“Back then there was this golden age of journalism.”
-Neil Strauss
Neil Strauss has a talent for honing in on the very essence of who a person is. It’s an attribute that has served him well as an interviewer for publications such as The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as a writer penning biographical books with the likes of Mötley Crüe (The Dirt) and Jenna Jameson (How To Make Love Like A Porn Star), and in his other life, as Style, the seduction guru and author of the pick-up bible, The Game.
Hello folks, and welcome back to another round of Things You Like That I Might Like Too. For those of you that haven’t played before, let me remind you that there are no winners and no prizes. This week’s challenge: Emerald City Comic Con!
There are a lot of comic book conventions in the United States, and if you didn’t already know, let me be the first to tell you – most of them suck. I understand the appeal of San Diego Comic Con, but if you’re willing to pay anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000 just to wait in line for two hours so that you can get inside to wait for three more hours just to see that thing that you like that you’re wearing the t-shirt of . . . you’re doing it wrong.
Our story begins with a poker game gone bad… a lifeless body on the floor, hand still clutching its cards… whacked on the head with a bass guitar. In the background, Mike Patton’s haunting film score crescendos over the radio waves as the other two poker players argue over what to do with the body. Incinerator? Garbage disposal? They haven’t a clue.
I first became aware of Dave Navarro’s penchant for cute things bearing the likeness of Sanrio’s Hello Kitty character while doing the SuicideGirls Radio show. We broadcast each Sunday out of Indie1031.com’s studios, which at the time also served as home for the wild living and hard rockin’ Jane’s Addiction and Camp Freddy guitarist’s Wednesday night Dark Matter show (which has since moved to Moheak.com’s Silverlake base). In the Indie studio, there was a shrine of sorts, where people left various Hello Kitty offerings to Dave.
It could be said that every day is Mardi Gras on SuicideGirls – and there’s no beads needed to see our beautiful breasts. However, if you’re looking to get in the carnival mood, you could do no better than to check out the steamy sights and sounds of LA’s own incredible 19-piece New Orleans-style orchestra and cabaret, Vaud and the Villains. Having been blown away by recent performances in the SuicideGirls Radio studio and at The Mint, we checked in with bandleader Vaud Overstreet to find out how he came to channel the sexy and sordid essence of the Big Easy.
When I was asked to write a weekly column for Suicide Girls, my immediate questions was, “About what?” Because, truly, I didn’t know what the fuck anyone reading this would want to hear from me.
“Anything,” they said.
Well, alright. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t mean How to Make and/or Buy Weapons Grade Narcotics: A Guide In Multiple Parts, which is what I wanted to write about. But court sucks, and you know it. So instead, I’m calling this “Things I Like That You Might Like Too.” It’s exactly what it says it is.
“It’s been made more like a work of art than it has a movie.”
-Simon Boswell
Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s bloody epic Santa Sangre, which was inspired by the story of Mexican serial killer Gregorio “Goyo” Cárdenas Hernández, has been praised as “a throwback to the golden age, to the days when filmmakers had bold individual visions,” and derided as “a massive clearance sale of leftover psychedelia.” It’s story and imagery has been dismissed as “a series of banal Freudianisms involving a circus family” and celebrated as “a wild kaleidoscope of images and outrages, a collision between Freud and Fellini.” But love it or hate it, you’ll never forget it, since with Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky firmly straddles the line where madness becomes genius.
