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?

This video features my interview with Coilhouse editor Nadya Lev about the companion magazine for her Coilhouse web site. The video is directed by Forrest Black. Blue Blood theme music is by Tim Skold. The launch party portion of the video features yours truly, Nadya Lev, Anachronaut, Nixon Sixx, Allan Amato, Forrest Black, Billy Vahan, Eirik Aswang, Coilhouse editor Zoetica Ebb, Coilhouse editor Meredith Yayanos, Karen Schultz, Perish, Courtney, Elizabeth Prokopiak, Scar 13, Mildred Von, Roxy Contin, Roxy Contin’s cute doggie, and many more!

My pal editrix Abby Ehmann always knows where the good party is. (Often she is the one throwing it.) A few years back, the Blue Blood crew exhibited at the late lamented BondCon event in Las Vegas. (BondCon was purchased by the fine folks at Kink, so hopefully they will relaunch it.) The BondCon show was held overlapping the same time as the Adult Entertainment Expo, which Forrest Black and I have occasionally attended over the years to do press coverage on happenings in the adult video world. Immediately prior to these two shows was the Internext show, which SpookyCash sent us to. (SpookyCash is far and away the leading affiliate program in its niche and facilitates people with popular sites being able to make some dough promoting naughty sites from Blue Blood and friends.)

So anyway, after a couple weeks in Vegas, I was all tuckered out, but Abby Ehmann told me that Paul Nathan was hosting a suite party and I really needed to go. This coming weekend, on Saturday August 30 and Sunday August 31, Paul Nathan will be emceeing Perry Mann’s Strippers & Hustlers Ball in Las Vegas. Perry Mann has been throwing the Exotic Erotic Ball in San Francisco for nearly three decades now and this month his crew is headed for Vegas. The weekend’s festivities include performances from Scooter & Lavelle, Drummer KC, D’Amato, all-female Motley Crue cover band Girls Girls Girls, Gen XX (a sort of stripped down electronica version of The Genitorturers), and Gilby Clarke. (Everyone always mentions that Gilby Clarke was in Guns n’ Roses, but I played his Kill for Thrills Commercial Suicide CD endlessly when it came out and recommend picking that up to all.) Of course, a Strippers & Hustlers Ball would not be complete without stripping competitions, so they will be having those too. This may be tricky as Vegas venues can be bitchy about nudity, but I’m sure they’ve got a plan to make it hot no matter what. The Ball web site claims they are planning the “world’s largest girl-on-girl pillow fight” just for the occasion. So you’ll be seeing one for the record books, if you head out to Vegas for Labor Day Weekend.

I’ve written about the aforementioned Paul Nathan-hosted Vegas suite party before, so I won’t do a full report. There was one anecdote which comes up a lot socially, but which I did not tell in print previously. The very talented and always impressively-costumed (and fully-functional) Tara Emory was at the party, dressed as a cheerleader. Tara can do the entertaining party trick of pissing through a hard-on into her own mouth. Naturally, I took a number of snapshots of this. As Tara was sitting on the posh bathroom counter in front of a mirror to perform said party trick, the images show brief flashes of me and my pals Bradical and Scar 13 reflected in the mirror. Looking carefully, one notices that Bradical has his hands on his face like McCauley Culkin in Home Alone. Not that anyone has teased him about this. Well, maybe a little.

I had not previously ever thought of Labor Day as a really big holiday, just a fashion season demarcation. It seems like a ton of people are taking trips for it this year though. If you are in Las Vegas for Labor Day Weekend, you just might need to dress like a stripper or hustler and get yourself over to The Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. The event hotline for Perry Mann’s Strippers & Hustlers Ball is the extremely awesome (702)-804-STRIP. I appreciate it when someone even takes care of the details down to their phone number.

And don’t forget to stop wearing white shoes by next week. Don’t want to be gauche.

So Scar 13 and I wanted to blow off a little steam in a chill environment after work. We listened to Loveline as we rolled over to Boardner’s in my Town Car. We were not actually going to Boardner’s, but Scar had checked her camera at Bar Sinister the preceeding Saturday and tipsily forgotten it there, so she needed to pick it up. Fortunately, they were able to find it. Yay! She keeps her camera in this little pink sort of chamois slipcover. She mentioned to me that Bradical, who has been kind enough to loan us his house and his lemons (don’t ask), for photo shoots, calls it a pink sock. Pink sock is one of those awful phrases, like Dirty Sanchez, which you must learn the meaning of if you are going to successfully use the internet in the future. Apparently Bradical had run into Dr. Drew, of Loveline fame, backstage at some KROQ event and had decided to ask him impertinent questions about how Scar should run her sex life. He then dutifully reported Dr. Drew’s answers back to Scar, along with the definition of a pink sock.

So we listen to more Loveline on the way over to the gothic club night which is our destination. The guest is advising the best way for a woman to orgasm during heterosexual intercourse is to only insert the guy’s dick about a third of the way in and rub her clitoris. A third of the way in? How enormous is the penis we are talking about here? Anyway, I’m pretty sure the answer is a bit more varied than that and I think I could have helped the caller out way better. Loveline’s guest was embarrassed to actually say clit and Dr. Drew had to help her out there. Anyone have a good contact at Loveline because they need to have my awesomely helpful and well-educated advice on there some night. I’ll even avoid saying fuck and that is a big concession because I love to say fuck.

Scar and I both kind of phoned in our makeup that night and I have a little black eyeshadow swoosh over each eye and Scar has a little black eyeshadow swoosh underneath each eye. We didn’t realize until we were ready to go that we had done kind of upside-down mirror images. Anyway, we’d managed to communicate gothic well enough, apparently. Because this cute Vin Diesel-looking guy hangs out the window of some huge black Range Rover or Escalade type vehicle, next to us in traffic, and made the universal sign for goth by tracing imaginary tears down each cheek and waving for us to follow his car. We went to the club anyway.

We arrive and Bradical explains to me that a pink sock is when you are having anal sex and the giver pulls out with some intestine inverting over the invading item. Thanks so much, Dr. Drew, for sharing this factoid with Bradical. Now neither I, nor anyone I come across, is going to be able to escape the mental image of inside-out ass on cock. We discuss how Dr. Drew is incredibly down on anal sex and generally advises all practitioners to go to their physician. I’m actually not really a fan of anal myself, but this doesn’t stop me from giving Bradical a hard time about his anal experiences. He explains that his girlfriends never want it in the ass because his penis is enormous. Maybe he’s been sleeping with the chick on Loveline?

Then Bradical tells me a funny story about gettng pulled over which I can’t repeat here. He then says he once got pulled over and taken to jail for the night when he was on his first or second date with a girl. Los Angeles clubland photographer Tim Sinn was apparently in the backseat and was kind enough to drive both Bradical’s car and his date afterwards. Ouch.

Tim Sinn explains that he is much more mature now. Tim needs to really connect with a girl on a certain level at this stage of his life. Fortunately, he points out, the special connection can be something like a pretty pair of eyes. Everyone I know is going to Hell.

As the evening progresses, I run into Perish, who has been kind enough to let me photograph naked people all over his house and vehicles (note the recurring motif here and feel free to drop me a line if you have a cool-looking house you’d like naked people photographed in.) He is hanging out with The Virgin Sister Bones who does the Lucifer’s Party comic zine, issue two of which included an extended sequence having to do with having sex with, or trying to have sex with, Perish. I have not asked if it is autobiographical or artistic license. We run into a guy in a Dallas goth-industrial band who has Scar on the cover of his new CD.

It is basically a chill pleasant normal evening out with cool people until, right in front of everyone, three bouncers chase down this one little guy, punch him repeatedly and pepper spray him about two inches from his eyes. I take a photo of this, then think I should really shoot video for it to be in proper focus and all, and then notice that some of the pepper spray is drifting and irritating my mucus membranes and that I really don’t want to be all that close to violence like this. I’m not going to say what club we were at because I don’t know what heinous crime this beat-down little dude might have committed and the promoters have never done anything bad to me personally and they may not have known what happened. But the bouncers themselves certainly believed they had done wrong because they went around the club afterwards looking at people’s cameras and deleting photos of what happened.

I like that digital photography allows me to document a random fun night out without the crazy expense and time-consumption of film. But is digital photography turning America coast-to-coast into a shame culture? A guilt culture is one where the people internalize right and wrong and feel they should do right, whether or not anyone is watching. A shame culture is one where people only feel bad when they get caught. I think people should do the right thing, whether or not nightclub patrons may have gotten a picture of their behavior. I also don’t want a pink sock. I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way.

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.

Editor Thomas S. Roche writes, “As I’ve mentioned in previous memoirs, my unholy allegiance in the Tripartite Pact of genre fiction, erotica and death rock made, in 1992, for an instant monsterfuck between the salacious vamps of Blue Blood and my overwrought brain. Back then, Blue Blood was a sumptuous, slick print zine featuring dead sexy ghoul girls dry humping each other and their tattooed fuck boys with all the abandon of a European Ferret after three pots of French Roast, not to mention erotic science fiction, sanguine but not sanguinary vampire porn, and, yes, monsterfucking, plus opinionated reviews of everything from punk shows to hardcore porn to the new Thunder Five .45 Long Colt revolver, which got extra points because you could load it with .410 shotgun shells. This, surely, was the midnight Tom Waits-Skinny Puppy wonderland come to life, with fucking.

It’s been a lot of years, now, but Blue Blood is still going strong, with a huge website collecting the counterculture erotica from all of Amelia G and Forrest Black’s web sites, including Barely Evil, Rubber Dollies, and Gothic Sluts. What’s more, Blue Blood now offers an extensive array of message boards, turning it into a true online community.

Amelia recently lured me to a dark alley to discuss the counterculture and get cranky.”

Interview with yours truly and free gallery shot by me and Forrest Black at Eros Zine! Blue Blood hotties featured in the sexy spread include, in alphabetical order, Batty, Chaotika, Dahlia Dark, Dana Dark, Dana Dearmond, Darenzia, Justine Joli, Kellie, Lydia Lashes, Miss Trixie, Nixon, Sara X, Scar 13, Spyder, Superna, Tankboy, Vima, and Voltaire. Please check it all out. Thanks so much for the support, Eros Zine and Thomas!

If you are in Hotlanta right now, you’d best be getting ready to strap it on tonight. Blue Blood board members have already seen some shots of Kellie and Scar (and Pika) getting geared up to party. There is a new fetish magazine in the U.S. called Buckle and they are throwing a shindig tonight.

I haven’t seen the magazine yet, so I can’t swear that it is great, but they’ve got some good people on board. Buckle’s first ish featured photographer Steve Diet Goedde. Blue Blood has shared exhibit space with Steve more than once and, more importantly, he was the first person (besides Forrest Black of course) to tell me that I really needed to set up a membership site. Steve’s advice has been terrific. Buckle’s second issue featured photographer Kelly Lind and his co-conspirator makeup artist Alex LaMarsh who are responsible for a whole lot of sets on BlueBlood.com. We’re very excited that issue number three of Buckle feature’s Blue Blood’s own Scar 13 on the cover. Blue Blood hotties are covergirls. The shot is by photographer Brian Bothwell who model Kerry Scarey tells me got his first magazine credit ever when I chose an image he shot of her to print in Swag magazine.

So it seems like Buckle Magazine should be of interest to Blue Blood folks. My only reservation about it, aside of course from not having seen it yet, is that I’ve seen a lot of statements online to the effect that Buckle is going to blow Marquis and Skin Two out of the water in the States. While I’m genuinely thrilled to see another magazine outlet for work and people I like, I’m not thrilled by hostile competition between people who should be working together for a common good. I’m biased perhaps because Forrest Black and I have provided content (photography, writing, columns, cover, etc.) for the last twenty issues of Marquis. I’m biased perhaps because, although my writing had already been published all over the world when Skin Two first published me, Skin Two was the very first magazine (besides Blue Blood of course) to publish photography by Forrest Black and yours truly. I’m hoping the competitive-sounding statements aren’t actually coming from the Buckle folks. Given who has been involved so far, I’m guessing and hoping that Buckle will have what it takes to be cool because it is cool and not because it is more something or other than existing major fetish publications.

So the jury is still out, but some hella hot babes are going to be performing at the Buckle Ball tonight. So go shake your booty at the Jungle Club right now, if you are in Atlanta, Georgia. Check Buckle out and watch for more coverage of what they are up to.

I get a lot of inquiries about my scars. I proudly display them and flaunt the name on Scar13.com, so it is no wonder people are curious. Here is an explanation, for everyone who was wondering but thought they would offend me by asking :-)

All of my scars are self inflicted. When I was younger I was the epitome of troubled youth, very unhappy and very manic-depressive. I took any pain I had in my life out on myself. By the time I was thirteen, I was cutting myself, not to the degree of scarring but mostly for the physical sensation. It is a distraction, you see. When I was in pain or bleeding, I never thought about what I was really feeling emotionally.

Long story short, I eventually got through this stage in my life. It took a lot of self realization though, and a lot of internal struggling. It was habit to hurt myself after so many years of doing it. One day after I had hit rock bottom. I had started using drugs more than recreationally and was cutting myself deep enough that I had scars up and down my thighs and on my left arm. I noticed that children and dogs on the street would avoid me. My family was scared of me, not in the way that they didn’t still visit with me, but in the way where they didn’t know who I was anymore. My friends didn’t even bother to call.

My world had become one in which I was isolated from anything beautiful because I had surrounded myself with ugliness. Seriously, though, the animals and the children were what snapped me out of it. My whole life I had always been able to get a smile out of a child and dogs would walk right up to me to be pet. All of the sudden I was projecting such negative energy that both shunned me. It may sound trivial, but that is what made me change myself.

I sobered up with the help of my mom and my friend Sal. I stopped cutting myself. It was a decision, not a coincidence. It was hard to do but not as much of a struggle as a new state of mind. I decided that I wanted to be a more positive person, that I wanted to bring people happiness.

Now I am rarely unhappy. I get frusterated and discouraged by life, of course, but I remain positive and realize that everything is temporary, and the bad times will pass. I wake up often and think how lucky I am to have all the beautiful friends I have, a well paying job and the opportunity to travel sometimes. I honestly believe that I am luckier than most people on the planet.

So, to everyone who wants to know if I am promoting self mutilation or glamourizing pain, the answer is no. I think everyone goes through a time in their life when they struggle with depression, mine just happens to be displayed physically. My scars are a reminder that I can get through anything. I am not trying to encourage anyone to hurt themselves, quite the contrary. I got through the shitty part of my life and came out a positive, happy person in the end, and I hope anyone out there struggling with depression problems will see that and have hope that they can do the same. It may sound cheesy but I am half hippie and half goth, and the hippie side of me says a positive outlook can make a huge difference.

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The author is the star of Scar13.com