by Andrew E. Konietzky You film minions are a voracious breed. I gave you a Horror Top 10 in October, which you greedily devoured. Unsatiated, you tore open another vein with the Holiday Top 10 in November, and now you want more. So I bring you The Film Strain’s Top 10 Tragically Underrated or Ignored... more

by Andrew E. Konietzky

You film minions are a voracious breed. I gave you a Horror Top 10 in October, which you greedily devoured. Unsatiated, you tore open another vein with the Holiday Top 10 in November, and now you want more. So I bring you The Film Strain’s Top 10 Tragically Underrated or Ignored Films of 2010. As with my previous lists, it is impossible to be 100% definitive and catalog all the films that got created this past year. Some of the films that I’ve included are big names, but considered failures by the studios. Many of them were tragically ignored by the masses and quietly slinked into DVD/Blu-Ray releases. Some may be completely unknown to many film lovers, so write them down. Here are 10 from 2010 that just did not get the respect and viewer love that they should have, but all of them actually got released in theaters somewhere.







1. Splice: “What’s the worst that could happen?”

This is a beautiful and warped film, the likes of which we don’t see much anymore. In this brain-tweaking treat Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are two young genetic engineers who make a lot of mistakes and poor judgments while playing God. They begin to bond with a creature they create and name her Dren (Delphine Chaneac). Ultimately they learn why folks shouldn’t mess with Mother Nature. This film creeps into you on a moral, intellectual, and erotic level, and should not be missed.





2. Paper Man: “If only everything in the world could be covered in butter.”

The film is touching and full of sublime humor. Jeff Daniels and Emma Stone turn in fantastic performances, and Ryan Reynolds’s presence as Captain Excellent brings a quirky humor into play. Anyone who has ever felt a bit lost in life will instantly connect with Paper Man; it’s inspiring and reminds us that great movies can be made about the little things. If you love films like Lars and the Real Girl, Defendor and The Station Agent, do not miss this one.





3. Black Swan: “I just want to be perfect.”

I will not give away any spoilers so as not to ruin the experience for anyone. However, if you’re familiar with Darren Aronofsky’s work, then you already have an inkling as to what you are in for. I’ve been a fan of his since I first saw Pi, which is a brilliant piece of filmmaking and storytelling. If there is any justice, Black Swan will dominate during the upcoming awards season. Natalie Portman’s turn as Nina Sayers – a dancer who struggles as she succumbs to growing pressures from her director, her mother, her rivals, and her personal need for a perfect performance – is, hands down, the best acting I have seen in a long time. The film is intense, exhausting, and truly stunning. A masterfully crafted piece that only Aronofsky could bring to the screen.





4. Legend of the Guardians – The Owls of Ga’Hoole: “We’re each others’ family now. We’ll find them together.”

Soren, a young barn owl, is kidnapped by The Owls of St. Aggie’s as part of their scheme to brainwash owlets into becoming soldiers. Soren and his new friends escape to the island of Ga’Hoole to assist its noble, wise owls who fight back against the army being created by the wicked rulers of St. Aggie’s. It is the first non-R rated film by Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, and the upcoming geek overload film Sucker Punch). This film deserves Best Animated Feature and Cinematography nods to say the least. I know this is a children’s film based on a series of popular books, but there were times when I forgot it was CG and that they were freaking owls due to the visuals, action, and great story.





5. Inception (2010) “Dreams feel real while we’re in them.”

It cost a little over $160 million to make and only grossed $62 million during the opening weekend. You know what that means? That means Inception was considered an epic failure by the studio. However it was a highly original thriller from the mind of Christopher Nolan, executed to a stunning soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, and gets my nod for the Best Film of the Year. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a skilled thief, the absolute best at stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious. He perpetrates his crimes while his victims are in a dream state, when their minds are at their most vulnerable. This is intelligent filmmaking at its absolute best. Unfortunately the complexity of the premise and plot also made it confusing for many. It’s a dream within a dream within an incomprehensible clusterfuck, but you will love the ride and the puzzle of it, I promise.





6. Kick Ass: “So, you wanna play?”

If Spider Man and Kill Bill had a drunken one-night-stand, then Kick Ass would be the love child. A superhero film based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr., it’s relentlessly violent, consistently smart, and hilarious. Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) is outstanding and deserves her own spin-off movie. Kick Ass caused a huge stink however, due to moronic parents taking their spawn to it thinking it was a kid’s film. Because of this, the film was attacked by family advocacy groups for violence and strong language. Several critics like Roger Ebert and Christopher Tookey also accused the film of glorifying violence, particularly violence by young children. Come on people!!! It’s Rated R for a damn reason. Even though the studio considers the film a financial failure we are getting Kick Ass 2: Balls to the Wall in 2012. Sweet.





7. The Runaways: “I like your style. A little Bowie, a little Bardot, and a look on your face that says I could kick the shit out of a truck driver.”

I love Joan Jett, the music and the person. Always have. But I simply cannot stand Kristen Stewart. I think she’s like watching the inventory of Lowe’s Lumber Department trying to act – she’s just THAT wooden. Even if you agree with me, don’t overlook this film because of Stewart. She actually did a fantastic job of playing Joan Jett. Dakota Fanning also delvers a strong performance as Joan’s fellow Runaway Cherie Currie. If you are a fan of The Runaways or Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, you will enjoy this movie (which was written and directed by Floria Sigismondi). For those who aren’t fans, watch it anyway – I bet most of you will end up being one.





8. Monsters: “All I want, is to get back to America.”

If you loved District 9 you should have seen this film already. The premise of the story is that six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, a new life form began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as a designated “Infected Zone.” Made with a crew consisting of only two people using off the shelf $8,400 cameras, the film was shot opportunistically with little to no outline of scenes and their direction. It’s a bit slow moving, but the visuals and realistic feel draw you in to the tale of two people just trying to get back over the border.





9. Exit Through the Gift Shop: “I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much anymore.”

The film documents Thierry Guetta’s attempt to make a definitive film about contemporary street art. In his quest to locate and shoot all the scene’s major players, the eccentric French shopkeeper turned filmmaker manages to befriend elusive superstar artist Banksy, who subsequently turns the camera back onto the filmmaker. When Guetta’s original documentary proves to be unwatchable, Banksy takes over the production of it, and suggests to Guetta that he should do an art show. It’s at this point that the documentary shifts focus onto Guetta and how he transformed himself into the artist known as Mr. Brainwash. When Exit Through the Gift Shop first came out, many insisted the film and the art of Mr. Brainwash were part of an elaborate hoax masterminded by Banksy to show the stupidity of the art world. It’s certainly a critique of the contemporary art world, and the over-commercialization and exploitation of street art, but is it a documentary or mockumentary? Either way it’s genius.





10. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: “We are Sex Bob-Omb and we are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff.”

Based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley and deemed an epic failure, this film will appeal to anyone who loves video games, Edgar Wright, Zelda, and/or rock music. It stars Michael Cera (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) as Scott Pilgrim, an uber geek who has to fight off his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes in order to prevail in love. Jason Schwartzman plays Gideon Gordon Graves, the evilest of the evil exes. If you’re anything approaching a self-identifying geek, go see it already – really, trust me on this!

Classic Set of the Day:


Bracket - Pez



Bracket is a colorful candy aficionado. She was living in Israel when this set was shot in 2006. An avid photographer, her blog has some beautiful examples of her work.

this is the thread where you post your fave sets of 2010, it's been a good year for sets, as always, so i'll start off with my top sets for this year working backwards from december december (image) Manko - Goldfinger november (image) Janette - fifi oui cest moi october (image) King - Talking... more

this is the thread where you post your fave sets of 2010, it's been a good year for sets, as always, so i'll start off with my top sets for this year working backwards from december

december

Manko - Goldfinger

november

Janette - fifi oui cest moi

october

King - Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset

september

Holley - Specs Appeal

august

Malloreigh - Sauced

july

Cianuro - No Way Out

june

Doctor - Blazing Streams

may

Squee - Philosophy

april

Cruella - Subtle Voyeurism

march

Lumi - Catch 909

february

Benten - Rain of Brass Petals

january

Maddie - Chase the Rainbow

Now, show me yours!

by Brett Warner Every other Friday night, T.J. Byrnes Restaurant and Bar in Manhattan’s Financial District hosts a modestly produced karaoke night. The small, unassuming Irish pub is tucked away behind a towering housing project, and on any such night, nearby residents might hear the echoes of drunken... more

by Brett Warner

Every other Friday night, T.J. Byrnes Restaurant and Bar in Manhattan’s Financial District hosts a modestly produced karaoke night. The small, unassuming Irish pub is tucked away behind a towering housing project, and on any such night, nearby residents might hear the echoes of drunken laughter or the faint opening bass notes of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.” For Rutgers professor Fred Solinger and bookstore manager George Carmona, though, this is not just about getting plastered and mumbling through a semi-coherent rendition of “Copacabana”— it’s turf warfare.



The conspicuously underage student body of nearby Pace University have begun moving in on karaoke night at T.J.’s, a night rightfully belonging to the seasoned song and drink veterans of the nearby Borders Books on Wall Street. With their awkwardly well-choreographed group numbers and so-unironic-it-hurts attempts at Britney Spears’ early material these captains of camp have thrown the sing-along gauntlet at our grizzled, retail-weary feet.

Who do these trust fund brats think they are? Don’t they know that we fucking invented serious karaoke?

A brief history lesson: the word karaoke is a portmanteau of the Japanese words kara (“empty”) and ōkesutora (“orchestra”). Its invention is generally credited to ‘70s Japanese singer Inoue Daisuke, who built the earliest incarnation of the karaoke machine after patrons in the local Utagoe Kissa coffee shops would request instrumental versions of his songs so that they could sing along at home. The savvy vocalist began renting out his new machine, which initially charged 100 yen per song, to local businesses. The novelty song boxes began to catch on, and over the course of the next decade, karaoke bars, booths, and restaurants began creeping up all across Asia, eventually making it to the United States in the early nineties.

Scientists have yet to rule definitively what causes Serious Karaoke Singing (or, SKS), though patients are usually in their early to late thirties, generally well versed in popular music while lacking any instrumental proficiency. In some instances, the subject maybe homeless, a listed sex offender, or the creepy Arby’s manager who only sings mid-period Elvis Presley. Whatever its origins, SKS is a rapidly growing phenomenon in which the karaoke singer takes to the mic with serious, oftentimes borderline obsessive determination to sing both well and accurately. In extreme cases, the patient may refrain from alcohol consumption altogether!

As a long-time sufferer of SKS, I feel it is my duty to document the everyday pitfalls and predilections of this very rare, socially non-normative disorder. For your careful consideration, I have compiled a short list of three dogmatic principles on which the garden variety Serious Karaoke Singer will base his or her vocal performance:

Selection

For the seasoned karaoke veteran, song selection is no mere heat/spur of the moment decision and, as such, is rarely taken lightly or recklessly. The prudent amateur vocalist will spend lengthy hours during the intermittent weeks between karaoke gatherings pouring over his or her iTunes library, making a mental or written note of which tunes to request on the subsequent evening in question. The subject will rarely if ever repeat a selection, except in self-referential instances, motivated by either nostalgia or circumstantial emotional factors (see “Impact” below). The subject can list in order of annoyance the Do Not Do’s, which include capital offenses like “Don’t Stop Believing,” “Wanted Dead or Alive,” any Beatles song, and (worst of all) anything that’s come out within the last six months. Additionally, the subject’s “set list” will be meticulously planned out ahead of time, opening with a suitably upbeat party starter (“Sledgehammer,” “1999,” anything by the Pet Shop Boys), peaking with a crowd-involving anthem (“Freedom ’90,” perhaps), and finishing off with an emotionally satisfying climax (“Take Me Home” and “Closing Time” are some obvious choices). The subject will know every local karaoke joint’s songbook inside and out, dissecting and analyzing each one’s variety, quirky typos, and propensity towards left-field inclusions (“Stripsearch” by Faith No More, anything by Tool). Finally, the subject will make regular requests to their resident karaoke DJ, ranging from the completely unreasonable (anything by Tori Amos that isn’t “Cornflake Girl”) to the painfully obvious (every good karaoke book should have Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”).

Technique

For the Serious Karaoke Singer, alcohol consumption is just one of several variables factoring in the overall performance. Vodka based drinks are very easy on the vocal chords, for example, while dark, heavier beers have the propensity to induce involuntary gagging during especially strenuous numbers. (Nobody wants to hear a dry heave during the soaring chorus of “Kiss From A Rose”.) The seasoned karaoke vet knows to pace him or herself accordingly, choosing more raucous songs later in the evening, when timbre, pitch, and proper embellishment are less easily achieved (see “Selection” above). It goes without saying that the SKS subject knows each chosen song inside and out, and may very well practice at home during the days leading up to, or even during, the karaoke excursion. You can usually spot one of them sitting alone in the corner, listening to their iPod with steely-eyed concentration, trying to remember exactly how D’Angelo phrases that third line in “Untitled.” Through trial and error, the subject soon learns which of the three versions of Prince’s “Kiss” are in the correct key and exactly how far they can carry a convincing falsetto. (“Tragedy” is a full ninety seconds longer than “Night Fever,” FYI.)

Impact

Every karaoke night needs that one guy or girl with the gall to sing “With Or Without You” or “Brick” by Ben Folds Five. While most people are just there to drink and made obnoxious asses out of themselves, the Serious Karaoke Singers suffer from a very deep, often uncontrollable urge to express themselves through other people’s songs. For them, it’s no mere excuse to butcher the English language and major pentatonic scales simultaneously— karaoke is a serious artistic endeavor. Mumbling through Radiohead’s “No Surprises” in a drunken stupor, surrounded by my best friends in that tiny Irish pub a short twenty-four hours before flying back to downriver Michigan, is a memory I’m not liable to soon forget. None of us are talented enough to write our own music, and nobody sits around and just listens to records anymore, so karaoke is the next best thing for groups of friends who like pop music as much – if not a little bit more – than they like hard liquor. As Rob Sheffield once wrote, it’s so much easier to sing than it is to talk. New Yorkers don’t express their own feelings— we use Madonna’s. Like that one pro athlete on the team who genuinely still loves playing the game, Serious Karaoke Singers are a rare, perpetually motivated, and (perhaps) naively earnest breed.

So if you happen to find yourself standing under the hot lights of a local karaoke stage this New Year’s Eve, remember to pick a song you can still sing while inebriated, because somewhere in the back of the bar, there’s a group of pretentious dweebs laughing at you, not with you.

Tim Burton’s new film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is his best work since 1994’s Ed Wood. I would say that casting Johnny Depp as the obsessive compulsive child hating Willy Wonka is an inspired choice but since this is their fourth collaboration that point appears to be moot. Depp has totally... more

Tim Burton’s new film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is his best work since 1994’s Ed Wood. I would say that casting Johnny Depp as the obsessive compulsive child hating Willy Wonka is an inspired choice but since this is their fourth collaboration that point appears to be moot. Depp has totally and completely entered himself into Roald Dahl’s universe and given himself over to this wild and wooly character with chocolate running in his veins.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opens July 15

Daniel Robert Epstein: Have you hit the waterslide yet?

Tim Burton: No, but I did go swimming in the shark tank the other night. That was fun.

DRE: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a lot of references to Wonka’s dysfunctional relationship with his father. Why do so many of your films have that theme in them?

TB: Yeah, I've got some problems. You might've seen me enough to realize that by now though.

DRE: I know you were bricked up in your room as a kid.

TB: My parents are dead, so the answers about that will remain unanswered. I guess they didn't want me to escape. With these kinds of things in your life you try and work out your issues in the movie movies, but then you realize that those kinds of traumatic issues just stay with you forever. So they somehow keep reoccurring. No matter how hard I try to get them out of my head they sort of stay there.

DRE: Did you and Johnny Depp talk about the character of Willy Wonka?

TB: Johnny and I have this process where we speak in the abstract to each other and yet we can still somehow understand one another. But we never used one reference. I do remember that we had conversations and one of the things that we did talk about is that in our childhood, in every city child there is some weird children's show host that has a weird name. Usually they have a kind of funny haircut and then as you got older and thought back on them you go, “That guy was fucking weird, man. What was that guy all about?” Like Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans, so we were kind of using that kind of reference point. I think that the great thing about [Roald] Dahl's writing is that he left that character kind of ambiguous. We did give him a little bit of backstory that's not in the book, but that weird, kind of mysterious nature of the character still felt important.

DRE: The movie feels very adult though.

TB: That's what I like about the book and Dahl's writing and why I wanted to do it. He was like an adult writer for children. He didn't speak down to them and it's kind of a book that you could read at any age and get something out of. He was very clever about being specific and subversive and off kilter and kind of leaving you guessing a little bit. We did try and keep that feeling in.

DRE: Do you think there are parts of this film that are too adult?

TB: No. That's the thing, I go back and look at the book and I look at the original movie and we're probably even lighter in a certain way. When you read the book it almost seems more traumatic and horrible and yet this is a children's classic. I think that adults forget sometimes what it's like to be a kid. Dahl explored those kind of edgier aspects of childhood.

DRE: What did you think of Gene Wilder’s portrayal of Willy Wonka?

TB: I think he was great. None of us on this production were ever trying to top that. Our goal was to try and be a bit more true to the spirit of the book. Instead of having a golden goose and an egg we have the squirrels and the nut room.

DRE: Would the project have been less attractive if you couldn’t add in Wonka’s backstory?

TB: It's fine in the book but we just felt that if you have an eccentric character you kind of want to get a flavor of why he is the way he is. Otherwise he's just a weirdo. If your father was a dentist and Christopher Lee you can see where that might cause you some traumatic experiences in your life.

DRE: Is Willy Wonka just nuts?

TB: No, I think that he comes across as emotionally repressed and stunted. When people get traumatized they just sort of shut down. I've met people who are kind of geniuses in one area but are completely deficient in all other areas of their life. So it's sort of the mixture of those things.

DRE: How was working with the Oompa-Loompa man himself, Deep Roy?

TB: To me there were three options. You either hire a cast of Oompa-Loompas or the more modern approach would be to make them all CG. But I've worked with Deep Roy before and to me he's just an Oompa-Loompa. There was no question in my mind and to have it all not be CG was important. In a technical manner it was more cost effective than doing all special FX shots because we could actually use him in certain shots with certain lenses and camera angles so that he could interact with Johnny and the kids on occasion so that he didn’t always have to be added in later.

DRE: How was it casting all the kids for the movie?

TB: Casting kids is harder than casting adults. I hadn't seen Finding Neverland, but when Freddie Highmore walked into the room I just knew that he was right. It was like that with all of the kids. These kids all had what I'd call a cinematic quality. Even though they're all good kids, there had to be a seed of what they are. I tried to find the seed of what they were especially the ones that hadn't acted before. It was important that they had something of their character in them as people.

DRE: What was the inspiration for the sets?

TB: It's all organic. The blueprint of the book was there, but the great thing about Dahl’s writing is that he leaves a lot open for interpretation. We had sort of complete freedom to devise what each of the rooms and the Bucket house looked like. It didn't feel like we were constrained by anything. It had quite an experimental feel as we were making it and that was fun. I enjoyed finding the right consistency for the chocolate so that it didn't look like a brown water.

DRE: Was doing the chocolate river fun?

TB: If you'd been in the chocolate room like in the last week we were shooting in there it started to smell so bad. Literally you’d open up the stage doors and people were complaining.

DRE: Did you save any of the props?

TB: I don't try and save too much. I did keep the Oompa-Loompa psychiatrist chair which is very appropriate and very comfortable actually.

DRE: Dahl wrote a sequel called Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, are you interested in that?

TB: No and you can count on it.

DRE: Was there ever any question in your mind that Johnny Depp was going to play Wonka?

TB: No, but it was the first time that I didn't have to talk anyone into it. Before I could even open my mouth the studio goes, “What about Johnny Depp?” I said, “Well, okay. If you're going to force him on me.”

DRE: What makes Johnny Depp the ideal actor for your films?

TB: He's a character actor in a leading man's body. He's ready to do anything. He's probably more like Lon Chaney than he is a leading man. He wants to transform and be different characters. He's an actor that you think about perhaps even for female roles. He can do it all.

DRE: How is The Corpse Bride going?

TB: We're still finishing that. It was good because we could only work with the kids on Charlie so much during the day so sometimes we'd work a day and then we'd go over to the sound booth and do some voice work on Corpse Bride. It was kind of a chaotic situation but I'm excited about that one.

DRE: Did one film affect the other?

TB: No because animation is such a slow motion process. Sometimes there would only be a few seconds a week to look at. It was good in a certain way because I was obviously hardcore on Charlie but Corpse Bride is slower so I can have a bit more objectivity on it.

DRE: I still meet people that think that you directed The Nightmare before Christmas instead of Henry Selick. Did you take a co-directing credit on The Corpse Bride to circumvent that notion?

TB: No and this is hard to explain but I'll try. With Nightmare it was so completely my developed thing so I felt so comfortable about what it was and it was so clearly delineated in my mind that I just felt comfortable and I knew Henry [Selick] could pull it off. With Corpse Bride there was a seed of an idea and so it took more development therefore I had to be involved at a slightly different level so to speak. That's why I got a little more in depth into this one.

DRE: Sidney Lumet wrote in his book, Making Movies, that he’ll do two studio movies then one personal film. It seems that you adhere to that as well.

TB: I try and treat each time as though it's personal for me. You spend so much time on it that you have to personalize it. But after doing a big one it's kind of like you do get traumatized by it a little bit and maybe the next time you think about perhaps not doing that again. So it's not necessarily a hardcore rule but I can certainly understand that.

DRE: Has having your first child made you want to do more films for children?

TB: No, I don't think that it has anything to do with that. It's not like all of a sudden I'm going to be making the Teletubbies movie or The Wiggles feature film any time soon. I don't think it has altered my thinking. In fact I'm more inclined to think about making porno movies or something than I am children's films.

DRE: What would a Tim Burton porno film be like?

TB: I'd only make G rated porno movies.

DRE: Are you interested in seeing Batman Begins?

TB: I have interest but literally on my way to the Bahamas I was in the screening room finishing up this one. So after you spend 15 hours a day working on your film you're not going, “Okay, lets go see a movie.”

DRE: Have you met any of your Goth fans?

TB: I live up in North London near Camden and it's like we're back in the late 70's and it's beautiful. I was out in the English countryside a few weeks ago and I just ran into a girl with a Nightmare before Christmas purse and it was just so beautiful and touching. That's the amazing thing. I encounter people every now and then that make me realize who I make movies for.

DRE: What do you think about the way Disney turned the Haunted Mansion theme ride into the Nightmare before Christmas?

TB: It makes me laugh because when we first made the movie they didn't even want to put out a trailer. It went from that to what it has turned into. I'm just a little upset that they didn't invite me to the opening so I have a little bit of an issue with them. But it's also great too.

DRE: How is it working with Todd McFarlane on the Corpse Bride toys?

TB: I haven't seen anything yet. I'm hoping that it turns out good. The good thing about a stop motion puppet is that it's different from live action. You can look at the puppet and go, “Just make it look like that.” It's quite easy or it should be anyway. Hopefully it'll turn out because the puppets are really beautiful.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

by Blogbot (video) Radeo Suicide hopes to escape from Frogger and the Bat Cave – with a little help from her friends Alissa and Frolic. What are your resolutions for 2011? (Leave them in the comments section below.) more

by Blogbot



Radeo Suicide hopes to escape from Frogger and the Bat Cave – with a little help from her friends Alissa and Frolic.

What are your resolutions for 2011?

(Leave them in the comments section below.)

I expected William Gibson to be one of those fast talkers who throws out a million words and ideas every second just like his novels. But he actually speaks quite slowly and clearly. His new novel, Pattern Recognition, is the first novel in a long career to actually take place in the present. In his long... more

I expected William Gibson to be one of those fast talkers who throws out a million words and ideas every second just like his novels. But he actually speaks quite slowly and clearly. His new novel, Pattern Recognition, is the first novel in a long career to actually take place in the present. In his long career?

Cayce Pollard is a market-research consultant. She is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the internet. Her father was supposedly dead in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 is somehow mixed up with this business.

Gibson is a revolutionary in the field of science fiction having coined the term cyberspace and imagining the internet before it became part of our daily life.

Check out William Gibson's website for Pattern Recognition


Daniel Robert Epstein: Did you really have to research internet subcultures or did you just talk to fans at book signings?

William Gibson: It was kind of inadvertent research. I was hanging out with people who are interested in some things I am interested in that have nothing to do with science fiction or fiction. I was interested in people who are involved with special interested websites. I thought there was a lot more going on there culturally.

DRE: What kind of sites?

WG: There are people who are talking about knitting. There are people who are really interested in vintage electric guitars. They get together and talk to each other all the time about vintage electric guitars. But then other stuff happens and they start to have real personal interaction and feel real connected to one another when they stopped talking about the guitars.

DRE: You’ve been threatening to set a novel in the present for years. What’s the reason it happened with this one?

WG: No I just called myself on it. Or maybe it seemed like the world was reaching a pitch of such adequate weirdness that I had to do it. If you had written a science fiction in 1965 that depicted the world as it is today with all its science fictional scenarios running simultaneously like global warming, AIDS and genetic manipulation, people would have thought you were crazy. Nobody would have published it. It’s got too many moving parts for a science fiction novel. The future has turned out so much weirder than anyone could have imagined it to be. Which is what always happens. In a way that was also my point.

DRE: Was it also to address 9/11?

WG: No I was already committed to it. I had started writing this book about a year before 9/11. I had reset three parameters. I was going to have it set in the summer of 2002 which was the near future. I was only going to have one viewpoint character which is something I had never done before. I wanted to keep the narrative real time and have no jump cuts. I didn’t think that would be particularly challenging but it turned out to be very hard. I proceeded very slowly and I had Cayse waking up in London but I couldn’t figure out what she was there for or what was going on or why she felt the way she felt. I was writing in the present. It was new and hard for me. While I was trying to get it going I was working on her backstory in New York. A couple of weeks after 9/11 I realized that my novel had been erased by circumstances. The character of the world had changed. I told my publisher it was going to take more time than I thought. I had to reinhabit the story with this catastrophic piece of knowledge. What they ended up doing was twisting the story into something that I could never have imagined it would have become. Not that I have that clear idea of what it would become to begin with. I can’t imagine what this book would have been like if 9/11 hadn’t happened. For someone who had always pretended that he was writing about the near future it was very strange. It was like I accepted this challenge to write about the present and the present had become something stranger and more apocalyptic than I could have imagined.

DRE: Do you like it when the story dictates to you what’s going to happen?

WG: It’s the only time I like it. Its one of the reasons I don’t produce as many books as some people do. I have to wait for that. My work is really just inducing that stage of writing where the characters are taking over.

DRE: What drugs go best with Pattern Recognition?

WG: Coffee. Triple shot lattes. Jet lag.

DRE: Will the internet eventually be the subject of science fiction and crime novels?

WG: Not anymore than telephone calls are. You and I don’t think anything about having this miraculous long distance conversation but it actually depends on an enormous technological infrastructure. The telephone system is not as straight forward as we think it is. It’s quite trippy when you look at how it works.

A hundred years from now people will find a novel like Pattern Recognition kind of interesting and charming in that these characters in this novel are so conscious of using the internet. If we go along the way we’re going it will be instantaneous. When you answer your cell phone you don’t think “Damn it’s neat, I can do this. I can call my girlfriend in Malaysia.” I don’t think they will be calling it the internet by then.

DRE: How autobiographical is the new novel?

WG: Not really anymore or less than anything else I’ve done. I have to have some kind of life experience in order to have stuff to knit together to make the stuff that becomes the novel. The London parts are all places I know pretty well. That works better for me. If Cayse goes somewhere in London it’s a place I’ve been too a lot. There’s no point in sending her to a part of London I’ve never been.

DRE: What corporate logos make you sick?

WG: Louis Vitton makes me a little queasy. My daughter for some inexplicable reason since early childhood has been terrified of the Michelin Man. That’s where I got that for the book. I think that Cayse’s logo phobia came from the fact that I think that everyone has that on some level.

DRE: The funniest one is the way they’ve turned Colonel Sanders, a dead man, into a cartoon character. He’s a dead man that runs around on TV talking about chicken.

WG: That’s exactly the sort of thing I was reacting to. That is spooky.

DRE: You've now reached a point where you are influencing other authors and artists. Have you seen yourself in other artists work?

WG: Well I think all artists have influences. But they are things you want to have and then get over. If people can spot your influences too easily then you haven’t digested your meal. When there’s bits of gristle of whoever floating around in your work then you need to work harder and get some Tums.

DRE: I’m not going to ask you too much about inventing the term cyberpunk. Except for the fact that it’s now an outdated term.

WG: I think it is. If it has any usefulness at all today, it’s as a cliché. If you say to somebody “Hey did you see that video? Its kind of cyberpunk.” They probably know what you mean but it doesn’t make them want to check it out.

DRE: What happened with Johnny Mnemonic? I blame Dolph Lundgren.

WG: Oh no [laughs]. I would blame Sony Pictures Imageworks. Nobody got to see the film that Robert Longo shot. Longo shot the script I wrote which I was happy with. The tragedy with Johnny Mnemonic is that we shot an ironic broadly comic action film that at some level was supposed to be about bad science fiction movies. We were not trying to make a blockbuster mainstream adventure film starring Keanu Reeves. When we started shooting that film Keanu wasn’t a movie star. Speed came out while we were shooting. As soon as it was a hit we had guys from the studio coming out of the woodwork telling us that we shouldn’t shoot a funny movie, where’s the bus? It just got worse from there. We kept doing what we wanted to do. Keanu and Dolph were both doing exactly what we told them to do. Sony cut 90 % of Dolph’s role because they said it would offend the religious right. He doesn’t even have a character in the movie they put out. He’s just this insane caveman who comes rushing in and flinging people around. It doesn’t make any sense. In the film we shot you get his backstory where he is preaching stark naked to churches full of women whoa re afflicted with the weird disease in the movie. He completely got into doing this comic villain and it just ended up making him look like an idiot. I personally felt very bad about that because he was doing what he was told to do.

DRE: Are you excited about the Matrix sequels?

WG: Yeah I’m curious to see where they go with it. I’m looking forward to that. I think the Matrix is the ultimate cyberpunk artifact. Once that’s done it could be put to rest. Nobody else can top that including me.

DRE: How is the collaboration with Chris Cunningham on Neuromancer going?

WG: I don’t know at this point. We haven’t had contact for a while. I’m trying to get in touch with him.

DRE: Are you working in any other mediums right now besides the novels?

WG: This is all I’m doing right now. Novels are like my day job. It’s what I actually do and anything else I do, I do for fun. That’s a good thing to know for people who want to hire me for other mediums. If I was making a really expensive project I wouldn’t want to hire a guy who wants to do it for fun.

DRE: What are you buying on ebay nowadays?

WG: There’s one particular kind of weird 1960’s celluloid animal. That’s along story. I can’t get into it because I don’t want people buying them and inflate the market [laughs].

by Blogbot (video) Felonie Suicide hopes to get more sets through member review in the upcoming year. What are your resolutions for 2011? (Leave them in the comments section below.) more

by Blogbot



Felonie Suicide hopes to get more sets through member review in the upcoming year.

What are your resolutions for 2011?

(Leave them in the comments section below.)

Mike Doughty, purveyor of the small rock, has it pretty good these days. After creating some fabulous sounds with Soul Coughing throughout the 90s as their singer/songwriter and guitarist, he's been touring extensively for the last 3 years as a solo artist. With 3 releases under his belt already... more

Mike Doughty, purveyor of the small rock, has it pretty good these days. After creating some fabulous sounds with Soul Coughing throughout the 90s as their singer/songwriter and guitarist, he's been touring extensively for the last 3 years as a solo artist. With 3 releases under his belt already and another on the way, he certainly hasn't wasted any time in the limbo that so many artists enter after leaving a successful band.

Formerly known simply as Doughty to the majority of his fans, he has reclaimed his first name and stripped away the heavier side of the Soul Coughing sound in favor of a sparse and jangling one man show. He slips old SC standards in amongst the new material, banters with the crowd and tells stories. In truth, he has never been more relaxed on stage or as commanding a songwriter.

The great thing about Doughty is that he's a sincerely friendly guy who loves what he does and loves that you love what he does. He's one of the few truly positive and optimistic rock stars you're liable to find. And though he's standing up on stage with only an electric guitar and a tiny amp to keep him company, he still rocks like nobody's business.

Check him out online at Superspecialquestions.

Mike Lyon

Mike Lyon: I guess the big question on everybody's mind is when the new album is coming out?

Mike Doughty: It's pretty much done at this point - having had some months to listen to it, there's small changes I think I want to make here and there, but essentially, it's soup. That said, I don't really know when it's coming out. I'm talking to some labels here and there, trying to figure out if anybody wants to put it out, and if so, whether I want to be on a label at all.

ML: Does it have a title yet?

MD: There's a working title in my mind, but I don't want to reveal it just yet.

ML: What are some of the songs we can expect on the record?

MD: I've been playing most of them for the past year and a half or so. "Madeline," "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well," "White Lexus," "Unsingable Name" - that batch of tunes.

ML: You worked with a full band on this record unlike your first solo release Skittish. How was it collaborating again after so many years solo?

MD: It was a beautiful experience. They were really great players. I like players that really have a thing that's their own thing, and I tend to trust them a lot. I've been trying out musicians for a couple years now, but these guys were the first that really came to what I was doing and brought something of their own, and yet really were concerned with the song, the nature of the song, the world of the song.

Dan Wilson [lead singer/guitarist for Semisonic] was my primary collaborator - he produced, and, just as importantly, played piano. I love the sound of the old Wurlitzer electric piano, that's a sound you'll hear on my music a lot more in coming years. He's a great musician, and a great thinker about music, which I think, perversely, was obscured by the fact that he had a gigantic hit song in "Closing Time." We spent a lot of time talking about and drawing influence from Cannonball Adderley's mid-60's recordings, a lot of indie rock, and old Jamaican rock-steady singles.

ML: Will the new record be under your name or the new band name [the aptly titled Mike Doughty's Band]?

MD: It'll just be under Mike Doughty. The Mike Doughty's Band thing was just the most succinct way to say that I'll be playing with musicians in club ads for this upcoming tour. I like the name, it's kind of teasing, in a good way.

ML: It's funny, your whole career with Soul Coughing and solo you've always had a huge draw in Minneapolis, and now you're working with one of the city's golden boys, Dan. And in your new live band John Munson who is the bassist for Semisonic will be rocking with you as well. How did you guys hook up?

MD: Munson? Just through Dan. As long as I've been making music, I've tried to use boomier, stranger instruments for low end; I find it difficult to work with the electric bass - the sound of the instrument is like a weird foam that fills up the entire frequency. I don't like it. So, of course, I've been working with upright bass players throughout my career. Dan and Munson and I have the same manager, Jim Grant, who's been suggesting Munson for years, but not 'til I was in Minnesota working on the album did we actually get together.

ML: You're also playing with Andy Thompson, which is funny because I went to high school with him. We have about a hundred mutual friends. When I saw him on stage with you for the first time I hollered like a maniac! Are Andy or any of the other guys co-writing material with you?

MD: Andy is just beautiful, the way he plays - he does those gorgeous, long fills - his sound has this big, shambling feel, like a long rambling melody. I'm very into that; it's extremely different from the breakbeat type stuff I liked when I put Soul Coughing together.

Dan and I have co-written a little, which has been fabulous. I haven't really done a whole lot of that, in the traditional sense, where two guys are passing a guitar around. It was great for writing bridges and that sort of thing. He's a very Beatlesy kind of writer, he likes the chord to change; I'm more coming from hip hop and dance music in my musical roots, I can hang out on the same chord for an hour.

ML: Your banter with the crowd during live shows has become a big draw. How much of it is rehearsed?

MD: I spent a lot of time watching alternative comics in New York - guys like Todd Barry, Louis CK, Marc Maron - and I kind of got over the idea that you can't repeat banter and jokes from night to night. I saw a real craft to it. So there's jokes that I'll keep for a tour or two, and there's jokes that I'll come up with before the show.

ML: With the new dynamic of having a full-time backing band, will there still be time for lengthy stories?

MD: I saw Chocolate Genius' "Songrider" show in New York this year, and loved the way he told long ridiculous tales with a musical backing. I may try to adapt some of that style for my own band shows.

ML: Let me ask about some past producers and collaborators. You did a track with BT called "Never Gonna Come Back Down", and had mentioned that you had recorded more material with him including a song called "The Heat and the Hate". Is that stuff pretty much shelved now or is it still in the works?

MD: Other than "The Heat and the Hate," we really didn't do that much outside of "Never." The song is pretty much shelved - it wasn't a very developed song, to be honest. But a fantastic title, I think.

ML: Your style with Soul Coughing was often described as kind of proto-rap. You did some great work with Common on a track called "Needle to the Bar" - what do you think about hip-hop collaborations
now?

MD: It wasn't Common, it was Casual. He's part of the Hieroglyphics, out of Oakland - Del, Souls of Mischief, etc - and he's one of the greatest rappers, certainly one of the most slept-on rappers, of all time. Really. There were bureaucratic issues, so the song didn't come out.

I would love to work with a rapper that great again, absolutely. Casual is truly a rare talent.

ML: You did a lot of world traveling between tours these past couple of years. What did Laos and Argentina mean to you as a musician?

MD: Also Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Shanghai, China. I've just picked up a hobby of traveling to strange cities alone in the past few years. It's kind of an exotic date with myself. I write when I'm travelling, but I find that the real creative benefit of those journeys is more abstract.

ML: You had a serious battle with drug and alcohol addiction. How did sobering up affect your music?

MD: I was pretty stuck, as a writer and a musician, for the last maybe three years of my using. Once I was clean, there was some time where my mind was really pretty blown, and it took a lot of labor to get back to a point where I was really writing songs again. From that point forward, the music has really deepened and become more special. I'm a better songwriter than I was ten years ago, which I realize is a rare position.

ML: Were you pretty wild as a kid or did that all come out once you achieved Rock Stardom?

MD: I was never wild, at least in terms of appearances. I always wanted to keep my vices quiet, so I could keep 'em going.

ML: Some of your recent songs are quite religious in nature. Was part of finding God your recovery or have you always been a spiritual person?

MD: I've always been fascinated with spirituality. Maybe not in the worst days of my using. But throughout my life.

ML: Your set lists change with wicked regularity. You've said you only play the songs you love to play at that moment. So what are the songs
you love to play right now? Are there some songs you just hate?

MD - I love "Madeline," "Looking," "I Hear the Bells," and "White Lexus," right now. I worked out a solo version of "Never Gonna Come Back Down," and I love playing that a lot. I'm sure there are songs I dislike, but I don't focus on negative stuff.

ML: You were one of the first artists online to moderate their own BBS. After about 4 years it got to be too much for one person to handle, though. But you've always been marked as a net-friendly artist. Any big online plans in the future for special content like unreleased songs or exclusive singles or even a return to a less centralized BBS?

MD: I've recently been trying to come to grips with the fact that maybe albums are not going to be around sometime in the next couple of years. I like albums - I don't really listen to albums, but I like making them. I think small batches of songs put up online is gonna be the way it goes. And I'm basically cool with that - I think it'll allow me to release stuff more often. The BBS phenomenon is something I've become less interested in participating in in the past couple of years. I'm sure I'll always maintain one in some form, but I think message boards are better without the artist's interference.

I've thought a lot about doing some heavy blogging, for a tour, or a record cycle, or something like that. Take weird pictures on the road, write snapshot paragraphs about this or that. Could be fun. In the future, maybe.

ML: You have a fanatically loyal fan base that's only grown as you've been out there touring so relentlessly. One interesting thing is that you have *cadres* of female fans. Legions. What makes you such a sex magnet, Mike?

MD - I don't know, man. It's fun to sing to women. I'm thankful for it, for whatever reason there's so many women in the audience. It's fantastic that the crowd has grown so much in the past few years of touring. I'm truly grateful for it.

ML: Ever dated a fan? Low blow follow-up question, sorry.

MD: Yeah, for lack of a better term, fans. What can I tell you, I've met women at work.

ML: So, how's New York treating you? What are some of your favorite places, places that have that unique something you dig?

MD: New York is just lovely these days - I love the Autumn. Lately I've been uptown on the West Side a lot - between 100 and 125th street. I really like it up there. Good food, too.

ML: You've got some tattoos - what are they like, and any plans to get any more?

MD: I have four: a picture of Louise Brooks, with the ee cummings caption, "The Moon Rattles Like a Fragment of Angry Candy"; the number 7 in a circle; the word "Today" in Khmer (the Cambodian language); and the number 27 with a caption saying "Twenty Seven" in Khmer. They're all in blue/black on my upper arms.

I've fantasized about getting my sleeves fully done - don't know if I'll do it. I'd like to get Apsaras - heavenly Cambodian nymps from the walls of Angkor Wat - tattooed on my arms at some point. I'd have to find the right art, and the right artist.

ML: Do you like the pornography?

MD: Yeah. I don't like fake boobies; I like porn where women look like actual women. I also prefer more amateur-ish porn where the women actually get off--there's nothing sexier.

ML: Again, thanks, it was certainly a pleasure. I'll look forward as always to the new material! Now that I'm in NY I'm certain to run into you at more shows!

MD: Aw, the pleasure was mine. Thanks Mike!

Classic Set of the Day:


Charlie - Robot Fetish



Charlie is an artist. Her sets are always perfectly themed. She explores her fetish for robots in today's classic set.

Question of the day: What webcomic looks like it was drawn on a Nintendo and features among its cast a former adult-film actress, a nice-guy robot, and a Macintosh with a libido? Answer: Diesel Sweeties. Diesel Sweeties is solely the creation of one R. (for Richard) Stevens, and for three years has... more

Question of the day: What webcomic looks like it was drawn on a Nintendo and features among its cast a former adult-film actress, a nice-guy robot, and a Macintosh with a libido? Answer: Diesel Sweeties. Diesel Sweeties is solely the creation of one R. (for Richard) Stevens, and for three years has entertained his digital audience with his highly pixilated robot and hu-man creations. Professor Stevens and I recently sat down for a little chat over AOL Instant Messenger, as he cannot be bothered with smelly hu-man interaction:

Richard Stevens: Get your freak on as I brew some coffee.

Keith Daniels: Roger. What's the flavor today?

RS: Fresh Jamaican blue mountain.

KD: They have mountains in Jamaica?

RS: Apparently one.

KD: Ok, let me know when you're ready.

RS: Word is born.

KD: Rock.

RS: On.

KD: Does Diesel Sweeties turn a profit?

RS: Depends on what time of the year it is. Currently I'm way in the hole from publishing a book, but I'll be back in the black by Xmas-time. Books are slow, steady sellers.

KD: So you make all your money from merchandising.

RS: Pretty much. I look at it like TV or radio ... free advertising for stuff I like to sell. I've been making t-shirts [for] as long as I've been interested in making comics; they're an important part of the process for me.

KD: There's something mystical about a good t-shirt too.

RS: T-shirts are one of the only really good things about America.

KD: In #685 Nipples the Bear says that kids should keep up with their art because in ten years it'll be the only thing about them that isn't boring. Grain of truth there?

RS: Damn, you're real specific with the strip numbers and everything! Yeah, I hang out with exactly one person I knew in high school because they all pretty much turned out to be disappointing. Everyone's all married with dogs, or beer-fat, or doing the cubicle job thing. Boo to that crap.

KD: Did that sort of life always terrify you?

RS: My Dad's owned his own business and been a free agent since before I was born. I don't fix cars, but I also don't go work on spreadsheets and listen to conference calls all day.

KD: It's interesting though that Diesel Sweeties entertains some of those cube-dwellers while they're at work.

RS: I can take credit for .5% of the economic slowdown thanks to reduced productivity.

KD: The rest goes to Scott Adams.

RS: Pretty much. I'm a germ in his lower intestine.

KD: The robots in Diesel Sweeties are always sortof retro style. Did you watch a lot of sci-fi growing up?

RS: Let's just say I thought every movie started with the 20th Century Fox Fanfare until I was six or so. Star Wars pretty much owned the first chunk of my life. Hence the gay robots.

KD: The robots in Star Wars were gay? I knew there was something funny going on between seethreepio and artoo.

RS: They had to be gay, all hating on each other in public but soothing and caressing in private. Out of the closet and into the sandcrawler.

KD: What did you think of Episodes I and II?

RS: Episode I could have moved a little quicker, but you can see how the whole galaxy started out formal and clean before turning into the WWII bombed-out wreck we saw in the old movies. Episode II was a hell of a good ride. I like to say that I'm going to visit Count Dooku when i go to the bathroom.

KD: I always say I'm faxing a letter to Panama.

RS: [laughs] Gotta dig that canal.

KD: What is it with you and poo anyway?

RS: The Livejournal is just a joke on Livejournals in general. I don't really like sharing what I'm really thinking, so I go with pure comedy goldÆ. Or not.

KD: So why even keep a Livejournal?

RS: It's hella fun. I would have quit after a couple entries but people actually seemed to enjoy it. I get loads of weird comments, so that's worth it.

KD: Never underestimate the power of poop. I like Maura, the former porn star, where did the idea for her come from?

RS: I don't really know. I needed a lonesome, jaded woman with a colorful background. Porn was elected because I've always wanted to operate a good, egalitarian porn site.

KD: Like Suicidegirls? [laughs]

RS: If there was no Suicidegirls site, I would have probably had to make it myself. I owe you guys for saving me the time and energy. My sweetie wants to be a Suicide Girl. I think she'd kick ass at it.

KD: Tell her to go for it.

RS: No need to - she told me.

KD: Are you a big fan of porn, in general?

RS: It's fun and all, but most of the commercial stuff feels a little too much like Animal Planet with bad moustaches.

KD: [laughs] How long have you been doing Diesel Sweeties? Where did the idea come from?

RS: I'm on my third year as of April. The idea just kind of evolved out of a need to draw comics after being done with college and starting to be bored by my job. I just gave myself a due date and started working on shit until I had a serviceable cartoon.

KD: Do you work best with a deadline?

RS: I don't work at all without one. Going daily is the best thing for me. I need to have an enemy to fight! That's why I include Hitler as a villain -- it worked for Harrison Ford.

KD: Now music is a big part of the humor in the comic.

RS: Yeah, that's how an old fart like me "snags the kids."

KD: But you're also a music geek yourself.

RS: A really bad one, but I guess so.

KD: You've also said that music is a great shorthand for describing a character.

RS: It's probably the best one-word way to describe someone without using ethnicity or insults. If I say someone is "Metal," most people have an image of that. It's usually a nice flexible image and that let's them blend the character with people they already know. Instant Lunch style!

KD: Your girlfriend is a big Danzig fan. Is that why you slipped him into the comic?

RS: She introduced me to the absolute, incomprehensible wonder that is Danzig when she played a parking lot concert video for me one day. Wanna hear a true Danzig story?

KD: Of course.

RS: She's been going to Danzig shows since she was like 14 or so. She brought me to one about a year ago ... first time she'd ever brought a date. So what happens? A roadie offers her a meet and greet pass.

KD: [laughs]

RS: She almost didn't take it, but I told her she had to go! I didn't think I'd get to stay after the show but some strippers gave me an extra pass right as I was about to get kicked out. First guy on earth to get free stuff from strippers!

KD: No kidding. And it doesn't make you nervous to go to sleep next to a Danzig fanatic?

RS: Danzig is all-knowing and Good. Danzig would never let any harm befall me. Oh wait, he's evil. Crap.

KD: I've heard that he's also really tiny; a wee little Satan man.

RS: I can't really comment on that. I'm obscenely gigantic, so everyone seems small to me. I do seem to remember Danzig standing on the steps of his bus when I said hi to him though.

KD: Hmm. Now, your poison is Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

RS: That's the most potent one, yeah. I kind of like them both equally as far as the total experience goes.

KD: What was the idea behind making Diesel Sweeties so pixilated?

RS: I was playing with different art styles once I had the basic concept. I've been obsessed with pixels and icons since I was a little kid ... and the robot/digital combination just seemed right. I hadn't seen anyone actually drawing their webcomics in such a way that admitted freely that they were webcomics yet at that point either. It all just kind of happened on its own, I just clicked a lot until it worked.

KD: Ever thought about syndicating it?

RS: Yeah, but I don't know if I'd be able to pull it off. I'm not anti-capitalist or anything, but dealing with editors and stuff is kind of foreign to me. That's why I quit freelance graphic design.

KD: You know what I would like? Some Diesel Sweeties robot toys.

RS: You know what I would like? To be able to provide you with those toys.

KD: [laughs]

RS: Toys are fucking cool.

KD: Where did the name Diesel Sweeties come from?

RS: Believe it or not, I just spent a few days combining words and humming along to how they rhymed. It was a hit-or-miss, seat-of-the-pants kind of thing.

KD: How much time does it take to produce the typical strip?

RS: Anywhere from fifteen minutes to a couple days. I scribble stuff down when I'm driving around and draw it later. If I re-used art, it's easy ... if not, it can take a while.

KD: Now, you're also a professor.

RS: I've got the cardigan to prove it.

KD: What do you enjoy about teaching?

RS: I teach some graphic design classes. I just love helping people simplify and refine good ideas into projects that are probably better than anything I could do myself.

RS: That and I like seeing what people listen to and how they dress. I also use it as a chance to practice for a future stand-up comedy career that will never happen because I slouch.

KD: I'm trying to rebut that by thinking of a comic who slouched, but.. I can't think of one. Yeah, you're right.

RS: I think maybe there was a guy in a wheelchair in the 80s, but that's about it.

KD: You were telling me yesterday, kindof an interesting story about your degree, and how you got involved with teaching.

RS: You mean the story I don't tell my students until the last class? I never graduated ... I had my advisor switched during my last semester and found out that my first advisor had screwed up and gave me too many internship credits. The new guy had to take 3 credits back, so I wound up leaving the design department second in my class with no diploma. Then a couple years later, the guy who took my credits away called me and asked me to teach a class. I kind of had to do it, purely for irony.

KD: ..and the moral of the story is..

RS: I never thought about it in moral terms. I kind of just taught because the whole situation amused the hell out of me and wound up loving the work.

KD: Are you a big comic fan?

RS: Always. I've been reading since I was three.

KD: Wow. What were some of your favorites growing up, and what are some of your favorites now?

RS: The first books I ever followed were Groo the Wanderer and Transformers. Groo is still pretty awesome. Right now, I follow a little of everything. James Kochalka books, better-written Spider-man stuff, all kinds of stuff. I got really heavily into Jack Kirby comics in college; those are a pretty sizeable pile.

KD: What is the appeal of comics for you?

RS: The speed. You can get so much information in a loosely-defined order in a crazy short amount of time. I'm kind of scattered in my thinking, so it works.

KD: Do you think webcomics will ever seriously offer competition to print media?

RS: I think they don't even need to try. I would wager that webcomics reach a larger and more varied audience than traditional comics as a whole - whether or not we're making money. All I know is that my friends and I reach a really varied, heavily female audience on a daily basis. We're working our way into peoples' lives and it feels good as all hell.

KD: Heavily female?

RS: You know what I mean! Liberal media bias won't work on me. [laughs] I mean we actually reach men and women both -- something comic books haven't done effectively ever.

KD: Ooh, I know you didn't just call me a liberal.

RS: [laughs]

KD: That is true. It has been traditionally a male thing.

RS: I think that webcomics are a lot cheaper to make and we're a lot more free to experiment with genres ... and as a result, we actually get a lot of varied readers.

KD: How will you know when it's time to quit Diesel Sweeties?

RS: As soon as the jokes stop making me laugh at least once a week. I hope I'll know when to quit and I hope to have some other stuff in the hopper before that.

KD: What other sorts of things would you like to do?

RS: I want to do kid-friendly silly stuff and more romance/soap opera stuff. Maybe something with mummies and space aliens too.

Point your web browser in the direction of Diesel Sweeties.

by Blogbot (video) Shotgun Suicide promises to forgo fried food and the F-word. What are your resolutions for 2011? (Leave them in the comments section below.) more

by Blogbot



Shotgun Suicide promises to forgo fried food and the F-word.

What are your resolutions for 2011?

(Leave them in the comments section below.)

I got to interview Christopher Walken in person and of course, the most important thing about the man is that he starred in the David Cronenberg film, The Dead Zone. We got a chance to talk a little bit about that. Walken walked into the room and seemed like he was almost surprised to be there. He was... more

I got to interview Christopher Walken in person and of course, the most important thing about the man is that he starred in the David Cronenberg film, The Dead Zone. We got a chance to talk a little bit about that. Walken walked into the room and seemed like he was almost surprised to be there. He was dressed in like a sweat suit and he smelled a bit musty. But that’s not right to complain about because he’s 61 years old and when you get that age things happen to your body that you can’t control. One thing that Walken can control though is the way his career is going. From big budget Hollywood films like The Rundown to his latest little independent film, Around the Bend, Walken always delivers the goods.

Around the Bend stars Walken of course, Josh Lucas and Michael Caine. It’s about four generations of men who are suddenly brought together by the chance to uncover the truth about their family’s past. After the great-grandfather passes away, the son shows up out of the blue to take them all on a road trip across America to fulfill his father's wishes. It’s a journey that takes them to a world full of surprises, some comic, some dramatic, and all of them personal.

Check out the website for Around the Bend

Daniel Robert Epstein: What made you want to sign on for Around the Bend?

Christopher Walken: It was a good job for a lot of reasons. It was a different kind of part. He was a father and a grandfather and, of course, it had Mike Caine. It just was a good job. A big, juicy part. Isn’t that what they say? Not only that, but I do a lot of these parts where I’m in the movie a little bit and here’s a role where I’m in most of it.

DRE: Did you know Michael Caine before this?

CW: I did know him a little bit just socially. I’d met him a couple of times at people’s house, for dinner and stuff.

DRE: Did you talk about other actors or directors you’ve had in common?

CW: No, actors never talk about that stuff.

DRE: Do you think your image is softening? This is your second dad, following Catch Me If You Can.

CW: Oh, that’s true. For a long time I’d never played fathers and uncles. I guess I’m getting old enough now.

DRE: Were there things you drew on from your own experiences, from your own relatives, that you saw yourself using in portraying this character?

CW: Not really. His day really was sort of like mine. He’s of the 70’s, rock and roll. I lived through all that. I had the bellbottom pants.

DRE: How about the paisley shirt?

CW: Sure. There was a scene in the movie that was cut. That van is established in another version as mine. That was my car. I showed up and I went into the van, and it was full of all these old clothes, including my wife’s. There was a lot of going through stuff and remembering. That didn’t end up in the movie, but the clothing I wear… when I show up I’m in this drab stuff, and then I get back into my old 70’s stuff, which still sort of fits. It’s a little tight.

DRE: The film’s story is very cathartic for your character. He’s the one with the most skeletons in his closet. What do you draw on to bring it out?

CW: Well, acting is pretending. I don’t know how these things work. I study the script and I try to make it sound like I mean it. He says that he’d been a musician. Well, there are certain parallels in my life. I was in musical comedy when I was a kid. I used to go to rock concerts and I went to Studio 54. I was very much a part of that. I saw Woodstock when it came out. As a matter of fact I used to go to Woodstock before it was famous. So all of that was quite familiar to me but like you say, for him things didn’t work out. In fact, he escapes from a jail hospital, so he’s had some bumpy times.

Actually, my best friend had a VW van. A lot of people had that van, and what a great car it was. I remember, we used to put six people in the thing and go up to the mountains. It got 400 miles on a gallon of gas. That was a great little car. The thing about that though was if you were alone in it and you were going over the George Washington Bridge it was always like ‘Whooom’ [he makes a swaying gesture]. It was not good in the wind.

DRE: Denzel Washington said that during one take while filming Man of Fire you grabbed him by the head and gave him a big kiss. Is that the kind of thing you do to keep things loose and to surprise people?

CW: Yeah, sure, sure. That wasn’t in the movie. You do takes, and you do lots of different things. Denzel is a lot of fun.

DRE: But is it also to keep everyone a little off balance?

CW: I have the feeling about movie acting that one of the tricks is to offer the editor as much stuff as you can. You’ll do a take and there’s a lot in it that doesn’t work, but maybe there’s something that does. That’s the great thing about movies. If it’s really lousy, probably they’ll cut it out. So it’s important to take those chances, and do things like the thing I did with Denzel. There’s lots of stuff I did with Denzel that isn’t in the movie. You make a movie and then six months later they’re sitting in a dark room and looking at all this film and they’ll think, “We’ll use that.”’ Offering an editor that variety is much better than doing take after take that’s more or less the same.

DRE: Were there more scenes in Around the Bend that got cut out, that we might see on the DVD?

CW: Oh, sure lots of stuff. There’s a big scene, actually and I miss it between me and Josh, where I explain to him what my life was like with his mother. It’s a very interesting scene. It was good, but sometimes in movies it’s good, but they can’t use it. It makes the movie too long or it doesn’t really matter. When you make movies there are all sorts of stuff that you wish they had kept in.

DRE: Do you take a serious critical approach to movies when you look at them later on?

CW: Usually it’s OK. I’m very lucky in that when I do, if I think, “Well, that was false,” and I think, “Well, you sort of nailed it.” Then if I see that the next day in dailies it’s almost invariably what I thought. If I thought it was fake, it is. If I think it worked, it does. So I think I have a good sense of that.

DRE: How did you come together with [Around the Bend director] Jordan [Roberts]?

CW: This is his first movie. My agent sent me the script. A lot of people from this movie are from the same agency. Then Jordan came to my house, actually. That’s pretty unusual. Sometimes I make movies, and I’ve never met the director before shooting.

DRE: The relationship between your character and the one of your grandson was very interesting because it seemed like he was trying to make up for the time he’d lost with Jason.

CW: Well, I noticed that it was interesting with my own father and his grandkids. They say when you get older you get back into your childhood a little. I must say, I’ve never had kids, but that little boy thought I was hilarious. It was very, very funny being around him. He was so spontaneous. He’d get absolutely wild sometimes. They’d have to take him and calm him down. His mother was there. He’d sometimes get hysterically laughing. He’s a very funny kid. He’s not in the movie as much as he might be; it’s a good thing maybe.

DRE: Was it in the original script that Michael Caine’s character knew you were dying?

CW: Sure. There is a kind of mystical aspect to all of this, in that he gets done with what he’s going to do and he just dies. So there is a big Grim Reaper aspect to that. [Caine’s character] says, “OK, I’m done. My dog is going to die,” and dog dies. He says to me, “you’re going to die, but you’re not ready. You’ve got to do this thing first.”

DRE: Interesting that when you get to the big revelations, Turner and Josh’s character don’t sit and hash it over endlessly, like in so many Hollywood movies.

CW: It was a big issue. We talked about it for a long time. We had meetings and rehearsals. That was a big problem. How do we explain what I did to him? We finally decided that there was no explanation. He was having a bad time and he did something terrible. That happens to people.


DRE: You’re apparently a sex symbol to a lot of women in their 20’s…

CW: Oh, yeah?

DRE: Is this the first you’ve heard of it?

CW: I’d heard about the older ladies, but that’s OK.

DRE: The word is you’ve gotten sexier as you’ve gotten older. So what kind of people approach you?

CW: I’ve been married for 35 years so I have to be careful. Not only that, but I live I the country and to tell you the truth I don’t see people much. When you make a movie the days are really long. When I get up it’s dark. The days I was talking about, rock and roll and Studio 54, I was very social. I think I almost maybe exhausted myself.

DRE: Will Ferrell is turning into a huge star and he wrote the Cowbell sketch. What was that like on the page?

CW: You never know when you do things whether they’re going to catch on. I did that sketch like I did lots of sketches because I’ve been on Saturday Night Live five or six times. I knew it was funny, but I’ve traveled all over the world and people in Australia will say to me, “You know what this salad needs? It needs a little more cowbell.”

DRE: You mentioned knowing when you’ve nailed it or missed. What happens when you nail it and some other element ruins the take?

CW: It happens all the time. You do a terrific take and a plane goes over. Or you do a terrific take and the sound guy comes up and says, ‘Your microphone was showing, so we can’t use that.” That’s very frustrating. But that’s show business.

DRE: So how do you nail it again and again?

CW: You don’t. Usually, if I think, “Boy that was it” and the guy says, “I’m sorry, we can’t use that,” I’ll never get it that way again. That’s just part of making movies. Making movies is sort of like a miracle. I don’t know how it gets done. Everybody does all these things and it’s so difficult to put everything together, and then it starts to rain.

DRE: Do you think you’re underappreciated as a comedic actor?

CW: Nah, I’ve done a lot of comedy. As a matter of fact, before I got into movies, that’s all I did. I was a musical-comedy actor.

DRE: But you had a live audience there. Is it easier to do a performance for two-hours straight through, maintaining the continuity?

CW: In a way it is that’s true. I’ve always said the audience is the unmentioned character. Anytime you do a play there’s another character in it, and that’s the audience. The audience tells you a lot. I did some interviews this morning and people were saying this movie has a lot of humor. When I saw the movie I was sitting all alone in a theater and I couldn’t tell that because I was sitting by myself. You really need an audience to tell you that.

DRE: This year happens to be the 20th anniversary of The Dead Zone. Did they actually shoot a gun to make you tense up during the psychic scenes?

CW: That’s right; we did that to make my reactions more convincing. They turned the sound off and they fired a gun. You can’t fake that kind of instinctive reaction to a loud noise. David was wonderful. He’s a wonderful director. I see him occasionally. He never ages.

DRE: He’s got a painting in his attic!

Will you ever direct?

CW: I’ve never done it. I don’t think I’d be good at it. I can’t articulate anything. I could say, “Yeah, good” or “Do it again.”

DRE: How about writing?

CW: Or course. All actors write. I’ve never met an actor who didn’t have a play or two tucked in his pocket.

DRE: How about writing an autobiography?

CW: I would do that, but I don’t think yet. In a way, when you write the memoirs, unless you intend to write a series of them it’s like signing your own death certificate. Somebody said, “I’d write my memoirs, except I can’t remember anything.”

DRE: Do you feel like you have a lot to settle before your time is up?

CW: No, I’ve never done anything terrible to anybody. But I would think that what Turner did would be a terrible thing to live with.

DRE: What would you say about your career?

CW: I was in show business as a kid. I wasn’t an actor, but I was in show business. I’ve done a lot of things. Musicals occupied me for a long time. I became an actor. Then I was a stage actor. Then I started making movies. I still do a play once in a while. One of the hardest things about being an actor is to stick around, to stay viable. It is. You can easily get lost.

DRE: And probably doing SNL didn’t hurt?

CW: That, and doing MTV, the Fatboy Slim thing. It’s just to do something different every once in a while.

DRE: You’ve got the reputation for playing quirky guys. Ever just want to do a Ward Cleaver kind of character?

CW: Oh, absolutely, I would love to do that. You mean like be a dad and have a dog? I’d love to do that. Have a house, kids and have the kids say, “you know, Dad, what should I do?” I’d say, “You know, son, just do the right thing.”

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

By Edward Kelly Hank and Britt made their promises. For Hank, it was an understanding with his ex-wife that he would move on. He tore down the evidence he had against Ocean Beach’s movers and shakers and put up a new target: the head honcho behind it all. Britt, meanwhile, promised to be a father to... more

By Edward Kelly

Hank and Britt made their promises. For Hank, it was an understanding with his ex-wife that he would move on. He tore down the evidence he had against Ocean Beach’s movers and shakers and put up a new target: the head honcho behind it all. Britt, meanwhile, promised to be a father to his ex-fiancée’s baby, no matter if the kid is biologically his or not. He asked her to wait until he gets out of prison and watch his dog in the meantime. She agrees.

With their personal lives wrapped up, Britt climbs into the beat up truck and Hank drives him to prison. The two, in typical Terriers fashion, joke about not wanting to be late for Britt’s “first day.” As they reach a crossroads, Hank offers a proposition: what if they hang a left, hit the freeway, motor down to Mexico and spend the rest of their days on the lam. All those promises they just made to their respective women and the community at large? Forget ’em. Mexico or prison. Those are the options. And then: end credits.



With the end of its first and only season, Terriers has earned its slot alongside Freaks and Geeks, Firefly, Wonderfalls, and My So-Called Life as a brilliant-but-cancelled one-season wonder. Hands down the most enjoyable new drama (sorry, Boardwalk Empire fans), Terriers felt like the type of show that had been on for three years, despite the fact we were all just starting to discover it. Sharp writing and fully-fleshed out characters brought to life by actors with keen instincts coupled with a lively setting made the show unique, engaging, hilarious, and infinitely re-watchable. The 25th-Hour-esque last scene was a perfect but bittersweet ending for the two underdog PIs who just want to keep their grungy little corner of the world the way it is supposed to be.

Now, I could launch into the reasons why it failed. After all, bitching and moaning about a network mishandling your favorite show is part of the mourning process for any cult TV fan. I’m not going to because the reason is obvious: no one knew what the hell the show was about. In fact, The AV Club ran a fascinating interview with the president of FX Networks who attempted to explain why the promos were the way they were, and whether it was their failure to connect that ultimately doomed the show. (Judge for yourself – would you have watched this show after seeing the preview below?)



But this article isn’t meant to be about that. See, we (or at least I) love canceled TV shows for the same reason James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana will always be viewed through a prism of beauty and eternal admiration: they died before they could grow old. You’ll never see or hear anyone talk about how ugly they were, mainly because there’s no evidence that they ever became ugly. It’s the same thing with TV shows cut down in their prime. You’ll never hear anyone say that Dawson’s Creek is as good as My So-Called Life mainly because My So-Called Life never had to come up with six seasons of storylines. Likewise, you will never find as voracious a defender of any Star Trek series as you will of Firefly. Firefly had 14 episodes. Star Trek, in all its incarnations, has had around 617 episodes. Even die-hard fans will have to admit that it’s impossible to defend the position that all 617 were winners.

Long-running TV shows will never, ever satisfy everyone. Case in point: how many people are still upset over the Lost finale? Or the Battlestar Galactica finale? Or the freakin’ Sopranos finale which aired over three years ago? When a long-running show ends, pulling off a successful finale is next to impossible. You can do one of two things: play it safe and wrap everything up nicely, or stay true to your artistic roots and end it in such a way that may not explain everything, but it’s how it should end. If you play it safe, you’ll be criticized for pandering; if you go the other route, you risk people re-evaluating your entire series based on its last hour.

Ever thus the love for canceled TV, Lebowski.

One of the most interesting blog posts I have ever read comes courtesy of site called Red Right Hand. In it, the writer, Michael Patrick Sullivan, posts some fan-fiction theories about what would have happened had Firefly been a hit. Cynically (or maybe just realistically), he paints a picture of a middling show that is attempting to recover from some creative missteps — like every show eventually must. Most likely, Firefly wouldn’t have been viewed as the perfect gem of a sci-fi that it is now, because it couldn’t possibly have maintained the form consistently over time.

“Unfulfilled potential” is one of those powerful phrases that your 10th grade teachers probably loved to bandy about. But the reason the idea is so powerful is because no one bothers to qualify what the hell “potential” means. It could mean that this thing had the potential to be the greatest thing in the history of things. And that’s the way Terriers will remain in the eyes of its fans. Realistic expectations or not, those 13 episodes are untouchable.

So, like Hank and Britt, Terriers fans are faced with a choice: bitch and moan, or mourn and move on. I’m opting for the latter if only because I look forward to loaning my DVDs to friends and helping them experience the limited peek into the awesomely seedy world of Ocean Beach. Will Hank and Britt head to Mexico, live their lives as Mexicans and leave behind their beloved San Diego? Don’t know, don’t care.

The ride’s over and, damn, it was worth it.

Amanda Palmer is a rebel with a cause; she fights fiercely for her artistic freedom. When the musician and singer, who is currently on hiatus from the "Brechtian punk cabaret" band The Dresden Dolls, made a video to promote one of the songs from her debut solo album, Who Killed Amada Palmer,... more

Amanda Palmer is a rebel with a cause; she fights fiercely for her artistic freedom.

When the musician and singer, who is currently on hiatus from the "Brechtian punk cabaret" band The Dresden Dolls, made a video to promote one of the songs from her debut solo album, Who Killed Amada Palmer, it seems her belly didn't conform to the ideal expressed by a male executive at her label, who apparently explained: "I'm a guy, Amanda. I understand what people like." She fought the label's attempt to slim down her stomach's role in the clip for "Leeds United" (it was already pretty damn small). Her loyal fans also rose to her defense, and a grassroots ReBellyOn website was launched.

The incident was the final straw in Palmer's already fractured relationship with Roadrunner Records, a subsidiary of the Warner Music Group. The singer subsequently asked to be released from her contractual obligations. So far the label has declined her request.

Palmer consoled herself with the very loving and direct relationship she enjoys with her fans via MySpace and her own blog. So when she sparked even more outrage with the release of her follow-up video, for the song "Oasis", they were the first people she turned to for help.

Amanda's semi-autobiographical lyrics tell a story of rape and abortion as told from the perspective of a teenager, who gets through the traumatic experience thanks to her preoccupation with the Brit-pop band Oasis. The subject matter of the song, and the up-beat way it was portrayed in the video, proved to be too much for broadcasters to handle.

Palmer, who is currently touring Europe, received an email while she was in the U.K. from her label there explaining that "all"' of the TV outlets had refused to play the video due to it "making light of rape, religion and abortion." Palmer, in response, reached out to her fans via a lengthy missive on her blog, and by calling up SuicideGirls.

Nicole Powers: Hello.

Amanda Palmer: Bonsoir.

NP: So you're in France right now? Whereabouts?

AP: I'm in Toulouse. It's really quite beautiful.

NP: So are you enjoying the French experience, the fine wine and wonderful cheese?

AP: Yes, unfortunately. It makes performing seem secondary actually, to the cuisine and the wine, but one does what one can to shuffle.

NP: I think that would be the rule of thumb for the whole of France; Anything that anyone does in France is secondary to the food and the wine.

AP: Yeah. It's clearly a beautiful way to live life. I have noticed that as I grow older I am becoming more and more orientated towards the enjoyment of food and wine, and much less concerned about basically everything else.

NP: I'm guessing that being in France is probably a good place to be right now, because maybe it's putting the drama of the video situation in perspective.

AP: Yeah. Nobody in France gives a shit actually about how funny I am or am not about rape and abortion luckily.

NP: Does the humor even translate?

AP: The fans know, the fans know what the songs are about. One thing I have to say that's really nice about my fan base in general in France or Germany, or wherever, is that the vast majority of the people are highly educated and all speak English, so they pick up on the subtly of the lyrics, which is really important to me because the lyrics are obviously so critical to the music. None of them are really just throwaway who-gives-a-shit lyrics, they're really central.

NP: So you're touring in Germany too. That's almost like selling ice to Iceland, because the particular form of cabaret that you do was born in Germany and Berlin during the war.

AP: Yeah, well we certainly gave an early nod to Germany when we were first explaining to people what the band was like and about. But it's one of those chicken and egg things. I mean, I think, even if the band wasn't called the Dresden Dolls, and I hadn't tagged us with this Brechtian name, I think people in Germany would totally dig the style anyway.

NP: But I think it's important to underline, given what you're going through now, that the style of music you do was born out of a terrible situation and a terrible time in war-torn Germany and Berlin, where such humor was a coping mechanism.

AP: Absolutely. I think that you'll find that's true across the board in every way with so many things, that art is always a direct, sometimes desperate response to what is going on culturally and politically. I mean that story is as old as the hills.

NP: Getting on to the video ban and the subject matter of the song, my initial reaction as an adult was that it was inappropriate, but then as I listened to the lyrics and watched the video, I realized what a great characterization it was, and how accurately you depicted the voice of a teenager. Teenagers do trivialize the stuff that they're traumatized by the most. Again, it's a basic coping mechanism, and the people in charge of what gets broadcast clearly aren't understanding that.

AP: Well you know, I think it's worse than that. I think that the broadcasters do understand it, but they're not giving enough credit to their audience to be also able to pick up on the irony. I think the broadcasters are sitting around saying, "Well we understand the humor, but obviously the general public won't be able to pick up on the subtlety." And I think that that is incredibly dangerous and really insulting. Because what happens then when you wind up with a bunch of mainstream content that's completely shooting at the lowest common denominator? Then you wind up in a snowballing situation where, if the content isn't intelligent, then people will actually become stupider.

NP: I think it's also something more insidious than that. I found it very interesting that in your blog you said that someone at the BBC said the song might be palatable for broadcast if you sung it slowly and in a minor key. That's like saying rape and abortion is only OK to discuss publicly as long as we view the woman as a victim.

AP: Yes, and the situation as sad and tragic. That's why this conversation gets really dicey. It's why, in my blog, I drew the comparison to that incredible Holocaust movie, Life Is Beautiful. There's nothing about the song or that film that says don't take this thing seriously, but it's a commentary about life that says people, especially teenagers, don't always take things seriously, and that's a subtle differentiation but such an important one in art. Because you're reflecting what's out there, and what's out there isn't necessarily good, you know?

NP: It goes without saying, obviously the teenager in your song was not happy about being raped, but is society saying that if a woman is raped it's only palatable if she sits around moping and is in tears for the next six months?

AP: Yeah. I think you basically just hit the nail on the head. It really makes people uncomfortable, especially with subjects like this, when you tell it how it might be...I think the most important thing, to bring it back to the artist's position, is that you have to have the freedom to reflect on everything. You have to have the freedom to reflect on a fucked up teenager's fucked up reaction to a fucked up situation, even though there are a lot of elements of that whole landscape that people might find uncomfortable. If you can't reflect on the realities of what's going on out there because people don't like those realities, then you're sort of forced to sweep those realities under the rug, which is when you get into trouble.

NP: In your blog you talk about how the song isn't really about rape and abortion, it's about the girl's denial. But what the song's actually bringing out is society's own tendency towards denial.

AP: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. It's very complicated, I mean there's so many issues that are stirring around in there that you could dredge out, like how people feel about abortion, and how women often are blamed. The same is true with rape and date-rape, and all of these really touchy subjects can come up. But, none of those subjects were in my mind when I wrote this song. It's just funny how that winds up happening because none of that was on the agenda at all.

NP: You talk about how women are blamed for abortion, in America abortion is a terrifying prospect, not only because of the procedure, but because of the traumatic experience a women has to go through at the hands of the anti-abortion brigade.

AP: Absolutely.

NP: Why are these people so focused on being anti-abortion? Wouldn't their energy be better used if they were anti-rape? They should focus their anger on the fact that kids can't always get the correct 'family planning', I hate that euphemism, information, or access to birth control. Why do women focus their anger on other women in terrible situations?

AP: Yeah. Absolutely. To me it's such a terrible irony. The most obviously example was some years ago when those pro-lifers busted into an abortion clinic and shot a bunch of people. How exactly are you defining pro-life?

But you know, I didn't deal with it in my blog, but that was my experience. I would have to say the worst part about getting an abortion wasn't the surgery itself, it was having to deal with people screaming at me outside of the clinic, and literally shoving up against me, and shoving pictures of mutilated fetuses in my face. I think, if anything else, when it comes down to it, writing that song was my way of processing that kind of assault, and just making it into a joke, which is how I process it, and that's got to be fair.

NP: How old were you when that happened?

AP: I was seventeen.

NP: So you were essentially that girl in the song?

AP: Pretty much. I mean obviously I exaggerated it, and I turned it into a really hyperbolic joke. Certainly, I was taking it much more seriously than the character in the song. But to be able to characterize those things, and to be able to laugh at them, it's an effective -- and it has to be a valid -- coping mechanism.

NP: I love the way you talk about how humor is a weapon in your blog. It is a weapon that can raise us up out of victimhood. You yourself, are not a victim. You've used humor to transcend that.

AP: Absolutely. But I think more importantly, it's not that you have to choose humor, it's just like a woman's right to choose between having a kid and getting an abortion, your experience is your experience, and you should be able to process and deal the way that you need to without other people demanding that you feel and experience anything a certain way. That includes everything, absolutely everything.

I think that's where art and artists are really essential in culture period, because they often break that ground that helps people come to terms with, and cope with, their own emotions about things. Because artists do always take it one step further, and push the edge and open up strange possibilities and pry through the darkest cracks of consciousness that you don't usually do just like sitting in your kitchen, brewing tea.

That's why people love music so much, and it's why people tend to embrace art and get really personal about it, because the best artists and songwriters, at least in my life in my experience, are those who put those experiences into a perspective that we're not able to, and laugh about them, or cry about them, or make them completely surreal. It's so necessary for life that we not only allow it but it should be encouraged -- we should be encouraging artists to do that.

NP: What helped you at the time? You were seventeen and must have felt very alone and very shocked.What music were you listening to to help you cope?

AP: Seventeen, it probably would have been The Cure and Depeche Mode. Seriously...I was a singer in high school, I think right around then my favorite band was The Legendary Pink Dots, and I was probably still listening to Violator and Disintegration, and Robyn Hitchcock who has a fantastic, bizarre sense of humor and shaped me a lot...Also Morrissey, who also has this great way of pushing the lines between what is and isn't appropriate to sing and talk about.

When I look at those songwriters who I really worshipped...When you hear people singing about the unsingable or talking about the unspeakable, but they're artists, I just assumed growing up that all artists had a special status in which they were immune to any kind of rules and regulations about what they were or weren't allowed to talk about, and that anything that was imaginable was allowed to be put into creation. But you know, it's not up to anyone to do that but the artist themselves. It's the artist who has to sit there and get the wild idea and manifest it and stand on trail

NP: Instead of it getting easier for artists to express unpopular or uncomfortable ideas (as it did in the first three-quarters of the 20th century), it seems now to be getting harder. Obviously the Dixie Chicks is the example to throw out there.

AP: Oh that was ridiculous.

NP: And this kind of censorship goes on all the time, behind closed doors in the offices of broadcasters on a daily basis. There's so much censorship going on that we don't even know about or question.

AP: I think there's two things that come to mind when you talk about that. One is the fact that mainstream music in order to survive has had to become increasingly more commercial, but that is due directly to the fact that music now can exist pretty much entirely on the internet and spread via word of mouth and not rely on mainstream promotional channels at all. So things are getting pushed in both directions. MTV is getting more and more terrified, and your mainstream radio outlets, who are losing business by the boatload, are making even more conservative decisions than usual because they can't afford to lose a single advertiser.

But in the meantime, an artist like me who has never really relied on those mainstream outlets, is getting all of her attention via MySpace and YouTube and by word of mouth by email. I think people underestimate the degree to which that is right on the brink of permanently changing. That sort of control is just going to be a thing of the past as everything become totally democratized on the internet.

The thing we need to worry about now is the outlets like YouTube starting to edit content at the hands of the advertisers, which is very slowly starting to happen. I mean, I don't know if you also picked this up on my blog, but YouTube just took down a whole bunch of my videos because they're involved in a lawsuit with Warner Music -- about money. It's just such an interesting time because we've got a lot to talk about and there's obviously this whole new paradigm that is taking shape, and the artists are sitting within it trying to figure out where exactly they fit.

NP: So your videos all just got caught up in the lawsuit?

AP: Yeah. They've since been put back up, but not with the original play counts. So a video that had a couple of hundred thousand hits now is just starting from scratch, which is obviously a pain in the ass.

It's scary, we're all used to everything on the internet being free, but there is going to come this breaking point at which things become, once again commercialized. It's something I really worry about, because I hear young rock bands talking about this nowadays, and they're actually talking about getting endorsed by products, sneakers and sunglasses, as if this is something cool. They never got the memo that that's actually completely ridiculous, and that they need to be so much more careful with their image and their art.

NP: But to be fair on these new bands, that's because people don't value music and they don't consider it something that should be paid for, so these bands have no expectation of being able to make money from music sales.

AP: Yeah. But that's fucked up. We actually can't survive that way. That is not any way for real artists to function.

NP: People need to start valuing music again.

AP: Well it comes down to the artist/fan relationship. Ignoring the middle-man for a second, and ignoring all the other people who want to make money, can the fans and the artists make a pact with each other that they will take care of each other, without interference. That's what I'm trying very hard specifically to do with my fan base, and they're coming along for the ride, which is fantastic. I would encourage all other artists and fans to do the same thing.

It's like a real relationship. It's a commitment. The fan has to be able to commit to the artist and say, "Wow, you rely on me to survive. I'm going to have to give you some money." And the artists have to be able to turn round to the fan and say, "You are literally supporting me, and I need to treat you with respect, and not over-price my fucking tickets. And not screw you in any way, not take advantage of you, not push products in your faces." Like any other relationship, it's got to be based on a real trust and mutual respect. Those are the relationships that will stand the test of time, and those are the bands that will survive, the ones that really get that that is fundamentally where we're headed.

NP: How do you explain to your fans about this trust and two-way support?

AP: I literally explain it to them through the blog and through the mailing list. I just constantly reiterate and point out that I'm relying on them to survive -- especially since things have gone awry with my relationship with the label that I'm on. That I really need their support, that I need them to actually buy the record, I need them to sign up for the mailing list, I need them to tell people about the shows.

In exchange I give myself completely when I play live. I refuse to phone-in a gig, and I will meet every single person who is standing in line for an autograph every night, even if it takes me four hours sometimes. So it's an ongoing dialog. That's what I fucking love about the internet. The questions are different every day, and the audience can actually ask me, and I can sit there at my Mac backstage and type in, "This is what we should do...this is how we can support the system."



Here are the "offending" videos. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.


"Oasis" - Making light of rape, religion and abortion?



'Leeds United" - Not what people like?


Amanda Palmer is currently on tour. Check her MySpace page for further info.

by Blogbot Here’s a selection of the best Sexy Santa fashions that naughty and nice Suicide Girls will be putting on — and taking off – this year. (image) [Abbiss in A Christmas Dream] (image) [Antigone in Naughty And Nice] (image) [Elora in Naughty Santa] (image) [DeeDee in Christmess] (image)... more

by Blogbot

Here’s a selection of the best Sexy Santa fashions that naughty and nice Suicide Girls will be putting on — and taking off – this year.





[Abbiss in A Christmas Dream]



[Antigone in Naughty And Nice]



[Elora in Naughty Santa]



[DeeDee in Christmess]



[Tekky in Steals Christmas]



[Loe in Santa Baby]



[Smitten in Sweet Xmas]

Want a SuicideGirl in your stocking this year? Get our SuicideGirls Holiday Gift Package ($35.00): The gift of love – SG style. A year’s membership in gift card form – plus a copy of issue two of our magazine.

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

by Blogbot (video) 1. Snoop Dogg pimps out the Night Before Christmas Cordozar Calvin Broadus a.k.a. Snoop Dogg puts his own spin on the Christmas classic. According to him, Santa would rather drink Pepsi Max from his cup than have milk with his cookies. He also alleges the white-bearded wonder has quite... more

by Blogbot



1. Snoop Dogg pimps out the Night Before Christmas

Cordozar Calvin Broadus a.k.a. Snoop Dogg puts his own spin on the Christmas classic. According to him, Santa would rather drink Pepsi Max from his cup than have milk with his cookies. He also alleges the white-bearded wonder has quite the potty mouth.

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2. Very Bad Santa

Casting further doubt on Santa’s character, this security video catches him in a drunk and disorderly state. Let’s hope this was a post-present delivery celebration, since we’d hate to think he was driving his sleigh under the influence.



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3. Grace Jones rocks Little Drummer Boy in the presence of Pee Wee Herman.

YouTube says “there’s no description available” and that just about sums this up. Seems Pee Wee is just a slave to Jones’ rhythm.

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4. You can’t kill Frosty without consequences.

The video shows a bus driver committing a hit and run on a Snow Man that was chillin’ in the middle of a road on the University of Illinois campus. Shortly after it was posted on YouTube the driver who committed the snow job was forced to resign, a Facebook page was subsequently created to get the driver reinstated.

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5. Xmas Lights That’ll Rock Your World

This video, shot by a hardcore Slayer fan, seriously ups the ante on domestic decorations.

Zooey Deschanel is as beautiful, funny and charming in person as you all expected. Even though she comes from a family of movie people, her father is legendary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Zooey seems as down to earth as anyone. I got a chance to talk with her at the Toronto Film Festival where Winter... more

Zooey Deschanel is as beautiful, funny and charming in person as you all expected. Even though she comes from a family of movie people, her father is legendary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Zooey seems as down to earth as anyone. I got a chance to talk with her at the Toronto Film Festival where Winter Passing, her newest independent film, premiered.

Winter Passing has Deschanel playing a young actor who returns home after a seven-year absence to her famous alcoholic father [Ed Harris] and a house full of strangers that include a religious wandering loner [Will Ferrell] and one of her father’s former students [Amelia Warner].

Check out the official site for Winter Passing

Daniel Robert Epstein: I liked Winter Passing a lot.

Zooey Deschanel: Oh thank you!

DRE: Have you been to the Toronto Film Festival before?

ZD: I have, yeah. My first film, Mumford, was here. It’s exciting to be back. It's a really great festival.

DRE: I’ve been to festivals in New York. It’s nice to be able to leave and go home when you’re done. Toronto is obviously different

ZD: Yeah I know. It is weird once you travel to places for work and you have to navigate your way in a new place and be working at the same time.

DRE: I saw you and Bryce [Dallas Howard] chatting with each other. It’s nice to see people like you interact naturally with one another.

ZD: Right, [laughs] she's a good friend of mine but I haven't seen her in a long time. It's nice when all these people who travel so much gather in one place for a couple days. You end up running into a lot of old friends.

DRE: How did Winter Passing come to you?

ZD: My agents and manager read it and really liked it. They sent it to me and I thought it was really great. It was interesting to read a script that had such a complex female character. It's so rare in this business for a female character to have so much depth. I was really excited about it and I hoped I would get a chance to do it. I wanted to work with [writer/director] Adam [Rapp] because he’s such an interesting and incredible writer.

DRE: Had you seen his stage plays?

ZD: No, I'd never seen anything he'd done.

DRE: I’ve only seen his brother’s acting.

ZD: His brother's just an amazing actor and he had a part in Winter Passing which was really funny. Since we did the movie I’ve read more of Adam’s work and he has such an amazing voice. We're lucky that we got him to do films because up until now he was just doing theatre.

DRE: I saw your sister’s show being advertised everywhere.

ZD: Isn't she wonderful? I was just driving down Pico Blvd and there's my big sister on this huge billboard. It is so amazing and exciting.

DRE: Being from a family of artists like your sister and of course your father, did that help you relate to your role in Winter Passing?

ZD: Obviously the family in Winter Passing is very dysfunctional. She’s an actress and her parents were writers so they treat art as almost another member of the family. There's a line in the film where I say, “This house is one big silent museum of suffering.” It’s that artistic temperament hanging over everybody's head. In that family it is almost more important than family members in some ways.

My own family has always had a very close relationship. I've always been very supported. My work doesn’t really have much to do with my personal relationships but it is exciting to grow as an artist and to be able to do more complex roles. It’s wonderful to have family to talk to who can see things from that point of view.

DRE: Your character is in such an awful emotional state most of the movie, it must be scary to put yourself in that mindset so much. Especially that scene where you walk in on Ed Harris crying.

ZD: Yeah, that was a really intense scene. We were shooting in New Jersey in the dead of winter and we were all really tired. It was the middle of the night and that garage was like the coldest place I've ever been.

DRE: So it wasn’t a set?

ZD: Oh no. It was a real garage. Sets are for movies with money. It was definitely intimidating to work with an actor of Ed’s caliber. I think that informed some of it. Ed was so heartbreaking when he cried and even though this was the difficult job I’ve ever done, Ed is such a generous actor that the scenes with him were almost easy. It was an incredible, fortunate turn of events that allowed me to work with such an incredible actor.

DRE: This could be one of my favorite Ed Harris roles.

What made this character so difficult for you?

ZD: It’s a character that's teetering all the time. It is so much easier to be crying all the time in a role because extreme emotions are much easier than playing someone who’s constantly on the edge of something. In the beginning she's someone who can't feel any emotion and then it slowly gets to the point where she becomes in touch with her own feelings and can actually walk down the street with a guy.

DRE: The sex scenes and nudity were totally relevant too.

ZD: If it's gratuitous it's not interesting but if it informs the movie and it helps explain the character I don't think that there's anything wrong with nudity. But sometimes it seems that there's a lot of gratuitous sex and nudity in films that doesn't help tell the story. I never felt taken advantage of.

DRE: When I spoke with Neve Campbell recently she said that for her first nude scene her director [James Toback] pretty much allowed her to direct herself and he followed her with the camera. Did Adam do anything like that?

ZD: Really it was a discussion. It was great working with Adam, because it was always a dialogue. The ideal situation is a director guiding things along. If I can’t bring in my ideas then why even hire an actor, just get a model. With Adam it was always back and forth. As far as the sex scenes, I think we all just discussed what would be the most appropriate thing.

DRE: If the movie had a different ending when you read it, would you have wanted to be in the movie?

ZD: There was a draft with a different ending. I might have said something about it but I don't do a movie for an ending. I do a movie because the material is good. Though it would have been a shame if the ending was different but I definitely wouldn't have turned it down.

DRE: Did you bring the script to Will Ferrell?

ZD: No! It was pure coincidence. I met Adam at a bar at this hotel and he said “I just met Will Ferrell for the part.” I was really excited because I didn't know who to picture in that role. But when he said Will, I couldn’t think of anyone more perfect. Will is such a good actor and he has such like a heartbreaking quality about him that works perfectly in the movie. I thought it was such a great thing for him to show that side of himself.

DRE: Were you disappointed that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy didn’t do very well?

ZD: I don't know. All of us going into it were excited because it was this really cool director who makes these incredible music videos; it had all these interesting actors and this great material. We took our best shot at it. I really like the film and I want to please people but in the end, you have to just put it out there and do your best work. I guess I don’t really care what anybody else thinks.

DRE: Have you heard of SuicideGirls?

ZD: I have heard of it, yeah. There was somebody I knew who was working for SuicideGirls. I haven't been on the site, but it sounded really cool.

DRE: The members really like you and the way you put yourself together. Do you do it all yourself?

ZD: I do. I have naturally dark hair and pale skin so people put certain things on me because of the way I look. It’s my job to play with that a little bit as an actor. But there's a certain core persona that you can't change. Obviously my style and my idea of what looks cool is one thing. I wear my own clothes. People always want me to dye my hair for roles but I feel comfortable with my brown hair. It's fun to play with different identities but it's important to me to present myself as I am.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck