Punk / TVparty! Books

1. Slang.
a. something or someone worthless or unimportant.
b. a young ruffian; hoodlum.
c. an inexperienced youth.
d. a young male partner of a homosexual.
e. an apprentice, especially in the building trades.
f. Prison Slang . a boy.

3. a style or movement characterized by the adoption of aggressively unconventional and often bizarre or shocking clothing, hairstyles, makeup, etc., and the defiance of social norms of behavior, usually associated with punk rock musicians and fans.

Kip Noll's tan was a faded memory, alabaster skin accenting a spotted face, surprisingly dressed in his signature Daisy Dukes, those aquavescent eyes too blurry to focus on much. Not that they needed to, he didn't have any say about anything. The raw attraction was undeniable but there was no sense of him enjoying any measure of success. In any other circumstance I would have assumed he was a hustler that hit his sell by date.

Over the years, Spider and I endured a lot of shit as an openly gay couple. There were times when we got pelted by rocks, water balloons, and we were called Faggot I can't tell you how many times. A guy pulled a knife on us at a Sav-On drug store. In 1972 we had a little cat named Ginkmo that disappeared, we were looking everywhere for him and when we came home and there was a box by our apartment door that said 'Faggot' across the top and we found Ginkmo in there dead with a noose around his neck. We took a lot of shit.

When the roughest of the rough trade found themselves at the intersection of desperation and fierce defiance they were primed and ready for David Hurles. Saul warned me about this roving sexual predator. A slight, unassuming but shifty Hispanic fellow in his late-thirties, Hurles came to us almost every week with his latest photo spreads. After consulting with Saul, he would drift over to my corner, accompanied by the latest refugee he'd scraped off of Hollywood Boulevard.

The Casablanca club was having new wave dancing that night with KROQ's Rodney Bingenheimer. Some nearby Led Zep rednecks who don't want this punk thing spreading and spoiling their Orange County paradise, started (and lost) a fight with the bouncers at the club. They came back in the middle of the night and torched the place. The owner also has had problems with his other club, The Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa. The Cuckoo's Nest is the premiere place in Orange County to see live hardcore but it happens to be right next door to a redneck bar where they hate punkers 'to the max.' To the concrete.

I watched in horror as Dale Bozzio, lead singer of Missing Persons, stumbled off the stage at the New Florentine Gardens in tears having just endured what no performer ever wants to face and few ever have to—a hostile crowd of punks that booed, hissed, spit and threw pennies. Before the set I told Chuck Wild, the group's keyboardist, I was worried something of the sort might happen, that's what happens when you send a power pop band to open for one of the UK's hardest of the hardcore, Stiff Little Fingers.

About the author: Billy Ingram launched TVparty.com in 1997 and it quickly became one of the Internet’s hottest spots for entertainment attracting millions of users a month; TVparty! was the first to broadcast clips of TV shows online.

In 2002 he released the best-selling book TVparty: Television’s Untold Tales to rave reviews from around the world. He wrote and starred in two TV series for the VH1 and Bravo networks and produced the Eisner Award nominated book Dear John: The Alex Toth Book.

Billy Ingram produced, art directed,conducted and transcribed dozens of interviews to craft the storyline for Beyond Our Wildest Dreams, an oral history of Las Vegas in the 1970s.

He was a designer on some of the most successful Academy Award campaigns, film trailers, and movie posters of all time, for stars like Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and many others.

An internationally acclaimed actor, Internet pioneer, artist, and writer, Billy Ingram starred in the 2011 indie motion picture Swimming in a Lake of Fire.