The BlueBlood VIP just passed one hundred thousand images with a series Forrest Black and I shot of an OG Blue Blood hottie from the magazine days. Blue Blood began in print sixteen years ago in the suburbs of Washington, DC, in the basement of a Maryland punk rock group house called New Cambodia.
I had previously done the BLT ::: Black Leather Times antisocial punk humor zine in a Virginia punk rock group house called Cambodia and I was ready to do something glossier and with more reach than BLT’s 2,000 copy print run and mostly local circulation. I don’t think I realized how much I was biting off or that it would eventually take a whole two car garage to house all the Blue Blood subscription magazines for any given issue while a pizza party of my friends feverishly stuffed envelopes and boxes in our unfurnished living room. Perhaps I had faith that Blue Blood would get the attention is has in press from everyone from The New York Times, Penthouse, and Draculina to HBO, FOX, and MTV. But I certainly could not have expected the audience of tens of millions of people the internet has brought.
It was extra meaningful to me and Forrest Black to have OG magazine covergirl Cherry Jason and her real life lover Ledgrey featured in the brand new series which took BlueBlood.com over the 100k mark. That is a whole lot of beautiful on-topic images, by a lot of creative photographers, shooting a lot of flamboyant people. I naturally still have a lot of friends in the DC area and generally get back mostly for weddings and similar occasions, but it’s also fun to check out how the club portion of the DC scene Blue Blood came out of is doing. This time out, Forrest Black and I went clubbing with Cherry and Ledgrey and pals and shot them over at their place.
Cherry is a dancer and Ledgrey is a banker and their place is in pretty much the most perfect, sought-after, convenient location in all of Washington, DC. Cherry and Ledgrey have such a wonderful energy, so we ended up with a bit of a gothic punk From Here to Eternity vibe in this series and the overall feel is just what we all wanted it to be.
The original Blue Blood magazine in print always opened with an entertainment section where we covered music, events, books, and all sorts of cool stuff. Pretty much like BlueBlood.net. Then there would be a number of short stories from big name genre fiction authors and a number of photo sets featuring exclusively real life couples doing what they would genuinely do whether or not there was a camera there. Now that we have digital cameras and the internet, the world is a different place and so we’ve added solo hottie sets to the mix, but, where BlueBlood.net is the digital incarnation of the magazine’s entertainment section, the hot stuff which made up the rest of the magazine resides on BlueBlood.com now in the VIP section. This way each sort of content is in its proper place to be viewed most conveniently.
Although naturally the history is important for a brand founded in 1992 like Blue Blood, let me break it down with a bit less history. BlueBlood.com features more than 100,000 erotic photos, including our world famous signature couples sets, and erotic fiction by some of the best genre writers in the world. BlueBlood.net features nightlife galleries, babe galleries, social critique, music videos, interviews with interesting people, book reviews, movie tidbits, comics info, television news, and entertainment journalism in general. To break it down even more simply:
BlueBlood.NET = SFW entertainment site
BlueBlood.COM = NSFW erotic site
BlueBlood.net and BlueBlood.com are intended for the same sorts of intelligent, independent thinkers, who enjoy the road less traveled, with lifestyles which are flamboyant, offbeat, and beyond the average person’s experience. Blue Blood in print used to be called The Trade Mag of Cool because Blue Blood’s audience is unusual, made up of tastemakers, the first in each of their respective scenes to know about and share new things, people who are just going to be more cool and creative than the norm.
One of the times it first became really apparent to me that a Blue Blood audience is really above and beyond, we were hanging out in New Orleans and I offered comp copies of the magazine to someone who worked for Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. NIN’s album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life, so I was jazzed at the idea of passing along my work to someone like that. His assistant was all excited, but, when he looked at the cover, he was like, oh, Trent already has that issue.
After sixteen years, it is more difficult to get a rise out of me. I know a lot of rockstars and, at this point, I am often reluctant to interact in any way whatsoever with anyone whose work I love. My fear is that a negative personal interaction with the artist will reduce my pleasure in the art. At Blue Blood, we approach our shoots, especially our couples shoots, as a very collaborative process, so there is a lot of discussion of what will be shown. I remember the first time Forrest Black and I worked with Cherry Jason in the 90’s, she totally made us both blush. Shooting her this time, if anything, it was the other way around.
Sixteen years is a long time. Sometimes I rail against the things in the world which I either can’t change or haven’t changed yet. But I’m awfully happy with where Blue Blood is at sweet sixteen. As a big William Gibson fan, perhaps I could have imagined in 1992 what Blue Blood would look like in 2009, but I can’t say that I did. The plan was pretty much do a bunch of cool art projects for the community and wait for new technology to be invented to make the whole thing viable.
Sixteen years. Dozens of Blue Blood parties. Hundreds of stories. Thousands of articles. Tens of millions of readers. Getting to meet and work with so many cool people in so many walks of life. And now over one hundred thousand images in the BlueBlood VIP! Not that I didn’t work and sacrifice for it, but, on a good day, I am truly humbled and grateful for getting to have the life I have had so far. And today is a good day.
On my birthday, two days ago, Anders Manga released X’s & The Eyes, his fifth studio album on Vampture Records. The first single “There Will Be Blood” is doing well on the European charts already. I swear I am moving back to Europe one of these days, just for the music.
In the United States-based events department, Anders Manga will be kicking off the U.S. tour with a co-headlining show at Dracula’s Ball in Philadelphia with a band called KHZ. Some people erroneously seem to believe that the regular Dracula’s Ball event is not happening this year, but it absolutely is happening. The record label Dancing Ferret Discs, also managed by Dracula’s Ball promoter DJ Ferret, will be shuttering its doors in November, but the events will continue. Hope that clears up any confusion.
Go check out the Anders Manga show and more, if you are in the Philly area. It is important to support creative people who actually come out of the scene.
A long long time ago, in a land far far from here, I found myself in abrupt need of a place to live. After approximately five years in Connecticut, my parents convinced my lovelorn and underemployed self that I should come stay with them for a while in part of Northern Virginia which is really a suburb of Washington, DC. I think they maybe thought I would get into some kind of government work, which, in a way, I eventually did for a while. But one of the problems with being a prodigy is that you are never quite on the same playing field as everyone else. I graduated from college without being legal to drink in America. When I got to the DC area, I thought I might apply to work for the FBI. I liked the idea of a job which required intelligence and education, which also involved learning how to use all sorts of weaponry and getting paid to stay fit. Only I did not meet their minimum age requirement. I signed up to take the GMAT for entrance to business school, but my father was pissy that day and wouldn’t drive me. After getting into an accident years prior, I was not on their insurance, so I couldn’t drive myself. I often wonder how different my life would be now if I had just figured out how to put together the seventy bucks or whatever a cab would have been and taken the test. It hadn’t seemed like the sort of activity I could have asked a friend to help with in the early morning.
The sort of activity I could get a ride to was generally a science fiction convention or a punk show. There was a guy named Steve who I met at a con and got to know largely because he lived in the same area as my parents and was willing to drive me places like that. He and I always had a great time together out on the town and quickly became friends for real. So, when my parents abruptly suggested I move within the next day, he was who I called to help me. I was nursing a terrible cold with the hope of getting entirely well in time for a New Years con. My mom had received word that she would be stationed in Brazil and a snot-spewing daughter with an inappropriate wardrobe and funny-colored hair seemed like it might be nonideal adornment for selling their house. It probably didn’t help that, because they had taught me to be unashamed, I never thought to hide my inappropriate reading material kept in shelves in the garage. I think my dad had decided not to buy some house, partly because they’d had a kid around my age lying around in a way he found unappealing. To this day, although I am close with my parents, I do not know if they actually intended me to get out of their house in 24 hours or if they simply lacked the faith that I could meet a reasonable deadline. They certainly offered me extra time when Steve and I were clearly going to manage to get all my stuff into storage within the day. I was blowing my nose with one hand and packing boxes with the other, but we made it. Steve and I made it to the New Years festivities too.
So I went to sleep on the living room couch at Steve’s place and we set about looking for a great house to live in. It was surprisingly difficult to find a place which would rent anything decent to unrelated individuals. As time dragged on without us finding a place, my friend Johnny gave me a room he was sort of renting to stay in. I say sort of renting because he had agreed to live there but decided he wasn’t really nuts about who his housemates would be and the location was kind of far out from the city. So he had paid without moving in. My friend Julia from college was paying rent on a super-expensive place in Washington, DC proper and found herself suffering trying to afford it. Even though all four of us were gainfully employed, we found that most landlords in the area would not even show places to unrelated groups of people. It seemed to me that what was functionally a four income family ought to have been a better bet for landlords than a single income one with kids, but people who owned rental properties did not see it my way.
So, like the main characters in the BBC America show Spaced, the four of us eventually pretended that I was engaged to Steve and my cousin Julia was engaged to Johnny and we were serious couples. I don’t recall exactly how Julia and I were supposed to be related, but, after coming up with this egregious fiction, we quickly found a spacious and easily affordable townhouse. Best of all, the landlord was a futurist who, for sexually harassing the previous tenants, had been court-ordered not to visit his own properties.
If you have not seen the incredibly entertaining BBC comedy Spaced yet, I deeply suggest that you rectify the situation. Blue Blood readers are probably all familiar with actor/writer Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead. Simon Pegg and actor/writer Jessica Hynes together created Spaced. In fact, Simon Pegg got the idea for Shaun of the Dead while working on an episode of Spaced where his character plays a zombie-killing video game. Simon Pegg has described the Spaced show as “a cross between The Simpsons, The X-Files, and Northern Exposure.” Despite numerological references to the X-Files and a lot of pop culture references in general, the show most reminded me of a more realistic, modern version of The Young Ones.
The basic storyline revolves around comic book store assistant manager and aspiring artist Tim Bisley, played by Simon Pegg, and perennially fired employee and aspiring writer Daisy Steiner, played by Jessica Hynes. The two of them meet in a coffeehouse, read the housing listings together, and eventually pose as a professional couple in order to get approved for a lease on a comfy apartment at a great price. Their new place is ninety pounds a week. (In current dollar terms, I think the conversion rate would place this price at around $33,000 monthly, but the show first aired in 1999.) Their new home comes with the tortured artist Brian downstairs and the lonely boozy landlord Marsha upstairs. There are frequent appearances from Tim Bisley’s best friend Mike, a military fanboy and aspiring soldier, and Daisy’s best friend Twist, a dry cleaner clerk and aspiring fashion designer. Bike messenger and night club king Tyres bicycles through from time to time as well.
The show is laugh out loud funny, but it is also about a time in your life when you are in the process of becoming. Pretty much everybody, except for the divorced landlord with lost Olympic dreams and a daughter who hates her, is an aspiring something. And who gets their dreams and who settles and who enjoys their personal outcome is still all in the future. This series will speak, on many levels, to anyone who has ever done anything creative and lived in a group situation.
When my faux-fiancee Steve and my faux-cousin Julia and her faux-fiancee Johnny and I moved in together, we were all at that stage. I was a stagehand and aspiring writer. Johnny was a plumber and aspiring sex symbol. Julia was a production artist and aspiring graphic artist. Today, I am a writer, although I’ve certainly missed a lot of milestones I set for myself. Johnny was a sex symbol, at least in the DC punk and fandom scene of the time. If reality shows had existed at the time, he would have been global. I’m in touch with Johnny today via LiveJournal and, even though he was badly injured in an accident last year (he was hit by a cop), I’d still cast him now, if I were putting together a reality show. I’m in touch with Julia today via Facebook and she got additional degrees in architecture and works in a field which is one of the highest forms of graphic arts today. Oddly, although I would have described Steve as my closest friend in the group at the time, I don’t really know what he is doing now and I can’t think of what, if anything, he wanted to be when he grew up. From his well-decorated leather jacket to his obscure music collection, he seemed very cool and creative to me at the time. I remember thinking he should aspire to do stand-up comedy, but he never agreed on that point.
Some of the humor on the show Spaced comes from the fact that Tim Bisley and Daisy Steiner have told their landlord they are a long-time couple. But they are not. Only Daisy is more and more interested in having the story be true. For a long time, I thought that Steve eventually couldn’t be friends with me because he (and admittedly many of our friends) had thought he and I would eventually be engaged for real and not just to get a place to live. I did ask him once if he thought we should sleep together. His response was to drop acid and, while still tripping, tell me he was too worried about jeopardizing our friendship which was the most important thing to him. In retrospect, I realize that he was also really freaked out that I started Blue Blood magazine in print. He was one of the coolest guys I knew in DC, but all of a sudden I was meeting all of his heroes. I wanted his approval very much and had thought I was celebrating things he was interested in and would be excited about. Worse, I think he actually had some Puritanical objections to the erotic subject matter. He started freaking out about bizarre things like being afraid I would invite “clients” to house parties and expect him to be nice to them. We’d had a great run, but the party was going to have to move. Maybe I should have asked Steve to drive me to take that GMAT test after all, even if it was boring to him and early in the morning, and my whole life would be different.
I enjoy the show Spaced partly because it makes me remember some extremely fun times I had at a very carefree and adventurous point in my life. Spaced is one of the most real shows I have ever seen, in terms of my own personal life experience. It is very rare that I see characters on television or in movies who seem exactly like people I would actually know. Spaced is that rare exception. I highly recommend picking up the new Spaced DVD set or adding BBC America to your cable lineup.
In the early days of American history, the founding fathers were a little fuzzy about which day of the first week in July they wanted to celebrate American independence. In 1778, General George Washington, who became the first president of the United States in 1789, saw to it that his soldiers got double rations of rum for the event. In 1776, John Adams, who became the second president of the United States in 1797, and was recently commemorated in a decent HBO miniseries, said the occasion “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations.” Over time, the holiday has been more or less formalized and somewhat regional. Parts of the American South refused to celebrate July 4th for some time because they were pissy about losing the Civil War. Well, in a way, everyone loses a civil war, but, in this instance, I mean lost in the battle-followed-by-formally-admitting-defeat way and not in the personal and societal loss way. It was actually not until 1941 that Independence Day was formalized as a paid federal holiday on the 4th of July and celebrated all through these 50 states.
Even when I worked on government gigs, back when I lived in the Washington, DC area, I was always a contractor and I don’t think I have ever gotten a paid holiday from any job I have ever held. Apparently, being my own boss is no improvement, as I’m making myself work today. At some point this evening, I’m going to go up on my roof with some family and friends though. During the day, I can see the Hollywood sign from my roof, but, on fireworks-oriented occasions, my roof is one of the best views in town. Los Angeles is very spread out, so there tends to be no one single awesome fireworks display. So I enjoy my 360 degree view of many smaller displays.
I think maybe next July I will try to be in Washington, DC for the occasion because I’ve never seen an Independence Day fireworks display which rivals what the nation’s capitol does on the Mall in the District of Columbia. Although I was impressed when Vegas did New Years up over-the-top one year by demolishing a hotel as part of the fireworks, I think we’d all prefer it if no buildings were blown up as part of the DC fireworks today, however. So we’ll just leave that sort of celebration for the New Year in Las Vegas.
For now, could someone please pass me some charred food, give me the opportunity to say ooh and ah, and assure me a double ration of rum. Strictly for patriotic reasons, you understand. George Washington would have wanted it that way.
The BlueBlood VIP just passed one hundred thousand images with a series Forrest Black and I shot of an OG Blue Blood hottie from the magazine days. Blue Blood began in print sixteen years ago in the suburbs of Washington, DC, in the basement of a Maryland punk rock group house called New Cambodia. 
Of course, although we have a safe for work free photo gallery of Cherry and Ledgrey on BlueBlood.net, you’ll have to head over to BlueBlood.com and pony up a few bucks to see the naughty bits. 
