“Without obsession, life is nothing.” Sure, it was our Queer Confucius John Waters who supposedly uttered this maxim, but this guiding artistic sentiment perhaps applies even more accurately to Waters’ “gutter film” predecessor, the notorious Ed Wood Jr. In his illuminating recent book Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA (via OR Books), Will Sloan interrogates … Continue reading
Olivia Nuzzi’s much-maligned memoir American Canto opens with a phone call and a cockroach rave. Stomping down Fifth Avenue in front of the Met, Nuzzi argues with croaky-voiced bear-crime-scene-stager and whale-beheader Robert F. Kennedy Jr…I mean, The Politician…about whether their long-shot presidential candidate x political journalist affair is wrong (it is). Answering his invocation of … Continue reading
Thank the filth elders above that Connie Marble somehow survived her attempted execution for assholism and skulked from Baltimore to small-town Pennsylvania to live out her sunset years! That was the first thought that crossed my mind as Aunt Gladys rounded the corner of Pepperidge Farm, crap cereal, and hot dog enthusiast Principal Marcus Miller’s … Continue reading
*Boom! POW! Squeeeee! SKWIZZzzzzzzzzz!* Well, hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams patriots? What’s that? HUH?! I can’t hear you over the fireworks blowing enthusiastic revelers’ hands off in the shining daylight sun! Hmmm? You’re not feeling particularly patriotic this year? Well, who can blame you?! But let’s see if we can change that! Rather than fetting … Continue reading
Chain restaurants at the mall used to mean something in this country. Stand-alone restaurant storefronts just a short jaunt away from the mall’s irresistible gravitational pull did too. Or at least I thought they did. When I was a teen in suburban Pittsburgh during the early aughts, Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Outback Steakhouse, Texas Roadhouse, … Continue reading
A square chunk of gaudy gold sits at the center of a low table, overpowering much of the other décor visible in the room—an inescapable brick of tacky opulence. One side reads in all-caps like your furious Boomer relative’s Facebook rant: TRUMP. On top is an ornate seal just out of view, obscured by the … Continue reading
At some point in college—or maybe grad school, I sought out Peter Hujar’s only published photobook Portraits in Life and Death at New York University’s Bobst Library. I wanted to pour over black and white photographs of filth elders like a pensive portrait of Divine, sans wig and forehead-reaching liquid eyeliner, curled up in a … Continue reading
A car crash is the most American way to leave this planet, isn’t it? The freedom of the open road and the promise of auto manufacturing fracturing into shards of metal and glass, airbags blowing into bone, skidding tires squealing before the crunch. And…welcome to the car smash! Certainly, I’m not the only one who … Continue reading
Faint, daydreamy pencil doodles of poised women with 1940’s-style wasp waists, their faces simple with cupid-bow lips and angled Barbie cat eyes, cover a ragged piece of three-hole-punched lined paper yanked from a drug store notebook. Beside and below these figures are mannequin-like heads with less defined faces. What they lose in facial features, they … Continue reading
Volunteering to have your face sat on in public is all it takes to earn my respect. Apparently, anyway. The act of being smothered by a highly sought-after “ass influencer” at a gallery performance was the exact moment when I had to hand it to writer Bianca Bosker: she has dedication. In her art world … Continue reading