Back in the days before MTV nailed down the formula of finding the worst assholes of any given demographic and putting them on television — back even before The Real World ushered in that glorious era — the network came up with some truly weird shit to air between music videos. Witness, for example, the totally forgotten Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes, a sort-of talk show that aired for two years before Warhol's death in 1987. Hosted by Debbie Harry at her most wooden, it basically comprised baffling meta-interviews and a lot of negative-transfer film effects, which was evidently some pretty cool shit back then.
Probably the show's most memorable segment features Courtney Love (fresh off her role in Sid and Nancy — a year before she ever met Kurt Cobain, by the way) acting out "her secret fantasy," which was to be, uh, a bag lady. "If I wasn't an actress, I would've probably been a bag lady," she tells the camera. "I actually get a lot of inspiration from bag ladies."
I'm not old enough to remember any of this. I just happened to stumble upon it when I Googled "Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame" last week after I was briefly reminded of Danny Marianino, better known as The Dude Who Punched Out Danzig Back in 2004, and it turns out it's quite a bit more interesting than that time Danzig got punched out back in 2004. For The Dude Who Punched Out Danzig Back in 2004, though, that moment has evidently been the fulcrum upon which his life was leveraged. At any rate, he's writing a book about it.
The book, titled Don't Ever Punch a Rockstar: A Collection of Hate Mail and Other Crazy Rumors, "profiles a regular guys [sic] journey in music and learning to shrug off one of the most opinionated events in music history," according to the book's Facebook page. And man, did that event ever have some opinions! But, seriously, folks, you may vaguely remember the viral video it spawned: Glenn Danzig, previously purported to be a karate expert or something, and The Dude Who Punched Out Danzig are talking heatedly, Danzig pushes the guy, and the guy knocks him out. Danzig then made the whole thing even more ridiculous by repeatedly insisting he let the dude punch him out because he didn't want to get sued, even though the video clearly shows him pushing the guy first.
But whatever. Fourteen minutes later, everyone forgot about it except whatever-his-name-is, who now writes, "Since the altercation between Glenn Danzig and Danny Marianino in 2004, Danny has been saving and collection [sic] a slew of hate mail, derogatory posts on blogs and messages that are so ridiculous it will blow your mind." Because what the world needs now is obviously inane Internet detritus collected into book form — or you could just look up the video and read the comments.
Actually, if you haven't seen it, you should do just that, because Danzig is obviously being a prick, and it's awesome to see him get knocked out. And then look up Courtney Love on Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes, because that is even awesomer.
