It seems like it should be unnecessary to point out that models are human beings, but a lot of people seem to have difficulty with this. Nobody is as beautiful as their best photo or as hideous as their worst. Ugly may go to the bone, but beauty is still only skin deep. All true.

The nature of digital interaction makes the relationship of humans with their images more difficult. Once upon a time, my unsavory pals and I could hang out at our punk rock group house and, if someone said a model in some of the trannie porn in our living was not feminine enough, nobody’s feelings were going to get hurt.

Today, a lot of people seem to be polarized in their responses to imagery, in particular in their responses to sexual imagery. On the one hand, there are people who callously and casually critique a model’s weight or body parts in public, even though the human being in those photos is going to see those comments. On the other hand, there are people who, on some deep lizard brain level, feel that, if they have seen someone’s hoo-ha, even someone who was paid to show it to them, that person is practically their mate.

It does not make you respectful and/or feminist, if you pathetically slavishly agree with everything someone ever says or posts because you have seen naked pictures or video of them, especially members of your gender of preference.

It does not make you intelligent/ and/or nonconformist, if you aggressively criticize all erotic media and the people who appear in it, especially members of your own gender.

Someone can appear in updates on your favorite website or the boxcover of your favorite DVD or the cover of your favorite magazine. You can appreciate their work and that is awesome. But they probably are not rich for life off of the work you enjoyed (or didn’t). The world has enough pain in it. Don’t be cruel to someone who was generous enough to share their naked selves with you. Just don’t be a lapdog either. You know that whole rather walk beside me and be my friend thing? Treat models like human beings.

In the internet age, most of us become somewhat reduced to our avatars and how we come across when typing. Nonetheless, models are still human beings and no more or less human, no more or less right, no more of less deserving, for having had more pictures taken of them than the average person.

A lot of models are afraid to go interact in public because people online can be so critical and most models know they are not as beautiful as the best photos where they were lit well, made up just right, dressed in clothing they may not own, shot with good composition, and post processed to perfection. In real life, people tend not to say the sort of rude things they write when in keyboard warrior mode. But, after seeing one’s best efforts nit-picked to death online, not just models, but most creative people find it more difficult to interact IRL.

Photos of models or real world parties or whatever are posted here from time to time. If you have something nice to say about them, by all means do. If you don’t have something nice to say, please don’t fake it, but don’t go out of your way to be a dehumanizing cruel jerk either.

Friends keep pointing out that there is a bacon of the month club. Actually, I think there may be a number of bacon of the month club options.

The Pig Next Door comes up quickly in a search engine attempt to locate the bacon of the month club. The Pig Next Door offers artisan bacon from sustainably-farmed specialty breeds. If you are a bacon fan, and I am, this sounds pretty good and they offer six month and one year bacon subscriptions, priced according to just how special the pigs are. Speaking of pigs, my friend senior Blue Blood writer Will Judy has a really thing about cartoons of animals being used to sell meat products. He is offended by cartoon cannibalism. Although I did not come to this concern on my own, I always think of it when I see a comic strip style pig raising a trotter to vote in favor of bacon.

So I do a little more research and it turns out that The Pig Next Door is a Johnny-come-lately, started only a year ago, looking to cash in on the bacon of the month concept pioneered by The Grateful Palate. The Grateful Palate has been selling bacon and bacon-related products online for more than a decade. Ah, the joy of the internet age, when nothing is so esoteric a niche that it hasn’t been knocked off and repackaged by someone. In addition to what may be the original bacon of the month club, The Grateful Palate also offers pig noses and pig T-shirt memorabilia. You can always go with the less cannibalistic T-shirt option of showing off the “I got porked by the Grateful Palate” slogan across your chest. You get a shirt and a little rubber toy pig with your bacon club membership. You also get an official Bacon of the Month Membership Card, in case a bouncer ever asks you to show one. And you get a pig nose, in order to facilitate cannibal role play.

My friend writer/director David Aaron Clark once took me to BDSM club The Vault in New York, in its heyday. And there was the option for gents to be dominated while wearing pig noses or masks. I have trouble eroticizing rubber facial prosthetics shaped like pigs or like anything else really. Yet I love muppets, fun fur coats, and the bottom half of most furry costumes. Go figure. For those less specific in their tastes and needs than I am, there is always pet play. Bet you’ve never seen someone in a pig or panda head do that before. Or maybe you have. I’m going to go fry up some uncured, sustainably-farmed, artisan bacon now, even though I’m not yet a member of the Bacon of the Month Club.

AltPorn.net interviewer Beda Hoydenish writes:

“Everyone knows Amelia G runs the Blue Blood empire and also does some of the photography and writing for it. Here on APN, we’ve featured photographs she has shot for Blue Blood many times and we’ve mentioned her writing once or twice. (You can also see the interview we did with Amelia G five years ago — Ed.) I write for APN and I have all the old Blue Blood print magazines from the 90’s in plastic bags with cardboard backing, so I thought I was pretty aware and I still found a lot on Amelia G’s new AmeliaG.com site to both inform and entertain me. In addition to running the business end of Blue Blood and working as an editor for many projects, Amelia G has had hundreds of photo sets published and thousands of articles. Amelia G has done writing and/or photography for all the major adult publishing houses including Playboy, Penthouse, Flynt, Crescent, Magna, and AVN, plus niche magazines including Marquis, On Our Backs, Skin Two, Tattoo Teasers, Fetish, Extreme Fetish, $pread, and of course Blue Blood. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Erotica, Best S/M Erotica, and Best Women’s Erotica and dozens more books. But she still took time out of her busy schedule to give APN this exclusive interview.

APN: Blue Blood magazine in print was really ground zero for jump-starting the whole altporn genre and you’ve managed to maintain a top ranking for Blue Blood for more than sixteen years. To what do you credit your remarkable success and longevity?

AG: Thanks. I always hope the universe will smile on me for hard work and doing the right thing, and sometimes it does. A big advantage Blue Blood had in coming to the web is that the magazine was always subscription-driven and we had free sites for the community for years before we launched our first membership site. We actually had paid members before we had even actually launched the first pay site because we tested out a banner rotation for a few minutes and people saw it. I really appreciate the support we’ve gotten over the years and try to really put a lot back into the scene and into having . . .

Cool promo pic of yours truly by Forrest Black. Read the whole interview by Beda Hoydenish on AltPorn.net.

Perez Hilton reports in Party Like a Vampire that convention booths are insufficient to entertain Twilight fans, so the series will be getting a large convention in Dallas dedicated to Twilight. The event is, perhaps not surprisingly, called TwiCon. It features a variety of comedy troupes who create respectfully humorous Twilight spoofs and a line-up of bands, most of which are inspired by the movie, but one of which, 100 Monkeys, is notable because it includes Jackson Rathbone who plays vampire Jasper Hale in the movie and its forthcoming sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon later this year.

Popular Twilight fanfic site Twilighted is doing a fan fiction contest as part of TwiCon with a theme of romance 100 years in the vampire future. Would it be wrong if I mentioned that the only other individual fandoms which tend to receive dedicated conventions are Star Trek and Star Wars. And Star Trek really jumpstarted the erotic slashfic type of fanfic. I’m not sure whether it is technically accurate to refer to sexy fan fiction as a genre with a series of sub-niches, but it feels kinda accurate. Maybe if Star Trek is getting a sexy modern makeover, someone needs to write some threeway erotica fanfic involving Bella and Edward and Spock. Or not.

The BlueBlood VIP just passed one hundred thousand images with a series Forrest Black and I shot of an OG Blue Blood hottie from the magazine days. Blue Blood began in print sixteen years ago in the suburbs of Washington, DC, in the basement of a Maryland punk rock group house called New Cambodia.

I had previously done the BLT ::: Black Leather Times antisocial punk humor zine in a Virginia punk rock group house called Cambodia and I was ready to do something glossier and with more reach than BLT’s 2,000 copy print run and mostly local circulation. I don’t think I realized how much I was biting off or that it would eventually take a whole two car garage to house all the Blue Blood subscription magazines for any given issue while a pizza party of my friends feverishly stuffed envelopes and boxes in our unfurnished living room. Perhaps I had faith that Blue Blood would get the attention is has in press from everyone from The New York Times, Penthouse, and Draculina to HBO, FOX, and MTV. But I certainly could not have expected the audience of tens of millions of people the internet has brought.

It was extra meaningful to me and Forrest Black to have OG magazine covergirl Cherry Jason and her real life lover Ledgrey featured in the brand new series which took BlueBlood.com over the 100k mark. That is a whole lot of beautiful on-topic images, by a lot of creative photographers, shooting a lot of flamboyant people. I naturally still have a lot of friends in the DC area and generally get back mostly for weddings and similar occasions, but it’s also fun to check out how the club portion of the DC scene Blue Blood came out of is doing. This time out, Forrest Black and I went clubbing with Cherry and Ledgrey and pals and shot them over at their place.

Cherry is a dancer and Ledgrey is a banker and their place is in pretty much the most perfect, sought-after, convenient location in all of Washington, DC. Cherry and Ledgrey have such a wonderful energy, so we ended up with a bit of a gothic punk From Here to Eternity vibe in this series and the overall feel is just what we all wanted it to be.

Of course, although we have a safe for work free photo gallery of Cherry and Ledgrey on BlueBlood.net, you’ll have to head over to BlueBlood.com and pony up a few bucks to see the naughty bits.

The original Blue Blood magazine in print always opened with an entertainment section where we covered music, events, books, and all sorts of cool stuff. Pretty much like BlueBlood.net. Then there would be a number of short stories from big name genre fiction authors and a number of photo sets featuring exclusively real life couples doing what they would genuinely do whether or not there was a camera there. Now that we have digital cameras and the internet, the world is a different place and so we’ve added solo hottie sets to the mix, but, where BlueBlood.net is the digital incarnation of the magazine’s entertainment section, the hot stuff which made up the rest of the magazine resides on BlueBlood.com now in the VIP section. This way each sort of content is in its proper place to be viewed most conveniently.

Although naturally the history is important for a brand founded in 1992 like Blue Blood, let me break it down with a bit less history. BlueBlood.com features more than 100,000 erotic photos, including our world famous signature couples sets, and erotic fiction by some of the best genre writers in the world. BlueBlood.net features nightlife galleries, babe galleries, social critique, music videos, interviews with interesting people, book reviews, movie tidbits, comics info, television news, and entertainment journalism in general. To break it down even more simply:

BlueBlood.NET = SFW entertainment site
BlueBlood.COM = NSFW erotic site

BlueBlood.net and BlueBlood.com are intended for the same sorts of intelligent, independent thinkers, who enjoy the road less traveled, with lifestyles which are flamboyant, offbeat, and beyond the average person’s experience. Blue Blood in print used to be called The Trade Mag of Cool because Blue Blood’s audience is unusual, made up of tastemakers, the first in each of their respective scenes to know about and share new things, people who are just going to be more cool and creative than the norm.

One of the times it first became really apparent to me that a Blue Blood audience is really above and beyond, we were hanging out in New Orleans and I offered comp copies of the magazine to someone who worked for Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. NIN’s album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life, so I was jazzed at the idea of passing along my work to someone like that. His assistant was all excited, but, when he looked at the cover, he was like, oh, Trent already has that issue.

After sixteen years, it is more difficult to get a rise out of me. I know a lot of rockstars and, at this point, I am often reluctant to interact in any way whatsoever with anyone whose work I love. My fear is that a negative personal interaction with the artist will reduce my pleasure in the art. At Blue Blood, we approach our shoots, especially our couples shoots, as a very collaborative process, so there is a lot of discussion of what will be shown. I remember the first time Forrest Black and I worked with Cherry Jason in the 90’s, she totally made us both blush. Shooting her this time, if anything, it was the other way around.

Sixteen years is a long time. Sometimes I rail against the things in the world which I either can’t change or haven’t changed yet. But I’m awfully happy with where Blue Blood is at sweet sixteen. As a big William Gibson fan, perhaps I could have imagined in 1992 what Blue Blood would look like in 2009, but I can’t say that I did. The plan was pretty much do a bunch of cool art projects for the community and wait for new technology to be invented to make the whole thing viable.

Sixteen years. Dozens of Blue Blood parties. Hundreds of stories. Thousands of articles. Tens of millions of readers. Getting to meet and work with so many cool people in so many walks of life. And now over one hundred thousand images in the BlueBlood VIP! Not that I didn’t work and sacrifice for it, but, on a good day, I am truly humbled and grateful for getting to have the life I have had so far. And today is a good day.

The $1 BlueBlood.com sale is going to be coming to a close in just a few days.

With the inauguration of Barack Obama and the new administration, the world expects the economy to pick up. He could do nothing different and people’s expectations would help the economy. So much of how paper and digital money works has to do with trust and faith.

So we have faith that, pretty soon, everyone is going to be able to afford more than $1 for a BlueBlood VIP membership. There has never been a Blue Blood sale this discounted before, and there very likely never will be again, and this one is almost over.

The site currently featuring tens of thousands of photographs of 387 hotties and counting. From punks who like to smash things to ethereal gothic beauties to fetish deities, Blue Blood features the most stunningly and uniquely beautiful. A battalion of coffee table book and nightclub photographers have contributed to BlueBlood.com. Not to mention erotic fiction from some of the top names in genre writing and just a dab of video. The BlueBlood.com megasite offers excellent value with all the content from the multigirl gothic, punk, and rubber subsidiary sites produced by Blue Blood, as well as the world famous signature couples content, and the erotic fandom science fiction and fantasy content. And your BlueBlood VIP memberships pay to keep BlueBlood.net free.

And right now, you can check all that out for one dollar. Channel your inner Bixby Snyder and say, “I’d buy that for a dollar!” (Robocop references optional.)

BlueBlood.com will be finishing up 2008 with a celebratory balloons set of the lovely Voltaire, lensed by yours truly and Forrest Black. Nothing says “party” like balloons on a hot naked tattooed girl. Well, maybe other things say “party” like that, but balloons on a hot naked tattooed girl are still very festive. Blue Blood’s New Years gift to all of you is the opportunity to try a BlueBlood VIP membership for only $1 and, when you sign up, you will be given the option to add a membership to Erotic BPM as well, also for only a dollar.

My best NYE ever did involve a trip to Las Vegas where they blew up a building to celebrate the start of a fresh year. New Years Eve Vegas-style featured fireworks and dynamite and police and drunk people in the street and everything. Perhaps some contemplation was involved as well, but it’s hard to top that, even during subsequent Las Vegas NYEs. Although admittedly I frequently stay in on New Years or spend it with just a few close friends and family members. Ringing in the New Year and celebrating my birthday are primarily my bi-yearly personal performance evaluations. Basically, I like to use those dates as opportunities to reflect on how I am doing at achieving what I’d like to and I usually set goals on the New Year.

This New Years, I recommend avoiding a hangover and curling up with access to both all the BlueBlood VIP sites and ErotiBPM for $1 each. You can always have a champagne brunch tomorrow with what you saved. Just sign up on the BlueBlood.com sale page and check the box for EroticBPM when you enter your info. Never done an intro price this low before and probably never will again. Year long half price memberships are available too, so please resolve to check it all out in 2009.

Director Ramzi Abed’s film The Devil’s Muse was released on DVD by Halo 8 last week. Ramzi Abed and I have corresponded for years. We finally met in person when we were both exhibiting at the Erotica LA convention.

In a surreal twist, I invited Ramzi to dinner with a few other cool creative people I know a couple days ago and it turned out that he and high end party planner Sabrina actually went to university together. I didn’t know this until we were literally walking into the restaurant. I guess I just have really specific taste in pals.

The Devil’s Muse is about everyone’s favorite unsolved Hollywood crime, the Black Dahlia murder. In case you are morbid enough to be reading this, yet not morbid enough to be familiar with this investigation, I’ll give you the quick overview. Elizabeth Short was a 1940’s starlet wannabe, who was good-looking, a snappy dresser, popular with the gents, and whose tortured corpse was found literally cut in half. Her murder remains one of the most intriguing cold cases of all time.

Ramzi Abed says, his goal was:

“to do a feminist version of the Italian Giallo genre of violent erotic thrillers, but only to subvert the sexuality and violence to showcase Hollywood’s objectification of women. [He] also mixed in real and exaggerated documentary footage into the scripted film, to further create a reality television feeling to alternately confuse and guide audiences further.”

You can decide for yourself now, as Ramzi Abed’s movie is now available via Netflix, Amazon, or Halo 8’s Merch Lackey store.

I did this interview with the wonderful Scott Owens from EroticBPM a while back for the esteemed Thomas S. Roche back when he was editing Eros Zine. Eros Zine was unfortunately not able to post it permanently before they lamentably stopped updating. As yesterday was EroticBPM’s nine year anniversary, I felt like now would be a good time to post it here.

Scott Owens is the founder of and mastermind behind EroticBPM. BPM stands for Beats Per Minute and is an electronica term for how fast the musical percussion is thumping to get your booty shaking. The site initially grew out of the rave culture which Scott was active in. Hence the moniker “Erotic Beats Per Minute.”

Partiers who have had a blast at raves will enjoy the site, but it also appeals to a more general taste in unique young women — and occasionally men. Those who like partying teens will find EroticBPM has a lot of hot stuff to fit that taste as well. And there is a special forum for photos of models and members showing off their elbows. MistyB, one of the star models on EroticBPM, posts, “Elbow fetish is the only fetish.” She might be joking. Then again, the site features a plethora of fine examples of elbow photography.

Scott Owens is creative and always pushing the envelope in terms of how erotic content can be presented online. Although blogging is less of a focus now, EroticBPM was one of the very first multigirl erotic membership sites to feature model journals and structured profiles and the very first in his niche. The site features a thriving community where members and models and Scott and company interact in a friendly and positive way. Scott and his trusty coder Anti are always thinking of new features. Members can post party pictures and such in the members area and you can just feel the fun looking at them.

One of the most striking things about Scott is that, even in the face of trials and tribulations, he manages to remain warm and friendly. He is a genuinely nice guy, enjoyed by those around him.

Fun fact to know and share: The famous, down-to-earth, and very beautiful Bella Star got her start modeling for EroticBPM and still stops by from time-to-time to say hello to members and everyone else. Beauties featured in our exclusive free EroticBPM preview photo gallery include Bella Starr, Seattle, Sky, Genesis LaVey, Charissa, MistyB, Krystal, Zia, Bailey, Tanya, Gwen, Cadence, MerriCat, Jamie, Haley, Faye, Wish, Nails, Bonnie, Hel Inferna, Bubbles aka Bella Vendetta, the always enjoyable Athena Hollow, and birthday celebration girl Money.

Amelia G: How would you describe the theme or themes of EroticBPM?

Scott Owens: EroticBPM started off primarily as an adult site focused on the rave subculture and community. But it has since evolved to include other subcultures as well.

Amelia G: What motivated you to start an erotic membership site? What motivated you to pick the themes you did?

Scott Owens: Well back in 1999 I thought that doing an adult site would be a fun summer project to teach myself photography and web design all at once. Only most of the websites out there at the time did not appeal to me. I decided to start a site with a community focus and use raver models since that was the subculture I was involved in and familiar with at the time.

Amelia G: Was a membership site your first web site?

Scott Owens: Yep, I had never tried to make a website before this.

Amelia G: EroticBPM was originally called RaverPorn. What prompted the name change?

Scott Owens: Several reasons. Many people felt the name was misleading, although we have a variety of content many people described the photos as erotica more than porn.

Also, the rave scene was in decline and so I wanted to keep an electronic music focus while still leaving it open for other subcultures.

Amelia G: What do you look for in models?

Scott Owens: What I look for the most is the right attitude and interesting personality.

As far as looks go, I don’t have anything specific that I look for, but models who have a unique look definitely get noticed more.

Amelia G: How would someone go about getting to appear on your site?

Scott Owens: There is a link on the site for the model application. Just attach a couple photos and tell us a bit about yourself and we will get back to you if we are interested.

Amelia G: You had a lot of buzz early on. What magazines, newspapers, TV, and other press outlets have covered your projects and how did you hook up with them?

Scott Owens: Spin magazine, Wired, BBC, Sex television, CMJ New Music, Mixmag, BPM, to name some. All of them got in touch with me after hearing about the website and checking it out, they thought it was fresh and interesting enough to talk about.

Amelia G: Is it easier or harder to get press coverage now?

Scott Owens: I would say it is harder. My site and others have been covered pretty extensively, so it is harder to attract attention just based on site novelty.

Amelia G: I understand you have done fairly extensive club promotion. What sorts of events have you created? Did you do event promo before the web sites or did that come later? Do the two things go together for you?

Scott Owens: I had done some event promotion previously, and once I started the site it made sense to promote at clubs and raves since that is what I was familiar with. I’ve done several site sponsored events with fun themes, great music, and always involve some of our pretty models. One event in particular involved a lot of chocolate and photos can be seen on the site.

Amelia G: You’ve lived a number of places while publishing to the web. Where do you think are the best places to do what you do? Do you like to move?

Scott Owens: I started in Wisconsin and then moved to Hawaii where I have been the last five years. And now I am getting ready to relocate to Portland. Hawaii has been a difficult place to do what I do because so much has to be done remotely through other people I work with on the mainland.

I think that Portland will be much better for business, they have a good music scene, and a lot of alternative culture allowing me to have much more of a hands-on approach with things, including being able to start doing events again.

Amelia G: Do you consider EroticBPM to be alt-porn?

Scott Owens: Yes, for lack of a better term.

Amelia G: Do you consider EroticBPM to be feminist?

Scott Owens: I prefer to say it is feminist-friendly.

Many women who consider themselves feminist approve of and participate in my website, but people have different ideas on how to define “feminist”. So I would rather let people decide if they think it is feminist rather than try to convince people it is.

Amelia G: Do you think it is easier or harder to do what you do now than it was when you started?

Scott Owens: It is definitely more challenging, there is a lot more competition now. I think it is much harder for people starting out now than it was when I did.

Amelia G: What are your favorite party accessories? Glowsticks, kegs, a certain kind of music?

Scott Owens: My party mood changes constantly, sometimes I feel like a keg party in someone’s house with a local band or DJ, and sometimes I feel like dressing up and drinking martinis at a big club.

Amelia G: Who are some of your favorite DJs?

Scott Owens: One of my current favorites is DJ P, check him out at Studio 54 in Vegas I also like Z-trip, Richie Hawtin, Yoda, Woody McBride, Sasha, John Digweed, Tiesto, Chris Liberator. I could go on, but I will stop

Amelia G: What do you think your members enjoy most about EroticBPM?

Scott Owens: Definitely the community. Everyone is very friendly and interesting to interact with.

Amelia G: Anything I didn’t ask you about which you are dying to tell the world?

Scott Owens: Not that I can think of.

Amelia G: To recap: interactive community of rave and other music fans, unique girls, tattoos, feminist-friendly, altporn. Join the party at Scott Owens’ place at EroticBPM.

When a bunch of my friends went to see Nightmare Before Christmas for Halloween, I took a pass. I think director Tim Burton has one of the most beautiful and impressively realized aesthetics in film today. Unfortunately it bums me out that his misunderstood and offbeat heroes and heroines often accept their second class citizen status. Different does not equal lesser. I just can’t get with that, no matter how poignant the color palette or how extravagant the design. So I’m pleased to see such a master of darkly beautiful cinema taking on the vengeful barber of Fleet Street in his forthcoming adaptation of Sweeney Todd.

Also, I find the posters where Johnny Depp is reclining in his chair, with a straight razor in his outstretched hand, unaccountably erotic. I feel a little spark every time I see it online (thanks for advertising on my sites, guys) and every time I drive by one of the ubiquitous billboards in Los Angeles. There are just times when what turns you on is not what you would find convenient to be turned on by. (I will still shoot anyone who comes at me with an open razor because I always bring a gun to a knife fight. So don’t get any ideas; I’m just sharing my feelings.) You can check out the Sweeney Todd trailer below, after the jump. I’m not personally that big a fan of show tunes, but, damn, that is one gorgeous movie in both the lush scenes and the spare ones. Yumtastic and no mean feat. (more…)