Lizz Winstead is one of the bravest comedians around today. She talks about abortion with a rare candor, as is a staunch supporter of Planned Parenthood. Her work raising awareness and funds (over a million dollars to date!) for the organization has not surprisingly raised the ire of the religious right,... more

Lizz Winstead is one of the bravest comedians around today. She talks about abortion with a rare candor, as is a staunch supporter of Planned Parenthood. Her work raising awareness and funds (over a million dollars to date!) for the organization has not surprisingly raised the ire of the religious right, but she stands firm, fighting for women’s reproductive rights at a time when in recent history they’ve never been more in peril.

In her new book, Lizz Free Or Die, she devotes a chapter to her own experience as a frightened and bewildered teenager who discovered she was pregnant, and who was even more frightened and bewildered by the reactions of the adults she trusted to give her honest advice, help, and support.

The book also features essays, which are poignant and hilarious in equal parts, on her upbringing in a conservative Catholic family, her coming of age as a stand up comedian in Minneapolis, the roots of The Daily Show which she co-created, and the rise and fall of Air America which she co-founded.

We caught up with Lizz by phone. Though the native Minnesotan currently calls New York home, she spoke to us from Texas where she’d just done one of her numerous Planned Parenthood stand up fundraising shows. This particular one raised money for a clinic that had recently lost every penny of its state funding for essential community services such as teen pregnancy testing and health care.

Nicole Powers: I’m such an admirer of your work with Planned Parenthood and that fact that you are so honest and open about the fact that you had an abortion.

Lizz Winstead: Well I want ladies to not feel ashamed of that. It just feels crazy at this point.

NP: In the book there’s a chapter, All Knocked Up, in which you talk about your experiences as a pregnant teenager. How old were you at the time?

LW: I was seventeen. It was the first time I ever had sex to top it all off.

NP: It’s this horrific tale; You’re lost and confused about what to do and you go to a “Kare Klinic” where the staff tell you that you have two choices: “mommy or murder.”

LW: Right. It’s so interesting, because when I wrote this story it didn’t even occur to me to write about actually having an abortion. Because having an abortion wasn’t the thing that permeated with me. The thing that permeated with me was being in trouble…and finding a place that masked itself as being some place that would help me, and having it be this place that was shaming and damning, and that tried to shape me as a person. To me, that was a story that women encounter everyday.

People kept saying to me, “Why didn’t you write about having an abortion?” [And I’d say,] “Because that isn’t the point at all. That was actually freeing to me.” That was the part that actually let me take a breath and allowed me to pursue what would be the best thing for me, which wasn’t motherhood. To this day I know that I never want to be a mother. At 17 I didn’t, at eight I didn’t, and at 50 I don’t, and so, thank god, you know.

NP: So what was more traumatic than the actual abortion was people’s reaction to it, and the reaction of people that you looked up to and trusted.

LW: They put themselves out there to be people who care about you and look out for your best interests, and they don’t. They are masquerading as doctors and people of god.

NP: This was over 30 years ago, but since then, with the current War on Women, it seems like we’ve gone backwards, which is the really scary thing.

LW: It’s true. I’m in Austin, Texas right now. I just did this fundraiser last night. Texas is one of the states that has been hit harder than anybody. Every place I have gone – and I’ve done 21 or 22 of these benefits in the past year – they said that they’d never seen it this bad since pre-Roe [v. Wade]. It’s just glaring, the shocking nature of how they’re twisting the truth and how they’re manipulating legislation. People don’t even really understand what’s in these bills. They twist it and they have all these ad dollars and they make it all about abortion. They don’t understand that it means in vitro fertilization. When people say there is a personhood amendment, that means you can’t freeze your eggs, you can’t have in vitro or artificial insemination. You can’t do all of this stuff. It’s kind of astounding.

NP: What worries me beyond personhood for fetuses (and zygotes!), and the whole abortion is murder push from a legal perspective, is that in some states they are giving doctors permission to lie to women about their health if they think that telling the truth will result in the mother seeking an abortion. To me, that is the potential murder of the mother, because a woman is not being allowed to make an informed choice about her own health. It’s putting the health of a clump of cells above the health of an actual human being. If doctors are being allowed to do that, in essence you are legislating for the murder of the mother.

LW: That’s exactly right. When you are saying the worth of a fertilized egg is the same as a full-fledged woman with dreams and ideals and hopes and families and goals – it’s society gone mad quite frankly.

NP: Also, the right pretend that they are pro-life, but if you’re really pro-life and are going to force women to have children, you have to be willing to feed and take care of them until they are able to do so themselves.

LW: And then we watch them cutting the CHIP program and any kind of pre-school food program and any wellness care programs for single mothers.

NP: Even food stamps.

LW: There’s one Republican who says that single motherhood is like a crime…They say motherhood is the hardest job in the world, which I agree with, then why are we demanding or requiring a 13-year old who happened to get pregnant to do it? We don’t even let 13-year olds drive or do anything by themselves. You can’t have it both ways.

NP: I’m just appalled that we as a society are even having these kind of debates in this day and age. It’s so backward that I feel betrayed by the left for even being tolerant of these utterly hateful, uninformed, and barbaric opinions.

LW: The problem is we don’t have the same infrastructure of media to battle these things. The right have Fox News and then the Fox News talking points get reported on Breitbart and Red State and Daily Caller. We just don’t have that infrastructure where something interesting on Rachel Maddow is the talking point on all these strong places that are fully funded. These amazing lefty blogs are constantly begging for money and struggling and trying to get funding. They just don’t have the financial backing the way the right does. That’s the part that frustrates me. I wish that people on the left who have the money to put into messaging would understand how and where they need to support.

I don’t know if you feel like this, but I do, that so much of what we do is combating the lies rather than being able to talk about what’s happening and what Planned Parenthood does, or whatever it is that they are trying to cut and the good that it does. We are just saying, no that’s not true, that’s not true, and then all of a sudden, before you know it, show over.

NP: The disinformation has reached epidemic proportions. People can’t recognize the truth even if they are slapped in the face with it.

LW: That’s right. When we do take to it, with Susan G. Komen or with this War on Women, with these battles now, we’re actually winning in some states. Planned Parenthood is seeing their funding dollars going up because people recognize what Planned Parenthood does. And whether women want to privately or publicly go forward, they know that they have used the services of these places, they know…I just wish that more faces could be put on it, and that more women would stand up and say “I used Planned Parenthood.” I wish we would defend it the way that we embrace it as this amazing community service. They are a national treasure to me.

NP: That’s right, you’re not just defunding abortions, when you defund Planned Parenthood, you’re defunding mammograms and cervical cancer screenings too.

LW: That’s exactly right. And birth control. When it boils down to it, why are we giving any credence to anybody who says “I would like to reduce the number of abortions and the way that I want to do that is to remove all access to birth control.” Anybody who says that should just be removed from a sane conversation. It shouldn’t be listened to. And they’re being elected and stuff. It’s like, oh my god, really?

NP: Their definition of where life begins is when the egg is fertilized…

LW: …And it’s not even implanted! So basically there’s this weird, oh wait, I’m pregnant before I’m pregnant? Is that what you’re saying?

NP: It’s just so frustrating, and like you say, there isn’t the left wing media to combat the right wing crazy. My fear is that there will never be because of the nature of money and where it flows from. The right supports the capitalist agenda, so it supports the mainstream news media that serves as their propaganda machine. You’re never going to get the mainstream media really discussing Citizens United and the like because for them it’s the goose that laid the golden egg. It’s the source of unprecedented amounts of advertising money that is going to be spent on TV and radio in the run up to the election. This is at a time when many companies can’t afford marketing spends, so it’s like manna from heaven.

LW: And most people don’t even know what Citizens United is. What people don’t know is astounding…Thirty percent of my audience — I was kind of doing this little internal poll — haven’t even heard of the Mitt Romney with the dog on top of the car story. And these are people who are knowledgeable.

It is astounding how people don’t know what ALEC is, they don’t know what Citizens United is, they don’t know who the Koch brothers are. If we could do some fun campaign where we are explaining it, in a way almost like School of Rock if you will, to try to just enlighten people about who is actually running their “democracy” and that they don’t really have one. We pretend we have a democracy, but let’s be honest, Citizens United has just destroyed it. We don’t have one anymore.

NP: One of the reasons that women’s rights in particular are getting so pummeled is because of our lack of representation in politics.

LW: That’s exactly right. That’s why for me, doing this Planned Parenthood tour, I do my stand up show and then at the end I read that essay from my book – to inspire women to tell their stories. Because if we don’t tell our own stories, they are going to tell our stories for us – that’s just not acceptable to me. I will not allow someone to tell my story. I just won’t. More women [need to] come forward and start telling their stories, and demand to sit at that table, that’s what we need to do.

NP: But you can understand why they don’t when you get young students who tell their stories about the difficulty they experienced getting birth control being lambasted as “sluts” and “prostitutes.”.

LW: Yes, that’s exactly right.

NP: The fact that Rush Limbaugh still has a job is just astounding to me.

LW: I completely agree. It is shocking. So every woman that uses birth control is a whore? Then we’re all whores. Yay whores!

NP: By the same token, is every man that’s ever used a condom a man-whore? Probably not.

LW: Isn’t that amazing? What I find so interesting is that the uterus is the only non-vital organ that society has deemed if you have one you are somehow intrinsically predisposed to want to use it…I’m actually a woman who never wanted kids, and yet when you say that, the right will demonize you as being woman hating, and mother hating, and all this stuff. It is maddening. The more we tell our stories, the more they have to look at all of us as individuals, and the more their crazy belief system they’ve put in place is invalidated – with every single voice that speaks out. I hope women realize that this falls in our lap. It’s women, and the men who support us, who need to start speaking out.

NP: What’s worrying as well is that in the current climate politicians feel comfortable in saying this outrageously hateful shit. It’s like we’ve somehow moved the moral compass of what’s acceptable to say; It seems like more normal people are now saying more outrageous shit and thinking it’s okay because our politicians are doing it. For example, Adam Carolla thinking that it’s okay to say “dudes are funnier than chicks” when talking about his fellow professional comics and comedians

LW: I worked for him, and so I took personal offence at that. It was like, I worked for you, you hired me to make your show funnier, and you’re saying that I was one of the less funny people. Were you forced to hire me? I worked on your show as a producer; Are you just saying this because you have a book out and it’ll trend on Twitter and you’ll sell more books? Is it worth it for you to sell out women? Do you really believe that or do you not? Either way it’s sort of shitty. I feel really bad about that. I can’t believe it actually…

Do men really want their sexual partners to feel shame and guilt about being sexual beings? Because that doesn’t really add to a healthy relationship or a good sex life or anything. Men should be really mad that they are also going to be affected by women having to reassess their sexual freedom. That’s the part that’s crazy. It’s like, do you guys not understand that this is about you too?

NP: I feel like women are getting betrayed by the right, and one might expect that, but they are also being betrayed by the left who know better. Because the left’s voices are in no way shouting as loud as this level of hate speak towards a group warrants.

LW: I do hear a backlash, but it’s like yelling into a hurricane, like trying to have a conversation in a crowded bar – that’s what we’re up against. It’s like if Metallica was on stage at a bar that accommodates 30 people and they’re just playing really loudly, and you’re trying to have a conversation, you’re just drowned out…The cacophony of people who are championing this whole War on Women have so much invested in making sure that women’s voices are silenced that they are going to shout louder. It’s coming so fast and furious I don’t know how we win this game of Wack-Em-All, because once we hit one, four more pop up. I think that it’s not that there are people who aren’t fighting back, it’s that they are just so much more organized and invested in keeping us down that they’re just the loudest. We need to change that.

NP: It’s so hard because women’s voices are the minority in politics, as they are in comedy. There’s so much for so few people to do.

LW: Right, I know, exactly. You’re one person. I basically made a decision to selectively really focus my time on reproductive health issues. That in and of itself is so all-consuming that I have let other parts of my life almost go by the wayside…It’s gotten so overwhelming.

When you come to these towns, the people who work at these clinics have been so beaten down. Every day when they go to work there are protesters demonizing them. They are so thankful that someone has come to their town that is merely celebrating them. It’s heartbreaking. It makes me feel completely warm and fuzzy inside that I can say, “There’s people out here trying to fight with you and for you.”

I really hope that women are going to understand that in this war, the people who are providing the healthcare, they can’t defend themselves and provide the health care, and do everything. We need to say, I have used your services, you have helped me, and I am here for you. I’ve got your back. That needs to be a priority that I hope more and more women will understand, because that’s what we’re talking about.

NP: Right. There are so many women that organizations like Planned Parenthood have helped that have been able to have careers that they may not have otherwise been able to have, but they are shamed into remaining silent. On an individual level you can understand that, because admitting you’ve had an abortion does potentially impact your career.

LW: That’s exactly right. People still demonize you if you come out and say you’re pro-choice or for Planned Parenthood. They rally the advertisers and say don’t hire that person on your TV show because that person is an advocate for abortion and we’re going to boycott your show. That has been the way it has been for the civil rights movement, and all the other movements. At some point you have to say, if we have enough people who are involved in the movement and say “I stand with you,” then they can’t boycott individuals because there’s too many of us giving them power.

NP: Have you had many incidents like that in your own life?

LW: I changed the names of some of my best friends who are not in the public sphere, and are just my dear friends, because those people do get people’s numbers and call up and scream at them and harass them. They have kids and they have lives and they don’t need that shit. I had this woman, Lila Rose, who is somebody everyone needs to know because she’s the woman doing those Planned Parenthood things, re-editing tapes and demonizing everybody, her website tried to compare me with Michael Vick because I was raising money for Planned Parenthood. [They said] why did Michael Vick go to jail for his dog fighting ring when I was doing something worse which is raising money for murder.

I was just like really? You’ve made that leap? That’s where you’re at? I get a lot of emails, and I get people posting on Twitter, and writing blog posts about me and my hatred of women and babies and everything else. I turn 51 this year, and I feel like I’m a fully formed human, and nothing they do can phase me at this point. Because what I’ve done I’m proud of in my career. I’m not afraid of what happens to me because of them. Hopefully other women will get there.

But bring it on. Bring it on. I don’t give a shit. I really don’t. I really just don’t give a shit. Because the bottom line is if you call yourself a progressive or you call yourself a radical or a liberal, they just assume you spend your days with babies on a stick dancing around anyway, so you might as well just tell your story because they are going to demonize you nine ways to Sunday.

NP: I really, absolutely applaud you for what you are doing. There’s just so few people in this climate who are willing to stand up for Planned Parenthood in such an honest and personal way.

LW: Well, I’m glad that I can do it because they helped me. Because Planned Parenthood existed, I was allowed to pursue what I believe was my destiny. Everyone should have that option to succeed and fail on their own terms. Hopefully by doing it, more people will jump on board and do it…

For me, it was easier to just go it alone because all I need is somebody’s couch to sleep on or a crappy hotel and a couple of music stands and a microphone and a glass of water, and then a whole bunch of people who are willing to get as many people as possible to come out and see a show that is going to raise money…

You know, when you have three or four hundred people together sitting around in a room and they’re seeing your comedy show, it’s much bigger than that. The [audience] looks around and they go, “Wow! That woman lives across the street from me. I didn’t know she was into this.” Or, “I work with that woman.” All of a sudden there is a community of people who pick up the reigns and talk to each other, and plot and scheme long after you’ve left. That’s the part that is super cool. It might be a bit of a slower process, but people do get really devoted and they do care…It’s really fulfilling and rewarding.

NP: Well, I for one am incredibly grateful that you were able to follow your path in your career because you have helped me keep my sanity. That’s what The Daily Show does for me, and obviously you co-created not just the show, but that comedy genre.

LW: It’s kind of crazy that somebody let me do it. The thing that is so awesome about it is that when Jon [Stewart] and his team came in, they brought it to a level that was utterly brilliant. You could never have imagined that it could have become such a juggernaut. Conversely, you could never have imagined that the media could become so derelict that a show like that could thrive. Because that show, it gets better and better as the media gets worse and worse somehow.

NP: What saddens me is that you never got to work on the show with Jon. I know he was your first choice and that you had a preexisting relationship with him. I would have loved to have seen what you guys could have done together.

LW: He asked me to come back a couple of different times and I was so flattered. But I just looked at him and I thought, you got this. Shouldn’t I be trying to do more stuff like this to get more stuff out in the world? That was my big plan, but after 9/11, it just shut down. People were [of a mindset that dictated] we do not challenge the government, we support the mission, we were attacked, we’re a united nation. But there was so much stuff to talk about. We need to always – no matter what happens – make sure that we keep our government and our media accountable. There was a real radio silence on doing all that.

NP: What you call the “satire blackout” in your book.

LW: Exactly. So when Air America called it was like, oh my god, thank you. Because there was an astounding chasm between right wing talk radio and any kind of progressive left talk radio. I can’t remember the statistics, I think it was 93 percent conservative to 7 percent liberal or progressive…The information is just staggeringly one-sided. I have never understood how people like Rush still have their job and still have advertisers; that these people who say just horrible shit that’s A) not true and B) that’s just hateful, are rewarded by advertising dollars, and that Air America – when speaking truth and power – was struggling every day just to get advertisers. It was just maddening.

NP: Air America has lived on in that so many of its voices continue to be heard. Obviously Rachel Maddow is one of Air America’s greatest success stories, and you played a huge part in discovering and launching her…

LW: Yeah, and that’s the thing, the story about Air America that’s always told is liberal radio doesn’t work, nobody wants to hear the message. And it’s like, you know what? Every single person that was on that initial network is very successful. Marc Maron has the number one podcast. And there’s Rachel, Randi Rhodes has a very successful talk show, Sam Seder has an amazing podcasting radio show and he’s on Ring of Fire and that’s doing quite well, and [urlhttp://alfranken.com/]Al Franken is a United States senator. It wasn’t about the talent or the message, it was just about the fact that we had people that ran that place who were not honest about the money they had. Once you start getting into a big financial hole it’s hard to get out. You need capital to be able to have a strong message, it’s the nature of the world we live in.

NP: Also, they say that people don’t want to listen to liberal talk radio; People want to listen, but the advertisers don’t want to pay – that’s a different thing altogether.

LW: Yep, that’s exactly right. People want it, but when you rely on a corporate structure it gets really tough. It’s much easier to fund a message that doesn’t require anything of the advertisers, [for them] to change or do anything.

NP: In England we have the benefit of well funded state media. I know our mutual friend Greg Palast has a problem even with NPR and PBS because the likes of BP are some of their biggest sponsors, which is advertising by another name. These public stations therefore have to play softball when it comes to the effects of pollution in the Gulf for example.

LW: Right. So where are our truth tellers? They are just silenced by the people who sponsor the programs and that seems very calculated doesn’t it?

NP: It does. That’s why people like you, going out and doing stand up where there’s no agenda in a medium where you can just speak unadulterated truth to power is so important. And it’s important to encourage more people to go out and look for that, rather than just expecting that the truth will come to them. Lies will just come to them because they’re being paid for. If you want the truth, you have to go out and seek it.

LW: Right. Exactly.

NP: What’s next for you?

LW: That’s an interesting question because I’ve been one of these people my whole life — I’ve never had a plan. I’ve never had a career path…Whatever happens next will probably just roll out eventually out of what I’m doing now. I don’t know what that is. I might be doing a documentary on the state of women’s health in the country. Hopefully I’ll write another book. I’ll be doing stand up. I’m going to be doing a column in The Guardian…I’m really excited about that. They have been massively supportive of my messaging, and who I am, and it’s just been incredibly encouraging. Hopefully I’ll be challenging shit that I see that’s wrong in whatever form that takes. I’m kind of willing to go there so long as I have that ability. So that is the non-planned plan.


For more from Lizz Winstead visit her website, and for information on her stand up shows visit this page. Her book, Lizz Free Or Die, is out now.

by Nicole Powers A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups. (image) [Kurosune in Apollo] This week Kurosune tells us why she's drawn to SG's Hentai Group. Members: 1,804 / Comments: 8,517 WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: What's not to like about a group that discusses tentacles,... more

by Nicole Powers

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.


[Kurosune in Apollo]

This week Kurosune tells us why she's drawn to SG's Hentai Group.

Members: 1,804 / Comments: 8,517

WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: What's not to like about a group that discusses tentacles, furries, chicks growing massive dicks (stay away from Bible Black – it's NOT for the faint of heart), bukkake, maids who punish their male employers in acts of BDSM, anti-demon slaying ninjas who wind up the prisoners of giant orges...or even just the adorable, moe-like girl who is bold enough to make the move and give up her cherished virginity to the wonderful, dreamy, all-round good guy in school who just happens to be her second period math teacher.

DISCUSSION TIP: We loooooove pictures of your particular "yum" – and remember, you ARE in a group that discusses yaoi (boy x boy), yuri (girl x girl) and furries. My personal motto is that you should never "yuck" someone's "yum." Don't be shy (you're among freaky friends!). Participate often, don't be an asshole, and everyone should get along just fine. We especially love the ladies here. Contrary to popular belief, women watch hentai too. We love it!

BMOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: Hands down, it's a tie between the "Favorite Images" and "What's Your Favorite Hentai Artist." I ALWAYS love reading those. Hentai is really visual, so pictures posted (be they silly, hot, funny, disturbing or whatever) usually manage to brighten someone’s day. And I love seeing what hentai people love. My faves are, hands down, Taimanin Asagi, Stringendo & Accelerando, and Sensual Pornograph – my first and favorite yaoi!!!

BEST RANDOM QUOTE: “Tentacles? In MY vagina???"

WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: It's a private group, so you have to request to join. Only those who have at least some blog/comment activity will be allowed in, but basically anyone who jumps in pure joy at the words "hentai," "yaoi," "yuri," "bukkake," or "virgins in high school uniforms" is welcome. 



***
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Producer, DJ, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Ronson has been responsible for some of the freshest sounds of the last few years. Despite his impressive résumé, which includes Amy Winehouse's seminal album Back to Black, and tracks for Lily Allen ("Littlest Things") and Adele... more

Producer, DJ, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Ronson has been responsible for some of the freshest sounds of the last few years. Despite his impressive résumé, which includes Amy Winehouse's seminal album Back to Black, and tracks for Lily Allen ("Littlest Things") and Adele ("Cold Shoulder"), he's also a rather humble and an eminently likeable chap, which, along with the aforementioned, explains why so many marquee artists are keen to work with him today.

Ronson came to prominence with work that showcased his own highly stylized aesthetic, which combines a '60s Motown sound with cool danceable grooves and hipster chic, as evidenced on Back To Black, which was released in 2006, and his second solo full length, Version, which came out the following year. However, he's not a man to be pigeonholed.

Though his own recent full-length, Record Collection (released under the Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. moniker), without doubt mines the rich vein of his signature sound, his productions for others are becoming increasingly diverse. Ronson's work with Duran Duran on their thirteenth studio album, All You Need Is Now (which came out digitally in December 2010 and physically in March 2011), received virtually universal critical acclaim, and has brought the band back to the kind of form even the most devout of fans could only have dreamed of previously.

The next major Ronson-produced work to hit the market is Black Lips latest, Arabia Mountain. Though it's their sixth studio album, it's their first to make use of the services of a hands-on producer, and it's a testament to Ronson's prowess that he was their first choice for the project. Though the official release is set for June 7, the full album is streaming online now. As with Duran's AYNIS, the consensus of opinion on Arabia Mountain sees reviewers and faithful followers alike appreciating Ronson's ability to subtly, yet progressively, sonically sculpt, while retaining all the key elements that make the band a classic.

We caught up with Ronson by phone to find out how he strikes this delicate balance.

Nicole Powers: What are you doing in England right now?

Mark Ronson: I am in the studio with The Gossip working on their new album...It's just like the second week, but it's all going well. They're a band I liked already a lot. I'm just helping them find a new sonic identity a bit too. They've got great songs, and are just coming out with some new sounds no one's heard before.

NP: How did the connection with The Gossip come about?

MR: I met Beth Ditto because we had done a show in February in Paris. They wanted her to perform but the band wasn't around, so my band basically learned The Gossip song and played behind her. There were a few people at that show - we ended up as the house band for The Kills, Gossip and Janelle Monáe. It was a really cool show. Then we had Boy George and Andrew Wyatt there, so we did "Somebody to Love Me" off our album. It was like a weird fashion show with 18 people performing.

I guess [Gossip] were starting to work on the new record and looking for a producer, so their manager called me and asked if I'd be interested in doing it. I was a fan of their album Standing in the Way [of Control], and I didn't have to really think hard before I said 'yes.'

NP: So it was serendipitous timing.

MR: It was, yes. Because the old school thing of producers, where that was your only job and you got to focus on making records - and all these great record producers from Quincy Jones through to Richard Perry, and whoever else, that's all they did...Now, producers really, they're either DJs or touring artists or musicians that have all these different side careers and stuff, which I'm not saying is necessarily a good thing, because sometimes it's good to really to just do, and get better at, the one thing you're supposed to be doing. But the music industry doesn't really work like that anymore, so we were lucky that the timing lined up. I would've been bummed out if they had asked me to do this record and I was busy.

NP: The producer's role is slightly marginalized these days. Now everyone thinks they can press record on their computer at home and produce their own album. But it's an important role, not just the physical pressing of buttons and moving of faders, but the psychology of production. Also just having a fresh pair of ears in the room is key. That's one of the interesting things about your collaboration with Black Lips, because they've spent their entire career not being produced and have finally come to the realization that they need to be.

MR: Yeah, I don't know why they came to that realization. I mean, to be honest, part of my hesitation in going in the studio with them - or not hesitation, 'cause I definitely wanted to do it as soon as they asked me - but thinking to myself, 'I really love the sound of their records, especially Good Bad Not Evil. How am I going to help them?' Obviously we both share this love for some sort of '60s aesthetic, [which is] modernized by being a punk band with one foot in classic garage rock and stuff like that.

But each project is completely different. If you're just working with a singer, you're there to help them with the whole arrangement and figure out what the whole band is going to play around that song. And if you're working with an actual band, it's completely different, because they already have an idea of what their parts are, and you're there to help them with arrangements and things like that. There's no set ethos, because all the bands that I work with are pretty varied in their musical styles and also in the way that they work. No two singers, no two bands, are ever alike. You just figure out what the best thing you can do to help make their songs sound the best that they can, you know.

The first success I had was with Amy Winehouse and Version, and I guess I became known for a specific sound because those were the first two things that anyone knew of by me. But, at the same time, you don't want to be like, 'OK, I'm going to go in and give them the same sound that I did for this last record.' Because you become a one trick pony, and you also cheapen what you've done in the past. Like, if I went and decided to do the sound of Back to Black with another artist, A) it wouldn't be anywhere near as good anyway 'cause Back to Black was mostly about Amy's voice and her songs, but it kind of cheapens Back to Black in a way.

NP: Right. But no one can accuse you of doing that. The last three things that you've done, your own solo album, the Duran project, and then Black Lips, they're all very different in sound. With Black Lips, what do you think you brought to their record that wouldn't have been there if they had just shuffled into the studio and hit play and record themselves?

MR: I think just helping them knock some of the songs into shape. And arrangement ideas, and maybe guitar lines that they had, and going, 'Why don't you move that here and repeat this at the end.' Just kind of Producer 101 stuff. Then also, I guess the thing that's cool about working with bands that you're a fan of before you work with them is that you feel like you're speaking for, you know, in Duran Duran's case, a million Duran Duran fans. Or the Black Lips, maybe it's a smaller cult following, but you kind of know what other fans want to hear because you know what you love about that band.

Every band wants to progress a bit with each record, but, as a fan of the Black Lips, I know what my favorite things are. I might not have the same favorite songs of every Black Lips fan, but there's certain magic elements and things that they do that's really unique to them and you go, 'OK, I'm going to help bring a bit more of that out because I know that's what I'd want to hear if I went into the shop and bought a Black Lips record.'

The same thing with Duran; They drifted pretty far from the blue print. They're a very savvy, constantly evolving band, but sometimes you need to remind a band that it's okay to go back to the magic formula that they had 25, 30 years ago. Especially if you've got new bands that have been going to town for the past eight years using some of that magic, which was basically disco influenced drum beats with great bass lines and a whole load of synths on it and great melodies. I think that was the thing with Duran, of not being of afraid to just be like, you know, "Girls on Film" is a fucking amazing song, you shouldn't be ashamed to do something that's slightly reminiscent of that.

NP: I feel with Duran Duran, that you gave them the confidence to be themselves. And that's particularly hard for them because they had such extreme success in the beginning, and then it's like the world turned on them. But they have had several periods of success. The Wedding Album was actually, in terms of sales, one of their most successful albums. They deserve a lot more respect than they get for their tenacity and staying power.

MR: The thing about Duran is that when you make such a giant impact the first time around, in a way that maybe one or two other bands from that era, maybe Depeche Mode and someone else did, you can still go out and play and it never feels like you're cheapening it. To be honest, there were some Duran Duran records in the last ten years that, as a fan, I don't even know. But there was never anything that diminished any of the love for them for some reason. I think it was just because every time they played, they played great. And for the past 8 years there was enough of the full lineup that you didn't feel like you were getting gypped when you'd go to a show...

Regardless of the quality of the records they've made recently, there's still just an immense amount of love, goodwill, and passion towards them. I think all anyone was doing was waiting for them to make a great record, to sort of come back in their corner. I think it's still early, their record has only just come out commercially, but just even off the back of the critical reception, the reception from the fans, and some of the fans like me who may have gone away for a little while - it's been so incredibly positive that I think it's turned around.

I've read a couple of reviews of their shows in America, Coachella and stuff like that, which have said they played songs from the new record in between the old ones and they didn't really loose the crowd for one minute - which is a lot to say when you're playing against songs that have been classics for thirty years. 'Lightening in a box' is what they call it the first time around and then with The Wedding Album. It was pretty magic and you're not ever guaranteed that that's going to happen exactly the same way again. But if you make a really great record, like I think that they did, you just open up to the potential of what your career could be, or what they could be. I think they could be now around for another 10 or 15 years because they've made something that seems worthy.

NP: I feel that you've given Duran Duran their career back.

MR: I don't know. That's nice of you to say. I don't feel comfortable saying that. But somebody said in one of their reviews that...if you came of age in the age of Duran and you compare it to Bob Dylan, this is your Blood On The Tracks. This is the record that comes 30 years later that reminds you why you love them so much - and I think that sort of sums it up the best.

NP: On this record there's a few tracks where you have writing credits. [The title track and then "Girl Panic" and "Safe" on the initial online release, plus "A Diamond In the Mind," "Other People's Lives," "Mediterranea," and "Return to Now" on the subsequent physical release.] That must have been kind of freaky, getting to the point where you're writing with your heroes.

MR: Yeah. I think that my role as a producer is to come in and do whatever is best for the song. I never try and force myself into the situation of writing, or be like, 'Hey, here's my chords.' Because I don't write like Duran Duran. The chemistry that they have when they're in a room together is something that if I tried to throw my chords in, they might be good chords, it might be a good change, but it wouldn't sound like them. So I was just there for a couple times when I had a little idea for a bass line, or a place for the chords to go, or a lyric idea that, if I thought it was worth it, I'd throw out. A couple of times it worked.

The first time I ever picked up an instrument to play in public was [when] I played "Wild Boys" by Duran Duran at my talent show in the fourth grade when I just moved to New York. I played bass because I wanted to be John Taylor. I remember that was the first time I ever played an instrument in front of a bunch of people.

It's so weird because I'm actually standing in the place right now, Eastcote Studios in London, I'm having such déjà vu...[I'm] in the live room where I showed John this bass line I did to see if he liked it. It's a bass line from "Safe." Of course, in some ways, I'm influenced by him anyways, because he was probably one of the first people I ever probably listened to as a kid...So I was like showing him back his bass line. One of the first things I ever did was play "Wild Boys" on the bass, and it was one of the most bizarre things that 27 years later...John's asking me to show him this bass line because he thinks it's kind of good, and it became a kind of seed for the song. But it is really strange that I'm actually standing right in the place where I remember him playing the bass line for the first time. That's really quite strange.

NP: I was reading an interview with Roger Taylor, and he was talking about how you approached the project very scientifically, and that you got the band to bring all of their old instruments out of storage that they recorded with back in the day, and you set them up in the room in the same way that they used to have it - that you were physically trying to recreate the situation that helped give them their signature sound.

MR: Well, basically, we just got some of the old gear, some of the old bass amps and stuff like that. But it was more about not where it's positioned in the room, but more just the fact that Roger and John were facing each other and actually laying down the rhythm track together like they would have on the first three or four albums. I think Duran get a bit of a rap because they were such a bunch of pretty boys that people forgot that they could actually play their instruments really fucking well. So to have John and Roger, who are a super tight rhythm section, in a room, playing together, staring at each other - it comes across in the music. That's how people used to make records all the time. Because of technology and people being lazy, you know, we'll do a drum [track] and we'll do the bass a bit later, and then we'll do this and we'll fix that. If you can just have two people that can really play sitting in a room together, and you get something out of that, it's going to be so much better than faking it or cheating it.

NP: You had Simon Le Bon sing on the title track of Record Collection. I absolutely love that whole record. It's interesting to hear the progression through the three albums that you've done...

MR: With this record, I just decided to do something without all the horns and stuff...I had just come to the halfway point working with the Duran record, so I learned so much about synths from sitting with Nick...The song with Simon on the hook on Record Collection came about because Nick had been such a big influence on the record, just from what he taught me about the synths...it was near the end of the record and Nick had played keys on this song, and I was just like, 'Hey Simon, do you like this hook for this song? What do you think about singing it?' It was quite unusual for Simon, because he writes everything and he sings it himself...He happened to like this hook that Nick Hodgson from the Kaiser Chiefs had come up with...He went in and it was just one of those bizarre things; you're just in the studio, in and out in 15 minutes, and the next thing you know you have Simon Le Bon singing the hook on your album.

NP: You also have Boy George on the album. His vocal on "Somebody to Love Me" sounds so good. It's the best record he's done in ages.

MR: Yeah, that's pretty magic that song...There was never the intention of asking him to be on the record. I had written that song with Andrew Wyatt from Miike Snow, who also sings on it, and Alex Greenwald, who tours and wrote a lot of the record with me. Two days after we wrote it, I just had this weird thing. I was like, 'We need to ask Boy George to sing this song.' I have no idea. It was just one of the things you sort of wake up in the morning...

NP: Those are the best ideas, when you listen to your subconscious.

MR: Yeah. And I think a little bit was we were quite aware of "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" when we were writing that song in the room, because they're both sort of non-Western rhythms. Theirs has a reggae beat, ours has a kind of afrobeat. And the blue-eyed soul song is a bit sad and regretful but bouncy. I think that must have been what was staying in the back of my mind.

I'd interviewed him once for Interview Magazine. I called him up when I got to London, I got his email, and I said, 'I'd like to play you this song.' He came and he heard it, and a week later he came to the studio and we recorded it. It was quite scary at first. I had no idea what his voice was going to sound like because I hadn't heard him sing in like ten years. I just had this idea that I wanted him on the song. The minute he sung, it was already an octave lower than it was written because his voice is just...

NP: It's got deeper.

MR: Obviously his voice is different than it was when he was twenty years old, like most people. And I just suddenly realized, right there in the room, it was like, wow, this song has just taken on an eight thousand percent emotional depth that it didn't really have before just because of everything that he put into it. It was a great song before that, and Andrew sounded brilliant singing it, he's one of my favorite singers...

NP: But the lyrics seem to very much apply to Boy George's life.

MR: Well, there's a line in the song, "See the boy I once was in my eyes." When he started singing that I was like, how fucking weird is this that he's singing this thing that we wrote completely unintentionally and it was meant for him.

NP: It does sound like you wrote it for him.

MR: Yeah, I think it's one of those things. It's like when I was playing with John Taylor on that bass line, the music of those people influenced me so much as a kid, it would only be sort of natural in some way [that] I would end up writing something that would be fitting for them to play. It's just like a circle that's going around; they influenced me, and I'm writing something that sounds like something they would've written anyway, so now it sounds cool when they play it or sing it.

NP: Who's left that you have a burning desire to produce?

MR: I don't know. There's nobody who's super famous that I'm like, wow, I'd love to work with these guys. I mean, there's bands that I love, whether it's Tame Impala or Arcade Fire or whatever. I get so nervous about working with people that I like anyway that if somebody like the Gossip or the Black Lips approached me and said do you want to work, then, you know, I have to fucking grow a pair and be like, OK, I love this band and it's nerve wracking, but I'm going to go in the studio because it would be stupid to waste the opportunity to work with them... I'm really lucky that the people have come into my orbit whether it's Rose Dougall, or Duran, or anyone. That's how I've ended up working with them. You know, I'm working with Rufus Wainwright in October on his new record. I think he's one of the most talented songwriters and singers. You know, he wrote opera, he's an aria writer of our generation...

I feel like after Amy's record, the success of that, I realized that it kind of puts you at a crossroads. You can go and chase that success, which often times is really futile 'cause it's not really up to you what the people like. Or you can just continue to do the things that you really love and carve out your living doing that. Some of the things I work on because of that sell 10 copies and some sell 2 million, but it's the only thing I know how to do. I'm not really great at planting like a giant career trajectory...

NP: I think that's a much healthier way to go about it. If you chase success, you're less likely to get it, and it's a very unfulfilling thing. Whereas if you just do the things that you love and do the things that you believe in, because they are true passion projects, success will come to you.

MR: The other thing is that I've been producing records and trying to get my foot in the door for 12 years before my first success, which was probably with "Littlest Things" with Lily that went in to Version and Back to Black. I remember the only reason I did those records was because I'd sort of given up...I resigned myself to believe I'm never going to have a hit record. Because I'd seen these other guys that I looked up to, who were at one point starting out like I was...Like I knew Kanye in the very beginning, I knew Danger Mouse, and I'd just see their star shooting straight into the stratosphere and it made me think, 'Fuck, maybe I'm not that good at this, so I'm just going to like fuck off trying to make hits and just make stuff I like.' I was lucky enough to meet a couple of people at that time, like Lily and Daniel Merriweather and Santigold, that I started making records with 'cause I just really liked them. Then that ended up being my first success. So I think that just taught me a good abject lesson, and to just stick with doing the things that you think are good, and hopefully sometimes people will agree with you.

by Brad Warner (image) People have been asking me for my thoughts about the shooting at the sikh temple outside of Milwaukee. It’s hard to say much except to once again state that there are too damned many guns in the United States. But I’ve already given that rant. Lots of people are speculating... more

by Brad Warner



People have been asking me for my thoughts about the shooting at the sikh temple outside of Milwaukee. It’s hard to say much except to once again state that there are too damned many guns in the United States. But I’ve already given that rant.

Lots of people are speculating that the shooter probably believed that the Sikhs he killed were Muslims and that this was some sort of revenge for the attacks in New York and Washington, DC on Sept. 11, 2001. Some have said that he was a white supremacist. Some are saying he was in a punk rock or heavy metal band supposedly called End Apathy. The Huffington Post has the most information on that aspect of the story. According to them the guy played bass in some of what they’re calling “hate rock” bands.

Of all that stuff, it’s the idea that he was a punk rocker that bothers me the most. The other things are all kind of obvious. White supremacists are bad. People who kill others for their religion are bad. People who can’t tell the difference between Muslims and Sikhs are stupid. Blah-blah-blah. I agree with all that. Who needs to hear yet another person say those things?

But I’ve always been one of those people who said that violent music or art did not necessarily lead to actual violence. I still believe that. But I also believe that violent art and music definitely can tend to make unbalanced people believe that real violence is OK. That appears to be at least part of what happened here.

All of the punk rock that I liked was very left-wing. But there was plenty of hateful stuff in there. The Dicks, who Zero Defex (the band I play bass in) played with a few times had songs like “Dicks Hate the Police”. MDC, whose name at one time meant Millions of Dead Cops, often had violent messages in their songs. MDC were big supporters of Zero Defex back in the day and we even played with them in Cleveland this year.

The photo of Zero Defex I put on this blog bugged some people who saw it when I posted it years ago because there’s a Nazi flag behind us. That’s me on the far left, just under the logo for The Dale, the bar we were playing at that night. The scowling skinhead in the middle is Tommy Strange, our main songwriter and guitarist. Although this was apparently taken during one of the songs that he sang while Jimi, our vocalist, played guitar because you can see Jimi just behind and to Tommy’s left with a guitar strapped on. I Photoshopped the picture to bring out the duct tape “No” symbol we put over the swastika on the flag to make it clear that we were against the Nazis and not for them. A lot of people didn’t catch that when I originally posted this picture. I still wonder where we ever got a Nazi flag. Think of the money we could’ve made selling that! A lot more than we got for the gig, I’m sure.

In any case, I never really thought those violent anti-police and anti-government messages were to be taken literally. To me it was a verbal working out of the frustrations we all felt at the way police and government power was abused. I didn’t think those bands were trying to incite people to literally go out there and murder police officers. Perhaps I’m naive, but I still don’t think it was meant to be taken literally.

Then again, maybe I’m like the dumb guys in the comedy heavy metal band Spinal Tap who said, “We say love your neighbor. Well, we don’t literally say it. And we don’t literally mean it either. But in any case that message should be clear.”

I feel like the problem isn’t so much the violent messages, even if some of the people who send them possibly really do want us to commit violent acts. It’s people’s inability to differentiate between art and reality. Even if you might argue that this isn’t the root problem, I still think it’s the problem we have to deal with because violent art is not going away. It’s been with us as long as art has been with us. And in the age of the internet it’s as impossible to control access to violent artistic images as it is to control access to pornography. So rather than trying to make all art conform to some kind of arbitrary code of niceness I think it’s better to try and educate people that it’s one thing to say “kill the cops” and a whole different thing to actually do that stuff.

In Buddhism there is an idea that right thought leads to right action. Conversely non-right thought can lead to non-right action. Thích Nhat Hanh cautions his followers not to consume what he calls “poisonous entertainment” that feeds our agitation. Dogen, too, told his followers much the same thing 800 years ago. I do not disagree with this approach. And yet I wonder…

As I have said many times, in my own case punk rock saved my life. It literally did. I was a suicidally depressed teenager. And one of the few things that kept me going were the so-called “negative messages” in punk rock music as well as in horror films and other supposedly “poisonous entertainment.” These messages let me know that I was not the only one who was frustrated by the status quo and wanted things to change.

Without these supposedly “negative messages” I would have felt totally lost and alone in the nice, clean suburbs of Ohio. Who knows? My frustration at all the supposedly “positive messages” I was receiving, which really just reinforced the false notion that everything was OK in the world, might have led me to take up a gun and shoot all the preps and the jocks in my school. So-called “positive messages” are often just propaganda intended to help big corporations and the like control the populace, keeping them docile by insisting that everything they do makes life peachy keen.

It’s impossible to say anything really conclusive about all this. But I think it’s good to say something non-conclusive. I don’t have the great answer to this problem and neither does anyone else. I think it’s really vital, though, to look at all sides of this issue.

***

Just moments ago I did an interview on Freedomizer Radio out of Houston, Texas. You can listen to it at freedomizerradio.com

From August 11 until September 11 I will be at Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery. I’ll be working there as a student/worker or whatever they call it. Probably serving food or cutting cucumbers or something like that. At the end of my stay I’ll give a couple lectures about Dogen. I’ve done this every year for a few years now. It’s good for me to have to get up every morning at five, put on my robes, do some zazen, be an indentured servant for most of the day and then do some more zazen at night. I kinda need that experience to keep from getting too weird when I do the other stuff I do.

Speaking of weird stuff I do, I am going on yet another European tour less than two months after I get out of Tassajara. Here are the dates as far as I know them right now.

Oct. 26-28 Weekend Sesshin Kajo Zendo in Finland

Oct. 30 – Nov. 4 International Lay Buddhists Forum in Malaga, Spain

Nov. 9 Dogen Zendo in Frankfurt , Germany

Nov. 10 Balance Yoga in Frankfurt, Germany

Nov. 11 – 21 Possible dates in The Netherlands and/or Germany (Most likely Nov. 16-18 in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, but nothing is confirmed yet)

Nov. 23-25 Weekend Sesshin at Fawcett Mill Fields in Penrith, Lake District, UK (Sponsored by Yoga Manchester
)
Nov. 25 Manchester, UK (Sponsored by Yoga Manchester)



Brad Warner is the author of Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between as well as Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up! and Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff that you can click here to see. You can also buy T-shirts and hoodies based on his books, and the new CD by his band Zero Defex now!

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(image) by A.J. Focht (image) A benefit in aid of the Aurora shooting victims is being put together by All C’s Collectibles, a local comic shop which is not far from the theater where the tragic event took place. There has been a tremendous outpour of support to help get the event off the ground. It... more

by A.J. Focht



A benefit in aid of the Aurora shooting victims is being put together by All C’s Collectibles, a local comic shop which is not far from the theater where the tragic event took place. There has been a tremendous outpour of support to help get the event off the ground. It will be held over two days on August 25th and 26th, and will include a silent auction and in store appearances by several fantastic comic creators. Many amazing supporters have stepped up and made donations towards the silent auction, including most of the major comic companies.

DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, POW Entertainment, Top Cow Comics and many more have all made contributions. There have been some fantastic donations so far including a signed Amazing Spider-Man movie poster from Stan Lee, and a poster and guitar donated and signed by Scott Ian from Anthrax. Several comic artists have also given original artworks for the auction. These incredible items and more will be auctioned off on Saturday, August 25 at 6:30 PM. The silent auction will be located at a donated space in the Embassy Suites. All the proceeds from the auction will go to the Alex Sullivan Fund and the Aurora Victims Relief Fund.

Many prominent comic writers and artists have agreed to come out for an in-store signing on Sunday, August 26. Comic icon Steve Niles, author of 30 Days of Night, Dark Days, Criminal Macabre, and many more, will be in attendance. Dark Horse Comics legend and creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola has been confirmed. Writer of the current The Invincible Iron Man run, Matt Fraction will also be joining, as well as All-Star Western artist Mortitat. More writers and artists have been in contact with the benefit and there are more appearances to be announced over the coming weeks.

Aurora Rise has begun to spread far beyond the city limits of Aurora, Colorado. There has been an overwhelming interest across the comic community to extend the event to future conventions and throughout other cities. So far, there is talk of branches at Dragon Con in Chicago, and even in the UK. There will also likely be a second event held in Aurora at a later date, probably mid-September, to accommodate more artists and writers who could not make it out for the first benefit signing. Volunteers associated with Denver Comic Con have set up Aurora Rise on Facebook, Twitter, and with its own website. They are currently working on setting up the infrastructure to expand the charity program through the Community First Foundation.

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by Lee Camp (video) We already treat war like it's some kind of game without real world consequences. So why not take it that next step? Introducing "War: The Gameshow!" If you're the last to die, you win a camouflage Snuggie! Hosted by funnyman Howie Mandel! Related Posts: Moment... more

by Lee Camp



We already treat war like it's some kind of game without real world consequences. So why not take it that next step? Introducing "War: The Gameshow!" If you're the last to die, you win a camouflage Snuggie! Hosted by funnyman Howie Mandel!



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by Laurelin (image) “Those guys, they just want to fuck you,” Jason had said, his finger jabbing into my shoulder again and again. I was so mad I could have broken it clean off. “You don’t even know them,” I hissed back, making him even angrier. He scared me when he was angry, but he never... more

by Laurelin




“Those guys, they just want to fuck you,” Jason had said, his finger jabbing into my shoulder again and again. I was so mad I could have broken it clean off.

“You don’t even know them,” I hissed back, making him even angrier. He scared me when he was angry, but he never hit me, although as the years went by I would come to find out that he would hit others that came after me. But even standing my ground he scared me; he had this power over me and for some strange reason, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. He kept me close, like a dog chained in a dirt yard on a run, allowed to run sometimes but ultimately, never allowed to leave the yard.

He made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world, and I remember thinking that I could die right there in his arms and be happy with everything I never did. But there was always the issue of my friends. While I was in college I became closer with all the men in the fraternity up the street, some even more so than my own sorority sisters. In the beginning of my relationship they were happy for me – I talked about Jason and I glowed, and they were shocked that someone had finally tamed me. Jason didn’t feel the same way about the guys I called my brothers. He knew how wild we all were, and he was convinced they all had ulterior motives.

“Those guys are NOT your friends, Laurelin. They want to have sex with you. Get it through your head, you are NOT spending anymore time with them,” he had said, and while I always fought back I eventually quieted, and instead of driving back home I always stayed with Jason. Soon my friends started calling, each call or text making Jason angry. They missed me, was I ever coming home? Why was I ignoring their calls? When could they meet Jason? But he wouldn’t meet them; a firm believer that guys and girls could never be just friends.

In the end, Jason didn’t last, thank god. When I finally broke away from him my friends were so glad, and I saw what it was like when a relationship takes over and a girl turns a blind eye to friendships in favor of a man. All these years later these boys are still my brothers, platonic, the best friends I have ever had through thick and thin, and Jason’s name hardly ever crosses my lips.

One of my closest friends in Boston is also a guy; he’s usually the first person I talk to in the morning and the last person I talk to at night before I fall asleep around 5 AM. We go to dinner, get drinks, go to movies, he thinks my last boyfriend was the dumbest guy on the face of the planet and when I was having trouble getting over it no one helped like he did:

“Laurelin, the kid is a loser. Do you really want people meeting your guys to be like, ‘Man, that chick is the coolest girl ever, but her boyfriend is a fucking tool.’ Stop crying, Jesus, pull it together.”

My friends and co-workers seem to think otherwise.

“You’re going to marry him,” they tease, and I think of Jason, his mouth set in a line, always so angry at the preposterous idea that not every guy just wants to bang me. I’ve quit trying to explain to everyone that sometimes, just sometimes…we really are just friends.



***

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by A.J. Focht Following the tremendous success Joss Whedon’s The Avengers found in theaters, Whedon has been signed on to write and direct the second film. Even more exciting, Whedon is helping develop the unnamed ABC television series set in the Marvel universe. The top current theories as to what... more

by A.J. Focht

Following the tremendous success Joss Whedon’s The Avengers found in theaters, Whedon has been signed on to write and direct the second film. Even more exciting, Whedon is helping develop the unnamed ABC television series set in the Marvel universe. The top current theories as to what show might be are either the Hulk show or a spy series based on S.H.I.E.L.D.

Thor: The Dark World is set to release on November 8, 2013. Aside from incorporating the Dark Elves, not much is known about the storyline. Former Dr. Who Christopher Eccleston has been cast as one of the film's villains, and the current rumor mill suggests he will be the king of the Dark Elves. According to Rene Russo, Thor and Loki’s mother, Frigga, will also have a larger role in the movie.

Marvel’s got a lot of movies in the works, and the next new original project is going to be Guardians of the Galaxy. Three-time Black List writer Chris McCoy has been hired to pen the script. Guardians of the Galaxy will be the cinema premier for several of Marvel’s lesser known characters. The announced cast of heroes includes: Star-Lord, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon. The movie is scheduled in theaters in August 2014.

Marvel and Fox Studios have been working trade deals all week. The original offer consisted of extending Fox’s rights to Daredevil on the condition that they let Disney/Marvel take back Galactus from Fantastic Four. Fox has decided to turn down the offer and they are talking about letting the rights revert to Disney, unless the home of the Mickey Mouse is interested in co-financing a Daredevil movie.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises recently hit theaters, but that hasn’t stopped Warner Bros. from thinking about the next Batman reboot. The Batman reboot is rumored to take flight just four years from now in 2016. Thought to be titled The Batman, it will take place in the Justice League universe of DC’s planned 2015 Justice League movie. The Batman won’t be an origins story, but instead will follow Batman’s second year of crime fighting.

The long awaited World of Warcraft movie has gained some recent movement. Sam Raimi recently confirmed he would not be directing as has been suggested as far back as 2009. Writer Charles Leavitt has been hired on to direct the script. There is no mention of release dates or cast lists, but this bit of information at least lets us know the project isn’t dead.

Speaking of movies we haven’t heard about for a while, Bryan Singer’s Battlestar Galactica film is also still on the table. The last big news was that John Orloff had been brought in to write the movie, now Singer has confirmed he is looking through Orloff’s script revisions. Singer didn’t have much more to say other than “it's very cool” and that the movie would exist “quite well between the Glen Larson and Ron Moore universes.”

The ground breaking 48-frame release of The Hobbit is actually going to be quite limited. Warner Bros. might be convinced that high-frame rates are the way to the future, but their first high-frame release won’t even make it to all major cities. This won’t be their last chance though. Not only does The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have one sequel already planned, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, but there is the possibility of up to two more sequels. New Line has registered two potential movie titles: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The first Hobbit is set to release on December 14, 2012, and the second a year later on December 13, 2013.

by Darrah de jour (image) I recently got a call from an ex-boyfriend (can I even call him that?) that I had dated for about one month a couple years ago. It would have been more brief, except that he was in Africa on a mission for three weeks, and when he returned, we broke up. Before he left, we met,... more

by Darrah de jour



I recently got a call from an ex-boyfriend (can I even call him that?) that I had dated for about one month a couple years ago. It would have been more brief, except that he was in Africa on a mission for three weeks, and when he returned, we broke up. Before he left, we met, and had sex. Well, we met, talked, then decided to hop in the sack. Unfortunately for me, he was inexperienced and believing virtue withstood the test of a woman’s sexual needs and intimate desires, he failed to satisfy even my most basic requisites. Like, giving me even a single orgasm after about four times doing the horizontal mambo.

Many times before meeting the chap, I’ve jokingly spouted, “Virgins are prude.” Not so much in an attempt to hurl insults at virgins or the born-again chaste, more to express my belief that America’s obsession with purity serves nobody. Sure, it’s great to not contract an STD from unprotected sex. Sure, it’s important not to wonder who the babydaddy is. Yes, preserving your reputation protects your quality of life and peace of mind. But, having safe, consensual, adult sex with another respectful, cool and hip person who knows their way around a bedroom, makes the above not such an issue. And that’s my point. In this obsession with purity, we’ve undermined youth’s right to knowledge about safe and enjoyable sex. We’ve imposed an unfair and derogatory scarlet “A” on every girl or woman who claims her equal right to enjoyable, safe sex. And, we’ve bastardized men’s ability to truly connect intimately with their partner, by promoting endless erections and Superman like abilities under the sheets.

Having an experiential personality, I often do searches on the Internet that are cringe-worthy the next day. The other night, I was reading a forum where teenage girls (around sixteen) to twenty-somethings talked openly about engaging in sexual activity with their boyfriends. Some of them were pregnant. Over and over, they spoke of being unable to voice that what he was doing was hurting them. Their boyfriends were *hurting* their vaginas, and they didn’t say anything. My initial response was sadness. Then a sort of outrage. These girls and women were asking each other what to do with their sore labias and swollen vaginal canals, which had tiny cuts in them from being fingered too vigorously. Without a doubt, each one echoed the last one’s sentiment: I didn’t say anything. And, now I’m in pain. What should I do? Do I have an infection? What’s wrong with me?

I could empathize with their frustrations and inability to speak up though. I remember being fifteen and dating a skater boy who went to my high school. I was working part-time as an assistant manager at a candle store in the mall, and sometimes, when I opened at 10 AM on a Saturday, I’d know he had broken into the mall after hours and stopped by because M&Ms were tossed into one of the candleholders atop the glass display. He wanted to have sex, and he hung around me every second to groom me to make this happen. He was rough with me. He kissed me hard. In public. His tongue whipping in my mouth like an angry reptile. He would stand over me while I sat, cross-legged at parties, smoking Camel Lights, and bend my head back, then jam his tongue down my throat for a few moments. Afterward, he would walk away. I was “his” and he wanted everybody to know it. Why didn’t I say anything? What was OK about this scenario? Appealing, even? Yes, he was cute. But not that cute.

He started fingering me a lot. A lot a lot. And, I admit, I liked it. It was my first time, and it happened innocently enough. One day we were walking around the mall, and he stopped at these gray double doors. “What’s this?” I asked. “Here, I’ll show you.” We went inside the long hallway, which was starkly illuminated by florescent overhead lights. He said to sit down. I did. He sat down beside me. He began kissing me, and then laid his body over mine. He moved half his body — the lower half – to the side and unbuttoned my jeans. He stuck his finger inside me. I remember wondering if his hands were clean, and feeling the tightness of my vagina around his one thick finger. It kind of hurt. And I felt kind of duped by the whole thing. For some reason, to this day, I remember that his body being half on and half off felt manipulative, and that he’d pre-planned this whole journey, and how objectified I felt. I felt like nothing, and something, but that bad kinda something. Like, one of the many girls he’d collected. The girls that contributed to the bad reputation that preceded him — and that had attracted me. I was now both confused, turned on, and repulsed by it. He stopped suddenly, and told me to get up. I got dressed, and we left. “Did I do something wrong?” I wondered.

We broke up after a couple more incidences. Like the one where he skateboarded over to my parents’ house when they were out of town, and tried to stick his penis inside me. We had both ditched school to meet at home and make out, but when he arrived — half hour after the planned meeting time – he seemed distant and aloof. Like he’d missed out on a party to be there with me. He hated school, so why did he care if we missed a class or two? When we were upstairs, he sat on my sister’s bed. I told him so. He didn’t care. “We can’t make out on my sister’s bed!” I implored, half-kidding, half-serious. “How weird,” I thought. He didn’t understand why, or care really. We made out, and he kept taking his dick out of his boxer shorts, and I kept moving away and saying no. Finally he jumped up. “Fine!” My vagina was unsheathed by panties, as he’d been fingering me again. He looked at my mess of curly reddish-brown pubic hair with contempt. I didn’t know if he didn’t like my vagina or my pubic hair, or was mad at it because he couldn’t get inside.

He bolted downstairs, and stopped in front of the TV. Something was on that he liked. He began fingering me again when I appeared. I let him for a second, then offered him some homemade fudge my mom made before leaving on vacation. He declined, then left.

We finally broke up after he had used me as a scapegoat to trick his mom out of twenty bucks to buy weed. And because all his friends knew I wouldn’t give it up. I was fifteen, and being me, I had already set a “losing my virginity” date. Eighteen years old.

Even though all this happened many years sago, I vividly recall there were times when I didn’t want him to touch me. Like out at the railroad tracks, with all his friends within earshot. His hands sooty with mud from the tracks and the park we had to cross through to get to the secret hangout. But I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more: the fact that his friends saw me as just another one of Ray’s girls, or the fact that he always stopped suddenly, after jerking his hand up my skirt — almost just to see if I’d let him. Our encounters never resulted in an orgasm. I never had one, nor gave him one. I never touched his penis; having only seen it when he pulled it out on my sister’s bed while trying to shove it inside me without any kind of conversation, whatsoever. When he decided we were done, he’d bark at me to get dressed, never waiting quite long enough for me to snap that last snap, or zip my zipper. He was always leaving me standing alone, struggling, racing to meet up with my boyfriend, who said he loved me but did nothing that resembled it.

Perhaps our friends on the east (my old stomping grounds) have the right idea. And not just when it comes to Dunkin’ Donuts blueberry muffins. According to USA Today, Boston’s Public Health Commission partnered with local social service agencies to erect a Break-Up Summit for teens. Nationwide, the $18 million program aims to educate youth on how to prevent dating violence and how to communicate more effectively and kindly (ie; no severing romantic ties publicly via social networks), while helping give young people the skills to cope with the downsides to embarrassing or hurtful dating experiences, like depression and low self-esteem, which can lead to further educational and social problems if left unchecked.

As of late, I’ve used a type of rationale that is helpful when choosing my next dance partner. My internal checklist is as follows:

• 1. Do I trust them to be discreet and not to tell anybody?


• 2. Do I think they’ll treat my body with the utmost respect, and value my orgasm as much, if not more, than theirs?


• 3. Afterwards will feel A-OK in my skin?

If the answer is now to any of the above, then I shouldn’t let them inside me. Easy peasy. Better not to bargain or barter with your most prized possession – yourself.

In terms of learning how to better converse with your sexual partners and to get down to the nitty-gritty regarding burning questions (or symptoms) – at any age – be it Plan B instructions to viability of sperm, I find the young adult site Scarleteen to be a wealth of resources. Finally, let’s honor that tender, lush land that resides in all of us...under the pink.


Darrah is a freelance journalist and consultant, with a focus on sensuality, environmentalism, and fearless women in the media. She appears as a “Woman on the Street” on The Conversation. Her lifestyle writing and celebrity interviews have appeared in Marie Claire, Esquire and W, among others. She contributes author and filmmaker interviews to The Rumpus. Darrah’s “Red, White and Femme” columns for SuicideGirls taks a fresh look at females in America. She also co-hosts SG Radio when her schedule allows. She lives in LA with her doggie Oscar Wilde. Subscribe to her blog at Darrahdejour.com/, and friend her on Facebook and Twitter.

Photos: Mikey B and Maryalena Salman

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by Lee Camp (video) It all seems to be coming together into one. 90% of our media is owned by only six corporations. Every movie is about a super hero, and we act like the President is the only lawmaker who matters. How much further can things condense? Are we headed towards a cultural singularity? An... more

by Lee Camp



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G Willow Wilson first made a name for herself in comics in 2007 when the graphic novel “Cairo” which she wrote was published by Vertigo and made a splash, combining fantasy and realism in an attempt to capture life in Egypt’s capital city. She followed up the book with the series “Air,” which... more

G Willow Wilson first made a name for herself in comics in 2007 when the graphic novel “Cairo” which she wrote was published by Vertigo and made a splash, combining fantasy and realism in an attempt to capture life in Egypt’s capital city. She followed up the book with the series “Air,” which was also illustrated by her “Cairo” collaborator M.K. Perker and other comics work including “Superman,” “The Outsiders,” “Vixen” and most recently “Mystic.” She’s also published nonfiction in many places including “The Atlantic Monthly” and “The New York Times.” In 2010 her memoir “The Butterfly Mosque,” was published about her move after college to Cairo where she met her future husband and came to fall in love with the country.

Her new book is her first novel, “Alif the Unseen.” The story of a hacker in an unnamed Arab Gulf country, the book involves the jinn, a battle with the state security services overseen by “The Hand,” the nature of storytelling, the power of the internet and climaxes in a revolution. It’s also a book that was written before the uprisings known as “the Arab Spring” erupted last year. We caught up with Wilson and spoke about the book and the current political climate in the Middle East following the Egyptian Presidential election.


Alex Dueben: Where did book begin for you?

G. Willow Wilson: It started from a number of seeds of ideas. One of which was the fact that I was really passionate about writing something about the impact that the internet was having on youth culture and the discussion of religion in the Middle East and bleeding over into the blogosphere here in the United States. I’d been living in Cairo and the internet was one of the main ways that I was able to not only keep in touch with people back home in the U.S., but also to reach out to others in the Middle East. What I found was really surprising to me. People were using the internet as a way to circumvent the censorship that is so prevalent in parts of the Middle East because the internet is still harder to censor than print media or television media. All of these different groups of people, who would ordinarily have no reason to talk to one another, were all of a sudden having conversations. Islamists and secularists, modernists and traditionalists, and all of the different demographics of people who would have to band together in order to enact any kind of change. For a long time pundits in the West said that change in the Middle East was going to be slow or impossible because these groups had such different ideologies, but what I was seeing was that people were actually trying really hard to find common ground because they had common problems–mainly the absolute lack of the freedom to chose their own government.

I thought that was very exciting, but at the time I really couldn’t get any traction here in the U.S. for an article or a book about this phenomenon because people really didn’t understand why the internet was such an important tool of communication. I think a lot of people in traditional media because they didn’t understand what was going on on the internet, they assumed that nothing was going on on the internet. Which today seems silly, but I said, you know what, I am going to put this in a novel. Sometimes people will latch onto an idea in fiction that they won’t necessarily latch onto in nonfiction because in fiction we expect the unusual. That was a big part of it. And another part was a desire to combine all of these things that I was interested in all of these audiences that I usually address separately and write about all of those things at once. It has modern fantasy and that could drawn on my comics-reading audience and it’s also got religion and politics which I write nonfiction on, so for me, it was also when I stopped censoring myself.

AD: Why did you decide to write a prose novel and not another graphic novel or comic series?

GWW: The scope of Alif the Unseen seemed big enough that I wanted a prose book because I knew that there were going to be things that are difficult to portray in pictures. There’s literary slights of hand that you can do in prose that are harder to pull off when you need concrete visual images as you do with graphic novels. I thought it was too big to be a graphic novel, so I decided to go with prose.

AD: You made the point that there wasn’t an awareness or interest in youth culture or Middle East culture is, I think, spot on, but it’s interesting you used a novel to address this. By focusing on the internal life of a character, it allows the reader to get into the character’s head and bypasses that orientalist notion of “the other.”

GWW: To me that’s the beauty of fiction. And in particular, the beauty of genre fiction. Taking people so far outside the realm of their own ordinary experience that they’re forced to give up a lot of their preconceived notions and react spontaneously to the characters in the story and the events in the story instead of drawing in with a notion of how things should work. To me that was what was so valuable about Alif as a novel, and not only as a novel but a work of speculative fiction.

AD: It’s been interesting to read non-genre critics respond to the book often in very interesting ways because they’re drawn to the book because of the subject matter but then they seem confused by the fantastic elements in some entertaining ways.

GWW: [laughs] It’s such a genre-bending book that I think people who are used to reading literary fiction, which has a limited set of tropes, get caught off guard a little bit. But that’s part of the fun of reading a book that takes you a little bit outside your comfort zone. Or at least I hope it is.

AD: I think so, but again if you’d written a book about a hacker in a Gulf country that ends in revolution with no fantastic elements, the book would have had a slightly different readership and a slightly different response.

GWW: Probably so. I wasn’t really interested in making a straight up political statement or disguising what should have been nonfiction as fiction. I wanted to tell a good story. I wanted to tell an exciting story that had the touchstones of modern politics and real life events and real life people, but at the same time break away from expectations about what the middle east is like. I wanted it to be the kind of book that I love to read, the kinds of books that I enjoy reading, so that’s the kind of book that I wrote.

AD: You’ve written about the jinn before, in your graphic novel Cairo. What do you find so interesting about them?

GWW: There’s so much fascinating mythology surrounding the jinn, analogous in a lot of ways to the mythology surrounding elves or faeries in Western mythology. They’re largely an untapped resource in English-language literature because they’re really not part of our typical fantasy canon. There was a lot there that I thought was worth talking about and they’re also a very interesting and convenient way of speaking about the ways that we people living in the modern, rational 21st century could be religious. Jinn are in fact mentioned in the Qur’an. They’re part of the canon of Islamic literature, but among the increasingly practical scientific people in the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world you’ll often see reluctance to talk about jinn and the unseen in a literal way. They fall outside that very pragmatic way that we see the world. This is true in the book as well. Alif of course is very reluctant to believe that the shady character he meets whose help he needs is anything other than a human being and really resists the idea that there’s anything more going on. It was a very interesting way to examine how we as modern humans interact with our own myths and our own religion.

AD: That’s true of many religions, Judaism and Christianity, just to stay in the same family, have fantastic elements that are largely or completely ignored.

GWW: That’s very true. It’s become somewhat uncool to talk about these things and I think the more academic our understanding of religion becomes–and this is equally true for people who practice religion in some ways, this is not a statement about atheists or non-practicing people–even practicing people prefer to focus on law and on ethics. We become increasingly nervous at the more transcendental aspects of religion that were very important to our pre-modern ancestors. As a writer of fiction and a longtime fan of Neil Gaiman and the modern fantasy writers of that generation, this was a really interesting topic for me to kind of dig my teeth into.

AD: I don’t want to give away much of the plot but there’s a point where Alif is in prison and The Hand has a great line talking about how if the citizens were given the right to vote, they would vote for either their own tribe, the Islamists or whoever paid them. That’s been what many people including lots of powerful Arabs and lots of influential Americans have been saying for decades.

GWW: Yeah. That’s the cynical, realist traditional interpretation of what would happen if you gave democracy to people in the Middle East. One of the reasons why we, though we are in theory the great spreader of democracy, have been reluctant to court democratic movements in the Middle East is because of that exact fear. I started writing the book before the Arab spring broke out and I didn’t want The Hand to be right, but I had a terrible inkling that if there were to be revolution or a series of revolutions in the Middle East, that that might be the outcome. In the book I chose the optimistic route and I back Alif’s assertion that freedom is not a dead idea. That people do want that choice and no matter the outcome that is a noble struggle to undertake.

It’s been interesting to see the Arab Spring unfold and compare it to what happened in the book. I pay particularly close attention to Egypt because that’s my second home and it’s where my husband’s family is and where most of my books still are. [laughs] A good chunk of my life is there. It’s been very very interesting to see the aftermath of the first free Presidential election in really the history of Egypt. To see this, in theory, moderate Islamist elected and everybody’s waiting to see what he’ll do. So far the threat of popular revolt, the reminder that the only reason that he’s in power is because a popular revolt put him there, seems to have been enough to at least make him appear to toe a line of equality. He’s made promises to appoint women and Coptic Christians to his cabinet. He’s done everything short of bend over backwards to reassure people that he’s not out to create a Saudi Arabia in Egypt because that’s not something that the people in Egypt–and I think, in most of the Middle East–want.

I think Islamism has had a chance to play itself out. We’ve seen it in Saudi Arabia. We’ve seen Shia Islamism in Iran. We’ve seen Islamist groups take control of parts of Somalia and parts of Sudan. People are, I think, cynical of that dangerous, golden age thinking. That if we just roll back the clock to the seventh century, everything will be okay. And it seems that even people who are practicing Muslims are becoming skeptical to that idea because they’ve seen the terrible fallout that goes along with some of these ultraconservative regimes in various places. I think it’s healthy for these ideas to be aired in public so that they have a chance to be tested and criticized so I think there’s good reason to be optimistic. I, like many people, are watching with anticipation to see what happens next in this new Middle East.

AD: It’s incredibly interesting and as you point out, now-President of Egypt Morsi was running against a candidate whose platform was essentially, forget about my career and what I’ve done, I’ll keep the Islamists in check.

GWW: Right. And he got a very good showing. Morsi only beat him by a few points. That shows that people are deeply worried about these things. But at the end of the day they’re not interested in a repeat of the old regime. The threat of Islamist takeover was the excuse that Mubarak used for thirty years to jail and torture dissidents of all stripes including secularists and to impose this emergency law that strips Egyptian citizens of even their most basic rights of free assembly and free speech. I think the election of Morsi shows that the people are willing to take that risk in the name of freedom. I think the people went the optimistic route and I and a lot of people are hoping that is rewarded by a government that works, but we’ll see. It’s too early to tell.

AD: It’s been exciting to see as across the region in Tunisia and Libya and Egypt, different governments emerge.

GWW: It’s exciting and chaotic. Revolutions are not easy things. They take a long time. You look back at our own history, even though we enshrine the year 1776, it took almost one hundred years for us to really get things sorted out and decide what it meant to be a United States. It took a series of small wars and a Civil War before we really sorted that out. Revolutions are not easy things and sometimes it takes a while for things to shake out.

AD: Your book touches on that at the end where it may be a hopeful ending, but it’s not a perfect, utopian ending.

GWW: I was at that point projecting forward and thinking about what mob justice means. Even if the mob in question is a revolutionary mob and has the highest ideals when it comes to giving the power of government back to the people, at the end of the day, a mob’s a mob. Sometimes innocent people get caught up in that momentary fury that is necessary to topple a dictatorship. Look at Tahrir Square. Innocent people have suffered when crowds get angry and I wanted to keep that in mind. When I was writing that scene, because the events in Tahrir Square had not unfolded yet, I was thinking about the French Revolution and some of the similar things that occurred during that time period. There’s no reason this wouldn’t happen in this situation in the Middle East as well where you get so many people in the same place at once who have been so angry for so long. For a brief period of time, mob justice prevails and that certainly comes through in the book. It is not meant to be an entirely sunny, wonderful you have a revolution, the end, happily ever after sort of an ending. I try to take into account what inevitably happens when great great upheaval is experienced.

AD: What are you working on now?

GWW: Right now I’m working on another novel. It’s set about five hundred years ago during the age of exploration. One of the characters from Alif the Unseen appears in it. Since it takes place so many centuries ago, I’m sure you can probably guess which one. [laughs] It’s high seas adventure with a twist so it’s been a lot of fun to write. It’s not finished and possibly won’t be for a while.

AD: Just as a final question, and we’ve been touching on this, I’m curious about your thoughts on the future, especially in Egypt.

GWW: I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see. What I hope will happen is that after a period of adjustment, which I think will consume the entire first term–possibly only term–of Morsi’s Presidency and at least the next Parliament, that people will get down to the business of fixing the economy. That’s my hope. I think we forget that really the breaking point that brought about revolution in Egypt was the fact that people were starting to find it difficult to feed themselves in many circumstances. Inflation was so high that a pound of meat cost more in dollars in Cairo than it does here in the United States. This is a country where a lot of people live on the global poverty line of two dollars a day. You can’t sustain that. The real problem is the economic tailspin that the country has spiraled into and I think the real test will be whether the Morsi government can start to pull it out of that tailspin. Irregardless of the discussion of religion, irregardless of the discussion of foreign policy, that is going to be the real test. I hope and pray that they’re able to at least begin to turn it around because that’s going to determine the future of not just for this generation of Egyptians but for the generations to come.

Robert Rodriguez was always an independent self starter. He made his first movie, El Mariachi, for $7000 and kept doing things his own way. He started his own studio facility, Troublemaker Studios, where he’s shot Sin City, Machete, Predators and more. Now he has his own company. Quick Draw Productions... more

Robert Rodriguez was always an independent self starter. He made his first movie, El Mariachi, for $7000 and kept doing things his own way. He started his own studio facility, Troublemaker Studios, where he’s shot Sin City, Machete, Predators and more. Now he has his own company.

Quick Draw Productions is a step above the production facility Rodriguez already has in Austin, TX. As a production Company, Quick Draw will produce sequels to Machete and Sin City, as well as remakes of Heavy Metal and Fire and Ice. This year Quick Draw partnered with computer giant AMD to use their technology for Quick Draw Animation.

Today’s movie lovers are reaping the benefits of many of Rodriguez’ innovations. He actually made Spy Kids 3-D before the current wave of 3-D films, and the green screen movie (like 300) was largely innovated on Sin City. He was a pioneer in shooting digitally, he gave George Clooney his first leading role in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn and he introduced stars like Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Danny Trejo to English speaking audiences. During a trip to Rodriguez’ home base of Austin, I got to catch up with the busy Rodriguez. This was even before he announced Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was starting production, but we had plenty to talk about with his new production company, animation studio and even his own network. We also talked about the state of independence, since Rodriguez is now a major player in the industry.

SG: What is the latest on Quick Draw?

RR: A couple of new announcements. Quick Draw Animation we’ve been working on this the past year. We didn’t mention it at Comic-Con. We mentioned Quick Draw Productions which is where we come up with the ideas, we have a financing facility but at the same time I was building out Quick Draw Animation and AMD is helping to power that. We teamed up with another media company that has given us the development money to not just have artists there, a core group of artists to create animated features including Heavy Metal which I showed there, but this is exactly how we’re going to do it is with Quick Draw Animation which we just formed today. El Rey Network is something that we’re also going to be talking to AMD about because we really want to be able to blow that out and really democratize that way of working, get a lot of content providers to be able to provide stuff in a really cool way.

SG: Was this always in the works for Heavy Metal?

RR: I knew I was going to do Heavy Metal. I wasn’t sure where it was going to be. When I got this animation company together, I said, “Well, as long as we’re going to do this other family film, why don’t we also do this more adult animated?” and they were really into the idea. They loved Heavy Metal so that became part of it.

SG: Is the family film Fire and Ice?

RR: No, it’s another one. Fire and Ice isn’t all CG. These are just CG kind of like Pixar type animation movies which is a real 3D animation company which I never had before. I did effects in my movies but I didn’t have my own animation company. So Quick Draw Animation, that’s what that’s going to be.

SG: We haven’t seen the anthology style like Heavy Metal done with CG yet, have we?

RR: No.

SG: Why do you think it’s taken this long and now is the time?

RR: You really needed somebody who was a real fan of it. I think conventional wisdom says anthologies don’t really work that well, and I always believed in it. I made an anthology once that didn’t work that well. It was called Four Rooms and after making that I thought, “You know what, I bet if you do it a certain way, there’s a way you could do it.” I tried it again on Sin City and that worked really well so I’m going to use that format for Heavy Metal, three stories and a wraparound and there’s a common thread. Like Sin City is sort of a destination and a place that wraps that up, that’s what the idea of Heavy Metal will be as well.

SG: Are there some classic Heavy Metal stories you want to include?

RR: They’re new ones but if you write down what makes a classic Heavy Metal story, you can get all your pieces together and mix and match and go, “The ultimate Heavy Metal story would be this.” After seeing so much of the material, you can say what are the sort of themes that keep coming up? That’s pretty exciting is reverse engineering it like that.

SG: You were so instrumental in bringing so many Latin faces to the screen. What can you do with Quick Draw to further that?

RR: Well, Quick Draw as well as El Rey. Quick Draw Productions is a great example. When I first made El Mariachi I came to make movies and it wasn’t like I was trying to make Latin films. I was just doing something that reflected my own personality and person. So they were going to have Latin actors and there were no Latin actors working in Hollywood. So not only did I have to go and cast guys like Antonio and Salma, I had to make stars out of them so that I wouldn’t have that problem again. That’s why they’re shot so amazingly in those movies, so people would go, “Wow, those guys are stars.” When I put them in another movie there would be no problem of “Oh, you can’t use them.” Hollywood won’t do anything until someone does it first successfully. Then they’ll imitate. So once we did that then there was imitation. For Quick Draw, what’s great about having my own production company now is now not only producing films but we can finance them as well. We just announced last week Richard Kelly had this great script called Corpus Christi, it had a Latin lead, he wanted Edgar Ramirez in it. So we went, we got Edgar for him, I’m producing it. I’m financing it as well so we can make sure these things get done right from the get go instead of it going through a studio and they go, “Oh, well, change it. Don’t make it Latin, make it somebody else.” I can say, “No, let’s keep the integrity of what you wrote.” Richard isn’t even Latin but he just knew that was the character he wanted and he really loved Edgar Ramirez.

SG: I didn’t even mean that it was political, just that they could be the stars of the movie.

RR: Yeah, be the stars of the movie and that’s the key to the movies that I’ve done is you don’t go see Machete or Desperado or Spy Kids even or Dusk ‘Til Dawn because they’re Latin films. You go because they’re just cool films. So that’s always what’s got to be first. First is a great film and if you’re Latin, that means something more. By making it so specific it becomes more universal. Like you don’t have to be British to watch James Bond. But because he’s British that makes him so specific and makes that particularly cool. That’s what my goal always was in making films that spoke to a generation that I grew up in that didn’t see themselves reflected on the screen.

SG: You’re such an individual self starter, how do you work with big companies like AMD?

RR: It’s the kind of company you work for. Right there, how could you go work at a studio if you’re so independent? Well, I find an independent studio, someone independent minded like the Weinstein Brothers. That’s why Quentin [Tarantino] and I have always worked for them. We don’t go to Warner Brothers, nothing against those guys, they’re all great but you don’t want to get lost in some system. Then the same thing when it came to technology, I always just follow what George Lucas does. I ask what is George doing? He goes, “I’m shooting digital now.” It’s going to take 10 years for people to catch up, I’ll do that too. Who do you use as an alliance for your technology? “I hook up with AMD.” Well, I’m going to AMD because he’s very much like that too, he doesn’t want to get lost in some corporate structure. So you find those likeminded corporations that are also very renegade like that and know how to give you a lot for very little. That’s the right kind of partner so it’s the kind of partnerships that you want to foster. We’ve been doing this since 2002 so I don’t even think about it anymore.

They’re very proactive about bringing me new technology and new ideas. They’re constantly thinking of cutting edge things that can help me because they know already how I think. If it’s forward thinking they’re going to bring it to me to try out because it’s a great testing ground. They know I can put it through all the paces in my studio because we’re doing so much.

SG: Do they have technologies that just need artists to work out the kinks?

RR: That’s just how it is. You have creative people and you have technical people. Creative people couldn’t come up with these machines. They come up with the idea for them but they have these amazing technicians who can build it. Then they need the creatives to go just test it out and see what it’s capable of. You need to have relationships like that. They’re good for both companies.

SG: You brought up George Lucas. I know you were inspired by how he couldn’t make Princess of Mars so he did Star Wars. You created your own Spy Kids too. What do you think of the real John Carter coming out and not connecting with people?

RR: Oh, I don't know, I haven’t seen it. So I reserve judgment. I know Andrew Stanton, he’s a really cool guy. That’s a tough one. I almost worked on that for a while too. It was hard to crack because people have imitated it for so many years. Everything from Avatar to Star Wars, we’re all inspired by the books. Then when you see the material, when we wrote the script and we were visualizing, it’s like people have seen all this because people ripped it off already so they’re going to think we ripped them off and it was the other way around. So that was the hardest thing to crack but I haven’t seen the movie.

SG: We’re excited that Machete Kills is coming and the new poster. Is it possible to make Danny Trejo look any more angry?

RR: Probably not. You know what that was? We were taking his photo for that poster, the inspiration behind it will be a famous story but it’s true. You’re the first person to ask. We were shooting that picture, we shot that when we were doing some reshoots on Predators. We kept that picture because we thought this is a great photo. We can’t use it in the first Machete but let’s save it in case we do a part two. What we said was, “Give us the face that you would give your kids when they did something wrong.” Now look at the poster again. He just did that on his own. I don't know if that was the real face or he was screwing around but I wouldn’t want to be his kid.

SG: Is it amazing that people just love Danny?

RR: They’ve always loved him. When I met him, I saw him and just handed him a knife and said, “Here, go practice. You’ve got the role.” I didn’t even see if he could act. He didn’t need to. He had such amazing presence and it’s really the presence that makes someone a star. You can’t replicate that. You walk in the room and you either have presence or you don’t. Not that that’s bad if you don’t have presence. You’re just a background player and then some people are the front and center stars. When I went down to shoot Desperado no one knew who Antonio was because he was from Europe. Everyone in the streets thought Danny was the star. They were just all around him, signing autographs and he didn’t even have any lines. They just saw him and they go, “Well, he’s got to be the star.” People just connected with him on such a visceral primal level, that’s why people like him.

SG: Why didn’t you just do Machete Kills In Space as the second one?

RR: I ain’t givin’ anything away, but if you think I’m waiting ‘til part three to show space… I’m glad I’m reading my audience correctly.

SG: You’re all about the creativity of working within restrictions. Does having your own facility make it too easy?

RR: No, this is a lot of restrictions. There are still restrictions on budget, on crew, on time. It’s very scrappy but the best thing, and I used to be a cartoonist, the best thing about having a blank canvas is that when you have inspiration, you can just start working. You’re not being stopped. There’s nothing busting your groove. That’s what I love about AMD technology is it’s so high powered, I don’t have to wait ever. I can just move at the speed of thought. So I love that I had a blank piece of paper and I could just start drawing and I would know I would have something that didn’t exist before. You want it that immediate when you have filmmaking as well. I had the idea for Sin City, I didn’t have to go to the studio and try to convince them. All those steps, it would just kill the idea. So you want to be unlimited there, but then you still have to work within a set of resources. But to be able to go and put your idea to work, that’s the best gift you can give yourself. Imagine if I were a cartoonist and I had to keep constantly going and asking people for paper. You’re not going to get anywhere like that. You’ve got to have your own basic studio to be able to create as an artist. There’s certainly tons of limitations with that. I don’t just have an open checkbook where I can just do anything I want. You have to be very strategic in what you do and really go only for the best ideas because you’ve got one shot at it.

SG: How are you excited to bring Frank Frazetta images to life in Fire and Ice?

RR: Well, I loved those images since I was a kid. I used to have those paintings up on my wall, the prints from the print books. I used to cut them out and paste them on my wall. So I have the earliest memories of those. I had them when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. I grew up with them. So to get to work with Frank Frazetta on a Dusk ‘til Dawn poster, seeing him react to Salma, she looks just like that lady he’s been painting all those years. He was like, “Where’d you find her? This is the girl of my dreams. I would’ve been painting her.” I said, “You were painting her. I made her look like your painting. That’s why she has the headdress.” That was totally based on a Frazetta painting, that image of her. So when he passed away, the family knew that I knew him pretty well and they wanted me to help with the artwork and being an overseer of that and work in the IP. One of the first things I wanted to do was make a movie of his stuff. John Carter for instance, Andrew Stanton had to tell his crew, “Stop bringing me Frazettas.” That’s all everyone had in their head. They think Princess of Mars they think Frazetta. It had such a mark on them that people have to try not to imitate him. Well, no one’s done him head on. No one has done him head on where everyone has seen those images through their lifespan and it’s just ingrained in the fantasy culture and they’ve never seen anyone do it justice. So I want to make a movie, like Sin City immersed you in the graphic novel, I want you to feel like you walked into one of his paintings and see his world the way he saw it for real, as if he’s there codirecting with me. I knew him pretty well. I would know very well, just by seeing something, Frank would say, “Screw that. That’s not right. You’ve got to stand like this. You’ve got to suck in that gut and you’ve got to put out your chin and you’re going to need calves that are this big.” I would be very, very particular about that.

SG: You talk about Salma looking like a Frazetta painting. Are those good images to put back into the culture?

RR: That’s what Frank believed. And Frank is co-directing this with me. He would say, “That’s how I want it.” And I would have to agree. Salma would’ve been perfect as Teegra.

SG: Are you interested in performance capture?

RR: I think it still has a way to go but maybe eventually. I really love working with actors. I love the mix, doing the mix of it where you work with an actor and you create everything around them but then you have that reality that you can tap into. I think humans are just capable still of so much more emotion than computers can generate. That’s just what I like to do. I like that immediacy of working with them.

SG: Is Red Sonja still a possibility?

RR: No, because I didn’t own that. That’s why it took so long. When someone else owns a property, now I just abandon those kind of things because that’s what stalls. The only productions I never got off the ground were something where someone else controlled it because then they’re indecisive. They’re like, “Well, let’s see how Conan does first.” So Conan’s probably not going to make (it) so I’m just doing movies like Fire & Ice and Heavy Metal, things where I now own the rights so I can just go make them so I don’t have to ask someone’s permission. Again, that’s the thing. You don’t want to be asking permission. Look how that slows you down. That’s why having your own studio’s so important and having your own production place like Quick Draw where you can finance your own movies, or your own animation and you have technology partners. You don’t need anything else. That’s what’s so great. You can just go, go, go.

SG: You did get Predators done.

RR: Well, that one was only as a test. I had written the script for that. I wouldn’t have done that had I not written the script 15 years before because I don’t own it. So if they wanted to do another one, I’d probably pass because I’d rather produce stuff like Richard Kelly’s movie or my own movies, other people that I can control the content more and it benefits the whole studio. Why go make someone else rich? You really should just cultivate your own talent and your own pool of ideas and your own entity.

John Shirley may not be a household name, but for three decades he’s been an incredibly influential and prolific writer. He was one of the most important early writers in the movement that would later be called cyberpunk, and William Gibson and others have paid tribute to his influence. Shirley’s... more

John Shirley may not be a household name, but for three decades he’s been an incredibly influential and prolific writer. He was one of the most important early writers in the movement that would later be called cyberpunk, and William Gibson and others have paid tribute to his influence. Shirley’s novel “City Come A-Walkin’” and his later trilogy “A Song Called Youth”–which has recently been re-released in a single volume omnibus edition–remain among two of the best cyberpunk works ever published. Shirley is also an award winning horror and fantasy writer perhaps best known for novels like “Demons,” “Bleak History,” and “Dracula in Love” and short story collections like “Heatseeker” and “In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley.”

A singer and songwriter who’s fronted a number of bands and written lyrics for bands including the Blue Oyster Cult, Shirley is also a screenwriter who’s worked in film and television. He was the original writer on the movie “The Crow” and written episodes of different television shows including “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” “Profit,” “VR.5,” “Poltergeist: Legacy,” “Batman Beyond,” and “The Real Ghostbusters.”

Shirley’s newest project is “The Crow: Death and Rebirth,” a comic miniseries released by IDW, the second issue of which has just been released. Shirley spoke with SG over e-mail to talk about his return to the concept of “The Crow,” which is also his return to cyberpunk, and other topics.


ALEX DUEBEN: What are you working on today?

JOHN SHIRLEY: I'm writing a novella for "New Taboos" which is a book of fiction, mainly, and some non-fiction, part of a series of books from PM Press featuring outspoken authors--in fact it's the Outspoken Authors series--and in the past it's featured Ursula LeGuin, Michael Moorcock, and Terry Bisson. When that's done I'm going back to writing my new urban fantasy novel,"FOGG IN THE AFTERLIFE"...a strange tale set entirely in the Next World...

AD: When did you first encounter The Crow?

JS: I encountered it first when it was a black and white comic book. I wrote to the publisher, having seen some other work they'd done, with the idea of breaking into comic writing in an independent smaller press, and I suggested a story called Angry Angel. They said it seemed good but it was too much like The Crow, a new comic they were doing. I looked for The Crow in a comic book store, bought it, thought, "Yeah it's too similar" so I gave up on Angry Angel--and thought, "You know, The Crow would make a good movie. This comic is very cinematic. It's very archetypal." It had a lot of elements I related to, like the rock’n roll feel. So I took it to Jeff Most, and he optioned it and we took it to Pressman. I wrote the treatment and first four drafts of the script, then David Schow took it on, and Dave and I share credit.

AD: What was the experience of working on the movie like?

JS: Well, it was bittersweet. It was interesting and exciting. I had some story disagreements with someone on the production team who was from a family that was part of a major corporation. (I'm not saying who this was.) He objected when my version used villains from an imaginary major corporation. He didn't like vilifying corporations, as he put it. He wanted the villains to be purely street people. In my version the villains were the 1%,  as the expression goes now, who employed thugs, and in his they were rooted in the 99%. He got his way. But it created a rift; plus I was too confrontational in those days, and didn't know how to handle big egos (like the director–a very talented man, actually). So then Schow came on and he had better instincts for dealing with those people–more movie experience perhaps–and he did a very good job. Of course it was bitter for all of us when Brandon Lee was killed in a tragic accident.

AD: How did you end up getting involved with IDW and working on a new Crow series and what was appealing about the idea to you?

JS: Jeff Conner, an editor at IDW, had worked with me before, and he knew about my experience with The Crow film. He himself had developed novels about The Crow. It was appealing because this time I could interpret it my own way--and you will find the corporate villains in The Crow: Death and Rebirth. (Not that I think all corporations are inherently problematic. But some are socially irresponsible. There's a mentality that crops up in some that needs to be countered in a healthy society.)

AD: How much creative freedom did you have as far as the comic?

JS: Once I had the general idea and the rough story outline approved by the studio and at IDW--e.g., by Chris Ryall there--I had lots of freedom. Jeff Conner gave me some very useful input but the story is all mine except for elements that are drawn from James O'Barr's creation. It was my idea to set it in Tokyo and use Japanese mythology, and I used a science fiction idea with metaphysical implications that is also found in my fiction.

AD: Why did you decide to make the main character an American living in Japan?

JS: Well I wanted him American to have that basic connection for American readers, plus I'm more confident with a point of view character who's American, being American myself–but I set it in Japan because Japanese mythology interests me and the Japanese setting could be applied creatively to The Crow.

AD: Obviously, writing a film is different from writing a comic but how has your approach changed in working on the comic?

JS: The formatting of the script is somewhat similar, but then again it's different. In comics one works panel by panel instead of shot by shot, and while in many ways it flows like a movie story, it's a bit more static too. But the main difference apart from that is having to describe things for a graphic artist instead of a film maker. There are restraints, and considerations there, special to the graphic arts. It was a learning process. But I grew up reading comics, as well as prose novels, so it came fairly naturally.

AD: As far as writing the comic, I know that you’ve written for television, but was it a challenge thinking about issues and how to break down the story like that?

JS: Yes, planning for five issues, there is a lot of story to set up. I wanted to [get] into the action pretty soon, because there're so many story elements, with a few characters. We don't meet the ultimate bad guy till later–we meet mostly minions. We think it's this set of people with one agenda, then discover a real puppet master behind them with his own agenda. And getting all that in, yes, a challenge. Working with an artist as opposed to producers/director, it's different! But I did feel more like the real author of the tale than I would if it were for television. In television things are more committee oriented. There are showrunners and other writers to filter through. In comics there is a lot of input from the editors but one can be more of a creator true to one's vision in comics, at least more than one can in television.

AD: Telling a Crow story today, a lot of the people who are reading the book or are the potential audience have seen the movie, have read the original James O’Barr comic, and have probably seen comic or movie sequels, to what degree does that make the story easier to tell and what challenges are there?

JS: Certain aspects of The Crow are well established and I didn't have to spend too much time on them. I wanted it to resonate harmoniously with the movie without being simply derivative of it. It jumps into the action, the revenge tale, fairly quickly, like the movie--on purpose. That's just part of The Crow in whatever incarnation The Crow takes.  And I decided not to dwell on "the transformation" into The Crow in the graphic novel, because I didn't think the graphic novel should resemble the movie overmuch. In The Crow: Death and Rebirth, a different character becomes The Crow than in the O'Barr comic or the movie--it's been established by now that The Crow spirit can transform other people who need to use its powers, its “angry angel” abilities, to “make the wrong things right.”

I used the Yata Garasu spirit from ancient Japanese mythology, the crow spirit, to accomplish this; I used Japanese Buddhist Hell imagery and mythology to enhance the story. I mixed in ghosts, magic, and one cyberpunk element, trying to show how metaphysics and science might converge in a mythic drama. But the most essential, fundamental elements of James O'Barr's comic book creation and the film are there: two soul mates, in this case a young Japanese woman and a young American man, are split apart by unthinking brutality; revenge and justice must be made manifest through The Crow. The soul mates must be in some way reunited, even though death has driven them apart. So that framing tale of romance, revenge, and romance once more, is still there. It is simply part of The Crow.

AD: I really enjoyed how you incorporated Japanese mythology, the Kabuki influence on the look of The Crow into the book. Had you thought about these ideas earlier and just never got the chance to use them in the movie?

JS: James O'Barr actually had The Crow using a Samurai Sword in the comic books, sometimes. So it may stem from that. But also I'm simply interested in Japanese culture–and so was James O'Barr, he especially liked Japanese Samurai films. I'm a fan of Zatoichi myself.

AD: Some readers might not be aware that you’ve written a lot of cyberpunk - and were a key figure early on in the cyberpunk movement - but most of your work, especially in recent years, has been outside the genre. I guess I’m curious why you enjoy writing in so many different genres and why this was a good time to tell another cyberpunk story in The Crow?

JS: Partly it was market driven, getting into so many markets, partly I felt I was more a fantasist of some kind--writing urban fantasy before it was a genre, in books like City Come A-Walkin’ (which is still in print). But also I write noir, crime, adventure, and lately have experimented with a kind of classic "disaster movie" set up for my most recent novel, Everything is Broken. My novel Bleak History has cyberpunk elements. The Crow: Death and Rebirth is also a fusion of genres. So what I've often tried to do is combine the strengths of different genres into one creation. To me it's like using all the instruments in an orchestra. Or all the colors on the palette.

AD: Do you have a favorite novel of yours?

JS: The A Song Called Youth cyberpunk trilogy. It's now out in a one-book omnibus. Three books in one volume. Best thing I've written in science fiction; in horror, perhaps my new story collection, In Extremis: The Most Extreme Stories of John Shirley is my favorite.

AD: Now since I have you, I know that you briefly wrote for a show from the nineties that I was mildly obsessed with at the time, VR.5[/I}. I know it's been a while but I was just wondering what the show was like and what–if anything–you found interesting about the show and its concepts?

JS: The show was about a particular take on virtual reality, the VR in VR.5, where it was almost a kind of alternate universe; it was about a team of investigators and reality leakage and I liked those ideas. They're pregnant with stories. It had its good ideas and good episodes. It ended fairly soon. I was story editor for most of its run and a writer. I have mixed feelings about the show, but it was a cool idea and it's worth reviewing on DVD or in reruns. Perhaps they'll bring it out again on the SyFy channel. ( I haven't heard, but you never know.) I wasn't in a good place then in my life, and I hadn't worked on staff before except in animation, so I struggled with it all, but it was interesting! A learning experience. I had a lot of fun writing for Ira Behr over at Deep Space Nine too.

AD: So the second issue will have been released when this runs. Would you like to tease what happens in the future issues that readers can look forward to?

JS: Like I said, there's a secret bad guy with an agenda and there's a giant demon we'll meet at one point who's pretty interesting–the Lord of Cruelty. There is a witch who lives perpetually in a barrel shaped (traditional Japanese) coffin, looking out through eye holes. There is the Crow's own visit to Japanese Buddhist hell...

by SG's Team Agony feat. Jeckyl Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls. (image) [Jeckyl in Abnormal Behavior] Q: My girlfriend and I recently moved in together and everything was wonderful. Then, just over a month ago, a close friend... more

by SG's Team Agony feat. Jeckyl

Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.


[Jeckyl in Abnormal Behavior]

Q: My girlfriend and I recently moved in together and everything was wonderful. Then, just over a month ago, a close friend of hers passed away. Since then, she has been sending slightly mixed signals that she wants us to some day get engaged and that she loves me and doesn't want to lose me. However, she is nowhere near as affectionate as she used to be and is very irritable. I have tried talking to her about it, but it gets turned around and made into my fault. Is this the grief she is going through talking? Should I be worried that she is going to leave or that I'm not enough for her anymore?

Scared Lover from South Africa


A: First of all, my deepest condolences. I can't imagine the pain and confusion you're both experiencing right now.Grief is a complicated process and, after just a month, I'm afraid to say she's barely scraped the tip of the iceberg here. You need to be patient. Death is a hard pill to swallow and she really needs you to be strong for her during this time. She is going to be extremely emotionally confused and you just need to go with it. Laugh with her when she's happy, comfort her when she's sad, and don't expect her to make any sense for a while.


Her on-and-off behavior towards you may be just another way that she's experiencing grieving. She's realizing how short life is, so she wants to make that commitment. But she’s also experiencing the pain of losing someone so she's likely terrified of going through it again. This could explain her bouts of coldness. Give her a few months to somewhat heal before having any kind of major relationship-changing discussion with her. She's really not in any position to be making life-altering decisions right now.


I understand that her grief is taking a strain on you, and my heart really does go out to you, but you need to try and keep it together, for her sake. This really isn't the best time to be confrontational. They say sometimes you have to put up with the rain in order to truly appreciate the rainbow, take this as a test of the strength of your relationship. If you can make it through this, you can make it through anything. And, honestly, the best thing you can do for her right now is to treat her the same way you always have, let her know she's loved and that she isn't alone.


How you proceed after this speed-bump is up to you, but I sincerely hope that your relationship manages to weather this storm intact.

Best of luck to both of you.

Jeckyl

***

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

(image) by A.J. Focht (image) A benefit in aid of the Aurora shooting victims is being put together by All C’s Collectibles, a local comic shop which is not far from the theater where the tragic event took place. There has been a tremendous outpour of support to help get the event off the ground. It... more

by A.J. Focht



A benefit in aid of the Aurora shooting victims is being put together by All C’s Collectibles, a local comic shop which is not far from the theater where the tragic event took place. There has been a tremendous outpour of support to help get the event off the ground. It will be held over two days on August 25th and 26th, and will include a silent auction and in store appearances by several fantastic comic creators. Many amazing supporters have stepped up and made donations towards the silent auction, including most of the major comic companies.

DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, POW Entertainment, Top Cow Comics and many more have all made contributions. There have been some fantastic donations so far including a signed Amazing Spider-Man movie poster from Stan Lee, and a poster and guitar donated and signed by Scott Ian from Anthrax. Several comic artists have also given original artworks for the auction. These incredible items and more will be auctioned off on Saturday, August 25 at 6:30 PM. The silent auction will be located at a donated space in the Embassy Suites. All the proceeds from the auction will go to the Alex Sullivan Fund and the Aurora Victims Relief Fund.

Many prominent comic writers and artists have agreed to come out for an in-store signing on Sunday, August 26. Comic icon Steve Niles, author of 30 Days of Night, Dark Days, Criminal Macabre, and many more, will be in attendance. Dark Horse Comics legend and creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola has been confirmed. Writer of the current The Invincible Iron Man run, Matt Fraction will also be joining, as well as All-Star Western artist Mortitat. More writers and artists have been in contact with the benefit and there are more appearances to be announced over the coming weeks.

Aurora Rise has begun to spread far beyond the city limits of Aurora, Colorado. There has been an overwhelming interest across the comic community to extend the event to future conventions and throughout other cities. So far, there is talk of branches at Dragon Con in Chicago, and even in the UK. There will also likely be a second event held in Aurora at a later date, probably mid-September, to accommodate more artists and writers who could not make it out for the first benefit signing. Volunteers associated with Denver Comic Con have set up Aurora Rise on Facebook, Twitter, and with its own website. They are currently working on setting up the infrastructure to expand the charity program through the Community First Foundation.

Related Posts:
Back Row Perspective Part 1: An Aurora Theater Survivor’s Message To The Media
Back Row Perspective Part 2: An Aurora Theater Survivor’s Message To The Politicians
Back Row Perspective Part 3: An Aurora Theater Survivor’s Message To The Online Community