journal Archive

When the heck did it get to be Tuesday?

Sometimes I just can’t stand the stress. The things I have to make sure work right. The decisions I have to make. The never ever just taking a day off. The giant corporations trying to eat me, when I would have thought I would be a tiny speck below their radar. The people who break their word. The people who just take. All that while trying to deal with all the normal stuff from food and shelter to death and taxes. Sometimes I just can’t stand the stress.

If you go to NBC.com right now, it looks like you can watch a full reply of last Sunday’s episode of The Apprentice: Los Angeles. Only the link on the front page of the site 404’s. I don’t blame them one bit. If my name were on that pale imitation of their earlier success, I wouldn’t want to extend the viewership of that show either.

The Apprentice Los Angeles Full disclosure: I have watched every single episode of The Apprentice. I watched all of the Donald Trump Coke Classic shows. And I watched all of the Martha Stewart New Coke shows, even with the lackluster candidates provided to Martha, and even though I have never seen anything else of Martha Stewart. Unless you count SNL sketches. Realistically, I think my viewing habits re: The Apprentice make it more meaningful when I say that I expect to permanently remove it from my TiVo queue later today. I’m writing this at 2am Saturday night/Sunday morning, January 14, and the show airs Sunday nights. At the end of this article, I’m going to tell you a spoiler for tonight’s episode. I know this secret info either because (a) I went to college with some big muckymucks at NBC or because (b) I have committed my valuable time and sharp business acumen to the lame task of figuring this out.

There was a lot I really loved about the first season of The Apprentice. I loved the whole businessman-as-rockstar vibe of the show. Before I lived in Los Angeles myself, I used to constantly get asked if I was in a band. There is no reason why living your life passionately and flamboyantly and taking the road less traveled should equate to being . . .

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I have a splitting headache and my ankle is just throbbing. I really hope some kind of storm is coming, as I’d hate for this much pain to be caused by something internal.

So a lot of magazines and sites and television shows are doing top ten lists right now. I had planned to post a Blue Blood list of the top ten sexiest men and women of the past year. Unfortunately I ran out of gas after thinking of Anderson Cooper and Vladimir Putin. I didn’t even think of any women before writer’s block set in.

For those of you who do not get CNN in your cable TV lineup, Anderson Cooper is a crystal-eyed honey who helms a show called Anderson Cooper 360. He also had a New York Times bestseller come out this year titled “Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival.” He looks like that, he is intelligent, he is curious about the world, he gets involved, and his fashion sense makes it clear he is a Vanderbilt. I could justify why it is terribly goth to be attracted to Anderson Cooper, but, trust me, it would be tasteless, so I’m just going to say he makes the list with flying colors.

Next on my abbreviated countdown is Economist coverboy Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. I know, I know, Putin arguably made some inroads against hard-won Russian democracy after the Beslan school tragedy and a bunch of war stuff in some country Americans don’t pay attention to. His gangster politics are thought by many to be bringing heinous and creative poisoning back in vogue and making it difficult for global corporations to reap the rewards of their investments in helping the Russian oil industry. But sometimes bad boys are hot. Sometimes you just want someone who is dangerously bad for you. Putin is a former spy who rose to rule a nation. That’s like being a badass cross between James Bond and Caesar. Totally fine.

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Anyone care to translate whatever language this cool page is in? They said something about Blue Blood’s Barely Evil or else something about a photo set ForrestBlack and I did for it.

This wasn’t for anything in particular, other than that my housemate Perish was getting all dolled up to go out on the town and ForrestBlack and I felt that needed to be immortalized. I’ve been a little bit obsessed with holiday decorations and costumes this year. No idea why, but it has resulted in some entertaining images.

Here is a sexy new shot featuring the glorious Roxy Contin, lensed by yours truly and Forrest Black, with a tree courtesy of Perish. We hope it puts a festive smile on your face 🙂 Full series coming to BlueBlood.com soon!

Love, Amelia

So I’m thinking about posting parts of my shooting schedule in public. Like on the Blue Blood MySpace, using the calendar function.

I usually keep my shoot schedule shrouded in secrecy because there are certain pathetic individuals and companies which follow me around like their own personal cool hunter. Heck, if I say I’m going to my favorite nightclub, they want to hang signage there. So, if I say I’m excited about shooting someone, I have to deal with professional stalkers trying their hardest to shoot the model right when I am working with them or trying to fill them with booze or cocaine the night before.

Only it is easier for me to schedule people if we can both review what I’m already shooting. If I am coordinating with anyone else for a special location, then it is more convenient to have a public schedule. And it is probably interesting for people who are into Blue Blood to be able to see more of what we have going on.

I might have had to deal with more extreme cases of copycatitus than most, but I’m sure other people have had to deal with this too. I know some of you post public shooting calendars and some of you do not. I would love to hear what other people see as some of the pros and cons of doing this. Thanks!

Forrest Black and I have shot members of more than one hundred bands, from The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Backyard Babies to Korn and Cradle of Filth to the Genitorturers and GWAR to Cinema Strange and Gitane Demone to My Ruin and Jack Off Jill. This is your month to join their ranks because we are running a super holiday sale special on band shoots!

The awesome deal: For only $600, you get a band promo shoot (usually $1,200) including high res final images of your band as a group and an individual shot of each member up to five band members. Processing and retouching are included in this package. You also get the benefit of Forrest Black’s and my art direction and vision. These images are guaranteed high enough resolution for magazine pages and CD art! Usually album art license is an additional $3,000, but that additional usage is 100% free with liner note credits with this special sale deal. Merch usage, such as T-shirts or buttons, is usually negotiated as an additional fee plus a percentage of sales, but it is totally free with this special sale as well. We will shoot images great for you to use for, not only magazine press, CD art, and merch, but also ideal for flyers and newspaper ads for gigs, online promotion, MySpace, iTunes, and design for your web site.

The killer rockstar images and amazing art we will make together: All of the example images below were shot by yours truly and Forrest Black with the exact style of lighting and setup we will be using to photograph you.

Eric Griffin shot in location studio we set up in a living room

Andy LaPlegua shot in location studio we set up in a living room

Godhead shot in location studio we set up at Marilyn Manson’s office

Tim Skold shot in location studio we set up in my hotel room

Diva Destruction shot in location studio we set up in a living room

Element shot in location studio we set up in a living room

Zeromancer shot in location studio we set up in a living room

The fine print: In order to secure this special rate, you must schedule a date in December or January and pay 50% of the base fee by December 15. The remainder is to be paid on the day of the shoot. We accept checks, money orders, PayPal, ePassporte, and good old-fashioned cash. If you have any special requirements for the shoot or timeline of how fast you need pictures, please let us know what they are when booking. We will attempt to accommodate anything you want. You will essentially be getting a $5,000 value for $600. In order to give you the best price possible, this is a no frills shoot. You will be photographed in a location studio set up in a living room, like the example shots above. We will not have people on hand to serve cappucino to your publicist. Each publicist, manager, or label person who wants to hang out incurs an additional $200 fee, unless either Forrest or I knows them well enough personally to have had dinner or a night on the town with them, on purpose, at least once. In our extensive experience, having gratuitous businesspeople on set just makes it much harder for the band to look comfortable in pictures and harder for us to create art. Same policies apply for girlfriends who want to shout suggestions. You are welcome to bring your own makeup or hair people. There is of course no charge if you bring your own makeup or hair folks. If you want us to supply makeup or hair, additional pricing will be based on what those individuals charge. You will be photographed against a basic clean background, white or light colored. We encourage unusual background color requests, but they may be an additional $120 to cover our costs, depending on the specifics. Additional band members, above five, are $100. Additional images with the same setup and outfits and makeup are $20 each if available without significant post-production.

Our shoot will be chill and fun and you will end up with beautiful publication-ready images like the examples above. To get your shoot date nailed down, just message the Blue Blood MySpace or email amelia@blueblood.net with the header subject HOLIDAY PHOTO SALE in all caps.

Possible bonus: and, if we have a good time working together and we like your stuff and how the shots turn out, we may run a feature about you on BlueBlood.net which is one of the most-visited taste-making sites on the web! Please make sure we have some of your music 🙂

Love, Amelia G

PS Please pass this along to friends in bands you like.

I know some people can’t help it, but it bugs me when people are overly familiar. Like when people who actually do know me make assumptions about me, based on some rumor they heard, or some guess they made. If there is something personal and I haven’t volunteered it to someone I know, then that means that either (a) it is not the case or (b) maybe I don’t want to be poked about it for whatever reason.

When they get whatever the thing is wrong or bring what the thing is up in an inconsiderate place or time, that is annoying. But the part that really annoys me is the name-dropping nature of it. Like they wouldn’t want to have an actual personal conversation with me, but they would want to drop my name to anyone who might be impressed that they know me.

Here is an example from a while back: There was someone who I now know dropped my name constantly, after after ForrestBlack and I’d shot her at an event and working with me one time — count it, once. And I guess she fleshed out a fictional backstory for me to show how well she knew me, but she was so deluded that she started to believe it herself. So she had a conversation with me about how I never graduated high school. Uhm. I don’t have quite as much post-graduate work as I’d once assumed I’d do and I did go to college when I was 16, but I had a high school diploma in hand, thanks. I guess maybe she came up with that based on her own status (which I admit I don’t know because I’m not that familiar with her) or maybe she figured punk rock meant uneducated, as opposed to philosophically different or disenfranchised. Whatever her defective rationale was, it bugged me that she would spread something so egregiously inaccurate in order to pretend to know me better than she did (or does.) I do not think my high school graduation status is something that anyone who knows me is obliged to know. But it is really overly familiar for someone to assume they know and then make commentary about something so delusional to show other people (and me!) how well they know me.

This happen to other people?