When you dream about anthropomorphising an STD, as we all do from time to time, what does yours look like? Mine looks like this.
Aside: I thought I’d take a good long browse through all the available Google images of Pete Doherty, but there that one popped up on the first page of the search, and while it is perfect, any one of them would do. Like this. And this. And, my god, this. He is the clammiest-looking individual I have ever seen. Echh.
Anyway, according to The Junky’s Wife, he’s branching out into other endeavors than creeping me out, and is now producing artwork he paints using his own blood.
I once rented an apartment whose last occupant was a junkie who used to shoot up and then use the needles as a dartboard. There were about 50 needle tips broken off into a wall next to the kitchen. I had to get a hazardous waste bag, pliers, and superheavy gloves and spend an evening pulling them out one by one, and that didn’t squick me out as much as the thought of touching something Pete Doherty smeared his blood all over. There’s probably more Hep C on that paper than red blood cells.
I love this quote the Junky’s Wife pulled from the original article:
His friends say the paintings prove his innocence over claims he injected heroin into a passed out fan, and backup his story that he was actually drawing her blood to paint with.
Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so? Okay then!
Not to mention his ‘art’ sucks.
…It’s not even going to stay red, for crying out loud. That stuff makes a lousy art medium. And using someone else’s, uncredited…yet another co-optation of women’s this or that… As to the quality of the work, it doesn’t do a lot for me. But that Kincade thread, or however it’s spelled, remnds me that I and a lot of others have been guilty of letting our feelings about the artist, his/her words or actions, taint our appraisal of her/his works. Even if they creep us out from the start. And even though we know darn well that this is subjective, and not all are going to feel the same way; how else can you explain that some people like Kincade’s work? Even after some people make clear what it is that creeps the rest of us out?
If you didn’t know what that (currently) reddish stuff was, would any of you feel different about that junky’s art?
Yes, but applying the word “artist” to someone as monumentally overrated as Pete Doherty? Just seems wrong.
Flea – you’re so on the money with the clamminess. Yeuch.
I’m still amazed Doherty can behave like this while the bright young female things like Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone get smacked around all over the tabloids for “crimes” of overindulgence that are far less serious than his. Having said that, it may be because we are all watching the Pete Doherty car-wreck in horrified fascination and can’t take our eyes off it.
I actually have no earthly idea who Pete Doherty is.
I think it might be better this way.
Evil Fizz, me too.
He’s a British rock star turned celebrity junkie. His band, the Libertines, produced one really quite good album, then he got into drugs in a big way, started dating Kate Moss, and now produces terrible music, worse art, and endless tabloid stories.
The double-standard in rock-star behavior is really appalling. People from Keith Richards to Pete Doherty are celebrated for their weirdness, their openly-dangerous habits, and really, their self-destructiveness in all major matters. And it’s not that society upholds them as role models and praises their actions directly, as it does with some of the ‘pimp’ stuff with rappers, it just enjoys the spectacle and somehow doesn’t blame them.
Compare that to Britney and Lindsay.
Don’t think so, Yuri K. Pete Doherty seems to be “celebrated” in exactly the same way as Britney and Lindsay–as an overpromoted pop star who’s being a public ass well past the expiration of his fifteen minutes. And, seriously, Pete and Keith Richards don’t belong in the same sentence. Musical accomplishments aside (not that it necessarily should be), Keith manages to keep it together in public, and has for some years–heck, decades–now.
Wouldn’t it be nice if real-life junkies were as glamorous and rich as Doherty? Instead they’re just…well…junkies. And there’s nothing pretty about it.
I dunno, I think he gets it just as bad from the tabloids. I mean just the fact that more people know him more for being a junkie than anything else is kind of proof of that. I think generally what you’re saying is true, though, about bad behavior being more acceptable when a man does it.
and just as a contrast here’s pete singing chim chim cheree from mary poppins
Um, that’s still assault. And if it was a previously used needle….
I’ve actually blogged about this guy before, basically saying that the media shouldn’t bother to cover him until they put out the obligatory obit column.
Oh, and when I anthropomorphize an STD, it looks like this:
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/clap.html
Wow! I’m a reference, and for no less a cultural icon than Pete Doherty and his squicky paintings.
And duh, I mean, if we’d known he was STEALING HER BLOOD FOR ART, no one would have been freaked out by the pictures of him injecting a syringe into the arm of a sleeping teenager.
Honestly, I’ve been waiting for him to OD and die for a few years now. I’d put him at the top of any dead pool. That guy REALLY doesn’t seem to want off the drugs. Eeeesh.