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  • 28 April 2013 Hey Gene, Can't remember if I sent this. From Love ride a few years back. Your gum was electric. Best Regards, Matt Sorum (@mattsorum)
  • 23 July 2012 Seen on the highway on the way to Virginia Beach concert hall - July 21, 2012.
  • 28 April 2013 Here is Kobra and some of her fans in Flint, Michigan. Look out world, here comes Kobra & The Lotus.
  • 25 March 2013 Shannon and Sophie at the Humane Society Event.
  • 28 April 2013 In a pottery store in Indianapolis, Indiana.
  • 25 March 2013 Here's Shannon and Andrew (@positron76) from Wolfmother, at the Brisbane, Australia KISS concert.
  • 01 April 2013 Here is the lovely Mel B (@OfficialMelB) posing in front of the KISS HELLO KITTY Cabinets I had put up in my office.
  • 06 May 2013 'Rock & Brews 2.0' opening in Torrance -- deal sealed with KISS. Solidly middle-class Torrance isn't exactly a rock star sort of town. And that's just fine with KISS icon Gene Simmons, who along with band co-founder Paul Stanley owns the rock 'n' roll-themed restaurant Rock & Brews opening on Thursday. "It's less about the celebrity and more about the experience," Simmons said of the burgeoning chain of craft beer-centric restaurants that got its start in El Segundo. "It's not about us," he added. "It's about you. We just work here. We want you to be a rock star. You may not be a rock star, but we'll make you feel like one. " Torrance becomes the third location for Rock & Brews, which first opened in 2010 in downtown El Segundo as a modest outdoor beer garden to test the concept before a revamped, refined version reopened in early 2012. The 5,400-square-foot Torrance restaurant sits in a sliver of the city adjacent to Redondo Beach's Riviera Village at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Boulevard. The building once housed a Tony Roma's and, most recently, Oliver's Cafe. A second Rock & Brews was unveiled in March in Los Cabos, Mexico. Another opens this summer in the renovated Delta Air Lines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, while one in Agoura Hills is slated for a fall opening. The ambitious goal is to open as many as 100 Rock & Brews in the next five years. Just about everyone involved in the concept is a rock star in their particular field. Founding brothers Dave and Del Furano have toiled in the music industry since the early 1970s, when they worked with Bill Graham at San Francisco's famed Winterland and met such bands as the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead and many others. Over the decades, the pair became known for their tour management and merchandising skills, which is how they hooked up with KISS, a band they've worked with for about 15 years. "This has been a dream of mine for 30 years to open a music-themed, concert-themed restaurant," Dave Furano said. "Beer drinking and rock 'n' roll are synonymous. It worked right out of the chute. " To make the dream a reality, he contacted South Bay restaurateur Michael Zislis, who has opened a series of successful restaurants, including Manhattan Beach's Rock'N Fish and BrewCo, as well as luxury boutique hotel Shade. "They wanted to do a rock 'n' roll concept -- they didn't know exactly what that concept was -- where they could display all their old vintage rock 'n' roll artwork," he said. "And it kind of incorporated all my favorite things, which are beer, food and rock 'n' roll " The motif resembles a backstage concert environment, but with a play area for kids (Zislis has six children) and water bowls for dogs on the expansive patio. "There's a sense here of being backstage at a show, but also being in your living room with friends," Stanley said, noting that the chain isn't intended to be a 21st century version of the Hard Rock Cafe chain, with its ubiquitous T-shirts emblazoned with the city's name aimed at tourists. "A theme restaurant is no excuse for crap food," he added. "And our palettes are refined enough that we know junk when we eat it." Jon Mesko, the partner of the Torrance location, described the new location as "Rock & Brews 2.0." It includes patio fire pit tables with enough room for up to 18 people to sit around, lounge tables equipped with iPads and draft beer taps so patrons can open a tab and pour beers for themselves, and a "Yellow Submarine" play area designed by Mesko's 6-year-old son, Logan. But the focus is firmly on craft beer. Rock & Brew Torrance has 73 draft beer handles compared to 52 in El Segundo, and South Bay breweries such as Torrance's Strand Brewing Co. are prominently featured. "It might surprise and shock people, but you're not going to find Bud Light on tap here," Mesko said, although it is available in a bottle. Depending on how work progresses, the restaurant was eyeing a possible soft opening this weekend before officially throwing open its doors to the public on Thursday. Rock & Brews will host a private luncheon Wednesday for 100 returning military personnel and a charity gala that night for the Torrance Education Foundation Tickets are available at torranceeducationfoundation.org. "We're coming into the neighborhood, but we're also supporting the neighborhood," Stanley said. "One of the things we've found out as we've become successful is that giving back isn't an option, it really is an obligation. It's something that's karmic and makes you feel good." Those aren't words one might expect from your typical self-indulgent rock star. But then Rock & Brews, which faced opposition from some neighbors before it opened, is intended to be more community-oriented rather than emphasizing the magic of rock 'n' roll. "It's dog friendly, kid friendly, and, to a lot of people, that's magical," Zislis said.
  • 31 May 2012 Here is Simmons/Universal recording artist Kobra Paige, who writes the songs and fronts KOBRA & THE LOTUS. Their first album is coming out this summer. Already on tour in Europe doing all the big festivals and playing alongside Metallica, Judas Priest and others. This is the post in Metal Hammer magazine.
  • 23 April 2013 So I went to the pharmacy to get some sunblock, and on the way out, I saw this.
  • 01 May 2013 Spike TV Developing 5 Event Series in Push to Re-Enter Scripted Territory. Projects Tom Fontana, Craig Piligian and Gene Simmons are among the cable network's limited series development slate. Spike TV is hopping on the miniseries trend. The male-focused cable network is eyeing a return to scripted fare, announcing the development of five event series from producers including Hatfields & McCoys'Leslie Greif, among others. "Our move into scripted special-event series is a major step in the evolution of the brand that now reaches a more balanced audience,” said Sharon Levy, executive vp original series at Spike TV, who will oversee each of the five projects. “Each project features our development’s mission to thrill, inspire, and entertain the viewer. We also see this as a stepping stone to developing original scripted dramatic series.” The move marks Spike's first attempt at a mini since its July 2007 event series The Kill Point and first original scripted comedy since Blue Mountain State, which ended its three-season run in November 2011. The mini slate comes as cable networks including History, Discovery and more are looking to the lower-risk miniseries as an entry point into scripted fare following History's success with Hatfields and The Bible. Here's a look at the slate. (Note: All titles are working titles.) HIT MEN From Leslie Greif (Hatfields & McCoy’s), Chris Collins (Sons of Anarchy) and rock God and multihyphenate Gene Simmons (KISS), comes Hit Men, a thrilling look into the untold story of how the mafia took control of the music industry of the 1970s. From rising artists to radio stations to record labels, the impact organized crime had on all facets of the music business in this era was all-consuming and changed the music world forever. The event series will be produced by Thinkfactory Media. WHITEY BULGER PROJECT Written by Academy Award-winning writer Bobby Moresco (Crash) and produced by Jonathan Koch and Steve Michaels of Asylum Entertainment (The Kennedys), this movie event chronicles the raw and unfiltered rise and fall of Whitey Bulger, one of America's most notorious criminals. This four-hour epic delves deep into the life of Boston’s most infamous organized crime leader, who ruled New England’s criminal underworld with an iron fist for decades.  Bulger’s larger-than-life story takes us from his days as a low-level street thug to FBI informant, to mob boss bent on undermining the competition, to the FBI's most wanted list, and fugitive on the lam for 16 years THE LAMP In the 1970s, the United States military set up some very unorthodox and secretive departments to research a wide range of areas from telekinesis to ambient noise to body language. Among these included the Research and Acquisitions Department, designed to covertly find and acquire all artifacts mentioned in religious and mythological texts to determine if any of them truly claimed magical powers. The search came up empty until they came across the legendary Aladdin’s Lamp. The project comes to Spike from the Levinson/Fontana Co. with Brant Englestein (Borgia) as writer. UNTITLED BENGHAZI PROJECT This project lifts the curtain on the untold behind-the-scenes story of the 2012 terrorist attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Based on declassified documents and testimonials from those who were on the ground, this miniseries will shed light on the actual events surrounding the tragic deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, and the heroic actions of CIA operatives that saved dozen of American lives. The untitled Benghazi project comes to Spike from Pilgrim Studios and Emmy Award winner Craig Piligian (Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, The Ultimate Fighter) who is executive producing, along with Pilgrim Studios’ Beth Miller. iHUMAN The stories of how technological innovation is transforming the human condition will be at the center of a series of films from Raw TV, the BAFTA Award-winning team behind the critically acclaimed film The Imposter. As technology becomes such an integral part of our lives and our most personal information becomes captured in a "cloud," how does this affect human interaction? From the comfort of a laptop, we are now able to do everything from cheating on our spouses, to sending SWAT teams to celebrities’ homes, to bringing about revolution or crashing financial markets. The connections in the digital age are actually resulting in a disconnection from humanity and this film series will explore this in a way never before seen on television. Raw TV’s credits also include Gold Rush, Locked Up Abroad and Paranormal Witness.
  • 16 March 2013 CARLINGS GROUP & GENE SIMMONS. We were flown in to Sydney from Brisbane by the CARLINGS GROUP, which is a Norwegian company that owns 200 stores in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and other countries. Jeans and stuff. Very hip. Very young. Very cool. We were on a boat load of young entrepreneurs and I presented the team who earned the most Kroner (Norwegian bucks). Here's one of the teams and a video - http://youtu.be/RF4-5LPZBLM