Finding Your Voice
9/3/21 - Comedy and art criticism don't exactly sound like parallel career paths. But after bouncing from a freelance hustle to a fancy art world job to improv classes, Christina Catherine Martinez realized she wanted to do both. We talk about how she navigates making a life and a career as an intellectual and a comedian, how alike those performances are on social media, and how power and money infect everything. One place she is sharing her voice is in her book, Aesthetical Relations.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Executive Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Aesthetical Relations by Chrstina Catherine Martinez
TRANSCRIPT: finding Your Voice
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Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend
Ann: A podcast for long distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I’m Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hey, Ann Friedman. What's up this week?
Ann: Oh my God. This week I am barely making it across the finish line of this week is how I feel.
Aminatou: Yeah, no. My body is broken. My body is weary. I like... This week was a rough week. It's a rough week.
Ann: Okay. Well, I have something that will be a balm to you. Our guest on today's episode is Christina Catherine Martinez, who is a writer, an art critic, a standup comedian, um, a source of endless delight on social media and, um, you know, someone who I have been aware of for a while, but really decided we needed to talk to her on this podcast when I read her book Aesthetical Relations, which, um, came out in late 2019, but, uh, I only got my hands on it this year because it was out of print for a little while due to pandemic supply chain shenanigans. She really has this super unique perspective where she writes about art and its impact, but also from a really personal lens about her experiences as a Mexican American girl, growing up in Los Angeles, her experiences with being treated for cancer, her experiences with working retail and like loving to collect clothes, it really hits on so many different levels and she is a true delight and joy.
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Aminatou: This makes me really happy as the resident CYG comedian. Thank you.
Ann: There's room for both of you.
Aminatou: I'm just kidding. I am truly, you know, I'm really in awe, honestly, of people who, um, are able to write in a funny way. And I think that's what about her work is so fascinating to me because clearly it's a skill and it's hard and not everyone can do it. And I just find, um, you know, the, the funniest people to me are, they're always strong writers. And so, and they're like really fascinating thinkers. And I think that it's really easy to dismiss it as just like ha ha funny. And then you're like, oh, actually a technical skill that a lot of people do not have. So I'm excited to listen to this interview.
Ann: Same, here is Christina Catherine Martinez.
[interview begins]
Christina: Are you, uh, I mean, are you a comedy fan? Do you identify as a comedy fan?
Ann: No. I mean, I wouldn't say like I am a comedy fan, but that said I have some like select fandoms. I mean, I think the, maybe the only time I've seen you perform live was at Weirdo Wight. I'm a devoted Weirdo Night fan.
Christina: Okay. Yeah, you’re a Weirdo Night fan. I feel like Weirdo Nights are definitely, and we'll probably talk about this, but Weirdo Nights, because they are a very special context where I feel like I can really do the type of comedy performance that reflects a lot of different parts of myself. As opposed to, as opposed to what I have to do when I maybe perform just like in a comedy club or an indie show. I'm glad you saw a Weirdo Night performance. I feel like that's a good representative of what I like to ideally do in my comedy.
Ann: Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe you can explain a little bit about Weirdo Night because I do think it's some important context for maybe understanding why it feels more like home to you then, uh, maybe I dunno, like aloud bar that I might associate with standup comedy. I'm like making air quotes right now. How is it different? What is it?
Christina: I feel like it's self explan-- Weirdo Night is a performance night. A performance night started by this really amazing performance artist named James Cameron who has an alter ego called dynasty handbag. And we, she definitely comes from the queer performance art, art world side of things. And in some ways, relationships with the entertainment industry is making certain inroads into film and TV and I coming from also the art world, but not even as a performer, but as a writer and an art critic, and then becoming a comedian, which I thought was going to be my way of running away from the art world. I thought that was my exit strategy. And it's sort of like the further I run, the more opportunities I find to just keep playing in that context. But what's really special about weirdo night is because it's a performance night run by performance artists and the acts run the gamut of musicians, performance artists, and comedians, and sometimes just sort of strange cabaret acts, you know, someone who can do a million hula hoops at once. So to me, it just feels so free because there's, it's such a, it's almost a, uh, no context is a context where the audience is ready for anything to happen. And it's a context where people just want to see entertainment writ large, and it's not as stuffy as a, as an art context where people, you know, I've performed comedy and art galleries and people are always a little bit less likely to let themselves go and laugh. Um, so this is definitely a lot of smart art world. People who are ready to laugh. And that's just, uh, that's just the best of both worlds in terms of the, you know, art comedy divide, which to me is just completely contextual. It's just depends on where I'm being asked to perform and what I can bring to that and how tired I am that day, honestly.
Ann: Well, you said that you thought comedy was going to be your way out of the art world or out of art criticism. Maybe, maybe take us back to that moment. Like what, like where, where did that enter the picture or also, why did you want out like really paint me a picture?
Christina: Okay. I kind of fell into art criticism, which is not a thing that most people, I mean, I don't know, do little girls and boys and kids dream of like one day being an art critic. You know, I wanted to be an actor and an entertainer since I was little. That was the dream. But I think when you are, when you grow up sort of like a poor Mexican kid in Los Angeles, you sort of live in the shadow of this kind of glamor of Hollywood that you kind of intuitively understand is not for you. So I did a lot of, I actually did a lot of theater and a lot of improv in high school. That was my big, uh, you know, outlet. I didn't finish college until I was 28. I drifted in and out of community colleges and jobs and just was, had, had no direction whatsoever. No one in my family had gone to college. They were encouraging in terms of, yeah, like that would be great if you went to college, but no one knew how to help me really. And I was working at, uh, I was working at Fred Segal and I had got an internship at a magazine, um, because one of the girls I worked with her boyfriend worked there. So even though I hadn't gone to school at all, this person just gave me an internship as a favor, which was actually huge because I got real experience, professional writing experience, which is what I wanted. And that turned into, I wasn't really happy at a fashion magazine. And at the time I was living in Echo Park, my next door neighbor, who was an art critic, we were just having beers on the porch and kind of getting to know each other. And I mentioned that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't really enjoy writing about, I do enjoy writing about fashion. I just didn't enjoy what I was doing because I was an intern. I usually got shuffled off to profile, you know, anonymous CW hunks about really, you know, and I was just, I just, it wasn't as glamorous as I thought. And I'm like, well, basically my job was to make really uninteresting people seem more interesting than they are, and this is not what I thought the writing life would be. And he just was like, well, you should try writing about art, uh, because you, you know, it's really, it's, it's, it's really difficult and you might find that more fulfilling. And I said, okay, well, how do I do that? And he was like, well, uh, you could write for me because he was the editor of a website. So I literally just someone shoved this opportunity in my face. And I took it because I just had no idea what I wanted for myself. And I felt like it was better than nothing. And in doing that, that, you know, I, maybe I could get a better handle on what I wanted, if it was, if I was figuring it out against actually doing something, anything so, you know, no. And that's how, you know, how, you know, how, how do you ever build a freelance writing career? I'm sure people ask you this all the time. Somehow it sort of snowballed. I did work really hard at it. I, I went to openings, I went to museums, I read a lot. I kind of like, you know, learn criticism on the streets for lack of a better term. And I did fall in love with it. I think I fell in love with the lifestyle, but also you just fall in love with the mode of thinking, you fall in love with the art world is a very weird, special place with some very weird hyper-educated, uh, people that you can't find anywhere else. Um, and after having no commercial gallery experience whatsoever, this gallery hired me to be their director, solely based off of my writing. And I was just in over my head. Um, I felt guilty because I had graduated school. I got this really cool, fancy job where I was like flying all over the world and going to cool parties and, you know, doing cocaine with cool people. And I just wasn't happy. And I felt like guilty about not being happy. Cause I, I guess, ostensibly, this is what I was working toward. And then I, I ran into a friend from high school, just on the street and I was telling him, they were almost like, oh, and they had, they had gone on to become an actor. They're a working actor. And I said, something about told them all about what I was doing. And they were just like, oh, oh, that's cool. You're like a fancy intellectual lady. And they seem kind of puzzled by it. And they're like, well, you should, I was such a freaking goof my whole life and just, they were like, oh, well, you know, you should like, I do improv iO West. Like you should come do classes. Like you were so funny and so talented edit, like it's a shame that you stopped doing that. So I just started taking improv classes, uh, around, you know, like I, you know, get off of my fancy gallery director job and like kick off my heels and put on a hoodie and go to improv. Eventually I just, I got, I got fired. I, my bosses…
Ann: From the gallery job?
Christina: Yeah, they could kind of, it was sort of clear that I wasn't really invested anyway. I think even aside from comedy, I would not have stayed just because it was infringing too much on my writing. But at some point, you know, they took me aside and they were kind of like, uh, look, we know you've been doing open mics.
Ann: We know you've been seeing someone else.
Christina: Kinda. They're like, well, you know, and that's really one of those jobs where like, you need to be the face of the gallery. So just like going to openings and doing all these outings and representing the gallery. And I was mostly that freak that time. I was mostly using it to do comedy and they were kind of like, look, it's clear that you don’t want to be here and that you want to be a comedian for some reason. So like, maybe you should go do that. And, um, and I did.
Ann: I've heard you make jokes about, um, how comedy pays the bills, but your passion is your day job. And I was wondering if that's like, you know, a joke that's kind of rooted in this time for when you were working at the gallery and starting to do standup, or if it's like, you know, you, you have a day job situation right now that you're sort of like, Ugh, like can't wait to jettison this.
Christina: It's funny. I actually don't, I don't knock day jobs. It's when I, when I first it's the gallery, it's when I got a day job that was supposed to be a career that things got frustrating. Um, whenever people, I don't have a day job right now and I'm, I mean, who knows what's going on? I'm open to one, uh, because I will say that I built my, you know, and things, there were a couple of really significant moments. One was when I think I came home when I was working at the gallery, like I came home from this art fair in New York where I had this whirlwind of art fairs and collector parties and tepid salmon, steak dinners. And I came home and my boyfriend at the time and I just started crying, you know, because I just felt guilty that I should be loving this cool life that I'm leading. And I didn't. And I realized that actually, you know, maybe doing like a little indie show to like 12 people in a garage was actually making me happy and not really sure what to do about that. My boyfriend was like, what do you want? And I was like, um, I think I wanted to do comedy and write about art. And even just as I said it, I was like, oh, I want to do comedy and write about art.
Ann: Oh, no. [laughter
Christina: Two big moneymakers. And then, um, if anything, the whole engine of my work comes from the tension between these two parts of myself. And sometimes I can get really excited by it, but sometimes I'm just, it's very exhausting. And I feel like my brain and my soul are being torn in half all the time, wanting to be seen as smart versus wanting to be seen as funny versus just like wanting to be adored versus wanting to be admired, you know, I, I will say. And so there are a few, there's a few, there's few very special contexts where I feel like these things can be integrated yet this book is, is another context where I felt like I worked something out that incorporated a lot of different parts of myself.
Ann: I want to ask you more questions about the book, but before we go there, I find myself curious to hear what you think about the way power operates in the worlds of art and comedy respectively. Like, like how it's the same, how it's different. I want to talk more about like, you know, how you situate yourself in your work between those worlds. But before we do that, like what about the stuff that's outside of you and sort of how people prove themselves or gain the power to like be the fullest version of themselves in that world?
Christina: Yeah. I mean, it's the, it's, it's the same. The details are different, but it's essentially the same as that people that come from money definitely have more of an advantage. Um, privately I have a lot of conversations with both comedians and artists who just don't feel like they can call themselves that because, because of where their money comes from at, and it's shitty, that's a word that's a working class thing because, you know, a rich person has no problem calling themselves an artist just because, and as doesn't care that their money maybe happens to come from their family, but a person who has to work for themselves has a really hard time calling themselves an artist if they're actually a bartender or a copywriter. And I think about that a lot as well. Like I was even trying to think of like, God, where did my money come from this last month? And it was like, well, there was some essay writing and there were some journals. There was some, uh, you know, magazine writing. And then there were some, there were some days where I just was a PA on a shoot because I like swallowed my ego and there's producers that I've worked with as an actor that I have made known that like, if they need just production help, I will do that, you know, for money. I think that, yeah, the power comes from the constant sense of doubt that people from a certain background feel about what constitutes participation in this world. And it's always social. It's always some, some dumb. You know, I don't go to art openings very much at all anymore. And I've actually been publishing some of the best stuff I've ever published in better magazines. And I just did a commission for the Los Angeles county museum of art. In some ways I'm more embedded in the art world than I've ever been. And yet I also feel so outside of it because I've, in order to actually do the work I've had to drop a lot of, I mean, we all did last year, but I dropped a lot of the social mores and especially social media expectations of being a, in the art world and there's analogs in comedy. So it's just this ouroboros of backslapping bullshit. And it, it's tricky. I don't think it's meaningless. I think it does matter to an extent, but the strategery to use the term from our hallowed President, George W. Bush, um, the strategery around building a creative life can somehow just like supplant the work itself. And, um, that's something I've had to deal with. It's scary. It's scary to feel like you're disappearing. And I know people, a lot of people operate from that position of if I don't have a social media exposure, I'm not here. You know, you know, when I had a day job at the startup, which was pretty good job, and I had vacation time, you know, I would use my vacation time to fly to art fairs and to cover those and then cover them for an art magazine. And I'm sure that gave them and I, and I was aware and I did not work very hard to disabuse anyone of the notion that like, oh, this is just my jetsetty journalist lifestyle. When actually it's like the fee that I got for writing the piece about the airfare definitely did not cover how much it costs for me to get there. It was my day job that allowed me to do that. But you know, on social media, it's just like, wow, Christina's flying all over the world and writing about this stuff. She must really have it together. But then also make it known that like, well, I still need money, like, well, but I'm still looking for work. Well, I don't want to look too successful because then maybe people will stop giving me opportunities, you know? And I have, I've had people email me even just for copywriting stuff, which is mainly my bread and butter right now. And like, oh, well, I don't know if you're too busy or you're still doing this. And I'm like, yes. [laughter]
Ann: I want to take a quick break. And then when we come back, let's talk about the book. I also have lots of questions for you about that.
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Ann: I really truly love the book as a whole. And, um, but, but in thinking about talking to you today there, one thing I was like, I have to be sure to ask about is your description of finding your voice, which is like one of those perennial creative topics that like people feel young, young artists, especially I think, feel particularly hand-wringy about, and, and maybe also listen, maybe artists at all stage, like, what is my voice at this stage? How do I find it? And I really love what you wrote about it, which is that you're not missing it. You're just scared to pay the price.
Christina: Oh my God. [laughter]
Ann: I would love to hear you talk about that because I was like, whoa, some underlines were happening.
Christina: I underline that thing in my own copy of the book. It's one of those things I'm like, I can't believe I wrote that.
Ann: [laughter] I love it.
Christina: “This is the thing about writing is that it's supposed to be your only way out and you think it's going to be easy because it's free just a pen and paper, but all that talking will cost you, you run all over the planet trying to find what mentors and well-wishers have referred to as your voice. And it's not that you're constantly missing it so much as you're scared to pay the price of finding it.” I, and it, it was, I was just scared. I mean, that came after the big, long essay about having, uh, about having cancer, uh, my cancer essay. And at some point I just couldn't, I couldn't write without bumping up against everything that I was running from about myself and all this stuff that I was too embarrassed to talk about. It felt painful to talk about, or even just embarrassed to use writing as a way to just describe my experience about things I didn't understand and feeling like, I mean, it's weird to say, what's basically like, well, I want it to be a specific type of intellectual, which was like a white east coast wasp, you know? And that was like my fantasy of a different kind of life, because I'm like a, you know, a white, Mexican, California girl. I guess like, yeah, I mean, the price or finding your voices that you can't control what it is. And I was trying to control that from the outside. It's like, I'm going to be this hot shit autotheory bitch. [laughter] My conception of what a writer was, was just so externally informed that I was afraid of. Yeah. Like that when I, when I finally got to a place where it was maybe coming from a more honest place that like, I wouldn't like it or other people wouldn't like it. And you know, sometimes both of those things are the case and it's just like part of me, like growing to be a more whole person allows that to happen, to be the case. Um, there is, there is absolutely, I mean, I'm sorry if this sounds discouraging, there's absolutely a price for finding your voice or being like true to yourself. I wanted to ask you a question, cause I don't know if this would be, uh, I don't know if the people will be listening to this podcast, like what the hell is going on? How would you describe the book? Like if you had to be like, oh my friend, like at coffee with someone and you're like, oh, you should be. Or maybe even not assuming you would recommend it, but you know.
Ann: No, I, a hundred percent would recommend it. That's what this interview is. I only talk to people whose work, it's not even like a tacit endorsement. I'm like, this is valuable space that I only share with people who are doing work I think is valuable. You know? So like totally it's an endorsement. Um, how would I describe the book? Well, I might say something like this, which is that I really like art criticism, but I don't have a real capacity for like, I don't subscribe to Art Forum. I'm not going to sit down and like read back-to-back reviews of, you know, different exhibitions or whatever. I like it when, um, people write about art in a way that butts up with lived experience. And so this book is really nailing it for me on that front. Like I love--
Christina: Yeah, that’s sweet, that's exactly it. [laughter]
Ann: Yeah. And so, and I really like this, your kind of singular experience of the world and like, you know, with, um, you know, the, the benefit of like how you see and appreciate art with like some really fucking funny parts as well. Um, it was, it's really just, you know, and I, I love a slim tome. I would call it a slim tome, which is, um, which is fantastic. You know, it's like slipping into a pocket.
Christina: Yeah. It's an airplane. It's an airplane read. A lot of people text me to say that they, they're reading it on their plane to New York or from New York. And I'm like, I…
Ann: It's a perfect airplane read.
Christina: I love that. Thank you.
Ann: Yeah. Yeah.
Christina: I'm actually already, unfortunately, I mean, it was such a, unfortunately I could already feel the next book starting.
Ann: That's not unfortunate. That's amazing.
Christina: It's so exhausting. It's like falling in love where I'm just like, oh god, I know this feeling. This is happening again. Really.
Ann: I have, I have a lot of favorite chapters, but I do, I do want to talk about the, uh, cancer chapter for a second, because I want to know if it felt necessary to include it in the book. Like if it felt like you were making, um, you know, I don't know everything we were saying earlier about like, you know, paying the price. Does it, did it feel difficult to include, like, I don't know, I'd love to hear about the, your process of deciding, um, you know, the way it fit into the rest of this book, I guess.
Christina: Yes and no. It actually came out of, I got sick in 2011. I think I was sort of done with everything by like 2012, but I just didn't want to talk about it at all. And frankly, you know, when I, even, when I was sick, I actually didn't talk about it at all. The only people that knew were my immediate family and my boyfriend and my best friend. I think it was what I needed at the time, but I just kind of like just disassociated, like I sort of just wasn't there for most of it. And then one night had like a rare moment of clarity and an urge to get it down. And just for my own reference, their own history as felt like that was important. It started just with the color, which is actually the color of the book, um, that this artist did this very strange installation that was a bunch of, uh, disembodied, like modernist architecture pieces all on this grid that he painted this, like just sort of like, I don't know, saccharin bubblegum pink. And that pink was the Pantone color of the year. Um, the same year that I had my surgery. And I thought that that was just a funny coincidence. And I also thought it was funny that the, um, the color was sort of the copy around the color was all talking about how it's so optimistic and such a color about like hope and brightness. And then, I mean, this is a bit copporial and, uh, disgusting, but also like that Pepto-y color, uh, reminded me of like what my body looked like when it was cut open. Um, as I mentioned in the book living with like a colostomy bag temporarily, um, in between surgeries and I mean, I can't really, that sounds so arbitrary, but something felt significant about, I mean, that, that work, that, that artist did was about the body in a way specifically about, you know, undoing these like macho ideas of like these modernist ideas about the body as a machine. And, you know, he kind of laid it out by deconstructing, you know, these, uh, pieces of architecture and painting them a really, really garish, embarrassing color. And that's just kind of how I felt being like, literally cut, cut, open. I worry a lot about the way I write that people and people have accused me of just like, well, you don't even really, you just use other people's art to like talk about yourself or your own experience. And I'm like, well, what good is it for if it's not making my life better? Like at the end of the day, why am I looking at this shit, if it doesn't help me understand something either about myself or my relationship to the world. And so I've just become, and there's plenty of other art critics who, you know, maybe take more of a stance where they feel like they need to serve the work. But to me, the work is the thing that I'm writing and that's what I'm serving. It's not even me and it's not the gallery and it's not the artist and it's not even the fucking artwork. It's the thing that I'm writing. So I just become more unapologetic about that when I find a confluence of maybe coincidences around a piece of art that I, that are sort of the sort of stick. And I try to explore that.
Ann: Yeah. I and also you caught some really good jokes and I mean, calling the surgeon, the Jeff Koons of butt I laughed out loud. [laughter] You know, and also some, the one says that I have heard friends express about being sick, that I have not necessarily read in detail, you know, like the part where you make a joke after surgery to make your family and boyfriend feel reassured that you're still you like that, that whole managing the emotions of the people who love you. It's an aspect of illness that I think is like, I don't know, you made that comment about, oh, all women write about their cancer or whatever. But I actually think that there is a lot of depth that doesn't has not been explored in writing.
Christina: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely part of like, the writer like Bob Nikas, who's an art critic that I really love. He mentioned this in an essay about an artist, Katie Nolan, who makes sculpture, but he's also was very perceptive and sort of connecting what she does to certain types of comedy. I mean, cause standup comedy is such an American art form that like on one sentence there's I love what I do. I don't bring, you know, my, my comedy is I think comes from a really, really joyous place now, but sometimes it doesn't and I definitely a big part of my recovery was feeling like I needed to perform being a certain kind of patient, being a certain kind of cancer patient, having a certain kind of recovery, A to just entertain people and B, yeah so I just hated feeling pitied, you know, and I, and I hated seeing how stressed out my parents and my boyfriend were. And I just like, yeah, even in the midst of my, whatever I was going through, I felt the need to make them feel better about how bad I was feeling.
Ann: Yeah. Okay. I have a lightning round set of questions for you that are, that are like, you know, quick, quick and dirties, um, if you want to play.
Christina: Yes.
Ann: Okay, well I feel like I want to ask you, uh, upfront, I kind of, um, maybe based on a joke that you made, but, uh, your favorite flavor of LaCroix or similar fizzy bev.
Christina: Limoncello. I am a right now drinking limoncello LaCroix with cold brew coffee and creamer all in the same glass. And it's kind of like a coffee icey Italian soda. And it's really good, but I do, my boyfriend and I, we chugg limoncello LaCroix, chug it.
Ann: That is also my favorite. It's a very polarizing flavor, but I am so deeply on team limoncello with you. Thank you for that.
Christina: Yes, yes, yes.
Ann: A good book that you read recently or a book you'd recommend that you read recently.
Christina: Mm. I have been reading a lot of stuff, uh, from female union analysts and I think that's opening, I don't really want necessarily to recommend it, because I think if it's not what you're into and that's not part of your journey, like you're just going to pick this stuff up and it's going to be gobbledygook. If it is part of your journey, if you feel drawn to a feminine union analysis, I would recommend Leaving My Father's House by Marion Woodman and uh, On the Way to the Wedding by Linda Leonard and also just point out it's very important that the wedding is actually just, uh, a metaphor for integration. It's not about like being in a relationship. The book that I would actually recommend that I tore through recently was, um, Levels of the Game by John McPhee. Um, it's so beautiful. So John McPhee is, I don't know, journalist, he's written like 40 books. He wrote a whole book about oranges and then he wrote another whole book. That's just about like the pine barrens of New Jersey. And he wrote a note full of the book that's just about like the California fault lines. He just one of these, um…
Ann: He wrote one about the shad, like just about the fish. So many.
Christina: Yeah. And I don't know how he does it, but he can write a book about anything. And it's so beautiful. And it's so interesting. So the one I read recently because I'm a big tennis freak, uh, he wrote a book called Levels of the Game. The entire book is a stroke by stroke narration of a tennis match between Arthur Ash and Clark Graebner. And Arthur Ash is a tennisplayer comes from a working class background and he's Black. Clark Grebner is a white, uh, bougie upper-class kid. And, um, this is like an important match, I think, at a US Open. And it sounds boring when somehow he makes this, uh, so gripping, I don't think he even have to be tennis to be in, to be into tennis, to be into this book.
Ann: Okay. You have an essay in the book about collecting clothes or a mention of collecting clothes. So I want to know your current favorite item in your closet. Devastating question. I know.
Christina: I think, oh. Okay. It will be because I feel like I definitely also, I come from many places. I come from a, um, I come from the vacuum of the broken promises of modernism. I come from Mexico. I come from art, I come from Los Angeles, but I also come from the early, the early aughts personal fashion blog-osphere. Yes. So I've been using some of my, and I know this is not like a hallmark of, of like very self-possessed personal style, which is, I think that, you know, when you get to a certain age, you kind of like, especially if you grew up in poor or like not even necessarily poor, but like when you get to a certain age and you sort of like retroactively revenge buy things that you couldn't have when you were younger and even if maybe they don't even necessarily suit you. And for me, it was a very specific pair of those, I don't know if you remember these, they're called the Jeffrey Campbell Nightwalk and they were those, um, they were like a knockoff of that big that out that the Alexander McQueen high heel that like had--
Ann: The Armadillo shoe.
Christina: The Armadillo shoe. So Jeffrey Campbell made like a sort of downmarket, petite bourgeois, uh, version. That was like a Mary Jane that has a giant, like five foot tall sort of like platform. And it's, it has no heel, it's kind of counterbalanced in this weird way. And I bought it.
Ann: Oh so it's sorry, it's not the Armadillo shoe. I'm just correcting myself. I'm looking at a photo of it. Yeah. It's a different one. I just want to correct the record, but I know what you mean.
Christina: Yeah. The heel of the bottom portion of it is sort of like him. He took that from the Alexander McQueen Armadillo shoe, and then he made it one. This is what Jeffrey Campbell does. He like steals a very specific part of a designer shoe and then like takes it down to where it's like kind of tacky and wearable. Um, yes. I bought a pair of them on Poshmark because I just wanted them so badly when I was a young blogger. And I'm like, and they're so lame and they're so corny and sort of just like a, just like a big, a big shoe that maybe like a suburban goth girl would wear. But I, I started to just sort of wear them out with like a dress or like a skirt and a t-shirt and I, I think I'm, if I'm wrong don't and you see me out, don't tell me, but I, I think I'm pulling them off.
Ann: Um, okay. And last question. Favorite snacks
Christina: Besides limoncello LaCroix? Um,
Ann: Yes, an edible snack, maybe.
Christina: I eat a lot string cheese and almonds. I'm based. I just eat like a little mouse sometimes.
Ann: What kind of almonds?
Christina: Like, like not even fancy ones, like just raw, nothing on them, almonds. I like the process. I like the ritual of string cheese. I just see, I try to see how small of a string I can get.
Ann: It's like a meditation trying to find or get the smallest string.
Christina: Wow. Yeah,
Ann: A meditative practice.
Christina: So yeah, no, you're just making me feel snobbier because I'm like, well, um, my snacks are not only healthy. They're kind of spiritual so.
Ann: I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And That's the end of my questions, Christina. Thank you so much on the podcast.
Christina: Thank you so much for having me.
[interview ends]
Aminatou: What a delight. Thank you for doing that.
Ann: Oh, the pleasure is all mine. And can also be all yours. You can go to christinacatherine.info, where she has linked to some of her standup performances, where her social media is all winked. And we will also link to Hesse Press, which is the small press that put out her book, aesthetical relations. So you can buy directly from them because we love supporting a small press.
Aminatou: We do love supporting a small press. Um, I am going back to bed to, uh, deal with my broken body and my sciatica, but I will see you on the internet my love.
Ann: I will see you on the internet.
[outro music]
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our producer is Jordan Bailey and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.