Looking at this set Forrest Black and I shot reminds me that I really need to text Voltaire. Neither she nor I are much for voice convos, but we are both fans of texting.
–Amelia G

Everyone knows I have a bit of a gangster fetish and loooooooooove pinstripes. So I was very excited when Yolanda was able to put together enough pinstriped latex for me and Forrest Black to shoot both her and Szandora in shiny pinstripes. I hope you all enjoy this shoot which resulted.
–Amelia G

Blue Blood celebrates its 17 year anniversary by rolling out a hot new design for BlueBlood.com with extra special new $1.70 VIP trial pricing. Since 1992, Blue Blood has pioneered a genre, redefined the rock and roll beauty standard, broken down the walls between subcultures, and launched countless artists, creating venue and platform for what was previously an underrepresented kind of creative work. Blue Blood has brought its audience the innovative and quality entertainment it deserves, with insightful writing, creative photography, and beautiful people. Blue Blood is about the power and sensuality of individuality. Blue Blood is delicious luxury pop culture candy for intelligent adults.

BlueBlood.com features more than 100,000 erotic photos, showcasing more than 400 of the most exceptional individuals, shot by dozens of gifted photographers, with a huge number of coffee table books and magazine features to their credit. BlueBlood.com includes magazine quality photography of gorgeous, stylish, gothic, punk, deathrock, and otherwise offbeat women, Blue Blood VIP’s world famous signature couples sets, and erotic fiction by some of the best-loved genre writers in the world.

Forrest Black, who supervises all design and code teams for Blue Blood’s extended network and is responsible for the brand’s overall look and feel, personally created the new design for BlueBlood.com and the Blue Blood VIP members area. Forrest Black was born in San Francisco in a house with thirteen black cats and, as a baby, went from crawling to walking at parties where the Grateful Dead jammed. As an early adopter of internet technology, he worked on sites for cool icons from John Lennon and Peggy Lee to The Beastie Boys and The Dandy Warhols. He has been art directing for Blue Blood since 1992. Forrest Black says, “We’re very excited to showcase even more of the great content our members have enjoyed, plus lots of new work. And we think the new 17 year celebratory $1.70 trial offer is a great opportunity for people to check out what we have going on.”

The new Blue Blood VIP tour includes bigger pages with larger photographs. It is broken down into thematic sections where pages of free sample pictures morph with dynamically updating images. Some of the core repeating motifs in Blue Blood are couples, goth-industrial erotica, art and tattoos, science fiction fandom and costuming, fetish, and of course punk. BlueBlood.com guests can also read news about Blue Blood contributors, see what recent community posts are from the Blue Blood forums where members interact, and follow a convenient new link to the regularly-updated Blue Blood Twitter.

Masuimi Max guns, lingerie, and milk bath gallery, photography by Chad Michael Ward and Kelly Lind

Masuimi Max in all her glory in tons of photos in the Blue Blood VIP including full sets by Chad Michael Ward, Kelly Lind, Amelia G and Forrest Black, and Ashley Fontenot.

Blasphemy Day is a new internet-spawned holiday like Talk Like a Pirate Day or CAPS LOCK DAY. I’m not surprised that more people added typing like a pirate to their holiday calendars than typing in all capital letters, but I would have thought more people would have gotten into Blasphemy Day.

Blasphemy Day is set for September 30, as a tip of the hat to the riots caused when a Danish newspaper ran a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to the anonymously-run Blasphemy Day web site, “International Blasphemy Day is not just a day. It is a movement to dismantle the wall which exists between religion and criticism . . . The objective of International Blasphemy Day is to open up all religious beliefs to the same level of free inquiry, discussion and criticism to which all other areas of academic interest are subjected.” Noble aspiration, although I’m not sure a mean-spirited cartoon really advances human knowledge. Slaying sacred cows can be humorous (Heck, even the existence of the idiomatic expression sacred cow is pretty funny), but I have yet to hear anyone explain what the joke was in the Danish Muhammad cartoon, except maybe that it would piss people off.

I used to feel like each person’s individual relationship with their deity or deities or lack thereof was . . . well, personal. I am a fan of analysis and critical thinking, but I pretty much don’t discuss religion. I lived in Israel as a teenager and all major religions go there for debate. Or it being the cradle of three of the major modern religions. Or something like that. While living there, someone I knew complained to me about an agnostic debating him on his Christianity. He said he felt it was wrong for someone undecided to try to convince him that his religion was predicated on something he couldn’t be sure of because, if the undecided agnostic won the debate, they would have stolen his faith. His position was that his faith was valuable to him and being undecided meant nothing to the agnostic. I just did a quick Bing on the person who said that and he apparently is still losing and rediscovering his faith on a regular basis, so maybe he was actually the agnostic. Whether or not the person, who made the point on the value of faith for the believer, was an idiot probably doesn’t make the point invalid.

But then I lived in Georgia. And that totally changed my views on religious tolerance. I experienced countless people who considered themselves religious use their status as a person of faith to behave in incredibly bigoted ways towards those around them. Including me. I literally had door-to-door religion salesmen defecate on my porch. I had bakers ask me if I drank baby’s blood when I was trying to buy a bagel. (No, I eat bagels. Duh.) I had come across bigots before, but I’d never seen this level of intolerant, assumption-making, busy-body, beating-down of anybody different. I had a pretty normal punk reaction to Southern oppression in that it made me want to jump up and down on the tables, yell, and rebel. Blasphemy became utterly hilarious to me.

While kind of doing the couch tour in between Atlanta and Los Angeles, Forrest Black registered the domain BarelyEvil.com. (Do not click that link if you are at work, unless your office is totally cool with viewing naked blasphemers while on the clock.) He was amused by the idea of satanic teens and I’m a big fan of putting a site on a domain, once it is registered, so Forrest Black built Blue Blood’s Barely Evil, and we did kind of a lot of shoots involving crosses, fetish nuns, and devil girls. They were fun and creative. BarelyEvil takes a light-hearted approach to the subject matter. You can see a free devil girl gallery Forrest Black and I shot here and both those full series, in all their glory, are available in the Blue Blood VIP members area. We’ve shot a lot of different styles of devilgirls, but we did this style first with Dana Dark and later of Szandora, Scar 13, Masuimi Max, Lori the Gory, and Nina Sin, among others.

So, is blasphemy funny or mean, uncalled-for or needed, or some gray area combo of the above? Is slaughtering sacred cows a good thing or is the very expression “slaughtering sacred cows” hate speech? Are you ready to celebrate Blasphemy Day?

It is no secret that I love the vampire genre. I received Honors at Wesleyan University for my thesis on vampire legends as a paradigm for aggressive human sexuality. And I would like the record to show that I will be speaking on exactly that topic this weekend at Vampire Con in Hollywood. I’ll be taking part in the panel programming Sunday afternoon, after the movie nights, and before Vampirella’s Ball (more on this in a moment.) I’m excited that Wendi Mirabella and Lotti Pharriss Knowles have put Vampire-Con together.

The panel I am on is called Hot-Blooded: Vampires & Sexuality and is at 1pm at the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Blvd. It will be moderated by David J. Skal, Author of Hollywood Gothic and V Is For Vampire: The A-Z Guide Of Everything Undead. I’m especially excited that Pam Keesey, who I’m looking forward to catching up with will be on the panel. She is the editor of multiple anthologies of lesbian vampire tales, Women Who Run with the Werewolves: Tales of Blood, Lust, and Metamorphosis, and Vamps: An Illustrated History of the Femme Fatale. Pam Keesey has a very engaging personality, has published yours truly, and once gave me a tour of Forrest Ackerman’s memorabilia collection. Other panelists are Hal Bodner, author of Bite Club: A West Hollywood Vampire Tale, filmmaker Fred Olen Ray from The Lair, actress Celeste Yarnall, best known at a vamp convention for her role in The Velvet Vampire, but who has appeared in everything from Melrose Place to Star Trek, and best-selling author, comic book writer, and filmmaker Donald F. Glut who recently directed the Elizabeth Bathory-inspired movie Blood Scarab. And we’ll be talking about vampire sex.

That evening, at the same venue, from 8:30pm to 1am, there will be Vampirella’s Ball. The music will be provided by DJ Xian and DJ Gary Calamar, music supervisor of HBO’s True Blood and KCRW radio DJ. Vampire Con describes the appropriate attire saying, “Costumes are thoroughly encouraged – Vampires, Victorian, Edwardian, Steampunk, Bohemian, Tribal, Gypsy.”

Forrest Black and I will have a location studio set up to photograph people involved in the event, revelers who most exemplify the themes of the event, and our close personal friends (i.e. not everyone, but photographic subjects best for doing press coverage on Vampire Con.) If we know you from online, please come find us on the roof Sunday night (or at my panel during the day) and say hello and where we know you from. I’m looking forward to running into tons of cool people at this event. Our favorite photos from the evening will of course appear here on BlueBlood.net.

This video features Forrest Black’s interview with the beautiful muse April Flores and my interview with art show curator and contributing artist Carlos Batts and contributing artist Misha (who enjoyed one of the tickets won by MorningStar in our Sisters of Mercy giveaway). Forrest Black and April Flores discuss what it is like to be immortalized in a very unique way and Carlos Batts and Misha and I discuss their inspirations for their respective pieces and Carlos Batts’ vision for the show. The gallery was kind enough to let us shoot while they were closing up, after the huge crowd had dispersed, so it would be quiet enough to hear the interviews, although I think you can see them flicking the lights on and off once or twice to remind folks to exit the building and head out to Good Luck Bar. The video is directed by Forrest Black. Blue Blood theme music is by Tim Skold. The gallery show party portion of the video features many luminaries in attendance, including yours truly, photographer Steve Diet Goedde, memorabilia historian Matt Kennedy, director Ramzi Abed, writer Gram Ponante, photographer Michael Prior (all the way from Australia!), and many more.

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I think I like Jax in red hair the best. Forrest Black and I shot this black half corset set of Jax. Speaking of fine redheads, check out the April Flores art show video. I’m really excited about it!
–Amelia G

Roxy Contin can dress right for any damn apocalypse you can imagine. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Roxy Contin’s freaked-out post-cyberpunk bra in this wicked Barely Evil set, shot by Forrest Black and Amelia G, but I approve of her plaid skirt, high boots and electric blue G string an awful God damned lot, and besides, sometimes you’ve just got to admire fashion innovation for its own sake.