Classic Set of the Day:


DebraJean - Shotgun Wedding



When DebraJean came to shoot this set she arrived in the rain with a shotgun she had toted in her backpack on the bus. I was a bit nervous but she said "Oh it wasn't a problem it wasn't loaded" then she proceeded to take her clothes off. DebraJean is one of a kind, truly a classic.

"I do try like hell to not be ashamed. But, sometimes I am, I have to admit," says New Jersey-born comedienne, actress and activist, Janeane Garofalo. We've been talking for close to 45 minutes - mostly about TV, politics, the media, and the toxicity of contemporary pop culture. As I switch... more

"I do try like hell to not be ashamed. But, sometimes I am, I have to admit," says New Jersey-born comedienne, actress and activist, Janeane Garofalo. We've been talking for close to 45 minutes - mostly about TV, politics, the media, and the toxicity of contemporary pop culture. As I switch the tape recorder off and the conversation winds down, we briefly discuss what Garofalo herself turns to in order to unwind, which is the source of her current state of angst.

"Sometimes I fall dreadfully short, behavior-wise, activity-wise. Sometimes I'll watch bad television, sometimes I'll read crappy magazines and I'm ashamed, because I've done it," she admits. The New York resident, who recently released a new stand up DVD entitled If You Will, is currently living outside of her comfort zone in a Los Angeles hotel while filming the Criminal Minds spin-off Suspect Behavior (which also stars Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker).

Like crack down a pipe, The Young and the Restless is coming down the cable into her hotel room, and Garofalo is unable to resist her nightly SOAPnet fix. "I discovered it when I started staying here two months ago. And I have been falling asleep to it," she reveals when asked about her "guilty pleasures" (my words not hers).

Though a daytime drama might just be a pleasant - if unsubstantial - distraction for anyone else, for the earnestly politically correct Garofalo it's a matter of personal integrity. "If I'm going to be falling asleep, I should be reading," says the Air America alum, who doesn't want to be guilty of denigrating the work of fellow actors by using my "guilty pleasure" phrase, nor of indulging in the potentially socially toxic material we've previously been discussing.

"I do feel guilt and it is my pleasure," adds Garofalo, who it seems is constantly torn between her desire to fix society and her need to participate in it - flaws and all. Holding herself to impossible standards of moral perfection may be the source of undue anxiety, but Garofalo's awareness of her own - and our culture's - shortcomings brings sharp social commentary to her humor, and makes for an illuminating conversation - which, after a little small talk, soon turns to topics that carry more gravitas than glasses.

Nicole Powers: You rock the nerd glasses like no one else I know. You look so hot in them. But on the DVD you describe yourself as "a bit of a neo-luddite" when it comes to technology. I feel so led astray. On 24, you did all this crazy geek shit and you totally looked like you could actually do it.

Janeane Garofalo: Yeah, but I am not computer savvy. I don't use a computer. But that is not the glasses' fault. They're not nerd glasses anymore, nor have they been for years. These glasses, whether they be cat eye or Clark Kent glasses, are now such a standard of the Lower East Side of New York, that the nerd issue is long gone. So you can't be angry at me.

NP: I'm just jealous. I'm a geek, but I can't work it in glasses like that.

JG: I bet you could...I think most people look better with glasses. Especially if they are in the right frames, it enhances the character of their face. I'm glad I have to wear glasses. Not only because I like them, but, as I get older, so I don't have to worry about people really recognizing all the signs of aging around my eyes. I know I shouldn't care about those things, but I have to be honest, it does bother me to witness the aging process and glasses hide that a little bit...The show that I'm on now, I don't wear glasses I wear contacts. And, it's in HD, which is the scourge of my existence. I wish so much my character could wear glasses, just so I could hide behind them.

NP: This is the new Criminal Intent?

JG: It's Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. But I can understand why you'd be confused because there's 8 million crime procedural shows, all with similar names.

NP: I have every confidence now that there are more crimes solved on TV each week then there are solved in real life by police in America.

JG: That's why we like those shows isn't it? We like to imagine there is a fully functioning and honest judicial system where things are properly adjudicated through the courts and the bad guys always get caught. That's why these shows are popular. Because we want to believe...In the same way, medical dramas are popular - 'cause you want to believe there's all those doctors out there who care, who will go the extra mile for you.

NP: What's going to make your crime procedural stand apart from the others?

JG: That's the problem with TV isn't it? Hopefully just having Forest Whittaker will set it apart in some way. But this is my dilemma with network television. As much as I love working there - because it is wonderful to have a job - ask anybody who's unemployed. I am filled with gratitude for working. What I'm not thrilled about is network television's constraints that they put on the writers...

I wish we had more freedom. But that's the nature of mainstream television. It doesn't really allow you to be too terribly different under the auspices of the crime genre. But Forest, just watching him work, he really is different. It's not like any other detective that I've seen. He just does it differently. He just has his own style. And, hopefully, I will be able to bring something different to it - at least that's my intention.

NP: So are you Forest's sidekick?

JG: I am indeed. It's a wonderful cast. It's Michael Kelly, Beau Garrett, Matt Ryan and Richard Schiff from The West Wing. It's nice to work with him again. The cast is fantastic and the crew is great. It's a real joy to work there. But I am not thrilled with all this violence - especially the violence against women. It really pricks at my conscience.

NP: Right. I love Law & Order, but the SVU series...

JG: Yeah, that bothers me.

NP: It makes me feel uncomfortable.

JG: Me too.

NP: Because it does make the crimes salacious and titillating.

JG: Salacious - that's the word I use on a daily basis. On a daily basis. It actually sometimes keeps me up at night, because my conscience is bothering me about it. Believe me, I'm not alone on the show in this feeling. Hopefully we will be able to get past that, because myself and the other cast members, our consciences do feel what you're feeling, and the word salacious is a perfect way to describe it.

NP: There is this weird imbalance, especially on network TV. You can show sex as part of a crime because then it's technically not sexy, but of course we all know that they're making it that way.

JG: It's for titillation purposes.

NP: But you can't show sex in a positive way, in a purely sexual way, because that's sex.

JG: It's totally fucked. And it's not culturally helpful. I don't want to be culturally irresponsible. But luckily, everyone in the cast - Forest especially - we are all hyper aware of that. So, even though they have that stuff, believe me, we are trying to move past that. I'm hoping that we can because we don't need more of it in the culture.

It's no different than British Petroleum pumping shit out into the gulf is it? It's like a pipe pumping out toxic waste, and luckily I'm working with people who are aware that that is not what we want to be doing, and hopefully we won't. But, unfortunately, you know that bullshit phrase that people use: We give the people want they want?

NP: Right, yes.

JG: Like it's the public demanding this kind of tawdry nonsense. I don't like that kind of pass the buck attitude, but a lot of stuff [like] that happens when you take these jobs on television. They sort of say, "Yeah, look, I didn't want to do that either, but the public likes it." I don't buy that. If you give them good stuff, they love it too. I mean, look at Mad Men.

NP: Also look at Oprah. I remember when the afternoon talk show circuit had devolved into this sordid and sensational scene. Then Oprah chose to break out and take the high ground, and look where Oprah is now compared to the other hosts of that era.

JG: Of course. It's a flawed argument. Sure there's some segment of the public that likes to eat shit. Fine. That's not my problem. We don't have to feed them that - right? But if you give the public good things, they do like that too. It's not fair to presume that the whole of the public and the aggregate wants a mediocre product. Also that's a weird point of origin for a show isn't it? Luckily, we have these discussions, like the one you are having now. I don't know if other shows have these discussions - maybe they do.

NP: Is it a fairly collaborative process between you and the writers?

JG: Yes. It is in that we can have these discussions. But sometimes I, and the cast, we don't prevail. We are overridden by the powers that be...So it is collaborative in that they are quite open to us at any time coming in to the offices and saying that. They go, "Eventually, once we're on our feet and the show is airing, we're going to move away from that." Then the cast always says, "But why are we starting there?"

But they feel like to start there is the way to get people, which I disagree with. But they feel like that's how you do it. You give them something they are familiar with and then you can move and get more creative. I hope in a way, in this case, they're right and I'm wrong, because I do want people to watch it. I do want to work there. I do want to keep my job. I do want to do a good show. I don't want to be part of something that I don't think is helpful culturally, and I don't want to do anything that's tawdry, masquerading as a crime series. Does that make sense?

NP: Absolutely. It is just so weird, the relationship that television in particular has with human sexuality. The flip side of that is this whole spate of shows highlighting teen pregnancy. All they've done is open their legs and forgotten to use a condom and we reward these kids with TV shows and magazine covers.

JG: It's no different than toxic waste or mercury in fish. It's low level poisoning...All of this mainstream entertainment, if you will, and mainstream tabloid journalism and mainstream corporate media news, lots of it is no different than mercury poisoning and low-level degradation. Bit by bit, piece by piece. They say you are what you eat, but you are what you read, you are what you see, you are what you process, and you are what you do with it.

NP: Right. Young children learn by repeating what they see.

JG: It's patterning and desensitization. It's a lack of consciousness. The collective unconscious is being degraded. But, you know, this is not new. This has been happening for years.

NP: It's been happening for years, but I guess the one thing that is new with reality TV is the glorification of dysfunction.

JG: You're right. And it's so-called reality TV, because it's not is it? Because what is it? The Hawthorne Effect, meaning that nobody can behave naturally because they're aware of being watched.

NP: The very fact that you're observing changes behavior.

JG: Exactly. And the producers of these shows encourage bad behavior, and then the editors are cast with editing it to the worst way. It is this chain where the shit is rolling down hill, and everybody passes the buck. Everybody says that this is what the public wants. Everybody just wants to keep their jobs. Everybody just wants to get a paycheck because they want to put their kids in a nice school...But, especially if you have kids, you should care more about this shit. You're being emotionally, mentally and intellectually shoved and pushed and prodded until you are just a blunt object, you know, societaly...I'm getting so hepped up here I'm not even articulating myself correctly. Do you know what I mean? So we're all just dense. We just don't care. You lose your empathy for people. You lose your perspective on what is proper behavior. How to appropriately treat one another.

NP: We've become desensitized to bad behavior en masse, as a society.

JG: It's just garbage, garbage, garbage. Tabloid magazines, sub-par news, crappy television programming, these reality shows where people are fighting, and, also, just the language in general. Just the degradation of the English language. The slang and the coarseness. Then add to that the texting and the sexting, and just the snark and the culture of cruelty, all of it - it's just a sea of garbage. Hopefully though, what will happen is there will be a renaissance out of it, of people rejecting this, moving in a different direction, saying, "You know what? I can't take this anymore."

NP: I'd like to think that will be the case, but the direction we're going in, I mean, can you get lower than Jersey Shore?

JG: Well, The Hills is just as shit, isn't it? The only difference is socio-economics.

NP: I guess you're right.

JG: People seem to pick on the Jersey Shore kids because it seems worse. But what is the difference between The Hills, The Kardashians and Jersey Shore? Money.

NP: You're absolutely right.

JG: What's the difference between political crime, corporate crime and the mafia? Better suits. Money. [That's] the difference between the Cosa Nostra, the actual mafia, and say Bush, Cheney, British Petroleum and Karl Rove. What is the difference between organized and political corporate crime? Better suits and they don't use double negatives.

And what's the difference between a gang of street thugs and corporate and political criminals? Money. And how we process it. Somehow Dick Cheney is considered different than any other gang member in East LA, for no reason other than imbued money/power status. And, of course, that guys like Dick Cheney are above the law, and guys in East LA are not.

NP: Right. And guys like Dick Cheney are absolute master manipulators.

JG: Yeah. They are sociopaths. Dick Cheney is a sociopath. He has no empathy. He clearly does not feel remorse, and, he clearly has no problem lying.

NP: I know that you hate the Tea Party movement, but that's a so-called "grassroots" bunch of folks that are virtually all victims of sociopaths. They're victims of manipulators who are cynically and deliberately motivating uneducated people to act against their self-interest.

JG: Exactly. Okay, the Tea Party movement, the Tea Baggers, they are suckers right? But they also are racist. Racist. It's not a populist movement at all. It's a racist movement. The first Tea Party was scheduled for Obama's inauguration day, so clearly they were upset with the job he was doing before he even did it. Never before has anyone asked to see a president's birth certificate. The Tea Party movement is built on one thing - hatred of the color of the man's skin and fear of modern multicultural America. I've never met more apologists for racists in my life then I have from the Tea Party movement.

But yes, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Dick Armey, all these cynics at the top, all these sociopaths at the top - they suffer from what [psychiatrists now] call Antisocial Personality Disorder - which, in behavioral psychology, is somebody that continuously does things that harm society, feels no remorse, guilt, [they're] not tethered to honesty.

NP: They're smart enough to know that racism is wrong, but they have no qualms about using it as a manipulation tool - to unite through a common hatred.

JG: Unite through hate. That is what the Republican Party stands for. That's what they've been standing for, more or less, since the Civil Rights era. The conservative movement and the Republican party of the last 40 years has been moving steadily to the right, and steadily to being the party of wedge issues. Because contemporary society has outgrown the Republican Party, so they have to do this. They have to keep micromanaging, and keep inspiring hate wherever they can - fear wherever they can - so that they can manipulate people into voting against their better interest. That's just a tale as old as time. What is the difference between that and any gang member, anywhere? It's the same.

NP: I think that gang behavior is more honest.

JG: Yes, it is.

NP: I think your average Tea Partier is a victim of abuse and manipulation.

JG: But they're still racist aren't they?

NP: They're blinded by hatred.

JG: And fear.

NP: But the people who are truly evil are the people that are inciting and manipulating that hatred and fear.

JG: Exactly.

NP: It's just classic mind control, and tactics of distraction. I mean the Tea Baggers aren't even talking about the tax breaks for the rich.

JG: Of course not! It's not about policy. It's about emotion. It's all limbic brain. It has nothing to do with actual policy. You can tell a right-winger - whether it be a Tea Bagger or whatever you want to call them - anything but the truth. They'll believe anything you tell them, but the truth. In fact the truth causes them to become confused and angry. They get quite reactive. They don't like facts. They don't like to think of the big picture. They don't like to be empathetic. They don't like to see things from many perspectives. They don't like nuance. It's all the limbic brain. It's neuroscience. It's emotional.

NP: The other thing that they use to manipulate is religion. It's just another manipulation tool in American politics.

JG: In all politics...It has been utilized and used as a weapon, as a divider, in every culture in every era. It's not new. One would hope we would've outgrown it by now. There's nothing inherently wrong with religion in and of itself. I don't care, especially if you're a guy like Martin Luther King. More power to you if you're going to use religion as a tool to better yourself and society. Wonderful. But that's not how most leaders use it. I also happen to like science. I'm interested in it. It answers the big questions and it comforts me. I don't know why more people who are religious don't feel comforted by scientific answers because they're fine with every other area of technology.

NP: People that reject science and believe humans walked around with dinosaurs, still watch TV and use cell phones.

JG: Exactly. They also will avail themselves of medical technology. Say they have a premature baby, they will use every area of medical technology to save their baby but they will still vote against stem cell research.

I'm getting all hepped up lady. This is crazy. I have to go soon. I have to go to work. But we have gotten into many interesting areas. I hope you don't feel that I'm being too strident with you.

NP: Not at all. SuicideGirls is all about being strident. I think there's a need to be more so. I believe that one of the greatest ills in this country is apathy. When you allow apathy to rule, that's when the people that aren't apathetic, like the Tea Baggers that are fueled with hate, can bring their minority agenda to the fore.

JG: Exactly. There's a famous phrase: Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people. I think Margaret Mead said it. She meant it in a positive way, but it also can be used the other way. Never underestimate the power of guys like Karl Rove, and how much damage they can do.

These right-wingers never ultimately win, because time marches on and it marches past them. If conservatives always won, we'd still own slaves and women would never vote. They never ultimately win - right? But they do a hell of a lot of damage in the meantime kicking and screaming towards a more evolved society.

...Don't lose faith, or heart. The news and everything focuses undo attention on these people. The majority of the country is not backward like this. It's a good titillating news story, to focus on these people as if they are legitimate. They aren't. They imbue them with legitimacy, just like they imbued in the Civil Rights era legitimacy on the people that were beating up Civil Rights marchers. But they're not legitimate.

NP: That's why I'm really enjoying the stand Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart are taking at the moment, organizing their own opposing rallies.

JG: Of course, and you know, we can all do it...Every single one of us can take a stand personally. We can all do it. And, it does make a difference. The biggest thing, and you're quite right, apathy. That's the worst place you can be in, because then life just happens to you. All this stuff just happens to you, and you're just witnessing the back slide of culture, and you're not doing anything about it.

NP: Right. We're all complaining about Jersey Shore while watching it.

JG: Right. And also, who gives a shit ultimately? Why are we complaining about Jersey Shore? The editors and the producers of the show have made them look horrible. Just like in The Hills or The Kardashians - wherever these crap-tastic shows are. These people are edited to look at their worst, but you know, there's no reason to be watching it. It's like eating junk food. Just don't do it. Just put it down. Nobody is compelling you to watch it?

...Sometimes I'll do a radio interview and they try and discuss Jersey Shore, and I'll say, "I don't know. I haven't seen that, but do you want to talk about the Tea Party? There's other ways we can go with this conversation." And most people treat you like you're an asshole.

NP: No, I'm glad that you're fighting the fight. I very much hope with your TV show that you can push back, and you and Forest and the writers can get it to a place where you're comfortable and proud, and it moves the genre in a healthier direction.

JG: Yeah, I hope so too. Like I said, the network, they've been very good about listening, talking about this, which I think is unusual...Maybe they weren't thinking about it before - 'cause they were just making a product. Hopefully the cast is making them think about it. Or, I may get fired. That's always a possibility. I may get fired. I have to accept that. If you're going to discuss these types of things, and if its possible that somebody finds it irritating, you always have to be ready - or I do - I just have to be ready for somebody to say, "Well, maybe you shouldn't be here." Even though I want to have a job, like anyone, I have to accept they might say, "Look, this is the show we're doing, make a decision." I just have to always know that that may happen. I hope it doesn't, but I'm ready for it if it does.

NP: Well, I'm hoping for the more positive of those two outcomes.

JG: I hope so too, but you know, we'll see. I guess we'll see.


Janeane Garofalo: If You Will - Live in Seattle is available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior will debut on CBS in 2011.

Classic Set of the Day:


Lee - Cruella



Lee is a Canadian SuicideGirl who has been on the site since 2006. She is into sex, modeling, hanging out with friends, watching TV, and going to shows.

by Laurelin Four Loko is pouring college kids into bed all over the nation. An alcoholic beverage boasting caffeine, guarana, and taurine as well as carrying 12% alcohol is more appealing then a vat of fraternity jungle juice. Who doesn’t love booze and energy in a 23.5 ounce colorful can? It just screams... more

by Laurelin

Four Loko is pouring college kids into bed all over the nation. An alcoholic beverage boasting caffeine, guarana, and taurine as well as carrying 12% alcohol is more appealing then a vat of fraternity jungle juice. Who doesn’t love booze and energy in a 23.5 ounce colorful can? It just screams “drink me” – and it has the FDA screaming right back. Considered a public health concern, the Four Loko ban started in October 2010 on select college campuses all over the United States, and now the substance is well on its way to being illegal nationwide. As a result, the creators and brewers of Four Loko have agreed to pull three out of the four ingredients out of their beverage, waving goodbye to the caffeine, guarana and taurine as of November 17, 2010.

Being from Boston, Massachusetts and pretty much living under a rock when it comes to national news and issues, I had no idea that Four Loko even existed until it was already illegal. It would have been in my fridge a hell of a lot more if I had. The day before it became illegal had the city bustling with excitement and everyone making that mad dash to liquor stores before it was all gone. On my way to work at 11:30 AM I was already noticing liquor stores with signs in the window stating “Four Loko: Sold Out.”





[Laurelin in Sunrise]

Imagine my disappointment the next day when I found out exactly what was going on and that I couldn’t get some. It made me want it even more. But not badly enough to go out of my way for it. Luckily, I found myself home in Rhode Island for Thanksgiving a few days later, and conveniently visiting a friend at a liquor store. A variety case of Four Loko with an employee discount? Sure, why not. I’m a former college kid, former binge drinker, bartender, and all around mess. Maybe I’ll be different. Maybe I can successfully ride shotgun with Four Loko.

Last night. Scene: My friend Steve’s apartment, waiting for him to return from the gym so we could go out for some drinks on a Monday night. I am staring at my 23.5 ounce cranberry lemonade Four Loko like it might bite me. I conquer the beast, and pour half of it over ice in a red solo cup, drinking it over the next half an hour while sitting on the couch watching Bones. It doesn’t taste good, but it doesn’t taste bad either. Certainly better than a shot of cheap tequila. It might have been the awkward sexual tension between David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel, but my face was as red as a tomato and I had the strange urge to chug the rest right out of the can. I didn’t.

The rest of the night was kind of lame. Out to the bar we go, and half a Four Loko (11.75 ounces), one 12 ounce blue moon, one 24 ounce blue moon, one red headed slut shot and a 12 ounce keystone light brings laughter over stupid shit Steve and I did in college, but brings on no new stupid shit. Home and in bed by 2 AM, I was perfectly lucid. All in all, Four Loko, you have let me down. We probably could have been friends when I was in college and down for shotgunning even a bottle of Everclear, but for now, I remain level headed and victorious. Tomorrow night I’m taking the whole can down and trying again.

by Blogbot La Senza is putting some festive cheer into their stockings with their latest advertising campaign. The Canadian-based lingerie company has assembled a special “choir” featuring scantily clad models of varying proportions who each sing notes that correspond to their cup size. (video) Dubbed... more

by Blogbot

La Senza is putting some festive cheer into their stockings with their latest advertising campaign. The Canadian-based lingerie company has assembled a special “choir” featuring scantily clad models of varying proportions who each sing notes that correspond to their cup size.





Dubbed “The Cup Size Choir,” the group appears on video singing “Deck The Halls.” The clip has had well over a million views since it was first posted on YouTube on Dec 2. Further fun can be had at CupSizeChoir.com/ where you can play a special interactive Cup Size Choir keyboard and record an XOXmas song of your own.

“It was very possible to lose one's mind...playing Catherine,” says Mena Suvari, referring to her role in the film Hemingway's Garden of Eden, which opens in select US theaters today. Indeed the character at the heart of the Ernest Hemingway book, upon which the movie is based, is considered... more

“It was very possible to lose one's mind...playing Catherine,” says Mena Suvari, referring to her role in the film Hemingway's Garden of Eden, which opens in select US theaters today. Indeed the character at the heart of the Ernest Hemingway book, upon which the movie is based, is considered to be one of the writer’s most complex.

The novel itself has a complicated and intriguing background too. Published posthumously in 1986, Hemingway – a contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein – started writing The Garden of Eden in 1946. He toiled on it for over a decade, but never completed the semi-autobiographical work. Given the nature of the text, and Hemingway's death (by suicide following years of mental illness in 1961), there’s much speculation as to whether he would have even wanted it published.

Set in post-World War I Europe, Hemingway's daring story follows the increasingly unconventional relationship between David Bourne, an American novelist (played by Jack Huston), and, Catherine, an heiress whom he meets in Paris. After a whirlwind courtship, the two marry and embark on an extended honeymoon in the South of France.

The bliss of their early romance begins to unravel when David’s mind returns to his writing. Bored and restless, Catherine begins to explore the boundaries of her husband’s love and her own gender and sexuality. Cropping her hair in various stages, she flexes her financial and erotic dominance over her husband. When that fails to satisfy her unarticulated needs, she brings a third party into the relationship, Marita, a sultry Italian (played by Casino Royale’s Caterina Murino). Noting that her husband is easy to corrupt, Catherine both enjoys and resents his compliance. “How can you lose with two girls,” she asks at the outset of their ménage à trios. As paradise is lost, she ultimately finds out.

SuicideGirls spoke with Suvari (who is perhaps best know for her roles in the films American Beauty and American Pie) at length by phone about her character, the film, the fascinating tale of the original text, and how Hemingway's novel has affected her personally. (Reader beware: there are spoilers ahead.)

Nicole Powers: This film first premiered at Rome's International Film Festival in 2008, and has taken to years to reach cinemas here in the US. Judging by how you're supporting it, I'm guessing that this was a labor of love?

Mena Suvari: Yeah. Definitely. We worked on the project four years ago. When the script came to me I loved it. I'm always very drawn to very complex characters and I felt that I could identify with Catherine in certain respects. Then I read the book right away. I actually wasn't familiar with the book and I just fell in love with it even more. It's actually one of my favorite books to this day.

It was an absolute wonderful experience working on it. I'd actually worked with Jack Huston on another project called Factory Girl beforehand, so we'd known one another, and I fell in love with our director, John Irvin. To have it premiere in Rome was wonderful and a lot of fun. Then, as you said, it took a few years. It was an independent film, and, especially with the business changing a lot, I didn't necessarily know what was going to happen with the movie. To hear that Roadside Attractions came and picked it up was, I feel, the best thing that could've happened. It's nice, but at the same time you think about how you worked on it so long ago...

NP: In a way, the film's journey parallels that of the novel, because years passed before it saw the light of day too.

MS: What's interesting about that is, having struggled for over 10 years to write the story, it was published posthumously when [Hemingway's] wife Mary had taken, it's said, literally two shopping bags full of about 3,000 loose leaf pages to the publisher. You don't necessarily know if Hemingway really wanted this story to be told, or if it would've been told in the way that it has been. Because I feel like the book is the publishers' own interpretation of what Hemingway meant for it to be. It's even said that the second half wasn't finished. So it's a bit of a mystery, and I do hope that Hemingway isn't rolling over in his grave about us making this movie.

NP: I understand that roughly two-thirds of the original word count was cut during the editing process for the published book. It's so intriguing. It makes you want to see Hemingway's original text.

MS: Yeah...Our director, John Irvin, who we called Papa on set because he kind of even looked the part of Hemingway, he was so well versed in Hemingway. That was a beautiful thing, because he was so passionate about doing this in the right way and doing it the just way...My character cuts all of her hair off in several phases and then she dyes it platinum...At the end of the film, at the end of shooting...I remember him pulling me aside and talking to me about shaving my head. Because from what I was told, but from what I have not read anywhere else because it's not in the book, is that Catherine ends up in a sanitarium. We actually shot a scene of me in an all white room with my abacus, just clicking back and forth. Obviously that didn't make it into the Hollywood version of the film.

I remember talking with our writer James Linville about it because he had told me that he had access to the original, or the most complete draft of what Hemingway had written. That's what he used to write the screenplay. I wanted to get my hands on it, but I haven't been able to get my hands on it yet. I think there's only like two copies or something.

NP: The end was one of the only things that didn't feel right to me. Hemingway's title is Garden of Eden. The story is about the loss of innocence, and peace of mind along with it. So to have a happy ending - is that where Hemingway would've really gone with it?

MS: I agree with you. That's the thing that can be a bit frustrating, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. And for me, as the actor, you play your part. I worked really hard on playing Catherine, and it was really important to me that the language in the book carried over into the film. I did a lot of re-writing on the film myself because I didn't want it to sound too contemporary.

I scoured the book and I had it highlighted everywhere. I carried it with me with my script. I really believed that every single word that was in that book, that Hemingway chose, had it's own importance and it was beautiful to me. So it was important to have that in the film. I didn't want any of that lost. I felt so thankful to have a director like John Irvin, because we really bonded. I felt that he supported me one hundred and ten percent, and was there for me every single moment of the day, scene by scene, to talk about Catherine and really dissect her. I needed to understand exactly where she was every single second because she's continually changing. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally, and it was a big challenge. But he was so passionate about this project and understood Hemingway and the best way for it to be communicated on to the screen. I just felt real lucky to be with him and be in his hands...

It's such a personal film. I put my heart and soul into it. I bared my soul really in all respects in playing Catherine. It's never been difficult for me to watch a film that I'm in or watch my work, I'm able to disassociate, but this is so personal to me that it touched me on a whole other level, and it still does.

I really feel like working on the project, it really changed my life in ways that I'm still figuring out. After the screening in Rome, I just found myself crying. I found John afterwards, and I just went over to him and he gives me this huge bear hug as he does and I just said to him, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity and believing in me...

'Cause I've worked on so many types of films with so many different kinds of directors and really, he had everything. He had a vision. He knew what he wanted, and was super professional and very passionate about what he was doing. But at the same time he knew how to relate to the actors. He knew how to relate to me and to really help me and to guide me. I think it was very possible to lose one's mind working on this project and playing Catherine. It was so intensive.

NP: You say that it struck a chord personally, in what way?

MS: It's funny, because I've been doing what I do for about 18 years and all of the sudden I got to this point where I looked back on my career and I made these connections between the characters and the projects that came my way and where I was at in my life. Even when I worked on Six Feet Under with Alan Ball where I played a performance artist. There were things that I was struggling with personally...I'd never done theater. I'd never really been on the stage in front of people. Even though what I do for a living, thousands or millions of people will see it, I'm able to disassociate when the camera is in front of me.

I really feel when I worked on Six Feet Under that it pushed me to a different place within myself, facing a fear that I had... She was somebody who had to lead, and be on stage, this powerful figure. I guess personally, in my own life, I struggled with that. I've struggled with insecurity my whole life really. I think probably every actress has - that's what they say about us...I was grateful for that role because it kind of pushed me in this new direction of feeling empowered within myself.

With Garden of Eden, this was like 4 years ago, I really believe that if that project had come to me in a different point in my life I might not have been as open to it. I might not have identified with Catherine the way I did then because of the things that I was going through in my life at the time. I was kind of setting out on my own in my life personally.

We went and worked in Spain. I'm there for about two and a half months and I went there by myself, just embarking on a complete exploration. It wasn't just physically going and being in another country and new city, [with a] new language and new culture around you. To play someone like Catherine where I really had to address almost everything within myself, it was everything personally that I was going through...

NP: I guess filming coincided with the aftermath of the breakdown of your first marriage.

MS: I got married for the first time when I had just turned 21. Even some of those things, I feel like I could identify with Catherine, being young and being married and not really knowing who you are. Growing in a relationship and learning more about who you are and what you want, and all of those things conflicting with one another continuously. I felt at that point in time, not just leaving a relationship but in every sense, kind of pulling the chains off of myself and just going for it, really going on this journey of self-discovery. And that's what it really is with Catherine. It's coming to terms with all of these different things that you feel within yourself. Who you really are and not knowing who that is, but, I think, at the same time having the best intentions. I think that's another thing that's really important. Some people said, Catherine, she's like the bad girl and she's mean. I hope that people don't see it that way because I see her as someone who's really lost.

NP: I see her as someone that's lost, but also someone who unleashes the destructive power of boredom. What causes the conflict and the drama is basically the psychological games that Catherine plays with the people around her to keep herself entertained. I don't think that she even realizes what she's doing or why she's doing it.

MS: I completely agree. I think she's really unhappy. It's funny if you think about how there are these moments where at the beginning of their honeymoon they go to this city and that city. They go to Madrid, and then she makes this comment: "It's too big of a city." It's too overwhelming for her and they end up in this shut down small hotel that's completely isolated, and it's almost in that moment where she starts to feel the most comfortable. She can manipulate and feed off of her husband, but I think her insecurities are so great that she's convinced herself that everyone is looking at her or making assumptions on her. It's [set] back then when there were certain things that women were expected to do and certain ways that women were expected to look. Catherine always pushed that. In the book and in the film, she wears fisherman's shirts and shorts, and you just didn't do that back then. That was really, really pushing it. And to have your hair cut short. I think she just lived with an immense amount of this feeling of being judged all the time, so the more isolated the environment the more comfortable she feels...It's said that Catherine is based on one of Hemingway's wives, not Mary...

NP: His second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer I think.

MS: A mix of one of his wives and then Zelda Fitzgerald, who was F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife. That's what was said, that she was a mix of the personalities of the two. I think these women were rebellious in their own right at that time.

NP: It's interesting that you mention F. Scott Fitzgerald because there is an element of Daisy from The Great Gatsby in Catherine. She's also a bored, care-free and careless heiress.

MS: Yeah. Catherine comes from a very wealthy family and that's something that she holds over her husband too. There's a comment that she makes to him where she says, "Well, it's not like we need your money anyway." She's always threatened by her husband's success. She doesn't know how to really support that.

NP: Well she wants him to be her play thing, and, when his success threatens to eclipse that, she gets insecure.

MS: I think she's always been insecure, but I think what sets her off even more is when she finds out that he hasn't been writing their story, and she just doesn't know how to deal with those emotions. She doesn't have the tools to manage really.

NP: Also, she's constantly searching for external things to make herself happy because internally she just doesn't have the capacity for happiness.

MS: That's why I really feel this story is a bit timeless and universal. I would hope that people would be inspired to read the book because even on subconscious levels I feel like I really learned a lot from the book. It really affected me, just even reading the story.

NP: In what respect?

MS: Just about relationships, about life in general, about the search for one's self - all of that.

NP: Are you happier in your own skin because of it?

MS: I think so...I feel at this point in my life, I'm much more at ease and at peace with myself for sure. I'm not perfect. I'm certainly human like everyone else, but I don't feel that angst the way that I did years ago. And I don't feel like I fight life as much. I'm much more accepting of me, but at the same time I'm much more accepting of learning about who I am because I feel like I'm continuously learning new things about myself.


Hemingway's Garden of Eden open in select cities on Friday, December 10.

Classic Set of the Day: Ember - Candy Cutie/URL] (image) I think it is fair to say that hands down Ember is the sexiest girl in a candy bikini anyone has ever seen. This set defines drool worthy. more

Classic Set of the Day:

Ember - Candy Cutie/URL]



I think it is fair to say that hands down Ember is the sexiest girl in a candy bikini anyone has ever seen. This set defines drool worthy.

by Blogbot 2010 was without doubt the year of the striped sock. Stockings were put to bed in favor off these warm and fuzzy alternatives that say you’re sexy without trying unfashionably hard. Here’s a selection of the best striped legged wear that Suicide Girls were putting on – and taking off... more

by Blogbot

2010 was without doubt the year of the striped sock. Stockings were put to bed in favor off these warm and fuzzy alternatives that say you’re sexy without trying unfashionably hard.

Here’s a selection of the best striped legged wear that Suicide Girls were putting on – and taking off – this year.





[Luscious in Grime]



[Salliss in Take Two]



[Rambo in Dancing]



[Vesta in Feeling This]



[Squeak in I Am]



[Kaelyn in Good Fortune]



[Phecda in Game Cube]



[Sash in Angeles]

Fashion Notes

“I love socks because I love how an often overlooked article of clothing can make a person feel so much more powerful,” says Khoos, SG’s resident soxpert who runs the site’s Rock My Socks Group. “And when it comes time to get down and dirty, there’s no fussing over clasps or buttons with socks. You can leave them on or rip them off!”

Looking to sox up your life? Try these American Apparel knee and thigh highs, which come in a variety of colors and contrasting stripe combos. And if your sock fetish goes beyond the realm of what AA can assomodate, try Sockdreams.com which has a vast selection of leg wear, including specialty ranges such as toe socks, super-high “dream sock” stockings, and ones which are exclusively made in the USA (all of which are available with stripes).

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

Matt Johnson of Brooklyn dance-punk duo Matt and Kim has been giving whirlwind interviews all afternoon, ten minutes at a time, but he still has energy to chat with SuicideGirls about his band's new album, Sidewalks. The first single, "Cameras," is so catchy that it's led Matt to tell... more

Matt Johnson of Brooklyn dance-punk duo Matt and Kim has been giving whirlwind interviews all afternoon, ten minutes at a time, but he still has energy to chat with SuicideGirls about his band's new album, Sidewalks. The first single, "Cameras," is so catchy that it's led Matt to tell the press, "We don't write songs anymore. We write anthems."

We've heard the new record, and Matt is absolutely right. He and his bandmate/significant other, Kim Schifino, have put together one hell of a danceable album. You'll have to buy the album, though, because Matt tells us that he and Kim won't be playing any of the new songs live, except for "Cameras." Unlike many bands touring a new album, Matt and Kim will only throw down the songs the people came to hear.

Matt is nearly as much in interviews as he is at a show -- which is to say, really, really fun -- and he told us some great stories about the new album, his life with Kim, and some surprising things he's never tried.

Jay Hathaway: How's all this whirlwind interviewing going?

Matt Johnson: It's good, it's good. I can take care of it. (coughs) Well, other than this impending bronchitis that I haven't gotten rid of for like a month. I've been doing plenty of sleeping, so that just keeps my energy in check.

JH: I read about your bronchitis a while back. I'm amazed it's not gone by now!

MJ: I would've thought, too, but I think drinking 'til 4am every single day for months on end doesn't help you get rid of it too quickly!

JH: So true. What are your ideas for videos for the new album?

MJ: We have one in the pipeline. We were planning on shooting before we left on tour, which was in early September. We ended up not being able to, so we're going to shoot when we finish this tour in mid-November. I can't disclose a lot of information on it. I think it will probably make some people mad, but I think it will make more people happy.

JH: Do you think it'll be as controversial as the "Lessons Learned" video (where Matt and Kim got naked)?

MJ: No, probably not. It's a little bit of a different angle, but we'll see. We'll see what comes out.

JH: I've heard you're only playing one of the new songs live. Is that true?

MJ: I just know that when I go to a show, and the band says, "Who wants to hear a new song?" everyone kinda just says, "No, we want to hear the stuff we know and can sing along to!" So we decided this was going to be the last tour of our last album, Grand, as well as a bunch of older stuff, and we do a lot of cover interludes for 10 or 20 seconds between songs. It still feels fresh and new, but we decided not to play any of Sidewalks yet, for the most part.

JH: In an interview a while back, you said you'd never seen Star Wars and never put milk on your cereal. Have you done either of those things yet?

MJ: I have not! Last night, I said to Kim, "I know I can get no one to cheer in this crowd if I say 'Like me, who out here hasn't seen Star Wars?'" And, of course, no one yells, because everyone's fucking seen Star Wars except for me. It was just one of those things. I realized at one point I hadn't seen it yet, and I thought, "Huh. That'd be funny if I never see it."

And then with cereal and milk, I -- dry cereal has basically been one of my favorite foods since I was a kid, and at one point I realized I had never tried cereal and milk together, combined before. I was like, "Huh. I wonder if I can just make it forever." Even this morning, I had a cup of dry Honey Nut Cheerios. It's delicious. I eat it out of a coffee mug, like my morning coffee.

JH: Do you have any other firsts you'd like to achieve, either musically or personally?

MJ: I'm sure there's a lot. I haven't thought about it so much. I have a weird intrigue to teen drama shows, in the sense that where I grew up in Vermont, I went to public school, but even public school was a graduating grade of 17. There were like 50 people in my high school, so there was no such thing as popularity. I'm intrigued as an idea by popularity at school. And then when I went to college, I went to art school at Pratt in Brooklyn, and I never really got it then. That's not something I will ever experience, so I wonder what regular school -- like, we never had a football team at any of those schools, so it's a weird part of American culture that I think everyone experiences, except for me. I'm just there watching Gossip Girl, like, "What is this all about?"

Musically, with the band, we've been wanting to collaborate with -- well, Kim and I are big hip hop fans, and we want to collaborate with some MCs and a couple of producers. Everyone's so busy, including ourselves, that we just haven't been able to make it work yet. In the indie rock world, there's never really any collaborating outside of the band. It gives you a chance to make something that you wouldn't make by yourself.

JH: Was this the first album you've gone into a studio to record, instead of doing it yourself? Did you learn anything new

MJ: We recorded our first album in the studio, but we didn't have any money or anything. We recorded it in all of nine days. When we went into Grand, we did it ourselves because we wanted to try whatever the fuck Matt and Kim wanted to try. If Matt and Kim wanted to try a mean harmonica solo on a song that was going to suck, at least we wanted to try it, you know?

Then going into this album, Sidewalks, we had enough money to work in studios with people who knew what the hell they were doing in the recording department, and still take as much time as we wanted to do whatever dumb things we wanted to try. It was a similar length to our last album, Grand. We spent about 9 months on each of them. But with this one, we were able to spend more time on the songs, and less time on recording shit.

JH: When you and Kim spend so much time together on the road and in the studio, how much does your working relationship affect your romantic relationship, and vice versa?

MJ: We've realized that there's pretty much no separation between the two, even though we call our working relationship Matt and Kim, and our personal relationship we call Kim and Matt. There's not really much differentiation. But the craziest part about it is after all the time we spend together -- which is every hour, every day -- Kim and I shared a cell phone for five years, and we never had to call each other. That shows how much time we spend together. -- the crazy part is that we haven't killed each other yet. We don't seem to have the desire to. We continue to get along. I can't figure it out. Even after we've been in a bus for two months together, and in each other's space, we get home and it's like, "You want to go out and get some dinner?" We only leave each other if someone has to use the bathroom, basically.

JH: What kinds of jobs did you guys have before you were in a band? Do you have any good shitty job stories?

MJ: My first job was at a wine-bottling place, when I was like 14. My whole job was taking bottles out of a cardboard box, and putting them on a counter, and someone would take them away from there. A machine could have done my job. That was terrible.

Another one I had was, have you ever driven down the road and there's the guy turning the stop and slow sign? And you're like, "Man, that job must suck!" Let me tell you something: that job does suck. I definitely did that my senior year of high school. So, I've had my share.

Classic Set of the Day: Blaze - Pyretta (image) Blaze is a dreamy pixie of a girl. She is incredibly beautiful and sexy and sweet as can be. Blaze is one of those girls that lights up a room with her smile, and she is always smiling. She instantly became a classic when she shot this sexy set. Hopefully... more

Classic Set of the Day:

Blaze - Pyretta



Blaze is a dreamy pixie of a girl. She is incredibly beautiful and sexy and sweet as can be. Blaze is one of those girls that lights up a room with her smile, and she is always smiling. She instantly became a classic when she shot this sexy set. Hopefully she will come up for an HQ visit soon.

In her latest documentary, Cool It!, two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning director Ondi Timoner (We Live In Public and Dig!) sets forth the case for lowering the temperature of the global warming debate, and offers pragmatic solutions to what former Vice President and preeminent environmentalist... more

In her latest documentary, Cool It!, two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning director Ondi Timoner (We Live In Public and Dig!) sets forth the case for lowering the temperature of the global warming debate, and offers pragmatic solutions to what former Vice President and preeminent environmentalist Al Gore considers a moral issue.

Based upon the book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg, the film takes a radically different approach to that of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, with which it is often compared. Indeed, Lomborg considers Gore's potentially paralyzing fear-based narrative and reliance on worst-case scenario statistics to be particularly unhelpful when it comes to promoting reasonable and rational change - a stance that has put him at odds with much of the environmental community.

Lomborg is not a global warming denier - though it's something his enemies have often accused him of being. As the Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank which advises governments, philanthropists and NGOs on the most effective use of aid and development funds, Lomborg hopes to encourage world leaders to act wisely when it comes to environmental policy. Rather than reacting on an emotional level and/or bowing to the prevailing politically expedient winds, Lomborg wants our politicians to heed real-world numbers. Using cost/benefit analysis as a litmus test for the viability of various options, the kinds of programs Lomborg suggests we prioritize are frequently in opposition to those proposed by even the most left-wing of minds.

He's against the various Kyoto treaties for example, not because he considers their intentions to be wrong, but because he thinks their execution is fundamentally flawed. As he points out in Cool It!, the bill for the 1997 Kyoto accord, which aimed to reduce carbon emissions to levels 5.2% below those in 1990 would have been around $180 billion per year. According to Lomborg's calculations however, the result of this massive spend would have been a negligible 0.008 degree Fahrenheit reduction by the end of the century.

Similarly, in June 2009 the EU committed to cutting carbon emissions to 20% below 1990 levels and increasing the share of renewabless used by 20% by the year 2020. All this made for a very catchy "2020" strategy title, but it came with a price tag of $250 billion per year. Yet the estimated net result of this massive outlay is that temperatures are projected to be reduced by a mere 1/10 of a degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Lomborg thinks that both the Kyoto and EU proposals offer a staggeringly poor return on invested resources, and has come up with alternative ways to best allocate the $250 billion annual budget the Europeans have already ear-marked. This is the manifesto Lomborg and Timoner lay out in Cool It!

Moving the focus away from energy efficient light bulbs, and the kind of draconian recycling legislation that nations such as Great Britain have employed - all of which are helpful but nowhere near helpful enough (and, as such, have the potential to be dangerously distracting) - Lomborg takes a holistic, big picture approach. In his budget, he not only provides funds for the research and development of energy alternatives and temporary geoengineering solutions (such as the deployment of sulfur to block the sun's rays), he sets aside funds for adaptation techniques (painting rooftops and tarmac white to cool sun soaked cities like Los Angeles, and building better levies and dykes to protect places like New Orleans). In addition to spending money to stave off, and prepare for, the environmental challenges of tomorrow, Lomborg sets aside money to combat today's major issues: health, hunger, water and education - this being something both Lomborg and Timoner see as a real moral imperative.

SuicideGirls called up Timoner to find out more about Cool It! We also spoke about her highly anticipated Robert Mapplethorpe biopic, which it's rumored will star Hollywood's man of the moment, James Franco.

Nicole Powers: How are you doing?

OT: I'm fine. I wonder sometimes if I'm jaded or something because the stakes just don't seem as big anymore for any of this stuff.

NP: Well, it's hard. In general, society has got monumental fuck up fatigue and everyone is kind of over everything. You didn't think it could get any worse after 8 years of George Bush, and then you get to the other side of that and you have the Tea Party, which is even crazier. They make George Bush look sane.

OT: I know. It's amazing.

NP: And, in a way, that's what Cool It seems to be about. It's the voice of reason in a high temperature and crazy-making debate.

OT: Yeah, in this case it's interesting because it's almost positioned as coming against the Democrats, or against Gore or something. And I couldn't be more liberal. I'm totally a Democrat. I just thought this was really pragmatic.

NP: That's actually a word I scribbled down several times while watching the film. People like to grab headlines, and those that do positioned this film as being the anti-Inconvenient Truth. It's more like a companion to it. Once you've been frightened and you're motivated to actually do something, then you watch this film for some sensible and doable solutions.

OT: Yeah, to me the fear isn't why this isn't getting done. Bjørn thinks that's a big contributor. I personally think it's that financially we can't. Economically we simply just can't afford to switch right now. Because alternative energy is not less expensive than fossil fuel, and the infrastructure's not there. It's very simple.

Certainly the good news that comes along with that - that the world might not be ending tomorrow - is helpful. But I don't think that's what stopped us from making progress. It may have actually stopped us from paying attention as much as we should to how long has this been failing. I mean, we've had 18 years of climate conferences that haven't gone anywhere.

We may have noticed that more, but I think people have just kind of turned off in general, which is why I was curious. I'm a work-for-hire on this film, and I'm kind of curious as to why they were making the film right now. Why there was such an impetus to make this film. It's not something I would've just generated myself because I wouldn't think that there would be that much interest in this topic actually right now. It wasn't something that I paid a lot of attention to. I had seen An Inconvenient Truth and read some newspaper articles, and pretty much considered myself up to date. I didn't think there was much more to know, except that this was a drastic problem that we needed to solve, but that we weren't solving.

The reason I took on the project was because I had to remind myself that this why I got into this - 'cause it's an amazing way to learn. This is how I learn, through my camera...And with Bjørn and going to labs and I figured out that actually I'm pretty upset about the fact that nothing has been done basically - nothing for 18 years.

NP: And a lot of money has been spent in order for us to do nothing.

OT: Yeah. People's entire careers and livelihoods depend on this debate continuing. Climate mediators and negotiators, they go around the world - the next [conference] is Cancun in a few weeks. Nothing is going to happen there, because nothing can. Because the countries can't afford to switch until it's less expensive. What needs to happen is a Carbon Tax.

This is something that because I didn't have final cut, it didn't end up in the movie. It was in the director's cut, and it should be in the movie. It's on the website, and it's something that Bjørn believes in. But I think that a couple of the producers thought that it was too unpopular in America, too much of an outside chance of it happening, that they didn't want to put it in the movie - which I think is every reason to put it in the movie.

NP: You touched on Cap & Trade in the movie, and you talked about why that wouldn't work - that it's too open to systematic corruption.

OT: But Carbon Tax is just a tax right? It's like we pay a tax on alcohol and cigarettes, why aren't we paying a tax on carbon? If we do a $7 per metric ton carbon tax, that's equal to the damage that we do, but not enough to drive businesses abroad. It's the equivalent of $0.06 per gallon at the gas pump for you and me, and whatever that's going to be on our electric bill. Not much. It will be okay.

My whole agreement, once I vetted Bjørn fully, and made sure that he was legit and his ideas were as I thought they were. That he wasn't a global warming denier or any of the things that he'd been touted to be by people that hated him. I thought, let me make sure that the film has to contractually adhere to his agenda. I [confirmed] that. It did. Then I said, I don't want to make a social issue film that's one of these films where you leave the theater or you turn off your DVD and you don't know what to do. You don't know really what's proposed, and it's just a film about how bad things are, and there's no solutions. I want there to be a budget at the end of this film that says this is exactly how we propose the money should be spent. He said okay to that. And I said, I want to know how to raise the money [here in the US]. The EU 2020 is costing $250 billion to those countries. That's basically a very moderate, pretty safe estimate of what it would cost us...

Some of it would [be spent on] adaptation techniques that would solve the problems for the hottest cities and prepare against floods. Some of it would be for being responsible to the developing world, who are the people who are most vulnerable to climate change. And a lot of it, $100 billion, would be spent on research and development of green energy, of which there are many potential solutions. We only highlight I think five in the film. Our thought is that research is pretty inexpensive. Throw that money at 100 different potential solutions and if one or two come out as really successful and cost effective, then we solve the problem.

My argument to Bjørn was [that] I need to know how to raise the money. He said, my favorite is the carbon tax. $7.00 per metric ton, it's not going to break anybody's bank. It's doable. And why not? Really? Why not do that.? Do you know how much it will raise if we all pay $0.06 more at the gas pump per gallon? We'd raise $273 billion annually, and that money can be applied towards that budget that we outlined. The only problem is making sure that it is spent on those things and not other things.

NP: So that was what you wanted to show at the end of the film?

OT: Yeah, right before the budget he outlines the carbon tax in the director's cut. Because I thought it was really important to say, okay, here's what we propose, you can agree or disagree with whatever part of it you want. But least there's a proposition out there that is a lot different than what is happening now.

And I think the geo-engineering is interesting. People like Gore call it nuts and [dismiss] it because they're scared that it'll distract us from cutting carbon, that we're going to say, we've got these quick fix solutions, why bother changing our lifestyle? I really don't think people are going to look at it that way. That's not what the intention of it is. It's a quick fix if the kind of catastrophe that Gore has painted a picture of comes true.

NP: Right, it's a Plan B, but Plan A should be making sure that we don't get into that situation in the first place.

OT: Yeah, and I think everybody understands that and Plan B wouldn't work anyway. It's not like we're going to constantly pump sulfur into the stratosphere every day forever. The idea is to just know if it's possible, and to know what the ramifications of that would be... so that we actually know how it's going to affect our climate...

My theory is, we got ourselves into this mess because of our greed, because we're parasites on this earth. Whether we like it or not, we've done wonderful things, but we are living off of this earth and we are sucking this earth dry of it's resources. The only thing that's going to get us out of it is our ability to reason and to innovate. Science - that's what's going to get us out of this thing. That's our only hope.

NP: I think also the law of change - that it only happens when the pain of holding on is greater than the fear of letting go. Change will only happen when we're absolutely forced to do so. Or, like you say, when alternative energy is the cheaper option.

OT: That's the only way, because if we wait until were forced to do so, it's too late. A lot of people would argue that it's too late now. We just can't tell yet how bad it's going to be.

Bjørn doesn't feel that way. Bjørn doesn't agree with that. I personally am pretty much agnostic as it is. I'm pretty comfortable with not knowing what's going to happen. That's the reality; that climate is something that we can only predict by modeling. Nobody knows exactly what's going to happen. We do know that global warming is happening. We can see that. Records show that. But is it something that we can really stop? We should do the best we can. We should try to research our way out of this.

NP: But it's not just about research, because we already have methods that have been tried, tested and proven to work. You touch on it in the section where you interview Stephen Salter, the Professor of Geoscience at the University of Edinburgh about wave energy. [He created a highly cheap and efficient generator, known as "Salter's Duck," that could convert 90% of a wave's energy into power. But when the technology was being assessed for government funding the job was given to the British Atomic Energy Authority - which, in the words Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics, was "a little like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank" - since rather than being an unbiased body, they were motivated to steer funding to their own nuclear energy programs ). Salter's technology has essentially been entombed for 35 years because of political and economic reasons.

OT: Economic, completely. Greed again. It's unbelievable, and it's a metaphor for the way Bjørn's been treated over the years. If you want to shut somebody up or kill something because you want only your message out there - you have financial gain or whatever it is - you don't kill them, you just discredit them. And their case even falters - they changed the numbers on the report because the Atomic Energy Authority wanted the money. So for thirty friggin' years we could've had wave energy and we didn't.

NP: You see a similar story in the move Who Killed the Electric Car? And inventor came up with viable batteries to run cars that far exceeded what was in use at the time. And the patents were bought by vested parties so the technology could be buried.

OT: Yeah.

NP: So it doesn't even come down to needing $100 billion for research for new stuff, because we already have existing technology that's not being implemented. It's not even the economics. It's the intransigence of our government, which is paid for by the oil and the energy industries.

OT: Yep.

NP: How do you break that?

OT: I don't know. I'm a filmmaker, you know. I just keep making movies. I don't know...I thought it was important. I thought I should contribute my skills towards this. I thought that would be a good idea. I thought that would be helpful. Who knows what it will actually do?

NP: What's mind blowing is Bjørn doesn't just use this $250 billion to solve the energy and environment crisis, he also uses it to help solve the hunger, health and the AIDS issues.

OT: Well, if you're going to say that [the environment] is the greatest moral issue of our time, I would tend to argue differently. We've got a lot of people that are dying needlessly on our planet right now because they don't have clean drinking water that we can provide, or that are dying of preventable diseases. If Gore's going to call [the environment] the greatest moral issue, I have to say there's other ones that we should be dealing with alongside it.

These are the very same people that are going to be dead from global warming, or before that. They can't irrigate, and they don't have proper shelter to protect themselves from the floods, so they need help. I think it's pretty immoral that we just let these people die all the time. People say there's so much overpopulation in the world, well, it turns out, from a purely economic standpoint, we actually all become wealthier when people survive...Our entire world's net economy becomes richer from people surviving.

NP: People seem to assume that in order to have rich people you have to have poor people too. But if you look at the developed economies - when everyone has a decent standard of living, and everyone has money to spend, the rich have the potential get even richer. There's actually more opportunity for wealth when you raise the poor out of poverty.

OT: Exactly. I liked that Bjørn was saying that, and I needed to figure out a way to drive it home somehow, so I did it with the kids. And the absurdity of those kids in England and what they're living with. My god, the fear that's driven into them is just awful.

NP: Yeah, in England old people live in fear of putting a yogurt cup in the wrong trash receptacle. They're getting fined more than their pension just for putting stuff in the wrong recycling bin. It's crazy.

OT: Yeah, that's pathetic. It's a delicate balance though Nicole, when you're making a movie, because you want to not demotivate people from doing things that are good like recycling. There's more to it then just global warming. There's the certification of the oceans and there's over-fishing. There's a million things we do to our environment that are really bad. So by all means we should still recycle.

You want to be careful not to demotivate people when you're making a movie. You also want to ground everything in a bit of reality. This is what's happening. It's not making that much of a difference. You've got to do more. And the idea of the whole feel-good versus do-good, that was a tough section of the movie to create. Because you want people to still try and do good, but you want them to know that what they're doing that's more symbolic is not really making that much of a difference. That's why I'm bummed that the Carbon Tax isn't in there, because then what are we saying to do. If not that, what are we saying?

NP: Right. If switching your lights off for one hour, one day a year for Earth Day is merely symbolic, you have to balance it with something that's woven into the fabric of our lives that would actually fix things.

OT: Yeah. What can we do? Pressure your politicians, unfortunately, that's what we have to do. It's on a bigger level than an individual level. We have to say to our politicians that not only do we not mind, we insist on a Carbon Tax. We absolutely say, this has got to happen.

NP: Moving forward, what are you doing to perpetuate the message?

OT: I'm not going to be doing this forever. I did what I could in making a movie. Now the movie is in the hands of the distributor and in the hands of Bjørn. This is Bjørn's life. This is what he does. This isn't what I do. I make movies...I don't want to sound like I don't care about what happens with global warming, but it is so much bigger than we are and there's only so much I can do. And it's not like this was a film that I started from the get go, so it's not really owned by me per se. I mean that carbon tax would've been in there if I had a say about it. I hope that people run with it. I hope it motivates people. But I'm afraid that people still aren't paying attention to this issue. I fear that in fact. What Bjørn said about this being overwhelming is actually true. People are tired.

NP: Also what he said about when something is fashionable, how we act irrespective of whether those actions are rationale. The issue became fashionable and we were doing lots of irrational things. Maybe now it's not so fashionable we can start being more rational.

OT: Exactly. That's what I hope happens. There's no reason not to be painting our rooftops a lighter color, or planting trees. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of sending everybody a $300 vote-for-me tax refund, they actually sent everybody a tree...At least the solutions are out there, and at least people have food for thought about what can be done - and they realize that nothing is being done. That's the work of Cool It. Hopefully it will motivate some action. We'll see. I know President Obama ordered it up. He wanted to see it. That's probably more helpful then anything.

NP: Did he contact the production office?

OT: Yes, he contacted the distributor.

NP: Wow! Very impressive. And your next project is the Robert Mapplethorpe biopic, which I know we spoke about when We Live in Public came out. Where are you with that movie now?

OT: I'm deep in it. I'm almost finished with the script and it's going really, really, really well. It's very, very, very exciting...Patti Smith just won the National Book Award for Just Kids [an autobiography in which she talks about her relationship with the photographer], so it just could not be more in the general zeitgeist. I couldn't hope for it to be more relevant then it is right now. That's going great, and that switch in my career is going great. I just left a meeting about a pre-scripted actor film, and that's clearly where my heart is right now. It's very, very, very much into that kind of story telling. It's a new challenge for me. I feel like I can bring a lot to that kind of filmmaking, and, after We Live in Public, I don't know how many more boundaries I can push in documentary... If you hear a certain happiness with me, it's because I know I'm on the right path right now...I'm going into a kind of filmmaking that I feel is pretty much right for me, which is I'm going into telling a story of a person who really existed.

NP: Who really existed, and who also pushed a lot of boundaries.

OT: Exactly. It's kind of perfect for me, wouldn't you say?

NP: Beyond perfect. I'm so looking forward to seeing it.

OT: Well I'm looking forward to making it. So that's where I'm at. I'm pretty happy with all that.

Visit CoolIt-theMovie.com for bonus materials and further info on the film.

by Damon Martin During the holiday season, atheists in America and Canada are letting everyone know they are still good without God. The message has been spread across buses and billboards throughout North America to send an alternative message during this normally oversaturated time of religious rejoice. more

by Damon Martin

During the holiday season, atheists in America and Canada are letting everyone know they are still good without God. The message has been spread across buses and billboards throughout North America to send an alternative message during this normally oversaturated time of religious rejoice.

Groups like Secular Samaritan, American Humanist Association, and the Centre for Inquiry are responsible for the Christmas time ad buys. The gospel they’re trying to spread with these billboards is that goodness and morality are not in the exclusive domain of those that believe in a higher power.

Several secular and Atheist groups have done similar campaigns around the holidays before, with many Christians, especially in America, claiming such groups are declaring “War on Christmas.”



[Tekky Suicide in Steals Christmas]

One of the most prominent advertisements that set off such alarms this year was a billboard bought by the American Atheists on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel just outside of New York City. The billboard says: “You know it’s a myth. This season celebrate reason.” The Catholic League promptly responded with a billboard of their own on the New York side of the Lincoln Tunnel stating: “You know it’s real. This season celebrate Jesus.”

The Centre for Inquiry in Canada has purchased bus ads and transit signs that state: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Below this headline the group lists religious figures like Jesus Christ and Allah, mythical creatures like Bigfoot, leprechauns, and the tooth fairy, and practices such as prayer, astrology and ESP. The group will also be holding in-person educational events featuring expert speakers.

Meanwhile back in the United States, the Secular Samaritans, have purchased ads on buses servicing the campus of the University of Illinois that promote a particularly powerful message. The ads feature public figures such as Bill Gates. The slogan that runs alongside an image of the Microsoft founder says: “Second richest person in the world. Donated over $26 billion to charity. Bill Gates is good without God.” However it’s been reported that some religious folks in Illinois are outraged that the bus ads are allowed to run, regardless of the overwhelmingly positive message.

However such prejudice against the secular community is not uncommon. A poll done in 2006 by the University of Minnesota revealed that over 47% of people surveyed would disapprove of a family member marrying an atheist. Nearly 40% of people interviewed listed atheists as people they would identify with the least to share a vision of American society. Others interviewed saw atheists as “amoral” or involved in criminal behavior or drugs.

Given the religious community’s poor view of non-believers, it’s especially ironic that atheists and agnostics were shown to be the most knowledgeable about religion in a recent Pew Research Center poll. The results of a test which asked Americans what they knew about religion, were somewhat staggering – especially to those who profess to know better. Out of 32 questions posed, on average 16 correct answers were given. Atheists and agnostics scored the highest, just over half of the Catholics knew why they took communion, while Bible-belt Southerners scored the lowest of any identified group.

Some would argue that the billboards and ads are somehow combative and that atheists are trying to take away the religious aspects of the season. Atheists (myself included) are just following the lead of free thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris that say we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about our non-belief, even at this time of year. In the end, campaigns or not, atheists will continue to not believe in God, we will continue to believe in science, and, BTW, no one is declaring war. Well, unless you’re Daniel Baldwin.

***

If you’re an atheist and want to find like-minded souls, you might want to join SuicideGirls’ Atheist Group (for members only).

Further reading: The Evolution of Religion, Why Women Are Bound to Religion: An Evolutionary Perspective, and Filtering the Truth: Religion – Friend or Foe?.

by Blogbot Due to demand, Dita Von Teese has added three extra late night shows to her very special Sunset Strip residency at The Roxy, which runs from Monday December 13th thru Wednesday 15th. As previously reported, the shows will each feature three sets from Dita, plus some very special guests. “We... more

by Blogbot

Due to demand, Dita Von Teese has added three extra late night shows to her very special Sunset Strip residency at The Roxy, which runs from Monday December 13th thru Wednesday 15th. As previously reported, the shows will each feature three sets from Dita, plus some very special guests.

“We have Dirty Martini from NYC, Perle Noire from New Orleans, Duke Lafayette (my favorite boylesque star!), Lada straight from The Crazy Horse Paris, and everyone’s favorite burlesque MC Murray Hill,” Dita told SuicideGirls via email. “I will be performing three acts, including some never-before seen numbers.





“I’m really excited about doing these shows at the infamous Roxy on Sunset in LA. Usually I do larger venues in Los Angeles, but this time I wanted to have a more intimate feel to the show. I wanted to bring some of the real burlesque scene’s finest, diverse, and most eclectic performers together from around the country to show what the real neo-burlesque revival is all about and why we all love the art of the tease, in all its forms!”

Tickets for the 11PM shows are available now via Ticketmaster (Gen: $35 + $8.50 booking fee / VIP: $60 + $10.25 booking fee).

Dita: Stripteese, a deluxe set of three miniature flip-books that capture individual facets of the burlesque star’s repertoire, is out now and available via Amazon.com.

Photo: Sandrine Dulermo / Michael Labica

Classic Set of the Day: Maxi - In Stiles Garage (image) Today's classic set celebrates the beautiful Maxi who turned 40 on Sunday. This set was shot over 6 years ago and she is just as stunning if not more in her recent photos. Confident, sexy, and talented; what a killer combination. Maxi is... more

Classic Set of the Day:

Maxi - In Stiles Garage



Today's classic set celebrates the beautiful Maxi who turned 40 on Sunday. This set was shot over 6 years ago and she is just as stunning if not more in her recent photos. Confident, sexy, and talented; what a killer combination. Maxi is truly an amazing person. What is hotter than a sexy girl and a vintage cadillac?

by Brad Warner I first got interested in spiritual practice when I was a teenager and my parents sat me down and told me about the horrible disease that runs in our family. It was, at the time, killing two of my aunts. This disease, they told me, usually begins to manifest when a person gets to be in... more

by Brad Warner

I first got interested in spiritual practice when I was a teenager and my parents sat me down and told me about the horrible disease that runs in our family. It was, at the time, killing two of my aunts. This disease, they told me, usually begins to manifest when a person gets to be in his mid-thirties. The symptoms get progressively worse and after a while you lose your ability to physically function, your brain deteriorates, you go crazy and then you die.

As if my life weren’t already shitty enough, being an uncoordinated nerd who couldn’t play sports, was shy around girls, and had zits and braces. Now I was going to die a horrendous death before I had time enough to get over this stuff.

Wonderful. Just super.



I became obsessed at that time with figuring out what life was before it got taken away. The first place I turned to was religion. Being that I was in rural Ohio, religion meant the Christian church. And not just any kind of Christianity. No sirree, Bob. The kind of Christianity I was exposed to in Ohio was among the most conservative, Bible-thumping, evolution-denying, fear-mongering Christianity the world has yet produced.

Those guys were just as obsessed with death as I was, though. So at least we had that in common. Their idea was that we only get a few decades of life on Earth after which we die and then there’s an afterlife, and the afterlife goes on forever. Quite logically, then, we should be far more concerned with the eternal afterlife than with the temporary condition we were living in now.

They said that this life was a testing ground that would decide where we would spend eternity. If we made the correct decisions in this life, we would be rewarded with eternal life in Paradise. If we made the incorrect decisions, we would spend eternity in torment. There were only two possible outcomes. What’s more, God decided our fate by tallying up all the right things and wrong things we did in life. A single act of right or wrong could tip the balance. And God’s mind was mysterious, so you could never be quite sure if any given act was right by him or wrong. So I was supposed to walk on eggs and live a bland, boring, restricted, white bread and mayonnaise life now in the hopes of a really super terrific future in the afterlife that would last forever.



[Bow Suicide "Living Simply" in Against The Grain]

Or maybe it wasn’t like that. Many of the preachers I listened to argued that it didn’t matter at all what works we did. What actually mattered was what we believed in our hearts. A true believer could get away with all kinds of stuff whereas an unbeliever could do all the good he could manage and still get sent to Hell for not believing. Mother Theresa and Gandhi, I was told, were on their way to eternal damnation for believing in the wrong things.

I had a lot of difficulty swallowing this stuff. But the biggest problem for me with all of this was that in order for it to work there had to be an afterlife. Yet there wasn’t any compelling evidence for an afterlife. I watched all those stupid movies about people’s near-death experiences when they went through that tunnel with the light at the end and all that stuff. But I couldn’t really believe in them. I read a bunch of books about out-of-body travel and reincarnation, but nothing in them was very convincing.

What I did know was that I was alive now. This I could confirm. In fact I toyed with denying that I was alive now, but that didn’t work. This life is undeniably real. So I threw away any interest I might have had in what happens after you die and concentrated on what I could do to make this life better.

It seems like most people when they search for a way to make this life better turn to the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. Drugs, sex, money, material goods… these things seem to be the way to Earthly happiness without regard to any belief in life after death.

This didn’t work for me either, for much the same reason as the whole afterlife deal didn’t work for me. There isn’t a whole lot of evidence that money, power, sex and all that really lead to happiness. Seriously. Think about it for a second.

I was already well aware of the excessive lives of people like Elvis Presley or Howard Hughes, who had all they could possibly want and were still miserable. Later on there was Kurt Cobain who did exactly what I’d been hoping I could do, parlay a shitty-paying career as an indie rocker into superstardom. What did it get him? Sure, some rich people looked like they were having a good time. But there was no more reason to believe that was actually true than there was to believe those people who claimed to have seen a white light when they almost died in a car crash weren’t just hallucinating.

Then I started working in the movie industry, where I routinely associated with famous and powerful people who were absolutely loaded with cash and had access to as much sex as they could possibly manage. Yet I could see clearly that they were just as unhappy as anyone else. I was working for a while with this guy who was a big deal in the Hollywood scene, a tanned and toned mover and shaker who wheeled and dealed with mountains of cash and crazy amounts of power and influence. I was a little pipsqueak who’d just entered the business. Yet I watched in a kind of stupefied awe as he made tremendous efforts to impress me with all this. I had believed that one acquired money and power in order to become secure and contented. Yet here he was with all kinds of money and power, and he was more insecure and discontented than me.

I’d already been doing the Zen thing for a while by then. But it was at that moment that I think I really became committed to it. Zen practice was all about this life and how to make it better. It didn’t offer any magic solutions, which was appealing because I didn’t believe in those. It never got into questions of the afterlife, which was great because I didn’t believe in that either.

Zen demanded a moderate degree of austerity, but not because you were trading austerity today for a future of wonders in Paradise. It recommended a certain degree of austerity because it said that chasing after money, fame, sex, material goods and power just added unnecessary stress to your life that would not be rewarded even if you got those things. I knew this was true. I could see it for myself.

Living simply is one of the cornerstones of lots of religions. But it seemed to me that for most religions I encountered, you lived simply in this life because it insured you a good time after you died. Catholicism seemed to preach that. And even the Hare Krishnas, as examples of so-called “Eastern spirituality,” appeared to me to be all about forgoing pleasure in this life in order to have a chance at reincarnating somewhere cooler.

The Zen approach to simple living was different. I could see for myself the kind of stress and hassles involved in trying to acquire those things that materialistic people claimed would make life better. That Hollywood business tycoon I was associated with was so driven for success that it affected every waking moment of his life and every association he had with anyone he encountered. The fact that he would waste any energy and effort at all, let alone a lot of energy and effort, on trying to impress someone who mattered as little as me told me everything I needed to know about that.

So how simply do we need to live? It depends on how happy you want to be. Traditionally, Zen monks gave up everything except what they needed to survive. The ideal was to have one bowl and one robe. You lived off the charity of others and slept wherever you could manage to sleep.

In the India of 2500 years ago this worked pretty well. There was an established tradition of giving to begging monks and there were communities of spiritual seekers who looked after each other. In Western societies today this system doesn’t work the same way. There is no tradition of giving to begging monks. And communities of spiritual seekers are forced to play the capitalist game to such an extent that they can quickly lose focus and almost always end up as either corporations or cults.

So what do you do? I have not reached any definite conclusions on this. I doubt I ever will. But that’s OK because definite conclusions aren’t the Zen way either. For now, I live pretty simply and unambitiously. To the extent that I have ambitions and desires to live better than I do — and I do have such ambitions, everyone does — I suffer. By this I mean that if I compare my life now to what it should be or what it could be or what it ought to be, inevitably the life I’m living at this moment pales by comparison.

But what am I actually comparing my life to when I do that? I’m comparing real life to something imaginary. Either I’m comparing it to the vague idea of what my life should be, or I’m comparing it to my imaginary construct of what other people’s lives are like. But even if I choose a real person’s life for comparison, I’m not that person. I don’t know what his life is actually like.

I might desire a big apartment of my own in Manhattan with a nice view of the skyline instead of the one I now share with two roommates in the least trendy part of Brooklyn with a view of the Phat Albert Warehouse. But in order to afford such a place I’d have to work very hard and be extremely driven. And, honestly, I don’t want to work that hard. It’s too much stress. If I want to see the Manhattan skyline, I can go see it. It’s just a $2.25 subway ride to Times Square. Things are pretty good.

It’s not necessary to have a lot of what the world calls “success.” The more stuff you own, the more responsibilities you take upon yourself. It’s also not necessary to give up everything and live with one bowl and one robe. You can find a middle ground between austerity and affluence that’s pretty good.

When you seek abundance and success outside of what you already have you just make yourself miserable. It’s quite all right to try to improve your situation. I am always trying to improve my situation. But I’ve found that it pays to be careful what you believe about the ways others might characterize the way you live. What society tells you about what’s best is a collective illusion. Just because most people believe something doesn’t make that thing true. In the past most people believed the world was flat too.

Living simply means making the life you have into the life you want to have. It means seeing the ways in which the life you’re living now is exactly what you want, or at least exactly what you need. No one can tell you whether you’re right or wrong in this. It’s up to you to form your own opinions about your life.

***

Brad Warner is the author of Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between as well as Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up! and Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains blog about Buddhist stuff that you can click here to see.

Buy the new CD by his band Zero Defex at CD Baby now!

Classic Set of the Day:


Clio - Loves You To Death



Clio is a voluptuous rocker from Amsterdam. Her beautiful green eyes, dark hair and pouty lips should be gifts enough but she is also one of the smartest and most level headed ladies around. Her freckles are kisses from angels, perhaps the ones perched on her shoulders. Clio has been blessed with a body like none other. One look at "Love you To Death" and you will.

By SG’s Team Agony Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls. (image) [Salome in Pop Art Clash ] Q. I’m 26, he’s 50. I really like him, he is respectful, thoughtful, humble, smart, funny, and just an overall wonderful person with good... more

By SG’s Team Agony

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



[Salome in Pop Art Clash ]

Q. I’m 26, he’s 50. I really like him, he is respectful, thoughtful, humble, smart, funny, and just an overall wonderful person with good energy. We have been seeing another for about 3 months now. I was in a bad living situation, and I just moved in with him over the weekend. We both have every intention of this being temporary. I know my feelings will get stronger, as they already have in the last month. He occasionally makes jokes about our age difference, and I feel that it bothers him. I’ve never dated anyone even close to his age, nor did I ever see myself doing so, but it doesn’t bother me at all. I guess I’m just wonderingly what the chances are of things working out.

A. I’ve actually dated two people significantly older than me (as in 15+ years older) and both times I thought the age difference was much less of a big deal than the people I was dating. It sounds like a patronizing cop-out to say that someone that much older is in a much different place in life, and that their perspective is much different due to their years of life experience, but it’s the truth. Especially if there are factors such as ex-spouses, children, or challenging career paths in the mix, a large age difference may put a damper on how compatible the two of you are. It’s only as I’ve gotten older that I’ve realized how naive I had been to think that the age difference was no big deal.

You also have the added difficulty of living together while the relationship still has that new-car smell. Moving in can be a stressor for any relationship, and you two are still getting to know each other and figuring out your expectations of the relationship and each other. This is a big step, even if it’s temporary, and when you add that to feelings you say are intensifying this sounds like a relationship that’s getting very serious very fast. His jokes could be his way of gently expressing his discomfort without hurting your feelings.

Also – and this is a delicate, embarrassingly Freudian admission – but when you are a young woman dating a much older man there is the risk that the relationship may sometimes tip from strictly romantic into territory that is suspiciously parental. I spent a year and a half with a man 16 years older than me, and he also helped get me out of a bad living situation once. It felt a little like I was a teenager again and my dad was coming to get me out of detention. I was grateful, and uncomfortable.

This is not to say that your relationship is like mine, or that yours is doomed. You say that he is respectful, humble, and generally wonderful. You seem thoughtful and well-spoken. So you two should be able to sit down with each other and talk openly about what’s going on. You don’t necessarily have to sit him down for a State of the Relationship Address (awkward!), but at some point in conversation, maybe next time he jokes about your age difference, ask him to be honest with you about whether the age difference makes him uncomfortable. Be prepared for this conversation to lead to other topics that you need to be honest about, such as expectations. If you’re young enough to be his daughter, does he see a future in his relationship with you? And no matter what his answer is, are you on the same page?

The age difference alone isn’t a surefire relationship killer, but failure to be totally and consistently honest (in a respectful and loving way) is. So check in with him, encourage him to be open with you even on difficult topics and extend him the same courtesy. I hope that the two of you are not only compatible but have the same expectations, and that you find happiness with each other.

Good luck.

Salome

***



[Atlea in Temptation Waits ]

Q. I’m 20 years old and I’ve never had a serious relationship. I’m attracted to everyone: boys, girls, transvestites, transgender, etc., etc. (pansexual). I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, so 20 years without a relationship and someone I can share my life with makes me feel really empty. Do you girls have any suggestions for ways to meet new people? Am I making too big of a deal out of not being in a relationship? I feel like being in a loving relationship would not fix, but improve the way I feel about myself and life in general. Thank you!

A. First off, let me say that it’s great that you are so open, and even greater that you know it. At 20, a lot of men and women are still on the fence about how they feel about themselves, let alone relationships, so knowing that much about yourself is a step in the right direction. It’s the hopeless romantic’s curse to feel like something is missing without a counterpart. It’s okay to feel glum about it sometimes, but it’s important not to let it become an obsession. Feeling like that constantly could hinder your chances of getting serious with someone, because you end up thinking more about the idea of romanticism rather than concentrating on what is actually happening. Relationships take time and they aren’t easy, but when it’s all said and done, they are so much better than a fling because you feel rewarded for the hard work you put in. It’s also very important to go into a relationship feeling confident about yourself. And you should be! You know who you are and what you want, so don’t be afraid to show it off! As for how to meet people, I suggest thinking about things you enjoy because chances are if you love music and meet someone at a show, then they’ll most likely share your interest, and that gives you something to build on. Go to your local SG group outings, maybe there’s someone on your friends list dying to be with you! Love is everywhere, you just have to keep an eye out for it. And remember that being in a relationship can make you feel great, but being comfortable with yourself will make you complete for life.

Atlea

***



[Rydell in Changing Seasons]

Q. Hey just wanted to get some advice for a huge problem. I’ve been on and off with my ex of 4 years. We have a 2-year old son together. He recently kicked me and my son out, so I had to move back with my parents who live 9 hours away.

He said that he kicked me out cause this friend of his told him I was prostituting like her – she sleeps with men for money. I know her and I never liked her, but cause it’s a friend of my ex I couldn’t say much. I never did that, but now that I’m gone they are all saying lies about me to him and I’m sure he’s talking crap also with them.

He texts every now and then, saying he loves me, but now he’s saying he’s seeing four other women. I ignored him, but he called my mom and told her that he believes everything this hoe is saying about me. He said he never wants to see me because he’s ashamed.

I texted him and told him to leave me alone forever, and that he shouldn’t believe everything they say, but now I’m left with mixed feelings. I still care about him and I’m mad that they have the nerve to talk about me now that I’m gone. When I was there they all kissed my ass. What should I do? I haven’t heard from him at all. It hurts. We have a son together and because of these lies this hoe is saying he has been a total asshole ever since. Please help. I just have no one to turn to. Thank you for reading this. It means a lot more than u could ever know.

A. First off let me start off by saying I’m sorry you have to deal with drama – it’s never easy, especially with a child involved. Now to jump right into it, it ooks like someone is gonna have to be the adult in this situation, and that my dear is you! Seeing how you are bound to this person for the rest of your life because you share a child together, you need to make the best and most mature effort (even if he isn’t) to be a grown up – not to imply you are not being one.

When it comes a situation like yours, there will always be people who feel the need to interject themselves into the relationship, whether it be friends, family or significant others. Some people are just immature and unhappy with themselves and feel the need to bring others down. Sadly some people thrive off this kind of thing – which seems to be the case with this women. As much as you wanna scream at her and call her a Donkey’s Cunt and anything else you can think of, try to rise above it and not stoop to her level ’cause this will only cause strife between you and your son’s father.

It’s hard when people spread a lie or get into your business. That being said, sometimes we have to take a step back; Ask yourself, will what was spitefully said by someone else with the specific intent of hurting you truly matter a month from now? Or 6 months from now? A year from now? And will stressing yourself out over it do you any good? As hard as it is to not feel the anger and resentment towards others, in the end we are really only hurting ourselves by being angry at them or hating them. Truthfully I would feel sorry for her (she probably just has some envy and jealousy issues with regards to you).

As for him, well he needs to grow a pair of balls. If he wants a successful relationship with you or anyone else, he needs to learn how communicate directly with his partner – and to tell others to butt out. If he had a concern about something you did, then he should have asked you about it, rather than dignifying idle gossip by believing it and dealing with it by name-calling. And if he doesn’t have trust in you, you may want to re-evaluate if you want him in your life as a partner. I’m sure you think you miss him, but are you really missing him, or just having someone in your life and the relationship familiarity that you’re used to?

Hopefully, in the end, if you don’t show that it bothers you as much as it may, and if you show him you can be more mature than either of them, then maybe he will pick up on it and realize he is being twat. Mohandas Gandhi said it best: “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

Hope this helps in some small way

Rydell

***

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“I'm old fashioned and modern at the same time,” Rachel Federoff tells me at one point during our phone interview. As a key player in the hit Bravo TV show, Millionaire Matchmaker - which is now in its fourth and most successful season to date – Federoff must reconcile her intrinsically alternative... more

“I'm old fashioned and modern at the same time,” Rachel Federoff tells me at one point during our phone interview. As a key player in the hit Bravo TV show, Millionaire Matchmaker - which is now in its fourth and most successful season to date – Federoff must reconcile her intrinsically alternative self with the always outspoken and often very traditional beliefs of her mentor Patti Stanger, who founded the Millionaire’s Club, the elite matchmaking service upon which the show is based.

The show makes for compelling viewing as it follows The Club’s well-heeled (and often well-quirky) clients as they are schooled in the art of courtship and get set up on dates. The Club is not for everyone however. Aside from a healthy bank balance, the other pre-requisite is that the millionaires and millionairesses must be looking for a committed relationship, and not just to hook up.

To this end, Stanger has very strict rules that her clients must follow, and that Federoff and her fiancé Destin Pfaff (who, as COO of the Millionaire's Club, also appears on the show) must therefore help instill and enforce. Drinking should be kept to a minimum on a date, the Stanger-mandated maximum being two, and all parties are also asked to refrain from sleeping with their partners until they're in a committed relationship.

This no-sex rule is not a judgment on promiscuity, but a reflection of the underlying relationship goals. But while waiting until well beyond the third date can be seen as pragmatic given the aspirations of The Club, some of Stanger’s other dating practices are tougher for those involved – particularly the women - to swallow. She insists that her clients and their dates stick to very traditional gender roles; men plan the dates, and the women are coached to suppress their “male energy” and allow their prospective partners to take the lead. In an era of supposed gender equality, it’s hard for liberated women to appreciate Stanger’s logic. However, as Federoff explains during our interview, our subconscious instincts are often at odds with our feminist ideals, and relationship success often hinges on finding your personal equilibrium between the two.

Andrea Larrabee: I know you got involved in the Millionaire’s Club through your partner Destin, but how did you end up as Patti’s VP of Matchmaking?

Rachel Federoff: Basically Destin and I met many moons ago on MySpace, believe it or not. After a few dates, he had asked me to pack up my life as I knew it in Orange County and to move in with him here in LA. I worked a crappy job for a while, and I saw what Destin was doing and thought that that was the coolest thing in the world. My background is in psychology and I'm a big people person. I had actually matchmade some friends of mine. Destin was getting so swamped with work that he had a little chat with Patti. It's a little bit different than how it's portrayed on the show, but he actually chatted it up with Patti about having me come on as his assistant...

At the wrap of Season One I went down to the set and I met Patti personally. She and I, of course, hit it off. We're both Jewish girls with an East Coast family, and very much have the same mentality and work ethic. I was so excited. Destin was like, "Patti and I are cool with having you work with me." As much as he hated the fact that the two of us would be working together, being in a relationship, he knew it would be good for me. So that's essentially how it started. Then Patti fell in love with the fact that I was so good at registering the girls, and handling the girls, and cracking the whip on them, so she eventually stole me from Destin and had me become her Director of Registration...I started learning how to matchmake through Patti. She saw I was phenomenal at it, so she started teaching me sales and I started to get my own clients...And when Chelsea quit the company, [Patti said,] "Rachel, you're amazing at what you do and I would love for you to be our VP of Matchmaking." Of course, I was like, yeah!

AL: What are the main things that you have learned from Patti? What are the skills that make a good matchmaker?

RF: There are skills, and I'll get back to that, but the biggest thing is either you have it or you don't. A lot of it is intuition...Reading a person, and getting to know them and what they like.

AL: On the show that Patti asks the clients what they want, but then she reads between the lines and weighs up what they're asking for versus what she thinks they need.

RF: Exactly...Our clients that you see in the show are very different from our real life clients, but they're also kind of similar in the fact that they all have these wacky, skewed ideas of what they are looking for. You'll have the 50-year old guy who wants the 21-year old girlfriend. We have to basically smack him on the hand and say no, that's not right, that's not what you want, and that's not what you need...You have to give them what they should have, because as Patti says, their pickers are usually off. That's true, and that goes for everybody. Millionaire or not, it's like you're in it so you don't see it. You need someone on the outside who can go no, no, no, you're doing it all wrong.

AL: Right. You can often see really clearly what your friends are doing wrong but you can never see the wood for the trees when it comes to yourself.

RF: Exactly.

AL: You say that your real clients are very different from the clients we see on the show. I guess the very fact that they're looking for love on TV maybe suggests that they want their 15 minutes of fame more than they want real love.

RF: Something like that, yeah. Pretty much. There are those that are really super sweet and genuine. On next week's episode for example, are probably the two best millionaires that we have all season. They are just really awesome people, really sweet. They're not douche bags, and I bet you a million bucks if they were to really sign up with us, they would actually listen to what we have to say and want to find true love.

But our real clients, a lot of them are very high end. We have a lot of celebrities and people like that, so obviously they don't want to be in the public eye - and they can't be in the public eye. They just genuinely want to find love. They're in it for the right reasons. They're doing it not because they have millions of dollars and they can afford our membership. They're millionaires for a reason - they work their asses of. They're so busy working, and running around and doing things that they don't have time to find anybody...and that's where we come in. We're headhunters for them.

AL: So those are the success stories that we never get to see.

RF: Exactly. We are completely confidential. I can't tell you who my clients are...That's the unfortunate thing with the show, they don't show a whole lot of success and it sucks. It's hard for us, because we do have a ton of success. Everyone gives us crap for it too. They say, "Ha ha, your success is in the 90 percentile?" It really is. It's just on a reality TV show everybody likes to see drama and train wrecks and crazy antics, so it's frustrating for us.

AL: How do you filter out the would-be dates that are only in it for the money?

RF: That's one of the biggest questions that pops up when we're potentially getting a new client. They don't want a girl who is going to be in it for the cash. That's why the girls fill out such an extensive application. The girls give us such crap for it. I'm always like, "I know it's a novel but get over it." It's a huge application, and it has a big giant affidavit in it stating that they're not allowed to ask for anything financial from the guys, or they will be fined money and they will booted from the club. So that's one thing.

The other thing comes when we're actually sitting down with the girls and getting to know them...Patti taught us things to look for [to spot] a sugar girl, a girl who just wants the money or a gold digger. If I come across a girl that's 21, and she says she'll date up to 70-years old, clearly they're having a little bit of Anna Nicole Smith syndrome. If you want to date the old fart that's got a million dollars then, no, you're not right for us.

And we have tons of girls that are wealthy themselves. We have doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and business owners, and, again, celebrities who are not really millionaires but they are celebrities and they want us to fix them up, and they are not paying clients. Luckily we don't have a whole lot of gold diggers because we are very good at seeing the signs. And screening them, it shoos them away. We're very selective.

AL: You brought in the female and gay clients for the first time this season, which is a very cool addition to the show. What are the specific problems you have to overcome with those two groups?

RF: Well millionairesses - and I hate saying this because I feel like I'm bashing females - but they tend to be the biggest pains in the asses. More than the guys. They really are. We don't like dealing with them.

AL: It's got to be really hard for the successful women. To get to that position they often have to be aggressive in their careers; It’s must be hard from them to then take the back seat in a relationship as women are often expected to do. I mean, you specifically encourage women to suppress their aggressive "male energy" on the show.

RF: Very true, very true. It is hard. A lot of them are, as you said, very strong and powerful, and quite frankly a lot of them have very masculine energy too. They are so strong that it scares the guys. It is hard for them to take the back seat. You're spot on with all of that.

AL: It's unfortunate that women sometimes have to choose between success and love, but it is hard for some guys to deal with women that are more alpha than they are.

RF: Yeah, to a certain extent. Usually we try to set them up with really successful guys that are ok with it.

AL: And the same sex couples?

RF: The same sex couples is phenomenal. I have been involved in the gay community for as long as I can remember. I've have gay friends, I worked at a gay restaurant, I've dabbled a little with females myself, so I'm a big advocate and I'm a big supporter for the gay community...I love all people. I hate people that are full of hate, and intolerant.

We were getting tons of e-mails from the gay and lesbian community asking, "When are you guys going to matchmake us?" and "Do you have a service for us?" I approached Patti and I was like, hey we're getting a shit ton of e-mails on this, we really should do something....She was like, "You want it, it's yours. Take over the gay division and see if we can make this work."

It's a slow crawl. It's been really tough. I think one of the biggest challenges, and again, I hate putting this stereotype on it, but I think the challenge is the guys don't really commit. They do tend to sleep around. I really have to admit it, and I hate saying it, but they do. They don't want to commit, and we're about monogamy and commitment. We're very old fashioned and they have to follow our rules. If you don't follow our rules, you're not going to succeed. You're going to keep screwing up, and it's not going to be our fault, it's going to be back to you again. You're the one that's screwing up. That's the hardest thing. It's frustrating because there's so many gay boys and girls that want to be fixed up...I have a ton of guys and girls registered.

With the show it's been kind of tough too, because sometimes we get hate mail from it. You get people that are anti-gay and they're pissed off that we are showing that - which pisses me off because everybody needs love. Everybody needs to find somebody whether you're gay, straight, animal, vegetable, mineral, everybody needs it. So I'm hoping it's going to take off even more after this season.

AL: You and Destin did some beautiful pictures for the "NO H8" campaign with your baby, Sin Halo. They are the most gorgeous photos. How did that come about?

RF: We just contacted the two guys, Adam Bouska [and Jeff Parshley]. I actually worked with [Adam] years ago at one of the gay places I worked at. I was so stoked to see that it was him and his partner that started it all. It's just a really special thing. It meant a lot to me, and I know it meant a lot to Destin, and by default it meant a lot to our son even though he doesn't know. I think it's important because I can show him these pictures and explain to him what it's for. I plan on teaching him to love people no matter what, so it's a big deal.

AL: That's one of the things I find so endearing about the show. So much reality TV exploits dysfunction, but you're trying to teach your clients, however dysfunctional they may be, how to be more functional. You tell them not to sleep with someone before they're in a committed relationship - and it's not that you're judging promiscuity - you're merely saying if you want to be in a committed relationship, this is what you need to do.

RF: Exactly. Exactly. I applaud you for getting it because half the time people talk so much shit or get so mad because we are ripping someone apart, or we're yelling at somebody. It's not because we're trying to be assholes...I'm not telling you to be a bitch. I'm telling you because I'm trying to help you. Do you want to succeed? Clearly you're doing something wrong, and clearly this is what we see, and we know from experience how things work. That's the frustrating thing, people get so upset. I'm glad you see it that way, as a positive and not a negative.

AL: Well they are coming to you for advice in the first place. But Patti in particular can be quite strident with her opinions on the show. In real life, with her clients, does she break it to them a little more gently?

RF: No. No, we're very much tough love. I hate using that word because of that stupid show, but we're very tough love about it. We're very no bullshit. People don't like it, and it's harsh, but you have to be that way. You have to say what has to be done. I'm actually like the nicest one out of the bunch, but this season I've been a little bit meaner. But I'm just being honest. So no, as you see it on the show, is very much in real life.

AL: What tough love do you wish you'd have had before you started dating? What nuggets of wisdom would have made your dating life easier as a teenager?

RF: Not that I was like a big sleep around girl, I wasn't a prude either, but I really like the idea that you should hold back on sex. I think that sex can really confuse things. I wish I would have known that even more so. I knew it, but I didn't know it as strongly as I know it now.

The other thing is the whole "me-amatum" thing that Patti is a big advocate for...I wish I would have been stronger to stand up to a guy, and be like, "Where are we going with this relationship, because I'm ready for the next step? If you're not ready, that's fine. I'm just going to go ahead and move on, and go my own way.” Usually guys will either say "no," or go, "fine, I'm not ready."

AL: If you're asking a guy to shit or get off the pot, so to speak, and they choose to get off the pot, you are preempting a break up, which is the hardest thing when you're really into someone.

RF: Yeah, it definitely is. But at the same time, wouldn't you rather know sooner than later? Rather than wasting X amount of time with a guy, I would rather know. I would rather not waste my time with someone that's never going to propose, and never going to commit. I would rather deal with it up front, and deal with a little bit of heartache, than even more anguish in the long run...

It's hard especially for a girl to do that because, in a sense, it's a little on the masculine energy side. Because you're going against the old fashioned grain where the guys should be the ones that are making the decisions and proposing and what not. But I like it because I'm old fashioned and modern at the same time. I want my guy to propose to me, and I want my guy to take charge of certain things, but at the same time, I also want to step up to the plate too and work with him.

AL: Women are sort of stuck between two worlds. With dating, our prehistoric caveman brains kick in. Guys instinctively want to be the hunter/gatherers and bring home the bacon. And women in the work place often have to step up to the plate and take control, and then have to switch gears in their personal lives to allow their men to feel like men. Women are often very conscious of the need to switch gears.

RF: Yep, it's totally true. Destin and I have that quite often. He's like, "I need to feel like I'm bringing home the bacon." Exactly what you said, hunter/gatherer. Yet he knows I don't really want to stay home taking care of the baby all day. I love my son, and I have no problem doing it, but I need to work and I need to do things too. I'm not Susie homemaker. I'm not a barefoot and pregnant, stay-home type of mom. That's not who I am. I would go crazy if I was a stay-at-home mom.

There are times when I have to tell him, ok, you need to stay home today and watch the baby so I can go and actually have some me time and do things that I want to do. And it's hard for him to jump into that role. Destin's very much a workaholic, he really is. So we're both kind of switching in and out all of the time. It's tough, it's really tough. For me, mom does kick in. I miss my son and I do want to be with him. Then again, I don't want to be with him all day, because I need some me time too. It's a crazy thing, and it's happening more now than obviously years ago.

AL: It's so much more confusing than in the 1950s when everyone knew what their role was. On the show Destin and Patti are very much about letting the guy take the lead old-school style. They emphatically encourage the women to take a back seat and allow the men to plan and pay for dates.

RF: If a woman goes out with a guy and the guy doesn't pay or take care of her, it's usually not for a good reason. But we also have a four to one rule where for every four times the guy takes the woman out, she does something nice for him. It doesn't have to mean that she has to pay for dinner. She can do something sweet for him, like bake him cookies or take him to a park. Patti would say do his laundry or something like that, but again, that's very 1950s and I don't entirely believe in all that. I've always believed in doing nice things back, but at the same time letting the guy take control too, if that makes since.

AL: It makes total sense but it's counter intuitive too. In my past, because I come from a feminist place, I've always wanted to be an equal partner and an equal contributor. I've always wanted to pay half on a date. I always felt that that was intrinsically wrong to expect a man to pick up the tab. What I never figured out is that guys actually like doing that, they like to be able to take care of a women.

RF: That's exactly it. I’m very much like you too. I would go out on dates and I would go Dutch, or I would pay one time or whatever. Obviously on the first date I tried to sit back and let the guy pay for me, but later on, I would help out. Absolutely. But, again, guys very much like to do that. They like to buy the girls drinks and stuff like that.

I was like, it's using somebody, and I'm not a user. It was wrong in so many ways for me. But yeah, they do they kind of enjoy it. I had to train myself to be more girly, and to step back and let the guy take care of me. It's kind of nice actually to feel like a girly girl, and have the guy like treat you, and open the car door for you, and pull out a chair for you. I had to teach myself to let it happen because I never did.

AL: It's so hard to reconcile those two opposing ideas. Obviously we're both strong women, and we have certain feminist principles, but we're also a product of thousands of years of evolution and ingrained culture.

RF: I hate saying this because I feel like I'm going against what Millionaire’s Club preaches, but I agree to it only to a certain extent. Do I think women should be at home and be the little wifey, and the guy should always work? No. I don't. I think women should work. I think women should have power, and be strong and independent, but at the same time we should also be romanced. We should also be treated like queens every now and then...We should allow them to do that. Destin and I have that balance. I'll let him do really sweet romantic things for me, and then I will do really sweet romantic things for him, which he loves...You just have to have that balance. I think that's what's key, and that's hard.

AL: What's the sweetest most romantic thing that Destin has done?

RF: I'd have to say the night that I found out that I was expecting - he proposed to me that same night. It was just really sweet. I found out [that I was pregnant] and we were all excited and happy and in tears. We were laying in bed and we were ecstatic. But then I started crying. It was a happy/sad cry. He was like, "What's wrong?" I'm like, "We're having a baby and we're not even married yet." That's where I turn into my old fashioned mode - we should be married first, we're doing this backwards. All of a sudden he turns around with this little box and proposed to me. It was the sweetest thing ever. It was just magical.

AL: He had the ring anyway, so he was going to ask you...

RF: Oh yeah. He had it all planned out. He was going to do this big elaborate thing that every girl wants, the elaborate hoopla. But this was probably the best thing ever. It was like two amazing things in the same day. We got engaged and we're having a baby. It was a double whammy, and I started bawling more, it was ridiculous.

And there was this one other time, and this was before we even were a real couple. It was probably on our second date, if you even call it a date. We haven't had a real date, date. We were hanging out and we were watching a live rockabilly band that I dragged him to because that's more my thing than his. He walks over to me and obviously has to get right up into my ear because it's so loud in there, and he said, "I just want to tell you that I love you, and I'm going to marry you someday." That was the first time he told me he loved me and that he was going to marry me. Usually when guys have said that right off the bat, that's when I run for the door. But this time it was the best thing in the world. It was the sweetest thing.

Millionaire Matchmaker airs on Tuesdays on Bravo TV (9 PM PST / 8PM C). Read Rachel's blog for insider info and the behind-the-scenes scoop.

The landscape of standup comedy on television has taken a surprising turn in the past few years. People like Artie Lange, Patton Oswalt and Paul Mooney are doing these amazing standup shows and are videotaping them in a very cool verite way. In the wake of the success of The Comedians of Comedy, Zach... more

The landscape of standup comedy on television has taken a surprising turn in the past few years. People like Artie Lange, Patton Oswalt and Paul Mooney are doing these amazing standup shows and are videotaping them in a very cool verite way. In the wake of the success of The Comedians of Comedy, Zach Galifianakis and director/editor Michael Blieden have teamed up again to bring Zach Galifianakis - Live at the Purple Onion to DVD. Besides Galifianakis’ hysterical set at the world renowned venue, we also get to see his “brother” Seth get interviewed by NPR’s Brian Unger and get some real personal moments with Zach.

Buy Zach Galifianakis - Live at the Purple Onion

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?

Zach Galifianakis: I just rolled a joint.

DRE: Nice.

Wait a second, does that mean you’ve got nothing to do for the rest of the day?

Zach: I have a lot to do, but nothing is more important than the ole joint rolling.

DRE: Can you do your normal stuff while you’re high?

Zach: I can’t do anything. I don’t know if I’m going to smoke it. I was rolling it. I’m practicing because my arthritis is really bad and I’m just trying to work on my fingers.

DRE: The only indication that you liked marijuana, was that one of your MySpace groups is the Relegalize It group.

Zach: Oh yeah, somebody added that. I’m probably also friends with sex offenders and stuff like that. But I’m all for the legalization effort of course.

DRE: You don’t do a lot of pot humor, well I didn’t see Out Cold. That’s a pot movie, right?

Zach: It is a bit. But it paints you into a corner if you’re like that. I’d rather have expanded a little bit.

DRE: Do you have a show tonight?

Zach: No, I’m going to go to one of those boring Hollywood meetings in about two hours. I’m going to sit there and pretend like I’m paying attention and nod my head. That’s all I have to do today.

DRE: Is this a meeting for something good?

Zach: I’m trying to get this movie made called Fat Jesus. I’m going around town talking about it and it is usually met with glazed over looks.

DRE: What’s it about?

Zach: The scientific community and the Catholic Church get together and release exactly what Jesus looks like. He looks exactly this assistant manager at Kinko’s. So everybody starts thinking he’s Jesus and he runs with it and his life starts paralleling the last days of Jesus but in the modern world. He’s also a complete loser, stoner type of guy so it’s as if Jesus came back as Pauly Shore.

DRE: Did you write it by yourself?

Zach: I am writing it with my friend A.D. Miles.

DRE: You’re from North Carolina, right?

Zach: I am from the mountains of North Carolina. It’s a small town in the foothills. Now I have a 60 acre farm up in the mountains that I live at sometimes. I’m getting ready for some cows. I’m really happy. It’s really nice. I’m going to make it into a writer’s retreat I think and maybe an all-black nudist colony.

DRE: You really have a farm or are you messing with me?

Zach: No, I really do have one. It’s really beautiful. I have a pond and a tractor and I drive around acting like I know what I’m doing, but I have no clue. But I’m learning how to farm and I love it.

DRE: What made you pick the Purple Onion for this DVD?

Zach: Purple Onion was this club back in the ‘60s that Woody Allen and Phyllis Diller and Mort Sahl and all these comedians used to play. They reopened it.

DRE: Did you specifically want Michael Blieden to direct so it would have the same feeling as Comedians of Comedy?

Zach: Yeah. I want Michael Blieden to work on everything I do because he’s really good at covering comedy. He’s shoots and he doesn’t tell you to do anything and he edits it nicely.

DRE: Did you guys talk about doing this when you were doing the Comedians TV show?

Zach: Well Netflix gave us some money and they said “Go shoot some stand up” and we just did it from there. It was a real organic type thing.

DRE: Netflix is getting into producing a lot of comedy. I saw their John Waters movie and they put out the Comedians movie. They seem like they give a lot of freedom.

Zach: They don’t muddle. They don’t do any of that. You just do it and you hand it in. I have all the say and the editing rights on it and that stuff, so it was good.

DRE: I’m sure you’ve been either offered or talked about comedy specials with places like Comedy Central and HBO. Is what they want out of you much different than what you want?

Zach: I definitely didn’t want it to be too polished. Standup on television is always over produced and everything’s really nice. I wanted the club feel for this. If you do it on Comedy Central or something, there are always a thousand people involved and it doesn’t really have the same feel as when you go see it live. So I wanted it to have the feeling that you are sitting in the room and hearing the drinks clink and people sucking through straws. Michael Blieden did a really good job of capturing that.

DRE: During one of the interviews you said that you are shy, to do what you do did you have to overcome that?

Zach: I don’t know if it’s a shyness rather than a lack of confidence, which I think translates into shyness sometimes. But when you’re working with people that you know, it’s a lot easier. I’ve been on the road with all those guys that worked on the Purple Onion thing. So that helps you loosen up. There’s also beer involved. That’s always a great confidence booster. They don’t let you do too much on Comedy Central. I’m shy a little bit in real life but everything is unleashed when I get onstage. Other than that, I’m pretty quiet.

DRE: I know you riff a lot, is that the right word to use?

Zach: Yeah riff, that works. A lot of it is just experimental. It’s making stuff up in the moment and improvising. I can stick to my jokes, but to be honest with you, you get a little bit bored with that. So I like to ask the audience questions and I like curveballs and all that stuff. I don’t really mind getting heckled. I think it’s fun as long as it’s done organically. I don’t like when people purposely heckle me because they’re trying to make the show better. That never works. They’re like “Hey, man. I just wanted to heckle you because it’ll make your show better.” I don’t fucking need you to make the show better. You’re making things worse.

DRE: You’re not in charge.

Zach: Exactly. You’re not in charge.

DRE: Did you tone any of the riffing down for the DVD?

Zach: I will say this without going into too much detail, I did say something political that was highly illegal. People can narrow that down. There were two references to that. Netflix just overlooked it. I had to call them and say, “You have to take this out. The FBI will come.” So I had to tone that down a little bit.

DRE: It’s funny that they missed it.

Zach: One of the producers, I guess he was trying to make me a martyr. I contacted a free speech lawyer and he said that we should take this on. I’m like “I don’t have time for that.” So it never happened. Thank God.

DRE: It’s so hard to tell what’s real and what’s not real in your act. But I read that your uncle really did run against Jesse Helms.

Zach: Yeah, that’s true. He’s still alive and he’s a congressman in North Carolina. Since my uncle is Greek, the KKK would show up at campaign rallies just to intimidate him.

DRE: Because he was Greek?

Zach: Yeah. My dad’s side of the family is real dark. Like a Greek guy running for Senate is intimidating to small-minded Southerners.

DRE: So you were raised in a very political atmosphere?

Zach: We discussed politics constantly and still do. A very Greek way of being is that you discuss politics. It’s a constant theme at my house. It’s what we talk about all the time.

DRE: Since you do some political stuff in your act, what does your family think of that?

Zach: My parents are very supportive. On the back of the DVD, it says that I want to thank my parents, but I hope they never see this. My parents are liberals, but I don’t think they like their son walking around saying “Who ate all the pussy?” and stuff like that. I tell them that it’s a stage persona, which is not really true but they understand. They don’t care. I could be in pornography. As long as I’m flying them to places, they could care less.

DRE: I saw that you have done Seth Galifianakis before on Jimmy Kimmel.

Zach: My brother has been on Jimmy Kimmel before and he’s performed live with me. I’ve gone on and he follows me. The DVD will be his second like thing on tape.

DRE: So we’re talking like he’s real? That’s fine.

What does Greg Galifianakis think of Seth?

Zach: Greg, my real brother, designed me. I don’t care what he thinks because he was my Dr. Frankenstein growing up since he was so mean to me. But he’s like an angel now so it doesn’t really matter.

DRE: I have an older brother too. So it was him beating the crap out of you that made you all angry?

Zach: It didn’t make me angry. I was angry towards him, but I’m not an angry person. It affects people different ways. I think I learned to use humor to defend myself against him and make fun of him because that was the only thing I could do to rebuke because he was so much bigger than me. My brother is such a gem now and he feels so guilty about all of it.

DRE: I know what you mean.

Zach: At least he says that. But he’s had talks with me where he started crying because he feels so guilty.

DRE: During the scenes with Seth, they kept in Brian Unger actually laughing. I didn’t expect that.

Zach: I told Blieden to cut that out. He’s like “No, you’ve got to watch it again.” You start laughing as Brian is laughing. We had a hard time keeping a straight face. None of that was written. We were just fooling around.

DRE: Once again it’s hard to tell if what you were saying is real. So did a bus driver really did pull your pants down?

Zach: That’s true. My brother did stuff his underwear in my mouth and yell out, “I’m giving you a gag order.” I’m trying to think of all the stuff that was on there. There was maybe one embellished thing.

DRE: I never thought about this before but Sarah Silverman told me that the reason that she had to change her act every night was because the same people were coming to all the shows. Is that why you do your standup that way?

Zach: That’s a good point Sarah makes because you do get these nerdy followers around town and it forces you to do new stuff, but screw them. I’m not doing it for them. I get bored with the same old, same old. When I go on the road I stick to my act, but in these little rooms in Los Angeles or New York, I do the more experimental stuff.

DRE: Is Dog Bites Man officially gone?

Zach: That’s done. Yeah. That’s cancelled.

DRE: You told Michael Showalter that you didn’t really love doing the show.

Zach: I really liked doing the show. It’s the same producer of Ali G, but Ali G went after people with power. There’s a different feel to it. We went after the religious right and we went after the Republicans and I have no problem with that. There were a couple of things that maybe didn’t even air, there was one time we were doing an interview and I started crying out of character. I was like “What am I doing? What am I doing?”

DRE: Oh wow.

Zach: It was inside this church. We were interviewing this preacher and he was so sweet. We went into this Megachurch thinking we were going to take on a certain kind of person. But it turns out sometimes people are just good people. Plus we had all these lawyers behind us. It felt a little bit iffy that way, to be honest with you.

DRE: Let me guess, Matt Walsh and [Dog Bites Man creator] Dan Mazer didn’t care.

Zach: No [laughs].

DRE: They didn’t care one bit I bet.

Zach: No, Matt Walsh was the hardest worker on the show. But Matt puts these blinders on and he just goes. Matt will say the most horrible things to anyone. But he’s a really nice guy and Dan’s a really nice guy, but when it comes to nabbing people, they were a little bit more ferocious than perhaps I was. I think Dan’s theory is that he thinks everyone’s a cunt.

DRE: I remember when your talk show ads were all over Manhattan. I had at least two people go to me, “Who is that guy?” I’m like “I don’t know who he is. I’m not in college.” Was that a surreal moment when they were plugging the hell out of that thing?

Zach: Yeah. My mom happened to be in New York at the time. She was in Times Square and she called me and she was like, “My God, Zach, your face is everywhere. It’s on the side of a building.” I’m like “I know mom, it’s bizarre.” But I wish they had not thrown that show on so strong. I wish that people had found it. In the TV business, they want a hit right away. It was weird. In Los Angeles there was actually a corner where I had a billboard up and then my roommate, who was a Banana Republic model, had a billboard up and we were facing each other. We were staring at each other through billboards.

DRE: You are actually in the Sean Penn movie [Into the Wild].

Zach: Yeah, it sounds like a joke. I didn’t audition for it. He called my cell phone and next thing I know, I’m in South Dakota with him in a hunting lodge for two weeks. The first thing I asked, “How the hell do you know who I am?” He goes, “I’ve seen that movie Out Cold about 20 times.” I’m like, “Really?” His son is a big snowboarder, so his son forced him to watch it. For Into the Wild, there was no written dialogue. I just showed up and improvised it all.

DRE: Is it an all improv movie?

Zach: No, it’s all strictly scripted, But Sean was like, “I’m just running the camera, so try to come up with stuff,” which is a bit intimidating. Hopefully I’m still in it. I’ve run into him a couple times and he says I’m still in the movie, so maybe.

DRE: You do a lot of movies. Do you want to be a serious actor or have a sitcom?

Zach: At this point I just take what rolls my way. I don’t really sit around going, “Oh, I’m going to take this project because it really spoke to me” because a lot of it is shit. I take a lot of jobs based on where it’s shooting. If it’s not in Los Angeles, that’s a big bonus. But in the coming years I hope to have little movies that I’ve written that I can be in. A less aggressive Woody Allen type of brand would be really nice like his early silly stuff.

DRE: Do you rewrite movies like Patton [Oswalt] and Brian [Posehn] Brian [Posehn]?

Zach: No, those guys all do that. I think that takes discipline and I’m too busy collecting firewood and trying to keep my house warm. Those guys are good at that. I haven’t gotten into that world yet, but I’m just focusing on my tractor and farming and when things come my way or if I come up with an idea, I’ll try to pursue that. I’m more of a shaker than a mover. Let’s just put it that way.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck