Hi --

It’s taken far too long, I know.

But: this past November US voters signalled “thumbs down” to George Orwell’s perpetual war. . . . Maybe these three (anonymous, internet-circulated) sleeping Marines will live long enough to vote in the next election? That would be my prayer.

(Interesting, that these 21st century American men at war seem more comfortable with homosocial intimacy than the anonymous soldiers of 100 years ago I found last week in a forgotten photo album in the basement of the house I grew up in. . . .)

ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR TWO

For over three years now I’ve been extremely hard at work “escaping” from the unfathomable horror of Orwell’s famous book 2004 come to life by researching the relatively less horrific topic of military homoeroticism v. homosexual panic in Nazi Germany. (Less horrific if only because it’s 60 years past.) This book is my first *commissioned* project -- in contrast to my first five books, it did *not* begin as a labor of love. And yet as the manuscript takes shape I’m ever more amazed at the *overlap* in underlying themes--

For better and for worse, Germans were at least 50 years ahead of the English-speaking world in the study of human sexuality per se, to include serious, widely read literature exploring the key role of homoeroticism in military life. (Most of which has never been translated into English, and very little of which is know even in Germany today. Between Brownshirt book burnings and Allied area bombing, much of it went up in flames. And then came the harshly hyperconservative 1950s. . . .)

Anyway: please wish me luck in completing my first of at least two volumes -- it’s far and away the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced; the topic is too serious to cut any corners; and last week my funding was cut! After three years of full-time research (on something that for me is anything but a personal “kick”) I’ve endured too many nightmares to NOT see it through.

LIFE DURING WARTIME: YEAR 5

To all my buddies -- Army and Air Force men I knew in the former West Germany, and one man I came to know 10 years later -- who helped me with photos, supplemental interviews, and most of all with friendship: please accept my apology for the unforeseen circumstances that at this writing continue to necessitate postponement of BARRACK BUDDIES *SECOND EDITION*. Namely -- once again -- you guessed it -- the war.

Strange but true: I was brought up to believe that making money off of war is ... wrong? Given that my first book was set against the backdrop of the First Gulf War (... not to mention the fact that, in the years since, more than a few young men have written me that reading my books inspired them to enlist!), how can I in good conscience peddle a deluxe illustrated new edition at a time when--

At a time when I can barely stomach watching the news from Iraq.

But then, I’m the type of person who does not slow down to look at car accidents, and who -- blah blah blah -- finds the 11 o’clock news more obscenely exploitive than a lot of adult video .

PORN UNDER PUNCHES

Offhand, I can’t immediately cite other authors and editors who, as Alex Buchman and I, have been singularly distinguished in an award-winning adult videomaker’s mass-produced prurience -- with not only prominent product placement, but also porn star protaganist pronunciation of passages from a serious work of non-fiction erotica, in this case BARRACKS BAD BOYS: AUTHENTIC ACCOUNTS OF SEX IN THE ARMED FORCES VOLUME II.

A year ago today, Dink Flamingo of activeduty.com was being out-pornoed by regional TV news smut-hounds stirring up a sweeps weeks scandal -- indignantly reporting live from his front lawn that when they had peered into the windows of his home they had seen people inside but upon ringing the doorbell no one came to receive their intrusion.

To date, the only non-developmentally disabled journalistic account of the scandal is my friend Mark Simpson’s DETAILS story.

Dink is my friend, too. (His trilogy of confessional accounts taped, transcribed, carefully cross-checked and edited by yours truly into three respectable chapters -- over more long hours than some authors spend on entire books -- is the veritable backbone of BARRACKS BAD BOYS.) Alex Buchman was a real-life (good) bad boy Marine; I am (or so the critics of THE QUEEN IS DEAD agree) a doomed “chaser” of military bad boy strays. . . . But Dink -- for better and worse -- has taken his parallel passion to a point beyond, say, MILITARY TRADE.) One secret we have in common is that both of us -- for longer than fleeting seconds, but less than tortured months of sleepless nights -- seriously toyed with the idea of becoming Army chaplains.

Anyway, Dink is contributing to Alex Buchman’s third and (according to Buchman, adamantly:) final installment. But he’s one of a half-dozen contributors (truth be known, myself included) still struggling with his definitive chapter in a book titled BATTLE BUDDIES, compiling authentic accounts of men getting physical in wartime.

What’s the hold up? My publisher is impatient, does not -- cannot -- understand. . . . Here too: thanks, more than I can say without sounding hokey, for your understanding.

“WHY DO YOU THINK THE NAZIS WORE BROWN?”

Everybody loves you (/hates you) when your new book is out and getting attention. . . . When my first book was in press and my Senior Editor commissioned COMING OUT UNDER FIRE author Allan Berube to write the Foreword, I was on cloud nine. . . . When Allan and I met, it came as a shock that even after *big press* success and with a film deal in the works he was still struggling to make ends meet -- after he’d devoted TEN YEARS OF HIS LIFE researching a definitive history of gays and lesbians in WW II! Four or five years later he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant to research the book he’s been working on since -- free of worry about funding his next meal. . . .

My book on homoeroticism in Third Reich Germany may or may not lead to a $300K endowment permitting me to work on the next volume free of worry about paying for pet food. But I believe that I can now understand and admire Allan Berube better than I was able to in 1992; more importantly, I can truly view him as a role model. Given the gravity of his project then and mine now, what should come first?: rushing the most difficult/sensitive, astonishingly wildly nuanced, potentially most valuable of writings to just get paid -- or researching/writing as I have for three years, in the interest of going all out to realize my own untapped potential in delivering a book that can be the most substantive possible addition to “the literature” and at the same time an exceptionally “good read”?

Jeez, was that an embarrassingly rhetorical question-- Again, wish me luck.

TANGIBLE PRODUCT: CD, PHOTO CD, TAG TEAM SIGNED O O P BOOK

For those of you inclined to smirk at -- or admire -- my “ueber-80s” author headshot on the back of BARRACK BUDDIES (the so-called Flock of Seagulls pic -- actually taken in late 1991!), the above video capture is me in 1981, live on cable TV with my first band Zyklon. (Awkward name? Not if you have the patience to learn our youthful philosophy in adopting it.)

Industrial Music a la Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, and to a lesser extent something resembling early Joy Division at their most electro-Brechtian -- those are the simplest reference points for the 25th anniversary reissue of THE HEARTLAND by grim-records.com. I did the artwork and wrote the liner notes. And for those of you who know my story ... well, Zyklon ceased to exist 25 years ago this month, on the day I left Michigan in pursuit of my first soldier lover in Germany. But if your iPod playlist is unacquainted with any variation on the genres *noise*, *industrial*, or even Kraftwerk, this is a CD worth purchasing as a collectible, probably better left unplayed.

Of surer interest to fans of my military interview books and/or visitors to this page attracted by images of military men:

• TWENTY [make that 18 --sz] copies of the 200 signed, limited edition SEADOGPHOTO photo CD-R remain available.



• THE QUEEN IS DEAD: JARHEADS, EGGHEADS, SERIAL KILLERS & BAD SEX is a collection of transatlantic personal letters (and small but high-resolution photos) between me and my closest writer buddy, Mark Simpson -- before he became internationally famous for coining “metrosexual”; before the clock turned 2000 and nobody, not even us, persisted in old-fashioned pen palship *on paper*. Published in the UK in the year 2000, QUEEN garnered glowingly positive reviews in prestigious places -- including top British newspapers such as THE GUARDIAN and THE INDEPENDENT (who named it one of the “books of the year”). That was all well and good, but now, finally, this improbably successful book is where I first pictured it: like an obscure import album on vinyl ... out of print ... *rare* and getting rarer by the day. You can probably still find a copy used or even new for under $20. But I have 15 [make that 14, thanks DG --sz] or so new copies autographed by Mark Simpson that I’m adding my inscription to and alternately donating to libraries and offering to supporters on a first come basis for $50 by check or PayPal (to order, click on the above image to the “old” link for the Photo CD, and simply change the amount to $50 -- I’ll cover postage, even internationally).

There’s more, much more to report--

But only so much fits on a postcard.

- Steve

PS My health? After this year alone racking up $10,000 in outstanding bills for medical testing (given my “pre-existing” lung problems I’m uninsurable), my new pulmonologist says that I look “young” (!) “and healthy,” but he wants me to obtain a follow-up CT scan just to make sure a new “area of consolidation measuring approximately 4.5 X 4.5 cm not noted on the prior exam” is not, at worst, a tumor but hopefully merely an “acute process compatible with” my bout with pneumonia back in November. . . . Meanwhile, I’ll send a free CD, photo CD, or copy of QID to the first person who knows Latin well enough to (WITHOUT GOOGLING!) translate three words on my radiologists’ report that echo my adopted personal motto: ABNORMAL BUT STABLE.

Hi. I am still alive. And -- despite my newly diagnosed chronic lung disease -- I am fully intent on living at least as long as the younger of my two cats (aged three).

Somewhere in one of my letters to Mark (born on the Fourth of July -- Happy Birthday Mr) Simpson, which ended up incorporated in THE QUEEN IS DEAD, I mentioned a slumming day trip across Puget Sound from Seattle to the struggling, low-rent Navy shipyard "ghetto" that-- Well, that I now call home. And I added that, in between cruising the retro adult video arcades a block or two from base, I stopped by a thrift store run by the local Humane Society and, for US $0.25, bought a Henry Miller book "that I will probably never read."

For those of you who believe that "everything happens for a reason" (now, more than ever before in my life, I don't NOT believe ...):

Reading my quaint biographical romances, people often ask how on earth I managed to keep my head above water during the black years of famine and drought. I have explained, of course, and in these very books, that at the last ditch someone always came to my rescue. Anyone who has a steady purpose is bound to attract friends and supporters. What man ever accomplished anything alone? The impressive thing, however, is that aid, when it does come, never comes from the expected quarter – where it should come from as we think.

No, we are never alone. But one has to live apart to know it for the truth.

Many, many thanks to the friends (old friends and new ...) who came through in response to my last "postcard." More than I can adequately express, your support has helped me survive the bleakest months of my adult life.

Re: "Are you getting better?"

Though not a superstitious man, I've grown almost wary about discussing the latest on my lungs. For one thing, my lungs have been declared irreversibly damaged (inexplicably and mysteriously so ... my regular doctor, who I would have to name as one of the most saintly humans I have ever encountered, actually took it upon himself to apologize for the "primitive knowledge" of early 21st century medicine). Realistically, the best I can hope for is that my health improves just a little. So, I'll cautiously confess that yes, I am doing a little better. And that (touch ... wood...) I can now boast of consistently going a month at a time without coughing blood.

That said, when I did wake up the other week thinking of Kafka , at least now I know the deal:

moderate hemoptysis may be frightening to the patient but is seldom fatal

To everyone I'm overdue writing to I apologize. With heart. Last fall and winter I truly did slow down considerably. (Concurrent with being told that I might have lung cancer / should in any case think about a lung transplant, the same day I had a CT-scan so did my father. With unhappier results.)

But even though it's now summer (my least favorite time of year -- yes, I am finished complaining), lately I do seem to be showing some renewed signs of life:

* Last weekend I narrowly escaped the "stray cat" seductive power of a charming lost sailor vomiting on the late night Seattle-Bremerton ferry. (Mercifully, even as I against my better judgment sought to intervene on his behalf with the Homeland Security patrol, at the last moment his Navy buddies materialized and after some hesitation offered, "Uh, he's with us.")

* Work on the Second Edition of BARRACK BUDDIES, though somewhat delayed (-- again. This time by some pesky flashbacks I suffered on account of Gulf War II syndrome --) ...

. . . is finally shaping up. My approach to this project has been slow but extremely meticulous. (Any last-minute -- even stream-of-whatever -- e-mail commentaries on that first book -- or better yet, period US Army / USAF hi-res photo submissions -- would be very welcome.)

* I am hopeful of playing a strong role in the launch of a new Men's Studies/Masculinity Studies book program. Especially now that the conservative US Supreme Court has unexpectedly, poignantly, in no uncertain terms ditched 20th century prohibition of SODOMY.

* My last "postcard" concluded with a pledge that everyone who sent a donation toward my medical expenses would receive a complimentary copy of a limited edition "Best of Seadogphoto.com" CD-R to be issued sometime this summer. This pledge I remain intent on fulfilling before Labor Day. To include the kind-hearted souls who sent me five dollars -- and those individuals who contributed from international postal zones that will cost me five dollars to send a data disc to.

* At this writing, I am still working on special letters to: the guy in AU who probably didn't realize the can of worms he opened in mentioning his most recent CD purchase; K.O.; my comrade in CO; the man of the law in MA ...

Finally, very special thanks to my mysterious new friend in CA who knows about Birmans. . . .

Your

Steve

PS I'm still thousands of dollars in debt for medical expenses, and am still dependent on outside patronage to try to keep making payments and keep on writing. As of this update, I promise to provide a numbered, limited edition photo CD-R (or, if you prefer, a one-of-a-kind, non-easy-listening, 80's industrial / "dark wave" / spoken word + original audio CD-R -- at your own risk!) to anyone who donates $20 or more via the PayPal button at the top of this page. For those who would prefer to mail a donation, my address is PO Box 1237, Bremerton, WA 98337 USA. Thanks.

Photo: "HOLLAND-WIEN-EXPRESS" Zeeland and buddy, January 1984

Station to Station

...is a line on the greatest album of all time.

From station to station back to Düsseldorf city
Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie

Trans. Europe. Express.

After contemplating how best to present a WEB-size overview of my seemingly disconnected (and mostly highly obscure) book, music, photo, and film projects, suddenly (while staring at the below digital snapshot of JOE) it hit me. This 1977 album by Kraftwerk provides a thread that links all of my pursuits over 20 years -- even the most tenuous and marginal.

Straight connection - T. E. E.

THE IDIOT is the title of my favorite book by Dostoyevsky (with Frank Kafka, my favorite author).

THE IDIOT is the title of my favorite album by IGGY POP. That album was recorded in Berlin. Iggy grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is where I went to college before dropping out to move to Germany. The worst job I ever had was working the night shift as a waiter at a 24-hour restaurant off US 23 across the street from the trailer park where Iggy's parents lived.

PLEASE KILL ME is the title of a 1997 book purportedly documenting THE UNCENSORED ORAL HISTORY OF PUNK .

I haven't read it. But I will. Despite this irritating (style-challenged) Kirkus Reviews excerpt on Amazon.com:

"Lou Reed and especially the Stooges' drug-crazed Iggy Pop became icons for a generation of disaffected kids who identified with the impulse to roll around shirtless in broken glass while howling `I Wanna Be Your Dog.' [...] Despite the astonishing prevalence of drug addiction, the New York bands and scene-makers of the mid-'70s, led by the Ramones, had splendid instincts for music and style, and most subsequent pop culture is to some degree indebted to them."

"No shit."

For a couple years when I was a teenager, my ambition was to be a rock music journalist. My first published words were two letters I wrote to CREEM magazine. The first big influence on me as a writer was Lester Bangs.

David Bowie:
Station to Station

A very great man (I think it was the Isley Brothers) once said that the real bottom line truism re life on this planet is that it is merely a process of sequential disappointments. So there's no reason even to romanticize your betrayals. Just paying dues, kid. I get burned, therefore I exist. No words in the history of the rock poetic genre, from Dylan to Bernie Taupin, ever said it better than Sandy Posey's pithy catalog in "Born a Woman": "Born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated and treated like dirt."

That's who this intelligent review was written by.

David Bowie: Station to Station | 163

This is the first Bowie album without a lyric sheet, and I'm glad because aside from reservations voiced above I've always agreed with Fats Domino that it's more fun to figure them out for yourself. The first line on the album is the worst: "The return of the thin white duke / Throwing darts in lovers' eyes." Somehow, back in Rock Critics' Training School, when they told me about "pop poetry," I didn't and still don't think that they were talking about this, which is not only pretentious and mildly unpleasant, but I am currently wrestling with a terrible paranoia that this is Bowie talking about himself. I have a nightmare vision in my mind of him opening the set in his new tour by striding out onstage slowly, with a pained look in his eyes and one spotlight following him, mouthing these words. And, quite frankly, that idea terrifies me. Because if it's true, it means he's still as big an idiot as he used to be and needs a little more cocaine to straighten him out.

This is pretty much exactly how Bowie opened his set at Wings hockey stadium in Kalamazoo, Michigan on his "Station to Station" tour. I was pressed up directly against the stage, looking a little too much like CHRISTIANE F. in WIR KINDER VOM BAHNHOF ZOO, in the (staged) scene where she is pressed up directly against the stage at a Bowie concert watching him perform "Station to Station." Except that she didn't look as though she'd been waiting endless hours for a very tardy David Bowie during which time the PA played the same album over and over again: Kraftwerk's RADIOACTIVITY.

Last year I read LET IT BLURT: THE LIFE & TIMES OF LESTER BANGS, AMERICA'S GREATEST ROCK CRITIC.

In terms of personal style (and physical appearance) Lester and I could not be more different.

But I learned that he and I share the same favorite drink, cognac. And the same favorite means of getting drunk: cognac and beer.

It turns out Lester grew up in San Diego and did a lot of his best writing in Detroit. I grew up in Michigan and did a lot of my best writing so far in San Diego. Both of us suffered through our last-ever "day jobs" in San Diego. Lester wrote songs, played in a couple bands, and released one or two records that never went anywhere.

So did I.

While I was still at school in Ann Arbor I used my student loan to buy an ARP synthesizer. I formed a band with my oldest friend Brian, whom I've known since second grade. We did a cover version of a song from THE IDIOT. (It didn't sound like Bowie's watered-down Top 40 version of "China Doll," another song from THE IDIOT.)

Just before I moved to Germany one of our songs was released on a compilation cassette by a fledgling zine/record label based in Washington state. Years later SUB-POP would skyrocket from obscurity with their launch of a band called Nirvana.

In one of the movies exploiting the Seattle grunge scene there's a brief shot of someone perusing PSYCHOTIC REACTIONS AND CARBURETOR DUNG: ROCK 'N' ROLL AS LITERATURE AND LITERATURE AS ROCK 'N' ROLL, a collection of writing by Lester Bangs.

Lester died when he was 33.

I never expected to live this long. (I'm the same age as MOMUS and one year younger than MORRISSEY.) But the cold war ended without any nuclear strikes on Central Europe. The peak years of my promiscuous sex life passed without me expiring from AIDS (or for that matter even once contracting any "social disease"). It's awkward. I never made any provision for living to see middle-age.

A year ago this month two overstimulated sailors I was entertaining unexpectedly pulled out a gun. Whatever they started to say I rudely interrupted with the demand that they take a picture of me sticking the gun in my mouth.

They didn't know what to say, but humored my request. After the first photo, I told them to take another, maybe from a different angle. The sailor to whom the gun belonged could only think to suggest, "Stick it a little deeper down your throat." When they took off I immediately transferred the images to my computer. But was disappointed.

I look even sillier with a gun in my mouth than I do wearing a ball cap.

.... Are lyrics by my friend Nick Currie AKA MOMUS who was in Seattle the other week. He played "Steven Zeeland," "Psychopathia Sexualis," "My Kindly Friend John Ashcroft," but not another, earlier song of his called "What Will Death Be Like?"

When I was 19 I had a series of panic attacks contemplating death. I re-wrote my Last Will every month or so.

Now, death is the one thing I'm not afraid of. I told my friend Packard, "A year past 40 is like a bonus track on a remastered CD."

Last year a photo I took of Packard was featured in the last publication Lester Bangs wrote for, THE VILLAGE VOICE. The accompanying article was written by Richard Goldstein, an esteemed journalist who in the 1960's laid the very foundation of "literature as rock 'n' roll" while Lester Bangs was still selling shoes at Mission Valley Mall in San Diego.

The published article did have a stupid cringe-inducing headline. But it was through no fault of Richard's that his overview of the social world I inhabit (or inhabited until that article was published) gave rise to grievous misunderstandings locally. At long last I received my first serious death threat.

I don't have many regrets in life. But one regret I do have is that I let that bother me.

The last model I took photos of surprised me by pulling out Nietzsche:

346

Being misunderstood.— When one is misunderstood as a whole, it is impossible to remove completely a single misunderstanding. One has to realize this left one waste superfluous energy on one's defense.

I think I'm starting to warm to the 00's.

Time to do some remastering.

Probably it's a good thing I've never aspired to lead "a glittering lifestyle," and that I actually prefer residing in downscale Bremerton to the uptown district in Seattle from which my last words in THE QUEEN IS DEAD were dispatched.

Three years ago this month I had $4,000 to my name and no job. I wrote a check to "alternative" recording artist MOMUS for a thousand dollars -- as a patron for his "Stars Forever" album. I didn't just do it for the publicity. His label was facing bankrupcy, I'm a big fan of his music, and the person suing him was the artist who recorded the first album my mom used to play on our living room console stereo.

This year I could use a little patronage myself.

Buchman has already offered his help; he's given me permission to auction off one pair each of his USMC "tighty-whities" (briefs) and olive drab green socks, both stencilled with his name. They're genuine. But I fear I've diminished their potential four figure market value.

They're clean.

--Steve

But you know, I wasn't always a writer whose slim claim to global sub-cult fame rests on the odd offhand mention of his name in The Manila Times; on page 197 of a novel by James McCourt; in a newsgroup list of "all-time favorite characters in Momus songs" (#10, "Steven Zeeland," #9, a monkey that "drinks heavily/ and plays with itself from dusk to dawn/ as wicked as the day is long"); . . .

I wasn't always a marginal author.

I have had other brushes with fame.

I was once a marginal musician.

A decade before I had my first book published I spent a year holed up in the staunchly religious-conservative hometown of Gerald R. Ford and AMWAY -- my hometown -- singing and playing dirge in the Midwest's preeminent proto-industrial noise band.

The only bands within a thousand or so mile radius we owed any debt to musically were Pere Ubu and Devo. We were as quirky; blessed with a not unrelated rustbelt-specific sense of humor; and at least as alienated. But they were conventional rock bands with guitar, bass and drums. We were 3 guys + 3 synthesizers -- droning on about youth taking poison to escape a poisoned world . . .

To an audience not quite prepared for us.

A "SYNTHESIZED SOUND SO EXPERIMENTAL THAT MANY PEOPLE FIND IT DIFFICULT TO CALL MUCH OF IT 'MUSIC'" declared our hometown daily, the GRAND RAPIDS PRESS.

"THE SOUND, WHILE ORIGINAL, LACKS DEPTH AS THOUGH IT WERE STANDING STILL. . . . MAYBE I'M WAY OUT IN LEFT FIELD ON THIS ONE, MAYBE YOUR INTENTION FROM THE START WAS THE STATIC APPROACH. HELL, WHAT DO I KNOW," shrugged the punk zine TOUCH AND GO in a review of our only vinyl release, a single pressed in mono.

But a fledgling zine/record label based in Olympia, WA accepted one of our songs for inclusion on a cassette compilation of American underground bands.

When the compilation arrived we were surprised to discover that actually only half of our song had been included -- midway through the track abruptly faded out! I winced; the other guys barked their indignation. A minute later we were on the floor laughing. . . .

By that point we were almost qualifed to make a career out of confusing people. A show we did in Detroit went over well. Our next gig was supposed to be in Chicago -- as the warm-up act for JAPAN.

But just when all our hard work showed some sign of paying off, I took off to chase a soldier. A week after the compilation came out I was in Germany. And so I missed out on the brief flurry of attention accorded my band-mates in the wake of our first and last national exposure: our song -- the "edited version" -- on SUB POP 7.

Six years later I was still living in Frankfurt and had shifted my focus to writing books. Sub Pop had moved its base of operations from Olympia to Seattle. They still championed music made by disaffected youth from backwater America. One track on the 1988 compilation was by an act from Aberdeen, WA (a Pacific Northwest town as broken-spirited as the one I live in today). The catalog number of Nirvana's first single: SUB POP 23.

Sub Pop became famous, made Kurt Cobain famous, made Seattle world famous for grunge, and godfathered the music industry category "alternative."

There is a "History" page at subpop.com as well as a discography. But you won't find the name of my first band there. There are cover art scans of their first two compilations, but no track lists.

I'm not complaining.

But I have taken stock of the pre-history Sub Pop relics in my collection: subpop 5 cass / subpop 6 zine / subpop 7 cass; and a 20-year-old envelope from Olympia, WA inscribed "THANX FOR YOUR CASSETTE --WE'LL PROBABLY RELEASE 'GARY, IN'."

After I find the right night to put everything else aside and give the tapes a proper final listen, I am going to auction these collectibles.

Why?

Because authoring alternative books costs money.

My late friend and mentor David Lloyd, the San Diego beefcake photographer, liked to tell me that I should author a play based on the life of Dr. Alfred Kinsey. On the other side of the Atlantic, Mark Simpson had an idea of his own for a musical based on The Kinsey Report itself!

There's something of a thread here . . .

Scottish alt.popstar Nick Currie, aka Momus, was just in Seattle performing material from his new album FOLKTRONIC. In one song, "Psychopathia, SX" Nick imagines himself a 1940's hillbilly stationmaster receiving a certain famous sex researcher:

Puffing round the railway track here comes the evening train / Bringing Dr. Kinsey back to talk with us again. . . .
The last MP3 I downloaded from Napster was from 1948: "Ooh, Dr. Kinsey!" by Martha Raye — a singer remembered for her "willingness to travel to the 'ends of the earth' to see soldiers."

The Haworth Press has just repackaged my all-time favorite of their backlist titles: BAD BOYS & TOUGH TATTOOS: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE TATTOO WITH GANGS, SAILORS, AND STREET-CORNER PUNKS by the late Sam Steward, AKA porn writer Phil Andros. In the early 1950s, Dr. Steward quit his career as a professor to open up a tattoo shop catering especially to Navy "boots." BAD BOYS grew out of a journal he kept at the urging of a friend and former colleague, who sometimes stopped in to visit. . . .

  "When Kinsey was observing in the shop I always used
  my best lines of patter to steer the customers into his
  areas of interest. This was not hard to do, since hope
  springs eternal in the human genitalia, especially those
  of sailors. . . . "
When the freshly redesigned BAD BOYS arrived in the mail last week, I was pleased. And proud; I'd had the honor of selecting the vintage photo for this cover.