I’m not one for spiritual journeys where I discover crap inside myself but I know that if I ever went on one, I would want David Carradine with me. Carradine is best known as Caine the star of Kung Fu and more recently as the titular subject of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. For the first time in his... more

I’m not one for spiritual journeys where I discover crap inside myself but I know that if I ever went on one, I would want David Carradine with me. Carradine is best known as Caine the star of Kung Fu and more recently as the titular subject of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. For the first time in his 50 year career Carradine decided to keep a journal while working on Kill Bill. He ended up writing a whole book, The Kill Bill Diary: The Making of a Tarantino Classic as Seen Through the Eyes of a Screen Legend. I got a chance to talk with Carradine from his home in California.

Buy The Kill Bill Diary

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?

David Carradine: I’m putting some stuff together for this art exhibit I’m going to have this month in Beverly Hills.

DRE: What are you showing?

DC: My artwork, paintings and drawings.

DRE: When did you start painting?

DC: I’ve always painted. This is a new thing for me, though. All of my paintings have just hung around and then I started painting on the computer. As long as you don’t do a lot of crashes, those survive and it doesn’t take up a lot of space.

DRE: So you draw on a tablet or do you draw stuff and then scan it in?

DC: I do a little bit of drawing stuff and scanning it in but by and large I paint on a tablet. I use a paint and graphics program that’s on my Mac.

DRE: Have you ever sold paintings in the past?

DC: I never tried to sell paintings before. I painted a lot years ago but all my paintings and all my sculptures have disappeared. I can’t even explain to you where they disappeared to. So then I started this new thing of working on the computer and now I’m finally going to get to do a show and it will be my debut.

DRE: Do you get nervous before debuting at something like this?

DC: Not exactly. I wouldn’t call it nervous. There’s a lot of work to get ready in time but I can’t say that I get nervous. It is not fun getting nervous

DRE: I would imagine that you don’t get nervous about much anymore.

DC: Nah, I don’t think I ever did. I think the first time I was ever on stage I was pretty nervous. But now I never feel nervous while working. I’m nervous before something happens but not this time. This one I’m just going straight ahead.

DRE: In terms of the Kill Bill book, do you usually keep a journal when you’re working on a film?

DC: No, never.

DRE: What made you feel like doing a journal this time?

DC: Well somebody I know told me that I’m a pretty good writer and that if I keep a journal I might get a book sale.

DRE: How did you like the process of keeping a diary on set and trying to remember stuff for a book?

DC: Oh it wasn’t a problem because I did it, basically, day by day. I didn’t have to remember. After I wrote the book, people would say, “God you have a great memory. How did you put it all back together?” I said I didn’t put it back together, I just did it right then. Pretty much every evening I’d be in my trailer with nothing to do so I might as well write down what happened that day. Once in a while I’d slip a day or two and then I’d have to go, “What the hell happened the day before yesterday?” But by and large I just wrote it as it happened.

DRE: Did Kill Bill come out the way you expected it to?

DC: Oh yeah. Quentin is constantly writing. Quentin never stops writing. He wrote right up to the very end. Then after we finished shooting, he wrote some new stuff and we came back and did pickups. But it was all progressive. The editing process tends to pull things out but the writing process never really did that. The writing process actually always added to it.

DRE: After reading the book I’m amazed that there wasn’t more uncontrolled insanity on the set.

DC: Why would you think there would be?

DRE: Just because it was such a complex film to make.

DC: Well the more complex it is the more we’ve got to hold it together. But the reason I asked why because a lot of people think Quentin is some lunatic and he just isn’t. He’s very didactic. He knows exactly what he’s doing all the time. But he can also change. He’s very malleable. He is totally in charge and totally working towards the end of the project. There is no insanity involved at all. So of course there’s none in the book and I didn’t want to make some up.

DRE: Were you surprised that Bill and Bea didn’t get to have big drawn out fight at the end of Kill Bill 2?

DC: I think I might have been actually slightly responsible for that. In Quentin’s original script, there was no big, long, drawn out fight. Then Quentin visited [Kill Bill fight choreographer] Woo-ping [Yuen] in Australia where he was shooting something. Quentin got really excited about using all those techniques. Then before we even started shooting I said, “Look I don’t want to see a Woo-ping movie. I want to see a Quentin Tarantino movie. We don’t go to your movies for the action. We go for the crazy things that people say.” Quentin decided to go back to more of his original concept and also in-between I think Quentin had seen Matrix II, which is loaded with that stuff. It’s also done by Woo-ping and Quentin hated the movie. I hated it too. I think almost everybody did.

DRE: Who didn’t hate it?

DC: Yeah. Quentin said “I think this shit is over.” He basically said to me that he didn’t want me on wires. I had become a real expert at the wire. I was eager to do it just for the fun of it. But he said that he said he wanted people to really see that I was doing it. Even in that fight with Michael Jai White, which is not in the movie but is in the extras on the DVD, is quite a fight. But there are no special effects in it at all. In the whole movie, there’s very little of that wirework that transcends what you think a human body could do. There is one sequence where Bea and the leader of the Crazy 88s run up a wall. Quentin used the wire just to make somebody a little bit more athletic, except for Pai Mei of course. But Pai Mei is a fantasy character so when Pai Mei stands on her sword, we like that. One of the great talents that Quentin has is knowing what the audience is going to like. He seems to really have that down. The other thing he’s got down is never letting the audience know what is going to happen next. Whatever happens next is always going to be something of a surprise. But I can say I was a little disappointed that the fight with Michael Jai White didn’t get in the picture. I wasn’t really disappointed that I didn’t get to do the wirework because I think he was right about it. I think that Matrix II and Matrix III and Charlie Angels II had really worn that out to where I don’t think people would have been really happy about seeing another circus exposition, is that the right word? Probably not.

DRE: Well it is like a three ring circus of violence, that’s the closest.

DC: Well my kung-fu master, Rob Moses, who was with me during the training, calls it a kung-fu circus. That’s never what we did back in the old days on the Kung Fu series or our movies in America. We showed people standing on their own feet and kicking and punching and jumping and dancing, as they could. Then the Chinese came in and overwhelmed us with Crouching Tiger. Then there was the Matrix and all the Jet Li stuff. That’s not the way that we made the stuff popular in the United States. We made it popular with Chinese people that are actually doing things. Matrix I certainly was an epiphany. We all went “Wow this is hot.” You can’t just go do it over and over again and expect people to be amazed by it.

DRE: I was a little surprised that you suspected that Woo-ping didn’t like you.

DC: I don’t think that he was totally responsible for that, I don’t like him very much either. He’s very stand-offish. It was very difficult to talk to him. He pretended throughout the entire time that he couldn’t speak English. I realized that it was a pose of his after a couple of months. I was not impressed about the attitude everyone else had toward him. They all called him the Master. I’ve known some masters. I’ve had interviews with the abbot of the Shaolin monastery a few times. He’s a very humble, simple person. Woo-ping has too much arrogance for me to classify him as a master. He’s a businessman. I would not want to run into him in a dark alley and have to fight my way past him. I’m sure he’s very capable, he’s a great choreographer. But that’s what he is, he’s a choreographer. Myself I’m a dancer, I’m a kung-fu artist, I am an actor. I got my own way to go and he can help me if he wants to. But he can’t rule me.

DRE: It’s interesting that you said he wasn’t humble since it seems that humbleness is what martial arts are really all about.

DC: Not everybody does it that way. Bruce Lee did not do it that way, for sure. Woo-ping does not do it that way, he is an absolute autocrat. His people don’t dare do anything that he doesn’t want. He wants everything to be his own way. Remember that sword draw that I did where I throw it up in the air and catch it in the fight with Michael Jai White?

DRE: Yeah, it’s fantastic.

DC: I had been practicing that for three months. Whenever I had nothing else to do in training I would practice trying to see if I could do that. On the day of the fight suddenly Quentin said “I want you to do that sword draw.” Woo-ping said “No, no, no, no.” I finally said, “Look, that’s the draw I’m going to do.” That’s all there is to it. It’s not just me saying it, the director said it. I didn’t say this but I could have, “Who the fuck are you? Telling me what I’m going to do and what I’m not going to do. I’ve been in this business for 50 years. I’m one of the people who made martial arts a famous thing in the world and I practiced this thing for three months. This is what I’m going to do.” Then there was a whole protocol thing going on. I walked away and Quentin came over and he had already talked to Woo-ping. I said, “I thought it was wonderful the way you dealt with him so diplomatically.” Quentin goes “There’s this protocol problem we got.” I said “Look, I don’t want to fuck with Woo-ping but on the other hand I really want to fuck with Woo-ping.” Quentin laughed and said, “Okay.” We went back and we continued with his version. Quentin gets what he wants without ruffling anybody’s feathers. Since everyone was setting this guy up as such a master I figured I had to shoot him down.

DRE: I am really shocked that you didn’t get the amount of respect you deserve.

DC: I think Woo-ping respected me. I just don’t think he quite knew what to do with me. I think he was reticent to try to teach me his stuff because he had that respect. That’s one of the things that came up early on. I said, “They’re not using me.” Quentin said, “Well, they’re afraid of you.” I said, “Look, I’m here. I’m working out eight hours a day, five days a week. What’s the point of it if they don’t lean on me and make me better.” The trainers got that. I really don’t know whether Woo-ping got that or not because, like I said, he’s sort of inaccessible. He doesn’t talk to you. I look a little askance at people that would allow people to treat them that way.

DRE: I love the story in the book where Harry Knowles doesn’t want to get out of range of you throwing a knife. Did you find that there are a lot of people like that?

DC: Harry Knowles is really special. There’s only one of him.

DRE: You also wrote in the book that you were hoping that this film would cause a resurgence for you like Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta, do you feel like that’s happened?

DC: Oh yeah. I’ve made a few movies since then that maybe wouldn’t have happened without Kill Bill. People called me as their first choice for some great parts. I did three or four of them last year. You haven’t seen them yet, but they’ll be out soon.

There’s nothing more fun than being the central character in a film. Particularly being a force that changes the shape of the film or controls the shape of the film. I’ve done that a lot in my own television series and most of the movies have been one man shows. That’s the highest position there is to be in and if you’re the villain you may be very important but you’re not the primary artist in the project. It’s a lot more fun to be the primary artist. People say that the villains are the best parts. Maybe they’ve never been in that other position. I don’t know. Maybe they’re just trying to speak well about what it is they do. But I don’t really enjoy playing villains much. I haven’t played many villains, really. Maybe it is that I don’t see them as villains. In real life people don’t think they’re villains. I don’t think Lucky Luciano thought he was a villain. You see a lot of movies where people play the bad guy and are joyful about being a villain. I don’t think that’s the truth in real life. Even serial killers think they are heroes. That’s a movie thing and I’ve never cottoned to it. When I play a bad guy I always refused to stick to the conventions like “The Leer.” Where you’re smiling, leering villain enjoying tearing people apart and shooting the shit out of every village. I don’t think that’s true. I think those people are serious about it. I don’t think they’re grinning. They’re not having fun. I think most of them think they’re doing God’s work. So I try not to think of these guys as villains. I think of them as people who misguided themselves into a dark place and think it’s the place to be.

DRE: I got to interview Roger Corman last year and he said that he’s proud and still has affection for all his films that he has made. Of course he’s not really in his films.

DC: He’s not an actor.

DRE: Are there films that you wish you never did or do you feel that it’s all part of the deal?

DC: I don’t think there are films that I wish I never did. There are films I don’t like. But most of the time when I was making a film, I thought it was going to be a good film. I’ve made a 120 feature movies and I don’t know how much television and once in a while you do something that you initially felt was beneath you. Sometimes it turns out you found some way to make it up to your standards or above them. Sometimes you’re making a film that you think is going to be a great movie or a great performance or something and then you see the film and you go, “Well that didn’t work, did it?” I’m not proud of every film but I’m not ashamed enough of anything to want to run away from it.

DRE: Corman sold the remake rights to Death Race 2000. If they remade it would you be interested in being involved?

DC: I don’t think they are thinking about me. I’m not going to be a charming courtier and try to campaign for the part. I think Warner Bros purchased the rights to do it from Roger and they’ve been talking about Tom Cruise playing a part. I don’t even want to get into that with Warners. I’ve never had an easy time with Warners. I made my all of my Kung Fu series with Warner and even though I probably made hundreds of millions of dollars for them. But they don’t come to me. I don’t know what they’re pissed off about [laughs], maybe it is because I walked off the first series.

DRE: Do you have good memories of making Death Race 2000?

DC: Yeah I have good memories. It all went very fast. We shot it in three weeks and it was raining all the time. You can’t see it because of my black vinyl costume. It was difficult to shoot because of that. We couldn’t spend as much time shooting as we wanted to because sometimes we had to change things because of the rain. I had no idea it was going to be something that would last forever. I believe it is the highest grossing film in the entire history of Roger Corman which meant a lot of money for me. I had a big piece of it but it never occurred to me that piece was going to amount to much. It was a little movie I made in three weeks and that movie just keeps going on. Now that they’ve sold it to Warner Bros, I get a piece of that too. If they want me to be in the picture, I would be in the picture, but when they remake these things they very rarely use the people who were in them the first time around. They always recast them. I know there’s talk at Warner Bros about doing a feature version of Kung Fu and they’re talking about going back and telling the original pilot movie story over again with a young actor. It would have to be a young actor because he’s studying up at the monastery. He starts out as child and a teenager. I’m 70 years old so I couldn’t play that part. But I think they’re making a mistake because it’ll be like Wild Wild West. For the movie they recast it and unless you are a geek TV fan, no one remembers who originally played the parts. But Kung Fu is a little bit different. I can’t imagine how they can expect to get a huge audience with somebody else playing Kwai Chang Caine because I’m entirely too identified with it. I ought to know because I have to live with it. But the sensible thing that they should do is a sequel where we see what the hell happened to this guy. What’s he like in 1906? Years ago I got tired of trying to convince Warner Bros of my opinions about things. I got other things to do. If they want me involved in any of these projects I would certainly think about it. But I’ve got so much on my plate, I don’t need it and I am getting tired of talking about it.

DRE: Have you ever seen David Carradine related tattoo on somebody?

DC: I don’t think a lot of people show me their tattoos. But I have a lot of tattoos myself. I don’t have them on my arms so I don’t show them a lot on the road. When I originally started getting tattoos I started putting them in places where I didn’t think they would get in the way of my movie career. That was before we knew there were ways to cover them up. I have one on my forearm. It looks like a seagull but it’s actually a flying tern and it covers a V shaped scar. I got tired of the scar there so I made it look like a seagull but as I said it’s a blind tern. Because that’s a pun.

DRE: [laughs] What was the last one you got?

DC: The last one I got was a pretty big dragon on my left thigh and it’s still not finished. I always wanted a dragon there and I was about to do Kill Bill and I was on my way to China. I thought, “I should have this dragon before I go there”. So I got a hold of this guy that came to my house and I spent an entire weekend, about 20 hours of tattooing, to get the dragon on. It still isn’t finished. I don’t think I will ever finish it because who’s got the time. People ask me how many tattoos I have and I say one because I do think of them as one entire painting or theme. I don’t know if it is true or not but that’s the way I think about it.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

I should admit this right off the bat: I’m not a huge fan of Travis Barker’s music. The only work of his I’ve really gravitated to is The Transplants; I'm still spinning that disc ever since I interviewed Skinhead Rob nearly a year and a half ago. But Barker’s new band +44 is good and a lot of... more

I should admit this right off the bat: I’m not a huge fan of Travis Barker’s music. The only work of his I’ve really gravitated to is The Transplants; I'm still spinning that disc ever since I interviewed Skinhead Rob nearly a year and a half ago. But Barker’s new band +44 is good and a lot of fun. He’s teamed up with another former member of Blink-182, Mark Hoppus, as well as former Transplants touring guitarist Craig Fairbaugh and the lead guitarist of The Nervous Return, Shane Gallagher. I had a very open and honest conversation with Barker about the new band and his trials and travails with the paparazzi and various famous blondes.

Check out the official website for +44

Daniel Robert Epstein: How long have you and Mark wanted to do this?

Travis Barker: It actually wasn’t that we were seeking out to do it. After Blink broke up, we decided we wanted to keep playing music and we just started writing and writing and writing until we had this big collection of songs. Craig [Fairbaugh] was in The Transplants so I got him. Shane [Gallagher] was in this band called The Nervous Return that I had grown up with. We just started playing music together. We wrote a record and it’s coming out in a couple of weeks and we’re going on tour.

DRE: Was there an overall concept behind it?

TB: It was just Mark and I continuing where we left off in a sense.

DRE: Is it impossible to avoid comparisons to Blink-182’s music just because two members of the band are in +44?

TB: We’ll probably never escape that, but it’s not even something that I disown. I loved being in that band. It’s probably natural if 2/3 of that band is in +44 for there to be some similarities like Mark’s voice or something like that.

DRE: What does +44 mean?

TB: It means absolutely nothing. It was just a number that I really liked, like how Blink meant nothing. It was just Blink. It’s for anyone else to interpret. You can’t hear the band name and say “That’s like a death metal band or that’s a rock band.” We decide what it means.

DRE: +44 is a little poppier than I thought it was going to be, was that something you guys were looking to do?

TB: Thank you. No one’s ever said that. Since I’ve started doing press on this record, everyone always says “It’s dark.”

DRE: It’s darker than Blink-182, but it’s still poppy.

TB: Yeah. Totally. You wouldn’t expect anything aggressive or sickening because Mark Hoppus isn’t going to sing like that. That’s not what this band was meant for. We’re never going to get too ill or anything.

DRE: Is it much different doing something like this as opposed to The Transplants?

TB: Oh yeah but it’s supposed to be. If everything was the same, it would suck.

DRE: Is it a different mindset?

TB: No but everything is different. In The Transplants, we’re talking about people getting killed. There are people getting robbed. There are a million things happening in The Transplants. +44 is more like real life situations that we experienced or that we went through. All these songs mean something, but it means something in a different way. For The Transplants, Rob is really doing all that stuff that he’s talking about, just like Mark’s singing about what’s he has experienced.

DRE: I was told you’re recording today, what are you working on?

TB: I’m actually producing Skinhead Rob for his hip-hop record called Warfare. I’m just doing all the production on it. I’m also working with this other artist named Eddie RapLife who’s a rapper and a skateboarder from Rhode Island.

DRE: When is Skinhead Rob’s hip-hop album coming out?

TB: Probably next year on [Cypress Hill member] Mugg’s record label.

DRE: How do you like producing?

TB: It’s amazing. It’s different. Producing in the rock world and producing in the hip-hop world is different. I’m a drummer so at the end of the day, that’s what I do. I play beats and I make beats and I’m moved by beats. It made sense.

DRE: Do you rap at all?

TB: No, I don’t rap. I play the drums.

DRE: I know. You just never know who’s a rapper nowadays.

TB: I think we all know who should and shouldn’t be a rapper nowadays.

DRE: What’s the writing process in +44?

TB: Mark can come to the studio with a whole song tracked with guitars, drums and everything. I come sometimes with ten different beats and I’d leave on tour with The Transplants and Mark would just write to those songs. In the beginning, I played a lot of keyboards. I did a lot of like chord progressions and stuff. Mark was programming drums. We were playing instruments that we hadn’t played before so it’s really wide open. I think that’s the only way to really get people’s ideas out and really collaborate.

DRE: How’s it going since you have to drum with one arm?

TB: It’s amazing. I’m not going to say I like or I enjoy it but I’m used to being dealt with fucked up situations and overcoming them. I guess that’s part of why I continue living and have a smile on my face because I like getting past shit like this.

DRE: Does your drumming sound a lot different?

TB: No. The only thing that I can’t do is like a 32nd note. But I’m compensating by playing another part instead. I basically taught everything that my right hand did to my left hand. Then I taught everything that my left hand was doing to my left foot. I put a pedal down there and it triggers the sound of a snare drum. So every time I push the pedal down, you’ll hear the sound of a snare drum. That’s my left hand now.

DRE: I know the way you broke your arm is a little bit different than the average way someone breaks their arm. How is that going?

TB: I went and saw a nutritionist recently and I’m in the best condition I could be health-wise. I have eight percent body fat. He said there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s actually turning into more of a bone issue like brittle bones, maybe something on the lines of osteoporosis. I have tests and stuff next week.

DRE: Oh damn. Are you nervous?

TB: Yeah. But I’m ready to fight it and move on. I don’t want to dwell on it. If that is what I have, I know that I just have to kick it in the butt and take care of it.

DRE: Are you going to be touring all over the world with +44?

TB: Well, I’m doing five weeks because I have to come back and get MRIs and x-rays. Then we’re coming back for a couple weeks just so I can get my tests done and then do some Christmas shows.

DRE: I know it’s going to be difficult to sell as many albums as Blink-182 did, but is that very important to you?

TB: I think you have to earn it just like anything else. I’d feel like I was getting over on everyone if people just bought our records because we were in Blink. I want to earn everyone’s respect and I want people to actually really love the band and that’s why the band has to stand for something. It has to make great music and we have to be good to our fans. If we sold a million records, cool. But when Blink first started we weren’t expecting to be the biggest band in the world. You just let it be a symptom of making good music and touring.

DRE: As a music fan yourself, when you were younger there must have been bands you just hated because teenage girls liked them or they were “too” popular. There are a lot of people who don’t like you just for those reasons. What’s your opinion of that?

TB: I think that was Blink’s heyday. But that’s not the only kind of music I play now and that’s not the only type of music video I’m in now. I design shoes. I design clothes. That’s one-dimensional. Yeah, in 2003 or whatever when it was crazy and All The Small Things was out, of course you’re going to have people that go “I don’t like Blink anymore. I don’t like them because they’re all over the radio. I don’t like them because girls like them.” But you’re just jealous. Get over it. Man up. If you don’t like the song we made, write a better song.

DRE: Did you hear about what Tom DeLonge said at a concert?

TB: No.

DRE: I’ll quote it to you “I do not want to be in a bullshit pop band with some bullshit pop songs while you drive your fucking bullshit car and sing along to it like you’re some 14 year old girl.” Is that a slam on the music you guys made?

TB: Yeah. It sounds like he’s trying to disown himself from who he was in Blink or something. That’s his personal issue. I would stand up for it in a minute. Was I a trashman? Yeah. Was I in the Aquabats? Yeah. Did we look like Devo? Absolutely. Did I play in Vandals tours? Yes. I played drums for The Vandals. Yeah, I ran naked in a Blink video. I don’t disown any of it. Man, those are some of the greatest times of my life because I was playing music. I think maybe he’s jaded or something or maybe he doesn’t know who he is or maybe he doesn’t like who he is.

DRE: Why did Blink-182 break up?

TB: We were playing a benefit concert and Tom, Mark and myself had different views on the next six months of our band. Like whether or not we were going to make a record, how we were going to make it and then Tom didn’t show up to the tsunami benefit. He had his manager call an hour before. So he left a bunch of people who paid to help the tsunami victims hanging and he didn’t even call. It was just like, “Whoa, man. There’s a way of doing things and that wasn’t the right way.” That’s all it is. I don’t hate, dude. I don’t wish him any bad. I just go, “Man. Sucks that you handled yourself like a little girl when it came to saying you don’t want to play music no more.’”

DRE: Years in the future or probably even sooner, someone’s going to try and get you guys back together. Any interest?

TB: I never say never. I don’t think things went down well but I don’t hate and I don’t hold grudges. I’m down for whatever. I would never do a reunion with any of the bands I’ve been in unless everyone was like brothers again. You hear these stories how bands are on stage getting paid ridiculous amounts of money and they hate each other. I won’t even entertain something like that. I’d rather be poor.

DRE: All the reality show couples’ marriages are breaking up. Does doing a show like that put extra pressure on a marriage?

TB: Oh absolutely. I think people start behaving differently and whatever else and then when the cameras are gone and your husband doesn’t want to do the show no more, you’re looking for this extra attention or something. There are a lot of crazy things that can happen as a symptom of doing a reality show if you’re not staying grounded during the whole time.

DRE: Do you feel like you and Shanna weren’t grounded during the reality show?

TB: Yeah, but at the end of the day, Shanna’s awesome. I love her. But she’s an actress.

DRE: They’re crazy.

TB: That too at times, but they don’t even feel themselves turning it on or turning it off. Me, I don’t have shit to hide from anyone. I think within the last couple years everything that I am has been exposed or whatever. I’m comfortable with it because that’s who I am, but other people have smoke and mirrors in this big front. That only lasts so long.

DRE: Do you feel like you guys would still be together if you hadn’t done the show?

TB: No, not necessarily. I think you can fall madly in love with someone and move really quickly like we did. We fell in love. We had children. But I never had the conversation with her like “Hey. How do you plan on changing after we have children? Do you plan on reevaluating some of the things you do now or maybe the amount of days you work a year? Now that we have children, are we going to step up our roles and stuff?” I should’ve had that conversation and I didn’t. So I’m partly guilty for that or whatever, but at the end of the day, I just have a different way of raising children and a different way of prioritizing things in my life. My children come first and then my work and then everything else. With Shanna it was that Shanna comes first, then her work, then the children fall way down the line. That’s not something that I can wake up to and live around. I’m madly in love with her, but you can’t compromise something like that. Family and little humans are way more important.

DRE: When I told a friend that I was talking to you, he sent me this flyer for some divorce party Shanna is throwing.

TB: Yeah. What do you do? She’s having a party because she’s getting divorced. It’s crazy. It’s classy. That’s all I can say. Classy. I’ll be real honest with you. I’ll be real bold and blunt. I think it would be okay and it would be acceptable if she wasn’t a mother of three. But as you are a mother of three, your children are old enough that their friends are going to be talking about you having a party because you’re getting divorced. You know what I mean? That’s kind of ill.

DRE: Since you are someone who’s very much in the public eye, will you not go do certain things because you don’t want it to be in the tabloids?

TB: Nah. I live my life, man. There’s only certain things they’ll want to cover. They want to cover you making out with someone right when you get divorced or whatever. But I haven’t changed anything I do. I haven’t compromised a bit because I think if I do, then I’m going to turn into some weirdo and I’ll stop being me. Half of the things they’re not even interested in. They’re only interested in something they can flip and turn around and use to their advantage.

DRE: What happened with Paris Hilton?

TB: I’ll be absolutely honest. So you’re asking me if I made out with her at a club? Yes. I made out with her at a club. I’m sure you’ve gone to a bar and just been crazy or wild and having fun that night and you just shamelessly kiss somebody. But she happens to be photographed by a million people when things like that happen. So it was weird for me.

DRE: Do you know exactly why Shanna attacked her?

TB: About a couple months ago it had been shared with me that Paris and Oscar [De La Hoya] had an issue a long time ago and I told Shanna, “Man. That sucks. I don’t know why you still get down with Paris or why you even talk to her.” Then she had told me the story right afterwards and just bashed Paris real ugly, saying awful things about her. I was like, “It’s crazy that you even can look at her in the face and be cool to her then.” Shanna was like, “Aww. Well I can just use her for networking and for press.” Then after this all went down, I had been separated for like three weeks and I was in Vegas for the grand opening of one of my buddy’s restaurants and we had a Famous Stars and Straps party that same night. We went out afterwards and Paris Hilton comes up to me and says hi to me and she’s super friendly. I’m sitting there going, “Gosh. Shanna told me she’s so hard to talk to and that she’s a cunt. She’s this and that.” I was like, “Paris is actually super nice.” So we ended up being friends and we ended up kissing in public.

DRE: Are you interested in a free SuicideGirls membership?

TB: Absolutely. I just want all the SuicideGirls to come to all of the shows that we play whether it’s The Transplants or [DJ] AM and I or anything. They are always welcome to have free passes to just hang out, listen to music and enjoy themselves.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

by Nahp A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups. (image) [Danette Suicide in En la Orilla] This week Danette tells us why she loves to go Vegan. Members: 1,068 / Comments: 10,638 WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: For everyone of us being vegan is more than just a diet. Here we share tips about... more

by Nahp

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.


[Danette Suicide in En la Orilla]

This week Danette tells us why she loves to go Vegan.

Members: 1,068 / Comments: 10,638

WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: For everyone of us being vegan is more than just a diet. Here we share tips about food, lifestyle, animals, and some silly stuff we like share with others.

DISCUSSION TIP: Don't compare veganism to religion.

MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: There isn't heated thread!! This is a group full of creativity, and everyone loves that!

BEST RANDOM QUOTE: “We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.”

WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: Everyone who's interested in anti-cruelty, curious people, and those who are interested in starting a new meat-free life are welcome to join.


***
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(image) by @NicolePowers and @VizFoSho (image) October 19 was a momentous night in the Twitterverse. We were having some after-hours lulz involving over nine thousand #tittysprinkles, when all of a sudden our favorite Twitter play thing, the @DBZNappa bot came to life. It was a miraculous moment; synapses... more

by @NicolePowers and @VizFoSho



October 19 was a momentous night in the Twitterverse. We were having some after-hours lulz involving over nine thousand #tittysprinkles, when all of a sudden our favorite Twitter play thing, the @DBZNappa bot came to life. It was a miraculous moment; synapses and circuits were blown. Our sugar-titted tweets had caused the automated entity inspired by the Japanese manga series Dragon Ball Z to break character.

For the uninitiated, @DBZNappa, in homage to dialog from a legendary Dragon Ball Z episode, is programmed to respond to mentions of "over 9000" or "over nine thousand" on Twitter with the obligatory reply: "WHAT, NINE THOUSAND?!" However, when SG was iron trolling his ass, he responded with an “I love you girls.”

Seizing the opportunity, we asked the temporarily lucid autoresponder if we could honor his master with an SG membership. Thus we tracked down DBZNappa’s elusive Dr. Frankenstein, Daniel Lo Nigro from Melbourne, Australia. We had oodles of questions for him – well over 9000. Here he answers just 15 of them:

SuicideGirls: What's your favorite episode of DBZ?

Daniel Lo Nigro: To be honest, I didn't really watch a lot of DBZ. I used to watch it but not really pay attention (I'd have it on TV in the background, while doing other things). Obviously, the "Over 9000" episode segment is a favorite of mine

SG: What inspired you to code the bot?

DLN: Some of my friends had a habit of saying "Over nine thousand" a lot, and so I started replying with "What? Nine thousand?" (Yeah, I was a bit lame.) They suggested creating a Twitter bot to do the same thing. I loved the idea and started working on it right away. I didn't think that it'd get as popular as it did!

SG: What did you study? What do you do now to pay the rent?

DLN: I studied software development at university. I graduated last year and I've been working full-time as a web developer since then.

SG: How long have you been coding?

DLN: I've been coding since I was 8 or 9 years old. Even before then, I had an interest in computers and computer games. My uncle introduced me to computer programming and showed me how to do a few things on the computer. Together we made a little Tamagotchi game (much like the handheld Tamagotchi) and my interest for programming grew from there. I was mainly self-taught and "learnt by doing" (that is, giving myself projects to learn new things). When I got an internet connection for the first time (dialup!), I spent ages browsing the internet. It was amazing. I was interested in how web pages were made, so I got a copy of FrontPage and messed around with it. I started to realize that I really liked creating websites, and decided to focus on web programming. At high school I met other people with similar interests, and spent more time learning about programming. This helped pique my interest even more.

SG: What's your favorite language?

DLN: Definitely C#. It’s is my language of choice because it's a very powerful, clean, clear and concise language. Microsoft's developer tools and languages are generally very good, and they keep adding very helpful features in every new release. JavaScript is my second favorite language; in the last few years I've been learning it more. You need to know it well to truly appreciate it. In the end though, all programming languages are pretty similar to each other. They're just tools that help you build awesome things, and it doesn't matter which one you use as long as you know how to use it well

SG: Do you have any other bots on Twitter?

DLN: No. I've considered it, but haven't had any good ideas

SG: Hypothetically, would you make an SG #TittySprinkles bot. And, if so, how could you see it working?

DLN: I could totally see myself doing that! I can if you like. I have no idea how it would work or what it would do though. What do you think a #TittySprinkles bot would do? Haha

SG: Chocolate or vanilla?

DLN: That's a tough one! They're both good. I think a mix of both is best – then you get the best of both worlds

SG: What other anime do you watch?

DLN: I don't really watch anime any more. I used to watch Speed Racer, Cowboy Bebop, Naruto, Death Note, Bleach, and Inu Yasha. I'm sure there's others that I can't remember at the moment though, haha.

SG: Do you have a favorite SG?

DLN: I only got a subscription recently and haven't had a chance to explore much yet. Having said that, Quinne is definitely one of my favorites. I think she's really cute (but most Suicide Girls are). There's just something about her that makes me like her. Bob is one of my favorites as well

SG: How much time do you spend on Twitter?

DLN: I used to spend a long time on Twitter, but nowhere near as much any more. I use it mainly when commuting to work since I catch public transport.

SG: Would do you follow and why?

DLN: Being a developer, the people I follow are mainly web developers and people that are very influential in the web development industry, mainly for inspiration and to learn about new development techniques and resources. I also use Twitter as a way to get news quickly, as stuff pops up on Twitter quicker than it does on news sites. Of course, I also use it to keep up-to-date with what my friends are doing. And @SuicideGirls of course!

SG: Any other bots you admire?

DLN: I love @CapsCop. It replies to people that tweet entirely in uppercase. @KingLeonidaz_ is somewhat similar to DBZNappa. There was also @AnnoyingNavi – but it's been suspended by Twitter. Twitter don't seem to like auto-reply bots and a lot of them end up suspended by Twitter. Not too sure how @DBZNappa has survived. I guess I'm just lucky?

SG: How would you improve Twitter?

DLN: Honestly, I don't know. I think it's pretty good as it is now.

SG: What else are you working on now?

DLN: No personal projects at the moment. I used to work on random projects (half of which I'd never finish), but recently I haven't had much time or many good ideas. So now I'm just doing my day job



If readers have questions about @DBZNappa, Daniel will be happy to answer them in the blog comments below. For more from Daniel, read his blog and follow @Daniel15.

Man I love this job! After three long years of wooing I finally got a chance to talk with the legendary comedian Al Franken. After many successful years as a standup comedian and Saturday Night Live writer, Franken has released a number of hysterical and popular books such as Why Not Me? and Rush Limbaugh... more

Man I love this job! After three long years of wooing I finally got a chance to talk with the legendary comedian Al Franken. After many successful years as a standup comedian and Saturday Night Live writer, Franken has released a number of hysterical and popular books such as Why Not Me? and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. When Franken released Lies and the Lying Liars in 2004, esteemed filmmakers Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus followed and him and documented the experience. Now it’s all been put together in the film Al Franken: God Spoke.

Check out the official website for Al Franken: God Spoke

Daniel Robert Epstein: What did you think when such prestigious documentary filmmakers wanted to do a film on you?

Al Franken: I was very excited because I liked their work.

DRE: Did you ever feel pressure to be on for the camera?

Al: No, I thought that would be a bad idea. There were certain things I know I did that I wish were in the movie but it’s their movie [laughs]. You know that party where the Republicans all are?

DRE: Yeah, the Newsweek party.

Al: Yeah, I saw Charlie Rose at the party and Charlie sees the camera and he goes, “How long have they been following you?” I said, “Like a year.” He goes, “well, how are you going to end it?” We didn’t know at the time and I said, “you know what, if we can’t find an ending I may have to murder someone and Charlie, it could be you.” Then a couple months later, we’re in Minneapolis and I was saying something like, “Why don’t we just end the movie by including that clip in earlier and then have me murder Charlie Rose.” They would follow me as I go into his apartment building, go up the elevator, knock on his door, Charlie answers and then you cut to me pistol whipping Charlie while he is on his hands and knees begging for his life. Charlie is doing a terrible job of acting and then we cut to Kevin Spacey as Charlie Rose and me pistol whipping him and killing him. Then we cut to The Charlie Rose show with Charlie, [director] Nick [Doob] and me asking why we put Kevin Spacey in. Now I knew they weren’t going to end the movie like that but I thought it would be very funny to put that in. But they decided otherwise.

DRE: Is this the closest we’ll get to an HBO type special from you?

Al: I’m not ruling out an HBO special for me in the future.

DRE: It was a lot of fun for me to see you interacting with all your “enemies.” Is it difficult for them to attack you because you have years of comedy experience so you could snap back at them?

Al: They can certainly attack me when I’m not there. They do that all the time. I was with Mark Luther who is our resident dittohead [a fan of The Rush Limbaugh Show] on my Air America show. He’s the guy we have on like once a week and we play Rush Limbaugh and Mark has to try to defend him. Mark has known me for 39 years. He said he was listening to some right wing show and this guy said he was at a hot dog stand with me at the Republican convention in San Diego and this guy tried to say hi to me and I was really rude. I said to Mark, “Does that sound like me?” Mark says, “you know that doesn’t.” I got to put up with that crap.

DRE: How important is it for you to never lie?

Al: It’s really important to me not to lie. It’s real important not to make mistakes. But you make mistakes. There’s a difference between making a mistake and lying. We had one mistake in [the book] Lies and the Lying Liars. We included a preliminary report on the damage that was done when the Clintons left the White House. The report said there was no damage done, [laughs] but remember Arie Fleischer [George W. Bush’s press secretary at the time] and all these guys were saying there was all this huge vandalism that was done by the Clintons as they left but that was just a big myth. The second report came out and said that there were some W keys removed from the computers. There was also some incredibly minor stuff that might have occurred when a rug came up or a phone line got ripped out. But that was a mistake because we used a preliminary report but that happens. There’s a big difference between that and then doing the painstaking lying that Ann Coulter does, where you just have to labor and labor just to make a lie.

DRE: In the movie you say she’s a smart lady. Is she smart enough to delude herself or does she know she’s lying?

Al: I think she is deluding herself some of the time and she knows she’s lying some of the time and justifying it. I did a debate with her which I will not do anymore because it is not any fun. I repeated a litany of lies that she’s done and she just wouldn’t respond. She’d go, “This can’t be about Ann Coulter. Ok, I’m a flawed person.” I think there’s something desperately wrong with her and I think that there’s a self-esteem issue there. Most of us try to do our best work and see our work as an extension of ourselves and try to do something that is good.

DRE: Are you serious about running for senate in Minnesota?

Al: I’m serious about it but I don’t know if I’m going to do it. Obviously it’s a big personal decision and also I don’t know what the rest of the DFL thinks. I’m getting an idea that a lot of people want me to do it [laughs]. I told myself I don’t have to decide until next year.

DRE: What’s it take to get young people involved in politics today?

Al: They just got to feel that it means something, that it means something to their lives. Our politics has to be more about the future than it is now. Look at these huge deficits and look at the investments in prisons and weapons as opposed to investments in education.

DRE: It’s all short term.

Al: Very short term thinking. But we also have to convince kids that it is worth the work and it is actually a lot of fun and also real important at the same time. How many things are fun and important at the same time? [laughs]

DRE: Just to talk about comedy, Harry Shearer said that everyone who’s ever worked on SNL secretly hated it.

Al: No, there were times when I hated it. There were times when it drove me nuts, especially toward the end where it was getting unwieldy with all the cast members. There was just a tendency to start getting too many people. It started to get frustrating to me because we would produce too much and I had kids and we were staying there way too late at night. But mainly I loved being there. The best memories of my life are always going to be rolling on the floor laughing up on the 17th floor on a Tuesday night and writing with incredible writers and cast members. That’s the quintessential memory of Saturday Night is Live.

DRE: Robert Smigel told me you brought him to Saturday Night Live.

Al: Yeah and it was a very interesting thing. He was in this review in Chicago and there was really funny stuff in it and there was stuff that wasn’t really funny. I said “Somebody in this group is really good.” [laughs] They had the right ethic of every one of them writes everything and none of them writes anything kind of thing. That’s all fine and dandy except I couldn’t hire everybody and somebody there was the guy. So I kept coming back to the show and figuring out by who was in what sketch and talking with them and it was Smigel. I really saw a talent there.

DRE: As a comedy fan I must ask, would you and Tom [Davis] ever do something together again?

Al: We actually just did. We did a fundraiser in Minneapolis on June 8th and we did a half hour together.

DRE: Old stuff?

Al: Some old, some new. It was great.

DRE: Is it wrong for me to want Joe Lieberman to become president just because he’s Jewish?

Al: Wesley Clark is half Jewish.

DRE: Oh good! Great I’m in!

If you had a tattoo, what would it be?

Al: Oh, it would be a dot on my ankle [laughs].

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

by Dell Cameron (image) Yesterday, American citizens from all walks of life gathered at polling locations throughout the United States with the hope of changing the course of their collective destiny. For over two hundred years, communities have been assembling in this fashion as participants in a great... more

by Dell Cameron



Yesterday, American citizens from all walks of life gathered at polling locations throughout the United States with the hope of changing the course of their collective destiny. For over two hundred years, communities have been assembling in this fashion as participants in a great democratic experiment. For some, the polls are a responsibility, due to the lives they perceive have been sacrificed in order to protect their ability to cast their votes. Others vote out of conscious because it's a privilege others throughout the world are denied. Yet, there are others who feel – with some justice – that no candidate is capable of accurately representing them and that abstaining from the vote is just as much their right.

Some Americans may still be unaware of the extreme transformations our democratic process has undergone in only a few recent years. The important changes to note revolve around the donation processes and the invention of external campaign committees that, in some cases, directly influence the outcome of political elections. In 2010, the Supreme Court arrived at the conclusion that the First Amendment clause, which provides all U.S. citizens with freedom of speech, also guaranteed that corporations had the right to make independent election expenditures. In a split 5-4 decision, laws such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which had previously prohibited corporate and union political donations, were deemed unconstitutional.

On the Supreme Court decision, Noam Chomsky, MIT Professor of Linguistics and author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy wrote, “On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections –– a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.” In Chomsky's opinion, “Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. “

What followed was an all out spending spree by corporations, unions and affluent individuals that dangerously altered the landscape of the American election system. During the 2012 cycle, spending by non-party affiliated organizations exploded. These organizations were often funded by only a handful of individuals and the number of individuals and organizations that were responsible for disclosing their donors dropped considerably in comparison to the previous election cycle. According to OpenSecrets.org, a cycle-to-date spending analysis revealed that by the end of the first week of October, spending by these organizations was more than the previous 11 election cycles combined totaling $517 million.

So as we examine President Obama's victory over Mitt Romney, the first question we should ask ourselves is who flipped the bill for his exorbitant $401 million campaign and what are their motives.

The top donor to Obama's campaign was a man named Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood producer and chief executive of DreamWorks Animation. Katzenberg's contributions to Obama's campaign included a $2 million donation to the Priorities USA action super PAC, a committee formed by former White House advisors. Katzenberg is also a bundler for the Democratic party – someone who elicits major financial support for political purposes once reaching their own personal donation limitations. Katzenberg, like many Hollywood elites, was a proponent of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a widely unpopular bill introduced by Senator Lamar Smith (D-TX) that was shelved in Congress in January 2012 after worldwide online protests erupted. Opponents of the bill claimed it threatened the integrity of the internet and was in essence an attack on online freedom of expression. Despite a number of threats from Hollywood elites, such as former Senator, now MPAA head Chris Dodd, after Obama withdrew support for the bill, Katzenberg remained a steadfast support of Obama's campaign. The undeniably instrumental role Katzenberg played in the Obama 2012 campaign may foreshadow future support for a new SOPA-like bill on behalf of the White House.

Another billionaire who reached deep into his pockets for the Obama campaign was Jon Stryker, stockholder and heir to the Stryker Corporation, a medical equipment company based out of Michigan. Stryker's contribution exceeded $2 million during the 2012 election cycle and has previously generously donated to the Democratic Party. The Stryker Corporation has been involved in a number of controversies with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Drug Administration, which included failure to meet FDA regulations, the falsification of documents and unlawful kickbacks to physicians in exchange for the use of their products.

It's important to note that while the Obama campaign has taken advantage of the support provided to them by big-spending, individual backers, these types of contributions were much more prominent throughout the Romney campaign. Romney's largest backer, a Las Vegas Casino owner, dwarfed Obama’s supporters by providing him with financial support exceeding $34 million dollars. Romney, however, did not win the election.

In light of the enormous financial support campaigns receive from individual backers and political committees, it's not difficult to understand why some voters felt so disenfranchised this election cycle – and that the act of voting seemed to be an exercise in futility. How could anyone expect to find a candidate to represent their voice in government when the issues affecting them most aren't being presented to the candidates in the form of multimillion dollar campaign donations?

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence, which stated, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Forty-nine years later, in a letter to William Branch Giles, he expressed his concern over individuals that, in his words, had “nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76.” He criticized the men of his time for leaving the intentions of American democracy behind in exchange for a aristocracy founded on banking institutions and monied incorporations that cloaked themselves under the guise of industry.

The dream of a perfect Democracy seems to have been abandoned in an age where hostile advertisements and televised debates intentionally exclude poorly funded third party candidates. With the acceleration of new laws that chip away at the foundation of a truly representative government, it's important we remember as a country what we once had and fight ferociously to reclaim it.

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by ChrisSick It's 11:30PM EST. The bar I've decamped in to watch election coverage has decided to turn off the television, now that CNN has declared for Obama. A very large, very drunk man is singing Queen's “We Are The Champions” quite badly. Every one is cheering madly. Fox News'... more

by ChrisSick

It's 11:30PM EST.

The bar I've decamped in to watch election coverage has decided to turn off the television, now that CNN has declared for Obama. A very large, very drunk man is singing Queen's “We Are The Champions” quite badly. Every one is cheering madly.

Fox News' homepage has this headline:



You can almost hear the sobbing behind it. Early reports say Dick Morris has hanged himself in the Fox News studio. Or maybe I just fantasized that. Romney Central is angrily tweeting that every one should just chill the fuck out because they're disputing Ohio.

And reality.

Running through it, it was a very good night to be on this side of history. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin lost the Missouri Senate race to Claire McCaskill. Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Tammy Baldwin will represent Wisconsin in the Senate and become the first openly gay Senator in history. Tim Kaine won over George “Macaca” Allen. Linda McMahon outspent Democrat Chris Murphy 4-to-1 in Connecticut and lost.

Same sex marriage ballots are being decided in Maine, Maryland, and Washington and early reports look good, but I can't find any more information because someone is singing “Afternoon Delight” really loudly and the one earbud I have in to listen to Fox News is just sounding like torrents of weeping. Seriously, looks like same-sex marriage with be legal in Maine and Maryland and Colorado has legalized marijuana.

There's a long week ahead, surely some races will be contested or recounted. At the moment only Ohio is being disputed by the Romney campaign, but the Electoral College math looks to be such that even if Ohio were to flip for Romney it would not be enough to overcome Obama's lead. The New York Times is currently calling Ohio for Romney and still has Obama up 285 over Romney's 200.

As of midnight, Election Day 2012, it's clear that Barack Obama will be reelected President, the Democrats will continue to hold the Senate, the Republicans will continue to hold the House, and Colorado will be the new preferred vacation spot over California.

God bless America, I knew you wouldn't let me down.

This is Tactical Animal, signing off.

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Tactical Animal: Sorry Folks, Election’s Over, Donkey Out Front Shoulda Told Ya
Tactical Animal: Politics In The Post-Truth Era
Tactical Animal: Now We’ve Got Ourselves A Race

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

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

Check out the official site for Perry Farrell

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

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

DRE: Do you eat sushi?

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

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

PF: Yes. Exactly.

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

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

DRE: Was it the duck vaginas?

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

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

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

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

So what made you want to start Satellite Party?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DRE: I believe your oldest kid is about five.

PF: That’s a yes.

DRE: Do they play music?

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

DRE: Over the Internet or is he with you?

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

DRE: That’s great.

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

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

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

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Few women have done sexually charged works that made an impression on both men and women’s psyches. Tura Satana’s look and work, especially in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, is right up there with Bettie Page, Dixie Evans and Brigitte Bardot. Satana is a woman that took all the shit she’s gone through... more

Few women have done sexually charged works that made an impression on both men and women’s psyches. Tura Satana’s look and work, especially in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, is right up there with Bettie Page, Dixie Evans and Brigitte Bardot. Satana is a woman that took all the shit she’s gone through in life and dumped that anger right into Faster, Pussycat. Since that time she hasn’t acted very much but she is easily recognizable, hence why she has a comic book and a line of memorabilia plastered with her face.

Check out the official website for Tura Satana

Daniel Robert Epstein: Back when you did Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, did you see the film as representing any kind of female empowerment?

Tura Satana: Not really, I saw that it was a part that gave me the opportunity to get rid of a lot of anger [laughs].

DRE: [laughs] But obviously that’s something that’s been taken from the film over the years, have you come to understand that aspect of it?

TS: I knew that aspect back then but we were trying to show that women could be feminine and still be strong and powerful and take care of themselves. That they didn’t need a man around to do everything for them. Female empowerment wasn’t even thought of back then, just a little equality. That was the only reason I agreed to do it. It was something that helped me show the world that women were not weak little pansies that needed to be protected all the time. That we’re capable of doing our own thing.

DRE: How did the part come to you in the first place?

TS: My agent asked me if I wanted to do an interview for Russ Meyers and I said, “Well, you told him that I don’t do porn.” He said, “Yes. It’s not that kind of a part. There’s no nudity in the movie.” Which that was not really true, there was a little nudity in there [laughs].

DRE: You have such a unique look, what kind of parts were you going for?

TS: For somebody who was built like I was there weren’t that many parts around. If I went for a casting call nine times out of ten they were either looking at my chest or looking at my face but never the two together [laughs].

DRE: [laughs] Did Russ do that too?

TS: No, actually he just looked at my chest and said, “Oh you’ll do great.” [laughs]

DRE: [laughs] Since then have you met a lot of women who have used the film for feminist ideals?

TS: Oh yes. A lot of women fans have written me and told me how much the part that I did in Faster, Pussycat helped them get better lives for themselves. They were proud to be able to be female, feminine and kick a little ass too.

DRE: [laughs] I’m from a generation that wasn’t around when Faster, Pussycat came out, was this kind of role and movie very unusual?

TS: Yes it was. There were no parts before with a female who was strong enough to carry out what they wanted to have done or what Russ wanted to have done. When I first went in for the job, he had me read some parts and I asked him, “Do you want it played soft or do you want it played with power?” He said, “Well, give me a rendition of each.” So I gave him a rendition of each and he said, “The power definitely does it.”

DRE: [laughs] You mentioned that you had some anger.

TS: It was basically stuff from when I was a kid and when I was growing up. Mostly that was a lot of the anger I had inside of me and Russ said, “Just bring your own personality to it.” Afterwards he didn’t think anybody else could have ever played Varla the way I did.

DRE: [laughs] I hope not.

Was the role cathartic for you?

TS: I felt like there was still some unfinished business there but one thing about that part was that it did limit what I could do afterwards. There were not too many people who were willing to give me other parts because they didn’t think I could be soft enough. I wound up losing a lot of parts because of that film.

DRE: Such as?

TS: Like Modesty Blaise. They thought I was not feminine enough. Then there were some parts for the Matt Helm series. They thought I was too strong to play opposite Dean [Martin] even though I had played opposite Dean in a couple other films. Even though I wound up losing parts I’m still happy about doing the film because I feel that it accomplished a lot for women.

DRE: I know you had some very rough times when you were younger but would it be difficult for you to say that you regret them because they were a big part of what made you what you are?

TS: Yes, there were a lot of the things that helped mold me to the way that I am. I was raped when I was almost ten years old by five guys. The helplessness and anger that comes along with that is something that takes a lot out of you. But I think it also helped make me who I am because after that I could have become a devout man-hater or I could have become a sex maniac. I think I fell in between the two.

DRE: How was the rape handled legally back then?

TS: First of all you got to realize that I am oriental and this was just a few years after the war was over. It felt like there was no crime committed against me. The oldest boy’s father paid the judge a thousand dollars and I went to reform school.

DRE: It’s so hard for someone like me to comprehend that but it seems that you’re doing so amazingly well now.

TS: Luckily my father and my brother helped me through it. It helped me put things in categories so I was a lot better off than most people who went through something like that.

DRE: Were there a lot of strong women like yourself either in Hollywood or in general?

TS: No. Back then most gals were taught that we were supposed to marry, get pregnant, have babies, take care of the man and take care of the house. There was nothing that told you that you could be strong and independent. Back then there were love children all over the place and everything had to do with loving the world and loving everything else. So being strong was not a positive asset.

DRE: Your look and your character from back then has also become a strong gay icon. When did you first start to notice that?

TS: I didn’t notice that many lesbians until recently. Mostly it was the gay guys.

DRE: Why do you think that happened?

TS: I think they loved it because of the fact that I was feminine but I was not in competition with them for their partners. They were able to take their partners to go see a film and enjoy it without being worried about their partners saying, “Oh God, I’d really like to stick it to that one” [laughs].

DRE: [laughs] What is your comic book about?

TS: It’s basically a continuation from the end of Faster Pussycat. I turn out to be a good guy afterwards and I get rid of all the bad guys. I start kicking ass that way.

DRE: Quentin Tarantino said that he’d give up five years of his life to work with you. Have you guys gotten in contact with one another?

TS: No we haven’t but I’m not that hard to find. He can find me any time he wants. I would love to work with him. I would love to work with John Waters. These are people that I admire and enjoy, but I think I’m a little past their era now.

DRE: Do you still want to act?

TS: I’ve got two pictures that I’m going to do very shortly. One is supposedly a semi-documentary on my life plus the times that I had with Russ out in the desert. Russ and I stayed friends until the day he died. I never did another film with him but he always kept saying that he wanted us to but that he felt he didn’t have anything that he thought would be good enough for me [laughs]. I said, “Yeah, you probably don’t.” because he got a little heavier into porn afterwards.

DRE: I read that you are also writing an autobiography.

TS: Yeah I worked on it for about eight years. I could probably go into a lot more details than I did but there were a couple times where I just didn’t feel like writing anything [laughs]. It’s hard to put a finish to a book when you’re still alive. [laughs]

DRE: What made you want to write it?

TS: Thousands of my fans have said, “God, we have to hear your story.” So I figured I’d finally sit down and write my whole story just so they’d know what’s going on.

DRE: You said before you weren’t interested in doing nudity for Russ. Was that because you were very into being an actress or were you against things like that?

TS: The only nudity I ever did was for Harold Lloyd. That was the only time I ever posed in the nude. I didn’t like posing in the nude. There’s a mystery about a woman if she had just a drape over her. On my website you can see some pictures that are very close to being nude, but I’m still not [laughs]. I have pictures of when I was an exotic dancer on there and pictures when I was about 14 years old. I probably could put all the pictures from Harold Lloyd’s collection of me on there but I haven’t gotten around to that.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

by SG's Team Agony feat. Lexie Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls. (image) [Lexie in Speres] Q: I can’t seem to make the leap from friend-zone to boyfriend-zone. Everyone I ask advise from says “just be yourself.” I be myself... more

by SG's Team Agony feat. Lexie

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


[Lexie in Speres]

Q: I can’t seem to make the leap from friend-zone to boyfriend-zone. Everyone I ask advise from says “just be yourself.” I be myself and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Is it that girls just don’t want me?

A: Oh, boy. The dreaded friend-zone! First off, sure being yourself can work, but only to a certain degree. It can be a terribly slippery slope to make that climb from just friends to something more. Get the wrong footing off the bat and you’re a goner for sure.

You have to remember one important fact, not everyone is going to be in to you the way you are into them. Some people you’re just destined to be friends with. If I could give you a few pointers on trying to stay out of that zone, they’d be this.

Don’t be too nice/accommodating/helpful. If there’s one thing that screams friendship to me it’s having someone all too eager to lend a hand. This applies mainly at the start of building something, once you’ve moved into almost boyfriend-zone, crank up the helpful/sweet notch. Just make sure it’s not too soon or she’ll rely on you for little things and see you as that guy friend that’s so helpful. Be a little aloof/hard to reach. The more you step back the more she’ll want you.

Treat her well but know when not to push it. Take her out to a nice dinner, movie, concert, but afterwards send her on her way. Even though you want to take her to your place and bend her over that futon, don’t push it. Remember the whole hard to reach aspect? Play it up.

Don’t be whiney or complain. Nothing says unattractive like a whiney person. Especially if you throw in desperate and needy, you’ll automatically get thrown into the no boyfriend-zone.

Have something in common with her – I know this seems like a given, but I think it’s really overlooked. I get it, you want that hot bartender at your local bar, but if you just want to talk about Skyrim and the new Batman movie when clearly her eyes are glazing over, it might not work. When someone talks to me about things I have no real interest in, I tend to get instantly turned off.

Hopefully some of these pointers will get you in the right direction. Be yourself, and apply these and it might get you somewhere.

Lexie


***

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

(image) by Laurie Penny a.k.a. @PennyRed (image) [Image of Staten Island Relief Workers by Jenna Pope a.k.a. @BatmanWI] In the forty-eight hours since I landed in the United States, flying into storm-torn Brooklyn just days after a bunch of cars floated down Wall Street, nobody has mentioned the election... more

by Laurie Penny a.k.a. @PennyRed


[Image of Staten Island Relief Workers by Jenna Pope a.k.a. @BatmanWI]

In the forty-eight hours since I landed in the United States, flying into storm-torn Brooklyn just days after a bunch of cars floated down Wall Street, nobody has mentioned the election to me once. You know, the presidential election, the one that’s happening in - what is it, three days? Right now, New Yorkers have more important things on their minds.

Access to food, fuel and electricity, for a start. People who do have these things are opening up their homes to friends and strangers who don’t. Across the city, volunteers are packing cars and heading to the disaster zones of Red Hook and the Rockaway, as well as to Staten Island, the borough worst hit when Hurricane Sandy battered through to flatten homes and devastate lives.

Like I said, nobody’s talking about the election. The island I always privately think of as Starship Manhattan spent days cut off from the rest of New York state, all of the lights out for days under 34th street, basements choked with brackish water, old people stranded in their homes. There’s an actual crisis taking place: houses have been destroyed, lives lost. The eighteen-month media circus that passes for representative politics in this country seems worlds away from the women in Staten Island weeping in front of the remains of their family homes on the nightly news.

With it being practically impossible for anyone without a car and a full tank of fuel to cross the city, I’ve just come back from volunteering down the street at the Williamsburg Church emergency blood drive. Right now New York is in a blood crisis. When the hospitals were evacuated during the storm, there was no time to collect the blood left in storage banks when the power went out, and by the time they got everyone to safety, that blood had rotted. Now they need new blood desperately.

When me and my friend Veronica Varlow went down to the Church to open our veins for the cause, I was told that my tangy British blood was not acceptable because I might be riddled with mad cow disease (this from people who haven’t even read my Twitter feed). They did, however, need volunteers to help shepherd those donors who were waiting patiently in line for up to three hours to hand over pints of superior all-American hemoglobin. So, I pinned on a badge and spent a few hours buzzing around filling out forms for people, cleaning tables and chairs, handing out snacks and tea and generally making myself useful. Even doing something so small to help the people helping to rebuild the city felt powerful.

Blood: when disasters happen, I’m always struck by the readiness with which people queue up to restock the banks of blood, platelets, and plasma. In the days after September 11, 2001, the donation centers had to start turning people away, and indeed, here at the Williamsburg Church we’re doing the same thing; with the donation line already thirty people deep, we’re running around with sign-up sheets where eager donors can leave their name and number in case we need more blood tomorrow.

There’s something so tender about that impulse. Sure, it says, we could raise money or go and help pump water out of basements in the Lower East Side, but wouldn’t it be simpler just to give you this part of my own body that was pumping in my heart five minutes ago? I’m pretty sure that if the New York blood centre were to put the call out tomorrow asking people to donate a pound of flesh cut from the chest closest to the heart because someone stranded on Staten Island needs it, there’d be plenty of volunteers, and not all of them would be kinky Shakespeare fetishists.

When there’s a crisis on, people want to help. Running around with the snack basket I was reminded of the floods of volunteers who gave their time, money and expertise to the Occupy camps last year. Practical anarchism. Everyone so keen to do whatever they could to help. Not just the kids from all over the country who kicked in their lives to sleep in the cold and be arrested multiple times in the name of a better future, but the shop owners who shipped out their spare produce. The trained nurses who turned up to administer basic medical care to those who had none. The parents who donated freshly-baked pies and soups to the kitchens. The librarians and academics who created an enormous library that, almost a year ago, I watched the NYPD rip apart and hurl into dumpster trucks, just because it was messing up their nice clean corporate dead-zone.

It’s no accident that the original Occupy Wall Street organizers were among the first to set up and co-ordinate volunteering efforts across New York. The group, which has drifted in recent months, immediately set about organizing teams and transportation to the worst-hit areas. The Zuccotti Park protest camp which was evicted last November and the enormous post-Sandy volunteer effort going on this week are different expressions of the same thing: overwhelming human response to crisis.

Crisis is what people in the United States have been living with for at least four years. Active emergency, turning people out of their homes and into the cold, destroying lives. It’s not crass to compare a climate disaster to a juddering crisis of capitalism, because the two are connected, not least because those most responsible are also those most likely to be snugly tucked away in gated compounds shrugging their shoulders when the storm hits. Like the crash, Hurricane Sandy hit the poorest hardest, smashing through Staten Island and Rockaway while the lights stayed on on the Upper East Side.

Nobody expected it to be quite this bad. Last year’s Hurricane Irene was bearable for most. But what I’m seeing here, at least in Brooklyn where I’ve been stuck for two days, is a city coming out of a six-month paralysis: finally, there’s a concrete task that people can put their hands to.

Sarah Jaffe’s brilliant piece at Jacobin draws attention to Rebecca Solnit’s work on the communities that arise in disaster zones:

Volunteerism, of course, can be regressive as well as radical. I am reminded of those “broom armies” in London in the middle of the August riots last year; the sea of white, middle-class faces holding up brooms they’d brought to unfamiliar areas of the city, the sweet intention to mop up after a disaster tempered by the idea that the kids from deprived areas who came out to fight the police could just be swept away like so much filth. Like any desperate human impulse, volunteerism can easily be co-opted, twisted into something violent, calcifying.

Greece, where I spent part of my summer documenting the human effects of economic collapse, isn’t the only developed country where people have been living in crisis for so long they are starting to numb down and accept it. As Imara Jones pointed out in The Guardian today, 50 million Americans, the same number as those in the states hardest-hit by Hurricane Sandy, are living in acute poverty, and nobody in the presidential race has deigned to talk to or about them, despite the fact that they also have votes.

How do we respond to crisis when crisis has become status quo? That’s the question facing the entire developed world this year, and neither of the men jostling to lead the nominally free world appear to have any sort of answer. The Occupy Sandy operation is not an answer either, not even the shadow-play of an answer, but it is deeply radical and compassionate. That means someone’s probably going to try to shut it down reasonably soon, especially if it continues to provide food and assistance to the needy after the floodwaters have receded. A community response to immediate external crisis can be spun as good PR for an administration, but a community response to structural, internal crisis is just embarrassing. In every case though, the most dangerous thing you can do in any crisis – the absolute worst thing you can possibly do – is sit at home and accept it.

Back to blood. Funny thing about blood: until the 1970s, America used to buy it. Blood donation, as the United States quickly discovered, is not something you want to inject with a market incentive when you have to juggle things like infection risks and supply shortages. All that changed when Richard Titmus’ book The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy was published in 1971, explaining why the values of public service beat the private market every time when it comes to social care. The private market in American blood was regulated until it became something like the British voluntary model - people coming in to open their veins for a biscuit and a cup of coffee, just because somebody else needs their blood more than they do. Quite a lot of my job at Billyburg church today was handing out packets of Oreos to younguns waiting in line to do just that – I still have no damn idea who donated those biscuits – and telling the people massing at the door that no, we have all the blood we need for today, thank you, come back tomorrow.

“There is in the free gift of blood to unnamed strangers no contract of custom, no legal bond, no functional determinism, no situations of discriminatory power, domination, constraint or compulsion, no sense of shame or guilt,” wrote Titmus. “In not asking for or expecting any payment of money, these donors signified their belief in the willingness of other men to act altruistically in the future.” There is still enough blood beating in the cynical hearts of New Yorkers to pound out an immediate, compassionate response to crisis. Today that gives me hope.

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Occupy Sandy Relief information here can be found at interoccupy.net/occupysandy/ – a website put together by the good folks at OWS, which contains all you need to know about what you can do to help. Click here for the NYC Blood Drive list of donation centers and opening times.

Laurie Penny is a journalist, feminist, and political activist from London. She is a regular writer for the New Statesman and the Guardian, and has also contributed to the Independent, Red Pepper, and the Evening Standard. She is the author of Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2011) and Discordia (2012). She has presented Channel 4's Dispatches and been on the panel of the BBC's Any Questions. Her blog, "Penny Red", was shortlisted for the Orwell prize in 2010.