I'm back from Vegas! Szandora rocks!

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Rock Photography

Just came across a site where people were talking about how some of Forrest's and my photos of Gen from the Genitorturers on BlueBlood.net at http://www.blueblood.net/bb_97.html were some of the best they had ever seen done of her. We originally were shooting them partly for magazine cover, only a certain company with the initials HT was cranky about it and didn't want to credit who the cover hottie was on the cover. It didn't help that the magazine's designer photoshopped Jesus suffering on a cross in the background of our photo. It also didn't help that the publisher sent the cover to said christian company for approval at Eastertime.

Over the years, I've shot members of bigger bands (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Korn, Manson, etc.) but Blue Blood was the first US magazine to put The Genitorturers on the cover. And we had seen them a lot over the years and I liked them as people and I liked their band and I liked their shows. So I felt invested in that relationship and that shoot. Not that Gen was horrible or anything, but I really went to bat for her and it ended up being a real problem that I insisted she be properly credited with our photo. She was pretty upset at the time and I promised her that her photo would not appear without her name and her band's name. Most photographers would have just let the magazine do whatever it wanted and later said they had no control over what the magazine did, no matter what they promised. My word means something though. The photos from that shoot have only appeared where we could credit her, so I kept my word, but it took a lot out of me. If someone went to bat for me like that, I would probably send them a fruit basket or a rare Blue Blood back issue or something.

The whole thing was kind of a nail in the coffin of doing rock photography for me. I was initially thinking of doing another one of the Blue Blood girls for the cover of this particular publication, but, when I saw Gen was coming through LA, I thought it would be fun to shoot her again and get her on the cover instead. Forrest and I had already shot Szandora, Yolanda, Batty, and Fetus de Milo for the cover of this mag. Yes, they photoshopped out Yolanda and Fetus' facial piercings to please HT, but shooting those covers was a lot more fun.

Seeing people I don't know on the net getting excited about the shots Forrest and I did of Gen made me think about some of what I like creatively about rock photography. Mostly we enjoy shooting people with intense personalities and the rock world has a lot of those.

I'm feeling pretty positive these days. I like that I have cut down on some things to reduce drama, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, just because there are people who would like to make cool things a pain.

Should I go back to doing more rock photography?

Wow, small world

Someone on the Blue Blood boards just private messaged me a link to a photographer's site so I could check out a very young (very hot) pic of someone else who posts there. The photographer whose site it is was very accomplished and shot for tons of rock mags in the heyday of the Sunset Strip. So I click around and, fuck a duck, I see that she shot a calendar of the hottest guys in the rock scene in Los Angeles, according to a panel of scene chicks.

One of the months was totally the first guy I picked up in Los Angeles. I failed to get naked with him when we hung out because his friends turned me off and then I left his info in a friend's car and the friend's car got impounded and I never did talk to him again. He got me to eat Fatburger with stuff on it, even though I normally eat my cheeseburgers plain and he wore an inscribed bracelet from a girl he loved back home. His hair was whiter when I met him than in the photo and I thought he was the hottest guy I met in LA. I would have thought of a cure for cancer, but I remembered these details about a guy I saw twice instead. How bizarre.

Relaunching BlueBlood.net has really pulled a lot of blasts from the past out for me. Both people I've gotten back in touch with and past lives I've been reminded of.

I was going to do a post about how the dicks mailbombing us managed to annihilate most of my email from 2003 and 2004 today. And about the headaches adding more servers to our hosting to handle all the new visitors and more active return visitors on our sites. And the crazy guy who keeps yelling in the street outside where I live. And how I threw my neck out again twisting around in a nightmare while trying to stay asleep during his screaming.

But really, all that was just washed away. I love that, although the new BlueBlood.net has been bringing up a lot of old wounds, it is also bringing to the front of my mind all the reasons that I got into doing what I do. How I loved the pageantry and the individuality and the passion and the intensity. I've been thinking that I am disenchanted because overly dramatic pixels on the internet claim the same names as subcultures I have passed through, but really I just need to create a place online for the people who care about the things I care about. The rest really doesn't matter much.

I will not abandon my community because of a few interlopers who want to call themselves by the same names as things much greater than they are. I took the path less travelled on purpose. I fought to have a life less ordinary.

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Passion Fruit Mousse

I'm going to go get gourmet pastry.

I Feel Yucky


Nothing is particularly wrong. I'm really pleased with the way my creative energies are being directed. Excited about the Fall. Loving the Blue Blood boards. Eaten yummy food recently. Yeah, my ankle is still jacked up and, along with some other health thangs, that is impeding my ability to excersize. But picking up heavy things and putting them down again is hardly my reason for being. Tried to watch comic Ron White on TiVo, but he just wasn't funny enough. Partly he was reusing material that was funny the first time, but lost something in repetition. Having hot and cold flashes and should probably go to the doctor again, but if it hasn't been fixed with the first gajillion dollars in medical bills, not sure the next time will be the charm. Probably partly just this weird murderous PMS I seem to have acquired, but I'm sick of it. Sick of being under the weather when I've got work to do. Maybe the Blue Blood relaunch is part of where I'm feeling bad. It is going really well, but it is a little like picking scabs off a wound I thought the scars were long-healed on. Hmmm, fever seems to be subsiding. Maybe I will eat some leftover BBQ and try TiVo again.

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Comic Con 2004

So I'm recovered enough from Comic Con to write about it on BlueBlood.net. My hotel was fucking awesome.

I got to share a few buckets of shrimp with Forrest and got to commando photograph him being "sassed" by our waitress.

I got to run into my old housemate Colin. Who is fucking responsible for me reading comics in the first place.

And Coredumper showed me a good time.

And I got to have a three-way with Forrest and Steve.

The convention itself was a lot like a big store which charges admission. The Sam's Club of comics, if you will. But I had a blast. If you wish to read all about it in detail, just click.

Yay I Got the New Marquis In!

Yay, I got the new Marquis in finally. It took weeks from when they sent me mags for them to come in. Local LA folks, I'll give you yours in person. Out of town people, please send me your current mailing address here. I don't like to send $20 magazines to unconfirmed addresses. Thanks.

I'm especially pleased with the Jonno, Szandora, and Genesis LaVey stuff in this edition. It is always nice to be able to do coverage on the people who are extra good to me and really deserve it.














Wow, this means Forrest Black and I have had many pages of our work published in all but one issue of Marquis over the last three plus years. And we are some of the only American photographers to have shot a cover for them. I think the only others are Steve Diet Goedde and Sean McCall who shoots for the SpookyCash sites Space Girls and Vampire Sex. Whoo-hoo!

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A Lot of People Sure Have Had Problems with Pay Pal Lately


So apparently a certain competitive site reported my PayPal account even though I was not using it to sell anything adult.
PayPal just told me that they decided to close my account, even though I was not in violation, because someone could "miscontrue" my intentions and think that perhaps I would sell something adult. Even though my TOS clearly state that I comply with PayPal TOS and do not accept PayPal for adult advertisements.
I don't really care about Pay Pal for accepting payments. Heck I lost thousands of dollars when they closed my business account. I accept Visa and MasterCard and pay by check and even Far East cards without them. But it is making me crazy having my personal account shut down because a lot of other people accept payment through PayPal.
Which services do other people like to get payments with?

Home


I'm home now. Will write about comics for BlueBlood.net shortly. I appear to have bitten off a lot of work. Was kind of less productive than I wanted to be today, but I'm really happy about the way things are coming together. Surreally, I unexpectedly ran into the person who first got me into comics at coredumper's event in SD. I took many funny pictures. My hotel rocked, but I didn't take any pictures of naked girls in it. Did get to see fireworks from the balcony. TiVo didn't catch much of interest in my absence. I couldn't believe my box of the new Marquis still had not shown up when I got back. I am getting a bunch of new servers for my sites. Not sure how many yet, but more than I have now. Servers sure do add up after a while. But better too much than not enough I think. Rock and roll. I bought some really yummy cold cuts. I think I am going to eat some and then maybe go to sleep after reading something I bought at the convention or perhaps the new Carl Hiassen novel.

Hey, check it out!


While some people were playing political games, Forrest and I were being productive. [takes moment to both in- and exhale] Okay, okay . . . RTB threw a party for the BlueBlood.net relaunch and the feature is now posted at http://www.blueblood.net/bb_120.html. Thanks, Jenn, Dave, and Jeremy!


TONS more hot deathrock photography at http://www.blueblood.net/bb_120.html!

Fetish Gossip

Note to morons: fetishgossip.com is not my site. I have never even posted so much as a comment on it. I just now used the site's contact form to see if they collect IPs of people who post in their sidebar because I'd like to know what fucking idiot posted that I am a part of that site.
I was on that site for months before Ugly Shyla showed it to me.
I've been known to go out of my way to shoot heavy girls.
My photography and/or writing has appeared in Marquis, Skin Two, Secret, Taboo, Fetish, Extreme Fetish, Women in Power, Gothic Beauty, and of course Blue Blood, but I don't really see my work as fundamentally fetish, so it would be silly for me to build a site based on that scene. There is only one person in the fetish scene I really dislike and I think a site where I slagged the same slag on a weekly basis would get awfully dull. I'm kind of proud of publishing so many interesting sites, so I'd feel silly doing one on all one topic all the time. I would also find it uninteresting. Believe me, fetishgossip.com would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more boring and repetitive if it were my site.
It is true that I like Kelly and I will stand up and say it in public. Does anyone really think I don't have what it takes to say who I don't like in public? I like to focus on the positive, but I am out of patience, so I'd recommend that certain people not push me. Hell, you do not even want to motivate me to post comments on fetishgossip.com. I'm happy to focus on the positive, but I do know the truth and I'll just keep linking that site if I get mentioned on it in any form. If you don't like that site, leave my name far from it, because I will talk about it when I am mentioned. I'm not afraid to sign my name to the truth and my lawyer is better than yours. And mine doesn't have to worry about being asked about their preferences in receiving enemas from clients in open court.
Leave me the fuck out of it because I would rather pay attention to good things and what I'm working on. And you won't like my green ass if you make me really angry. (Dork points if you get the reference, but I'm in that mode this week.)
If there are any fetish scenesters who would like to know my opinion of them, just drop me an email or post a note on BlueBlood.net inquiring. The people complaining loudest about that fetishgossip.com site are the two-faced scum who think they have a monopoly on talking trash anonymously. I'm willing to stand by what I have to say. I am way too productive to spend a week insulting any one person, but I'll be glad to take the time out to post a few sentences of the good, the bad, and the ugly, upon request. I've shot more than two thousand people. But I don't think I need all my fingers to count the number of people I've shot that I don't feel positive about.
You want my opinion, all you have to do is ask for it. I'll be happy to sign my name.
For that matter, if you want Forrest Black's opinion of you, I bet he would provide it upon request as well.
Now, if you all will excuse me, I have actual work to do.
/end rant

Yay!

I have Chinese food delivery. Cashew chicken and salt and pepper shrimp with head on. Smells amazing and I'm about to eat some. It rules to be me!

Oh for fuck's sake... 

Okay, so when I posted the link to fetishgossip.com, someone friended me and showed me some evidence that she (don't know her but am pretty sure she is female) felt showed Kelly owns fetishgossip.com. She felt that IP tracking was 100% proof. As an internet professional, I know IPs can be spoofed. I felt the evidence was inconclusive. But it is irrelevant anyway. The site is kind of funny but hardly worth building a lifestyle around. I don't have any new fetish scene drama in my life and I like that just fine. No desire to get involved.
Anyway, I was going down my friends list and saw a post about fetishgossip.com made by vivavanstory and so I trundled over to the site to see what recent updates had been. I noticed a post there referring to these pictures and this livejournal post.
So I posted the following in response to this person who had contacted me first:
Was just going over my friends list and your entry reminded me to take a look at Fetish Gossip and I noticed your post referring to my diner snapshots.
Forrest Black made a joke to me that the reason people think Fetish Gossip is Kelly's site is because they looked around the scene and were like "now who has a spine . . ." I'm not saying I agree with everything Kelly thinks or vice-versa, but I do respect his spine. S.P.I.N.E. is not a secret organization or a nonsecret one for that matter.
It was a joke I posted for Forrest's amusement because he was ribbing me about posting pix of the four of us in a diner. The general theme being that people would over-interpret snapshots of four people eating burgers.
 
. . . and I discovered that they had taken me back off of their friends list, after they had contacted me first, so that I could not actually reply. The reason sites like this Fetish Gossip one get popular is because of breakdowns in communication. A perfect stranger contacts me and wants to have a dialog about something. I am open to her. I listen to what she has to say. And then find that I can not respond. What is wrong with people?

Peer Pressure

Hey, no one I respect ever got addicted . . .

Evelyne got me to join Friendster a while back. Never really used it though. Masuimi recently got me to join My Space. Been revisiting the whole sort of friend network concept on various sites. Most of them just don't have enough context somehow. Also, Evelyne is a musician and I added a couple of people on the various networks who I actually know who are musicians and now every band in the friend network universe is asking me to add them. Seems sort of spammy, but they have to promote somehow.

I want a better internet time-utilizer.

Twitchy Eyeball

Why is my right eye twitching so badly again lately? It had almost completely stopped for a while. I have some writing I need to do which is kind of overdue in my personal schedule for myself, but the twitching is driving me crazy. Hard to catch up on email or anything much longer than a post on BlueBlood.net. I'm really pleased with the diversity and intelligence of the people posting in the Blue Blood Community.

I love my South Park cartoon of myself with the twitching eye.

I think I am going to try to address some of this health junk with diet again. No complex carbs, minimal sugars, minimal dairy, no caffeine, no alcohol, more veggies, more protein, all that fun stuff.

Went to sort of two dinners tonight. Someone I know was doing a sort of debut for her new chef and then we had another dinner to go to as well. Yum yum.

Chatted on ICQ for a while. That was nice, but my bestest ICQ buddy moved to New York for the month and our schedules never match up lately.

Got some really cool press for various projects this month. I found an awesome new law firm. I've actually left the house and had fun with a bunch of different social circles lately. The new Marquis is out in English now, but I haven't seen it. I think it only shipped like Monday, though, so that makes sense. I have a bunch of things to be actually pretty thrilled about, but I'm feeling kinda down at the moment. I'm feeling sad partly about health probs and partly about the ways that the internet has changed human interaction for the worse. There are a bunch of ways the internet has greatly improved my world, but I can't help feeling like somehow it makes things more convenient for lazy poisonous people. I look down my friends list and it seems like all of the best people I know are having trouble connecting with enough of the people on their wavelength to not get kinda screwed.

I think I've got a rant in me about how everyone is in business on the internet, but they are in minor under-the-radar biz and way too few people are even trying to connect on human terms.

But I think I'll save that for later. I've got four contracts to read over. A bunch of banner stuff to work on. Site updates to do. Contributors to calculate payments for. And a magazine deadline which was the 11th. And a bunch of other stuff on little purple stickies all over my monitor.

Feeling kind of better for having taken some Advil and vitamins when I started writing and just the writing itself helps get the blahs out of my system.