Exploiting the Archives: Karrine "Superhead" Steffans edition

I’m generally a pretty respectable, buttoned-down sort, your typical repressed Juggalo. I’m a dad, a husband and a small business owner but every once in a while I like to get a little bit dirty, not unlike Christina Aguilera and Redman circa 2002. Or 2 Live Crew. Or the big homie Pigpen. That dude was perpetually enshrouded by a cloud of smoke. 

I can also be clean. When I was conceptualizing the Weird Accordion to Al, for example, I challenged myself to write hundreds of thousands of words on a single subject without using profanity even once. So far I’ve held to that. Is it a big fucking temptation to just toss in swear words willy-nilly? Not really. I find that the more profanity you use, the less fucking impact it has. Now that last fucking, it had no impact whatsoever, did it? 

Generally, I’m only dirty when the situation and subject calls for it, or, alternately, if the situation egregiously doesn't call for it. Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter was ostensibly targeted at the Younglings, but I amused the hell out of myself imagining the King Features Syndicate having the filthiest fuck-fest this side of The Aristocrats (the joke). 

With the exception of Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter, I have seldom been as filthy as I was writing about groupie turned author turned one-one woman industry Karrine “Superhead” Steffans, who rose to camp infamy when she released 2005’s Confessions of a Video Vixen, a riveting tell all so wide-ranging and ubiquitous it’s as close as Hip Hop has produced to Pamela Des Barres’ classic groupie tell-all I’m With the Band. 

I gleefully covered Confessions of a Video Vixen for Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club, with its myriad glorious revelations, chief among them Fred Durst’s pillow talk (him cooing “Make me cum and I’ll marry ya” stands out in my mind for some reason) and his habit of ordering three times more food than he could possibly eat, then sending away plate after plate of barely nibbled-upon food, something that impressed the author to no end. 

I was so fascinated by Steffans and her world that I also wrote about her follow-up, 2007’s The Vixen Diaries for the same column. This wasn’t quite as juice and explosive as her debut was. How could it have been? Yet it was fascinating to read and write about all the same. 

I haven’t revisited Steffans’ lascivious aura in a while, and, to be honest, I would have written these articles with more tact and sensitivity today. 

I'd probably read a tell-all about ex-boyfriend Bill Maher as well. 

Elliott Kalan of The Flop House mentioned one of these pieces on the podcast and I was blown away that one of the smartest people in comedy could enjoy something so incredibly stupid. 

And while I previously imagined that I was done with Steffans as a writer, I just discovered that she’s also the author of a Kindle single about being in a relationship with Li’l Wayne called How to Make Love to a Martian that so looks so terrible/awesome that I would not be surprised if it’s a Literature Society entry in the not too distant future. 

Ah, Steffans. She is the gift that keeps on giving. 

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