By Keanan Duffty

In 2002 I had reached out to Bill Zysblat. Bill is David Bowie’s longtime business manager. His office, which houses the RZO organization is on 57th Street in Manhattan. I was interested in designing some clothes for David. “Great,” said Bill, “but he’s on tour so let’s revisit after the current dates come to a close in 2003.”

Several years later I reconnected with Zysblat. In the time since our first conversation my fashion business had changed. My label had blossomed and I struck a deal with the American mass retailer Target, a 1400 plus chain based in Minneapolis and reaching across America coast to coast.

“Come up to the office,” said Bill. “You should meet with David and see if there is synergy.” The RZO organization – that would be the place where I would first encounter the guy who had influenced my whole career.

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by Daniel Robert Epstein

2006 was a illustrious year in music for many reasons, but certainly the release of Meat Loaf’’s Bat Out Of Hell III was one of them. Meat Loaf and his longtime Bat Out Of Hell collaborator, Jim Steinman, were able to heal their wounds long enough to finish their trilogy.

Meat Loaf has been a cult figure since the release of his first albums in the early 1970’s, but it was his role as Eddie the biker in The Rocky Horror Picture Show that cemented his legendary status. Meat Loaf has had only middling hits in-between his Bat Out Of Hell albums, but he is still creating music and still picking amazing roles in Fight Club and Dario Argento’’s most recent episode of Masters of Horror, Pelts.

Read our exclusive interview with Meat Loaf on SuicideGirls.com.

By Nicole Powers

Gwen Cooper traded her ho-hum career as a policewoman to work as a professional alien catcher at Torchwood, an organization which legend has it is “separate from the government, outside the police, and beyond the United Nations.” Eve Myles, the Welsh actress who plays Gwen, in turn, has traded her life in very legitimate theater for one in the warped and sexy science fiction universe.

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by Aaron Colter

If you weren’t aware, a group called LulzSec has been causing mischief around the web for the past month or so, most notably unveiling the insanely lax security policies of Sony’s user accounts and dumping the email logs of the Arizona Police Department, which, like the diplomatic cables uncovered by Wikileaks, weren’t shocking so much as they confirmed negative assumptions – that the American government does, in fact, work with countries around the world for the benefit of multination corporations, and that too many police officers are egomaniacs with a hatred of anyone other than clean-cut white men.

LulzSec hit the websites of governments around the world, including Italy, Spain, and England, dumped the names of right-wing secret police in Columbia, accessed parts of the FBI, the CIA, AOL, and AT&T, and posted the image below on the PBS website for airing a biased documentary about Wikileaks and accused soldier Bradley Manning.

Before disbanding last weekend, LulzSec partnered with the Anonymous campaign to target institutions that restrict freedom of speech on the Internet, like the U.S. Senate, which caused them to become a target for others in the hacker community, as well as the topic of debate in the news. The group, reportedly made up of only six core members, recently called it quits on their 50 day sail of laughs, some say due to increased scrutiny from law enforcement agencies around the world, and the revealed identities of some members, potentially stemming from IRC chat-room leaks.

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by Mur Lafferty

SuicdeGirls presents the fifteenth installment of our Fiction Friday sci-fi series, Marco and the Red Granny, which is brought to you by SG columnist Mighty Mur a.k.a. cyber commentator Mur Lafferty.

Marco and the Red Granny is set in a not-so-distant future where an alien species, the Li-Jun, has transformed the moon into the new artistic center of the universe, where the Sally Ride Lunar Base soon gains the nickname “Mollywood.” These aliens can do amazing things with art and the senses, allowing a painting, for example, to stimulate senses other than sight. However, humans remain suspicious of the Li-Jun’s emotion-imbued goods, so while their entertainment can be beamed back to earth, a trade embargo prevents anything from being physically imported to the planet.

In the previous installments, Marco, a writer whose career has long been in the doldrums, gets a surprise call from an agent he thought he no longer had informing him that he has received an offer from Mollywood for a much coveted Li-Jun patronage. Keen to catch up career-wise with his ex-GF Penelope, who’d unceremoniously dumped him after being recruited by the Li-Jun two years earlier, Marco hastily jumps on the next shuttle to the moon. Once aboard, he finds himself sitting next to a seemingly unassuming old lady called Heather, who turns out to be The Red Granny, a legend in Li-Jun’s reality show world for being a three-time champion of The Most Dangerous Game (which requires contestants to sign away the rights to their life).

After settling into his new accommodations at House Blue, Marco has a brief meeting with his new patron, a Li-Jun called Thirteen. It’s only then that Marco realizes he’s never been shown the terms of his employment, and a sense of unease sets in. That evening, Marco is taken on a trip to see The Red Granny in action in The Most Dangerous Game. After a bloody battle, the senior reality TV star is again victorious. The viciousness of the game leaves The Red Granny unconscious, and Marco shocked, disturbed, and in need of a stiff drink. Unfortunately stiff drinks are frowned upon by the Li-Jun, so Marco settles for an early night

The next day, Marco learns first hand about the process that enables the Li-Jun to put taste into paintings, music into pie, and stories into (nonalcoholic) beverages. Having had his deepest and most depraved memories dredged and thoroughly probed by the aliens so they can be monitored and recorded, Marco finally sees the terms of his contract. He ultimately accepts the Li-Jun’s too-good-to-refuse offer, and embarks on his new life at House Blue. However, though he’s been handed everything he ever wanted, somehow the reality of it is hollow.

Twenty thousand words into his new graphic novel, with his first deadline looming, Marco suffers from a severe case of writers block, and searches for inspiration in the bottom of a glass that’s actually had something worth drinking in it. To this end, he stumbles across an illicit drinking establishment on the seedier side of the moon which turns out to be run by a collective of folks who are strictly persona non grata as far as the Li-Jun are concerned – The Alcoholic’s Guild. There Marco has an uneasy encounter with a glass or three of gin, his ex-GF Penelope, who is now going by the name Knowledge, and her AG sponsor, Defect. After downing one too many drinks, Marco begins to get a sense of exactly how severe of an infraction the Li-Jun consider the consumption of alcohol to be.

While attempting to conceal his inebriation as he sneaks back into House Blue, Marco is caught red handed by his Li-Jun keeper Seven (it was probably his spontaneous vomiting that gave him away). The punishment is a second bout of mind raping/mapping. Afterwards, with his patronage in jeopardy, Heather gives him a ‘special’ necklace to calm his nerves and promises to plead his case with Thirteen.

The following morning, Heather takes Marco on a behind-the-scenes tour of the secret areas of House Blue where the Li-Jun infuse emotion into art. The Red Granny also reveals that everything created in Mollywood will soon be permitted to be legally imported back to earth. Duly inspired and placated, Marco is allowed to resume his patronage…However, that was before he got kidnapped twice in one day. The first time by Penelope/Knowledge and Defect of The Alcoholic’s Guild, who made him realize the Li-Jun had brainwashed him into compliance, and the second time by the Li-Jun, who were rather upset about the fact he’d just been fraternizing with said Alcoholic’s Guild – albeit initially unwillingly. Marco’s punishment for this infraction was laid out by his ‘friend’ Heather; He was to be a contestant in The Most Dangerous Game…

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by Daniel Robert Epstein

Stan Lee was recently named the 26th most influential American by Atlantic Monthly, but if it was up to me I would have put him quite a bit higher. Lee is, of course, best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and dozens more, though controversy has always swirled around how big his real contributions might have been. But first and foremost Lee has always been the consummate salesman, whether it was selling the latest weird Spider-Man villain to the readers or hosting the television show Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Lee’’s latest projects are totally without connection to Marvel Comics. His company, Purveyors of Wonders, has been producing original characters for straight to DVD movies. One of the best is Mosaic, an animated film starring the voice of Anna Paquin as Maggie Nelson a high school student whose father is an Interpol agent investigating a mysterious race that can change appearance at will. After Maggie is bathed in the power of one of her father’s discoveries, an ancient runestone, she gets all the powers of a chameleon. Maggie teams up with a member of that ancient race, codenamed Mosaic, to defeat the evil Mannequin who wants to take over the world.

Read our exclusive interview with Stan Lee on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

David Mamet is one of the greatest writers who ever lived. He’’s had success in every medium he’’s worked in from theater to film and in the past year in television with The Unit, which he co-created with Shawn Ryan.

The show has become a ratings success for CBS. But what people love the most about Mamet is his wit, his hilarious cynicism and his ability to teach. That teaching gene has been put on display with Mamet’s acting classes, his book On Directing Film and now his new book, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business.

Due to the nature of making studio films and mainstream television Mamet has been steeped in the business end of Hollywood for many years now. With Bambi vs. Godzilla he uses the classic 1960’s cartoon short as a metaphor for how Hollywood treats its denizens.

Read our exclusive interview with David Mamet on SuicideGirls.com.