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?

I see it as, not only a given, but maybe even a goal that things I enjoy in a fringe environment will be picked up by the larger society. The problems come when the overculture, in the process of co-opting something cool, tries to destroy the naturally existing subculture and the people most dedicated to that culture, in order to replace it all with something more easily managed and controlled. The problems come when the marketing shifts from spin to bald-faced lies. The problems come when no one appreciates art without a backstory and the market becomes used to the perfection of fake backstory. It seems like modern press is often more comfortable presenting a tidy and wholly false PR tall tale than presenting something real and true. Part of the reason for this is that modern audiences are often more comfortable reading tidy and wholly false PR tall tales. Real life tends to be more complicated and harder to get your head around.

I could like Avril Lavigne if she were presented as essentially a cute blonde actress in a larger movie. Instead, her managers insult everyone’s intelligence by getting a stylist to put Avril in a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and having her publicist tell the world the actress is inspired by David Bowie (but neglecting to tell the girl playing the precocious punk songstress role that Bowie does not rhyme with Maui.) Just try and find music magazine press presenting anything remotely true about the teamwork creation of Avril Lavigne. I don’t know if the magazines fear lack of access to stars their audiences want to read about or if they fear legal reprisals or if it is all just some sort of gentlemen’s agreement, but certain specific pieces of truth have more trouble getting out there as overculture chews up subculture.

I’ve been debating with myself whether or not to mention what got edited out of the most recent interview Eros Zine did with yours truly. I appreciate what Eros Zine does for a variety of scenes and I adore EZ’s editor Thomas Roche who did the interview. And I very much appreciate the support (and fun times!) both have given to both me and Blue Blood over the years. I’ve decided to mention part of what was expurgated because I feel like this one small piece was important. Before I do, however, I want to make it very clear that publications such as Rolling Stone and the LA Weekly, with presumably larger legal budgets, have also cut pieces about the world of supposed altporn apparently due to legal concerns. So it is not unusual that Eros Zine’s legal department insisted on cutting a number of comments. (I promised Thomas I would be clear that it was legal and not editorial who required the cuts.) Journalists always want to know my opinion about adult video and the so-called altporn sites I’m supposed to consider competitive. But apparently what I have to say is just too dangerous to actually print.

Assuming that Eros Zine’s lawyers are essentially sensible, I just want to post for posterity the portion which was cut which contained shoutouts to people who deserve some credit. The rest can remain on the cutting room floor for now.

Some of the directors who might object to the current shameless pretension that punk art porn was just invented are Gregory Dark, David Aaron Clark, Nick Zedd, Justice Howard, Michael Ninn, Antonio Passolini, Stephen Sayadian, Richard Kern, and I’m really just scratching the surface with that list. (VCA and Vivid will be trying to get them all under exclusive contract by this time tomorrow. If they want to thank me for the suggestions, they can send checks payable to Blue Blood at 8033 Sunset Blvd #4500, West Hollywood, CA 90046. Or show me some quality product. Screeners are accepted at that address as well. My mind is open and I’m still a journalist.)

I worried about being potentially helpful to outsider corporations by giving shoutouts to people who deserve them, but I decided that I wanted to take the high road because I think it makes one a better person to give credit where it is due. Unfortunately, the legal folks worried about my commentary on my concerns about said corporations using my shoutouts as free consulting.

The biggest challenge of having sort of imperialist types come into a community is, not just to keep them from pushing out the native peoples, but also to keep the native peoples from simply becoming assimilated by the invaders. I’m certainly not immune, although I guess I’ve got more of a rebel/revolutionary mentality than many. I don’t think anyone is immune. (I just came from visiting a Native American art history museum, so please forgive the analogies.) I’m not personally what anyone would consider left wing and I definitely don’t believe cashing a check from a large corporation is intrinsically bad.

Full disclosure: Hustler owns VCA. I’ve not only worked for Hustler, but I’ve stated in public and in writing on numerous occasions that I felt they were the best of the big adult publishing houses, all of which I have done projects for. Vivid does not, to the best of my knowledge, do magazines, so I’ve never worked with them, but there are plenty of photos floating around the net featuring yours truly drinking and eating with with people who work at both Hustler and Vivid. I really like some of those people and think they are good folks.

I’m not sure precisely where one ought to draw the line, but I definitely think it should be drawn before invaders get to assume control of our opportunities, re-write history, and take away our language. There is nothing wrong with doing a lucrative gig for a large corporation. So much the better if the gig is something fun and interesting. But there really ought to be some wiggle room between accepting some money and accepting total annihilation of one’s self-actualization, culture, and ideals. I guess I’m just an optimist.