People keep asking me why I haven’t mentioned that Forrest Black and I have some of our photography of American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert in the current issues of Star Magazine and Rolling Stone, so I suppose I’ll mention it now. The internet has been abuzz for weeks now that Adam Lambert was going to “come out” in Rolling Stone issue 1081. So many publications were reporting that Rolling Stone was going to report that Adam Lambert says he is gay that Rolling Stone had to rush to put the digital image of the cover, lensed by brilliant top photographer Matthew Rolston, online well before the issue hit newsstands. Which seems very meta-something.

For some reason, a number of folks desperately wanted to be the primary source for settling speculation on Adam Lambert’s sexual orientation. Forrest Black and I photographed Adam Lambert kissing Brad “Cheeks” Bell. In point of fact, all of the supposedly scandalous images of Adam Lambert kissing a male were of him kissing the same guy, Brad “Cheeks” Bell. However, as many fans seems to find boy/boy smooching inconclusive and seemed to perhaps care about orientation, I didn’t want any part of anything which might hurt Adam Lambert’s chances of winning American Idol. I heart Alex Burton, my editor at Star Magazine, because the deal he and I made for the first round of images he ran was that there would be no outing of Adam Lambert in the issue and Alex Burton, my man of the Led Zeppelin tattoo, kept his word and kept the article classy and positive. Word is that Star Magazine offered Brad “Cheeks” Bell $2,000 to tell all and Cheeks declined, saying that he’d turned down higher dollar offers than that and he would only ever do a positive interview about Adam Lambert.

Unsubstantiated rumor is that Rolling Stone ponied up $50,000 for Adam Lambert to tell them his sexual preference first. Rolling Stone contributing editor Vanessa Grigoriadis, my fellow Wesleyan University alum, did a great job presenting Adam Lambert as a whole interesting person with visceral prose and probing but respectful questions. In the interview, Adam Lambert tells Vanessa Grigoriadis that he waited to come out in Rolling Stone because he felt he could express himself in context there. Some of the context, however, is that he didn’t lose his virginity (presumably to a man) until he was twenty-one and that he’d made out with girls while drunk at nightclubs and was now somewhat bi-curious about what it would be like to have sex with a woman.

Rolling Stone has always had some of the best, most incisive and most intriguing interviews of any magazine (and of course Wesleyan grads tend to be terrific writers), so it is no surprise this is a good one. But I’m left uncomfortable that the issue of a sexual label was such a big deal. I feel like we don’t have enough words to describe sexual orientation for the terms gay and straight to have much meaning.

If Adam Lambert suddenly got a girlfriend, after years of going out with the same sex, would that mean he did not count as gay any more? How about if he just occasionally fooled with really inspiring women who really got him as a person, but only had relationships with men? I realize that I travel in circles which are perhaps a bit ahead of the curve on sexual openness. But I know men who are gay-identified who sleep with women from time to time. I know women who are bi-identified who only have relationships with men but also have sex with women. I know men who are straight-identified who will have sex with men provided there is a sexual configuration of enough people for it to count as an orgy. Everyone can think of the prison example for same sex relationships among people who do not identify as gay or lesbian. Etc. I think that maybe 10% of the population is strongly hardwired to enjoy only the same gender and maybe 10% of the population is strongly hardwired to enjoy only the opposite sex. But most people, in the right situation, are more fluid than that. They might have a preference, even a strong preference, but, in the right situation, the preference won’t dictate their actions.

At any rate, I feel most human sexuality is too complex for a tidy label to be genuinely descriptive. I thought it was cool that Adam Lambert told Vanessa Grigoriadis and Rolling Stone, “I loved it that this season girls went crazy for me . . . As far as I’m concerned, it’s all hot. Just because I’m not sticking it in there doesn’t mean that I don’t find it beautiful.” There is a certain combination of flamboyance and rawness there which is the reason so many of my friends were rooting for Adam Lambert on American Idol.

And it is a flamboyance and rawness which utterly transcends sexual orientation. I think that general America is far more afraid of that rock star counterculture essence than they are of male homosexuality. Senior Blue Blood writer Will Judy made the excellent point that, although Adam Lambert was runner-up to Kris Allen, rather than winner, on American Idol, “Lambert got to live my ultimate superdream from 5th grade though. Fronted Kiss AND Queen in the same night. (And KILLED, of course)” which is a really fine summation.

Last week, I started seeing all kinds of links in to Blue Blood from American Idol sites. As I have not been watching American Idol this season and have never covered American Idol on this site before, this seemed peculiar until we started receiving emails with subjects like Adam Lambert Nude, Adam Lambert Gay Kiss, Where can I find naked pics of Adam Lambert? and suchlike. Actually, this still seemed a bit peculiar until People Magazine got in touch with us and emailed us the photos we shot which everyone was talking about.

Now, of course I recall Forrest Black and yours truly shooting American Idol finalist contestant Adam Lambert. He is pretty memorable. I have also photographed guys before. Naked guys even. This does not mean that every single person, out of the thousands I have ever pointed a camera at, has stripped down at some point in the shooting process. In case this is not already blindingly clear, allow me to state categorically that we photographed Adam Lambert and Cheeks at a costume event sponsored by Blue Blood and promoted by Xian. Everybody at the event was clothed and most were even costumed. There was nothing scandalous about Adam Lambert being dressed up glam; he looked great and it was a costume party. So, no, I do not have any naughtier pictures than the portraits in this Adam Lambert gallery.

To all the ignorant prudes who hide their own bigotry behind platitudes about what “other” people in “flyover states” will think, I don’t think a few sexy images have exactly hurt the careers of any modern (like post invention of photography) musicians. Anybody heard of David Bowie, Keith Richards, Marilyn Manson, Twiggy, Madonna, Deborah Harry, Slash, Jeff Beck, Lily Allen, Katy Perry, Tommy Lee, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Jones, Zack de la Rocha, Tom Morello, Jared Louche, Eddie Vedder, Dave Navarro, Flea, or Anthony Kiedis? These are all performers who have been immortalized on camera either nude or kissing someone of the same gender or, in most cases, both. Do any of these smug I-am-open-minded-but-what-about-the-middle-America-frauen people seriously think that nobody from say Iowa ever bought an album by the Rolling Stones, Motley Crue, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Discussing the existence of photos of Adam Lambert kissing, Access Hollywood Dish of Salt interviewer “Laura [Saltzman] mentioned she had never been [to Burning man], Adam gave her a wicked little smile and said, “We are going to the Burning Man– I might kiss you too!”” Additionally, in the interview, Adam Lambert said, “You know what, I have nothing to hide. I am who I am. And this is about singing… nothing else.” So he can sing, he’s gorgeous, he has remarkably impressive presence, and he owns who he is and makes no apologies. I like that and I hope everyone reading this likes those traits in a person too.

Last week, the American Idol Judges had the following comments on Adam Lambert’s performance of “Black or White” (The theme of the episode was Michael Jackson.): Man-in-charge Simon Cowell said, “That was in a totally different league than everyone else.” Performer Paula Abdul said, “You’ve got the whole package going on.” Producer Randy Jackson said, “You could make a record right now and it would sail right to the top.” And the new judge songwriter Kara DioGuardi said, “I hope Michael Jackson was watching you tonight.” So I kind of think the good guy has a good chance of winning, having what it takes to be a star and deserving it and all.

If you happen to feel like tuning in to American Idol tonight, it would be awesome if some of the tens of thousands of people who read BlueBlood.net could cast some votes for Adam Lambert. Tune in Tuesdays 8pm/7pm central and Wednesdays 9pm/8pm central on FOX.

So, Forrest Black and I just went for coffee. Well, it was Starbucks, so he went for coffee and I went for ice water and conversation. I was just reading a thing about how Warren Buffet built his business and wanted to talk about some of the interesting ways he approached things. So we are talking about how insurance companies invest with your premiums and that is where most of their profits come from, and how Warren Buffet’s primary holding company Berkshire Hathaway actually failed at its primary business and no longer actually produces anything to do with what the original brand was about, and various other factoids which are intriguing, if you find business structures interesting.

At a certain point, I noticed some security guards hovering kind of close to me out of the corner of my eye and wondered if Starbucks had any special rules against people with purple and green hair discussing high finance. I couldn’t think of anything particularly awful I was doing, so I went back to my conversation, but there was still this sense of bad energy. The security guards went away, but people started shouting. As some of the people shouting were Starbucks employees, I assume security fled so they would not be witnesses to the people who worked at the shopping center braining someone with a coffee pot, if that was about to ensue. These security guys know where their paychecks come from and it is not making coffee-drinkers happy.

So apparently there was a customer there who wanted foam on his coffee or crema on his espresso or something like that. The chick who took the order didn’t really understand his question, so she answered kind of noncommittally on whether or not he could get what he wanted. When he got his order, it was not what he wanted. The barista said their machine could not do that. (This sort of thing is why I get my coffee at Intelligentsia and not Starbucks.) Instead of just apologizing to the guy and giving him his money back with a coupon, as Starbucks used to do when they were a better stock to own, the chick who took the order started screaming at the guy that he should have listened to her when he placed his order. So this dude who was behind the counter but seemed too young and clueless to be a manager came over to try to help, but, by this time, the customer was yelling about his “shitty” service and making a huge scene, while the line got really backed up with people waiting to order. The Starbucks dude, who was hopefully not a manager, took a stab at trying to calm things down, but he had this kinda rude grin on his face the whole time and seemed like he was laughing at the customer. He may have just been nervous, but it really did not help. The Starbucks at Western and Hollywood used to have a really awesome cool manager who we liked enough to give free gifts when we ran into him at a convention Blue Blood was exhibiting at, but Starbucks moved him to Vermont and Hollywood. I don’t even know if the Western and Hollywood Starbucks has a manager any more.

I know Forrest Black was pretty close to handing the customer five bucks himself and just asking the yelling guy to please leave. Instead, once the customer told the cashier, “you can kiss my ass” and she shrieked back, “you can kiss your own ass”, we decided to just leave that classy establishment. This is one of those moments where someone doesn’t realize how much accuracy is in what they were saying. When the Starbucks customer told the cashier to kiss his ass, on some level, what he really wanted was for her to treat him like a customer, rather than belittling him. I would have been opposed to another customer paying the angry customer to leave because I feel like that would just be paying off a terrorist and reinforcing that guy’s behavior where his yelling and expression of rage got in the way of everyone else’s coffee drinking ambiance and even coffee ordering. I thought the Starbucks employees could have handled things much more smoothly to stop the unpleasantness, but I also don’t think people should be rewarding for publicly crying like spoiled children in the cereal aisle and ruining other people’s experience.

People pay five bucks for a coffee because they want to relax. The thing I actually found kind of surprising was that the people behind the counter really did not seem to take any pride in their work or care if they did it well. I mean, Forrest Black didn’t have any problem with his order and I had not problem with mine, so it is not like they messed everything up or anything, but the folks who used to work there always seemed to want to excel.

Now I’ve worked at some pretty terrible jobs. Heck, there are days I come to work and just wish I still worked retail. Even when I have to work on something I do not enjoy, I do try to do it well though. I take pride in a job well done and try to do my best. Sometimes my best is nowhere near good enough, but I strive for excellence and take pride in putting in a good effort. Do you take pride in doing what you do well or at least putting forth a good effort to achieve the tasks at hand?

So I really think MTV needs to debut a liquor lesbian duet between Katy Perry and Amy Lee where they snog by the end. See, poor Katy Perry was asked by Steppin’ Out magazine who she would want to kiss. Her singing about how she kissed a girl and all. Katy Perry told Steppin’ Out that she would like to recreate the Madonna and Britney Spears kissing moment from whatever awards show that was at. She wanted Mily Cyrus to kiss her at the Teen Choice awards last week. Okay, I just Googled to see why I remembered the Madonna lesbian kiss being a threesome and to see what awards show it was at. The answer is the VMAs and the kiss was Madonna kissing both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. How does Christina Aguilera get left out of that? But I digress.

So anyway Katy Perry said she wanted to do a stunt like the Video Music Awards one with Disney’s Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus. Miley Cyrus’ peeps issued a public response to this idea which can be distilled down to “ew, gross, no.” In more detail, Teen Choice Awards host Miley Cyrus told E Online’s Marc Malkin that “[Katy Perry] sang on my record. So I think she’s kind of getting back at me, because she was doing harmonies and backgrounds.”

Okay, that was kind of unintelligible, but Miley Cyrus is only like fifteen-years-old. But Katy Perry is still left with the problem of who to do a lesbian publicity stunt with now that Disney’s teen queen rejected her advances. According to my usual primary source for pop culture factoids, The Jesus Blog, Katy Perry found “that because singing about Christ did not bring riches and fame she has decided to sing about sensationalism and pull publicity stunts in order to be known.” Yep, you heard it here first (unless you read The Jesus Blog or are, ya know, very informed about Katy Perry), Katy Perry started off as Katy Hudson, singer of Xtian pop rock.

Now I have no problem with it if someone like Christina Aguilera or Alanis Morisette is initially marketed as wholesome and virginal and later marketed as more mature and maybe a bit dangerously slutty. That is just growing up. I think it is egregiously inappropriate to market very young girls in overtly sexual ways (Yes, I’m talking to you, Billy Ray Cyrus!) But it is pretty normal for young girls to grow up and for artists to evolve over time. All that makes sense.

But when Xtian artists like Amy Lee of Evanescence or Katy Perry sort of cross over into gothic and bi-curious markets, they tend to dilute both. Amy Lee can sell diluted darkness because she seems, to the uninitiated or overly gullible, to be coming from a gothic place. Amy Lee is the methadone of goth. Katy Perry can sell homophobia because she seems, to the uninitiated or overly gullible, to be coming from a sexually adventurous place. Katy Perry is the arsenic of sexual adventure. So I think Katy Perry’s peeps need to get with Amy Lee’s peeps, put together some sort of Ani DeFranco meets Coal Chamber mash-up, and have the two supposedly edgy artists make out to it. Lesbian kiss publicity stunt problem solved!

When the feminist publications like Feministe and the rock publications like AntiQuiet, and the news overlords like MSNBC all agree on something, it is safe to assume the topic is something as definite as the sky is generally blue. In this instance, pretty much everyone agrees that famous homophobe Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” video is a lot like a tremendously sucky version of a Girls Gone Wild set up.

More than a decade ago, Jill Sobule sang a bouncy tune, of the same name, about a woman who is titillated and unsure and excited about the new experience of having kissed another woman. Neither video shows a lot of lip-locking because both were intended for MTV airplay and, as a society, we tend to still view same sex kisses as potentially unsuitable material for kids. I think there will come a time when the idea of two women kissing being scandalous is as quaint as the idea of two people with different ethnic or racial backgrounds kissing is now. Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, recently had to work on their legislation because they had some old laws on the books to prevent black/white couples from other states from using Massachusetts to legitimize their otherwise illegal unions.

Because progress really can and does happen on so many fronts, the lameness of third wave feminism never ceases to disappoint me. If Katy Perry thinks it will turn guys on to tell them that she had a dream about kissing a girl, but, like, ew, not that she’d ever really do that . . . well, it probably will turn guys on.

Most guys I know, who would freak if their girl made out with another guy, think they will be just fine with it if she makes out with another girl. In real life, guys often beg to see this and then get really upset when the opportunity actually arises. Like it never crossed their minds that the chicks might actually be into each other, so then they get belatedly jealous. Personally, I think the swinger relationship model is at least internally consistent, but it is just silly to have the notion that it is totally cool for your girlfriend to kiss other girls, so long as she doesn’t like it. The idea of chicks kissing chicks because they really want to kiss a guy and need to get his attention . . . well, I guess I just think it is better to be more goal-directed towards what you really want.

Gentlemen, before your girlfriend starts kissing girls, decide whether or not you are cool with swinging. In most cases, the other party having a vagina doesn’t really mean it does not count, unless you are making your darling do something she hates. Of course, there is also the possibility that your girl is indifferent one way or the other to whomever she fools around with. To her, getting down with anyone may not be worthy of a musical anthem because it is a matter of some indifference and just really no big deal. This may include doing it with you.

Ladies, do not ever plant your beautiful sexy lips on anyone who would sing a song which manages to be sexist, male-bashing, and homophobic like “Ur So Gay”. Katy Perry does not deserve your kisses.

I handed Gene Simmons his laundry once. This was more than ten years ago, so my memory is a bit murky, but, as I recall, I may have both handed him his clean laundry and picked up his dirty laundry to run back to the stadium. It was one of my last gigs as a stagehand. I was a runner. A runner is someone who will work for stagehand wages but has a working and ideally presentable car. At the time, I had already mostly transitioned into doing contract design work, corporate presentations and that sort of thing which paid better. My car actually was not terribly presentable, but some of the staff for the KISS tour recalled a nicer-looking (but less reliable) car I had owned at the time of an earlier gig and they liked me. I took the job because they had specifically requested if “the girl with the kinky zines” was still available. Plus working at a rock stadium was generally pretty sociable and fun, especially at a job which, unlike many I’d done there, was unlikely to cause injury.

I was never a member of the KISS Army or anything and my parents felt the KISS logo was unacceptable Nazi regalia and boys who wanted me to like KISS (and them) had always played me “Beth”. I guess guys always think the chick will like the power ballad better than the rocker, but it always struck me as really ill-conceived to try to seduce a girl with a song about blowing off your girlfriend. (Talk about “Lick My Love Pump” being in the saddest key!) I did think KISS had some fairly listenable music, but I was not crazy familiar with them either.

So, when my runner job afforded me the opportunity to watch part of a KISS concert, I didn’t have a ton of expectations, except that I’d vaguely thought they wore their makeup different. I missed the whole trauma the hardcore KISS fans endured when the band went from monster makeup to hair metal makeup. They are probably the only band in the history of the universe to get less pussy after donning hair metal makeup than they got without it.

Regardless, the thing which struck me most when I worked for KISS was that there were ridiculously hot unfamiliar girls at the show. Like super hot and super into the band. And, at the time, I was at least minimally acquainted with a pretty high percentage of the hot sluts in the DC/NoVa/Baltimore area. So it was surprising to have so many incredibly hot metal chicks at a KISS concert and not recognize any of them from other events I’d been at. I commented on the anomaly at the time to everyone I mentioned the show to, but I didn’t understand what the likely reason was that there were such hot girls there who I’d never seen at shows by Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Poison, Aerosmith, Warrant, Kix, Child’s Play, and countless good-looking national and local bands in related genres.

I joked at the time that the band must bring the girls with them or something. This went way beyond just what a band bringing groupies from the last city would entail, but it didn’t occur to me that it really would be beneficial for a band like KISS to in fact hire a hottie crew. A lot of their fanbase was homophobic, but there were persistent rumors that their lead singer Paul Stanley was homosexual or bisexual and Gene Simmons had this demon fuckmonster persona where he lived out fans’ male adolescent fantasies, so, from a PR perspective, it really would have made sense for them to cast some amazingly hot women as enthusiastic fans and pay them to come on tour at cheer them on. I mean, sports teams have cheerleaders and that is kind of the same benefit. The only difference is really that cheerleaders have uniforms and everybody knows what their roles are, but hired rock fans are kind of more disingenuous. The first time I photographed someone who made rent pretending to enjoy The Rolling Stones in concert, it was like I found out Santa Claus was a lie. Actually my parents never lied to me about Santa Claus, so I think I got that childhood trauma at a later age, when I realized that rock n’ roll was kinda dishonest.

The music industry has a long history of putting fake publicity out there. The habit greatly pre-dates rock and roll. It is ironic that the internet has put such a damper on music sales. On the one hand, the web has made it so much easier to disseminate dishonest presentations of self, but it has also made it easier to steal the music industry’s primary product. So, the industry is taking a huge hit to the wallet at the same time that its PR machine has destroyed any trust music fans might have had. Their disingenuous behavior makes it hard for anyone to feel much sympathy for the record industry.

It seems obvious to a teenager that a squeaky clean band might have a dark secret life, but it is less obvious that someone might be drinking apple juice out of a Jack Daniels bottle on stage. At this point, I pretty much disbelieve anything stated more than twice in any press release. I figure whatever they are trying to sell me is probably a lie. I used to listen to music every day and base large portions of my life around music and music-related events. But I’ve lost my faith.

So a site calling itself Gene’s Secret launched this week with a seven or so minute video purporting to be of Gene Simmons fucking some blonde. A couple of clips from the video have also been circulating the web and blog empire Gawker received a cease and desist from Gene Simmons’ attorneys for running them. If you care, the sex is not particularly inspired or emotional and the blonde actively avoids kissing the KISS bassist and they are apparently doing it to the dulcet tones of Steve Perry. Gawker feels the clips are sufficiently newsworthy as to not require them to comply with the C&D. Now I could go off about celeb sex tapes and Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee and Fred Durst and why these types of videos tend to have unappetizing sex and why our Puritan society refers to anyone in one as B list and what is wrong with a society which invades people’s privacy like this. But I’m not going to because I, perhaps cynically, believe that the whole thing is an orchestrated publicity stunt. I have no faith that this is a real stolen video or that the subjects did not know they were being recorded or that any of what is being presented is remotely as real as WWF.

At first glance, some people felt the Gene’s Secret Gene Simmons sex tape was a hoax and utilized a lookalike. I mean, there are an awful lot of KISS cover bands, so I can understand how people would believe it would not be hard to find a Gene Simmons demon lookalike. Through the Manatt law firm, Gene Simmons confirmed the authenticity of the sex tape but denied that anyone but Gene Simmons’ Allied Industries corporation should be able to profit from it. Nonetheless, the video is still live on the Gene’s Secret site, which one would assume would be the first target for a C&D. If this reminds altporn fans of when a site called SuicideGirls unsuccessfully pretended it was not really them licensing their content when they decided to resell unretouched versions of photosets they had promised models they would not resell . . . well, it reminds me of that little fiasco too. (Full disclosure: At the suggestion of SuicideGirls head honcho Sean Suhl, Blue Blood has previously consulted with the law firm of Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips.) Both scenarios feature a lawyer letter which purports to be trying to stop the distribution of the content, while simultaneously giving the content authenticity. Of course, this is the internet, so Gawker promptly posted the C&D on their tech industry blog Valleywag under the heading “Gene Simmons lawyer confirms sex tape’s authenticity“. While this may prove that the man in the video is in fact the tongue-wielder from KISS, it doesn’t prove that the whole thing is not a hoax.

The Gene’s Secret site features the following copy:

“This isn’t Shannon, this isn’t the same Family Jewels that you can catch on late-night cable. This is Gene giving you his best on screen performance yet! Find out all the benefits of being the spokesperson for a the latest energy drink, Frank’s Energy. Although it looks like Gene would rather gulp done one of Frank’s Energy Girls! . . . What is Gene’s Secret? Actually, it’s a WHO, and she is a hot little Austrian babe, named Elsa. She is a model, and one of the Frank’s Engery Drink Girls, a brand which Gene endorses (apparently to fuel his sex drive.) Elsa and Gene party like rockstars, and we have it all here, EXCLUSIVELY on GenesSecret.com.”

Now, I’ve never heard of this energy drink before, but I’m guessing a lot of people, who never heard of it before, have now heard of it. Most of the copy on the membership site tour is about how Gene has a reality show called Family Jewels and he uses this beverage. Celebrity sex tape site tours usually have a lot more text about how you just have to see this video and you should sign up now now NOW! This tour seems less interested in making sales and more interested in telling everyone about projects Gene Simmons gets paid on. Gene Simmons keeps his shirt on during the video and most people prefer to get naked for sex or at least don’t pay attention to the clothing they have on, but a video of an older guy having sex is less embarrassing if he is wearing a smoothly adjusted T-shirt for the whole thing. A publication called AVN, which is primarily about mainstream Valley porn video, puts on an award show for pornstars every January. Last year, Gene Simmons was a presenter at the AVN awards show and AVN was apparently the first to break the news about the Gene’s Secret celebrity sex tape. Coincidence or evidence of the occult? You be the judge.

When something like a celeb sex vid scandal happens, it is hard to parse out the truth, so people tend to partly believe the whole thing is fake and partly believe the whole thing is real. So many things like this have been presented to people in the Digital Age that most people carry constant cognitive dissonance around in their heads 24/7/365 now. No wonder prescriptions for antidepressants are so common. Cognitive dissonance is painful. It is bad for society when people suffer from constantly having mutually exclusive ideas in their heads. Aside from the mental health costs, when people are used to the puzzle pieces in their brain not fitting, then they become much less able to make decisions, less able to run their own lives well, less able to vote for candidates who hold their values, less able to form lasting relationships. People may think they are just doing internet marketing, but they are causing real world damage.

I wish I believed that hot chicks, who can really strut, just want to rock and roll all night. I wish I believed that some callous big titty whore tricked a genuinely promiscuous and wild rock star into starring in his own porn video, blackmailed him, and then cashed in anyway. I wish I believed that Gene Simmons was a victim here. That might all be true, but the music industry has cried wolf too many times for me to believe any of it. They’ve put too many snake oil salesmen behind the pulpit. I wish I believed that anything in music culture was real now. Viral marketing has destroyed any trust music fans, or people who would otherwise have been music fans, might have in music or musicians.

Viral marketing might get the word out, but it has destroyed my faith.