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Have you seen Party Monster with Macaulay Culkin?!
I just rewatched it the other night after finding out Michael Alig has been released from prison and people have been greeting his depravity with cronuts. That's right. Apparently filling up murderer's bellies with sweet confections upon their release from a 17-year stint in maximum security prison is just so. edgy. I mean what's more bittersweet than a sick-as-the-night-is-long ex con waxing poetic on his murder?
Upon wrapping his filth-lips around the much-anticipated cronut, Alig crooned:
Obviously I want this, but I just don’t feel like I deserve it. I mean, it would be horrible not to eat it, but I just feel so awful. — Bedford + Bowery
I was so tripped out by how fucked up Alig and his story was, I started googling like, everything, and tripping myself out even more.
The story of Michael Alig, King of the Club Kids, has every element of a good story. And a car crash. You just can't! look away. Between the sex, drugs, killer parties and a Drano-induced murder, it's narrative gold.
But did you know that he has a very popular Twitter feed that he managed from a maximum security prison in Marcy, New York? Or that it was managed by none other than the digital edition director at Lucky Magazine, Esther Haynes, while he was in prison?! Oh and yeah, she's also editing his book Aligula. He dictated his daily tweets over the phone to her. Seriously. Now, of course, he's running his own social show. (Complete with 30,000 followers.)
I mean what. the. fuck. I know the whole, sexy murderer thing is practically an archetype at this point; Chicago, Natural Born Killers, Bonnie and Clyde, Syd and Nancy—the list goes on—but that's art serving as social commentary. It's supposed to make our skin crawl that murderers are being celebrated and question our impetus to glorify the violent ... however charming, however fun they seem.
Why is it even fucking legal for a convicted murderer to have a Twitter account?! (Or a presence on Reddit for that matter, because apparently casually confessing crimes with an overly clever pseudonym on a faux anonymous site is also a "thing.") I mean, I get that Twitter is "just a conduit for communication" and their prerogative is never going to be curtailing said communication, but don't they have some inkling of corporate responsibility to do the right thing?!
I don't mean to get all preachy, but seriously, should we let the school shooters keep pithy online journals for their daily musings? You want the red-hot tweets from The Green River Killer who murdered 48 Seattle prostitutes?
I realize the Son of Sam law will keep Alig from collecting moola for his nefarious doings—as well as Haynes' book sales and any future parties if his sordid ass ever gets out on parole—but I don't think we should be fostering a cult around him either. Especially since penance isn't on his radar. In regards to finally confessing to the murder:
I know why I blabbed. I must have wanted to stop me. I was spinning out of control. It's like the old saying 'What do you have to do to get attention around here—kill somebody? —Michael Alig
Brief recap of Alig's Ascent to King of the Club Kids and Descent into Drug-Addled Murderer
In 1983, Alig was a pouty-faced Fordham freshman, fresh off the boat from small-town Indiana bussing tables at Danceteria. But oh was that boy hungry for the Limelight—literally and metaphorically. Following the tutelage of NYC socialite and underground club junkie, James St. James, Alig approached eye-patched nightclub owner Peter Gatien about the possibility of throwing an outlandish party for a small fee.
What began as a vehicle for his boundless ego, deviant mind and penchant for all things "fabulous" launched an entire movement: The Club Kids. These kids championed freak-dom and the beauty of the misfit long before GaGa ever traipsed onto the scene. Everyone from queers and artists to social outcasts and lonely rich kids flocked to his glittered, drug-addled shores to showcase their perversion, creativity, and inner-circle prowess. If the rest of society said you were strange, The Club Kids said you were stellar.
Oh and don't think this was like actually underground. Oh no. They were a full-blown phenomenon (and spawned the likes of RuPaul and Amanda Lepore) gracing talk shows like Geraldo Rivera and Joan Rivers in full regalia and collecting Club Kids across America.
Cut to 13 years later. Alig, once a sober party-goer, believe it or not, is a now a total drug addict—wrestling with heroine, cocaine and ketamine, among other delectables. He gets into an argument with his sometimes friend and always drug dealer, Andre "Angel" Melendez; fellow club kid Robert "Freeze" Riggs finds them physically fighting with Alig screaming "get him off me!" Naturally, dead-high and strung-out Riggs whacks Melendez on the head with a hammer, knocking him out. But apparently that wasn't enough, so in one of the more sickening ways to take someone else's life, Riggs and Alig then strangled Melendez before pouring Drano down his throat, duct-taping it shut and throwing the body into the bathtub with ice.
A few days later things were getting a bit stinky, so Alig dismembered the corpse before tossing the thing into the Hudson River; Melendez's legless body washed up on the shores of Staten Island a year later.
So yeah. The bastard's out of jail. Only time will tell if when that W'burg bridge party will happen.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
