cheech

So I was initially disappointed with this book on Warhol's factory I got sent over from Arlington Central Library to another branch, cuz I thought it was this giant thick one I saw a couple years back, but it's not. It's a skinny paperback...so it doesn't have the photo I was looking for of Candy Darling. This other book I saw had a photo of her standing with a bunch of Factory people...nude. Candy might've seemed dainty but she had a very big cock and balls.
Anyway, so I was initially sad cuz this book is by a principle photographer of the 1960s Factory, Nat Finkelstein, and he seems to take pretty sloppy, poorly-composed pics a lot...but there is still some fun to be had from the book. And he lets loose his opinions on people. This is just PART of his run-down on Edie Sedgwick:

She complained that with all this shit of 'art for art's sake' she wasn't getting any money out of her part in the art. 'Get me pay for my dinner.' God! Edie was boring. She had a beautiful body, whoop ti doo, but that was all. Like most of the girls at the Factory, there wasn't anything real about Edie. She was simply signs and symbols. She was spoiled in every sense, a child of the haute-bourgeoisie, with no thougth in her head at all except 'Edie'.

Yeah, but Nat, HOW DO YOU FEEL about her? There are, as I said, some great photo moments. There is a tryptich of Lou Reed sitting next to Andy. In the first, Lou is doing the clasping-hands-looking-into-the-camera-looking-profound thing while Andy is slumped down, then in the next Andy is lunging towards Lou, who's losing his cool-ass look, then in the last Andy is grabbing/hugging Lou who is caught in the only open guffaw I've ever seen the man give in my life.
There are the many pics of the VU...the Velvets...the Velvet Greakin Underground. One page has a series of shots, with the last the best, of a couch-&-floor full of folks: Edie laying across the laps of Andy, Lou and Sterling Morrison. Lou is giving a ghoul-smirk, reaching forward and grabbing the head of Barbara Rubin, Edie is making a funny Betty-Boopish face cuz she's falling off everyone's laps, Andy's highly amused, Sterling has his face leaning wryly on his hand, and Cale...oh, poor John's been cut out of the side of this one. How symbolic...
This page spead is titles THE PSYCHOPATH'S ROLLING STONES. Nat writes:

I had written a proposal for the Andy Warhol Index [about the Velvet Underground]. A proposal is what a writer uses to titillate the publisher, not the public. I ddin't expect anybody at the Factory to read it. One day I was doing something or other at the Factory and everybody was very aloof. Then Lou walked over to me and said "'The Psychopath's Rolling Stones', huh?" which was the way I had described them; being cute. I thought he would like it. He was very sensitive, had a deep sense of pride, wanted to be regarded the best. I think those were the last words the Lou Reed ever spoke to me. Later the report came back to me that Lou had said that the three worst people in the world were Nat Finkelstein and two speed dealers.