by Blogbot

Today on the new and improved SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Moxi Suicide will be joined in studio by the super talented and utterly gorgeous Kerli. The Estonian born and raised, and Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter/producer will be showcasing cuts off her new EP, Utopia.

Well before electronic dance music features graced the pages of mainstream magazines in 2012, the 25-year old fashion forward singer was riding a wave of popularity in the US with her #1 Billboard Dance Club hit, “Army Of Love” in late 2010 and early 2011. The visually rich video for the track, shot in her native country, has racked up over 3.5 million views so far on YouTube.

The song proved a fitting bridge for a truly visionary presence on the trendsetting side of pop between Kerli’s 2008 debut album for Island Def Jam, Love Is Dead (which spawned the hit “Walking On Air”) and her new set for the label, due for release March 19. The much anticipated Island Records offering showcases Kerli’s gift for sincere songwriting, which fans of Demi Lovato know well (the artist, born Kerli Kõiv, co-wrote Lovato’s platinum-selling “Skyscraper,” which won an MTV VMA in September of 2012 for ‘Best Video With A Message’).

“The only goal I have in life is to make other people happy so I really wanted to make an album that captured ‘love energy,’” the songwriter and performing artist says of her forthcoming full-length. “Since my last record I’ve gone through such a huge transition spiritually,” noting she “got out” a lot of the “depressing” lyrical themes off her chest via her debut American release. “I just want to bring joy and positivity into the world.”

Much of the forthcoming Utopia EP draws inspiration from both pop and dance genres, and was recorded with up and coming Swedish production duo SeventyEight, whom Kerli swoons are her “songwriting soul mates.”

“We just clicked,” she said of the recording sessions, which took places throughout 2012 both in Los Angeles (Westlake Studios) and in Stockholm. “They’re perfectionists and I’ve never felt more comfortable [writing],” the onetime Stockholm resident said, adding that collectively they conjured “magic” for the new release.

“When we were in the studio together the energy was full of electricity….we were hugging and jumping around and always had our friends partying and bringing energy to the studio.”

For more visit Kerli’s website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.

You can now listen – and watch – the world’s leading naked radio show live on Thursday nights from 6 til 8 PM at our new state-of-the-art all digital home: TradioV.com/LA.

You’ll also be able to listen to our podcasts via Stitcher – download the app now!

If you have questions for the SG Radio crew or our guests, you can call in during the live broadcast at: 1-855-TRV-inLA (1-855-878-4652)

For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

**UPDATE**

If you missed the live broadcast our February 28th show featuring Kerli is now available on podcast via Stitcher:

Alternatively, you can view it via the TradioV player:

Video streaming by Ustream

by Zach Roberts

Eros Hoagland is a photojournalist. His portfolio includes Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador, Haiti, Rio and Juarez. He’s seen the shit that you don’t want to – but need to and his memories are tagged NSFW.

Basically if it’s dangerous and there’s things to photograph, he’ll be there sooner or later. He’ll tell you he’s not an action photographer. It’s more about the aftermath for him. He’s been shot at however, well, he’ll say something to the extent that guns have been fired around him.

When I caught up with him via cell phone he was walking the streets of Tijuana, about 10 minutes into the conversation he starts laughing saying he just spotted a tattooed and pierced ‘SuicideGirl.’

I’ve seen his work in magazines and on news sites but as with most photographers, the photos don’t ever get attached to a name and a face – just a listing of the agency, maybe a last name. So when I heard that HBO was doing a series on photojournalists called Witness, in part on a guy named Eros Hoagland, I did a quick image search and re-discovered his work.

It’s not what you’d think; colors are drained, sometimes down to black and white. He shoots a lot with an iPhone. “I could give a shit about what other people think about what cameras I use.” He tells me cell phone shots allow him to get more real moments. “People don’t even know… their body language is completely different. The iPhone erases all of that.”

I’m not sure if Apple would want to use this as an endorsement. Hipstamatic might want too though. He says there’s “something very interesting about the way it compresses layers.” Indeed, he’s convinced me to go back to the app and drop Instagram.

Eros is not your traditional combat photographer, he’s more of a combat photo-essayist. He lays out a scene…there’s abstract shots, people’s faces are often obscured. He tells a story…”I’m not there to tell you what’s happening, I’m there to show you what I saw, what’s happening to me…you can come upon your own conclusion.”

One of the big dangers photographing in a place like Juarez – outside of direct violence – is the effect that you might have on the people after their photo is taken. Someone’s photograph showing up in a paper might endanger that person’s life, so Eros works abound that, shooting them in shadows, or with a slight blur. He’ll also do this for stylistic reasons, “[It] helps me convey a sense of mystery,” he explains. “I like people to look at pictures and say hmmm what’s going on here.” And they do. His photos convey the feel of the moment better than even video might (which he does as well).

His work from the Mexican border is coming together as a book called Reckoning at the Frontier. Some of the photos you see here will be in it. Reckoning at the Frontier will be more than just a portfolio book, he’s brought on a writer, Myle Estey (CNN, Global Post, VICE), who’s worked extensively in the borderlands to add essays and context to the photos.

Before we lost connection on our cells (me in Alaska, Eros in Tijuana) he said that he’d love to photograph SuicideGirls in his journalistic style, so if you’re in the San Diego area hit him up!

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by Nicole Powers

“I’m not cynical about clicktivism.”
– Cory Doctorow

I was recently fortunate enough to spend some quality time with Cory Doctorow discussing topics related to the plot of Homeland, the thrilling follow up to his contemporary classic novel Little Brother (which serves as a primer on civil rights in the digital age). Our conversation spanned 90 minutes and ran into excess of 17,000 words, so the need for brevity dictated that I had to edit our interview heavily. However, Doctorow has an avid following, and rightly so. Hence I figured those of you that enjoyed the first installment of our interview might appreciate this second bite at the apple.

In the first part, we discussed Burning Man, which is where the action in Homeland kicks off, and the student debt bubble, which serves as a backdrop to the book. In part two, our conversation delves further into the post-Occupy politics of Homeland. In Doctorow’s book, our hacktivist hero Marcus Yallow, having been forced out of the education system due to financial pressures, gains a position as a tech guru for an independent political candidate. Our discussion therefore naturally turns to the limitations of two party systems, the potential social media has to transform the political landscape, the pros and cons of clicktivism, and the perils of online activism, which is especially poignant given that Aaron Swartz contributed an afterward to the book.

Read part two of my interview with Cory Doctorow on SuicideGirls.com/.

Cory will be embarking on a multi-city US book tour starting on Tuesday, February 5th, which also happens to be the release date for Homeland. See below for a full list of dates:

Cory Doctorow – 2013 Homeland Book Tour
Tuesday, February 05 – Seattle Public Library Central Branch, Seattle, WA
Wednesday, February 06 – Powell’s Books, Beaverton, OR
Thursday, February 07 – Booksmith, San Francisco, CA
Friday, February 08 – Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA
Saturday, February 09 – The Leonardo, Salt Lake City, UT
Sunday, February 10 – Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
Tuesday, February 12 – Times Square Marriott Marquis, New York, NY
Thursday, February 14 – Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, OH
Friday, February 15 – Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL
Saturday, February 16 – Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC
Sunday, February 17 – Dekalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA
Monday, February 18 – Square Books, Oxford, MS
Tuesday, February 19 – Booksellers at Laurelwood, Memphis, TN
Wednesday, February 20 – Octavia Books, New Orleans, LA
Thursday, February 21 – Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
Friday, February 22 – Book People, Austin, TX
Saturday, February 23 – Crowne Plaza Hotel, Nashua, NH
Saturday, February 23 – RiverRun Bookstore, Portsmouth, NH
Sunday, February 24 – Gibson’s Bookstore, Concord, NH
Monday, February 25 – Busboys and Poets, Washington DC
Tuesday, February 26 – Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA
Wednesday, February 27 – South Broadway Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM

Full details can be found here.

by Tita Suicide

Fans from all over British Columbia headed to the Vancouver Convention Centre last weekend to heat things up at the city’s adult-only event. From lascivious lingerie, to bawdy toys and sexy seminars, the taboo show had something for everyone – including the Vancouver SuicideGirls!

Aadie (@aadielee), Ceres (@CeresSuicide), Cruella (@CruellaSuicide), Glitch, Harajuku (@HARAJUKUSUICIDE), Jacksons, Peatrie (@PeatrieSuicide), Parker, Rydell, and Tita (@Cupcakedujour) visited with friends and fans at booth 923, and blew up the internet with their tweets, posts, and texts using the official hashtag #SGCON2013

“Who’s excited for the Vancouver ‪#tabooshow tonight!? ‪#SGCON2013” – @CeresSuicide

“Cannot wait to join the ladies of ‪@SuicideGirls at ‪#taboosexshow this Saturday and Sunday! ‪#SGCON2013” – @PeatrieSuicide

The booth carried all of the site’s newest apparel, including the super cute booty shorts and “Fill In The Blank” tanks. The updated attire was received with the kind of enthusiasm that only a sex show can bring, as many patrons promptly changed into their SG swag right where they were standing! The girls encouraged patrons to snap photos of their new gear, and took some of their own too!

Saturday evening was capped off with a special SuicideGirls after party at Library Square, where the models, members and fellow convention attendees danced until the bar closed down.

“It was like a pub, meets aerobics, meets the SuicideGirls in there” – @Ave_Dogg

By Sunday the stories rolling into the booth were filled with fun, and sexy accounts of shopping, partying, and in at least one case – piercing.

“Hey Tita, thanks heaps for the tickets last night, woke up with a lot less cash, my nipple pierced and a bag full of goodies! X” – @ivoryboone

Safe to say the event was a big success, filled with experiences, that will be enjoyed for some time 😉

by Alex Dueben

“John Tallow is, basically, anyone who’s lost enthusiasm for their work. Anyone who was doing great right up until they realised it didn’t matter. Anyone who let themselves get disengaged from the world and then discovered they liked it better that way.”
– Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis is a name familiar to comics readers because of the many great series he’s written over the past two decades including Transmetropolitan, Planetary, The Authority, Nextwave, Global Frequency, Fell and FreakAngels. The graphic novel Red, which he wrote, was adapted into a 2010 movie starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. The film’s sequel, Red 2, will be released this August.

He’s also written multiple videogames including Dead Space. Ellis’ first novel, Crooked Little Vein, was released in 2007. He’s also written extensively about futurism, design and other topics for Reuters, here at SuicideGirls and currently for Vice.

Ellis’ new novel is Gun Machine, thriller set in New York City about a policeman who has to hunt a serial killer. Using that armature, Ellis uses the novel to comment on the nature of police work, explore the history of New York City, the meaning of wampum and more. We spoke with Ellis over e-mail about the book, the future of the webseries Wastelanders, which he’s writing with Joss Whedon, and whether he’s abandoned comics.

Read our interview with Warren Ellis on SuicideGirls.com.

by Nicole Powers

“Scholarship is inherently not a market activity.”
– Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow has made me wait almost a year to read Homeland, the much-anticipated sequel to Little Brother, his opus on civil rights and protest in the digital age. With not one but two Doctorow novels, Pirate Cinema and Rapture of the Nerds (which was co-authored with Charles Stross), already on the release schedule for 2012, Homeland has had to loiter in the wings for a 2013 publication date. But the wait has been well worth it. Homeland is a beyond worthy successor to Little Brother.

The highly prophetic novel, which was first published in 2007, is now regarded as a contemporary classic. As such, Little Brother is required reading in many of our more progressive schools, and has even been turned into a “must see” stage play –– hence Homeland has quite a legacy to live up to.

When I last sat down with Doctorow –– for an interview specifically about Little Brother –– on January 4th, 2012, Obama had just signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 into law. With the stroke of our President’s pen, yet another of the central themes of Little Brother –– unlimited military detention without trial –– had become fact rather than fiction.

In Homeland (which Doctorow had finished writing a few days prior to our first meeting), we return to the Little Brother universe a year and a half after the last novel left off. In the intervening months, austerity has choked the life and soul out of America, and our hacktivist hero Marcus Yallow has quit his studies, having been forced out of university by financial pressures and burgeoning student debt.

The action kicks off at Burning Man, where Marcus has an unexpected encounter with his sometime ally Masha, and their nemesis Carrie Johnstone. Masha, who is on the run from just about every law enforcement agency you can name (and a few that you can’t), hands Marcus an insurance policy in the form of a key to an encrypted torrent file which contains a treasure drove of highly sensitive data. Her subsequent disappearance prompts Marcus to set up a WikiLeaks-like site, an endeavor which is made all the more complicated by conflicts of interests that arise from his new job as a tech guru for an independent political candidate.

Meanwhile Johnstone has given up her position in the military for a lucrative job in the private sector with a Halliburton type entity that has tentacles embedded in the government, military, and the increasingly lucrative (and corrupt) student loan market. It’s therefore no surprise that Johnstone and her corporation, Zyz, are the subject of much of Masha’s leaked data, and a cat & mouse game ensues involving lawful interception, rootkits, and drones. It’s not all doom and gloom though, and at one point during the breakneck-paced plot, Marcus (and Doctorow vicariously through him) gets to sit down and have a Mini Dungeon adventure with Electronic Frontier Foundation founders John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore and Mitch Kapor, with uber geek Wil Wheaton acting as Dungeon Master.

Having read an advance copy of Homeland, I met up with Doctorow at his North London workspace to question him about it. As I make myself comfortable on his couch and set up my digital recorder on the coffee table next to his well-thumbed copy of the RAND Corporation’s 1955 book A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, the Canadian-born writer and Boing Boing editor does something quintessentially English by offering me a cup of tea. Normally this would be more than acceptable, but having been tempted by the delights of cold-brew coffee –– Marcus’ hi-octane beverage of choice which fuels much of Homeland –– I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that Doctorow didn’t have a batch on the go…

Read our interview with Cory Doctorow on SuicideGirls.com.

by Sandor Stern

Dear Republican Friends,

Regarding your stance on gun control…

On December 14th, 20 schoolchildren and 6 adults were massacred by gunfire at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. The following day, the Los Angeles Times front page headline read: “Evil Visited This Community.” Really? Evil? Have we come so far in the 21st Century that our response to a horrendous act by a mentally unbalanced man is couched in the terms of the 17th Century? Are we still responding to human initiated barbarity with labels like “evil” or perhaps “witch”? Does the impulsive action of one demented soul approach the level of planned and organized mass killings that rightly bear the description of evil. To label the actions of this man as evil is to suggest a fateful biblical connotation allowing us to throw up our hands in despair and defeat.

Lets be real. This act was not biblical. It was not evil. Even though human perpetrated, it was a natural disaster like any other natural disaster –– hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunami’s, tornados –– the list is small but the results are devastating. Until we approach mass killings as natural disasters we will continue to do nothing about them but bury our dead and chew up paper and airtime in a repetitive gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth. We cannot prevent natural disasters but we can reduce their fatality rate. Earthquakes kill less people in communities that institute proper building codes. That’s the reason less people die and fewer buildings are destroyed in Los Angeles as compared to Mexico or China. New Orleans would have suffered quantitatively less damage from flooding had there been the foresight and the will to strengthen their levees. Hurricane Sandy is a prime example of foresight and will. The City of Long Beach, NY suffered enormous property damage while the beach cities on either side faired much better. Why? Because in 2006 all beach cities were offered the opportunity to have the Army Corp Of Engineers build protective sand dune barriers at the cost to each city of 10%, while the government paid the additional 90%. Beach cities on either side of Long Beach said yes. The Long Beach City Council voted 5-0 against it.

As for the catastrophe of mass killings, though we will never prevent them, we can through foresight and will reduce the number of victims. In the Los Angeles Times on the same day as the headline quoted above, another article appeared. At an elementary school in China, a man attacked and slashed 22 children. Slashed –– he had no gun. Of the children attacked, four were hospitalized with serious wounds. None were killed. This was the first such attack in a year. This is a country with four times our population. Newtown was the seventh mass killing in the USA this year. Since 1982 there have been 61 mass killings in this country. The weapons used totaled 139 firearms. And this is only the tally for mass killings. Every year more than thirty thousand people die in the US from gunshot wounds. Eight thousand are homicide deaths. Sixteen thousand are suicides and another thousand are accidental deaths. The remainder of deaths are police related. If we have the foresight and will to reduce our death toll it is obvious that firearms are the key.

This is not about illegal weapons. Of the weapons used in mass killings since 1982, more than three quarters were legally purchased. This is not about the interpretation or misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment –- even though it begins with the words “a well regulated militia” and makes one muse on the militia status of the vast majority of gun owners. This is about the type of weapon allowed in the hands of any citizen. The victims in Newtown were shot multiple times. The killer used a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle that can hold up to thirty rounds. So what hunter needs a rifle that fires thirty rounds? What homeowner needs thirty rounds of rapid fire to protect his property from a robber? This is madness, folks, and it is a madness on an organized level. The NRA and its lobbying and bullying must bear the brunt of this lack of foresight and planning. I say to any of you who will not support gun control laws that you are enablers of mass murder. Think about that when you cry over those innocent lives lost last Friday. Perhaps it’s not too late to find your conscience.

Your friend,

Sandy

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