In recent years, I realize I have shied away from talking about certain topics such as feminism or sexuality or even actual products. This is kind of odd as these were certainly pretty cornerstone issues which were, not only covered in Blue Blood in the past, but were instrumental in why I wanted to do it in the first place.

I feel like feminism on the net, particularly when associated with the site genre dubiously dubbed altporn, is pretty much a mockery. The language has been so co-opted by people who don’t mean it, or even understand it, that the whole thing pretty much makes me sick. It definitely makes me want to disassociate myself from the whole thing, but do I really want to change my life and who I am because someone fake pretended to be like me? Probably not such a good idea.

One of the difficulties involved with feminist politics in 2007 is that it seems to be in vogue to attack people on a personal level, rather than to debate the issues. I see that most people deal with personal attacks by either defending their personal lives or correcting misimpressions about their personal lives. I think that people should pay attention to and debate the actual point and not deconstruct details which are merely specific to the person bringing a broader feminist or other issue up.

I think any artist has to give of themselves, to a certain extent, in order to create. But the global communication networks we live with today make it so difficult to maintain the slightest shred of privacy. Reality show programming and tabloid journalism put into the zeitgeist the notion that the world is entitled to know really personal things about anyone remotely famous. This makes me want to, not only avoid being famous, but move to a farm in Montana. The main thing which prevents me from doing this is the knowledge that it is terribly cliche for a Los Angeles person to buy a spread to get away from it all. That and the simple fact that pretty much no place today is really remote enough to truly get away from it all.

But it is difficult to talk about sex in this type of media climate while maintaining one’s personal privacy and avoiding becoming a public figure. But sharing any private moments in this world is like entering into a BDSM relationship with a room full of strangers who don’t believe in safewords. Sometimes, I believe a person should be entitled to say, hey, this is just for me and not the public. I believe in a fundamental right to privacy.

Lastly, various marketers have disseminated the notion that, if anyone you’ve heard of either endorses or slags a product, then they must be corrupt and inaccurate. These are marketers who of course utilize something called WOM or word of mouth marketing. Just one example of what this often boils down to is a solitary lonely dude posting two hundred reviews on Amazon, with sixty different usernames, of a dozen books, not one of which he read. But, if someone with an actual journalistic pedigree gives an opinion, it is often dismissed as envy because they also wrote a book or some such nonsense. Note to the world: known journalists really do tend to have more valuable opinions than anonymous posters. For real.

I could probably have written three long treatises in place of this article. My primary point here is that feminism, sexuality, and pop culture products news and reviews used to be the main things I wrote about. The current media environment is one where the producers have become cynical and manipulative and the audience has become jaded and betrayed. It is difficult to express true and heartfelt opinions, knowing that marketers may be rushing to either pirate or discredit what is said and readers may be looking for spin in all the wrong places.

So, if I sounded like a feminist, would you hold it against me? If I talked about sex and sexuality, would you feel compelled to pry beyond my comfort zone? If I reviewed products I like, would you assume it was just for the advertising dollars? If I reviewed products I don’t like, would you believe that I was just envious?

I used to be above it. Now I’m down in it. But I don’t really want to lose my voice.

Over the years, I think Rolling Stone magazine has maintained a higher standard of journalism than most music rags. The majority of music publications are written by writers in the employ of publicists and most rarely have an article on topics other than a performer’s favorite color or fictional creative process. Although their musical tastes and mine are not always precisely the same, Rolling Stone is usually an example of what journalism ought to be.

A week or so ago writer Elizabeth Goodman did a brief piece for Rolling Stone’s online incarnation where she really blasted Trent Reznor. Full disclaimer: The Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life. When the “Get Down, Make Love” single came out, I drove from DC to Chicago, partly so I could get it from Wax Trax before it was widely available. Some of this is a topic for another article, but I wanted to fully disclose where I’m coming from on this.

In the recent Rolling Stone piece, Elizabeth Goodman chortled about Trent Reznor not being allowed to be giddy with happiness, being goth and all. Reznor apparently confided to Rolling Stone that he had perhaps taken so long between albums because he had sort of lost his confidence and was too worried what people thought of him. The goth-industrial icon went on to explain that he felt he was developmentally past that and was likely to only improve as an artist. The writer quoted what he said and summed it up saying, “After tiring of patting his own back, Reznor went on to pontificate on another of his recent epiphanies.” A little harsh. Apparently, Reznor’s second epiphany was realizing that he didn’t care much for the twenty bands playing overly-generic, over-produced, whiny-ass emo songs he had heard on the radio and that he couldn’t much tell them apart. (Bad news Trent: most radio stations don’t really have a whole twenty bands in rotation at any given time.)

The artist went on to say that he was suspicious of the motives of why a guy might be trying to start a band today: “Is he trying to change the world and do something different and express himself…or is it because they want to fuck Paris Hilton and be photographed outside trendy restaurants?”

I think Trent is right. The nature of celebrity has changed so much. For example, I used to get so excited when a channel like HBO wanted to come shoot at my punk rock group house and interview me and Forrest Black, even though none of us had cable at the time. But HBO was not secretly trying to set up cameras in my house to catch me breaking it off with a lover or having an argument with a housemate about whose dishes were in the sink. (The dishes were mine; I use plastic now.) At the time, if HBO sent a production crew over, they were going to let me outline which areas were public and which were private, they were going to respect my wishes, and news was a straighforward interview, and not getting photographed with the wrong sex partner in a trendy restaurant.

The really cool thing about the Rolling Stone article is that it has enough rawness to be journalism. The cynic in me wonders if maybe it is not just a very very clever placed article, something designed to appeal to the sort of people who liked Pretty Hate Machine. But Elizabeth Goodman’s article feels like actual music journalism. She didn’t just write the same nonsense bullet points from a publicist which one normally sees in music articles these days. She held my interest. She may not have personally liked Trent, but she wrote her article in a way where readers could actually get a human feel for both the journalist and the journalistic subject.

So, kudos to Rolling Stone and Elizabeth Goodman and Trent Reznor for all still flying the flag.

Incidentally, Trent has been on the cover of Rolling Stone at least twice. I’m just sayin’.

Forrest Black and I went out to Das Bunker last weekend to catch Andy LaPlegua’s special DJ set there. In honor of the occasion, we posted the first series of photographs of Andy and Kellie we’d shot. The shoot happened serendipitously. The plan was initially to just photograph Kellie by herself, but Andy was hanging out and a studio space with stage blood, Jack Daniels, and Kellie in it just really called for him to participate too. This photo session also resulted in the artwork for Combichrist’s last full length album and T-shirt design and a liner note shoutout. Kellie then interviewed Andy for a Blue Blood feature article and, by the time of their next photo session with us, Kellie and Andy were married.

So I came home from a fun night at Bunker and just kinda got on a roll, formatting photos for BlueBlood.com. We’ve got some naughty but dressed photos photos for your viewing pleasure here and some more provocative photographic series over on the dot com.

If you are reading this, odds are good you know this, but BlueBlood.com is the digital evolution of the seminal magazine of counterculture erotica founded by yours truly in 1992. There are currently approximately four hundred photos of popular hottie Kellie LaPlegua on BlueBlood.com and more on the way. Kellie has also interviewed a variety of luminaries of the goth-industrial world for BlueBlood.net feature articles. She also helps mental patients and is at work on a spooky comic book. Because Blue Blood hotties do more than just look cute.

We are also celebrating pictorially and otherwise right now because Andy LaPlegua is entering his ninth week on the Billboard Dance charts, alongside such perrenial favorites as Nine Inch Nails and Madonna, with the single “Get Your Body Beat,” the video for which regular Blue Blood contributor Chad Michael Ward worked on the production design.