A lot of zines are thinly disguised adverts for their editors, and Girly is no different in this respect

...this is all stuff about me,my adventures, travels etc

Last updated 11 September 1999. So far here we have

1992 etc - a look back at the year I started doing frag, reminiscing about Kinky Gerlinky and Diane Brill and the comic "Trantastic"l

MILAN - "My Glamorous Life" - highlights of art/DJing trip to the fashion capital of the world in 1998!

SCRAPBOOKS - seven years of Mona's Scrapbooks analysed!

 

nineteen-ninety-two etc
Perusing the bookshelf tonight looking for a worthy successor to the excellent "Voices Of Guns" (big detailed book about the SLA and Patty Hearst) I came across "Boobs, Boys and High Heels" by Dianne Brill, and it set me to thinkin.  

It came out in '92, the year I first went to the best club ever, Kinky Gerlinky. The club and this book are now part of our history, but their influence on me has endured. Simply put Kinky Gerlinky was a revelation and a rebirth for me, and whilst I never really let my hair down and rocked there, it was an inspiration just to stand around in the toilets surrounded by shrieking mad drag queens, taking it all in, looking and learning. It wasn't non-stop fun all the time of course, but when it was great, a wild and liberated chaos settled in the air and you could just breathe it in all night, and be genuinely sad when it was time to go home. Where else could you see Amanda Lear and Jayne County and Leigh Bowery doing the incredible "Divine gives birth to Nicola" act? I know nostalgia is reactionary, but this was a turning point in my life we're talking about here, so give me a break.

 
I guess realistically it was the last gasp of a club scene I missed, and it couldn't last much longer, but I'm sure glad I arrived in time, or I might never have got this far. Proto-Mona was unleashed - awkward like a new-born foal or Bambi at first, but standing tall and fearless 6 years on.  

1992 was also the year I published a mostly autobiographical comic about my early dressing up called "Trantastic" - a bit cringey in places now, but I met some cool people through it. and it was another crucial step in my evilution. "Boobs, Boys & High Heels" I got the following year. It's more of a personality piece like those umpteen Di Dors than a real "how to" book; a relentless injection of sassy "get out there" positivity for the girl of the glamorous early '90s. I remember seeing her slag out to plug it on "This Morning" (- those were the days!) Brill has pretty much disappeared in the last 5 or 6 years, like the majority of the Kinky drags, but then she too was an 80s club scene product (NYC in this case), as the numerous collages of cheesy snapshots illustrate. Still, she managed to express that timely more-like-a-drag-queen-than-a-real-woman philosophy that fitted with my nascent self-image, whilst dispensing a wide spectrum of top tips and advice which has stood the test of time well enough. I'll never take 6 hours to get dressed or be "queen of the night every night", but it's well written and funny, so I can recommend it. You can probably get it for about £1 now, so keep an eye out. Apart from anything else, the title is cool and looks good on the shelf between "Bomb Culture" and "POPism".

 

 
MY GLAMOROUS LIFE
 

In November '98 I jetted from London to fashionable MILAN with my pal V the artist and my brand new record box, to DJ at the World Premiere of V's new drag-themed video work "Dress Rehearsal" at two of the city's most fabulous venues. We were wined and dined and hardly spent a penny. We met and had dinner with Anna Piaggi and other fashion bigwigs. We ate fresh artichokes and asparagus, quartered fennel bulbs and baby lollo rosso lettuces. We drank fine wines and enormous tumblers of vodka. We rocked in a slightly scary drag club full of Brazilian transexual hookers. We window-shopped in vast ornate nineteenth century arcades, sneering and smirking at fashionable ladies in big furs. We stayed up late, slept a lot and tried to work out the mad game-show dominated telly. We had fun, but had to come home after five days! I spent all my money on duty frees and make-up on the way back.

 

 
Milan - a bit more detail #1: Anna Piaggi
 

You know her even if you don't really know what she does, she's in Vogue all the time; she's an Italian fashion commentator/patron/muse, with an eccentric and photogenic taste for pointy hats and wild clothes (she's a bit like a cool Italian Zandra Rhodes; they probably hung out together in the '70s).Tonight she's wearing an american high school band type tunic with gold brocade trim and a matching plastic sword and a typically conelike Stephen Jones hat in a trad Burberry-style beige red and black check pattern, all of which clashes with her pronounced red mascara and eyemakeup and dark poppy lipstick. She takes the tunic off to reveal a fitted top in orange and red with patched asymmetrical patterns and matching wristbands. I'm sitting directly to her left so I can't really stare without it being obvious, but she looks fab.

 

She remarks that our outfits are similar colours and they are (I've got orange hair and a red and yellow top on). She asks about V's art and about my DJing and Kitsch Bitch and Girly, making some intelligent comments about self-expression and censorship etc, but as the dinner starts up I don't bother competing with the assembled group of fashion designers, publicists and photographers who are constantly vying for her attention. Occasionally she translates an anecdote about Manolo Blahnilk or Amanda Lear, but most of the time V and I just pay attention and smile a lot as the celeb-sprinkled stories and laughter go back and forward very theatrically. It's a bit strange but the food is lovely.

Note to rich folks and ambitious shoplifters: Anna has recently published a big thick book compiled from 10 years of her monthly "A.P." pages in Italian Vogue, and its really fab in that "expensive fashion book you can't afford" kind of way.

 

Milan - a bit more detail #2: The Zip club
 
The first showing of "Dress Rehearsal" is in one room of a large club called PLASTIC. "I LOVE ROCK'N'ROLL" sounds amazimg on the super-loud sound system and I know it's going to be good. My DJ set goes well and people dance to the Stooges, Joan Jett, DMZ and the Dolls. I do another set with our host Nicola, playing 60s pop trash and instrumentals in a smaller bar, and that's fun too. I avoid the monster vodkas of the night before like a good girl, so when the club is closed by the cops an hour early at 5am I'm still standing, and ready to rock. When someone says "Do you wanna come to a club full of Brazilian transexual prostitutes?" I say "fuck, yeah!"  

V is a bit vodka-poisoned but also down for it, as is her wannabee designer fag pal Anthony, and after the customary standing around in the cold period, Ricardo (genderfuck drag stylist and Plastic DJ) drives us to a place a long way away that appears to be called "?". There is a disconcerting "pay as you leave" policy which we worry over unnecessarily, since there is a definite whiff of illegality in the air. But this is Milan, so it's a lot more civilised than Soho's after-hours hellholes. It's a big place inside, but has obviously seen better days, like a cross be tween Jo-Jo's and the Cafe de Paris in London.

 

It's packed with a good mix of people, but it's obvious that the hormone queens and implant-baring hookers rule the roost fiercely. The atmosphere seems tense and competitive, like Edelweiss in New York, and I feel underdressed and self-conscious in my Last Chance Saloon "We Are All Prostitutes" top. Although our entrance ticket allows us free drinks we are suspicious that we will end up paying and arm and a leg for them to get out alive, so we don't push it. One each. We start to relax when we see a few friendly faces from Plastic, dance a bit and try to avoid the trannyfuckers who are everywhere. Soon enough the cabaret starts and we sit down to watch. It consists of 5 or 6 basic lipsynching acts and a few oddities, but the performers are so into it they win me over easily; pure enthusiasm and no Celine Dion ballad shit. Ricardo does a Marilyn Manson rocknroll vogue-ing lip-synch routine and is followed by a pair of identical queens who do a comedy cat fight duet, ripping off wigs and throwing shoes at each other. There's an exotic dancer too, and it's fun.

 

We dance some more, lose Anthony to the back room a few times, and finally decide its time to leave around 8.45 even though the place is still jumping and will do so until 10. We climb the stairs and are relieved to pay the straight 20,000 Lire (£8) to get out. Luckily I can still remember the address of the hotel (V is trashed) and double luckily we get another lift back. The receptionist doesn't seem to pay us any mind as we get the key, nor does he comment when I descend 10 mins later to get 2 big black coffees. Drinking the divine beverage I feel momentarily perky, and consider going out for a walk around the block or to a sunday market. Just then the left side of my brain reminds me what I've been doing for the last 12 hours and I go to sleeeep instead. For a long time.

 

 
 

Wanna see my SCRAPBOOKS?

 

Since 1992 I've kept big scrapbooks - hardback A4 things, seven of them, full of the same crap that's in my head - I just finished the last one last week. People who look through them say they say a lot about me, so I thought "I'll give my readers a peek into my personal secret scrapbook world". I can't actually show them to you of course but I can give you a few snippets and analyse their contents a bit for you. There's a lot of stuff - pics of celebrities, film stars and criminals, press clippings, adverts, trademarks, frames from comics, xtian pamphlets, and just stuff I like the look of for no particular reason. I've gone through all seven and tallied up the most frequently appearing people and things as below. You may be surprised - I think I was.

 
PEOPLE most frequently appearing in MONA'S SCRAPBOOKS 1992-98
  1 Madonna: Slightly embarrassing but true; I guess Madge has just been one of the most famous people in the world since 1992. I don't like her music much, but she has an entrancing power. My favourites are the intrusive Paparazzi pics and the ones taken from miles away with telephoto lenses.
2 Dolly Parton: Hooray! I love Dolly and am proud that she's number two!
3 Liz Taylor: I feel a bit more ambivalent about Liz, because she doesn't really do anything anymore, but she's still fab.
4 Elvis Presley: Whoa! Dead for twenty years and still one of the most reproduced faces - and nearly every one goes in. All right!
5 Pamela Anderson Lee: I like Pam a lot, most of these are Paparazzi shots. I like to leave on the captions which say things like "IT'S ALL OVER for Pam and Tommy Lee after 21 Months" - classic Enquirer
6 Jayne Mansfield: Even though Jayne's mag appearances are relatively rare compared to the rest, every one goes in because she was so great! I even extended the chart from the top 5 to the top 6 specifically to include her.
 

OTHER THINGS most frequently appearing in MONA'S SCRAPBOOKS 1992-98

  1 RELIGION, CULTS etc including Xtians, Waco & Manson - what can I say? - I'm obsessed.

2 SPACEMEN, ROBOTS etc including Sci-Fi trash - a bit of a catch all, but another definite long-term interest - from Robbie and Klaatu to Laika, John Glenn, Shatner and exploding space shuttles.
3 IMAGES OF RIOTING AND CIVIL UNREST inc Burning Cars - what can I say? - I'm obsessed.

4 DIAGRAMS from newspaper articles inc cross-sections etc - hardest to explain, but I just like
instructive line drawings and illustrations. One of my quirks.
5 WARHOL & THE FACTORY and related stuff - no explanation, just too broad a category to fit in the first chart.

  1999's scrapbook has been a bit neglected recently but I can divulge that the runaway winner for this year will be MONICA LEWINSKY. My favourite pcs are of her eating CHIPS on her book-promotion visit to England around April/May.
  The important thing is not how much I like someone or something but more often than not "how often they get in the National Enquirer" or my other favourite mags (Interview, PAPER, W, Vanity Fair etc). Nearly all my Pams and Liz's are from the Enq, and most of the Elvises too. In the second chart I could have had a category for "pages from Manga comics or Japanese fashion mags", but this would be pointless even though they outnumber all the others - I got them all at once, stuck them in all around the same time; they don't represent an accumulation of stuff like the rest so they don't really count. In contrast a lot of the xtian crap is covers of tracts I pick up in the street - I like the pictures and the colours and they make me laugh....HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA am i mad? Now you have enough info to decide for yourself.
     

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