Instead of dealing with my own obscene interior yesterday i made that blog post. In this pic can u find:

The paper mache head i got in Tokyo that I recently wore to a dance party in Chinatown.

2 chairs i bought for the sex club that we won’t end up using that i don’t know what to do with now.

luggage not unpacked since Christmas.

Ikea shelving meant for your garage.

An LA Weekly i can’t toss because it has a hot guy on the cover and I need to find out who he is. I’ve been meaning to do this for over a year.

The cardboard model of the gallery and disco ball prop from my PARTY MONSTER installation.

Every issue of Nest magazine, not in any order.

A Buddha machine.

Childrens toy birds that make noise during an earthquake.

Storyboards for a book project that will never get published.

Issues of McSweeney’s i’ll never get around to reading.

Several lampshades i thought i might use for the sex club but probably won’t but they were only $1 each so i had to.

Vintage Hallmark paper honeycomb centerpieces. (Not that i have a table to ever put them on.)

Souvenir metal miniatures of the World Trade Center I had a NY friend buy me on Sept 11 2001 because I knew every miniature made after that would say “Never Forget” or something.

A box of Obscene Interiors books. No it’s not that box. I don’t know what’s in that box. Oh I just looked, it’s confetti.

Very “this is the piece that’ll get me into art school.” Drag queens standing on a black shard. Sharks (a metaphor?). And a primitive Basquiat-inspired demon figure. Shit like this plays well in a crowded BFA portfolio review meeting – “This one’s got the passion, he just needs to focus.” – but after you’re accepted you don’t know what to do with it, and lord knows your parents don’t want it, so you stick it on your wall in a desperate attempt to deny it’s true fate: the thrift store. And it’s there a couple kids will find it and have a great “omg look at this” moment, maybe snap a pic on their cell phone, and then go to lunch without buying it.

Art like this is only acceptable to display if your mother painted it, and that’s what you see when you look at it. Because the rest of us see the most boring and overused image ever. Flowers in an old-world windowsill. And it’s horribly composed and poorly rendered (as this scene so frequently is). But again, if mom painted it it’s great and warm and u can keep it.

I bought this exact same print on a family trip to Laguna Beach when i was 15 or so. I didn’t care about the joke: “Sitting duck” har har. I just liked the chill nature of the duck. I needed any image supporting relaxation to be on my walls at that time.

I really try to be supportive of people being creative. But sometimes it’s really REALLY hard. I mean you have no idea how badly i want to put quotation marks around “creative” here.

Blurry squiggle flowers in a penis vase is a new way to combine two common subjects and secure a purchase from a gay buyer.

Great example of the piece that didn’t get you into art school.  You hang it on your wall in a sour grapes victory. Who needs art school anyway. Theory just turns you gay. I like colors. Immago paint my walls yellow.

20 years later you think about the suckers still paying off their CalArts loans while they work at a brand licensing firm and insisting finding ways to put Dora the Explorer on a toothbrush is “still being creative you know.” You might be working as a bar back and considering charging guys to watch you jack off online but u know that’s still better than Sallie Mae having a $50,000 grip on your ass into middle age. OMG this has nothing to do with what i’m supposed to be talking about. What’s happened to me. I’ve become an LA Weekly film critic.

Blank black corridors get tiresome, so liven up your sex club’s walls with super-graphic super-graphics. Here I’ve chosen a nice bj image to set the mood. To add texture I’ve designed a subtle background diamond-plating inspired pattern using the logo of the club.

Paint the wall black – a flat finish is nice and velvety but a bitch to keep clean. I’ve chosen a Dunn Edwards interior black in eggshell finish – a nice amount of gloss. (Don’t get high gloss or u won’t be able to draw on it with chalk in a later step.)

Draw a grid on the wall in pencil based on the repeat size of your pattern. 18″ in this case.

Cut an 18″ square of Gatorboard, then Spray 77 a 1/4″ piece of foam to the board, overlay your logo (remember to reverse it), then cut it out of the foam. Using the grid on the wall, start stamping. It’s ok if some drip or don’t fully stamp – it’s a sex club, things should get a little messy. I’ve chosen DE6356 “Sheet Metal” although the lighter gray, DE6348 “Draw Your Sword,” seems more appropriate given the venue.

Now, in Photoshop make a scaled 18″ grid over your artwork, then divide each of those squares in half and print it out. This is our guide as we draw the line work on the wall in chalk. It’s easy because you’ve already drawn a grid on the wall for the pattern, now divide those squares again. It helps if you number the squares along the side so u don’t get confused as you begin drawing on the wall.

Time to run a paint test. Because i want the blue linework to fluoresce under UV light I’ll be painting it with Wildfire brand blue UV reactive paint. I find it’s best to paint a flat white undercoat, then the UV paint on top. UV paint is very transparent so it will take a couple coats. Because i want this to really pop, i’ve mixed 7 parts UV blue to 1 part UV white.

Now wipe off all remaining chalk marks with a damp rag, and light with UV fixtures. To avoid blasting the hall with UV light (which would cause anyone wearing a white shirt to light up the whole area when they walked by) I’m not using blacklight flourescent tubes, instead, 6 mini-UV-LED-spotlights and 3 blue UV mini-spots from MiniSpotlight.com. Now you’ve got a hot sexy wall that looks great under under bright lights for a photo or porno shoot (and promotes your venue by stamping your club name all over the image!), as well as regular, dark, club cruising conditions.

Back in January u may recall i went to a sex club here in LA and was shocked at how big it was, but also how dull it was. So I contacted the owner and pitched my concept to create “the world’s first ‘designer’ sex club” – meaning the first sex club to have any actual design too it. My one stipulation was that it be a top-to-bottom (punny!) visual makeover – including a new logo, new ads, online redesign, and the club itself. Work has already begun and will continue slowly before being completed by summer 2010. I promise grafitti-covered back-alley porno-set HOTNESS – AND vintage designer pleather and chrome HAUTENESS! – the ultimate Obscene Interior really. It’s the most challenging and most fun job I’ve ever had. It’s basically a fun house for adults. Here’s the new logo in one of the new ads. I wanted “Come inside.” but that implied endorsement of unprotected anal sex – and that’s angainst club rules. Much more to come…

I try to remain constructive in my criticisms but holy crap are these just bad. The opposite of erotic.  I won’t mentioning which American sex club these are from, although they seem to be proud of them as these were on their website. As a theme park designer can i just tell you how painful it is to see bad scenically painted stone walls. Sometimes it’s charming – like at an elementary school play, but this is a sex club where u want raw real hard cold and rough. You want Silence of the Lambs. This is Scooby Doo.

I don’t know what is going on in the other rooms. I spared u the pic of the “pirate room” which had a Jack Sparrow cardboard standee. It’s my professional opinion that an adult sex club should not in any way resemble the themed party rooms at the KIDZ FUNZONE in the mall. (Unless you’re catering to adult baby fetishists – then that would be appropriate. Use lots of pastels and oversized furniture.)

The walls in this first image don’t clash with the upholstery as much as CRASH with the upholstery. When dealing with greens of any signifigant intensity it’s important to do a paint test. As I’ve learned, sometimes the paint comes out a bit more acid-fluorescent than the more mellow paint chip.

This last room has it working though. The window trim is a great buttery color and the bamboo blinds and red couch are all helping each other nicely. The room above it looks like it was inspired but a bowl of cheap guacamole topped with sour cream.

[If u didn’t know: Obscene Interiors is my collection of real online male personal ad photos. I gray out the men to allow an undistracted view of the setting, so we may better study how men really decorate.

Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor is also a fun little gift book you can order direct from me - and I’ll sign it, or get it from Amazon.com or any cool bookstore.]

Those Todd Oldham body pillows Target used to sell are great if you’re like me and sleep alone but like wrapping your arms something big, soft, and pretty. I bought two and keep the extra in the closet for when my current one wears out.

[If u didn’t know: Obscene Interiors is my collection of real online male personal ad photos. I gray out the men to allow an undistracted view of the setting, so we may better study how men really decorate.

Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor is also a fun little gift book you can order direct from me - and I’ll sign it, or get it from Amazon.com or any cool bookstore.]

If you’re stumped for wall decoration maps are a safe stand by. They give a smart vibe without being turn-off smart like displaying the periodic table. That is, if used correctly, as in framed. When a map is crookedly pinned to the wall it says, “I’m lost. And I need to be reminded where I am. Every day.”

If u didn’t know: Obscene Interiors is my collection of real online male personal ad photos. I gray out the men to allow an undistracted view of the setting so we may better study the candid reality of modern home decor.

Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor is also a fun little gift book you can order direct from me – and I’ll sign it, or get it from Amazon.com or any cool bookstore.

Here’s some images from my book Obscene Interiors: Hardcore Amateur Decor. These are real online personal ad pictures posted by men. In my book I gray out their silhouette and comment on the interior design, or lack thereof,  they’re posing in.

Here’s some images from a print campaign for Lorgan’s, an Asian chain store dealing in retro furnishings. If campaign Executive Creative Director, Todd McCracken; Creative Director, Eric Yeo; or Art Director, Kat Tan care to respond to what I see as a blatant case of plagiarism (or at least severe unoriginality), please send me an email because I’m sad now.

I was in Minneapolis at the Chuck Palahniuk event for his new gang-bang novel Snuff. Anal-beads and blow-up dolls were given away, as was copies of my book. Chuck was mobbed as usual so I spent the night chatting with Don Pollock whose raunchy/gritty story collection Knockemstiff is also being promoted by Chuck on this tour.

Then there was the artist-designed mini-golf course at the Walker Art Center, a temporary thing just for the summer.

And I saw some small buffalo on the drive to Fargo where I then ate some buffalo. As always, more pics in my Flickr pages.

The Fight Club author just started touring to promote his new novel, Rant, but he’s also promoting books he didn’t write–like, mine. In San Francisco earlier this week, he described Obscene Interiors as, “the funniest, dirtiest, book I have seen in years,” then gave out coppies durring the Q&A. (He’s also giving away Monica Drake’s debut novel, Clown Girl, which I haven’t yet read.) I never thought my book was that dirty, I mean, it’s not like I wrote about guys getting their intestines sucked out through their anus while masturbating in a hot tub.

Join me Monday, May 9th at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena CA 91101 for his only planned LA appearance. There’s bonus prizes if you come wearing a a wedding dress (males and females), it’s related to the novel somehow. His other book tour dates are here.

In the Sept 06 issue of Blackbook, Fight Club author, Chuck Palahniuk, lists his top 10 book picks over the past 10 years. My collection of online male personal ads, Obscene Interiors, takes 2004. And now I’m taking the rest of the day off to bask in the glow of his approval.

Earlier: Fight Club Author Disappointed