#Linda Tripp

[moiraiinesedai]

THEM.

[mars-rivers]

Sarah Paulson attends 'A New Way Of Life 2022 Gala' at Skirball Cultural Center in LA♡

[junior-stargazer-goke91]

Impeachment: American Crime Story (2021)

1x03: Not to Be Believed

[bisexualdisaster531]

YALL I started American Crime Story: Impeachment.

This show is incredible. Fuck. The acting, the tone it's perfect. They are doing an incredible job of showing everything about the scandal. More of my thoughts to come later

[goodegrrrl]

Congrats, Lady Paulson 💕 well deserved.

[dekaohtoura]

[secretagency]

[toongrrl-blog]

- The Lily

"But now Tripp is back, reinvented and reimagined, as a pioneer of the #MeToo movement, a bold fighter against corruption in government and a woman who placed principle above self."

Yeah Linda? You were not a #MeToo pioneer, stop taking this honor from Tarana Burke and Linda was a right winger who hung out with the Federalists. This is pure White Feminism

[biographyfamouspeople]

Linda Tripp Net Worth

Have you ever questioned Linda Tripp net worth? One of the largest presidential scandals in American history—the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky affair—was exposed in 1998 thanks to American civil servant Linda Tripp. When she succumbed to pancreatic cancer in April 2020, Tripp is thought to have had a net worth of $1 million. READ MORE

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Find the Word Tag Game

tagged by: @sleepyowlwrites!! my words: fruit, flavor, friend, first, flirtatious, foreign tagging: @sleepyowlwrites, @drabbleitout, @drippingmoon, @druidx, @ashen-crest, @zmwrites, anyone who wants to, and watching shows and movies set in DC is so weird cuz it’s like wow I know those places lmao NCIS has always been wild especially when they mention VA cities I’ve been to/lived in your words: talk, scream, yell, cry, whisper, murmur

fruit (Aurora)—

Warren chuckled and slapped his back twice upon meeting him at the bottom of the stairs. "Nah, man, it's a big day for you! Aren't you excited?"

"Excited, sure," Guetry said, catching with one hand a fruit thrown to him by someone in the crowd. "But I also threw up twice before I even left my room, so. Everything's fine!"

Thrive regarded him, in the middle of plating the food from his pan. "It is fine."

flavor (Rebirth)—

"Good morning, newlyweds, question mark," Guetry said obnoxiously as Warren entered the bridge later, sucking the last of the coffee flavor out of his teeth. "Oldlyweds? Whatever. We officially have the best news you will ever receive."

Warren turned back to Thrive, who had followed him, making a last-minute adjustment to his form suit. "Hear that? The war's over and I can go back to sleep."

"My decryptions are finished," Scotty said. "Among these files are extensively rendered star maps detailing the locations of four hundred and forty-five vital loyalist camps and bases within the Milky Way, as well as the elusive Blue Palace where Hyret currently resides."

"Holy shit," Warren said. "That's literally the best news we will ever receive."

friend (Eternal)—

"Your parents sound wonderful," Thrive said.

Warren shrugged. "Just like anyone else, they weren't perfect, but they were the best parents they could be. I like to think I was close with both of them, for the short amount of time I had with them."

Thrive folded his arms. "Part of me wishes I'd taken the time to find out who my parents were. I'd always suspected an older Watcher I knew when I was young to be one of them because from the point I underwent entu'borah onward they didn't seem as friendly with me as they once were."

"Wow," Warren said. "It kills me to think that someone could've just...given you up or abandoned you."

"It happened more often than anyone liked to admit."

"How? How does that happen in a society where having a child literally can't be a surprise?"

Thrive ran a palm over his jaw. "There was a time when having at least one child was mandatory. Our population was, according to the Leadership, dangerously low. It never was. We'd been over a hundred billion in numbers since before I was born."

first (Meridian)—

Warren greeted Thrive at the VIP gate of the Node a few days later the only way he felt was appropriate—he ignored the security detail and threw his arms around him, held him tight and for a long, long time.

"Things have sucked," Warren murmured into his shoulder as Thrive slid a hand to the back of his neck. "I missed you so much."

"We'll get through it together," Thrive said. "Just like we got through the first year of Leviathan, and everything else we've gotten through together."

flirtatious(ing) (Rebirth)—

Guetry waved in Warren's direction. "Yeah, got him lookin' proper Node, too. Opinions?"

Thrive observed the outfit and cosmetic differences with a critical eye, and Warren felt himself flushing under the scrutiny.

"To me," Thrive said after too long of a pause, "he seems much more comfortable in his skin, and that's deeply satisfying. Thank you, Guetry."

Warren exhaled and grinned. "Just say you think I'm hot and move on."

"The day those words leave my mouth is the day you should worry about my well-being."

"Do they need to leave your mouth though? You're kinda giving off the vibe already."

Thrive gave him a look that was hard in the eyes but his lips sort of curled up a bit at the corners.

Warren could've easily been pushed to amp up the flirting, but he decided that was too much in a public setting. "How's the acquisition going?" he asked instead.

foreign (Rebirth)—

"Alright," Thrive said, handing Warren the tablet. "Scotty, highlight the pieces of code we need to manipulate."

He placed his hands on Warren's head, fingers finding specific, symmetrical points. Warren looked down at the tablet and had to blink unexpected blurriness out of his eyes before he realized he could suddenly understand the foreign symbols scrolling from right to left. Something about it still seemed off, as if he looked at it within a dream, and it didn't help when some of the white text became yellow.

"I…" Warren took a second to really look at the code and orient himself. "What's happening?"

"I'm translating," Thrive said. "Stimulating the language center of your brain. You're temporarily fluent."

"Did you know you could do this?"

"...That's not important."

[donnasweett]

the thing about american crime story is ryan murphy casts his little projects and then says my work here is done

[mars-rivers]

How cute is this.♡

[benevolent-blackhole]

I remember being really confused about why it would be dangerous to play outside…They didn’t tell us there had been an attack or anything. That does still confuse me a bit, but.

My mother didn’t tell us either, she just put us in the living room off base and turned on the TV and we watched the planes crash into the towers on repeat.

I remember her telling me pretty early on- maybe before she actually knew- that this was an act of war and we were going to war and my dad would have to go away from home and fight now.

And imagining my dad with a rifle and a blue uniform because all I knew about war at the time was Liberty Kids.

[waitmyturtles]

THE MORNING AFTER: ONLY FRIENDS, EPISODE 6 ("DECIDING IN YOUR YOUTH / ON THE POLICY OF TRUTH") EDITION

In segment 2/4 of this latest episode of Only Friends, Boston let us know what year the show's mind is on.

Some stuff was percolating around this time, some of it majorly important, and other stuff important maybe only to someone like myself, a baby born in the 1980s and raised in the 1990s who happens to have a thing for 20th-century British electronic rock.

In February 1997, the infamous "The One With The Morning After" episode of Friends came out -- when Rachel discovers that Ross had slept with someone else when, "WE WERE ON A BREAK!"

In September 1997, Linda Tripp begins recording her conversations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, about Lewinsky's affair with the U.S. president of the time, Bill Clinton.

In January 1998, the first public news of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal comes out.

And in 1998, one of my favorite songs ever, "Policy of Truth," is released by one of the greatest bands of all time, Depeche Mode (ya feel me, Sand?). I thought a lot about this song, about the meaning of truth in the hands of young folks, and I thought a LOT about politics, during this episode.

It's just time to pay the price / For not listening to advice / And deciding in your youth / On the policy of truth

Truth, Bill, Monica, cheating, Friends. It's a lot. To me, this episode dealt with politics, with the nature of what "truth" means, what truth means when it is created and/or revealed at a particular point in time, and how young people begin to learn about the correlation between truth and consequences in safe, unsafe, and enduring ways.

We meet Boston's dad, shown above. We see he's got a flavor about him. He's quite casual with his son ("Ton, you dipshit!"). He's borrowing help from his son's friend for campaign materials (ooookay, lol, where is your campaign manager), while smoochin' on a Scotch.

What are campaign materials? Campaign materials -- posters, mailers, policies, commercials, etc. -- are the selling of an image. A political campaign is not quite about truth. A political campaign is a selling of a story that candidates want voters to buy with their votes. It's reality....-ish. It's a kind of truth that is ultimately selective and marketed to a particular voting audience that will hopefully allow that candidate to win and gain power.

There was someone else playing a political game, until his game crumbled. Top was playing a political game.

Before Mew blew Top's shit UP (Mew would have made Linda Tripp proud, goddamn), Top thought his political game was selling. He thought his IMAGE was selling. He thought his secret about his sex with Boston, while him and Top had reset and were not officially boyfriends again ("we were on a break"), was safe.

We saw Top's true nature come out time and time again, to Boston, to Nick, to Sand. We saw his aggressiveness and his confidence, his assuredness about his success as a top-tier man, directed to everyone EXCEPT Mew, with whom Top had to play a different game -- a game of touch-and-go, a game of restraint, a game of change, and certainly a game of withholding and/or manipulating certain truths about himself (Top) in order to continue to win Mew's heart. Before the in-bed blow-up at the end of the episode, Top even planted a guilt trip on Mew -- digging into Mew's continued distrust of Top by asking Mew to PLEASE consider everything that Top had changed for Mew.

Someone else was called out for playing a dishonest political game. Boston calls out Ray for not being honest about his feelings for Mew. Boston says to Ray, as Ray looks on in shock, below:

In this scene, I realized something. The only person NOT playing a game of deception at this point is Boston. Boston -- while an absolute jerk and asshole -- KNOWS he is these things. He doesn't fight off allegations that he is "nasty." He knows what he likes. He is honest about how he acts. He is truthful to his feelings. He is a jerk -- but he doesn't lie. (Or at least, he hasn't lied, yet.) He happens to keep secrets and withhold truths, but he hasn't distorted his image to try to fool anyone -- the way that Top has, the way that Ray has. He is utterly direct about his intentions with Nick, and he leaves it up to Nick to deal with his (Boston's) brutal honesty.

(Before I unwind on Boston to bring together these thoughts on sex, politics, and truth, I want to note that we had two instances of advice from GROWN-UPS -- from the quartet's business professor, and from Sand's mom -- that playing with friendship, work, love, and business, can result in awkward consequences. Finally, we begin to see a creep of the grown-up Greek chorus offering its thoughts on the antics of this group of aloof students who are almost Seinfeld-ian in their disdain of how they may hurt each other, others, and even themselves with their behaviors. This group has decided right now, in its youth, on its policies of truth. And Seinfeld, along with Friends, was the aloof epitome of the 1990s.)

The reason why I interjected that thought on grown-ups and consequences here is that both Boston and Ray had different takes on "truth" in this episode than Top. Like I said: Top has an image that he had been selling to Mew until the very end of the episode.

Boston and Ray, on the other hand, have relationships with truth in which they are unaware of the consequences of their almost thoughtless honesty (and in Ray's case, his simultaneous dishonesty). What do I mean by that?

As I mentioned before: Boston isn't deceitful. He's just brutal. Boston is brutally honest about his feelings and intentions -- and he doesn't realize that people like Nick, or Gap (DRAKE) may interpret sex, and feelings that might come from or after sex, differently than him. And those different feelings, from different people, will almost always have consequences of a kind that Boston is clearly not prepared to deal with. The biological urge that many have to be close or clingy after sex? The implication that if you have sex with someone, that you might automatically be “dating”? The theory that maaaaannny people have that sex is a way INTO a relationship (and not the other way around)? All of these notions need communication. I posit that Boston’s been VERY clear in his communication that he is NOT into ANYTHING related to a relationship—but he’s not aware that others do not think like him, and that WILL have consequences for him.

Ray, in that drunk and high performance of a lifetime at YOLO (cc @liyazaki LOLLLLL), thinks that he's saving his friends with a round of truth-telling. By being so blind to the feelings of others -- and, really, to ignore the rights and privacy of others to deal with their own truths on their own time -- Ray BLASTS past any of consequences that he might face, and that his friends may face, as he reveals their secrets, one by one.

@lurkingshan noted in one of her meta posts yesterday that Mew punched Ray at the bar in part to control the release of the truth of Top cheating on Mew, to leave that little bit out, so that Mew could have his own "gotcha" moment later at home with Top.

You know what that was? That was politics, baby. That was a HELL of a power move, for Mew to literally PUNCH someone out of his way, so that Mew could clinch a win for himself -- vis à vis a brutal truth that very clearly hurt and impacted him, either through his love for Top, and/or through embarrassment for his own reputation, as Shan notes.

I'm gonna tie this ALL together in just a moment -- but I want to make one very last note about the truth and a character. Sand runs to Ray in the parking lot after Ray's blow-up. Sand admits his feelings to Ray. Ray pushes him away and gets behind the wheel. And Sand hops on his bike and follows Ray.

At this point in the series, I posit that Sand knows exactly what he is getting into. (I'm SMDH about it, but he knows what he's getting into, god fucking damn it, SAND, baka.)

He's NOT deceiving himself. He's being honest with his feelings, like Boston is -- but, unlike Boston, I believe Sand is very fully aware of the consequences that his feelings may lead him to face. Remember that Sand is not a part of the original aloof quartet. He's not one with the liars, like Cheum and Ray. He's not one with Boston, who doesn't think ahead. He's not one with Mew, who is insecure, conniving, and now potentially vengeful. Sand, the goddamn romantic, is caught beneath a landslide on a champagne supernova with his feelings, and will clearly ride them out, with intention. (I want to SHAKE HIS DAMN SHOULDERS, but anyway.) (GMMTV, why do you have to play First like this. I just finished Not Me. You took the anarchy outta my boy. Now he’s blubbering for another problematic dude. Can we just. Let. First. I dunno. Anyway.)

So.... whew. What of all of this?

I take this episode as one that says:

Truth is what you make of truth. Truth -- whether it's the presentable truth, the not-totally-complete truth, the whole and unedited truth, or in the words of Californians, your own truth -- will have consequences when it is revealed. And a huge part of maturity is in one's handling of those revelations when they are made.

When you are young, you don't have the benefit of years and years of time and life to recognize that your actions may have consequences, some that are fleeting, some that will last a lifetime. A huge point of one's young adulthood is how you are shaped by the consequences of your actions and your decisions -- and by seeing how your actions affect other people, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Sex and politics rarely, if ever, mix well. For Boston's dad.... what will be revealed about Boston is not gonna be good for his campaign. And Boston's own life may well be impacted for a good chunk of his lifetime.

But, more than anything else, this theme of politics that I saw in this episode reflected for me -- of course, as always -- a kind of ephemerality in this series. You know why?

Politics, unless it is INCREDIBLY corrupt, always has term limits. Unless you're Putin or Mugabe: power unto a leader, or a group of leaders, will almost always come to an end.

The image will fade. The rhetoric will wither out.

The politics will always change -- because people always change, ideas always change.

HOWEVER. The consequences of one's actions in politics may last a lifetime, or lifetimes. If you REALLY fuck up? You’ll be known for that for your life.

The OF quartet is heading into a dalliance between impermanence and permanence, as well as with consequences that their aloofness has not prepared them for, and it's bound to be devastating. Many of them tried to play games in this episode. Almost all of them are unaware that these games will have long-lasting effects. Some of them (like Nick and Sand) are still playing games. And these games, these risks, are bound to end in many of them ending up as losers.

The following rule is NOT ephemeral — it is a permanent truth: in politics, there will ALWAYS be losers. That is always the case, and will always be the case. There are going to be a lot of losers by the time this show ends.

(EPHEMERALITY SQUAD, HAPPY SUNDAY! Thanks for tagging me in your meta yesterday! @ranchthoughts @chickenstrangers @slayerkitty @twig-tea @clara-maybe-ontheroad @distant-screaming @lurkingshan @neuroticbookworm)

[bubblybellyblog]

Sudden Surprise

(From the drafts)

CW: diarrhea

Lina’s stomach was full of butterflies, jazzed up from her first (and only!) keto coffee from the bright green bag on her hotel counter. She’d been on a new dietary regimen recommended by another nail technician for a few weeks, and was loving her new team, no #family, of #GirlBosses. 

Lina’s supportive, albeit doofy, husband, Tripp, was exasperated with her new fad, but knew it was only a matter of time before she opened her eyes to the Pyramid Scheme. His sister in law, who Lina grew up admiring, had already warned her that “multi-level marketing” was a cult-scam, and they were all confident that after the conference, Lina would quit. 

So, they, along with the vast majority of Lina’s friends, politely declined her offers for a healthier lifestyle. But Tripp had helped her pack her bags for the national conference, and Lina found herself boasting about his support as she and her team filed into the first conference session. 

“I’m so sorry, sweetie, can I get by?” Lina was interrupted suddenly by another woman whose eyes anxiously darted through the crowd. “The bathrooms, you know, before we start...” 

Lina quickly moved aside, in a flash, pitying the breathless girl with a hand holding her stomach. Thank god my team is eating clean in this overwhelmingly large crowd, she thought, relieved that her own stomach’s butterflies were gone and replaced with a steady rumble, which she interpreted as settling. Still, the rumble distracted her just enough to miss two of the girls in her upline (the ones who’d recruited her, who mentored her), exchange tums tablets before the lights dimmed and the panel speakers began. 

15 minutes later, Linda found herself distracted, again, by her stomach. An ache had begun moving downward in belly, leaving it bloated against her tight, bright team top. Knowing the next break wasn’t for another hour, Lina placed a hand gently on her lower tummy, hoping to quiet it and focus on the speakers and crowd. Still, the rumblings turned louder, indicating to Lina and those closest to her that something was not going well. 

As the panel began to wind down and the speakers moved to wind the crowd up and get everyone excited, Lina found herself in stuck in some sort of digestive dilemma - her gut turned as she reluctantly stood and waived her hands in the air. Two rows in front, another girl seemed equally unenthused, and Lina noticed her hands clasped tightly across her tummy. Then, just as the crowd went into an abrupt silence (as part of the programming), Lina’s gut unleashed its loudest cry yet - a long, wet, uncomfortable gurgle followed by a sharp stomach cramp.

Her teammate, Megan, turned to her in horror and shock. “Are you alright?” she asked concernedly. Lina, now awkwardly pale, nodded, though her stomach was now sending her all of the classic poorly signs. 

“I think I need the restroom...” she began, as Megan nodded and pointed her to the doors in the back of the hall.

Lina stood slowly, feeling the keto coffee from that morning drop lower in her belly. As she turned and began walking through the rows of seated other women, she wished she hadn’t eaten so much of the provided breakfast - the scrambled eggs and spinach and ham felt like a sick lava in bowels that sloshed with every step. The thought was enough to make her dry heave a bit. 

[in-death-we-fall]

Wham, Glam, Thank You Mam…

Kerrang 910, June 29 2002

The unmasked Joey Jordison’s Murderdolls are not Slipknot Mark II. Can you imagine the Clown wearing make-up and stack-heels?...

Oh Kerrang, we absolutely can... but that's not the point here

Words: Joshua Sindell Photos: P R Brown, Lisa Johnson

(drive link)

In a dimly lit room at the Sunset Marquis hotel, five heavily mascara’d men in black leather, each with immaculately back-combed hair, pose and purse their lips for a photographer’s lens. Only a single white curtain against the window protects their pale skin from the outside sun’s piercing rays. Last night’s expedition to famed strip club Crazy Girls has left some of them feeling bleary and achy, but, as the band Junkyard once sang so sagely, ‘That’s life in Hollywood’. Yes, this is LA, the home of all things tawdry and torrid, where giants in spandex so famously used to stride down the Strip. But this is not 1986. These events are happening in June of 2002. And one of these pouting prima donnas happens to be a member of Slipknot.

Murderdolls are the new baby of Joey Jordison – Slipknot’s diminutive drummer – but in stark contrast to his unrelentingly intense day job, their music is a trashy pastiche of glam-rock, New York punk circa 1977, schlock-horror, and heavy metal. Jordison has swapped his mask for make-up and his sticks for a guitar, and has created a band that embody practically everything you don’t ever hear on the radio these days. Alongside him are Static-X guitarist Tripp Eisen, singer Wednesday 13 who previously fronted the Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13 and two friends of Tripp from LA – bassist Erik Griffin and appropriately-named drummer Ben Graves.

Just one listen to the Murderdolls’ debut album will be enough to have a legion of Slipknot fans chomping on their home-made boiler suits in confusion. Cheesy songs about grave robbing? Tributes to ‘The Exorcist’’s possessed devil-doll Linda Blair? Zombies? Mad scientists? Ghouls? What the hell is going on?

Jordison, barely five-foot-five even in his new stack heels, allows himself a sly smile.

“This is so far removed from Slipknot that it’s actually the best thing about it,” he says. “When we play, it’s just so fucking funny. We’re very serious about not being serious.”

To change gears from the testosterone-filled, uncontrolled anger of ‘Iowa’ to the sexually charged grind of Murderdolls is certainly something of a role-reversal. Butt Tripp Eisen, who, like Jordison, is also on shore leave from his day job, finds the turn-around almost hilarious.

“It’s kind of like being bisexual,” he jokes. “You’re doing a guy for now, but you’re not giving up on the ‘girl’ thing.”

The seeds of this project were sown years ago, in the mind and garage of Joey Jordison, under the name The Rejects. This was long before Slipknot and nu-metal’s all-conquering domination of the rock scene. The Rejects would eventually morph into Murderdolls, and to Joey, this is no mere side-project.

“I just feel that there’s no point in doing anything that’s even remotely similar to Slipknot,” he reasons, seated at a small table inside the cool, dark hotel room. “For me, it’s a chance to play guitar, which I played long before I played drums.”

Murderdolls began to become more than just a figment of Joey’s imagination three years ago when Slipknot toured with New Yorkers Dope, who had Eisen in their line-up at the time. The two bonded over a mutual love of such bands as Manowar, The Ramones and The Plasmatics.

“I had spent my whole life being kind of a glam guy, but also digging the heavy, heavy music,” says Tripp, a soft-spoken man with dreadlocks that sprout from his head like drooping asparagus. “It’s rare to find someone who can relate to both, and that’s what drew me to Joey. He’s into Slayer and Twisted Sister with equal intensity, and there’s not many people like that.”

To Tripp, there’s not all that much difference between the two. Both metal and glam are escapist and theatrical in nature, and he points out that Mötley Crüe and Slayer both used pentagrams on their albums.

Together, during the off time from their respective bands, Joey and Tripp dug up some of Joey’s old Rejects songs and dusted them off. They discovered a voice in North Carolina native Wednesday 13, and he brought several of his own songs with him. Then, after the album was finished, the band’s line-up was completed by Griffin and Graves.

The record itself is an absolute blast. Roaring guitars, skull-rattling drums and sneering, screaming vocals, all set to fast-paced tunes of terror and turmoil. Imagine the Ramones, the Misfits and the Dead Boys wearing long-haired wigs and goofing on love, lust and comic books. Add to the mix a soupçon of Marilyn Manson, plus a few screaming metal electric guitar leads, and stir. What pours out ain’t pretty, but it will certainly raise some eyebrows.

Joey couldn’t be more excited at the prospect of his Slipknot fans lending Murderdolls an ear.

“Not to take anything away from Slipknot, because I love that band and I’m still very much in it. But playing the guitar is not the same as playing the drums. Wearing make-up and trashy clothes is not the same as wearing coveralls and a mask.”

But what is to become of that famed Slipknot ‘mystique’? Won’t it forever be ruined by the fact that Joey is the first of them to go mask-less? Joey downplays the importance of his decision, saying that the internet has basically removed whatever secrecy Slipknot had tried to maintain anyway.

“We meet and talk to the kids without our masks every day,” he points out. He also says that Slipknot’s singer Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root will soon be performing sans masks in their own side-project, Stone Sour.

“I’ve said this a million times before, but wearing the masks is what the music ‘made’ us do,” says Joey. “It was not to just hide our faces. After knowing what Kiss looked like without their make-up for so many years, when I went to see them on their reunion tour, I didn’t give a fuck if I knew what they looked like under their make-up. When I saw them in make-up, I said, ‘That’s fuckin’ Kiss’.”

Scheduling the Murderdolls sessions and upcoming tour was never an issue with Slipknot either. All of the nine members decided that their loving maggots could allow them a few months’ rest, and many of them are pursuing solo projects.

“It was a mutual decision,” says Joey, “It wasn’t like we all needed the time away from one another. I told them that I felt that this stuff was worthy of being put out on a record. I think that it’s worthy for people to see it live as well. I’ve been spinning upside-down on a drum riser for the past 10 months, and now I’m going to go jam with this other band for a while, and they were totally cool with that. They knew from the start, even before the first Slipknot record, that I was going to do this, so it was no surprise to them.”

As for the other members, this much is known. Tripp Eisen says he’s still very much a part of Static-X, who are just about ready to wrap up their touring scenario for 2002 and will immediately begin writing their third album. Singer Wednesday 13, recruited to replace Rejects singer Dizzy, is an aficionado of ‘80s glam acts like Pretty Boy Gloyd and Tuff, and claims, quite horrifically, to have the soundtrack albums to every one of Sylvester Stalone’s movies – including ‘Over The Top’ and ‘Rhinestone’. Wednesday, who speaks in a warm southern drawl, plays a big role in the band’s theme and sound. He explains the song ‘Dawn Of The Dead’.

“I’ve always loved that movie,” he says, “and I thought, ‘How great would it be to have a Quiet Riot, ‘Cum On Feel Tha Noize’-type chorus for a song like that?’.” The singer described the sound of Murderdolls as a “Frankenstein monster we stitched together.”

The two newest members are Ben and Erik, friends of Tripp’s from LA. They do not play on the record, and both were struggling musicians who felt left out by the onslaught of post-grunge blandness and down-tuned rap-rock. Secretly, they wished they’d get hired to play just this kind of balls-out rock that just didn’t seem to exist outside of their old CD collections. They were working in shops on trendy Melrose Avenue when Tripp gave them a call.

“Once we all agreed that Nikki Sixx was God, we knew they were the right guys,” observes Wednesday.

Joey is loath to describe the band’s sound as metal or punk, though clearly it has elements of both, as well as some of the more frenzied moments of Marilyn Manson’s catalogue. In particular, ‘Dead In Hollywood’ truly sounds as if the God Of Fuck was somewhere in the mix, lending a helping shout. As it turns out, Joey asked the man himself to contribute, but not on any of the songs that have turned up on the record.

“Marilyn’s a friend of mine and we’ve always helped each other out,” says Joey. “I played some guitar for him and hooked him up with a remix, which he just recently used on the ‘Resident Evil’ soundtrack. He said that he’s going to sing on one of our songs now.” Unfortunately, what with his own deadline looming shortly, Manson’s tracks – either ‘People Hate Me’ or ‘Nineteen Seventy 666’ – may have to wait until after the release of the new Manson disc.

If all this sleaze and disorderly conduct sounds a little backward thinking, it is no accident. Even Trip agrees that the ‘Dolls pay tribute to a bygone time.

“I feel that kids today don’t know about what we grew up on, and I think that we’re trying to bring the whole package to them. The Union Underground and Sinisstar are similar in the respect that they’re bringing trashy rock back, but we just feel like we can do it better.”

Wednesday speaks with an endearing confidence that borders on pride.

“Nobody’s done it to the extent that we will,” he brags. “There were bands like Buckcherry and Beautiful Creatures who were doing the whole Guns N’Roses rock thing, but nobody’s done it at the level that we’re going to.”

Without too much Slipknot business to attend to, aside from the upcoming Reading and Leeds appearances this summer, Joey is clearly basking in his new-found freedom. Returning from the bathroom after applying his make-up, he jokes that posing for photos in Slipknot is so much easier than this current Murderdolls shoot. “You just throw on a mask and make hand gestures!”

Joey says that he’s looking forward to sharing his band with the world, and playing guitar live.

“I think that we’re original, but we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” he muses. “I think that in Slipknot, we broke down a lot of doors. I’m very proud of that, and I’m very fulfilled there. This is just another way to keep the glass full.”

Murderdolls release their debut album, ‘Beneath (sic) The Valley Of The Murderdolls’, on August 19 via Roadrunner.

Doll Parts

Joey Jordison’s guide to his new bandmates…

Ben Graves Joey: “Again, Tripp found him. Does he look like Twiggy Ramirez? Absolutely no comment.”

Wednesday 13 Joey: “He and I wrote all the music and the lyrics together. It’s fun when we’re singing about grave robbing. It’s much more tongue-in-cheek than anything Slipknot’s ever done.”

Erik Griffin Joey: “Tripp brought him into the band. I saw a video that Tripp did of them jamming, and he looked right for the band.”

Tripp Eisen Joey: “When we met, we instantly knew that we had the same taste in music. I really love his leads on the album. Live he’s great, and he’s a great friend.”