Joey Was A Babe

 BY LIZ

I don't remember much about that Ramones documentary; it made me sad so I blocked it out. But I'm pretty sure there was something about Joey being in love with a girl and Johnny stealing her away and then marrying her (right? I don't feel like Wikipedia-ing this), which is just so baffling to me -- why would you go for some mean crabby Republican* when you could have the sweetest strangest tallest boy in the world? Joey was a babe and I relate so much to his scrappy, weirdly/pervertedly traditional sense of romanticism. He was a lover and I love this snippet from some Creem article Joey's ex-girlfriend wrote about him a very long time ago:

"He always smiles and never lies, but makes up great stories about people getting hit by buses, girls turning into vegetables, and giant cockroaches breaking through walls. Joey sleeps in his leather jacket. He has a plastic bug zoo. Once he made me and Dee Dee catch a huge waterbug for him and he fed it bread until it died a few days later, then he kept it anyway."

          So these are a bunch of my favorite pix of Joey; a lot of them came from here. A few days after he died I went to see Patti Smith and she sang "Be My Baby" for him, which was so sweet. I think you should listen to the original version of "Be My Baby" as you look at all these photographs. Joey can be everybody's baby.

When Joey was little the kids made fun of him and called him Geoffrey Giraffe (his real name's Jeffry), but everyone knows it's a great thing to be a giraffe. Giraffes are so gentle, and so elegant in their gawkiness. Plus 6'6" is such a hot height, a couple inches past ideal but not quite Thurston Moore-level excessive. I mean, clearly Thurston Moore grew to 6'7" just to lord it over everyone all the time, but Joey's much too sweet and humble for that. 

          But what I really want to talk about is his jeans! Joey was so good at wearing jeans. The first boy I ever dated used to have these jeans with the most ripped-up knees and it was just too severe -- like, it was so obvious he'd ripped them up himself, and that's trying too hard and I don't approve. I wholly believe that Joey's knee rips happened naturally, that he never tried too hard for anything in his life. Plus he looks like Ric Ocasek here and right now Ric Ocasek is my other number-one favorite pop romantic of all time.

Oh my god, he's so cool. On his way to go surfing, flirting with some babe (Debbie Harry!) in a convertible, and some other guy (Dee Dee??)'s lying dead on the sidewalk. Also: is that Snoopy on Joey's shirt? Snoopy as the Red Baron, even?









One of my best things about Joey: how he always wore his belts outside of the belt loops. Sometimes I think about doing that too but then I'm like, "No. Only Joey. Only Joey can do that thing with the belt loops."

Joey loves kitties. Kitties love Joey. Here's a picture of my cat looking at this picture, loving Joey Ramone.

I just really like the drape of his shirt here. And he's got such lovely hands.

I like the idea of this pic being the "after" shot to that photo up top, of Joey sitting by the pool in his rolled-up jeans -- like he just said whatever the Joey Ramone equivalent of Whatevsies! might be and took off his glasses for the first time ever and jumped right in and swam all day in the sweet happy sunshine. I hope that's what happened. I hope there are lots of nice swimming pools in Heaven.

*I actually don't know much about Johnny Ramone, and I always visit his cenotaph whenever I'm at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Maybe Johnny Ramone was totally wonderful.