Kiss/Devo Tour Program

Found this official "Tour Program" for the inaugural Atomic Books "Kiss/Devo" party held March 17, 1994 at Memory Lane. (The program lists the venue as The Hour House and that's where it was originally scheduled to be held, but the event got shut down for some reason or other and bumped to the following week at Memory Lane.) Local bands were invited to play songs by Atomic Books owner Scott Huffines' two all-time fave favorite bands (um, Kiss and Devo). Includes the set lists - and Scott's reminder to tidy up afterwards!





The only known salvageable footage of this historic event is Blister Freak Circus (Skizz Cyzyk and Joe Tropea) performing Devo's "Gut Feeling" - with the backbeat provided by Pong! Scott Huffines filmed this at Memory Lane, brilliantly inserting stock footage clips that evoke the Devo aesthetic (think "It's a Beautiful World").


"Gut Feeling" by Blister Freak Circus
from Atomic Books' "Q: Are We Not Kiss? A: We Are Devo!"
Memory Lane, early 1990's

Here's Scott's backstory on this event:

Peruse the City Paper nightclub listings and you are likely to find a plethora of hipster-ironic musical mash-ups with clever names like "Johnny Clash's Planet of the Apes 80's Flashback" or "The White Strokes versus Wu Tang & Wang Chung."

But in the early days of Baltimore hipsterdom this was not the case.

That is until the tax man came knocking at Atomic Books' door.

A $5,000 tax bill loomed large. How was Huffines to pay? A book sale? Although during the 90's Baltimore was referred to as "The City That Reads," the fact was, no one read. Of course they occasionally bought books -- but only to decorate their living spaces with. What was he to do?

Suddenly a light bulb appeared above Huffines' head, a 150-watt illuminated marquee scrolling a message: "Put on a show, Little Rascals style!"

And since Kiss and Devo were his favorite bands he decided: What better way to beg for money than to force feed the grunge-loving public the music of his youth? And thus was born:

"Q: Are We Not Kiss? A: We Are Devo!"

The show was a rollicking success, even garnering a coveted City Paper "Best Of" award. Huffines and Warner videotaped the event, utilizing antique VHS cameras the size and weight of cinderblocks. They stored the tapes away never knowing that they were Atomic TV's legacy, their Dead Sea Scrolls, their Book of Genesis.

Many years passed.

And so these tapes sat, deep in the Atomic TV archives until one day the spectre of unemployment revisited Scott Huffines and gave him time. Time to panic and time to worry about his future. But eventually he grew bored and nostalgic, as men in their 40's often do, and he used this time to review hundreds of unlabeled videos, trying to make sense of his past.

He is still confused.

Sit back and enjoy one of Atomic TV's earliest clips, our own "Cavern Club" footage.

-- Scott Huffines

Miriam Linna Zines

Straight Out of Brooklyn

Cleaning up the house, I rediscovered a lot of old zines I hadn't looked at in years, including three associated with Miriam Linna, erstwhile Cramps drummer and the entrepreneuress behind the Norton Records empire (along with her longtime partner and A-Bones and Zantees bandmate Billy Miller).


Joined at the Hip: Billy Miller and Miriam Linna

If RE/Search Books ever came out with an Incredibly Strange Hipsters volume, Miriam would surely be their first point of contact - and by strange, I mean interesting, cool, and curious. She's just a compendium of knowledge about all things strange and unusual, be it books, mags, music or what have you. Naturally, Miriam and Billy live in the Hipster's Mecca, Brooklyn, NYC. Back in the day I called the Norton Records phone number (a NYC area code, natch) and Miriam herself answered the phone...I recall we shot the bobo yapping about music and pulp novels for a good while until I was giddy with excitement. This ranks up there in my memory banks with meeting Miriam and Billy's West Coast equivalent Hipster Couple, Mike Vraney and Lisa Petrucci of Something Weird Video and Tease magazine fame.

Anyway, here are some fine Linna publications from yesteryear.

The Norton Records catalog itself was already something of a zine, often providing the only reference to or photo of rare vinyl platters and bands hitherto unknown. So it was only a matter of time before Miriam and Billy boy branched out with a music zine (and later full-fledged, full-color-cover magazine) called Kicks. They published two issues in 1979. Then, after a 5-year hiatus, came out with Kicks #3 in 1984.



Kicks
No. 3 (1984)
Edited by Billy "The Big Fish" Miller and Miriam "Scamp" Linna

Anyone familiar with Norton Records (or the A-Bones, Zantees, or Cramps, for that matter), would know what kind of music interested Billy and Miriam: Strictly Old School "Rock & Roll" - i.e., American rhythm and blues, rockabilly and anything recorded at Sun Records. In that sense they were like Baltimore's John Waters, who always accused The Beatles of killing real music (i.e., Little Richard, Fats Domino, Doowop and other ebony tones) in 1964 when they ushered in the whitebread British Invasion. But, just in case people didn't know, Billy laid it all out in the Kicks #3 Editor's Manifesto, reprinted below:



For those who have trouble with small print, let me excerpt a few choice Miller morsels:

"We don't deal in ROCK MUSIC here at KICKS. If you're a fan of David Bowie or Devo, take this magazine back to the store. You've obviously bought the wrong thing. To me, rock music means asshole Roger Daltry swingin' a microphone around his head while leagues of stoned out squares gaze in wide-eyed ecstacy waiting for MTV or Lisa Robinson to tell 'em where they ought to take their zombie butts to next...WHENEVER YOU BUY A RECORD BY DURAN DURAN YOU ARE SPITTING ON THE GRAVE OF EDDIE COCHRAN! It's a big sham and you are the sucker. Do kids get in front of a mirror and pretend they're Spandau ballet? You tell me, Jack." And so on...but I think you get the point now! (Though Billy must have given Miriam a pass for her brief foray into New Wave music with Nervus Rex - whose "Don't Look" b/w "Love Affair" is one one of my all-time fave singles, btw.)

But the Kicks manifesto also hinted at future publications, because uber-hipsters Billy and Miriam's interests couldn't be constrained to just music. Defending the "non-musical" articles, Billy contended that "...White Castle, Lois Lane, Vic Morrow and The Golden Spike reek of the same heart-pumpin' fodder that sets a Sun record spinnin' and bodies wailin'." (There was even an homage to Shemp Howard in its pages!)

In fact, a feature on JD paperbacks in Kicks #3 called "1,000,000 Delinquents" by one Miriam "Bad Seed" Linna eventually spawned a sister publication called...



Bad Seed
#1 (1984)

Taking its name from ye olde scriptures ("the fathers have eaten sour grapes and set the children's teeth on edge" - Jeremiah 31:29), Bad Seed was dedicated not just to books, but any and all movies, mags, or music relating to "bad" (i.e., cool)teens and juvenile delinquents. Bad Seed's themes probably inspired like-spirited zines like Chip Rowe's Teenage Gang Debs and John Marr's Murder Can Be Fun.

Here's the Bad Seed creed:



And last, but not least...Miriam's interest in bad seeds led inevitably to the bad boys and girls of '60s adult paperbacks and...



Smut Peddler!
"The astonishing world of paperback exotica"
Vol 1, No 1 (1992)
by Miriam Linna

Here's the editor's Mission Statement:



Ah Smut Peddler! Before Feral House came out with Sin-a-Rama, this was the definitive reference guide to sleazy '60s adult pulp novels. As she says in her "Intro of Sorts" (above), "Folks say you can't judge a book by its cover, but I can pretty much assure you that BIG BANGOUT AT THE SIN SHORE and CONVICT LUST and LOVE ADDICT and PERVERTED LUST MEN deliver. Deliver what? THRILLS, AND PLENTY OF 'EM!...This stuff is luscious, enervating, astonishing, and unaboundingly exciting reading." Though she cautions her readers that the sex depicted in these naughty nightstand readers is relatively tame by today's "anything goes" standards, Linna - ever the old school rocker - makes the argument that, "Like rock & roll, a good adult novel gets your immediate attention with a solid beat and keeps you glued to the pages with action, action, ACTION!" Yeah boy!

Now I gotta find my Shake Books, the extinct publishing empire founded by Alan Betrock, whose books are all out of print. Betrock covered turf quite similar to Billy and Miriam, stuff like adult movie posters, tabloids and cult scandal magazines, and the wonderfully self-descriptive I Was a Teenage Juvenile Delinquent Rock 'N' Roll Horror Beach Party Movie Book: A Complete Guide to the Teen Exploitation Film, 1954-1969.

Bailey: The Gateway Drug to BBW Porn

It began innocently enough. I was 18, fresh out of Boot Camp and checking onto my first ship. After that first day was over with I hopped onto my rack to sleep. As I was about to hit the light, I saw something poking out from under the mattress.

An issue of Plumpers magazine, left over from the previous tenant. Up until then, my porn content had been mainstream stuff—and I mean stuff that was mainstream in the 90's—Club and Cherie magazine, High Society, and Penthouse and the occasional Hustler, Scramble Porn, compilation tapes surreptitiously ordered from Adam and Eve catalogues. I had lived 18 years on the planet without ever seeing a fat girl naked. I'd thought about it sometimes on an intellectual level. It probably would've stayed that way if I had never found that Plumpers. Hell, I'm willing to bet that if there had been one of those disgusting, hyper-obese women on the cover, i would've burned the magazine immediately, albeit remain scarred for life. But no, I was greeted with the cute smiling face of Bailey, complete with a pair of white fuck-me go go boots. I was done for. I felt something awake in my nether regions and the idea of naked fat girls was no longer just an intellectual curiosity.

Bailey to me at the time was one of those cute girls you never thought you'd see nude because she didn't fit the body paradigm of anyone I had seen naked up to that point. Do you remember the days when porn was free of amputees, septuagenarians, ouvert crackheads and homeless chicks, and scat set to creepy music? Sure they were always out there but it wasn't so easy to find. Simpler days.

She was as cute a button. The type of girl who was friends with the insecure hot girl because of her self esteem building powers. In high school you were kind of attracted to her but you were afraid of the shit you'd get for admitting it. And guys, including you, would only talk to her as a way to getting to her hot friend. It's a symbiotic relationship between those two when you think about it.

Now here she is, completely stripped, and no one around to fuck with you about what you felt. I did what felt natural.

And in no time, I fell into the rabbit-hole that is the world of BBW porn. Pretty soon I was scoring my own issues of Plumpers. I moved on to other BBW publications, videos. Attending BBW parties. Sex with a few. Even dated a couple of chubby girls. I struggled with it as I became more open with it. Most of all I didn't want to be that clichéd black guy who was into fat, mostly white, chicks (I don't go a week without seeing that cliché walking down the street).

But as time went on it went from being an oddity that I kept hidden to more of a piece of a wide spectrum of types of women I like. And boy is that spectrum is wide. You have to figure that one Wonder Tracy has to equal four or five Morgan Laynes.

Thinking back on Bailey recently I can't help but think how much of a gateway drug she proved to be. Because I did end up lusting after the disgusting hyper-obese ones for a while(don't worry, I'll keep those to a minimum here). In fact she revolutionized my entire life. I'm still trying to decide if that's a good thing. There are people I suppose who are still trying to decide whether their raging heroin addiction is a good thing. Either way, finding more of her stuff (in fact finding that plumper's magazine) has been something of a holy grail for me. And if I find that she's done hardcore, well, I'm in heaven.

Chaz: The other BBW gateway drug

Mienfoks COVER GIRLS - March - April - 2009

SuperNews - Obama's plan for AIG

So Different, So Appealing

That's how I describe my home today, thanks to a massive Spring Cleaning Initiative the past two weekends. As you can see in the "before" and "after" shots below, a little tidying up can make a world of difference!


My living room, before.


My living room, after.

That's me (holding the tennis racquet, far left) and my exhausted girlfriend Amy (wearing the lampshade, far right) proudly surveying a living room that's truly fit for "living" again.

Lewdsome Twosome

More Spring Cleaning Artifacts...

Two more "salacious" reads unearthed during my ongoing Spring Cleaning Project.

First up, a Jayne Mansfield bio that boasts the greatest cut-to-the-point title ever:


Here They Are - Jayne Mansfield
by Raymond Strait
SPI Books, 304 pages (1992)

Subtle cover, eh? I actually own two of these (they travel in pairs), purchased for a buck each God knows where.

But I really love the following find, a collection of Russian short stories by such giants of Western literature as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky and Kuprin - being hawked as lurid and lewd adult reading: Women and Vodka. "The depths of desire - 17 unforgettable Russian stories." Is it that hard to sell Russian lit that the copywriters guys had to hype it like they were writing a Stoli ad? Note that some moronic bookseller scrawled "45" cents across the otherwise lovely cover drawing by Lou Marchetti.


Women and Vodka
Edited by Mark Merrill
Cover by Lou Marchetti
A Pyramid Royal Book, 190 pages (1956)

Here's the back cover:



Note the hype (that I've highlighted in boldface):

"A woman with a debt to a man and only one way to repay it...An innocent young girl driven into those streets from which there is no return...These are only a few of the naked moments in this powerful collection of great Russian stories. They range from the closed boudoirs of society to the tawdry excitement of back-room rendezvous. Bold, shocking, frightening frank - each one is a literary masterpiece."

Well, at least that last statement ("each one is a literary masterpiece") is accurate, though if you just read the cover you'd assume that old Fyodor and Leo were merely Russia's answer to Harold Robbins, titillating the masses with tales of getting juiced and getting down. (Hmmm, perhaps I should have pursued this topic as a thesis when I took my Russian Literature class in college.)

Mienfoks - INTERNET GOLD SERIES - #114

MIENFOKS presents random gems found somewhere on the internet and brought here for your mocking pleasure. Look closely as some of the humor is subtle

DEWEY COX - Stages of Drug Use !

For the Sweet Love of Tristan Taormino

I don't know if this has been said before, maybe not on the intertubes at least. If I am truly the first person to publicly announce this, let it be known that I wasn't ashamed to admit it: I think Tristan Taormino is cute. I'm not talking about sleek, airbrushed, super-waify Tristan. I think she's cute just the way she looks in real life.Hell, I think I'd even date her.

Yes, I think it would be cool if we dated, at least for a few months. We could talk about feminist theory, Dostoevsky, or the finer points of butoh. Or we could spend quite evenings at home watching Bergman films or reading Rumi to each other over bottles of Two Buck Chuck.

And in the bedroom I'd do whatever she wants.

I thought about that last line and I take it back because I know exactly how it'll play out. She'll want to explore our sexual possibilities. The word “pansexual” will float out there all casual-like. So will some other dude's name. And I won't have a problem till it occurs to me that it's supposed to be me doing the exploring. To which I will inevitably go, “Sorry, I love you but no homo.”

But I will be the little spoon to her big spoon and we'll spoon. And everything will be perfect for about four months, four and a half months tops.

Also, just to show you the depth of my ignorance, even though I've heard the words “Tristan Taormino,” “Thomas Pynchon,” and “niece” in the same sentence countless times—Being a porn addict and book nerd makes for interesting Venn Diagrams—it didn't register till recently that “Tristan” might not be a man.

Maybe that's why I think she's so cute. I was caught off guard.

Amazing Head Swaps !

IRON MAN vs BRUCE LEE !

DId You Know - Lifetime Targets Women ???

Laetitia Casta reminding us it's spring..

here's the always beautiful Laetitia Casta reminding us spring is here and we need to get out and go babe hunting!

Sophia Cahill in Penthouse magazine..

Here's Sophia Cahill posing for the April 2009 issue of Penthouse. Some nudity so NSFW. And MQ/LQ so NSFHQF.

hot Eva Mendes in white..

sometimes a set gets so overposted I skip it, only to forget to post it later. Here's one of those sets. Eva Mendes looking sexy in a great set -only now I forgot from which shoot.