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In his latest book, Vultures' Picnic, investigative reporter Greg Palast jumps ass deep into the one percent's favorite combustible lubricant. Armed with a miniature recording device, condoms, mosquito repellant, K-Y Jelly, a 3.4-ounce flask of Felipe II, and his trademark fedora hat, Palast travels from Alaska to the Amazon, and from Louisiana to Liberia to expose the dirty business of crude oil, and those who make indecent fortunes from it.

During the course of his investigations, Palast uncovers the incestuous relationships between the petroleum corporations and the governments they control, and how human and environmental carnage, corruption, coup d'états, and cover-ups are ultimately considered a cost of doing business by these toxic bedfellows.

[Caution: You may feel violated after reading this interview -- but at least you'll know a few of the names of the motherfuckers that are screwing you.]

Read my exclusive interview with Greg Palast on SuicideGirls.com.

During our previous conversation with Chuck Palahniuk, which occurred shortly before the publication of his Sunset Boulevard-inspired book, Tell All, he spoke about how the ultimate name to drop was God's. For this interview, we reconvene to discuss the domain of the G-man's nemesis -- Hell -- which serves as the setting for Palahniuk's wickedly inspired new novel, Damned.

According to Damned's canon, evolution is hokum and Charles Darwin is resigned to hellfire and damnation alongside Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, and the entire Kennedy clan. Turns out you can end up there by committing all manner of trivial shit, such as dropping the f-bomb or honking your horn one too many times. Worshipping the wrong god will also land you in the hot spot, as will suffering the inconvenience of being a deposed one (thus the likes of Thor can also be found hanging out downstairs).

The topography of Palahniuk's netherworld features a greasy Dandruff Desert, Great Plains of Discarded Razor Blades, a Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions, a Lake of Tepid Bile, and the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm (where in Hell, "porn is creating an effect equivalent to that of global warming on earth"). Those that find themselves there have two main career options: pornography or telemarketing.

The narrative of Damned follows Madison Spencer, the somewhat chubby, eternally optimistic13-year old progeny of a self-obsessed Hollywood star and a billionaire businessman. As a reflection of her mother's glamour, Madison is an abject failure, however, the upside of her troubled childhood is that after a lifetime (albeit a short one) of electrolysis and herbal high colonics, Hell holds little terror for her.

Having been resigned to Hell after inhaling marijuana, and eschewing an eternity being "ogled by millions of men with serious intimacy problems," Madison finds gainful employment in telemarketing, an occupation that she finds unexpectedly fulfilling. Ensconced in one of Hell's endless call centers, which has banks of phones that are programmed to auto-dial the earthbound specifically at dinnertime, Madison finds redemption. The question is, ultimately, will she want it?

Being in the business of asking people questions for a living, I felt a certain affinity with Madison. For the start of my conversation with Palahniuk, it therefore seemed only appropriate to borrow a little something from her telemarketing script...

Read my exclusive interview with Chuck Palahniuk on SuicideGirls.com.

In his first novel, Dark Origins, CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker brought us a serial killer so extreme that he was the world's first to be deemed worthy of Level 26 status. The spree of diabolical crimes perpetrated by the latex-attired - and therefore forensic-proof - Sqweegle, was ultimately halted by Steve Dark, a Special Circumstances investigator with demons of his own.

On October 14, Steve Dark returns in the second Level 26 installment, Dark Prophecy. Having left Special Circs at the end of the previous book, when Dark's destiny crosses paths with that of the Tarot Card Killer, he's forced to operate under the auspices of a far greyer area of the law.

In the same way that the psychopaths Dark hunts are no ordinary killers, the Level 26 books are no ordinary thrillers. Dubbed "digi-novels" by Zuiker, the multi-platform murder mysteries combine traditional text with web-based movie and community elements. We caught up with Zuiker ahead of Dark Prophecy's release to talk about the progression of Dark, and how, with the introduction of the iPad, the digi-novel has finally come of age.

Read our exclusive interview with CSI's Anthony E. Zuiker on SuicideGirls.com.

In 1988 when Guns N' Roses debut album, Appetite For Destruction, topped the Billboard 200 chart and the band's seminal single "Sweet Child O' Mine" did the same on Billboard's Hot 100, being a member of the hard rocking Los Angeles band should have been a dream come true. But for the band's drummer, Steven Adler, his fantasy reality was already turning into a nightmare. Guns N' Roses muse, "Mr. Brownstone," a.k.a. heroin had moved in, and by 1990 it had robbed Adler of his career, health and wealth.

But the seeds of Adler's destruction were sown long before Guns N' Roses was born. A quintessential problem child, Adler was thrown out of his home by his mom and step-dad when he was just 11-years old. Lack of proper parental supervision aided and abetted his underage activities at the clubs that gave him his music education. It also facilitated sexual abuse at age 14 - something Adler was unable to deal with or verbalize for the next three decades.

Having served his apprenticeship on the Sunset Strip, Adler and his childhood friend Slash hooked up with Axl Rose in 1985. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin and bassist Duff McKagan completed what is now considered the classic Guns N' Roses lineup. Under the stewardship of manager Vicki Hamilton, Guns N' Roses signed a marquee deal with Geffen Records, which was also home to the band's idols Aerosmith.

With the release of their first studio album, Guns N' Roses transcended the record sales of their heroes. Appetite For Destruction went on to become the best-selling debut album of all-time worldwide, selling over 28 million copies around the globe. The quintet followed up with G N' R Lies in 1988. It would be the last complete Guns N' Roses album Adler would perform on. He was conspicuous by his absence during Guns N' Roses' 1989 American Music Awards performance (for which Don Henley subbed). A disastrous appearance at Farm Aid the following year would prove to be Adler's last with the band. He recorded one final track, "Civil War," which was included on Guns N' Roses' fourth studio album, Use Your Illusion II (which was released as a companion their third, Use Your Illusion I in 1991).

Adler was fired by his Guns N' Roses' bandmates in 1990. With the absence of a reason to get up in the morning, his substance abuse spiraled. Adler's life was punctuated by a series of car crashes, accidental ODs, and suicide attempts. In 1996 one such incident led to a stay in hospital during which Adler slipped into a coma. He awoke to find one side of his face paralyzed due to a suspected stroke, which resulted in a permanent speech impediment. However, unfazed by his near-death experience, Adler continued on his path of destruction.

Adler credits Dr. Drew Pinsky with changing the direction of his life. He appeared on the second season of VH1's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Though he's succumbed to several, perhaps inevitable, relapses - most notably while appearing on the Celebrity Rehab spin-off series Sober House - Adler nevertheless is proud of his progress.

In order to move forward, Adler has spent a lot of time coming to terms with his past, which he has chronicled in a new memoir entitled My Appetite For Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns N' Roses. In the book, Adler is upfront about the part he played in his own downfall, but also makes it clear when and how he thinks those around him may have given him an added push.

I called up Adler to find out more. Read my exclusive interview with Steven Adler on SuicideGirls.com

Nicole
XOX

Ps. Steven Adler will be an in-studio guest on SuicideGirls Radio on Sunday Sept 12th.

Chuck Palahniuk needs little by way of introduction on SuicideGirls.com, the site's very name being an hommage to the author of Fight Club, Choke and Snuff. I caught up with him by phone to talk about his latest novel, Tell-All. It's a fictional gossip-laced memoir told in the voice of Hazie Coogan, the female assistant to "the glorious film actress" Miss Katherine Kenton who resides in Hollywood's very real past - a glamorous world populated by the likes of Lillian Hellman, Darryl Zanuck, David O. Selznick, Clark Gable and Bette Davis, who are all names Tell-All's characters love to drop.

During our conversation, Palahniuk spoke about society's need for the culture of celebrity, the nature of name-dropping, and the ultimate name to drop. Read my interview with Chuck Palahniuk at SuicideGirls.com.

Justin Halpern is an ordinary guy who curates an extraordinary Twitter page. In less than a year it's garnered over 1.3 million fans who follow Justin simply to keep track of the latest and greatest shit his dad says. Justin's talent lies in realizing the aforementioned shit was of a superior quality to that emitted from other dad's mouths. He also has a knack for conveying the underlying heart behind his father's seemingly harsh witticisms.

Raised on a farm in Kentucky, Justin's dad, Sam Halpern, is a man of few words - who knows how to make every syllable count. The exact opposite of passive-aggressive, Halpern, Sr. has never been backwards about coming forwards with his often-unsolicited opinions and words of advice. Growing up, this brutal honesty was difficult to deal with, but now Justin is reaping the rewards. His @ShitMyDadSays Twitter page has spawned a hilarious yet surprisingly touching book of longer vignettes -- brilliantly retold by Justin -- and a TV sitcom produced by Warner Brothers for CBS starring William Shatner, which was co-written by Halpern, Jr. in association with the team behind Will & Grace.

The @ShitMyDadSays phenomenon was precipitated by a very humbling experience for Justin. As the founder of the Holy Taco comedy site, a Maxim.com contributor and an aspiring screenwriter who was free to work wherever is laptop rested, he decided to move back from Los Angeles to his hometown of San Diego to share an apartment with his girlfriend who also happened to reside there. Things didn't go to plan however; Justin's love interest broke up with him the day they were supposed to start cohabiting. To add insult to injury, having already given up his LA apartment, at 28 Justin had little option but to move back in with his folks. Fortunately his story, or at least this chapter of it, has a happy ending.

I caught up with Justin, who now splits his time between Los Angeles and San Diego, to find out more about the upside of living in close proximity to your grumpy old dad (and the fun that can be had with irritable bowel syndrome).

Read my interview with Justin Halpern at SuicideGirls.com.

Tera Patrick has one of the most recognized names, faces - and bodies - in porn. The Asian adult film actress made her first movie in 1999 and has managed to stay at the top of the proverbial pile for over a decade. Over the course of her career she has won numerous industry awards, and was inducted into the elite AVN Hall of Fame earlier this year.

The product of a broken home, as a teenager Tera craved attention. Her ambitions were simple: she wanted to be a model and marry a rock star. She achieved her fist goal early in life when she was discovered by a talent scout at the age of 13. She subsequently signed with a Japanese agency, and moved halfway around the world to fulfill her dreams. Alone. When she was just 14. Though successful at landing assignments, without any parental supervision, Tera's life soon spun out of control.

Back in the U.S. with her legitimate modeling career behind her at 16, Tera knuckled down, passed her GED, went to college, and landed a respectable job at a nursing home. A clash of the worst kind with a bedpan however sent Tera hurtling back into modeling. By now her curvy, 5 foot 9 inch frame weighed in at a healthy 135 pounds. Since fashion was no longer an option, glamour work was the natural choice. With Playboy and Penthouse competing over her, Tera's top shelf magazine career blossomed, catching the attention of softcore movie director Andrew Blake, who produced her first X-rated film.

Tera was a natural on camera, and found immense satisfaction in her new career. Consequently her rise in the porn industry was rapid. Though Tera consistently failed to find balance in her personal life, the one place she was able to exert control was on set. There her star status allowed her to dictate exactly the kinds of scenes she was willing to do, and choose the partners she wanted to do them with.

Her vocation also brought her much closer to her second goal, since rock stars have a tendency to gravitate towards models and porn stars. Tera hooked up with Erik Schrody a.k.a. Everlast after appearing in one of his music videos. When that relationship soured she set her sights on Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard, whom she began dating in 2002.

Drawing on his music business experience, Evan took control of Tera's career as well as her heart, and advised her to end her exclusive agreement with Digital Playground, who served as both her management and production company. This led to an enforced hiatus from porn while Tera fought to be released from the deal. When Tera returned to the industry in 2004, she wanted Evan, who was by now her husband, to be the only man in her life. The pair set up their own production company, Teravision, in association with Vivid, the world's largest adult movie house, and Evan began appearing alongside his wife (using the porn name Spyder Jonez) in all their new product.

At the top of her game with a rock star by her side, having conquered the adult movie industry and taken full control of her business (or so she thought), Tera began to reflect on her career and set new goals in life. Closing the chapter on porn, Tera set about writing her memoir.

Sinner Takes All: A Memoir of Love and Porn is the result. Written with Cherry Bomb author and SG contributor Carrie Borzillo, and published by Penguin imprint Gotham Books, it chronicles Tera's path to porn stardom and the loneliness, love, and lust she experienced along the way. It's a page-turner of a book, which, like every good story, ends with the kind of twist even Tera couldn't predict.

On the eve of the book's release, I called up Tera to find out more. Read my exclusive interview with Tera Patrick at SuicideGirls.com.

For some life is meant to be lived; Others feel it is there to be used up. In the book Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes, these two schools of thought come together as author and extreme liver Jonathan Shaw explores his relationship with the willfully self-destructive Nascisa, a crack addicted teenage prostitute he met on the streets of Rio De Janeiro.

According to his own legend, Jonathan is the "bastard product of a brief, surreal, violent and unhappy alcoholic marriage between big band legend Artie Shaw and movie star Doris Dowling." Born in 1953, the Vietnam War served as a backdrop to Jonathan's understandably troubled formative years. Working as a writer for Los Angeles' first alternative newspaper, The LA Free Press, afforded Jonathan the opportunity to run wild with the likes of Jim Morrison, the Manson Family and Charles Bukowski. An extreme life lead to extreme drugs, and our anti-hero fell for the escapist lure of Heroin as the looming seventies chased the fun out of the last throws of the sixties.

Under the apprenticeship of legendary first generation tattoo artist Bob Shaw, Jonathan turned his affection for needles into a positive. After a period spent traveling -- one of many in his gypsy life -- Jonathan moved back east to New York. Always the outlaw, in 1976 Jonathan founded Fun City Tattoo in the East Village -- a decade and a half after NYC had banned such store front parlors (following a particularly virulent outbreak of hepatitis B). Indeed the city only repealed their outdated laws in 1991. The notoriety of the parlor and its proprietor attracted an equally notorious patronage, which included Johnny Depp and Dee Dee Ramone. Sometime around 9/11, tired of his life and his drugs, Jonathan sold his store and retired from tattooing, moving to Rio De Janeiro to begin his next chapter.

HERE Jonathan shares a vignette from his life in South America.

The L Word's Mia Kirshner takes the plight of refugees and the displaced personally. As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and the daughter of a father born in a displaced persons camp in Germany shortly after World War II and a mother who's a Bulgarian Jewish refugee, it would be hard not to.

Born and raised in Toronto, Mia studied Russian and English Literature at Montreal's prestigious McGill University, before taking on the role of actress.

Never one to shy away from difficult subject matter, Mia has a fearless reputation in Hollywood, taking on numerous sexually challenging roles. She portrayed a dominatrix with psychic abilities in acclaimed Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand's first English language movie, Love and Human Remains, she was a mysterious bisexual assassin in Fox's 24, played the title role of murder victim and women whose sexuality was the source of much speculation in Brian De Palma's Black Dahlia, and is a regular on the small screen as Jenny from The L Word, a Showtime drama based around the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women living in WeHo.

The recurring themes of female sexuality and empowerment, and the plight of those displaced by conflict collided, when, over a period of seven years and with the support Amnesty International, Mia journeyed around the world to gather the stories of women and children who were driven from their homes. From the war in Chechnya and the ethnic cleansing in Burma to those affected by globalization in Mexico and AIDS in Malawi, Mia tells the tales of individuals would otherwise not have a voice in a compelling and beautiful new book, I Live Here.

Mia shares one of the many tales from her journey, and talks about how the story told by a prostitute in Thailand came a little too close to her home, at the link below:

http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/23422/

I was shocked at the gender-bending scene around them, but soon came to enjoy the circus of wild characters they attracted. It's hard to express how exiting the scene was -- loose, free, chaotic, wild -- and I knew I wanted to be part of it."

Bob Gruen
New York City, March 2008

Bob Gruen didn't just experience life with the New York Dolls, he photographed it -- a lot. The legendary rock photographer first captured the seminal glam-cum-precursor-to-punk band at a gig at the Mercer Arts Center on New Years Eve in 1972. He continued hitting the shutter right through the band's bright but brief career, documenting their demise in '75 while wards of punk rock impresario Malcolm McClaren, and their resurrection nearly two decades on.

"They were living a decadent life, and I joined right in, but I always knew when to get the photos," says Gruen, who has compiled images of the band for a new book, New York Dolls: Photographs by Bob Gruen. Like the band, the book is clad in glamorous and sexy attire, the pages being bound between hot pink satin covers.

Click HERE for my preview and some exclusive images from the book.