Bold what’s you, or what you like, or what you’ve done. My personality: I’m loud only when I’m high. I’m obnoxious. I’m sarcastic. I’m cocky. I cry easily. I have a bad temper. For the most part, I don’t like people. more

Bold what’s you, or what you like, or what you’ve done.
My personality:

I’m loud only when I’m high.
I’m obnoxious.
I’m sarcastic.
I’m cocky.
I cry easily.
I have a bad temper.
For the most part, I don’t like people.
I’m easy to get along with.
I like to fight.
I have more enemies than friends.
I’ve smoked.
I’ve smoked weed.
I drink coffee.
I clean my room daily.

My appearance
I wear makeup.
I wear a piece of jewelry at all times.
I wear contacts.
I wear glasses.
I’ve had braces.
I have braces.
I change my hair color often.
I straighten my hair often.
My ears are pierced.
I have small feet.

Relationships:
I’m in a relationship now.
I’m single.
I’m crushin’.
I’ve missed an ex before.
I’m always scared of being hurt.
An ex has physically abused me at least once.
I’ve told someone I loved them when I didn’t.
I’ve told someone I didn’t love them when I did.
I’ve been in love more than two times.
I believe in love at first sight.
I believe lust is more important than love.

Friendships:
I have a best friend.
I have at least ten friends.
I’ve gotten a phone call in the last 48 hours from a friend.
I’ve beaten up a friend.
I’ve been in a serious fight with a friend.
I can trust at least five people with my life.

Experiences:
I’ve been on a plane.
I’ve been on a train.
I’ve left the state/province.
Someone close to me has died.
I’ve taken a taxi.
I’ve taken a city bus.
I’ve taken a school bus.
I’ve gone bungee jumping.
I’ve made a speech.
I’ve been in some sort of club.
I’ve won an award.
I’ve spent 24 hours on the computer straight.
I’ve been in a physical fight.

Music:
I listen to country.
I listen to pop.
I listen to techno.
I listen to rock.
I’m one of those people who play songs repeatedly until I hate it.
I hate the radio.
I download music.
I buy CD’s.

Television:
I spend at least six hours a day watching television.
I watch soap operas daily.
I’m in love with Days Of Our Lives.
I’ve seen and like The OC.
I’ve seen and like One Tree Hill.
I’ve seen and like America’s Next Top Model.
I’ve seen and like Popular.
I’ve seen and like House.
I’ve seen and like 24.
I’ve seen and like CSI.
I’ve seen and like Everwood.

Family Life:
I get along with both of my parents.
My biological parents are still together.
I have at least one brother.
I have at least one sister.
I have at least one step brother/sister.
I have at least one half brother/sister.
I’ve been kicked out of the house.
I’ve ran away from my home.
I’ve sworn at my parents.
I’ve made my parents cry.
I’ve lied to my parents.
I’ve lied to my parents about where I am.
I’ve lied to my parents about what I’m doing.
I’ve lied to my parents so I’d be allowed out.
I’ve walked out when I’ve been grounded.

Hair:
I’ve been brown.
I’ve had streaks.
I’ve cut my hair in the past year.
I’ve dyed my hair in the past year.
I’ve been blonde.
I’ve had black.
I’ve been red.
I’ve been light brown.
I’ve been medium brown.
I’ve had purple/pink.
I’ve been blue/green.
I’ve gotten my hair thinned.
I use conditioner.
I’ve used silk therapy.
I’ve used hot oil treatments.
I’ve curled my hair.
I’ve straightened my hair.
I’ve ironed my hair.
I’ve braided my hair.
I’ve had/want(ed) dreadlocks.

School:
I’ve thrown something at a teacher.
I’ve yelled at a teacher.
I’ve been suspended.
I’ve had an in-school suspension.
I’ve been sent to the principal’s office.
I’ve walked out of class.
I’ve skipped an entire day of school.
I’ve skipped a whole month of one certain class.
I’ve failed a test.
I’ve cheated on a test.
I’ve helped someone else cheat on a test.
I’ve failed Art.
I’ve failed P.E.
I’ve failed Math.
I’ve failed another class.
A teacher has called my parents.
I’ve been caught skipping.



<3

Evan Williams describes himself as "an American entrepreneur, originally a farm boy from Nebraska, who's been very lucky in business and life." This statement might be true if he was merely responsible for one giant leap in the Web 2.0 world. However, as someone partly responsible for two... more

Evan Williams describes himself as "an American entrepreneur, originally a farm boy from Nebraska, who's been very lucky in business and life." This statement might be true if he was merely responsible for one giant leap in the Web 2.0 world. However, as someone partly responsible for two monumental jumps forward, one has to conclude that he's being over-modest by attributing his success to luck rather than his capacity for vision, tenacity and good judgment.

In 1999, Pyra Labs, a company Williams co-founded, launched Blogger, a web-based service that put easy to use blog publishing tools in the hands of the masses and helped fuel the proliferation of the web log phenomenon. The company was sold to Google for an undisclosed sum in 2003. Williams however had caught the start-up bug, and left Google the following year to co-found Odeo.com, an aggregator and search engine for podcasts. The Odeo concept never really took off, but a side project started at the company did. The original five-character SMS shortcode-friendly name for that venture was Twttr.

Odeo was reorganized and re-branded as Obvious Corp. in 2006, and Twitter, which had added a couple of vowels to its name, became the center of attention. After winning SXSW's Web Award in March 2007, Twitter was spun off as an entity unto itself. Since then, Twitter has grown exponentially, with usership increasing by 900% this past year. The site has leapt over giants like LiveJournal and Linkedin in terms of monthly visits, rising from #22 (in Jan '08) to #3 (in Jan '09) in Compete.com's list of the Top 25 Social Networks.

Unlike other, increasingly cumbersome, social networking sites, Twitter's success lies in its simplicity. It has stayed true to its original concept: delivering brief Facebook style status updates to social groups in real-time via SMS. The service, which can also be accessed via RSS and the web, combats our propensity for digital diarrhea (which was, ironically, enabled by the likes of Blogger), by asking one simple question and limiting posts in response to 140 cellphone-friendly characters.

We tracked down Evan Williams (Twitter's CEO as of October 2008) -- via Twitter of course -- to ask him about the rules he tweets by, the people he follows, and his vision for the service's future.


Nicole Powers: Twitter has progressed way beyond the "What are you doing?" concept and has become a hub for group dialog and a place to let random thoughts fly. Have you thought about replacing that question?


Evan Williams: Yes, we have thought about that. It's a question about the question, because it worked really well to make Twitter approachable, and clear, how to use it. This was something I saw when I worked on Blogger for a bunch of years, we didn't have any direction at all for people, and it was this intimidating thing...kind of like a blank sheet of paper, so we tried to make Twitter very focused. Just say what you're doing, it doesn't have to be profound, or interesting, or anything. But, obviously, it's also limiting. Most users get beyond that and realize just from observing how people use it that they don't have to take that terribly literally. But in some ways I think it trivializes what's going on, and it does limit people's perceptions -- especially new users I think. We're still struggling with that. I wouldn't be surprised if we change it at some point, but we haven't made any decisions.

NP: Have you any thoughts on what you'd change it to?

EW: My favorite option is "What's happening?" That sounds a little too like we're trying to be hip, but I think the most accurate thing to say would be "What's happening?" Because what Twitter really is is what people are doing and what's happening around them, and some of the most interesting news cases are when people are reporting on things that are around them, or events. "What's happening?" can also apply to yourself, what you're thinking about or what's happening in the world that you're commenting on.

NP: How about a simple "Wassup?" That covers what's happening and what you're thinking.

EW: Yeah. Maybe.

NP: Because it's so new, we're still figuring out social etiquette on Twitter. What rules do you personally tweet by?

EW: I personally don't like to have a lot of rules. I'm sure I do have my own rules but I always hesitate to imply that there's any rules, because I think the beauty of Twitter is that people use it however it works for them. I think it changes depending on how many followers and what people are expecting from you. For the majority of users Twitter's very much about people that they know or people who are close to them, the friends and family type use. It's very casual. You can tweet about things that would be mundane except for the fact that you care about this person, and maybe you're interested in what they're doing at the moment. Right now I have over a hundred thousand followers so I try not to let that freak me out, because, if I did, I think I'd become much less interesting, trying to be interesting too much. So I don't know if I have any rules beyond that, but I try to just still be personable and personal and not trivial but not think about it too much.

NP: In a way "micro-blogging" is a very confusing moniker for Twitter because those that blog and tweet like yourself, know the two forms of communication have a very different feel and purpose. A blog is a more formal, well thought out thing, and Twitter takes the pressure off blogging because it really is just a thought thrown out into the world. What mental criteria do you use when you express in the different forms?

EW: They definitely overlap. One comment on the term "micro-blogging", it's not one that we've ever used to describe Twitter. We see micro-blogging as one of the many use cases for Twitter. There are people who use it very much like a blog, although blogs are used in every possible way so it's hard to even define what that means. Twittering has definitely impacted how much I blog. I hardly ever blog now, and I've blogged for years. I think, in a lot of ways they serve the same basic purpose, which is having a thought and wanting to share it with the world. The main difference for me is whether or not I want to take the time to flesh out something a little bit more on a blog, and that just comes down to the length I think.

NP: I like your less is more approach. I sort of feel that when photos went from print to jpeg, and when text went from paper to websites and blogs, in a way we became overwhelmed with a compulsion for what I call digital diarrhea. All of a sudden there were no limits imposed by cost, and we're actually learning now that we need to impose limits on ourselves, and that's a lesson that Twitter's teaching the masses with the strict 140 character count.

EW: It's something that goes very well with the fact that there's more and more voices out there, and more and more people who are publishing and saying things that are interesting to pay attention to. At least having some constraints on the verboseness of everyone's thoughts is helpful in order to tap in and listen to more voices.

NP: It's like a conversation that no one's allowed to hog.

EW: Yes. Exactly.

NP: Twitter has created a new hierarchy of celebrity. [At the time of writing] Stephen Fry, who's a relatively unknown here in the U.S., is the leading non-presidential Twitterer* (according to Twitterholic Barack Obama has the largest Twitter following). Fry is way ahead of Britney Spears for example. Are you enjoying how Twitter members have reshuffled the world order, and created one of their own?

EW: [laughs] Yes, definitely. I think it's very early, and very exciting for us to see the celebrities outside the geek world adopting it. It's really exciting with someone like Stephen; Stephen is really understanding it and using it as a medium of its own rather than just a promotional vehicle for other things.

A lot of celebrities are looking at social media, and are considering that they have to have a social media strategy, and Twitter and Facebook and all these things need to be incorporated. It'll be really interesting to see how that fleshes out over the next few months. I remember in the early days of blogging, when I was a popular blogger for the first year or two -- it was a very good sign when I became not a popular blogger and people who were much more skilled in that medium became the attraction rather than the geeks.

NP: Are there any celebs that you might not have followed in the real world that you now follow because of the way they tweet?

EW: Yeah. I don't follow many in the real world, but the ones I've been enjoying on Twitter, well Shaquille O'Neal is an interesting example. I'm not a basketball fan, in the same vein with Lance Armstrong, it's not a world I would pay much attention to, but I follow their twitters and it's interesting to see their lives and what they're talking about. Rainn Wilson is another one. Rainn plays Dwight in The Office, the U.S. version, and he's hilarious. His Twitter persona is somewhat like his character on the show. He just started but he seems to be taking to it.

NP: The way certain celebs use Twitter actually takes the power away from the paparazzi and the vacuous celebrity mags and blogs. Celebs are actually letting followers know what they're really thinking and doing, which is a genius way to combat the rumor-mill.

EW: Yes. And some have become very aware of that. Certainly Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have been talking about that aspect. It was hilarious, a couple of weeks ago Demi actually posted a picture of a paparazzi on TwitPic, completely turning the tables, and she made some jokes laughing at him.

NP: It seems like a very special time on Twitter right now, very reminiscent of the early days of MySpace, before it became commercialized. One of the beauties of Twitter right now is that you're focusing on building it and getting it right before you monetize it. As a user and a fan of your own service, do you worry what will happen once the twits invade Twitter?

EW: [laughs] I don't worry about the things that we're going to do because I think there's a lot of opportunities for monetization that actually enhance the user experience, and enhance what people are already doing. I think the dynamics are different than say a MySpace, where they sort of had to put a lot of ads on there on the pages that maybe work against the flow of what people are trying to do. With Twitter, I think there's a lot of opportunity to help people and make money at the same time.

Once of the things we've been talking about for a long time is search, and how we want to build that more and more into the product -- search is an area of course on the web that's always been highly monetizable. We don't expect Twitter search to have the same type of ads or work as well as web search, but I think when people are seeking particular information there is an opportunity to answer their queries, and there are people who want to be among the answers to their query. So monetizing search I think will make a lot of sense in the same way that Google have ads in their search that don't interfere, and in many cases help the user experience.

What I do worry about more, and we're seeing it somewhat today, is as Twitter gets bigger and bigger there are people who are trying to game the system, and basically spam it for their own gain. It gets harder and harder to deal with. Most popular properties, Google and Facebook and MySpace and everybody else, have to deal with spammers, and we are now too, and we'll have to invest more and more into that. I think that's the bigger threat...obviously I'm biased, but I don't think our own monetization efforts will be something that users reject.

NP: Your service is free, as is much of the internet. Are we getting to a point where people need to start valuing the stuff on the net? Now that we have micro-blogging should we have micro-payments for the content and services that we use?

EW: People have talked about that for years and it hasn't seemed to work for one reason or another. I think the economic climate that we're in, and getting deeper into, is definitely going to bring up these questions again. How should these things be paid for? Obviously they cost money. Advertising has been the default answer, it hasn't been the only answer, but over the short history of the web it's been the one winning answer time and time again for most mainstream services. Whether that will still be the answer -- I don't know. I tend to think that a combination of subscription and advertising probably makes sense for most services, and we see a likelihood that the same will be true for Twitter.

I think there's pretty good reasons why micro-payments for content haven't worked out that well, and, in part, it is there's just so much competition for attention -- it's still the scarcest commodity -- and there's always people who are willing to do something for free, and so you have to be really special and rare to be able to charge money, at least for content.

NP: You've recently announced a $35 million injection of venture capital. You still have a relatively small 29-person headcount, so what are you planning to spend it on?

EW: Well, we also have a good amount of money left in the bank from our last financing. But the reason the we did that, took that investment, is basically because we feel like we're just getting started, and our growth is phenomenal, and as that continues over the next few months and couple of years, our cost is definitely going to go up substantially.

We need to grow the team in a lot of ways right now. I mean it's great that we're so small but it's also painful in some scenarios, so we have pretty ambitious hiring goals across all aspects of the company. We're going to keep the majority of the people technical, and product and engineering will continue to be the bulk of the company, but we're really thinking long term.

We don't know all the ways we're going to use that money, hopefully we'll keep a lot of it in the bank. If we never need a lot of it, that's great, but in the climate we're in we don't want to assume too much, and we don't want any short term concerns to distort the potential of our long term vision, and our investors and the boards and everybody is very on board for building a very long term viable company. We need to do that step by step, and we need to invest a lot to get there.

NP: What additions and refinements would you like to see on the site?

EW: There's a ton of stuff we want to add and improve but the interesting thing is for most of Twitter's history the vast majority of our resources have gone into just keeping up with the growth. There were some fairly publicly painful scaling issues early on. Really, up until about six months ago, we had really bad reliability problems. The product has really changed very little since we launched it, and it a lot of ways that's very good.

I think simplicity is definitely key, but we think there's a ton of ways it can be enhanced. One is to make it just a lot easier, especially easier to get started. As we're seeing more and more mainstream users coming on the service, we have a lot of awareness right now but we want to get a lot better about turning that awareness into engagement. It's still way to hard when you first find out about Twitter to really make it useful and interesting -- that comes down to finding people to follow, connecting with your friends, understanding even what it does and what the concept is. There's a lot to do just on the user experience.

NP: It's interesting how you do adapt Twitter, and make it work for you. For me, the initial idea of having all these updates by cell phone horrified me, because I'm one of these people that's over-connected rather than under-connected. So the way I use it -- I don't even connect it to my phone -- but I use it as almost a ticker-tape of the collective consciousness on my computer.

EW: Do you have a client on your computer of just the website?

NP: I guess I should use a client so it automatically updates. I mean, talk about collective consciousness, today the one thing that dropped onto our Twitter radar has been TwitterFox, the Naan Studio application which does updates via Firefox.

EW: Yes, and we hear that a lot, people find how Twitter works for them, and a lot of times they love the SMS or they hate the SMS and a desktop client or an iPhone client really works for them. That's one of the beauties of it. We've been really fortunate with our third-party developers, who have built a lot of these alternative ways to experience Twitter, and they've added a lot of value. What we haven't done enough of, and this goes back to were we need to improve, is helping people discover those different ways, and really walking them through what the different options are, and just ramping them up from an uninitiated state to get them engaged.

NP: As you expand, and get more mainstream users, and perhaps less responsible users, will you have to police the site more? I know that you say you hate rules, but for example, Google have recently started more aggressively policing Blooger's content. Can you see a point where you're going to have to have a department to police in the same way other social networking sites do?

EW: I probably wouldn't use the term "policing." We already do have people dedicated to suspending accounts if they spam or are otherwise violating our terms of service. That will definitely have to continue and be a bigger part of our efforts. Part of that will be technical and algorithmic ways to discover fishy behavior and part of it will always have to be manual review.

In cases where it's clear cut and people are definitely being nefarious, then it's actually a little bit easier to deal with than when people are gaming the system in some way but are fairly legit users in other ways. For example there's what we call aggressive following. It's something a lot of people do in order to get attention. As you know when you follow someone, most people will get an email and then they'll check out your profile and those people will follow you back, out of obligation or some other reason.

NP: Right. There is this social etiquette that makes you think if they're following me I should follow them to be polite.

EW: Exactly, and we really hate people feeling obligated to follow someone, especially when that person's just following someone in order to get attention. So part of that is user behavior and the social norms that need to develop around Twitter, so people understand that they don't need to do that. And then also discourage or de-incentivize someone from doing the aggressive behavior, because I think that lessens the value of the network for everyone.

NP: You don't want it to be reduced a popularity contest, with people collecting friends but not adding to the conversation.

EW: Exactly.



*Since writing this article, Britney Spears has overtaken Stephen Fry, marking the end of an era of geek rule at Twitter.

Click HERE to sign up for a Twitter account, and follow us at: Twitter.com/SuicideGirls.

Waking up with a Taylor Swift song "I wore a dress, you wore dark grey t-shirt..." is only slightly less weird than last night when I woke up with a song from Rudolph "there's Always Tomorrow..." stuck in my head. Return to the world of the working tomorrow as a server at a fun... more

Waking up with a Taylor Swift song "I wore a dress, you wore dark grey t-shirt..." is only slightly less weird than last night when I woke up with a song from Rudolph "there's Always Tomorrow..." stuck in my head.

Return to the world of the working tomorrow as a server at a fun posh place, but start on the breakfast shift- oy, is 6 am going to come soon!

Family is fucked up, the ex called this morning while the current was here but we slept through it, and I am confused as always about the current... really digging him a lot these days, and the idea of getting further involved just to have him go to LA in the fall or me go to Singapore this or next year makes me not want to bother. Army boy is due in town in a few days and I haven't written him his "Dear John" letter yet, so he expects me to hang out which I can't with the boyfriend, esp since we are meeting the parents this week, ironically, it just fell so we are meeting his on Fri and mine on Sat, without planning for it to be a crazy weekend of family. So we will see.

Highlights of recent have included extensive callbacks for a film I like, so hopefully I will get THAT role, Liberty of London lingerie from Target, painting my bathroom a happy orange sherbet color, and my new cell phone... the ghetto version of a Blackberry or something, but it is fun!

Feel like I should be going to bed NOW in order to wake up in the morning. Wish me luck!

JEM

There was a peculiar notion going around my high school in the white bread and meatloaf suburb of Akron, Ohio where I grew up that said that bands like DEVO were “wimp rock.” But seeing DEVO at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood where I had the privilege of sitting in on the final rehearsal for their... more

There was a peculiar notion going around my high school in the white bread and meatloaf suburb of Akron, Ohio where I grew up that said that bands like DEVO were “wimp rock.” But seeing DEVO at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood where I had the privilege of sitting in on the final rehearsal for their current tour gave the lie to that. Even with several members of the band having passed sixty years old and the rest closing in quick, DEVO rocks like no other band on Planet Earth.

It’s easy to forget today just what a revelation DEVO’s first album was when it came out. For a lot of people in those days, seeing the band on Saturday Night Live on October 14th 1978 (Fred Willard was the host!) was akin to the previous generation seeing The Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. DEVO’s appearance probably launched a thousand bands that night. It literally gave me a reason to live. The soul-less imitation of “rock and roll” we were force fed in the Ohio suburbs in those days was pretty much Muzak with a beat. Then along came DEVO and nothing was ever the same again.

In 1980 they even cracked the mainstream with their top ten hit Whip It. But just a few short years later their career took several wrong turns, including co-writing a song with would-be Reagan-assassin John Hinkley Jr. and signing with a label they likened to the Titanic the way every band on it sank without a trace.

In 1995, though, a funny thing happened. Girl U Want, an obscure album track from the same LP that had produced Whip It was featured in the movie Tank Girl and all of a sudden the kids wanted to know about DEVO. The band once again donned their trademark yellow industrial waste clean-up suits (originally purchased at the MF Murdock Janitorial Supply Company in Akron, Ohio) and showed them what de-evolution was all about. For the past 14 years DEVO have been playing shows consisting mainly of their earliest material.

But now something new is on the horizon. Their first and third albums are at long last available in re-mastered versions and DEVO is on the road promoting these with a series of two-night stands across America playing the first LP in its entirety on the first night and the third LP the following evening. But what’s even more exciting DEVO is recording their first album of new material since 1990’s Smooth Noodle Maps. The results are set to come out some time next year with an even more extensive tour.

I spoke to DEVO’s front man and fellow Akron-ite Mark Mothersbaugh about all this stuff and about getting spit on by John Lennon.

Brad Warner: I’m about ten years younger than you and I grew up near Akron in Wadsworth, Ohio…

Mark Mothersbaugh: Oh! Where are you now?

BW: Right now I’m in St. Paul. But I live in Santa Monica.

MM: You made it out at least!

BW: Seeing you guys on Saturday Night Live in 1978 was a big deal for me. I’d already started playing guitar at the time. But I thought rock music was over. I thought I was working in a dead art form. And DEVO was something that was cool again. It really meant a lot to me.

MM: Well thank you.

BW: So I’m pretty excited that you guys are doing a tour and you’re reissuing the first album and Freedom of Choice. Is that right?

MM: Affirmative. They’ll probably reissue more of the catalogue. Those are just two that are linked up with some shows we’re gonna do.

BW: That’s cool. That first album I actually wore out. It got to where the record sounded like shit because I’d played it so many times. So what’s different about this new version? Is it re-mastered?

MM: Now that it’s almost absurd to put out records, they have some little extras that come with it. I think even the regular one’s gonna be yellow vinyl and red vinyl. They’re very high quality vinyl compared to what they used to make records out of in the old days. So they’re definitely collector’s discs. And the packages are enhanced. On some of them you can get different versions of it, DVD footage and stuff like that. (NOTE: The CD reissue of the first album contains a bonus live recording of the entire album played at London’s HMV Forum in May, 2009. The CD reissue of Freedom of Choice adds the contents of the DEVO-Live EP originally released in 1980 shortly after the LP. You can also order an Ultra Devo-luxe edition from their website that contains both re-mastered CDs, plus 2 bonus DVDs and a colored vinyl single.)

BW: Sounds great. So why are you doing this now?

MM: I think for DEVO we’ve decided that we’re shocked that no one came along to take our place. So we have to go back out there and start talking about de-evolution again and remind people what’s really wrong on planet Earth. So early next year there will be new music coming out. But for the uninitiated and those who were somewhere else when it happened we’re putting out some of the essential listening material to help bring them up to speed. And we’re doing shows to accompany the releases in a number of cities around the US. We’re literally doing album one on the first night starting on side one track one of the vinyl. Almost like you’re hearing live vinyl. We’ll play through the first side of the album and we’ll flip over and play the second side of the album.

BW: Cool!

MM: And the next night we do the same thing with Freedom of Choice. If you would’ve asked me a year ago if that sounds like I good idea I would’ve said that doesn’t sound like a great live show. What changed my mind was last May we played All Tomorrow’s Parties in London at the Forum and we did album one. I just thought, we never put them in this order and that vinyl was supposed to be act one and act two of a listening experience. It doesn’t have the same build as a live show. It’s something different.

BW: Right.

MM: I thought this is gonna have weird energy to it. But it was really great! It’s not a new concept. All Tomorrow’s Parties started a long time ago. And a lot of people are doing their albums live.

BW: Yeah, I saw Brian Wilson do Pet Sounds live.

MM: There’s a lot of people doing that. Now I finally understand it. I had never thought about it. But once I heard us do it I could think of a couple dozen bands I’d love to hear do their first album live. It made me think of when DEVO played Inland Invasion a few years ago. And Billy Idol came out and he played "White Wedding" and "Rebel Yell" and everybody was going crazy. Then he said, “Now here’s my new album!” And everybody’s kinda like… the wind went out of the sails. And the audience was kind of polite. Then after about 40 minutes of that he played "Dancing With Myself" and everybody went crazy again.

BW: That’s gotta be a weird experience, though. Cuz for you or for him it’s like this is what you did 20 years ago and it must not seem that relevant. But if the audience is into it…

MM: Yeah. But there are some things about doing that that are interesting. We play every year, though. The last 13 years we’ve done festivals, a lot of European and Asian shows, Australian shows, and a lot in the US. We played Lalapalooza a few times back like ten years ago. We’d do like three weeks a year, four weeks a year at the most and then that was it.

BW: And this time you’re putting it back together.

MM: Yeah. But there is an element where you’re going, I remember the first time we put on these yellow suits. I proudly felt like I was a McDonald’s cheeseburger in that yellow plastic box. And now 30 or 35 years later, I still feel like a McDonald’s cheeseburger. But now maybe it’s like a double patty cheeseburger!

BW: I was gonna ask you about that. Cuz it kind of surprised me. I was living in Japan in 1996 and I read about you guys putting on the yellow suits again and that was the last thing I ever expected to see DEVO do. But on the other hand it sort of made sense. Cuz you guys were never anti-commercial as such. You were trying to do it your own way.

MM: In defense of that, there aren’t any other bands that come to mind that all wear plastic yellow suits unless they’re DEVO tribute bands.

BW: That’s true!

MM: Everybody wears blue jeans. That’s the uniform of the last 50 years. People wear it and they don’t even know they’re wearing a uniform, but they are. That is the uniform. I think our yellow suits, when people call ‘em a uniform it makes me smile. Because at least ours was creative. We created it ourselves as opposed to just buying into Levi’s ads. DEVO wasn’t really about being sexy. We weren’t really anti-style. But style meant something totally different to us.

BW: Sure. That’s pretty evident.

MM: We wanted to look like a machine. We wanted to look like a team. At the time it was like Kenny Rogers…

BW: I remember! God, that was awful. Talk about denim uniforms!

MM: Or it was like Elton John and his band, or Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. We wanted to look like parts of a machine on stage. We were more influenced by Agit Prop from Germany and Europe in the late 20s and 30s and Bauhaus, geometric shapes and the Italian Futurists and the Russian Suprematists. We were interested in pure art. And the yellow suits always felt to us like we were art. We thought we were in some ways much less commercial than anybody else because of that.

BW: Yeah. It’s funny that it became commercial. That’s interesting to me. You did "Whip It" and all of a sudden everybody was into it. But there was always that problem of did the mass audience really get it. Or did it even matter if they got it? There was that whole thing about "Whip It" being taken as sexual innuendo and all that.

MM: It’s only fitting that that would be the song that was most remembered in the United States and had the most airwave success. But that’s OK. People by nature don’t come to art or music to get educated or to get vitamins. They’re there cuz they’re trying to escape from the world. But DEVO managed to sneak in some vitamin-enriched information as a side feature and that was kinda good. Some people probably never got it and never would get it. But there were always those kids out there who wanted to know what it means. You might’ve been a fan of some band like that when you were a kid. Where you look at the album cover for every bit of information you can get. You’re looking for every clue. The posturing in the photographs, the type that’s picked for the title of the band and the album. All that stuff is really important to you at a certain age. It was to us too. We designed our own album covers and designed our own merchandise and costumes and stage shows. We totally understood the importance of all the areas of the aesthetic. It wasn’t just about sonic music or just trying to get on the radio. It was a lot bigger.

BW: The most brilliant piece of DEVO merchandise I saw at that shop Wacko in Los Feliz, the DEVO doll with the interchangeable heads.

MM: The company that did those, I wasn’t really into the style that they were doing the artwork in. I had plenty of arguments about it. But the big blow was that they weren’t doing a set of five. Because that’s what DEVO is. It’s a set of five guys. We went around in circles. And finally I said, we’re allowed to have accessories, right? They said, yeah. So I said I want it to have five heads so pole can change the heads on the dolls. A true DEVO fan would take the hit and buy five of them.

BW: Talking about other bands, I’m sure you must know Polysics from Japan.

MM: Yeah. We played with the last time we were over there.

BW: What do you think of them? They’re so DEVO.

MM: They are! And they do some of our stuff better than we do it. It kind of freaks me out. And their fans love it. I don’t know what their fans think of DEVO. They’re so into Polysics maybe they don’t even know. And they’re a great band live.

BW: Oh yeah. I like them a lot. One other thing I wanted to ask you about because I’m from Akron. You guys did a show at the Akron Civic Theater last November in support of the Obama campaign. How was that to go back there? I know Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders was there and The Black Keys played too.

MM: That was appropriately unpleasant and also had a lot of pleasant moments too. Of course there were members of my family who were really upset that DEVO was supporting Obama, which I could not believe. I said, you guys are in the most most depressed butt fucked part of the country. Why would you be against getting rid of blood-suckers? They could not see it.

BW: I know. I never understood how Ohio people could support the very forces that were oppressing them.

MM: But it works. On the other hand we played at a place we hadn’t played in, in 30 years. It was almost 30 years to the day of the last time we played at the Akron Civic Thetare. And we wrote a lot of our early songs in less than a mile radius from that building. So it was kind of interesting to be back there. And Chrissy, who was kind of freaky on the phone before then, when we got to the show she was a total pro. It was really pleasant to work with her. And The Black Keys, I’ve always liked them. It was my wife’s idea. She said why don’t we do something for Obama. She was worried because Ohio was a swing state in the last two votes before that and had gone Republican at the last minute. So we went back there to say, come on exert your freedom of choice. And I think that that’s what won Obama the campaign, the DEVO concert.

BW: It probably was.

MM: Well if you want to be honest about it, probably not. But it was kinda nice to play there. The energy was really good. Everybody was really great. Akron-ites were excited that we were playing there again.

BW: Yeah, you were rejected there at the time and then you come back and everybody thinks it’s great.

MM: That’s fairly common. Bands have to leave their hometowns to get discovered. Especially if you’re doing original material. There was no appreciation at all for that back in the Seventies. We would lie and say we were a Top Forty band so we could get a gig. We’d be up there going, “Here’s another song by Aerosmith. It’s called… Jocko Homo!” At that point there’d be some out of work factory guy who was bummed out anyway, some Vietnam vet who came back and the factories are all closed he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with his life. He’d slam his beer down and go, “That’s it! You callin’ me a monkey you mother fucker?” We’d once again get paid to quit, beat up, chased out or a combination of the three.

BW: That’s amazing. Cuz I’m friends with a guy I think you know, Rod Firestone from the Rubber City Rebels.

MM: Oh yeah! God, that’s a name from the past! We spent a lot of time with Rod during the formative years. He was instrumental in DEVO having a home base in Akron cuz he had a club that he opened and he allowed DEVO to play there. Then, of course, we ended up bringing Pere Ubu down there too. That was like the cultural island in an otherwise really dark, culture-less factory town.

BW: He always likes telling stories about The Crypt (a bar that originally catered to workers at the nearby Goodyear factory which Rod Firestone and his band-mate Buzz Clic transformed into Akron’s first punk rock club).

MM: It was a cool club. I was the soundman for a while for his band.

BW: Yeah, he told me you were the soundman for the Rubber City Rebels! They still play a few times a year. I met them when they did a tour of Japan. I was reading about you in David Giffels’ book about DEVO. Do you like that book, or is that a touchy subject?

MM: We weren’t part of it. We weren’t interviewed for it. It’s got a lot of misinformation in it. My feeling about that is, whatever. There was this one guy who was tangentially connected to us for a while who got involved. And it’s definitely the story of DEVO from the point of view of this guy who didn’t get to be part of the band.

BW: The story I wanted to ask you about from that book isn’t one of those stories. It’s in there about John Lennon coming up to you…

MM: That’s true.

BW: I wanted to hear that story.

MM: When we started going to New York we turned into a phenomenon. Which was pretty cool. Every time we whether it was CBGBs or Max’s Kansas City after the first show that we played it was a mob scene. It was always packed. In New York at the time it was customary for people that were celebrities to be able to call Max’s or CBGB’s or the other clubs and say, this is Mick Jagger and I’d like to bring Charlie Watts and Keith Richards to the DEVO show tonight and Bianca my wife and a couple friends. And they’d go, OK and put them on the guest list. But then they’d charge that against DEVO’s part of the take.

BW: (laughs) That’s awful!

MM: So every night we played in New York we’d have people like Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, all the filmmakers, all the actresses, all the people in bands. There’d be Frank Zappa’s band or whoever was in town. Brian Eno, Robert Fripp. They all showed up on our guest list. But that just meant we’d have to beg for gas money to drive back in our Econoline that held all the equipment and held the band. We didn’t have any place to stay. We’d have to crash inside the van.

BW: That’s like a twelve-hour drive back to Akron from New York. I’ve done that.

MM: Something like that. I don’t remember how long it was back to Akron. But I remember one night we were sitting outside of Max’s and we’d just played a set. I was waiting for everybody to leave so I could go in and finish unloading our equipment and drive back to Akron. I was in the passenger seat. And I looked around and it’s John Lennon and Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople. They’re really drunk and they come out and John Lennon stuck his head in the car. And he got up about six inches from my face and started singing “Uncontrollable Urge” really loud. He obviously understood that the “yeah yeah yeah” part was a permutation of what he’d done. And the opening of the song, I don’t know if you ever paid attention, but it goes like dah-dah-duh-DAH, dah-dah-duh-DAH.

BW: Oh yeah! Like "I Want to Hold Your Hand"!

MM: Yeah. I took it right off "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Then the “yeah yeah yeahs” come in. So he knew it was a mutation of him. And he sang it for me right there with alcohol stinking spittle right into my face. I was in shock and about as high as you can get for the rest of the night. I couldn’t believe it.

BW: That’s amazing.

MM: And him and Ian, they just kinda put their arms around each other and started wobbling down the street singing the song all the way down Park Avenue or whatever street that was.

BW: I’m really looking forward to the tour and the new album. What’s the new stuff like?

MM: It sounds like DEVO, that’s for sure. Some of it sounds like it’s early, some of it sounds like the third or fourth album. And some of it is like the later stuff with more electronics. But lyrically it’s the same as what we always did. If it has anything to do with love it’s usually kind of absurdist. Other than that, without lecturing, we talk about the issue of de-evolution and things falling apart.

BW: Are you bringing the guitars back then?

MM: Yeah there’s some really good guitar stuff. One of the things I insisted Bob 1 (lead guitarist and Mark’s younger brother) do was I told him he had to play a lead that outdoes Smart Patrol. I told him this has got to be his new signature solo. So we’ll see if other people think of it that way.

BW: I’m looking forward to it and to the tour. Good luck!

MM: And thank you, SuicideGirls!

Comic book fans are eagerly awaiting the release of The Losers. It's not just the adaptation of the Vertigo series that has readers buzzing. Chris Evans, just cast as the film incarnation of Captain America, is one of the stars of The Losers. The film also has Avatar's leading lady, Zoe Saldana,... more

Comic book fans are eagerly awaiting the release of The Losers. It's not just the adaptation of the Vertigo series that has readers buzzing. Chris Evans, just cast as the film incarnation of Captain America, is one of the stars of The Losers. The film also has Avatar's leading lady, Zoe Saldana, Thor's Idris Elba and Watchmen's Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

The eclectic cast plays a gang of black ops soldiers betrayed by a corrupt government official. Clay (Morgan) leads his gang to a life under the radar in South America. It takes a stranger named Aisha (Saldana) beating the crap out of Clay to convince The Losers to come back into the game. Yeah, The Losers takes a different sort of approach to an action movie.

Who directed this in your face action epic? Was it Michael Bay or Tony Scott? No, it was actually a filmmaker named Sylvain White. White has been working steadily on feature films for over half a decade. He really got in Hollywood's face with Stomp the Yard, a college dance film that became a blockbuster in 2007. The Losers marks White's foray into the action genre, and he's attached to the potential film of Robotech if that gets a green light.

As ecclectic as White's films are, he presents even more diversity with just his voice on a telephone. Born in France, White came to Los Angeles in 1991. He speaks a slightly accented English, more noticeable in an extreme enunciation of words. We're so used to the locals slurring everything together, it's the people who pronounce everything who stand out.

SG: Did you see The Losers as your chance to put your stamp on a big budget Hollywood action movie?

SW: That's kind of how I saw it. Unfortunately and fortunately, and contrarily to what people might think, it's actually not a big budget movie. It was done for very, very little money but I say fortunately because I'm very proud of what I was able to accomplish with what we had and in fact, it prompts questions like this. It looks like a big action film but in fact it was done for very little. We shot the whole movie in Puerto Rico, although it feels like it takes place all over the world. We were able to just really maximize a lot of the costs to make it feel that way. I always wanted to do action. I love action films and I grew up with the action films from the '80s like Beverly Hills Cop and Die Hard and the Lethal Weapons. I wanted to bring back the combination of the humor and the action in an explosive cocktail.

SG: I should have said a studio action movie because I'm not necessarily talking about the money.

SW: Yeah, absolutely. The great thing is that because it's based on a comic book that was pretty original, and I mean original not by its action but by its tone, it's a pretty unique combination of hardcore gritty action with this really cool sense of humor and these really interesting comedic characters. Yeah, when I heard about the project, I jumped on it. I did everything I could so that I could land it.

SG: You mention humor. Why have action movies gotten so serious?

SW: It's kind of interesting the evolution of action. I feel like action sort of found itself in the '80s and in the '90s it kind of went over the top. It was always like how big the explosion is or how grand the building exploding can be. I think they pushed the scale of the action to the max in movies like Independence Day and Pearl Harbor. You couldn't really blow anything bigger up. After that, people wanted stuff that wasn't over the top as much but much more realistic and gritty. I think that's when we've seen the latest incarnation of what the action style is, which is very well reflected in the Bourne series for example or even in the latest James Bond. But, as you pointed out, the big difference is when you go into more gritty realism, usually it's combined with a very serious, dry tone. The movies take themselves very seriously. It's for the better. I love those movies. I love the way action has evolved in that sense, but at the same time, I felt with this film, it had a unique feel to it because it potentially did something those other movies didn't which is still have the sort of hardcore gritty action but have fun with it and have fun with the characters and have a lot of humor in it.

SG: Are audiences ready for fun action movies again?

SW: I think so because I think for the last 10 years, we've seen really hardcore gritty action from stuff. All this sort of treatment of action is pretty realistic and I think people have seen it now. I think people like it but they still want to have fun watching the movie so why not combine it. I'm hoping people are ready. I'm counting on the fact people are ready for it. I think it'll be nice because it'll be a breath of fresh air.

SG: You incorporated some of the modern shaky handheld style but not in every single scene. How did you decide when to use it?

SW: Well, you know, I like the handheld feel for some things. It sometimes makes moments feel more personal and you can capture sometimes more detail. So I use it for that but I don't use it as aggressively and as much. I use it for very specific moments and specific things that I do. I also use a lot of steadicam, I use a lot of dolly track, I use crane shots. I mix it up and I did it a little bit the same on Stomp the Yard where I really try to mix the different kind of camera styles to create an overall aesthetic envelope for the movie. The handheld thing wasn't necessarily an overall decision. It was just for specific moments, to give scenes or instances a certain feel.

SG: That's an interesting distinction. Does handheld work better in smaller intimate scenes than in big action?

SW: Yeah, because sometimes if you do it during the big action, it can be kind of messy. It can be a little bit hard to follow, especially if the editing is fast. So it really is a balance. Usually when you go handheld, my opinion is when you go handheld you have to cut slower. When you go more traditional, then it allows you to cut faster. It really depends on how you want to temporize the scenes. It's a really good device. I've always used it I was in film school for tailoring moments.

SG: That's a really smart point of view, that it has to be decided in conjunction with the editing.

SW: Absolutely, which is very true for 3-D movies as well. Now I think people are figuring that out. You have to adjust the editing to the technology. It's very important because you have so much more information to process in a frame when it's in 3-D or if it's moving really fast in a handheld shot. You have to hold on it a little bit longer.

SG: How much do you think the interest in Chris Evans as Captain America will help The Losers?

SW: In the comic book world I think it's going to be very good. I think The Losers is going to really help Chris Evans get more recognized for his role in Captain America. I think it's kind of the other way around. I think people know that he's going to be the next one, mostly in the industry or in the comic book world but I think the mainstream's not necessarily fully aware of that yet. He's a terrific actor. The role he has in The Losers is so different from everything else that he's done in the sense that he's such the comedic character in the movie. He's so good at it. Categorically, the roles are different so I don't know how much it will help but I'm certainly very happy about his success, and the success of Zoe as well. When I cast her in the movie, there was no Avatar, there was no Star Trek. People didn't really know who she was yet. I had been aware of her from some of the independent films that she had done. I really pushed to get her. Of course now we're all happy about the success she's had so if it helps the movie, it can only be a good thing.

SG: Did you make sequel deals before their other films got booked?

SW: [Laughs] Well, I don't know what she did. I'm not aware of her deal but I'm really hoping that there will be a sequel. I hope the movie does well. We based the story on the first two volumes of the comics but there's a multitude of volumes so there's also room for sequels that are already kind of laid out in the comic book. I think it'd be great but you never know.

SG: Have we gotten to the point where a man can fight a woman and it really is equal?

SW: It really depends on the individuals but that certainly was something that I feel sometimes feels fake in movies. I wanted the fight in this movie to feel real and I just counterbalanced the fighting style. He's more of a boxer/slugger style and she's more like a female Bruce Lee. She's super fast and precise but her punches have lower impact. She can punch him five times while he can only punch her once. She's moves so quick, it's hard to connect. That's how I balanced the fight between them. I like it. It feels fun but it's still believable. Typically, you shoot a scene like that, I had the assistant director from the Bourne series for example, who did Wanted as well, he would tell me, "To shoot a fight like that, normally we get five days to shoot those kind of scenes." We did it in a day and a half and I'm very proud of the result.

SG: Is it also at this point you don't have to pull the punches on her? The woman can take a fair beating in an equal fight scene in 2010 without making people uncomfortable.

SW: Oh yeah, absolutely. You can show that as long as she's tough. Aisha is a tough character but Zoe is a tough girl. She really went out there, she trained so hard. She brought on actually the same stunt coordinator she worked on Avatar with, which was a very fortunate thing for us. She worked and trained so hard, so she was really badass. Speaking of SuicideGirls, we talked a lot about her look, the piercings and the tattoos and really wanting to stay true to the look of the character in the graphic novel. It's cool because you don't see that kind of character very often, especially a multi-ethnic sort of character with that sort of aesthetic. And at the same time, she's such a badass. She really holds her own against these guys. She's probably more of a warrior than any of them. I love that about her.

SG: If you end up doing Robotech next, is the technology all there to do it?

SW: Yeah, the technology is there for sure I think. You know, I'd love to do it. Its one of those projects that I've been a fan of the anime forever, since I was a kid. I think it'd make a fantastic movie. What set it apart as a cartoon was that unlike some of the other cartoons at the time like Transformers and some of the other things that were in the same vein, is that Robotech had a very strong narrative and cinematic quality. It felt more like movie or a long series than a cartoon for kids. That was because it had the Japanese sensibility in the storytelling and that felt more adult. The themes were very adult. When I was 12, I thought this would make a fantastic movie so I'd love to do it. It's a huge movie obviously planned at Warner Bros. but that's all I know. I read it. I thought it was really good but I don't know much more about the actual project.

Last month Scott Snyder ceased being an immensely talented short story writer and teacher with degrees from Brown and Columbia and instead became one of comic’s hottest writers and a new horror-fantasy icon. American Vampire #1 created by Snyder and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque has received a lot... more

Last month Scott Snyder ceased being an immensely talented short story writer and teacher with degrees from Brown and Columbia and instead became one of comic’s hottest writers and a new horror-fantasy icon. American Vampire #1 created by Snyder and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque has received a lot more press than the typical comic series, largely because of Snyder’s friend and mentor who is writing the backup story in the first five issues, Stephen King.

Snyder’s first book, the short story collection "Voodoo Heart" was an amazing batch of stories, tales about chasing blimps across the nation, guarding Niagara Falls from would-be suicides, trust fund runaways and a pilot who crashes into a wedding and runs off with the bride. The stories were fantastic and unlikely, outlandish and improbable but never impossible. Instead, quiet tales of odd characters dealing with strange circumstances that were funny, bizarre and touching. His short story “The Thirteenth Egg” was one of the best parts of the superhero anthology “Who Will Save Us Now?” and was very much the kind of fantastic horror story that comics do so well.

Snyder is also writing the just-released “Iron Man: Noir” miniseries, a pulp take on Tony Stark set in the 1930’s. The second issue of “American Vampire” goes on sale Wednesday April 21 in which the new species, the “american vampire” of the title makes its debut, and we chatted with Snyder about the series, the evolution of monsters and his long-delayed first novel.


SCOTT SNYDER: It’s sound so creepy to be like, I love this site, but I really do.

ALEX DUEBEN: Well awesome. I’m a big fan of yours. I read your book Voodoo Heart a while back and really loved it and American Vampire is really great.

SS: Thanks. We worked really hard on that. It’s definitely been like, I feel like the luckiest guy on Long Island right now. It’s been a great ride so far.

AD: In other interviews, you’ve talked about how the idea behind the series was vampires evolving. How did you come up with this concept and what are they changing into exactly?

SS: It was several years ago when, I mean there’s always a vampire glut, but there was another glut of vampire works out there. I think it was when there a sequel to Blade and Underworld. It just seemed like all of the vampires were too cool to give you the time of day, looking like they were on their way to some neo-gothic club that happens to exists in the sewer with a chandelier overhead. The leather trenchcoats and sunglasses. That aesthetic was so boring by that point. It made me nostalgic for vampires that I grew up on. My favorite vampire movies and books are things like Salem’s Lot and Lost Boys and Near Dark and the works where vampires are not so much scary because they’re exotic and romanticized but scary because they’re your loved ones come back to kill you from the dead. They’re not scary because they’re so foreign and beautiful and so on. What’s scary about Salem’s Lot to me is that penultimate scene of Danny Glick, that little boy, scratching at his brother’s window to be let in in the middle of the night. What’s scary about Lost Boys is Michael changing into a vampire in front of his brother and his brother’s worried that his own brother is going is going to kill him. Similarly in Near Dark, the girl you fall for, who seems to be your dream girl, turns out to be a serial killing vampire.

I was in a model shops getting a Doctor Who model for a friend of mine and they had a series of busts. One of them was a zombie Confederate soldier. I had been thinking about vampires and it occurred to me, why not have a vampire that walks the kinds of landscapes you enjoy writing about? Why not make a new kind of vampire that’s indigenous to this place? From there it just took off. If I’m going to make a new kind of vampire, what’s he going to be and when’s he going to appear. Wouldn’t that mean then, as a logical extension, that there had been other species before that had branched out as well. I thought about doing it as a book for a while. I worked on it as a screenplay with my best friend for a bit. When I started working in comics, I was biding my time, thinking this was the perfect format for it.

AD: Both stories, Pearl, which is by you and Skinner Sweet, which is King’s, are set in the West. Is that the specific setting for the book?

SS: It’s not. The cycle we’re working on next also takes place in the West, but the one that I’m plotting now after that takes place on the East coast. There’s one we’re thinking about that’s going to take place in Middle America. There’s an overseas one we have in mind. The west just seemed like both a mythological place and [a place] of optimism and endless sunshine. That seemed like such an inhospitable place to the vampires we’ve seen. The perfect place to begin another species that can walk in the sun and has a kind of more muscular character to it than what came before. Plus there are certain desert qualities that really characterize the American vampire.

Our editor, Mark Doyle, who’s been amazing, we went back and forth thinking maybe we should include some teaser where it shows what the American vampire looks like. I’m really excited for people to see issue #2 where the actual new species makes it’s first appearance. It’s not some incredibly radical different thing where it doesn’t look like a vampire, but there are some notable differences. It has much more desert qualities to it. Rattlesnake fangs and an unhinging jaw and so on. We’re really trying to have it be something where we make something that’s new, not just as a gimmick, but something that’s new that’s in some way allows us to really get into inter-species relations and conflict later on in the series. Each vampire species has its own set of weaknesses and strengths and that means that the European vampires have sort of are eager to find some way to kill off this new bloodline.

AD: Why did you decide to open the book with Pearl and her story?

SS: That was an editorial decision. Originally I pitched the series as starting with Skinner in the West and Vertigo essentially rejected the pitch on the idea that if it was going to start in the West, it would be too narrow of a focus and too literal. In the pitch I had included other ideas for where it was going to go. The second cycle was going to be the 1920s it was going to be Pearl so I wrote that up as a lot more elaborate pitch for them saying, I agreed with what they said and what if we started here. They immediately jumped at that. We were actually going to save Skinner’s story for later in the series.

They knew that I knew Stephen King and could I contact him and anyone else I knew to just give a line of press for when the announcement was made. I had given him the pitch to see if he could make any suggestions and he’d been really helpful about giving me a couple tips. He was really excited for me. He said you know I really love that character Skinner and when you get to him I’ll write an issue if you want. I was like, if I tell them you’re going to write an issue or two they’re going to jump at that. I don’t want it to be something you do because you feel like it’s some favor or something and he was really adamant. He liked the character and thought it would be fun.

I went back to Vertigo and told them. It was a Friday afternoon when the office is closed and I got this Monday morning call, basically, did you say Stephen King said he would write an issue? Immediately it became, how do we do that. Steve wrote him with such exuberance and made up so many interesting things about the character. The character was developed and designed and had a history, but some of the nuances and his long standing grudges Steve elaborated on and made so much richer. He brought in this whole theme about legend versus fact and history versus folklore. Issue one was the closet thing to the outline that I had set up for him. He really takes off in issue two. You start to see the epic scope of what he wants to do.

AD: When you originally proposed this, were you thinking of having a rotating series of artists like in Brian Wood’s series Northlanders?

SS: That’s exactly what the proposed format was actually. Rafael [Albuquerque] was just the first person that auditioned for the series. Editor Will Dennis, who’s been terrific, he does Northlanders and does Scalped and he suggested Rafael. Rafael sent some sketches based on my descriptions of the characters and it was just immediate, this guy understands who they are. We actually wound up using his sketches in a couple of the promos. These are sketches before he ever saw the script.

He’s in Brazil and I contacted him on instant messenger and I talk to him literally every day. We’ve become really close friends. It was his idea to the two cycles in two different looks, one in washes to give Steve’s an antiquated feel and do the Pearl one in these real hard inks to give it an art deco 20s look. Rafael will always be our artist on the big forward moving cycles. In between what we’re going to try and do is explore a little bit of the history between different vampire species and human-vampire relations. Explore why the species we’re all so familiar with from folklore and Dracula has become the dominant species and where are all the other ones are. I just feel so lucky to get to work with him.

AD: Is the plan to jump around in time with these characters and some new ones? Do you have an endgame in mind for the series?

SS: I do have an endgame, but it’s far far in the future. I know in mind how I want the series to end, but we have so many ideas to go forward and backward and sideways with it. We’re hoping to get a good long run like some of my favorite Vertigo series. In terms of the format, we are going to explore different decades and we’ll return to different decades as well to show different perspectives on things. We are absolutely going to pick up on the characters decade to decade. It’s Skinner’s blood that we’re following, essentially. He’ll pop up in fun and surprising ways, sometimes featured centrally as an antagonist or protagonist and other times he’ll make cameos. Pearl the same. I can promise that we’re following both the bloodline and the characters that are established in this cycle so they won’t disappear after this at all.

AD: Has working at Vertigo and Marvel come about because of the short story “The Thirteenth Egg” that you wrote for the superhero anthology, Who Can Save Us Now?

SS: In terms of working in comics, all of it did. I think all the time, what if I hadn’t written that story? It’s crazy. It caught the eye of Mark [Doyle] and my editor at Marvel, Jeanine [Schaefer]. The chance to pitch for the Marvel Timely series two years ago. Then I got Iron Man: Noir, which they’re waiting to release so it coincides with the movie, and Nation X. That led to a chance to pitch a creator owned thing to Vertigo.

There’s nowhere I’d be more thrilled to be than Vertigo. I get intimidated all the time by the bar that’s set. It won’t be for lack of trying if it sucks. There’s no phoning it in. I understand how fortunate I am to be able to do this at Vertigo and to be able to have my own series as a relatively green writer. And I want to know what people think. People think I’m just saying that, but I really do want to know. Comics fans are so astute and so generous and so vicious. I want to know. I want it to be a series that people feel a part of and respond to. I’ve been on that side as a fanboy for a long time so I want people to feel like they have access to the story as well.

AD: Like I said at the beginning, I really loved your first book Voodoo Heart and I know you’re working on a novel, but I keep seeing the release date change. I don’t know how much you want to say about it or when we can expect it.

SS: I’m really not going to finish my next draft of it until at least the summer. I’m hoping 2011, but it’s a ways away. It’s actually about somebody who works in comics. It’s about a guy who’s struggling with his son who’s in an accident and he is caught in this place, psychologically, where he’s having a lot of trouble reconciling the limitations of medical science and the more fantastic possibilities that he writes about everyday. It’s called The Goodbye Suit. I want to let it sit until the summer and look it over and really rewrite it and tinker with it and then hopefully have it done before the end of the year. I love it to death and it’s very personal. I’ll definitely do it but I’m just having a lot of fun with comics right now and I like to step away from it for a while so I can be more objective when I look at it again.

My plan is to get a few cycles of Vampire done. I like to finish the whole cycle at once, so I write all the issues of a cycle together. I’m finishing cycle two and I’m going to finish cycle three hopefully and really get into four by the summer and be a good full year ahead and then take a few months over the summer to really work on the novel more and come back to Vampire in the fall. That’s the hope, that I can buy some some months to work on it without having to do both, but we’ll see.

AD: A lot of the interviews have been pretty overwhelmed by talking about Stephen King, and that’s understandable, but the heart of the comic and what makes it so awesome seems to get obscured a lot of the time.

SS: If you wanted to know what it’s like to work with Stephen King, he’s the most generous guy in the world. I’ve been wracking my brain, why is he writing so much. Is he doing this as a favor to me because we’re friendly. I loved it but I don’t want to be burdening him with this, doing it because its an obligation. What you realize quickly from talking to him, when you see the intensity of his scripts, is that he acts like a hungry exuberant young writer when he likes a story. The writing is just so fun. It’s inspiring to watch because he has no reason to be that enthusiastic about it from a pragmatic standpoint. He doesn’t need to go to the mat for five issues of this thing. He does it that way because he’s a story guy, and when he gets into something he likes he lives there entirely. For a young writer, someone like me, it was incredibly inspiring to watch. To see somebody who’s so established, it doesn’t get more established, act like somebody who’s right out of the gate and getting their first job. That was great.

He’s also the most gracious guy in the world. I keep thanking him and he’s like, I should be thanking you, this is so much fun. I’m like no no no. I’m thanking you. Mark and I got him a fun gift. We got him an Elvis Day of the Dead bust. He and I are both big Elvis fans. The funny thing is, yesterday I came home from dropping my son off and I had this big package. I opened it up and it’s this big bottle of Dom Perignon from Steve. I’ve never drank Dom Perignon. “Thanks for the wild ride. Congrats. TCB. Steve.” TCB is Elvis’ personal logo which we both use. That’s Steve King. That’s who he is and I just can’t say enough good things about him as a writer, as a person, as a mentor, as a genius storyteller. I can’t throw enough love his way.

For her forthcoming release, We Are Born, the darling of downtempo, Sia Furler, hits a distinctly upbeat groove. Indeed, the six tracks we've heard so far are decidedly funky. Just don't, whatever you do, use the F-word in the singer/songwriter's presence - it's very likely to irk... more

For her forthcoming release, We Are Born, the darling of downtempo, Sia Furler, hits a distinctly upbeat groove. Indeed, the six tracks we've heard so far are decidedly funky. Just don't, whatever you do, use the F-word in the singer/songwriter's presence - it's very likely to irk her.

Having come to the attention of the KCRW-listening, latte-sipping music intelligentsia thanks to her turns with English post-trip-hop outfit Zero 7, for a while Sia was inadvertently defined by what was initially intended as a very limited, no-strings-attached guest spot with the lush lounge combo. Thanks to the success of Zero 7's debut album Simple Things (2001), and their follow up release, When It Falls (2004), and the numerous international tours that followed, Sia's personal brand became synonymous with the downtempo pigeonhole Zero 7 prominently occupied.

Seeking to capitalize on Sia's credentials in the 90 bpm & under department, record label execs understandably pressurized her to continue in a similar vein with her solo work, despite a personal preference for something a little less languid. It was therefore no surprise when Sia's evocative track "Breathe Me," became her first breakout solo song, thanks to its prominent use at the end of the final episode of Six Feet Under. Indeed the inspired TV license earned Colour The Small One, the album on which the song was originally featured, a long overdue release in the US in 2006 (the CD was released in the UK 2 years earlier). And while her next solo album, Some People Have Real Problems, helped bridge the gap between the music Sia was expected to make and the music she wanted to make, it's her latest offering, We Are Born, that has finally allowed the Australian born (but currently New York based) artist to come into her own.

SuicideGirls caught up with Sia by phone to find out how she got her groove back, and to get the 411 on her aversion to the F-word.

NP: So you've been teasing us, so far we've only heard a handful of tracks off the new album.

SF: I know, I'm sorry. It's really weird. We've been very mysterious about it. I think that's because we don't really know what we're doing. [laughs]

NP: There's an honest answer.

SF: Because we've got this tour scheduled and of course, you know, we'd had our plan to put the record out before the tour, and now we're shooting the video for the first single. The album is definitely finished. It's been finished, it's been mastered, but we've had a bit of a bidding war between a couple of labels to license this album.

NP: Oh nice.

SF: Yeah, which is awesome, but we're just finalizing all of the paperwork so I actually still haven't signed to this major record label, even though we're proceeding as if I have. They're all doing the work that they would be doing if they were my label but I think that everyone's a little bit tentative to really either send the shit out, or to make an announcement about when it's going to be released.

NP: Right.

SF: I feel that's what the label and my management are doing right now, they're just trying to fucking turn it around really. It's already been pushed from March to April [and after this interview back to June]. They want a long lead time to do all of their ass kissing, you know. It's a tricky business.

NP: I thought it might be because they were frightened to give you access to your own album in case you tweeted it out.

SF: [laughs] Well actually, I've been warned. And even before all of these interviews they're like, "Don't talk about the album. Don't tell too much about the album. Just tell 'em a little bit about it." It's like, "Why?" And they're like, "No, this is about the tour." I'm like, "Oh! OK! You sure?" I think basically, I don't really know, but I guess maybe they're trying to create some mystique, considering I'm like the dichotomy of that.

NP: Well it's a nice turn of events because I remember when I last spoke to you, you were talking about how you couldn't even get Colour The Small One released in America until Six Feet Under used the track "Breathe Me" in their final episode.

SF: Yeah. Nobody cared. Errol [Kolosine] from Astralwerks was the only person who cared. He put it out and did exactly what this new label is doing right now. He just proceeded as if we were signed, even though we were still working out all our paperwork and all of the little tiny details.

I mean [We Are Born] is pretty awesome. I know that it's my strongest commercial record yet and I think that's probably why I'm not surprised that now we have a lot of takers. Because Colour The Small One, there was no radio singles on there. I mean, I understand how the machinery works now and it's not surprising to me that this one is more appealing.

NP: And your last album, Some People Have Real Problems, was firmly in the genre of quirky...

SF: [laughs]

NP: ...In a wonderful way. But when you go to a record store, unfortunately there isn't a quirky section.

SF: [laughs] It's weird actually, 'cause my record before Colour The Small One was like R&B, it was called "urban" in England. So you'd find my first record, which was called, Healing Is Difficult, in the urban section. Then you'd find Colour The Small One in the urban section, and like my ten fans, that bothered them immensely. They wrote to me when I had like eighty members on my message board eight years ago and I knew them all by sight and by name. That was the thing that peeved them the most, that Colour The Small One was in the urban section. It's weird.

NP: This album, it's kind of funky. You've gone funky!

SF: Yeah. I mean it's hilarious that you use that word because it was kind of a running joke that nobody is allowed to use the word "funk." [laughs]

NP: Ooops!

SF: For some reason it irks me, but I'm just going to have to accept that maybe I'm funky.

NP: What's wrong with the F-word?

SF: I don't know. I guess probably it irks because when I first started out it was like the early '90s and I was in a band that we called "a jazz / hip-hop / funk fusion explosion." Like I did trip-hop fusion, like every possible genre that was cheesy at the time. I mean I do love old funk, [but] I guess I've never really been into new funk.

I think I'm scared of being new funk. I'm a big fan of The Funk Brothers and Motown and all that sort of shit, so I don't know why it irks me, that word. Maybe it was just growing up in the '90s in Australia. Australia's never really moved on. If you go to a restaurant or a cafe´, or you're in an elevator, they're still playing Rebirth Of The Cool and Galliano and all that sort of new funk, so maybe it's just that.

It's way more uptempo this whole record. There's still a few weepies on there, you know. There's some weepies for the peepies. But I wanted to make a fun record. I want to go on tour and have some fun.

A lot of these tracks I wrote like five years ago with Greg Kirsten. At the time everyone said it would be career suicide if I put out this uptempo record. Because I'd just done the Zero 7 stuff and put out Colour The Small One. They were like, "You're known as a downtempo artist and your fans will be confused." I was like, "What fans? What are you talking about?"

I wanted to put it out and I was like, "Beck can do it. Why can't I?" And they were like, "He's an established artist and you're a nobody." So I put out Some People Have Real Problems, kind of like as a band aid to those people in my life, advisors and colleagues and people that said I would be committing career suicide.

I put out that album and then "Buttons" off that one did well so I guess it gave them the feeling that it would be OK for me to make the music that I wanted to make now. It was confusing because my first record was R&B and then I got kind of pigeon-holed after the Zero 7 stuff with my downtempo vibe, so it's nice for me to be able to make the music that I've always wanted to. I think they were albums that I needed to make, but this is one that I wanted to make.

NP: So where and when was this album recorded?

SF: Last July in L.A. in Eagle Rock. I recorded it with my usual band plus Greg Kirsten on keyboards and Nick Valensi from The Strokes on guitar.

NP: Very cool.

SF: Yeah. I love it. I like listening to it. I'm excited. I've never listened to my albums after I've finished making them before, and this one I've listened to three times.

NP: Talk about a couple of the tracks that are close to your heart.

SF: Well "The Fight" is my favorite song on the whole record. The title of the album comes from the opening lyric of that song, We Are Born. I don't know why I love that song so much, but it just feels like a victory song. There's something victorious about it. I guess I'm just really attached to it for that reason.

Then "Clap Your Hands" I just think is a really fun for dancing around. It's a pretty shallow song. It's a romantic comedy movie song. Then I guess my favorite ballad on the album is "I'm In Here." I wrote that with Sam Dixon, who I wrote a bunch of the Christina Aguilera stuff with. Those are probably my favorite songs on the record. Oh yeah, "Big Girl, Little Girl." I like that one too.

NP: You mention Christina Aguilera. You've been working with her?

SF: Yeah. I have. We wrote five songs. Four of them are going on her album and one of them is in her new movie, Burlesque.

NP: Wow. How did that come about?

SF: She's totally awesome. It's a really good collaboration. Many years ago I tried to ask her if she wanted to duet with me on "Death By Chocolate" which is on Some People Have Real Problems. My manger at the time, she wrote her an email. She cc'd me on it and said, "Sia is a big fan of Christine Aguilera." She misspelled Christina's name. I remember thinking, "Well there goes that collaboration."

I never heard back from them and it didn't surprise me at all. Then maybe a year ago, David, my current manager, was like, "Well we've got a call from Christina Aguilera's management and she's interested in writing with you, and they want to set up a call." So we tried to set up a call and it took a while to get us both online at the same time. Then eventually, I think it was on the try number three, she called and I was put through about three different people. First it was David, her manager, then it was her assistant, and then it was her husband and then it was her. It was really funny. Every time I'd be like, "Christina?" Then a male voice would come on the phone. Eventually, she was like, [puts on a high voice] "Yeah!"

She just said, "I'd like to step into your world." I said, "So you don't want me to write with your co-writer, you want me to bring one of my own?" And she said, "Yeah." So I decided who I would want out of my friends to make a million dollars, and I chose Sam Dixon, who is my bass player and who I write a lot of songs with. We've been friends for seventeen years, and I thought I would like him to make a million dollars. So we went to her house and it was really easy. We wrote the four songs there and they flew us back to write the fifth song for the movie.

NP: Over how many days did that all happen?

SF: Four days, four songs.

NP: Wow. A song per day.

SF: Yeah, I like to work fast. I like to do everything fast.

NP: What was it like working with Christina?

SF: I guess I was scared, because when you're someone's songwriter you're their bitch. You're not really in charge. I'm in charge of my job and my work. I'm the leader, I'm the boss, so it was kind of exciting to go in being somebody's employee.

I really enjoyed it. I loved it so much so that that's something that I'd like to do, you know, if I decide that touring really isn't for me. Because I'm not really comfortable with the fame aspect, and I don't like touring at this stage. That's why I'm gonna live on the bus for this tour. We're trying something different. I'm taking the dogs, and we're gonna live on the bus. I don't like hotels, I don't like being in different environments all the time.

NP: So what surprised you about working with Christina?

SF: The surprising part for me was just that she was really nice. It was really easy. The surprising part for me I think is that I liked having a boss. I liked working for somebody

NP: I guess having a set period of time where you've got to come up with songs and you've got a deadline, that can be a helpful discipline

SF: Well that's the only way I work. That's how I work for myself too. We schedule a day or we schedule days, and then I have different people come in and I work with them and write songs. We do a song a day, sometimes two. I don't ever like write unless it's scheduled.

NP: So who might be some of your dream artists to partner up with?

SF: I like pop music so I would like to write for pop artists. I'd like to write for Leona Lewis and Britney Spears. A lot of the artists whose voices I love, like Lauren Hill, I'd love to write for them as well, but they write their own music. She's one of my favorite voices. And Amy Winehouse, she writes her own stuff. So there's a lot of beautiful voices that I love but I know I couldn't write for 'cause they're writers; They don't need a top line writer. So I guess that really the only place for me is in pop music because the majority of independent artists write their own stuff...I sent Nelly Furtado a bunch of songs the other day, like about a hundred. I don't know if she'll use any of those but that'd be nice.



Sia's new album, We Are Born, is scheduled for release on June 8 via Monkey Puzzle/Jive Records. Her North American tour kicks off on April 10 in Vancouver, European dates follow in May. For more info go to SiaMusic.net/.

It's going to be the busiest summer ever. I can't believe how much work I have to do; in the next two months, I will produce more work than I did all of last year combined. Requests are pouring in for more work -- pretty cool jobs too but soon I might have to say no. Currently, I am sitting... more

It's going to be the busiest summer ever. I can't believe how much work I have to do; in the next two months, I will produce more work than I did all of last year combined. Requests are pouring in for more work -- pretty cool jobs too but soon I might have to say no.

Currently, I am sitting in my bed (my office) working on some more designs while Bexi drinks beer and eats chips and mutters things like, "I have to save the world" and "I have to travel back in time" and "if I had a dick it wouldn't go up" as she stares at the empty lot across the street.



If you like pavement, you'll probably want to pay attention to this blog over the next few weeks. There will be a lot of pavement posters.

You can buy these two now:
http://www.secretserpentsstore.com/servlet/the-551/pavement-coachella-2010-lil/Detail
http://www.secretserpentsstore.com/servlet/the-550/pavement-pomona-2010-lil/Detail

When I first saw photos of David Bruehl's work, I was amazed that I had never come across his work before. Tattooing since August 2001, mostly in Florida, it's hard to believe he hasn't received more widespread attention. Before tattooing, he attended the Savannah College of Art and Design... more

When I first saw photos of David Bruehl's work, I was amazed that I had never come across his work before. Tattooing since August 2001, mostly in Florida, it's hard to believe he hasn't received more widespread attention. Before tattooing, he attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in the Illustration department. Taking a bold, graphic approach to tattooing has really shaped his work as being able to stand the test of time without sacrificing the opportunity to add in many finer details. Like an oasis of talent tucked away in Norman, OK I can only hope his work and approach to tattooing not just as an art form but a profession gains widespread attention.



TattooSnob: Let's get the most generic question out of the way. Tell us a little about yourself!
David Bruehl: My name is David. I'm an artist. I tattoo because I love the synergy in working with another person to create pieces of art that they will wear forever. People stretch me, so to speak. I have two sons, Ezekiel and Abraham. A lot of my time off is spent with them. I also paint, do yoga, and various athletic things, and ride bicycles.

TS: Artists often refer to a time period when it all came together, could you tell us a bit about when that was for you?
DB: I can see several steps when I look back. One was when I saw Grime's work when I was first learning to tattoo, which opened my eyes to what could be approached in tattooing. Also, after around 2 1/2 years into tattooing, I moved to Tampa and started getting to do some larger custom pieces on friends, which was a big step. Every time I've gotten critiques from artists I respect my work has jumped almost immediately. Perhaps the most recent has been moving to Oklahoma and being away from so much of the "hype" of tattooing. I've withdrawn from much of any viewing of others' work and magazines and such. I'm trusting non-tattoo reference and my own instincts more than anything right now.




TS: Often the downside of being particularly skilled at any "type" of tattooing is winding up pigeonholed. Are there any types of tattoos you wish you got to do more of?
DB: I wish to work with more of my own imagery. Free reign, which will lead to more "out there" stuff. I don't think very much of what's been swirling in the back of my mind has been out there yet, minus a couple pieces, and I've only recently started exploring it in my painting work.

TS: Playing off that whole "pigeonholed" thing up there, I really like all the bird tattoos I've seen in your portfolio. Do you have any specific interest in ornithology or are they just something you found yourself tattooing frequently?
DB: When it comes to the bird thing, it originated in me incorporating them into traditional compositions and such. The imagery of a perching bird resonated with me, usually one of loneliness and unrealized potential. I think many people in modern society feel tinges of that. It was something I included in tattoos if I had some freedom. (Birds in flight, however resonate differently with me.) From there, once something relatively unique is put out into the public eye, people tend to jump on it, so it's a common request. I prefer when I get to make up a bird to work with a greater scheme rather than just tattooing some exact type of bird and that being the only image in the piece, almost like a portrait.

TS: It's obvious your work is in demand--what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
DB: Email (davidbruehl@gmail.com) first for consultations. Include a paragraph or two describing the tattoo you want, the size, etc. Include any reference that helps get your point across. That makes things simpler than trying to call or come in. Please be patient with a response.



TS: How long can the average client expect to wait before being able to get an appointment with you?
DB: I book out myself in 4-6 week blocks and then hold off booking until I'm mostly through those. I try to keep the wait from being too ridiculous.

TS: Is there one tattoo you've done that you'd consider a personal favorite?
DB: Man, that's like asking me which of my kids are my favorite! I did a weird lucha libre creature just recently that was definitely one of the most fun tattoos I've done. Saying one's my favorite, though? That's impossible. I guess it's the one I'm doing at that moment, as that's the one I get to see



TS: Let's talk about the last time you were tattooed - who did it, and what was it?
DB: The last tattoo I got finished is a cobra on my thigh from Phil Holt of Red Letter 1 in Tampa, FL. He started it at Skull &amp; Sword in San Francisco. The most recent tattoo that got started and finished is a torch on my shin from Michael "Shack" Shackelford, who's one of my dearest friends.



TS: Are there any artists out there you'd like to be tattooed by, space and time permitting of course?
DB: Phew, that's a list... I want to get in with Grez and Seth Wood. My most definite plans are getting some major work from Fernando Casillas, who I work with.

TS: What are some of your favorite tattoo conventions to attend/work at? Do you have any you specifically like to work, or any new ones you'll be checking out this year?
DB: To be honest, I hate working conventions. I dislike working out of a shop element, and don't care for the time constraints inherent in convention tattooing. As far as meeting up with other artists and such, though, they can be a lot of fun. I'm about to go to the Cigar City Convention to work for the second year in a row. I really enjoy that convention, they try to keep up a high standard of artists. Also I feel the same way about The Masters of Tattooing in Dallas, but have not worked that.




TS: I've witnessed tattoo artists using head phones before while they were tattooing. Personally, I definitely feel like part of the bonding time between an tattoo artist and a client is the chatter that typically occurs during the tattoo. What is your general feeling on this?
DB: I don't personally use headphones while I tattoo. I tend to reflect the client, and thus if they are talkative, I'm talkative. If they're quiet, I'm quiet. I don't necessarily think every person wants to bond with their artist.

TS: Speaking of those conversations while being tattooed, I'm sure you have some humorous memories. Any specific ones you'd like to share?
DB: I did a cover up on a guy who had his grandpa's initials- GWM on his arm. Intrigued, I asked him why he was covering up his grandpa. He told me he kept getting hit on by men who thought the tattoo meant "Gay White Male".

TS: What are you involved with aside from tattooing?
DB: I do yoga. A lot. I go to yogalife studio with Becca Hewes. I ride bicycles; I own two--both fixed gears that I put together though Buchanan Bicycles and Give & Take. I'm starting a blog where I track my weight loss at FatTattooist.com. I'm down to muscular 250 currently... at my heaviest I was 324. My ex and I are doing t-shirts together for Fingers Crossed Design and I'm doing some design for embroidery patterns for a good friend.

TS: Any last minute plugs?
DB: Michael Shackelford! He's the great American storyteller.
Also, my friend Jason Vaughn!

It seems like every music video director turned flmmaker eventually makes a big studio action movie. Even Michel Gondry directed The Green Hornet. That big budget movie won't be out until December, thanks to the latest production delays, but we'll get to hear from Gondry before then. His latest... more

It seems like every music video director turned flmmaker eventually makes a big studio action movie. Even Michel Gondry directed The Green Hornet. That big budget movie won't be out until December, thanks to the latest production delays, but we'll get to hear from Gondry before then.

His latest film takes you deeper into his personal world than you may want to go. The Thorn in the Heart is a documentary about Gondry's aunt Suzette and her son Jean-Yves. Filming discussions with them and other family members reveals the Gondry legacy in the film industry, but also some lifelong emotional conflicts. It's like when you're at someone's house for dinner and they start fighting, only you can't leave. Gondry's camera is still there.

The documentary played at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, where Gondry was surely the only person speaking broken English in a French accent. The echo in a large meeting room way too big for a single interview, and made him sound surreal. The subject of his film led to a discussion about his very artistic process, more about the meaning of film than its literal content.

That sort of discussion seems appropriate to Gondry's body of work. Films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep leave a lot open to interpretation. You could analyze the themes or just marvel at the handcrafted imagery. Even the high concept comedy Be Kind Rewind turned out to be a call to arms for people to pick up cameras and make their own films. The Thorn in the Heart may be a personal exercise or it may speak to everyone, but either way, here is some insight into all the films Gondry has and will make.


Question: Do you think film was in your blood?

Michel Gondry: Oh, in my genes? I think in a way yes. I mean, I never had the ambition to become a director because I didn't really think of it. I didn't think of the director when I was watching a movie, what it took to make the film, until I bought a camera. But, my father was doing a lot of Super8 and my cousin, as you've seen in the film. Being surrounded by this and photo, I was printing my own photo when I was really young, so the technical aspect of it really attracted me. The idea that you can imprint an image with a chemical element on a piece of paper was really magical to me.

Q: Do you think it's something you can be born with, even if you don't grow up around the technique?

MG: It's hard to answer that. I think it's always a combination because you can have it and then if you are exposed to it, then the fact that you have it in you, it captures it and then it reveals it. So you can have it in you and then you're not exposed and you never knew you had it in you. Or, you can not have it in you and then by a succession of coincidences, you end up doing it and being good at it so you do it. So it's very hard. I don't know how I could identify that. I tried to remember. I remember watching Chaplin movies and liking them but never in a sense of "That's what I want to do" until I was in my '20s.

Q: What makes people need to do what they need to do, like you make films and I need to write?

MG: Well, I think it's always a combination of things, coming from inside and coming from outside. As well, there is a great deal of privilege when you can be an artist and do your hobby for a living. You have to really appreciate that because I think if you're not born in the right place in the world, then you're fucked. It's going to be a million times harder. People always say, "Oh, it's amazing. You've worked with the guy I was at school with" and see the world as small. It sound corny, but I say it's small because I don't share it. In an artistic profession, there is a sense where people get really protective to maintain their privilege. They're not really trying to share it and share the creativity with other people. I think everybody should be entitled to express themselves or have creativity or do an activity that makes them happy when they wake up.

Q: So people who work mundane jobs, like offices or factory, is that because they didn't have an interest or didn't know about it?

MG: I think most of them didn't have the opportunity. It's a social class thing. We still work on the same principal where some people have the luck to be born in the right place and some people don't have this luck. The people who are born in a place that makes their life easy, most of them don't try really to help the others or to see the unfairness. On the contrary, they try to maintain their privilege or oppress people who are already oppressed. It's just a system that's always been there and it's sort of terrible. It's what we should think of now instead of thinking how to make more automobiles because for the capitalist world, it thinks the only way that society can function is if you make more things then people buy more stuff and there are more jobs and more money to spend. It doesn't work like that anymore. We're going to have more and more crap. I'm talking a little bit above my head because I'm not really a specialist but I really feel people should look at other activities. People need to have activities I think but the production and fabrication of objects, finding an excuse, creating the desire for the buyer to buy them, it's wrong. Now we're exhausted. We're exhausted this way and should think of that.

Q: Is documentary a truer form of filmmaking to you than fiction narrative?

MG: Yeah, if not more. Some of my favorite filmmakers are making documentaries. I don't see that any lesser than a feature film. It is just amazing. The creation lays in other places. It's in the moment, not as much in the preparation, but in the moment and also the editing of course is very important. I watch mostly documentaries on my TV. I don't like to watch fiction, to be honest.

Q: Have you seen the documentary competition at SXSW?

MG: No, but you know when you go to festivals as a filmmaker, you never watch anything because I'm here doing these interviews. Lately I've seen this documentary that was amazing. It was called 51 Birch Street about this guy that puts a camera on his family and reveals all the story of his mom after she passed away and her father. It was just amazing. I watched it twice and I couldn't believe how enriching it was.

Q: Do you think it's the place of drama, whether fiction or documentary, to ask questions rather than provide answers?

MG: Well, it's not ask questions like you would ask a question to get an answer. You find more of the answer in the question in the sense that I think first of all, you don't want to ask a question if you know the answer. I think it's very important. It's like in science, if you hope too much for a result, then you're going to be biased. Your observation won't be really objective. The real discovery, and there is some intuition or truth that can be found and then proven, but a lot of discoveries are made as side effects. Somebody is looking for some experiment and then discover another property. Like they invented the transistor by complete randomness. I think that's interesting to be in a state of being observant to a point that you're going to capture something you were not looking for.

Q: In journalism they say you should know the answers to the questions you're asking.

MG: I think it's totally wrong. I cannot disagree more with that. I think if you're pressing for an answer, sometimes some journalists are trying to get me to say something and I can tell it right away. Either I'm going to tell it just to make them at peace or I'm not going to do it at all because it pisses me off. I think you go on an interview or an investigation like a conversation. You have to be curious of the person you're talking to. If you're not ready to be surprised then what's the point? You could write your article and not ask the person. Maybe you're hoping to go into some territory and discover something but you have to be ready to be completely surprised or taken by surprise. That's the beauty of it.

Q: Is that the difference between journalism and drama, that you can be more inquisitive in drama?

MG: Yeah, but you work with a screenplay. Or it depends, because some people like Mike Leigh who is one of my favorite directors, doesn't write a screenplay. He has a structure and he builds a character with his actor. A lot happening in front of the camera is not planned. There are some other directors who do a movie that's great and everything is carefully planned, but you have to have a lot of time to be able to write all the details of something that must look like life because it's very complex.

Q: I'm including documentary as drama, as a dramatic way to portray real life.

MG: Yeah, well, but when you say dramatic, it's some way to provoke emotion when you watch it for instance? I think if you connect with it, if people reveal things that they were not necessarily willing to say, not by manipulation but just by asking questions and asking what you would be shy to ask, I think that may be embarrassing a little bit but things you really wonder. I think if you do that then people reveal themselves in a way that's dramatic, meaning that's going to interest people.

Q: Has your family always known that they could be the inspiration for your personal films?

MG: Maybe not. It's hard to tell how they think. They encountered so much. Of course by doing that, I show it to them so it's sort of comforting probably. If I have any success, they are sort of part of it because they've been supportive all the time, so they're a part of it anyway but to show it, to officialize it probably gives them some pride.

Q: You weathered a lot of problems on The Green Hornet. Why was was it so hard to make?

MG: It's a little bit cursed. Even the one with Bruce Lee had just one season and was cancelled, so it doesn't have a history of success, which could be scary to say but it's challenging. It's interesting. That was what was proposed to me and I was interested in doing it, so I had a choice. I could have done it or done something else. It has not been a straight road. It's been very windy.

Q: Is it a relief to be done principal photography?

MG: Yeah, of course. Now I see all the problem. I see, "Oh, I should have shot it this way." I wish I had known, but it's always like that.

Q: Do you look at the comic book movies like The Dark Knight and Watchmen to see where the style is going?

MG: It doesn't fit very much in that style. I respect it but it's sort of a caricature of filmmaking. I always thought comic book being a much lighter art form should not be depending on film but should be leading film and be more creative. I see more of those comic books as overly filmic. Dark Knights and these serious knights are not my cup of tea. I like comic books but more like Crumb or the independent ones. I don't like genres that have so many codes. I don't like zomie movies, I don't like vampire movies. I know a lot of people like that because they're sort of in control of society with rules. Really it's not for me. I don't like for instance games that you play like Monopoly and such, because it's not creative to me to have so many rules.

Q: We're wondering what the Michel Gondry take on an action movie would be.

MG: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good I think.

The Thorn in the Heart is now playing in select theaters.