THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

I used to be able to pen top ten lists in my sleep. It was my métier. These days, for whatever reason, they just don’t come to me. Here is one of my better top ten list from the days of the old jo-tel: top ten craziest bitches of all time.
_____________________________________________

10. Sylvia Plath

Always in competition with Virginia Wolfe for craziest turn-of-the-century literary bitch, Plath was neurotic and turbo suicidal despite being pretty attractive and talented. She finally succeeded in the early morning in 1963. With her children in the house, she locked herself in the kitchen, making sure to seal off the doors, and then stuck her head in the oven. People love to blame other people for Plath’s neuroses. But her first of four suicide attempts occurred before she ever met Ted Hughes, who is teleologically concluded to have been abusive. (Note to self: don’t marry a crazy wife that tries to kill herself all the time, because people will just assume that you’re abusing her and editors will eventually and amorally publish her unabridged diaries.) To make matters worse, her death is often seen as some sort of heroic statement. To quote Woodie Allen in Annie Hall, ” Sylvia Plath - interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality.”

I mean, have you ever read The Bell Jar? Neither have I. But it sounds really depressing.

9. Eva Braun

The craziest thing about Eva Braun was how normal she was. A photographer who fell in love with Hitler while hired to take propaganda photos of him, Braun spent most of her relationship with Hitler secluded in the Fuhrer’s Alpine retreat where she could indulge in her entirely sane hobbies of skiing, hiking, and dancing. She didn’t marry Hilter until April of 1945. One day later she killed herself with a cyanide pill. She stayed faithful to Hilter to the end, however, despite the fact that he was responsible for the death of millions of Jews and had a problem with flatulence.

8. Lady MacBeth

It hits you when Lady MacBeth is trying frantically to wash imaginary blood from her hands. Not only is she a bitch for convincing MacBeth to kill Duncan, King of Scotland, but she’s also crazy. And that’s the worst kind of bitch. Also, while I love the way the line sounds, why does Lady MacBeth claim “I have given suck” indicating that she had nursed children? I thought MacBeth was childless…

7. Patty Hearst

This is one crazy story about one crazy bitch. Patty Hearst seemed like your standard millionaire heiress. Until, that is, she was kidnapped from her Berkeley house by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The SLA used Patty to get ransom money from the Hearsts (which was paid in the form of a six million dollar donation to the homeless of Berkeley - let’s all try to imagine the amount of weed and crack smoked at People’s Park that night!) before enlisting her aid in robbing banks. Later communications from her were issued under the pseudonym “Tania” and revealed that she was committed to the goals of the SLA. She was eventually captured and hired hotshot Harvard attorney F. Lee Bailey to defend her. Baily employed the lamest defense strategy this side of the twinkie defense by arguing that Hearst was a victim of the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, which makes a prisoner sympathetic to her captors. The defense failed and Hearst was convicted of bank robbery. Hearst claimed that she had been physically and sexually abused by her captures. President Carter believed her and ordered her released from prison. Before leaving office, Clinton granted her a full pardon. She now lives in Connecticut and, since being released, has starred in the following movies: Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, Cecil B. DeMented, and A Dirty Shame.

6. Joan of Ark

Joan of Ark was a certifiably crazy bitch. Around 1424, at the age of 12, Joan said she began receiving visions of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret telling her to drive the English out of France and bring the the French king to Reims for his coronation. Her military success teaches us that even a insane teenager can lead an army to victory if the circumstances are right. Sorry Napoleon.

[more bitches]

5. Clytemnestra

What a bitch. While her husband Agamemnon (Lord of Men) was away fighting the Trojan War, Clytemnestra decided to get busy with Aegisthos. Upon Agamemnon’s heroic return, Clytemnestra weighed the options: “I could kill Agamemnon, orrrr … I could … ummm …. let’s see … oh screw it I’ll just kill him.”

4. Ayn Rand

I hate Ayn Rand and her ideas. That why she’s a crazy bitch. Fuck you, Ayn Rand. I hope you die for real.

3. Marina Abramovic

Reid told me about this crazy art bitch. Born to two high-ranking Soviet officials, Abramovic reacted against her constrained upbringing by liberating her body via performance art displays. Only for her “liberating” usually involved some strange method of self-mutilation. Her masochistic tendencies played out in several ridiculous and disturbing displays. In “Rhythm 0″, she invited her audience to do whatever they wanted to her using any of the 72 items she provided: pen, scissors, chains, ax, loaded pistol, and others. According to one account, “By the third hour, her clothes had been cut from her body with razor blades and her skin slashed; a loaded gun held to her head finally caused a fight between her tormentors, bringing the proceeding to an unnerving halt.” “Cleaning the Mirror #1″ involved her scrubbing a grime-covered human skeleton on her lap. For her “Rhythm 5″, Abramovic laid down inside the blazing frame of a wooden star. With her oxygen supply depleted by the fire, she lost consciousness and had to be rescued by concerned onlookers. She also had a guy pull back a bow string with the arrow pointed at her heart so that if she had been unable to hold on to the bow, she would most likely have been killed. She held onto the bow for twenty minutes. She also cut her belly with razor blades on a few occasions. Come on, that’s not art! Now. Eating poop– that’s art!

2. Medea

Medea was one crazy bitch. Using her power of sorcery, she helped Jason complete three of the four tasks demanded by her father, King Aeetes, before he would relinquish the mythical Golden Fleece. Medea fell in love with Jason and left with him after he acquired the fleece. This did not prevent her from killing him and their children when Jason cheated on her with Creusa, who she also killed.

1. Queen Mary I

This bitch was kra-kra! After Henry VIII finally produced a male heir (Edward VI), the dude died after only nine days as king. Mary’s ascension to the throne was contested only by Jean Gray, another of Henry’s legitimate daughters. Mary, however, with the support of privilege classes, won out and promptly had Jean Gray killed (Cyclops was pissed and vowed revenge, but Professor Xavier counseled against it as a bloody retaliation could undo all the university’s hard fought progress towards achieving mutant equality). Once in power, Mary’s agenda veered violently toward restoring the Catholic Church that Henry VIII had so cavalierly thrown aside in order to engage in his wife hopping (and head lopping) activities free of religious censure. After reinstating the crime of heresy, Mary proceeded to order the death of over 300 alleged heretics (p.s. they were burned at the stake). She soon became known aptly as “Blood Mary”. She was also so eager to conceive a male heir that she gave herself the first recorded “hysterical pregnancy”. It has been suggested that she might have had an ovarian cyst that not only prevented her from conceiving a child, but could have contributed to her early death in 1558. Historians: is there anything they can’t do? Oh yeah, useful things.

-Shark (originally posted 7/10/05)