First off thanks to everyone who took the time to try and answer the trivia questions. I read each and every response, even after our winner was found, just to see who knew what and if there were any common misconceptions. I love body modifications and I love knowing where we (as the bod mod community) came from. I hope that the younger readers will see these questions and develop a yearning for more knowledge on our past, present and future.
I have left Jamie’s answers as she wrote them in italics, and added a bit to some in regular type, I have also added hyperlinks for more information.
-What does Muzak (the generic elevator music company) have to do with body piercing?
Wealthy Muzak executive Richard Simonton had a private life that involved participating in gay BDSM culture under the pseudonym Doug Malloy. He had multiple genital piercings and wrote a short autobiography called “The Adventures of a Piercing Freak.” He advanced Jim Ward the money to start Gauntlet, and is considered one of the pioneers of the resurgence of modern body piercing.
For a great interview with the man known as Doug Malloy (as well as for an all around good read) be sure to pick up the book Modern Primitives.
-What modern body modifier first made a name for himself by wholesaling CBR’s for under 4 bucks when Gauntlet was still charging around 20?
That would be Steve Haworth.
-What is Fakir Musafar’s birth name?
Fakir was born Roland Loomis.
-What does PFIQ stand for?
PFIQ is the common name for a publication known as Piercing Fans International Quarterly, which was published by Jim Ward.
-Name at least one of Erik Sprague’s aliases besides “The Lizardman”.
Eric Sprague uses the alias ‘thelizardman23′ for many online community and file sharing sites.
One answer I hadn’t considered, but got a lot was Lizard Skynard, his new band. Other possible answers would be Amago or Spidergod5. I think there may be a few others as well, but to quote the lizard himself, “If there is any doubt, then use Lizardman.”
-What does “TSD” stand for ?
TSD stands for Traumatic Stress Discipline, a suspension group. TSD originally stood for Traumatic Stress Disciples. However when a newscast misquoted it as Traumatic Stress Discipline the members decided to keep that name.
-What was Todd Bertrang formally arrested for?
The formal charges were: Child Porn, Obscenity, Conspiracy to Violate FGM Laws, and Felon in Possession of a Firearm. Todd Bertrang was a mod artist who performed genital cuttings. FBI agents posed as a wealthy Arabian couple looking to have their daughters’ genitals modified and offered 20 million dollars, to which he responded with “I’ll think about it.” The FBI raided his home, where they found “obscene photographs” (photos of his mod work), “child pornography”, and a gun. Because of this, he and his partner were put in prison.
This article Shannon wrote years ago gives good detail as to the events that went down.
-What is a RABbit?
A reader and participant in the newsgroup rec.arts.bodyart is known as a RABbit.
Before BME became an interactive community site, the best place on the net to discuss body mods was rec.arts.bodyart. One of these days I plan to do a feature on the old group, I just need to get some more replies from members.
-Who’s collection of photos, were the basis of the Shawn Porter Collection?
The Jack Yount Collection was the basis of the Shawn Porter collection.
-Who was the primary photographer of the BME trading cards and the Modcon books?
Philip Barbosa was the primary photographer.
-What bodmod artist worked with Dee Snyder to design the piercings seen in the movie “Strangeland”?
Piercing “design” for the movie was done by the then New York-based body modification artist Keith Alexander.
-What was BME’s original url?
bme.FreeQ.com
Bonus Question:
In the acronym DFWC, which stands for ‘Don’t Fuck With Chuck”, who is Chuck?
Allen Falkner, of course 🙂
This (as was pointed out by some in the comments) was a fairly easy trivia. However, lot’s of readers had no clue, which is why I feel it is important to get this info out there. I hope to do these trivias about once a month. If anyone has any suggestions for questions, as always, feel free to shoot me an email using the link next to my picture below this post.
So whatever happened to Todd Bertrang?? Was he released from Prison? Did he die?
I believe that shannon actually had BME up at http://www.io.net/~glider/ long before that newfangled freeq URL. (At one point it was also http://freeq.com/underground/bme – circa 1996, looks like.)
Ah, the bad old days of rec.arts.bodyart, when there were endless flamewars over whether tattoos were sufficiently bodyartish or not, and when Silver Anchor was that jewelry upstart….
I thought disciples was spelled wrong on a show’s overhead projector and they went with it