One Monday morning in 7th grade my friend Michelle showed up to class with her boyfriend's name written in hickeys across her back, clearly visible between the straps of her dress-code flouting top. It had happened at a Sublime-and-peach-schnapps fueled party at her place that I hadn't been invited to - because really we weren't very good friends and she, like all my other friends from middle school who later went on to jobs in strip clubs and cocktail waitressing, mostly only spoke to me on exam days - so when she was sent home by our prudish, elderly English teacher I remember feeling slightly triumphant. Today as I sit here bored to distraction at a pointless job, I envy them. But that's neither here nor there. I can't recall which of her boyfriends was the culprit, Mike or Jameson. Probably Mike, because although Jameson was the bigger freak, Mike is a shorter name and thus easier to fit on a 13 year old's back. I believe she sucked her own name across his back as well, but he wasn't an Honors student so the teacher that was so scandalized by Michelle's love marks never found out about her boyfriend's matching temporary tattoos and he got off the hook.


I would like to see this look recreated. Not on myself, however.

Gotta love, gotta love...

a) her rooftop garden
b) those platform sneakers
c) the red/blond highlights
d) the background dancers

from the Wigstock documentary, a film I thoroughly enjoyed.

Cristina Monet for the Village Voice

Before she was CRISTINA, enigmatic icon of NYC ironic disco euphoria and subsequent no-wave malaise, the thinking/drinking girl's Madonna as depicted on her album covers:




... Cristina Monet-Palaci was writing theater reviews for the Village Voice. Two, specifically. Check them out through the magic of Google's scanned digital archives:

"Dancing on the Precipice"
"Moan for the Misbegotten"

Or don't, since they're kind of boring unless you're a Cristina completist... not that she wasn't a pleasant writer, but who cares about a small-time 1975 production of a George Shaw play? I was intrigued to see what she was up to at the paper, knowing that she had just dropped out of Harvard or Oxford or whatever, and that she met Michael Zilkha (rich kid, entrepreneur, founder of Ze Records, her one-time husband, etc) while they were both "working" at the Village Voice. I was disappointed to see that the subject matter of these reviews isn't nearly as avant-garde as her musical persona, but it's nice to take a peek at the other side of Cristina - the intellectual, Ivy-league educated, snobby and well-manicured rich girl who passes her time writing esoteric reviews for a downtown paper by day before spending her nights getting into sloppy-drunk skirmishes with the vegetarians over her mink while on line for the coatcheck at Danceteria. Speaking of avant-garde performance (why not?) here's what Cristina had to say about the well worn phrase, "The marriage of Grotowski's manner with Racine's material is a completely disastrous example of the prestigiously touted but phony avant-garde."
I don't know what she's talking about, but I like her spunk.

If you really want to get into it, what most reminded me of Cristina's next incarnation as a disco snob's idol and muse was a certain knack for alliterative phasing that pops up from time to time in these critiques... "A forced little farce" and "spasms of sensation" (from the second review) hint at future songs "Ticket to the Tropics" and "Don't Mutilate My Mink" (from her second album). Or maybe not, but I like to imagine Cristina plucking away at a typewriter (that's what they used in 1975, right?) with freshly manicured little red nails (or maybe pale frosty pink), then pausing to take a drag from a long thin cigarette and raising one perfectly arched eyebrow as it occurs to her to call Shaw's play, "a forced little farce," a phrase which already sounds like jaded scornful laughter, years before it would occur to her to apply the same feeling to "La Poupee Qui Fait Non."

the multitude of people you want to fight on a daily basis are too numerous to dwell on but go ahead

Two girls and one guy are walking down Rivington at 11pm last night. I am struggling to lock my bike to the pole of a no parking sign at the mouth of Freemans alley, that fucking place. I'm already frustrated, both with myself for going home with ##### again even though I know it's a bad idea, and because this is a terrible place to lock my bike for the night but it's also the closest to his apartment and he's waiting for me across the street in front of his door, so fuck it, here I am. #####'s got his back turned to me and his hands on his hips, staring up at the sky, probably thinking about how handsome he looks in his new suit or something else he wants to buy. Anyway, these two cunts with scrunched up faces and long, shiny rich-girl hair and this asshole in a fucking porkpie and pimples are heading towards me, sauntering in a smug formation with the girls on either side of the guy and his arms draped over each of their shoulders. They are smug because they're rich and underage, which in this stupid city is the same thing as "cool," and you can feel this smugness dripping off them and fogging up the whole sidewalk before you even see them, like the stench that comes off an alcoholic on a sweaty morning or that of a fat man who ate a lot of garlic last night. My bike is yellow. Apparently, so is the bike belonging to the fuckface in the goddamn fedora because one of the smug bitches looks at me and says, "Watch out Patrick, looks like that girl's trying to steal your bike," and they all snicker and guffaw because they think it's funny that I'm struggling with the lock to a shitty yellow bike and meanwhile down the street he's got some yellow prince of a bike that probably weighs like 10 pounds and has a slick, gorgeous seat designed by an Italian instead of a seat covered in tape and ripped leatherette, and yet they both happen to be on this very block only a few feet away from each other. "Life's funny like that," and "the world is our oyster," they're thinking as they raise their faces to the sky with triumph shining on their ugly mugs. The simmering rage that I've been feeling all day starts to tickle the back of my face again. Why has the world let these cheesy motherfuckers get away with being so goddamn smug? I mean, just last week I was knocked to the ground by a random guy in his unsuccessful attempt to pull the purse off my shoulder and I wasn't feeling nearly half as smug as these twats. These thoughts flash through my head in rapid succession as I look them in the eye in the instant it takes them to pass me:
yank her hair no punch her in the side of the head your keys are still in your hand oh fuck there's three of them and ##### is across the street and if it goes badly you don't want him seeing that and if it wasn't for him you wouldn't be feeling this level of rage right now anyway so just ignore them and get back to locking up your bike.
So I do, but then it occurs to me that I can at least throw something at them from behind; but alas, no half-empty drinks are handy, no disgusting trash litters the street, no chewed gum is in my mouth - oh how perfect, god I'd love to see some gum stuck in that shithead's flowing mane. They continue on, unaccosted. The guy unlocks his bike. They smarm their way back down past me. Hat-wearing fuckface looks back at me, one hand walking his perfect bike, the expression on his face amused and curious, like he finds it delightful to be strolling around on this Tuesday night with his unnecessary bike and his female companions, and when he asks me "Excuse me, are you okay?" I can detect a whiff of derision in his voice even under the pungent stench of smug. The tickle of rage makes my face twitch and wipes all the wit from my mind so all I can do is growl, "Your friends are bitches and you're an asshole." I turn on my heel and stomp across the street where ##### is waiting to tell me that I must be half-retarded for taking so long to lock up my bike.

MC's

These are some good ones:

"I passed you on the way up from Manhattan. You had little shorts and a black tank top, with a tattoo peeking out on your back. Your hair reminded me of some Hawaiian shit, dark, short and cute. I waited on the other side to tell you that you were beautiful, but you headed down South 4th, and I just let you go. I don't wanna make out or anything, just tell you that you/re beautiful, that's all. "

Oh yeah, kid? Who are ya, Holden Caulfield?

and this one:

You Were Sun Bathing in the Socrates Sculpture Garden - m4w (Sculpture Garden)
"You were sunbathing in a red swim suit. You were alone with your hair pulled back. I was in a hat, sunglasses, reading a book. We crossed paths when exiting i asked you, "Did you get enough sun" and then I told you to be careful. You seemed very nice. I would love to meet you again."

Looks like Humbert Humbert's back up to his old tricks, oblivious as ever to his own creepiness.

Today at 9:31 am

A man in drag, somewhat elderly, with red lipstick and dark eyeshadow painted on leathery skin, sporting bright red bobbed hair, wearing a knee-length black skirt paired with a lacy black cardigan, crossing the street purposefully with head held high, glances down, stops abruptly, bends over gracefully in clunky heels - feet together, knees together - like a lady, picks up the penny lying in the cross walk, straightens, places the penny in a small purple purse, and continues on his way, headed god knows where with a lucky penny.

Beautiful Twenties

Polaroids by Alison Nix.