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?

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?

DJ Xian likes to throw big events for big dates. Halloween is coming up, so you know she’ll be throwing another Hex Hollywood bash. Along with the venerable Panpipes, Blue Blood sponsored the last Hex Hollywood bacchanalia on 06/06/06. In honor of the date, the theme was Angels, Devils, Saints, Sinners, Undead, Nuns, Priests, Gods, Monsters, Virtues, and Vices. Costumes turned out heavy on the angels and devils. A highlight of the evening was the performance by the crew from CORE, Constructs of Ritual Evolution. A low point of the evening was when we broke a lens. As it turned out, the gentleman, who tripped over the cord attached to our camera, was gallant enough to kick in a few bucks towards a new one and then Samy’s gave us a truly godlike deal on a replacement, so it ended up not being so bad after all. In this series of some of the hottest looks from the night, you’ll see where we change lenses and backdrops, so now you won’t have to wonder why. All in all, Xian’s “three levels of pleasure and pain” was a huge extravaganza, packed with people who really did it up, and had plenty of fun.

Hex Hollywood Pictures by Forrest Black and Amelia G

Hex Hollywood Site