Party Boy in a Cage

December 18, 2006 8:24 PM

Michael Alig, the once-king of the "club kids" speaks with New York magazine regarding his ten years in prison and recent denial of parole.
posted by dr_dank (26 comments total)

The apartment where the murder took place was directly across for my place. I was laying on the couch watching tv when it happened... still freaks me out
posted by Shanachie at 8:55 PM on December 18, 2006

Another Michael Alig related article. His myspace spot. Aligula. His art.
posted by nickyskye at 9:34 PM on December 18, 2006

Dang. His website is the HTML equivalent of prison loaf. I think my eyeglass prescription just increased by 10%.

Anyways, run-of-the-mill low-grade sociopath. Meh.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 10:40 PM on December 18, 2006

I have to wonder if the party was that much fun...
posted by pwedza at 10:52 PM on December 18, 2006

Never heard of this guy before, but his wikipedia bio is horrific. Cutting the legs off a decomposing body. Blimey. Stay off them drugs kids!
posted by algreer at 11:01 PM on December 18, 2006

Hideous. Unrepentant. Worthless. He should die in prison.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:08 PM on December 18, 2006

I think we have found the ideal place for forced relocation of ALL 'club kids'.
posted by Sukiari at 1:17 AM on December 19, 2006

Prison doctor should treat his trapped nerve. Leaving him incontinent is unnecessary suffering.

He is a train-wreck of a personality for whom it is very difficult to have any sympathy. A mirror of US society's decadence.
posted by asok at 3:01 AM on December 19, 2006

He'll forever have to live with the fact that he was played by Macauley Culkin. I think that's punishment enough, don't you?
posted by antifuse at 3:23 AM on December 19, 2006

Also, I'm surprised (and a bit embarrassed to admit) how many of the Club Kids I recognize from various episodes of America's Next Top Model. Weird.
posted by antifuse at 3:26 AM on December 19, 2006

Wow, five pages and not one mention of Daniel Auster.
posted by jack_mo at 4:00 AM on December 19, 2006

I don't find him hideous - he killed a man in a fight while high. That's not exactly cold-blooded murder. There is no evidence that he is a sociopath other than the testimony of the person who started him on the club lifestyle and who has made a great deal of money from his story.

The article doesn't tell you what is happening to him in prison, but there is a telling detail - the glasses he received from a friend last year are already broken, missing a lens and held together with fishing wire. He spent years in solitary confinement for taking drugs, only to have his porter be another drug-pusher (and he punished for it). And now they have not given him necessary medical treatment. Prison is an appropriate sentance, a life-time of incontinence is inhumane.
posted by jb at 4:21 AM on December 19, 2006

There is no evidence that he is a sociopath other than the testimony of the person who started him on the club lifestyle and who has made a great deal of money from his story.

You might want to watch the Bailey/Barbato documentary on the subject before repeating this statement.

Alig repeatedly condemns himself from his own lips.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:31 AM on December 19, 2006

I would rather trust a psychologist than someone being filmed in a documentary who, according to his own testimony, had not had someone to talk to for a long time.
posted by jb at 4:43 AM on December 19, 2006

jb - the Party Monster documentary is mostly made up of archive footage and interviews, some made before Alig was convicted.

Having interviewed St. James, Bailey and Barbato when the documentary came out, and again when the (awful) feature film was released, I'm pretty sure Alig has difficulty empathising with people to the point of being a sociopath/psychopath, or at least did when he was doing enough drugs each day to fell an elephant. (Admittedly, you're right that St. James is not exactly a reliable source; though he is a hysterically funny one.)

Also, re: killing someone in a fight, there are so many versions of the story, and the players were all so spectacularly high, that I doubt we'll ever have a definitive version, but having researched the case fairly thoroughly, I'm inclined to think it was premeditated murder, and that at least one other person should be in prison with Alig.
posted by jack_mo at 6:02 AM on December 19, 2006

He's a slimeball sociopath and to my eyes represents everything that was wrong with the whole 'club' scene.
posted by jonmc at 6:49 AM on December 19, 2006

More than once, he urinated onto a crowd of people or into someone’s drink. Occasionally, he would execute a giant exaggerated pratfall, knocking partygoers to the ground in the process. Even Musto, who detests Alig, admits that there was something fascinating, even instructive, in his bad-seed routine. “In a way, his bad behavior was refreshing,” he says. “He was sending up the whole aspect of formality and polite society.”

I really, really hate this kind of thinking. I hate it. Either he was a sociopath -- and I think urinating onto a crowd of unconsenting adults pretty much qualifies -- or he was "sending up" polite society. You can't have it both ways, and my money's on the former. Sending up polite society is Scott & Zelda jumping into a fountain in formal wear. Pissing in someone's drink is mental illness.
posted by scratch at 7:40 AM on December 19, 2006

what about pissing in your formal wear? what does that qualify as? besides incontinece, I mean.
posted by jonmc at 7:53 AM on December 19, 2006

In your own formal wear, probably alcoholism. In someone else's...well, you'll have to draw your own conclusions.
posted by scratch at 8:20 AM on December 19, 2006

He is an iconic symbol of a certain generation. Disparaging him disparages that generation - X - which is exactly the point, your not supposed to like him or the generation, by definition. Didn't anyone see Less Than Zero, how soon we forget the mood and scene of the late 80s. Michael Alig even says the scariest thing is the letters he gets from people saying they support him. I don't get people weighing in saying they don't like him, as if your supposed to like piss in your food.
posted by stbalbach at 9:18 AM on December 19, 2006

I'm not sure why I find this case so interesting, but I've spent a long time with it. I think part of it was that I had no idea about this scene while it was happening, yet in their self-contained world these people lived like superstars. Clubland is another good book which deals with the case (as well as several other criminals tied to the Limelight -- someone could make a good HBO series based on the Limelight at that time).
posted by Bookhouse at 9:37 AM on December 19, 2006

what an asshole. but then, not having a famous novelist as your dad can really play against you in court.
posted by matteo at 12:07 PM on December 19, 2006

the Limelight

Limelight nightclub will be born again - as a retail mini-mall.
posted by ericb at 12:13 PM on December 19, 2006

I'd sincerely have doubts about anybody who lived in NYC in the years of his prime activity who was aware of Michael Alig and who does not despise him. As the living, breathing poster child for the contemptuous and sneering abuse of privilege, there's not a whole hell of a lot that could happen to him that I'd think unjust.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:45 PM on December 19, 2006

Pissing in someone's drink is mental illness.

Ah, come on. We're so quick to pathologize in this day and age. Every behavior we don't like is somehow straight outta the DSM IV. But it ain't so. Normal, mentally healthy people can manifest a whole range of unpleasant and obnoxious traits without necessarily needing a sleeveless sweater.

You don't have to be mentally ill to be an asshole.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:16 PM on December 19, 2006

I preferred Borat to Ali G.
posted by chrissyboy at 11:21 PM on December 19, 2006