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Loren's blog is hosted at Livejournal. Click here to be taken there now. Latest Posts:The Black Mass (2010-02-07T16:27:22Z)One of my favorite parts of the Morbid Curiosity reading at the Hypnodrome was to see what the performers chose to wear. Russell Blackwood sported an exquisite black on black smoking jacket, which imparted a nice sense of decadence to the evening. Dana Fredsti went with courtesan chic to read about being an exotic dancer. Jill Tracy was sleek and self-contained in black to convey her sense of loss as she read her ghost story. Bill Selby chose a Hawaiian shirt covered in little animals to read about being buried in roadkill. Will McMichael worked a pinstripe suit, which simultaneously added gravitas to a story about making snuff films and underlined the author's metamorphosis to from sideshow geek to university professor.I bought myself a top at Dark Garden Corsets, because I didn't feel like my usual reading attire of t-shirt, tattoos, and jeans/velvet button-down blouse and silver Docs struck the right tone. I pulled out a layered skirt I bought years ago at In the Shadow of the Gargoyle on Haight Street. I don't get many opportunities to wear it these days. It was surprisingly fun to dress up. Maybe I ought to do it more often. My favorite costume that night was Gravity's outfit for reading "The Black Mass." She chose a tan trench coat, which she kept tightly belted throughout the evening. She wore a black cloche hat, too. The juxtaposition of concealment of her body and the abandonment she recorded in her memoir created an air of mystery that completely fascinated me. Gravity submitted a handful of stories to Morbid Curiosity over the years, but when it came to putting the book together, I selected "The Black Mass" because it came from the first issue. That issue had been out of print forever, which I wanted to honor. Also, I love the way that Gravity put herself into a situation without much forethought, then dissected the experience afterward with a self-effacing laser-sharp curiosity. Here's a shortened version of the story: Not his real name (2010-02-06T14:54:23Z)Frank Burch, not his real name, remains a man of mystery. He came to Morbid Curiosity through a colleague who'd contributed to the first issue. Both of them were academics with a morbid bent. She published her story under her own name. His, no less true, required a pseudonym. He wanted to tell the experience, needed confess it to an understanding audience, but he couldn't take the chance that the indiscretions of his youth would get back to his family or jeopardize his academic career.I knew his real name and checked him out as best as I could in the rudimentary world wide web. It helped that his openly morbid colleague vouched for him. He had the background he claimed in the story. I had no doubt that what he wrote was true. The story he needed to get off his chest: he had assisted in making snuff films. He minced few words, which is why the video that follows below is NSFW. His allusions in the piece ranged from Charlie Chaplin to Carlos Castaneda, Irving Klaw to Orson Welles, Arabs, Illuminati, and the Great Train Robbery. Frank admitted from the start that they were making special effects pictures, in which the blood was Karo syrup and the less savory body fluids were Tame cream rinse. That makes the tale only minimally less shocking. It's a wonderful story, extremely well told. Will McMichael of the Thrillpeddlers stepped up at the last minute to read it for me at the Hypnodrome last October. I'd never met Will before (just as I never met "Frank" in person), but he perfectly embodied the sense of an academic looking back over his adventures as a geek inside the freak show. Will researched the names, the Spanish, the German film terms, and was completely believable delivering the story. I hope you enjoy what you see. I've turned off the embedding on this video because I didn't want it to wander unaccompanied through the internet. You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcHujJPm4qk Keep in mind that it's really, really not safe for work. The Morbid Things We Do for Money (2010-02-05T17:16:07Z)When I started putting the Morbid book together, I had to make a lot of hard choices about what essays would go in. Some contributors gave me pieces for multiple issues, compounding the dilemma. Dana Fredsti was one of those.Dana wrote about working with big cats, especially a tiger named Jasmine, at a feline rescue facility in Southern California. She wrote about learning to surf, which I find immensely morbid. She chased ghosts and pried into her childhood and talked about being a crazy cat lady. Limiting myself to a single piece was difficult, but when I took my brain out of the equation and went with my emotional reaction, the answer became clear. I loved her story about dancing in the bikini bar. As she told the tale, she made herself vulnerable and funny and very, very real. I knew that girl. I might have been her, if my life had gone another direction. The character, drawn in the first person, approached archetypal. The story became something of a lightning rod as I promoted the book last year. When I mentioned it on "guy-oriented" radio shows, interviewers couldn't see what might be morbid about choosing to take off your clothes in a roomful of strangers for a handful of crumpled dollar bills. In fact, the men I was talking to got defensive. I think it's an important story, as political as anything I published in the magazine. I hope you enjoy Dana's reading of it at the Hypnodrome last October. |