SKINEMA reviews over 150 pornos but seldom mentions porn. The book is actually about the pill-popping exploits of Chris Nieratko. "He's an asshole," as Johnny Knoxville puts it, but whether he's rescuing a stalker from choking on her own vomit, getting his nose broken for having AIDS (he doesn't), or marrying the one woman that can put up with his insanity, his life sounds so much like a collection of hilarious bar stories it's impossible not to grab a beer and listen to the whole thing.
When Vice Magazine and a few other outlets said they needed porn reviews, Chris obliged by sticking the names of porn videos above various rants about his life. The review for LIQUID GOLD 2 begins, "My mom could single-handedly save my town from flooding if ever the occasion arose. She once worked at the United States' largest producer of maxi-pads and before being laid off, stockpiled truckloads of the stuff." He mentions the porn he is reviewing approximately zero times.
Comprised entirely of real diary entries gathered over New York writer Lesley Arfin's teenage years and beyond, Dear Diary hilariously captures everything that makes us cringe about adolescence: the awkward relationships, the social posturing, and the sex and drugs that swirl around both like a flock of diseased pigeons. Arfin manages to inject humor into troubled years of parental abuse, tales of drug addiction, and a whole pile of insecurity. Dear Diary began as a wildly popular column in Vice Magazine which would start with Lesleys diary entry and then update the reader with the perspective 10 years gives you. The book takes this process one step further as Lesley, now 27, tracks down the frienemies listed in the entry and asks them probing questions like, Did you french Josh? Dear Diary blurs the distinction between past and present, instead offering a stark continuous and cathartic commentary on the author's life, noting every embarrassing detail and effusively documenting every mistake without a trace of guilt or remorse.
Yeah Arfin remembers the nineties. Remembering her remembering the 90s helps me remember the early post-911 period. 2012 is the new Y2K, she's tricky re-millennium tension.
I love Vice to death, even though they remind me again and again how (un)wildly suburban my own teenage years were. No drugs or sex swirling 'round here, just the awkwardness.
Rahodeb
Los Angeles, CA
March 2006
APR 19, 2007 10:43 AM