So right now FUSE is playing a block of Nelly videos. I find Nelly ridiculously hot. Hot like sexy, not hot like kindling. I’m not even sure if I like his music, but I certainly enjoy his videos. They’ve got productions values! (Bonus cool points to anyone who gets the movie reference there.)
So I was sitting there, letting the purple hair dye set in my hair, watching the Hot In Here video, and I suddenly realized that at least part of the video was shot inside a particular nightclub on Hollywood Blvd. Specifically, it was shot inside the Basque nightclub a couple blocks from me which burned down a day ago. Holy firemen of irony, Batman!
I was all trying to go to sleep at like six in the morning and I couldn’t figure out WTF was up with all the helicopters. I mean, my neighborhood has been a little weird lately, but this was just ridiculous. Turned out they were all the news copters shooting the fire and the literally two hundred and ten firemen and countless arson investigators and other officials dealing with the fire. Apparently, the building’s core was super old and had like poisonous resins or something on some of the burning wood. Not the best air quality where I live in Los Angeles for the past day.
But I really think the copters should have been blasting Nelly singing Hot In Here while they flew over my place. That would have totally made it all okay.
I did not have a television for many years. Then, when I had one, it was only used to play videotapes; I didn’t even know for sure whether it failed to get reception or I’d never tried to get any on there. In the process of getting myself the Hell out of Georgia, I hocked the aforementioned television and used the proceeds for moving expenses (paying off a truck tow driver not to tow away the moving truck cab with almost everything I was moving inside.) I did not miss my hocked television.
But then they invented TiVo, On Demand, UnBox, instant download, renting DVDs by mail, and high quality TV shows with long, complex, and well-written story arcs. My two biggest objections to television in the past were always that (1) I couldn’t see planning my schedule around when a television show was on and (2) I’m not exactly the average person, so I was pretty sure that no show aimed at the lowest common denominator was likely to appeal to me.
The Sopranos sucked me in on DVD and I watched the first few years in an absolute orgy of television consumption. Even though The Sopranos often dropped whatever storyline had made me push play on the next episode, the show was still a whole lot of cuts above what I thought of television as capable of being. Prior to The Sopranos, my mobster fetish had only been satisfied by movies and real life.
Since then, I’ve come to strongly prefer the format of the long cable drama over all other video media. It’s funny that I don’t even really know what the name for it ought to be, but it is definitely a new structure …
I handed Gene Simmons his laundry once. This was more than ten years ago, so my memory is a bit murky, but, as I recall, I may have both handed him his clean laundry and picked up his dirty laundry to run back to the stadium. It was one of my last gigs as a stagehand. I was a runner. A runner is someone who will work for stagehand wages but has a working and ideally presentable car. At the time, I had already mostly transitioned into doing contract design work, corporate presentations and that sort of thing which paid better. My car actually was not terribly presentable, but some of the staff for the KISS tour recalled a nicer-looking (but less reliable) car I had owned at the time of an earlier gig and they liked me. I took the job because they had specifically requested if “the girl with the kinky zines” was still available. Plus working at a rock stadium was generally pretty sociable and fun, especially at a job which, unlike many I’d done there, was unlikely to cause injury.
I was never a member of the KISS Army or anything and my parents felt the KISS logo was unacceptable Nazi regalia and boys who wanted me to like KISS (and them) had always played me “Beth”. I guess guys always think the chick will like the power ballad better than the rocker, but it always struck me as really ill-conceived to try to seduce a girl with a song about blowing off your girlfriend. (Talk about “Lick My Love Pump” being in the saddest key!) I did think KISS had some fairly listenable music, but I was not crazy familiar with them either.
I live in Los Angeles, so it is probably no surprise that a lot of people I know are making resolutions to either become stars or achieve bigger stardom.
It doesn’t seem like it is much fun to be famous in 2008 though. Entertainment Weekly’s entire year in review issue was all about how much it sucks to have the eyes of the world on you. When I recently went to my OB/GYN, I was reading either Esquire or GQ in his waiting room and there was an interview with Michael J. Fox. The interviewer asked him what his thoughts were on like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or maybe all three. Michael J. Fox was a young Hollywood star in the 80’s, but he still has a pretty squeaky clean rep. Perhaps because he played a wholesome character on TV for a while. At any rate, his response was that he was soooooooooooooo glad the whole tabloid and paparazzi thing did not exist when he was young because it was his opinion that he did a lot of the same dumb things and they just were not recorded for posterity.
When I was a teenager, I lived overseas, mostly in countries where (a) it was legal for me to drink and (b) I had diplomatic immunity so what was legal was not that much of a factor. I am pretty certain that I would cringe at photos and video taken in many of the situations I got myself into. But there aren’t any. Actually, I wish there were more photos of me growing up. But the point is that I could be young and experimental and even a little wild, without it going down on my permanent record.
I had dropped the luscious Michelle Aston off at Bar 107 in downtown Los Angeles before, but had never gone inside. For some reason, I had assumed it was a teensy hole in the wall dive. I figured I’d stop in anyway to help Julie Simone celebrate the 12th DVD Release by her company, Julie Simone Productions.
I was happily surprised when the inside of Bar 107 turned out to be larger than expected, with red plush booths and a small stage in the back. The bar could have had more of a selection, especially in the sparkling water department, but it was still very cool.
Julie Simone’s new flick, Audition, was playing on televisions mounted up high by the ceiling. I’m not sure if that violates some sort of zoning ordinance, but I always wonder about such things and the crowd was sufficiently naughty all on their own.
Luminaries in attendance included, of course, the woman of the hour in a black cocktail dress, the aforementioned Michelle Aston, Blue Blood art director and style editor Forrest Black, sexy Aiden, writer/director David Aaron Clark, KSEX and BaadMaster’s Dungeon host Mistress Genevieve, Music+TV and Aural Salvation host Rev Mitcz, and America’s Beloved Porn Journalist Gram Ponante.
Audition is written and directed by Julie Simone and features Gia Paloma, Master Liam, Krissy, Lystra, and, you guess it — Julie Simone.
Gritty nicely-distressed design movie promo bondage posters were on hand for revelers seeking a collectible keepsake. The promo poster implication is that Audition is like Captivity with less ick and more sex, but that’s just going on the nice …
I realize that Glaxo doesn’t want to be associated with a person like Paris Hilton, but she’s being cheated out of a great opportunity to use her popularity for good, and to rehab her image a bit.
Yes, I think PH should become a celeb spokesperson for Valtrex, and should do public outreach on behalf of genital herpes sufferers.
(Seriously, it’s not like she has any sense of personal shame, and the jail thing doesn’t work for anyone. The last guy who came out of jail with his image improved was Mandela, and he went in a hero.)
I’m envisioning a very lo-tek trashy glam viral-style campaign, if you will, with street teams pasting up mysterious flyers that ask, “Is Paris Burning?”
Fueled by Ramen recording artist Cobra Starship is a very modern band. They are currently on tour, opening for Fall Out Boy, along with fellow openers Paul Wall, +44, and The Academy is . . . Cobra Starship’s name sounds like a cross between TheCobrasnake and late Jefferson Airplane. They’ve got a song on the Snakes on a Plane and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie soundtracks, ringtones available, a Glamour Kills clothing endorsement, and impressively pimped out profiles on all the good social networking sites. They even (I’m sure ironically) cover Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” The CS site itself contains a sort of pseudo-ironic “typical” rockstar history, which is probably actually based on true events but liberally gilded. Band leader Gabe Saporta’s animal familiar-dictated mission is apparently teaching “hipsters to not take themselves so seriously and by telling emo kids to stop being pussies.”
I guess Cobra Starship’s genre is Self-Deprecating Post-Emo? I don’t know. The salient point for Blue Blood readers is that Xanthia Doll appears dancing her yellow-clad booty off in their new video for their long-windedly-named single “Send My Love To The Dancefloor, I’ll See You In Hell (Hey Mister DJ)” from their album, While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets. Xanthia says, “I’m so happy I’m in it! It was a lot of fun to be a part of! Just look for red hair and a bright yellow jacket and you’ll see me! Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!”
Xanthia’s positive attitude is a lot of fun, but I have to admit that I like my rockstars to truly own what they do. If I were more familiar with modern emo, apparently Cobra Starship’s Gabe tapped a …
