FRIDAY FICTION - WEIRD BABY

She is born with great swaths of acne across her cheeks, sprawling bacterial nations shaped like muttonchops.  Slouched over, with my back up against the end of the hospital bed, I struggle to hold her even four feet off the ground. A pony-tailed Production Assistant is vying for my attention, desperately bobbing his head at me with bulging, bloodshot eyes.  The eyes jump out of their sockets, stroll over in little top hats and bow ties and tap me on the shoulder. What’s worse?  The dreams or the hallucinations or my breath?  I taste disinfectant as well as the odors it should be masking.  I think my teeth are rotting from the double-dose epidural.  But there is a clear voice in my head, You have to be more nurturing…

ARGENTINA - PROJECTILE ARTING

Nina Park is an artist originally from Antwerp who was wandering around the world for eight years before she decided to settle in Argentina. She’s finally presenting her new collection of work, "Deep Throat Puking": art pieces made completely by using her own colored vomit. It looks sort of like that cute spin-art stuff, only completely fucking foul.

PART-TIME BASTARD - STEREOTYPICALLY SELLING OUT

This week, the writer trapped between her old left-wing paper and her new fascist one is being forced to think about how bloody imperfect women are. This is a column, by the way, and it's called Part-Time Bastard. She doesn't want to get in trouble while she's two-timing these newspapers so there's no byline. Now you know.

NEW YORK - FOOT PATROL'S IN TOWN

Back when Texas's acid-punk (Butthole Surfers, Crust, Ed Hall, Helios Creed) scene was in full swing, a lot of the musicians from those bands worked at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired between tours, including Teresa from the Butthole Surfers, aka that girl featured on the Slacker movie poster who tries to sell Madonna's pap smear in the film. And it was some of those very strange people who first discovered TJ Wade, a pre-teen blind prodigy who could instantly play anything he heard on keyboards.

KOY PEN AMERICAN - JONNY OLSEN IS BIGGER THAN JESUS (IN SOUTHEAST ASIA)

If you know who Jonny Olsen is, then you are most probably a 15-year-old girl from Vientiane. That's because Jonny is the hottest thing in Southeast Asian pop music right now. Which is a little odd, because he's from LA. 

BERLIN - A DAY IN THE LIFE OF EUROPE’S BIGGEST SUBSIDIZED THEME PARK

Euro white trash beats US white trash any day of the week. When the former group holidays, they go to Tropical Islands on the German/Polish border--an indoor holiday resort subsidized by the European Union so poor people can afford to get out of town. This is a tale about 24 hours in this sultry land.

LONDON - A TOKEN OF MY GRIEF

 

 I’m all up for stoicism. Moaning little self-involved bitches make me feel ill. My granddad fought in a tank in a desert and saw his matey get eviscerated, then spent six months in a prisoner of war camp, and he wasn’t a little moaning bitch about it. Still though, once being stoic turns into a t-shirt that says, “My Husband Died of Cancer, and All I Got Was This Shitty Shirt,” you’ve officially gone too far and strayed into psychosis. You’ve also joined this company’s target audience.

PARIS - GETTING TO KNOW FRANCE

I've been in Paris--"studying abroad," if you will--for the past four weeks. Last weekend I decided it was time to leave the city and see what else France has to offer. I took a train with some friends to the South, where I was exposed to tourist spots that aren't the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. We started our journey in Tours, where we went on a tour. A tour of Tours. That is American humor. Do you like it?

LONDON - JASPER JOFFE'S LIFE OF JIZZ

This is Jasper Joffe. He's very high here. High on hubris. High on being Jasper Joffe. As if the Britart "me, me, me" generation hadn't gone far enough – as if Tracey Emin sketching herself masturbating (how did she hold the pencil steady?) wasn't onanistic enough to put you off your copy of Art Now – Jasper Joffe has recently also concluded that l'art c'est moi. The man who painted Himmler in lush pastels is spending the rest of this week flogging all his possessions at the Shoreditch gallery. Childhood photos, big fuck-off TVs, love letters, toothbrushes, racist dolls – they've all have been divided into 33 lots, priced at £3333.33 apiece. Nice work, Jasper. He is doing this, he says, for two reasons. Reason one: he's 33. Jesus had been there, done that, and got crucified by that point. It's a pretty high peg to measure up to, he says. (Didn't tell him about Alexander the Great conquering the known world by 24.) Reason two: his girlfriend recently split up with him. So there's a certain amount of self-flagellation going on here.

NEW YORK - EXQUISITE COSTUME SALE

In a city where the term "vintage" has been perverted to mean anything from the shop owner's childhood or earlier, it's refreshing to find a spot that lives up to its promise. Exquisite Costume is one of my favorite such places in New York, but unfortunately it's usually a fantasy trip since most things are priced just out of my reach. I have, however, scored some awesome pieces there, including an Austrian shearling military cap that's memorable but not too costumey to be worn all winter long. During my last visit I tried to stretch on a pair of pristine fur-trimmed suede boots that were just a half-size too small. But it's not all animal-fluff stuff, so calm down animal lovers. And it's one of those shops that looks really tame and pristine from the outside, but you get in and you lose your gosh darned mind.