Blasphemy Day is a new internet-spawned holiday like Talk Like a Pirate Day or CAPS LOCK DAY. I’m not surprised that more people added typing like a pirate to their holiday calendars than typing in all capital letters, but I would have thought more people would have gotten into Blasphemy Day.

Blasphemy Day is set for September 30, as a tip of the hat to the riots caused when a Danish newspaper ran a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to the anonymously-run Blasphemy Day web site, “International Blasphemy Day is not just a day. It is a movement to dismantle the wall which exists between religion and criticism . . . The objective of International Blasphemy Day is to open up all religious beliefs to the same level of free inquiry, discussion and criticism to which all other areas of academic interest are subjected.” Noble aspiration, although I’m not sure a mean-spirited cartoon really advances human knowledge. Slaying sacred cows can be humorous (Heck, even the existence of the idiomatic expression sacred cow is pretty funny), but I have yet to hear anyone explain what the joke was in the Danish Muhammad cartoon, except maybe that it would piss people off.

I used to feel like each person’s individual relationship with their deity or deities or lack thereof was . . . well, personal. I am a fan of analysis and critical thinking, but I pretty much don’t discuss religion. I lived in Israel as a teenager and all major religions go there for debate. Or it being the cradle of three of the major modern religions. Or something like that. While living there, someone I knew complained to me about an agnostic debating him on his Christianity. He said he felt it was wrong for someone undecided to try to convince him that his religion was predicated on something he couldn’t be sure of because, if the undecided agnostic won the debate, they would have stolen his faith. His position was that his faith was valuable to him and being undecided meant nothing to the agnostic. I just did a quick Bing on the person who said that and he apparently is still losing and rediscovering his faith on a regular basis, so maybe he was actually the agnostic. Whether or not the person, who made the point on the value of faith for the believer, was an idiot probably doesn’t make the point invalid.

But then I lived in Georgia. And that totally changed my views on religious tolerance. I experienced countless people who considered themselves religious use their status as a person of faith to behave in incredibly bigoted ways towards those around them. Including me. I literally had door-to-door religion salesmen defecate on my porch. I had bakers ask me if I drank baby’s blood when I was trying to buy a bagel. (No, I eat bagels. Duh.) I had come across bigots before, but I’d never seen this level of intolerant, assumption-making, busy-body, beating-down of anybody different. I had a pretty normal punk reaction to Southern oppression in that it made me want to jump up and down on the tables, yell, and rebel. Blasphemy became utterly hilarious to me.

While kind of doing the couch tour in between Atlanta and Los Angeles, Forrest Black registered the domain BarelyEvil.com. (Do not click that link if you are at work, unless your office is totally cool with viewing naked blasphemers while on the clock.) He was amused by the idea of satanic teens and I’m a big fan of putting a site on a domain, once it is registered, so Forrest Black built Blue Blood’s Barely Evil, and we did kind of a lot of shoots involving crosses, fetish nuns, and devil girls. They were fun and creative. BarelyEvil takes a light-hearted approach to the subject matter. You can see a free devil girl gallery Forrest Black and I shot here and both those full series, in all their glory, are available in the Blue Blood VIP members area. We’ve shot a lot of different styles of devilgirls, but we did this style first with Dana Dark and later of Szandora, Scar 13, Masuimi Max, Lori the Gory, and Nina Sin, among others.

So, is blasphemy funny or mean, uncalled-for or needed, or some gray area combo of the above? Is slaughtering sacred cows a good thing or is the very expression “slaughtering sacred cows” hate speech? Are you ready to celebrate Blasphemy Day?

I kind of like this year’s female pop sound, but, for some reason, all the top-selling pop artists this years seem to sound oddly similar. Moreso than usual for such things, which is saying something. I don’t think that normally Britney Spears, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Rhianna, etc. all have nearly identical voices. I think this is one of those occasions where, if I knew more about how the female pop sausage is made, it probably boils down to just a few writing teams and just a couple of producers.

This year, barring visual cues, I can’t tell any of these chicks apart from their singing. The new Britney Spears single “Womanizer” is predictably stylish and expensive-looking. It is in the format of one of those videos where the girl wears a whole passel of different outfits to appeal to a larger variety of demographics. Britney Spears has always been marketed somewhat like this, but this vid kicks it up a notch.

There is even a sequence where Brit is all done up with a reddish pinkish bob for hair and fake tattoo sleeves. Basically, the scenario has her done up as a waitress who would have a lot of “friends” on MySpace. The temporary tattoos are what feel like they put it over the top, although certainly, as the meaning of having ink has changed, tattooed hotties like Masuimi Max and Kellie LaPlegua are getting their ink lasered off. So maybe there is no true permanence in counterculture beyond what is in your heart. The look can always be co-opted, often in ways which are glossier than the original.

They will gobble up fashion as fast as the underground can produce it, although genuinely individual and independent spirit is the part mainstream wants to leave behind. But, like, America’s favorite trainwreck Britney Spears is, like, sorta naked in the “Womanizer” video.

Edit: So apparently, although this video has been uploaded about a billion and a half times to YouTube, it is not embeddable the way most vids from there are. Blue Blood has a policy against linking pirated content, but Antiquiet has the Britney Spears Director’s Cut video and I’m linking that, despite Kevin Skwerl’s FBI arrest and indictment because him once again having special materials means that either (1) it’s all effing astroturf and thus the copyright holders want it approached this way or (2) Kevin Skwerl takes stuff from work.

I love music, or at least I used to, but the music industry sure makes me sick.

What if you threw a fetish party and nobody new came? The same rugged stalwarts from the last five years were present, sporting hardened and stained latex wardrobe, silicone lubricated, lipoed, botoxed expressionless and very drunk. BDSM and drugs/liquor don’t mix but its Hollywierd and the weirdo onlookers, unhappy married couples, and pervy old white dudes in black leather were all in attendance. At least there weren’t any melancholy hipsters or smelly hippies. Then again they know how to party and should have been there.

My editor sends me a mysterious online message about a job should I choose to accept to cover it, a fetish event in said Hollywierd, wedged between X-Mas and New Years. I opened the message on myspace on my nearly defunct once puzzling newfangled phone that will let me navigate online but only in something smaller than 8 pt. font. I ventured to the address via the Red Line at the Hollywood and Vine Station and I was really ready to see something interesting whether it be puke or piss.

The club was situated at The Henry Fonda Theatre and has been known to deny entrance to those that have been placed on the list before, but I was miraculously let in, and my bag barely inspected. I should have smuggled a flask. It was cold out. So I was wearing something odd, not latex, but one of my fav old drag queen outfits from someone that had a much bigger bust and ass than me, that I scored in a Silverlake thrift store. Twas pink satin, and about 8 sizes too big, but I pinned it to my leotard with safety pins and felt fabulous. Underneath my skirt I had two pairs of stockings, and leg warmers, and I was wearing a Blue Blood hoodie, 2 scarves and a cashmere overcoat. Fuck fetish, I had just got over a nasty cold few weeks prior and I was not looking to score.

Most of the fetish miscreants were there, just not many of the promised advertised ones. Some it seems, or most were skinny and lacquered a bit too tight with corsetry. God forbid someone should sneeze. I overheard one fake eyelashed missy hiss to the other, “wearing thisss feels like you are being squeezed by a nice long python.” I couldn’t eavesdrop much more since the carpeted stairs made it tough for me to get down in high heeled boots and I had work to do.

On the main floor Master Syrus applied long beautiful feather needles for a fantastic scalp piercing, and a bosom piercing. Some of the old crows watching were more glassy eyed than others, but when you are wearing 2K in latex couture everything else seems to pale in comparison. Sadly the Mistress of Ceremonies Masuimi Max, Mistress Aradia, and a slew of purported others were not seen during the time I was there, and I missed the performances by Midori and Kumi, although I did see Kumi in a white wig briefly.

Watching Mistress Genevieve 2.0 wait in line to get in was priceless: with brown hair, possibly meth fidgety and frozen overdrawn lipped smile in brown, opening and closing her phone, muttering where is she, jumping up and down in impatience like she had to pee, all of a sudden spins around and bluntly asked me why did I cut my hair. I looked her dead in the eye with bemusement, and said because I was tired of it, but secretly because I didn’t want to look like everyone else, especially her. I still have nightmares of getting my eyes nearly enucleated by her during the production of “Scuba Squirters 3.” Now I know better and I kept my distance from her talons while I waited in the short VIP line.

The fashion show highlighted the fashion of Syren and Stockroom in typical black/white combos. The best event was the two leather hooded chick bunnies with tits marked by black X marks, sparring away in boxing gloves and adorable mens boy shorts. One was in black the other in red. The dark bunny won in a lovely spray of red glitter.

This was nothing like the other great fetish venues such as Skin Two Rubber Ball in London, Fetish Evolution in Essen, or the Black and Blue Ball in NYC. This was the first year of the West Coast Fetish Ball and it was a cold day, so of course it was going to be sparse, and although the VIP area upstairs has a tent cover and kept things more warm, it was basically a total ripoff, charging ten bucks for a shot of booze was ridiculous and to laud it as such a big fetish venue with so few hardcore and featured performers around, I felt bad for anyone that shelled out good beer money for a total letdown.