White Trash Art

American Heroes and Madmen #7: Michael Alig

In the late 1980's Michael Alig was a very successful NYC club promoter from South Bend, Indiana. His theatrical persona and outlandish costumes were, in part, the aesthetic basis for a small pop-culture cult who were known as the "Club Kids". The club kids became an international phenomenon. I remember seeing a bunch of  them on "Maury" when I was about 18, and they were all about my age. I also remember thinking that they were kind of sad in their life's solitary quest for people to look at them and watch them prance around on ecstasy, being fabulous.

By 1996 Michael Alig was a junkie, addicted to heroin, cocaine, ketamine, rohypnol and more. After an argument with his drug dealer and roommate Angel Melendez, Melendez allegedly started to strangle Alig. Michael's friend Robert "Freeze" Riggs stepped in and bashed in Melendez's head with a hammer. At that point, both Alig and Riggs made a bad situation worse by trying to inject the dealer with intravenous doses of Draino, and by pouring Draino into his mouth and duct-taping it shut. Admittedly in a foggy drug haze, they kept the corpse around the apartment for a week, at one point stuffing it into a chest that people were using to sit drinks on at a house party. After the body started to reek, Riggs, who apparently had an disinclination for cutting up former friends, paid Alig ten baggies of heroin to dismember Melendez. They dumped him, in pieces, in the Hudson River. Alig told everyone, including a crew filming a documentary, that he had murdered Melendez, but everyone thought he was just full of shit and looking for attention. After Melendez' torso was fished out of the river several weeks later, police picked up the duo, who admitted guilt. Alig was sentenced to 20 years, which he is currently serving in Attica, NY. A movie was made about Alig, starring Macaulay Culkin, called "Party Monster", as was a documentary film of the same name.

Alig, these days, suffers from Cauda Equina Syndrome, a CNS disorder that causes incontinence and involuntary bowel movements in some cases. He has to wash his urine and shit soaked sheets in the prison toilet. He is terrified of not being able to find a decent boyfriend if he gets out of prison.

His cult still exists, long after the club scene has fizzled out in Manhattan. You can reach him at:

Coxsackie Correctional Facility
Michael Alig # 97A6595
Box 999
West Coxsackie, New York, 12051-0999

http://nymag.com/news/people/24365/
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/longhand/riggs1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Alig
http://www.michaelaligclubkids.com/
http://rickx.com/movies/Alig.htm

A Tragic End To An Amazing Life

After purchasing her book "The Beautiful People's Beauty Book" several years ago, I have been a big Princess Pignatelli fan. Her candid quips about being a fabulous European socialite in the swinging 1970's are purely irresistible. Completely free of shame for her awesome hair, body, face and wealth, she would lay it on the reader - unabashed.

She was no hausfrau, and she made no bones about it. And if her volumes indicate her demeanor at all, she didn't give a flying fuck who thought she was bitchy.

I learned awhile back that Princess Luciana Pignatelli had passed on. In months past, details of her death were sketchy (even with diligent and compulsive googling), and just today I happened on an article that described her suicide with gin and pills after learning her investments had taken a huge dump on her perfect Italian bone structure. Distraught over being not only old, but poor - two conditions she could never entertain - she desperately ended her own life.

I say a heartfelt ciao bella, princess. You gave me big wonderful taste of what it was like to be you.

Here's a few Pignatellisms I've collected, previously published on my page Feelin' Pretty in 2005.

"You see, I'm very gourmande, which means I should be given all the more credit for not getting fat."

"In my ex-husband's house, everyone was unhappy, even the parrot.  It was my fault, too.  With two strong personalities, either you pull together or you destroy each other.  What does this have to do with beauty?  Lots!"

"It does not matter what you start with, try to get by on nature alone past 30 and you are finished."

"For heightened perception without drugs plus rapid weight loss, nothing beats the oldest known treatment for obesity: total starvation."

"Every woman over 30 needs a homosexual in her life."

Join the Princess Luciana Pignatelli Appreciation Society on Flickr, which is run by another big fan.

snapshots from the road: Virginia City Nevada, 1998

...back when I used film.

Virginia City, NV

 

Back before I actually moved to Reno, I visited there with Satan to visit Satan's father Lucifer and his wife, Ms. Beelzebub. Virginia City was a place I loved from the first visit, and I continued to make trips there whenever I could during the four years I lived nearby. The best bar in the world is there, but this story is about the Julia C Bulette Red Light Museum in the Julia C Bulette Saloon. Last I knew the tavern was still there, but the museum has since been closed (although it may have been partially moved to a different location). In 1998 I walked in for the sole purpose of seeing the intriguing museum it advertised. I gave the bartender my 1 dollar admission to go down into the basement museum, and with his mouth full of unfortunate teeth ( lack of/rotting teeth is a phenomena very prevalent in Northern Nevada with their rampant methamphetamine problem) he croaked "it's haunted". Sensing a bit of carnie-style buildup in the haunted claim, I proceeded into the dusty innards of the building.

 

The museum was, in fact, a creepy sort of place - but not haunted creepy. It was more like finding your dad's porno collection and your mom's double ended dildo in a shoebox in the attic creepy. OK, well maybe not that creepy, but you get my meaning.

object d'art, Red Light Museum

The place was small but cram packed with artifacts left from an area that has been famous for its whorehouses for the last 150 years. Glass cases housed huge collections of speculums, archaic methods of birth control, and empty bottles of patent medicines used to cure all sorts of genital ailments.Other items were stuck in just for their curious nature.

 

the "HUMAN PENI-PHONE" of the Dani Tribe, New Guinea

A pane glass window gave a voyeuristic glance into a cowboy era abortion performed by old department store dummies.

Little Crown of the Blessed Virgin (American Heroes and Madmen #5: Michael Jackson)

Acrylic on canvas, 5' x 5'
Part of group show, opening Saturday, August 29th - Galerie Chappe, Paris France
"I Pray Daily for Michael"
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Linds

gouache, marker on paper

meth couture #3

gouache, marker on paper

The Greatest Tear Jerker Country Songs of All Time*

*as compiled by Peggy the bartender and Donnie the plumber on a Tuesday night  in a bar in an American farm town that has no stoplights

Listed in no order, because of the subjective nature of these kinds of lists:

Whiskey Lullaby  - Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss
Oh my God. So freaking awful. So ridiculously sad and depressing. Alison Krauss could make you cry just by hitting the right note with that voice that sounds like a mother singing to her babies for the very last time in the face of some unforeseen tragedy... and the lyrics! A triumph among sad country songs.

The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away a little at a time
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind
Until the night she put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory...

Me and Little Andy - Dolly Parton
It wasn't enough for Dolly to stick us in the guts with a neglected toddler looking for a place to sleep during a horrible storm because "mommy ran away again" to the Indian casino or the crack house, or whatever... Oh no - she had to kill off the kid -and worse... the kid's DOG too. I'm going to go hang myself now.

 Giddy up trotty horse, going to the mill
Can we stay all night
If you don't love us no one will
I promise we wont cry
London bridge is fallin down
My daddy's drunk again in town
And we was all alone and didn't what we could do
I wonder if you'll let us stay with you

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry - Hank Williams

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry

The Caroll County Accident - Porter Wagoner
After Porter's dad is killed in the mangled, bloody carnage of a highway wreck, he realizes that his old man was out poking someone who wasn't his mom. The traditional rock-n-roll car wreck tragedy song is embellished (akin to Wagoner's signature be-dazzled wagon wheel sportcoat) with a gut wrenching country twist. 

I went down to see the wreck like all the rest,
The broken glass the bloody seats the tangled mess,
But I found something no one else had ever seen,
Behind the dash in Mary's crumpled up machine.
A little match box circled by a rubber band,
And inside the ring from Walter Browning's hand

El Paso - Marty Robbins
The evil tramp Felina must have a pussy that's hot as an oven and as spectacular as the Hope Diamond, because this miserable cowboy murders for it, then suicidally rushes into certain death just to get a piece of it again.

Maybe tomorrow
A bullet may find me.
Tonight nothing's worse than this
Pain in my heart

He Stopped Loving Her Today - George Jones
This one made me cry the first time when I was probably 7, and has made me fog up, and even sob uncontrollably, on countless occasions since. Morrisey ain't got nothing on George Jones for pure unadulterated melancholy, and I bet he knows it.

Kept some letters by his bed
Dated 1962
He had underlined in red
Every single I love you
I went to see him just today
Oh but I didn't see no tears
All dressed up to go away
First time I'd seen him smile in years...

Get it? Yeah. He's finally smiling again cause hes fucking dead.

Travelin' Soldier - The Dixie Chicks
A small town high school girl loses her first love to the Viet Cong. Good Lord have mercy.

One Friday night at a football game
The Lord's Prayer said and the anthem sang
A man said folks would you bow your heads
For a list of local Vietnam dead
Cryin' all alone under the stands
Was a piccolo player in the marching band

Ribbon of Darkness - Marty Robbins
Donnie's Marty Robbins pick was "El Paso", but I have to say this one always gets to me more. It reminds me of when you're so down and low, and you've gone through the same terrible scenarios over and over in your head so much that you can't stand to think of them any more.

Here in this cold room lyin'
Don't want to see no one but you
Lord I wish I could be dyin'
To forget you

Oh how I wish your heart could see
How mine just aches and breaks all day
Come on home and take away
This ribbon of darkness over me

The Long Black Veil - Lefty Frizell (popularly covered by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, The Chieftains and others)
They don't get any sadder than this one. The narrator sings posthumously about how he sacrificed his life to protect his lover's reputation.

The Judge said son, what is your alibi,
if you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die.
I spoke not a word, though it meant my life,
for I'd been in the arms of my best friends wife.

Sweet Dreams - Patsy Cline
There's only three short stanzas in this concise attack on the softest, mushiest, most damaged part of your aching heart, and Patsy goes in for the kill with that sad beautiful voice.

You don't love me, it's plain
I should know I'll never wear your ring
I should hate you the whole night through
Instead of having sweet dreams about you

Teddy Bear - Red Sovine
There's nothing like a crippled kid to get past the steely exterior of the average truck driver's road-weary heart.

This was my dad's radio the little boy said
But I guess it's mine and mom's now cause my daddy's dead
Dad had a wreck about a month ago
He was tryin' to get home in a blinding snow
Mom has to work now to make ends meet
And I'm not much help with my two crippled feet
She says not to worry that we'll make it alright
But I hear her cryin' sometimes late at night

D-I-V-O-R-C-E by Tammy Wynette
someone s-h-o-o-t-m-e

Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R P-R-I-S-E
But the words we're hiding from him now
Tear the heart right out of me
Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today

Honorable Mention:

Do It Yourself - Drive By Truckers
Following the tradition of great Scotch-Irish balladeers who eventually gave us Appalachian tear-jerkers comes the Drive By Truckers with this tale of a suicide in the modern South. (Also check out their song 'The Deeper In', which is a woeful tale of brother-sister incest in the milieu of a Jerry Springer existence)

Who’s to blame for the loveless marriage, who’s to blame for the broken band.
You ran from life and all of it’s pleasures, your own teeth marks on your own damned hand.
Thrown out before the date’s expired, you’d rather die than let anyone help,
You’d rather die than take a stab at living.
Nothing would kill you so you do it yourself.

Giddy Up Go - Red Sovine
The king of the trucker troubadours spins a tale of a lost wife and child, and jams a giant lump into your throat for the tearful reunion of father and son, so very alike, in the parking lot of some Stuckey's on Route 66

Wreck on the Highway - Roy Acuff

There was whiskey and blood all together
Mixed with glass where they lay
Death played her hand in destruction
But I didn't hear nobody pray.

Meth Couture #2

Gouache on paper about 10x8" 2009

Meth Couture #1

 
gouache and acrylic on artists paper about 8x10

She's Lost Interest

This ad was in the back of a medical journal I bought on Ebay awhile back. Personally I think those mutton chop sideburns he grew put the kabash on the marriage. Either way, he's totally not getting laid tonight.