Buddhist Pioneer Ruth Denison

Ruth Denison has spent 91 years learning to move gracefully through life. A Buddhist elder, and one of the first teachers to bring vipassana meditation to the west, she has spent long hours mastering breath and sensory awareness, and literally dancing her way through life’s changes. But some changes are more daunting than others, even for a master.

“I am 90 years old, and ahead of me is my death,” she says, matter of fact. “I have no balance, sometimes not even in the mind, even though I am the master of that.”

The murky, mysterious conditions of one’s own twilight are frightening, even to Denison, a warrior woman who has bravely stared life’s horrors—war, imprisonment, the death of a spouse—in the eye.

“But now, I have had enough of the stress, the stress that arises out of the conditions of my age,” she sighs, visibly frustrated. Then we go outside to feed her favorite roadrunner, and she beams as she looks for him—the stress, it seems, has faded for now.

Denison lives at her meditation center, Dhamma Dena, in the Mojave desert near Joshua Tree, California. The compound, which she founded in 1977, is named after a female disciple of the Buddha, and overlooks a sparse, eerily beautiful terrain known as Copper Mountain Mesa, its sandy landscape polka dotted with green creosote bushes and sage scrub. She still teaches, hosting bi-annual meditation retreats for her students, some of whom fly in from the far corners of the world.

When I arrive for our afternoon together, Denison is sitting behind her desk, piled with letters from friends and followers around the world. Small and wiry, with deep-set eyes, her skin translucent and crisscrossed with fine lines, she issues commands and quips in the same breath, her thick German accent dense and warm as gingerbread.

She used to have five wiener dogs, but now a lone cat with matted coat sits outside waiting to be fed, along with the rabbits in her backyard, and her favorite roadrunner, who dines on fresh hamburger meat. Denison likes to feed animals, but she also likes to feed people, so we sit down for some German chocolate and a cup of instant coffee, and she tells me a little of her story.

Ruth Denison, nee Schafer, was born in eastern Germany, close to the Polish border in the region formerly knows as East Prussia. As a child she heard the voices of saints and angels, and learned to communicate with an entity that, at that time, she thought was God. As a young woman in World War Two, she had already learned that she had the capacity for inner silence, even during the abuse she endured at the hands of Russian soldiers in occupied Berlin—she reasoned she was helping to pay off some debt of conscience owed by Germany for the atrocities of Adolf Hitler.

After the war, as a young teacher, she traveled to Los Angeles where, in 1958, she met her future husband Henry Denison. A moody 6’4” intellectual with an interest in radical thought, he was a friend of counterculture icon Alan Watts, who would lead talks on Eastern philosophy and other spiritual topics in the living room of their house in the Hollywood Hills. “It’s one of the great wonders of life, ‘what would it be like to go to sleep and never wake up?’” Watts is quoted as saying. “And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find that it will pose the next question to you, ‘what was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep?’ That is when you were born. See, you can’t have an experience of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum. So, after you are dead, the only thing that can happen is the same experience as when you were born.”

Psychologists, yogis, philosophers, gurus, LSD freaks, avant garde authors, and Zen masters attended the Denisons’ salons—guests included Fritz Perls, Lama Govinda and Aldous Huxley—thinkers brought together by a shared goal of spiritual awakening. The Denisons found themselves increasingly drawn to Zen, and in 1960 the couple traveled east, spending time at Zen monasteries in Japan, visiting the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore and finally, Burma, where they met Sayagyi U Ba Khin, who introduced them to a Buddhist practice thus far unknown in the West—vipassana. Centered on mindfulness of breathing combined with contemplation of awareness, the meditation practice is thought to develop “insight into the impermanence of all phenomena, and thereby lead to a permanent liberation” according to Richard Gombrich in his book How Buddhism Began.  Indeed, the Sanskrit word vipassana is often translated as "insight" or "clear-seeing.” The Denisons stayed at U Ba Khin’s meditation center for three months.

When Denison returned to Los Angeles, she resumed her Zen practice, helping build zendos in California, and hosting darshans, pujas and lectures at her home. But her thoughts often returned to vipassana, and she went back to Burma to practice with U Ba Khin, who, by this point, had decided that the West was ready to be formally introduced to vipassana. He gave four Westerners the transmission to teach, including Ruth.

Nervous, and feeling under-qualified for the immense task ahead of her, Ruth led her first retreat in Frankfurt, Germany, with fellow initiate Robert Hover. For the following four years she taught across Europe, bringing vipassana to Spain, Norway, Sweden and, eventually, California. “If you live in the present, there is no future,” she told her students. “Don't let thinking rob you of your experiences.” In 1977, seeking a rural escape from Hollywood, she bought a cabin on five acres in Joshua Tree, about three hours east of Los Angeles. Her students followed her there, and Dhamma Dena was born.

Today, she tells me the most important thing she tries to teach her students is awareness of impermanence. “You have to remind yourself every day of that,” she says, “yet we hardly do it, because it’s so shocking when you mention something about it. But through Buddha’s teachings, now death isn’t such a big mystery, or such a big horror. Impermanence is the natural thing.”

Writer Sandy Boucher, a longtime student who also authored Denison’s biography, first met Denison 30 years ago, and though she has since studied with many other teachers, including Pema Chodron, “Ruth was the one who set me on the path,” she explains. “It is understood that Buddhism is a path, and you have a teacher, and the teacher opens the door for you and invites you in. As an artist and as a writer I was drawn to the fact that she was so creative in her teachings and so inventive and spontaneous. If the practice wasn't working, or if the energy was flagging, she would immediately think of some way to fix it, to the extent that we might suddenly find ourselves out in the desert dancing in a conga line. That was very unusual in the Buddhist world, the use of movement to teach mindfulness. She is the pioneer in that.”

Boucher and a few other longtime students lead the most recent retreat at Dhamma Dena earlier this year. It was the first time in years that Denison wasn’t singlehandedly running the show, although she was present. “When you’re ninety years old, the body wants to slow down, even though intellectually, you may be completely there,” says Boucher.

Ruth’s experience of old age, as she is sharing it with her students, has become one of her most important teachings, she adds. “She is fully cognizant of her stage in life, and talks about it, teaches us how to accept it as a natural unfolding,” says Boucher, who says Denison helped her calmly face her own stage-three colon cancer 15 years ago. “Then, and now, I hear Ruth’s voice in my head, especially when it comes to discomfort or pain. She will say ‘it’s just sensation darling. The pain is just sensation.’”

When I talk to Denison again, it is on the phone. It is her 91st birthday in a week or so, and she sees little cause for celebration. “My mother was 92 when she died. And she is such a model for me.” She describes the day her mother died.  “She had a little party, a kind of high tea meeting with her four of her friends. And they are sitting and enjoying their cakes and their teas and coffee and she says ‘well, I’m not quite so comfortable, I feel like I would like to lean back on the couch. And the next minute she breathes out and dies.” These are upsetting memories that keep popping up these days, and sometimes she longs for the space to process them, without having to field the constant requests for wisdom, or even look at the RSVPs to her own celebration.  “I’m too much overloaded, without getting into birthday parties,” she says. “What is a birthday? What are we celebrating? Our lives having left us, and before us, one year left to live? That for me is ‘birthday’.”

But she continues to talk, teach and share her chocolate and wisdom nonetheless, as she has done for so many years. It just so happens that, now, the thing she is sharing is also the experience of death, the thing with which she walks side by side, catching glances here or there and wondering at what point, it will guide her off life’s path in another direction. That moment could be years from now, I point out to Ruth, reminding her that people have lived to be 120. “Oh but you know when the lord of death is touching you,” she says. “And as long as you have anxiety you cannot respond to it in the right way, and you cannot provide yourself the smooth and harmonious farewell.” She feels it most in the morning. “Carlos Castaneda says you have to just watch it as you feel it, and be in that space of taking apart from the world. Castaneda said ‘don’t get ahead of yourself. Just be alert to the touch of death.’ Otherwise the anxiety will take over and you will be ahead of your dying.” She sighs. She worries that she is ahead of herself, some days. But she can’t help it. “I have everywhere, messages. So I feel sometimes overrun, like I don’t have the time which would allow me to go more smoothly through this.” That is the challenge, for Denison, managing the anxiety that will grip us all, Buddhist masters and laypersons alike, as we feel ourselves lurch into the home stretch.

The next time I call Dhamma Dena, Ruth is not there – she is in rehab, having fallen and fractured a bone. The lady who answers the phone says Ruth is doing well, and getting around as best she can. I wonder who is feeding the roadrunner while she is gone. Then I remember, it’s OK, Ruth runs a tight ship. Whether or not she is at Dhamma Dena in person, you can be sure the roadrunner will be fed, and that her students will still hear her voice, any time they need it.

Originally published in Spirituality and Health magazine. Read it here.

Trent Reznor for Dazed and Confused

Trent Reznor quietly wrote his latest record sitting in his bedroom at night, clicking buttons on his laptop, just enjoying the process. Not what you’d expect from the famously detail-oriented rock legend who enjoys access to the most advanced producers, musical instruments and recording equipment on Earth. But the casual and unplanned genesis of “Hesitation Marks”, Nine Inch Nails’ first record in six years, just ‘felt right’ for Reznor, who for the majority of his 25 year career has never had any qualms about doing whatever the fuck he wants.

The process started in 2012, following a busy five years in the wake of NIN’s last record, which was released in 2007. During that time, Nine Inch Nails went from major label, to entirely DIY, to major. Rez started a band with his wife Mariqueen Maandig called How To Destroy Angels. He won an Oscar for his musical score on David Fincher’s Social Network. He teamed with Dr. Dre to create a soon-to-be launched online music subscription service called Beats Electronic Streaming, which some say will rival Spotify.

Then one night in his bedroom, for no reason in particular, Reznor fired up his laptop, launched ProTools, and let his nimble fingers do the talking. His only thought was—keep it simple. He broke down the music in his head into its basic components, and reconstructed it with the smooth obsessiveness of a Bauhaus architect.

A year later, the result is one of the most eagerly anticipated albums of 2013. David Lynch directed the music video to the first release off the album, ‘Came Back Haunted’, and in August, NIN kicked off The Tension tour, a mammoth six-month festival and arena tour of the world, whose live show is expected to raise the bar even higher than his mind-rumbling ‘Light the Sky’ tour of 2007 did.

Trent made time between rehearsals in Los Angeles to speak with Dazed, to tell us how it all came about.

What’s the theme or narrative threat of the new album?

This record was an exploration of sparseness and minimalism. Which for me is difficult. But that’s how the record started. Sometimes, before I start an album, I’ll come up with elaborate set of plans or rules that help me, because if I have too many options I can spin around in a corner and make bullshit. But if I limit myself, that helps. Like in the studio, I might say ‘for the next couple of weeks I am not going to plug anything in’. Or ‘I am only going to use this laptop and see what I can make it do’. Which is what happened this time.

So you enjoy working within boundaries?

I need them. In the modern studio there are a bunch of instruments around me and I can simulate anything I can’t play, so sometimes the palate feels too big. I had been away from the concept of writing for NIN for several years. I wasn’t sure what I felt like doing, so I started noodling around on laptops. Pretty much the whole record was written in my bedroom, on a laptop. It felt more exciting to me that way.

A lot of lonely bedroom musicians with Garageband will be very inspired to hear that.

Writing this album, the first 75-80% of it was pretty smooth. But once I took it out of the bedroom, finishing it was a real challenge. We spent six months just trying to mix it, and figure it out. It’s so much easier to put 30 things in a song than three. We asked ourselves, how can we take everything else out except what has to be in there? And how can we make those things have purpose? Alan Moulder (producer), Atticus Ross and I—we spent a lot of time looking at each other in a room going “did this get harder, or are we just getting worse?” But we learned a lot of tricky things. And we never gave up.

So you’re currently rehearsing the festival show, which is a stripped down version of the arena show, correct?

Stripped down, but still good, we hope. We hope to maximize each venue. In a festival usually we are toward the top of the bill, so for fans there is that fatigue of having seen other bands, having been high and sober already ten times that day, and their ears are ringing. A festival is a distraction-filled place, so its like, how can we make a fucking field with shitty sound and another band playing on the other end, how can we turn that into an experience, on top of what I think is great music, played well? How can we make that festival experience feel more immersive, how can we can suck you in a bit more? That’s what we’re working on here in Los Angeles, today.

So how will the arena show compare?

It is our own show, and our environment, so we can get away with more. The audiences are usually very wiling to go on more of a journey, so you tend to make an artier, more immersive show for them. I think the best tour we ever did was Lights In the Sky, which involved an some very cool video technology. The end result was something that became a bit disorienting to the viewer. Where you could start the show looking like a rock band on a stage, but then make it feel like the stage had transformed into something else. The arena tour this fall is picking up where that left off. But my goal is not to give you a tech demo, like ‘look at all the gadgets I’ve found, look at how big this robot is’.  I want to keep it like a great film or great book where it’s not about one emotion. Something that can hold your interest and surprise you with what gets revealed.

Do you go see much live music yourself?

I don’t go see that many bands these days because by the third song I kind of know what’s going to happen. Maybe I’m just old. If I go to a venue and it sounds kind of shitty, which it always does, and I’m in a place and there’s 50 assholes with their phones up in front of me, and I see the band and on the third song they’ve turned the lights on and they’ve played one song I like and now they’re deep in to the new album which I don’t know that well yet. And I’m thinking ‘God I’d rather be home right now’. Is that a familiar feeling at all, for you?

Yeah, absolutely. That’s why it helps to be a bit drunk on those occasions.

I can’t even do that any more! So now I’m completely sober, tuned in, and I cant escape.

You collaborated with Josh Homme on the latest Queens of the Stone Age record, Keep Your Eyes Peeled, tell us about that.

When he started working on this record, I went up to the studio and we talked for a long time. I could sense there was somebody who wanted to do something different, but felt unsure. Yet doing the same thing didn’t feel like the right move. Of course there was fear of trying to write in a  different way, and feeling vulnerable as a person.  I tried to encourage him, saying ‘hey these are the best feelings, this is the best time to start writing. The last thing you need to do is make another great Queens record that sounds like a great Queens record. See what happens, and if it sucks, no one needs to hear it. Lets just try some shit’. I heard some demos throughout the process, and I knew he was on to something. I think injecting his vulnerability into it was the key to making that record. It’s still Queens , but its not middle aged queens, its not beach-chair fucking Queens.

Is that ever a fear, at this point in your career--that you’ll turn into lawn chair NIN?

When the joys of yachting starts to tire, you mean?

How is your golfing game, by the way?

I have never golfed. Actually, I golfed one time, and was so filled with resentment.

Just the fucking people. I didn’t get past that. The outfits.

It’s an older, preppier crowd, for sure.

As you get older, it’s a weird puzzle—you try to look at yourself objectively and imagine what people think. Because, when we play a show, I look at the audience, and it generally looks the same as it did in 1990. Its not the same people, of course,  but it doesn’t look like The Eagles when I look down there. It doesn't look like people my own age.

That will be a trippy day, when you look out at the audience at a NIN show and see a sea of walkers.

I like that we’ve found new generations of people who like the music. The moment it feels like it has become nostalgia, then it will feel different to me and I don’t know if I would want to do it anymore. Right now, it still feels vital to me. And when I am writing music, I not playing a character.  I’m not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

Isn’t it hard to remain original that within the confines of a brand, like NIN?

I’m acknowledging NIN is a brand, and you’re’ a brand, Dazed and Confused is a brand. But you can still be rooted in honesty, and integrity. There can still be evolution.

So you’re back with a major label again, Interscope, after being completely independent for a few years. Why?

We left Interscope because we were high and mighty and we thought file sharing has destroyed the record business, and had also damaged the relationship between fans and artists. I remember the day I woke up years ago, furious at fans, because the record had leaked, and now everyone was talking about the album a month before its supposed to come out. A little while later I relaxed about it. ‘They’re not stealing shit out of my house and making money from it – they’re excited about the music we did. Why am I mad at them? I would do it too.’ In fact, I do do that. So it got me thinking about this broken relationship that had led to the file sharing, the notion of selling people a plastic disc they don’t want in a store that's disappearing, pretending that it hasn’t leaked and pretending you can't get it free online anyway – I thought there’s got to be a better relationship that can be established here. So I went off on my own and spent a long time experimenting with different business models, saying ‘here’s a record that’s free, or five bucks if you want a nice version or $250, if you’d like a really nice coffee table thing’. Everything that I did felt like the right thing to do at the time, and then six months later, it would feel tired. And I would feel tired. All that stuff takes so much energy, figuring out, what’s the temperature right now, what are people expecting, and here’s a new thing called Kickstarter. So that is one of the reasons for returning to a major label. It was an intriguing idea and it’s proven so far to be a good one, where there are people who are actually good at what they do, and I let them do it. I don’t need to be the publicist really. I probably can, if I have to. But I’d much rather be worrying about the color of that light out there, and playing that note in tune, and picking out the best way to arrange the song. Rather than thinking about what pricing  we should have for the download. That’s all marketing stuff. It’s not art. I realized I was wasting a lot of time thinking about that shit rather than the thing I’d like to be thinking about. Which is making music, and making art. That’s all.

Alden Ehrenreich, BULLETT magazine

When I arrive to meet Alden Ehrenreich at Dominick’s, his favorite West Hollywood trattoria that once stood as a Rat Pack drinking den, the 23-year-old actor is lying flat on his back on a wooden bench out front, talking on an outdated cellphone that makes him look not entirely from this time. He is dressed in green—from his sneakers to his prep school blazer, to the leather strap on his wristwatch, all of which match his matinee idol eyes. “Warner Bros. gave me a stylist for my last movie,” he says as we enter the restaurant. “It became a joke how much I like green.”

That movie was last spring’s Beautiful Creatures, a supernatural misfire that tried to do for witches what the Twilight saga did for vampires. The film disappointed at the box office despite built-in fans of the YA series it was based on, but it marked a quantum leap in Ehrenreich’s career. As Ethan, a young man who longs to escape his stultifying Southern hometown, Ehrenreich not only held his own, but stole the show, opposite heavyweights like Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, and Viola Davis. In March, he also appeared in a pivotal exchange with Mia Wasikowska in Chan-wook Park’s macabre family drama, Stoker.

Even before he was born, Ehrenreich was connected to movies. Sitting in a darkened theater, his mother, then pregnant with her son, saw the opening credits to Field of Dreams—“Directed by Phil Alden Robinson”—and suddenly knew what she was going to name him. “It had nothing to do with the movie,” Ehrenreich says. “They just couldn’t decide on a name.” The native Angeleno, who “grew up around the business of movies but not in it,” developed an early passion for acting that carried into his freshman year of high school. At 14, Ehrenreich made a short film he screened at a friend’s bat mitzvah. The video, a gonzo clip featuring Ehrenreich breaking into the girl’s home, trying on her clothes, and eating dirt, amused fellow guest Steven Spielberg.

The film icon then set Ehrenreich up with an agent, which led to years of auditions—one of them for Francis Ford Coppola, who was casting his second movie in a decade, the black-and-white immigrant odyssey Tetro. During their initial meeting, the legendaryGodfather director instructed Ehrenreich to read aloud a passage from The Catcher in the Rye. The actor, then 18, landed his first starring role as Bennie, a teenager in search of his long-lost brother, played by Vincent Gallo. “As Christopher Plummer once said, when he was playing Tolstoy in The Last Station, ‘The only way to play a genius is to be very simple,’ and that’s kind of how Francis is at this point in his life,” says Ehrenreich of working with Coppola on Tetro and again in the 2011 gothic horror film Twixt. “There is so much depth there, but the way he communicates and the way he directs is beautifully simple. He doesn’t engage in a whole lot of rhetoric about what he does.”

Over beef carpaccio, baked ricotta, a half-dozen oysters, four Belgian beers, a side of spinach, and two orders of whitefish piccata—Ehrenreich knows his way around the menu—the actor, who majored in theater at New York University for a semester before transferring to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, describes being weaned on a diet of silent, western, and classic films, his parents schooling him on the genius of Charlie Chaplin, Elia Kazan, and Marlon Brando. “My parents held these film festivals at our house that would chronologically take me through film history,” he says. “We started with the earliest movies and slowly made our way through the century. It turned me into a film buff.”

But Ehrenreich’s passions aren’t limited to movies. Growing up, he marveled at the staccato prose of Joan Didion, and once painted his mother as she sat in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. When he was feeling lonely during Tetro’s shoot in Argentina, he sought comfort in the Spartan writing of Ernest Hemingway. “I had never lived on my own before,” he says. “I started reading A Moveable Feast and it turned everything around for me. Hemingway was like, ‘The bread was good. The wine was great,’ and that made me appreciate all of the small things going on around me. It made Argentina come alive.”

This summer, Ehrenreich will appear in Woody Allen’s romantic drama Blue Jasmine, opposite Cate Blanchett (“one of the greatest actors I’ve ever had the honor to work with”) as a fashionable New York housewife in crisis, continuing his enviable knack for collaborating with some of Hollywood’s—no, cinema’s—most revered filmmakers. “Film is just so important,” he says. “It’s such an effective art form. If you have the opportunity to say something that can benefit people and affect the way they think about their own lives, help them find tolerance toward something, or help them accept something about themselves, then you must take it. And take it seriously.”

This article originally appeared in BULLETT magazine. Read here.

Cameron Diaz

In 2010 I spent two hours interviewing Cameron Diaz for a major women's magazine. Her views on life and womanhood were far more thoughtful, spiritual and progressive than I had expected, bearing in mind her blonde and breezy public persona. Here is the unedited version of our interview, minus some introductory chatter at the beginning. I hope you enjoy it.     

What about you? How have you evolved?

There’s a lot. I think that over the last few years there have been a lot of things that have sort of propelled me and pushed me into different stages of growth. One being my father dying – that was a huge one and that reorganizes everything in your life, and continues to. In wonderful ways although obviously the loss is horrible and devastating. You don’t want to have it. but you have to take something good from it to figure out. I have learned a lot about what I want in my life having gone through that loss for myself and for my family. So that a big part of it. I also think that just the normal everyday ways we live our lives – I am 38 years old right now, it’s a great age. I love being 38 and I am excited about being 39 and I am excited about being 40 and its because I feel like life gets better as you get older. You know yourself better, you know what you want, you’re stronger mentally emotionally and physically –and I’ve been having this evolution of mind body and spirit for I think…more intensely over the last few years…but its the course of life. And being in my late 30s is certainly much different than being in my late 20s.

So the big catalyst for you was the passing of your father?

Yes, and just maturing. At 35 I think women, starting at 27 is like a big thing

What, you mean like the Saturn’s return or something?

Exactly. How old are you?

I’m 34.

You’ll see at 35, there’s going to be settlement from all of those past years from 27. From 27 to 34 there’s that seven year spam where you have done a ton of work and you have gone …I’m sure at 27 there was a burst of knowledge…at 35 comes another one. But it’s a much more subtle one. Because you have all the knowledge that you gained over the last 7 years and it’s a bigger resolve within yourself. It’s easier to make the good decisions you need to make. The 27 – 34 is the questioning and the revelation that everything you thought you knew when you were 22 and 23 when you thought you had the world figured out…you’re reorganizing all of that. and at 35 your life becoming so much more clear…a and all the fringe shit you don’t need just gets cuts away.

What gets cut away? Behaviors?

Everything. Everything. People, behaviors, everything. I think a lot of people do a good cropping of people from 27 to 34 and then 35 is the big hedge cut. Its like buzz cut every body! It’s hard.

Wow, devastating!

But that is a big part of the growth at that period of time and then you start working the foundation of the things that did stay. You’re like these are the things I am confident on now. Then at 35 you are ready to go I am just not doing that any more and you feel confident in that decisions and you feel confident in that decision because you’ve done the work. At 38, whats so wonderful about it is that your really lose so much judgment for other people and yourself. The mistake that you make….you can see the traps coming towards you that you would normally have fallen for and you can change…make different decisions to have a different result. You can change pattern. And you can start making better clearer decisions because you have all the experience behind you.

(orders food)

I am going to get the roast chicken…do you guys have sweet potatoes by any chance? Don’t worry about the potato puree I’ll take the chard. Do you have quinoa?

So you were saying…35 is this kind of watershed year. I feel like in a very biological sense that 35 is a cut off – that I have kind of contended with myself, because I don’t have kids, and I always thought I wanted them, and now I am not sure because I don’t feel ready – but there’s this whole pressure, like at 35 apparently your eggs start shriveling up and they are not behaving in the same way. Is that part of it? Is that part of why it is a watershed year? Like ‘this is where I am at with my fertility?’

I think that’s natural, if you think you’ve always wanted them. But a lot of my girlfriends who are 35, they will do that. They will go ‘yeah I’ve got to do it now’, or ‘if I don’t I am OK’. And I hear that so much more from my girlfriends. It’s like…I like my life. And then you have your girlfriends who have kids, and the one who don’t have kids. And they’re like its like wow…it’s a lot. Do I want to change my life completely? Is that the way I want to change my life completely? There are so many different ways to live your life. You can do whatever you want in your life. You really can. I really believe that. And its just matter of what choices you make. And maybe this society puts us in this position of choosing.

Maybe before we’re ready to choose?

I see it with a lot of my girlfriends who had kids younger, saying, “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.” Everybody is on their own path, but today we live where women are feeling less and less pressure to live under the constraints, ideals that maybe they don’t believe in. That don’t apply to them.

It’s a gift. We’re a privileged group of women who have that ability to make the choice.

Absolutely. To be able to make the decision where you don’t need to have a family just to exist. A lot of women need a man to be able to pay the rent, or create a family life. I think the ideal of that is…that’s something that made sense at a time and still does to certain people, but it doesn’t need to make sense for everyone. It’s not an absolute for everyone.

As evolved, as we are I think there’s still pressure, a very traditional pressure. I think that I have felt like ‘oh, I’m on the shelf’. I never thought about it when I was in my 20s and when I turned 30 I was like…I started feeling something…a guilt or something that was prodding me to be in a place that maybe I wasn’t psychologically ready for. Even the most evolved women friends of mine who are in their late thirties and forties are all going through the same feelings, and I am trying to figure out ‘what part of your sadness is to do with yourself, and what part is to do with society saying you should be doing this?’ Because you know, we can freeze our eggs, we can call on our female support groups to help us if we do get pregnant. Maybe I am too trapped in a seventies utopian village dream…

Well it takes a village. I see it with all my friends. Even if they have nannies or the grandparents help out or whatever it is. You can’t really do it totally on your own and it be healthy for you. For the child, or the relationship as well. With the child and just in general. I don’t think it’s a healthy thing to just solely do that. Go to a village where there are women absolutely where that’s what they do. They have children. And the village all helps take care of them. Everyone does their part. I think that when I talk to my girlfriends about the whole thing we approach it from a place of what is…if there’s dissatisfaction in your life, where is that dissatisfaction coming from? If it really is that you want to have a child and give life, raise that life, create a human being to deliver to the world…that’s a huge responsibility. If that feels like your calling and your purpose then yes. And if you’re at 38 and you haven’t done it yet, there’s other questions to be asked, like why it hasn’t happened yet? It’s bigger than just making the decision to have the child because you think its something you’re supposed to do. You have to look at the big picture and look at what it is you want out of your life, not just that society has said it’s something you should do. And um, I have never personally felt the pressure of having to have a child. I am very lucky; my family has never put that pressure on me. My sister has four children. She did it, she took care of it. And my parents would never put that on me. It would only be if I wanted to do it, then they would be happy. If I don’t, I am sure they might have their own disappointment but they would never put it on me? And in addition, I just really don’t care what other people think outside that. I really don’t care what society thinks I should do.  I live my life the way I want to live it, and I love my life. I am blessed every single day. I feel very fortunate, I feel like I am the luckiest of the lucky, and I don’t take that for granted. So I feel like if I felt like there was something missing in my life in that way, then I would address it. I would be doing something different in my life if that were what I wanted. That’s just how I live my life

You seem to operate very much in the present. So tomorrow you might wake up and be like ‘I need to have kids’?

Whatever. If I woke up tomorrow and thought ‘I have to have children’, I would sit with it. I wouldn’t be impulsive. I would sit with it and be like ‘hey this is a new thought. Let’s explore this. What is it that makes me feel that all of sudden I need this. Am I feeling insecure about something?  Am I feeling like something is getting away from me that I want to hold on to? Do I feel the pressure of other people trying to tell me what I need to do? Are they right? Am I wrong? Or is that I really feel like I have something to offer a child that I really want to give?’ Creating a life and creating a person….do I think that the value of that is worth me at this time in my life doing, over what I would be doing without that responsibility? So now…this is the time for me to do that. Ok I’ll do it. That would have to be the only way I would make that decision

A considered decision.

A considered decision, for the right reasons. Not because I feel any pressure from any place, from any one. That’s how you end up unhappy in your life. And I’m not an impulsive person at all. I‘m a very practical person. I’m very thoughtful about the things that I do. I wouldn’t ever reach that decision that out of the blue.

Have you always been someone who always thinks deeply about decisions, and considers things?

It’s definitely a version of me, it’s been an evolution to this place. I think that we all evolve through our lessons. I have been very fortunate in my life to have met amazing people, to have had relationships with all kinds of different people all over the world, from different walks of life, with different intellects and interests and ambitions – across the board. That’s one of the great joys of my life – the people I have been able to be in contact with. Even the people that come up to me on a daily basis to say ‘hello’ because they know who I am. All of that is an enrichment of my life and it helps me formulate…I’m always being open to considering other ways and the possibilities of what the spectrum of experience is, how broad it can be. And I take a lot of joy in finding out what my boundaries are.

By being completely open?

Yes. By being completely open and allowing things to come in. I never put out “no”. I never say never. Sure go ahead, let’s give it a go! Unless I have already had the experience and I know what it is and I go ‘you know what, its not for me’. But new experiences and new ideas and new ways of thinking – I’m open to all of it and I will try it and if it doesn’t work for me I am not going to do it. But I won’t put a limit on it.

What new experiences are you exploring right now?

Something really major for me at this time in my life has been an interesting journey...and I am really happy to be on it…I have been, since Charlie’s Angels…before Charlie’s Angels I never ever had worked out. I was an athlete, I liked doing physical things but I got lazy and I got out of my body and I didn’t have any connection to it. I was in my 20s, I was invincible. And then I did Charlie’s angels, I got connected to my body again, it was very intense experience but I really enjoyed it because I was gaining not only physical strength, but it helped me in a mental and emotional way. When you challenge yourself and put yourself into challenges you really overcome. The benefit of that is that you build strength inside yourself mentally and emotionally. You push your limits. You expand yourself so you can be capable of doing more and accomplishing more. And its has affected me in every aspect of my life. Emotionally, I realized that pain is only temporary. The physical pain I went through helped me understand emotionally and mentally that pain is only temporary and you can get through pain, in times that are hard, whether it’s a breakup or a fight with a friend or a complication that you can’t figure out, and its bringing some complexity to your life that is painful, you go I know I can get through this, this is only temporary and if I do the work and work hard and push through the challenge on the other side there is this massive payoff, I am going to gain the knowledge  didn’t have before,  I am going to be stronger, more capable, a bigger vessel to hold more, and that set me up on a course. Working out and training and keeping that part of my life in my everyday routine, has helped me accomplish so many things in my life because that was the anchor and the catalyst at the same time to help me in other aspect of my life. More recently, what I have added to that because before, it was just like going to the gym, and I am notoriously known for being an eater. I eat everything and anything. I love food. Its one of the benefits of being the skinny girl with the high metabolism, but I always worked out so I could get away with it. But as I got older I realized on so many levels, that you have to make choices in your life, changes that you have to make, changes of habit and lifestyle that set you up in a course into the next phase of your life. And something I have started doing just recently in the last two months, since the new year, something I have been working towards over the last year or so which was I need to make a change in my lifestyle, in my habits, because I know I cant do this forever – and that's eat what I want when I want.

You had been eating whatever you wanted up until two months ago?

Yes. Food is my pleasure. I love fried foods. And I decided that after taking a look at the way that my body is changing and just the general lack of discipline. Eating is something we do several times a day, it’s a huge part of our lives, and its how we stay alive! Its like any decision or any habit that you make on a daily basis – if you are making bad decisions all day long it eventually racks up. And then what you have is a bad result of those decisions.

Were you feeling a bad result?

I was feeling a bad result. Just physically. I decided to sort of go ‘ok I am going to start changing my habits, I am going to start making different decisions’. What do I have to lose? If I decide I don’t like it I can always go back to eating fried foods at least once a day. That’s fine. So I started changing what I ate and how I ate it. And within a week, and just doing the training that I would normally be doing  - I do diff things from Pilates to weightlifting to anaerobic stuff to plyometrics – all the different stuff I have done over the years. I love it.

But you ate poorly.

I ate like shit! And the result of that was that I was maintaining a body that was…fine. And a feeling in my body that was…fine. It was all good and when people looked at it they would go ‘wow – that’s great’. But really it’s talking about individual potential. And everybody has their own. If I am at 50% of my potential that might be someone else’s 100%. But I am still only at my 50%.a and someone else might look at themselves and realize that they are only at their 50%. How do they get to the 100%? The only way to do it is to change your habits and to change the way that you do what you’re doing currently. If you’re only at your 50% what you’re’ doing isn’t working.

For you were you at 50%?

I was probably at 75%.

What made your realize that there was something you were sweeping under the carpet?

I realized over the last year and a half or so, I started realizing ok – it takes a little bit longer in the gym to get back. If I leave the gym for a week. When I was 30, it would take me 3 days to get back to a place that I could feel the strength again. By the end of two weeks of being in the gym and working out I would be back up to where I felt like I was in a good place. But I started realizing that it was starting to take me a week to a week and a half to get to that good place. You can spend you day doing anything. An hour doing anything you want. I prefer to spend and hour in the morning or even 30 minutes in the morning dedicated to my physical health.

This is how I have always been. But what is new for me is making different choices in what I ate. Which I have never done. Combined with the fitness I have always done. And the result of that has been phenomenal. I don’t eat all the crap that I normally eat. And I am eating very clean. I am not eating anything…I am eating the proper carbs…like whole grains and brown ice and oatmeal and sweet potatoes really good…actually the best carb…and quinoa…that kind of stuff. Nothing white – no pasta. Every once in a while. I don’t believe in depriving yourself. I just believe on being focused and disciplined at a very high percentage. Not just 60-40 but 95-5 of the majority. I am eating more frequently – I eat every three hours and I eat a protein, the right carb and greens, and that's what I am eating. I am not inviting in…I am doing it grilled or roasted not fried. I am not eating…I cut out dairy completely a year ago. I am doing low sodium, if none at all, I stopped salting my food which honestly I thought I was going to die…but you realize oh wait the reasons I needed salt all the time was because I ate salt all the time. Like anything there is transition period. Now I don’t even think about salting food nay more.

What’s been the impact of all this?

The impact has been gigantic. I get a better result with my workout. I started lifting heavier weights, which I would never have done in the past.

So beyond the physical, you feel more present in your body?

When you make decisions like…it gives you the ability to be present in that moment and more thoughtful about your future. Discipline creates focus and that transfers into every aspect of your life.

Which is interesting, because your approach is to be open, but what’s brought you to a healthier place has been to not be so open with certain things.

Actually the cool thing is, because I have narrowed the scope of what I am eating, it has enabled me to expand it. If I am cooking for myself if I am not going to fry it, how else can I make it taste good. You come up with different ideas  from fry it or salt it, put some potatoes on it and a bit of butter of it.

Do you feel more sexual?

I fell more alive in every way. The confidence that it gives you…if you look at it…I've talked to a lot of people about this thing…would you agree that most people, 80% of most peoples' dissatisfaction with their lives is about how they look and feel? Probably people don’t realize how they feel…they associate it with how they look…but the reason they look that way is because you don’t know how you feel inside. If you were connected to how you feel inside hen you would realize that you would be making different choices to make you feel different inside which would automatically change the way that you look.

You believe that people can act themselves into a more beautiful self?

It’s transformation. Very powerful…how do you want to look? How do you want to feel? I feeling my body really really strongly. The energy that comes out of me comes from not the way that I look to other people but how I feel. How it feels to be strong in my body. How it feels to not eat something that makes me bogged down. To be able to be light on my feet and know that I am ready to take on whatever I need to take on. That the challenges that I have put up for myself have made me stronger and more capable in making more decisions for myself whether its my career, my relationship, my friends, my family – whatever it is. Dealing with anything that makes me stronger – we all have our time and we’re all human and we all have our ups and our downs, but it helps you navigate and be more resilient to the downward moment

So what exactly do you want most at this point in your life? Right now.

I think its like…I’m where I want to be. I am exactly where I want to be. Making the choice to be more thoughtful about this. Be more thoughtful about the choices that I make throughout the day. It has just given me the ability to…when I have a challenge within a friendship, or even the littlest things. It has made me more disciplined to return emails. Because I am more focused.  It has totally rippled out. Ok I must call my sister. I shouldn’t let that thing go and I should not let that pass me by. I have more energy. It’s not that hard for me to say yes to a lot of things that I may have said no to because I was beat. Now I think differently. And also just the benefit of taking on a challenge and like sticking with it and staying with the discipline gives you confidence to do so much more. The first two weeks I thought I was going to die without fried foods. I was doing interviews for Green Hornet and they were like ‘what superhero power would you have’…and I was like “eat fried foods!” I was obsessed with it. I pushed through it. I got past it

I am very happy for you.

And then it’s not on my brain like that any more. Sometimes I'm like, I look at it and I’m like ‘I could eat all of that’. And I'm like ‘go ahead do it. Go ahead Cameron. What’s going to happen?’ And I’m like…’I don’t really want it.’ Because I think about how it will make me feel and how I want to live my life now and how I want to be and I don’t think that it’s worth it to me to take myself back. Once in a while I’m like you know what I am going to go out and have fried chicken at the château. And I’m going to kill it. I’m going to eat all of it. I’m going to eat it down to the gristle. And I’ll go do that.

So how does this feed in to the whole where you’re at right now? You’re at a place where you’re healthy in your body, evolved in your mind, growing and learning and having found yourself.

There’s no destination. I’m not waiting to arrive anywhere. I’m still…you know…I’m in a constant forward motion. You know? That’s just you know…that’s just me. I don’t say that everybody has to be able to do it. But I think that I see the benefits of doing it. Of living that way. And it’s something that speaks to me and I would encourage it to anybody. If there’s anybody who wants to talk about it, I would be happy to. If anyone is interested, I am happy to have that conversation. I am not going around saying you have to do it.

Have you always been this disciplined?

I contribute a lot of that to my parents. The way they raised my sister and I. but they allowed us to have our own beliefs. They said...hey you’re capable.

I reading an  interview that you did where you were saying that they always encouraged you to be your best rather than the best. You meet a lot of younger women wracked with fear about how they are going to be the best. Everyone’s only capable of being his or her own best.

If your aspiration…if you aspire to be your own best…doesn’t mean you are not going to end up being the best. The goal shouldn’t be to be the best.

What’s your goal?

My goal is to do the best that I can as it happens. To make the best decisions that I can given consciously given everything that I’ve gone through in my life, lessons that I have learned but try not to repeat the same mistakes, but I am human and it might happen but hopefully the repercussions of it aren’t as damaging in some way. To just really be conscious of where I am at and what I am doing. I don’t think that…I think happiness, there are many arms and legs, there are many moving components to being happy.

If you had to choose between love and career, which would you choose?

Life is not linear process, it expands and it contracts. It ebbs and flows.  So I'm happy to go with the flow. It’s not about either or necessarily. But as you go, like recently…I usually cook a lot more, and I haven’t been cooking very much lately, so the way that I manifest the need for that for me was that cooking was a creative outlet…so I started drawing more. I’ll just doodle now. I used to draw more. I have created an other outlet. I still need that outlet. And when I started relaxing there was something missing. I was like wow this feels kind of the same as when I am cooking. That satisfies that. I cook for the people I love. I like to give it to people. It’s not the same thing. And the nurturing comes out in other ways. That’s the ebb and flow. Ok I am not in the kitchen so how can I satisfy these things.? I don’t think that you ever have to give up anything. I think that you just have to change again…I am not going to give up the pleasure of eating just because I feel a certain way I am just going to figure out how to do it differently

So, I know you are on the downlow in interviews about your relationship…

I’ll see what I can answer for you.

What’s it like having been on the downlow and then there was a really cute moment where you were feeding each other popcorn during the Superbowl. What’s it like to come out,  when one of the things associated with that is bringing relationship into the public eye. It brings a whole other range of issues. Did that moment mean anything to you guys?

It was really sweet…we laughed. We were like ‘oh my god can you believe it?’ Especially since it was the only time…he finished his popcorn and he went to eat my popcorn and I was like whoa! It’s my popcorn, because we love popcorn. I said ok you can have this piece and that was the only time I had fed him. There were two pieces of popcorn left and I said you can have this piece and the camera happened to catch us right that moment and we were like ‘of course’. The one time I do that.  We thought it was sweet. It was really cute. And it does show a dynamic of our relationship which is we know going to a place which is the most watched event in television history…you can’t really live your life worrying about those things. There’s only so much that you can keep to yourself without being able to…we cant be mad at that. Here we are trying to sort of keep it on the down low for so long and now its sort of like we’re just living our lives. You want to go out and be in the world with the person you are with. There are certain things you don’t want to give up completely and that moment wasn’t necessarily one…but we didn’t care. It didn’t bother us that that happened at all. We laughed at it. We were like ‘oh my god we are going to get in so much shit for that’. He is. But its not disingenuous of whom we are. What really hurts is when people portray things in a way that isn’t nice or not real. When they say things that are hurtful. That’s when you get upset about people getting into your business. But that was who we are. Then someone said afterwards that Alex was upset about it and we were like what? That’s when you go ‘come on guys. Why would you say that?’ And then that became negative about it and we were having fun with it. We were having fun with the whole thing because it was funny. And all of a sudden people have to put a negative slant on it where we are like that’s just not cool. It’s not important for us to go out and change people’s opinion of it. Its just who…we were just being who we are.

What’s the dynamic like between you two, if you were to describe it?

Well. I’m happy to talk about the other part of it...but the dynamic is where I keep it a little closer. But to answer your question about what’s it like being in relationships in public. You hope that people respect it. Of course you know that people are going to have their opinions about it.

What a bummer to have to deal with that.

We just kind of ignore it. Because it’s like any relationship. With anybody. If people take it back to themselves, I am sure there is plenty of girls in relationships who either love their boyfriend or hate their boyfriend. Or they’re a mixed bag. The verdict’s out. Or there are people in a relationship and it’s celebrated but their relationship isn't really doing that well. And there are relationships where people are like how does that fucking work? I don’t get it? But it’s between the two people. You cant judge. And I have learned it. Being at this age. You cannot look at every other relationship in the past might have looked and gone what is wrong with those people. You cannot judge the love between two people. You cant make someone feel differently about someone than the way they feel about them. That’s their journey. A thousand percent. Everybody is in your life for a purpose. For me. I think why marriage hasn’t been really important to me because I believe we’re where we supposed to be, with whom we’re supposed to be when we’re supposed to be with them. If I try to lock something down and say this is what it is, I’m missing out on all the possibilities of what it could be. And it doesn't mean that I am looking for someone, some thing else to move on to. It means…why am I going to say this is what this is when it could be so much more. Why do I have to put a limit on it?

So you’re cool with where it’s at in that moment.

It doesnt mean you cant be committed to one another or to the future but you’re not there yet. You’ve got to get there. And you’re never getting there because it keeps moving. The future is not. It doesn’t exist. You only are where you’re. You keep making the choices that you make to get you to the next place. Those only exist as you’re there. This is what I believe and that’s what I encourage for people. Whatever it is for you…you have to be honest. I mean…the only way about getting around feeling insecure is to address it and feel honest about it and say I am insecure about this because it makes me feel like this ad then he goes you don’t have to feel that way. That the. I think people get so bogged down. The pictures I did yesterday are all about my body…clothing is Cosmo. I don’t have a problem with that. I have worked to have what I have. I feel good about what I have, I am not hiding…but I am not going to pretend that it is easy. Nothing is. Nothing is easy. That is life. Life is you exits being human is to be challenged in every way shape or form and if you are not taking on the challenge and not learning to take on the challenge in a healthy way or to keep moving through those challenges then your experience here is going to be a very unhappy one. But if you learn to take on those challenges and embrace them and take strength out oft hem and power yourself through them then the payoff to that is unbelievable. In any aspect of your life. I am not just talking about the physical aspect. Doing what I have been doing for the last 10/11 years, taking care of my body in the way I have and then stepping it into this new phase of adding consciousness of what I am eating and changing my patterns, it has been a consistent challenge the whole way through but I am not allowing myself…every once in a while I will get down on one knee and have to take a breath. But then I am like you know what this…the benefit of this is does good. It makes my life so much better in everyway ay. Some people it might be meditation is the thing that catapults their success in all different directions. Some people it might be their children. Whatever it is you have to find that for yourselves. I personally think the majority of people…the fact that the media and you turn on the TV after 1am and it's a pill or a piece of equipment or a program or a DVD or a book that’s a quick fix to something that everybody for the majority of people have a dissatisfaction with, which is the way they feel inside and the way that they look. And if people became more conscious of how to…if they really applied themselves to that and made the changes in their lives. Even if you don’t go 100% on something, it moves a needle of you make an effort. No matter what the percentage is, if its 75%. You’re going to make a difference and that keeps you motivated to doing more and more.

Do you have a mantra? When you’re struggling in the mornings perhaps?

Its funny…it’s just do it! It’s the best slogan ever! They are so smart.  It is a mindset for people. When you re focused on something. Whatever it is. Whether its your meditation or your spiritual practice or whatever it is that gets you motivated and moves you forward and pushes you, you just have to do it. It’s called discipline and discipline is necessity in everyone’s life of some sort.

Tell me more about discipline and how you learned it.

My parents put a lot of responsibility on my sister and I from a young age. They allowed us to like…I got up in the morning and made my own breakfast starting at five years old I could cook an omelet I did my own laundry. We had chores around the house...we had a work ethic and we were held to it. And I think that that is a discipline. My parents gave us the discipline of taking care of what we had to take care of. There were rules and responsibilities and we had to take care of those things and when you realize that how much you can expand that. That’s just running a household or getting yourself out of the house and balancing a checkbook. That’s the basics of it all…The 100% is all the other aspects of life that you want to be accomplished in or that you want to participate in at the very least if I wanted to like…if my thing on the weekend was to go thrift shopping I have got to get up at the weekends to go do it. If getting there at 6am mean getting the things I really wanted rather than getting there at 9am and getting the scraps I would probably be more motivated at 5am when the alarm to just go do it. It’s like setting the alarm at 5am and saying I am going to get an hour’s workout because I want to feel better about myself. I just got to do it. I gotta do it. Because that’s what it takes.

Have you thought about writing a self-help book?

Haha. When you put that into your head and you don’t let yourself talk yourself out of it. It goes back to what they think makes them happy...instead of really searching…..what do you have to lose. How are you going to spend that other hour? If you need more sleep go to bed earlier so hat you can get up and do that hour. You can have it all. Sometimes it’s at a little bit more of a cost but the goal is to have it all and come out with equity at the end.  And what are the things that you want. How do you make that balance? If you have to chalk it up. Its like I am going to have fun eating food. But I am going to change the way I eat and the choices I make on it because its worth it to me at the end to have the results that I have gotten from it. Dong the same thing over and over and over and over again is really bad for you. If you inject rat with water over  and over…they get cancer. Because anything too much of anything over and over and over again is not good for you.

Do you feel that your friends come to you for advice? You seem very grounded and you have a really good sense of what it means to be healthy in all respects.

I am lucky that a lot of my friends have helped me and we help each other. We all sort of arrive to these ideas and beliefs through each other's experiences and being like.  That's the great thing about relationships and friendships. Sometimes you don’t have to take on the challenge yourself to understand the repercussions or the payoff too.

How do you talk about difficult subjects with your friends…when one of your friends isn’t  making good decisions for themselves or going through a negative pattern?

Drew and I have that with each other all the time. We’re like sisters she’s like ‘oh god here it comes again.’ And I’m like not it doesn’t and she’ll be like later on…preaching to me on something and I’m like rally…you’re going to say that again…or we’ll be like ‘ok I hear you I totally get it thank you so much for addressing that. What else, can you just lay it out for me because I want to know? You know ok I respect that and I appreciate and I am going to pay attention to it. And then use it and I appreciate you coming to me as my friend and bringing that to my attention because I respect you and it matters to me what you think and I know this is coming from a place of love and I am happy to receive it. It hurts a little bit but god it would be so much worse if it cost me anything with you.’

You make it sound so easy!

It’s all in how you say it too. Rather than telling someone ‘hey guess what you do you’, you can say ‘hey do you ever realize that when you do this, this happens. Is that something you’re aware of?’ Oh…and then you’re not like hey guess what you do. You do that. And that happens. It’s like that puts people on the defense right way but if you give them the opportunity to discover it for themselves. They can work it out for themselves.

I’ve got a couple more questions. What do you think of social networking?

I don’t get social networking. I mean I get it, I understand it. But it freaks me out. It freaks me out. Like I guess its just because of the position I am in… this need to make your life into content to be uploaded for everybody to see. Its like why would you want anybody to know? I also think that …I don’t think its perfect. The whole system. And I hear all these weird stories bout people getting hacked in their space and pictures being taken off and it really freaks me out because I’m like ‘well if there’s part of it that's supposed to be private we’re not really sure whether or not that’s even really possible. If we are putting up all this stuff that you think is private and then it is being accessed by other people, that is such a violation that I wouldn’t want to take the personal chance of doing that’.  We don’t really know the repercussions of it yet. Also its like a distraction. And that keep you from doing other things…like taking care of yourself. And moving through the world in a way that you’re …I have believe that work ethic is like a major thing for me. I have a very strong work ethic. And I believe that people…that we should all work really hard.  And you should have a good time while you are doing it. Work should be fun. And I find in the younger generation…like 32 and younger…there’s just a difference, there’s not the same work ethic as 33 and up.

I wonder why that is?

I think that it’s all about decades. Every decade has a different you know and generations. Its generational and I think that kids are that are in their twenties think that… Its a statement of society…there was the mentality and its happened over the centuries in America with every generation where parents have to work real really hard throughout depression and the 40s and the 50s it was lets reap the benefits and there was a sense of working hard but starting to have this sense of accomplishment and giving your children things you could never have as a child and that theme carried on all the way up to where you couldn’t give kids what they need. You didn’t have to work for it because you could charge it. My parents used to put things on layaway. If you put the things you want aside and you went and paid for them as you could afford them. You went in and said ‘now I want this pair of pants for this much money’ and you didn’t go in and say I’ll take all this stuff and I’ll pay you later. And I think we live in society now where it is instant gratification. We can have whatever we want right now without having to actually pay for it, which ultimately you have to work to be able to afford it. It’s like getting from a to b with out doing the work. You have to pay for it. Somewhere.

What are your thoughts on monogamy? Is it something society has created or is it a natural state for humans to be in?

1000% society. I think monogamy has been created to provide you know. We all know where it comes from. It comes from religion. And it comes from societal constraints. And you know I don’t think that it is natural. I absolutely don’t think it is natural. Its probably one of the biggest challenges of our society is to try and figure out how to come to terms with that.

How to navigate something that maybe goes against biology?

Uh huh.

Its like you’re saying with diet. If you choose that you want to be monogamous you are going against personality or biology then you are creating this other new narrower world that could be awesome or could be a nightmare.

I think it’s all about the individuals and it’s all about people being honest. And its about people being able to communicate and I think that its going to be one of those things that will be a major challenge and people are trying to start to learn how to navigate it in a more realistic way. And I think that it is going to be a major part of the reconstruction of our society, taking that into consideration. Or it should be. I think people would be a lot happier if they figured it out.

You once said a woman should never be alone without her dildo.

I’m sorry, who said that? I said the two things that women should absolutely have is a dildo and a triple A card because you should never be stranded by the roadside without help.

I went through my phases with them. With feeling almost guilty. Like, ‘I’m so self-sufficient right now! I kind of don’t need anything else’.  I got rid of anything that had a motor because really, how is a guy going to compete.

I think that that’s you guys, you and your boyfriend. You guys can work that out. Yeah I now its definitely one of those things that has become…have you seen. Like on television there’s this show like pay per view called shop erotica and they are like this is…I LOVE that. Its is a normal act. It is an absolutely normal act. You might as well optimize it. People are afraid to like you know…you don’t have to talk about it, it doesn’t have to be the topic of conversation...you don’t have to share it with everybody but it s natural thing and girls shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Men shouldn’t be afraid of it.

Some guys are intimidated by it and then they get into it.

Optimize whatever the boundaries are...maybe one day you’ll learn how to introduce it to him in a way that doesn’t feel threatening to him, that might be the challenge. For me I see it as a challenge for myself to see how creative can I actually get. It’s a good challenge in figuring out how to make it something that is breaking up your norm. The thing that maybe wasn’t doing it the same way all the time doesn’t allow you toe expand and grow and now you get to have the opportunity to expand and grow because of the he limitations that he has.

What do you think of the word “lover”?

I love the word lover. Absolutely. I love the word lover I think its a beautiful word. I think it encompasses everything that a relationship should have.  Because I think it implies a connection a partnership, and as well as the…you know…kind of what that relationships is specifically that makes it different from all the other relationships that you have. A lover is somebody specific. Unless you have several lovers. But if you are calling one person your lover it’s a partnership and it’s a connection and its specific.

Partner – there’s something very logistical about that word.

I think its important part of relationships. Your lover is the partner in that aspect of your life but also you can expand that and because you have that connection it makes you stronger to the rest of life and its challenges and what you can take on together.

Do you ever want to be a wife?

I don’t know. I think that when you are in a committed relationship with somebody there’s no difference.  You’re practically married. In that way. You’re married for that time that you are living life together.  When you marry your lives together and integrate you lives together. Not all relationships but when you are in some relationships it is like a marriage. But I don’t need a title or a label. I am happy being somebody’s lover. To me it’s the same. It’s got the same gravity.

You were talking about integration. Do you find or have you found in the past that there is a struggle to maintain sense of self in a relationship? When you integrate with someone in committed relationship or as a lover, there is sometimes, you lose a part of yourself.

I think it’s universal. I think it’s important to keep trying to find the balance in it. If you go too far in one direction I don’t think it is healthy. And ultimately for women. Everybody find something different attractive. There might be a guy who wants a girl who solely wants to take care of him and doesn’t want anything else going on in his life and only a couple things that don’t take him too far from his needs. But I think generally men want women who have things going on in their own lives. Certainly thats the kind of man I would want. Somebody who is supportive and wants that for me as well rather than somebody. The things that I have going on in my life aren’t a threat to them.

I know you don’t necessarily look ahead very far, you try to be in the moment, but presumably you have a sense of future. Like, when you’re 60, where do you want to be with your career?

No. I never think about that. I have no idea. I am limiting myself if I do honestly. I am limiting myself if I do. I just…the things that I have found in my life that when I am the happiest and where I am reaping the biggest benefits and I am like looking at something and I am like wow. Wow. Really? This is amazing. I had no idea it could be like this. I had no idea. Even if I thought…if I gave you the best picture. If I looked at that paper and I looked at where I am at right now I think I just limited myself. This is so much better. Where I’m at. Actuality is so much bigger and better and brighter and funner and more exciting and more fulfilling than I would ever have been able …than what I wrote down here. I don’t know. How here in this moment do I know what I am capable of in two years, or ten years, or two months? Two months ago I didn’t think I would not be coming here for Sunday fried chicken.  You know what I mean.

Is that why they said ‘we haven’t seen you for a while?’

I lived here for a while. I also lived up around the corner. I used to come here every Sunday. The fried chicken was on Sundays…Fried Chicken Sundays was so good.

Try not to think about it!

But two months ago if I had said what is my optimum on Sunday, I would be eating fried chicken and I would have thought that would have really made me happy but if I was eating fried chicken on Sunday it would have meant I wouldn’t  have just had the journey I have had over the last two months that ahs completely enriched my life. Why am I going to say that’s where I am going to be when I get there I know its going to be so much better than I ever thought it could be. Because that’s my journey.  I am dedicating myself to allowing that to happen. And when I get to those moments where I am down and I need to lie down for a second because it hurts so bad I know that when is stand back up and I start walking. That journey from there on there is only going to be better because of that moment. I have to have that moment to get to a better place and that is going to happen many times over in my lifetime if I am lucky and as I take that journey I am happy to end up wherever I am in that moment. So and to me its like…if I start thinking about where I want to be in the future, I would freak the fuck out. I would start getting scared. But what if that doesn’t happen. Guess what. It might not. Something better might happen. So why should I worry about it.

That’s a good point.

Our brains go straight to – its not going to happen so something terrible is going to happen. I have never thought one day about what my career was going to be. If I was going to be successful or not. If I was going to make a million, even a million dollars. I never thought for one day wondered if people were going to see my movies. What I do is I go…I’m so blessed to be having this experience I am going to work as hard as I can, whatever the outcome is, its no business of mine. My business is taking care of this moment right here, and he I take care of this moment right here. The future is being taken care of right now. Because I ma dedicated to this moment. I've never worried about where I am going to end up and I’ve never had the picture of…I want to be on the cover of Cosmo, I want to be in a movie that makes 200million worldwide. Why would I ever limit myself to that? There’s so much more out there. And all of those things if I am lucky enough to get any of them, it’s a blessing and I if I am not grateful for it then I am an asshole and if I am appreciative of it then I am in need of nothing and that is exactly how I have gotten to be where I am right now. There’s no other pat of it. The places that I have had expectation or worries – guess what. So unhappy. So unhappy. Aspects of my life where ..And that’s been the journey for me. Is learning that. Identifying that in these parts of my life that are working really really well, I had no expectation. And I allowed them to be what they were going to be. And the things that I worried about what they were going to be, I have never been satisfied with. And so my discipline has become not to worry about the outcome of those things in those parts of my life and just be present and just for the best thing possible to ensure that wherever it keeps moving towards is someplace that is only going to be better and brighter and bigger than I could have ever imagined it to be.

Wow…you’re a very positive person to be around.

Thank you. There’s a reason everything happens. It all works out. It always always does. Then it’s about figuring out how to make yourself feel happy.  And it’s not about what’s going to make you feel happy ten years from now, it’s about what’s going to make you happy now. What aspect of yourself do you need to address?

That’s so hard to figure out.

If you’re quiet for a second and you just listen to yourself and you’re honest yourself. You’ll be like…oh I feel fat. Ok so how do I address that? Or oh…I really want a dildo. You’re going to have to address that some day. Its not going to be easy…but that cliché …nothing good comes easy…it doesn’t mean that it ahs to be miserable it just means that you have to work at it and you can have a great time doing it and you can have fun doing it. You can take on a challenge with the attitude that the challenge s going to kill you or make you better. Making you better is a better way to go.

I think women in America need to connect with that part of themselves. People are scared of saying the wrong thing, being the wrong thing…

It’s just stupid. It’s a lack of appreciation for what we have, too. There is no…we can always be more grateful. We should never be less grateful. You should always be saying I could be more grateful. Gratitude and being grateful is the key to so much happiness. If you are grateful for what you have you really in need of nothing because we are the luckiest of the lucky. The luckiest of the lucky and you should never lose sight of that

So gratitude is almost a technology for happiness?

Absolutely. 1000%. I could be really upset about the things…like how do you live with the paparazzi. No, I am grateful for the paparazzi; do I want to have them do what they do? No, not really? Do I want them rushing up on me and scaring the shit of me in the middle of the night when I am walking in a dark parking lot. No. Their actions I am not grateful for, but what it means is that what I do for a living, the thing that I love doing, the thing that I am grateful being able to do that they are allowing me to do it by going to the movie theatre to see and support me a me in doing what I love doing and part of that comes from wanting to know what goes on in my life which gives these guys, their behavior is connected to that. I don’t want them to be that way but I understand why there are there and I have to be grateful for that. It helps me to be calm. Its like be respectful and back off, if you are going to do it do it over there, don’t come in here, I appreciate that’s what you have to do and I am grateful for the reasons why it is being done but please have respect. Its ok. I can live with that. And it helps me go…OK. I can do this. I can move through it. I am fine I am calm and cool and collected.

And if they don’t listen, then you karate chop them?

Exactly.

Thanks so much, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you.

You’ve been very easy to talk to. Thank you.

The Sounds of the Desert - Palm Springs Life magazine

Trying to understand contemporary music in the High and Low deserts is no easy task. It’s a sound born of the canyons, sand dunes, gated estates, meth labs, utopianism, conservatism, tourism, high design, and hopelessness — a sound deeply informed by the surreal extremes of its environment.
It’s a loose and sprawling tapestry, stitched in an eclectic weave that trips the line between soulfully freewheeling psych rock (War Drum, Golden Animals, Waxy), country-infused Dadaist electronica (Gram Rabbit), and rock as heavy and mysterious as the sonic booms that emanate from the 29 Palms marine base (Vista Chino, Waxy, earthlings?, and Masters of Reality). It’s a sound that exploded into mainstream consciousness after the legendary generator parties of the 1990s that spawned the “Palm Desert sound” or “desert rock,” whose golden children are the multiplatinum Queens of the Stone Age and its offshoot, the Eagles of Death Metal. And in the post-apocalyptic wake of that ’90s desert rock scene, it’s a sound that, like tumbleweed, continues to roll with strange and unpredictable abandon, possessed by a rebel soul that is all its own.
In the last 10 years, the region has emerged as a commuter Mecca for music-obsessed SoCal urbanites. They snake east along Intersate 10 out of Los Angeles, coming for indie-rock shows under the stars at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown; to find out why country star Gram Parsons loved Joshua Tree so much, he died there (at Joshua Tree Inn); to record at Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree; and to experience the timeless Palm Springs pool resort weekend at the generation-defining Ace Hotel & Swim Club.
And, of course, they come for the musical flash flood that is Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which rages through Indio each spring, populating the desert with countless satellite parties and mini festivals (Desert Daze, for instance). Goldenvoice’s behemoth festival drops in 150 or so bands from all over the world.
Meanwhile, those in-the-know gather at the Hood in Palm Desert, epicenter of the low desert music scene, either enjoying the invasion to the fullest, or counting the days until the desert life returns to normal.
Palm Springs Life met a few of the people who are defining the music scene in the desert.

Rachel Dean
Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Palm Springs
Ace Hotel & Swim Club is inextricably linked with the music scene, drawing culture junkies from the world over. The venue hosts live music and DJs, be they electronic, house, hip hop, jazz, folk, soul, disco, reggae, or psychedelic, with bands like Golden Animals playing in the Amigo Room, and L.A. DJs like Travis Keller from Buddyhead spinning poolside. Acts like Flying Lotus, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Florence+the Machine, and Blood Orange have been surprise guests at Desert Gold, its annual Coachella week party. This year, the Ace celebrates its fifth Desert Gold with music by Jack White’s Third Man Records, live field recordings by NPR, and parties by the Do-Over, among other things.
I loved this hotel as a guest, even before I started working here. When you walk in, there is a guitar in the lobby, and record players in the rooms — music is everywhere, and as a musician and a music lover, that makes me feel at home. Whenever I go back to L.A., I am constantly promoting the desert music scene, telling people to come check out what’s going on.
I had been coming to the desert from Los Angeles since 2008, when I went to a show at Pappy and Harriet’s. I was blown away by the desert music scene, so I continued to go back and forth. I ended up making a record out here and stayed, eventually taking over managing the Pioneertown Motel behind Pappy and Harriet’s. When the Pioneertown Motel changed hands, I went back to L.A. and worked at the Standard Hotel in Hollywood, booking music, but the whole time I wanted to come back to the desert. So last year, I did, and my job here at the Ace is perfect.
The Ace is very supportive of the desert music scene. We see our musical programming as a way to have a conversation with the city around us. Personally, as culture programmer, I just want to celebrate what it was that brought me out here and show our L.A. friends what is only two hours away.

Robbie Waldman
Unit A Recording, Palm Springs
Musician and producer Robbie Waldman runs Unit A Recordings, the largest recording studio in Palm Springs. (In true Palm Springs style, it has its own pool.) Formerly Monkey Studios, the 2,800-square-foot space is where many original desert rocks bands recorded in the ’90s. Queens of the Stone Age cut their first record there, for instance. Today, the studio continues to work with musicians rooted in the original scene — like Fasto Jetson, Jesse Hughes (Eagles of Death Metal) and Yawning Man, psych-rock pioneers War Drum and Brooklyn imports Golden Animals, and iconic acts such as Captain & Tennille and Brian Setzer (Stray Cats).
Waldman, also the frontman for Waxy and bassist for War Drum, discusses the history of the desert rock scene, and how a new Low Desert sound — which straddles the heavy rock and hipster psych sounds — is emerging.
Palm Springs is a small town with a lot of rich kids, a lot of poor kids, and a lot of talented kids with time on their hands‫ — ‬many of whom started playing guitars.
In the early ’90s, I was only about 14 or 15, but the desert generator parties were happening, and they were unbelievable. Bands would play all night in different spots‫ —‬ out in Sky Valley, Indio Hills, or some secret High Desert spot‫ —‬ and they’d play until the generator ran out of gas. You got the sense that your mom and dad didn’t do this. Maybe they had Woodstock or something, but they didn’t have this. This rebel sense of independence, with lots of wind and sand hitting you in the face. There was Kyuss (featuring a young Josh Homme), Fu Manchu, Unsound, Fatso Jetson, and Yawning Man, who I recorded at my studio [in February].
Kids didn’t have cell phones or computers in those days, so word of the parties would spread around the Low Desert high schools, and then everyone would head out in a gigantic caravan, 60 cars all following each other to the same spot. And that’s how the whole desert rock scene came about‫ —‬ “desert rock” meaning large landscape and jammy, heavy blues. The music very much reflects the nature of the desert itself in that it’s sincere, it’s beautiful, and it’s also deadly. And it has a lot of depth if you’re willing to dig under the surface.
Right now, I really feel like there’s a psych sound that’s permeating. My eyes have been opened to it from playing in the band War Drum the last couple of years; we’re talking a lot of organs, jamming blues, and garage surf rock. It blends well with the hipster scene — you know, thrift store clothes and your mom and dad’s records. The hipster movement is closely connected to fashion, and if you’re wearing a tie-dye shirt and a jacket with tassels, you’re going to want to match that look with the right music — which is where the psych works well. Ultimately, what’s exciting about the scene is that there are some genuinely talented musicians coming together, from Ehren Groban (War Drum) to musicians from outside the area coming into the desert to perform and record, like Dagha Bloom. I am looking forward to what is going to come out of the desert next.

Robyn Celia
Pappy and Harriet’s, Pioneertown
When it comes to live music in the High Desert, it’s all about Pappy and Harriet’s, the Pioneertown roadhouse that has hosted Sean Lennon, Rufus Wainwright, Robert Plant, Peaches, Arctic Monkeys, Victoria Williams, Eagles of Death Metal, Wanda Jackson, Lucinda Williams, Gram Rabbit, Spindrift, Leon Russell, Zola Jesus, Cold War Kids, and Peter Murphy from Bauhaus — an eclectic mix of indie-rock royalty and legendary rockers, performing in a warm, family-style restaurant.
Monday’s open mic nights, hosted by Teddy Quinn, has seen everyone from Feist to Ry Cooder to rapper KEI$HA (she played a Bob Dylan song). And the Sunday-night band‫ —‬ comprising local folk and rock luminaries Victoria Williams, Bingo Richey, and JP Houston‫ —‬ has become an institution.
Last year, Pappy and Harriet’s teamed with Goldenvoice to host shows by Coachella festival artists between their weekend performances.
It’s hard for the venue’s fans to believe that 10 years ago, there was no music scene here. The success of Pappy and Harriet’s started in 2003 when two New Yorkers, Robyn Celia and Linda Krantz, arrived and turned the 1972 roadhouse into a music destination.
It was 2003 and I had been in New York City forever, having moved there from New Jersey as a teenager. Linda [Krantz] was working in the film industry there and not feeling it, and I had been in a band for years and wasn’t feeling it either. Then Linda did a movie in Joshua Tree and found Pappy and Harriet’s and said, “You have to see this place.” So a bunch of us came out for New Year’s, and did that a few times, until one year, we heard it was for sale. And we were like, “Why don’t we buy Pappy and Harriet’s?” It was a crazy, fluke thing. I remember driving to the airport and looking behind me, leaving New York City and listening to a Ryan Adams song, thinking “I’m leaving a place that everyone wants to go to, to live out in the desert.” Of course, now I can’t imagine ever going back to New York.
There was no real music scene here when we arrived. The same band played every night for four years, the same exact set list. One night, I had a couple of glasses of wine and was looking at High Road Touring’s website and was like, “Oh, so I can just put an offer in for whatever artist I want to play here? Cool!” So I put an offer in for Lucinda Williams, and that was it. Suddenly, we had booked Lucinda Williams for our first show, with Gram Rabbit and Spindrift as support. We sold 600 tickets to the show, and it was the most amazing night, even though we had put the stage outside. I had no idea how cold it got in the winter here, and it was November. Somehow, Lucinda got through the show, and played for three hours. When it was over, I couldn’t believe it had happened, and that this was reality.
The first six months, we were really worried about getting people out here. Because let’s face it, we are in the middle of nowhere, on mountaintop, in a fake Western town. The Los Angeles radio station KCRW really helped us, presenting shows for us, and then the desert weeklies would write about us, and sure enough, more and more people started showing up.
We’ll never forget the night Robert Plant turned up out of the blue, and then came back the next night and performed nine songs on stage with our Sunday band of local musicians, sharing the mic with Jesika Rabbit from Gram Rabbit. He came and sprinkled his fairy dust on this town, and he was gone. From then on, 2006 became the year Robert Plant came to Pappy’s. Daniel Lanois — the man who produced U2’s Joshua Tree album and produced records for Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, and Willie Nelson — played here, and it was amazing. Eric Burden from the Animals got on stage with him, as did Skye Edwards, lead singer of Morcheeba, and again, we just couldn’t believe this was really happening. When Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age filmed the Anthony Bourdain special here, we saw another surge in visitors, this time interested in the food. People would come to the restaurant from all over, not even knowing that bands played here.
Musicians definitely seem to enjoy playing here, because the location is so beautiful, but also because it’s a break from the normal touring venues, in that you can actually breathe. I think musicians feel relaxed here. In fact, our greatest achievement is that people from every walk of life, musicians or otherwise, can feel comfortable here. And we’ve always kept it indie. We may have international bands playing here, but in the spirit of Pappy and Harriet, the original owners, this is a mom-and-pop operation. You really can’t get more independent than this place.

iTHouse Architecture for Palm Springs Life magazine

 
Architect Linda Taalman Koch built her glass house in a special part of the High Desert — a place that locals know as “Gamma Gulch.” Close to Pioneertown, the landscape is lonely and breathtaking in equal measure, and those who choose to live within its winding network of bumpy dirt roads tend to be, Taalman Koch says, “resilient types.”
“There’s a history of this being a place for people who are loners and pioneers,” Taalman Koch says, pouring a cup of barley tea in her kitchen, which boasts sweeping views of this magnificently eerie landscape. There’s no TV in the transparent dwelling, no Wi-Fi, and no cell phone signal. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the guy in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ll be eating lunch by myself and all I can hear is the sound of my silverware, the sound of my chair moving, and the sound of my house expanding and contracting. I like it.”
The house is an “iT House,” a pre-fabricated kit home based on a luxurious, off-the-grid design Taalman Koch created under the banner of her firm, Taalman Koch Architecture. Made of aluminum, steel, and glass, it sits lightly on the earth with minimal foundations, an energy-efficient yet ultra-stylish house rising up from a wild and rugged landscape. It has no conventional heating or air-conditioning system, but remains cozy in winter and cool in summer with its passive heating and cooling, strategic orientation, and cross ventilation — as well as an efficient, suspended steel fireplace called a “fire orb” that looks like a spaceship.
Dwell magazine called the iT House among the most architecturally important in Southern California, sparking visits from countless curious admirers. One of those visitors was a German media executive, Andre Nitze. So enamored was he with the design, he built his own iT House a couple of boulder gardens and few dozen Joshua trees away from Taalman Koch’s home.
“I’m here every single weekend,” says Nitze, whose house, completed in 2011, is the fourth of 10 built so far. “Being at my home here feels like taking a shower. It washes away all the L.A. city stuff, the stress, and the distraction. Then what’s left is just you. It’s awesome.”
The Greatest of Changes
In 2008, when Nitze was still based in Berlin, he took a road trip from Chicago to San Francisco, stopping in L.A., where he got his first taste of the Southern California lifestyle. He liked it. “I decided I needed to create some reason for me to come back — like a house,” Nitze says. A Bauhaus aficionado with minimalist sensibilities, he started researching kit houses and prefab homes, and found the Taalman Koch iT House website. The clean lines and sparse yet functional drama of the house was exactly what he wanted.
Nitze flew to California to meet with Taalman Koch and see her iT House firsthand. He decided that he, too, wished to create his dream home in the desert. The next hurdle was finding the perfect plot of land. A week later, one of Taalman Koch’s neighbors mentioned that they wanted to sell 10 acres — “In Gamma Gulch, no one advertises,” she says. “It’s word of mouth” — and Taalman Koch immediately emailed Nitze with the news. One phone call later, Nitze had purchased the land and was ordering his iT House kit. Then all he had to do was build it.
“Building it is less difficult than you might imagine,” says Taalman Koch, and Nitze nods. No heavy equipment is required. No cranes and no trailer trucks. The main components of the 3,000-part kit are the flexible aluminum frame for structure and wall framing, an acoustical steel deck roof, an aluminum framed glazing system consisting of large sliding doors, a panelized enclosure system, and built-in cabinetry. The kits are designed for a crew of two to build using simple hand tools. No welding is necessary, as all connections are bolted. Taalman Koch does recommend use of a contractor but Nitze, a resourceful and capable type, assembled the whole thing himself without professional help. “It was fun,” he says.
Vive la Différence
While the two houses are both 1,200 square feet with an almost identical floor plan, the properties are nonetheless distinct. The décor in Taalman Koch’s is soft with natural accents, whereas Nitze’s is pure Bauhaus minimalism — a masculine, more expansive take on the iT House concept, featuring wood paneling and a recording studio (he was a touring musician in Europe). Taalman Koch’s bathroom features a sliding glass door so she can feel like she’s taking a bath outside (“It’s a kind of exhibitionist bathroom,” she jokes), whereas at Nitze’s pad, the bathroom is closed off, “like a secret spa cube in the middle of the house.”
Now the friends bump into each other on morning walks and call to see when the other is in the desert.
Owning an iT House is like being part of a cool little club, it seems, and Taalman Koch envisages iT villages of four or five iT Houses where people can share resources, like a swimming pool and solar panels.
“I think there are people who want to live in a totally different way than the menu of options that is currently out there,” Taalman Koch says. “You can have Tuscan style, you can have ranch style, but the market has shown in the last three years that the public is more sustainability-minded and more open to design now — not just when it comes to sneakers and cars, but also in the home environment. For those people, the iT House can accommodate a lot of dreams.”

Read the original article here.

Mia Wasikowska cover interview, Dazed&Confused

With wide-set eyes and a blond bob clipped to one side with a barrette, Mia Wasikowska resembles a teenage Margot Tenenbaum: intelligent and eccentric, perching awkwardly on the edge of a couch with her hands on her lap like she’s patiently waiting for... something. When Tim Burton picked her to be his Alice in Alice in Wonderland, he exposed the former ballerina to her widest audience thus far. But by the time it was released in July 2010 the Australian actress had already worked with the world’s coolest contemporary filmmakers, playing the daughter of lesbians in Lisa Cholodenko’s Academy Award-nominated The Kids Are All Right, starring in Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Jane Eyre and shearing her long hair for Gus Van Sant’s Restless. “I love it short,” she says, running her fingers through her current schoolgirlish do. “I’m never going to grow my hair again.”


Maybe it’s the sporty haircut, but no one here at the Casa del Mar hotel restaurant in Santa Monica seems to recognise Wasikowska, even though she’s one of the highest-grossing actresses in the world (in 2010, her films made $1.03 billion, tying with Johnny Depp and outgrossed only by Leonardo DiCaprio at $1.1 billion). Perhaps the 23-year-old’s quiet demeanour also helps her slip by unnoticed, or maybe it’s her casual attire – sensible black flats, black tights, a flowery knee-length skirt and a simple pink t-shirt. “I think it’s because I live in Australia and I don’t get too much into the Hollywood scene,” she says, explaining her relative anonymity. “Living far away from LA has been the best way for me to exist within this industry. It’s good to be able to step away from here and into my personal life, and keep the two separate.”
She pauses.


“You know, before you arrived, the weirdest thing happened,” she says, her smile warm. Turns out a journalist from a different publication had sat with Wasikowska for a full five minutes, having mistaken her for someone else. And she had played along, not realising. “We were chatting for a while,” she confesses, “then she looked confused and asked me my name. I said, ‘I’m Mia,’ and she was like, ‘Oh. Whoops.’” It’s hard to imagine anyone making that mistake with DiCaprio or Depp, but then Wasikowska really isn’t bothered by her inconspicuousness. Rather, she’s enjoying it while she can.


Wasikowska – pronounced “vassikofska” – still lives where she was born and raised, in Canberra, the small, unglamorous capital of Australia. She grew up the middle child of three, with fine-art photographer parents. “There are a lot of public servants, artists and college students in Canberra,” she says. “Basically, it’s a small city in the middle of the bush.” Canberra’s most famous daughter trained as a prima ballerina until she was 14, when a small but painful bone mass on her heel forced her to swap the 35 hours a week she spent in the dance studio for Hollywood. Less than ten years later, the American dream is hers. Now she’s learning how to live it right. “I’m learning my own limits: how much to work each year, how much to put into establishing a home and friends,” she says. “I’m learning not to get carried away, to keep a life outside of films. Because this is a wobbly thing to pin everything on.”
She recently started knitting to help her detach from the ups and downs of movie life. “I guess knitting doesn’t do much for my badass image though, does it?” she sighs. Is the demure Wasikowska, with her flat shoes and sensible hair, really trying to cultivate a “badass” image? Apparently so. “But it’s not working, is it? Almost everything new I pick up – knitting, crotcheting – seems to work against me... Oh well.”

There’s no time for knitting on this trip – she’s about to head to Sundance with her new movie, the modern gothic thriller Stoker. The first English-language film from acclaimed Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Thirst), Stoker is visually lush and verbally sparse, an ultraviolent, hyperreal Hitchcock homage. Wasikowska plays the enigmatic India, a glum teenager blossoming into a ruthless killer – think Wednesday Addams meets Aileen Wuornos. She stars alongside a perfectly neurotic Nicole Kidman as her mother and Matthew Goode as the deranged but dashing Uncle Charlie. (Harmony Korine, who lives in Nashville close to where the movie was shot, makes a brief appearance as an art teacher.)
There are certain moments in cinema that are unforgettable by virtue of the emotional response they spark, the kind that linger in the viewer’s subconscious long after they leave the movie theatre. The shower scene in Psycho, for instance; Tim Roth yelling “everybody be cool, this is a robbery” in Pulp Fiction; or Jack Nicholson’s “here’s Johnny” grimace in The Shining. Well, there is a scene in Stoker that possesses that mesmerising power: India’s devastatingly erotic piano duet with Uncle Charlie. Wasikowska studied piano for months to play the complex duet by famed minimalist composer Philip Glass, who specifically intended the piece to be played by a husband and wife. At one point, the music demands that the male pianist reach his arm around the female while continuing to play. The incestuous sexual tension escalates with the music, India and Charlie dripping with tragic Nabokovian desire as their fingers do the talking. “It’s a very sensual moment,” says Wasikowska, adding, “That was my favourite day of filming.”


Then there is Stoker’s own shower scene, an unsettling masturbatory moment, with India naked and washing away the memory of what she just witnessed – the murder of a boy she once kissed. What’s odd is that she becomes increasingly aroused as she flashes back to the moment of her lover’s death, her body shuddering in climax as she relives the sound of his neck snapping. Fun stuff. “It’s a crazy scene,” Wasikowska says. “The kind of scene that when you get the shooting schedule, you’re checking to see when it is so you can mentally prepare.”

The film is littered with metaphor and symbolism, including a recurring egg motif — early on, India is seen rolling hardboiled eggs along a table and cracking the shells; later, you catch a glimpse of white plates arranged in a circle on a wall, a yellow plate in the middle like a yolk. This, says Wasikowska, stemmed from Chan-wook feeling that her character was like “a little chicken in an egg, pecking her way out and breaking the shell.” Does Wasikowska ever feel that she is “only an egg”, to quote Robert A Heinlein’s 60s SF classic Stranger in a Strange Land? Or is she a chick? Where exactly is she on her personal egg-to-chick trajectory, or has she already hatched into the actress she always wanted to be?
Okay, maybe we weren’t entirely normal, but I honestly don’t even know what normal is.
“Well, most young girls identify with this feeling of breaking out of their shell,” she says, picking at her bowl of wild mushroom pasta. “But that’s the beginning, then you have to find your feet and see how you fit in the world. There’s a constant readjustment, a feeling of always changing and being influenced by things and working really hard to keep a core sense of who you are, so that the outside world doesn’t erode that layer of yourself.” So what exactly is the core of Mia Wasikowska? What is she guarding? Whatever it is, she’s not giving it up on the first date. “I can’t explain it in words,” she says, “but I know how to protect it.”
Her family, of course, help keep her grounded, and her mother in particular has helped develop her uncanny knack for picking the right projects. “Marzena, my mom, was really into independent, experimental and art-house films when I was growing up, so she has often been my reference, introducing me to good directors.”

Marzena Wasikowska (Mia and her two siblings took their mother’s name) and John Reid met at art school in Canberra, where they were both studying photography. Reid is a lecturer at the ANU School of Art, directing a programme encouraging students to produce environmentally conscious work, while Marzena continues to shoot portraiture and documentary photography. Marzena and John only married a year ago, to the surprise of their children. Wasikowska had just returned from America: “Mom said, ‘We’d like to invite you to our wedding at 3pm.’ So we had a wedding in our garden. Me and my sister ran out and got a plant from a nursery. My mom had a cake, a pie actually. Or maybe it was a pastry?”
Impromptu weddings, kids taking their mother’s surname, art school – the signs point towards Mia Wasikowska having grown up in a wonderfully bohemian household. Eccentric, even? “I don’t know... Okay, maybe we weren’t entirely normal, but I honestly don’t even know what normal is.”
Her parents have always been supportive of her career choices, although were initially surprised when she quit dancing and decided to get into acting. “They were a little worried at the beginning because it seems so out of reach, being in Australia and trying to make it as an actress,” Wasikowska says. “But I really didn’t like the dance industry. It’s kind of brutal.” She still dances every now and then, although it’s mainly in her bedroom, to favourite bands like First Aid Kit (she also digs Bob Dylan and Nina Simone). “I feel a bit stifled when it comes to crazy dancing in a club. Maybe I should try it though,” she ponders. “Maybe that would help me be more badass...” She is also a gifted photographer, shooting photos, often onset, using one of her Rolleiflex, Holga or Leica cameras. In 2010 she was shortlisted for the Australian National Photographic Portrait Prize for an onset photo of Fukunaga and Jamie Bell, her Jane Eyre co-star. Photography, piano, ballet, acting – the list of Wasikowska’s talents grows ever longer with time.

Other exciting projects she’s got coming out in 2013 include Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, about a longstanding romance between reclusive vampires who are thrown off when Wasikowska’s character comes in and disturbs the peace. “I’m a little bit of a trashy socialite in it,” says Wasikowska. Like a bloodsucking Kim Kardashian? “If you like,” she laughs. “She is quite different to the characters I have played before in that she’s a lot sillier. Polyester, Gucci and revealing, colourful plastic clothes. It’s fun.” She’s also co-starring in Submarine director Richard Ayoade’s The Double, a comedy about a man (played by The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg), whose life is taken over by his doppelganger. “Richard Ayoade is amazing, a wunderkind person,” she says. “Also, he has possibly seen every single movie under the sun. I’m in awe.”
I would never want to do something that I felt I had done before, and it’s not fun to just play a victim or a sexy, proppy girlfriend. Give me a character that has their own drive, something to say... That’s badass
In the next few years there are a few things on Wasikowska’s to-do list: she would love to work with Jane Campion, shoot films in Europe and Australia and play “louder” characters. She’s not putting any pressure on herself to cross over to the mainstream and sign up for the big-paying blockbusters that might increase her chances of being recognised by strangers in hotel lobbies. “I very specifically know what I like and what I don’t like when it comes to film, and I don’t know how much ‘business’ there needs to be in my decisions right now. I’ve made mostly creative choices in my career, which is really fun, so I guess I’ll just carry on, see how it goes and do what I want to do. To me there’s no point making a film unless it is challenging and different. I would never want to do something that I felt I had done before, and it’s not fun to just play a victim or a sexy, proppy girlfriend. Give me a character that has their own drive, something to say... That’s badass.”


Stoker is out on March 1.

Read the story at Dazed Digital here.

Toro Y Moi for Red Bulletin

Chazwick Bundick, the chillaxed electro-pop maestro known as Toro Y Moi, is less chillaxed than normal today. Maybe it’s because he's about to unveil his art on his home turf of San Francisco for the first time. And you always wanna make a good first impression on your home turf, even if you're one of the founding fathers of chillwave.
Recognized primarily for his music, drawing has nonetheless been a major creative outlet throughout Bundick’s life. In fact he was doodling in his first sketchbook way before he figured out how to use ProTools. He still has those first drawings, back from when Michael Jackson and Ninja Turtles ruled his world.
“I was 5 years old, so my Michael Jacksons had big round goblin faces,” he says. “Those drawings were kind of playful, and really cool.” Judging by his latest efforts, his art hasn’t changed much -- still kind of playful, and still really cool.
He’s standing in front of 13 of his canvases, all of them strictly 2D, in shades of black and red and laden with comic-book nostalgia. There’s a red tongue with a pill on it, and a stylized rendering of the number 3. The paintings line the walls of the tiny gallery space at Public Works Gallery in San Francisco’s Mission district. Bundick arrived a few minutes ago, still a little damp from the rain, after taking BART from his place in Berkeley.
A contemporary-art junkie who reads Juxtapoz and studied graphic design in college, Bundick is all nerd chic in tortoiseshell glasses and red rain jacket as he explains the concept behind his show. Because this isn’t just an art opening, as he points out -- it’s also a listening party.
Beneath each painting hangs a pair of headphones, each looping a different track from his forthcoming album, ‘Anything in Return.’ He’s trying to create an experience -- one that is public yet private, less subject to the alcohol and the jostling of a gallery show, yet more inclusive than plugging into your laptop by yourself.
“The Internet has made music too fast-paced, and therefore very forgettable,” explains Bundick. “So I wanted to do something that was interactive and physical, as opposed to just online and virtual.”
Later that night, the small gallery will fill with Toro Y Moi fans, who will don the headphones and nod their heads in quiet appreciation while checking out the paintings in front of them. “By connecting people to the art as well as the music, you’re heightening their listening experience. I think it’s better this way.”
There is no discernible correlation between the paintings and the songs -- the art was created after the music, and the music was not made with any of the visuals in mind. But Bundick cares less about the art matching the songs and more about creating an environment in which to hang out with his music. “Like this, people can preview the album without any distractions,” he says. “No skip buttons. No ability to see the .wav file on SoundCloud, which means you can’t skip ahead to the breakdown.”
There are plenty of contemporary acts using art to enhance the musical experience -- from singer Hannah Hooper occasionally painting canvases live on stage while her band, Grouplove, jams behind her, to the LED-screen backdrops employed by artists Richie Hawtin and Nine Inch Nails that involve audience smartphone participation.
Last year, Usher hired multimedia gurus Moment Factory to create “participatory content” for his show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, with the audience posting tweets on a stage screen in real time and creating on-screen avatars that danced with Usher for a song.
With thousands of new songs popping up on the Internet every day -- on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Vimeo, blogs, etc. -- it’s no surprise musical acts are searching for ways to give their music a longer shelf life, even if it is just in peoples’ heads.
So is this a one-off for Bundick or is he planning to launch a visual arts career? He laughs a little, and shrugs. In fact, while he was a student in the University of South Carolina’s graphic design program, he was in the process of sending his résumé to graphic design firms, right around the time Toro Y Moi became popular in 2010. “Honestly I thought the design would take off first, that it was more realistic than music,” says Bundick.
“Definitely, art has always been a big part of who I am.” But the music is what got the attention, with his sounds becoming part of the ridiculously named but briefly influential “chillwave” scene; his 2011 album ‘Underneath the Pine’ was named one of the top 50 albums of the year by Pitchfork, who commended his “knack for analog warmth” alongside his gifts for “lush ambiance” and “addictive rhythmic interplay.”
That’s serious praise from some of the most serious music critics in America. Which is why Bundick’s art is the exact opposite of serious. “People say I’m a -- quote unquote -- ‘deep thoughtful songwriter,’ ” he says. “But I don’t always act deep and thoughtful. I think my art shows that side of my personality.”
There is the finely nuanced, cerebral Bundick that you can hear piped through the earphones, and then an entirely different, giggling, childlike Bundick before your eyes. One of his paintings looks like a bleeding pear, for instance. “What does it mean? I don’t know,” he shrugs. “It’s a pear, and it’s bleeding?”
So perhaps the art is his way of relieving the pressure of being Chazwick Bundick, chillwave luminary, or even “the next Prince,” as someone once put it. “Listen, don’t get me wrong, I totally appreciate how seriously people take my music, because that’s how I want to be accepted as a musician,” says Bundick. “But you can take life too seriously. That’s why people get thrown off when they look at my drawings and see that I’ve drawn a pear, or a pipe, or a big boob. Because believe it or not, I like boobs.”

This article originally appeared in Red Bulletin magazine, January 2013.

Ariel Pink for Dazed and Confused

Talking with Ariel Pink is like getting a surprise visit from chaos theory, his discussion bouncing effortlessly from highbrow to the gutter, a filter-less verbal free association that connects Bach with quantum physics with Michael Jackson with milkfarts. It’s a free-flowing exercise in postmodern post-irony, a pre-Apocalyptic jig—as is his music. His latest album, the much-anticipated “Before Today”, delivers what discerning audiences have come to expect from Mr Pink, albeit more polished than ever before—a swirling, holographic voyage through the kingdoms of synth pop, surf rock, basement punk and pure summertime melody, his songs are conceptual as much as they are organic, shrouding comforting FM radio pop music sounds with eerie context, making the listener feel like they’re trapped in a hazy, post-operative anesthetic fog wondering “Who am I? Who are you? And why are we talking about farting?”

(interview for Dazed & Confused)

I really like the artwork on your new album, “Before Today”.

It was pretty cool. I was really happy with it. We wanted it to look like one of those mid seventies German records that were done with airbrushes.

Who is that creepy glowing lady on the front?

Creepy glowing lady? It’s a Chinaman. It’s the guy from “Gremlins”. “With Mogwai comes much responsibility.”

There are some real lessons to be learned in Gremlins.

Yeah, like how hot is Phoebe Cates? She's the ultimate brunette man. Like, her and Sasha Grey.

Sasha Grey…from Dirty Dancing?

No…the porn queen! You gotta get with it, I mean come on!

What’s the most important film in Sasha Grey’s oeuvre?

I just saw something about ass farting.

Isn’t that what asses normally do?

Sorry—I mean milkfarts. She’s not like, gross-out though. She sounds like she’s pretty intelligent. Indie nobility. She was in that Steven Soderbergh film.

What about blondes? Do you like blondes?

I like Jenny McCarthy. She farts in person. She farts a lot. That’s kind of a common thread with me. People like to watch violence and pain and farts. You don’t feel the pain…you don’t smell the fart…but you can really get off on it. It’s pretty weird.

There’s something so intimate about farting.

The more evolved version of love is where you fart. That’s when you’re in the romantic stage, with the puppy love, the flutters and the chess, and that kind of stuff. Then when you let it go with your loved one...that’s the real deal. Think about all the nastiness that happens at birth. You are literally shat out into the world of shit.

So, back to the album. I understand you recorded it in Tito Jackson’s old studio. Are you a fan of the Jackson 5?

Yes. But I didn’t realize that we were recording in Tito’s old studio until afterwards.

How did you feel about Michael Jackson passing away?

He passed away the day after my birthday. It was odd because we were just listening to him in our van when we were on tour. Our drummer had brought the “Thriller” demos and we were fully feeling Michael Jackson. And then we played our show in Lyon, France. This is on the 25th of June. Someone tugged on my leg and said “Hey man. Michael Jackson is dead” (in accent). I thought he was saying “you can get off the stage now because you have kicked Michael Jackson’s ass, you’re the fucking king”. But he actually meant it. I had to pause and I didn’t know what to say. Then we played three more songs. I announced it to the audience. Most of them already knew. It had kind of traveled through the audience before it hit us. There weren’t that many people. It was fun show.

Trippy to find out something like that while you’re on stage, right?

Yeah. With Michael Jackson it was like more than being a fan. It’s like when something is part of you. Like Star Wars and ET and all the things that I experienced that resonate with me through my life.

And The Goonies too, man.

Are you kidding? Corey Haim RIP.

Have you ever seen Corey Feldman’s band, Truth Movement?

No. Is it like kind of a Genesis kind of thing?

No. The music is challenging, hard to describe.

Wow, it sounds really exciting. You can’t even describe it. You can’t compare it to anything. That’s what I strive for, I strive toward the movement of truth. Toward not being like anything you can actually describe.

So one of the songs on your new album is called Hot Body Rub. Do you remember the best body rub you’ve ever had?

I like it when my back is scratched, personally. I am a back-scratching guy. Like a hairless cat. I love to just wrinkle up and have my back scratched. I have a girlfriend who does it nice. She doesn’t like it when I scratch her though. She’s got moles.

Another one of the songs on the album is called “L'estat (acc. to the widow's maid”. That’s a weird name. Is that some kind of a literary reference?

It sounds like a literary reference, doesn’t it? I write my own literature. I write it and then I sing it and that’s it.

Do you read much?

I only read science books.

Have you read The Holographic Universe?

That’s not science. Thats pseudo science. But it’s true—I really do just read straight up science.

Who is your favorite scientist?

I would have to say…that’s a really good question…I think maybe Galileo. I liked it back in the day when science took hundreds of years to make these quantum leaps.  I don’t know. I want to see an atom. I wonder how they actually image that shit. I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe that there are little bits of nothing in between everything? I think they finally got an image of an atom, which is supposedly an electron cloud encasing basically nothing, emptiness and then a little piece of matter…a proton in the center. And the protons are made of quarks and there you go. But what are the quarks made of?

Um…Holograms? Some people say your music sounds “holographic”.

I think that’s where we’re going with music – I’m like the Galileo of my time.

So I really like the album art of your new single, Round and Round, which features a man kissing a dog.

Yes, and on the back cover it’s a girl making out with a cat. It’s a kind of yin yang.

Do you have any pets?

I have a bird, Norman. And I used to have a cat named Jules and a cat named Malibu. I never had a dog. Oh wait – I did have a dog. I had a Dalmatian named Bonny. She died.

I recently read a story about a man who fell in love with a dolphin. And he claims that the dolphin made the first move!

Dogs kind of make the first move too. And cats do too. They full on rape. I think most animals are like that. They see you as a piece of meat or a tree trunk. And anything they can rub up against, they will. It’s just like the law of attraction. You’re just like this loving, non-killing thing…and if you treat 'em nice they are going to want love you. They have that urge probably ten times a day just like we do, and they just will spray on your lap you know. It’s just what they do.

Thank God humans don’t spray on each other’s laps.

They do. And that is why I love Sasha Grey. I tried on MySpace to arrange a meeting with her. I asked her to come on tour with us. She didn’t say shit. I don’t think she knows who I am. She’s into other shit.  She’s not reading Pitchfork. She’s rifling through her ex-boyfriend’s industrial music record collection.

With your song “Little Wig”. Was it a subconscious Jimi Hendrix reference, or conscious?

I think I realized I was thinking “Little Wing” and then I wrote it down and then I was like “little wig!”.

So it was a consciously subconscious reference.

Always. Never plagiarism. Just extrapolation. Like, I think heavy metal owes a lot to Mozart. And Bach is obviously the king of music, hands down.

The king of your world of music, even?

Absolutely. The world of music, period. Bach created science in music. I really truly believe this. I am not even joking. I think the fact that he was an organ player really helped define him as composer. Back then, most composers were composing in their minds. They were scoring. They wouldn’t need a piano in front of them to compose. So they didn’t need the virtuosity of being an instrumentalist to get them to do what they needed to do.

It sounds so abstract…writing music without playing an instrument.

That’s why having ensembles play their work was so vital. It was the realization of something that someone had in their head. The whole performance aspect of it was so key in bringing it to life. And that has been so decimated by modern recording techniques. Once we could record things, pretty much the whole performance aspect lost its weight.

Why?

It created huge disposability of what we consider music—hence the simplicity and urgency of rock n roll, which relies on those three chords than can be played over and over again and still ring with some sort of vitality. It speaks to the non-scripted. The non-notational parts of the music are what actually make it. It is the inverse of hundreds of years of musical progression that had reached its summit probably with Bach. And after Schoenberg, really, where are you going to go? It’s hardly surprising that recorded music would all out replace the zeitgeist.

So where is music going, in your opinion?

Now it’s going back to performance believe it or not, in my opinion. I think recorded music is so disposable that so it’s going to be a fringe interest and people are going to actually go to live shows more for their sonic kick. IPod and iTunes are going to devalue the currency of a recording, period. And it’s also diluting the listernship with drove and droves and droves of more recordings doing pretty much the same thing. So yes, the performative, social aspects are going to come back

Speaking of performance—the first time I saw you perform was in 2006, at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. You were covered in chocolate.

I wanted it to be mud. I wanted to be covered in mud like Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. But instead I got bunch of chocolate on me. We were all supposed to be different kinds of zombies and mummies…my girlfriend was a mummy and my friend was a zombie and then there was a troll and Dracula.

Was it Halloween?

No.

I understand you are really into Ethiopian and Eritrean music, and you even started to study the Ethiopian Amharic alphabet?

I actually did for a while. I started to collect tapes out here in Little Ethiopia, and in order to read and know who the names of the music I was getting I had to learn how to read the language, at least phonetically. So I after a while it became very natural. And there are some similarities with Hebrew, which I was raised to read. I love that music. Over the past three years, Ethiopian music has been my most treasured discovery.

Any artists you would recommend?

Bezawork Asfaw. Mahmud Ahmed. I love Yeshimebet Dubale. There are so many.

What is it about the music you like?

It is so futuristic. Its like the best funk band ever. Like the best James Brown band ever. You know what I’m saying. All the performers in Ethiopia had to go underground when records became illegal there while it was communist, up through to the 80s. They outlawed selling records. So the musicians would do these midnights sessions and would dub the tapes themselves.

So recording of music was banned in Ethiopia?

Unless you were affiliated with the state, yes. Basically, they had to go underground. There was no market to sell or produce the vinyl, so it went to cassette tape, which was a cheap recording alternative. They had a handful of studios that they could things in private.

Are you an artist or a musician?

I am both and I am neither. I am a musician and I am an artist. And an artist is a musician. Isn’t that what they call them in Spin magazine? “Artists of the month”. I think an artist is someone who is good at what they do. Like the art of cooking. The art of whatever. You’ve already turned your trade or skill or whatever field you’re in into an art. I would hope that I am perceived that way.

Father Yod and the Source Family

In 2007, when independent publisher Jodi Wille published a book about a 1970s mystical tribe from L.A. called the Source Family, she had no idea the profound ripple effect it would have on a certain swathe of the contemporary art underground. Illustrated with photos of the long-haired, dreamy-looking family members, the book triggered a chain reaction in a specific substrata of neo-hippie musicians, designers, writers, graffiti artists, restaurateurs, alternative livers and spiritual seekers, some of them famous (Billy Corgan, Devendra Banhart, MEAR ONE), all of them free spirits, the kind who might themselves have joined the Source Family had they been born 30 years earlier.
The Source Family was led by a bearded visionary called Father Yod, who lived with his 14 "spiritual wives" in a mansion in Nichols Canyon alongside around 140 other family members, operating LA's first health food restaurant 'The Source' on the Sunset Strip (featured in Woody Allen's Annie Hall), and living by "Aquarian" principles of love, whole foods, Eastern and Western spiritual teachings, and rock 'n' roll. This year, thanks to Wille's documentary, The Source (it premiered in March at SXSW, with more screenings planned in San Francisco and LA), the cosmic ripples started by the book in 2007 are set to reach an even wider audience of New Aquarians and future "Yodheads". But unlike the Source family Aquarians of the 1970's, who lived, ate and slept together, dotingly hanging on to Father Yod's every word, these New Aquarians are decidedly postmodern, a brightly-hued collage of inter-connected individuals who aren't looking for a guru, but are bonded by their common appreciation of the Source's radness. Some of them have taken on Aquarian names; they connect at rock shows, gallery openings, at parties under desert night skies, and on Facebook; they design Source-inspired clothing and make Father Yod-inspired art, tuning into the Source on their own terms, in a way that doesn't require them to actually drop out...not yet, anyway.
One of the early Source Family adopters was musician Guy Blakeslee, frontman of LA rock band, The Entrance Band. Like many others in his scene, he already had a passing knowledge of The Source Family thanks to the legacy of YaHoWha13, the Family's influential psych band, comprised of longhaired, guitar-wielding and gong-smashing wizards Djin, Sunflower, and Octavius Aquarian. When YaHoWha13 reformed in November 2007 for a concert at the Echoplex celebrating the book's release, hundreds of bearded, feathery, beautiful young things gathered at the venue, curious to meet original Source family members, including the book's authors Isis and Electricity Aquarian, and the late Sky Saxon, garage rock legend who happened to be a Source family member in the 1970s. (Father Yod was there too, but only in spirit--he died in a freak hang-gliding accident in Hawaii in 1975.)
That night at the Echoplex represents, as Blakeslee puts it, a "pivotal" moment in the development of the psych scene in LA, uniting many generations of psychedelic music fans and spiritual warriors in one room, creating a dialog between the 1970s and the "kids" that hadn't taken place before. "There was a room in the back of the venue all done up with white shag carpet and huge inflatable bean bags and I can remember lounging in this room on loads of Ecstasy talking about Kabbalah and breath of fire with Source Family members who were excited to be talking to a young wannabe shaman active in the LA scene," says Blakeslee (his band also performed that night). When the white-robed, messianic figure of Electricity Aquarian led the audience in a cycle of 108 breaths of fire (a Source Family ritual known as the "star exercise"), Blakeslee remembers feeling "impressd that so many hipsters were willing to let down their guard and do the exercise together."
Shortly afterwards, Blakeslee played the YaHoWha13 reunion show in San Francisco, members of the Entrance Band backing 70-year-old Sky "Sunlight Aquarian" Saxon. Like Blakeslee, Saxon was tripping balls. "Sky was on mushrooms and his wife kept looking at me all googly-eyed and saying "we're not supposed to eat mushrooms" as she ingested more. Sky would turn to me and say "is it trippy Guy? Guy, is it trippy?" And I couldn't quite tell what he meant, but I knew the answer had to be YES." That night, Blakeslee had a long conversation with Electricity Aquarian about his idea for a traveling show, where the Entrance Band, Sky Saxon, and YaHoWha 13 would travel the USA playing shows at elementary schools to recruit and convert the next generation of Aquarians. And even later that night, Blakeslee was given his Aquarian name by YaHoWha13's guitarist, Djin Aquarian ("such a down to earth gentleman with an elfish charm"). Guy was pronounced "Sir Guyser Aquarian", and the Entrance Band drummer Derek James was anointed "Lux Deus Aquarian".
Blakeslee remains in regular contact with Djin Aquarian, the most active YaHoWha13 member, and go-to guy for many contemporary musicians interested in the Source. When Sky passed away in 2009, singer Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame played bass for Djin Aquarian at the Sky Saxon tribute show, also at the Echoplex. This would mark the first performance by YaHoWha33, a band made up of any YaHoWha13 fan who wants to jam with Djin Aquarian. Sky and Djin had given Billy Corgan his Aquarian name--Shmuel. "It's Samuel in Hebrew," says Djin, on the phone from his home in Mount Shasta. "Samuel was the prophet that anointed King David, and King David was the songwriter. But Billy might be ready for a more cosmic name now, less rooted in Hebrew. Shmuel sounds like a wet mop in the face."
Djin has given out several hundred Aquarian names over the last five or six years, to the ever-growing group of young friends that is gravitating toward him and the Source. Apparently, before Father Yod died, he told his 140 core followers that they should prepare for a second incarnation of The Source, made of friends and extended family, whose members would number 4000. That's a lot of names, but Djin is happy to channel them for his new friends. "The names are based on love and friendship," explains Djin. "It gives you a little boost to feel like you belong to that energy movement, that is moving towards health and hygiene and lifestyle and sovereignty and sustainability and all those things that we stood for."
Take Sasha Vallely of the LA band Spindrift--visit her Facebook page and you'll see she now goes by the name Sasha "Kaleidoscopia Aquarian" Vallely. Sasha received her name after meeting Djin at the Sky Saxon tribute event, which she helped organize. "Some people ask questions about my name; they wonder what it's all about," says Sasha. "I try and explain it. I say it's kind of like a cult, but now it's more spread out, and about like-minded people. People that believe in love and being good to one another and all those philosophies. It's a really cool thing to be a part of. A lot of other people want to be involved and I think it's great to spread the word, the message of being more health conscious and looking out for each other." She, like many other New Aquarians, picks and chooses the elements of Source family philosophy that fit her life as a touring musician. "The Source were very strict and used to get early every morning and meditate and were vegan. I can't do that right now. But I do strive to be more health-conscious. I mean, look at Djin, he's full of life and energy and glowing, because of the healthy lifestyle that he leads. I would like to be more like that."
Don't mistake the New Aquarians for straight-up New Agers--open-minded they may be, but forming a drum circle on Venice Beach, growing dreads or paying a lot of money for didgeridoo healings in Ojai isn't what turns them on. They're too inspired by 60's and 70's backstage rock 'n roll culture to go full-on tie-dye (they see themselves as more sophisticated than that), and they're too committed to their art to fully drop out. Instead, they're part of that new breed of conscious hipster, the young culturally-astute hedonists, yogis, and shamanic aesthetes who are searching for their souls and healing their bodies and minds using various experimental means--magic mushrooms, whiskey, ayuasca, raw foods, LSD, niacin, goat-herding, juice cleanses, sound baths, travel to India, art shows in Paris, rainbow-chasing, you name it.
OwlEyes, an LA artist known for his vibrant use of color, rainbows and other psychedelic imagery, started incorporating Source family "vibrant light" inspirations into his collages around the same time he decided to switch up his lifestyle and get healthier. "I think the commune/ cult vibe always attracts the youth, but what made the Source stand out for me, I think, is that they had a very advanced idea of the way food should be treated and used," he says. "Living food for the immortals." Café Gratitude, arguably LA's hippest new health food restaurant, plans to come out with its own take on the "Source burger"--one of the most popular items on the menu at the original Source restaurant. Isis Aquarian, co-author of the 2007 book and spiritual mother of the New Aquarian movement, is expected to be present when they unveil the burger. Isis, like Djin Aquarian, has become a touchstone for young artists and musicians interested in the Source.
As Father Yod's former right hand woman, one of his spiritual wives, and designated record keeper of the Source family, Isis makes regular trips to Los Angeles from her home in Hawaii to pursue her life's work--spreading Father Yod's "love, health, and rock n roll" message. Famed graffiti artist MEAR ONE, for example, is one of Isis' biggest fans. You wouldn't ordinarily pair a young urban graffiti artist with a septuagenarian from Hawaii, but the admiration is mutual, and strong. The pair recently met up at Elf restaurant in Echo Park (whose co-owner Astara is another Source family devotee, of course) to discuss a stencil MEAR is making of Father Yod's face, underscored with Yod's slogan, Just Be Kind--kind of like an "OBEY GIANT" for the New Aquarian movement (look out for it on a city street near you soon). "Isis hunted me down in a spiritual sense," says MEAR, from his studio in Silverlake. "It's interesting, when I met her I was in a transition period in my life and she kind of zeroed in on that and got straight to the point. She's kind of a shawoman like that." Isis' philosophy, says MEAR, is "like water for thirsty minds right now."
Likewise, Seattle-based experimental clothing designer Michael Cepress has become one of Isis' young fans, and he is creating some Isis-inspired looks for an upcoming new line. "When it comes to the Source Family aesthetic, I love the pure, natural beauty of their handmade clothes, their glorious long hair and glowing complexions--an obvious merit badge granted from years of organic diets, daily meditation and clean living--and the honesty of the look," says Cepress. "There is no tongue in cheek subtext or "we're smarter than you" irony. Its honest, direct, and filled with an undeniable hope for making the world a brighter place through gentle living and open minds."
Sometimes the adoration gets a little out of control--Isis wishes an Australian jewelry company called ManiaMania might have asked for permission before creating their 'Isis Aquarian bracelet', but when they sent her one of the pieces she had to concede it was very pretty indeed (she gave it to Jodi Wille as a gift). Isis continues to fly back and forth from Hawaii to LA, fulfilling the quest given to her by Father Yod before he died, to spread his Just Be Kind philosophy among the New Aquarian tribe. And they're lapping it up--when Isis introduced herself to musician Devendra Banhart at a show at LA's Harvard and Stone venue recently, Devendra beamed from ear to ear. "I'm so honored," he said, explaining that he had read the Source book as he wrote down his phone number on a piece of paper. Isis Aquarian may have been the most senior lady in the room, but that night, she was the envy of every girl. Later that night, over a bowl of late-night tom yum soup at a Thai restaurant in Hollywood, she attempted to explain the Source's magical appeal. "We were forbearers, pioneers; we were part of something that was ahead of time, embracing things that this generation is embracing too, taking everything from home birth to green energy to vegetarianism to the mystery teachings. Plus, we wre multi-faceted--there was fashion, music, the restaurant, our mystique...and we really did exist in another realm of frequency. That's how we did it. As a concept, that is just being accepted right now. But kids get it."

Read the article on KCET's ARTBOUND here.

Rooney Mara

(for Dazed & Confused magazine)

Rooney Mara is bundled up in a scarf and black jacket, looking like that skinny loner girl who got into Nick Drake, Rimbaud and Alcoholics Anonymous way too young; who was rumoured to be a cutter (but laughed when she heard); and who dyed her asymmetrical hair jet black because, well, she ran out of green dye. It’s nighttime and we’re in Los Angeles, at a low-key neighbourhood diner, and Mara’s pale, quivering fingers play with a cup of hot water – the only thing she’s ordered, with a squeeze of lemon added. Her subdued yet intense energy – imagine a young Sinéad O’Connor, with more hair and eyes just as glassy – helps her blend in, for now at least. Give it a couple of months and she might find it more difficult to drink hot lemon water in diners unnoticed – she’s about to grace screens across the world as the dykey, computer hacker anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

“I’m really disconnecting myself,” says Mara, who is avoiding thinking about how her life will change once the trilogy of movies comes out. “I’m in denial. I’m not preparing at all for it.”



Playing Salander would have been a big responsibility for any actress, let alone one who was pretty much unknown before this. You might remember Mara from the opening scene in 2010’s The Social Network, where she appears for a few minutes looking totally different, all chatty, feminine and pretty with long hair. Now she has transformed into the coolest Hollywood weirdo since Edward Scissorhands, after beating out actresses including Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence for the role.



If you’re not familiar with the books, or with the Swedish movie adaptations, here’s a primer. In a world of airbrushed, watered-down femininity, Lisbeth Salander represents modern womankind’s most intriguing rebel, an androgyne who loves women and men, an outcast with no need for social acceptance. Do not try to categorise Salander – is she gay? Is she straight? Is she goth? Is she punk? She’s none of these things. She’s indefinable. She’s Lisbeth. She’s just weird.

“She is definitely not ‘goth’,” says Mara. Her voice is deep for her small frame – she’s only 5’3”. “We don’t like to use that word when describing her. Her whole thing is that she is not part of any group. To be goth or punk means you are part of subculture and a group of people – she doesn’t want to be perceived by anyone as anything. She wants to be invisible, and that’s why she dresses the way she does. To keep people away.”



Rooney Mara as Salander – it’s the kind of role that defines an actor or actress. In the way that Christopher Reeves is forever Superman, Harrison Ford is forever Indiana Jones and Kristen Stewart will forever be Bella, Mara will forever be Lisbeth Salander, whether she likes it or not.

“The road is littered with people who have been lucky enough to play characters that the public identifies with them for many, many years,” says director David Fincher. “The best example I think is Vivien Leigh… you can’t really give a performance much better than Blanche DuBois, yet she’s still Scarlett O’Hara. That’s a tricky thing to explain to a 25-year-old. In the same way that The Social Network made it hard for people to see Rooney as Lisbeth, Lisbeth is going to make it hard for people to see her as anyone else.”



Born Patricia Mara into a well-to-do Irish Catholic household in Bedford, New York, Mara grew up one of four children in a prominent American football family. The perception in the US media is that she comes from an extremely privileged background, but she refuses to be branded a trust fund baby. “I grew up in a little cul de sac,” she says. “My dad is one of 11 children and I am one of 40 grandchildren. I didn’t grow up poor by any means, but I didn’t grow up in some crazy dynasty.”


When she started acting in 2005 she took her mother’s maiden name as her first name. She was still a student when she landed her first lead role in a film (Tanner Hall). The following year she starred in the widely-panned A Nightmare on Elm Street, then, in August, landed the role of Lisbeth Salander. Going from B-movie horror to the most hotly-anticipated Hollywood trilogy of the year, in a matter of months? To say Rooney Mara came out of the blue is an understatement – so where, exactly, did her talent come from?

She had taken “silly little acting classes” as a kid, and did “a little bit of theatre in high school, but just fun.” She and her sister Kate fell in love with the stage when they were little girls, going to see Broadway musicals with their mother. “Rent, Miss Saigon and Les Misérables – I saw that one six times. I know the whole thing by heart, but I can’t really sing, so don’t ask me.” While her sister decided to move to LA to focus on her acting career, Rooney went to university to study psychology, international social policy and non-profits, while working on films and TV throughout. “I always wanted to act. I just didn’t want to go to school and learn to act. I wanted to go to school to learn other stuff.” In 2007 she took the plunge and moved to LA herself, by which point her big sis was already a bona fide starlet (she played Heath Ledger’s daughter in Brokeback Mountain). “Kate had been an actress for so long, working since she was 12, so it was beyond helpful to have her around,” says Mara. “I can’t imagine having moved here without her being here – it’s hard enough being an actress starting out in LA, let alone doing it by yourself.”

Being Salander, however, is a journey she’s taking all on her own. It’s a responsibility only the bravest of actors would have taken on, which makes it all the more remarkable that Fincher went against the feelings of almost everyone in the business, his studio included, to select the little-known Mara for the part. Maybe he saw something of Salander inside her? “Well, I was a pretty dark person to begin with,” says Mara. “I have always been more drawn to darkness, and I think Lisbeth is very dark.” She pauses to elaborate. “I mean, she has a lot of pain but she’s not someone who is carrying around a hurt. This is what David has always said to me. There are no wounds left. She’s all scar tissue.”

Mara met David Fincher on The Social Network, where she was on set for just four days. “She’s naturally shy and very feline,” says Fincher of Mara. “She susses things out and stays in the corner and watches everybody until the time comes for her to do what it is she needs to do.” So Fincher was able to recognise her suitability for Dragon Tattoo from that short space of time? “Oh no, I don’t think so,” she says. “I barely knew David from that shoot. I think actually he was kind of hesitant until he saw me audition. After that, he knew he wanted me. He was adamant.”

To play Salander, Mara had to radically alter her appearance, and agree to a laundry list of requirements – she would have to become a smoker, be naked, take part in a horrific rape scene, move to Sweden, and learn to ride a motorcycle. The only thing that fazed her was the motorcycle. “I was like, ‘There is no fucking way I am learning to ride a motorcycle’,” says Mara. “It seems so dangerous and scary to me.”

Five days after she got the part she moved to Sweden, where she lived for four months. “The winters are brutal there,” she says. “It’s pitch black from 3.30pm, and once the snow is on the ground it’s there until spring.

The change of environment helped Mara slip into Salamander’s character . She had her eyebrows bleached (they have grown back nicely since then – “they’ve had a year to grow wild”). She had her nipple and her eyebrows pierced, as well as “a bunch of ear stuff”. And she got to dress like an Emo boy. “It was awesome; I loved it. It is so much easier to roll out of bed and just put on whatever pants are there.” For the role she also got computer hacker training – “not as much as I would have liked” – and learned how to take apart a computer and put it back together. These things appealed to her inner geek – Mara describes herself as a natural born loner, who loves nothing more than sitting alone in her bedroom and Googling stuff. “Yeah, I’m weird. But, like, everyone’s weird though, right? And yeah, a lot of things about my life are going to change, but I’m not at all worried… because I’m still going to be up alone in my room Googling stuff, whatever happens.”

You can also read the interview here.

Moped Culture for the LA Times

I wrote this for the LA Times.

It's sunset on a Tuesday and members of L.A.'s biggest moped gang, the Latebirds, have gathered at Choke, a Silver Lake shop, for their weekly ride. They lean against their motorized steeds -- Tomos, Puchs, Motobecanes and Peugeots -- on the sidewalk, brooding, smoking and shooting the breeze, looking cooler than Bob Dylan and his Triumph Bonneville. They are artists, would-be novelists, bike messengers, stylists, a mortician and the intermittently employed; twenty- and thirtysomethings for whom riding and restoring vintage 1970s mopeds has become a lifestyle. Some call them "dirt wizards," but their casual-yet-carefully wrought aesthetic -- raw skinny denim, Vans and mucho plaid -- betrays undeniable hipster leanings.

They're joined by members of other, more recently formed gangs, the LA Tigers, the Woolly Bullies and the HalfWits. Cruising through the hills and canyons of Los Angeles County, 15 to 50 of them at a time, they fall just short of magnificent, thanks to the tinny, high-pitched "waaaa" of their 50cc engines -- a migraine-inducing whine that's less "Easy Rider" than it is "angry chain saw."

"You can't take someone on a moped that seriously," says Steve Acevedo, a member of the LA Tigers. "And we don't take ourselves that seriously. That's the whole point -- it's all about having fun."

Anna Halprin, founder of postmodern dance

Some time after the Second World War, dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin decided that everyone is a dancer, and that every movement is a dance, even the act of putting one's socks on. With that in mind, she founded what we now call “postmodern dance”, an art movement whose egalitarian, anti-authoritarian ideology had more in common with future phenomena like punk rock, street art and flash mobs than with the ballet or modern dance of her time.

Unlike her predecessors, Anna Halprin had a warts 'n all approach to dance. She and her dancers were sometimes naked during performances. They refused to be corralled onto a stage, performing their dances in the streets, in nature, among audiences, or wherever they felt like it. When invited to dance at a lunch for important art patrons, they made a stage in the middle of the room, sat at a table, and forced the audience to watch them eat lunch. Sometimes they gave audience members a “score”, instructing them to get up and join the dance. This approach was seen as inclusive or insulting, depending on your viewpoint. She really infuriated those who believed that dance was purely aesthetic—something pretty, polite, and non-confrontational. Not that she cared what they thought. “I never make my choices on the basis of whether people are going to like it,” she says, speaking from her home in the coastal forests of Marin, northern California. “I have to make my choices based on whether it is good art.” 

By constantly challenging authority and shunning homogeneity, Halprin and her peers helped lay the groundwork for the hippie counterculture, as well as for punks, for culture jammers, hipster aerobicizers and cultural iconoclasts the world over (if Banksy had been a dancer, he’d probably have danced with Anna Halprin. And did we mention her daughter married Dennis Hopper?). Today, she's still dancing (sometimes naked), still pissing some people off, and still inspiring most of the rest. Anna Halprin is, without doubt, one of the most badass 90-year-olds you’ll ever meet.

Born Anna Schuman on 13 July 1920 in Winnetka, Illinois, Halprin started going to ballet classes at the age of four. When the other kids laughed at her euphoric, energetic style of dancing, Anna’s mother took her out of that class, and enrolled her in a modern dance class, where she studied the techniques of modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. It was a much better fit for Halprin’s freeform tendencies. “We had lots of fun skipping and hopping and waving balloons and moving scarves through space. I liked it very much, and people didn’t laugh at me,” she says.

In high school, she was introduced to the techniques of second generation modern dance goddesses, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. By this point, Halprin was already sure she had found her life’s path. Aged 18, she was invited to move to New York City and join Doris Humphrey’s dance company—a huge honour, but her parents said no—they wanted her to go to college first. She hoped to get into Bennington College, a women’s college in Vermont, but the school had already met their Jewish quota, so she was rejected. “In all the private schools in those days they had restrictions on Jews,” she explains. “If the Jewish quota was filled and you were Jewish, you didn’t get in.” She was depressed about not getting into Bennington, but what felt like failure turned out to be a blessing. 

In 1938, Halprin started studying with Margaret H'doubler at the University of Wisconsin, which had opened the first university dance departments in the country. H'doubler, a former student of biology, believed that dance is a science as much as it is an art, and taught dances based on natural body movement.  In H’doubler, Halprin found the mentor whose instruction would inform her entire philosophy. It was also around this time that she met her husband, Lawrence Halprin, who would become one of America’s best known landscape architects, designing fountains, waterfalls, parks and shopping malls around the world.  She says Lawrence was her greatest influence, as a dancer. And he often designed spaces with dancers and movement in mind, even calling his park designs “choreography”. 

After graduating, she and Lawrence studied together at the School of Design at Harvard. Lawrence was being taught by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school of art and architecture in Germany, who had moved to the US to escape Nazi persecution. Surrounded by some of the most important thinkers of her time, Halprin started applying some of their ideas and philosophies to her own work. Before long, she realized that she was creating a style of dance that was entirely original, and had little to do with the modern dance that she had once worshipped. 

“It was a very specific incident,” she says, recalling the moment she realized she was doing something totally different. She had been invited to participate in the American Dance Festival at the ANTA theatre on Broadway. She was the only dancer from outside New York—the others were Manhattan-based dancers studying under Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and other notable modern dance choreographers. The festival lasted two weeks, and what Anna saw troubled her. “What I noticed after a while was that everybody in Martha Graham’s Company looked like Martha Graham. Everyone in Doris Humphrey’s company looked like Doris Humphrey. And so on. There was a philosophy behind that approach to art that I found very offensive.” What she was seeing was, in essence, no different from ballet in its philosophy, even though modern dancers had rebelled against ballet because of its rigid, autocratic culture. “I saw the teachers saying ‘this is my style, you learn my style’. Therefore all the dancers looked alike. This seemed very autocratic and dogmatic to me. And after a while it was very boring. I wondered, ‘there must be a different way of approaching dance that doesn’t have everybody looking the same?’”

Because there was no alternative dance tradition for her to align herself with, she had to create her own from scratch. Settling in the Bay Area, she began to teach. In 1955 she founded the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, teaching and collaborating with a number of the most progressive dancers and composers of the time, including minimalist composer John Cage and dancer Trisha Brown. She encouraged her students to improvise. “I would give them ideas, not commands. I would say ‘move in levels’. Or ‘move in different spaces’. It was very open, and very improvisational, and as they began to respond in their own way, I began to see there were many differences in the ways people moved and the ways they chose to express themselves.” 

When the dances went a little too far in the direction of openness, becoming overly “loose”, she remembered D’Houble’s instruction, and decided to revisit a more scientific approach to the body. “What’s unique about dance is that our body is our instrument,” she explains. “That’s not true of any of the other arts. I knew I needed to look at this instrument that we have, and figure out a new way to develop it. And that’s what we did.”

The rest of the world woke up to her revolutionary approach in 1965, when she and her students (including both her daughters Daria and Rana) performed Halprin’s “Parades and Changes”, one of the most controversial dances ever seen, at the time. It’s a sweet, innocent dance, in which the dancers happen to become entirely nude. “I chose the task of dressing and undressing as my inspiration,” she explains. I thought that this would be very beautiful, because you could see the body as it undressed in many different forms, and it would have a sculptural feeling.” Her studio in Marin, where she still works today, had an outdoor theatre, a wooden deck built by her husband. “Out there, we were very close to the feeling of nature. It is nestled in a wooded area, and it is very private. It didn’t feel coquettish or seductive to be nude in that environment.”

On stage in New York City theatreland however, the nudity was shocking. As they danced, Halprin heard members of the audience whispering “oh no, they’re not really going to undress…are they?” But they did. In the corner of her eye, Halprin noticed a couple of cops lurking backstage. “I figured this is New York, maybe it’s a custom,” she says. The next day, Halprin received a summons for arrest for indecent exposure. She left New York and didn’t go back for 10 years. She and her students became outcasts of sorts, shunned by the modern dance circuit. But once again, just like the time she was laughed out of ballet school, or turned down by a college for being Jewish, being rejected by the establishment was a blessing in disguise for Halprin.

No longer able to perform or tour heavily, she and her dancers had the space and time in which to fully explore, experiment with and evolve the artform they had created—postmodern dance--as well as the healing and therapeutic  capabilities of dance. In 1978, Halprin and her daughter Daria, a psychologist and former actress, would found the Tamalpa Institute, teaching “personal, interpersonal and social transformation, teaching new models for health, psychology, art and communication”. 

If it all sounds very tripped-out California, well, maybe it is. Had Daria not had such an unconventional, tripped-out California upbringing, perhaps she would not have been so well suited to co-found the ultra-progressive Tamalpa Institute with her mother. And perhaps she would not have been so well-suited to play the lead female role in Antonioni’s cult classic “Zabriskie Point”. A 1970 art film, “Zabriskie Point”, captured the essence of the psychedelic counterculture, featuring music by Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. Daria was perfect in the role of a young California hippie chick tripping out in the desert—she had been tripping out all her life, playing and dancing with the most talented avant garde artists of the time on her mom’s wooden deck, leading a childhood so bohemian, so unconventional, some kids weren’t allowed to come and play at their house…the Halprins were that far out. Daria was married to Dennis Hopper from 1972 to 1976, and had one daughter with him, Ruthana.

But that’s a long time ago now. Today, at their Tamalpa Institute, Daria and her mother work with terminally ill AIDS and cancer patients, as well as students of movement. Halprin has borne witness to the healing power of dance many times. One man, after a two-month workshop with Halprin, drew a self-portrait that showed fire coming out of the side of his head.  Six months later he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. “I did a similar thing, made a portrait, and that’s how I discovered I had cancer,” says Halprin, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1972. “Your body is your instrument for expression, but your body can also lead you to information that can otherwise be hidden.” She has written a book about how to heal through dance, and made several videos. Maybe to some people, cancer isn’t something to dance about. But to Halprin, dancing is the only response to the realities of life. And perhaps its no coincidence that she looks about 30 years younger than her age, and is still as provocative and focused as she was in her youth.

The illness of her beloved husband Lawrence (he passed away in October 2010), for example, inspired the dance “Intensive Care”, a haunting, nightmarish exploration of death and dying that evokes Japanese butoh horror dances in a hospital ward. “That was the most recent thing I did that people started walking out on,” she says. Again, you get the sense that shocking people is the furthest thing from Halprin’s mind when she’s creating a dance. Understanding the images in her head, as inspired by the emotional events of her life, and translating those into movement—that is her life’s work, and will continue to be. Whether its shocking or not is irrelevant to her. And even though she may be 90, don’t ever expect Anna Halprin to stop dancing. “Looking young, feeling young, I don’t know if it is in my DNA or it is the demon dancer in me that makes it so, but I feel I am working on dances all the time. I cant stop. I don’t feel that my age is going to stop me from dancing. I just dance differently.  I don’t dance now the way I dance when I was in my 20s or 40s. I dance the way I do when I am 90. And those dances are just as important.”

Published in 2011 in Dazed & Confused

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead has the clear, fresh complexion of someone who has never really abused her body. Yes, she’s been drunk several times in her life, but she has never been the type to get messy. Except for that one time, when she got super wasted in preparation for her film, Smashed. It’s a movie about Kate and Charlie Hannah, a sweet, young married couple who love nothing more than pounding beers and propping up the bar every night, until pounding beers and propping up the bar devolves into wetting the bed and accidentally smoking crack with a homeless lady.

Winstead is better known for her screamqueen roles and for nerd-friendly fare like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Grindhouse and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, so taking a role in a tiny, booze-drenched indie film was a career move that might have left more dollar-motivated Hollywood types scratching their heads. But, for Winstead, it represented the meaty, dramatic female lead she was ready for. Even if her liver wasn’t.

“James was handing us tequila shots – I don’t even know how many tequila shots,” says the 28-year-old, describing how director James Ponsoldt took her and co-star Aaron Paul (Jesse from Breaking Bad) on an epic bar-crawl to help them get into character ahead of the 19-day shoot. By bar number two, Winstead was already waving the white flag. “I remember being in the bathroom throwing up, and Aaron was holding my hair. Then we had to pull over on Hollywood Boulevard and Aaron was rubbing my back and holding my hair back some more. Aaron is pretty famous so I was like, ‘Imagine if the paparazzi were following us?’”

Whatever method-acting magic occurred that drunken night must have worked, because Winstead’s performance was so electric it’s inspired almost universal critical acclaim for the movie, which won the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Independent Film Producing at Sundance, and is even getting Oscar buzz. “It was such a small movie I don’t think any of us expected that all this attention would happen,” says Winstead. “The fact that people have responded so well is beyond exciting.”

Many films have tackled the tragic dynamic of an alcoholic couple, such as classics Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Days of Wine and Roses. What’s different about Smashed is how it explores “the program”, aka Alcoholics Anonymous, from the point of view of someone who isn’t a down-and-out, Everclear-guzzling drunk, merely a girl who likes to party down. You know, like the average, fun-loving 20-something. “With Kate it was like ‘Okay, I’ll give AA a try, but I don’t really think I have a problem,’ and then it slowly dawns on her that that is where she belongs. That she is an alcoholic. And it’s her personal discovery as opposed to someone coming into her life and saying, ‘You need help.’”

Los Angeles, where Winstead lives, is as well known for its AA culture as its party culture. Happy hours, pill-popping, rail-snorting and scene-making are deeply embedded in the fabric of Hollywood, as evidenced by the town’s many, many drug casualties, from Lindsay Lohan to John Belushi to Tatum O’Neal to Whitney Houston to Drew Barrymore to Anna Nicole Smith to Michael Jackson to Marilyn Monroe. The list is pretty much endless – and those are just the famous fuck-ups. Don’t forget the out-of-work actors, the party-hard rockers and those emotionally sensitive types who simply find themselves in a town where the calendar revolves around
which glamorous party to crash that night. “Doing Smashed made me realise the universal struggle of it all,” says Winstead. “Some films try to make alcoholics an extreme sort of ‘other people’, these crazy messes. But Smashed shows it could be anyone.”

She’s got a point. Think about your friends who drink every night. The ones who might have just a few white wine spritzers, and then end up in the back of a van having weird sex with some random creepazoid. “You see young women drinking all night and then passing out and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s cute,’ and everyone laughs it off,” says Winstead. “I have friends like that too, who you can’t help but worry about even though apparently they’re just being young.” Smashed explores a 21st-century youth culture in which alcoholism has become an acceptable identity to assume, in which being the fun drunk party-girl can be totally okay. Maybe even when you’re wetting the bed once in a while. “The question is, at what point do you start picking yourself up and being an adult?” says Winstead. “Seriously, that line is very blurred. You can be 40 and still be living that lifestyle, and it’s no big deal.”

But, she adds, Smashed goes way beyond being a critique of the party lifestyle. “It can be anything. Pot. Sleeping pills. A toxic relationship. Any cycle you’re in, but can’t stop. Hopefully it’s one of those films that makes everyone think about their lives in some way.”

It certainly did for Winstead. Not because she decided to become sober, but because researching the tools that alcoholics use to maintain sobriety introduced her to notions of living an honest life. “That was something I could really relate to, looking at my life and the ways I’m not living my life honestly,” she says. Her statement is an interesting one, because Winstead strikes you as a very honest kind of person. She has wide eyes that hold your gaze, a calm and assured voice and a humility and affability that seems underpinned by a strong awareness of who she is. She may be a distant relative of screen legend Ava Gardner, but Winstead exhibits a lack of pretension that comes from growing up in small towns in North Carolina and Utah, and she’s happily married to writer/filmmaker Riley Stearns. So how, exactly, is she not living an honest life? “Well, like a lot of actors, it starts with being an extreme people-pleaser,” she explains. “My whole life, I’ve often made decisions based on making other people happy and trying to avoid conflict. So I’ve been trying to shake myself out of that. Like, what do I want? I started realising how rarely I thought of that.”
Indeed, the whole process of making Smashed has, in some ways, been about Winstead starting to be true to herself. As a studio actress, she has already achieved what so many actors in Hollywood dream of – a decent paycheck. In Hollywood, if you have any tendencies towards auteurishness or “being European” in your career choices, you’re pretty much guaranteeing yourself an anorexic bank-balance. Luckily, she isn’t in it for the money. “People say you’re exaggerating when you say you didn’t get paid to do a project, but after taxes and lawyers and agents, it’s like you literally didn’t get paid,” she says. Winstead had always felt a little out of place, she says, like the indie girl plopped in the mainstream film. Now, finally, she’s the indie girl in the indie film. So, paycheck or no paycheck, she feels very at home there for now. Her next role, in Roman Coppola’s surreal fantasy A Glimpse into the Mind of Charles Swan III opposite Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Patricia Arquette and Charlie Sheen, should further solidify her indie-drama cred. “For some people acting is about achieving a level of power and success, and they are really great at being a ‘star’,” she says. “But I never thought I would be a star. I knew it was time my sensibility matched up to the films I was doing. And in that sense, Smashed was my dream come true.”

Article published in Dazed & Confused

Neil deGrasse Tyson for Dazed&Confused magazine

“Don’t overvalue my existence relative to the messages that I deliver,” says astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson during a Skype conversation, downplaying himself with Spock-like reserve. But  deGrasse Tyson is one of those rare souls whose well-informed words can bring the entire universe to life for the rest of us earthlings, a “people’s scientist” with a following of millions thanks to television appearances and his dozen or so books. In them he provides down-to-earth explanations of black holes, string theory (he’s not a fan), and wormholes, offering stargazers young and old an easy-to-read roadmap from infinity to beyond. Seen by many as the successor to the late Carl Sagan, whose soul-infused explanations of extra-terrestrial phenomena touched countless Americans in the 1980s, Neil deGrasse Tyson has made it his life’s work to unravel the mysteries of outer space in a way that everyone, even the chronically science-illiterate, can understand. Here's what he had to say to me...

I knew from the age of 9 that the universe was calling me. And it was my duty to listen. My parents helped—they would visit book stores and go to the table where things were marked down to a dollar and pick things up for me. So I had a rather fertile library for when I wasn’t outside playing basketball.  And that fed my interest. One of the books was called “One Two Three . . . Infinity”, by a physicist called George Gamow. It’s an exploration of all the weird stuff in mathematics, physics and in the universe. It talked about four dimensions, black holes, how there are hierarchies of infinity. You know how numbers, you can count them forever? Well how about fractions? The infinity of fractions is bigger than the infinity of numbers; and then there are transcendental numbers, like Pi. There are more transcendental numbers than pure irrational numbers, and there are more irrational numbers than counting numbers. And more fractions than all of them. Yet they are all infinite. Weird things like that. So that was an awesome book, an intellectual baptism into the fun world of math and science. Now when I think back on it, if your first book on math and science is like a text book, well that’s not necessarily fun. Its like, take your medicine here.  Perhaps if everyone were exposed to the fun side first, then fewer people would be frightened of math and science. 

I saw the Milky Way for the first time at the Hayden Planetarium in New York aged 9. I just assumed it wasn’t real. I had seen the real sky from the roof of my apartment building in the Bronx, and it didn’t look anything like that. I thought “ok, this is the sky they wish was there, but it can’t be the sky that actually is there.” Then I went on a trip to Pennsylvania, which is maybe 100 miles west of here, far enough away so that the city lights are not too bright. And there it was – the night sky. It reminded me of the Hayden Planetarium. To this day, the night sky reminds me of the Hayden Planetarium. The penny dropped and I said “whoa…they were telling the truth back there.”

I attended the Bronx High School of Science. There would always be someone within arm’s reach to talk to about your latest ideas, or some hypothesis you might have dreamed up the night before. To this day, those were the most formative years of my life. I guess that school has seven Nobel Laureates, as many as Spain, or so I’ve heard. I don’t feel any pressure to win a Nobel prize, but I do feel there’s a legacy of excellence to carry on. 

When I was 15, I visited the Mojave desert and talked to a group of people about a comet that was about to visit us. It was my first experience of public speaking. I gave two 45 minute lectures, and they paid me $50. I couldn’t believe it. Why am I being paid to talk about what I love? They were paying me just for my knowledge and my expertise. I would come to learn that of course that is what a free market is. You have a talent and ability, and that is what people want. 

I started wrestling in 10th grade, and carried on through college and a little bit in graduate school. I enjoyed it immensely. Because if you lost, you lost. You can’t blame it on anyone else. It’s you against one opponent. And I deeply respected the purity of that contest. I also rowed. So I stayed in pretty good shape over the years. One of the great crimes is that I remember the shape I used to be in.

It was while I was applying for college that I met Carl Sagan, one of the most popular American scientists of modern times. His television show, Cosmos, was first broadcast in 1980, and it opened up the universe to the masses in a way that had never been done before. He was deeply poetic. When you hear his narration on Cosmos, the way he delivers his lines and his words, it is deep and resonant and almost brooding in its depth of majesty and respect for nature. So, Carl was a professor at Cornell University, and when I applied, the admissions office showed him my application. I don’t know why—I guess it was dripping with the universe, and it was clear to the admissions people that there was one person whose lap this belonged in, and that was Carl Sagan’s. He sent me a personal letter and invited me to visit him. So I did.

That afternoon at Cornell, I remember wondering why Carl Sagan would want to spend this much time with me. He had nothing invested in me, after all? I remember thinking in that moment that if I were ever to become as notable or important as Carl Sagan, or even approximately that, that I would treat students with the same generosity that he had shown me. To this day, if I’m meeting with students and Washington calls me, or congress, or the White House or whatever, I say “you gotta wait. I got a student here.” I hold my time with students in very high priority, because of that first meeting with Carl.

I didn’t end up going to Cornell, I went to Harvard. In college, and since then, I never experimented with any substances in some attempt to get closer to the cosmos. It’s interesting how susceptible the brain is to hallucinogenic thoughts in the presence of very simple chemicals. But I have never presumed that to alter what the brain does, might somehow connect you closer to the actual universe. It might connect some people closer to art, to creativity maybe. There is certain music you could say that could not have been composed without being under the influence. But science is not subject to some random creative thought you may have, because at the end of the day, you have nature to answer to. The scientist has to reckon with the truths of nature, the artist has to reckon with the truths within. If hallucinogens make them closer to themselves and make them a better artist – fine. But there is no obvious evidence that altering the capacity of the brain to interpret reality actually brings you closer to reality. For that reason, I’ve not been drawn to efforts to alter my state of mind.

While I was at college,  I met a young black man who criticized my choice of academic pursuit. He said my efforts should not be wasted on the field of astrophysics, which he saw as having little to do with the betterment of black people. That was a powerful statement to me at the time, mainly because I didn’t have a rebuttal. He was majoring in economics, and he was planning to empower inner cities with enterprise zones,. All signs indicated that he was going to make a difference in the world, and I wasn’t. I was deeply troubled, especially because my parents were active in the civil rights movement. I kept with physics, but struggled with my intent for years. In fact it would be about ten years before I would climb out of this hole that he had put me in, before I realized that doing what I loved would have a greater effect on society than anything this other guy could have possibly done. And sure enough I look back now, I try to find him on the internet and he has no internet footprint. I don’t know what he is doing. Where is he? I don’t know. 

I met my wife in graduate school. She has a PhD in mathematical physics and we were in some classes together. That was in 1980. It started pretty slowly, it wasn’t love at first sight. We got together early and then broke up. So that meant it was for real when we got back together. We’ve been married since 1988. There are always challenges in any relationship, but I have to say, there are whole categories of conflict that don’t arise for us, simply because we both have the capacity to approach the solution in a rational and logical way. It’s cool. . It would be a boring world if everyone just approached everything rationally and logically. Actually we’d be rid of many problems that exist in the world but sometimes you have to take both together. If the problem is a side effect of the great expression of emotional creativity, I guess I’ll take it.

When I was finishing my PhD at Columbia I started interacting with the media for the first time. I was the go-to physicist when reporters would call. And I started learning a little bit about how the media works. For starters, there’s been about 3 articles about me in the history of articles about me that had no errors  about my identity or life or story. Once, for instance, I was interviewed by a relatively short reporter, she might have been 4 foot 9 in heels. And so afterwards I stood up and shook her hand and she reported me as being 6 foot 4. In the New York Times. I’ve never been 6 foot 4. That might have been how she felt when I stood up, but I’ve been 6’2 all of my life. Of course then everyone else picked it up and I became the “strapping 6 foot 4 physicist”. It was because of that article that I created my own Facebook page that had accurate information on it with regards my height and weight.

In 1996, I became the director of the Hayden Planetarium and found myself back at the same institution that so influenced me when I was a kid. It’s one of those great small town stories, isn’t it, except this is New York. I came full circle. That same year, Carl Sagan died, and America lost a great scientist and communicator. Sometimes people ask me where I think Carl is, where do we go after we die? Well, one of the things Carl taught us is that the universe isn’t what you want it to be. Truths aren’t decided by what feels good; they are decided by experiments, observations and analysis. And occasionally those truths are unpleasant. Or make you sad. The claims that something other than your body is released upon death, the claims that you go to heaven, hell or purgatory—these things remain sufficiently unconvincing to me that I don’t experience any urges to change my behavior in an attempt to influence what happens after I die. What is convincing is that I see things die, and then they decompose in the ground. Worms eat them, and bacteria. Why should we object to that, I don’t know. Personally I don’t hold worms as being lesser than any other kind of creature. They’re just uglier, I guess, unless you’re another worm. The people who are cremated, the energy is pulled out of them but it becomes heat, which just escapes into space, and what good is that. No one benefits from that when you radiate out in to space. I’d rather stay here on earth.

It’s true that I did turn down the chance to be on the “1997 Studmuffins of Science” calendar. It was a cute thing done by National Public Radio, they were trying to attract women into science. But it was a little too weird for me. That said, a few years later, in 2000, I did agree to be featured as People magazine’s “Sexiest Astrophysicist”. Studmuffin is kind of like a boy toy, whereas Sexiest Astrophysicist—that’s something you pause and think about.

In 2006 for the first time in my career, I got some hate mail—people were mad at me for getting Pluto demoted. Yes, I’ll admit my part in having Pluto stripped of its planetary status. Now it is classified as an icy body, and we grouped it with other icy bodies. It’s happy. I promise. It’s the biggest icy body of the group, instead of the smallest planet in the solar system. 

People ask me if there are secrets that the government or NASA keep from us—well, there are no secrets. Look at how much we knew about President Clinton’s genitalia. If there ever should have been a state secret, it’s that. People ask me about CERN, if we’re safe from dark matter—yes we are. We are bombarded by much higher energy particles from space than anything they are creating in CERN. In fact, has there ever been a time where people predicted some kind of science apocalypse and it actually happened. Where robots started controlling people, where we split the atom and the atom destroyed the world? No, it has never happened. All the science apocalypses have not even come close to coming true. People are worried for no reason. If they are worried, they should be worried about the environment. Although the universe has no shortage of energy in it.  

My single favorite musical genre is the blues. The depth of pain that is infused in every note and phrase, every thought, I find to be some of music’s greatest expression of emotion. I am especially tickled every time an artist takes ownership of a scientific idea, like an idea about the universe, and it serves as the muse for their creativity. Then and only then would I assert that science has become part of our culture. If the artist doesn’t deem it worthy of reaching for, I think it just lives out in the peripheries, completely ignorable by the rest of society. Scientists and artists, we’re both searching for some inner germ of creativity that can bring more of the world in reach of others.

Some time in 2013, I’ll be hosting the sequel to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, so that it can reach a new generation of viewers. It’s such an honor. I’m working with his Carl’s widow, Anne Druyen, and right now we’re figuring out the right tone. Will I pursue the deeply respectful prose for which Carl was known? Or will I be more myself, which has a more persistent comedic dimension to it. Carl is more poetically quotable. Not than I am incapable of this. In fact every now and then a poetic Tweet comes to my mind and I put it out there. It’s not that I am not capable of it. But it’s not my natural state, my average state. My average estate is that I will make an observation about the world, and maybe it’s a snarky observation or a humorous observation, but it always has a certain down to earth quality to it. Will that accomplish the goal of reaching down into the soul of a person’s poetic curiosity and stimulating it? Or will it just allow the person to laugh and move on to the next topic? Right now we are exploring what balance between the two would be right. Because honestly, when I talk to audiences, I am not delivering brooding statements. Usually, I am just having fun. I can’t help it. Why? Because the universe is hilarious. 

Hugh Hefner for Variety

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 “I'm 86 years old, Playboy magazine is approaching its 60th birthday…that it should still be relevant, that it should still be hot—that we should be doing this interview—is beyond belief…very satisfying,” says Hugh Hefner, dressed in his usual silk pajamas, sipping from a bottle of Playboy branded water and seated beneath a large bust of one of his greatest loves, Barbi Benton, her ceramic breasts glinting in the mid-afternoon sunlight. “When I began publishing in ‘53, most of the post-war men's magazines were outdoor adventure books, and I was not interested in hunting and fishing,” he says. “So I created an urban, urbane lifestyle magazine, in which the romantic connection between the sexes was the centerpiece. And that's still the case. The concept of Playboy has really not changed at all.”

White haired and just a tad hard of hearing, Hef (his preferred nickname since adolescence) has a lot to reminisce about. Like how he launched Playboy magazine in December 1953, using his apartment furniture as loan collateral so he could publish the now-famous calendar nudes of Marilyn Monroe, at a time when newsstand nudity was unheard of and when Monroe’s star was on the rise. Or how he weathered the slings and arrows of feminist attack, while being an ardent supporter of women’s rights (the Playboy Foundation was the amicus curiae, the friend of court, in Roe v Wade, helping fund the pro-choice campaign). How he published some of the best American literary fiction and nonfiction of the past 50 years—the words of Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer, Ian Fleming, and Vladmir Nabokov have appeared on the pages of Playboy, and more than 30 Playboy stories have been adapted for film, including Born on the 4^th of July, The Fly, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Born on the Fourth of July, Fahrenheit 451, All the President’s Men, Roots, In the Valley of Elah, and The Hurt Locker.  And of course, there were the parties—those Gatsby-esque bacchanals at Playboy Mansion West in the 1970s, when the magazine’s circulation was peaking at 7 million per month; when he was operating 23 Playboy Clubs with 900,000 members worldwide; when things like online publishing, reality television, the economic meltdown of 2008 (Playboy’s value dropped from $1 billion to $84 million between 2000 and 2009 and was subsequently put up for sale) were unforeseeable specks on a distant horizon.

Today, Hefner is in a phase of intense forward motion, actively steering Playboy Enterprises into a new phase of its existence—back to being family-owned and operated, and LA-based. When we meet, he’s a few weeks away from unveiling Playboy’s brand new headquarters in Beverly Hills, having closed his offices in Chicago and New York. This year he oversaw a $122.5 million buy-back of Playboy Enterprises with the help of Rizvi Traverse Management LLC., placing him—not Wall Street or shareholders—firmly back in charge of the bunny again. “Once the company went public, we had to worry about the bottom line every year,” says Hefner. “And prior to that, I didn't worry about the bottom line, I worried about the vision. Now I can worry about the vision again.”

So, what is that vision? “The company is basically moving towards becoming a branding company, because our marks are so iconic,” says Dick Rosenzweig, VP of Playboy Enterprises, Executive Vice President of Playboy since 1988, and with Hef since the late 1950s.  Brand licensing remains Playboy's highest-margin business, he says. “We have been very strong in licensing all over the world, more so really internationally than domestically. Internationally, these countries look to America as the leader in contemporary and hip society. To them, the Playboy name and the bunny represent something that they want to emulate, whether it’s a rabbit head on a shirt or on a volleyball or a nightclub.” In China, where the magazine and its website are banned, Playboy’s licensing business is booming. In 2003, the Far Eastern Economic Review named Playboy the most popular brand in China and there are about 650 outlets licensed to carry Playboy merchandise, including a high-end Playboy clothing line comprising men’s suits and formal attire. (Hef doesn’t wear Playboy clothes. “I wear pajamas,” he says).  

Reality TV has also helped take Playboy to an entirely new demographic—young women. ““When reality TV first became popular everybody and his uncle wanted to do one at the Mansion and I was not interested,” says Hefner. “It was after the fourth or fifth year that a friend, Kevin Burns, who had done a couple documentaries for A&E on me, came with a notion of, instead of focusing on me, focusing on the girlfriends, and that turned out to be an inspired idea.” Six season of Girls Next Door on E! and various spinoffs later, and Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends are arguably as well-known as Hef himself, especially among the shows’ viewers.

Playboy is still running clubs (casinos were a Playboy’s major source of income in the 1970s), with the focus on quality rather than quantity—Playboy is just ending a relationship with the Palms in Las Vegas and will “probably” have another club in the city. There is a Playboy casino in Macau, one soon to open in Cologne, Germany, and a casino club in London which opened about a year ago in the back of the Four Seasons hotel. “That’s where we want to go in terms of live entertainment - very hip and on the scene,” says Rosenzweig. And the magazine, which has around 34 foreign editions, is especially thriving in Eastern Europe, where it is seen as a bastion of the “American contemporary hipness” coveted by the rest of the world. “The magazine is really at the base of everything that we do,” says Rosenzweig. And while it may not have anywhere close to the circulation it once enjoyed (around 1.5 million in the US in 2011), as a brand ambassador, “the magazine brings a lot to the party.”

Now that he has control of the brand again, Hefner has been swift to get rid of aspects of the company that gatecrashed that party, like porn. “Licensing has permitted us to get out of the part of the business that has never been my favorite,” says Hefner, referring to softcore porn channels on cable TV and websites operated by Playboy from 2001 until this year. After going private again, he sold the adult portion of their company (once thought to comprise about 60% of the entre business) to a German-Canadian company called Manwin, so that Playboy Enterprises could focus on mainstream entertainment. “Porn is something we never really wanted to get into, but Wall Street encouraged us to. They thought there was so much money in it,” says Rosenszweig.

The relocation of Playboy to LA, finally executed this year, has been on the cards for years. Hollywood has been Hefner’s home and community since the 1970s—he purchased the Holmby Hills estate now known as Playboy Mansion West in 1971, and moved there permanently in 1975, doing so in order to more closely supervise Playboy Enterprises' interests in television and film production, but also because Hollywood has always been something of a spiritual home for him, as evidenced by his extra-curricular passion projects.  Hefner championed the reconstruction of the Hollywood sign in 1980 (was honored by a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his efforts), for instance, and again in 2010, when he donated $1million toward saving the landmark. Hefner has financed the restoration of more than a dozen classic black and white films, including 1945’s The Big Sleep, and funded historical documentaries on silver screen sirens Clara Bow, Rita Hayworth, Marion Davies, Louise Brooks and cinematic icons. “Films had a major influence on my life growing up, so it’s my way of paying back what I felt I got out of the movies,” says Hefner. “It’s the same thing with the Hollywood sign…I helped save it because it had meaning for me.” So what does Hollywood mean to Hugh Hefner, the elder son of conservative Protestant parents, Glenn and Grace Hefner, and a direct descendent of distinguished Massachusetts Puritan patriarchs William Bradford and John Winthrop? “Dreams, of course,” he laughs. “Dreams.”

Published  Thursday June 7, 2012

 Read the interview at Variety.com here

Snoop Dogg for Dazed & Confused

The smell of burning ganja hovers around Snoop’s shiny motor home, parked on a busy street corner in Hollywood. It’s not a billowing fog like in Cheech and Chong, more like a haze sweet enough to make some passers by lift their noses and sniff. A black gentleman built like a Hummer is guarding the door to the motor home; his name is Keys, he’s 6’9” inches tall, and he looks like he eats several KFC Variety Buckets per day. Keys opens the door with a polite smile.

“You can go in now.”

Inside, a suspension of smoldering herb vapors—aka stoner smog—hangs  low in the air, swirling and translucent like dry ice in a hair metal video. Gliding toward me is Snoop Dogg, West Coast G-funk superstar rapper and original gangster, all 6 feet and 4 skinny inches of him. He’s got a blunt in his right hand, prayer beads round his neck, and a knit cap on his head in the Rastafari colors of black, red, gold, and green—black is for Africa, red is for the blood of martyrs, gold is for treasure, and green is for…

“Do you smoke?” asks Snoop in his laid-back drawl, s’s cut smoother than glass.

Yes, I say. If I’m going to pop my blunt cherry with anyone, it’s gotta be Snoop.

“I’m gonna roll us up a new one so we can have one fresh,” says Snoop, stubbing out the blunt between his fingers, and busting out some fresh blunt wraps. “I would never disrespect you like that, such a lady.”

Hearing him speak, I’m immediately transported to the first time I heard his voice, nearly 20 years ago in 1993, when his debut album Doggystyle (still his highest-selling album) dropped. Following on from Dr Dre’s The Chronic (which featured many contributions by a then-unknown Snoop), the record redefined West Coast hip hop, presenting a sweeter, smoother kind of gangsta rap, prompting me and all my suburban teenage girlfriends to start dropping phrases like “tha shiznit” into casual conversation. We were obsessed with this slick but dangerous new G-Funk vernacular, informed by the exotic world low riders, gin, juice, Crips, Bloods, bitches, pimps, hos, and chronic. Back then, Snoop was the only thing as cool as Nirvana.

20 years later, unlike so many 90s artists who have had to deal with their own irrelevance, creative stagnation, or just not being around anymore—Salt n Pepa, Axl Rose, Biggie—unlike them, Snoop’s still the Doggfather, ever-ballin, still super high. It’s because he pays attention to his fans, says Snoop—rather than ignoring the haters, he listens to the feedback he gets, positive or negative, the feedback of his fans acting as divining rods that so far, usually send him in the right direction.

 “I let the people tell me what and how to do,” he says. “Like I may throw a whole lotta records out, because I want to feel what the people feel. Maybe they say “That’s wack dawg. That shit aint on. I want to hear that old Snoop Dogg shit man, that shit dope right dere.” So I’m playin it by ear to hear what they like, and when I find out what they like I’m on it. I’m on it like I’m on it.  And then sometimes I just take a chance and just jump in the swimming pool and do some shit they wouldn’t expect and they’re forced to like it, because I love it.”

This year he headlined the Coachella festival with Dr Dre, projecting that now-famous hologram of Tupac on stage in what will be remembered as much more than the ultimate West Coast rap reunion. Tupac may be gone, but through him, Snoop and Dre were showing us the future.

“You like that?” he asks, passing me the blunt.

“It was amazing,” I say, squinting as I inhale.

“I didn’t see it.”

I wonder what he means—he didn’t see Tupac looking like a Star Wars hologram on stage with him? I start wondering if maybe it was a ghost, or maybe Tupac actually came back from the dead, already stoned enough to have a shaky grasp on reality.

“I’m just fucking with you, I say that to everyone,” says Snoop. “So, people liked the hologram?” His voice drops, perhaps we’re moving into emotional territory.

“All my friends were stoked and Instagramming it. They loved it.”

“That’s beautiful. That was for a memory of Tupac more than anything… for the people who loved him to be able to see him one more time. That was special.”

“Thank you for doing that, Snoop.”

“Pleasure, baby.”

I’m really super duper baked now and except for the cottonmouth, I feel awesome. I can’t imagine interviewing Snoop in any other condition. There’s music playing on a laptop and Snoop is nodding his head in time. The song is by a young R ‘n b singer who he is producing. “This is like love…you know what I’m saying? That’s what music is made for—to give an expression to love.  Music is a loving, peaceful instrument to be played around the whole world, and that’s what we’re doing. It’s a love thang.”

I feel like Winona Ryder in the South Park movie, everything just feels like whoa (“war man…wow, you know? Wow.”) and the feeling’s heightened by the happy mystical vibes the D. O. Double G. is emanating right now. It feels like pure L.O.V.E., a vibe that’s warmer and fuzzier than I’d expected, different to the gangster pimp persona he after shedding his straight-up gangsta shit—actually it wasn’t just a persona, Snoop really was a pimp in 2003 and 2004, hooking up rich  athletes and entertainers with girls, and runnin’ with real pimps (he quit to spend more time with his family). Has the evolution of Snoop Dogg taken him from hood to hustler to hippie, I wonder? I ask Snoop to explain his mellow state of mind.

“Mellow has always been my state of mind,” he says, “but now I’m at a point in my life where I’ve found Rastafari and it’s helped me develop a peace and a tranquility, so I can put myself in a zone of relaxation at all times. It’s just about being more positive and peaceful; about trying to help, not trying to hurt.”

Seems like we’ve caught Snoop in the throes of a mystical metamorphosis, a Rasta rebirth sparked by recent visits to Jamaica this year during which he spent time bonding with the Marley family, shaking a maraca at Niyabinghi sessions with Rasta elders (rumors are that Snoop was anointed as a Rastafarian in a ceremony on the island), and recording a reggae album in Port Antonio with Diplo and Switch (called Reincarnated - Peace, Love & Soul, it’s due in late 2012.)  Oh, and he’s growing locks. Tasha Hayward, his soft-spoken personal hairdresser for 20 years and friend since the Long Beach days, has been through a lot of hair styles with Snoop—braids, cornrows, ‘fros—but this is the first time she’s used beeswax on his hair, helping him grow in his dreds.  Tings a gwaan for Snoop.

“When I look back in time what do I see? I see a young, wild, misguided wannabe,” says Snoop, “because I wanted to be. In the future I see a leader, a motivator. I see a politician. A legend.” A nappy dreaded legend, by the sounds of things.

When I ask him how his connection with Rastafari came to be, his head drops and his eyes close.

“It chose me,” he says.

His publicist taps me gently on the shoulder, shaking her head. Snoop’s Rasta-fication isn’t something she wants us to get into right now. Nonetheless, I try and imagine what it would have been like if Snoop Dogg and Bob Marley had sat down, wrote some lickle songs together, praised Jah and blazed some major reefer. We’ll never know—Bob Marley died in 1981, when Snoop, now 41, was just ten years old. One has to wonder, who would have out-smoked who in such a clash of the ganja titans? Would it would have been a photo finish? In fact, has anyone ever out-smoked Snoop?

Yes. Once, confirms Snoop. In the Weed Olympics, country singer Willie Nelson takes gold, hands down.

“Willie would win a gold medal, I would win silver and Wiz Khalifa would win the bronze,” says Snoop, second place to the 79-year-old country legend, poet outlaw and straight O.G.

So what happened exactly when they crossed spliffs?

“I lost,” says Snoop. “Couldn't hang. Had to pull out the white flag.”

Wow. They must have smoked literally mountains of weed.

“It’s not even that it was mountains, it was so many different procedures,” says Snoop. “It was a joint, a blunt, a vaporizer, a bong, a humidifier, so just much shit going around. It was just me and him, and we was playing dominos, and I’m trying to concentrate while he is whooping my ass at dominos, trying to smoke at the same time. I had to say ‘white flag’.”

(I’m feeling kind of the same way after three hits.)

This April, Willie Nelson released the track Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, a rootin’ tootin’ 420 anthem featuring Snoop Dogg that celebrates the booming weed culture in the U.S. Today, medical cannabis use is legal in 15 states, and despite federal unease at how cross-eyed everyone is getting, the consensus is that a national lifting of marijuana laws can’t be too far away. In California, for example, you can get already get yourself a medical marijuana card under virtually any pretext—maybe you’ve had period cramps, nightmares, or a persistent hiccup? These all qualify as conditions that can be legally treated with cannabis. I asked Snoop what ailments he had that entitled him to be a certified, card-carrying stoner.

“I have migraines,” he says. “Back pains. Yeah.”

The longest Snoop has ever gone without smoking weed (aside from when he was in the womb, presumably) is 185 days, he says. This occurred in 2003 around the time he started coaching football to kids. It felt awkward being baked around small children, so he refrained from smoking at practice. Then he stopped smoking in the studio. Five whole days went by without Snoop taking a single hit, toke or bong rip. “I showed up one morning for the Steve Harvey show (popular US chat show)and he looked at me like ‘what’s wrong with you? Your eyes is white.’ I say ‘I stopped smoking. And he’s like ‘what?!’”

The first two weeks, Snoop went through some gnarly weed withdrawals. “I was like…’motherfucker, I think I am gonna die.’ But my homeboy gave me green tea, and all kinds of shit to get my body working. My shit was like heroin-addicted because I was so used to it.”

How long before he started feeling good about being weed-free?

“Three weeks. I was awesome. Rocking on stage, skin started to fill in on my face, hair started to grow, clothes started to fit. I needed that.”

Snoop’s puffing while his assistant rolls him another blunt, and it’s clear that those days are over. Whats more, he’s found the perfect stoner buddy in the form of 24-year-old rapper Wiz Khalifa. While Snoop—who embodies the first wave of chronic-obsessed hip hop in the early 90s—may be passing the ceremonial spliff to Wiz (part of a new wave of super-baked, weed-obsessed rappers, along with Curren$y), we’ll all be getting a contact high once their movie, Mac & Devin, comes out this summer. In it, Wiz plays a recalcitrant and uptight Chong-type character to Snoop’s wiseguy Cheech, who takes the viewer through 90 minutes of plot-driven instruction on weed lifestyle. You’ll learn basics like how to roll giant spliffs, how to combine “medical with medicinal”, how to dump your “controlling bitch” girlfriend, how to lose your virginity to a hooker, and you’ll learn why edibles make you trip balls. “I don’t do edibles,” points out Snoop, “because I don’t have no control, its like I don’t have an on or off switch. But my homeboy Warren G daddy used to make the chronic cake…that shit was good as a motherfucker.”

There’s even a whole part where Snoop’s character Mac, a charming pot dealer who has somehow resisted graduating high school for 15 years, postulates pussy as the ultimate renewable resource. Snoop, who is now finishing the blunt alone after I bow out, is more than happy to explain the physics. “The reason I say it’s a renewable source is that because once you get it, you are reenergized to wanna get it again,” he says. ”Whether it’s mentally or physically or spiritually, you are driven to want to it again. And that’s a renewable energy, because you have to get some new energy in order to do it again.”

“Yes. Whoa. Yes! That’s so fucking true,” I say. After the interview, I sat in my car for two hours, trying to remember how to drive, and trying to recall how Snoop had somehow figured out a way for pussy to solve the world’s energy needs. Because it made perfect sense at the time.

Tenacious D interview in full

Kyle, I like your white socks and sandals by the way.
J : Oh good. Okay good. Yeah, It’s a big part of Kyle’s persona really.
White socks and sandals?
K: Yeah, I’ve taken a lot of heat but uh now it’s become kind of a thing.
So, you won’t leave the house without them?
J: What is the heat that you take, do people get really mad at you?
K: People like to remind me what a horrible look it is.
J: But is it? cause you know ninjas have a similar sock you know where it separates the toe, the big toe from the rest of the foot.
K: You know I should go have a look at that.
J: The ninja defence.
Is it ninja inspired?
K: If I just wear sandals I notice my feet get really dirty, so this is really, yeah, this is the perfect combo.
Would you say you’re covering all your bases?
K: I’m covering my bases.
And Jack have you ever been tempted to give it a go yourself?
J: The socks with the toe?
Exactly.
J: Uh, no, but now that you mention that maybe, maybe it would feel good, I’ve never been a big flip flop guy, do they have flip flops from where you come from?
Yeah, they do.
J: Yeah, they annoy my feet, I have kind of granny feet, in that someday they’ll probably have horrible uh …
Bunions?
J: Yeah, funions, I like to call them funions. I don’t have them now but it seems like the shape is going into that direction, I may have to have some kind of surgery to avoid that cause there is nothing less rock’n’roll than bunions.

I would agree with that statement actually, trying to think of something less rock’n’roll, nahh [laughs] … Now I’m noticing right now Jack that you’re squinting, I would say almost that your eyes are closed, are you especially tired?
J: I had to get up really early for a photo shoot this morning and it was out in the fucking, the sticks cause this photographer was especially particular about the perfect background, and uh, I was driving back here and I was having that kind of drive where you’re battling to stay awake, it’s always dangerous cause you like, really I should pull over and sleep but I can’t I’m late for this thing here.
K: Yeah, you’re late.
J: And I didn’t have a coffee or anything, and I was looking in the, I have a little mini fridge in the seat next to me and there was nothing good in there with you know any zip gibbidim gibbidim gob so I just resorted to slapping myself. I slapped myself a few times, but it’s so scary when you’re driving and you’re like “just stay awake” and it doesn’t matter and it’s like deeeaaahhh …
K: Oh god.
J: you know what I mean and you get that little adrenaline blast in your heart.
Have you seen those videos on youtube with teenagers punching themselves in the face?
J: To stay awake or just for fun?
Just for fun.
J: No.
K: Is that the latest? Can’t keep up with the kids.
Yeah, I think it’s like, if you want to for example pretend that you’ve been bullied or maybe have to … like not go to school then you have to sit there and like really punch yourself really hard in the face several times until like your nose breaks.
J: Oh wow!
It’s really cool and then you put a video of it on youtube, it’s kind of cool.
K: School sucks.
Yeah, it must really suck if you have to punch yourself in the face to avoid it.
J: I wonder if anyone has ever died from a self inflicted punch to the face.
Yeah, well you could do cause I imagine, you know they’ve got that special ninja move apparently that you know, it just sends something to your brain.
J: Yeah, if your nose bone goes to your brain bone that’s the end.
The nose bone to the brain bone?
J: Yeah. It’s the first thing they teach you in ninja school.
It would be like the snuff movie, the youtube snuff movies where kids accidentally punch themselves …
J: I’m trying to think, I feel like I’ve seen someone die on video before, snuff, have you seen any snuff?
K : mmhmm [no]
You’ve never seen a snuff film?
K: No, sounds pretty grisly.
Did you watch that Gaddafi footage?
J: Ah no, that would have been snuffy.
K: Oh no wait, I guess, I did see that.
So, you’ve seen a snuff video, kind of.
J: I saw uh, what’s his name go down, you know when he got hanged.
Who’s that, Saddam?
J: Yeah, Saddam.
What’s that like?
J: So that’s snuff, it was a good snuff.
Good snuff. So…anyway, you haven’t done a, this is your first album since 2006, fair to call this a comeback? Would you feel like it’s a comeback?
J: It’s absolutely a comeback. That is in fact the whole concept, it’s a concept album and the concept is a comeback.
K: Although you know …
J: In fact has there ever been an album where it was more of like, it’s about the comeback. The comeback album?
For yourselves or for other people?
K: LL Cool J?
J: Oh, but he said don’t call it a comeback, we’re saying do call it a comeback.
What about Diary of a Madman, that was kind of a comeback.
J: Was it a comeback?
Well, it was Ozzy, just, he’d been kicked out of the band …
J: No that was his second album, his first album one was Blizzard of Oz.
Oh that’s right.
J: Diary of a Madman was just sort of like more stuff from that first session I think, uh, so no. We are the first real comeback album. Should be a self proclaimed comeback, wait a second, what’s the greatest comeback, oh, it would be Back in Black, where they got a new singer, but that’s different cause you’re coming back with a different band, we’re still the same D, we’re just coming back. Yes, the answer is yes.
This is a comeback.
J: I was just trying to think of other greatest comebacks of all time.
I was thinking Betty White, now that’s a comeback.
K: Betty White?
Well, that woman made a comeback.
J: Was she gone for a while?
She was Betty White, she was the golden girls and then they started dying and then she was like suddenly the hottest thing in the world.
J: Right and then golden palace and then she was gone for like ten years no one knew what she was doing.
Yeah, at least ten years.
J: She didn’t have any shows or anything?
K: Well, golden palace.
I don’t think she was doing …
J: Was that the last thing she did was golden palace?
K: Could have been, I feel like she’s been on the scene …
But not really at the level that she’s at right now.
J: There was like, there was a full campaign, there was an internet campaign to bring her, to get her on Saturday Night Live.
That’s right. So would you say your comeback is bigger than Betty White’s?
K: It’s bigger than Betty White and Jack White combined.
K: This whole thing could backfire on us really, I mean, we’re banking on it but …
J: Well, I mean, what do you mean, what, how could it backfire? If people don’t like the comeback album then the backfire is?
K: You guys didn’t come back!
J: And then we shouldn’t have done a comeback album, we should have just done a regular album and pretended like we didn’t need to come back.
K: Well, in today’s world, I mean, if everything is bouncing around on youtube.
J: It just felt very organic, when we came back to the drawing board and said okay lets write another album with the songs, the first thing we thought was lets write a great comeback song. And then later we were like you know what, lets make a whole comeback album, so that the whole album is still with inspirational jams that make you want to exercise and work out and just be really inspirational and say I can do anything, I can be the best.
I read somewhere that you felt like uh, Rise of the Phoenix was your answer to Eye of the Tiger.
J: Yeah, similar.
So, just kind of like you say, the kind of thing that make you want to jog up and down stairs.
J: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Have you done a lot of exercise while making this record?
J: Uh, I’ve done a fair amount of exercise, uh, believe it or not, I’m pretty fit, I’m pretty strong, uh, underneath the soft exterior lies the heart of a lion. It’s pretty uh, pretty, it’s pretty firm underneath, feel that.
K: Oh my god! Dude.
J: Yeah, it’s mostly natural.
Mostly natural?
K \ J : [laughs and mumble]
J: K we exercise all the time; don’t we?
K : Yeah, I don’t …
J: Weeeellllll you know what I do is, there is a lot of breaks where I’ll take a week of here, two weeks of there, sometimes three weeks or a month of, but then I’ll get back to working out in earnest and I’ll go like a week or two in a row just every day, and then there will be a long period of like “I’ve got other shit to do, I don’t have time to work out”. I’m not one of those guys that’s like, “what, I have to work at seven then I’ll work out at six”. No, I’m a one-thing-a-day kind of guy, working out is the thing I’m gonna do today. Like for instance, this interview - I’m not going to work out today.
I’m sorry!
J: I put everything I have into one thing.
I feel bad.
K: No no, it’s important.
This is more important than his heart?
K: Well, for today.
J: We were thinking of doing an exercise video for like, just encouraging people to exercise, just add it to whatever you’re doing. Like right now, we’re doing an interview but we’re also …  doing this the whole time.
Well, we could do this the whole time, do you wanna just do this while we’re talking.
J: Yeah, yeah.
Comon Kyle! You can do it, common! And I’ll do this the whole time, I don’t think it’s gonna be distracting at all.
J: Lets see how long this lasts.
You know I was thinking in terms of someone should do, well Mick Jagger should do an exercise video, you know that video to Start Me Up, the way he dances it’s really aerobic.
J: He’s running around the stage really uh, he’s really showing off in a way, he’s like saying look, I’m very fit, it’s not really about getting the crowd pumped up, it’s more about saying look at me, I’m really, I’m in really good shape, I don’t get winded, I’m not too sweaty and yet I’m running … and they say that amongst all the aging rockers he’s in the best physical condition because of his days of doing yoga in the 60s and 70s and 80s he just kept that yoga practice going and that was his secret to youth, to youth and that’s what me and Kyle are going to start doing.
I was gonna say, how is your yoga practice coming along?
K: I don’t
J: Never?
K: No.
J: You never did any yoga, no downward dog?
K: Well, I dabbled
J: Right, you know downward dog?
K: Yeah
What about you?
J: I’m very good at yoga.
What’s your favorite kind of yoga?
J: Kundalini
Ah, I see.
J: It’s all about the chakras.
Now, which chakra would you say you need to work on the most?
J: The seventh.
What’s that, the genital one?
J: It’s [laughs]
I don’t know, I’m like one two …
J: No I think the genitals is like the first one
Oh it’s the other way, okay.
K: It’s the thousand petal lotus
You need to work on your thousand petal lotus  
J: Somebody knows a lot about Kundalini yoga over here! Way more than me in fact, I was kind of just bullshitting but this guy is throwing some real facts around. I better … no, you know, I’ve done some yoga, I, you know, not the hot one but …
Bikram
J: Yeah, I’m more of a Hatha guy
So, going back to the comeback and everything, last time you guys put out a record it was 2006 now it’s 2012, I feel like, it’s only 6 years but 2006 it was a whole different universe really when you think about the changes that have happened since then, so much has changed …
J: Not really.
You don’t think, I mean there was no Justin Bieber in 2006, everyone is on myspace in 2006, so you know, maybe talk to me about where you were then as human beings and where you are now as human beings, and the biggest changes culturally that you think are worth talking about.
J: Wow, 2006, lets get in our hot tub time machine.
K: Yeah
J: What was happening in 2006?
K: Was there youtube in 2006?
Barely
J: I don’t know …
K: Cause it feels youtube was the big demarcation of, of the advancement.
J: Youtube?
K: Yeah. I feel like there was before youtube and after youtube.
J: What were we doing in 2006?
K: I think we were releasing our movie, we were working hard.
J: We were globetrotting and feeling very cocky.
K: yeah, shooting a documentary and …
J: But what about the world, what are we talking about? What were we doing and what was different then now?
Well yeah I mean, Ronnie James Dio - alive, Ronnie James Dio today - not alive.
J: No, that’s true.  
Big changes. I wanted to talk about Dio’s passing with you because obviously so important to the last record.
J: Yeah, it’s a bummer. We loved Dio and we were planning on doing another song with Dio for this album which we obviously didn’t get to do so, that was uh, that was depressing. But we got to meet him so there was uh, there is good times to remember. Uh, what else Cage?
What was it like when you met Dio?
K: Ronnie James?
Of course.
K: Well I think, didn’t he ask us to be in his video?
J: He heard that we wrote a song you know on the first album and people said “hey! This band tenacious D is dissing you, they’re saying  you… they’re disparaging you” And so he took a listen to it and he said no they’re not, they love me, this is a love song. And he was right, and he reached out to us, we got a note saying “hey, will you be in my music video?” And so “of course” we said, we had to, it’s the least we could do for all the years of inspiration he’s provided. And we went down and met him, and he was the sweetest guy that you could imagine, very warm, very funny and very magical.
K: Yeah, he’s quite diminutive.
J: You’re saying he was very short?
K: Well yeah.
J: Yeah, he was very short, he was probably Prince like in stature. I don’t know if you’ve ever met Prince. Good things come in small packages. Or so I’ve been told.
Was is for you, was it equally magical, Kyle? Meeting Dio?
K: I don’t know if it was magical it just felt like  …
J: He was more of a hero of mine, lets be honest Cage
K: It was an honor but lets face it [laughs] yeah he was definitely more a hero of Jack’s.
J: Yeah.
K: I think was ready to [17.52] on that one.
J: Really, Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell wasn’t your first album?
K: No, I think I was rocking the Beach Boys, little more poppish.
Which record?
K: I believe it was called Endless Summer, but they were one of those bands, they put out greatest hits [18.17] … every couple of years.
If Brian Wilson and Ronnie James Dio were to go head to head, who do you think would win?
K: Wow, that is peaches and herbs there, that’s apples and oranges.
J: Wait if who? Ronnie James and who?
Brian Wilson.
J: Oh, ridiculous
Ridiculous?
J: Who would win?
Yeah.
J: In a battle of songwriting?
Yeah.
K: I’d probably pick Brian.
J: Well, Ronnie James would definitely have more evil songs, more powerful performance.
K: Might kill him with the pipes.
J: James is the greatest metal singer of all time, Brian Wilson is like the 500.000^th best metal singer of all time. He’s like the worst metal singer ever.
K: Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever heard him really go at it.
J: I would like to hear Ronnie James Dio's cover of …
K: Surfin'Safari
Of which one?
K: Surfin'Safari
Well Ronnie James Dio did have a sort of croonerish early career didn't he, in the 50s, he was singing a lot of kind of happy songs, so he might have
actually been able to battle Brian Wilson at his own game.
K: Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah, you should youtube it. It's kind of amazing he's wearing like, you know the sort of like the suit, and he has like a bowl haircut, and he's crooning or maybe
it's more of a pompadour what am I thinking, it's a 50s kind of romantic crooning kind of thing he's got going on
J: Is that before Elf?
It's before anything that remotely has any kind of satan in it..
J: wow, and what was the song?
There were several songs, several.
J: I feel like I saw something, I saw this when we were in Australia someone showed me some early Ronnie James, it was kind of baffling.
He went through many lifetimes in one lifetime.
J: He had kind of a Spinal Tapian arc to his career, he had to listen to what the flower people said period.
Speaking of evil, just wondering how your thoughts on Satan have evolved since 2006.
J: The same. I mean, I still think it's pretty funny. Satan, I mean it's really a 1980s phenomenon.
Satan is?
J: Satan in rock. I mean, Black Sabbath was doing it in the 70s but for the most part it blossomed in the 80s, you know, and you couldn't be in rock if you didn't have a devil angle in the 80s almost. Van Halen was able to rock pretty hard without Satan but besides that it was like all the top acts were devil heavy.
I beg to differ, where is the Satan in Def Leppard?
J: Yeah okay, there is another one. But those are rare birds, and also Def Leppard was a girl band. It was for the girls, I mean the dudes were like all right yeah I'll give it up for Def Leppard in a li'l bit, ACDC!!
Kyle, thoughts on Satan? I mean seeing as you're into the Beach Boys, you might be less satanically inclined but … I'd like to hear you guys talk about the devil right now.
J: Well there is no devil in rock and you could say in a way that rock has a, I don't wanna say that it's died but it's definitely taken a back seat to a lot of other genres. It doesn't have nearly the, uh, the pull that
it used to. Like now …
K: It does feel like it's waning
J: Yeah, who's the biggest rock act, it used to be tons of them now there is only of bands that can fill a stadium.
K: Foo Fighters.
J: Yeah, you've got the Foo Fighters, but they're kind of carrying the torch alone. They don't have a lot of other you know …
K: Jack White seems like he's carrying the torch a little bit.
J: Yeah, the big Monsters of Rock of [22.51]
They're carrying the torch together
J: Yeah, they have to, it has to be … it has to be Monsters of Rock
[23.01] and Metallica, and Megadeath and Slayer, just about … I heard that the biggest selling metal band doesn't even exist, it was Metalocalypse, they're the one metal band that actually is on the billboard, one hundred.
J: Really, I didn't even know they had an album
Oh yeah, they totally had an album, and they toured, and they were doing super well and …
J: Do they look like the characters in the cartoon?
Well, it's almost like a Gorillaz set up where they have a screen and then, they have Brandon what's his name and …
J: And they pack them in?
Oh yeah, they were selling out everywhere, so it's almost like you have to have an affiliated cartoon, like an adult swim show in order to like be a rock band or a metal band that's selling on the level that maybe Van Halen, or like Sabbath or Ozzie did in the 80s, you know like …
J: I don't believe that they're as big as Sabbath was in the 80s, I'm not gonna buy that.
I think they're as big as they can be.
J: I need to do some research and get back to this interview because I can't go along with this, that Metalocalypse, is as huge as you say they are, do they sell out like consecutive nights at the staple centre.
Consecutive! uh, well …
J: The big Wembley?
They shut that down, there is no big Wembley anymore!
J: What happened?
They shut it down!
J: They weren't selling enough …
I don't know what happened but they shut it down, I saw my first rock show there actually, Guns'n'Roses, Faith No More, Soundgarden in 1992
J: WOW!
K: Man, what a show.
Oh my god, it was, it altered me. What shows altered you, I mean, I'm sure you've talked about this before with each other, but what was the show that made you into Satan and metal, what
was the show that made you into the Beach Boys, or whatever it may be.
K: Well, I remember my first show was Heart and Robert Palmer.
Together? That's weird!
J: Did he do: might as well face it, you're addicted to love. Did he save that till the encore?
K: No, that was actually before …
J: Oh, it was in the middle of the set
K: No, it was before that song came out.
J: Ah, okay.
K: So he was opening up for Heart. He only had one hit and it was : [singing] You know you like it dudududdu … You like it on top dudududdu didididuu
I don't know that song.
J: [singing]
Ah, that was Robert Palmer?
J: He's an old cover guy …
Did you fancy Ann Wilson or Nancy at that point?
K: Well, I think it was always about Nancy, and then Ann started, starting to blow up a little bit.
J: You don't like that? A little extra?
K: Sometimes. She was cute in the day. So I guess uh, yeah, I don't know if I was altered though by the show, lets see, what show altered me? Mhmm…
J: I saw uh, one of my first shows was Loverboy, I was visiting my cousin Spokane Washington and Loverboy was playing and I didn't know what was good and not good at the time, I was excited to
go to a concert and he was like? "How is everybody doing in Spokaaaaaane!!??" Cause it sounded like cocaine. And the crowd was like "aaaahhhhh!!' And that made me realised all you have to do is yell out
like a drug and then you're like a hero to the people.
Can't imagine there is a lot of cocaine in Spokane though, it doesn't seem like a cocaine town.
J: You'd be surprised, they party over there. But uh, I saw Devo really early on, my brother was an engineer on the Freedom of Choice album, you don't remember Whip It? You don't remember Whip It.
I do.
J: And that was a great fucking show, they had some twisted short film before the concert started and the audience was just fucking lathered up and ready for rock. And they came out with their full concept, you know, the costumes and their crazy modern rock, it was great, that was a great show. But uh, the band that I saw early on that really made me wanna have a band, I saw uh, I saw the Meat Puppets in the 80s while I was in high school, I went down [28.05] Long beach at a little club, and they rocked so fucked hard, the lead singer dude was just staring out into the centre of the audience, like for three songs in a row he didn't move at all except for his hands playing the guitar and staring and singing, he was just staring and I think, I'm pretty sure he was frying on mushrooms but uh, the force of the rock was so good, it was just ooohhhh, and I've had a few experiences like that where you're in the audience and you're like, you're just enjoying it so much, it's washing over you, it feels, it's like a delicious meal or you know, a sexual experience, where you just, you're taking it in, it like "oh, this is just too good" and everyone in the audience is on the same page, you look around and everyone is just smiling ear to ear, that's rare but when that happens it's like, wow that's the fucking, that's the shit right there.
So, it's obviously gonna happen when people listen to this album that you've just made, I wanted to talk to you about the album artwork, in which you've, the artist who ever they may have been, managed to make a phoenix look like a cock and balls, which I don't know if you guys notice that
J: I don't know what you' re talking about … it's kind of like a rorschach test, if that's what you see it says a lot more about you than the artist.
K: Yeah, what made it look like a cock and balls
I don't know, I just never realised how veiny, uh, a phoenix is.
J: A phoenix is? Well, they're flame veins.
Flame veins?
J: But uh, what I think is cool is that the phoenix has a purple head and uh, blue balls.
Which indicates a certain degree of tension within, it's got purple head and the blue balls.
J: Almost ready to burst.
Almost, like you guys with this album.
J: Exactly.
K: There you go, it's the perfect cover, we've figured it out, we've cracked the code.
J: Prepare for the love explosion.
Was it something to do, were you really channeling you know, cock rock as it were, which you know I think is another one of those fading genres of uh, of music.
J: You know what, we didn't put too much thought into the intellectual message of the cover, we just thought, you know it should be a phoenix, and what should the phoenix look like?
What's funny? And that was what we came up with. We came up with a rough sketch of it and we sent it over to this kid who is an incredible painter and he blew our minds with this. When I first saw
his rendering of it because we sent him a very rough sketch of a, you know, it looked like a fucking chicken with a long neck and a mushroom cap head and uh, he sent back that thing and I was first, I looked at
it and I was scared of it. I was like, oh no no no, that's too disturbing, we can't unleash that on the public but then I looked at it again the next day and I was like wait a second, that's beautiful. It had a very profound affect on me that painting because you know, when you look at something and you're like oh no no no, that's too much, then you know you're on to something, you're pushing the boundaries.
K: We had a couple of artists before who had a crack at it, didn't we?
J: Yeah, we didn't, I don't know if we should, well, here it is now. We uh, we sent it out, we sent the rough sketch to a few different artists at the same time to see who came back with the best one, and he was the best.
K: Is that …
J: That's not cool, it's not cool
Well, what other things did they come up with, that weren't quite, were they more …
J: They were all different versions of …
Like a tattoo style phoenix or a chinese phoenix
J: No there were just some more polite, sweeter versions of it and this one was just very real, and terrifying, it looks like the end of the world's penis
Rising again.
J: Yes. The Anti chrenis … the anti cock!
Yeah. Good good.
K: I never thought of that.
J: Someone's gotta give on the heading'
Did you just, no you didn't
J: The A-cock-olypse
K: O my god, you're on fire!
What's up with not being able to spell?
J: A-cock-olypse NOW! [laughs]
K: Oh, you mean the spelling?
Yeah. Is it R. Kelly inspired or something?
J: Does he say Rise with a -z ?
I fell, although there is that movie rize about krumping or something, I don't know.
J: I've always liked phoenix just with a f-e-n-i-x, it also, it looks like penis when it's phoenix like that, but also
K: Did we miss out by not having an extra -e, wouldn't that be, rise of the fe-nix, cause it only has one -e.
J: No, it's right. This is right.
It's not too late.
?: There is precedent for fenix spelled like that.
There is?
?: Yes.
There is?
?: Yeah, that was my first show
J: But rise with a -z you're right it does have a real uh, hip hop flavour to it, which we have never shied away from you know Tenacious D has a very hip hop flavour to it.
K: Yeah we used to think that we had to be.
J: I just like the letter -z and when it's "rise" I think that was a mistake, it should have been a -z all along and phoenix definitely should have an -f.
You're saying you wanna rewrite the dictionary?
J: That's what we were doing.
Maybe you will with this.
J: I think it's more pleasing to look at, and yeah, I guess it's just sort of done. Why didn't we spell it the way it's supposed to be spelled?
K: Yeah…
J: This is better, this is better.
I think it's better.
J: We improved upon it.
K: It's inadequate
You're gonna go to England to perform
J: Yeah, we got too many England dates. We're doing, are we doing Glastonbury? Is that what we're doing?
K: I think so.
J: And we've got three nights at the, at the …. Hammers..?
Donnington as well?
J: Donnington?
Are you doing Hammersmith, are you doing London?
J: Is that what it's called Hammersmith?
Hammersmith is a place in London that has a music venue.
K: Brixton.
Oh, Brixton.
J: That's a lot of England.
K: I think we're more popular in England ... than we are here.
J: We've never done three nights in one spot, we're gonna try three nights there, seems a little cocky.
K: A completely different set each night.
That's challenging.
K: And I think we'll succeed.
J: No we can do it, as long as we keep it to like a half hour set. Do you think people will be upset if we just play the half hour set?
K: You have to cut [35.37]
J: Technically how long do you have to play to be contractually not giving people money back.
Oh, 50 minutes, five zero yeah, in America - I don't know about England.
K: Yeah, that's not very long
J: No. If it's under an hour.
If you stretch out the songs, have a lot of drum solos,  is Grohl gonna be performing with you at all, on the live shows?
K: I don't think so.
No, he's just doing the record with you?
J: Yeah
K: We have Bruce Wackerman.
J: An incredible drummer.
K: From uh, Bad Religion.
Ah, nice.
J: He's one of the greatest drummer living.
K: Yeah, he's one of the greatest.
J: But what do we do, we do have to do something different every night, when your plant your flag in a place and you say we're gonna play a lot of nights in a row, it's got to be different every night.
K: We'll go shell game on them.
J: Really? We're just gonna change the order of he songs?
K: We'll change the order.
J: No, no, no, no, no … we got to, put a different, we'll have different stuff, like one night we'll be just like in, oh shit City Hall is coming down tonight.
K: Yeah, yeah.
J: Next night, they'll be like "What!" they fucking played, fucking [36.40] and one just neither of those, and that will be special. They didn't do anything, did they? That's the first night.
I'm glad you guys worked that out. Do you, just wondering, very random question here, have you guys ever been to Burning Man? And do you ever see yourselves there?
J: No, I've never been there and I feel like it's a nudist town out in the middle of the desert.
K: It's nearby
It's near Reno. What's the shreddiest song on your album?

J: Probably Rise of the Fenix. The only song really with a solo though is Rock is Dead. That's the only time when we really unleash the power of shredding although we've got a really tasty section in Death Star. But it's not shred heavy, it's shreddy light. Which is good. I think.
K: Yeah we don't want to draw focus away from us too much.
J: The story behind the album is that the D's last effort was not as successful  as the first one. So we have to circle the wagons and say hey man. If we're gonna do this thing we gotta fuckin face some demons. We gotta come back from the dead, basically. And add to that, we don't have to just do it for ourselves. We have to actually save rock n roll. because rock n roll lets face it has died. Is it too late to put some CPR on this guys ass? To fucking put some electric shocks to his heart valves? We're basically creating a Frankensteins monster out oft his thing and seeing if it works. Its  also us saying there's no point in doing it if we're not the best. I do not care about being good. I only care about being the best. What we set out to do was make the best album of the year, be the best rock band in the world and then  fuckin take it around the world and toot our horn about it. Right kage? isn't that the story?
What's the song "low hanging fruit" about?

J: Low Hanging Fruit is definitely about sex but that's part of the come back. We're back. and its kind of a mid life crisis album. That's what its really about. And  the album cover obviously has some of that too. Why would you put a big flaming boner on your album unless you had some weird middle aged insecurity? We've embraced it.  

You're also re-embracing ass sex, I see?

J: What are you talking about? 

There's a song on the album called "They fucked our asses".

K: That was not literal. That was metaphoric. 

J: That was the least about sex.  

Well my assistant's father is an astrologer and he ran your chart Jack and it said you are a cancer moon and possibly bisexual. 

K: I never felt those vibes from you!
J: Doesn't mean I'm not, just means you're not the one I choose to give my cock to. 

One more question - what are your thoughts on Justin Bieber? He really stands for something in terms of being an antithesis to what you stand for. 

J: He's flaming out. He's going to burn really bright for another couple of months and then he will be gone. I refuse to say we are  the antithesis of Justin Beebs because we've got lasting personality. We have been here for nigh on twelve years. 

K: Do you think he has lasting powers? 

J: He seems energetic but he's gotta grow up and make that transition.Who is the guy from N Sync who made the transition…Limbersnake. Ask him how did you do it. 

K: Or maybe we take Beebs under our wing.

J: I think that's our next album. Tenacious B. Tenacious Beebs.  

K: We could probably learn things . He's a good dancer 

So what makes a really good air guitarist? 

K: I would say commitment. When you don't actually have a guitar you better be committed. 

J: And don't overdo it. Keep it subtle. If you're doing this all the time (makes shreddy hand movements) people are going to lose interest. Also, don't underestimate the power of the face muscles. Make it look painful sometimes. Throw in a little pain with your pleasure. 

Whats the best guitar solo in rock history? 

J: Eruption. Why are you even asking.    

K: Elliot Easton 

J: Oh yeah that is a good one. wha wha wah whaaaa…That is a close one. Its so compact. its really short.   

How long is it?

J: Three bars.

Lucy Hale for Cosmopolitan

Liberace's Home for Palm Springs Life magazine

Even if you don’t spot the plaque by the driveway that reads “Piazza de Liberace,” it’s clear that a showman owned the house on North Kaweah Road in Palm Springs. Musical notes adorn garden fencing. Statues of Roman youths and lions flank the entrance. The mailbox is shaped like a grand piano. A tall iron gateway opens to a black-and-white foyer, where two vintage candelabras illuminate a large photographic portrait of Liberace, posing with an elegant Afghan hound (he had 27 dogs when he died in 1987).

Liberace, whom Guinness World Records once recognized as the world’s highest-paid pianist, lived in the Old Las Palmas property from 1968 to 1972. Opening the tall black front doors, you half expect to be transported back to the era of cherubs, rhinestones, and Versailles dazzle; of white marble, leopard-print fabric, and bejeweled chandeliers by the dozen. Instead, you’re greeted by the unexpected: a tasteful modern home, presented in shades of black, white, and green and filled with discreet nods to its former owner.

“Yes, we bought this house because it was Liberace’s house,” says Elizabeth Smalley, a doctor who purchased the property with her husband, accountant Garth Gilpin, in May 2010. “But when we moved in and started the remodel, the challenge was how to honor and respect Liberace’s original vision without, you know, recreating it — how to make it feel Liberace without looking Liberace.”

The couple, who owned a condo a half a block away and split their time between Pasadena and Palm Springs, had often walked past the house imagining what the insides looked like. When it was placed on the market, they peeked inside, and what they saw was “unbelievable,” Smalley says. The prior owner was a fan of Liberace and Elvis Presley (who owned a house two doors down). The interior, which reflected those passions, was perhaps even more decadent and colorful than when Liberace lived there.

“There were painted cherubs on the ceiling, a room that was Dalmatian and cow print, fake flowers, red velvet, gold, with Elvis and Liberace everywhere,” Smalley says. “It was the most dysfunctional house we’ve ever seen. Nonetheless, we thought, ‘How can we not do this?’”

Realizing they needed help transforming Mr. Showmanship’s palace into Garth and Elizabeth’s pad, they called in Palm Springs-based designer Christopher Kennedy.

“I was speechless,” says Kennedy of walking into the house for the first time. “I saw the enormous potential to create something modern, but quietly inspired by the great artist who once lived there.”

They started in the kitchen, which was dark and “tiny” and had not been updated since the 1950s. Knocking out a few walls to incorporate two adjoining rooms created a larger kitchen and dining area. White and gray tiling reflected Liberace’s legendary fondness for white marble, and quartz counters added some Liberace sparkle to the space.

On kitchen shelves are copies of Liberace’s cookbooks, including a first edition of Liberace Cooks! Recipes From His Seven Dining Rooms, bearing the performer’s trademark piano signature on the cover. And there is, of course, a chandelier, but “it’s a modern take on a chandelier — a reference done in a contemporary way, which was our goal throughout,” Kennedy says. A reading nook adjoins the kitchen, and on the wall is a framed wallpaper sample with a musical note design. When they moved in, that wallpaper was “everywhere,” Gilpin says. “On the ceilings, on the walls — it looked like musical ants crawling all over the house.” What was unbearable in excess, they realized, was charming when framed for posterity — sample size — on the wall.

Completing the kitchen provided the momentum to take on remodeling the rest of the property. Years of ill-conceived additions had left rooms at different levels. “That’s why it was on the market for so long, some realtors had told me,” Gilpin says. “People would come to look at it and they would be tripping from having to step down here, step up there. So we leveled everything.”

Beneath the flooring in the living area, they discovered 7,000 bricks that Liberace had painted green, turning what used to be an outdoor patio into an indoor living area. Gilpin and Smalley repurposed some of the bricks for walls around the house, swapped some with collectors, and used the green hue as inspiration for accents throughout the house. “We call it ‘Liberace green,’” Kennedy says.

The living area is dominated by a black granite bar built for Liberace, who positioned his baby grand piano next to it and installed lights in the shape of a piano overhead. Gilpin and Smalley centered the bar by moving it 3 feet (making it the focal point of the room) and removed its mirrored and gray marble surface, exposing the granite beneath. The wall behind it was covered with a simple textured wallpaper in “Liberace green.”

Adjoining the living room is “the white room,” whose focal point is a white marble fireplace and striking black Baccarat chandelier. “There aren’t too many references to this house in books, but the one little description we did find was about the white room. It had white carpet, white everything,” Smalley says.

The master bedroom, which was “cathouse red” (Kennedy’s description), velvet, and gold, is now an exercise in understated chic, a large headboard with a swirling design providing the only real “Tony Duquette drama.” Duquette was the interior designer who worked with Liberace on many of his homes, famously living by the motto “More is more.”

The en suite master bathroom was refloored using white marble taken from the living room, and the shower was tiled with neutral gray and white mosaic, echoing Liberace’s love for the Roman bath aesthetic. A large glass wall looks out onto a white Roman sculpture installed by Liberace. On the vanity is a photograph of Liberace, with Gilpin and Smalley grinning on either side of him. “The magic of Photoshop,” Gilpin explains. Next to the photo are matchbooks from Tivoli Gardens, Liberace’s former restaurant in Las Vegas. You don’t have to look too hard to see signs of their affection for Liberace. Homages include coffee-table coasters bearing chandelier motifs and a drain along the piano-shaped patio that they had custom-made to look like
a keyboard.

The guest-room bathroom features a sunken tub with Liberace’s swan-neck plumbing. “We have a photograph of his home in Las Vegas, which had the same gold swan-neck faucets,” Smalley says. “When we first visited this property, we were so excited to see it again. We sat in this bathtub and took a picture.” They had no idea the faucets were gold, until they went to have them professionally cleaned. “We thought they were brass,” Smalley says. “But, of course, Liberace had gold-plated faucets. Why would we imagine he wouldn’t?”

While most of the house is understated, Liberace is fully unleashed in the powder room, whose black walls are covered in gold-framed, black-and-white photos of the star, gifted to Gilpin and Smalley by the previous owner. “Guests at first don’t see too much Liberace. Then when they get in here, there’s this really great surprise,” Smalley says. Around the corner from the powder room is another portrait, of a man in a crown, wearing a king’s robe and holding a scepter. It’s not Liberace; it’s Gilpin, when he was crowned Mardi Gras king in New Orleans two years ago. Smalley painted the portrait herself. “Oh, we’re gregarious too,
in our own way,” she says.

In the back yard are decorative wrought-iron gates with L’s in the swirling design that were brought over from The Cloisters, the Palm Springs house Liberace lived in after this one. The pool area was completely rebuilt and landscaped with a grid of grass and concrete “to soften it and to give more of a sense of a back yard,” Kennedy says.

Remodeling Liberace’s home has made Smalley and Gilpin feel connected to Palm Springs. “When we say we bought one of Liberace’s houses, everybody has a story,” Smalley says. Neighbors have described trick-or-treating on Halloween night in the ’70s — going to Liberace’s house because he gave the kids silver dollars.

Before he died last December, their next-door neighbor shared with them anecdotes from the years when the world’s highest-paid pianist lived in the house.

“He told us how Liberace would come over in the mornings, in his bathrobe, and go into his icebox and chow down on his fried-chicken leftovers. Then at night, he’d hear him playing the piano,” Smalley says. “It’s such a great Palm Springs story, isn’t it? ‘I lived next door and got to hear Liberace playing the piano for free.’”

Read the story here.