Aptly Titled

Comments (0) By Hiya Swanhuyser Wednesday, Oct 28 2009

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The truth will out; between 1997 and 2006, a lot of it got out via Morbid Curiosity, a bizarre and fearless magazine edited by Loren Rhoads. The nonfiction project exclusively featured first-person accounts of the disgusting, the horrifying, the sad, and the criminal. Rhoads’ new book, Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, subtitled True Stories of the Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox, and Unusual from the magazine “Morbid Curiosity,” is made up of her own selections from among the hundreds of insane stories she published throughout the years. Like the magazine, the book somehow avoids malice and sensationalism; unlike that other late-'90s shockeroo mag Answer Me!, Morbid Curiosity has no evil aftertaste. It still ain’t for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, though, trust us — one story describes what happens to Golden Gate Bridge jumpers, the crabs who eat them, and the Coast Guard crews who have dinner later that night. Tonight, several writers from the LGBT community read their contributions, including Dean Estes’ story from inside the Oakland Mormon Temple. It’s a sweet and silly-sexy tale of dramatic blasphemy. The mystery of the night is a writer who goes only by “JD,” who was party to the DIY euthanasia of an AIDS-wracked friend. Who’s going to condemn him? And yet the law is not on his side: We know, because Rhoads includes section 187-193 of the California Penal Code as an addendum to “Killing Max.”
Fri., Nov. 6, 7:30 p.m., 2009