J.C. Hutchins is modest about his abilities, but he's at the forefront of some major innovations in storytelling. He's best known as the author of the 7th Son trilogy, an epic techno-thriller that follows the exploits of seven clones who discover that they must cooperate to track down the evil... more

J.C. Hutchins is modest about his abilities, but he's at the forefront of some major innovations in storytelling. He's best known as the author of the 7th Son trilogy, an epic techno-thriller that follows the exploits of seven clones who discover that they must cooperate to track down the evil genius from whom they were cloned in the first place. When 7th Son didn't get the attention it deserved right away, he podcast it for free, gaining the attention of several thousand loyal fans and St. Martin's Press. The first book in the trilogy, 7th Son: Descent, will see print later this year.

In the meantime, J.C. is applying his knack for thrills to a project that's a little more...unconventional. What's so revolutionary that even a pioneer of podcasting like J.C. is convinced it's breaking new ground? It's called Personal Effects: Dark Art, and is a book-centered project that takes reader participation to a new level by blurring the line between fiction and reality.

J.C. provides the compelling characters and chilling story -- a psychological thriller that pits a young art therapist, his SuicideGirls-inspired geek goddess girlfriend, and his wisecracking younger brother against the mind of an accused murderer with a bizarre condition: psychosomatic blindness. To get to the bottom of the mystery, our hero has to face his own worst fears at Brinkvale Psychiatric -- also known as "The Brink" -- the unsetting underground hospital where he's been able to help every patient...until now.

Personal Effects: Dark Art is more than just a good story, though. Parts of the book also exist in real life, thanks to Personal Effects creator Jordan Weisman, a game-industry legend who has put together viral games and elaborate treasure hunts for huge properties like Halo and The Dark Knight. The book comes with some of the personal effects of Martin Grace, the creepy blind patient -- you can see some of them in an amazing photoset featuring Suicide Girls Annika and Lumi which will go live on Tuesday June 9 -- and those lead to phone numbers, websites, and other ways to unravel more of the book's puzzle in real life. If you can follow all the clues, you'll wind up looking at the ending in a completely different light.

Suicide Girls talked to J.C. about breaking new ground in the fiction world with Dark Art, and also got the whole story about a Suicide Girls columnist who has more to her than you might have suspected.

Jay Hathaway: So, who is Jordan Weisman, and what is Personal Effects?

J.C. Hutchins: Jordan Weisman is a living legend in the gaming community. In the early 80's, he founded a company called FASA, which was one of the first very well-known role-playing game companies. His company, among many things, had the license for the Star Trek role-playing game, and was also really instrumental in making BattleTech and Shadowrun into really well-known games. In the early 2000's, he pioneered a new form of storytelling called the Alternate Reality Game, better known as ARGs, and he and some co-conspirators designed one of the very first and most memorable alternate reality games, which was codenamed The Beast.

The Beast was designed to promote the movie release of AI by Steven Spielberg. Imagine a game where you'll never be able to read a rulebook and where pattern recognition and the dependence on your friends in person or online makes all the difference. They were embedding clues in the film credits, movie posters, all throughout the web, telling a narrative online that was filled with puzzles and mysteries and intrigue.

Since The Beast, Jordan went on to create the I Love Bees alternate reality game for the release of Halo 2, and he was involved with the alternate reality game that promoted the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero. You might remember that, where people were finding USB sticks in bathrooms, and there were clues actually stenciled on the tour shirts.

He pitched a supernatural thriller series to St. Martin's Press called Personal Effects, with a similar concept: let's tell really cool supernatural thriller stories that involve interesting characters, where those characters are assembling tangible items throughout the course of the novel, and those tangible items, like photos, business cards, faxes and whatnot are included with the book, and they will propel the readers into a completely different, story-enhancing narrative in other venues -- sort of like an alternate reality game. I had an editor friend at St. Martin's Press who was familiar with my work from 7th Son, the podcast novel trilogy. He mentioned me to Jordan Weisman, and within a few weeks, it was pretty clear that our storytelling philosophies are so in sync, it's really creepy.

JH: And you were already starting to do some of this multimedia stuff on the web for the 7th Son novels ...

JCH: You're right, because I had purchased domain names to reference in the novel, and those domain names were mentioned in the book. I had these little mini-websites up in case people's curiosity fueled them to the web, just to see what was up. In the most rudimentary way, I was already curious about blurring that line between fiction and reality. In the case of Personal Effects, we're blurring the line between being a reader and being an active participant in unearthing information about the narrative.

JH: Will you be doing any podcasting for Personal Effects: Dark Art?

JCH: I'm best known for my podcast fiction. The 7th Son trilogy ran from 2006-2007, and I released an interesting narrative experiment called 7th Son: Obsidian in 2008. So I turned to my keepers and said, "You know, guys, we have a really interesting opportunity to create an audio version of Personal Effects: Dark Art and release it into the wild, and this would be a cool loss leader to get people interested in the book."

But it clashed with the philosophy of the novel, which is that you have to hold these things. You have to hold these tangible items, and look at them, and feel the different paper qualities. These credit cards and IDs we have, you tap them on the desk and they click, just like real ones. So we couldn't do that, but I know that my people are still going to want podcast fiction.

I am writing and recording and releasing a novella called Personal Effects: Sword of Blood, which is a prequel to Personal Effects: Dark Art. In fact, it takes place a day or two before the events we see in Personal Effects: Dark Art. And that is currently being released in the wild right now, and it's a really cool universe-enhancing story, because the events in Sword of Blood are actually mentioned in the novel. People are getting a cool sneak peek at the universe and the characters.

JH: Personal Effects: Dark Art has even more secrets and hidden information than a traditional thriller. Has it been hard to bite your tongue and keep from giving away the secrets online before it's released?

JCH: Oh, ahh! I want to tell you everything! Yes! Absolutely! We're talking about two different forms of being coy. I've got the responsibilities of a traditional novelist, in that no author wants to give away the ending of his book. But I've got this other minefield in that the transmedia experience that is fueled by these tangible items is just stellar. When readers follow up on the clues they read in the book, combined with the clues they might find in these tangible items, and are sent to telephone numbers, listening to voicemails, hacking email addresses, visiting websites, they will be experiencing narrative-altering plot twists.

Personal Effects: Dark Art is written as a standalone novel that you can read from cover to cover and be satisfied with, but if your curiosity propels you into this transmedia experience, your perception of the events of the novel, and in particular, the ending, is completely different. We do the Sixth Sense thing, where we learn something that we intended to just be a gasp moment, where it's like "Wait a minute, what does this mean about the events that I just read, and the sanity of our main character?" Am I dying to tell you about this? Fuck yeah! But I just can't.

JH: Let's talk about some of those characters. Zach Taylor, the protagonist, is an art therapist. What did you know about art therapy when you started writing the novel?

JCH: Nothing, nothing! And I didn't do much research, to be honest with you. My impressions of the mental health industry are far less bleak than what you see in the novel. My father worked in the mental health industry, my mother worked in the mental health industry, my sister worked in the mental health industry. So throughout the years, the decades, and the osmosis, I have an informed idea of how patients are treated and how one should approach a patient if you're a therapist.

But really, just like most businesses, the day-to-day life of a therapist is pretty boring. Not only is it pretty boring, but there's rules that nail that therapist down to not be able to talk about it. You can't tell your family about your patients. You have to respect the boundaries of a patient in a certain way, and you certainly can't break into his home and look for clue that could help unlock the secrets of his psychosomatic blindness.

There's a very needed and formal structure to being an employee in this industry, and knowing all that...I said "fuck it!" and threw it over my shoulder. I crafted a character who would be likely embrace an intensely curious side, working at an institution that appears to tolerate his cavalier attitude because he gets results. He does things that would get any other art therapist fired in real life, but I reckon if you're reading a book, the last thing you want to do is read about real life.

JH: And even in real life, you can't tell me that if you got a case like that, you wouldn't go home and tell your girlfriend at least a little about it.

JCH: Exactly! That's one of the reasons why there are code names in the book. Like the autistic kid who's obsessed with the game Monopoly, he's nicknamed Park Place by the staff. You can go home and say "Oh man, Park Place gave me such a hard time today," so I'm not really compromising his identity. I challenge anyone who's actually spent any kind of quality time in the mental health industry to tell me that they know someone, or they themselves have never uttered a syllable about their patients. Perhaps there's a sliver of truth in Zach's blabbermouth tendencies.

JH: And to the extent that a place like The Brink has ordinary patients, we're definitely not talking about an ordinary patient, here, either ...

JCH: By no means. The only thing that's stranger than the 12 murders Martin Grace is suspected of is his psychosomatic blindness. And his strange insistence that he didn't murder these people, but he is absolutely responsible for their deaths and doesn't want to defend himself in any way. He's ready to be sent to the electric chair. Why would anyone want that, particularly if he didn't commit the murders? That's the challenge Zach Taylor faces as he steps into that patient room for the first time, to meet this bastard named Martin Grace.

JH: I feel like we should also talk about the supporting cast that Zach has in his brother and his girlfriend, and I especially want to talk about Rachael, since she has such a strong connection to SuicideGirls. Was she directly inspired by the SuicideGirls aesthetic?

JCH: The short answer to your question is "Fuck yes."

JH: Awesome.

JCH: [laughs] I have been a SuicideGirls superfan for years. The women at SuicideGirls aren't just beautiful, you also get to know many of them from their profile pages and their blogs. They're not just gorgeous, they're brilliant. They're geeky, they're empowered, they take shit from no one. As I poked around and explored the site, I was like, "This is exactly the kind of person that my hero, Zach Taylor, would be with." It absolutely informed the creation of Rachael.

It was pretty cool that she was a fact checker and a technical writer, but I decided she wouldn't stop at being that, she would have a creative side herself. Let's make her a video gamer! She's covered in ink, she's hot as hell, she's brilliant, and she's a video game blogger. And this was back in 2007, when I conceived of this and started writing the story with her. So we thought, let's give her a video game blog that's updated every once in a while. As we got closer to the release of the novel, we decided to have Rachael be a blogger that you wouldn't just like to read, but you would love to read. So Rachael began to blog at her website, PixelVixen707.com, and quickly got a very interested and very engaged fanbase...and then they found out she wasn't real.

JH: So what happened? How did they react?

JCH: They freaked out. Rachael, in her emails to other gaming journalists and bloggers, telling them about about her site and about herself, was dropping hints to her unreality. Like, here's a link to the newspaper where I work. You visit the website and up at the top of the page, it says, "Bandwith provided by the people that created me." These are small little glints, and nobody picked up on it. Until the day that Rachael blogged about an event in her personal life, in which she mentioned Zach and she mentioned going to Brinkvale Psychiatric and whatnot, and people started clicking those links to Brinkvale, and clicking those links to the newspaper, and the fiction was finally exposed.

A great many of Rachael's readers who had become, in a way, her friends, freaked out. They felt hoodwinked. And then they realized -- and it took some time -- that the quality of her work hadn't changed, that she was not shilling for the novel. Rachael lives in the Personal Effects: Dark Art universe, which is very similar to ours, but she will never say that she's in a book. There was a very intense week or two, and I wasn't following it very closely, because I had stuff to do -- I'm not Rachael Webster, I'm not writing that blog -- but once everyone realized, "She's just as real as me in nearly every way," then everything was OK again.

JH: It will be interesting to see how the people who know Rachael as a gaming blogger and a Suicide Girls columnist react to seeing her in the book, where things really get crazy ...

JCH: Things get crazy in two ways, and the first and most important way is that Rachael is exposed to dangerous elements. We had to nail down a chronology for when the story takes place, and Personal Effects: Dark Art takes place in November of 2008. Where were you in November of 2008? Rachael was experiencing these traumatic events, but much like you, Rachael doesn't talk about November 2008 in her day-to-day life. While she's blogging in real time now, she might be reminded of something, but she's over it, just like anybody would kind of be over it. But if you go back in the archives of her blog to early November, you'll see that she references this peril. It doesn't give away the plot, but certainly implies that there was trauma and that she and Zach were going through a hard time. And this is where my nose starts to bleed: that post was actually written on November 3rd, 2008.

JH: I was really interested in all of the slang you created for the book. Zach's brother Lucas has this great, quirky vernacular that all the other characters start to pick up and use themselves. Where did you come up with that?

JCH: With Lucas, I wanted to created a personality that was at high contrast to Zach's, that loved life, that was absolutely like a living spring. Boing boing boing! You can't shut the guy up. Combine that with my love for slang. I have always, since I was kid, wondered "Where did 'chill out' come from?" I had always quietly wanted to be one of those people who said that really clever thing that was the initial pebble in the pond, and as I went through my life, I quickly realized that I would never be cool or clever enough for that to happen. But, oh my gosh, here's an opportunity to live vicariously through someone who might be that person. So Lucas, instead of saying "How's it going?" he says "Welcome up!" Instead of saying "that's really cool," he says "katabatic!" For those who know, katabatic is an Antarctic wind that cools the planet. At one point he calls something that's troubling him a "foolbiscuit." That was something that spilled out of my mouth when someone cut me off on the road. By the end of the book, when someone says "'dore," everyone knows what he's talking about, including the reader.

JH: 7th Son was a sci-fi thriller, and Personal Effects: Dark Art is a psychological thriller, but would you ever write something that takes place in a slightly more mundane world?

JCH: [laughs] Not an underground mental institution for the damned? Well, there's something to be said for writing stories that do not have extremes, like human cloning or a blind serial killer, but I love extremes. I love Alfred Hitchcock movies, because quite often a person just as normal and reserved and dorky as you or me gets thrown into these improbably situations and is forced to take care of business. The person who you meet in the beginning of North by Northwest, Cary Grant, is a borderline drunk, a dandy, and certainly a chump, is doing battle on the face of Mount Rushmore by the end of that movie. How fucking cool is that?

We all have these personal dramatic moments in our own lives, the personal, daily equivalent of doing battle on Mount Rushmore, and while that's interesting to me, I like -- I hate to sound pretentious -- but I call it "widescreen fiction." I love it when the stakes are really, really big. Do I have ideas for stories that are far smaller in scope? Absolutely. But right now, I'm full of piss and vinegar. I want to tell big stories, I want to kick people in the balls.

(image) A few years ago a friend was showing me his tattoos at a geeky event I organized. He turned around, pulled down his collared shirt -- and my eyes popped out of my skull. He had a DB-9 port tattooed to the back of his neck. He then proceeded to show me other parts of his body as that wasn’t... more

A few years ago a friend was showing me his tattoos at a geeky event I organized. He turned around, pulled down his collared shirt -- and my eyes popped out of my skull. He had a DB-9 port tattooed to the back of his neck. He then proceeded to show me other parts of his body as that wasn’t his only “geeky” tattoo. A few months later I met a friend’s wife who had her name tattooed on her arm -- in binary code. It wrapped her arm like a bracelet of ones and zeros. These geeky tattoos were few and far between, so I went in search of tattoos of the geeky kind. Here's a tour of some of my favorites.

The Transistor

As I mentioned, the first geeky tattoo I saw was on the body of my friend, Eric Gradman. He’s the one with the DB-9 port on the back of his neck. “I got this tattoo at a time when lots of people were getting barcodes on the back of their necks. I have a bit of an aversion to permanent numeric ID markers.”

He tells the story of how he got another one. “I'd been drinking at Zeitgeist in San Francisco for about 7 hours when we decided to get tattoos. Transistors are in every piece of electronics we use and their discovery revolutionized the world. Nobody really uses BJT transistors anymore; they use FETs (which use a different schematic symbol) but the BJT symbol is so classy. Even hippies smile when they see it, mistakenly believing that it stands for world unity.”

011000100110100101101110011000010111001001111001

I’ll bet you know what language the above is–- but I’ll also bet you can’t read it (hint). Lots of people get binary tattoos with their name or special words. The only problem with binary is the quantity of ones and zeros. After researching geeky tattoos on Flickr, I found some very simple binary art that I particularly liked. “I am a geeky person," explains Robert Maki, whose body it belonged to. "Since I love computers and people call me a geek, I decided to get it tattooed on me, in the most primal language of computers.”

Love in 3D

Meg Watcher's tech-head body art is also some that I stumbled across on Flickr. She has a traditional Mom and Dad in a heart on her arm –- with one very cool twist -- it’s tattooed in 3D red/blue lines. “I really liked the look of old-school offset red and blue 3D drawings and wanted to get it done in tattoo form,” Meg told me. I got out my 3D glasses (which I have on my desk) and spied it through the blue and red shades -- and it looked pretty good. If you have a pair of shades, get em out and see for yourself.

Showing the <3

A friend of a friend of mine (thanks for introducing us Joz), Ed Morita, writes a blog on baking and his pastry creations make my mouth water. Earlier this year, Morita asked his readers to help him decide where to get a tattoo featuring the Wordpress logo. “I have been a blogger in some form or another since 2004, and five years is a long time to be using any sort of brand. WordPress has been a big part of my life, and like other big things in my life I think that it is time for me to get inked.” (See photo.)

My Bar Camp LA buddy Jason Cosper wanted to show his love for Apple but only to fellow Apple lovers. “Why get an Apple logo when you can get something that the really hardcore people will get? Also, it's easier to explain it away as a simple Celtic knot when people I don't want to talk to ask about it.” (See photo.)

Fellow Bar Camper Jeremy Kitchen has two Linux tattoos. His first is the classic penguin, “Tux” holding a sign that reads “1337.”

“I was 19, wanted a tattoo, was very gung-ho about Linux, and thought it might be cool.” Last month, he convinced co-worker Terri Haber to join him in his second Linux themed tattoos. His image of choice: Tuz -- the new Linux logo, which was changed to bring awareness to a rare disease that kills Tasmanian Devils.

Time traveling

Our final geek tattooist comes inked with so much good stuff I don’t know where to start. How about with the inside lip tattoo of “geek” (showcasing his inner geek!). What about the yin/yang Tron circuitry on his forearms? The Atari console with green screen and punch cards? The Flux Capacitor? And I can’t forget the Logan’s Run Jewel on his palm? I’d like to introduce fellow SG member: FEJ

In homage to his Dad, FEJ has a complicated tattoo of an Atari console, punch cards, green screen and Dad tattooed in 8-bit binary on his arm.

“Dad had punchcards around the office when I was a kid. I remember seeing them and wondering about them, and as I got older, admiration for him being able to use them in the early days of programming. He worked for Rockwell which made the eProms for the Atari and Activision game cartridges. We had a modified 'Adventure' cartridge with s eProm quick release that allowed us to change games that way. We got games almost a year before they were released.”

And the Flux Capacitor? “One day it just popped into my head (I didn't fall and hit my head on the sink) and knew. Those that know what it is always point it out.”

My favorite of all the tattoos in this article is FEJ's Logan’s Run palm jewel. In this future world, to combat overpopulation and consumption, everyone reaching a certain age is killed. “When someone turned 29, the jewel in their palm glowed and they are supposed to go to 'Carousel' and ultimately be executed in the ceremony. Those that fought the system became 'Runners' and went looking for 'Sanctuary.' I like to think of myself as a 'Runner' on the constant spiritual journey looking for 'Sanctuary'”

Heathervescent is a writer, technology consultant and agent of cacophony. She was unable to find a tattoo of Cronenberg’s back port from eXistenZ and was constantly distracted by this collection of the worst Unicorn tattoos! You can read more of her adventures at heathervescent.com and follow her @heathervescent

One hundred. This is a milestone or something. A centenary of Asshole Fuckfacing. What better way to celebrate than with another horrible, horrible Asshole Fuckface Roundup. Put something on and get ready for some stuff. First, some disgusting pro-some life Asshole Fuckfacery. Our religious zealots have... more

One hundred. This is a milestone or something. A centenary of Asshole Fuckfacing. What better way to celebrate than with another horrible, horrible Asshole Fuckface Roundup. Put something on and get ready for some stuff.

First, some disgusting pro-some life Asshole Fuckfacery.

Our religious zealots have a lot of explaining to do this week. Not just for the murder they committed, but also for their reaction to the murder. On Sunday, anti-abortion lunatic and American terrorist Scott P. Roeder shot and killed Dr. George Tiller. Tiller was one of the few doctors in America willing to provide 2nd and 3rd term abortions.

Oh, good, the gunman did it in church, in front of God and probably a bunch of children. I was worried this might be really creepy. Roeder is a terrorist, plain and simple. In the past, he was caught with explosives.

He is a member of the American Taliban.

Jesus Fail.

Roeder should be waterboarded in order to get information out of him about other American terrorists. Since that is what we do to terrorists, we should get on it pronto (and take photographs -- so we can destroy them later after leaking some to the press). Also, we might want to start putting these type of citizens on a list of possible terrorists. They certainly should be placed on the “no fly list.”

These ones have all put their names next to their Twitter updates, so they should be easy to identify.

Terrorist sympathizers, every single one. They support the Dr. Killer killer, so let’s put them on the “no fly list” and waterboard them for info. Let’s get to it. Now. Please. Thanks.

Next up, some office hi-jinks Asshole Fuckfacery.

Sometimes it’s hard not to take a little something from the workplace. Stapler at home broken? Why that one on your desk seems nice. How about those files? Really could use a couple for the cabinet at home? Pens? Want and need. Or maybe you need a foot.

Hey, when you need a foot, you need a foot. There's no getting around that.

No. But he didn’t need it, right? He’s got another one.

First question: Why can’t that be Adam Lambert? Second question: What the fuck?

Yeah, I’d believe that if you hadn’t taken HIS FOOT.

No, it doesn’t. She took a dude’s FOOT.

Next up, a lunatic lying Asshole Fuckface.

Dick Cheney is obviously the worst human being America has produced this century. Not only is he a crazy torture fanboy, but he also enjoys lying out of his ass constantly. This week, former Bush I and Clinton counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke criticized Cheney for using 9/11 to justify his torture nonsense. Cheney no likey.

Um. Dude.

Other than that, and telling Condi Rice Al Qaeda would be the Bush Administration’s biggest problem, yeah, you totally nailed it. Many politicians seem to forget that videotape exists that undermines their current positions, but Dick Cheney seems to forget that print exists. He still hasn’t wrapped his little brain around the existence of the written word.

Finally, some visual WTF Asshole Fuckfacery.



Totally not gay. You know who would have loved this? George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce, Johnny Carson. They were all about their sweet, sweet bodies. Anyone who knows anything knows a comedian isn’t good until he can pose in Entertainment Weekly straining his oiled up abs so hard his capillaries might burst.

I remember when comedians were the guys who were tormented by the hypocrisy, unfairness and insanity they saw in society and were driven to point it out. Now, it’s all about abs.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper You may also enjoy his blog, Stop All Monsters.

Downloading Nancy has already faced a rough road to movie theaters. At the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, audiences walked out of the screening. As of last summer, any theatrical release was still uncertain. The film finally hits theaters this week, more than a year and a half after it was finished. more

Downloading Nancy has already faced a rough road to movie theaters. At the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, audiences walked out of the screening. As of last summer, any theatrical release was still uncertain. The film finally hits theaters this week, more than a year and a half after it was finished.

Maria Bello plays the title character, a depressed housewife who asks an internet pen pal (Jason Patric) to kill her. Her husband (Rufus Sewell) would rather check his cell phone than dance with his wife at a wedding reception, yet he is still surprised when she disappears. Some guys just can't take a hint.

Still supporting the film after over a year of disappointing activity, Rufus Sewell made last-minute phone calls this week to get the word out. Though separated by miles and phone lines, Sewell maintained a connection, laughing up the film's rocky path and its technological commentary.

He even made jokes at his own expense, many about the abundance of one-dimensional villain roles on his resume. Most audiences may only know him as the baddie who menaced Heath Ledger in A Knight's Tale, Antonio Banderas in The Legend of Zorro and Jessica Biel/Edward Norton in The Illusionist. TV viewers got to see him weekly in the short-lived Eleventh Hour and die hard genre fans still remember Dark City. Downloading Nancy offers the sort of role Sewell prefers to play, like it or not.

Fred Topel: Did you know when you made Downloading Nancy that it would be controversial?

Rufus Sewell: No. I mean, if you don't know if a movie's coming out, you certainly don't know if it's going to be controversial. There's nothing controversial about a film that doesn't come out. I think as far as I'm concerned, [I gave] my recent interview in the New York Times last weekend talking about the surprise at the reaction in Sundance, and I was very surprised. To tell you the truth, I found it amusingly provincial because I do think, yes, I suppose the film is shocking and it's very dark and has a certain tone, but I was very surprised. I still am to a certain extent.

FT: With the subject matter, did it seem like something that was going to inevitably divide people?

RS: The subject matter, that's what I mean. The subject matter, people watch films where people die every day. What is it specifically about the subject matter, as people are now referring to it, that is more offensive than blowing up countries and stuff?

FT: In this one, you get to know her.

RS: There you have it. So I just think it's quite revealing about what people don't want to look at. Of course, from the way it's shot and everything about it, it certainly was never going to be a mainstream film but no, I didn't expect so many people to walk out at Sundance. I was delighted.

FT: When you got the script, what was your reaction?

RS: I thought it was great. It wasn't just as simple as that but I thought it was very interesting. I thought the characters, obviously it's very unusual. You don't read a lot of stuff like that and I really, really liked the fact that the part being offered to me was not the kind of standard unimaginative offer that I have been getting used to. That it was to play this middle American, very kind of out in his depths, someone who wants to be Mr. Average, trapped in a relationship that is beyond his scope of experience. He copes with it by just freezing someone out in a way that actually is very, very cruel though not intentional, and then ends up, though he may not be able to express it properly, completely devastated by what he's done. I just thought that was amazing.

FT: You say he's distinctly American. Would this story exist in England?

RS: Oh yeah, I don't think the situation is quintessentially American. It just so happens that the character very much was. But yes, it could just as easily happen in England. Absolutely. I don't know how easily it happens anywhere, but unusual though it is, that unusual one in a million thing could happen in England.

FT: How did the festival circuit shake out?

RS: I only went to one festival because I was doing a play on Broadway at the time. It was the only weekend I got off. I just had the experience of being there at the screening at Sundance and watching the door flap open and closed.

FT: How many times?

RS: Quite a bit. I thought people must be drinking a lot of Diet Pepsi before it started. Then I thought maybe after a while there was a bit more to it. Then we had to, kind of ill advisedly, we were all pulled up in front of the screen to be interviewed afterwards. One of the main things, this is why I think of the reaction as being quite provincial, is that one of the questions is: why did you make this film? I just don't think that's a question that should be asked at an independent, or supposedly independent film festival. It's quite funny really. I mean, it's a film I'm very proud of, whether you consider that it fails or succeeds, whether you like it or don't like it. I'm proud to be in it.

FT: Well, why do you make any film?

RS: Exactly. It's just a stupid question.

FT: Was there a certain point that set people off?

RS: Yeah, I think between the beginning and the end, it got them. Possibly my knitwear. I was expecting some kind of reaction to that. My signet rings and diamond patterns, I was expecting a little trouble.

FT: Do you think the internet connects these darker elements in real life?

RS: It's easy to get involved in alarmist [theories] but yes. I think it's undoubtedly true. There is an incredibly powerful forum for people. In the past, when you'd hear about pairs of people who'd get together and murder for example, the first question is: how the fuck do these people find each other? How do you find out in casual conversation that you both like, for example, skewering baby seals and then throwing them off beachheads. I mean, how does one discover a shared love of the obscure? It's taken a lot of work out of that which is potentially a very worrying thing. But I suppose, it could equally, to be cheesy, have a power for good but you know, our experience of humanity so far doesn't hold up in that direction.

FT: How connected are you with cell phones and Blackberries and Facebook, et. al.?

RS: Quite, really, because I live pretty much around the world. My son is in England and I live wherever the work is, so the idea of Skype and stuff like that has actually revolutionized my life because I can still be in contact in a real way. So things like that have become quite important. The funny thing is, no matter how technological or how technical indeed these advances sound, in the end, they all end up being used for humans to either show pictures of their asses or lie to each other, or in the best sense to be able to see their child's face or whatever. There is no technology so sophisticated that it can't be ultimately used to just show an ass.

FT: Were you surprised that CBS didn't pick up Eleventh Hour?

RS: Honestly, personally, I'm quite happy they didn't because I wanted to do something else.

FT: Was the TV experience not what you expected?

RS: I never really wanted to get into a long term thing to tell you the truth. The idea was to no longer feel as underused as I have. I felt underused, not insomuch as unemployed. There are people that are aware of what I can do but in terms of the people who are actually allowed to give out the jobs, people don't realize how useful I can be. I felt that possibly, the idea of doing something like this, would at least give me a forum to do a lot of different things. As it turned out, I felt underused. The idea of being overemployed but underused at the same time is not a future that I would choose for myself.

FT: Is that just the procedural nature of the mystery of the week?

RS: Oh, not necessarily. No, I don't think it was simply that. The truth is, I think it improved enormously, and I think if there was a second season, it would have really got quite good. But I'm still relieved that they let it slip through their fingers as far as I'm concerned. I think it probably would have been good enough if we'd done a second series to continue beyond that, by which time I decided that's not what it wanted.

FT: It was surprising because it got decent ratings.

RS: Yes, I know, that's why I say, I'm not condemning the show. I think it had a lot of strong points. I'm talking about the experience I had from what it started with and what we ended up getting towards was quite respectable. It's just that irrespective of the fact that I worked with people I really liked and made a lot of friends, by the time it finished, the fact that I think they made a mistake in not renewing it was good news for me. So I think they made a mistake, but at the same time, I dodged a bullet.

FT: What have you found since that allows you to be rightfully used?

RS: Oh, I don't know yet. I was prepared to stop doing the series and be unemployed for anything up to a year and still would think I've made the right choice. As far as what I've been happily reminded of is my nature, and my nature as an actor is I'd rather have lack of financial security, lack of security all around with the faint glimmer of very, very exciting, incredibly disparate things in my future. That also includes low points, unemployment, drudgery, whatever, but to me that is the life that I would [prefer], with varying highs and lows. There's a number of really interesting independent projects which is very much the future that I've always wanted to have. Theater possibly, Shakespeare, possibly next year and possibly another very high quality TV miniseries in Europe which I may well be doing. It's not definite yet but it could be happening in the next couple of months, but the difference being not for any of the networks and finite, a beginning, middle and end.

FT: What are the roles you feel did utilize you?

RS: Well, none yet.

FT: Not even Dangerous Beauty or Dark City?

RS: Definitely not, definitely not. Dark City is a wonderful film. I don't think I'm very good in it. No, I don't think so. I don't mean to dismiss it completely but it's not work of mine I'm proud of. I'm proud to be involved in that work. I think I've gotten much better since then, to pat myself on the head. To tell you the truth, I'm very proud of some of the smaller roles I've done, When I've managed to push myself to be in a part other than the one they wanted me to be in. I like Vinyan very much which I did recently. I did like my work in that. Amazing Grace, in which I play a relatively small part, because of the fact that I campaigned to play that kind of oddball part that I played in it, I'm very proud of that. Very proud of the comedies that I've done even though they've been unsuccessful, like Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence or The Very Thought of You, the version in America which I was kind of cut out of. The Taming of the Shrew which is a BBC modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew that I did with Shirley Henderson a couple of years back. A lot of comedy stuff where I've been given a real chance and my theater work. In terms of film, I've been conscious of trying to make the best of never quite getting the part that I want. Everyone has their thing they have to get around. With me, it's like okay, how can I make this upper class bad guy in the 19th century different and interesting?


Downloading Nancy opens in select theaters on June 5.

(image) I'm no expert on superhero comics. But in the pile of comics in our living room, stuck between The Boys, Walking Dead, and Air, are a few out-and-out good guy vs. bad guy books -- and the best of the bunch is Ultimate Spiderman. Never mind that it's an unusually good retelling of the... more

I'm no expert on superhero comics. But in the pile of comics in our living room, stuck between The Boys, Walking Dead, and Air, are a few out-and-out good guy vs. bad guy books -- and the best of the bunch is Ultimate Spiderman. Never mind that it's an unusually good retelling of the story of everyone's favorite geek hero. Never mind that Mary Jane has a mean right hook, or that Gwen Stacy went punk. I like the book because it gives us a Spider-Man who's still learning right from wrong.

Spidey taught us -- and say it with me -- that with great power, comes great responsibility. But really, that's just his opinion. And if he didn't have the memory of his dead uncle nagging at him all the time, would he always play nice?

As the SG Gamers group caught on, Cole MacGrath, the star of Sucker Punch Productions's PlayStation 3 sandboxer inFamous, owes plenty to Spider-Man. As the erstwhile motorcycle messenger, you can scale buildings and fall from any height -- not to mention shoot lethal bolts of electricity from your fingertips. Like Spider-Man, when you start out everyone thinks you're a menace: accused of being a terrorist who turned the city into a free-fire zone, you're scoffed and spat upon everywhere you go. But unlike Spider-Man, you live in a city that can't stand in your way. Sometimes the cops sneak out of their hidey-holes to take potshots at the gangs, and the military mans the barricades around the island. But inside the city limits, you are the law. And everybody else looks very, very helpless.

In most games, the run-of-the-mill civilians fall into two extremes: they're either crucial, or insignificant. In a game like Grand Theft Auto, pedestrians are just moving targets. Running down a sidewalk full of people may get the cops on your tail, and a stick-up might bring you a few bucks, but your rampages have no long-term ramifications. The little people just don't matter. At the other end, a real-time strategy game will give you a population to protect or an army to deploy -- and every last one of those folks is a resource. Lose one or two and it's no big thing, but waste too many and you're going to lose the game.

In inFamous, the civilians matter -- but they don't matter much. You can help them, but the rewards are minor. And thanks to that design decision, you'll focus on the role you want to play rather than the points you need to earn.

Choose to be a hero, and you can stop every five feet and heal someone who's wounded and dying on the sidewalk. You get a few experience points for every save, but that's just a "thank you"; knowing that you've saved hundreds of lives is the real reward. On the other hand, have you ever tied your ex's dog to the back of a bus? Or maybe grabbed the last beer in the fridge? If you're the villain-type, inFamous lets you wreak havoc on an already wrecked city, torturing the populace and even draining the last gasps of life from victims dying on the street. All these crimes will nudge your karma toward evil, but in the scheme of things, a few murders here and there don't add up to much -- and anyway, you'll quickly learn how hard it is to do good.

Maybe Spider-Man had time to catch baby carriages and save grandmas from falling taxis. But in inFamous, stray passers-by love to jump in the middle of a firefight, and who the hell has time to protect them? Plus, most of them are obnoxious. I talked to one gamer who tried to play nice, until he got trash-talk from one too many civilians -- so he walked up to the guy and knocked him across the street. Could Spider-Man get away with that?

Yes, he could -- if he wanted to. And nothing made me appreciate the masked webslinger like trying to follow his example, and failing in so many little ways. Don't get me wrong: this ain't Watchmen. The story crams 50 pounds of nonsense in a 5 pound bag, and the hero is just some guy with a squeaky messenger bag and a rechargeable battery for a brain. But the game puts its stubby little finger square on how it feels to be the ubermensch. Nobody can judge you, because nobody can stop you. And yes, all those little people matter -- but they only matter a little.


Rachael Webster (a.ka.a SG member PixelVixen707) is SG's Hit Play games columnist. A game lover and game blogger living in New York City, she also writes at PixelVixen707.com and tweets as PixelVixen707.

Morrissey and his legendary former band The Smiths continue to have a far-reaching impact on music and style, reaching artists and fans across international and genre boundaries alike. Some, such as San Antonio-based rock trio Girl in a Coma (sisters Nina and Phanie Diaz and Jenn Alva), who are second-gen... more

Morrissey and his legendary former band The Smiths continue to have a far-reaching impact on music and style, reaching artists and fans across international and genre boundaries alike. Some, such as San Antonio-based rock trio Girl in a Coma (sisters Nina and Phanie Diaz and Jenn Alva), who are second-gen fans, have paid the ultimate homage by naming their group after one of his songs - in this case, 1987's "Girlfriend in a Coma."

With a name like that, it's not a total surprise that this band was eventually able to meet Morrissey, but it's fairly remarkable that these rockers were hand-picked to tour with him. But that's not where the life of this charming band ends. Before that monumental moment happened, they had already been discovered by another living legend: Joan Jett, who signed the ladies to her own Blackheart Records and has released two of their albums, Both Before I'm Gone and the newest Trio B.C.

In an interview with SG, GIAC lead singer Nina Diaz, 21, talks about the band's multiple brushes with greatness, and how they've grown along the way.

TP: Joan Jett and her manager/producer Kenny Laguna produced two of the songs on Trio B.C. - do you feel like they were able to help you bring out a different side of your talent that you hadn't seen before?

ND: It was a great experience, and I think the songs came out well. I think they came out exactly how they should have at the time.

TP: When they told you that they wanted to sign you, everyone knows Joan Jett, but did you know about the Runaways or did you go back and listen to the band to learn about the music?

ND: I knew of the Runaways 'cause of Phanie. Everything Phanie listened to, I would kind of drop my ear into. We knew the Runaways and we definitely knew Joan Jett.

TP: How would you describe your growth on this album as compared to the first one?

ND: On the first record, I wrote the songs between 13-to-17, so there was kind of a lot of experiences and growing up going on. Now, on this album, two of the songs are older but the rest of them I wrote on the road. Now I'm 21, I'm able to actually go into the clubs and not have to wait outside. Before, when I had to wait outside, I'd just suffocate myself in the van and start working on stuff to show the girls. I'm proud of the writing, I think it's a change from Both Before I'm Gone.

TP: There are two major differences you're talking about, the age difference in the songs and also writing on the road from the perspective of someone who has "made it," so to speak. You didn't have a deal before and didn't necessarily know you would, so there's a lot of change, a lot of growth.

ND: Yeah, and when I was writing, a part of me was thinking that everybody has to like it now. And also that people know a bit about [me] now, and that sort of messed me up a little bit. But I had to just let all that go and say to myself that I've been doing this since I was 13. And when you let go, it's amazing what can happen.

TP: As a writer, you can second-guess yourself to the point of not writing anything!

ND: It's a horrible, horrible feeling. You want to rip your hair off and scream!

TP: I can see how that would be a pressure to think about how people like what you've already done, and you want to continue to please them.

ND: Yeah, well, people go through different phases of what they listen to, so you can't always get everybody. We are changing, and I hope people will continue to grow with us.

TP: Your videos are great and really unexpected. How did you manage to get [legendary transgender performer] Amanda Lepore in the "Road to Home" video?

ND: That's actually my favorite video out of all of the videos that we made. Amanda is beautiful and moving and it's so cool that she did the video. It was a really quick process and everyone was working together as a team. I was really happy about that.

TP: Whose idea was it?

ND: I have a fascination with transvestites and transgenders. I like the idea of it; it's beautiful to me.

TP: What was Amanda like?

ND: It was really last minute. We contacted her three days before the shoot and she said yes, she would do it. And she did a great job!

TP: You've played some gigs with Morrissey, and to be a band named after a Smiths song, that's got to be incredible. How did this happen?

ND: We were fans of the Smiths and Morrissey and we wanted to pay homage to them and call ourselves Girl in a Coma, but we never thought we'd ever get even close to seeing the guy. One of our past managers was friends with Boz Boorer, who is a guitarist with Morrissey. He listened to some of our cheap little demos and said, "Come to London, I'll make a demo for you guys." I dropped out of school my junior year, got my GED, and went to London. As soon as we landed from the plane, we were recording our Boz Boorer session. So then we toured on it and toured on it, and knew then that Morrissey knows of it because Boz showed him, like, "Hey, Morrissey, check this out. It's a band called Girl in a Coma!"

Then, when Morrissey happened to need an opening act in New York, we were there. We cancelled our show - hey, we're opening up for Morrissey, no problem! After that, they asked us to continue on the tour and go overseas and we accepted everything with open arms.

TP: Did you have much personal interaction with him?

ND: Yeah, he would pass by here and there. We would get really nervous, like, there's Morrissey! Sometimes I'd actually turn my face to the wall, it was kind of really funny. On the last show in Paris, he came into the room. We gave him a little gift and a thank you card and he brought champagne and sat down for a moment and had a conversation with us. I thought he was just going to drop it off, but he sat down and it was really cool.

TP: There's so much legend about him that some of us forget sometimes that he's actually just a guy, you know?

ND: Yeah, his fans are wonderful but some of them kind of cross the line a little bit. It's expected. But he's an amazing, awesome person.

TP: I'm one of the only people I know who actually got to see the Smiths in concerts.

ND: Really? Wow!

TP: Yeah, that shows my age, but it was one of my first shows ever, the year before they broke up.

ND: Oh wow! Congratulations on that!

TP: He's someone I would actually be frightened to interview, because I was always such a big fan. It's kind of like not wanting to know what Santa Claus is really like.

ND: Yeah! I thought I never really wanted to meet him because I didn't want the idea that I had of him to be different. But it was better than I could have ever expected. It was wonderful.

I was very sad to see Obama pass on my gay pick for the Supreme Court. I really wanted the Republicans to be forced to show their colors as they made homosexuality the main issue to keep someone off the bench. It didn’t happen. Fortunately, Obama went with a pick that is so politically shrewd it... more

I was very sad to see Obama pass on my gay pick for the Supreme Court. I really wanted the Republicans to be forced to show their colors as they made homosexuality the main issue to keep someone off the bench. It didn’t happen. Fortunately, Obama went with a pick that is so politically shrewd it is astounding: Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Turns out she’s not white. After the dust settles, the Democrats will have created a majority for many, many, many years. Why? Because Republicans can’t stop their racist nonsense from spewing forth out of their loud holes. By the time this nomination process is over, America’s Hispanic population will be done with the Republicans for a long, long time.

Immediately after the pick, the idiots went on the offensive. Rush Limbaugh, who is a shocking racist, declared Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Rush is one of the leaders of the Republican Party and he is losing his shit over the Sotomayor pick.

Right. Racism should remain where it belongs – on AM radio. Next Newt Gingrich also joined the asshole party. He’s made statements to the press and has Twittered about Sotomayor.

Oooooo. This southern white racist seems to be upset with the Latina. And he follows it through to its natural conclusion.

Wow, what a weird thing to Tweet during a trip to Auschwitz. But, hey, stay focused and all that. Don’t feel weird Twittering about a Latina woman being racist while you are at the hellmouth of hatred, super white guy.

Naturally, Newt followed up with with an email to his minions that explained how Sotomayor nomination is “un-American.” Totally. That’s why George H. Bush nominated her to the bench. Of course, the racism charge stems from a quote taken out of context. Here’s the deeply offensive statement.

Oh no! She’s worse than the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan! What will white men do?!?! If you really want to know how the right wing is spinning this, take a look at the entire speech. Not at all what they are spinning it into.

But let’s take that quote out of context and accept it. How’d this guy make it on the bench?

What the fuck?!?! Racist son of a bitch! How dare he use his life to contaminate his views. How’s he on the bench?!?!

While most, but not all, of the Republican lawmakers in Congress are saying this nomination should not have anything to do with race, they are letting the attack dogs run wild. Tom Tancredo is running around freaking about Sotomayor being a member of La Raza, which he says is a Latino KKK. He mostly says that because he is retarded.



Um, yeah. Remember all those lynchings of white people La Raza pulled off in the west? Man, those were some dark days. And in the '50s, you couldn’t go a week without hearing a story about a group of Latinos dragging a white man behind a truck by a chain.

Tancredo – and my father – believe La Raza means “The Race.” It does not.

While I know they are completely incorrect and their attacks are insane, I’d like them to continue. And I’d like them to go on every news channel, radio station and talk show in America. Scream that message loud and often, idiots, because you are doing even more damage to your already unpopular party. If it continues at this pace, the damage will be permanent. By the time this is over, Latinos will flock to the Democratic Party in dramatic numbers.

They need to keep this up. It looks like nothing other than angry privileged white men attacking a woman because of her race. And the news networks will eat it up and continue putting these morons on the television because it’s conflict and conflict means ratings.

Oh, and there’s an added bonus. Republican on Republican violence. Not all conservatives are pleased about the attacks on Sotomayor. They can see them for what they are: The death of the Republican Party, which may not be able to resurrect itself from this for years.

That’s not how your side came into power. You guys rode the back of fear and hideous attacks. Your peeps are doing what they have always done. They literally know no other way. You’re just pack animals who have tasted blood and won’t stop until you’re put down.

I mean, look at this shit.

This dude has his own radio show.

Please. Keep. Going.

So, it should be all white men.

Sit back, pray for more racist nonsense and enjoy the show. It’s the end of any hope the Republican Party ever had at regaining control of Congress.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper

Vera Ramone King's book Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone documents her 17-year marriage to the bassist and lead songwriter of seminal punk rockers the Ramones. In vivid and loving detail, she recounts the rise and demise of her lover and best friend, who succumbed to a heroin overdose in... more

Vera Ramone King's book Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone documents her 17-year marriage to the bassist and lead songwriter of seminal punk rockers the Ramones. In vivid and loving detail, she recounts the rise and demise of her lover and best friend, who succumbed to a heroin overdose in 2002. She offers the untold story of how she continually kept him alive even amidst bouts of terrifying abuse from her husband, illuminating a vital link in the band's masterful and enduring legacy.

In a revealing interview from her home in South Florida, King spoke with SG about her book, the "Ramones curse," and her extraordinary life as a strong woman standing in the supportive shadows of a music icon. Without her, the history of the Ramones - so often portrayed as a staunchly masculine narrative - might have been forever altered.

Tamara Palmer: Your book is a total page-turner. I had a really hard time putting it down!

Vera Ramone King: Thank you! I wanted it to be straight and truthful and from the heart and honest, and I hope that that comes across. I really wanted the fans of Dee Dee especially, and all the Ramones fans, to know that there were so many other different sides to him besides leaving the legacy that he was this crazed, drug-addicted rock and roll punk person, you know? I wanted them to know that he had a lot of different, good qualities to him and that there was more to the man than just what people wrote about or want to remember him with.

TP: It must have been very therapeutic and healthy for you to tell your story as well?

VRK: It was. In the beginning, when I started writing it, I had some moments where I didn't know that I could continue because there were a lot of painful memories that were put out of my head, that I chose not to remember for so many years. But in the end, you know what? It was extremely therapeutic and I felt alleviated of all this stuff that I've kept inside me for so long, 'cause we parted on not the greatest of terms and we both left a lot of things unsaid to one another and unresolved.

I am remarried for a long time now and I discussed this with my present husband Kenny. I wanted to know how he felt about it, and he was extremely supportive. He said to me, "This will probably help you heal and just put this to rest, put this behind you." Without his support, I couldn't have done this. There's no way you can, 'cause you don't want to hurt someone else. But being that he gave me all the support and he told me just to do what I needed to do, he's a secure enough person within himself that he didn't feel threatened in any way as far as our relationship. There's no insecurity there. We've been together almost 19 years, for cryin' out loud!

TP: That's a long time.

VRK: I met him in 1990, a year after Dee Dee and I split, and we lived together for five years until my divorce was finalized in 1995. I just wanted to make sure that I knew the person that I was going to spend the rest of my life with, which is what it was with Dee Dee; I would be spending the rest of my life with him. And I don't take my vows lightly. It's a commitment to me. I don't think, well, if in a couple years it don't work out, so be it, we'll get a divorce. It's not like that for me. I take it very seriously. Divorce is not a thing that people want to go through. It's horrible.

TP: Sure, all the disentangling of emotions . . .

VRK: And finances. So I was hoping that my message was that there was more to this man than just what people know about. There have been other books written about the Ramones, but they've been by third parties, I should say, like Monte Melnick, the road manager, or Jim Bessman, who just wanted to do a book on the Ramones for the fans. But there's never been a book written by a woman or someone who actually lived with a Ramone on a day-to-day basis. I don't really write about the whole band. I'm basically talking about my experience with one man. I do mention the different guys in the band, of course, but I try not to get into that too deep.

TP: You're right that the written history of the Ramones outside of this is a very masculine history. You show that there were women behind the scenes, you in particular, and without you the band might not have ever . . .

VRK: Well, Dee Dee wrote the majority of the Ramones songs, and I strongly believe that - and I'm not flattering myself or anything like that, 'cause I'm not an ego person - he had a lot of issues and I don't think that he would have been alive past 1980 had I not been around. I think that I was really put into his life for a reason. He wouldn't have left behind these wonderful songs that they have, or the legacy that they have now that has continued for three generations. 'Cause I see little Maddox Jolie-Pitt wearing a Ramones T-shirt, I see Tom Cruise's daughter Bella, who's like 15 or 14, wearing a Ramones shirt, and I see 50-year-old people wearing 'em too, you know? It's just amazing that the Ramones legend has spanned generations.

TP: This was something I was going to bring up, because little kids love them some Ramones!

VRK: Where would you think that they would be familiar with this music? They weren't this popular when they were touring and making albums in the early '80s. Nobody would play them.

TP: There are only a few bands and artists who have had that kind of career after the fact. Tupac Shakur is a possible parallel.

VRK: Right, and that's what I wrote about. When they all started to approach that 50-year mark, they all just passed away within a year of each other and I thought it was somewhat uncanny that that had happened. I talk about the curse in the book obviously, and it makes you wonder if there is such a thing.

TP: There's never a definitive answer on something like that, but when you recall being spooked by someone putting down a curse on the band, and then everyone starts to die so close to each other so many years later, it has to make you wonder. The evidence is overwhelming, from what happened to all the guys, to your battle with brain tumors, to the murder of their former manager Linda Stein.

VRK: And just recently, in mid-January, Gary Kurfirst, their long-time manager, was on vacation - totally healthy, never had a heart problem, dropped dead. Just like that, and this happened just a few months ago and left everybody in shock. He was having such a good time, extended his vacation by a week and he died on his vacation. Yeah, with no history of medical problems.

TP: You were there when the curse was uttered.

VRK: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

TP: Did you not really think about it or believe it or give it any weight until later?

VRK: After that night it really freaked us all out. You know the kids from the Columbine, with those long leather coats, that kind of look? I mean, this is what this guy looked like, and he was clutching a Bible and rolling a cross around in his hand. This was like something out of a movie. And usually backstage at the back door where the band has to go through to get in their tour bus or van or whatever it is, there are usually fans that are waiting to have pictures signed or pictures taken with the band and this was like a totally different thing. It was pouring rain and there was this bizarre group of people standing there.

He had a whole little entourage of people behind him and they started denouncing [the band members], going up to each one of them individually and saying, "You must repent for your sins" and trying to denounce them and have them give in to God and give up this horrible way and their music. It was just so bizarre. We all were left so speechless after this when we got into the car. It left us with chills. After nobody responded to him, he just started cursing each and every one of them. I tried not to look, but he was cursing everybody that was there. We piled into the van and we were all dead quiet. I mean, you could hear a pin drop. And then finally, Dee Dee was like, "That guy gave me the creeps!" We were all really taken aback, we had never experienced anything like that before. People would always tell the band, "You're great, we loved the show," stuff like that. And this was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was just so creepy. Creepy.

TP: It's not like the band was doing anything overtly sacrilegious.

VRK: Yeah, they weren't Satan worshippers or worshipping the devil in their music in any way, or writing their lyrics backwards to say, "Satan, you are" whatever. I could see if this was happening to some of the heavy metal, Satanic . . . I mean, look at Ozzy Osbourne!

TP: Exactly: Save it for Black Sabbath!

VRK: Yeah, even the name Black Sabbath! So we didn't really give much thought to [the curse] until they all reached that age and it was all like the magic number: 50. Dee Dee was two months short of his 50th birthday, Joey died on Easter morning, barely a month before his 50th birthday; and John was diagnosed with prostrate cancer on his 50th birthday. And, naturally, I got sick on my 50th birthday.

TP: You did? Oh, wow!

VRK: Yeah, and it was like a magic number, your time is up kind of thing.

TP: How is your health now?

VRK: I still have issues. When something like that happens to you, you don't just get off scot-free. I could get into it in depth, but I'm not going to bore you with that kind of stuff. Looking at me, my doctor calls me his miracle patient every time he sees me . . . I wasn't afraid of dying, it was just so damn painful. I lost my hearing, they told me I'd never get my hearing back, and I couldn't even just stand up to brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I was totally shot.

TP: This is something you bring up late in the book, and really give very little space to - almost shockingly so, like, "Oh, by the way, I had tumors in my brain, no biggie . . ."

VRK: I wanted to just mention it and that I had been through a lot. When I got diagnosed, they actually told me I had had it for at least 15-20 years. And I remember having headaches as far back as 1989 and going to all these doctors in New York and then giving me pills for headaches. Nothing helped me, painkillers, but nobody gave me a brain MRI and it must have been when [the tumors] started. So finally, down here, after three months of looking for cancer in different parts of my body, seven neurologists later, nobody wanted to touch it because of the delicate area it was in, I finally found a doctor/professor in Miami who was willing to do the surgery. I saw him at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, I was his first patient Monday morning at 5 o'clock. It was a few days before Christmas and I told him that a doctor in Gainesville could do [surgery] just after Christmas, and he said, "Vera, you don't have a week." It was that bad. So that I even came out of it as good as I did, I feel like my life has a purpose and I didn't finish doing what I was supposed to do. I hope that this was a part of it, and that Dee Dee is proud of me.

TP: How could he not be? You're very fair and loving to him in this book.

VRK: It's a punk love story! We didn't break up because we no longer loved each other, there were other issues.

TP: Like fearing for your life?

VRK: I believe that, being that he went off his medications and wouldn't go back on them, if I would have stayed with him, I would have just ended up as another statistic and I would not be sitting here talking to you right now. So I had to make a choice and I didn't just lose a husband, I lost my best friend. When we broke up, it was really painful for both of us. He would still call me every day and we would talk and we'd cry. But he didn't want to go back on his medications and that was just my one requirement that I wanted, because otherwise he would have been too violent. I didn't want to end up like Nancy [Spungen] or anybody, you know?

TP: Why didn't he want to go back on his meds?

VRK: He had this in his head - if you ever saw him, he wasn't fat. There wasn't a fat inch on his body. He was convinced that it was making him fat, the medication. I didn't write about it in the book, but he ended up being bulimic and he just developed all these different issues. He wanted to go off the medicine, then he wanted to quit the band. Like I said, it wasn't that we stopped loving each other. But he just went off on a tangent and I was not feeling well and I couldn't cope with everything that was going on. I had to start letting go and taking care of myself. I wondered, is his illness rubbing off on me? Could it be catching? I really started to think that his illness was becoming my illness.

TP: How could it not get ingrained into you, when it's happening to your partner?

VRK: Maybe after all these years, it started to affect me. I was not feeling well and I had these headaches 24/7 and I would have to lay down, and he'd be like, "Are you laying down again? What are you laying there for?" When he wasn't feeling good, I had to deal with it, but the minute I didn't feel good, I was on my own. I wrote about it in the book, but whenever I got sick, he went ahead and had a good time. He would take advantage of me coming down with the flu because he knew I'd be bedridden and that gave him total rein to run wild. I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn't know what. Finally, they told me that I had to go to a psychiatrist, that they could find nothing wrong with me, but they never gave me a brain MRI. I went to a shrink and she put me on Prozac but I still had the headaches. It alleviated some of the depression of my divorce and trying to put the pieces back together. It was all I knew, and when you're trying to start over in your late 30s, it's tough. Especially doing it on your own. He just turned around and quit the band and left me with the finances up in the air. I had houses and cars and apartments and no job for the last 13 years. What was I going to put down on my resume, rock wife? Full-time rock wife for 13 years? That's not gonna cut it! I went through a really hard time and I had to do what I had to do, but I knew that for once I had to put myself first. And that's what I did.

TP: It saved your life in a couple of ways, because if he hadn't have done something to you, your tumors might have still gone undiagnosed and that could have got you.

VRK: If there were reality shows in the '80s like there are now, he would have given Ozzy a run for his money. What can I tell you? We lived a rock and roll soap opera every day. Every day! And when his addictions would subside, as far as taking drugs for any length of time, there would surface other addictions, whether it was tattoos or shopping. Everything was in excess. He could never just do things in moderation, and that's when things become a problem.

TP: That sounds like it would have been so hard on you, not leaving any time to decompress.

VRK: Well, I'm not portraying myself as a saint in any way, you know? We partied together.

TP: But you were still his lifeline, his support system.

VRK: I was, I had to be. I was his chauffeur, his personal manager, his everything.

TP: I don't think you try to portray yourself as saintly in the book. You're obviously not Mother Theresa.

VRK: No, and nor do I claim to be. Like I said, we partied and we did everything but I knew where to draw the line. I knew when to say, "Okay, let's go home now." Or, "I think that's enough now." You know, you don't party 'til you frickin' overdose, or you're foaming at the mouth. I don't know how old you are, but in the late '70s and all throughout the '80s, people did drugs recreationally. That didn't necessarily mean that you were a drug addict, but some people were. It's okay if you can keep it at that. I'm too old to be doing that kind of stuff, especially now. I try to live a pretty clean life. That's in my past. My favorite pastime was smoking weed, period. If I did a line here and there, big deal, to stay up and hang out or go to a new club or something, but it wasn't to constantly be looking for it and wanting it and needing it. That's a whole different thing.

TP: It sounds like Dee Dee's financial habit with drugs was at a rock star level before he became famous.

VRK: Well, absolutely. No one can possibly say that I married him for his money, okay? There was no money. I will swear to this on a Bible: We lived on $10 a day per diem and $175 a week for his paycheck, and he spent most of it. I'd eat a fruit salad a day and what was left over went for cigarettes or maybe a Quaalude or whatever, some weed. We weren't rich by any means, and then when we did start to have a little bit of money and could afford a better life, he had to have the best weed around. He had to have the best of everything. He put out a solo album, Standing in the Spotlight, and the very last song at the end is called "I Want What I Want When I Want It." And he lived by that. That was his motto, it should have been on his tombstone. But he had a lot of great qualities as well and I hope that comes through in the book. He had a big heart, he was very giving, he loved to make people happy. When Stiv Bators came and wanted to borrow one of his knives, because he collected them and had about 200 at one point, he was like, "Give it to him," even though it was one of his favorites. And when Sid [Vicious] saw Stiv's [knife], he had to go to 42nd Street and buy the same knife. And that was the same knife that was used to kill Nancy. I don't know that he actually committed that crime; I heard that it was a drug deal gone bad, and that somebody else used the knife to stab Nancy while Sid was passed out. Because Sid was really a very sweet soul; he didn't have a mean bone in his body. Just because he called himself Sid Vicious, he wasn't vicious.

TP: The legend of how somebody like that is portrayed is often so far from the reality.

VRK: You only know what you read, but when you know the people that were actually involved - we were invited there that night and my intuition told me, don't go. Something just told me, don't go. First of all, I knew that going to the Chelsea meant that Dee Dee would end up shooting heroin with Sid at some point, and I didn't need to get into a shouting, screaming match with Nancy either, because she could be a handful. Dee Dee was disappointed but he listened to me and thank God he did because I'm glad we had no part of that. When we heard about it from people in New York calling us up, Dee Dee and I just looked at ourselves and I said, "I told you so." Something just told me, do not go.