Friday, July 24, 2009

Ancient Gonzo Wisdom


The book is out now. What are you waiting for?My interview with Thompson is in it. At first he hates me, then he likes me. It's an epic story of a young journalist interviewing his idol and only acquiring the skills to do so halfway through the encounter. Go buy it now. Read more!

Friday, July 25, 2008

World's Weirdest Museums

11 Oddball Museums
Forbes Traveler July, 2008

If Night at the Museum had been set somewhere other than New York’s Museum of Natural History, it would be a very different movie. This 2006 blockbuster starring Ben Stiller made hundreds of millions of dollars and, reportedly, boosted museum attendance. But it could have been a much stranger beast. Instead of Teddy Roosevelt and Sacajawea, one night in Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum could've led to a romance between Siamese twin skeletons and the corpse of an obese woman whose fat has turned to soap. At the Venthaven ventriloquist museum, the big laughs could've given way to the scariest Twilight Zone episode ever.

World-class museums aside, a lot of people find second-rank museums lacking. At best, they're hermetically sealed repositories of dusty culture; at worst, they're tourist traps teeming with children on field trips. Sometimes, you gotta take a walk on the weirder side.

Doug Kirby, publisher of the book series and website Roadside America, has catalogued bizarre museums and other attractions best avoided by elementary school field trips. By heading off the beaten path, he says, “you’ll see amazing things—but just duck your head and make sure your tetanus shot is up-to-date.”

There’s little chance of being physically injured at Kentucky’s Venthaven Museum, the world’s only public collection devoted to ventriloquism. Many visitors are unnerved by the hundreds of dummies that line bleacher-like seats, waiting to dredge up childhood nightmares inspired by the Twilight Zone and Poltergeist. According to curator Lisa Sweasy, who leads tours by appointment only, visitors are charmed by tour's end.

“There are no scary ventriloquists,” she says. “Some people will come in with a prejudice against them, but that always goes away once they've learned more.”

Venthaven’s exhaustive focus on dummies is unique, but the museum’s singularity of focus isn’t. The Museum of Toilets in New Delhi presents a complete history of the world’s commodes. Exhibits include a reconstruction of Louis the XVIII's toilet-and-throne combo and a microwave technology toilet that (they say) we’ll use in the future. Meanwhile, over in Iceland, the curators of the Phallological Museum focus on the symbol of the phallus from ancient times straight through to the present. There is also a sizeable collection of Icelandic animal penises.

Clearly, some museums are founded by men and women with an intense interest in one subject. Others are motivated by what Kirby calls water-cooler value. Because many small and strange museums lack the wealth and clout of larger institutions, they’re forced to become more creative in their exhibitions. “We don’t have the resources of the Museum of Natural History or MOMA," says David Wilson, founder and curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technologies in California. "So what we’ve done is look to the margins, to the edges of things. And we find an extraordinary body of stuff there.”

Wilson was awarded a MacArthur fellow “genius” grant for his work with the 20-plus-year-old museum, which "provides the academic community with a specialized repository of relics and artifacts" emphasizing things that "demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities." In other words, it's a whimsical but not frivolous collection of objects that interest Wilson, such as microscopic sculptures and a collection of trailer park art. One advantage of running your own museum, says Wilson, is "you can present pretty much whatever you want.”

Other weird museums have firmer footholds in history and science. And some, like their legitimate counterparts, strive to educate the public. The Glore Psychiatric Museum in Missouri grew out of State Lunatic Asylum Number Two. In the 1960s, asylum official George Glore began collecting and displaying artifacts and replicas of antiquated devices for treating mental illnesses, like a human-sized hamster wheel meant to treat patients suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. According to museum spokesperson Kathy Reno, the museum is intended to help remove the stigma associated with mental illness.

On the other end of the learning curve, there's the Museum of Bad Art in Massachusetts, which is dedicated to mocking artists who erred in their attempts to create beauty. If you’ve ever been mad at Picasso for being a better artist than you—of if you've ever muttered "My kid could paint that!"—this is the place for you. In its own way, even the MOBA is trying to educate the public. “People who don’t know anything about art, and are intimidated by serious art museums and art galleries, like the idea of coming someplace where it’s okay to have a laugh,” says Louise Sacco, MOBA's Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director.

Whether you're looking for laughs, scares or a few moments of squirmy discomfort, somewhere in the world is an obsessive curator waiting to show you his or her collection.
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Monday, June 30, 2008

Jon Stewart Interview

Faking Sense of the World
Hartford Advocate June 12, 2008

According to a 2007 Pew poll, Jon Stewart is one of the five most-respected broadcast journalists in America. It doesn't matter that he began his career not as a sleeves-rolled-up, coffee-swilling print journalist but as a comedian whose resume includes residency at Manhattan's Comedy Cellar, a cameo in Half Baked and three short-lived MTV shows.

The Daily Show started out as news parody, but with Stewart at the helm since 1999, it has grown increasingly sharp and political. Stewart is not just a smart-ass; he's actually smart. And while he can be glib, he's arguably one of the most moral people on television news.

One of the few people who don't take Stewart seriously these days is Stewart himself. When accused of committing journalism by Bill Moyers last year, Stewart countered that he's only a comedian. Stewart dismissed his own work as that of "a tiny, neurotic man, standing in the back of the room throwing tomatoes at the chalk board."

Stewart is amazingly punctual—he called exactly at the scheduled time—and extraordinarily nice. As a former chain smoker who went cold turkey in 2000, he gave me useful advice about quitting cigarettes and talked freely about every other subject—but still wouldn't admit to being anything other than a working comedian who happens to have one of the best TV shows on the planet.

Advocate: Is your stand-up work mostly current events-driven or do you use it as a chance to get away from what you do on TV?
Stewart: It's a combination: It's events material, or it's a story about something horrible that might have happened to me on the drive up. And obviously, bits I've been working on over the years. I weave everything in and out, and hopefully present a nice little evening of comedy.

I might do a Q&A, or maybe just be a sing-a-long. It could take all kinds of shapes: charades, Pictionary.

So it's like a traveling, troubadour kind of show.

That's exactly right. It's like a minstrel show, except without any conceivable musical talent.

Or blackface.
Right. It's the old-world style of minstrel show, not the modern racially driven version. I think it's a chance to make some larger observations—if I have any larger observations to make. It's not as tied to current events as the show, and it's a different format. I'll be standing, for one thing. It'll give people an opportunity to see what stumpy legs look like.

I'm sure you're sick of this question ...
Sagittarius.

Nice. I was going to ask if it's difficult to adjust to comedy in a post-Bush world.

Oh. As a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal—in all of those areas, I am looking forward to the end of the Bush administration with every fiber of my being.

You're tired of the "subliminable" jokes?
Yeah, there are times when you play on the lack of erudite commentary from the President. But that's not the heart of what we do. I am sick of deconstructing their propaganda, because it's pretty much the same as it's always been. It's just repeating something over and over again until we believe it and we hope that you believe it.

[Comedian and Conan O'Brien writer] Robert Smigel said in a recent interview: "For Obama, it could be a John Kennedy situation where everybody is going to invest all this hope and optimism, idealism." He was saying that satire might be more difficult under an Obama administration. Do you think that's true?


I think that the satire of what that is would be tough. But certainly the interplay between that idealism and the established cynicism would work for satire. If someone was to introduce hope and idealism into our political system, I think the tension that would create in other areas would certainly be ripe. You would think that if you bring oxygen to the organism, the organism lives. But there may be other organisms in there that thrive in darkness and in a more anaerobic environment. Watching those creatures writhe will always be interesting.

Larry King asked you on his show if it would be terrible for you as a comedian if everything was good.
I was a little stunned by the question. It was a little crazy, the idea that I absolutely would cheer for the destruction of mankind if it would give me three to four minutes of jokes every night. But to be fair to Larry King, I don't think he was really paying attention. It was more like, "How long do we have left in this segment?"

That describes the last two decades of his career, doesn't it?
[Laughs.] Don't mess with the King, baby. You mess with the bull, you get the suspenders.

Is it fair to call The Daily Show liberal?
I think the metric by which television is considered liberal is literally based on the metric of liberalism in each person's soul. Peoples' senses of humor tend to go about as far as their ideology. There are people who believe I say things they didn't agree with because it's too liberal, and there are people who don't agree with things I say that believe I'm a conservative shill. I don't get wrapped up in peoples' definitions of what we're doing here.

You've said you're not a warrior for anyone's cause. I imagine that you get criticism from both sides.
I reject the idea there are just two sides. I think that with the amount of ideas and thoughts there are, it's not even going to be consistent with the same person. People can hold liberal and conservative dogma points at the same time. They're not living their lives via platforms. They're living their lives. The whole thing is an awfully tired construct.

I'm sorry I asked.
[Laughs.] You didn't make it up. It exists. Unless, are you the guy that invented it? Then this is an entirely different interview.

When you're interviewing someone like [neoconservative former Department of Defense official] Douglas Feith or [National Review Online editor] Jonah Goldberg, and are basically calling bullshit on them, is it difficult to keep yourself under control enough to have a civil conversation?

In trying to have a discussion, there are moments where I probably lose my cool or train of thought. Or my ability to blink. And it's creepy. But I think it's hard to have any conversation that has purpose to it on a talk show in front of an audience with commercial breaks. I think there are probably much better ways to accomplish that. A six-minute interview isn't the best place to make or debunk a case. So what people get are bastardizations of arguments and perversions of discussions. That's what we specialize in.

So you're saying that you shouldn't be doing what you do every night?
The format of the show suits me. But I think that if you're looking for the kind of discussion that's worthwhile to have, this is not the best format for it. I think there are better formats and better people to do that than me [laughs].

Do you find conservative writers are hesitant to go on The Daily Show? Is there anyone that turned you down you wish could have been on?
Oh, I'm sure. You know, it all goes so fast. We have a woman here that's in charge of getting guests. We make requests all the time. And people are out of town, or they don't want to do it or they want you to have lunch with them first, and you end up being like, "fuck that."
But I don't think it's necessarily conservatives who are avoiding the show. We have a pretty good representation there as we do in anything. I just think it's not a comfortable format for a lot of people.

But people have got to sell books, right?
Yeah. I think that's the only reason people come on the show. People have gotta sell books, people gotta get votes. I don't think anybody comes on the show just because they think it looks like fun. Well, every now and then, we get someone deluded.

Has Stephen Colbert taken the heat off you? There was that Rahm Emanuel memo warning Democrats not to go on his show—do you look easier by comparison?
I'm going to let you in on a little secret, here: Stephen's playing a character on his show. He might not admit this himself, but in real life, he's a very sweet, reasonable man. I don't want to blow anything out. I don't know if you want to put that in there. It might not be for public consumption.

Wow. I feel like Bob Woodward.
Exactly. I'm not going to say where you got this information. I'm just telling you. I'm an anonymous source. Take this to the bank.

But has having The Colbert Report on after The Daily Show changed The Daily Show?
We're definitely of the same genetic material. I think there's a nice complementary relationship. In some respects, it works in the way that the more staid news works with the cable-type news. They're parodies that are increasing the reach of the other parties. The shows paint in different colors, but use the same material.

When [Supreme Court Justice] Antonin Scalia called your show "childish," did that smart at all?


I can say this: he's childish. And shut up. No, that doesn't bother me. It does bother me when Antonin Scalia says he doesn't want to discuss cases like Bush. V. Gore anymore because, you know, we should just get over it. That upsets me more than comments that he makes about our show. You can make a better case that our show is childish than he doesn't have to discuss Supreme Court decisions he's made.

Do you see what you just did? You took on the appearance of childishness to make an astute, well-reasoned point. That's something you do on The Daily Show all the time, and that's why it bothers me, as a fan, that he referred to the show as childish.

Here's the difference: I'm thinking about him, but he's not thinking about me. What he said was reflective of nothing other than the glibness. And in some ways it reflects the seriousness with which he should take our show, which is not at all. What we wish he took more seriously are the decisions he made. But I don't think in any way, "How dare he say that, what does he think he's doing?" I get it.

You've been criticized for trying to have it both ways, acting as a media critic and then retreating by saying you're just telling jokes.

I think that stems from how my interviews don't live up to the standards I ask of news people. And what I'd say in response to that, is, "Why should I do their fucking jobs?" I have a job and my job is on Comedy Central. If I took a job at CNN, I think I'd to have a different perspective on what I do. But I don't do a news show.

It's not a news show, but it's pretty newsy.

I'm working with the tools that are the best for me. People would like to place a standard on our show that doesn't exist. We're not set up for reporting; we don't have an apparatus for that. We're discussing things that hopefully people might get something out of, but it's wildly inconsistent. Just because we hit on points that resonate, or people think are real complaints—that doesn't make us journalists.


You're seen as one of the most trusted names in journalism, according to a recent poll. On The Daily Show, you guys talk about how perception dictates reality. Do you think this is one of those cases?

I think we are so far up our own asses about our own importance. I think that people are arguing about something that doesn't matter. The real issue is that TV news can either bring clarity or noise. And it tends to not seem to know the difference between them. ... We do a show that doesn't try to bring noise. I think that we have a more consistent point of view than most news shows, I'll say that.

What's that point of view?

That theater doesn't make for authentic public
discourse.
Read more!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

David Cross Interview

The Believer, May 2008

Quick note on the text: this was one part of a two-part interview. I interviewed Cross from the point of view of someone who hated him. Another writer interviewed him as a fan.

I have complicated and conflicting feelings about David Cross’s work, which is appropriate, as he’s a complicated, difficult performer. As I told him when we met, I think he’s talented. He has a nimble mind, great timing, and a knack for absurd humor. However, his performances often seem driven by an anger and smugness that overpower his appeal, particularly in his stand-up. I was managing editor of New York Press when he released his second CD, It’s Not Funny, which was the prime reason for his inclusion on the paper’s “50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers” list. We called him “meandering” and “not funny,” and wished that Andrew Dice Clay would inflict bodily harm upon him. Even though some on the staff, including me, were inclined to agree with his liberal anger, we thought Cross’s tone was alienating and shrill.

In addition, Cross has waged public crusades against seeming straw men like Creed’s Scott Stapp, Jim Belushi, and Larry the Cable Guy. I’ve always been confounded by the attention Cross paid them.

I chatted with Cross in late 2007 at his East Village apartment. He was extremely self-aware, willing to speak frankly about awkward subjects with admirable candor and introspection. Honestly, I came away liking him a lot. Also, he had embroidered towels in his bathroom. One read DAVID’S. The other read ALSO DAVID’S. I’m not sure what conclusions should be drawn from that, but it’s the kind of detail that as a reporter I would feel remiss if I kept to myself.


HATER: I understand that you were angry, and [your 2000-2001 stand-up act] was a free-flowing of expression. And, I feel like a dick for saying it, but did you forget to write punch lines?



DAVID CROSS:
What I’d say to that is that I’ve never written jokes. I mean, I’ll write things on a piece of paper and riff on them onstage. What I don’t think is fair, and what I think you’re implying, is that there’s nothing funny in it. That’s fine, that’s your opinion.


HTR: I’m not saying it’s not funny. I’m saying that it’s undernuanced at times. It could be more clever or well-constructed.


DC: Yeah, probably. You can continue to craft it and hone it. But that, for better or worse, is not what I do. It might read funnier, definitely, but it would feel false. I think I could have a funnier, more economic set. But that’s the comedy I do. And I understand if people aren’t interested in it and would rather listen to someone else. But I’ll never understand the anger people have toward me. And here is the rest of it.

For the rest of the interview, go buy the magazine. It's on sale at a bookstore near you!


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11 Unlikely Summer Movie Heroes

20 years after 'Die Hard,' heroes are coming in surprising sizes and shapes.
Premiere.com, May 8, 2008

1988 was a watershed year for explosion-laden, bullet-riddled action flicks. Chiseled body builder-types like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren and Carl Weathers racked up massive body counts in Rambo III, Red Heat, Red Scorpion and Action Jackson. But that year's best-remembered action film announced the age of over-grown muscle stars had passed. In Die Hard, Bruce Willis's John McClane was a different kind of action hero. He was an unstoppable killing machine audiences could relate to — a wise-cracking, barefoot beat cop who needed every lucky break he could catch. Flash forward 20 years, and the lasting effects of the Bruce Willis-ification of the action star are evident. The girlyman heroes appearing in this summer's event movies include fresh-faced art house stars, doughy comedians and AARP members. This summer, it seems, almost any Joe can be a hero.

Read the rest of the article (laid out in a lovely slideshow format) here. Read more!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Which Rocky are we talking about, Sen. Clinton?

Scholars and Rogues, April 1

It’s time for Hillary Clinton to bone up on her classic ’70s cinema. Attempting to pander to a Philadelphia crowd, she compared herself to Philly’s most famous fictional son, the Italian Stallion, Rocky Balboa.

The AP reports:

“Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people,” Clinton said in excerpts of prepared remarks to be given Tuesday to a meeting of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.


It’s a hack reference, and it’s a little distressing that she included it in her “prepared remarks” — she needs crib notes for pop culture references? But what’s worse is that it’s an inaccurate one. In her attempt to appear more human by invoking the name of the scrappy underdog fighter, she revealed that there’s a good chance she’s never actually seen the movie. Mrs. Clinton evidently doesn’t realize that in the movie Rocky, the titular character lost the fight - to a black dude!

The victory he celebrates at the end of the movie is about how he “went the distance” in the fight and because he recently won the love and respect of his new girlfriend Adrian. It’s only in the shittier sequels that Rocky actually wins fights. So unless Clinton’s ready to go home and be happy that she tried her best and has gained Bill’s love and respect, she can only liken herself to Rocky II through Rocky V. Read more!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Jonathan Davis Article

Got the Life
Inked Magazine March, 2008

Jonathan Davis is the last guy in America you’d expect to be well adjusted. Think about it: The guy’s whole career has been built on being a fuck-up. And here is the rest of it. For the last 15 years, Davis has battled and exploited his inner demons as the lead singer of Korn, gaining legions of fans that empathize with his tortured childhood and share his dark fascinations. Born with severe, nearly life-threatening asthma, Davis was abused by a family friend as a boy, ostracized and ridiculed by his classmates as a teen, and became a drug addict and a rock star in his 20s. By the time he hit 30, he was one of the most famous singers in the world, with a legendary reputation for drug consumption and skewed fixations. I spoke with Davis the day after he finished his first solo tour, a two-month slog he described as a blur of “shitty little showers and fucked-up shit holes.”Logically, a goth rock deity like Davis should have been clubbing baby seals for kicks or hiring a private detective to bury a bizarre sex video. Instead, he was resting at his Malibu home looking forward to the following day, when he planned to take two of his children camping on the beach. “I love it. I set them out there in the sand and a tent and that’s it,” Davis says.

What? No drugs? No sex? No blood? Sun, sand, and children? Frankly, it doesn’t sound like a day in the life of a rockstar. “I don’t give a fuck. What’s a rockstar? Trying to be a rock star is what got me in trouble in thefirst place,” Davis says.

These days, Davis spends his time off the road earning his World’s Greatest Nu Metal Dad coffee mug. Sober for almost a decade, he is a happily married father of three boys: 12-year-old Nathan, 2-year-old Pirate, and his newborn baby, Zeppelin. During our conversation, Davis’s voice rarely rose above a whisper, but he booms with happiness on the subject of his kids. “I really love my children. It’s the one thing in this world that makes me truly happy, other than music,” Davis says.

?sible that Davis could some day be too well adjusted to sing for Korn? “No chance. I got issues, bro. I’ll always have issues,” he says.

Davis might be living the straight and narrow, but his version seems wider and more crooked than most. His adoring wife Devon is a former porn star (for the record, she was only in girl-on-girl films, which is like the Coors Light of porn). He sings through a microphone set on a $50,000 stand designed by H.R. Giger (the Swiss artist who created the alien in Alien), he’s collaborating on an opera with Clive Barker (the sicko British horror writer behind the Hellraiser movies).

And as a former collector of serial killer art—a topic, he says, he now can’t ??storm lyrics. “I’ve gone to those places and I’ve written what I needed to write there,”Davis says. “I’m not going to go and try to repeat myself, write some fake shit. With each new record, I’m tapping into new things and just exploring different ideas.”

And while he doesn’t party anymore,well,he still kind of parties.“I’m at the parties and I’m chopping up lines of cocaine, rolling joints, and pouring drinks,”Davis says. “I can hang out with everybody, but it’s not for me. I just can’t do it.” When Davis grew up in Bakersfield, his hometown was about as close to the farm town in Footlooseas a southern Californian city can get. While its demographics have shifted a little since then, the town is still called the “buckle of California’s Bible Belt.”Not surprisingly, Davis had a tough time fitting into the sunny, Reagan-loving community, and his tattoos are a testament to that. He has a monstrous bishop on one arm, and HIV—the nickname his tormenting high school peers gave him—on the other.

Even though he grew up listening to English new romantic bands like Duran Duran—he didn’t embrace metal until hearing Pantera in his 20s—Davis was cautioned against becoming a musician by his father, a touring musician him­self. “My dad didn’t want me to be a musician because he tried and he went out. It was hard and he wanted to protect me,” Davis says. So he followed his father’s suggestion and, at 17, he became employed in a more wholesome profession; through a high school program, he got a job at a mortuary.

“It was a very fucked-up line of work,” Davis says. “I did it ’cause I really like dark, sick shit. It sounded interesting to cut up dead bodies.” He was in­terested, but not entirely prepared for the experience. “The first day … I was terrified. I went back to school and I was ghost white. I had just faced my mortality. The first guy I cut open was in a motor vehicle accident. The guy was smashed the fuck up. I’ll never forget the sound of the scalpel opening up his flesh. It still rings in my ears to this day.”

But despite finding success, or at least stability, as a coroner, Davis re­tained his passion for music. He formed the band SexArt, which gained the attention of two Bakersfield guitar players, James “Munky” Shaffer and Bryan “Head” Welch. Impressed by Davis’ stage presence and voice, Shaffer and Welch asked him to join their band. Loyal to his SexArt cronies, Davis con­sulted a higher power of sorts. “My aunt’s a psychic and astrologer. She told me all of this stuff was going to happen. It definitely impacted my decision to join the band,” Davis explains.

Welch and Shaffer were experimenting with new dissonant and down-tuned guitar styles. Davis started mining painful childhood memories for lyrics. Korn and the genre of Nu Metal was born. The music was gnarled and aggressive, the vision was dark and personal. Their self-titled debut album was some­thing increasingly rare in popular music: a truly original sound. The lifestyle the band’s success afforded them, while epic and dangerous, was stolen whole­sale from classic rock icons. “When I first started, I would watch that Doors movie. I wanted to be Jim Morrison, you know? I tried to be as fucked up as I could possibly be, all the time,” Davis explains.

By 1998, Korn had attained a new level of popularity. They headlined their first Family Values tour. Their album Follow the Leader debuted at number one on the Billboard chart. But the years of partying and touring had taken their toll on Davis, and he hit rock bottom in front of the worst possible audi­ence. “[My son] Nathan saw me fucked up, and two days later my grandfather passed away. That’s when I got sober. Two drastic, traumatic things in my life happened back to back,” Davis says. “I flew into Atlanta for a show. I sat down at the bar. I said it was my last Jack and Coke and my last cigarette. They all laughed at me, but I haven’t touched them since.”

Getting sober changed his life, but it didn’t make it perfect. In 2003, Welch left the band to become a born-again Christian. In his 2007 book, Save Me From Myself, Welch renounced his wanton rocker ways. Surprisingly, Davis has read it: “It could have been a lot worse. There are a couple of things in there he didn’t need to say, but he did.” But, Davis adds, while most of Welch’s accounts of rock star debauchery were essentially true, some aspects were sensationalized. “He never partied a lot like he said in the book. He never had chicks. That was never his style.”

Davis says Welch is now living in a Christian community in Arizona that main­tains a cult-like hold over the former Korn guitarist, and he also believes they prevent Welch from communicating with his former band mates. But despite the apparent rift, Davis wishes him luck. “I’m glad he found something to get him sober and make him happy. And the whole God thing, if he needs that, it’s fine. People need God and all that stuff to do something positive in their life. In my opinion he traded one addiction for another. But at least it’s a positive one.”

Welch’s departure didn’t stop Korn, but while on tour in Europe in 2005, Davis had a health scare that almost did. After noticing a series of mysterious bruises on his body, he was diagnosed with a rare blood disease called Immune Thrombocytopenia Purpura, or ITP. His blood couldn’t coagulate, which posed a unique occupational hazard for a heavy metal singer; head banging became potentially lethal. The six-month steroid cure was as painful as the disease. “Steroids make you just go crazy in your head. You’re aggressive and your body aches when you’re coming off of them. You can’t sleep. And when they start weaning you off of them, your joints ache. It really fucks with you,” Davis says. Now completely recovered, Davis is excited to work on his solo projects and more music with Korn. But even more than that, he’s glad to spend time with his kids. “I’m not saying I’m some boring dude. I’m just an artist that’s a really good father. That’s rare. People trip out on that.”
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