How do you make marshmallows? (PICS)

My second attempt at making marshmallows has gone so swimmingly much better than my first that I felt words could not do the difference justice. Fortunately, I have a whole lot of photographic equipment I should be using to shoot rockstars and naked people. But there isn't a lot of budget for that sort of thing in the current economy. So here is my marshmallows visual aid. Both batches were made with roughly the same recipe.

This time, when I heated the sugar, I was very careful to mix it thoroughly. I also set the candy thermometer to sound the alarm at a lower temperature than I was aiming for, and I aimed for a temp approx seven degrees cooler than last time. Plus I heated the gelatin. The result has only been setting for a few hours, so it is not quite ready for me to melt down portions to make crispy rice treats. But I think it is definitely going to work well this time.

Full disclosure: The really gross-looking glop on the left tasted more like a fruit glace and caramel than marshmallows and it made the crispy rice treats kinda soggy. But it actually was pretty yummy too.

Because marshmallows are made with only the whites of eggs, I now feel compelled to make crème brulée with every batch. Crème brulée is surprisingly easy to make, especially as compared with marshmallows.

Have you ever seen a Zedonk?

Have you ever seen a Zedonk?

by Amelia G : September 23rd, 2010

Katherine Dorsett at CNN reported today that the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve, in Bumfuck Dahlonega, Georgia, now features a zedonk. Preserve founder C.W. Wathen says he keeps his donkeys with his zebras because donkeys are extremely calm and they help the zebras chill and not run through fences. Apparently Sarah the Donkey does a little more for the zebras than give them tea and sympathy. Zeke the Zebra is now a proud dad.



Apparently it is quite unusual for a male zebra and female donkey to breed. The preserve folks were concerned that Sarah’s pregnancy was going on a bit long. They were very happily surprised when the reason turned out to be that she was giving birth to a zedonk, half donkey and half zebra.

Apparently Pippy the Zedonk lies down poised to get back up like a zebra and makes sounds like a zebra, but she is a chill babe like her donkey mom. It is expected that Pippy could live for a couple decades but will probably be sterile. Although zedonks are sometimes deliberately bred, this would standardly be done with a donkey sire and zebra mare. A zebra sire and donkey mare is an even more unusual pairing, so what Pippy will be like is somewhat anybody’s guess.</p>

I lived in Georgia and never knew there was a place like Chestatee Wildlife Preserve. Maybe it wasn’t there . . .

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Rudy Rucker Posts 10th Issue of Free Flurb

Rudy Rucker Posts 10th Issue of Free Flurb

by Amelia G : September 22nd, 2010

If you like cyberpunk sf, you are probably familiar with author and general cool guy Rudy Rucker. What you might not know, or at least I didn’t until now, is that Rudy Rucker edits an online science fiction zine called Flurb. It is free to read and includes many top speculative fiction/science fiction talents.



I found Flurb via a link from author Annalee Newitz on Facebook. Her story in Flurb #10 is called The Gravity Fetishist and is eighteen kinds of awesome. First of all, just the idea that, in a future where humanity has colonized space, someone might fetishize something we earth-dwellers all take for granted, gravity, is tremendously hilarious and inspired. The story itself really captures the feeling of craving the forbidden, cultural aspects of sexuality, the way reality doesn’t necessarily live up to fantasy, and our sexual triggers don’t always match up perfectly to what happens or even what could happen. It is a really nice meld of hard sf and social science, with a dash of tasty pervery.

Other contributors to Flurb #10 include editor Rudy Rucker himself with a bit of consciously Burroughsian alternate history. Blue Blood contributor John Shirley offers up a tale of ultimate drug addict self-destruction. Author Jon Armstrong has another standout piece with a complex weaving of the mechanics of pop . . .

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Hollywood Gets a Social Makeover Hosted by Financial Times

This is why I am all awake and lively at 9am Pacific. There seem to be some technical difficulties, but the panel description sounds really cool and interesting, so I hope the Social Media Week folks can get it all streaming.

Hosted by the Financial Times, a global media partner of Social Media Week, this conversation at The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills will explore how studios and other global media companies are using digital and social media to advance their businesses and reach new audiences, seizing on opportunities and managing challenges posed by new platforms. 

Matthew Garrahan, Los Angeles Correspondent for the FT, will moderate the discussion, and panelists include:

• Tom Lesinski, President, Paramount Digital Entertainment
• Jake Zim, Vice President of Digital Marketing, 20th Century Fox
• Courtney Holt, President, MySpace Music
• Ross Levinsohn, Managing Partner, Fuse Capital

Boardwalk Empire (PICS)

Boardwalk Empire

by Amelia G : September 19th, 2010

I’ve been watching a lot of TCM lately. In particular, the gangster movies from the 1930’s really resonate with me. In a way, the world is such a different place now, and, in a way, so many of the issues are so very current. Those movies took on themes of people with good work ethics and limited opportunities, as well as issues of gender roles, personal responsibility, defining right versus wrong, and how a society can reabsorb men who have been to war and killed people for their country.

I believe we are in a depression now. My mother was an economist for the United States government for many years and, when I asked her what the difference between a depression and a recession is, she told me, without even having to think about it, that it depends on whether your party is in office or not.

I have another definition of the difference between a depression and a recession. They say porn is recession-proof. Everyone I know who does any business in the adult arena says revenues there are down. Way down.

So, in addition to TCM, I’ve also been watching the Boardwalk Empire previews and ubiquitous Los Angeles billboards for some time with great impatience. Everything about the show looked like it was going to be awesome. HBO got Martin “Goodfellas” Scorsese to do a long form cable drama about Prohibition in Atlantic City. Boardwalk Empire was apparently created by Sopranos writer/producer Terence Winter.



Boardwalk Empire stars Steve Buscemi as the Treasurer of Atlantic City when Prohibition goes into effect. The pilot kicks off with him addressing a temperance group and then telling his driver, a Princeton drop-out back from war, played by a fine-looking Michael “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Pitt, that the first rule of politics is to never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Looks like Michael K. Williams, who played Omar on The Wire, is going to be in this too.

I saw Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt act amazingly together before in the thought-provoking movie Delirious, about a good-looking homeless teen, a lonely paparazzi photographer, and a trapped teen pop diva. I think Delirious would have been a bigger film, if it had just had a name which was not so forgettable. I thought it was really good and I just had to look up what it was called. But I digress.

Boardwalk Empire so far is a ridiculously good story. I keep wondering about its historical accuracy and there are so many fascinating little tidbits, of the sort I’d usually go check if I saw them in a TCM movie, but I don’t want to spoil any suspense on a series I will definitely be watching all of. I just know to take it all with a grain of salt because of that opening disclaimer about the truth and a good story.

I had unattainably high hopes for this series and, so far, it has absolutely met them. If someone were to tailor-make a series perfect for my viewing pleasure, Boardwalk Empire has it all. It is intelligent, witty, tidily plotted, beautifully shot with sets designed with entertaining and inspired attention to detail, flawlessly acted and directed, and features characters ranging from iconoclastic criminals to flashy club girls to artists, all in great outfits, including the best in mobster chic. All this one is missing for my needs is a vampire.

Do you believe bad things happen via coincidence or the Devil?

Do you believe bad things happen via coincidence or the Devil?

by Amelia G : September 17th, 2010



If you’ve been paying attention to the pretty Flash designs floating around the site here, you probably know the Devil movie opens tonight. It is being marketed as being with M. Night Shyamalan’s touch. WGA credits him for the story, but lists a Brian Nelson as the screenwriter. Apparently, M. Night Shyamalan is producing a series of films he is writing at least the story on but not necessarily the screenplay and not directing. I expect this will allow him to be more prolific. The director, according to the press kit, is John Erick Dowdle, who also directed Quarantine. Oddly, some press lists Drew Dowdle as the co-director, but he appears to have produced the Devil movie.

At any rate, the theme of the movie is that there is no such thing as coincidence and the devil walks among us. I don’t really believe that, but I loved M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.

The promo for the Devil movie includes one of the best microsites I’ve seen in the marketing niche. It is . . .

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Homemade Candy with Skull Flair

Homemade Candy with Skull Flair

by Amelia G : September 17th, 2010

Carrie Carolin at Goth Shopaholic just went through the Sur La Table site and selected all the best Halloween cupcake accessories. I would not have even guess that Sur La Table would have spooky kitchenware, but they do.



So I’m learning how to make a health food version of Rice Krispies Treats this week. This means I’m learning how to make marshmallows from scratch. I always assumed that marshmallows were some kind of scientifically engineered modern food, but all those additives on the store bought ingredients list are basically preservatives. Traditional confectioners have made marshmallows for ages out of mostly just sugar and maybe some corn syrup, corn starch, and vanilla, plus maybe a couple egg whites if you want to get buckwild.

The key to what variety of candy you are going to create is how hot you get the sugar. Traditional confectioners have boiled sugar for a while, then spooned out a bit of boiling sugar water and dropped it in a bowl of cold water. They would then reach a hand in to the bowl of cold water to feel the current consistency of the recently boiling sugar. This was how they would tell when the sugar was hot enough. I assume traditional confectioners all burned off their fingerprints as well.

Another way to test how hot the sugar you are boiling has become is, ya . . .

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What do you think of cyberpanhandling or cyber-begging?

What do you think of cyberpanhandling or cyber-begging?

by Amelia G : September 16th, 2010

We’ve all seen people online begging for PayPal donations or cash in the mail or for people to buy some product from them . . . not because the product is good or because they are working for a charity, but just because they claim to need money. Some say they need money for medical care or to pay a debt or to make rent or because their boyfriend dumped them or to move or to buy new furniture or purchase dog food for their pricey purebred or get school books or whatever.

Sometimes people probably are having a bad time and such things help, but it strikes me that more often the cyberpanhandlers tend to be people living in high end neighborhoods, rolling in luxury cars, and just suffering from a combination of poor self-esteem and/or poor financial planning. It is like they are saying, “please show you love me with some money.”



I used to really feel for sad tales I saw on the internet, especially if I had met the people in person at some point, but time after time, I discovered that cyber-beggars were often better off than the people they panhandled from. I admit that, now, when I see someone posting about how their life is so hard that everyone who reads their Twitter feed should PayPal them a dollar, it pretty much makes blood spurt . . .

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Would you want to wear banana shoes?

Would you want to wear banana shoes?

by Amelia G : September 14th, 2010

The usually more loquacious Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing posted this image of a banana shoe earlier today under the title “Just look at this awesome banana shoe.” The article read, “Just look at it.”

The banana shoes are the creation of Israeli designer Kobi Levi. I’d like to tell you all that the years I lived in the Middle East somehow give me an extra insight into Israeli banana shoes, but I can’t say that they really do.

When I was little and first saw a cartoon of a man slipping on a banana peel, I didn’t get it. I asked my mother to explain it and didn’t totally accept her explanation. Her explanation was that banana peels can be slippery and some people think other people’s misfortunes are humorous. I believed the latter part about a lot of people being dicks, but I felt I had to gather empirical evidence about the whole slipping on banana peels thing. I tried to slip on a banana peel repeatedly, but it is apparently one of those things which simply can’t be achieved by someone who is trying to do it.

My mother was impressed by my application of the scientific method to banana peel slippage. I think she still believes I should be a scientist when I grow up. A proper scientist, not one of those soft social science scientists.



Kobi Levi also . . .

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Does your car need eyelashes?

Does your car need eyelashes?

by Amelia G : September 13th, 2010



I’m a big fan of flamboyantly gigantic eyelashes. They can be a pain to put on and take off, but they really complete a dramatic makeup look. I love photographing them and I like to wear them from time to time. A downside of the really good fake eyelashes is that they tend to be pricey. </p>

So I don’t know whether I am more disturbed that someone made false eyelashes for car headlights. By the fact that, even with the crystal strip add-on, the carlashes are less pricey than many of the people lashes I and many folks I know would wear. Or the fact that I think you could decorate a car really cute and ridiculous with . . .

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Water Beating on Pale Flesh (PICS)

I was really pleased at the way Forrest Black and I were photographically able to capture the precise splashes of water on skin with this series. Shooting this gave the bunch of us an awesome excuse reason to stay in the sort of hotel which has marble showers too. Whole series in Blue Blood VIP.

Market: All Access Pass Call for Submissions

I'm reading for a sequel to my anthology Backstage Passes: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Erotica from the Pages of Blue Blood. Backstage Passes features fiction from Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy A. Collins, Yon Von Faust, Amelia G, Sèphera Girón, Andrew Greenberg, Thomas S. Roche, William Spencer-Hale, John Shirley, Shariann Lewitt, Will Judy, Althea Morin, Cecilia Tan, and more. I'm hoping to get a similar mix of kickass emerging talent and established writers for the sequel.

Extended submission guidelines for writing for Blue Blood projects in general are available on the Blue Blood Books site. There is a submission form and submit email listed on the web site.

For this book in specific, music must play a central role in the story. Events could take place at a punk club or an outdoor festival, characters may be musicians, music may just really speak to a particular character, but it needs to be important. Science fiction, horror, fantasy, and similar elements are welcome. All Access Pass is a paying market. When submitting electronically, please make the subject of your email ALL ACCESS PASS SUBMISSION.

Final deadline for submissions to All Access Pass is January 5, 2011.

Are ray gun vibrators steampunk? (PICS)

Are ray gun vibrators steampunk?

by Amelia G : September 12th, 2010

Are ray gun vibrators steampunk? This is the sort of question I lie awake at night contemplating.

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction, which builds on the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Now H. G. Wells and Jules Verne were both geniuses and can be forgiven for imagining future technology as based on 19th century inventions and future values as growing out of a Victorian sensibility. They both came of age in the 1800’s, so they’d have a reason for this.

Personally I love the steampunk aesthetic. It’s, ya know, really really pretty. When I see all that broken or antique clockwork and gears, though, I admit I think Salvador Dali or William Faulkner. I think of the poetry of broken or past time, the ephemeral nature of humanity’s existence. I don’t think that I wish I were born in a time when American women could not vote and men were supposed to sexually overload at the sight of a table leg without a skirt on it.



Blue Blood readers will be familiar with the lovely Nicotine, who portrays Lady Clankington, as part of the tongue-in-cheek history of the little death ray sex toy rayguns line designed by “mad Dr. Visbaun”. Lady Clankington always wears steampunk couture garments from Brute Force Studios. The mad scientist behind . . .

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Steampunk Nicotine Lady Clankington (PICS)

I'm really happy Blue Blood is able to publish this special Erotic Fandom shoot by yours truly and Forrest Black. It stars Nicotine, making her fourth Blue Blood appearance, wearing couture from our long-time friends at Brute Force Studios, and showing off one of the new line of steampunk rayguns from Lady Clankington. Special thanks to The Death Knight for the kickass steampunk location. Whole series available in the Blue Blood VIP and well worth it, if I do say so myself. Watch for an interview with the lovely Nicotine coming up. Forrest Black also shot some video of Nicotine and the raygun's creator demonstrating proper product, uhm, placement. Check out the photos and you'll be able to tell where we took a break from shooting them and did the video part and then came back to the photography portion of the show. I think this is a really fabulous shoot and I'm really happy to get to share it with you all.

Ice Cube on My Block

Ice Cube on My Block

by Amelia G : September 4th, 2010

My block is generally bracketed by Russian (or possibly Armenian) gangsters in big black cars. They keep the neighborhood safe. Hollywood is probably pretty safe anyway. I occasionally hear gunshots at night, but never anything like an AK. Today, however, LAPD bookends my street instead.

Rapper Ice Cube has been set up to shoot a music video on my block since 7am this morning. There is at least one guy in a colorful three piece suit who must be suffering in the heat. There are a couple of big fine women in big fine eyelashes and small skin-tight dresses in purple and animal print. Although fewer than you’d maybe expect for a rap video set. But mostly there are a lot of people in muted T-shirts standing around. Today is scorching hot and the afternoon sun was really harsh overhead, so they may be doing a lot of waiting for the light to be right. Mostly the caterers appear to have what to do. One manager type guy is loudly telling two of the police officers hired for the shoot day about how Ice Cube gets death threats. The death threat talker is loud. Maybe to impress the big fine women. But he is suddenly silent when my crew walks past. Maybe he doesn’t know how loud he is or maybe he thinks I’m gothic and, like a bat, use sonar to hear and thus can only make out sounds in my physical proximity.

They did one shot which had an interesting set-up. They have a really beautiful big fine red convertible for the day. They had like four guys in the car, driving slowly up my street. A pair of guys jogged along beside the car on each side, each team of two holding a different reflector. I only noticed two cameras and they seemed to be getting this from the back, but I suspect it will make sense in the final video.

My balcony is pretty much a front row seat to the scene. I considered taking a few shots of the set-up. But then I thought about how many photographers have taken pictures of Forrest Black’s and my set-up, when we were shooting on location. I thought about how Forrest has literally been shown portfolios where someone is showing off having shot over Forrest’s arm. Not that I would, a zillion years, ever consider a snapshot portfolio work, but, upon reflection, I decided not to take any snapshots of the Ice Cube video shoot.



There is something surreal about this sort of thing and something terribly commonplace . . .

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Machete (PICS)

Machete

by Amelia G : September 3rd, 2010



There is a sort of school of modern directors who often collaborate and make movies within movies. In the Grindhouse outing by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez had a sort of faux trailer, within the movie, for a movie called Machete. Fans kept coming up to him and asking if this was a real movie he was working on. Caught up in the feedback loop of fan appreciation, Robert Rodriguez assured them that he was totally working on it.

Apparently, as is often the case with creative projects, he sort of was and sort of wasn’t. The writer/director/editor had cast Danny Trejo a number of times and feels he “he pops and has one of the most amazing faces in cinema history.” Danny Trejo has been in approximately a bazillion movies, but often in a more minor gangster/vampire/bad guy’s henchman sort of role.

Robert Rodridguez says he watched John Woo movies early on and they made him (a) want to be Asian and (b) wish there was something comparable in modern cinema with a Latin flavor. I don’t personally totally get that, as those movies make me fantasize about being badass, but not any particular ethnic flavor of badass. But that’s me.</p>

When shooting Desperado in a small Mexican town, Robert Rodriguez noted that the locals assumed Danny Trejo was the star of the movie, even though his part was actually a small role as a knife-throwing assassin . . .

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If a two-tailed dog promised you free beer and eternal life . . .

If a two-tailed dog promised you free beer and eternal life . . .

by Amelia G : September 3rd, 2010



The Two-Tailed Dog Party in Hungary is making some mighty attractive election promises:

Eternal life!
Free beer!
Tax cuts!
Money without work!
There’s a 93 percent chance we won’t steal.
You will be happy!
We will promise anything.

In terms of country infrastructure, the Two-Tailed Dog Party favors flooding the roads with beer on holidays, building a spaceport, erecting snow mountains for skiers on flat plains, roller coasters arching over major cities, and existential express buses to nowhere which don’t make any stops. Also more techno music in parliament and free Burn energy drinks.

No word on whether Burn is an official sponsor of the political guerrilla street art the TTDP is doing, but they should certainly consider it. I don’t think we get Burn in the US. Any European readers want to share what it is like?

It might not be fun to be living Hungarian politics. Gergely Kovacs, chairman of the Two-Tailed Dog Party, says, “We just elect these people to represent the gangsters and the rich. This kind of democracy is ridiculous.” I’m just really impressed by such an entertaining and viral way of getting a political message . . .

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The Last Exorcism in Social Media

The Last Exorcism in Social Media

by Amelia G : September 2nd, 2010

I really like Eli Roth as a personality. He has a certain wit and charm and unstoppable DIY willingness to just go for it and stick to it, which I really enjoy. I find him most interesting as a writer and have been following him on Twitter just to read his random thoughts in 140 character installments. As an actor, his parts in Inglorious Basterds were definitely some of the most enjoyable.

One of the things I like about Eli Roth is that he seems to be genuinely a DIY guy. He financed student films by working as a phone sex operator and got private investors to make his first film Cabin Fever. One of the thing Lionsgate probably likes best about him is that he makes movies, which cost less than two million dollars to produce and gross a gajillion dollars in box office. He makes movies people want to see. The Last Exorcism, produced by Eli Roth, opened — as you probably noted from the countdown clock and banners here — on August 27 last week, and it has already grossed over twenty million smackeroos.

But I digress. The fascinating tidbit of the week from Eli Roth’s Twitter is that Ashley Bell, who plays the possibly possessed Nell Sweetzer in The Last Exorcism, did all her creepy contortions without benefit of CGI. The images in the posters and the clips I’ve seen are really striking and I like Eli Roth’s take on the whole thing, which is essentially that CGI has its place, but sometimes less is more. And he is willing to express actual happiness with his accomplishments on the internet, even in the face of people being what I believe (from my vast education on the subject) the DSM IV characterizes as “jerks”.



I haven’t seen The Last Exorcism, so I’m going to quote Mike McPadden from my Facebook, “THE LAST EXORCISM is my favorite movie of 2010 (so far). PG-13 regardless, I loved it,” Mike McPadden enthused, adding, “The more I ponder THE LAST EXORCISM, the better it becomes. And I loved it immediately. Amidst the affable, thoroughly enjoyable schlock of EXPENDABLES, PIRANHA 3D and (I’m guessing) MACHETE, LAST EXORCISM is a genuine surprise of depth and power—with a socko final wallop right out of a 70s-era 4:30 Movie!”

Speaking of Pirhana 3D, Eli Roth has an acting part in that movie as a wet T-shirt host. Apparently, Joe Francis, of Girls Gone Wild infamy, is really peeved about Pirhana 3D. He says of the character obviously based on him and played by Jerry O’Connell, “I believe Mr. O’Connell may lose more than his penis (i.e., lots of money) if he and the Weinstein Co. choose to release this film and continue to falsely associate me with its questionable content,” Francis . . . I appreciate a good parody as much as the next guy, but to associate me with drugs and the filming of underage girls crosses a definite line.” Jerry O’Connell is probably best known for playing a super-powered teen on My Secret Identity and a time-space continuum traveling dude on Sliders. Joe Francis is probably best known for his legal woes regarding his alleged use of drugs and the alleged filming of underage girls. Also his alleged tax evasion and alleged sexual assaults. I’m digressing again, but I’m just saying Joe Francis should try reading some of his own interviews and not just Jerry O’Connell’s, to find out what he is associated with.

Mike McPadden and I are both veterans of the Desktop Publishing Revolution and zinesterdom. He did a zine called Happyland, under the name Selwyn Harris. He now writes for Mr. Skin and also posts occasionally missives on his McBeardo site. I have to recommend his August birthday entry, entitled Madonna Boots, about how he lost his virginity. I won’t give away the punchline summary, but the tale has . . .

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