• commentary
  • TUESDAY DECEMBER 7 2010 11:04 PM

Dirty Laundry: Sexy Striped Socks Rock

by Blogbot

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

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





[Luscious in Grime]



[Salliss in Take Two]



[Rambo in Dancing]



[Vesta in Feeling This]



[Squeak in I Am]



[Kaelyn in Good Fortune]



[Phecda in Game Cube]



[Sash in Angeles]

Fashion Notes

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

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

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

  • feature
  • SATURDAY AUGUST 22 2009 6:00 AM

The great thing about buying a car these days is...

The great thing about buying a car these days is that there is so much (SOOO MUCH!) information about every single version of every single model. NOTHING is left to chance except whether or not you read the right blogs, consumer reports and remember to get your CARFAX History Report that tells you how many oil changes occurred during the car’s lifetime, how many windshield wiper blades have been replaced (front and rear) how much sex has been had in the rear seat (front and rear) whether there is actually a dead person in the trunk, and if Ozzy Osbourne ate a bat in the passenger seat. It’s both stunning and mind numbingly boring and it makes me want to start a Russian Roulette Blindfold Car Mart (that’s because I’m a contrary fuck, always have been).

Then, I remembered that there is a field, a business, an art form where the R.R.B.C.M. is commonplace. Yes! You’ve guessed it….the music business! Come on down!

There is no consumer report that warns, points, or guides us about THE REASONS BANDS BREAK UP. For instance, a five second Google search can return that the 2001 Honda Civic is by far the model most plagued with problems. There is no website, blog, book, YouTube video, or directory where you can gauge the likelihood of how prone a middle aged bass player is to alcoholic tendencies or a predication for underage girls. Lead singers and guitarists – well, where do we start? How about the drummer that used to be in PiL, worked with Ministry and NiN? ... should come with warning, “watch out this bright spark might write a book, Tour Smart!

In the interest of due diligence and possibly starting my own BANDFAX History Report business (which I’m thinking of calling BandFaxTic!), I’ve done some research...Well, more accurately, I had some of the students at my new school do it. Let’s have a look at some early results. Please feel free to contribute. We have created a public Google document that you can add to. Go here to read more stories and contribute.

A never ending list of reasons why bands break up:
1. Sandwiches are dangerous: Ask Karen Carpenter (allergic to), Elvis (BLT with banana) and the singer from the Libertines (heroin sandwich?)

2. Girlfriends are dangerous: Ask The Beatles, Elliot Smith, or just about anyone on the planet.

3. Navigational problems: Ask The Kinks, Minor Threat, Kid Dynamite, The Smiths all parted ways because of “different musical directions” while Marc Bolan of T Rex actually drove into a tree.

4. Leadsingeritis: Ask any band with a lead singer! Ha, only serious, or more accurately…………lead singer dying-itis…..maaaaaan: Nirvana, The Doors, Queen, Sublime, Alice In Chains, Joy Division, INXS, the Germs, and the list goes on and on and on.

5. Legal Zoom dot com: Ask N.W.A., Dream Street, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, 30 seconds to Mars.

6. Leadsingeritis part two – the curse of massive greatness: Pulp, The Talking Heads, The Jam, Rage Against the Machine, The Smashing Pumpkins

7. Drugs and alcohol: Fill in the name of any band here___________________

8. Unable to follow up the amazing last album – Eagles (also file under Legal Zoom) Geneva, also called the “where are they now” department.

I hope this all helps. So far, from a scientific standpoint, it looks like it boils down to this: don’t start a band whatever you do. If you won’t listen to me and do start a band, then DO NOT get in a van, a bus, or god forbid a PLANE. Don’t do drugs, a sandwich, or anyone else’s girlfriend. Make sure you hire a lawyer (or two!) before you begin playing any instrument (even if you are a parent and your 4-year-old child is just mastering the harpsichord – I especially mean you!) Don’t leave the country. Don’t write any songs and for fuck’s sake don’t come up with a name, an album cover, or t-shirt design.

Forewarned is fore-armed. And remember, for a long time it looked like Ginger Spice leaving the Spice Girls was the end. But, now they are re-united and better than ever...just remember that when everything seems hopeless!

I’m out and about as always. Come say hi:

Tuesday, October 6th - Chicago, IL
New Music Seminar Chicago - Panel Speaker. Pre-registration is open and you can get an additional 10% off using code: NMSCHICAGO24986.

Sunday, October 11th - Philadelphia, PA.
School of Rock - Guest Lecture. 1508 Brandywine St, Philadelphia, PA 19130

Friday, November 20th - Sunday, November 22nd - Philadelphia, PA
School of Rock - Guest Performances; 1508 Brandywine St., Philadelphia, PA 19130

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - Saturday, March 13, 2010 - Toronto, Canada
Canadian Music Week - Conference, Panel Speaker. Times TBD.

And if you really want to get serious about this stuff, I’m finally teaching my Touring 101 class online through Madison Media Institute. They’ll give you college credit. Fill out the form here for more information.

Vote for my SXSW panel, “Welcome to the Music Business – You’re Fucked”

Vote for my new twitter t-shirt – dont #follow #lead!!!

Follow me on twitter: twitter.com/marteeeen


Woooop

MA

  • commentary
  • FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 2007 4:00 PM

Being Too Much Of A Rock Star Can Kill You, FYI



At this point, I think we all have to admit that science is pretty awesome.

I mean, it’s brought us the electric light, internet tubes, the theremin, LSD and cyborg monkeys that can move objects with their minds. What else do you want?

I mean, unless you’re one of those neo-Luddite squares who whine about “unforeseen negative consequences” and “possible damage to the environment” and all that other crap. Wow, you’re so going to regret your science-hatin’ ways when I unleash my secret army of telekinetic robo-chimps and chortle as they use their turbo-charged monkey brainwaves to burst your skull open like an over-ripe banana, Scanners-style. I mean, what could possibly be the unforeseen negative consequences of that?

Of course, just because science can be awesome, doesn’t mean it’s consistently awesome. Like all great artists, sometimes scientists can’t summon forth enough inspiration and resort to phoning that shit in.

As an example, let me present a soon-to-be-published research study from the fine folks at the Liverpool John Moore University’s Centre For Public Health, entitled “Elvis To Eminem”, that comes to the shocking conclusion that being a rock star just might not be the healthiest career choice a young person can make.

Yes, in case you’ve ever disputed the scientific accuracy of the rock ‘n’ roll motto “Live Fast, Die Young”, now it has been statistically proven!

Alas, not the “Live Fast” part, since apparently it’s either difficult to gauge the airspeed velocity of the average unladen rock musician, or the researchers assumed that Hüsker Dü’s “Land Speed Record” was actually a previous thesis on the subject.

Focusing instead on the “Die Young” part, the researchers started out with a UK list of what are supposedly the All Time Top 1,000 Albums compiled in 2000. They then tallied up all the various North American and European musicians from “the mainstream popular categories of rock, punk, rap, R&B (rhythm and blues), electronica and new age” that appeared on said list, excluding for no apparent reason “those from the music genre classifications of country, blues, jazz, vocal, celtic, folk, bluegrass and spoken word”.

I’m sure you fans of Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams and Bill Hicks will be pleased to know that, scientifically speaking, they are not as important as The Backstreet Boys.

After establishing their cohort of 1064 famous or semi-famous musicians (and you know something’s all good and sciencey when you can use words like “cohort”, not to mention phrases like “offset transposition matrix”), they established which of them were dead, when and how they died, and how long they’d been famous. They then compared those statistics to the average life expectancy for the general population and discovered the following paradigm-shifting fact:

”Pop stars can suffer high levels of stress in environments where alcohol and drugs are widely available, leading to health-damaging risk behaviour.”



Those “health-damaging risk behaviours”, such as flying in airplanes or being a drummer for Spinal Tap, mean that famous musicians are around 1.7 times more likely to die than your average schmuck. So the next time your crappy band plays a show in some lousy dive bar in front of five disinterested drunks and one snarky hipster fuck yelling “Freebird!”, don’t think of it as a sign that you perhaps shouldn’t have dropped out of college to pursue your dreams of rock stardom, but instead as an indicator that you’re scientifically 1.7 times less likely to suddenly fall over dead than the dudes in Nickelback.

One of the interesting quirks of this study is the disparity between survival rates for American and European rock stars. Statistically, becoming a famous musician in Europe lowers your survival rate dramatically…to that of the average American.

So if you’re reading this article in, say, England, and are wrestling with the age-old dilemma “Should I become a massively famous rock superstar and live a life of Caligulaesque decadence, playing sold-out arena shows and getting stoned to the gills on a plethora of drugs while being sexually serviced in cartoonishly improbable ways by at least five adoring groupies at a time every night, or should I play it safe and become an accountant?”, rest assured that option #1 is, scientifically speaking, as dangerous to your health as moving to Nebraska and shopping at Wal-Mart.

Even better, if you manage to survive being a famous European rock star for over 25 years, your survival rate improves past that of the average American of the same age, while the survival rate for American rock stars declines ever faster. The researchers conducting this study advance a few theories as to why, such as American rock stars performing more “nostalgic or reunion tours” (and I admit, if I had to spend most of my evenings performing “Keep On Lovin’ You” at various state fairs, I’d yearn for the sweet embrace of death as well) or the disparity between the American and European health care systems leaving impoverished American musicians more at risk of not having health insurance as they get on in years. Of course, the continued existence of Keith Richards alone could have skewed the results.

While this study may be of dubious practical value, at least it deals with actual human beings. Unlike a previous UK study that dealt with the survival rates of British soap opera characters.

No, not British soap opera actors, British soap opera characters.

In case you were wondering how dangerous it really is to be a fictional character on a British soap opera, science has the answer!

”Characters in soap operas lead very dangerous lives. Their lives are more dangerous even than those of Formula One racing drivers or bomb disposal experts. People suffering from many forms of cancer and other serious diseases have better five-year survival rates than do these characters.”



Cynics may scoff at how laughably pointless it is to research the mortality rates of fictional characters on soap operas, even if it’s done all science-like using “Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox regression, with age as a time dependent covariate”, but that just means they can’t ask themselves the big, important science questions:

”Could the exaggerated portrayal of these violent and dangerous lives be contributing to our distorted national perceptions about violent crime and death?"



Yes, without our pal science, the entire British national perception of violent crime and death would continue to be distorted! Without this valuable research, mankind would have to survive without

”…the first quantitative estimate of the size of the pinch of salt which should be taken when watching soap operas.”



The horror!

Uncognitive was going to write a soap opera about rock stars until he discovered that, scientifically, all of the characters would have to die during every episode.


  • news
  • THURSDAY APRIL 12 2007 10:00 AM

Germs Drummer Arrested for GHB: Hippy Soap to Blame?



Last week, Germs drummer Don Bolles was arrested for narcotics possession after a traffic stop in Newport Beach, California when police tested his soap -- Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap -- and found that it contained GHB.

A field test of the soap indicated it was GHB, said Sgt. Evan Sailor of the Newport Beach Police Department. Bolles, whose real name is Jimmy Michael Giorsetti, was arrested on suspicion of felony narcotics possession. He was released from jail Sunday on $2,500 bond.

He told the Los Angeles Times he has been using Dr. Bronner's for 35 years, adding that the organic ingredients help give him the complexion of a 15-year-old girl. "A date-rape drug is the last thing I need," he said. "If anything, I need a way to keep the girls off me. They make my girlfriend mad."


Dr. Bronner's has hired a lawyer to assist in defending Bolles, saying that the test must have been flawed. According to a company spokesperson, the soap can test positive for THC since it contains hemp oil, but the company was baffled as to why GHB showed up. There was no word on why the officers tested his soap in the first place.

UPDATE: The folks over at VBS.tv recently interviewed Don Bolles about some Dos & Don'ts. Check out the exclusive videos here and here.

  • news
  • MONDAY NOVEMBER 6 2006 9:00 AM

New Model Army Touring U.S. and Europe

Best known for their working class ethics and unwavering political stance, New Model Army are about to inject some influential punk rock, a little bit of soul, and a few experimental sounds into your brain. That's right--the band is heading out on tour. You may feel a tad taken in by their charm after you see them, and no matter what, you’ll be bragging that you did.

    November 25 - USA, San Diego, Brick by Brick
    November 27 - USA, Los Angeles, Knitting Factory
    November 28 - USA, San Francisco, DNA
    November 30 - USA, Seattle, The Vogue
    December 2 - USA, Portland, The Fez Ballroom
    December 3 - Canada, Edmonton, New City
    December 5 - USA, Boston, Mid East Upstairs
    December 6 - USA, Brooklyn, North Six
    December 7 - USA, New York City, Mercury Lounge
    December 8 - USA, Hoboken, Maxwells
    December 9 - USA, Washington DC, Rock & Rock Hotel
    December 15th - France, Paris, La Maroquinerie
    December 16 - Germany, Köln, Palladium
    December 17 - UK, London, Astoria
    December 30 - Germany, Munich, Zenith



  • commentary
  • SUNDAY JULY 2 2006 11:00 AM

Mad Dogs and Rock 'N' Roll Nightmares

Tags: movies, cult, life, rock

“I woke up last night I thought I was going to die
My doctor came a-runnin’ and my family stood by…”

-- “Bop Pills,” Macy (Skip) Skipper

Today started off on the ass side of the bed with one of my dogs in the hospital after puking up blood last night. The doctor floated all kinds of possible doomsday scenarios in front of my wife and I – cancer, Addison’s disease, Parvo – but it turns out that the big knucklehead has what appears to be a parasite that he most likely got from eating stuff off the sidewalk (which, as we all know from The Cramps, is something you should never do).

He’s got another night in the hospital ahead of him, and then he'll most likely come home tomorrow where he'll be spoiled rotton. A sick pet is the surest and swiftest route to crippling, unmanageable worry (next to a sick child or parent, of course). It’s not like the little buggers can tell you what’s wrong with them, so I declare that if you’ve got a pet within reach, let them know how much you appreciate their good health and unconditional love by giving that fuzzy or feathered or scaled little crumbgrabber a smooch (unless it’s a fish, in which case I guess you can give it a couple of extra flakes).

Speaking of animals gone berserk, Synapse Films has just released the Satanic hair-metal train wreck Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare in a deluxe DVD. If you've never experienced RNRN, I strongly suggest you carve out two hours from your life, erase as many brain cells as possible with the industrial cleaner of your choice, and tuck into this film with both hands; it is, without question, one of the most bizarre yet consistently entertaining low-budget films ever made. Canadian stunt rocker Jon-Mikl Thor (or just Thor to his pals) stars as the frontman for a horrible, horrible flash metal outfit which runs afoul of a gaggle of demon hand puppets in a remote farm house before facing off with a Great Satan constructed from what appears to be pipe cleaners.

Yeah, it’s cheap, dopey ‘80s horror, chock-a-block with teased hair, unfortunate nudity, and half-assed nods to Gremlins, but RNRN is so wrapped in its own lunatic logic that you can’t help but feel deep affection for it--which, incidentally, is the perfect sentiment to bring this post full circle: it’s the same sort of affection I felt when I discovered that my dog once ate a AA battery. You can’t believe that it happened, but you’ve gotta admit the dedication behind something like that. Synapse’s DVD is loaded to the gills with extras, including interviews and commentary by Thor, acres of behind-the-scenes footage, and music videos for the two gawd-awful songs performed in the movie (“ENERGY! YOU GIVE ME ENERGY!”). Trust me, you need this one in your life.