colbert will have a four hour line for people who want to get his autograph to sell on eBay. What actual fan wants to wait that long in the heat for a two second interaction?

Which brings me to the next reason I’m not crazy about the Comic Con. It feels like every year it gets a little bit more uncomfortable in the weather department. Maybe it is global warming. I don’t know. But last year was unbearable. It was insanely hot outside. It was impossible to park any place near the convention hall. After walking a long distance in the heat, there were huge crowds of sweaty people. Either the convention was too cheap to spring for properly air conditioning the hall or the San Diego Convention Center is simply not capable of properly cooling the building during the summer and that is why it is cheaper to rent it then. Needless to say, the weather, combined with lack of technology used to combat the discomfort caused by the weather, makes costuming less than thrilling. Additionally, all the snack stands had absurd lines and kept running out of basics like water. The convention discourages bringing in outside beverages, however. I was literally ill from dehydration at the end of the show and Scar and I both broke out from how generally scungy it was.

The show has gotten to an unwieldy size. The San Diego Gaslamp District is simply not big enough for it. Not only are hotel reservations difficult, but even finding a restaurant with food and a wait time of less than three hours is a challenge. The convention center actually sold out on the Saturday of the show last year and pre-sold out for that day this year. It makes sense that people only attend on Saturday because the event is essentially just a big store. Who would take a weekday off of work to go shopping, when they could just go on the weekend? And last year, although Comic Con supposedly frowns on this, a ton of vendors and exhibitors totally closed down and shipped out early on Sunday. This irritated me, partly because we stuck it out and partly because this meant there were booths I’d intended to see which were totally closed by the time I wandered by. There were a number of friends of mine at the show who I never saw, even when they stopped by the booth multiple times. Cell phone reception is not so good there either. And the sheer size is so overwhelming that we were all pretty frazzled when we did meet up.

So, don’t get me wrong; I had fun at Comic Con 37. It may have been mildly productive, although I’m better about contacting cool people I met at a show when I am less worn out getting home. But I am sitting at my desk now, with the central air going, drinking water, getting ready to post this article, and thinking “woot, woot, I’m not in the sweltering heat and I’m drinking water whenever I feel like it and life is good!”