RIP Al Goldstein
A sincere rest-in-peace to the one of a kind publisher of the infamous 1960s/1970s-era Screw magazine and all around cantankerous New York Jew bastard, Al Goldstein. Goldstein passed away at the age of 77 on Thursday.
Goldstein was a true New York original. The raging iconoclastic, bombastic child of a postwar post-1950s repressed sexuality turned into a pathological id of horny teen rebellion. The kind of self destruction we don’t see any more. The kind of honesty that’s impossible in our hyper-aware media culture of Redditized memes and comic book movie assembly-line Seacrestization.
No country for Al Goldstein in a land of Chris Hardwicks and Katy Perrys.
Today society celebrates the safe kind of rebellion. The know nothings and babble-ons who churn the TMZ machine. Miley’s twerk routines and the occasional redneck wisecrack on Duck Dynasty.
Ambulatory marionettes on talk shows spouting the latest plug for Papa Johns pizza or pop songs with titles straight out of a Deepak Chopra self-help book.
No risks. No real voices speaking actual truth to real power.
The real originals are being driven out of the collective. Dismissed from the conversation for upending the multimedia vertically integrated apple cart.
But Al Goldstein was that asshole that wouldn’t play along with the system. He destroyed his life. His wives. His liver. Everyone he knew and came into contact with.
But it was a glorious self destruction.
Pure.
Noble, even.
I watched his late night New York cable show Midnight Blue for many a moon back in the 1990s. He ranted about his ex-wives. He would spend twenty minutes trashing a restaurant for giving him an undersized pastrami sandwich. Or celebrate a spare rib.
He was a dick.
There’s no denying that Goldstein was a son of a bitch, a raging misogynist and a self-destructive clown. But Screw Magazine also published artists like Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman and was pushing the bounds of bad taste and first amendment freedom years before Larry Flynt.
Take a moment to honor a unique, outrageous rabble rouser who lived his life pure in the truth of his own convictions.
In our digitally interconnected hyperlinked world that smoothes out all the wrinkles of dissent, that mines any hint of authentic subculture, we won’t see too many Al Goldsteins come our way again.
Thanks for the obit. Says a lot that Al G got Page 1 (below the fold, natch) in the NYTimes this AM. Native NYer here. I too watched a lot of NYC public access in the 70s-90s and Al was the Porn man of the moment. Use to spot him on the street regularly, a total pile but a first amendment stud on the level with Zappa.
What a useless sack of dogshit.
I love how the older, uglier woman is in the back and not smiling, lol.
Yeah, maybe. But for every asshat TMZ –type there’s a Gavn McInnes to tip the scales back to the entertainment we need but need not speak.
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Hopefully
Here’s a middle finger to you, Al, in salute!
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.and one to you too, DB1, for a spot on obit.
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.As Larry Flynt once said: “If you don’t like the pictures, take it up with God Almighty, not me.”
I don’t know or understand who wrote this post. Nor do I understand this post in my non-ambulatory RNa excited persona. But the prose is as beautiful as it is pathetic. A life gone by and missing societal change and shit because of the increasing introspectiion age hammers into out nervous system…and shit. Aging Brothers.
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Yes you can-can, can-can, tiny cans can can!
R.I.P.
Great tribute!
We didn’t get too much info about Al Goldstein out here in Australia back in the day, but I knew about Screw magazine growing up.
If you words describe his general attitude then I am a lifelong fan starting now.
RIP Al.
Goldstein knew his Monkey Holes. Son.
Was he murdered by the chick in back?…yikes
Once again you celebrate the looser – the piece of crap you would not want taking pictures of your own wife daughter or mother – but are happy to let victimize someone else. Your anger and frustration is fueled by your own failure. Clearly you write like you masturbate in that you have a chronic need to please yourself. Maybe if you were not so certain you know it all you may actually engage and change people – even yourself. Hysterically telling people they are idiots because they believe in God, as you often do, sets a standard that reflects poorly on your own intellectual capacity since the question of who or what created the creator or necessary components of creation are equally subjective to some people; neither science or faith can be absolutely proven by either party. Yet when someone professes faith in a system you reject your protest is so obnoxious and reflexive it becomes clear you are truly pathetic, lost, scared and alone. A look at your other works makes the view into your vacuous cranium quite clear. Shifting between writing angry and abusive comments about women while offering peaks up their skirts or denigrating soft white targets is easy; living and loving is a bit harder. I think you are a lucky punk. My guess is in a different time and place, before technology, you would be the mumbling fool, writing on napkins in greasy spoons and talking to himself – wiggling your legs back and forth because you tell yourself you have to go to the bathroom, and maybe you do, but let’s be honest you are really doing it simply because you like the way it feels: CREEP.
You celebrate the looser – a creep and an ass – you must have been good friends
Al had a place in Florida, on the inner coastal waterway.
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For some reason he had a huge statue of a hand with the middle finger extended erected on his yard, where all the boaters could see it.
Oh, you thought I was making this shit up?
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http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-12-19/news/sfl-mayo-al-goldstein-obit-20131219_1_nick-navarro-new-york-times-sofla
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Fuck all y’all!
3billion