So I registered the domain for my name a while back, when the internet still had a bit of that new web smell. I’d been doing work more and more in the digital space for a few years then and I would end up having to pay off a cybersquatter for the BlueBlood.com domain, so it seemed sensible to register everything near and dear to me. Then nine more years went by. Some of my favorite sites have grown out of Forrest Black registering domains while drinking beer and then me feeling that, once it was registered, the domain had to have a site on it. For a long time, I just had a link to a hosted journal on AmeliaG.com, but now seemed like the time to actually put a proper site on there. Today it officially goes live.

The site has the Amelia G bio with just the broad strokes. There is a more detailed sidebar with just 2009 news about press appearances and where my writing and photography has appeared this year. I considered including a page with a gigantic lists of places I’ve been published, but, after doing thousands of pages of editorial, not to mention radio and television stuff, it just seemed like it would be a bit of a laundry list. Plus, oddly enough, when I was doing research for the site, I discovered that some of my work had been reprinted without me even knowing it. I’ve moved less as an adult than I did as a kid, but sometimes it is still possible to lose track of compatriots with moves and all on everyone’s part.

I hope people enjoy the Photography Portfolio section of Forrest Black’s and my work. People always ask to see my online portfolio and I always was reluctant to put one together before. When I say “reluctant”, I mean that the notion of editing together only forty of my favorite images, out of everything we’ve ever shot, made me effing hyperventilate. I forced my brain through its discomfort and editing a selection of images from over such a long time period turned out to be really fun, once I got into kind of the right headspace, because I got to look at all sorts of contact sheets with positive associations and beautiful unseen images. Because of the ephemeral nature of human life, there is always something intrinsically bittersweet about any good photograph, I think, but it still felt mostly good to go through everything.

Given the fiscal realities of shooting on film, there are all sorts of awesome images Forrest Black and I shot which nobody has ever seen because it cost so much to make prints, so we tended to just print whatever a magazine wanted to publish for a lot of shoots. So the photo portfolio I edited together on AmeliaG.com has quite a few exclusive images the world has never seen, along with some favorites you will probably recognize.

It was also really fun putting together the section with the Amelia G Personal Pics because I got to dig through hard drives of tons of random uncategorized galleries of digital nightlife snapshots and recall all sorts of enjoyable adventures. My mom looked at the pics and said it looked like I must go out every night. Really I’m a workaholic, so I just like to only venture out for really cool stuff and I try to make a night out count. I hope you all also enjoy my goofy snapshots of going to parties, conventions, and gallery shows, clubbing, travel, and just hanging out with pals.

The background photo is a promo shot Forrest Black was kind enough to do for me last week. I really like how it turned out. If you are interested in hairstyle matters, my haircut is by Thierry, blowout is by Youne Lee, and color is old skool punk rock style where my bathroom is purple now too.

Putting the Amelia G site together made me nervous as anything, but I’m really happy it is complete and I think it turned out good. I hope you all like it too.

Ashton Kutcher is the pretty much undisputed leading twit on Twitter. As of this moment, he has 2,839,413 followers, outflanking people like Barack Obama, Perez Hilton, Shaquille O’Neal, Britney Spears, and Oprah Winfrey, and even CNN and Twitter itself. He has held the number one spot for quite some time. So, when Ashton Kutcher tweets that his wife Demi Moore has gotten a mohawk, people listen.

I know an awful lot of extremely physically beautiful people, yet, even among celebrities, Ashton Kutcher is so freakishly good-looking that I remember him being in the movie Reindeer Games, even though I don’t think his character had a name. And I think his part was so small it consisted pretty much of stumbling into a bathroom or something at the wrong time. So I stop and think about it and realize that I can’t come up with any other movie Ashton Kutcher has ever been in. I know he was on a TV series called That 70’s Show which ran for a long time, but I don’t even know what network it ran on. So I go and check IMDB and I have actually never seen Ashton Kutcher acting in anything other than Reindeer Games. Yet he is clearly up there at the top of Mount Celebrity. I’ve apparently never really seen him act, yet I know that he dropped out of a biochemical engineering college program to become a male model.

Ashton Kutcher has managed to parlay a certain kind of famous access into something far larger than most. He is a perfect spokesman for digital cameras and micro-blogging services because he has managed to commodify certain parts of his existence in such a flawless and innovative way that, in 2009, the rest of society is panting to catch up.

The Punk’d reality show Ashton Kutcher co-created with producer partner Jason Goldberg at Katalyst Films took the Candid Camera genre to a whole new level. By playing pranks on recognizable people, Punk’d made the viewer feel much more invested in the show; it made the show feel ironically more real and most of the punked celebs more humanized. Maybe this makes some sort of statement about the alienation of modern man and how so many people feel more connected to famous faces on television and online than their, err, IRL peeps. Punk’d was spoofed on The Simpsons as the show Chop Shop with the pranked person crying out anguished “Why would you do that?” in response to their car being chopped for the purpose of filming their reaction for reality television.

Why would Ashton Kutcher do that? To get paid? To become a powerful producer? To be feared? To amuse himself? To get MTV to foot the bill for expensive pranks he wanted to play? To be able to have people to play pranks for him? To come across as more of a man’s man and less of just a pretty boy? To become that special sort of celebrity of the new millennium where he is nominally a famous actor, but the real description is much more complex . . .

So anyway, it appears that Demi Moore would look really hot with a mohawk. But the widely-covered haircut is just a photochop (Chop Shop!) Ashton Kutcher posted to his Twitter via TwitPic. Most of the news covering Ashton Kutcher punking the news media with what is not the most convincing photo manipulation say that Ashton Kutcher actually photoshopped the image. Never mind that minutes after posting the chop with the tweet ” wifey just got a new hair cut what do you guys think? I love it”, he tweeted, “@mrskutcher I”m just playing baby but I think you’d look great with that cut”. Which apparently was enough to convince a large proportion of the news media that Demi Moore actually had gotten a mohawk hairstyle. Because the Punk’d guy would never play the prankster in such matters. And apparently some pundits have poor reading comprehension. Which is ironic, given how many serious think pieces I have seen about Twitter decreasing people’s aptitude to comprehend complex thoughts. How much more complex than j/k are they themselves capable of? And what makes them think Ashton Kutcher did that photoshop job? Surely someone, who can pay other people to do pranks for him, has people for that.

When I started writing this article, a short time ago, the Demi Moore mohawk TwitPic had 179,571 views and now it has 181,371.

Blue Blood hottie Serena Toxicat recently mentioned that she would be showing thirty of her art pieces at the Blow Gallery in Berkely, California. If you are in that neck of the woods, you can stop by 2112 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 for an evening of hotties like Serena Toxicat, art, and possibly some free booze. Most gallery shows have free booze. I try not to examine why too closely. Here you can examine the conversation Serena Toxicat and I just had about art.

Amelia G: What first got you into creating? Were you always creative?

Serena Toxicat: Apparently as a 5 year-old my painting looked like pointillism. My 1st grade art teacher raved about the stuff. After my dad saw how much I liked to color and paint, his best friend bought me a set of acrylics and I never looked back, except to kick my own ass to make more. I do so many things in the world of art and performance that my productivity in any one area tends to ebb and flow.

Amelia G: What are your favorite media to create in and how to you feel writing vs. visual arts compare for expressing yourself?

Serena Toxicat: I love acrylic and just developed a system whereby I draw in marker over an acrylic base. I also like making sculpture with found objects and occasionally indulge in photography. I made some mixed media pieces, with b&w images of my pointy little Isis as the central focus. Most intriguing might be my channeled oracular pieces. I close my eyes and let the spirits paint with my hands. You should feel the energy coming out of those things!

Creating is creating, and if I’m happy with a piece of art I feel the same sense of completeness I do with my writing. Usually the visual stuff goes faster. Well, compared to a book it does!

Amelia G: Who is curating the Blow show and how did you get involved? Does it have any particular theme?

Serena Toxicat: Amy O’Rourke, one of the stylists, curated the last two shows. It is very eclectic – everything from artistic nudes to hanging paper sculpture – and she is quite happy about that!

Amelia G: Is it true that the Blow gallery is actually a hair salon? If so, how does that work? Do they get the sort of clientele where the art and hairstyle work have good synergy and complement one another?

Serena Toxicat: Yes! And they do great hair. It seems to work well for them, this meeting of the aesthetic worlds. The clients appreciate it and many come to the shows and buy or just enjoy. Blow has a new opening every 10 weeks with fantastic catering. They have been combining hair and showing art for as long as I can remember. I discovered them while searching for a colorist. When I found David, who has since moved, we developed a relationship based on bright horizontal stripes (in my hair) and mullets (as material for many a delirious joke).

Amelia G: When to when can people see the show? Anything in particular, specific art piece of yours, event feature, other artists showing with you, whatever, which you think people will extra enjoy?

Serena Toxicat: It starts Sat. 4-4 and closes June 7. I’m really excited about my bright green and orange pieces. They address important issues, like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc., and feature multicultural female (so far) subjects dressed in gothy striped frocks.

I also hope people get off on my socially conscious and poetic propagand[iv]a video. I play a newscaster and talk about everything from Bush and Obama to animal activism and being nice to hookers. Jim Stipovich has been showing his nudes since the 70’s. I’m sure he’ll bring out his following out of the proverbial woodwork and make many new fans! I also love Shaista and Kelly’s stuff. Fun!