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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.

The festivities surrounding the release of Cherry Bomb: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Better Flirt, a Tougher Chick, and a Hotter Girlfriend, and to Living Life Like a Rock Star continued with a second launch party on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at the Billy Shire Fine Arts, Gallery in Culver City.

Guests included: Kim Saigh (the celebrity tattoo artist currently starring in TLC's L.A. Ink), Chris Vrenna (Marilyn Manson), Cherie Currie (Runaways) and her son Jake Hays, Terri Nunn (Berlin), Jessicka and Christian Hejnal (Scarling), Jared Gold (fashion designer), Audrey Kitching (model), Leigh Gorman (Bow Wow Wow), Mezhgan (celebrity makeup artist), Cynthia Freund (celebrity wardrobe stylist), Melissa Renee Hernandez and Anna Geyer (Girl School club promoters).

Toasting with cherry flavored cocktails, author Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna had much to celebrate. Her groovy girl-powered guide bagged the number one spot on Amazon.com's Fashion & Beauty Bestsellers list, and is already in its second printing a mere week after its release. Carrie hopes her book will bring out the inner rock star in everyone, and promises it will "help you embrace that wild side." Judging by its success so far we can expect the world to be a little wilder from now on.

Dedicating her book to "chicks who rock" author and professional rock chick Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna celebrated the launch of her new book, Cherry Bomb: The ultimate guide to becoming a better flirt, a tougher chick, and a hotter girlfriend, and to living life like a rock star, with her rocktastic friends at the uber funky La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Hollywood on Saturday, August 9. Bona fide rock chicks Aimee Echo (of The Start), Jessicka Hejnal-Addams (of Scarling) and Abby Travis (of The Bangles) came out to show their support. Many of the books contributors were also in attendance, including Liz Adams (illustrator extraordinaire), Piper Ferguson (photographer) and Jeanie Long (piercing expert). The book is an essential girl guide to becoming fabulous, and includes lessons on such essential life skills as tour bus etiquette and guest list technique.

I gave some tips on how to attract, seduce, and understand a "bloke from Blighty" (translation: British man) to my pal Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna for her new book Cherry Bomb: The ultimate guide to becoming a better flirt, a tougher chick, and a hotter girlfriend, and to living life like a rock star.

The A-to-Z reference book with a rock n' roll attitude promises to impart "everything awesome a girl needs to know, including the obvious (style, beauty, dating, and sex tips) and the not-so-obvious (how to prepare absinthe, how to sneak backstage, how to hit on a celebrity)." It includes contributions from Tori Amos (life advice), Dita Von Teese (striptease), Betsey Johnson (breast cancer awareness and personal style), Katy Perry (vintage shopping), Lisa Loeb (how to be a great hostess), Anna Sui (fashion inspiration), Berlin's Terri Nunn (dating, doing it & dumping), and Imogen Heap (individuality), among others. Published by Simon & Schuster's youthful boutique imprint Simon Spotlight Entertainment, the essential tome will hit bookstores on Aug 5th.

Click HERE to order your copy now.

In somewhat related news, we were amused to hear that gaffe-prone Brit bloke Prince Charles inadvertently invited burlesque striptease artist Dita Von Teese to do her thing at his son's 24th birthday bash. Apparently Charles was introduced to Dita at a polo tournament at the rather regal Guards Club in Windsor. When the heir to the English throne asked her what she did, she tactfully replied that she was a dancer, at which point Charles eagerly extended an invitation to the somewhat bemused Dita to entertain his youngest son Prince Harry at the swanky party he was planning in September. An insider told English "newspaper" the Daily Star that an embarrassed Charles "gnawed his fist to within an inch of its knuckle when his aides explained what sort of dancing she did for a living." We're sure that Harry and his pals will now be eagerly awaiting the big day however. In the meantime, though not a chick, we feel that Charles could perhaps learn a thing or two about avoiding such potentially sticky situations by taking note of the rock n' roll wisdom in Cherry Bomb.

Today there are two different stories in the press concerning heart transplant recipients who took on some of the personality traits of their organ donors. Apparently the phenomenon is not uncommon, with about 70 such cases documented by scientists.

In the most recently reported case, a Georgia man named Sonny Graham received the heart of a 33 year old man named Terry Cottle who had committed suicide by putting a gun to his head. Wanting to thank the family of the donor, Sonny got in touch with Terry 's widow Cheryl. When they met, despite a very large age gap (Sonny was thirty years older than Cheryl), the two felt an instant attraction, and subsequently married in 2004. "I felt like I had known her for years," said Sonny. "I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I just stared."

Sadly, last week, in a bizarre turn of events, Sonny was found dead with a single bullet to the throat. With no foul play suspected, it appears that Sonny had used the same suicide method as the first owner of his heart to tragically end his life.

The second similar case, which was reported by The Daily Mail, has a less gruesome ending. Claire Sylvia, a former professional dancer from Massachusetts, had a heart and lung transplant in 1988 at the age of 47. While recovering from surgery she discovered she had developed entirely new cravings for very un-dancer-like consumables such as Snickers bars, green peppers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and beer. "For some bizarre reason, I was convinced that nothing else in the world could quench my thirst," recalls Claire.

She noticed other physical and emotional changes too. She was much healthier, easily fighting off the colds to which she would have previously succumbed. She found she was becoming more independent, assertive and aggressive, and even began to walk with a more confident, and masculine, swagger. After dreaming of a man called "Tim L." one night, she searched through obituaries in old newspapers on file at a local library, and eventually saw one for a man named Tim Leighton, who matched the vague donor description she'd been given of an 18-year old male who died in a motorcycle accident. Like Sonny, Claire wanted to contact her donor's family to thank them. After tracking them down, a meeting was arranged, during which the family confirmed that Tim had shared Claire's new-found robust constitution and cravings.

Such stories certainly leave us thinking about the nature of our soul and where it resides. Those that would like to read more on the subject might like to read Claire's book A Change of Heart, which was first published in 1997 and is available via Amazon.com.