by Tara Diane So there are definitely many things that can lead to an injury when you’re involved in extracurricular bedroom activities, and one I am fairly certain occurs often is head-to-headboard trauma. To prevent this from ever happening to you or your lady friend ever again, I made a tutorial... more

by Tara Diane

So there are definitely many things that can lead to an injury when you’re involved in extracurricular bedroom activities, and one I am fairly certain occurs often is head-to-headboard trauma. To prevent this from ever happening to you or your lady friend ever again, I made a tutorial on how to make your headboard feel like a pile of clouds (and actually look kind of cool). I apologize if this tutorial is somewhat scattered, hopefully the pictures explain better than I can articulate. It’s actually really super insanely easy to do, it’s just hard to write it all out.

To start, you need a board. If you have a headboard on your bed – sweet – you’re all set. If not, I’m pretty sure you could cut a piece of plywood to the correct size and follow the same directions below. Or you could probably find one on Craigslist or at a thrift store for pretty cheap. At any rate, you need a headboard.



What You’ll Need (for a queen sized bed)

• One queen-sized top sheet


• Two full-sized quilt batting packs (they look like this and are available at any craft store/fabric store/Wal-mart/etc.)


• 6 cloth covered buttons in whatever size your little heart desires (they come in kits at any craft store/fabric store/wal-mart/etc; if you can’t find them just ask)


• 1 box of upholstery nails (around 30-50 nails)


• 5 safety pins


• Hammer


• Scissors


• A staple gun, if you want your life to be easier (otherwise another box of upholstery nails)

1. First, cut about two inches off one end of your sheet. It’s probably best to cut off the folded top section. This will be used to make your fabric-covered buttons. Cut six two-inch squares out of the fabric scrap, then follow the directions in the video below.





You now have six fabric-covered buttons! Set them aside.

2. Fold your sheet into thirds, hamburger style. When it’s folded like this, make sure it is wide enough to fit around the headboard with a couple of inches to spare. If it’s folded correctly and you have a queen sheet and bed, this shouldn’t be a problem.



3. Now, cut the top third off of sheet. This will give you one third of the sheet, which you can set aside, and the other two thirds of the sheet still connected and folded in half.



4. Take each of your quilt battings and fold them into thirds, placing them on top of the sheet. You want to have at least a two inch margin of sheet poking through around all of the edges, so you might have to trim the batting to make it fit.



5. On one of the long ends, fold the sheet over the batting about two inches. Safety pin the sheet to the batting. It doesn’t have to go through every layer of that shit, and you definitely don’t want it to go all the way through to the other side of the sheet. This is going to be the bottom of your headboard.



6. Put the fabric junk in place so that the bottom reaches about where you would like it to, then tack all of the corners in place with nails or a staple gun.



7. Pull the fabric tightly around the sides and staple or nail it in place. This is the point where I started throwing a temper tantrum because I realized I had the shittiest little nails on the planet, and switched to staples. After the sides are pulled tight, pull the top and staple/nail it.



The back will look really horrendous, like that.



8. With the section of sheet you had set aside earlier, create a back to your headboard. To do this, fold the edges of the sheet so that they look nice and finished and fit over the ugly shit you just did. Use pretty upholstery nails, spaced out equally, to tightly attach it. This probably won’t show, since it will more-than-likely be against your wall, but you want it to look decent anyhow. If that sounded confusing or complicated, it’s really not at all when you are physically doing it. Doing it. Physically. Perv laugh.



9. To make fake button indents (because let’s face it, you’re probably really fucking over working on the project at this point and don’t want to start drilling holes and shit) just use staples or nails through the front. Make six indents, three rows of two. Glue your cloth-covered buttons over these marks with heavy-duty fabric glue.



10. If your headboard was as wrinkly as mine was, you might want to steam it or take an iron to it at this point. Then, since you’re already there and probably tired from all of this crap, take a nap, because your ass is fin!

Word. Have a good week. It was nice getting in bed with you.

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on”... more

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on” like a lot of comedians who aren’t comfortable unless someone’s laughing. Cross might prefer if you didn’t get it and reported a sarcastic remark as fact. Not so fast, David Cross - we’re onto you.

His new show, The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, gives Cross another vehicle for that type of humor. The IFC series stars Cross in the title character. He created and wrote the show about an energy drink salesman sent to England to head up the company’s U.K. sales force. Todd keeps lying about his accomplishments, his abilities and even his home address. It makes his bad decisions worse when he tries to cover for his fibs.

Fans might not recognize Cross with normal skin tones. His most famous role could be Tobias on Arrested Development, where he painted himself blue as an aspiring Blue Man Group performer. He also created Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and popped up on The Colbert Report as liberal radio personality Russ Lieber. He’ll also be seen shortly on Arrested creator Mitch Hurwitz’ new show Running Wilde with Will Arnett, who also costars in Todd Margaret.

Consequently there's double the reason to talk to Cross right now. As Fox revealed their plans for adding Cross to the cast of Running Wilde, the man himself is gearing up to launch Todd Margaret. Relaxing in a hotel room at The Beverly Hilton, Cross kept most of his attention on Todd Margaret. The beard he sports on Running Wilde was the only reference to his Fox show.

FT: Did you try out other female names for the last name?

DC: No, that just popped into my head and I was like, “Let’s go with it.” It just fits I think.

FT: Is it ever addressed in the series?

DC: You know what? It was in the script but in editing, we took them all out. I think one stays because we couldn’t cut around it but we did have in every script somebody going, “Margaret? That’s a girl’s name.” Every episode had that but we took it out in editing.

FT: Why’s that?

DC: It was a different joke for the show. It felt a little wacky and as we were editing it we were taking some of the overt wackiness of it out.

FT: Did you want to go blue and let Will Arnett drop F bombs?

DC: Yeah. Will’s character is probably the most fun to write for because he says the most vile, awful, heinous, sexist inappropriate shit. Those were really fun things to write for and IFC’s been great at saying, “We’re not going to bleep it. Write what you want.” There are a couple of words we can’t use that have different weight in the states than they do in the U.K. Specifically “cunt” which in the U.K. is like saying, “Oh, you jerk.” Here, I don't know, women have a problem with it. I don't know what it is. So we were encouraging ourselves to push the envelope on awful stuff that Will says.

FT: Is there a different version for the U.K.?

DC: Outside of maybe two or three things that I fought for and then IFC just said, “No, we like it better this way,” there are maybe two or three things but it’s pretty much the same thing. Although Channel 4 and all the stations in the U.K., you get to show more of the show because they’re not dependent on ad revenue. So there are some differences but that’s just in the stuff we get to show, the time. It’s not content differences.

FT: When Todd chugs energy drinks and starts ranting, did you just improvise or did you write that whole thing out?

DC: Well, we kind of had the advantage of taking the stuff I riffed in the pilot, because we reshot that, and then taking the best bits out and then making that the script for the pilot reshoot. So the only thing that was improvised was the Barack Obama thing I think. Over and over again, all day, I loved it. I love the energy drink, the cheap shit energy drink that we actually got that we put the labels on. I love that it was about 97 degrees Celsius in the café when we were shooting and just getting to do it over and over again all day was just a treat.

FT: What did it actually taste like?

DC: Whatever the cheapest they can get by the gross. I don’t even know what the real energy drink was.

FT: Did you have a spit bucket?

DC: No, because we were able to cheat a lot of it but I had to down a couple of them and you see it. I definitely let a bunch spill. Meisner, heavy Meisner.

FT: Is lying always funny?

DC: Unless you’re in politics. I mean, it’s funny when you work for the treasury or the banking industry. They love it. They love lying. Or in the pharmaceutical industry. Then it’s a rip snorter.

FT: On TV, is it funny?

DC: Oh, then no. No. Absolutely not.

FT: Why does Todd keep trying to cover up?

DC: He’s just one of those guys that that is in part why it’s so frustrating. You watch him, because any of us would at some point when they’re confronted with this would just go, “Okay, yes, all right, look, I’m sorry. I lied about this thing. You’re right, I screwed up but come on, let’s start over again.” He just never takes the golden opportunity that’s handed to him, especially from Dave’s character who clearly doesn’t believe anything he’s saying. He gives him a couple of outs constantly. In episode one I go, “I live at 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” Then I come to the office, he’s like, “Hey, I went on Google Earth, 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, when were you going to tell me? How long were you going to keep that a secret from me?” “What?” “You lived in a hospital?” Because one of them’s a hospital and instead of going, “All right, I made that up,” I just go, “Oh, yeah, my dad was bipolar so whatever.”

FT: Isn’t it harder to keep coming up with those explanations than to just admit it?

DC: In real life, of course but you have to have a very bright, sophisticated genius writer to do that and we were lucky enough to get me.

FT: How do you describe your comedy? Is it even possible to articulate it?

DC: Well, you’re absolutely right so I just don’t describe my comedy. I let others if they choose to do it but I don’t. I agree with you, it is a hard thing to quantify. Also, when people write about the science of comedy, it’s just boring and detrimental almost.

FT: If I used words like extreme or surreal would I be on the right track?

DC: No. I don't think so. That’s up to you. It’s also subjective and I’m inside of it. I don’t see it as surreal. I can point to a Magritte painting and I can look at certain films and say, “Oh, that’s surreal” but comedy is not really. I don't think it’s really surreal.

FT: Has this become a double PR tour for you, with Running Wilde?

DC: Not really. People have asked questions which I think are understandable and inevitable but the focus is on Todd Margaret and the Running Wilde guys were here a couple days ago. My connection with that show is much different. This one I created, I wrote and I star in. That one I’m guest acting on here and there. Absolutely ecstatic that I get to be part of the show but that’s just acting.

FT: If that took off, would it make Todd Margaret a limited series?

DC: No, Todd Margaret is my absolute most important thing to me right now creatively. I mean, I have my butterfly collection but no, Todd Margaret is first and foremost. I have a story to tell. I want to tell it. I know where it goes. I had a blast writing it and shooting it. Literally, this is trite as hell, but the best cast and crew you could ever hope for. I think IFC is going to, I imagine, continue to support it and be excited about it. This is what I want to do. Eventually I’ll have to do something so I earn some money. I can’t go for years without making any money but I would do this until the story was satisfied. It’s so gratifying. I’m very proud of it.

FT: Being a solo project, is it more in your voice than other things you’ve done?

DC: No. I mean, the idea, the initial idea came from me but outside of that, I cowrote it with Shaun Pye. Outside of basically the pilot, it’s very collaborative. Between IFC, RDF and Channel 4, they’re all very encouraging and pretty much like, “Yeah, do what you want. We trust you.” Also there’s nothing autobiographical about it at all. It’s just this funny cool story. Maybe if I didn’t do standup it would feel more solo but it’s not.

FT: Is the Russ Lieber thing over?

DC: Oh God, yeah. I haven’t done that in years and years. That sort of had an unofficial ending I guess.

FT: They must have realized they didn’t need to fake a rival for him because he’d get real ones in politics.

DC: Right, right, as the show kind of found itself.

FT: Have you ever seen Tobias costumes for Halloween?

DC: Oh God yeah, I see pictures all the time. I’ve seen that a lot. This one guy got Tobias tattooed on his calf. That’s very odd.

The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret premieres October 1 on IFC.

By Malloreigh If there’s anything that’s legitimized veganism among the masses lately it’s been the explosive popularity of vegan baking. A vegan cupcake baker won Food Network’s Cupcake Wars, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ pair of cookbooks featuring rich, delicious vegan cookie and cupcake recipes... more

By Malloreigh

If there’s anything that’s legitimized veganism among the masses lately it’s been the explosive popularity of vegan baking. A vegan cupcake baker won Food Network’s Cupcake Wars, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ pair of cookbooks featuring rich, delicious vegan cookie and cupcake recipes have been a success with vegans and non-vegans alike.

That said, even if it weren’t for the sudden boom in the acceptability of vegan baking, this cookie recipe would still be a hit. The delicate flavor of lavender flowers gives this a particularly grown-up taste, but even without the floral hints, these cookies are gobbled up in record time no matter where I bring them. I think the relatively small amount of sugar makes them feel guiltless to eat.

Bonus side note: I came up with the idea of combining the flavors of lavender and cinnamon sugar while showering. My soap smells like snickerdoodles and my facial exfoliant is scented with lavender oil. The combination was surprisingly exciting.



Make this recipe your own by using one of the several adjustments I’ve left room for in the recipe, as follows.

Note on egg substitutes: There are many different substitutes you can use, from ground flaxseed to psyllium husk to applesauce to mashed banana. Each of these will impart their own taste and properties on to the cookies. I prefer ground flaxseed because it’s nutritious and doesn’t make my cookies taste like bananas. For each flaxseed egg, combine one teaspoon ground flaxseed with three tablespoons liquid – juice or water – in a separate small bowl or measuring cup. Whisk it together with a fork and add it all at once.



Vegan Lavender Snickerdoodles

• 11/2 cups flour


• 1/2 cups granulated sugar (I used slightly under a half-cup – this is my general trick for less guilty cookies)


• 1 teaspoon lavender flowers, dried and crushed (optional)


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/2 cup oil


• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, or a combination of 2 teaspoons of different extracts – I like to use almond extract combined with vanilla


• 1 tablespoon maple syrup, agave nectar, or brown rice syrup


• 1 egg substitute (I use 1 tsp ground flaxseed whisked with a scant 3 tbsp)

apple juice or water)

• Cinnamon sugar mixture to coat

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix together until an even dough forms.

Cover the bowl and set it in the refrigerator for half an hour.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll one-inch cookie dough balls in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten each with a fork.

Bake for 6 – 7 minutes. Watch closely – you want the cookies to be golden but soft. They take exactly 6 minutes in my oven but have taken 8 – 10 in someone else’s.

Makes 20 cookies, give or take, depending on how much dough you eat.

Even if The Exorcist was before your time, and honestly 1973 is before I was born, everybody knows it. Considered the scariest movie of all time, generations cowered before VHS copies and new audiences got to see a new version with that upside down spider-walk in 2000. Now on Blu Ray, both versions of... more

Even if The Exorcist was before your time, and honestly 1973 is before I was born, everybody knows it. Considered the scariest movie of all time, generations cowered before VHS copies and new audiences got to see a new version with that upside down spider-walk in 2000. Now on Blu Ray, both versions of the film are re-mastered in high definition, with a complete behind the scenes documentary about the making of the film.
Linda Blair played Regan MacNeil, the teenaged girl possessed by a demon. She floated over the bed and her head spun 360 degrees in old school special effects that still look better than any CGI creation. She even returned for the critically panned Exorcist II: The Heretic and, in 1990, a spoof of The Exorcist called Repossessed (Leslie Naked Gun Nielsen was the comedy priest.)
None of Blair’s subsequent roles ever matched the acclaim and success of The Exorcist. By her ‘20s, a series of women’s prison movies and B horror films defined her career and drug problems proved a familiar show business temptation. The Exorcist keeps coming back though, and Blair has participated in several re-release events with a smile.
Now Blair’s focus is on promoting a Vegan lifestyle through books, and promoting the well being of animals. She still acts, and as the latest release shows The Exorcist still calls. At 51, her lean figure and healthy complexion are a living endorsement to her lifestyle. Now a veteran of the press circuit, Blair enthusiastically greets reporters with a plan to promote the good stuff while speaking frankly about the bad.
SG: Are you proof that clean living works?
LB: My entire life, my mother was very much into supplements and eating healthy and she read a lot of magazines no matter what her interest was. My brother was hockey, I was of course a variety of things from the horses and the articles on that and whether you are a runner or whether you sail or whether you play piano. Whatever it is, there are so many great articles and things. So she would read and she would outline things with supplements. I hated food when I was young, so in order to get me to eat she knew that I had to have certain things. Then as I got older, everybody accused me of being pudgy for so long so I found my balance. That’s how I became a vegetarian and then a vegan. It has to do with the environment and how we treat the planet. So yes, I think if I can be a testament to changing people’s eating habits then that’s a good thing.
SG: Is it easier now that it’s more popular and people accommodate it?
LB: Sure, I mean, I didn’t know what it was years ago either. Vegetarian, vegan, what? Huh? And way back when, if you were a vegetarian, you were a freak, right? You were like a hippy. You were like, “You’re crazy.” Now of course it’s hip to be vegan and vegetarian. I don’t care how we get there. I just want to make it a better place. Of course it’s all how we farm animals and the foods we eat. It makes a difference. Heart disease, diabetes, all these things are so tied into it. They can find much of this information. We’re working on getting the new website, getting the information in there. It’s still a work in progress but LindaBlairworldheart.org and Healthworld. It used to be quite prominent, my old website about six years ago but ever since I moved up on the property with the dogs and creating that part, we had a couple of hiccups. So we’re just putting Healthworld and everything back together.
SG: Is it fun that every time The Exorcist comes around again you get to revisit it?
LB: I’ll tell you what I’m so excited about. Everybody is like, “You’re really excited about this.” I am because 37 years later, whoever talks and honors something? Usually it’s like oh yeah, we remember that film. At the Academy Awards, oh, great performance, great performance 37 years ago. Wasn’t she fabulous? When in fact with this, finally all the questions I still get asked… I do a lot of appearances and I do it for two reasons. A, because of my charity that I want to educate people and how we can make the world, planet and our country a better place. Also because it’s a nonprofit and also because it keeps me out there in the public light to understand really the heartbeat of America at least. For me they will always ask the same questions. How do you spin your head around or this or that? If they come back several times to see me, they’ll have a different question. “I asked you this last time but I want to ask this this time.” So I know all the questions they’ve asked are about to be answered. People’s wildest dreams are about to be answered. How did we spin the head around? How did the bed shake? How did the room move? How did, why did? As far as the theological side of it, that’s why it’s withstood time, because it’s a theological thriller. It’s not a monster movie. It never was. [Author] Bill Blatty had to clear that up for me, so I think people are so hung up that it’s a horror film, but it’s not. The horror is in the reality of how scary religion can be and God and the devil and the questions.
SG: Did you have a potty mouth after filming The Exorcist?
LB: Not after, no, no, no. I developed a potty mouth probably in my 20s and 30s and I’ve tried to, I think as all adults do, you need to restrain it. It’s really not very attractive. We all slip once in a while but no, I didn’t.
SG: So the dialogue of possessed little Regan didn’t affect you?
LB: No, that was all not in the original screenplay at all. [Director] Billy Friedkin wrote a lot of those fabulous lines before we would shoot. He’d give them to me the night before and say, “This is tomorrow’s dialogue.” I’m like, “Nah, I can’t say that.” He talks about this in the documentary, how much he had to make me do things because I didn’t want to. I’ve told people this for years. Everything I’ve said to people no one wanted to believe it to be the truth. Finally the guys are finally telling the truth and letting me go. I think that this version is going to change people forever and honestly they’re going to have a different respect for it. I really do. I think it’s very empowering.
SG: Blu Ray is a fantastic way to see it.
LB: No, but it’s the documentary. Then the Blu Ray.
SG: Why do you think Exorcist II gets such a bad rap. It’s obviously not the original but it’s not that bad.
LB: Well, I think that if we had done the film that we all signed and agreed to do, it was good. I’ll tell you what happened. They rewrote it five times. It wasn’t the story. You have Richard Burton. Are you kidding me? That’s incredible. You have John Boorman who had just won the Academy Award. John Boorman got scared. He brought in it Rospo Pallenberg to finish filming it. Thank you for the compliment. Some people do like it and other people don’t. That’s where the studio system and everybody starts making it not as good as maybe it could have been. That’s all I’m going to say. I had the honor of working with Burton so that’s all I care about.
SG: Repossessed is a really funny spoof of Exorcist. Why isn’t there more love for that?
LB: That was released the same time Friedkin had out The Guardian, Blatty had out Exorcist III, I had out Repossessed and it broke my heart because I think for all the people that are afraid to see it or don’t want to show their kids, it is a perfect film for them to be able to see it. I’m very proud of it. Thank you for giving it a shout out.
SG: In hindsight, how would you have navigated Hollywood after The Exorcist if you look back now?
LB: I think that it’s given me great tools to work with the press and with Linda Blair World Heart Foundation try to make a better relationship. There is no handbook. Somebody told me a long time ago there’s no book written for a young actor to know how to communicate. The technology always changes so for the press it changes and there’s no handbook for young people. Look at Lindsay Lohan and all of them. Nobody’s talking to them. They get fired. If they tell you no, you get fired. I wasn’t necessarily like that. I wasn’t like that at all but it is hard. It really is hard.
The Exorcist is now available on Blu Ray.

by Blogbot On October 14th, CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker will unleash a new Level 26 serial killer. Picking up where his first digi-novel*, Dark Origins, left off, Dark Prophecy follows Special Circs investigator Steve Dark, who this time finds his destiny entwined with that of the Tarot Card Killer. more

by Blogbot

On October 14th, CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker will unleash a new Level 26 serial killer. Picking up where his first digi-novel*, Dark Origins, left off, Dark Prophecy follows Special Circs investigator Steve Dark, who this time finds his destiny entwined with that of the Tarot Card Killer.



In the run up to the book’s release, the SuicideGirls community has been invited to participate in a very special mystery. Follow the clues (pictured), and visit this link, and fate may lead you to what Zuiker promises will be “some kind of cool surprise.”





Pssst! Need a hint? Zuiker says we should be “thinking about other sites like DreadCentral and CSIFiles.com.”



***



[Dark Prophecy - Part 1 - The Reading/Hanged Man]

*Bringing the novel into the digital age, Level 26 connects the printed word with motion picture elements and an interactive web-based social community. Crime fiction fans can consume the Dark Origins and Dark Prophecy thrillers via the familiar left to right, cover to cover route, or take a less linear approach. Readers of the books are encouraged to visit Level26.com to view cinematic “cyber-bridges” and participate in the site’s social and interactive areas. In advance of Dark Prophecy’s release, the associated cyber-bridges will be available to view at a rate of one per day on Youtube. The first one is posted above. For the latest info and TCK developments follow Level_26 on Twitter, and check in next week for an exclusive Q&A with Zuiker in the interview section of SuicideGirls.com.

Does Mike Mignola require an introduction? The cartoonist is best known as the creator of “Hellboy,” a character brought to the screen by Guillermo del Toro in two films. He co-writes “B.P.R.D.” an ongoing series from Dark Horse Comics in addition to the occasional miniseries like “Witchfinder,”... more

Does Mike Mignola require an introduction? The cartoonist is best known as the creator of “Hellboy,” a character brought to the screen by Guillermo del Toro in two films. He co-writes “B.P.R.D.” an ongoing series from Dark Horse Comics in addition to the occasional miniseries like “Witchfinder,” “Lobster Johnson,” “Abe Sapien” and others. Mignola co-wrote the novel “Baltimore” with Michael Golden.

Hellboy continues on two tracks. Short comics and miniseries are released by regularity drawn by Mignola himself, Richard Corben and other artists telling stories of Hellboy wandering the earth and investigating the supernatural. Meanwhile in the current “The Storm and The Fury” written by Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo, Hellboy’s life as the beast of the apocalypse and his destiny come to a head. When that miniseries ends, Mignola will return as the regular artist of the book in its new status quo.

His newest book is “The Amazing Screw-on Head and Other Curious Objects.” It collects the short comic “The Amazing Screw-on Head,” which was turned into a half hour cartoon for the Scifi Network, and Mignola’s favorite comic of his, “The Magician and the Snake,” which was written by his then seven year old daughter Katie. We spoke with him by phone about the new book.


ALEX DUEBEN: Dark Horse sent me a copy of the book and I really loved it.

MIKE MIGNOLA: Well that’s a good start to this. As opposed to, I’ve seen it and what were you thinking? [laughs]

AD: [laughs] I read “The Amazing Screw-on Head” when it first came out, but other than that and “The Magician and the Snake,” are all the stories in the book new?

MM: The one story I had done before, “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk,” there was a version of that that I was never happy with so I’ve completely redrawn it. But yeah, other than that, it’s all new.

AD: After “The Amazing Screw-on Head” came out everyone was wondering when we’d see more of the character and the world and you’ve avoided that.

MM: I’ve said a trillion times, as I’m sure you’ve read, the reason I never wanted to do more is because unlike almost everything else I’ve done, I felt like I did everything I wanted to do with the character. I got it right the first time. He was never a character who was built, for me, to have more stories. Some characters take on a life of their own. He didn’t. He just existed for that number of pages. Originally there was supposed to be a feature at the end of that original story that was his origin. I realized I had no interest in what his origin was, which is why we ended up with this goofy thing of three old women and a monkey. The origin that I had come up with for him wasn’t that interesting. It was okay. It would have been fun to draw, but it was kind of making more of this character than he really was.

AD: Here they’re all stories set in the same world

MM: Sort of. It takes place in a non-world. That was one of the biggest problems when they approached me about doing “The Amazing Screw-on Head” cartoon way back when. They couldn’t let go of the idea that it must take place while Abraham Lincoln was President. I kept saying, no, it doesn’t take place any time. It’s entirely my made up goofy world where it all kind of looks sort of late 19th Century Victorian, but there’s no real geography. It’s my little toy world. It’s not meant to be a real world.

AD: So instead of more Screw-on head, you have a lot of odd interconnected stories sort of connected and it’s fun to see how they connect.

MM: That was part of the fun. Once we started talking about doing this book and I knew the stories I was going to do, I was looking for a way to connect the stories without really making it too logical. Because I love “The Magician and the Snake,” I reference “The Magician and the Snake” visually here. I’m going to establish this particular place and go into one panel of Screw-on head, pull this building out and put it here, so this story takes place inside this building that we saw in one panel of “The Amazing Screw-on Head.” It became a game of connecting these things together without a story thread that connects them together.

AD: How did the idea for the book start? Was it originally just to collect short pieces?

MM: The problem with collecting was that there was only thirty-five pages of material. All I had that I wanted published was “The Amazing Screw-on Head” and “The Magician and the Snake.” The “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” story, like I said, wasn’t very good. It was always going to be a weird book. I knew the title of the book was going to be “The Amazing Screw-on Head and Other Curious Objects,” but I didn’t have the other curious objects. So I did start making up these stories with the sense that I would wrap them around “The Amazing Screw-on Head.”

AD: The character of Gung the Magnificent, the main character of “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” appeared in that one line in Screw-on Head. I think of him as this Robert E. Howard character.

MM: I had done the story “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” first. The original version of that story. I had the name Gung banging around and I just liked the name Gung, so I used it again in Screw-on Head. Again, there was no logic. I just thought it was a fun name. When I redid “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” for this book I added this Victorian framing device to the story alluding to the character growing up to become Gung the Magnificent. That was one small concession to tying into the Screw-on Head world, but I don’t have more stories about that character either.

This really is a book about dead end characters. I did, when I did the original “Abu Gung and Beanstalk” think, I want to come up with more stories about this character because he was fun to draw. Again, everything felt forced. I find certain characters like Hellboy, I make up the character and stories just keep coming. Other characters, if the stories don’t keep coming, I can manufacture a story but it’s not going to have whatever that first story had. My feeling is, if I did it right, let’s just do something else. And the beauty of a book like this, because I knew I had Screw-on Head in there and I knew that was strong, it gave me the freedom to do really odd things because they didn’t have to carry the book.

AD: Do you enjoy these odd one-off tales. Hellboy and BPRD are both in the midst of these years long story arcs. Do you enjoy these kinds of short stories?

MM: Well there’s benefits to both. It’s actually really easy to keep adding to a big ongoing storyline because you don’t have a beginning and an end. These things I think are trickier to do, but they are really fun. They are really satisfying. I love to do self contained stories. So much of what I’m doing all fits into this Hellboy continuity, it was really fun to do stories that couldn’t fit into that world at all.

AD: You write a lot, mostly in this Hellboy/BPRD world. Do you get many odd ideas like these that don’t fit anywhere?

MM: You know, I don’t. If I because I think right now I’m programmed to make up stories because the Hellboy machine is so big, I’m programmed to make up Hellboy stories. I was doing this Victorian occult detective character and I made the decision that I didn’t want to keep making up stories about that guy because we have too many books going on. If I were still doing that character, as I’m reading things and hearing things, part of my brain would be thinking new stories about that character. If I was doing another volume of “The Amazing Screw-on Head,” part of my brain would be trying to come up with more short stuff like this. Usually I need to have something on the horizon I’m making stuff up for.

AD: So no more Witchfinder comics for the time being?

MM: There’s a second volume which John Arcudi wrote, but right now we’ve got so many books going on, I’m just spread too thin. I want to get back to drawing comics. Every book I make up, even if I’m not drawing it, seems like I have to draw the cover or I have to co-write it. I want to put all my energies back into drawing comics, so I’m kind of putting a lid on some of these things right now.

AD: Are you going to be doing more work with Duncan Fegredo after the current Hellboy story, "The Storm and The Fury," ends?

MM: I’ve told Duncan the door’s open for him to do whatever he wants to do. He won’t be continuing as the major artist of Hellboy. There’s always a place for people to do shorter Hellboy stories, like what Richard Corben’s been doing. Basically if Duncan wants to do a story that’s set in 1975 that takes place in New Guinea, we’ll do that. But where “The Storm and The Fury” ends, I will be picking up that Hellboy and continuing that storyline.

AD: And we’re back to where it was, with you writing and drawing the book.

MM: Yeah. Well, it won’t be where it was. It ends in a pretty weird place, but yeah, I will be doing the main ongoing storyline. It doesn’t mean I’ll be doing it eight issues a year, but the current continuity of Hellboy will be done by me.

AD: the way you phrase that, current continuity. so much of Hellboy’s tales are set in the past

MM: We talked about short stories. They’re self contained stories and they’re not burdened with, I’m the King of England, I’m the beast of the apocalypse. They’re fun to write because Hellboy was just a guy. The story is about Hellboy doing something and it’s not about who Hellboy is and it’s really fortunately the way this thing was structured there’s forty some odd years of Hellboy wandering around the world and it’s a big world so there’s no end of stories to do with Hellboy when he was just a regular guy.

AD: I don’t want to know any spoilers because that’s no fun, but does the new status quo set up chance to tell smaller folklore tales?

MM: There is that element. Again I can’t say anything really about what I’m doing because I also can’t tell what happens, but The Storm and The Fury has really shaped up to be not just the climax of the three books that Duncan and I have done, but it’s the climax of everything that’s been done with Hellboy since I started the comic. We’re looking at a major restart when I come back to the book.

AD: Will that be next year?

MM: Um. It’s a little early to say. That would be my goal. It’s possible that it will end up being 2012 when my book actually comes out. I think The Fury is supposed to come out next year. As soon as I can get them out I’ll be getting them out.

AD: Fair enough. You mentioned you’re involved in lots of books. BPRD seems to going along nicely. You’re one of the writers. How involved are you in the book?

MM: Most of the time these days my involvement is phone conversations. John [Arcudi] and I talk about where we’re going. We come up with the broad strokes of where things will go. I’m very involved in all that stuff, but the day in day out, the personalities of the characters, that’s where John really elevates that book into something else. I’m steering it from afar and John is on the ground really doing the character stuff. I’m the broad strokes guy. I’ll come up with specific bits, but more and more, these characters are his characters. It’s my world, but they’re his characters.

AD: And the book has the great Guy Davis on art.

MM: He’s the greatest. With BPRD we’ve wrapped up what we’ve been doing. With "The King of Fear," that ends this first cycle of stories and now we’re in a different place as far as the condition of the world. It’s exciting because we’re making changes as I’ve done with Hellboy that can never be unmade. It’s not like the Marvel or DC universes where you blow up a city and then the next time we see that city it’s all rebuilt and everything’s fine. If we blow up a city, it’s probably going to stay a big hole. We’re going to be making bigger and bigger changes to the world, so that’s exciting to really have this blank canvas to remake things.

AD: Along those lines, are we going to see more books about the BPRD from 1940s?

MM: We’ve planned BPRD: 1948 and I think that’s as far as we’re going to go with that. John Arcudi will be writing BPRD: 1948 and we haven’t settled on an artist for that book, although we’re talking to some people. I wanted John to do that so he could make whatever connections he wanted to make between that BPRD and the structure of the ongoing BPRD. I wanted to give him a chance to put his stamp on the past since he’s dealing with the current BPRD.

AD: You talked about cutting back the number of books you’re working on, does that mean less of Abe Sapien or Lobster Johnson books?

MM: Lobster Johnson we’re trying to get it up and running. It’s just we want Guy to do Lobster Johnson and we’re just trying to find a place where Guy has enough room in his schedule to do it. John Arcudi has written a Lobster Johnson series that is sitting on Guy’s desk it’s just a matter of Guy finding the time to do it.

AD: So what else do you have going on

MM: Don’t I have enough?

AD: well it’s a standard question to ask towards end because no matter how much ground we’ve covered, it’s always, well actually...

MM: Well actually I do. I am doing another novel with Chris Golden who co-wrote Baltimore with me. We’re another project that was originally conceived as a comic that I’m never going to get around to doing as a comic so we’re doing that as a novel. Similar to the Baltimore novel it’ll be massively illustrated and co-written by Chris and I. I don’t know when the hell I’m going to do because I seem to have my hands full but yeah my main goal is just to back off the writing as much as a I can and get back to the drawing table.

AD: I would be remiss if i didn’t ask about Hellboy 3

MM: I was wondering if we were going to get through this without asking that.

AD: Well if I was talking with Guillermo del Toro, I would ask him

MM: I would think if Hellboy 3 were high on his list of things to do, I think he would have called me by now. But I haven’t heard from him since he got off the Hobbit. It’d be great if it happened, but again, I never thought they were going to make the first two, so I’m sitting here going well, I’m not holding my breath. It’d be great but there’s point to me spending any time thinking about it because it’s entirely up to other people whether that happens or not.

AD: How quickly do you draw?

MM: Not quickly at all. I’m not fast. I can actually draw kinda fast, but I erase everything I draw nine or ten times. I’m amazingly picky. I’m my harshest critic. I’m amazed actually that Screw-on Head went as smoothly as it did because I’ve become such a perfectionist. Good enough isn’t a phrase I’m real comfortable with because there have been a lot of horrible stuff in the past. As I do less and less drawing, I want it to really be great every time I do it. I was really nervous to do the Screw-on Head stuff because I thought here’s new stories that are going to wrap around two of my favorite things I’ve ever done. Is it going to be a nightmare where every panel I’m second guessing and changing stuff and drawing pages and throwing pages out and redoing things? I did the cover twice, which is not bad for me. I’ve done books where I’ve done the cover five different times. For the most part, the stories went really smoothly and I had nothing but fun doing them. But no I’m not terribly fast.

AD: "The Magician and the Snake," which you did with daughter.

MM: Still my favorite thing I’ve done.

AD: How did this story start out?

MM: An editor at Dark Horse had called and asked if I would do a story for an anthology, a six page story, and all she said was, if you could do something that isn’t Hellboy that’d be great. I said sure, it would be great to do something that wasn’t Hellboy. I had no idea what I was going to do. I went and picked up my daughter from school and she started telling me about this picture she drew at school, about a snake on a rooftop being furious at these floating objects and I said, what the hell are you talking about? [laughs] She told me the story behind that picture and I can point out the place on Seventh avenue in New York where she was when she told me that story and where I said well I don’t know what the hell that thing is but that’s better than anything I was going to do as a story for that anthology.

The story had that Little Prince quality to it, where it’s so odd it must be symbolic of something, and there were actually two or three directions I could see going with the story. Not changing her story but just saying when I write it, I can lean it this way this way or this way. I was spending a lot of time away from home at the time so I think it was post-9/11, so there was a gloom and sadness about things. It became this story about not spending enough time with your family and enjoy the time you’ve got together. That was the spin I put on it in the script, but the actual plot of the story is exactly what she told me. I added the monkey at the beginning. I would have made it a victorian era stage magician, but she art directed that part. She was seven. He’s got to have a pointed hat with stars on it. And she was right, it works better that way. It was just one of those things it took no time to draw. It took no time to write and I just sat back when I was done and said, wow, I don’t know that I could do that again. It helps that it’s only six pages, but it just worked perfect for me.

I tell you, it does make your life a lot simpler when you’ve got something like that. When you do a story like that once, even if you only do it once, and just sit back and go, even if I don’t do anything else, I did that one and that might be as good as it ever gets. Again one of the motivators for getting this Screw-on Head book done was this story which is my favorite has just been in this little odd anthology that very few people have seen. I wanted to make sure this thing got back into print and of course it was originally published in black and white. My daughter has been very insistent over the years that the snake is green and she wants the thing in color.

AD: Has she seen and approved the colored version?

MM: Yes, she approved the colored version.

AD: She’s now waiting on her royalties.

MM: Yeah I think she’s sensing that she’s gotten skunked once or twice on foreign reprint money. We did discuss her credit on the book. She relinquished having her name on the cover of the book. She gave in on that, but yes, she will be expecting book royalties.

AD: Well, she was listed first in the story credits.

MM: That hasn’t been amended. I was like, can I just have my name by myself on the cover? She gave in on that.

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by Damon Martin Scientists from the University of California Santa-Cruz and the Carnegie Institute of Washington have announced the discovery of a planet a scant 20 light years away from Earth that could theoretically be habitable since it has all the characteristics of a planet that could support life. more

by Damon Martin

Scientists from the University of California Santa-Cruz and the Carnegie Institute of Washington have announced the discovery of a planet a scant 20 light years away from Earth that could theoretically be habitable since it has all the characteristics of a planet that could support life.

Gliese 581-g is the latest planet discovered by scientists studying the Red Dwarf star called Gliese 581, which resides in the Libra constellation. The team’s findings were strong enough for them to declare the new planet livable by Earth standards. As many scientists state when dealing with extraterrestrial life, where there is water there could be life. Gliese 581-g has all of the necessary factors to create and sustain water, as well as an atmosphere similar to what we have on Earth.

Professor Stephen Vogt, a member of the team that discovered Gliese 581-g, admits that they don’t know for sure if the planet currently has any life forms growing or living on the surface, but he is confident enough to make a very educated guess going as far as saying, “that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent.”

Gliese 581-g falls into the rare category of what scientists refer to as a “Goldilocks” planet. Yes, the same Goldilocks from the Three Bears story – the term is used to describe a planet that is not too hot or too cold, but just right. Orbiting just 14 million miles from its sun, Gliese 581-g circles the Red Dwarf star every 37 days, but due to the much lower heat output of the Red Dwarf as opposed to the Sun, it’s estimated the temperature on the planet ranges between -25 degrees to 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

The discovery of this new planet of course also raises several philosophical questions, especially regarding “intelligent design” and the idea that Earth is a special planet based on its habitable conditions. If Gliese 581-g is indeed a livable planet, then the unique nature of Earth isn’t nearly as unique. It’s always been somewhat arrogant to believe that Earth was the lone life-sustaining planet in a universe filled with millions upon millions of stars with planets circling them.



[Vanessa in Fell To Earth]

Does this mean that E.T. is going to land on Earth tomorrow? Probably not. But famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking believes that aliens would almost have to exist based on the sheer number of planets and stars existing in the universe. “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” Hawking said during a recent documentary on The Discovery Channel. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

Hawking also warns that although the curiosity about life on other planets intrigues many people, the reality of the situation may be much different: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Gliese-581 g is a significant scientific discovery, but it’ll likely be beyond our lifetimes before we figure out exactly what is able to live, or is living there. And since Gliese-581 is over 20 light years away for earth, with current space technology it’d take over a thousand years for us to travel there. So will first contact with Gliese-581 g’s possible residents be more “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” then “Independence Day”? It’ll likely be generations before we have a definitive answer.

Does Mike Mignola require an introduction? The cartoonist is best known as the creator of “Hellboy,” a character brought to the screen by Guillermo del Toro in two films. He co-writes “B.P.R.D.” an ongoing series from Dark Horse Comics in addition to the occasional miniseries like “Witchfinder,”... more

Does Mike Mignola require an introduction? The cartoonist is best known as the creator of “Hellboy,” a character brought to the screen by Guillermo del Toro in two films. He co-writes “B.P.R.D.” an ongoing series from Dark Horse Comics in addition to the occasional miniseries like “Witchfinder,” “Lobster Johnson,” “Abe Sapien” and others. Mignola co-wrote the novel “Baltimore” with Michael Golden.

Hellboy continues on two tracks. Short comics and miniseries are released by regularity drawn by Mignola himself, Richard Corben and other artists telling stories of Hellboy wandering the earth and investigating the supernatural. Meanwhile in the current “The Storm and The Fury” written by Mignola and illustrated by Duncan Fegredo, Hellboy’s life as the beast of the apocalypse and his destiny come to a head. When that miniseries ends, Mignola will return as the regular artist of the book in its new status quo.

His newest book is “The Amazing Screw-on Head and Other Curious Objects.” It collects the short comic “The Amazing Screw-on Head,” which was turned into a half hour cartoon for the Scifi Network, and Mignola’s favorite comic of his, “The Magician and the Snake,” which was written by his then seven year old daughter Katie. We spoke with him by phone about the new book.


ALEX DUEBEN: Dark Horse sent me a copy of the book and I really loved it.

MIKE MIGNOLA: Well that’s a good start to this. As opposed to, I’ve seen it and what were you thinking? [laughs]

AD: [laughs] I read “The Amazing Screw-on Head” when it first came out, but other than that and “The Magician and the Snake,” are all the stories in the book new?

MM: The one story I had done before, “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk,” there was a version of that that I was never happy with so I’ve completely redrawn it. But yeah, other than that, it’s all new.

AD: After “The Amazing Screw-on Head” came out everyone was wondering when we’d see more of the character and the world and you’ve avoided that.

MM: I’ve said a trillion times, as I’m sure you’ve read, the reason I never wanted to do more is because unlike almost everything else I’ve done, I felt like I did everything I wanted to do with the character. I got it right the first time. He was never a character who was built, for me, to have more stories. Some characters take on a life of their own. He didn’t. He just existed for that number of pages. Originally there was supposed to be a feature at the end of that original story that was his origin. I realized I had no interest in what his origin was, which is why we ended up with this goofy thing of three old women and a monkey. The origin that I had come up with for him wasn’t that interesting. It was okay. It would have been fun to draw, but it was kind of making more of this character than he really was.

AD: Here they’re all stories set in the same world

MM: Sort of. It takes place in a non-world. That was one of the biggest problems when they approached me about doing “The Amazing Screw-on Head” cartoon way back when. They couldn’t let go of the idea that it must take place while Abraham Lincoln was President. I kept saying, no, it doesn’t take place any time. It’s entirely my made up goofy world where it all kind of looks sort of late 19th Century Victorian, but there’s no real geography. It’s my little toy world. It’s not meant to be a real world.

AD: So instead of more Screw-on head, you have a lot of odd interconnected stories sort of connected and it’s fun to see how they connect.

MM: That was part of the fun. Once we started talking about doing this book and I knew the stories I was going to do, I was looking for a way to connect the stories without really making it too logical. Because I love “The Magician and the Snake,” I reference “The Magician and the Snake” visually here. I’m going to establish this particular place and go into one panel of Screw-on head, pull this building out and put it here, so this story takes place inside this building that we saw in one panel of “The Amazing Screw-on Head.” It became a game of connecting these things together without a story thread that connects them together.

AD: How did the idea for the book start? Was it originally just to collect short pieces?

MM: The problem with collecting was that there was only thirty-five pages of material. All I had that I wanted published was “The Amazing Screw-on Head” and “The Magician and the Snake.” The “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” story, like I said, wasn’t very good. It was always going to be a weird book. I knew the title of the book was going to be “The Amazing Screw-on Head and Other Curious Objects,” but I didn’t have the other curious objects. So I did start making up these stories with the sense that I would wrap them around “The Amazing Screw-on Head.”

AD: The character of Gung the Magnificent, the main character of “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” appeared in that one line in Screw-on Head. I think of him as this Robert E. Howard character.

MM: I had done the story “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” first. The original version of that story. I had the name Gung banging around and I just liked the name Gung, so I used it again in Screw-on Head. Again, there was no logic. I just thought it was a fun name. When I redid “Abu Gung and the Beanstalk” for this book I added this Victorian framing device to the story alluding to the character growing up to become Gung the Magnificent. That was one small concession to tying into the Screw-on Head world, but I don’t have more stories about that character either.

This really is a book about dead end characters. I did, when I did the original “Abu Gung and Beanstalk” think, I want to come up with more stories about this character because he was fun to draw. Again, everything felt forced. I find certain characters like Hellboy, I make up the character and stories just keep coming. Other characters, if the stories don’t keep coming, I can manufacture a story but it’s not going to have whatever that first story had. My feeling is, if I did it right, let’s just do something else. And the beauty of a book like this, because I knew I had Screw-on Head in there and I knew that was strong, it gave me the freedom to do really odd things because they didn’t have to carry the book.

AD: Do you enjoy these odd one-off tales. Hellboy and BPRD are both in the midst of these years long story arcs. Do you enjoy these kinds of short stories?

MM: Well there’s benefits to both. It’s actually really easy to keep adding to a big ongoing storyline because you don’t have a beginning and an end. These things I think are trickier to do, but they are really fun. They are really satisfying. I love to do self contained stories. So much of what I’m doing all fits into this Hellboy continuity, it was really fun to do stories that couldn’t fit into that world at all.

AD: You write a lot, mostly in this Hellboy/BPRD world. Do you get many odd ideas like these that don’t fit anywhere?

MM: You know, I don’t. If I because I think right now I’m programmed to make up stories because the Hellboy machine is so big, I’m programmed to make up Hellboy stories. I was doing this Victorian occult detective character and I made the decision that I didn’t want to keep making up stories about that guy because we have too many books going on. If I were still doing that character, as I’m reading things and hearing things, part of my brain would be thinking new stories about that character. If I was doing another volume of “The Amazing Screw-on Head,” part of my brain would be trying to come up with more short stuff like this. Usually I need to have something on the horizon I’m making stuff up for.

AD: So no more Witchfinder comics for the time being?

MM: There’s a second volume which John Arcudi wrote, but right now we’ve got so many books going on, I’m just spread too thin. I want to get back to drawing comics. Every book I make up, even if I’m not drawing it, seems like I have to draw the cover or I have to co-write it. I want to put all my energies back into drawing comics, so I’m kind of putting a lid on some of these things right now.

AD: Are you going to be doing more work with Duncan Fegredo after the current Hellboy story, "The Storm and The Fury," ends?

MM: I’ve told Duncan the door’s open for him to do whatever he wants to do. He won’t be continuing as the major artist of Hellboy. There’s always a place for people to do shorter Hellboy stories, like what Richard Corben’s been doing. Basically if Duncan wants to do a story that’s set in 1975 that takes place in New Guinea, we’ll do that. But where “The Storm and The Fury” ends, I will be picking up that Hellboy and continuing that storyline.

AD: And we’re back to where it was, with you writing and drawing the book.

MM: Yeah. Well, it won’t be where it was. It ends in a pretty weird place, but yeah, I will be doing the main ongoing storyline. It doesn’t mean I’ll be doing it eight issues a year, but the current continuity of Hellboy will be done by me.

AD: the way you phrase that, current continuity. so much of Hellboy’s tales are set in the past

MM: We talked about short stories. They’re self contained stories and they’re not burdened with, I’m the King of England, I’m the beast of the apocalypse. They’re fun to write because Hellboy was just a guy. The story is about Hellboy doing something and it’s not about who Hellboy is and it’s really fortunately the way this thing was structured there’s forty some odd years of Hellboy wandering around the world and it’s a big world so there’s no end of stories to do with Hellboy when he was just a regular guy.

AD: I don’t want to know any spoilers because that’s no fun, but does the new status quo set up chance to tell smaller folklore tales?

MM: There is that element. Again I can’t say anything really about what I’m doing because I also can’t tell what happens, but The Storm and The Fury has really shaped up to be not just the climax of the three books that Duncan and I have done, but it’s the climax of everything that’s been done with Hellboy since I started the comic. We’re looking at a major restart when I come back to the book.

AD: Will that be next year?

MM: Um. It’s a little early to say. That would be my goal. It’s possible that it will end up being 2012 when my book actually comes out. I think The Fury is supposed to come out next year. As soon as I can get them out I’ll be getting them out.

AD: Fair enough. You mentioned you’re involved in lots of books. BPRD seems to going along nicely. You’re one of the writers. How involved are you in the book?

MM: Most of the time these days my involvement is phone conversations. John [Arcudi] and I talk about where we’re going. We come up with the broad strokes of where things will go. I’m very involved in all that stuff, but the day in day out, the personalities of the characters, that’s where John really elevates that book into something else. I’m steering it from afar and John is on the ground really doing the character stuff. I’m the broad strokes guy. I’ll come up with specific bits, but more and more, these characters are his characters. It’s my world, but they’re his characters.

AD: And the book has the great Guy Davis on art.

MM: He’s the greatest. With BPRD we’ve wrapped up what we’ve been doing. With "The King of Fear," that ends this first cycle of stories and now we’re in a different place as far as the condition of the world. It’s exciting because we’re making changes as I’ve done with Hellboy that can never be unmade. It’s not like the Marvel or DC universes where you blow up a city and then the next time we see that city it’s all rebuilt and everything’s fine. If we blow up a city, it’s probably going to stay a big hole. We’re going to be making bigger and bigger changes to the world, so that’s exciting to really have this blank canvas to remake things.

AD: Along those lines, are we going to see more books about the BPRD from 1940s?

MM: We’ve planned BPRD: 1948 and I think that’s as far as we’re going to go with that. John Arcudi will be writing BPRD: 1948 and we haven’t settled on an artist for that book, although we’re talking to some people. I wanted John to do that so he could make whatever connections he wanted to make between that BPRD and the structure of the ongoing BPRD. I wanted to give him a chance to put his stamp on the past since he’s dealing with the current BPRD.

AD: You talked about cutting back the number of books you’re working on, does that mean less of Abe Sapien or Lobster Johnson books?

MM: Lobster Johnson we’re trying to get it up and running. It’s just we want Guy to do Lobster Johnson and we’re just trying to find a place where Guy has enough room in his schedule to do it. John Arcudi has written a Lobster Johnson series that is sitting on Guy’s desk it’s just a matter of Guy finding the time to do it.

AD: So what else do you have going on

MM: Don’t I have enough?

AD: well it’s a standard question to ask towards end because no matter how much ground we’ve covered, it’s always, well actually...

MM: Well actually I do. I am doing another novel with Chris Golden who co-wrote Baltimore with me. We’re another project that was originally conceived as a comic that I’m never going to get around to doing as a comic so we’re doing that as a novel. Similar to the Baltimore novel it’ll be massively illustrated and co-written by Chris and I. I don’t know when the hell I’m going to do because I seem to have my hands full but yeah my main goal is just to back off the writing as much as a I can and get back to the drawing table.

AD: I would be remiss if i didn’t ask about Hellboy 3

MM: I was wondering if we were going to get through this without asking that.

AD: Well if I was talking with Guillermo del Toro, I would ask him

MM: I would think if Hellboy 3 were high on his list of things to do, I think he would have called me by now. But I haven’t heard from him since he got off the Hobbit. It’d be great if it happened, but again, I never thought they were going to make the first two, so I’m sitting here going well, I’m not holding my breath. It’d be great but there’s point to me spending any time thinking about it because it’s entirely up to other people whether that happens or not.

AD: How quickly do you draw?

MM: Not quickly at all. I’m not fast. I can actually draw kinda fast, but I erase everything I draw nine or ten times. I’m amazingly picky. I’m my harshest critic. I’m amazed actually that Screw-on Head went as smoothly as it did because I’ve become such a perfectionist. Good enough isn’t a phrase I’m real comfortable with because there have been a lot of horrible stuff in the past. As I do less and less drawing, I want it to really be great every time I do it. I was really nervous to do the Screw-on Head stuff because I thought here’s new stories that are going to wrap around two of my favorite things I’ve ever done. Is it going to be a nightmare where every panel I’m second guessing and changing stuff and drawing pages and throwing pages out and redoing things? I did the cover twice, which is not bad for me. I’ve done books where I’ve done the cover five different times. For the most part, the stories went really smoothly and I had nothing but fun doing them. But no I’m not terribly fast.

AD: "The Magician and the Snake," which you did with daughter.

MM: Still my favorite thing I’ve done.

AD: How did this story start out?

MM: An editor at Dark Horse had called and asked if I would do a story for an anthology, a six page story, and all she said was, if you could do something that isn’t Hellboy that’d be great. I said sure, it would be great to do something that wasn’t Hellboy. I had no idea what I was going to do. I went and picked up my daughter from school and she started telling me about this picture she drew at school, about a snake on a rooftop being furious at these floating objects and I said, what the hell are you talking about? [laughs] She told me the story behind that picture and I can point out the place on Seventh avenue in New York where she was when she told me that story and where I said well I don’t know what the hell that thing is but that’s better than anything I was going to do as a story for that anthology.

The story had that Little Prince quality to it, where it’s so odd it must be symbolic of something, and there were actually two or three directions I could see going with the story. Not changing her story but just saying when I write it, I can lean it this way this way or this way. I was spending a lot of time away from home at the time so I think it was post-9/11, so there was a gloom and sadness about things. It became this story about not spending enough time with your family and enjoy the time you’ve got together. That was the spin I put on it in the script, but the actual plot of the story is exactly what she told me. I added the monkey at the beginning. I would have made it a victorian era stage magician, but she art directed that part. She was seven. He’s got to have a pointed hat with stars on it. And she was right, it works better that way. It was just one of those things it took no time to draw. It took no time to write and I just sat back when I was done and said, wow, I don’t know that I could do that again. It helps that it’s only six pages, but it just worked perfect for me.

I tell you, it does make your life a lot simpler when you’ve got something like that. When you do a story like that once, even if you only do it once, and just sit back and go, even if I don’t do anything else, I did that one and that might be as good as it ever gets. Again one of the motivators for getting this Screw-on Head book done was this story which is my favorite has just been in this little odd anthology that very few people have seen. I wanted to make sure this thing got back into print and of course it was originally published in black and white. My daughter has been very insistent over the years that the snake is green and she wants the thing in color.

AD: Has she seen and approved the colored version?

MM: Yes, she approved the colored version.

AD: She’s now waiting on her royalties.

MM: Yeah I think she’s sensing that she’s gotten skunked once or twice on foreign reprint money. We did discuss her credit on the book. She relinquished having her name on the cover of the book. She gave in on that, but yes, she will be expecting book royalties.

AD: Well, she was listed first in the story credits.

MM: That hasn’t been amended. I was like, can I just have my name by myself on the cover? She gave in on that.

When SuicideGilrs last spoke with The Daily Show’s Senior Women’s Issues Commentator, Kristen Schaal, she was in the process of doing exhaustive research for a sex guide she was penning with her boyfriend, Daily Show staff writer Rich Blomquist. Two years later, after much sweat, tears, soiled sheets... more

When SuicideGilrs last spoke with The Daily Show’s Senior Women’s Issues Commentator, Kristen Schaal, she was in the process of doing exhaustive research for a sex guide she was penning with her boyfriend, Daily Show staff writer Rich Blomquist. Two years later, after much sweat, tears, soiled sheets and general stickiness – their rigorously field-tested manual, The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex, is in stores. In this excerpt, Schaal and Blomquist take a peak through a Glory Wormhole to give us an incite into the future of sex.

***

Teledildonics

by Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist

In the future, you’ll be having the best sex of your life, and your partner won’t even be there. No, you won’t be masturbating (at least not every time). You’ll be fucking each other thousands of miles apart with the help of remote stimulation devices known as teledildos.



A technology still in its infancy, teledildonics combines the latest advances in communication with the crude vibrating, sucking, and “massaging” mechanisms we’ve used in sex toys for the past hundred years. The result: no longer is your distance from your lover during sex limited to the length of the penis. Now, you can be literally millions of penises away and still fuck each other’s brains out-just don’t expect any cuddling afterward.

What does it all mean? It means that in the future, the dorky kid who claims to have a girlfriend in Canada may not only be telling the truth, but also getting more action than you, teledildonically.

Here are just a few forms this genital-exciting new technology could take:

oPHONES

Let’s face it: so-called phone sex isn’t sex. It’s masturbating with a phone in your hand. And if your phone-a-friend-with-benefits isn’t good at talking dirty, you’re tempted to call 911 and report a violent crime: your genitals being bored to death.

Thankfully, teledildonic telephones, or dildophones, will change all that. Featuring either a penile antenna or a vaginal input port, these kinky communicators will boast a vibrate mode five hundred times more powerful than anything on the market today. Meaning that your future lover may be whispering sweet nothings, but you’ll definitely be feeling some sweet somethings . . . and they will rattle your astro-fillings with ecstasy.

Yet for all its promise, dildophone technology faces three major obstacles:

• Dropped calls could result in blue balls.


• It’s likely you’d get annoying unsolicited orgasms from teledildomarketers (probably during dinner).


• Sitting on your phone and accidentally dialing your parents would technically constitute incest.

Are oPhones basically vibrators? How dare you! They are vibrating phones you hold against your crotch, something only imaginable in the future.



ROBOSEXTING

This is the basic concept behind the remote-controlled sex machines of the future known as robosexters. The term is based on “sexting,” the early twenty-first-century practice of using mobile phones to send regrettable photos and declarations of horniness to future ex-boyfriends. Robosexting expands on this notion, only instead of blurry shots of your initials shaved into some crazy girl’s pubic hair, it’s a sexy metal messenger that’s traveled thousands of miles to deliver the orgasms your partner couldn’t give in person.

A robosexter’s program determines exactly how it goes about doing this. Early versions might let users string together routines of preprogrammed sex acts (e.g., LAP DANCE, HAND JOB, HEART-SHAPED HICKEY, REPEAT), while advanced models will allow for more personalized messages (e.g., that “thing” you do with your “thing”). This level of detail will require “teaching” the robot with a motion-capture suit, or possibly just fucking it the way you want it to fuck. This, however, is dangerous territory, given that there’s no quicker way to make a robot fall in love with you.

* After his death, actor George Clooney will be cloned using the copious amounts of leftover DNA in his bedroom. The result of this experiment and all subsequent dashing replicas will be named “George Cloney.”



GLORY WORMHOLES

No matter how lifelike robosexters become, in the end you’d still be settling for a bucket of bolts that may or may not be secretly planning to murder you and steal your lover. The ideal teledildonic would let you actually be there, cutting the jealous robot out of the equation and allowing you to get some faraway poonanny in the flesh. This is the thrilling concept behind glory wormholes. A glory wormhole is a hypothetical phenomenon that provides a shortcut to a distant part of the universe, but is only big enough to accommodate something the size of a penis (even then posing a significant risk of time-splinters). Sound crazy? That’s because it is crazy. It’s sticking your cock into a rift in the space-time continuum and hoping someone or something a million light years away will give you a hummer.

From a teledildonic standpoint, the first impulse might be to somehow mani-pulate glory wormholes so you could control where they go. But even if this were possible, would it really be the most exciting way to use them? Your penis could travel to the farthest reaches of the known universe, experiencing pleasures not yet conceived of by our primitive human brains. Even if there were nothing on the other side, the vacuum of space would put any penis pump to shame. Knowing all this, would you still want to bother your out-of-town girlfriend with a disembodied, intergalactic hard-on right in the middle of her big business presentation? Probably not.

As if the prospects weren’t already exciting enough, glory wormholes could also let your penis travel through time. By accelerating your end of a wormhole to a velocity approaching the speed of light, anything that entered (e.g., your penis) would exit at a point in time prior to its entry. Meaning, at least in theory, you could get a blow job from Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, Hitler’s mom, or even a younger version of yourself (assuming you cruised glory wormholes during your “experimental phase”).

Yet for all the mysteries of glory wormholes, one thing is certain: if they do exist, they make for some very happy worms.

***

Excerpted from The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex by Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist, a volume which is self-regarded by its authors as the “ultimate guide to getting your rocks off.” Don’t do it without it!

Reprinted by kind permission of Chronicle Books. Text (c) 2010 Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist. All Rights Reserved.

Tomas Alfredson’s brilliant Let the Right One In, which made SuicideGirls’ distinguished Top Ten Films of 2008 list, is no less brilliant for having been remade as Let Me In, the Americanized version in theaters this week. In fact, the exquisite direction of the remake by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield)... more

Tomas Alfredson’s brilliant Let the Right One In, which made SuicideGirls’ distinguished Top Ten Films of 2008 list, is no less brilliant for having been remade as Let Me In, the Americanized version in theaters this week. In fact, the exquisite direction of the remake by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) has earned it surprisingly good reviews from critics still enamored with the original, and sparked a debate in some quarters about which version is the definitive one. Whichever you prefer, the very fact of this dark story now having been positively received twice in two years is proof of its poignancy and emotional heft. With the action moved from an apartment block in Sweden to the creepy suburb of Los Alamos, New Mexico, Let Me In retells the story of Oskar (now called Owen), a shy, possibly disturbed young boy who is seeking a respite from severe school bullying when a savior appears: a quiet, severe-looking girl named Eli (now called Abby), who teaches him to stand up for himself in exchange for nothing more than his companionship, at first.

Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen and young acting phenom of the moment
Chloe Moretz as his mercurial guardian, Let Me In deftly examines a bond of friendship between two damaged children, one being driven by abuse into a possible future as a psychopath, and the other an aged vampire in a child’s body who has more or less come to terms with the kill-or-be-killed nature of existence, though echoes of humanity still reverberate in her eyes. Although certain elements of John Lindqvist’s source book have been soft-soaped for American audiences, such as Eli recruiting a middle-aged pedophile as her personal Renfield, keeping him enslaved while perpetually denying him that which he most desires, the book’s sensationally realized characters and bold storytelling are still there in abundance, guided by the sure hand of Reeves, a director steadily moving up the ranks of talent to watch. Matt Reeves recently called up SuicideGirls during a lunch break while out promoting the film.




Ryan Stewart: What’s the psychology of a 250 year-old vampire who is forever stuck in the body of a pre-pubescent child? Does she have a limited ability to learn? Is she wise? How did you interpret her mind?

Matt Reeves: I think she’s stuck, emotionally, in terms of her development, at the age of twelve. And that’s something that I actually got from the book. There’s this one scene where Lindqvist describes Oskar and Eli speaking, and Oskar is asking Eli questions because he doesn’t really understand exactly what she is. He’s just been confronted with someone who is…whatever she is, and he says “How old are you…really?” And she says “I’m twelve, but in a way that I don’t quite understand -- I’ve been twelve for a really long time.” And he says to her “Well, maybe you don’t understand it because you’re, you know, twelve!” And she takes offense at that. She says “Are you saying I’m stupid?” And he says “No, I’m saying you’re a kid.” There was an idea there that really got to me. It’s one thing to think that there’s this scheming, 250 year-old woman who knows what she’s doing inside of this twelve year-old’s body – that would be a real manifestation of evil, in a way – but there’s another way of thinking of it in that if you imagine a kid who is eternally trapped at that age and also has the burden of having to find some way to survive, that to me was tragic and very, very sad. And I loved that idea.

RS: Was Chloe’s interpretation similar, that she shouldn’t try to project as being wise beyond her years?

MR: It was something we talked about. I showed Chloe some photographs of a homeless family that was documented by this photographer named Mary Ellen Mark – the family was named the Damned family, ironically enough – and there was a girl who was about the character’s age, probably about twelve, who was the daughter. This family lived in terrible conditions – they lived in their car, they squatted in an abandoned house – and there was this one shot where the girl was holding her younger brother’s hand in a very protective way and staring at the camera, and she had this look on her face that just said ‘Don’t mess with me.’ She had the look of a survivor, and yet at the same time you could see that just under it there was this tremendous vulnerability. And I showed this to Chloe and I said “This is kind of like what Abby is, because she’s really not someone who is older – she is twelve – but she’s seen things that no twelve year-old should ever see. And she’s been witness to things and been a part of things that no twelve year-old should ever have to be part of. That is a terrible burden, and Chloe seemed to get that, so that’s how we tried to depict the character. To me that’s a much more tragic, and also a more ambiguous kind of characterization.

RS: Did you see Abby as manipulative, in that she’s seemingly always on the lookout for a new companion/flunky?

MR: I know that some people say “Abby is grooming Owen to be the next Richard Jenkins” [the actor who plays Abby’s protective, human father figure] but to me, when I look at their connection, she has a genuine connection to him. She sees him as another kid her age, and she’s become so isolated that she doesn’t have connections like that in her life. To see someone who she can relate to and connect to is a profound thing for her. I think she truly loves him, but even that doesn’t change the fact that she still has needs. Part of the reason why she needs a caretaker is that she’s still a kid, she’s still stuck at a certain level of development, and when she loses control she has no sense of judgment. Primal things come out of her, and I thought that was a good metaphor for adolescence, when hormones start to surge through your body and you start to change. During those moments she doesn’t really think clearly, and she can potentially put herself in grave danger in addition to killing someone else. So, her survival is greatly aided by having someone around who looks out for her. I mean, obviously a vampire can’t even go out in the light, plus the fact that she’s still a kid. The vulnerability of that is what got to me – the fact that she can be both viciously brutal, as well as vulnerable. There’s a dichotomy, a mix there that I thought was really cool.

RS: In Let the Right One In, it’s heavily implied that Abby/Eli may not have started her long life as a girl. There’s a famous shot of her nude with a horrifically stitched-up crotch. Did you feel the need to explore that?

MR: Well, in the book there’s an actual flashback to where she becomes a vampire -- it’s a scene where she’s attacked – and in that scene Oskar literally starts feeling her feelings, and through that he discovers that Eli was actually born Elias, and was a boy at that age, and was castrated. It’s a horrific, orgiastic scene where this vampire attacks Elias and takes away his sex organs, and it’s a very, very haunting and disturbing scene. As for me, I related to this story as a coming of age story and what I wanted was to do a version of the story that would play with all of those things – and I kept all of those lines – but in that scene where Owen is watching her dress we just hold the camera on him and we don’t see what he’s seeing. So, for people who’ve read the book that interpretation still stands, but I felt that since we’re not going into the full back story and seeing all of that, it would throw off the balance.

RS: I’ve heard that the book is sprawling, like a miniseries.

MR: There is a lot of stuff in the book, especially about the Richard Jenkins character. His character is actually a pedophile, and he becomes this really horrific zombie in the last third of the book – these are all things that I didn’t end up using or bringing in, because the thing I really wanted to focus on and keep the balance on was Abby and Owen’s relationship and the coming of age aspect of the story. I always feel that without being able to give full weight to everything you can end up throwing a curveball that distances the audience, emotionally. I wanted you to relate to those characters without thinking about…I mean, you already have the obstacle of getting over the fact of her being what she is, and that she does these horrible things. The first time I watched the Swedish film, I actually didn’t understand what that moment where you see her genitals was about. I thought it was about his coming of age, him watching her and being fascinated by someone of the opposite sex. At that age, that’s fascinating. And then when I read the book I discovered the back story and I decided to have it there in a way so that it’s not a distraction for people who don’t know of it.

RS: Did you approach working with Chloe any differently than you would a twenty-something actress?

MR: You know, it’s interesting, when we started I was fortunate enough to get some advice from Steven Spielberg on that. J.J. Abrams has a relationship with him and he had shown him Cloverfield, and Spielberg loved Cloverfield, and I met him. And then when I was doing this I asked J.J. if he would ask Steven if he wouldn’t mind speaking to me about directing children, which is something I hadn’t really had that much experience with. And he did, he gave me wonderful advice. He was very generous, and he told me to have them keep journals, which I did. They kept these very detailed journals, and the only caveat I gave was that they had to share their journals with me. I said to them “You can write anything you want in character, but I have to be able to read it with you so that I can maybe draw on that stuff.” The idea was to find a way for them to be able to express themselves and connect to their character, and the journal was part of that. Also, just having the two of them spend time together was part of it, because their relationship was so important. So, we went bowling and stuff.

RS: What tricks did you learn for getting the best performances out of them?

MR: Well, I shot the first three weeks of their relationship -- where they meet at the jungle gym -- I shot all of those jungle gym scenes in order, in the first few weeks. By doing it chronologically we captured the arc of their relationship, for the most part. We started with them not really knowing each other, and then growing closer and closer, and by shooting that as they were actually becoming friends, I hoped that it would come across. Part of directing them was also letting them guide me, you know? Spielberg told me “Remember that you’re trying to recapture what it’s like to be twelve, but they are twelve.” So, if Chloe had an idea or if Kodi had one, I’d always want to entertain it since it was a window into their point of view. I always like to do that with actors anyway. I have in my mind a very specific plan for the way I think something should be, but I’ll jettison it at the beginning of what we’re doing, because there might be a much better idea somewhere and it’s the happy accidents, the discovery moments that bring the movie to life. So, directing Chloe was in a way like directing an adult in that I could explore with her, and the way you explore with adult actors is to play with them, so this was very close to that experience. I tried to have a set where they could play in between takes too, because it was important for them to be able to remain kids.

RS: It’s funny that you mentioned Spielberg, since this film is very reminiscent of E.T., with its 1983 suburbia setting, and this introverted kid suddenly getting an odd companion. Did you see it that way?

MR: I sure did. I was thinking about the 80s when I was reading the book, and I was thinking about Spielbergia. I was thinking about E.T. That was a movie that profoundly affected me when I was growing up. This story is obviously incredibly different in that it explores the very, very dark nature of this creature, but it also concerns the dark nature of the boy. There are definite parallels, with a kid growing up in a suburb, and him being lonely and isolated, and being a bit of an outsider. In a way, it’s a kind of fantasy. It’s as if your imaginary friend showed up, and she had this darkness to her. She’s a dark figure, and that’s part of the tragedy of it. Their relationship is tender, and also drenched in blood, and that’s powerful combination. It’s also straight out of Lindqvist, and I liked the idea of getting to this Spielbergian world through the Lindqvist sensibility, I really related to that. So, yeah, I definitely thought of E.T., that’s exactly how I viewed it. I really related to Elliott when I was growing up, because his parents were going through a rough time with a divorce, and that was affecting him – and all of those things that I related to are also in Lindqvist’s story.

RS: Would it be fair to say this film calls into question the notion that children are invariably innocent?

MR: I think it does, yes. It’s actually exploring fantasies of rage and revenge and that’s the power of the story. On the one hand Owen is kind of an innocent, because he still is a kid and he doesn’t really understand how things work and he has that emotional purity, but there’s also an element of myth to childlike innocence. Even babies have fits of rage, and I do think that it’s a myth that children are just pure in that way. What children are is very pure in their expressions of things, including their dark sides. I definitely think that was something that Lindqvist was exploring, and it’s a fascinating part of what he was trying to do.

RS: Can we expect some flying monsters next time in Cloverfield 2?

MR: [laughs] God, I wish I could tell you! I’ve been through some ideas, but frankly we just don’t know yet. I’ve been working on Let Me In for the past two years, and J.J. Abrams just started shooting Super 8, which is his passion project at the moment, and the writer of Cloverfield, Drew Goddard, just directed his first movie – which also has Richard Jenkins in it – and that’s a movie he wrote with Joss Whedon called Cabin in the Woods, and it’s supposed to be great. So, we just haven’t had time to work on it! We are working on it as fast as we can, and I have no other news to report. But now, based on this conversation, I think that we should definitely consider some flying monsters.





Let Me In is now playing in theaters everywhere.

by Star Padilla Trikoton has stepped up the game when it comes to self-expression and individuality in fashion. The Berlin-based fashion house has found a unique way to reflect your personality in their clothing. The company uses the sound of your speech as source code for designs that are then woven... more

by Star Padilla

Trikoton has stepped up the game when it comes to self-expression and individuality in fashion. The Berlin-based fashion house has found a unique way to reflect your personality in their clothing. The company uses the sound of your speech as source code for designs that are then woven into their high-tech knit garments.



They take audio recordings of their customers’ voices and feed them into a retro 1970’s knitting machine that has been hacked to make it interactive. A computer on the front-end transforms sounds into binary code. Microcontrollers and small engines respond directly to this computer-generated code, translating it into patterns, which are then incorporated into sweaters, vests, leggings and scarves.



The service isn’t limited to the sound of your own voice either; at a recent trade show, Trikoton designed clothing based on people’s favorite songs, which extends their reach to an entirely new (if famously unfashionable) segment: music geeks.

I’m a total music and tech nerd, so Trikoton’s ability to cohesively merge the two into an apparel line definitely appeals. Trikoton’s aim is to “make the clothes wearable and more or less affordable”. The prices seem a bit steep to me (a sweater costs $228, and leggings $200), but to have a one-of-a-kind piece (literally) is almost priceless.

With the holidays around the corner, if you find yourself stuck for ideas for a gift for that special someone (or me for that matter), this could be that very gift you’ve been looking for. Take note: my fave song right now is “Sleeping Sickness” by City and Colour. (You can’t blame a girl for trying!) Clothing can be ordered online at Trikoton.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FT: You must be expert in post production though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FT: What is the legacy of Def Jam today?

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

FT: What are you wearing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FT: Are we actually making progress on the economy?

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

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

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on”... more

David Cross is so deadpan, you might not even be able to tell he’s joking. Certainly when you type his text out and read it, it feels totally straight. That’s why it’s funny. He says things that are inappropriate or ridiculous in casual conversation, then moves on. It’s not that he’s “on” like a lot of comedians who aren’t comfortable unless someone’s laughing. Cross might prefer if you didn’t get it and reported a sarcastic remark as fact. Not so fast, David Cross - we’re onto you.

His new show, The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, gives Cross another vehicle for that type of humor. The IFC series stars Cross in the title character. He created and wrote the show about an energy drink salesman sent to England to head up the company’s U.K. sales force. Todd keeps lying about his accomplishments, his abilities and even his home address. It makes his bad decisions worse when he tries to cover for his fibs.

Fans might not recognize Cross with normal skin tones. His most famous role could be Tobias on Arrested Development, where he painted himself blue as an aspiring Blue Man Group performer. He also created Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and popped up on The Colbert Report as liberal radio personality Russ Lieber. He’ll also be seen shortly on Arrested creator Mitch Hurwitz’ new show Running Wilde with Will Arnett, who also costars in Todd Margaret.

Consequently there's double the reason to talk to Cross right now. As Fox revealed their plans for adding Cross to the cast of Running Wilde, the man himself is gearing up to launch Todd Margaret. Relaxing in a hotel room at The Beverly Hilton, Cross kept most of his attention on Todd Margaret. The beard he sports on Running Wilde was the only reference to his Fox show.

FT: Did you try out other female names for the last name?

DC: No, that just popped into my head and I was like, “Let’s go with it.” It just fits I think.

FT: Is it ever addressed in the series?

DC: You know what? It was in the script but in editing, we took them all out. I think one stays because we couldn’t cut around it but we did have in every script somebody going, “Margaret? That’s a girl’s name.” Every episode had that but we took it out in editing.

FT: Why’s that?

DC: It was a different joke for the show. It felt a little wacky and as we were editing it we were taking some of the overt wackiness of it out.

FT: Did you want to go blue and let Will Arnett drop F bombs?

DC: Yeah. Will’s character is probably the most fun to write for because he says the most vile, awful, heinous, sexist inappropriate shit. Those were really fun things to write for and IFC’s been great at saying, “We’re not going to bleep it. Write what you want.” There are a couple of words we can’t use that have different weight in the states than they do in the U.K. Specifically “cunt” which in the U.K. is like saying, “Oh, you jerk.” Here, I don't know, women have a problem with it. I don't know what it is. So we were encouraging ourselves to push the envelope on awful stuff that Will says.

FT: Is there a different version for the U.K.?

DC: Outside of maybe two or three things that I fought for and then IFC just said, “No, we like it better this way,” there are maybe two or three things but it’s pretty much the same thing. Although Channel 4 and all the stations in the U.K., you get to show more of the show because they’re not dependent on ad revenue. So there are some differences but that’s just in the stuff we get to show, the time. It’s not content differences.

FT: When Todd chugs energy drinks and starts ranting, did you just improvise or did you write that whole thing out?

DC: Well, we kind of had the advantage of taking the stuff I riffed in the pilot, because we reshot that, and then taking the best bits out and then making that the script for the pilot reshoot. So the only thing that was improvised was the Barack Obama thing I think. Over and over again, all day, I loved it. I love the energy drink, the cheap shit energy drink that we actually got that we put the labels on. I love that it was about 97 degrees Celsius in the café when we were shooting and just getting to do it over and over again all day was just a treat.

FT: What did it actually taste like?

DC: Whatever the cheapest they can get by the gross. I don’t even know what the real energy drink was.

FT: Did you have a spit bucket?

DC: No, because we were able to cheat a lot of it but I had to down a couple of them and you see it. I definitely let a bunch spill. Meisner, heavy Meisner.

FT: Is lying always funny?

DC: Unless you’re in politics. I mean, it’s funny when you work for the treasury or the banking industry. They love it. They love lying. Or in the pharmaceutical industry. Then it’s a rip snorter.

FT: On TV, is it funny?

DC: Oh, then no. No. Absolutely not.

FT: Why does Todd keep trying to cover up?

DC: He’s just one of those guys that that is in part why it’s so frustrating. You watch him, because any of us would at some point when they’re confronted with this would just go, “Okay, yes, all right, look, I’m sorry. I lied about this thing. You’re right, I screwed up but come on, let’s start over again.” He just never takes the golden opportunity that’s handed to him, especially from Dave’s character who clearly doesn’t believe anything he’s saying. He gives him a couple of outs constantly. In episode one I go, “I live at 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” Then I come to the office, he’s like, “Hey, I went on Google Earth, 21 and 50 Church Avenue.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, when were you going to tell me? How long were you going to keep that a secret from me?” “What?” “You lived in a hospital?” Because one of them’s a hospital and instead of going, “All right, I made that up,” I just go, “Oh, yeah, my dad was bipolar so whatever.”

FT: Isn’t it harder to keep coming up with those explanations than to just admit it?

DC: In real life, of course but you have to have a very bright, sophisticated genius writer to do that and we were lucky enough to get me.

FT: How do you describe your comedy? Is it even possible to articulate it?

DC: Well, you’re absolutely right so I just don’t describe my comedy. I let others if they choose to do it but I don’t. I agree with you, it is a hard thing to quantify. Also, when people write about the science of comedy, it’s just boring and detrimental almost.

FT: If I used words like extreme or surreal would I be on the right track?

DC: No. I don't think so. That’s up to you. It’s also subjective and I’m inside of it. I don’t see it as surreal. I can point to a Magritte painting and I can look at certain films and say, “Oh, that’s surreal” but comedy is not really. I don't think it’s really surreal.

FT: Has this become a double PR tour for you, with Running Wilde?

DC: Not really. People have asked questions which I think are understandable and inevitable but the focus is on Todd Margaret and the Running Wilde guys were here a couple days ago. My connection with that show is much different. This one I created, I wrote and I star in. That one I’m guest acting on here and there. Absolutely ecstatic that I get to be part of the show but that’s just acting.

FT: If that took off, would it make Todd Margaret a limited series?

DC: No, Todd Margaret is my absolute most important thing to me right now creatively. I mean, I have my butterfly collection but no, Todd Margaret is first and foremost. I have a story to tell. I want to tell it. I know where it goes. I had a blast writing it and shooting it. Literally, this is trite as hell, but the best cast and crew you could ever hope for. I think IFC is going to, I imagine, continue to support it and be excited about it. This is what I want to do. Eventually I’ll have to do something so I earn some money. I can’t go for years without making any money but I would do this until the story was satisfied. It’s so gratifying. I’m very proud of it.

FT: Being a solo project, is it more in your voice than other things you’ve done?

DC: No. I mean, the idea, the initial idea came from me but outside of that, I cowrote it with Shaun Pye. Outside of basically the pilot, it’s very collaborative. Between IFC, RDF and Channel 4, they’re all very encouraging and pretty much like, “Yeah, do what you want. We trust you.” Also there’s nothing autobiographical about it at all. It’s just this funny cool story. Maybe if I didn’t do standup it would feel more solo but it’s not.

FT: Is the Russ Lieber thing over?

DC: Oh God, yeah. I haven’t done that in years and years. That sort of had an unofficial ending I guess.

FT: They must have realized they didn’t need to fake a rival for him because he’d get real ones in politics.

DC: Right, right, as the show kind of found itself.

FT: Have you ever seen Tobias costumes for Halloween?

DC: Oh God yeah, I see pictures all the time. I’ve seen that a lot. This one guy got Tobias tattooed on his calf. That’s very odd.

The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret premieres October 1 on IFC.