Our THIRD hardcover book, Hard Girls, Soft Light is now available in the shop!! Over 200 pages of beautiful SuicideGirls. It's everything you dreamed it would be. (image) more

Our THIRD hardcover book, Hard Girls, Soft Light is now available in the shop!!

Over 200 pages of beautiful SuicideGirls. It's everything you dreamed it would be.

by Laurelin (image) One of the perks of having an online column is literally being able to go back in time. Exactly a week, month, and year to the date your words are still there and you can instantly remember what was going on in that moment. So many times those memories are just… lost, and I realize... more

by Laurelin




One of the perks of having an online column is literally being able to go back in time. Exactly a week, month, and year to the date your words are still there and you can instantly remember what was going on in that moment. So many times those memories are just… lost, and I realize suddenly how lucky I am to write the truth, to write with honesty and more often than not, pain, because I can look back see how I’ve progressed. Tonight I look for last year’s post, and I am a bit squeamish. I have a sinking suspicion that nothing has changed. I don’t feel different. I feel… used up and empty. To quote Bilbo Baggins, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

On this day last year I wrote “Life Beyond the Bar Scene: Winter is Coming.” I was clearly not over my ex and I was using other people in an attempt to replace him. It wasn’t working. I remember feeling lost, confused, alone. Fast forward one year, and I have managed to actually get over the ex I was writing about. He and I didn’t speak for about six months, and while I think part of me will always look at him as the one that got away, they were the best and most needed six months of my life. Erased. Deleted from everything, hidden from Facebook, he quit working at my bar, simply… gone. I ached, and then one day I didn’t. Life goes on, what do you know!

He walked into the bar two months ago, after all that time, and I remember stopping dead in my tracks. I had almost forgotten what he looked like and that moment of recognition hit me like a wave crashing into a small vessel in a storm. I hugged him and said I was happy to see him, and for once, I was.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you on your birthday,” he said. And I knew he had remembered it and had not called because it really didn’t matter.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t call you on yours either,” and my lower lip didn’t tremble when I turned away. I couldn’t believe it. I smiled, and when he left I waved, turned back to my bar and carried on. He was never really far from my mind, but it was almost like he had finally found a place in the archives, a place that didn’t hurt.

A new year is coming and I don’t feel any different, but I am. I think I only feel used up because I think I should feel that way. Looking back I’m suddenly pretty sure I just lived the best year of my life. I went on a ten day Caribbean cruise in January. I scuba dived shipwrecks, got over my fear of karaoke, and held baby monkeys in diapers. I danced like no one was watching even when everyone was watching and I screamed “Discount Double Check” and did Aaron Rodger’s touchdown move zip lining across the rainforest in Antigua.

I dated. I discovered dating was not for me and I discovered that while men can be mean and break my heart, I can be mean and break their hearts. And I was sorry, sometimes more than others. I got up on stage and I read stories naked for the first time in March and again in October. The first time I was so scared I could have just peed right there on stage and the second time I walked with confidence, read with pride, and now I can’t wait to do it again.

In April I ran my first Tough Mudder and it was a ten mile muddy uphill journey of insanity. I didn’t train much and when I got back, that was it. I started running. I joined a Crossfit gym and I vowed that I would no longer blame every aspect of my hectic life for the wobbly parts of my body I didn’t care for.

I got promoted at all of my jobs, I turned 30, my friends are brilliant and I still find time for the little things: cat naps, cuddling with pets, reading, movies, martinis, and the occasional misstep into romance, which as my readers know has yet to work out. Used up and empty is often a result of this; but it’s not all I am. It can’t be.

When you think about it, each day since that post one year ago is just that: one day. It’s just another ordinary day, when added up makes an ordinary week, ordinary month, and yet somehow… a totally extraordinary year.




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When i, likely drunk, decided to interview Jhonen Vasquez for SuicideGirls, i knew i was embarking on a dangerous mission, and would almost immediately regret the decision. In spite of this, i rose, wobbling, from my workstation, staggered into the newswire office and declared it would be done. Asking... more

When i, likely drunk, decided to interview Jhonen Vasquez for SuicideGirls, i knew i was embarking on a dangerous mission, and would almost immediately regret the decision. In spite of this, i rose, wobbling, from my workstation, staggered into the newswire office and declared it would be done.

Asking you readers to contribute some questions would surely spell trouble, too. Allow me now to thank those of you who pried yourselves away from the naked girls for two minutes and actually took your time to think about what you were about to DO. And also to scold the rest of you. Childhood photos? Cheese?! Fucking hospital stays? People, i expect more of you, though i'm suddenly and acutely unsure why.

Jhonen's books have earned him a well-established place in comics and a hefty, if undesirable, credit for founding the Goth comic genre. His work is biting, insightful, revolting and hilarious without missing a step. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Fillerbunny, Happy Noodle Boy and other delightful characters have spawned a myriad of fandoms and questionable tattoos worldwide. His animated series Invader Zim, while short-lived, garnered immense popularity, he's worked in music video, and he's still expanding his genres. With its distinct drawing style, uncompromising humor, and bitter infectious world-view, his work has risen Jhonen to cult icon level in some 10 years, and we can only fear what the future may bring.

So here he is, appearing in SuicideGirls for the second time in all his belligerent mucusy glory, brazenly riding a giant pig directly into your brains, like the sacred whore of Babylon. Do try and enjoy.


ZE: Alright, so I had a dream about this interview last night for some unknown reason.

JV: You did?

ZE: Yes, I did. I had a question I asked you in the dream.

JV: Was this a dream where I was naked?

ZE: Yes, this is a dream where you were naked, indeed.

JV: Why was I naked in your dream?

ZE: You actually said you couldn’t do the interview unless you were, in fact, naked.

JV: Right, but it was a dream. I’m fully clothed now. Let’s make that clear.

ZE: You’re not, in fact, naked, to make the record clear, no one’s naked.

JV: The fact still stands that you had a dream where I was naked, you sick fuck.

ZE: Ehm. The question was “who the hell are you?”

JV: I’m apparently the naked guy: hater of clothing.

ZE: Is that all?

JV: Someday, I hope to at least be the guy with shoes and maybe a cummerbund.

ZE: Your new book’s called “Jellyfist”. What is a Jellyfist?

JV: Apparently it’s a horrible book of surreal comics I wrote and had Jenny do the artwork for, as my latest blight upon the comics world. As far as the word itself goes, I don’t know, we were just walking around in Chicago and Jenny was talking about something and the words “jelly” and “fist” came up in the same sentence when I stopped her and said that was a great name for the book.

ZE: What was it you guys were talking about?

JV: We were trying to figure out the logistics of someone we knew having sex.

ZE: [laughs]

JV: [laughs]
Anyhow, we concluded that massive amounts of natural and possibly supernatural physical jellies and a fist were involved.

ZE: Where was this fist going?

JV: It was pushing into the flesh of their stomach, into the gelatinous flesh of their stomach.

ZE: Through an orifice or just straight through?

JV: No, no, not fisting in the classic, playground sense.

ZE: No, of course not the classic sense. Okay.

JV: The book has nothing to do with fisting or even jelly, just in case any church groups were on the fence about picking up hundreds of copies of it.

ZE: There’s no jelly?

JV: Maybe in a couple of the stories. There’s one about young couples in love and the male cracks the female’s head open and releases a jelly-like, sort of this amoeba style creature that he then ingests which I guess could be a jelly-like thing.

ZE: Does he then give birth to the very same creature?

JV: He sort of mixes it with his own internal jelly and then launches it at a nearby child.

ZE: Launches it how?

JV: A cannon formed of flesh, a gun, forms out of his belly meat and fires it at the kid and the kid then, under the control of the jelly, crawls up between the female’s legs.

ZE: The circle of life is then complete.

JV: A sort of revisionist stork theory.

ZE: The cover image is a drawing of tiny wiener people trapped in a jar. What is that?

JV: The cover acts as a sort of “cover” to hide the contents of the book.

ZE: No, what is the idea behind the cover image?

JV: Originally, I wanted the cover to have a warm, homey, family photo album binding vibe to it, the sort of album your lace-doily-loving grandma might haul out. The jar of preserves is the only thing that stuck around from that idea, something Jenny came up with. Makes me think of all the jars of “things” you see in a Svankmejer film, like when Alice is descending in that elevator. As for the sausage shapes, I kept harping on Jenny to make the characters more balloony or sausagey, possibly to tap into the primordial human dread of balloons filled with meat.

ZE: Are these fetuses related to one of the characters in the book?

JV: Well, no one image would really tell you what the book was about, especially since I never intended for the book to be anything other than a stream of conscious nightmare with Jenny and myself doing the streaming, so we went with the ambiguous approach. If there are any baby-preservers out there buying the book based on the cover, they’ll be pretty pissed.

ZE: The press release said the project began as a really big, surreal trip. What was the very first story about, the one that started it out?

JV: It’s not so much the first story that started the project so much as the situation when the first story was done. I was working on some of my own stuff at the time, and Jenny just happened to be at my place, not doing much but wandering around the room, or playing Guitar Hero or something. I scribbled what would be the first “story” onto a scrap of paper, handed it to her and told her to draw a comic with that as the script, which she promptly did in a matter of hours. I loved how mad the end result was and pretty much decided right there to do a whole book with her. I don’t think she thought I was serious at the time.

ZE: That is what spawned Jellyfist.

JV: Yeah. It was just a fun thought, to do an entire book of stuff that even I didn’t know what the end result was going to be, other than it being fast and loose like that first comic. That’s not quite how it turned out in the end but that’s how it started off.

ZE: So you were inspired by her work.

JV: I had always liked her work, yeah, but it takes funny little moments like that to give me the bigger idea.

ZE: This is a question from one of our readers. Okay, so how was it working with Miss Goldberg? Does she share your loveable trait of absolutely despising humanity? I don’t know if you’ve worked with many females in comics or in any of the businesses you’ve worked in but I assume that this is the closest business interaction with the opposite sex. Did that change anything?

JV: Female or not, there’s always complications working with someone co-creatively, but this was a case where our differences were part of the plan, and when things started getting uglier in the process, I decided to take that one step further by doing the running commentary in the book itself. No, she doesn’t share my, what they call my “trait of despising everything”. She’s a much nicer person than I am, but I’m taller.

ZE: How would you say this compared to your earlier collaborative project with Crab Scrambly on “Everything Can be Beaten”?

JV: She smelled better than Crab.

ZE: Aww, poor Crab.

JV: Which isn’t to say that Crab smelled bad, it’s just that she smelled like cherries and Crab smelled like cinnamon...and crabs. I don’t like cinnamon.

ZE: [cat sound]

Would you say that Jellyfist is more advanced than Everything Can Be Beaten in any way? How do you feel about it?

JV: I was never very happy with Everything Can Be Beaten, based on the writing alone, but it’s a great showcase for Crab’s paintings. There was quite a bit more thought behind Jellyfist, and for all its gibbering absurdity, its’ a more complicated mess, where even the things I hate spark a bit more thought and conversation than the other book did. Maybe it’s an easy out, but incorporating my bitching into the book itself probably helped push it slightly above being just an inside joke between Jenny and I, and into something that lets the readers in a bit on what leads up to a hideous mutant project like this.

ZE: [laughs] I guess that’s the beauty of collaboration. I mean you both got something you didn’t expect, I’m sure.

JV: Well, she’d never done a book before so this whole thing was comic book boot camp for her… maybe she’s better for the wear that this project had on her mind. I hope she is.

ZE: You have traumatized her beyond repair? Will she ever work in comics again?

JV: Yes, I hope she does. She’s a great talent and a very good friend but whether or not we were designed to work together on a book like this, I don’t know, and I don’t know that we should ever do one again, not like this. Ever.

ZE: So would you say, overall, that you guys are both now happy with it?

JV: I don’t know if she’s even seen it. I kind of kept her in the dark [laughs] at the tail end of the project. I did all the layout on my computer over a few sleepless nights, long after the deadline was broken, and by that point I was so irritated at being made late on a deadline like I had never been before that some vengeful bastard part of me just wanted to do the final bit myself, and not show even her until the thing was published.

ZE: You’re a sadist.

JV: Nope. A masochist. This is comics.

ZE: You’ve been also branching out in several directions in recent years. A lot of your newest stuff involves other collaborations. Could you talk about working with bands and other artists? Is this something you want to pursue further?

JV: It was a while back, but I did the "Shut Me Up" video for Mindless Self Indulgence and people seemed to dig that. Thank YouTube for that one because I think that’s the only place people get to see it. I was pretty jazzed to hear that the band was a fan of my work, and them asking me to do a video of pretty much anything I wanted was awesome since, well, that’s pretty much how I work anyhow. That’s how that one was…they really had no direction other than “do a video” so I listened to the demo song they had sent me, and ended up with a loony retail guy chopping customers in half.

ZE: It’s still kind of on your terms.

JV: Yeah, but working with people in that way there’s always going to be some, you know, some little snags. We had a few on the video, after it was pretty much put together, because once the video was done the band ran into some trouble with airing the video without the band actually appearing in it. There were some changes made to the thing without my being involved, though I wish I had been. I like those guys and I want them to be shown in as cool or fucked up way as possible, but I don’t think the changes helped so much as they kind of flattened the thing.

ZE: You sort of cut your teeth on the comics because your comics have always been particularly cinematic.

JV: Yeah, I think when people say that, I mean, I’m very conscious of trying to do that whether it comes across or not, so when someone says it’s got a very cinematic feel to it, then I’m happy because that makes me think, “Hey, either this person is as visually retarded as I am or they are picking up on something I am successfully conveying, regardless of my otherwise crippling artistic deficiencies.” Hopefully it carries over into the non-illustrative work and into the actual motion picture work I am doing lately.

ZE: More reader questions. Have you ever felt pressure to make your subject matter more mainstream and less dark in nature?

JV: No.

ZE: Are you ever accused of stuff when there are school shootings?

JV: No. You know what, surprisingly no. I’m pretty critically invisible, which might be part of why I don’t get blamed for the school shooting or when I actually do shoot people. I don’t get blamed. Other people get blamed. I’m going to shoot you after this is done.

ZE: [laughs] Is there any subject matter you consciously try to avoid when sitting down to write a script or a comic?

JV: To date, no. It’s never crossed my mind to have to baby-sit anyone’s perception of right or wrong, no, so the only conscious decision making as far as content goes is whether or not an idea is right or wrong for the particular project. I’d love to think that the people who choose to pick my noise up are already well enough equipped with a decent balance of hard reason and absurdist thinking to not need to be sat down and told why something is okay or why it isn’t okay. It’s just like in drawing, the more you know what something is supposed to look like in reality, the better equipped you are to abstract it, to stylize it on purpose and have fun with it instead of simply interpreting it badly for lack of education.

ZE: Alright, someone has to know if you actually have a MySpace.

JV: Someone HAS to know?

ZE: They HAVE to know.

JV: What happens if they don’t find out?

ZE: No, no, listen to the rest, from what they’ve seen of your personality all signs would point to no, but they have seen some pretty convincing profiles.

JV: I’d actually like to know what happens if they just never knew, if they never found out I had a MySpace or not.

ZE: I had to include this question for that very reason.

JV: It sounds important to them. In fact, it sounds like a very big deal to them.

ZE: They have to know.

JV: Let’s have a bit of fun with that and not answer, yeah? Then we’ll scan the news sites for stories about some lunatic guy or girl, probably fifteen years old, clutching a GIR doll in their cold, dead hand, who leapt from a tall building, strapped with explosives after screaming “Why didn’t you friend me, Jhonen!? WHYEEEEEEE?!”.

ZE: They will no longer support your product.

JV: It’s creepy shit, man, how seriously people take that stuff, the levels of accessibility they think everyone should have just because they themselves write a blog about what color their shit was that day. Discretion is a dying artform. By the way, mine was blue.

ZE: Do you like processed American cheese or did you like it as a kid?

JV: That’s a horrible question. That falls into the “zany randomness” category of questioning.

ZE: I don’t know.

JV: But no, I don’t think I’ll answer that because then I’ll have lost all my power. I have to keep my mystery. I have to maintain my mystique.

ZE: [laughs] Will Questionsleep.com ever be updated?

JV: Does this person asking have any internet website building skills? Because maybe it will, maybe that’s the person that will make the site come to life. Let’s just say I’m cursed in terms of finding adequate web design help. Web designers are some of the shiftiest, most flighty, you know, sketchy people I’ve ever known and they’re dirty. They’re dirty people. Unclean, in my experience.

ZE: [laughs]

JV: They’re swarthy types.

ZE: They smell like cinnamon.

JV: No, only Crab smells like cinnamon.

ZE: Crab, sweet Crab.

JV: Only crab smells like delicious cinnamon sprinkles.

ZE: Cinnamon crab.

JV: He rolls in Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

ZE: I could so picture it.

JV: I’m picturing it now.

ZE: Frolicking.

JV: Sparkling.

ZE: [laughs]

JV: Glittering in the night.

ZE: Spends the night rolling in the cereal.

JV: There’s a lesson to be learned there, but I don’t quite know what.

ZE: Hold on here’s my favorite one from a reader. In the director’s cut of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, you mentioned you built a teepee in your back yard. Did you have any other play equipment in the back yard? [laughs] Well, did you?

JV: Jesus…I don’t even remember writing that…or even doing that. I envision a future in which I’ll be using other people’s brains as external hard drives of sorts, retaining memories that I myself have already discarded in favor of shiner, newer ones with more buttons, only, with all the misinformation about me out there I’ll be reclaiming all these diseased, distorted memories that never quite took place.

It wasn’t a teepee I built, but a concentration camp for the local children who opposed my ideas, my visions of the future in which I ruled over the neighborhood and then the planet in a kind and just and occasionally brutally mad way. The children were used as forced labor to build my ziggurat, manned by my army of intelligent insects. You know…that sorta thing.

ZE: That has all been very informative, thank you.

You can buy Jellyfist on Amazon and other Vasquez works at the Slave Labor Graphics goods dispensary. Do visit uncle Jhonen at his website, the never-ever-ever updated Questionsleep.com.

*It is my duty to inform you that i did makeup for that MSI video. UNGH!

by Bob Suicide (video) Related Posts: Bob Suicide And The Raiders Of The Limited SDCC Exclusives Ur W33K 1N G33K: SD Comic Con 2012 Edition Part 1 Ur W33K 1N G33K: SD Comic Con 2012 Edition Part 2 The SuicideGirls Guide To Prepping For ComicCon SuicideGirls Comic Con 2012 Highlights Party At Comic Con... more

by Bob Suicide



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Lily Tomlin is a true comedy goddess. She’s been entertaining people with her wonderful cast of characters since Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. In fact one of my favorite movies of hers, 9 to 5, was just released in special edition DVD. But her latest movie is special because not only does she play... more

Lily Tomlin is a true comedy goddess. She’s been entertaining people with her wonderful cast of characters since Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. In fact one of my favorite movies of hers, 9 to 5, was just released in special edition DVD. But her latest movie is special because not only does she play Meryl Streep’s sister in a singing duo but it also reteams her for a fourth time with director Robert Altman. A Prairie Home Companion is a look at a fictionalized version of Garrison Keillor’s long running public radio program. It is reimagined as a song heavy variety show and the movie highlights its last night before it is shut down.

Check out the official website for A Prairie Home Companion

Daniel Robert Epstein: How was it getting to work with Robert Altman again?

Lily Tomlin: Great. Wonderful. It’s always a real opportunity and fun and blissful and we got Meryl on top of it.

DRE: The two of you obviously have a real rapport.

LT: I just absolutely love her. You can’t not love her. I don’t know what it is. She’s just so wonderful. She’s so much fun and crazy and unpretentious.

DRE: She once told me that people are nervous when they are first around her but then she disarms them with a joke.

LT: We are nervous when we see her but you just warm up with her so easily.

DRE: Did the two of you have chemistry right away?

LT: Yeah she’s so absolutely cool and delightful and fun and like a bad kid. There is this side of that just wants to misbehave and doesn’t take anything very seriously. I’m sure she takes plenty of things seriously, but she doesn’t bring that to her exchange with everybody else. She’s just playful and fun and smart and divine.

DRE: Do you and Robert keep in touch when you’re not working together?

LT: Oh yeah. I don’t see him every week or anything like that but I feel very connected to him and his wife Kathryn.

DRE: Do the two of you connect because of your comedy-improv background?

LT: No, I think originally I got in Nashville because we had the same agent. I had optioned a book for myself, called Maiden. I was still in Laugh-In in 1971 because I never dreamed I couldn’t be in movies too. I didn’t realize how hard it was to go from television to film in those days, especially if you did the kind of thing I did on Laugh-In. I had optioned this book and my partner Jane wrote the screenplay. As it turned out Bob was looking for a project for Joan Tewkesbury to direct after [writing the screenplays for] Thieves Like Us and Nashville. My agent gave him that screenplay and he was going to produce it with Joan directing. So Bob said, “well you come down to Nashville and take this part and then we’ll get to know each other and then we’ll do Maiden in the fall. Columbia had bought the screenplay and reimbursed me and we were going to do it at Columbia because Bob had just done California Split with them and they wanted him to cut six minutes out of it. They came down to the set of Nashville and he punched one of them in the nose and that guy fell in the swimming pool so we never did Maiden. I didn’t know it but Louise Fletcher was supposed to play that role of Linnea and that’s where the deaf element came in because her parents are deaf. She and I exchanged letters later because she and her husband had been in Thieves and I guess her husband had been one of the producers and they had some kind of falling out or something because Louise dropped out of Nashville.

DRE: I’m sure you’ve done long runs of theatre or a long movie shoot but you’ve never been in anything as long as your character has in Prairie Home Companion, are you able to relate to that idea of a project ending?

LT: Yeah, it’s a little like losing a lover or a death or something.

DRE: But they seem to take it very well.

LT: Well my character has probably been drinking all evening. I think that’s part of Altman or Garrison’s sensibility too. The play is sort of about mortality in general. It’s certainly a strong layer of all the content and it takes it in stride. There’s nothing you can do about it. It is just part of the flow of life and maybe that’s why they don’t angst over it. They’re sad but they go on and the girls have tried to buy a bus to get a tour going. So hope springs eternal in a sister act.

DRE: You’ve done so many projects, do you keep working so hard because of mortality?

LT: I just love to work. I do concerts all the time. I did a concert Friday night in San Jose while everybody was at the Hollywood Bowl doing a live show. Garrison was there, Meryl sang and John C. Riley was there. I couldn’t be there because I had this old date for months. It was a great date and I enjoyed it but I really wanted to be at the Bowl with all of them.

DRE: I’m sure the cast will do another concert in the future.

LT: I hope. I always beg Garrison but he always turns around and says, “Yeah.”

DRE: Have you ever had a project shut down by external forces?

LT: I don’t think I have. Well [The Incredible] Shrinking Woman was shut down because I had to go and do 9 to 5.

DRE: That’s one of my favorite films.

LT: Shrinking Woman or 9 to 5?

DRE: Both of them.

LT: We were shooting Shrinking Woman for five months because of all those special effects. I was supposed to start 9 to 5 and we just didn’t get done so the studio let us shut down for a couple months and I went and did 9 to 5 and then I came back and finished Shrinking Woman.

DRE: Tell me a good memory from The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

LT: Well a good memory? All the things I had to go through at the time. From the scene in the garbage disposal to this day the skin on the right side of my face is thinner. I have a little crease here in my eye because they had to put so much of that garbage on me and it had dye in it and I had a big allergic reaction to it. I had to put a lot of steroids on my face. It was all enflamed and peeled and I just kept doing it over and over again. Then also I rode on that darn gorilla which was all made out of fiberglass. God only knows what I have in my lungs.

DRE: I assume that’s why you never did a movie with special effects after that.

LT: Jane and I were the executive producers so I didn’t complain about it or anything. I tried to protect myself but I wanted to get the movie made. I saw fiberglass flying around in the air but I tried to wear a mask a good part of the time. Then I was to be in the lab and they put a beaker over me and stuff like that. I was 30 feet up in the air so we could do the special effects but there was guard to keep me safe. I’m supposed to be running back and forth across the table, I could have easily run off the edge and I couldn’t look down because I was supposed to be screaming.

DRE: When Jane’s credited with writing something that you are working on, do you write with her?

LT: She really writes. I’m not a writer of any kind of substance at all.

DRE: Did you understand I Heart Huckabees?

LT: Oh absolutely, that’s the kind of material that I totally understand. It’s about how we don’t know anything and how crazy being a human is and what’s really true. It’s just like in [the Broadway play] Search [for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe], what’s reality and what isn’t and how we’re all cultured and conditioned to have certain views. It depends on where you grow up, where you’re born, what era and everything else that develops your world view or even your view relating as a human. If you have a whole different acculturation, you might be extraordinarily different.

DRE: How was it working with David [O. Russell] again?

LT: I love him. I’m mad for him. To me he’s like Altman because he’s just as free but absolutely totally different. Altman’s a very different person but you always know it is going to be an adventure.

DRE: From what I read, he doesn’t seem to calm down on set.

LT: No, he doesn’t. But I’ve only been on two sets with him and he’s only made four movies. His first movie was his student film, Spanking the Monkey. Then he did Flirting with Disaster, which I did with him but he was still a new young director but he was pretty much there. Then he did Three Kings, I don’t know what happened there and then Huckabees. That was the nature of the movie like, “I’m going to find my way, I’m going to find myself.” Dustin [Hoffman] used to say it was like Jackson Pollock throwing paint at the camera. We would be doing a scene and David would be yelling through a megaphone, “Now switch lines!” and we’d switch parts which was wild. But I’m totally up for those things. I can be just as serious and constrained and I’ll try whatever comes along.

DRE: Do you still do bits with Ernestine?

LT: I do her in concert all the time. A couple years ago she did a series of commercials for an internet computer based teleconferencing company. She’s an executive now. She was dressed a little more executive, same color scheme, same jewelry; her hair was a little more groomed. But she was teaching CEOs and others how to economize and teach.

DRE: How difficult is it to stay current and gain new fans?

LT: I don’t know, that’s hard. Unless you’re on television a lot in a youth oriented vehicle, I don’t think a lot of kids get exposed to you. They might know you from some old movies like if there’s a cult following for Shrinking Woman or 9 to 5. But that’s the nature of being a performer. Kids today don’t even know who Gregory Peck is because they live in their own time. There’s always going to be leakage and people are going to know a certain project or their parents will show them something. I still have kids stop me on the street and they do the snake thing from Big Business. But when I used to open a show, kids would be in sleeping bags out in the snow though my fan base has aged with me.

DRE: Would you want to go on TV now to try to get some new fans?

LT: Sure but I can’t pander to them. It has to be organic. They’re the first ones to know if you’re authentic or not. It will either come or it won’t. If you’re on a hit show that young people watch, then people are going to know you.

DRE: Has anyone wanted to do like a new sketch comedy or variety show with you?

LT: Yeah, different things at different times. Not so much variety because I don’t think the networks have too much confidence in variety in this time. Saturday Night Live and Mad TV are anomalies. But that doesn’t mean somebody couldn’t come in with something. I’ve developed a couple of sitcoms but the story meetings are unbearable because they change things so much. Jane and I would always say, “well we’ll come up with something else.” A few years ago I had a commitment to go on air, but we could never come up with a script that we all agreed on. They always wanted to take some absolutely integral element away.

DRE: What would be an example of an integral element?

LT: Many years ago everybody on the show was going to wear a spy camera except me. I was going to make the set like my house and my office so anything that was shot at my home could be cut into the show. That was just one element of a very much larger idea. It would have been fun.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Since Perry Farrell broke into the music scene in the early 80’s few people have had such an impact on modern music. In fact, his co-creation, Lollapalooza changed the face of American music festivals forever. But it is really the impact of bands like Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros which has cemented... more

Since Perry Farrell broke into the music scene in the early 80’s few people have had such an impact on modern music. In fact, his co-creation, Lollapalooza changed the face of American music festivals forever. But it is really the impact of bands like Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros which has cemented Farrell into the world’s musical consciousness. His new collaboration, Satellite Party, is set to expand that world view. Satellite Party unites Farrell with cohorts such as producer/guitarist Nuno Bettencourt and collaborators like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fergie, Thievery Corporation and even a spoken word appearance by the still dead Jim Morrison. I got a chance to talk with Farrell about this exciting new work on the phone while he was in Hong Kong.

Check out the official site for Perry Farrell

Daniel Robert Epstein: How’s it going in Hong Kong?

Perry Farrell: I’m having a really good time. I just went to the Museum of Science. I bopped around there for a while and had a good time. I walked the streets this afternoon and discovered some cool SoHo-type of neighborhoods. The streets in Hong Kong are like a mini-version of New York in a way. I don’t know if you’ve ever been here but there are lots of textiles, lots of clothing, lots of clothing stores, lots of cool parks to go and hang out in. So I’m taking it all in. Also the food is really out there.

DRE: Do you eat sushi?

PF: I’ll eat sushi. As a matter of fact, I’m trying things for the first time here.

DRE: Are you trying all those crazy insides of animals?

PF: Yes. Exactly.

DRE: Do you have to close your eyes before you pop it in your mouth?

PF: I almost don’t want to look, but I am looking. The city has a smell that you don’t smell in New York so I’m coming to find out what those smells are. Sometimes I’m finding out that it’s a cow’s stomach lining or part of a duck. With some of these smells, you walk by the stores and you’re just like “Oh, man.” But tonight, it was on my table.

DRE: Was it the duck vaginas?

PF: [laughs] At first I thought to myself, “Wow. I don’t really know if I want to go into this.” But honestly, when I stop and think about it, the American Indian ate every part of the buffalo. They didn’t leave anything behind. It was good thing they did that because they weren’t wasteful. So that’s how I’ve talked myself into trying everything, “Well, I’m not wasting the animal,” so it’s more like an American Indian philosophy.

DRE: Is trying these foods for the first time different than when you were trying new drugs back in the day?

PF: It’s a little bit like that. I guess you could say that [laughs].

DRE: To eat everything they have over there you would probably need drugs.

So what made you want to start Satellite Party?

PF: I was just loving the idea of putting together a themed party, almost like a sleepover party. We would dress an indoor location and just keep the party going. Like a rave but like the ’92 raves, when things were really interesting and fresh. Over the years with the rave scene, and even the rock scene, the promoters got very lazy and were just turning one out after the next. As many as three to five days a week you were trying to turn your bar over and turn your night over so they just stopped putting details into things. I wanted to put the details back into this party. I thought that the theme should be as if we were going to have a space party on a satellite. We would dress up like it is an extra special occasion and do what the music would sound like and what would the party feel like. That’s what I started building. I got real excited about that because, you know me, with Lollapalooza it takes me all year to build those three days. I like the idea of always performing myself, so Satellite Party was for me to perform music in this theme.

DRE: Did you always plan to do an album with Satellite Party?

PF: Yeah, at one time I was just going to be programming electronic music because it was just going to be a DJ thing. Then maybe I would DJ it and at some point step it up. With electronic music, house music, there are very few lyrics involved. It’s beat matched and you can play anybody’s music so you can play music for two days straight. But it started to develop into a story as I was writing one song to the next, then I started putting more and more lyrics on it and then it started turning into something very different. It became a complete story. Very odd occurrences happened like getting the chance to produce a song that was written by Jim Morrison and The Doors, that happened to fit this story perfectly. Jim’s part is the Heavenly Host. In his storyline, he’s looking at the world, as we’re all looking at the world, from the vantage point of the satellite. He’s singing about the world in a song called The Woman in the Window so I wanted to continue to develop it into a film for theatrical release. But there’s a giant leap to get there. I needed to figure out if I wanted to get right there for a theatrical release or do it in another way. That was to make sure the music was really loved because you can go right to theatrical release but if the music isn’t good or people don’t appreciate the music, the film will bomb and no one will appreciate the music. So I wanted to take the longer, slower, but I think a better method, which would be to go out there and play the music live and develop this thing very stripped down and go out there and live it, live this story of the Solutionists, who are this collective of people that are an elite group who are excellent at the art form of public display and protest. Well demonstration, demonstration is a little bit less aggressive. But they are professional demonstrators and public assemblers. So we’re going to go out and actually put together some of these fun parties, as well as a straight tour, but all the time developing the performance.

DRE: With each thing you do that’s connected to Satellite Party is it a different piece or is it a big continuing story or concept?

PF: Well, the songs all tell a story. But if you didn’t know the story and you just listened to the music, you would be able to appreciate it for what it is. But when you get the CD, the packaging of the CD will tell the story and our online, which is very close to being up, will help people begin to understand who we are and what we’re about, the Solutionists that is. We’re going to go out and actuate this story, actuate this myth. This myth really is about new renaissance artists taking responsibility and taking the Earth and beautifying the Earth and taking over through the media. We take over through the art of public display and demonstration. With a good website, like the very compelling one you guys have that I’m looking at right now, you can do a lot, you can say a lot even though I know it’s silly because you’re basically selling sex and cheesecake even though it’s not as perverse as some of these other sites, but still you can draw people in with this and you can do a lot. You can have a good time changing the world.

DRE: I read an older interview of yours from about 1998 about how you wanted to get into broadband and hit the new mediums that were coming up. You’ve been doing things like that since you started. You even did it when your life was going through some pretty heavy things. How do you keep yourself up to date on that stuff so well?

PF: Sometimes I think that it’s not so easy because being an artist, you put your head into your art, and the next thing you know, there’s five things that you don’t know that came up, that you’re not aware of. You feel like “Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t know about that.” But I think the world in general is taking on a lot of information. There are a lot of new avenues. If I can get spiritual for a minute, I feel that we’re able to access, if even through our dreamtime, dimensions that we weren’t able to access before. I’m communicating with people right now from Hong Kong. I get updates on artwork and an update on the video within five seconds. As I’m sitting here conversing, I’m on Friday and you guys are on Thursday. It can be overwhelming. You almost just have to relax and say “Well I will take in what I can,” and concentrate on your own art and your own dreams and on your own art forms. If you have good allies, they’ll be bringing you good ideas that you can check into. Then you can apply those to your life or not.

DRE: I believe your oldest kid is about five.

PF: That’s a yes.

DRE: Do they play music?

PF: Yes. All of my family loves music. My youngest boy was playing guitar to me this morning.

DRE: Over the Internet or is he with you?

PF: No, he’s with me. He’s gonna be three. We have music in our house all day. We sing at night and all through the day. We rehearse all day. The boys know the songs, so we all sing together.

DRE: That’s great.

I read an interview with you where I think you were being a little facetious. You said that you would only do Jane’s Addiction if money started to rain from the sky. With a band as popular as Jane’s the amount of money you might get offered might feel like money was raining from the sky. Or were you basically saying you would never get Jane’s back together?

PF: Well, I guess you’re smart because I was being facetious, although you never can tell what’s going to happen. People can apologize or come together. There could be a greater evil that we all fight for, like Martians invading the world. You never can tell who might end up being friends again, right? [laughs] But I will just tell you this. I don’t have any ambition to put Jane’s back together again. What I’m very excited about it is Satellite Party. As we build this thing, and we’ve only started, but next year in June we’re going to be going to do Europe and staying there for two months performing in festivals and clubs and opening up for some legends. So I’m excited about building Satellite Party because I think the musical potential that I’ve got in front of me is everything I’ve been looking for, for many years. It’s a hybrid of sound and it’s still developing. As we speak my drummer [Kevin Figueiredo] is putting together a drum kit and is going to include his drum triggers. That’s something that I’ve wanted from my drummer for many years. We are bringing more players in the group. We have now a second female vocalist/keyboard player so she can be playing some of the denser sounds we have on the record.

The record is a hybrid of sound. It’s got female vocals as well as male, so it’s very unisex. I’m really excited about developing this. As for Jane’s Addiction, I’m an artist and I like the idea of painting new paintings. Although I appreciate the paintings that are hung now in the galleries, so to speak, but that music was sung and played and written at a certain time in life but I’m very tied and involved in what’s going on in the modern world and the future even. I have to put the brakes on in my mind most of the time to try to stay with the world as opposed to getting to far ahead of myself. So I’m not really much interested in going to Jane’s Addiction, because Jane’s Addiction is reminiscing about the past. That’s fun but I’m really much more excited about the future.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

by Blogbot (image) [Above: Exning Suicide in In My Place] (image) Chai Cupcakes Recipe (makes approx. 2 dozen) 1 1/2 sticks butter 2 1/2 cups flour 2 3/4 cups sugar 1 1/4 cup milk 3 eggs 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda Pinch of salt 1 tablespoon chai tea Frosting 3 cups powdered sugar... more

by Blogbot


[Above: Exning Suicide in In My Place]

Chai Cupcakes Recipe (makes approx. 2 dozen)

1 1/2 sticks butter
2 1/2 cups flour
2 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cup milk
3 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon chai tea

Frosting

3 cups powdered sugar
1 stick butter
2 sticks cream cheese
1 tablespoon chai tea
A couple teaspoons of milk, depends on your preference of consistency

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Mix butter and sugar together first. Add in dry ingredients with wet. Bake for 16 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. For the frosting, sift the powdered sugar into the softened butter. If it’s not softened, you must be patient and wait! Mix the rest of ingredients and put into a piping bag and tip. Decorate however you please! I like to add dark chocolate for a garnish.





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Sid and Marty Krofft haunt my nightmares. Well not so much them personally, it would be weird if two AARP members bedeviled me in my sleep. But I saw some show of theirs where some fat dude got stuck with porcupine quills and now for some reason that makes me wake up in a cold sweat. Now that Rhino Home... more

Sid and Marty Krofft haunt my nightmares. Well not so much them personally, it would be weird if two AARP members bedeviled me in my sleep. But I saw some show of theirs where some fat dude got stuck with porcupine quills and now for some reason that makes me wake up in a cold sweat. Now that Rhino Home Entertainment is releasing the Krofft’s second show, The Bugaloos, on DVD, I can watch those episodes and see if that porcupine thing is in there. But besides being a seminal part of so many childhoods, The Bugaloos is still some seriously tripped out madness. From the very first episode the viewer is dropped into this wild world of British kids with wings singing songs and old school Hollywood types driving tripped out cars and hanging with giant yellow dudes with no teeth.

Buy the DVD of The Bugaloos

Daniel Robert Epstein: I believe The Bugaloos was your first project after H.R. Pufnstuf.

Marty Krofft: It was right after H.R. Pufnstuf. We went to England to get The Bugaloos; just like we went to England to get Jack Wild after he was The Artful Dodger in Oliver. That was right when The Beatles and everything was happening. So we went and we did auditions for The Bugaloos in London and we must have had about 4000 kids standing in line.

DRE: How did you end up casting Jack Wild in Pufnstuf in the first place?

MK: We knew Lionel Bart who wrote all the music for Oliver. We went to the premiere with him and when we saw Jack we said, “Oh my God that’s the kid.” We didn’t have any intention of picking up somebody with a cockney accent because we were afraid nobody would understand them. But when that worked, we did the same thing with The Bugaloos.

DRE: I’m a bit young, so I wasn’t around when these shows first aired, was Pufnstuf a big hit right away?

MK: Yeah it was. By the time I showed it to the president of RCA and NBC, they all knew this was happening. Before that we did The Banana Splits. So Hanna Barbera came to us before we did Pufnstuf and they asked us if we could help create the Banana Splits. At that point, when we were building the Banana Splits we saw that the head of programming of NBC was coming to see us. They said, “Next season, why don’t you create your own show.” Then we did Pufnstuf and we immediately created The Bugaloos.

DRE: Were you and your brother given more freedom because Pufnstuf was a hit?

MK: I think we were given freedom on both because I don’t think anybody at the network knew what we were doing. So they trusted us. We’d already had a reputation doing our big puppet shows. Before we ever had done Pufnstuf, we did puppet shows as opening acts for stars Judy Garland, Sinatra and Liberace. Then we did an adult only puppet show called Les Poupee des Paris which was a big hit in the 60’s. So it isn’t like we were an overnight success.

DRE: I’ve been very excited about doing this interview for about a week so I’ve been telling a lot of people about it. Then when I tell people that it is for The Bugaloos and they all start singing “The Bugaloos, The Bugaloos.” Who created that song?

MK: It was Charles Fox. In fact I’m still talking to him. Charles Fox also wrote the song Killing Me Softly for Roberta Flak. We’re thinking about doing a Broadway show on Pufnstuf and we’re doing something new with The Bugaloos as we speak. Even though we only did 17 episodes of the Bugaloos.

DRE: What’s going on with the Bugaloos now?

MK: We had developed it once for Jersey Films, which is Danny DeVito’s company at Universal. But it never got off the ground script-wise. So because we have Land of the Lost and Pufnstuf in more than development at Universal, we decided we’re going to do a Bugaloos preschool show, like the Mickey Mouse Club, and cast new Bugaloos that are around 13 and 14 years old. In the old show, Benita Bizarre [played by Martha Raye] lived in a jukebox. Now since kids don’t know about jukeboxes anymore, they will live in a giant iPod called an Eye-pod, so we don’t get sued.

DRE: Is your stuff being remade because everyone that grew up on it is now heads of movie studios?

MK: Yep, you got it. Ron Meyer, who’s the head of Universal, was our agent when we were the first clients at CAA, Creative Artists. I guess we messed with the heads of kids in the 70’s because they’re still into us in 2006. They now have children, nieces and nephews. Monetarily we thought of the preschool shoe because last year The Wiggles made more money last year than Mel Gibson. We’re working with a guy named Savage Steve Holland [writer/director of Better Off Dead and creator of Eek! the Cat].

DRE: He’s a genius.

MK: What we always did was go after young talent. Now that we’re old, we’re still going after young talent. We have belief in the newcomers.

DRE: Isn’t Savage Steve Holland about 50? [laughs]

MK: That guy has experience. I don’t think he’s 50 but he looks about 38. But you could be right. His motorcycle and helmet don’t make him look like that age.

DRE: In Hollywood working with older people is verboten. You and your brother are pushing 70, is there resistance on the studio’s part to having you involved?

MK: First of all they want to see us because they want our autographs so we get in the door. We were always ahead of our time and no matter how old we are we’re still ahead of our time with what we’re doing. We still get goose bumps, things still excite us and we know that if we’re not working we will have to watch daytime television which could kill us immediately.

DRE: I’m a big fan of Billy Barty’s who you worked with quite a lot.

MK: We probably worked with more little people than anybody in recent times except for The Wizard of Oz. Billy Barty was in most of our shows and was one of the great people to work with. He was so talented and such a great guy.

DRE: Mel Blanc revealed in his autobiography that Chuck Jones and the other Warner Bros. cartoon directors would go up to the top of Termite Terrace [the building on Sunset Boulevard where Looney Tunes cartoons were created], get high, come back down and storyboard.

MK: Really? Well, I never was invited.

DRE: [laughs] I’ve read that you and your brother have said that you never did drugs when you’re doing the shows. But how can you not when you got a show called Lidsville?

MK: Well, you don’t have to have a show called Lidsville to do drugs. We were just smart. We had The Beatles calling us for our shows every week. Brian Epstein asked for all the Pufnstuf 16 millimeters and all The Bugaloos 16 millimeters to be sent to London every week. We knew we had something when that was going on. When we did those shows we weren’t thinking about college kids.

But we always did big shows and we always spent more money than any network gave us. For these shows we only got like 50 to 60,000 dollars an episode but we spent $100,000 on each one. Today that $100,000 would probably equal $350,000 but we put everything on the screen.

DRE: But would you guys get high?

MK: Now we’re back at the drug thing.

DRE: Yeah, I only want to follow up.

MK: It’s true that we weren’t doing acid and drugs when we were doing shows. Fortunately we’re not drug addicts or alcoholics. But I know many of them.

DRE: What was the writing process between you and your brother on these shows?

MK: We didn’t write the shows but we hired the best people we could find to do this. On Pufnstuf we had Lennie Weinrib, on The Bugaloos we had several writers and Si Rose who had done shows like McHale’s Navy. We called him up one day and said, “look, we’ve never done a TV series, could you come in and help us?” So he became the exec producer and head writer on a number of our shows.

DRE: What was your process of creating something like The Bugaloos?

MK: We drew the rough stuff but we had artists, in a place we called the show business factory. It was a 50,000 square foot building where we created everything. Then we had a shop that was about 25,000 square feet where we built everything.

DRE: Were you guys competitive with places like Disney and Jim Henson?

MK: Well late in life I met [daughter of Jim Henson and co-chair and co-CEO of the Jim Henson Company] Lisa Henson and she told me that she would always go to her father and say, “How come the Krofft’s have so many shows and we only have one show?” I think Hanna Barbera felt that we were coming in on their territory so they were always worried the most.

DRE: [laughs] As they should have been.

MK: Right.

DRE: How many shows have you done?

MK: We did 13 kids shows. But the big thing is we’re still independent. We’re probably the only independent left in the business. We own everything we ever did. We never made the mistake of selling everything to the majors. Our library is valuable because most of our titles are going to be made into movies. If we’re still around we’re going to enjoy it. If we’re not, I’ve got three daughters, three grandkids who are talented and could take over. Right now I’ve got one daughter that runs everything in the company as far as the administration. My brother and myself are still very active, of course I show up every day. My brother never showed up every day. So nothing’s changed just because we’re old.

DRE: How was it possible that you didn’t sell it all over the years?

MK: We’ve gone through a lot of pain because we never did. When you’re an independent, you’re struggling all the time financially. So as of this date and this phone call we’re still independent. By two o’clock today, things could be different.

DRE: [laughs] What’s the dynamic between you and your brother?

MK: My brother only deals in creative areas and mostly my creativity is to take some of his dreams and make them come true and take some of my dreams and make them come true. So I really run the place and I make it happen. It is one thing to have an idea, it’s another thing to get it to happen. That in itself is creative.

DRE: Have you guys seen a lot of the satires of your work?

MK: Yeah I saw Mr. Show. They thought we were going to sue them.

DRE: Did you guys ever meet Bob Odenkirk and David Cross?

MK: Of course. They have come over to the offices over the years to talk about ideas.

DRE: Have you heard about this new one called Saul of the Mole Men that’s going to be on Adult Swim?

MK: No, I haven’t. That’s live action?

DRE: It’s a live action but with greenscreen and very low budget effects. But it looks hysterical.

MK: Have you seen it?

DRE: I’ve seen a clip of it and it looks great.

MK: Is it a Krofft look?

DRE: Oh yeah.

MK: Of course.

There’s a guy who does a preschool show out of Iceland called LazyTown, who says his show is like Land of the Lost on acid.

DRE: How far along is the Land of the Lost movie?

MK: The second draft of the script just arrived in my office so we’re moving along pretty good. It will probably get released sometime in 2007. Chris Henchy, who’s married to Brooke Shields and Dennis McNicholas who was the head writer on Saturday Night Live wrote it. Will Ferrell is attached to star with [Anchorman director] Adam McKay set to direct.

DRE: How close are you with the Pufnstuf Broadway show?

MK: That’s not close at all. We’re first developing a Pufnstuf movie at Sony. Julian Fellowes [Oscar winning screenwriter of Gosford Park] will be writing the Pufnstuf movie. He also wrote the London stage version of Mary Poppins which is coming to Broadway.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

While fans of the Distillers and other next-generation punk bands should ultimately find this transition natural and easy to follow, Spinnerette --- the new vehicle for former Distillers lead Brody Dalle -- has a decidedly more gentle rock edge as debuted on their first release, the "Ghetto Love... more

While fans of the Distillers and other next-generation punk bands should ultimately find this transition natural and easy to follow, Spinnerette --- the new vehicle for former Distillers lead Brody Dalle -- has a decidedly more gentle rock edge as debuted on their first release, the "Ghetto Love EP."

With languid, thumping rhythms and wiggling guitar underscoring Dalle's considerably quieter but no less fierce vocals, tunes like "Ghetto Love" and "Valium Knights" are the perfect comedown to a rowdy gig from the Distillers, the soothing medication to take after amped Distillers albums like 2002's Sing Sing Death House. The first Spinnerette album, A Prescription for Mankind, will emerge in June.

In a telephone chat with SG, Dalle spoke about her current project, old musical formats, and a fresh approach to creativity in light of becoming a mother in the years since the Distillers parted ways. (She has a daughter, Camille, with her husband, Queens of the Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal frontman Josh Homme.) In both talent and attitude, she could be in the running for Hot Rock Mom of the Year.

Tamara Palmer: In the few years since you last put an album out, there have been so many changes in the music industry. Have you had to take any precautions against your album or material leaking online before you could have a chance put it out?

Brody Dalle: You know what? I haven't thought about it. We haven't been particularly precious about it and I think having an attitude like that totally helps. If it happens, it happens but I haven't thought about it. You can manifest things if you get too precious and scared or if you think about something too much so I'm glad that's not been a part of my mental process, worrying about whether it's gonna leak or not. I know the Yeah Yeah Yeah's [album] did and that really sucked for them.

This is under a different name so people don't really know it. I think that's one thing that we have going for us. People are probably like, "Who's that?" or "Who cares?" if they have seen it. If it was the Distillers, there'd probably be more of a danger of that happening.

TP: It can go both ways, either by stimulating sales or by cutting into them.

BD: It used to help bands. I remember when we were on [record label] Hellcat and the Offspring album leaked. And they sold 12 million fucking records, so it didn't hurt at all, you know? That was way before the downloading thing took over, when people were excited and they'd hear [the bootleg] and then they'd go get the hard copy. Whereas now, when people have it, they have it. The ADD generation, they're just -- they're movin' on.

TP: That's what I'm afraid of, that the market for the physical product might not be the same as it used to be.


BD: Yeah, it's true, it's really, really unfortunate. There's so much stuff out there for people to buy, we're just getting bombarded with things. I think people just either get overwhelmed or they don't care anymore? It sounds really fucked up, but people are getting really complacent, and if they can just download songs straight to their iPod, why would they need to have this extra thing laying around unless they really are a fan or they really give a shit.

TP: I feel like a dinosaur because I DJ with vinyl and I've got lots of vinyl in the house.

BD: No, that's a dying art and that's beautiful. You should just hold on to that because pretty soon -- I mean, actually, vinyl's kind of had a resurgence, I'm sure you know that.

TP: It seems like it, and right when everyone seemed like they were putting the final nail in the vinyl coffin. Are you doing any kind of vinyl?

BD: Yeah, of course! Yeah, we're doing a single for "Sex Bomb" with a remix by Adam Freeland, and that's coming out in about a month. That's kind of a special release thing that we did, and we'll definitely press up vinyl [for the album]. It's just been a long process to try and just even have this record crown itself. It's been a real uphill battle.

TP: Well, you've had a lot going on as well.

BD: Yeah, but the changes within the industry and people being so gun shy about signing new bands or something they don't know about and people having a hard time having any faith in anything. I looked in the LA Weekly the other day and there were, like, no shows, and I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" I know there's a recession, but entertainment, that's a leisure.

TP: You'd think it'd be more plentiful at this time.

BD: Fuck yeah! But there's nothing going on, I don't know, there's something depressing in the music I'm hearing right now, but hopefully that'll change.

TP: Are you finding difficulties when it comes to booking shows or are you going to tour?

BD: We're definitely gonna tour, it's just a matter of raising the profile of Spinnerette. If if it were the Distillers, it'd be no problem, we could play wherever we wanted and it'd be easy-peasy. But because it's a new band, people don't know about it, but we're going on tour for sure. It starts May 29 on the East Coast and then the record comes out. Then, we'll do the West Coast and the touring will start. Because I have a little girl, it'll be spread out.

TP: That sounds way more civilized anyway.

BD: Yeah, and at this point in my life, even if I didn't have Camille, I don't think I could do an eight-week tour. I think I might just go crazy.

TP: That kind of lifestyle is either for you or not for you: A different city every day for months on end.

BD: Yeah, have you ever toured? I know you guys do the Suicide Girls tour and perform?

TP: I mean, I'm not a performing . . . [laughs]

BD: You're just the writer.

TP: Exactly! But I have been on the road with a band, just not for more than two or three days. I have slept in the little bunks on the tour bus before and don't understand how anyone could do that for very long.

BD: Believe me, it becomes your safe place, like, "I just want to get to my bunk! I just want to get to my bunk." It's like your little haven.

TP: It's a little bit too claustrophobic for me.

BD: That's what we all thought when we first started doing it, but then it becomes your womb.

TP: I can see how it could be.

BD: Also the movement -- a lot of people get car sick, but I don't have that problem so it's like being rocked to sleep.

TP: Okay, I can see how it could sort of be like Magic Fingers.

BD: [laughs] Totally!

TP: So, since you'll be doing short stints on the road, will Camille come with you?

BD: No, not to start, not until we can build a bigger profile and enough momentum. She'll be at home with her daddy. He has a break in his touring cycle, so it works out really good.

TP: Will this be the first time you have been apart from her?

BD: No, we've been apart here and there. My dad died and I was gone for four weeks, which was gnarly, but it was in Australia. That was the longest; that was pretty brutal. She was about a year old, but my husband was here and his family was there so that made a big difference. That was so intense; that's not a good example because my mind was on this awful thing. Josh and I have gone to England once for eight days, he played and it was just kind of a mummy and daddy get-away. You gotta have them. But she's been on tour; she's been on tour with Queens a couple times. She's ready to be a road dog.

TP: What's her interest in music? Is she a rock child?

BD: She has really eclectic tastes and I think it's because we do. I'm not trying to shove anything down her throat. She picks what she likes. She loves Eagles of Death Metal, of course. Basically, she loves the stuff that she hears a lot. When we're in the process of making a record, that's what she hears all the time so she's obsessed with Spinnerette. I remember one time [Distillers/Spinnerette guitarist] Tony [Bevilacqua] and I were driving in the car and she wouldn't let us take it out and play something else. She threw a little tantrum, it was really cute.

TP: She's probably also your own harshest critic, too.

BD: Totally! She will also hear the first bar and she'll know what it is. She loves Cibo Matto actually lately. She loves the Ramones.

TP: Kids love the Ramones!

BD: They do! But come on, how could you not?

TP: So Spinnerette is really almost as new as having a child, or are they about the same age?

BD: It's a bit younger, we've had a couple of incarnations. It started in 2006 after Camille was born. The Distillers broke up before I got pregnant and I played with a whole bunch of people including one of my girlfriends who played bass. Tony and I would just play for hours and gather people together to start something new, and then I got pregnant and put everything on hold. As soon as Camille was born, I went over to [writing partner/member of Eleven] Alain Johannes' house and started demo'ing. It wasn't really even spoken about; it just blossomed into this thing. One of the first songs we wrote was "Ghetto Love" and once we had written it, we were like, "Wow, let's do another one!" And onward it went and then it had a title and became this thing, and the record company wanted us to make a record so they paid for it and onward and upward, that's what happened.

TP: So you didn't cook up any musical concepts when you were pregnant, it just evolved later?

BD: I mean, I did have a lot of ideas, but nothing's really come to fruition until now. It's taken a long time. There's no such thing as accidents, I don't think.

TP: Did you have more to do on this project than you did on the Distillers records? It seemed like that band went through a lot of lineup changes, but you remained at the core. Did you have to handle everything yourself?

BD: I was very hands-on, and if you're talking about the music part, I played everything from Wurlitzer to bass to guitar to percussion. So it's a much more musical project. It's definitely what I want to be doing and is a bit more intricate than the Distillers were. I love the Distillers, but this is really just straight-ahead, easy, not much to think about - except my lyrics, I thought about my lyrics a lot. But the music was simple. And Spinnerette is definitely shooting in a different direction.

On the surface Kathy Griffin's "reality" show, My Life on the D-List, may be about the comedienne's relentless quest for A-List acclaim. However, in reality (of the real variety), Griffin's Emmy Award-winning Bravo show pokes fun at and undermines the very institution she purports... more

On the surface Kathy Griffin's "reality" show, My Life on the D-List, may be about the comedienne's relentless quest for A-List acclaim. However, in reality (of the real variety), Griffin's Emmy Award-winning Bravo show pokes fun at and undermines the very institution she purports to covet above all else: fame.

Furthermore, while other reality stars make a virtue out of their genuinely mean spirits in a desperate attempt to make the most of their fifteen minutes, Griffin delivers the wickedest lines with the kind of underlying warmth that lets all that "get it" know that no malice is intended.

It's this overwhelming sense of bonhomie that makes the show so watchable. It's also why, despite being the butt of many of her jokes, the gay community chose to honor Griffin with this years Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Vanguard Award, which is given to those who have "increased the visibility and understanding" of the GLBT community. As Grifin says in our interview, "I'm genuinely a fan of most of the people I trash in the act." And "the gays" have no bigger fan than Griffin.

SuicideGirls caught up with Griffin by phone to get the skinny on her headline-grabbing minimal GLAAD outfit (she's the only member of the Hollywood community with the balls to accept a high-profile award in a bright blue bikini -- which revealed a hot SG photoset-ready bod). Griffin also gave us the scoop on the no-so-D-list fifth season of My Life on the D-List, which premieres June 8.

NP: Where are you right now?

KG: I'm in my house in Los Angeles, and I'm sending an email to Robert Verdi who is the gay stylist who tells me what to wear. And if he doesn't tell me what to wear, I can't function.

NP: So was he the person who told you what not to wear at the GLAAD Awards? Obviously, you spectacularly unveiled your "banging bikini bod" there...

KG: Well I think he's upset with me for that. What happened was he got me this beautiful Dolce & Gabbana dress, and these fancy Christian Louboutin heels. I did the red carpet, and then I didn't tell him that when I went out to get my award I would be in a bikini. And, of course, the Dolce & Gabbana dress got no press at all, and my bikini picture, I don't know if you know this, has won me several bikini contests in magazines.

NP: Congratulations!

KG: Yeah. I really, pretty much, have changed by career to official bikini model.

NP: I was actually going to ask you about this, because obviously SuicideGirls is a pinup site; Would you consider changing careers and going into nude modeling?

KG: I don't think it's up to me. I think my fans now have demanded it. I don't have any say in the matter anymore because my hot body has become such a commodity that I can only completely stop comedy and become a nude or semi-clad bikini model.

NP: Do you have any lines you would draw in your new career as a nude model? Would you do split beaver for example?

KG: Well you know I have a dream to actually win Beaver Hunt in Hustler Magazine, which is a contest where I believe they're looking for the most attractive beaver. I think it's important that I send them a photo -- probably a really crappy, lurid picture of me in a trailer with full spread beaver. I think I have what it takes to become a champion.

NP: Well I think it's good to have goals in life, and now you have two Emmys, you need to cast your net wider for awards. Like you need another Emmy!

KG: I absolutely need another one, and I want to put it out there in an energetic but secret, or close to a secret, way, that I want an Emmy so bad I'm happily willing to kill for one. There are a lot of studio executives that I think I could kill -- and probably get away with it.

NP: There's probably a lot of reality TV stars you could kill to clear the pitch, and you could possibly be doing the world a favor by doing so.

KG: I think we're talking about Heidi and Spencer. So what I'm pledging is that I am willing to assassinate Heidi and Spencer if it will get me my third Emmy. I think we're killing two birds with one stone.

NP: Absolutely. Everyone's better off. There is no downside to this.

KG: Although, I will say I don't know if what I just said is illegal in the way that it's illegal to threaten to kill the president. I'm not sure if I'm now on any kind of a Hills watch list but I stand by the hit that I've put out on Heidi and Spencer.

NP: A fatwa if you will.

KG: Well it's a fatwa not unlike the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and honestly, you know, let's face it, I think it's only going to get me more fans. I can't imagine, except Heidi and Spencer themselves -- and their parents -- I can't imagine one person being bothered by this.

NP: I would go out on a limb and say maybe there are moments when even Heidi's parents wouldn't mind.

KG: Yeah. Exactly. There's got to be a Montag somewhere down the pike who's going to just send me a 'thank you' note.

NP: I think you'd still get an invite to the funeral.

KG: Ok. I'm in. I'll get hair and make up and everything. I'm sure it will be a big press event.

NP: I do think you should strategize with your manger about this to get the most out of the opportunity.

KG: Yeah, I will. By my manager I assume you mean my mother. You know that I'm desperately trying to get my mom to be a momager. Like I'm trying to get her to be Dina Lohan, and she's terrible at it. She won't go to any nightclubs. She won't release any of my private journals to the press or anything. She's a terrible momager. I may fire her.

NP: Well, like Dina, she does try and outshine you in the reality show.

KG: Are you kidding? People don't even really know I'm on the show anymore. First of all, you should know my Mom calls Kathy Griffin: My Life of the D-List "her" show. She'll say, "Oh, someone came up to me and said 'Maggie, I love your show.'" I go, "Mom, are you sure you didn't hear 'your show' but they said 'your daughter's show?'" And then she kinda looks heavenward like, "Hmm! No! They said my show." So yea, it's all come full circle. I'm the sidekick of my own show.

NP: Lindsay Lohan's mom is so focused on being the star of her reality show that the management has gone by the wayside anyway, so you and Lindsay are kind of in the same position.

KG: Oh, believe me, I'm totally aware that it will get to a point where I won't be able to get my mom for my show because she will be doing her spin-off on, who knows, TV Land, WE or Oxygen. I'm sure she can write her own ticket on pay cable.

NP: How's it been going splitting the friends up. I know it's got quite savage with your mom stealing your gays.

KG: Well, yeah, she openly steals my gays -- and, by the way, they are happy to throw me under the bus to have more Maggie time. They don't understand that she is a vicious, manipulative, climber, not unlike Ryan Seacrest, and she is willing to do whatever it takes to step right over my dead body to get to the top. I'm not sure if my mom is not with Ryan Seacrest right now. Like I wouldn't put it past my mom to just befriend him and to be splitting a box of wine with him right now and talking about how horrible I am

NP: So would Ryan Seacrest be one of your gays?

KG: You know, I don't know if Ryan is one of my gays yet. We're just going to stay tuned on that one.

NP: I just wondered if you had the inside scoop.

KG: I think that we can admit that Oprah is one of my gays.

NP: Definitely. So how's it going with you and Oprah

KG: We're good. Nothing's changed. Oprah and I have a lot of weekends in Montecito. Sometimes Oprah and I have to call Michelle Obama and say, "You know what? We're having our 'me time' right now." Michelle is always trying to get in with me and Oprah, and I am going to have to talk to Michelle at some point and say, "Look! I discovered her, Michelle. You came a little too late to the party." Also, I'd like to warn Michelle, "Don't fuck with Gayle. You think I'm bad, you gotta go through Gayle to get to Oprah."

NP: I do think Michelle has gone all Single White Female on you. I mean you had the hot arms first!

KG: I had the hot arms. And, by the way, let's face it, I've got the whole package and she's got herself a nice set of arms. But, you know, she's going to have to work out a little harder if she wants to fit in my bikini.

NP: Yeah, she needs to step up her game if she has any hope of hanging out with you.

KG: And she does, a lot of hope right now with me. She's just too shy to say it.

NP: So what can we expect with the new TV show which is starting in a couple of weeks?

KG: Ahh! I am so excited. We have ratcheted things up for Season 5. First of all, it's 10 episodes starting June 8th. And this year the theme is I get celebrities to try to give me tips to help me get on the A-List. It doesn't go so well but I have; Episode one, Bette Fucking Midler; Episode 2, Lily Tomlin; Episode 3, Paula Dean; Episode 4, Paris Hilton. I mean it's action packed. I have T.I., I have Gloria Estefan, I have Katt Williams, I have Jackie Collins, I have Salman Rushdie -- it's really quite a list. Suzanne Somers, who has really more money than god...

NP: It's interesting because your life on the D-list doesn't really exist anymore because you're not on the D-list.

KG: I'd like to think that, but I appreciate that you're going to a river in Egypt with me called denial, but the truth is I literally can't go 48-hours without someone calling me Kathie Lee Gifford. I have these sort of A-list moments where I feel pretty high and mighty, as my mother would say, but then, sure enough, I'll go to the airport and they'll say, "Kathy Griffith."

Can I tell you the greatest D-list moment I had? There's this girl called Julianne Hough from Dancing With The Stars. She's the blonde woman, OK? So she's this hot, sexy dancer and I was at an event, I was sitting next to Sarah Silverman, who's an old pal, and she went up to Sarah and said, "Oh god! I love you! It's so great. You're so funny." I'm standing there the whole time like, "Umm, I have a little treat for you, Kathy Griffin is next to her." And Julianne Hough, the dancer from Dancing With The Starts, by the way, not even one of the stars but one of the dancers, turns to me and says, "I don't know who you are but it's nice to meet you," and then walked away. So, yeah, I'm on the D-list.

NP: Nah. I would say, without a doubt, you're somewhere between a C- and a B+.

KG: Oh, come on, you're just saying that.

NP: I'm so not. You're so not a D-lister anymore. I think for the next season you need to consider changing the title.

KG: Come on? The chick from Dancing With The Stars doesn't even know who I am.

NP: Yeah, but that's not a reflection on your status, that's a reflection on her dumbness and detachment from society.

KG: But what about people that come up to me and say, "I miss you on my TV." I'm on TV everyday! Come on, nobody is saying that to Winslet -- trust me! Look, believe me, I really worked my butt off this season to get help and tips and advice...

NP: But I was listening to that list, and I think you're higher up in the pecking order than some of the people that you're getting the advice from.

KG: I know. But none of them are in trouble like I'm in trouble where I'm banned from TV shows and, you know...Look, I like where you're going, it's very encouraging to me, but I'm not going to quite believe it. We'll have to see.

NP: But, if tomorrow you got the lead in the next Star Trek and were unequivocally A-list, you would still be banned from those TV shows.

KG: I know, that's why I can never be on the A-list.

NP: There's some bad boys and bad girls on the A-list.

KG: Yeah, I know. My mom always wants me to be Rita Rudner. That's her dream because Rita Rudner doesn't offend anybody. But, I don't know, I guess it would be nice to not be offensive for like a day in some upside down world. I can't get though an hour without saying "pussy." I have to say the word pussy once and hour, I just have to, I'm sorry.

By the way, here's a D-list thing, we did a an episode of the D-List about race and stand-up comedy -- like, is comedy color blind? So I went and I did a set at the world famous Apollo in Harlem, and I got kicked out of the building and ushered off the stage for swearing.

NP: Really?

KG: At the Apollo! By the way, I didn't say anything racially insensitive, because I wouldn't, but my first pussy joke I got in trouble. I got kicked out of the Apollo.

NP: I wandered why you hadn't got Wanda Sykes' gig at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. I think she was way to easy on Rush Limbaugh.

KG: Yeah, I mean really, unless you're anally raping him with a broomstick, you're being too easy on him. That would have been my opening joke.

You know what? Craig Ferguson recommended me for that. Wasn't that nice?

NP: I think we can safely say you're a shoo-in for 2010.

KG: Yeah. I'm probably going to turn it down.

NP: Well I know you have issues with Michelle Obama.

KG: With her jealousy of my body.

NP: So what other adventures do you have on the new D-List?

KG: It is honestly action packed. First of all, getting kicked out of the Apollo, you have to admit that's an accomplishment. This is the stage where Chris Rock did his last special, Richard Pryor, Redd Fox, I mean guys that are maybe even bluer than I am, and then I get kicked out -- for swearing. I didn't even get kicked out for bombing. I got kicked out for swearing, for cussing.

NP: For pussy?

KG: Well I used every swear word in the book, but I think it was "pussy" that really was the nail in my coffin. However, what I learned is comedy really is color blind, because I didn't get into trouble with anything that had to do with the fact that we were in Harlem, that it was the Apollo, I just got kicked out for the age old reason of too many pussy jokes -- too many.

NP: You're famous for having what some might call a fowl mouth, and I was chatting to Lisa Lampanelli, who's famous for being the "Queen of Mean...."

KG: I love Lisa.

NP: And she said something, and she phrased it so well, and it's something that I believe too, that you can say anything and make fun of anyone as long as the "intention is good behind it." And I get a great sense of that when I watch you on your TV show.

KG: Ahh, I could like burst into tears. You said something that I so desire and hope for, and I don't know if it's something that's understood. Thank you for saying that 'cause I try not to make a big deal out of it but, you know, my goal is always to be funny first and foremost. If someone thinks I'm mean first and foremost, I'm just like, you're not getting it. But I understand people can react and feel whatever they want but I really am honestly and truly just out there to make people laugh. If it's not getting the laughs, I'm taking the joke out, but if it's getting the laughs it might then also be perceived as mean, definitely. But the number one goal always has to be funny. I really don't just go out there and think what are the meanest things I can say, because that's just a grocery list, but if I can put a funny spin on it then I feel that's Ok.

NP: Lisa also talked about how you should "never make fun of people you don't like" (the exception to the rule bing Rush Limbaugh) and I get the underlying affection you have for the people you target with your humor. There's a duality to it.

KG: Yes. I'm genuinely a fan of most of the people I trash in the act because that's what people are; They have moments when they're good and they have moments when they're evil, and everything in between. Somebody may be an amazing artist but they might be a preposterous person. Or someone might do one thing one day that there's nothing funny about and the next day they just do something that just strikes me as funny. I just think it's always about trying to find the funny. I'm not someone who can say I'll never put this person in my act because I like them. If I like somebody they still might do something silly. Or I might not like somebody but I'm happy to give them props if they do something cool.

Paula Abdul is a great example. I like Paula Abdul, I have her records, I think she really does make that show, I wouldn't want to see the show without her, and it also appears that she is addicted to mood-altering substances. I'm trying to say that in my best legalese. If she hates me and is offended she has every right to be but the truth of the matter is I get a kick out of her. I think she's ridiculous, I think she's fun.

But I really, really try and focus on making fun of people for their behavior. I'm not so into making fun of someone for the way they look, or something that's out of their control, but when it's someone's behavior, that's funny to me. Like I just don't go around saying Kirstie Alley is fat, but what's comical to me is that she took millions of dollars from Jenny Craig -- and gained weight -- I mean that's just funny!

NP: Yeah, unless you're Jenny Craig.

KG: Yeah, exactly, and then you want your money back. But you know, I don't want Kirstie Alley to be unhealthy, I don't want her to have heart problems, but on the other hand I can't help but find it funny that she is literally a spokesperson for a diet program and gained a crap load of weight. And then trying to film those commercials for a while saying, "Have you called Jenny Yet?" To which I say, "No," I don't think she took her call."

I got to take a shower. I'm stinky. I was working out in order to maintain my bikini body for my new career as a nudist / sometime bikini model.

NP: Well you definitely have potential as a SuicideGirl.

KG: OK. Thank you.

NP: Do you have any body mods? Any tattoos?

KG: This is really embarrassing, I have one tattoo, it's half faded because I've had six laser treatments to remove it -- are you ready? It's my tattooed wedding ring and I'm divorced -- yeah! I don't have a fuckin' sunburst, I don't have a skull & crossbones, I don't have a barbed wire fence running around my arm. I have this one little, pathetic wedding ring on my ring finger. It's half faded, and it's just the bane of my existence.

NP: Well can I suggest we turn a negative into a positive?

KG: Yes.

NP: You might have lost a husband, but you could gain a new career as a Suicide Girl 'cause that tattoo means you qualify.

KG: Really??? Ok! Alright then, I won't have anymore laser treatments. By the way, they don't even work. There's been times when I just wanted to take a lit cigarette and say let's end this once and for all. But, if it gets me into the SuicideGirls posse then I'll keep it.

NP: It absolutely does. I can't wait to see the photoset.

KG: OK. Me too!


Season 5 of My Life on the D-List premieres on Bravo June 8.