As we patiently await the inevitable invasion of summer, the sun is launching some surprise attacks, showering us with hot sunny days when we least expect 'em. Under these conditions a well-prepared SG needs at least one killer sundress in her arsenal. Here's what Suicide Girls are putting... more

As we patiently await the inevitable invasion of summer, the sun is launching some surprise attacks, showering us with hot sunny days when we least expect 'em. Under these conditions a well-prepared SG needs at least one killer sundress in her arsenal.

Here's what Suicide Girls are putting on -- and taking off -- this spring.

























Fashion Notes
This retro '50s inspired vintage design will have you instantly in the swing of spring. The 100% cotton yellow frock, with black polka-dots, has spaghetti straps and a full skirt with a white tulle petticoat peeping below. The bodice and waist are trimmed with black for added drama ($64.95 from StarletsAndHarlets.com). * Continuing the dotty '50s theme, this adorable Stop Staring red dress with white mini polka-dots, has a swing skirt, cute cap sleeves and a scoop neckline. It's trimmed in black, with four faux buttons down the front, piping on the sleeves and a thin black belt ($99.95 from Daddyos.com). * This Free People white linen mini with a flowery red snap dragon print is the embodiment of summer. The dress has a fitted bodice with smocked side panels, cats cradle knotted straps, and a feminine flared paneled skirt ($128 from 80sPurple.com). * This embroidered dark blue gypsy dress is perfect for warm days and wild nights. The spaghetti-strapped top has contrasting white stitching, and a peephole at the front with a self-tie closure. In keeping with the Romany style, both the top and skirt have a ruffle trim, and the design is pulled together with elastic smocking at the waist ($22.90 from Forever21.com) * This deceptively simple lemon yellow "dobby spot" cross back sundress is perfect for outdoor fun. The skirt has extra-large pockets on either side, and is drawn together at the back with a pretty self-tie bow ($55 from TopShop.com). * You'll keep your head in the clouds wearing this sleeveless, scoop neck white sundress. The mini skirt, which flares from under the bust, features super cute cutwork ($80 from TopShop.com). * And if white's not your color of choice, this little black summer dress could be for you. The short woven dress has crocheted overlay on the bust, upper back and straps ($22.80 from Forever21.com).


Did we miss your favorite Killer Frock shot? If so, upload it to our Remix Album (the girls are also name-checked at this link).

Check back every other Saturday for more Dirty Laundry and let SuicideGirls show you the best way to (un)dress.

Dear Baby Jesus, Please help me warn the good people about the horrible people. I feel the masses must know what the awful people are doing and why they are doing it. Jesus, I will call these people “Asshole Fuckfaces” because they are Asshole Fuckfaces. I could not do it without your help,... more

Dear Baby Jesus,

Please help me warn the good people about the horrible people. I feel the masses must know what the awful people are doing and why they are doing it. Jesus, I will call these people “Asshole Fuckfaces” because they are Asshole Fuckfaces. I could not do it without your help, J-bro. So, let’s get this fucker rolling.

Amen.

First up, some delightful politician racism.

Pat Buchanan is my favorite blatant racist who gets to have a job as a legitimate political commentator. He’s one of the few fun guys on the other side of the political spectrum, so he makes a great guest on cable news shows. And we apparently have all decided to turn our backs on his ugly streak of racist nonsense.

This week, Mount Racist Fuckface erupted again, on the pages of the website Human Events. In the middle of one of his usual rants against Obama, he tossed in this little gem.

“Scrub stock.” That’s some old school racism there.

That’s impressive. Pat Buchanan thought he would use a racist term so obscure that no one would get it. Too bad there is this thing called the Internet. Delightfully, it gets worse. “Scrub stock” isn’t just some random phrase Pat picked up. He speaks in code language to angry whites the way Bush spoke in code language to religious extremists and “scrub stock” is a label they know. It was commonly used in the early 20th century to argue that whites are better than blacks. And Pat knows his history, especially racial history.

So, Pat Buchanan just called the president of Trinidad “inferior” because he is of mixed race. You know, like our president. Point made, Pat.

Next up, some Asshole Fuckface apples fall far from the tree.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was one of our greatest Americans. He was an amazing man and his message and words inspire to this day. Sadly, some of his words are coming true, like these:

Trust me, Martin, your kids are being judged on their character. Only problem is, they are being judged as Asshole Fuckfaces. Most people don’t know the King children like to rake in the dough anytime anyone uses their father’s words.

Now that is sexy. How proud would their father be? We don’t really know, but we can only imagine he’d be very proud. Not many people know that he wanted to charge an admission fee to his “I Have a Dream” speech.

This week, it was revealed just how Asshole Fuckfacish his kids are when they made a nonprofit foundation pay them so King Jr’s words could be used on the King memorial on Washington's Mall. Seriously. These assholes made the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation pay them $800,000 for the use of his image and words ON HIS OWN FUCKING MEMORIAL.

But that was before he gave his famous, "I'm Getting Mine" speech.

Next up, religious Asshole Fuckface morons.

Bill Nye the Science Guy made a trip to Texas last week. He spoke at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas. Now, most people would probably understand, when going to see a man named “The Science Guy”, that science would be discussed. Sadly, this was Texas, so my theory did not hold up.

Sounds good. Off to a nice start.

Okay, well, maybe. Whatever. Now you are talking about Martians or some shit. Or as I like to call it, “Fake stuff" -- stuff that is not in The Bible.

You son of a bitch! You crossed a line, “Science Guy.”

Yes, you believe in God,but you are apparently so stupid that you get upset when hearing about science during a lecture you attended starring a guy named “The Science Guy.” Also, your belief in God is so strong, you can't listen to someone say something you don't think is right about God. That's some strong faith you've got there. Stick to your “God Guy” and the one book. Do not venture from its thick hard cover.

Finally, some white guy math Asshole Fuckfacery.

Byron York is a conservative writer who currently works for the Washington Examiner, a paper so important I just discovered its existence. Previously, he wrote for National Review magazine, which means he learned how to write complete bullshit and stick to it. This week, Byron explained Obama’s popularity numbers in a ‘holy shit am I white’ kind of way.

Fucking black people. They are totally throwing off the real numbers. Here’s the deal, if we went back to the thingy where they only counted for 3/5’s of a vote, he WOULDN’T be that popular.

Nice breakdown. I mean, come on! Why can’t people see this? America doesn’t like him, black people do.

Life will be much easier for Byron when he accepts the fact that black people are Americans and they are here to stay. Same with Hispanics and Asians. I know it’s weird to wrap your head around but they actually count as much as white people.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper

Gavin Hood became a political filmmaker with his very first movie. In Tsotsi he attempted to redeem a fictional criminal teen in South Africa, Hood's country of origin. He tackled American foreign policy, for better or worse, in his follow-up film, Rendition. The ensemble drama about our government's... more

Gavin Hood became a political filmmaker with his very first movie. In Tsotsi he attempted to redeem a fictional criminal teen in South Africa, Hood's country of origin. He tackled American foreign policy, for better or worse, in his follow-up film, Rendition. The ensemble drama about our government's often overlooked policy of taking terror suspects to foreign countries where torture could be conducted legally, was not a hit financially or critically, but it asked the questions Hood wanted to ask.

The X-Men series has always kept politics in the metaphorical forefront. The comic books portrayed mutants as a persecuted minority. The films featured politicians proposing policy to round up mutants, exterminate them or even try to "cure" them, raising the moral question of who decides what needs to be fixed.

Perhaps Hood is the right filmmakers to explore the origin of X-Men's signature character, Wolverine. Hugh Jackman returns as James Logan, whose self-healing powers and natural claws made him a prime candidate for military work. Thanks to his extended life span, Logan's military career spans from The Civil War to private mercenary operations post-Vietnam. When his old mercenary cohorts threaten his quiet life as a Canadian lumberjack, Logan submits to experiments that give him an adamantium endoskeleton, including new claws.

Hood was eager to discuss the political undertones of his film. He claimed that no previous interview had made the connection between the film's African mercenary missions and his own South African background. These may not be the comic book soundbites Marvel and Fox want to use to sell their movie, but they show the thought Hood put into his first big budget studio spectacle, however the end result is judged.

Fred Topel: Did you bring Africa to the story?

Gavin Hood: Yeah. Let me tell you, obviously it seems like I just brought it because I come from Africa. Actually, what I was trying to do was go all the way with the character of Wolverine in terms of a real arc as a soldier, from soldier in a just war to mercenary in a murky, dirty world from which he wants to extricate himself. Certainly as they run out into the opening battle scene of the Civil War, the idea that I wanted to create was a sense that it is really two guys fighting on the side of right and a just cause and off they go.

Then of course as they proceed through World War I, they're still in a just war but things are starting to get tougher. By the time they get to World War II, still in a just war but they are starting to be more and more affected by battle. One is sort of falling in love with the idea of killing and the other one is becoming slightly alienated by the idea. Then of course you get into Vietnam where it's maybe not a just war and it's a little murkier.

Now, where does Africa come in? By the time they get into Africa, we're really into the world of the mercenary. Wolverine the character, he's now not even fighting. He's been a soldier at least up to now. Now he's just a gun for hire and now he's in Africa as a mercenary.

I do think there's a real world parallel with that, that war has become very murky and mercenaries are very much being used. We've seen over the last half century, soldiers meddling in the affairs of weaker countries and stronger countries sending mercenaries into these places. We always say, when I was in Africa, that the battle for Africa would be during the Cold War. It was a cold war but for us it was a very hot war. The Cubans and the Soviets and the Americans and the British were on different sides backing different guerilla groups and I personally lost friends in those conflicts.

FT: If no one else has even addressed it, did you have to pretty much downplay your political interests in the movie?

GH: Yeah, I don't think I've ever made them overtly known because I think the idea is that you're directing a big action summer blockbuster, but I do think that any movie has themes and ideas that present themselves to the audience. I don't believe there is any movie that isn't in some way political because it presents a world view.

I'll give you a perfect example. In any movie that is simply about good versus evil, and the hero is on the side of good and he's fighting evil forces, that is in my view putting out into the world and certainly into a mass audience and young audience's mind a rather dangerous philosophy, which is that there is good and evil in the simplistic and easily defined way. I think that's a dangerous way of seeing the world because it denies one's own capacity for evil.

I think that for the last eight years, we've had that philosophy very much prevalent in the Bush administration that if you're on the side of good, at least as you perceive it, then you can do no evil. This is classically the philosophy of any fundamentalist group that somehow they are on the side of God. This, as we know, is destructive, whether it be from an Islamic fundamentalist point of view or from a right wing political point of view. People who believe themselves to be good fighting evil are very difficult to reason with. I think that a far healthier philosophy to recognize, in the way that it exists in the character of Wolverine is a bit of a laugh, that one has the potential for violence or evil within one's own being.

FT: Isn't that sort of the whole Marvel model of superheroes?

GH: That's what's so great about this character or about this movie for me and why I wanted to do it. I was excited by the fact that I would be making a superhero movie in which the leading character is in fact at war with his own nature and questions his own nature and doesn't always like his own nature. That is a pretty positive, in my view, mass audience hero.

It's not the mass audience hero that is the good guy, only fighting forces of evil. This is a guy who recognizes his own capacity for evil and I think that's exciting in a sort of popular culture kind of way. After all, the most famous line from Wolverine, the comics, is "I am the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice."

It's important to be quoted exactly like that. Don't leave out the but. Don't change it to "and what I do isn't very nice." "But what I do best isn't very nice," that line alone just tells you right there that you're dealing with a character that has a certain degree of self-loathing, and to his credit, a certain degree of self-analysis going on.

FT: A big news story surrounding this movie is that a pirated copy was leaked online on April 1. The piracy will forever be a part of this movie's history. Is that something you could address after the film's release, like maybe as part of the DVD?

GH: Maybe. Hopefully by the time the DVD comes out, the FBI will have concluded their investigation. We might actually know who did this. Of course, I don't know if that'll happen but it might. Yeah, I guess it is strange. We're probably the most pirated film in the history of cinema. What a strange distinction. What we don't know is whether it will or will not negatively affect the box office and we'll never really know.

No matter what the box office is, we won't know to what extent the piracy ate into our box office. So I certainly wouldn't recommend anybody letting their film get out. It's too stressful. I do think it's going to provide a massive push to the industry in terms of how to resolve or how to combat this problem because if we don't resolve this problem, it's going to become increasingly difficult to attract investors to making films because it's just too risky.

FT: Clearly it came from within the industry, because who else would have access to an unfinished version?

GH: Well, I don't know. There are people who hack. There are people who make copies. I actually have a strong sense of how this happened so it's very tempting for me to want to say, "Look, I think this is how this happened." I restrain myself from doing that because I could be wrong and that would be the most terrible thing to suggest that somebody had done something that they might not have done. So the FBI is investigating. Let's find out, if they can, how and who did this? Then we'll take it from there.

FT: Do you think it's a specific person or a broader element?

GH: I think we have a strong sense of where and how it happened but we don't know who.

FT: It seems like the critics are already itching to tear you down before the film even comes out. How do you handle that, so shortly after your debut they were so happy to praise?

GH: Might happen. A lot of people might tear me down, that's true. You never know. Listen, you do the film the best you can. Just as there's no such thing as a perfect person, there's also no such thing as a perfect movie. There will always be flaws. For me personally, I always find that there are some scenes that I find, "Wow, we nailed that moment better than we ever could've imagined," and there are others where you go, "Dammit, I never quite got that where I'd like to."

It's a bit like a friend of mine who's such a keen golfer. I personally don't play golf, but you don't ever play the perfect round of golf. Life just ain't like that and that's okay. You just keep trying to do your thing and then you've got to put it out in the world and of course people are going to hopefully, mostly love it and certainly have comments where they don't love it.

FT: What current events are you following in the news?

GH: Well, right now I'm very interested to see what happens with the South African elections. I'm South African so that's really what I'm following at the moment.

FT: That's not really covered in American news. What should our readers know about that?

GH: The African National Congress party has had a very strong majority for many, many years and this is the first election where there are other groups beginning to emerge that might eat into the majority that's currently supported the ANC. Some people think this is very sad and the ANC may be splitting apart.

I personally see it as exactly what democracy is supposed to be. I think multiple parties are a good thing and that opposition is a good thing and it fuels debate. So it's fascinating to me to see South Africa becoming, in my view, even more democratic because there isn't just one party dominating the political landscape.

It still will dominate. The ANC will certainly be the ruling party. The question is will it have a 2/3 majority and therefore be able to adjust the constitution if it chooses to, or will it fall short of a 2/3 majority and therefore minority parties will have more influence in the government. So it's just an exciting time for South Africa as it moves into its, what, 15th year of democracy.

FT: Do you still vote in South Africa?

GH: Sure, I have the mark right here on my finger. This dirty mark on my thumb right here is what's happened to the purple ink that they paint on your nail so that you can't go in and vote again. Apparently it takes ages, it has to grow out. So if you didn't vote, we can see. Yes, I was back home, literally on Wednesday and I flew out Wednesday night. I was back home, I voted and I was doing press obviously for a few days before that about Wolverine. I went and voted and went straight to the airport.

FT: Do you share how you vote?

GH: At this point I'm not going to because it's a big thing in South Africa for people to say, "Your vote, your secret." It's one of the things that I plug for people to encourage them to vote. My main thing as somewhat of a celebrity out there is to encourage people to vote no matter who they vote for. So I tend to avoid picking a particular side. I just think it's really important that young people get out and vote because it's a democracy that the battle was hard won, and it's good for people to get out and vote.

When Marvel comics wanted to launch Wolverine: Weapon X, a new Wolverine comic in advance of the Hugh Jackman movie, they turned to writer Jason Aaron, who hasn't been a professional writer for very long, but has quickly become one of the pre-eminent comics writers of his generation and one of a... more

When Marvel comics wanted to launch Wolverine: Weapon X, a new Wolverine comic in advance of the Hugh Jackman movie, they turned to writer Jason Aaron, who hasn't been a professional writer for very long, but has quickly become one of the pre-eminent comics writers of his generation and one of a handful who's been able to so skillfully write war and crime stories in addition to superhero comics.

Aaron came out of nowhere in 2006 with The Other Side, a supernatural Vietnam war tale about two soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict. It was an intensely personal book for Aaron who cited his late cousin, Vietnam veteran and writer Gustav Hasford (whose Vietnam war novel The Short-Timers became the movie Full Metal Jacket) as one of the major inspirations for the book (and, indeed, for Aaron's writing career). Since then Aaron has created an ongoing crime saga set on an Indian reservation, (Scalped), in addition to writing Hellblazer, Punisher and Black Panther.

SG called up Aaron at his home in Kansas City.

Alex Dueben: This isn't your first time writing the character Wolverine, but how did you end writing a whole new series for Marvel?

Jason Aaron: I did the "Get Mystique" story arc for Wolverine and I'd been talking with John Barber, who's the editor, about doing some more stuff. I had a couple of ideas. Eventually they offered me my own book where I could do all those same things that we'd already been talking about.

AD: What did you want to do with character?

JA: We had talked over a couple of different ideas, stories that we're going to do down the line in Weapon X. The first one is a more of a sci-fi tale than we've seen Wolverine involved in in quite some time. I've said it before, one of the things I love about the character that you can put him in different genres and he works.

In just the stuff I've done so far, I did a single-issue story that was basically a gritty character drama and "Get Mystique" was one long chase basically from start to finish and "Manifest Destiny" was a balls to the walls kung fu story. With Wolverine: Weapon X we'll be trying to mix things up like that from arc to arc, so the first arc is a typical sort of black ops story but the second arc will jump right into the middle of a completely different genre.

AD: You want to keep jumping around to make it accessible for casual readers.

JA: Ideally. I've tried to model it after what Garth Ennis did with Punisher Max, which was a series where he had recurring characters and villains who popped up in a couple of arcs, but the arcs were pretty stand alone. We'll have recurring supporting characters and we'll have an ongoing character arc for Wolverine, but at the end of the day hopefully we'll have relatively stand alone arcs so you can jump right into the book without having read Wolverine at all before.

AD: For so long Wolverine was a character without a past and a few years ago in the comics he ended up remembering his entire history. Is there a handbook explaining where he was when and what he was doing?

JA: If there's a handbook, nobody gave it to me. (laughs) In this book we'll really be focusing on just going forward. We'll have flashbacks and things from Wolverine's past coming back to haunt him, but it's all going to be about new villains, new challenges, and moving things forward.

AD: Did you have an editorial mandate to try to attract new readers and tie in with the movie?

JA: The first arc, we talked about doing something that would evoke the movie, something that would deal with the legacy of Weapon X without rehashing the same stories. Somebody who goes to see the movie and likes it and wants to pick up the book, you want to give them a few elements that they would recognize.

AD: You're also writing another, very different book from Marvel, Ghost Rider, and you're wrapping up the book with a standalone miniseries, Ghost Rider: Heaven's on Fire.

JA: It's basically me finishing out the story the way I wanted to which was getting a new number one out of it and hopefully bringing in a few more readers. I've been doing the book for 13-14 issues or so. It got great reviews, brought in a lot of fans that have never read the series before. So it was just planned especially with me taking over Weapon X, which is obviously the biggest book I've ever done. It seemed like a good time to get a little more spotlight on Ghost Rider.

AD: When you write, do you tend to think in terms of a defined beginning, middle and ending?

JA: It depends. A lot of the stuff I did last year were short arcs. Three issues of Black Panther, a couple issues of Hellblazer. For Ghost Rider I came on with one two-year story. With Wolverine it's obviously much more open-ended. I hope to stick around on this book for a nice long run.

Last year was much more focused on me doing those short runs which is a great way to build your name and get attention. This year I'll be a little more focused on ongoing series. Around the time Ghost Rider finishes up I'll be working on a new Marvel ongoing

AD: Can you say what it is yet?

JA: No, not yet.

AD: Your other book is one of my personal favorites, Scalped. I would imagine that's a story where you figured out the beginning, middle and end of the story.

JA: The ending's been there since the original page. I don't know where all the characters are going to wind up, I don't know all the points along the way and there's never been an issue number, but I would say in general where we're at by the end of this year will be about the midpoint -- the low point in a lot of ways for a lot of the characters. Now whether that translates into us doing 60 issues or 70 issues, I don't know, I can't say, I wouldn't want to say.

AD: For those who don't know the book, we should probably say what it's about.

JA: It's a crime series set on a modern day Indian reservation in South Dakota. It's a story involving an undercover FBI agent, Indian gaming, a murder mystery that stretches back to the nineteen seventies, the militant red power movement of that era. And it's a character drama. It's really about the characters living on this reservation, from the head of the local criminal organization to the undercover FBI agent who's trying to bring him down to people all over the reservation.

AD: I think that's been one of most interesting things is that it started out as a noir, but it's really become the story of a community.

JA: We quickly realized that was going to be the strength of the book. With the third arc, the "Casino Boogie" arc, each issue focused on a different character. That's usually something series do a little later in their run. We figured to do this early because if people don't buy into these characters, they're not going to like the book. We're not going to dazzle them with plot twists. We don't have a great hook like 100 Bullets.

AD: Have you always been interested in Native American history, the American Indian Movement?

JA: I've always been interested in the history, especially of the plains Indians of that region. More recently, the Leonard Peltier story, the story of AIM. And all that just played together with my desire to do a crime series.

AD: You've talked about your cousin Gus Hasford who was a novelist. He wrote The Short-Timers which was adapted into the movie Full Metal Jacket. Was he a big influence on you or did you want to establish yourself as a writer independent of him?

JA: I think I already wanted to be a writer even before I really met him. He definitely reinforced that desire. He was an eccentric guy. He had a book collection of thousands of books. He carried a little notebook with him all the time and was always writing down ideas that he would file in this elaborate filing system. He always had several different books that he was working on at the same time. When I met him he was researching a book on the Civil War writer Ambrose Bierce, working on some sort of sci-fi novel about a war between Japan and Australia, as well as the sequel to his Vietnam War book The Short-Timers. He was a guy who did not graduate high school, but was one of the smartest people and just a voracious reader who could talk about any number of subjects.

AD: Your cousin was a fairly successful writer, though I think all his books are all out of print now.

JA: Yeah. He had three novels published and they're all out of print, but The Short-Timers is pretty easy to track down.

AD: I guess I'm wondering, why comics?

JA: I've been reading comics since I was a kid, but I wasn't actively trying to become a comic book writer because I had no idea how to go about doing that. The only time I ever met comic pros was getting my books signed at Dragon*Con. I thought you had to move to New York to pursue work that way and really in that area you probably did before the rise of the internet. I had dreams of being the next great American novelist and went to college and got an English degree and flirted with journalism. I moved from Alabama to Kansas City and here I was writing film reviews and DVD reviews and had a few short stories published. And over the course of that whole time I was still reading comics.

In 2000 Marvel out of blue set up this talent search contest. I wrote up a one page Wolverine synopsis and dropped it in a box with a huge pile of other synopses at Wizard World Chicago and kind of forgot about it when months later when I get an call out of the blue from an editor at Marvel. Even though that eight-page story didn't lead to anything else at Marvel at the time, which was a little disappointing, for the first time ever I had my foot in the door a little bit. It encouraged me to think I could take a crack at this.

One of the first things I pitched was the story that eventually became The Other Side. I pitched it all over before finally getting an editor at Vertigo to take a look at it.

AD: It's all about persistence.

JA: I was very persistent. Years ago I went to a writers' conference when I was still in Alabama and had sort of an eye opening experience. I didn't know much at the time, but I knew enough to know that I wasn't a very good writer. At this conference it seemed like the people there for the most part were interested in finding out 'how do I get an agent, how do I sell this book.' Of course most of those books, maybe all of them, aren't good enough. They never considered the idea that their book might not be good enough. They all figured they had the next Bridges of Madison County and they just wanted to get it out there.

I was still interested in just trying to become a good enough writer. I always figured if you're just good enough, the rest of it will work itself out. That's one of the main things I tell people who are trying to break in, just make sure you're good enough. Be a harsh critic and don't just go by what your friends tell you. I worked a lot of crappy day jobs where I could goof off and daydream and write at work. If I wasn't writing comics right now, that's probably exactly what I'd be doing.

AD: What I think made The Other Side stand out wasn't just that it was good but that it was so different from anything else.

JA: That was part of the idea. This was obviously the first big thing I was pitching and I wanted something that would hopefully get somebody's attention. Nobody really does war books anymore. Except for Garth Ennis, nobody's done them at all the past few decades.

The goal with really everything I write is to look at it and say is this different? Does it have its own voice? Can I honestly say that if I saw this comic as a reader, would I pick it up and pay three-four bucks to read it? I think if the answer to that is ever no, then you've obviously got to re-examine what you're doing

AD: There's dozens of ordinary superhero books, and plenty of writers and who can do it, so what can you bring to it so that it stands out?

JA: Yeah, but that's not a slam against superhero books. There's a lot of really good stuff being done in the mainstream right now. I think it's a great time to be a comic fan.

AD: I think it's a high point because the mainstream has absorbed so many creators with their own sensibilities.

JA: I think people forget how exciting and shocking it seemed when Brian Michael Bendis started to get so much mainstream Marvel work. Or when Grant Morrison took over JLA [Justice League of America]. Those were bold moves at the time. Companies handing the keys over to these young nutballs who'd been off doing their own stuff for years. But now that seems commonplace. You have a guy like Axel Alonso at Marvel who goes out and looks for people who tell their own stories and have their own voice to bring to Marvel. He's the guy who went out and found Matt Fraction and Rick Remender and me and Duane Swierczynski.

AD: I know most of your work is at Marvel right now. Are there any Marvel characters you're itching to write?

JA: I want to write The Thing.

AD: Why The Thing?

JA: I don't know. The Fantastic Four has been one my favorite comics for years. The Lee-Kirby stuff, I put that run at sort of the top of any run on any comic ever. The Thing is just such a great character...I'd love to get my hands on him. Hopefully somewhere down the line. Especially if I keep saying that in interviews, maybe I'll get my crack.

AD: I'm happy to help.

JA: (laughs) And I'm getting to write Spider-Man a little bit in Wolverine now. I wrote him in just one panel of Ghost Rider a few months ago.

AD: We'd be remiss if we didn't mention your collaborator on Wolverine: Weapon X, artist Ron Garney. What do you like about working with him and what does he bring to the book?

JA: The first thing he brings is that he's having a blast. He's having a lot of fun. He's been really excited about doing Wolverine from the get-go. When Axel [Alonso] offered him "Get Mystique" he was a little skeptical only because he had no idea who the hell I was, but we had a lot of fun with that. We've only met once. We had breakfast together at the New York Con this year. He was up in the morning all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looked like he'd already run a couple of miles, and I kinda slid out of bed, not feeling my best. So we're very different, but we hit it off and I think you can see his excitement in the pages.

I think this is some of the best stuff he's ever done. And definitely the best stuff he's done in a long time. You can tell he's so into everything we're doing on Wolverine. Not to mention that the guy can draw his hands off and in terms of action, I love his action scenes. He brings such simplicity and power to all the action scenes and he makes them believable. He's the guy who probably could do most of those things to you if you pissed him off, so he brings a lot of believability to the flips and throws and stabs and punches. He makes me look like I know what I'm talking about.

After two years living in Sao Paulo and reporting on the city's fashion, design, music and lifestyle scenes for CoolHunting.com and JoshSpear.com, journalist Phuong-Cac Nguyen built up valuable information about the metropolis to bursting point. The splatterings are in her 176-page Total Sao Paulo:... more

After two years living in Sao Paulo and reporting on the city's fashion, design, music and lifestyle scenes for CoolHunting.com and JoshSpear.com, journalist Phuong-Cac Nguyen built up valuable information about the metropolis to bursting point. The splatterings are in her 176-page Total Sao Paulo: A Guide to the Unexpected book, out April 29 on Unhinged Jaw Press, a veritable newcomer to the tourist guidebook industry that targets creative types preferring to take jaunts through off-the-beaten-track locales and check out the Red Light District over the standard foreigner mob scenes.

Interspersed between the spotlights on neighborhoods and tips on where to find the best $2.50 caipirinhas, are interviews with Paulistanos from a diverse range of professions, from a vinyl shop owner to Phuong-Cac's favorite interview of the bunch, a garota de programa (aka program girl, the Portuguese euphemism for prostitute).

Cleo is 23 and has been hustling as an escort for almost two years in São Paulo's sex biz, where she makes a killing doing it with clients at R$300 for two hours. Her bills include R$1,750 to maintain an apartment near Avenida Paulista and R$650 a week to a website that publishes her ad, but she still has enough left over to put away for a house. The money definitely beats the crap salary she was paid as a receptionist.

Here's an interview excerpted from the book, with a little extra length thrown in exclusively for SuicideGirls.



Phuong-Cac Nguyen: How long have you been doing this?

Cleo: A year and a half.

PCN: How did you begin?

Cleo: I met a girl who did programas in a swingers club in Sao Paulo. We became friends and I ended up interested.

PCN: How many clients do you have?

Cleo: Three or four a day, from Monday to Friday. On weekends not as many; one or two. The clients have kids, and 80 percent are married.

PCN: And the youngest?

Cleo: He was 17 and a virgin. He was underage at the time but I only found out later. Later I spotted him at the reception, probably waiting for another girl. He must have liked it.

PCN: Explain how a programa works.

Cleo: I charge R$300. It's the minimum. If I lower the price clients want an even bigger discount. There are so many idiots here you wouldn't believe it. A guy even asked me if he could pay the day after.

PCN: When are the busy hours?

Cleo: Lunchtime. Also after 6 p.m., when men leave work. And during soccer games. They go to the stadium, have time off.

PCN: What do you like about your work, compared to others?

Cleo: I like the freedom. I don't like to have a schedule, having to go to work on time, decide how much I want to earn. I also like people, having contact with them.

PCN: And the bad side?

Cleo: Well, there are some guys that are annoying, hard to get on with. It's unpleasant.

PCN: Which things should clients watch out for here?

Cleo: There's a lot of cheating. You call a girl but the person you are dealing with is not the one in the photo. If someone if sick, for example, they send their friends. Some girls change their attitude once they meet their client.

PCN: What are the foreign clients like?

Cleo: The gringos are more attentive. I never had any trouble with them regarding payment or time. They're more polite. They expect you to be on time. Brazilians have a fetish for anal sex. The gringos are not so crazy about that. They prefer petting and kissing.

PCN: Do clients bring their own toys?

Cleo: No, I have mine. I have a dildo I normally use. I have a bag with costumes. A lot of them ask me to wear lingerie.

PCN: What's the most requested fantasy?

Cleo: They like fetish gear. Corsets.

PCN: So, give us the dish on these sessions.

Cleo: One time this guy wanted me to pee on him. We were two girls, and he didn't want to see us. We blindfolded him and took him to the bathroom. We didn't have sex with him. Some guys like to switch roles. They ask me to fuck them with a dildo, businessmen and married men in particular. Once I received married doctors with children. I met them in a hotel and they were fucking each other. A very important businessman used to hire around six girls. He liked to watch us six fucking. I never received less than R$1,500 from him. I went out with him for three months. Then all of a sudden he disappeared.

PCN: What was the lamest experience you've had?

Cleo: Sometimes not everything is clear, and when clients arrive they expect more. This guy wanted anal and was being very rude. The main problem is anal, because that's all they want. Timing is also a problem. For instance, I normally offer two hours and some guys think that means fucking nonstop. Some guys take pills and want to fuck four, five times in a row. I fuck twice at the most.

PCN: Were you afraid to put your photo on the escort's website?

Cleo: Not really. Not even my friends [know]. My parents don't have Internet. My boyfriend is an excellent cover.

PCN: And so he's cool with it all, I assume.

Cleo: We've been together from the very beginning. He's been very supportive. He's my bodyguard. I always tell him where I will be, so he keeps an eye on me and when he can he comes here.

PCN: Before doing this, where were you working?

Cleo: I worked as a receptionist and a secretary. Promotions for malls. The thing is, women are very poorly paid here in Sao Paulo. On average women don't make more than R$600 a month. I used to work from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. for only R$350. I had to help my mother.

PCN: Where do you want to go with this?

Cleo: I have plans to stop. [My boyfriend and my] goal is to buy a house. After that I'll quit. I also want to study.

PCN: Explain the different levels of girls.

Cleo: There was a very high-class house called WE. But it was shut down by the federal police. Now there are a lot of TV girls doing programas. But it's in secrecy. There are negotiations. But they're very expensive, some of them charge up to R$6,000 a night. Some girls [on the escort site I'm found on] are quite known, because they appeared in a Brazilian men's magazine called Sex. So they consider themselves famous. But the top earners are the TV girls. Guys pay that much just to say they went out with them.

PCN: We're doing this interview right after hearing about ex-New York City Mayor Eliot Spitzer's connections with a Brazilian prostitute. Your opinion?

Cleo: I think that in every profession one must have ethics. She didn't have any. It's a secret one must know how to keep. It's about reputation. But in Brazil it's also about self-promotion, so girls go on TV and declare that they are prostitutes. To scandal is not cool.

PCN: Which restaurants do you like?

Cleo: A very good one is Famiglia Mancini. They serve pasta and it's excellent. There's a churrascaria called Vento Aragano. It's the best one in town, and it's very expensive. But since it's the client who's paying, I eat a lot.

PCN: Tell me about the motels here. Which are the nicest?

Cleo: Lumini. Pousada do Cowboy. Studio A; they have swimming pool, are very clean, have solar panels. Opium is also very beautiful. A very famous one is Faraos, with an ancient Egypt theme. There are also a lot of drive-ins. You have sex in the cars. In Brazil, drive-ins are private garages. Some have even beds next to the parking space.


Excerpt from Total Sao Paulo: A Guide to the Unexpected courtesy of Unhinged Jaw Press. Text copyright (c) Unhinged Jaw Press 2009. Printed with kind permission of Unhinged Jaw Press.

Total Sao Paulo: A Guide to the Unexpected book is available from TotalSPGuide.com.

Mexico is sending a present. It’s kind of a shitty present because it can kill you. Totally not cool, Mexico. It’s almost like you don’t care about all the money we spend on your drugs or the way we let your people pick our vegetables for almost nothing, then scorn them for trying to... more

Mexico is sending a present. It’s kind of a shitty present because it can kill you. Totally not cool, Mexico. It’s almost like you don’t care about all the money we spend on your drugs or the way we let your people pick our vegetables for almost nothing, then scorn them for trying to live. Whatever. Mexico has decided to send the swine flu our way and I am totally not interested.

Mexico has been hit hard by the swine flu and it’s a bit disturbing. The virus is apparently a new one that we haven’t seen before, but it is also a descendant of the 1918 flu virus that killed 50 million peeps. All H1N1 viruses are descendants of the 1918 virus, but they pick up a little something special along the way to make themselves stand out a bit. This flu has the pig part, with a little bird and human virus genes thrown in, which makes it “very unusual.” Me no likey very unusual flu. And it’s a mover.

Super. Basically, the CDC and WHO are freaking out because they don’t know exactly what is going on. They know a flu is spreading, but they don’t know how deadly it is. At the time I wrote this article, 149 people were confirmed dead in Mexico and there were 40 confirmed cases in the US, a few in Canada, Scotland, New Zealand and some suspected cases elsewhere. It’s already all over the place and it’s just getting going.

The cases in the US and Canada are very mild, which has confused scientists even more. On one hand, it could have co-infected with other microbes in Mexico to create a super death flu or it could be the same virus that has mutated into a less lethal form. Or it could be the treatment methods in Mexico. And nobody knows how many Mexicans have come down with a mild case of the flu. Sounds awesome, right?

The Mexican president is saying the problem is under control, while the death toll increases. On Sunday, when the president made his claim, 86 people were dead. Now we're up to 149 and people on the ground are saying it is much worse.

Ruh roh.

Nada bueno, amigos. And it gets worse. The 1918 flu killed so many because young adults were the most likely to die. This flu appears to be the same deal. It causes the body’s own defenses to work against the body -- those that succumb drown from an extreme build-up of fluid in the lungs which is brought on by the body's immune response. So, the people least likely to die from this flu are those under 3 and over 60. Those most likely to kick it are between 20 and 40. This is one of the key signs of a pandemic flu. The 1918 flu killed 2.5% of those infected, while this Mexico version is killing 7% of reported cases. Hence the freak out.

The government is now saying it’s not if we have outbreaks, it's when.

The question is how bad will it get? Economically, given our current situation, a full-blown pandemic would be fucking devastating. Pandemic waves commonly last 12 weeks. Did you know some government agencies recommend you stockpile enough goodies to get by for 12 weeks? Are you ready? I can hold on for 6 days, then I’m going to need milk and some kind of cheese cracker situation. Grocery stores don’t keep more than a week’s worth of food, if that. Now imagine a run on grocery stores if a pandemic breaks out? How’s that look? What if the flu sweeps through your local power or water plant? How’s that going for you? What about your garbage men? Now that they’re all infected, trash is piling up and the rats are out. Also, enjoying all those imported cheap foods? They aren’t happening because the border is closed. How do you feel now that half of the doctors and nurses have quit? Not so good?

Our society is actually quite fragile. Aside from the deaths, fear is the next big bad during a pandemic. It leads to people doing all sorts of crazy things. The economy would nose dive because of all those employees staying home because they are sick, staying home because they are afraid of becoming sick and staying home because they are quarantined with a family member who is ill.

So, this one could be the big bad or it could be nothing. I suggest you keep an eye on it and maybe do a little prep.


FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper

Fischerspooner emerged from the ultra hip electroclash scene in 2001, bursting forth in a ball of glitter with their debut album, #1, and a live show that was part disco, part art-house and 100% entertainment. Visual and performance art student and showman Casey Spooner was front and center expressing... more

Fischerspooner emerged from the ultra hip electroclash scene in 2001, bursting forth in a ball of glitter with their debut album, #1, and a live show that was part disco, part art-house and 100% entertainment. Visual and performance art student and showman Casey Spooner was front and center expressing partner Warren Fischer's pulsating soundscapes with dance, makeup, costume, and elaborate staging effects.

As they embarked on a major label venture with Capitol Records, who released Fischerspooner's follow up album Odyssey, Warren and Casey chose to embrace the culture the company represented. Their songs became more structured, and their stage show got a whole lot bigger. So big that after completing a European tour, Fischerspooner found themselves without the funds to tour the show fully in North America.

Disappointed that artistic success had led to financial failure, Casey retreated to his theatrical roots. He joined experimental New York performance ensemble The Wooster Group, taking on the role of Ophelia's brother Laertes in their production of Hamlet (which featured two Fischerspooner songs that were composed for the show).

Though he enjoyed his relatively simple life as an actor, Casey found he missed the creatively all-encompassing and fulfilling odyssey that was Fischerspooner. Taking inspiration from Shakespeare's rhyming couplets, a third Fischerspooner album began to take form.

Called Entertainment, the album, which is released on the band's own FS Studios label, explores what happens when art and pop culture collide. Is entertainment art? That's one of the many questions Casey asked himself when SuicideGirls called in.

Nicole Powers: When Fischerspooner do an album, there's a lot more to it than just getting the music right.

Casey Spooner: Oh my god! Tell me about it. The next record -- I'm not doing anything. Just makin' a record. I'm not even going to make a cover. Nothing. No show. It's just going to be an album, and you can just sit home and listen to it.

NP: People expect a big production from you and they expect you to morph with each album, so it's not just about the album, it's about coming up with an idea for the show and an overall look. How did that process start this time around?

CS: It's different every record. It's actually not that hard when I have time, and it's also naturally the way I think because I come from a performance and visual arts background. A lot of times when I'm writing music, I'm thinking about what it looks like or I'm imagining how to perform it, so there's sort of an organic process that's happening.

The thing that was weird on this record was, all the other records I would write and I would almost have an image library. With Odyssey, I had an incredibly extensive, super organized catalog of images that would be [in] folders that related to specific songs, folders that related to specific production design, wardrobe or photography or graphic design. So when I had to go work on those elements, I would just send a reference library, a style guide, and people would have that to work from.

On this record, I didn't write that way. I wrote, for the first time almost language first, and not image. So, there was a bit of a crisis as the record was finishing because I did not have an image in my head 'cause I had done something very different on this record.

I wrote many of the songs title first only. For about a year I was trying to start the record and the only thing I could do was write titles. Then I was like, that's a good little system, because I sort of over-wrote on Odyssey. I was so panicked and I wanted to be so great, and wanted to do the best I possibly could, that I just basically made like a phone book-sized journal that was so impossible to manage or to edit or to find anything -- there are images of me on the floor of the studio with a thousand pages around me. It got too big. So I was like, OK, I'm going to write in a different way. I'm going to write just titles first, and when I hear music that I feel connects to the core theme of a title, then I'll get into structuring the language within the song.

Also, I've been doing this production of Shakespeare while I was writing the record. I would be writing while I was in rehearsal or writing while I was touring, so it kind of opened me up. Warren and I have had a lot of fights in the past about simple rhyme. I despise really simplistic rhyme, and I always would avoid it in songwriting because I felt that I was compromising the concept of what I was saying in order to satisfy an arbitrary structure. So I always resisted rhyme aggressively.

For instance with "Happy," I had written a crazy, weird, wordy chorus, which ultimately Linda Perry cleaned up, and put it into more simple rhyme structure -- just because I refused to do it. Warren and I would fight about it. He would be like, "Can't you just make it rhyme!" So, after working on Shakespeare, I started to value the power of something that could be meaningful and rhyme.

NP: The good old fashioned rhyming couplet.

CS: Yes. So I started writing differently on this record. When it came time to make the image I was in a bit of a panic, so for this cycle what we did is we did a couple of workshops with The Wooster Group. They gave us some stuff, we had some ideas, and we just kind of all threw it into these workshops, and that kind of set us on a trajectory that ultimately helped us start to develop the image.

NP: Where you workshopping to the finished album?

CS: Not quite. I mean Warren takes so long to finish the songs. Its like basically the idea was there, but structurally it could shift, but we had a general sense of what things were like.

The thing that was very different about this record also is that we continued to perform while we were working on it. Every summer we've gone out and done a couple of shows, and every summer we'd put in new songs no matter what state they' were in. We had written choreography for ten songs a year and a half ago. The whole show was written in a very traditional pop sense [by] summer 2008. We had projections done, we had choreography done, we had wardrobe done, we had all these elements already done. Then we kind of took that stuff into the [Wooster Group's Performing Garage] and then found a way to kind of interrupt it or infect it or kind of take it apart or push it in a completely different direction.

NP: Give an example of that.

CS: One of the things that we did that was very different is that we've been using video for the first time to kind of influence the choreography. Vanessa Walters, who's our choreographer, she would have written choreography from start to finish. Then, we went in to the Garage, [The Wooster Group] just gave us the space, and there happened to be a video camera and a monitor there, and we were playing with them just because they were there, and it ended up being a big influence on us.

We videotaped the choreography of one of the songs that was already written, and I accidentally didn't turn the mic on. We wanted to see what it looked like, and I was like, "Oh, we'll just play the music from this source and you just hit play on the camera, and then the music will play and we'll see the choreography then we'll know how it looks." We did that, and it was this weird accident where the choreography actually offset from the music because of course it was not in sync.

It was kind of a breakthrough because the choreography was in time and it was thematic to the music but there was this tension where the music would change and the dance wouldn't change. Or the dance would change and the music wouldn't. Then Vanessa started doing this crazy thing where she started trying to queue the dance up to the music, and she started rewinding and fast-forwarding the video and it started making these weird kind of glitches in the movement that were incredible.

So basically we went through all the choreography and we did the same treatment to all the choreography in the entire show where we remixed it using these video interruptions, then that was turned into choreography, and then that was learned. A lot of times we would actually write it, video tape it, stored it, put the distortion tape onto a monitor, have dancers copy the distortion tape, video tape that and then turn that distortion tape into the final choreography.

So there was a very peculiar way of trying to find a way to integrate pop music and dance in a completely new way that wasn't about the count, and it wasn't about style, and it wasn't about ration. It was more about finding dynamic tension in chaos. So that's one way the show is different from the album.

NP: So if the music came first this time -- what was the first track to click into place?

CS: The first one I actually wrote for this record is the last song on this record, "To The Moon." I was a bit baffled because I had been immersed in Shakespeare and I didn't feel like I had a song written yet and I just started doing one of the scenes that I knew from the show. It's this line from Laertes to Ophelia, it's this parting when he's leaving Ophelia, and he's telling her to not have a relationship with Hamlet. His last line to her is, "The chariest maid is prodigal enough / If she unmask her beauty to the moon." Somehow I just locked onto that "to the moon" phrase and then I built an entire song. That was the thread when I left Hamlet and started the record.

NP: You say you stared with the titles. One of them is "Amuse Bouche" which is a foodie term that's always amused me. How do the lyrics relate to the title.

CS: It's kind of a sexy gastronomic song. I always loved the term "Amuse Bouche." It was always envisioned as like a lost Prince song. I can imagine Prince doing a song called "Amuse Bouche" that was all about eating and sex. Also, I liked the pun about taste, which then becomes about aesthetics. I love the first line because it sounds like a jingle to me. Like [sings] "It's a taste of the unexpected." That sounds like a commercial for MacDonald's or something.

The interesting thing about that song, is there are two tracks on the record that Warren programmed after the first record and before the second. "Amuse Bouche" was one of them, the other was "We Are Electric." They were two things that he'd programmed that I'd always, always loved. I had written a version of "Amuse Bouche" with the band, but he didn't like the music, so I took the melody and I ripped them off another song and then I just transposed them over an old track that I really, really wanted to try and save. I did the same thing again with "We Are Electric." I took a song idea and put it on top of a track that I liked that had been sitting around for a while.

NP: One of the tracks that's most disturbing to me is "Money Can't Dance." You sing about having no legs and no arms -- please explain that because it's haunting my dreams.

CS: Oh great.

NP: Legless dancers...

CS: Interesting. Actually I'm talking about money. I'm talking about how currency doesn't have the things that we have. "Ain't got no arms, ain't got no legs, ain't got no eyes, ain't got no head." It has no intelligence, it has no perception, it has no physical extremities. It's a little bit saying money sucks, money's lame. Money can't do what we can do.

NP: Does it refer to our current money based crisis?

CS: Well the funny thing was I wrote that song two years ago. I mean it's kind of incredible because I wrote it about my own personal crisis -- I just feel like the world caught up to me. I wrote that in the spring of 2006.

NP: So you had your own personal financial crisis?

CS: Oh, yeah, for sure. We were just trying to survive.

NP: I guess what you do with Fischerspooner is so damn expensive.

CS: Ugh! Tell me about it. I'm basically running a community service group over here.

NP: I can imagine you can be touring and very busy, but not actually making money...

CS: Exactly. You just put the nail on the head. But you know, I'm addicted. It's like my drug. I can't do anything else. It's like artistically, I think, OK, I'm just going to kill this whole thing, and I'm going to go be an actor. Or I'm going to go be a painter, or I'm just going to go be a musician. And when I try to go do just one of those things it just is always unfulfilling. It's all about this collision of all these things coming together that's the only thing that excites me and feels relevant.

NP: I guess going back to that song, you want to work on an entity that has the full compliments of arms and legs and heads.

CS: Exactly. I need it all. I need sensuality, I need intelligence, I need expression, I need physicality.

NP: Having been through that personal crisis, is the title of the first track "The Best Revenge" relevant to that?

CS: Yeah. There was a point a couple of years ago where honestly I didn't know if I was going to make another record with Warren. I didn't know how my personal life was going to pan out. I wasn't happy where I was professionally on every level, every person I was partnered with. There was just this moment where I felt like my entire life was an imploding disaster. I didn't know what I was going to do next, and so I kind of went to The Wooster Group as a refuge. I needed to go some place where I didn't have to be responsible, where I didn't have to create the opportunities, where I didn't have to know the budget, the schedule, and I didn't even have to be artistically responsible. I could just show up and be a performer.

I was incredibly frustrated because I had worked two years on this huge record and I was only able to perform for three months. And the two years I worked on the record was the longest period I ever spent not performing, and it made me a very unhappy person. So I went to The Wooster Group as a refuge, it was also what I felt my career was supposed to be. I thought I was going to be like Spaulding Grey or William Dafoe or Kate Valk. I thought I was going to have this kind of unique career as an artist and a performer that would be a hybrid between a visual artist and an actor. And I did have that but it just felt like the whole thing turned in on itself.

I was really driven by this project [Fischerspooner] because I like that we started as a performance art piece about entertainment that ultimately became legitimate entertainment. I like the fact that we were raising all these questions about what is performance art and what is pop music and when entertainment is entertainment not art and when is art not entertainment, and what does context mean. What does it mean to do the same thing in a museum as in a concert? Just raising all these questions about meaning and art and entertainment.

NP: I guess some might say art isn't even supposed to entertain.

CS: Sure. But some people would say that it is. Those are the questions. Why not? Yes. No. Can it? Does it? Will it? And how art ultimately becomes entertainment. The things that were once seen as artistic or transgressive or revolutionary ultimately become absorbed into culture and become status quo. There's this constant growth and renewal, and process of evolution with what is considered artistic and what is considered entertaining.

The thing that I made a big mistake on is that I thought I could build one artistic body of work and supply it to two business models, one was the art world and one was the music world, the entertainment business. What happened was I got myself in this weird situation where conceptually everything was working but in terms of a business model it was a complete disaster. It was so naïve of me to think I could actually conquer two industries simultaneously. Ultimately I came to realize that the art world and the business of art is driven by engineering value by limiting access to creative product. Entertainment is about engineering value by dispersing as much creative product. So the two things that I was kind of participating in, and trying to raise questions about, and trying to build a business off of were directly in competition with each other.

NP: And kind of mutually exclusive.

CS: Exactly. I couldn't get the president of Capitol Records to talk to our art gallery, and I couldn't get our art gallery to talk to the record label. But meanwhile, they both had resources, and I was working in both worlds, and they could have both benefited from partnering together,

I thought that it could be almost like taking the idea of Duchamp that goes through the ideas of Warhol that manifest themselves in the ideas of Jeff Koons. I thought I could take that to the next level, and really blur and create a business by integrating all these ideas conceptually and fiscally. But, instead, basically it was like conceptual perfection equaled career suicide. The more successful I was creatively the more I destroyed the infrastructure that was helping me create work. So that was a disaster -- that was one of the disasters I was facing upon starting this record.

NP: Obviously a lot of that was when you took Odyssey out on the road, and you had to deal with the expense of touring a live show. How do you hope to rectify that and modify what you do moving forward to make it work?

CS: You know, honestly, I'm ignoring the same problems again. It's a little bit different now because we're not partnered with the same people in the same way. We've kind of had to reinvent ourselves, and the infrastructure that is basically manifesting all this work is not the same as it was before. So we're working in a way that's kind of back to where we started from where it's very independent. We basically self-finance everything so I don't have to answer to anyone, and I don't have to explain.

The thing that was good for me was to go back to experimental theater and back to where I thought my career should be. It really kind of invigorated my belief in the conceptual aspects of this project, and how it is such a rare opportunity for me to be able to participate in all these things that interest me at the same time that I couldn't do if I chose to go in a more traditional career path. So it kind of gave me the strength to come back to what I had considered a lost cause.

The thing that's been quite nice also is that I've had the experience now of working in very grassroots experimental theater. I've had the opportunity to work on a major label album release. I have worked were we've self-released, we've done mid-sized independent, we've done large. I basically participated in all these different methods of producing creative work and distributing it. They're all successful in ways, and they're all flawed in ways, so, in a strange way, it kind of makes me feel more relaxed because I know there's nowhere better than where you are. There's no perfect scenario. I'm kind of comfortable just solving the problems that are before me instead of struggling to go run out and find bigger / worse / different / better problems.

NP: Is that what "The Best Revenge" is for you right now?

CS: Well "The Best Revenge," it's just that cliché. They say the best revenge is living well. The question is, what does that mean? Success does not necessarily mean living well.

NP: I guess that's what you're doing right now, finding that equilibrium and realizing there's no such thing as a perfect situation.

CS: Exactly. I had the blessing of actually having dreams come true. This is the thing I hate about clichés -- basically there's truth in them. That's really what the song is about also, to me. It's such a cliché the song. That's the thing that's sort of fascinating about entertainment is you're trying to constantly reinvent the same thing. You're trying to reiterate the same clichés, you're trying to redo the same format of a song -- that's the thing that's quite incredible and awful.

It's this form that everyone can engage in, that everyone can decipher, that has a method of distribution, everyone has a dialog with them, everyone knows what they are, there's just something fascinating about songs. That's ultimately what the project is about, how you make a song, how do you make another song -- and does the world need another song? I mean, how do you make a song about a cliché? So "The Best Revenge" is a cliché about clichés.

NP: Moving forward you've got the tour coming up. What can people expect from that?

CS: I think just because I've been so immersed in experimental theater and been reinvigorated to engage in that form of theater again, the shows are much more about staging, they're more about image, they're more about performance. They're more like experimental theater than they are like a rock show.

Odyssey was really about being on Capitol, which was this icon of classic American music, trying to embrace that cliché and find a way to embody it and infiltrate it and take it apart at the same time. This is less about that. It's a bit of a return to the avant-garde for us.

There's a lot of dance, there's a lot of costumes, there's a lot of video, there's more of a sonic and visual collage that goes with everything. We're in the process of finishing it right now so there's a lot of things that are up in the air, but every time we do a body of work it's a different incarnation. But I want to make something that's more in the tradition of Grace Jones or Laurie Anderson.

NP: If the audience take away one thing from experiencing your performance, what would you like that to be?

CS: This performance, it's kind of glamorous, it's kind of enigmatic. You really just want people to enjoy it. You want it to feel fresh and exciting, and in order to do that you constantly have to find new ways to engage in the same things. That's really what entertainment is -- when it's successful it's the same thing in a new way.

NP: And as a performer you have to do that as you present the same thing each night.

CS: I have to enjoy it in a different way.

Odyssey opened up a spectrum for us, it opened another range of things that we could do, and now there's just a broader spectrum. So we can have live instruments or we can [choose not to] have live instruments. The way people look at musical performance is just not even part of the way we think about performance. It's just like making a play, making a performance where it's about the ideas of the body of work, and just being completely cavalier with whatever you need to do to execute that idea.

I guess the one thing that I think I want to make sure people don't expect is... it's not gong to be like...because the last time we toured North America, it was off the first record and I was really disappointed that we weren't able to tour Odyssey in North America. I feel like everybody is kind of expecting what we did six years ago. It's not the same kind of turn-of-the-millennium, exploding glitter, apocalyptic, punk celebration of excess. This show is a bit more restrained and kind of more mature. It's more about form...

NP: Which is a very artistic term.

CS: I know. I hate that. I try to tailor my language for the audience I'm talking to so I don't come off as some pompous art school asshole.

Like I [follow] Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies [on Twitter], which I love. One of them the other day was, "Say what you mean in the clearest language possible," and that is what I'm trying to do. But it's really hard. It's hard to describe music with words. I hate reading reviews of music. They can't tell you what it really sounds like.

NP: I guess too, earlier you encapsulated what the first Fisherspooner show was about in a sentence, but had someone asked you to do that six years ago when you were in the middle of it, you wouldn't have had that perspective.

CS: Yeah. Exactly. So ask me in six years and I'll give you a clear answer.

Entertainment comes out May 5. For tour dates go to Fischerspooner.com.

The Dalai Lama recently said, "Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication.” He says that celibacy, ultimately, brings a better life with “more freedom” and less ups and downs. I found this interesting... more

The Dalai Lama recently said, "Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication.” He says that celibacy, ultimately, brings a better life with “more freedom” and less ups and downs.

I found this interesting and wanted to ponder it further and engage in discussion with my friend, Brad Warner. Brad is sometimes referred to as a Buddhist teacher and people often ask me if I ask Brad about Buddhist shit. Mostly I don’t. We normally eat burritos and talk about how much sex we are or are not having, but since I’m a curious kitten and this topic was fresh in my mind I decided to ask him what his thoughts were.

Who am I to disagree with the Dalai Lama? Hence, I looked within myself to figure out where my feelings lay on the subject. And then asked Brad for his.

I definitely see what the Dalai Lama’s saying. I have several journals full of romantic anguish that would depress a holocaust survivor. I can understand how a life without the distractions of all that might be could ultimately more desirable, and for a while I sat with that.

I realized that when I reach for my journal it’s often to get the feelings out that might bore my friends, since its pages contain more angst than can be hammered out with a night’s drinking.

While at times life is taxing, I’m usually living in the land of the blissfully content. I’ve had my heart broken but I’ve also experienced true intimacy and found out what love is. I’ve bonded myself to several individuals for life through our relational and lustful encounters -- and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.

Maybe I’m just an intensity junky, but what goes up, must come down and isn’t it better to engage in a rich life experience, when it comes to this stuff anyway, than to abstain from romantic relationships entirely? That’s what I think I think, but I wanted to clarify my position and see what Brad’s thoughts are.

Aspen: Do you agree that sex and dating ultimately cause suffering and attachment?

Brad: Sure. But just about anything you do causes suffering and attachment. Any kind of personal interaction leads to suffering and attachment. When monks leave family life behind they just form new attachments in the monastery. It’s impossible to really live free of human attachment, except for maybe a few people who live in the mountains, but in general, yes.

Aspen: Isn’t it more important to have a well-rounded human existence with interpersonal relationships than it is to try to avoid suffering?

Brad: People think that because I’m a Buddhist teacher I’m an advocate of not having these human attachments, but it’s next to impossible to actually do so.

Aspen: So then maybe a better goal would be to learn to deal with your suffering...

Brad: Yeah. I come across as sounding kind of boring in that way, because really the best way to be free from suffering, as much as possible, would be a marriage or a monogamous relationship, or these kinds of boring things. When I go on SuicideGirls and I start reading that people are into polyamory. It’s a nice fantasy but it normally doesn’t really work.

[Brad is surprised I don’t know what that is and explains its an extended polyamorous family, and alternative lifestyle. According to Wiki, it’s having more than one intimate relationship with the consent of everyone involved. Brad picks up a guitar and starts to strum it. He and I discuss the fact that we’re both suffering right now as I write this.]

Aspen: Even the dog is suffering.

Brad: Really? Even the dog?

Aspen: Yes. She wants you to give her as much attention as you are giving that guitar right now. What are you suffering about?

Brad: Cookies.

Aspen: Do you think there is suffering even when we’re in love and the sex is mutually agreeable and both participants are laying around afterwards all dreamy?

Brad: If you really looked closely you could see some.

Aspen: How would searching for suffering serve me?

Brad: Suffering is always a matter of comparing what you have now with what you think it ought to be. I’m not saying you should look for it, I’m just saying it’s there.

Aspen: Do you think that all of us in this urban experience have pressure from society to have an enhanced sexual desire?

Brad: Yes. There is a great push in the advertising community and incentive to promote the idea of sex, because sex sells. In our media saturated culture, you are constantly being told various things about sex. Most of the people who are telling you don’t have a clue. They are presenting fantasies or something that isn’t real…like the Playboy mansion. This is the life the Buddha lived before he left the palace to embark on his own spiritual journey.

Aspen: So you are saying the Buddha is like Hugh Heffner?

Brad: Yes. He was like Hugh until his early 30s. There are all kinds of stories about him having hotties at his disposal and he saw that that was not an end to suffering…to keep coming back to that word.

[Brad then plays with the dog and tells me since she’s fixed she’s not suffering.]

Aspen: How do you feel about love?

Brad: Oh….um…..love….love stinks. Remember that song? Love is a funny thing. In Christianity, it’s all about love and Buddhism tends to value the word compassion a lot more so…Then there’s the agape love. There is something called love that you could say holds the whole universe together, an interconnectedness. Love in the emotional sense tends to be problematic.

Aspen: Does it always involve attachment? There is often a fine line between intimacy and co-dependency. It causes an extraordinary amount of pain in the world. If you don’t love someone, they can’t hurt you.

Brad: Yeah, I’m sort of thinking about my own life and this marriage that’s ending. Its also culturally bound. I tend to be kind of cold.

Aspen: Yeah, I can see that.

Brad: I’m not really Mr. Cuddly. I’m not a “Mr. I-love-you-all-the-time” kind of person, so when you say love it means different things to different people.

Aspen: Yes, but I asked you.

Brad: I don’t think too much about love.

Aspen: Don’t you think too much about everything?

Brad: Yeah. Um…..I don’t have any great deep thoughts related to the word love.

Aspen: What about the word burrito?

Brad: I have a lot more associations with the word burrito because I had a good one in San Fran with Soyrizo. What do you think about love?

Aspen: I think its something people chase like food and when people don’t, its just so they don’t get hurt.

Brad: I think men and women think different things about love. Men say “I love you” in the heat of the moment without really understanding what that means to the woman. I’ve never gone out searching for lots of sex. It’s mostly not worth the trouble. That’s what the internet is for.

Aspen: Why? Because it’s often less fulfilling than you would like?

Brad: Yes and it often has to do with your upbringing. My parents stayed together until my mom died, so it’s just not something you go and do. I have the same sort of urges of any man….I sound very confused and weird….

Aspen: I see how the roller-coaster inherently caused by dating would go against the typical Buddhist path of staying even-keeled. How can one keep a steady mind if they want to experience a healthy dating life while keeping steady on their spiritual path?

Brad: You’re probably not going to and it’s a tradeoff.

Aspen: Well when the endorphins kick in, you’re too high to stare at the wall and when you do you just think about sex.

Brad: When you are in that state you cant really think clearly.

Aspen: Why would you ever want to avoid that experience entirely?

Brad: Well its standard in Buddhist practice to avoid states of bliss because bliss is the other side of terror. So that’s why you’d want to avoid that terrific state because it always has a backside to it. This is why the long term relationship is better….if you get through that bliss state you can get through the flip side and then settle in a place that is neither one of those.

Aspen: Awesome. I dig. Do you think people turn to spiritual journey when they are looking for love, or after they have it?

Brad: Both. I think often people get into these spiritual groups because they are looking for a love experience but that’s also why people join cults…because they feel they are loved by the cult and that can create a kind of drive toward looking for that.

Aspen: Does urban living affect one’s spirituality?

Brad: Yes it does but then so does rural living. These days it might be equal because of the internet and everything. I’ve spent time in Tassajara [an SF Buddhist mountain retreat] where no technology is allowed and its very isolated. I was talking to a guy I know who spends a lot of time there and also a lot in San Francisco and he was saying he thinks that we get acclimated to the sounds of the city and you are actually primed to react to that and it’s in your nature to be alert to sounds that might hurt you so he was thinking that based on his two experiences that we are expending energy to shut out all of these sounds. So like a billboard that flashes something to you, it is causing a response and all of that is taking a toll.

Aspen: So you think that people seek refuge from the stimuli?

Brad: Oh yeah. More often what I see people doing is searching for stimulus. I find myself doing this, like when you surf the internet, people are spending hours on the internet looking for stimulation. The worst thing I do I go on YouTube looking for old bands. It causes a reaction so sometimes people want to be away from that. And what’s really important is to find a way for people to live in that environment. This will gradually change the environment itself but it will take time. The economy is a reaction to over stimulation and we’ve put ourselves in an economic recession to avoid stimulus. When you go around you see blank billboards and you didn’t see that in Los Angeles two years ago. When things go too far it’s over consumption and we sort of recognize that we are over consuming, but we don’t know how to do it in a comfortable way, so you have all these very deep unconscious reactions…

[I’m yawning and he says doing zazen makes him fall asleep too easily.]

Aspen: Do you think those in urban society are more promiscuous than in rural areas?

Brad: Not necessarily. I think were more open about it. Christians are more promiscuous but they hide it well. Like Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. Maybe were a little bit more in this kind of a society but…..it’s a common idea to idealize rural life. That it’s free of temptation….but sometimes in a rural society sometimes all there is to do is fuck.

Promiscuity always seems to lead to misery but people seem to mask it because they’re going to have more orgasms. Well the orgasm lasts a minute but you’ve invested a week into getting a minute long orgasm. You’ve invested a week of miserable hunting and pursuit and you cant help but get tangled into peoples lives.

Aspen: Does zazen affect your sex life?

Brad: There are two ways it affects your sex life. The sort of net result of doing zazen is that your life is more balanced so you start to pay attention to everything. When you start noticing everything, sex is just one of the things that happens. It doesn’t become less exciting, and it can become more stimulating because you’re more present. When everything becomes extraordinary, sex becomes less of a contrast to the rest of your life.

Aspen: Do you have anything specific to say about LA and sex and spirituality?

Brad: Los Angeles is a funny city when you talk about sex and spirituality because the entertainment industry is based here. A large portion of the population is involved in the entertainment Industry. In the ‘60s there was a huge spiritual movement here and it’s always struck me as being flaky. The actors have too much time on their hands -- that’s sort of a caricature but I think its very true. The entertainment industry is based on sex. Everyone needs to look sexy and everyone is better looking in LA.

Aspen: Everyone is very focused on grooming here.

Brad: When I go back to Knoxville everyone is a lot fatter. They seem healthier here. In LA the emphasis is always on getting something from it, like being in the spiritual community is good networking. Like scientology and this weird thing where they get together and yell at you but when spirituality is done for a gaining ideal then you’re just back into the same trap of anything where you’re trying to gain something like enlightenment or peace of mind.

Aspen: Meaning you aren’t content.

Brad: Well that’s part of it but the Zen focus tends to be on seeing what you really are now without trying to alter it deliberately. And it changes as you see it whereas other spiritual practices focus on….well I want to be this and how am I going to get to be this person I want to be.

Aspen: Well right now I’m a mess, Brad.

Brad: Well then that is very helpful because what you want to be is an idea created by that mess so it’s not a sound starting point. If this messiness creates an idea of what it wants to be then the idea is fundamentally flawed so its better to look at the mess and if you keep looking at it, it sort of gradually sort of fixes itself. But I don’t think there is any other way to do it.

Aspen: Well if you are looking at yourself where you are now, then why do zazen?

Brad: Because it’s the best way.

Aspen: According to whom? You?

Brad: Well yeah. Because you’re sitting still and a blank wall doesn’t lie to you it just kind of presents. It’s kind of an amazing thing how that wall will present to you everything that you are.

Aspen: Usually it just presents my grocery list and the calls I need to return.

Brad: Yeah that too. At least you remember.


Brad Warner is currently on a book tour to spread the gospel about his latest spiritual guide, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate.