Russell Simmons sat all by himself at NBC's party on the rooftop of the Beverly Hilton hotel. Well, not totally by himself. The young girls he came with were talking amongst themselves, and celebrities kept stopping by to meet him (hence the photo opp with Jimmy Fallon). The Oxygen Channel, an NBC... more

Russell Simmons sat all by himself at NBC's party on the rooftop of the Beverly Hilton hotel. Well, not totally by himself. The young girls he came with were talking amongst themselves, and celebrities kept stopping by to meet him (hence the photo opp with Jimmy Fallon).

The Oxygen Channel, an NBC cable arm, is producing a documentary on Simmons' business. Running Russell Simmons shows the viewer what it takes to maintain Simmons' multi-faceted life, by following the assistants who coordinate all his endeavors behind the scenes. It is scheduled to premiere Nov. 2.

Even with all of Simmons' productions in music with the Def Jam label he co-founded with Rick Rubin, its on air components like Def Comedy Jam and Def Poetry Jam, business isn't even the most interesting thing about Simmons. He's a vegan, he's an animal activist, he's an author, he has several clothing lines - and as a philosopher he's a force to be reckoned with. He practices Buddhism, yoga and meditation, and his work is layered with his own, honed ideology. His biography, Do You, talks more about spiritual peace than running a record label.

Everything Russell Simmons says is wisdom, so if he's sitting on the roof by himself, you take that opportunity and learn as much as you can from him. The questions aren't even really that important, merely a means to get Simmons talking about philosophy, music, politics, dating, and so on.

Fred Topel: How has your philosophy evolved since Do You?

Russell Simmons: It hasn't. The thing is for me I've been reading the same scripture over and over again and I can't make sense of it but the simplest thing I can say is the book is called Super Rich, the new one. The state of needing nothing is rich, obviously, right? So Super Rich is a state of consciousness, like Nirvana, like Samadhi, like Christ Consciousness, the idea being hyper sensitive and focused. The road to enlightenment is paid with riches, right? The idea that you give it all away or I couldn't care less or don't need to hold onto it are so free that it keeps coming. You can't give it away and it keeps coming, that idea is different from what The Secret or other Christian self help books talk about because we know that you can't pray for shit, and if you do, when you get it, it won't make you happy. It's a funny thing. A lot of these books that talk about the state of consciousness that attracts all these things actually act like the end all is the thing that it attracts instead of the state itself. So it's kind of a funny book but it's kind of a simple book and it's a how to book again. The publishers think it's much better than the last one. I get a lotta, lotta, lotta people and it's selling more now than it did when it came out still. Not right when it came out obviously but when it became a best seller. So I'm excited about the new one and the book coincided with this TV show.

FT: It's funny you mention The Secret because I got a lot out of that too, and I don't see it as a way to get stuff.

RS: I don't mean to limit it. I mean that the essence of everything that The Secret is talking about, The Secret itself is what we call the Atman or the Self or God. I think that they say that but they play the second fiddle to what you can achieve in the world as a result of this consciousness. Instead of saying needing nothing, operating from abundance not as a way of attracting things but as a natural state, it happens as a byproduct of all the things you talk about. I think maybe even Oprah when talking about The Secret, said The Secret is God. I don't mean God, that scary God or the outside of you God but the connectivity self. The core of The Secret is that connectivity.

FT: Yeah, my relationship with God is not someone who punishes you for doing things he doesn't like.

RS: No, I don't think like that. I don't even think of God as outside of me. I think God's a big living breathing everything that we're connected to and the more we realize that connection, the more obviously "powerful" we are. Even to the state of Christ Consciousness, the miracle workers. Samadhi refers to a state, the Yogis refer to a state that's not just enlightened where you walk around and you're comfortable in your skin. Beyond that, it's enlightened where you can actually perform miracles. That's the last stage of Samadhi. It's documented in all the scripture, that mysticism. So if you don't achieve that state while you're walking around right now, certainly on the way to it you become so much more powerful. That's all you have to know. The book's about that.

FT: People who are interested in spirituality might be more accepting about giving up material wants. How can you give up that longing for another person in relationships?

RS: I'm a big meditator and I believe in it. I believe the more secure you are in yourself the more you can love someone without having to be with them and the more you can be free to really give and not worry about receiving love so much. You really get it just by your presence alone. Somebody that exudes love attracts anything they want to. So just like the thing that you think you want as you become less attracted, operate from more abundance, more love inside. Everything just comes. Never mind not being perceived as needy. What we're trying to get to is letting go of some kind of suffering. It's easy to talk about letting go of suffering, "Oh, forget it." It's easy to say it but the best way to help someone else to get rid of it is to get rid of it for yourself. So go find a place and serve and it'll help you to leave yourself.

FT: Which of your many, many projects has the most focus for you right now?

RS: Well, I want to make sure I don't fuck this reality show up because it's obviously putting myself and all my businesses at risk. I've got to make sure I watch the editing and watch everything.

FT: Are you still concerned about coming off well with all acclaim you've had over the years?

RS: No, no, I don't think that. I'm already fucked up. There's nothing they can say about me. I already fucked everything up already that way. I mean I'd like to make sure I do the right thing for all the companies that I represent, all the charities that I care about. I'm responsible to a lot of a people for a lot of shit.

FT: You must be expert in post production though.

RS: A little bit, a little bit. I'm working on it. I'm not an expert but I'm working on it. I know what I want for myself. I wouldn't say I was good at doing derivative shit so I've got to always fight the urges of everybody around me to do derivative stuff.

FT: You're so open already, what will we be surprised to learn in the show?

RS: I don't know, you read my books, I read my own shit and my own Twitter. Language is a funny thing. I don't write my message with a lot of foul language often, but when I'm describing the Bhagavad Gita I noticed re-reading the book, being proofread now, it's like, "Krishna said, 'Nigga' go out there'" No, Krishna didn't say, "Nigga' go out there." In my book, that's in there the way I describe Krishna and teaching Arjuna yoga on the battlefield. The Bhagavad Gita is the story where Krishna teaches Arjuna yoga on the battlefield. The language that I use and in my show, when I read it it's kind of shocking. So on the show, to actually see my language, my real talk, it may be difficult to take, it may not be. It may be just enough personality so people can digest a lot of, not preaching, but a lot of yoga, a lot of prayer, a lot of animal rights, a lot of human rights, a lot of gay rights. So real language and also the fact that I struggle with women. Buddha didn't stop struggling with women until enlightenment. That was his last problem. I'm single. I was married a long time to a lot of girls. That's kind of a funny thing. Some are yogis, some are really sweet vegan but there's been a lot of them and until I actually found a girl I'm starting to see now more at the end of the show, but all through the show I had too many dates.

FT: Where does a man like you meet someone you can trust?

RS: I'm pretty open minded. Simone [Reyes] thinks I'm a little open minded. I meet girls who say, "Oh, I'm a vegan, I'm a yogi, I just came back from a meditation retreat." Simone says, "That girl's a coke whore from Hell." I don't care if they're vegan or yogi around me. It's fine. Do you. If you want to go on a yoga date and go to a vegan restaurant, and if you're fine and successful and smart, you want to do all that for me, keep doing it. See how long you can keep it up. How many yoga classes can you take and how many vegan meals can you eat? I don't know. I mean, some girls I see after I break up with them, they're still vegan later. That's okay.

FT: Do you ever laugh when someone just puts on the wrong act to try to impress you?

RS: I don't laugh. I don't know, I live with it.

FT: Language is a funny thing too because we can never quite express our feelings in words. Is that something unique to the complexities of English?

RS: I don't know, I'm not a language expert at all. I know about English and poetry a little bit, not much of that. I express myself, people say I was vulgar sometimes but I'm more concerned with the suffering of animals than I am about what curse words I use. I'm more disappointed when I see somebody eat a steak than I am if I see somebody use a cuss word, that's for sure.

FT: What is the legacy of Def Jam today?

RS: I don't know. Def Jam Rap Star comes out at the beginning of the Fall [October 5]. That's a big deal. It's a video game but it's a big game. It's like a brand new creative update to whatever Karaoke was supposed to do, it does it. It makes videos. Def Jam, hopefully what I'm doing will be Poetry stuff right now, we're shooting for HBO. We still do stuff and we'll hopefully keep making good records and stick with the work we want to do. I still own the name Def Jam for all these other creative things. I don't have that many ideas for it actually because I'm not that much into youth culture like that. I'm into an urban graduate culture I guess. I would say that my clothing company is urban graduate. Hip hop got older. Some of the older shit, I think you don't have to give up Phat Farm when you're President Obama and put on Ralph. You can put on Argyleculture. Or I can do things that speak to that grown up hip hop audience that's so big and so underserved. You have to grow up out of the 80 clothing companies that were made for hip hop and then have to wear Ralph. You don't have to do that. There's something new. There's some new cultural phenomenon that's integrated and cool. Adam Sandler doesn't have to keep wearing Phat Farm. I know he's a comedian but shit, he can wear new shit.

FT: What are you wearing?

RS: Argyleculture, my own stuff. Or American Classic which I made for Walmart.

FT: Music today is going in such a rhythm intensive direction with a lot of electronic sound. How can someone who's interested in more traditional music learn to appreciate the new styles?

RS: You ain't got to hear them. Fuck them. You like what you like. Enjoy it. Whatever makes you feel good. I heard a 50 Cent record, "I Get Money," I was so excited I almost jumped out the window. When he made "I Get Money," it sounded like a Public Enemy record or an old hardcore record, I loved it. I like "New York" by Jay-Z but I don't always like the new shit. I try to like everything but I don't try hard. I listen, sometimes I don't like it. I don't feel bad if I don't like it.

FT: I don't feel bad but I'd like to appreciate what's out there.

RS: I want to be young too. I mean that. I like being with new shit. I like new shit but if I don't like it, if I don't get it, I don't think I'm going to get too old and die. I like Delfonics records and Blue Magic and shit like that a lot.

FT: Are you working on anything to help the cause of gay marriage?

RS: A lot of gay rights, yeah. I'm a big gay rights activist.

FT: Is there something new we can do to push that cause?

RS: I wrote a letter to the president and put it on the cover of about Lt. Choi. That was fucking horrible. In America now, you let that happen on your watch? No. Do something. Give him a pass. You're fucking president. Write him a letter like Kennedy wrote a letter to Martin Luther King. Even if you don't do shit, write him a letter, "I'm sorry for you." Do something.

FT: What do you think it will take to finally make this inevitable change happen?

RS: It is inevitable. It'll be fine but it's not fine. People live and die and they're discriminated against. So everything's fine later? What, next generation? You've got to live a whole life full of discrimination? You're going to die and be discriminated against? People always say, "Oh, things are better." Also the disconnect in African-Americans and education and poverty and unemployment, it's horrible, man. It's horrible. I think we've got to do something about it. I think we say, "Oh, how'd it get this way?" It got this way because they've been through a lot of shit and they suffered and they were disconnected. They're humans and they obviously had a problem. When you see the black community and Mexican community, stop bussing people, stop immigrating, that's horrible.

FT: Are there things you're happy with Obama for doing?

RS: Yeah, crack cocaine reform. Yeah, I'm happy with a lot of what Obama's doing. I'd just like him to stand up and be a little bit more aggressive, that's all. And I think it's tough because he doesn't have a support system. These Democrats are green. They're not blue.

FT: Do you think he could possibly lose re-election?

RS: I hope not. Not if I can help it. I'm going to go on the road and break my neck for him.

FT: Are we actually making progress on the economy?

RS: I don't know. I mean, I built a company to help underserved communities just because I know that they're suffering and they need it. Find creative ways to help people come out of the poverty or help them and support them and protect the little money they do have, the little infrastructure they built.

Running Russell Simmons premieres on Oxygen on Nov. 2. Super Rich is in stores Jan. 4, 2011.

(image) by Laurelin Driving down the quaint streets of Chatham on Cape Cod is always a reality check for me. The gorgeous colonial style historic homes with vast lawns and wrap around porches lay quietly by the sea, so perfect in their rustic yet modern décor, looking as though a horse drawn buggy would... more

by Laurelin

Driving down the quaint streets of Chatham on Cape Cod is always a reality check for me. The gorgeous colonial style historic homes with vast lawns and wrap around porches lay quietly by the sea, so perfect in their rustic yet modern décor, looking as though a horse drawn buggy would be a better fit in the driveway rather than a SUV. I have always wanted a home like that. I want something old fashioned by the water, somewhere were I can drink sangria on the porch with my husband and look out at the sea. I could stare at these houses forever, just dreaming of a life that right now, seems so out of reach.

I left a seaside town to move to the city, traded the ocean in my backyard for a concrete ocean and non-stop traffic, horns and sirens. Constant college party screams and shouts lull me to sleep instead of the waves and the cry of seagulls. Instead of tasting salt in the breeze, you might get the occasional AC water drip from the apartments above you. I am used to this city life now, and I do miss it when it’s gone, but I can’t see myself retiring and settling down here forever. For me, right now, this is what I have convinced myself I need. This city has always catered to my single needs. Even when I had a boyfriend this city did nothing to help “us” live a quieter happy couple life. We’re late nighters. Our only consistency in life was the same bar stool we would sit in after work. We had no place in a place like the Cape. We didn’t belong there, we belonged here in this tragedy.

It’s a much different story than just city life vs. country life. To me it’s like two different worlds. Move me to one of those houses on the Cape without me feeling like I’m completely done with this city bar scene and I would be lost. My only question –– is it going to be enough? What am I waiting for? More money? The perfect person to bring with me? If I wanted that life so badly things would have been different. I could have moved home to Rhode Island this year but I couldn’t do it. I was supposed to move to San Diego this September, but the thought of leaving Boston just became too horrifying for me. It was just easier to stay, to keep doing what I’m doing. Why stir the pot when things are pretty much alright the way they are? This city has become the ultimate enabler, allowing me to live a crazy life from which I want no rescue.

I guess I’m just not done yet. I know I’m almost 29 years old, but I’m just not finished, not ready to settle, not ready to admit that I want a quieter life, eventually. I’ve been looking for a place to move into in Boston next month, and the realtor I was driving with was just trying to make small talk:

“So, you must have a boyfriend,” he asked, giving me a coy sideways glance.

“Um, not really.” I said.

“Not really?”

“I mean, not technically. I have someone. Just not my boyfriend.”

“Huh,” he said. “How do you feel about that?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m not really the girlfriend type right now.” (What the hell? Is this guy going to sell me an apartment or is he my therapist?!)

“Wait,” he said. “Not the girlfriend type? Don’t you want to get married?”

“Nope,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Not right now.”

The guy has a point. I’m about marrying age I guess. I honestly just figured out myself that one day I do want to get married. I always thought I didn’t. I am one of the most independent people I know. Even when I did have a boyfriend, the concepts of jealousy, anger, and general relationship hassle weren’t an issue. We were calm, confident, and we laughed at other couples that always seemed to be miserable. I thought marriage was a huge mistake. Then one day I caught myself watching Say Yes to the Dress, and something clicked in my head. Maybe I could see myself doing that, one day. I just don’t like to make hasty decisions. I stay out late, I’m outspoken, I have the mouth of a sailor and I’m an angry drunk. I am really not girlfriend material –– who would have me? Who would get me that house on the Cape when I can’t even stay home and be quiet for one damn night?

I keep forgetting that this new guy I’ve met knows all this about me. He likes me the way I am, and perhaps I should keep that in mind when I’m deciding who and who isn’t girlfriend/boyfriend material. I think maybe I am just waiting for the right person who wants the same things I do –– to stay up late, sleep in a bit, get wild often and worry hardly ever, never grow up, and then one day wake up, get married and buy a house on the Cape, move away and never look back, just straight ahead off the porch and over the ocean. I guess I won’t have a problem leaving this city as long as I have someone holding my hand who’ll help me keep my eyes on the future rather than my bar scene past. Who knows, maybe this is it, but I guess there’s no way to really know without a little more time being just a bit unsettled.

***

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by Blogbot (image) If you're attending SDCC be sure to stop by our booth (#1632) to say hi. We'll have issues 1-3 of the new SuicideGirls Comic for sale, as well as copies of our book, Beauty Redefined, DVDs, and T-shirts. Girls on hand for photos and autographs will include: Radeo, Rambo,... more

by Blogbot



If you're attending SDCC be sure to stop by our booth (#1632) to say hi.

We'll have issues 1-3 of the new SuicideGirls Comic for sale, as well as copies of our book, Beauty Redefined, DVDs, and T-shirts.

Girls on hand for photos and autographs will include: Radeo, Rambo, Tita, Bob, Ackley, Milloux, Lolana, and Rlei.

The ladies will be indulging in a little cosplay - maybe even as a special character from the SuicideGirls Comic!

See you at SDCC
XOX

Ps. SuicideGirls Comic artist Cameron Stewart will be hanging out at our booth on Saturday between 12 and 1 PM.

Related Posts:

SuicideGirls Comic – A Preview Inside
Dirty Laundry: Cosplay 4 Comic Con
SuicdeGirls Comic Con Cosplay Adventure

by Jensen This post is going to be completely different than the usual Doing it with Jensen posts. I’ve got this friend, Ocell, who co-writes Food We Chew. He always posts all of this amazing looking food but I’ve never seen any real evidence that he can cook. So I proposed that we do a blog together. more

by Jensen

This post is going to be completely different than the usual Doing it with Jensen posts. I’ve got this friend, Ocell, who co-writes Food We Chew. He always posts all of this amazing looking food but I’ve never seen any real evidence that he can cook. So I proposed that we do a blog together. Basically, I wanted an excuse for a cute dude to make me food, and I saw pictures of these amazing looking bagels he had made and decided I needed them in my stomach. My life is tough! Anyways, I’m behind the camera this time, not in front! Sorry gentlemen, this one is for the ladies. Or something.

If you don’t have a bread machine, you’re pretty much fucked. And not in a good way. No bagels for you, sorry :[. I’m sure there are plenty of awesome non-bread machine bagel recipes, but this is not one of those.

If you want the full recipe and directions, check out AllRecipes.com.

What You'll Need

• salt


• sugar


• bread flour


• active dry yeast


• cornmeal


• eggs


• coarse salt, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, whatever you want on your bagels

Add all of the ingredients into your breadmaker as per the directions on the AllRecipes website. Check out that beard, meow.



'I know you’re going to taste all sorts of delicious after you get all mixed up and put into my mouth, random pile of ingredients.' The bread machine takes hella days. We played Candyland (he won, fuck you “stepped in a gooey gumdrop, lose a turn” square) and poker (we tied) in the meantime.



After the bread machine does its thing, take out the dough and knock it around a bit on a floured surface (so you don’t get a big sticky mess). Then you roll it into a nice, thick rod. His rod is looking good in this picture.



You then cut the rod (ouch!) into nine little balls and then smoosh them flat with your hand. This is all very scientific. Punch a hole in the middle of the ball with a finger and then stretch it out so it looks like, well, a bagel. Chris made a goatse comment during this action and I tried to take a picture but he said something about it ruining the bagel experience. Lamez!



Sprinkle cornmeal on a pan and then place the bagels on top. Brush them with egg whites and then add whatever topping you like! We (well, he, I watched) topped them with sea salt and sesame seeds. After eating them, we both decided we liked the salt ones better. Throw them in the oven for a while!



While the bagels baked, I played with Ocell’s monstrous cat. Kind of just throwing this in there as proof that I was even on the bagel making scene, hah.



They were super super yummy! And didn’t seem too hard to make. The salt ones tasted just like big salted pretzels, which we guessed is probably a very similar recipe, only they fold the dough into a knot.



Sooooooo, you should definitely try your hand at bagel making :]. And you should go to Food We Chew, because they make way better shit than me (though they probably wear more clothes).

Thanks guys!


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Doing it with Tara: Macaroni and Cheese
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Doing it with Tara: Space Invader Magnets

(image) by Blogbot (image) [Above: SG Member Bazuka in Lights Please] SG Member Name: Bazuka Mission Statement: Bring your phantasy by painting to life 
 (image) (image) (image) (image) Medium: Digital Art – Wacom and Photoshop Painter
. Aesthetic: Spark in the dark
. Notable Achievements: I work... more

by Blogbot


[Above: SG Member Bazuka in Lights Please]

SG Member Name: Bazuka

Mission Statement: Bring your phantasy by painting to life 










Medium: Digital Art – Wacom and Photoshop Painter
.

Aesthetic: Spark in the dark
.

Notable Achievements: I work as matte painter. Still lovin' to paint. Being satisfied with my own work sometimes.

Why We Should Care: My work is special cuz it comes right from the heart and from my mind. If you look at my paintings you also get a glimpse of the phantasy world in my head. That’s what I like about art, you can see for a minute into the artist. 
I adore artists like Hieronymus Bosch, Michael Hussar, Arthur Rackham, and lots more (I also think Laurie Lipton and Craig Mullins do cool work)
. Their paintings all have a dark side that still has beauty within, and I try to do that too. Painting has always been my way to express myself and bring my phantasy world to life...at least on paper
..

I Want Me Some: You can find me on SG.







***

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(image) [Remembering the good times: Amy at Coachella 2007] Amy Winehouse has been found dead. The BBC reports that an ambulance was called to her North London home on Saturday July 23 at 3.54 PM GMT. The London Metropolitan Police said in a statement that she was pronounced dead at the scene. The singer... more

[Remembering the good times: Amy at Coachella 2007]

Amy Winehouse has been found dead. The BBC reports that an ambulance was called to her North London home on Saturday July 23 at 3.54 PM GMT. The London Metropolitan Police said in a statement that she was pronounced dead at the scene. The singer had had a much publicized battle with drugs, though at this stage her death is officially being treated as “unexplained.” She was just 27.

So sad.

R.I.P.

Photo: Nicole Powers

by Blogbot (image) “Comic Con + Suicide Girls = Probably one of the best weekends of my life.” – Rlei Suicide Continuing our tradition of cosplay at Comic Con, this year SuicideGirls rocked outfits inspired by a ‘historical’ character from Issue 2 of the new SG Comic (see top left) as drawn... more

by Blogbot



“Comic Con + Suicide Girls = Probably one of the best weekends of my life.” – Rlei Suicide

Continuing our tradition of cosplay at Comic Con, this year SuicideGirls rocked outfits inspired by a ‘historical’ character from Issue 2 of the new SG Comic (see top left) as drawn by Cameron Stewart (he and Missy came by the booth and signed copies of the comic for fans – see pic top right). The costumes, which were whipped up by Junker Designs, were such a hit the ladies of booth 1632 even made the cover of Entertainment Weekly’s Comic Con photo gallery!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi! We hope you had as much fun as we did.

XOX

For more images check out our SG at SDCC photo gallery.
(Images courtesy of Ackley, Bob, Callioppe, Chris Gore, Drama, Exning, KingMuerte, Lolana, Radeo, Rambo, Rlei, Seena, Tank, and Tita.)


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I posted this on G+ earlier, but I'm also posting it here because I think it's important. On the way out of the Syfy party on Saturday night, a pretty horrible thing happened. I wasn't going to talk about it in public, but I can't stop thinking about it, and I think this needs to be... more

I posted this on G+ earlier, but I'm also posting it here because I think it's important.

On the way out of the Syfy party on Saturday night, a pretty horrible thing happened. I wasn't going to talk about it in public, but I can't stop thinking about it, and I think this needs to be said.

If you camp out in front of my hotel while I am on location or visiting a city, if you camp out in front of a party I'm attending ... basically, if you camp out anywhere so you can shove a stack of 8x10s into my face when I'm trying to enter or leave a location, I'm not going to sign them, and I'm not going to be nice about it.

I refuse to reward or validate that kind of behavior, and I'm done being polite about it.

When we walked out of the SyFy party on Saturday night, a pack of people -- probably 12 or 15, I'd guess -- appeared out of nowhere, and surrounded me. They shoved pictures into my face, thrust pens at me, and made it so that I couldn't even move. They separated me from my friends and my son, and, quite frankly, terrified me.

Let's stop for a second and think about this: in what kind of world is it acceptable to surround a person you do not know, separate them from the people they are with, and essentially trap them? Maybe in crazy entitled psycho world, but not the world I live in.

I tried to scrawl my signature on a couple of things, just so some of those people would move and let me keep on walking, but whenever someone took something away, something new immediately took its place. Somehow, +Felicia Day saved me. She reached through the mob, grabbed my hand, and said, "Sorry, we have to go meet some of our friends," before the literally pulled me away, to safety.

This is when the mob lost its shit. They yelled at me like I had done something wrong. They called me names, and they booed at me. (Seriously). A woman stormed up next to me and said, "If you don't sign these things for me, I'm going to tell Twitter what an asshole you really are."

I looked her square in the eye, turned on my dad voice, and said, "Really? Are you serious? We're done here." I quickened my pace, and for the next two blocks she followed us, screaming and ranting and raving about how she'd waited there for hours, driven all the way from someplace far, and that I basically owed her. I eventually tuned her out, and I guess she went back to the Syfy party to harass whoever else came out, next.

The whole thing was really scary, made me feel like a sideshow freak, and made me really, really angry. I was just trying to walk out of a hotel and go meet up with my friends. I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm not going to apologize for it.

I realize that a person who thinks it's entirely normal and not psycho to camp out in front of a hotel for hours and hours so they can trap a person isn't going to understand why I will not validate that behavior, but I need to make this clear for the future: I'm a person. I'm happy to sign things and take pictures with people in appropriate situations, but if some dude violates my personal space or freaks me out, and then gets mad at me when I try to get away from him, I'm not going to do anything beyond telling that person to go fuck himself, and I'm not going to feel bad about it.

This is important: I realize that anyone reading this isn't one of Those Guys. Please don't think the "you" here refers to, you know, you.

John Linnell and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants have been making music for 30 years, and they still haven't run out of things to say. While other bands with that kind of longevity just go through the motions and secretly hate one another, the Johns somehow manage to get along and keep making... more

John Linnell and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants have been making music for 30 years, and they still haven't run out of things to say. While other bands with that kind of longevity just go through the motions and secretly hate one another, the Johns somehow manage to get along and keep making good records.

Their 15th record, Join Us, has been three years in the making. During that time, They Might Be Giants have been putting out wildly successful kids' albums, and Join Us marks their return to "adult" rock n' roll.

We were lucky enough to spend some time on the phone with John Linnell, trying to figure out what this record is all about. It turns out that after 30 years, a band can just make music without having to explain themselves. Join Us is a They Might Be Giants record: you'll either get it, or you won't, and Linnell is totally okay with that.

Join Us is out July 19th.

Jay Hathaway: The narrative around this album so far seems to be about going back to your original sound. That seems kind of strange for a band that's always been about trying new things.

John Linnell: I would say that we're very intuitive when we're working, so we don't have this charter that says we're going to go back to our original plan or something like that. I'm not even sure who makes up the narrative at this point. We did a set of interviews for the press release, and [the writer] was like, "What's the story? How are we going to talk about this Album #15? What can you say that you didn't say about the last one?"

I'd say that we mostly have the luxury of not having to say what the hell it is we're doing, what's different about the new project, y'know. That's how we work. The chatter is after the fact.

I guess it always feels like we're, in some sense, trying to get back to the original impulse, however we are approaching it formally. We're trying to make music from scratch, you know.

This album, for example, Join Us, when we started recording, there wasn't a notion of it being a particular kind of album. We obviously are changing all the time in ways that we're not necessarily even controlling. Just getting older and having your perspective change is a way of evolving.

I'm sorry. I'm kind of coming up with excuses for why I can't explain what the theme of the new album is.

JH: Flansburgh said in an interview that he felt The Else was "too aggressive" and that you guys were in a more natural place with Join Us. Do you agree with that?

JL: I think he's right about The Else. It was something we noticed while we were making it. I said something along the lines of "This is the least cuddly record we've ever made." But again, that wasn't something we planned out.

Here are some observations I've made about this one: I think Flansburgh is really opening up his lyric writing in a way that -- I mean, he's had songs in that direction in the past, but his lyric writing on this album -- can I say record, or does it just sound like I'm 80 years old? -- his lyrics are much more elliptical and free-associative in a very interesting way. He's freed himself up in a very cool way in his lyric writing.

JH: That's always seemed like your department.

JL: That's true. I think in the past, my lyrics have been the ones that have been the least concrete and the most obtuse. It's kind of interesting to me to see John writing stuff like -- well, he's not doing the same thing I have done. He's coming up with his own language and style, and it's really good.

JH: I recently read about a study that analyzed a bunch of pop lyrics and decided that music is more self-centered and aggressive now --

JL: Oh, I saw that. Yeah, yeah. I was kind of amazed at the conclusion they drew. Not only did they say that statistically the words "I" and "me" showed up in lyrics, but they said that this proves that people are more self-centered than they used to be. That's kind of a big leap.

It would be kind of like saying that because there are a lot more slasher films, people are more homicidal than they used to be. It's the same kind of leap, I think, to go from the art, the artifice to saying "this is the way people are living their lives now, and this is the way they think now." I think that's a huge mistake. I think it's a huge fallacy. Lyric writing is very often mistakenly thought to be autobiographical, and in our case, that's the biggest mistake of all.

JH: Do you think your lyrics have moved in one direction or another over time -- more inward-looking or more outward-facing?

JL: Mine personally, as opposed to John's? I'm interesting in how his lyrics have changed. I have less to say about my own lyric writing, because I'm kind of inside of it. I think it's a cliche about getting older, but I feel more comfortable with the formal parts of it. I've written a lot of songs, so I kind of know the ropes in some sense. Nothing to say about the quality of it, but I know how it works. I wouldn't say I've gotten more personal, though. We've always had the notion that the most interesting thing you can write about is something in your imagination. Real life and autobiography, at least for us, doesn't hold a candle to stuff you can just make up.

JH: Do you worry about the current generation of kids being more self-centered? You're raising a kid now, so are you at all alarmed by this internet-enabled exhibitionist phase people seem to be going through?

JL: I'd be worried generally about kids being too self-involved and not thoughtful. I think honestly it's a stage of growing up. Babies are incredibly self-involved, children less so, and you hope for your own kids that as they get older, they get more interested in other people and more concerned about other people. It keys into politics. The political position that is self-interested is kind of a more childish position. When you start worrying about other people and realizing that your fate is tied to the fate of those around you, that's a more grown-up attitude. That's what I want for the culture as a whole. That's what I want for the political endgame: for people to care about each other.

JH: Are there things that you'll try now, musically or just in life, that you wouldn't when you were younger? Or do you think it's kind of gone the other way, where you're ...

JL: ... less comfortable.

JH: Yeah!

JL: I dunno. I think John already said this. We are essentially uncomfortable people, in a certain way. But maybe we're more comfortable with being uncomfortable, because we realize that's what we're like. And we're not in high school anymore, so it's not such a problem socially.

I'd say there are things we tried in the past few years that we were nervous about early on, and at a certain point, we kind of realized it was good to get more other people involved and we felt less like we were diluting the project. We made a bunch of records with just us and a producer, and then we started having a regular band involved, and we've given more responsibility to the other guys. We've worked with producers who took more extreme liberties with what we were doing. We'd have a song and the producer would say, "Let's completely change that around." I think we're more comfortable with that now than we ever were back in the day.

Having said that, we didn't do a lot of that on this new record. We produced it ourselves. We worked very, very slowly. This is probably the slowest we've ever worked on something. Maybe that's something that distinguishes it.

JH: You started writing this in 2008?

JL: Something like that. It's been a number of years. We've been doing other stuff, but we started recording some of these tracks a few years ago. This has been our Chinese Democracy.

JH: There's that saying about the sophomore slump, and how first albums are always better because you have forever to write them. Is taking a few years like doing that first album over again?

JL: Yes, exactly. That's a great peg. This is our second first album.

JH: I like that. It doesn't seem like you're too weighed down by having made 14 other records, though. Do you feel like that's an advantage when you write a new album?

JL: I think that one great advantage is that we're not trying to define who we are. At this point, people are either okay with it or they're not interested in it. Even people who are finding out about us for the first time quickly learn that we have this long history, so what we're doing is kind of settled in some sense. We at least are perceived to know what we're doing.

JH: A lot of bands that've been around as long as you guys have seem to be phoning it in at this point, but your albums haven't really dropped in quality over the years ...

JL: There's something nice about bands that are nervous. I think our first album sounds very nervous. We probably didn't feel very confident, and we were worried that people wouldn't like it. That's not bad, y'know? It's good to worry about what other people think. I would say and hope that we're still somewhat worried and we don't want people to hate us.

One of the reasons we took so long to make this is that we did write a lot of songs, and sift through them and reject a lot of them because we feel like we don't want the standards to drop.

JH: It seems like Flansburgh was champing at the bit to get back to making the "adult" albums, and he just wanted to rock out and play loud. Were you on the same page on that?

JL: Probably just in terms of volume, he's more comfortable playing loud as a natural thing. For me, I like loud volume, but I can also take it or leave it. The thing with the children's thing was not so much about the volume for me as whenever we had to be at all self-conscious,which was surprisingly not that often. But I feel like we work best when we're not really thinking too hard about who it's for. Obviously, with the kids thing, you do have to worry about who it's for.

I think we were happy to make these records where some of it was going to go over the kids' heads, and the happy result of that is that some of the kids get things that you don't expect them to get. They're smarter than you think. We tried not to filter that we were trying to filter too much.

What amazes me is that kids are attracted to so many things. It's actually the adults who have the problem with challenging material. Kids are actually interested in it.


JH: It reminds me of the whole Rebecca Black phenomenon, where you have this manufactured pop ...

JL: About half the interest in her is negative, right? It's a weird phenomenon of actually exciting a lot of hatred.

JH: Yeah, exactly! But at a certain point, it becomes unironic. Artists have gone on tour and covered this song, and I can't tell if they're kidding ...

JL: That's a very contemporary problem. They can't remember if they're being ironic. The first thing I ever heard about it was that my son and his friends all hated the song, and it was kind of interest to them because they hated it. It was getting negative attention.

JH: Kids are smart, though. It's a completely meaningless song, and they get that.

JL: Oh yeah. I think the emptiness of lyrics like "Today is Friday and tomorrow is Saturday" just had this poker face quality, this almost deadpan quality. Like, "Really? That's your thesis?"

JH: Ha! Yeah. But going back to your new album, are there any songs you're particularly excited about? "Can't Keep Johnny Down" is a great single.

JL: Thanks. You know, it's a very mixed-up record in the best possible sense. There's some possibly misguided ideas that we just pursued to the bitter end. For example, there's one song where the entire band sped up a substantial amount, and the vocal is at regular speed. Some of the people we played it for were like, "Those drums sound a little thin." They didn't get the point of it, so I don't know if that requires an explanation that we did this on purpose.

It's a sound that I like. I always like a narrow canvas. There's so much that has these crazy low ends and super-high high ends. That's one track.

There's another track on the record where there's one song in the left channel and another song in the right channel, and they go together in sort of an old-fashioned way. Almost like a showtune or something. That's called "Spoiler Alert."

JH: Talking about extreme high and low ends reminds me of those remastered Rolling Stones albums. And by remastered I mean "completely ruined."

JL: So they basically just compressed the shit out of it, trying to make it sound more contemporary?

JH: Yeah, so it's good that someone's thinking about these things, instead of just turning everything up.

JL: I definitely think there's a default position that is tyrannical. I would say we're just as proud as anybody to go fall in line with "This is what sounds good, so we'll go with that." But when you hear somebody who takes the trouble to look at it a different way and come up with a completely differently approach, it's refreshing. You can't believe how sheeplike the overall culture can be. Everything sounds like everything else. It is a little depressing.

JH: Have you heard anything like that recently?

JL: No, I'm just so out of it all the time. Most of the stuff I like, I'm like, "I've just discovered this great thing," and everybody else already knows about it, inevitably. I heard Das Racist recently. I really like their music.

JH: The other day, I heard a really amazing song and thought it was from a great new band ... turns out it was an old XTC track. Whoops.

JL: Exactly. In some ways it's kind of a pleasure when you think something's new, because you realize it could be new. You could do this now and it would sound really fresh. Flansburgh was talking about hearing this Bob Dylan song, "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" -- I think it's on Blonde on Blonde -- and he's thinking, "Is this a new Dylan track? This sounds unbelievable." Because he'd never heard the song before. It makes you think you could have something new that sounds as fresh as that.

JH: Yeah, absolutely! So, what are you reading right now?

JL: Well, my wife and I have been on a Russian novel kick, so I'm a little ways into this version of The Brothers Karamazov. It's a weird translation, it's not the current translation that everybody likes now. This is a guy named David McDuff. It's an interesting, wacky version of The Brothers K.

And I just read Nicholson Baker's U & I, which came out twenty years ago. It's about his intense, almost stalker-like obsession with John Updike. He talks about how he wants to be John Updike's friend, even though there's no real basis for a friendship there. It's a very funny book, because it's this intensely confessional-sounding story, where he's admitting to this embarrassing, almost slavish interest in this other writer. It really isn't clear whether this is real or whether he's completely bullshitting.

America devotes an inordinate amount of resources to its wars on controlled substances; namely its wars on drugs – and raw milk. Yep, you read that right. The prohibition of alcohol may have ended in the US in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, but it’s still alive and kicking when... more

America devotes an inordinate amount of resources to its wars on controlled substances; namely its wars on drugs – and raw milk. Yep, you read that right. The prohibition of alcohol may have ended in the US in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, but it’s still alive and kicking when it comes to unpasteurized milk.

The retail sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal in the vast majority of states, and though some states do permit direct farm sales and/or herd shares, federal laws prohibit the sale and transport of raw milk across state lines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers unpasteurized milk or cream –– and any uncooked products made from it, such as cheese, yogurt, and ice cream –– to be categorically unsafe. Their official line is that “raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks to you and your family.”

However, by their own figures, a mere “800 people in the United States have gotten sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk since 1998.” When you compare those numbers to the statistics on alcohol and cigarettes – which can be bought legally in all 50 states – the government’s position on the sale of raw milk appears to be inconsistent to say the very least. And the discrimination against raw dairy is even more profound when the health benefits are taken into consideration. But while the fight to decriminalize other controlled substances grabs headlines and galvanizes support, few are even aware of the prohibition against real milk. Kristin Canty, a small farm advocate from Massachusetts, hopes to change that with her compelling new documentary, Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farms.

Canty didn’t set out to make a film, merely to heal her son, who suffered from asthma and severe allergies. When traditional medicine failed to help, she embarked on a voyage of discovery that led her to raw milk. While fighting to heal her sick child, she also had to fight the seemingly unreasonable and intransigent attitude our government has towards healthy-minded boutique farmers who produce this hard to come by commodity in the face of much adversity. Frustrated and angered by reports of raids, and shocked at the increasing ferocity of the persecution of those who were doing nothing more than producing fresh food, Canty was compelled to expose the truth. For her, it wasn’t just about the disparity in treatment between big agriculture (whose factory methods have actually been responsible for the majority of serious food scares in recent years) and the mom & pop organic and sustainable operations, but an issue of a mother’s right to choose healthy food.

Nicole Powers: Congratulations on the film. I found it absolutely riveting. It really struck home for me, because I remember when I first came to America, just walking through the grocery aisles, it was so hard to find anything that actually resembled food. It just always amazes me what Americans will put on their plate and call food.

Kristin Canty: Yeah, I agree with you.

NP: I always joke about the advertisements for cheese products where they say “made with 5% real cheese” – doesn’t that beg the question what’s in the other 95%? It amazes me that more Americans are not asking that question.

KC: It’s scary. It’s truly scary. I know, that most Americans don’t think at all, and don’t want to think, about what they put into their mouths.

NP: How did the process start for you?

KC: Actually, I used to be that person. It’s not that I didn’t think about what I put into my mouth, I just didn’t think that the government would lie to us, or allow foods that were so unhealthy to be in the supermarket. So I clipped coupons and we ate processed foods all day long, and my son Charlie got really sick. He was my third child. When he was in preschool he was completely ridden with allergies and bad asthma. He had a middle ear hearing impairment because he had so much fluid in his ears. It was pretty sad because we never knew it because he never got an ear infection, he was just moderately hearing impaired and it took us awhile to catch that. We didn’t know why his speech was delayed.

The doctors told me that he was allergic to the world, which meant grass, dust, every kind of pollen, every kind of animal. So my house, I had to rip up all my carpets and take down my curtains, and vacuum [for] dust mites, wrap his bed in plastic, and run a HEPA filter all the time. [I had to] follow him around with an asthma inhaler and an EpiPpen. It was just crazy. He was just so sickly. None of the medications were working. He was just getting sicker, sicker.

Finally, I’d started to try to heal him with food. I was walking through Whole Foods one day at my whit’s end, and someone handed me a copy of Patient Heal Thyself by Dr. Jordan Rubin – it’s all about healing yourself with whole foods. I started cooking with his recipes and I needed more. He recommended Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallen-Morrell. That book is very much about raw milk and traditional foods, and it had a lot of examples of people who had been healed from allergies and asthma because of raw milk.

I just figured what the heck, I’ve got to give it a try. So I went out to the farm [to get raw milk], and met the farmer, met his kids, met his customers, and made sure everybody was healthy. I drank a ton of it myself before I finally gave it to my children, and within a few months my son was completely healed of all allergies. He had none. He’s 16 now, and he doesn’t even sniffle. He doesn’t even have seasonal allergies. It was amazing.

It’s very hard in this lifestyle with the four kids and four teenagers especially. We’re all very busy, but we belong to three co-ops and we try as hard as we can to get as much of our food as possible directly from farmers that we know and trust.

NP: What’s the theory behind the idea that raw milk can alleviate allergies and asthma?

KC: The theory that I first started investigating actually was that kids who grow up on farms don’t get as many allergies and asthma. They [attribute] that to the fact that their bodies are tougher and they’re exposed to more bacteria. Probably what’s happening to most of us today is we’re not consuming as much of the positive bacteria. We’re consuming a lot of the sterile dead foods and we need the bacteria. We need the enzymes that our foods are completely devoid of right now. Basically, [my son’s] gut was probably just empty of good bacteria, and when your gut doesn’t have the bacteria, it can’t protect you against viruses and diseases and allergens.

NP: It’s this modern thing of being too clean.

KC: Exactly. Exactly.

NP: And it’s actually hard to source unpasteurized, raw dairy products. As a European, I used to love unpasteurized cheese, and I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to find it in America. I had no idea that cheese shops that were selling unpasteurized Brie under the counter were actually participating in some sort of bootleg, prohibition-era kind of activity.

KC: Right. I know, it’s so sad. And actually I read — and I forget where – that the French farmers and the French cheesemakers are having a difficult time with their government, that the government is trying to shut down their raw cheeses. That’s just a travesty. Nobody is getting sick from raw cheese in France, or anywhere else. There are two artisanal cheese makers, very large cheese makers, in America that were just recently shut down…At least we can have raw cheeses in our higher end supermarkets and cheese shops that are aged over 60 days, and now [the FDA is] trying to increase that to 90 days. Basically, I think that their goal is to eliminate raw cheese altogether. They’re just unfairly making that a scapegoat. We know where the most unsafe food is in America, and they’re just letting that go scot-free and picking on artisanal food makers.

NP: For the benefit of the people that haven’t seen the film, what is at the root of most of the food scares?

KC: Well, if the US government was serious about food safety, I think the first thing that they would want to do is build more USDA inspected slaughterhouses. Right now we don’t have enough of them. If you’re a grass fed farmer, in many states, you can’t get your meat slaughtered in a USDA slaughterhouse because there’s different rules for the grass fed then for the conventional. A lot of slaughterhouses don’t want to be bothered with those rules, and don’t have to be because they have enough business. In many cases the farmers have to haul their meat very long distances to get to these slaughterhouses. And thousands and thousands and thousands of animals are slaughtered in an hour in these huge facilities that aren’t well inspected. Half the time the farmers will tell me that they’re not even sure that what comes out is what they put in.

NP: Right, they have no way of knowing that it’s actually their meat really.

KC: Exactly…In Massachusetts we’re very lucky, we have two USDA inspected slaughterhouses. The farmers really trust the inspectors and know them well. Plus we are allowed to have these mobile slaughtering units. You can bring them onto the farm. They come with an inspector, and they’re very, very clean. In my DVD that will hopefully come out in the winter, I have a friend of mine, who’s a farmer and teaches sustainable farming at Tufts University, explain these mobile units and why they’re so sanitary as far as slaughtering is concerned – and the most humane. But in other states they don’t allow these outdoor units, they don’t allow field slaughter, and they pretend that these huge, filthy USDA slaughterhouses are the way to safety – and it’s actually the exact opposite.

NP: Right, ‘cause I understand that you’re getting cattle that have been raised on antibiotics with bacteria resistant E. coli in their gut and in their feces, and all that spills out in these slaughterhouses that don’t have the time or the inclination to be truly clean. So that just gets into the meat, and it doesn’t necessarily just get into the meat of the carcass that’s being slaughtered at the time, it gets into the meat of all the carcasses that come after that animal, which is why we’re getting all of these scares involving bacteria resistant strains of E. coli.

KC: Exactly. Then factory farming is the other very unsafe practice…Instead of keeping the cows clean, they keep the cows crowded, knee deep in manure in some cases, and feed them grain and GMO corn, which cows should not be eating. Cows should be eating grass. Instead of keeping the animals clean, they try to clean the milk. You’re still eating that; you’re not getting rid of any of that through pasteurization. Ultra-pasteurization is even worse. That just kills everything. You’re not getting anything live in that milk. It’s just dead food – completely dead food. That is only meant for a longer shelf life. There is absolutely no nutrition in ultra pasteurized milk, and that’s the milk that I’m sure 99% of Americans are drinking daily.

NP: Right, and that milk is mixed in huge vats with milk from thousands of other cows.

KC: Yes, exactly. So these are the kinds of discussions we should be having as far as food safety is concerned – not going after our artisanal food makers and shutting them down.

NP: These factory farming methods, in England they were brought in during the war, and they were only ever supposed to be a low cost, low labor, temporary measure to feed a population that was in crisis. They were never supposed to be maintained after the war. Then these big food corporations took hold and things never reverted back. What is the history of factory farming methods in America?

KC: As far as the dairy factory farm, what happened was, after prohibition, when they started making whisky here instead of importing it, these big huge distilleries in New York City found that when they fed cows spent grains, the cows would produce a lot of milk. These were the first factory farms. They moved tons of cows, tied them up – the cows never moved – and they were fed this spent grain.

NP: Which is the byproduct of whisky production.

KC: Exactly. They were called swill dairies because the cows were fed the swill.

NP: Swill dairies. Lovely. Yum.

KC: Yeah. So the milk came out blue. They were milked with dirty hands into dirty buckets. The milk came out blue, but plentiful…So they added chalk to it to make it white and fed it to the multitudes. And I think the death rate in New York City at that time was 50% in children that were drinking this milk.

NP: Wow.

KC: So they outlawed swill dairies. There was a group of doctors that were outraged about this and started this certified raw milk movement and were saying that the only dairies that you should be drinking milk from were ones that were certified clean raw dairies. But at about the same time they discovered that pasteurization could also clean the milk and get rid of unhealthy pathogens — and that was just the cheaper, easier way. They could continue this factory farming and make money. So eventually, pasteurization won out and many states passed laws making it harder to get raw milk.

NP: You said the death rate was 50%? Five, zero?

KC: 50% in children under a certain age. I think it was like in children under 6 the death rate was 50% from drinking this milk at the time.

NP: So instead of outlawing the unhygienic practices, by almost a comedy of errors they outlawed raw milk.

KC: Exactly.

NP: So moving on to what’s happening today, what’s shocking in your movie is the footage of the raids. It looks like the authorities are invading a meth labs, and yet all these farmers are doing is producing fresh milk products.

KC: Yeah. It’s really sad. That’s why I made the movie. I just wanted to expose the raids. I was really upset. It wasn’t really meant to make anybody drink raw milk. It wasn’t meant to be a diet movie, or tell you what you should be eating. I tell my story quickly, and I tell you the way that I like to eat, but I think that this is really a civil rights issue that everybody should be concerned about, whether you want to eat this way or not. I would think that if most Americans knew that the government was spending millions of dollars spying on sheep farmers and raiding Amish farmers, they would be quite disturbed, no matter how they eat.

NP: Right, you feature a family, Linda and Larry Faillace, that imported some sheep…

KC: Yeah, they were spied on by the USDA investigative forces. The USDA has their own police force, and the USDA spent $1 million spying on this sheep farm and writing down every 15 minutes what they were doing.

NP: And what their kids were doing.

KC: And what their children were doing. All they were doing was home schooling and taking care of a flock of beautifully healthy sheep. They were saying that these sheep were at risk for mad cow disease because they’d come over from Europe.

NP: Which is a concern. Coming from Europe I can’t give blood. But I also know that there are downed cattle in American slaughterhouses that they don’t bother testing and that the USDA has actually reduced testing for mad cow disease [and has gone to great lengths to stop concerned farmers from conducting their own private carcass inspections. If they were really seriously concerned mad cow, they’d step that back up.

KC: Right. They would test a cow for mad cow disease, not the sheep. Sheep have never gotten mad cow disease. They get scrapie, which is related, but these sheep didn’t even have scrapie. These sheep were very healthy. They had imported them from Europe, and none of the sheep in Europe were being killed for mad cow disease, they were all healthy flocks also. They were just using it as a big scapegoat basically, pretending that they were taking care of mad cow disease in this country by keeping everything that had been imported from Europe out.

NP: Right, if they were serious about the issue, they wouldn’t be spending a million bucks on an artisan sheep farmer, they’d be spending it on upping mad cow screening in cows in America since we know that there are downed cattle heading into slaughterhouses.

KC: Exactly. They didn’t really want to find it.

NP: There is a trade war between Europe and America and we do like to control the dairy and cotton products that come into America. But what are the other reasons why the government is picking on the small farmer in an unwarranted fashion while letting the big guy off the hook?

KC: That is the big question of the movie that I would like all Americans to think about. And to know that this is happening. As far as the sheep are concerned, I know that the USDA officials who were in charge of this project told the Faillaces that they were under political pressure from the beef industry and the pharmaceutical industry to get rid of the sheep. So that’s one thing, there is political pressure. And I’m assuming [there’s pressure] from the big corporations, whether it be because of fears, in that case fears of mad cow disease, or fear of competition. Who knows? Then there’s also just a mindset right now that the FDA seems to have that all food needs to be made in a lab and in factories. That real food humans have eaten for millennia has all of a sudden turned into the demon. That’s just a mindset that I wish that we could have an open dialogue about.

NP: The film focuses on dairy and slaughtering practices, but farmers that are just trying to grow vegetables are having similar harassment issues aren’t they?

KC: Yeah. This is crossing all farms. I couldn’t get into everything in the movie. My original goal was to cover every single restriction of all farmers. The vegetable farmers right now, well, first of all, since the USDA deregulated all the GMO crops, especially the GMO alfalfa, if you want to be an organic farmer, everything is getting contaminated right now. It’s very, very difficult and very expensive to find organic seeds –– which is quite frightening.

NP: Ironically soy is one of the worst crops. People eat soy because they assume it’s going to be healthy but that’s one of the most GMO-ridden crops isn’t it?

KC: Yep, GMO soy and GMO corn is in all of our processed foods, one or the other, and sometimes both. Then if you’re an organic vegetable farmer, you have to fill out an incredible amount of paperwork to talk about the soil that you’re using to grow your vegetables. If you’re a chemical farmer, they leave you alone. You don’t have to write down any of the chemicals that you’re using on your [crops]. So the amount of work that the farmer has to do just to grow things the way that they’ve been doing for years and years and years is very unfair.

NP: I know in California in the Central Coast wine area, there are winemakers that basically follow organic practices but prefer to use the label “sustainable” so they don’t attract that kind of oversight. So a lot of the time with a Central Coast wine you’re consuming an organic product, but they just don’t want to call it that.

KC: Yeah, and that’s true in Europe too. A lot of the wines that are produced in Europe are actually produced with the biodynamic practices too. But it’s so expensive to get that label that they don’t do it. The best thing to do is to not worry so much about the labels, but to know your farmers.

NP: Get to know your farmer.

KC: Yeah. To know who’s producing it, to know how they’re producing it. How they’re either growing their vegetables or taking care of their dairy cows, or taking care of their animals that are meant for slaughter. It’s very difficult, but we have other tools. You can actually Google Earth the farms now if you can’t physically step on the farm. As much as possible get to know your food and get to know where your food is coming from.

NP: That’s what really surprised me. I did a story on a Central Coast winery. I liked the wine, but until I visited the vineyard I had no idea that it was produced in such an all-but-label organic and sustainable way. And what really struck me was the love and the passion that this farmer had for the land and all of the things that lived and grew on it. I would really encourage people to get to know their farmers, but that’s not always practical if you’re living in the middle of a city like Los Angeles.

KC: Yeah, it’s not, but there’s wonderful farmers’ markets in Los Angeles. You can just go talk to the farmers at the farmers’ markets and then you can Google Earth their farms.

NP: And of course there’s Rawesome, the Venice Beach, CA food collective that you show in the movie.

KC: Yeah, the Rawesome club is a great club. I would highly recommend joining that club. All their food is just fantastic.

NP: As a club member you can buy food that’s not available to the public. That’s why these grocery collectives are sort of so important. It seems strange having to become a member of a club to buy a pint of milk, but that’s the legal get-around for raw dairy in some states.

KC: Yeah, it’s just very sad. Like what happened to the Ohio family [John and Jacqueline Stowers]. Their grocery stores just weren’t full of the food that they wanted to eat. Just like you said; you go to the grocery store and you can’t find anything that resembles food. [Jacqueline] found 40 Amish farmers in her area that had no way to get their products to market. She came up with this great idea to go to the farms and buy the food directly from the farmers. Since the supermarket wasn’t serving up healthy food, she got the food directly from the farmers, collected a lot of food and brought it back to her house and her neighbors would come and pick it up. Then the next week her neighbors would drive and get the food, and, you know, it was a co-op. They were cooperatively going out to get their food from the farms and taking turns. This grew bigger and bigger and bigger and finally the Ohio Department of Agriculture caught wind that they were doing it. They never prosecuted them with anything. All they had was a warrant that said that they were operating a retail establishment without a license, which is a third degree misdemeanor. For that third degree misdemeanor, they had 11 armed agents show up at their house one day and keep ten kids up in a room for six hours while they ransacked their house, took their computers, took their cell phones, took their personal food, and took their food from their co-op –– and then never ended up charging them with any crime.

NP: Which is why it is a civil rights issue, because this is about intimidation isn’t it?

KC: Exactly. Yeah. I’m hopeful that Americans would believe that our government should be spending their money on real crime…not families that are thinking very hard and working very hard to feed their families healthy food.

NP: One of the other things that I love about this film is that you’re not a filmmaker per se, this is just an issue that you were upset about and felt that more people needed to know about. You’re basically a citizen activist and the film was your tool.

KC: Right. I just got upset about the raids and I had to do something about it. I was just writing and telling people, and trying to get active politically, and it just wasn’t working for me. I had a bunch of farming organizations that were going to pay for the documentary to be made and I was trying to hook them up with a documentary maker. I couldn’t find one that wasn’t super expensive or was just too busy or was going to take so long to get the project done. Finally, one of the documentary makers that I wanted to do it called me and took me out to lunch and said, “You should just do this yourself.” So the next week I started Kristin Canty Productions and hired a small crew and made my reservations and set out across the country to film the people who had been raided.

NP: What was the budget for the movie?

KC: The budget was $75,000, but we far surpassed the budget. We’re still going with distribution. It’s a good thing I didn’t know that.

NP: Do you have other projects in the pipeline now?

KC: For film? No. I’m just going to just finish up distributing this film, and hopefully be done and put it on autopilot when I can finally release it on DVD, after I try a short theatrical run. ‘Cause when I play in the theaters it gets a little more press than if I just release it on DVD. Then I’m going to hopefully open up a ‘farm to table’ restaurant in my town, in Massachusetts.

NP: When you do release a documentary like this, you inadvertently become a nexus for information. People see the documentary and then they want to tell you about what’s happening down the road from them. Is there anything in particular that has come as a result of this documentary being out in the world?

KC: It hasn’t come as a result of it, I think it’s just been naturally happening and naturally building up…I mean, I don’t think that it’s getting worse because of my documentary, but a few months ago, Dan Allgyer, who’s an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania, was raided by the FDA. There was a one-year sting operation on him. He has a private club also, and the members of that club brought a cow to Capital Hill and protested his raid and his shut down. They’re quite upset, but to no avail. The Department of Justice is now prosecuting him for the sale of raw milk across state lines. And in California there’s a whole bunch of goat-share people that are being shut down. There’s a lot of people that really like raw goat milk and the CDFA has come down really hard, has shut down all your raw goat farmers right now, so that is a big problem.

NP: If I didn’t know it was true, it sounds so ridiculous it’s like the plot of a Hollywood comedy –– smuggling raw milk across state lines and hiding goats undercover.

KC: I know, it’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s insane. Like I said before, they don’t seem to care –– I could feed my kids sugar all day. That’s what I used to do because I just hadn’t paid attention. I fed them cereal in the morning and Kraft’s macaroni & cheese at lunch, and we usually had a decent dinner. But they wouldn’t care if I fed my kids sugar and junk food all day long. We have a huge rise in obesity and diabetes in our kids, and they’re just not paying attention that. Then you have these parents and families who are trying so hard to get away from that and feed themselves and their children the way that they believe is correct, and the way that makes them feel better and feel healthier, and this is getting shut down. It’s absolutely insane.

NP: Well thank you for making the movie. It certainly covered an aspect of the issue that I had no idea about. I highly recommend people go see it.

KC: Thank you very much. Where are you from?

NP: The North of England, Sheffield.

KC: Do they have raw milk there?

NP: We used to have milkmen come around on milk carts, so you’d get milk fresh from the dairy every day. It had literally been in the cow that morning. They’d milk the cows and you’d have milkmen come round to deliver it. It would be left on your doorstep each morning.

KC: How about now?

NP: There’s no milkmen now. When I was growing up the joke was that if a child didn’t look like the father, it was the milkman’s. I used to love the whole milk with cream on top. I would rush down to be the first person to open the pint of the milk in the morning so I could pour the cream on my cereal. A pint of milk with the cream on top just doesn’t exist anymore –– I miss that so much.

KC: No it doesn’t. Well, I have it in my fridge, but, yeah. In Italy I know they have raw milk right in the vending machines on the streets.

NP: Really? Wow.

KC: Every country is different. I was curious about the UK because actually I’ve had a lot of requests for the movie there. I’m hoping to screen there. I get a lot of requests, like I’ve had a lot of requests from Australia. I’m thinking that they kind of must be having some of the same kinds of problems. I got a bunch of requests from Germany yesterday…

NP: I would imagine France too because the farmers are so proud of their cheeses.

KC: But when I first started getting them I was confused why they were interested because this is an American movie about American problems and American farmers. And they all wrote back: “the world is watching America right now and if you lose this fight we may all lose this fight.” I thought that was really sad. I don’t know if my film could make a dent in it. This is an uphill battle that really is going to take numbers and the voices of the people to make change. I know that my movie makes individual change; individuals who see it usually immediately go out to seek their local farmer and think about their food and try to get involved at some level. But to put a dent in the big picture, I think it’s going to need a lot of…

NP: I see your film as part of a greater movement. The underlying message is very similar to that of another movie I saw recently, The Last Mountain. It is ultimately a civil rights issue. It’s also an issue of how our democracy is being taken over by big business. Big business is subverting democracy in the same way that it’s subverting the food chain.

KC: Right, big business right now is pretty much in charge of us. I tried to get an interview with anybody from the USDA, and a guy who was an assistant to a secretary of one of the large government administrations said to me: “You know, it’s all very cute, and it’s all very nice what you’re doing, trying to protect the small farmer and trying to help the small farmer, but big ag [agriculture] runs this country and that’s just the way it is.” I just find that very, very sad. I find that an extremely sad statement.

For further information on the film and the issues raised in this interview visit FarmageddonMovie.com/.

by Laurelin I have always loved a challenge. Who doesn’t love to be tested to the limits, and pushed beyond their comfort zone to see if they can rise to the occasion and be successful? The human mind and body can be pushed, and the reward is sometimes nothing more than the personal satisfaction of... more

by Laurelin

I have always loved a challenge. Who doesn’t love to be tested to the limits, and pushed beyond their comfort zone to see if they can rise to the occasion and be successful? The human mind and body can be pushed, and the reward is sometimes nothing more than the personal satisfaction of knowing you did it. Take rock climbing for example. I started a while ago after reading John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. I thought that the climber’s concept of ‘mind over matter’ when it comes to physical activity was fascinating. To be able to push on and keep going when every muscle in your body is screaming for rest, to be halfway up a mountain (or in my case, a rock wall in a gym) and know that if you stop, you fall, and you might die.

When I’m climbing everything in the world goes silent; all you can think about it putting one leg in front of the other and pushing up to find the next finger hold. You must go on. Failure is not an option. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I find myself searching out similar challenges when it comes to men and dating. I crave a chase and hopefully big payoff. The guys I fall for usually have something wrong with them that I think I can fix, some undesirable quality that I convince myself I find endearing, something that makes things absolutely more difficult than it needs to be.

During my freshman year of college over a decade ago, I fell for one of the biggest “players” I had ever come across. This guy was a disaster, pledging a fraternity and totally dedicated to his brothers, but not at all to his school work, running though women like his life depended on it. And all the while, I was chasing after him, spending too much time with him, then watching him with other girls and feeling terrible. There had to be a real person under there somewhere. I was going to find him, and he was going to fall in love with me and stop all that crazy behavior. I could do this, I knew it.

I put up with a lot choosing that path, but through some act of God that’s exactly what happened. That guy turned out to be a wonderful person. We did fall in love. He shaped up, figured things out and while things didn’t work out with the long run, something clicked in my head that made me think, “You can do it! You’re different, and these broken men will see that, and everyone will live happily ever after! It happened once!”

Clearly once ten years ago shouldn’t set any sort of precedent, but it did; I am still a sucker for a challenge. I want the broken ones, I want the ones who don’t want to settle down, I want to have to work hard for my payoff. That has essentially meant I spend a lot of time heartbroken, wondering what I did wrong, what I should have said, what I should have done, how can I fix my own game for next time (maybe I shouldn’t have sent that goodnight text, now he thinks I’m clingy).

My friend Stephanie and I were going for coffee the other day and talking. “When did dating become this game?” She said. “It’s always about leaving them wanting more, not saying anything that makes you sound crazy, not texting too much or not enough, it’s not normal!”

“It’s not the game, it’s the players.” I said. It’s true. We meet all the wrong people, or we ourselves are someone else’s wrong people. The game has started playing us, and when it’s not, we keep making the same wrong moves over and over. I’d say I was getting tired of it, but I’m not. Failure is not an option until I fall off that proverbial relationship mountain, and when I do, I just get back up and keep trying. It’s exhausting and exhilarating, lots of bumps and bruises with only minimal positive results. Always reaching for that next finger hold.

“I give up, I swear,” Stephanie says. “Game over.”

“I don’t know...” I say, smiling. “You’re probably right. But did I tell you I met someone the other night? He has a reputation of being a bit of a player, but I like him and I think he likes me...”

When it comes to this game, this player is all in.

***

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Lindi Ortega is a singer-songwriter from Canada with an incredible voice that brings to mind both Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. She’s been kicking around the music industry for a decade or more, slowly climbing the rungs and paying her dues as backup on tours with Kevin Costner and the Killers’... more

Lindi Ortega is a singer-songwriter from Canada with an incredible voice that brings to mind both Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. She’s been kicking around the music industry for a decade or more, slowly climbing the rungs and paying her dues as backup on tours with Kevin Costner and the Killers’ Brandon Flowers. Despite the recent setback of being dropped from her first major label deal with Interscope, she’s finally getting some well-deserved recognition. Her new record, Little Red Boots, was highlighted on NPR, which is how I heard of it. She talked to SuicideGirls recently about those little red boots, how getting dropped from a major was a blessing in disguise, and how dinosaurs evolved into birds.

Keith Daniels: So you’ve had a bit of an adventure getting to your hotel today.

Lindi Ortega: Yeah. There was a medical emergency on our ferry and we had to turn around. This three hour ride became an all day journey.

KD: What happened?

LO: I dunno! They didn’t say. But they were calling for a doctor on board the whole time and I guess there was none so they had to turn around and go back to port.

KD: It’s weird when that happens because you always think of that only happening in old plays, “Is there a doctor in the house?” 

LO: Yeah! I was thinking about pretending I was a doctor but then I thought that would be bad so I didn’t do it.

KD: [Laughs] So is this your first time in Ireland?

LO: No! My mom’s from Ireland, so I’ve been to Ireland a number of times. This is my second time at this particular hotel. I like Ireland. It’s a beautiful country.

KD: They have a weird love of country music there, too. I mean, Garth Brooks was huge there.

LO: Yeah! It’s cool. It’s so rad that these parts of the world are into country music that you never really expected. I guess maybe because it’s just so different and so foreign to them that they latch onto it for being such a different thing to what they would normally listen to.

KD: There might be a little of Celtic influence in the way you sing, too. When I played your music for a friend she thought at first that it was Celtic music.

LO: I’ve heard that before. I think some of my melody lines might be inspired by Celtic music, because of my mom.

KD: When did you first realize that your singing voice was something special?

LO: [Laughs] I don’t really know. I can’t really gauge what I sound like. It’s kind of like when someone records and then listens to themselves talk, “Wow. Is that really what I sound like? Is that good, or bad?” I don’t really know. But I had a friend in high school who heard me singing. I was at my locker and I had headphones on and I was singing along to the music in my headphones. She tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Is that you?” I turned around and thought maybe she was annoyed by my singing, but she said it was really good and encouraged me to do some of the assemblies and stuff at school.

The first assembly that I did at school and the reaction to my performance is what gave me the bug to want to keep doing it.

KD: Is there a part of you that still has doubts about your ability?

LO: It’s just hard for me to gauge it. It’s weird for me. I don’t really know what I sound like. [Laughs] I don’t know how else to describe it. But I do know that I absolutely love to sing. I probably would whether I was bad or good anyway, because I get so much pleasure from doing it. [Laughs] That’s where I come from.

KD: Your dad was in a latin band, right?

LO: Yep!

KD: So how does the Canadian daughter of an Irish mother and a latin musician father end up getting into hardcore country music?

LO: I dunno if it’s really hardcore country but more like I love a lot of the old country, and I think a lot of that comes from my mom growing up. She had Willy Nelson records and Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson. We used to watch The Dolly Parton Show together and all that stuff, so I think my initial gravitation toward country stemmed from my mom’s love of country. My mom was also really into folk music too, so we were also listening to Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel and stuff like that. As I progressed.... In high school I was listening to everything but the older I got the more I gravitated and felt like I could relate to what some of the old school outlaw country singers and crooners were talking about in their songs. That resonated with me. So I gravitated a lot more towards it as I grew up.

KD: Your new record starts out with this rhythm that’s straight out of Sun records, like Carl Perkins or something. You reference Elvis and James Dean. Do you have a particular love of the ‘50s?

LO: I’m an old-school gal. I like everything from those eras. I just think those old movie icons were awesome. I just have a propensity toward the old times. [Laughs] I thought James Dean was kind of fitting. I was really trying to reference the old school country outlaws that I loved. I just finished reading a James Dean biography, and it kind of fit with what I was going for, because he was the ‘rebel without a cause’. I just thought his story, what I was reading, was kind of fitting with the vibe I was going for with the record. But yeah, I’m definitely a lover of the old school.

KD: What about, “I’m No Elvis Presley”? What inspired that song?

LO: [Laughs] I did a showcase and got a comment back from somebody saying, “Oh, she’s good, but we don’t really know if she has it, that thing would make her legendary,” or whatever. I thought that was a preposterous expectation, like I don’t think you should expect anybody to be the next Elvis or the next Dylan or the next, y’know, Michael Jackson, because what made those artists so special was that they were truly themselves, truly individuals. I think people in the industry just want to get in on the next thing, y’know, in comparison to a legend. I think that’s really unfair. I guess that that [song] was my way of politely telling them that I thought that was unfair to place upon me.

KD: I was reading your blog this morning, and I thought it was interesting what you were saying about what the “little red boots” symbolize to you. Would you mind talking about that a little bit?

LO: Yeah! When I first got my little red boots they kind of became this thing that I wasn’t expecting them to become. Red is my favorite color, and so I just wanted a pair of red boots. So I went to [inaudible] in Nashville and got them, but somehow those boots inspired so much for some reason. In that blog I talk about walking a mile in somebody shoes, and I thought it would be interesting for somebody to walk a mile in my red boots to see what the Land of Little Red Boots is like. I wrote that song because I was on tour with Kevin Costner. The first few shows I was wearing those red boots onstage and after the shows people would be very appreciative of the music, but they would always comment on my boots. I guess they really kind of stuck out when I was performing. So I figured I should write a little song about them.

My step-dad and I were traveling around following Kevin Costner around in a little hatchback and I just started writing a song about my little red boots kind of like how I envisioned myself as a comic book character or something. [Laughs] So I wrote the song, and then when it came time to name the album I was still wearing the boots, and I had a song, and I just felt like they defined me in a lot of ways. I just thought it was really appropriate to name the record that as well. And I’m still wearing them at the moment. They’re being held together with duct-tape on the soles right now to keep them going until I can get to a shoe repair shop.

KD: Any good anecdotes about being on tour with Kevin Costner?

LO: You know, it was cool. It was pretty surreal, I thought, because I’d seen his movies, so I couldn’t stop thinking of him as Mr. Dances With Wolves or Field of Dreams. It was kind of weird seeing him out of that character, just a normal guy, just like all actors. I think we forget hat when we see them in movies that we like. We just envision them as those characters. It was super fun, a really great tour. The creation of my album was sort of born on that tour so I have nothing but fond memories of it.

KD: We talked about the little red boots, what about birds? There’s a bird in your logo, you reference them in a couple of songs on the album, you’ve done some charity work for wild birds... What do they mean to you?

LO: We used to get little birds that would fall into our chimney when I was a kid and I used to rescue them. I’m just fascinated by the fact that birds fly. Just the image of a bird flying is just an amazing image in my head. For some reason it just resonated with me. I did volunteer for a wild life sanctuary where I grew up and there were birds there. I just always liked birds. And then I ended up owning a bird, and owning a parrot is what got me interested in learning all about parrots. It started off as just sort of an interest in parrots and learning about parrots and then it just evolved into learning about birds and then birds of prey and owls and all this stuff. I have a bird song anthology at home. I’m super into them for some reason or another. I have a tattoo of a bird on my wrist, and on my other wrist I have a Leonard Cohen song, “Bird On a Wire”, written. I’ve just got this thing for birds. I just love them. [Laughs] I can’t really explain it, it’s kind of weird. Maybe it’s my own little quirky thing.

KD: What I like about birds is that they’re so different from mammals. You look in their eyes and you can’t figure out what they’re thinking.

LO: They’re like super-duper ancient, right? Because they’ve evolved... they’re the closest species to the dinosaurs, right? Dinosaurs evolved into birds. They’re really freaking cool looking. When you look at dinosaurs and birds closely you can really see the transition, especially birds’ feet. If you take a good look at any bird’s foot it’s very, very reptilian, like some kind of dinosaur. Just the way they move, the way their heads move, they’re very dinosaur like. I think it’s really cool. There’s this ancient thing attached to them which is really interesting, as well as just the awesome fact that they fly.

KD: Have you ever read any Darwin? On the Origin of Species was inspired by finches.

LO: I read a little bit about that. That’s really cool. I actually just saw a documentary all about just that, all about the evolution of species. I think it’s really cool. [Laughs] I think all that stuff is awesome. We live on a crazy planet.

KD: What did you learn from being on tour [as a backup singer] with Brandon Flowers?

LO: I’ve learned a lot. I learned how to survive being on a bus with a bunch of boys and not lose my sanity. [Laughs] I’ve learned from taking a backseat and watching how a frontman does his thing. It’s interesting to see how somebody conducts themselves at that level. I take away from that. Being on the road, especially on this tour... We’re doing a festival run right now, which is different from the bus/hotel kind of stuff. We haul butt and then festival, festival, festival. It’s really interesting to see how that operates and how that whole world comes together. It’s a constant learning experience every day and it’s really cool. The more that I see it... I’ll be at these festivals and I’ll think to myself, “Man, I hope someday I can play my music for all these people.” It just looks like so much fun. It would be so cool to come back and do it with my own stuff someday.

KD: Is it hard to go from playing in front of a thousand people to playing for a hundred in your own shows?

LO: It’s not hard. I love playing my songs. It’s just a very different thing. It’s a whole different thing altogether. I love playing shows of my own music [even if] it’s in a bar of like, twenty people. If they’re listening and paying attention and are an appreciative audience who are into the music it doesn’t matter to me if it’s 2,000 people. I love doing what I do. It’s just cool to have anybody show up and want to listen to it and enjoy the show.

KD: There’s a song on the new record called “Fall Down or Fly”. What I got from it was your whole ordeal with Interscope and your struggle to make it in the music business. Is that what that song’s about?

LO: Yeah, I think it’s about my whole entire journey, which has not been an easy one. [Laughs] It’s been quite a slow climb up the mountain. I’m still climbing. It’s a continuous thing. I guess that song was really just a tribute to people that have stuck by through it all and have continued to support me and have believed in me at times when it was difficult for me to believe in myself. It was a true appreciation of those people, but also to try and be a voice for other people who are going through similar experiences. It doesn’t have to be music, but any experience where you’re trying to make something of yourself and it’s difficult. [That song] is just trying to cheer them on, because I’ve had people do that for me. So it’s me paying it forward through a song.

KD: I guess that’s the real trick for a songwriter, to take something specific that happened to you and make it general enough that people can apply it to their own lives.

LO: I think even though experiences that we have are specific to who we are there’s always something that’s innately human about our emotions: the stuff that we go through. So I think as long as you tap into those things people can relate to that. That’s what I try to do with a lot of my music. There’s a lot of touching on a little bit of darkness, a little bit of loneliness is a running theme through a lot of the songs. A lot of people go through moments of loneliness and darkness. I try to walk through the line of, ‘I get that and I feel your pain, but hopefully I can make you feel a bit better about it.’

KD: Speaking of that darker side, another song I really like is “All My Friends”, which is kind of about self-medicating. How literal are you being in that song?

LO: I’m being literal. Very literal. I’ve gone through times in my life that have been very dark. I’ve been depressed. I’ve had to deal with therapy and psychologists about things. I don’t think there’s any need or necessity to hide that fact or pretend it didn’t happen because I think a lot of us deal with those things, and I think talking about it helps other people who are going through it not feel so alone. And yeah, all that stuff [in that song] is... I was going through really difficult times and I was turning to the wine and the mary jane to get through. But you realize at the end of the day that even though these things bring you temporary comfort it’s not going to solve your problem and it might end up making things worse. Really worse. Depending on how bad you go with it. [Laughs] It depends on what kind of thing you’re using to fix your issues. That’s why it’s called “All My Friends”. There’s a real irony there in ‘all my friends are gonna kill me dead’.

KD: How did it make you feel to have that deal with Interscope fall through? I mean, a lot of musicians have that dream of getting signed to a major label, and that’s when you’ve ‘made it’.

LO: It was like a fairy tale when it happened because I’d been working at this for a very long time, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually able to get an American record deal on the same label as one of my favorite Canadian artists, Feist. I thought it would be a really good home for me because at the time that I signed with them they had a lot of eclectic acts like Noah & the Whale and [inaudible]. Then Lady GaGa signed to them too and there was a shifting of the label dynamic when [she] got huge. All of a sudden they started signing more and more of these dance-pop acts.

I saw a release date for my record come and go with no record coming out and I wasn’t hearing from anybody and I started wondering what was going on. Then I realized that it probably wasn’t going to happen. So it was really disappointing at first because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought maybe that was it for me. I had a good long talk with my manager. He’s got this label called Last Gang Records and was nice enough to take me under his wing on his label. He said, “Why don’t we just release it through Last Gang? That way we can call the shots and do what we want to do and try to make it happen for you.” They’ve been absolutely amazing.

So to me, I have no hard feelings for Interscope. It’s almost like a blessing in disguise. I wouldn’t have made the record that I made had that not have happened, and I wouldn’t be on the label that I’m on now, which I love, who are supportive of me and so great to me. I’m happy where I’m at now.

KD: And unless you’re a huge multi-platinum artist like Lady GaGa, you can end up being in debt. I mean, not just not making money, but losing money on a major label.

LO: I guess I got lucky in a sense. It kind of all worked out in a good way. Friends of mine have gotten in horrible situations with stuff like that. I just managed to get out of it in a good way. It’s been fine, awesome actually. I’ve got nothing to complain about. [Laughs]

KD: Will you being a solo tour of the U.S. any time soon?

LO: Yeah! It’s probably going to be with a full band. I’m putting together a band. I’m going to be living in Nashville for two months, from July 25th to September 25th. I’ll be touring out of there setting lots of dates in the U.S. So there’s going to be a lot happening, a lot of shows coming up. I’m really, really looking forward to it. It’s been fun touring with Brandon but I can’t wait to get back and start promoting my record and playing my songs for everybody. I’m really excited.

Lindi Ortega’s official website is lindiortega.com

(image) by Blogbot (image) [Above: Pemphredo by Bob Suicide] "I named her Pemphredo after the protectors of the Gorgons who all shared an eye. Her name can translate to "she who shows the way" based on her role in Perseus' story or more commonly - and literally - "alarm."... more

by Blogbot


[Above: Pemphredo by Bob Suicide]
"I named her Pemphredo after the protectors of the Gorgons who all shared an eye. Her name can translate to "she who shows the way" based on her role in Perseus' story or more commonly - and literally - "alarm." Although, they're generally depicted as being old, Hesiod said that Pemphredo in particular was beautiful. And, they're known for being grey in color. So, I think it's a pretty good fit."




[Above: Pemphredo in Progress: Stage 1]
"I like to start by doing the facial features. Mostly eyes 'cause they're my favorite."


[Above: Pemphredo in Progress: Stage 2]
"I use my pinky and pointer finger for shading...and sometimes a bit of rolled up toilet paper wrapped around a pencil for the little stuff."


[Above: Pemphredo in Progress: Stage 1]
"I've learned from Cherry Rae that my eraser is my best friend. I lightly sketch out an idea so that it doesn't indent the paper when I change my mind...I always change my mind. And I like small, intricate details, like the tiny "engravings" on the diadem."


Artist/SG Name: Bob Suicide...but I've always signed my art Willow Redfern (it's from an old book series I read as a kid).

Mission Statement: I started out copying things I saw in video game magazines - art that I wanted to be able to draw. It was mostly heroines and scantily clad princess. I've always been attracted to the aesthetic of the female form. And, over time, there came a point where I could replicate what I was looking at with relative accuracy. But it was all on wrinkled, warped binder paper with generic #2 pencils. 



Then in high school, I was surprised by a friend's mother who bought out the entire art store (no hyperbole here - it was a small town), gift wrapped it, and left it in the school's girls restroom for me to find. 



After that, I started pulling headshots from girly magazines and drawing as many faces as I could. (It's still my go-to doodle when I'm just pushing a random pen on random paper.) 



I'm still using everything she got me. Now the new frontier is learning to draw something that I can't see - making up more than what's in front of me. I'm using a lot of Greek/Roman mythology for inspiration.



Medium: A blank piece of paper and a pencil.



Aesthetic: Beauty...with a little bit of beast.



Notable Achievements: My mom says I'm cool.



Why We Should Care: It's important to encourage the artist in everyone. I just picked up a pencil one day and had people who supported my habit. So if you love art and want to make your own, there's no reason why you can't pick up a pencil and draw on any flat surface you can find. I support you! If I can do it, anyone can.



I Want Me Some: I don't have a set place where I'm selling my doodles. But, I'd be happy to take an offer on a piece or a commission when I can if you're interested. Feel free to message me and let me know what you're in the market for.

***

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