So I was chatting with my pal Anders from the band Anders Manga yesterday. I had just been looking at some snapshots of us partying together at a Hollywood hotspot just off Hollywood Blvd. When I say Hollywood hotspot, in this instance, I mean a place variously called White Lotus, The Ritual Supper Club, the local bus station, etc. where A-listers like Mark Wahlberg can go to bang porn stars cast for the next season of Entourage on HBO. At any rate, I’ll post the pics shortly and add a link, but Anders and I were just talking about this and that and he asked if I had heard from Jennifer of The Nuns recently.

Descended from Welsh royalty and initially known as Jennifer Miro in the earliest 1970’s incarnation of The Nuns as a seminal punk band in San Francisco, Jennifer steered the band in a more gothic direction over time and was variously known as Jennifer Anderson or Tiffany Tarantula or Maitresse Jennifer. The Nuns were huge in San Francisco and opened for bands like The Ramones and The Damned and were even on the bill for the very last Sex Pistols show. Jennifer also had a role in Dr. Caligari, the seminal cinema of transgression film from Stephen Sayadian and Jerry Stahl, who were also responsible for Cafe Flesh. However, Maitresse Jennifer or Mistress Jennifer is probably best known to members of the Blue Blood boards as the Blue Blood hottie who asked all the most interesting questions about love in the kinky tumultuous world of fame, wealth, and rock and roll.

[13:10] Anders Manga: hey have you heard from Jennifer? from nuns?
[13:10] Anders Manga: she vanished?
[13:11] AmeliaG: not in ages. I was in pretty regular contact with her, so I wonder if she got married or sex murdered
[13:11] Anders Manga: i heard her friend in the band was murdered in nyc
[13:11] AmeliaG: eep, forget I just said that particular conjecture
[13:11] AmeliaG: that’s creepy

I was just thinking that Jennifer, like a lot of superstar hotties, will disappear when she gets into a new Relationship and reappear when it ends or has trouble. I wish people would not exit their normal day-to-day lives and relationships when they are in love, but it is pretty common. That is what I had assumed had happened. Now that I’ve read a bit more about what was going on at the time, I’m kind of worried.

Apparently, in the fall, Mistress Kris who performed with The Nuns and appeared in many photo shoots with Jennifer was murdered at a hotel in Times Square. Times Square in New York City is supposedly gentrified to the point of Disneyfication. I think a Disney corporation even covered the financing on a bunch of the un-sleazing of Times Square. Nonetheless, the Hotel Carter still stands and is still open for business from vagrants and creeps. At least as recently as 1999, Hotel Carter was the sort of establishment where the front desk personnel might be killing one another with a knife or hammer, and housed the sort of nightclub that Sean Puffy Combs and Jennifer Lopez would have to flee after a shooting incident. In the 80’s, Hotel Carter was the place to throw a half-dressed bound woman out the window. I’ve always liked the word defenestration but not approved of the practice.

At any rate, a housekeeper found poor Kris’ nude corpse wrapped in plastic under the bed, after a guest named Clarence Dean checked out. Clarence Dean was already wanted in the State of Alabama for (a) failure to appear for a property theft trial and (b) a rape charge and (c) not keeping the folks who track convicted sex offenders aware of his whereabouts. Apparently the vile Clarence Dean had been found guilty of attempting to do horrible things to a nine-year-old girl in Florida, but he had not maintained his sex offender registration. He was also accused of meeting college girls via online dating sites and then raping them. According to the New York Times, Clarence Dean also had prior convictions in Texas and Tennessee for sex-related offenses. Apparently, Clarence Dean got to New York by stealing the car and credit cards belonging to the Tennessee woman he was supposed to be helping care for as a home health aide. (The only other person I’ve ever heard of stealing from the person he is supposed to care for, in this sort of situation, is one of the very worst people I have ever had the misfortune to meet.) Clarence Dean’s ill-gotten gains could only take him so far because he was forced to stay at the Hotel Carter because it was bargain-priced at only $99.23 a night before tax. Consider how expensive Manhattan is if $99 a night gets you a place described by the AP as “a threadbare accommodation that stands as a throwback to Times Square’s seedy past . . . for budget travelers who don’t mind insects, grimy bathrooms, stained furniture and broken telephones.”

So anyway, the whole thing is totally appalling. It appears that the perpetrator of this awful deed is probably standing trial round about now and may get the death penalty. Certainly, given his long rap sheet, Clarence Dean does not sound like a candidate for rehabilitation and no amount of remorse on his part, if he had it, would bring Kris back. To be 100% even-handed, I’ll mention that Clarence Dean’s brother apparently claims the guy is a simpleton who is being framed, but I can’t think what the motive would be for the New York City police to frame a fugitive serial sex offender for murdering a hot girl from a goth band.

At any rate, I hope Jennifer is okay. Does anyone know how she is doing?

I am sad to report that special effects pioneer Stan Winston passed away yesterday, after a long struggle with multiple myeloma cancer. He was only sixty-two-years-old. Stan Winston is like nine of the top ten names in special fx that people into them tend to know. The other name is Tom Savini, known best for his active participation in fandom and willingness to share his knowledge from doing makeup effects on projects including Friday the 13th, Day of the Dead, and Killing Zoe. Stan Winston really was larger than life in a way where all comparisons have to fall short. He won Oscars for Best Effects Visual Effects on Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Aliens. His work spanned the gamut from makeup to general special fx to the creature creation he was best known for. Not having been a reader of the comic book and being a fan of Keanu Reeves, I might be the only person in America who thought the look of the makeup and animatronics (and everything else) in Constantine was awesome, but it really was impressive. If the characters in a movie had innovative and fantastical design in the last couple decades, odds were good it was a Stan Winston joint. From Edward Scissorhands to John Carpenter’s The Thing, from Predator to Tank Girl, from Dracula’s Dog to Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Stan Winston was the man. When the hilarious Galaxy Quest wanted to do it right, they tapped Stan Winston. Now of course, Stan Winston did not attach every eyelash and fang personally, but he was one of the founders of a quadruple threat empire with studios for live action character effects, digital animation and enhancement, producing and directing, and even an action figures and comics division. You can see some of the product of this genius in Ironman in theatres now.

I just did a shoot on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame this past weekend and I was struck by the extent to which I didn’t recognize the names of so many of the accomplished people memorialized there. Stan Winston got his star in 2001 and I hope people remember him for a long time, whether or not they are wandering along Hollywood Blvd. Rest in peace.

So right now FUSE is playing a block of Nelly videos. I find Nelly ridiculously hot. Hot like sexy, not hot like kindling. I’m not even sure if I like his music, but I certainly enjoy his videos. They’ve got productions values! (Bonus cool points to anyone who gets the movie reference there.)

So I was sitting there, letting the purple hair dye set in my hair, watching the Hot In Here video, and I suddenly realized that at least part of the video was shot inside a particular nightclub on Hollywood Blvd. Specifically, it was shot inside the Basque nightclub a couple blocks from me which burned down a day ago. Holy firemen of irony, Batman!

I was all trying to go to sleep at like six in the morning and I couldn’t figure out WTF was up with all the helicopters. I mean, my neighborhood has been a little weird lately, but this was just ridiculous. Turned out they were all the news copters shooting the fire and the literally two hundred and ten firemen and countless arson investigators and other officials dealing with the fire. Apparently, the building’s core was super old and had like poisonous resins or something on some of the burning wood. Not the best air quality where I live in Los Angeles for the past day.

But I really think the copters should have been blasting Nelly singing Hot In Here while they flew over my place. That would have totally made it all okay.

Well, damn, if we didn’t all have a really good time at the Golden Gals Gone Wild gallery show this weekend. I admit I was, to a certain extent, dubious about the concept. I wasn’t really allowed to watch television as a child. My parents didn’t want me to turn out weird or antisocial or anything. So I have never seen the TV show Golden Girls, although I understand it is about a group of charismatic elderly babes who still speak like human beings, instead of like people’s warped concept of what people are supposed to act like as they age. I have this pretty much on hearsay and having walked through a room where the TV was on. So, anyway, I’m sure there were nuances in the work displayed this past Saturday which would have spoken to someone more versed in old television shows.

Curator Lenora Claire spent $110 on an oil painting by artist Chris Zimmerman off eBay, featuring Golden Girls actress Bea Arthur (I think she was the sexy one, but maybe that was Blanche Devereaux.) in the nude. Lenora Claire loved the painting and decided that it’s existence in her possession was a great reason to throw a massive multi-artist gallery show to celebrate the whole theme. I was charmed by the idea, as a lot of projects I end up blowing up into ridiculously huge things start off with exactly the same sort of thought process.

I had additional really excellent reasons for going to the gallery show, despite my innocence of sitcoms of yesteryear. First, Blue Blood’s own Ed Mironiuk did a sleekly latex-clad Bea Arthur for the show, which was featured in fliers and all that good stuff, but I love seeing art in person and I like to support my friends’ creative output and I like to see Ed Mironiuk, but he lives on the East Coast. Also, some of my unsavory pals and I thought having gone would be an entertaining conversation piece. One of my friends was threatening to spend the whole time texting people to tell them “hey, guess what I’m at!” It seemed like half the people in the gallery space actually had cell phones out and were doing this and it made for a super packed event.

The art show at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery on Hollywood Boulevard transcended the theme, however. I did not have to be an aficionado of the show to really enjoy the art there. Kudos to Lenora Claire for gathering up a really interesting diverse group of creative people. A few standouts including amazing use of texture were Jason Mercier’s junk portrayal of Rue McLanahan and Elmer Presslee’s flowery Bea. The punk fantasy of Austin Young’s piece was a cool take on the theme, which made me look him up when I got home. In the clean commercial lines department, I really liked the superhero quadtych (Is that a word — like triptych only four?), a little blue naughty piece, and of course Glen Hanson’s piece, which was also used for commemorative T-shirts. I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of Glen Hanson, as he was wearing essentially gold lamé underwear and looked delightfully striking. And it took something to be striking in a room where go go dancers sported giant paper maché granny heads and a DJ complained that they had been planning to hang work by club kid killer Michael Alig. No idea why Alig didn’t show, but I’m guessing a club kid famous mostly for killing someone because he couldn’t figure out how to otherwise acquire drugs . . . well, I’m just saying there is some Darwinism there and maybe not so much responsibility.

Luminaries in attendance included Blue Blood head designer/artist Forrest Black, Blue Blood hottie Scar 13, Blue Blood hottie Xochitl (who Forrest Black and I each thought the other had photographed that night), artist Kristin Tercek of Cuddly Rigor Mortis fame, writer/gadfly Clint Catalyst reporting for BuzzNet, writer/director Ramzi Abed creator of The Black Dahlia Movie, editor Tony Pierce from the LAist, fashion designer Adele Mildred, and writer Tucker Max who was there to support Rudius Media artist Jim Wirt of Coloring Book Land.

Incidentally, I mentioned in a previous feature on Tucker Max that he was coy about whether or not he did cocaine. It seemed to me, in a very funny story he wrote about a Las Vegas vacation, that he was deliberately avoiding committing to whether or not he had done blow in the land of casinos. He would like me to share that he would absolutely have just said it, if he was nose down in white powder and that, in point of fact, he has never done, and never intends to do, cocaine. I’ve been trying to decide if I agree with the Tucker Max theory of “beer and hot chicks” versus “hookers and blow,” but I’ll have to get back to y’all on that one.

Clint Catalyst, fresh off his acting turn with Michelle Tea and Guinevere Turner in In the Spotlight told me he started off the evening with a lot more makeup and had gone through five outfits over the course of the night. At the bottom of the page, you can see the video Clint Catalyst shot, including some footage of Forrest Black at the beginning.

I have to say that I kind of wished I had brought a change of clothes because it was ridiculously hot in the gallery. My clothing was so drenched with sweat that I actually did go home and change my shirt before going to an afterparty. (Admittedly, my home is on Hollywood Blvd, in between where the gallery is and the house in the Hollywood Hills I was going to afterwards, but it was hot.) It was so hot inside that what might normally be delicate napkin-blotting to avoid damaging makeup quickly became the full on athletic-style blot or face squeegee. World of Wonder could stand to invest in some A/C. You will notice in the photos of the event that Scar and I are making what appear to be peculiar gang signs; we are fanning ourselves in the oppressive heat.

Excessive warmth notwithstanding, whether or not attendees were Golden Girls fans, I think everyone had a good time. I got to see tons of people I like, who I don’t see every day. There was a crazy mix of people. In fact, the demographics were so mixed that it was like a game of rock/paper/scissors whether people were going to go in for the handshake, the Hollywood hug, or the cheek kiss. I’m usually not a big fan of kitsch, because I feel an artist should truly own what they create and not hide behind irony, but a lot of the Golden Gals Gone Wild artists really rose to the occasion and it was a smashing fun event. I can tell it is going to be a really fun time in Los Angeles this season, can practically smell it on Hollywood Blvd. Not that I want to go around smelling Hollywood, but you get my meaning.

I think it’s unfortunate that one of the down sides of living in pretty much any interesting area or city is that, if you are there long enough, the notion that it just isn’t as cool and fun as it used to be is nearly inescapable. It’s really difficult not to fall into a bit of a rut when you see stores you used to enjoy close down, clubs you used to have a great time at are gone, friends that used to be the life of the party have settled down or just become such monumental losers that you don’t want to see them anyway. It’s hard not to feel like you should just uproot yourself and move to greener pastures sometimes. I know I’ve felt like that in a number of areas I’ve lived. Lately, a lot of my Los Angeles friends have been sharing their general ennui on this subject as well. So, I thought I might share one technique that I’ve found that can kind of help shake things up a little. Just pretend you are visiting. Give yourself a week to do all those things you’d only do if you were actually from out of town. Read the local weekly paper and actually go to everything that piques your interest. You’ll be surprised at just how much fun is actually going on right around you.

Just the other day I was feeling kinda bleh and decided I better just get off my butt and take a walk around my own neighborhood and I ended up having a really fun time. Stopped by the Frolic Room on Hollywood Blvd. and had a beer with their usual crazy assortment of odd characters. Wandered over to the notoriously crusty gay hangout that is the The Spotlight Lounge over on Cahuenga to check out Joanna Angel’s Porny Monster release party. Ran into a ton of people I know but wasn’t really expecting to see. James St James, Author of Disco Bloodbath/Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland, was there too, so that was cool. Then I wandered down to Sunset and Vine(ish) to check out Cardinal Sin’s new Dark Pink club. Had a really pleasant time there, met some really cool people. Had a suprisingly interesting conversation about leisurely scenic walks in the World of Warcraft with a couple of nurses while getting to enjoy Wednesday and Darkfiend spinning some of my favorite music. Stumbled home in the wee hours.

Now, obviously, not everybody lives in my neighborhood, but the point is that there actually are more interesting things going on around you than you probably realize, and sometimes it really pays off to just stop by some bar you’ve never been inside, go see a band you’ve never heard of, take a fish printing seminar at the local museum. Amelia has a really cool collage on the theme of government’s inherant indifference to the plight of man that she did not long ago over at the Getty. There is a lot to do, so treat yourself to a kind of random sample from time to time. It’s totally worth it.