After partying like a rock star for the past 35 years, Gene Simmons is surprisingly reticent about some things. Sure, he’ll boast that he’s had sex with 4,800 different women—all meticulously counted and cataloged, apparently—and he’ll rant about almost any issue at the slightest provocation.

But at 58, the Israeli-born Kiss frontman (who spent his early childhood in Haifa as Chaim Witz, the son of a Holocaust-surviving Hungarian mother) becomes as shy as a blushing schoolgirl when the subject is his money.
    
“I’m not here to dispel anybody’s rumors either up or down about assets I have. Those are sort of private issues,” Simmons demurred in an exclusive interview with Portfolio.com over the phone from Bilbao, Spain, where Kiss was in the midst of an eight-month world tour.  
 

SIMMONS SAYS On Downloads: "You're making a living off your music, why would you give it away for free?" On Touring: "If you're Kiss, you can take out 75 percent of gross." On Prostitution: "They should be paying me." On Carbon Emissions: "You're better off getting rid of cows."

Luckily, he had plenty to say about his philosophy of business, life, politics, and art.

Lloyd Grove: How are you?

Gene Simmons: I’m deliriously happy.

L.G.: Excellent. So let's get started. You've been pretty vocal about internet downloading of music, and you've had some critical remarks to make.

G.S.: That's like saying, "You're pretty vocal about a nuclear holocaust."

L.G.: [Laughs] But, Gene, it's happening, there's nothing we can do about it—

G.S.: Oh, you can't? No, you're wrong.

L.G.: Tell me why you're not like some horse-and-buggy guy complaining about the automobile?

G.S.: Oh, no, no, no, I think it's very clearly a matter of worldwide theft. And that what's needed—consortium is not just a big word like gymnasium. [It would include] rights holders, writers, publishers, record companies, or at least the entities that now hold the assets of those companies, which have since gone belly-up and have enormous debts—my sense is a trillion dollars of lost income. Hundreds of thousands of people thrown out of work by music fans who decided, one way or the other, by hook or by crook, to stop paying for content. There's no difference between that and movies or anything else that you own. So you're Norma Kamali and you design an outfit, and your name is your brand and your ownership—and your name is your signature. Nobody else should be free to sign your name and your signature to a check and cash it, not without your permission, and certainly not without you getting paid. What's missing is repercussions for bad behavior. Jail time, taking peoples' homes, cars. I mean legitimate hardcore penalties for theft.

L.G.: Well, if you have millions upon millions of people around the world doing this, particularly—

G.S.: That means that there are possibly trillions of dollars which can be collected.

L.G.: Sure, but what is the enforcement mechanism? Who has the resources to go chase down teenagers in their houses and haul them out in handcuffs?

G.S.: In order to fight a big army, you need a big army. So that means all the writers and the publishers and the people on one side who have been stolen from need to get together and go after the people who have stolen from them. But that also involves carriers—YouTube, everywhere else where content is put out that doesn't pay for it—and it doesn't just involve individuals. They get the stuff delivered through entities that are making a good living. It's a parasitic life form. But by the way, I'm not so much complaining as an individual, because I'm rich and famous—I'm filthy rich-and that's good.

L.G.: Sure.

G.S.: And that's what America is all about-to aspire, to work and then get paid for your work and blah blah blah.

L.G.: Let's agree that artists certainly deserve the fruits of their labors.

G.S.: Let's.

L.G.: And the ancillary people, the producers, technicians, etcetera. But are you suggesting that you put together some private sort of civil-litigation force, or what?

G.S.: Oh, in all areas. I think you tug on the shirtsleeves of the legal system and, at the same time, start class-action suits.

L.G.: I see. So a Team America: World Police for the music and record business.

G.S: Well, there is one for drugs—there didn't used to be.

L.G.: How successful has the one for drugs been, Gene?

G.S.: That question sounds like you're giving up—which is to say, it hasn't been very successful. But what's the alternative? Nothing?

L.G.: Well, the alternative, I suppose, which has been put forward by groups such as Radiohead, is to try and figure out a new business model. [Last year the British rock band released its seventh album, In Rainbows, on the internet, telling downloading fans to pay what they wished.]

G.S.: That's a fallacy. That was a one-time event for them. They're not going to go back to that model because you can't make a living. If you're nobody, you don't have any sort of downside—"Yeah, take my music for free." But if you're somebody, which is to say you're making a living off your music, why would you give it away for free? I mean there's got to be a demarcation between what charity is and a capitalist venture.

L.G.: This is the problem, of course, that's faced by many businesses that have been affected by the internet. I come from the newspaper business, and newspapers are on an inevitable downslide in circulation and advertising because their content is available for free online.

G.S.: I think you're missing my point. Whether newspapers and paper goods become a thing of the past or not, underlying rights is what needs to be protected. If you create something, and you own it, the question is, should other people be able to have access, make copies, and bypass you and not pay you? That's really the issue. It's a legal, moral, and ethical question. I mean, the farmer goes into the henhouse and complains that there are no chickens and no eggs left. Well, moron, you let the foxes in whenever they want, so what do you expect? Of course there aren't any. So this doesn't affect me. Kiss is on a world tour, our 35th anniversary, we're selling out stadiums, and we're about to play to 50,000 people in Bilbao, Spain.

L.G.: Is that where you are now?

G.S.: Yeah, literally.

L.G.: I looked at the pictures on your website. Awesome. Those crowds are amazing.

G.S. And we're thrilled and blessed and all that stuff. But how sad that there's not going to be another Beatles or Kiss or U2 or whoever. There's not going to be a new band like that, because there isn't going to be an infrastructure to support it. And so the next generation is happening right now. There are some really good bands out there that are never going to see the light of day. You always hurt the one you love. Well, the people who love the music the most are the ones that are killing it. Again, I'm not complaining for me. I get paid every time I get up on stage—and [from] 3,000 licensed goods, everything from Kiss condoms to Kiss caskets.

L.G.: Right, it's easier to sort of supervise and enforce your licensed products than it is your music. But can you make sure that your music is protected as well?

G.S.: Well, we simply don't put out new music. We put out DVDs, our Kissology DVD trilogy, volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, is approaching 20 times platinum, 20 times—that's from the R.I.A.A. [Recording Industry Association of America]—each disc! [Street noise] The music you hear in the background is people marching through the streets. I'm out on the terrace.

L.G.: I hope it's not a revolution or a coup!

G.S.: Well, it's happened before in Spain, it's pretty volatile here. So again, this doesn't affect us, but the new bands, forget it. It's a crime. And the reason the film industry began to battle piracy is they saw the death of the record industry. They actually arrest people. They actually see people with video cameras filming the movie, and they arrest them in the movie theaters, and they take them to court.

L.G.: Of course, we could talk about this endlessly. Obviously there are certain countries like China that don't respect even rudimentary copyright laws.

G.S.: So far. But they're coming around, because of capitalism and trade and sanctions and blah blah blah, they're coming around. Because China is going to see that as soon as it enters the underlying rights world, which is to say, the next Chinese person who creates the next Pokémon, Chinese version, is going to want to reap the rewards. So if you're a Chinese filmmaker, or songwriter—you know, right now, China doesn't have any pop culture that anybody gives a shit about. I can't name you a Chinese comedian, or actors or superheroes or anything. But when that first Chinese superhero or cartoon or song or painting becomes a worldwide phenomenon, you bet your ass, they're going to be more vocal about it than Western culture, and they're going to want to get paid. Same thing with India. I can't name you an Indian comic book, cartoon character, comedian, actor, and don't really care.

L.G.: Well, Bollywood, of course.

G.S.: Means nothing outside of India. And over there they collect 50 cents or whatever per ticket. Once they see billions of people willing to go to their movies, what do you think they're going to do? How about if there's an Indian rock band who all of a sudden starts making records that everybody wants to buy? Stranger things have happened. There have been German bands that have sold platinum. So that first Indian band, do you think they're going to let the rest of us have it for free?

L.G.: So we should be propping up the popular culture of India and China and sort of accelerating this process?

G.S.: We should be doing nothing. Capitalism is a wonderful, self-generating sort of entity. Let the cards fall where they may.

L.G.: I just wanted to ask you—you're in the middle of this humongous world tour which you started in March and you're going to the end of August—what's that been like, traversing the globe on this very demanding tour?

G.S.: It's not demanding at all. Anybody who complains just wants sympathy. It's the life of Reilly. You live on Mount Olympus. I don't even have to wipe my ass if I don't want to. People carry your luggage, you travel on your private jet—there's nothing to complain about. And the big guys don't. You never hear Mick Jagger open his mouth. Bono will say nothing. It's lonely at the top? No, it's not. You can have as much flesh as you can digest. It's not lonely—we get paid very well, hideously well—everybody wants to be us, and we have access to any girls we want.

 
L.G.: How old are you, Gene? 58, 59?

G.S.: Yeah. By the way, only white people talk like that. You never hear a black person say to B.B. King, "Aren't you 80? Isn't it time to stop?" White people are fucked!

L.G.: So you think I'm white, do you?

G.S: Well, the biggest stars in the world are over 60-McCartney and the Stones, those are the bands you want to go see. There isn't a 20-year-old band that can sell out a stadium.

L.G: Now are you really partaking of the full-dress rock star's life at age 58 or 59? Or are you just telling me you're doing that for marketing purposes, since you're a genius marketer?

G.S.: Nobody's a genius. We're all trying to figure out how to make the next buck. Think what you will. I mean, when you lead your life, you live your life. And whether somebody thinks it's a good story or not, who cares? You ask me a question and I answer it, and then you make of it what you will.

L.G.: So tell me a little bit about what you've learned about business. You sort of learned the hard way, did you not?

G.S.: Business has never been easy, and the delusion that musicians and writers and artists and people like that, who aspire to this thing called show, actually never really paid much attention. In the spirit of full disclosure before the fact, and truth in advertising, it is actually called the music business and show business. It's not called music or show—it really isn't. And it isn't called film, it's called the film business. You know? And art, it really is the art business. They call it the art "world," they don't want to use the word business, and words like inspiration and all that stuff is nonsense. The classic musicians and artists of the past, during the Renaissance period, these were commercial artists. These were commercial writers. Chamber music was based on the premise that the lord of the manor walked up to the guy, and said, "I want a three-minute piano concerto, put it in my chamber, there's going to be just a few guests and royalty"—that's why it's called chamber music, by the way. And that's why Mozart sometimes had three-minute piano concertos. You know why? Because that's what he was paid to do. [What] they were all paid for, and that includes the Sistine Chapel. The pope shows up and says, "I don't like that." They're commercial artists.

L.G.: Absolutely, I take your point. But what I wanted to get from you was, in the early part of your career up until perhaps the '90s, you were in a situation where the series of people who were managing Kiss and managing your business affairs and investing your money were doing a wretched job. Was there a point back in the '90s when perhaps you had only $6 million in assets or something like that, and you learned a lot about business the hard way? I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

G.S.: Well, sure. But it's fair to say that whatever numbers people think are the real numbers aren't anywhere near that—but I'm not here to dispel anybody's rumors either up or down about assets I have. Those are sort of private issues. I'm responding to the $6 million thing, which is a very funny number. That's okay. My mother eats more for lunch than that amount of money. But the point is that I will always be at the top of my list in terms of priorities. People who work for you, and with you, don't always have you at the top of their lists. Now, if and when they do, and if they have the goods to deliver, then it works. And, like any job, you have to understand that everybody—managers, agents, everybody else—works for you, not the other way around. And if at any point, they don't do what you think they should be doing—you fire them. Nothing personal. It's not called "friends," it's called business. And so people have been let go a number of times, and will continue to be, I'm sure, in the future.

L.G.: Right, but did you have a wake-up call at some point and say "Look, I, Gene Simmons, have got to get my arms around all this and control it myself and not leave it to people who don't have my best interest at heart"? Was there a point when you realized that?

G.S.: That's a really good point, and it's a good caution for anybody about anything. The more you know about the structure, the infrastructure of the process, the dynamics, who's in it, why, the agendas, and so on, the more you'll be able to make cognitive and astute decisions about your life. And every decision you make either increases your assets or decreases them-whether or not you're in mutual funds or whether or not you'd go down a dark alley or go down a well-lit alley. All those decisions have repercussions up or down. You're right. The more you know, the more astute your decisions might be.

L.G.: I was just wondering if there was a certain time when you said "Aha! I have to do this!" 

G.S.: Well, it's a learning curve. In real life, nothing happens like switching on a light bulb. Those are sort of poetic notions. In the real business world and the real world—politics, religion, and so on—it's a learning curve. You learn a little bit and you learn some more, learn some more, and you've got to keep in the race. And once you stop, technology and the business model overtakes you and leaves you behind. So I used to be a sixth-grade teacher, and I used to teach kids math and English and literature. It was in Spanish Harlem. I think it was P.S. 75. The year was 1972, I think. So I used to teach math to kids—and my daughter, Sophie, comes up to me and shows me math problems, and, I have to tell you, I don't have a clue what she's talking about.

L.G.: Same here.

G.S.: Yeah. And what that means is, we didn't pay attention to the evolution of mathematics, so it bypassed us. And it's no different in math, it's no different in business, it's no different in anything. You know, if you blinked and you opened your eyes all of the sudden, the world became a digital and virtual world. I mean, it happened right away.

L.G: Talking about learning curves, when you see that the people who are most successful in the financial world, the heads of huge investment banks like Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, when you see that they've managed to lose tens and tens of billions of dollars, what do you make of that?

G.S.: Arrogance. Arrogance. Warren Buffett doesn't lose. And that's not because he's Buffett, but because he has a philosophy. He's very conservative. And when you get full of yourself, arrogance kicks in. It's like Tyson, when he was hungry and lean and mean, nobody could stop him. And then he decided to get into the ring in Japan and not train because he thought, "Hey, I'm Mike Tyson." So he got knocked out. It's arrogance.

L.G.: By the way, do you have investments with Berkshire Hathaway?

G.S.: Perhaps.

L.G.: I'm not asking you numbers, Gene. I just wonder if you think it's a good operation, and whether you've put your money there.

G.S.: Well, it's difficult to be quoted. I watch financial guys all the time, especially on the Fox entity, because it just becomes so spirited, and debate goes back and forth. And I also watch CNBC and CNN. I like everybody's point of view, and I've been on those broadcasting entities. I want to make the point about the financial geniuses of the stock market, the ones who have been successful, and there was a study on this. Over the course of the year, they picked 10 places to stick money in and they kept moving it around. And a monkey was given a dart and kept throwing 10 darts at a dartboard, and the monkey beat the best guys in the business. In the short term, that's possible. In the long term, the conservative point of view is what wins.

 L.G.: Between a monkey and Warren Buffet, you'd pick Warren Buffet?

G.S.: I would, because, over the long haul, he's been successful. I think his average is 20 percent or more per year through the years. And if you take a look at what he invests in, it's biotech and communications and medicine and so on. It's AT&T, and every once in a while he'll go Disney. But it's not going to be a startup operation, it's going to be an entity that's been around a long time with a lot of assets. So this guy is a good guy to look at. So why does he do over 20 percent average per year, and the street does about half that? You know, people get greedy, arrogance kicks in. "I'm the genius." You get your face on the cover of BusinessWeek, and then it becomes about the celebrity. People start asking you questions, the way you're asking me, "So what do I do with my money?" And you become full of yourself, and then you think your opinion is the only thing that matters. It's not. I'm very conservative. If I have the cash to buy it, I'll buy it. Perhaps not all for cash, but you have to take a look at the downside. If the ship sinks, do you have another boat so you can move on? You can't just get on and go, "Hey, it's not going to sink." Well, maybe it will.

L.G.: Are you and your business partner, Richard Abramson (who together own a branding and marketing company, Simmons Abramson Marketing), still advising ITU Ventures, this venture capital firm in Century City?

G.S.: We talk. We talk the way we talk here, and the talking is what makes people make decisions. You're the President of the United States, you want to go to war, you don't want to go to war, you sit down, and you talk. You talk with people who have their snoots to the ground. In general, it's pop culture, but everything costs money. Venture capital is a good word for life. Because everything costs money. We think there are different rooms in this building—pop culture is over here, and oil is over there, and communications and biotech are over there—but it's really all the same. Everything costs money, and everything needs people to give you money for either that service or for the product. You have to figure out how to get your stuff into their hands and get their money into your hands, and therein lies the big hurdle. How do you do that for the least amount of money, for the most amount of money, and how do I get them to understand they can't live life without my stuff? And I use that word in a Marshall McLuhan-esque sense. My stuff is important and they need it, and I have to convince them they need it, so part of that is branding and marketing and positioning and advertising. Or, if you can bypass that, then your business model works better, because it doesn't cost as much to get your message out there. Viral is best, because it's the most seductive. That's what we sort of do.

I can't tell you why I know the things that I know, but I'm also clear I know what I don't know. And if you're clear about the issues you don't know, then you're getting a pretty good read. So it doesn't matter whether you're a venture capitalist or whether or not you're in pop culture. Because, as you know, we're the branding marketing company of the IndyCar Series, and that includes the Indy 500. I'm the one that came up with "I am Indy"—and the song. But in order to position a message, you have to understand something about what the thing is and where it wants to go. Those are sort of vague language notions, but I know what they mean. And that doesn't mean I know squat about how an Indy car works. I can't tell you a gear from a schmeckle—I have no clue. And it's completely unnecessary, actually, in the world that we live in. That's why you hire engineers. You have to keep your eye on the big picture, otherwise you'll never get there. And so I understand certain things based on a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's sort of like [Sony chief executive] Howard Stringer. If you sit down and talk with Howard, he'll tell you, "Look, I'm not trained. I don't know a lot about business and stuff like that, but I have a point of view."

L.G.: Now he tells us!

G.S.: Oh, no, he was always very clear, and you want to get a guy like that who isn't concerned with the minutiae. You know, the captain of the ship is not going to be able to fix the ship's engine if it breaks, and can't tell you how it works, but he knows where he's going.

L.G.: Let me ask you about your whole Kiss operation and the licensing. You have 1,000 products that are licensed, as you say, everything from condoms to caskets. Are you licensing new products all the time?

G.S.: All the time. And it's 3,000 products!

L.G.: So not only are you now up to 4,500 sexual encounters-

G.S.: That number is not true.

L.G.: What is the correct number, Gene?

G.S.: 4,800.

L.G.: Do you, like, mark these down? How do you keep track of all that?

G.S.: Well, you have to take photos.

L.G.: [Laughs] So you're licensing new products every day. Was there any point at which you had given over the rights to your music and you had to get it back?

G.S.: Some of the publishing was sold off, because there was a big piece of cash in front of us, and we wanted to use the cash to work on something. But it came back—it all comes back.

L.G.: How hard was that to get it back? What was that process like?

G.S.: Money. If you have money, things are easy. Everybody talks about publishing as being the cash cow. The truth is, if you're lucky and blessed and at the right place at the right time, a lot of variables, live performances are it. It just is.

L.G.: And you control the iconic Kiss costuming and makeup?

G.S.: Right, all of it. It's privately held, there's no debt, never has been. We don't borrow money, and when we go out and do tours, you'll get your live fees, the millions that comes from that every time you get up. But you can also-I mean, as an example—if you are doing $4 per head at a live event on T-shirts, let's say for argument's sake, 50,000 people. And out of those 50,000 people, you average $4 per head per live, they buy a T-shirt. But not everyone has a T-shirt, so it kind of averages out to $4 a pop. That's the gross. We get $4 per head, so that's two hundred grand. But we just played Paris yesterday, day before, and it was $23 a head. As you can see, that's just for T-shirts. They have hall fees and something like 20 to 25 percent hall fees, sort of paying quote "rent" to the entity—and there are price of goods fees. But we make a living.

L.G.: How does that break down? What percentage of the take goes to expenses and hall fees and other things?

G.S.: It's as different as the people who work in it. Even with hall fees, you can negotiate them. As an example, if you're a live entity and you control the concert hall, you're going to be harder on bands that come in and only play once. But if you're the Stones or Kiss or U2, you're going to want to be nice to them, because they can play anywhere and fill up anywhere. So the hall wants the business, because they don't just make money off the band—renting the facility and getting their licensing and merchandising. They make money off of parking and popcorn and peanuts and whatever else they're selling there. And that's where the real money is for the hall.

L.G.: The band doesn't get a piece of those concessions?

G.S.: Popcorn and soda? No. You don't want to get involved in food and beverage, because one person chokes on a popcorn, and you get sued. No, no, no food and beverage for us.

L.G.: Can you give me a ballpark? I'm just curious, I just know nothing about this business that you've been in for four decades—how does it shake out?

G.S.: If you're Kiss, you can take out 75 percent of gross.

L.G.: Wow. How many people do you think in this latest tour...?

G.S.: I think you're mixing different business models. One is licensing, merchandising. The other one is actually putting on a show.

L.G: Okay, were you talking about the licensing business?

G.S.: Yes.

L.G.: Okay, 75 for that. What about the show itself?

G.S.: Well, it costs us around 300 grand a week to pay for expenses. And, again, if a band goes out there with 10, 15 trucks, it's going to cost them that much. Or you can fly everything. As soon as you put everything on jets, it goes 5 to 10 times as much. You keep on the ground and keep the distances between the cities to 500 miles or so, then you do well. But do an average of four to five shows a week, often five, and we can take out as much as a million or more a show.

L.G.: And how large is your road crew? How many people?

G.S.: Well, it's covered in the 300. In the smaller arenas—say 15,000 to 20,000—we can have a crew of about 30. But as you get up to the stadiums, you have to have mercenaries come in. We don't pay for people manning the porta-potties. But you're going to want to have extra sound, extra lights, so you staff up to maybe 50. Now, again, the sad part of all this, in the music world, is that they took their eye off the ball, or someone opened Pandora's box and they can't figure out how to put it back in. It's over, and there's going to have to be a new business model for new bands. McCartney's always going to do well. He'll be able to play any stadium and play Beatles songs, and I'll pay to go see it. And the Stones. But the next Kiss? Is not going to have a chance.

L.G.: Right, right. Tell me, the A&E show, which is quite charming—

G.S.: Gene Simmons Family Jewels. We start shooting the fourth season in July or August.

L.G.: Now do you own the show?

G.S.: Um, I own most of the show—there are partners. It's seen around the world. I don't know, 60 to 70 countries, something like that. I have the German version, and I can speak German well enough, but the voices they used! [Speaks German] I was telling you the other languages that I speak, but the—

L.G.: Hebrew, German, English, what was the fourth?

G.S.: Very little Hungarian. Sorry, no, full Hungarian—very little Japanese. Hungarian curses are the funniest docile-sounding exclamations. You want to hear some? You know, in English, we say holy shit, what the fuck. Ready for Hungarian? [Curses in Hungarian] That's when you slam your thumb with a hammer or something. Here's the direct translation—"Oh, that's Christ's horse!" [Another Hungarian curse] "That's the pain of the dog!" But you can say you're beautiful in any language—you have to learn that first.

L.G.: Absolutely. So, Family Jewels—let me ask—

G.S.: Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

L.G.: Yeah, yeah, I got it. Can you tell me what kind of revenues you're throwing off annually from your company? I'm not asking profits, just sheer cash flow.

G.S.: Well, it's millions and millions, but I don't want to talk about that because A&E is my partner. We also have a cartoon show on Nickelodeon called My Dad the Rock Star, a comic-book company called Simmons Comics—it's all there on GeneSimmons.com

L.G.: I'm just asking, just all together, if you added it all up, how much cash flow is the Gene Simmons, Kiss business, with the music and the licensing and the ancillary shows—how big a business is that? That's what I'm just trying to get—the order of magnitude.

G.S.: I make a living.

L.G: [Laughs] So, you don't want to tell our readers-

G.S.: No, every day I wake up and new opportunities come up and there's just not enough time—the lecture circuit speaking-engagement thing is all over me—I've done a few.

L.G.: As kind of a business guru?

G.S.: Well, I'm not fond of the business gurus, I'm fond of think tanks. I'm fond of talking and listening. I'm not fond of speeches, because the guy is only going to hear his own voice talking. Business and religion and politics and pop culture are a moving target, and because it's a moving target, the only way you're going to learn is you have to engage people in conversation. If it's stationary, then you can talk all you want, because the rules don't change. But people change, tastes change, and just everything changes, so you have to engage people in conversation, and sometimes it'll take an illiterate to walk up to you and say, "How do you know that?" And that's a good question. Even though he's unqualified to ask anything, he's never done anything, what comes out of his mouth may be actually pretty profound.

L.G.: I want to help you plug your book that's coming out, Ladies of The Night, which is about the oldest business in the world. It seems to be just your sort of appreciation of prostitution, right?

G.S.: Well, it's really not. I neither condemn it nor condone it, you know what I mean? It simply is. I have a fascination with it, and you can take a few different points of view about it. One, that it's despicable and so on and you can take a puritanical point of view.

L.G: Not yours, I would think.

G.S.: Or you could take the point of view that it's women empowering themselves.

L.G.: That would be your point of view?

G.S.: It is. And that what goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults is nobody's fucking business is my point of view, and that what everybody else has to say about it is besides the point.

L.G.: Let me ask you, have you been a satisfied customer?

G.S.: Actually I haven't, but that's only because I'm against the business model. I think they should be paying me. Here's how I position it, and I hope you're recording this. This is a pearl of wisdom. Page one, at the dawn of existence, four million years ago, that first human female grunted to a male counterpart, "I'll stay in this nice warm cave, you go out and risk your hairy behind to bring back that delicious mastodon meat. I'll trade you some of mine for yours." After that momentous event, nothing would ever be the same. Before language, before culture, before currency, before even religious questions, before anything. The very first time that male either didn't kill, hunt, or in essence use his physical powers to overcome something, and not share it with somebody, was sex.

L.G.: So this is the spark that ignited the economic engine?

G.S.: All of it, that's precisely the point. Sex ignited, well, obviously the biological imperative, the urge to merge, but also, sex is the very first spark that ignited civilization, civility, nonviolent sort of social harmony. It is sex itself, or from the female, that created the social structure. Otherwise, every guy would be trying to kill every other guy. So there's less food and so on, and you don't want to share it with anybody in the pecking order. Testosterone would rule. It is sex itself that was the spark that ignited all of it.

L.G.: Let me end with this: Obviously we're in the middle of a very heated presidential campaign. Who do you think would be better for the economy, Obama or McCain?

G.S.: Well, I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican—I mean, both are full of hot air. On the far right, you've got wacky religious anarchists, and then on the far left you've got communists and socialists, and so neither works very well, which is why sometimes Democrats and sometimes Republicans get voted into public office. People tend to vote for ideals more than political parties, and I think that's healthy. I am a social liberal in terms of female rights. I think anybody who wants to get married should be allowed the hell that that brings—so married gay men, good luck, why the hell would you want to get married in the first place? Good luck. You want some of that torture? Go for it. I think the gay community is looking for something else—some kind of validation, and I'm all for it by the way, but marriage is hardly the place. I'd want to just get paid just as much. The hell with anything else, just give me the money. But fiscally, I'm very conservative. I'm against charity—I'm totally for jobs. I can always give you money, but you'll go through it, then you're done. I'd rather give you education and skills so you can go and make your own money. So I'm against welfare. I'm for giving people jobs so they can make their own money so they don't have to say thank you to anybody, including me. When you give charity—it's often awkward to people. But, of course, I'm like you, I want the world to stop living in hunger and blah blah blah. I don't want socialism, I think the idea of a universal health care, and you have a right to be taken care of-actually, you don't. And I don't think it's government's responsibility to pay for your medical bills. That's why businesses are moving offshore, because as an employer, if I hire you, it's not just that I have to pay rent, insurance, the price of goods, your salaries, deal with the unions when they go on strike and torture me. But I also have to make sure that if you're pregnant, you have maternity leave, and pay you for it, and if you have a broken tooth, I have to make sure that's taken care of, and when you retire, I've got to worry that you're paying your taxes and stuff like that. So no wonder it's difficult to make money in this country. By the way, the employer is the last one that gets paid. First one is the person who works for you, then you've got to buy the price of goods, you've got to pay rent, and if there's a profit left, the owner of the company gets paid. And I'm for making it easier. I'm pro-Corporate America. I think that corporations are what makes America possible. I like Wal-Mart.

L.G.: Do you like Exxon Mobil having record profits on rising oil prices?

G.S.: I do. You want to know why?

L.G.: Yes.

G.S.: I would encourage the American oil companies to make as much money as possible so that we put the money in our oil companies instead of the Middle East.
L.G.: Are you for offshore drilling and A.N.W.R. drilling?

G.S.: You know, the druthers. Of course, there are environmental issues, but neither you nor I are qualified to say what's environmentally sound. For all the global-warming issues everybody talks about, we'd be better off killing cows because the methane released from cow farts literally is causing the biggest hole in the ozone. 

L.G.: Really? Are those more damaging to the ozone than your G5 or whatever it is you're getting around in?

G.S.: Yeah, yeah, that's a popcorn fart.

L.G.: Can I just say for the record that my carbon footprint is one zillionth of yours, and I feel like a better citizen for it?

G.S.: Probably, but it's not the carbon emissions that's the problem, it's methane. They're telling you the wrong things. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't limit the emissions and the garbage we dump from stuff like that, but it's political. I think you should be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor, but you're better off getting rid of cows, which is not going to happen, because the emissions of the methane causes holes in the ozone which increases the ultraviolet rays, etcetera. But that's a tough one for people to swallow, although it's absolutely true, and you're welcome to do the research.

L.G.: Asking about McCain and Obama . I know you've been kind of a hawk on Iraq, I don't know where you're on it now.

G.S.: I'm a hawk. It's very funny how people use those terms. I think...

L.G.: It's a branding-marketing term.

G.S.: No it's not, I think it's a political positioning for people who don't agree. And the people who want peace more than you or I are the soldiers in the front line... I want the opinions of the people who actually risk their lives voluntarily. I want to know what they think, not what somebody who's having a margarita in the afternoon is thinking.

L.G.: Fair enough. But between Obama and McCain—

G.S.: I'm about to answer. Socially, perhaps environmentally, I like Obama. In terms of foreign policy, I prefer McCain. In terms of the economy, I believe Obama is going to have a damaging effect on our economy.

L.G.: So are you undecided at this point?

G.S.: I think most people are. That's why it's fifty-fifty. That's why even Hillary supporters are thinking of voting for McCain. But that's good. I think this is a terrific time for politics. My gut tells me that Obama's got history on his side, sort of like the black John F. Kennedy, the underdog, and Kennedy was the first Catholic to be president. We're not voting for issues, we're voting for personality. People know nothing about politics or positioning, they vote based on sound bites. Because nobody reads, nobody digests. And once a president is in office—I mean, for eight years, nobody knew the name of the Vice President of the United States. They just don't because they're busy trying to work and survive and have families and stuff like that. Do I think Al Qaeda cares if it's Obama or McCain? Actually, they do. Muslim extremists don't number in the hundreds of thousands, they number in the millions. That's worldwide. I believe we're fools and delusional, and [we] think here's a fantasy, we pack up, go home, and everything is fine. Nobody's going to try to figure out how to get a dirty bomb, strap it on their chest, and walk down your street to take out your city.

L.G.: So it's a scary world.

G.S.: Yeah, and then your choices are what are you going to do about it? Come home, watch TV? Or are you going to go out there, whether everyone agrees with you or not. Remember, America created the League of Nations—tried to get countries to talk-but it failed miserably—two World Wars followed. America tried again with the United Nations-it continues to fail daily at a miserable rate, while Muslims were being killed by Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the U.N. did shit. Nothing. It took American planes to go over and drop a few bombs for everybody to come to their senses. The just horrific events that are going on across the African continent, including Mugabe and Sudan and just everywhere, Darfur. What do you think U.N. is doing about it? Nothing. Fucking pathetic. America is not the police of the world. Actually, it is. It actually is. If America ceased to exist, who would you count on? France?