“I’ll never forget the humiliation of bringing my portfolio up to Carmel Snow’s office at Harper’s Bazaar and unzipping it only to have a roach crawl out and down the leg of the table. She felt so sorry for me that she gave me a job,” writes Andy Warhol in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: … Continue reading
Last week, Vanity Fair published “Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick: A Brief, White-Hot and Totally Doomed Romance,” a rambling yet nostalgic look into Andy and Edie’s short-lived mutual obsession. Comparing Andy and Edie to, at once, Marilyn Monroe and Romeo and Juliet, the article is a lot, but it also managed to rekindle my fascination … Continue reading
“There is no before,” exclaims Flawless Sabrina, discussing the nuances of drag names in the beginning of the iconic 1968 drag documentary The Queen. For fellow queens, trans and gender non-conforming people and generally, anyone invested in queer history, it’s nearly impossible to imagine a before Flawless Sabrina. Drag pioneer, mother and grandmother to numerous … Continue reading
Writing about nightlife isn’t easy. Something about that transcendent substances and dancing-fueled atmosphere gets lost in translation when put to a page. Not that many academics and fellow writers haven’t attempted to capture that rhythmic, sweat and glitter-drenched disco ball-illuminated utopia. But, staid and stodgy academics that haven’t stepped foot in a club in the past 20 years or maybe ever don’t typically spin captivating tales of after-hours debauchery. Continue reading
After the dreamy crack of fireworks and a soar of cinematic strings, Lana Del Rey begins her lush love song “National Anthem” with the frank line: “Money is the anthem of success.” Celebrating the all-too-rich, beautiful and doomed, the corresponding 8-minute long video features Lana immersed in a Kennedy-esque Camelot fairytale with A$AP Rocky playing the JFK to Lana’s Jackie. Continue reading
Are all major institutional exhibitions on queer culture doomed to fail? That’s what it unfortunately seems like, especially in the wake of self-asserted “groundbreaking” exhibitions like Art AIDS America (though not identity-based per se, obviously touched on queer culture and activism) and more recently, the Museum of the City of New York’s Gay Gotham. Curated … Continue reading
Finishing his manifesto with a rallying battle cry for the absurd or, as he describes, “instructions for use,” Theatre of the Ridiculous auteur Charles Ludlam writes, “This is farce not Sunday school. Illustrate hedonistic calculus. Test out a dangerous idea, a theme that threatens to destroy one’s whole value system. Treat the material in a … Continue reading
Describing the initial inspiration behind his aggressively and amusingly trying amphetamine-fueled tome a: A Novel in his more palatable The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), Andy Warhol explains, “I think it all started because I was trying to do a book. A friend had written me a note saying … Continue reading
“She lost all her innocence She said, ‘I am not a feminist’ –Hole, “I Think That I Would Die” Examining society’s impossible expectations for women in her essay “Bad Feminist: Take One,” Roxane Gay describes, “…the right way to be a woman is to be thin, to wear makeup, to wear the right kind of … Continue reading
In an interview with The Guardian’s Dominic Rushe, photographer and porn star Peter Berlin explains, “I have wondered what it would be like to just have Peter Berlins on this planet. I think I’d prefer that. It sounds selfish. Very rarely have people made me stop the way I made people stop. If I was … Continue reading