In last week’s installment of her Vice column, “Amphetamine Logic,” Wild child blogger Cat Marnell announced that her time at the hipster web mag was coming to an end.
“I’m writing my last columns,” Cat Marnell explained when we reached her late Friday afternoon .“I almost feel addicted to them, like I could go on forever.”
However, Ms. Marnell, who celebrated her 30th birthday earlier this week, is ready for her next venture. She said she has become a perfectionist. “I’ve just got to do it right. When you are writing weird, it’s make it good or go home, you know?” Ms. Marnell noted she scrapped this week’s column because she wasn’t happy with it and missed her deadline.
“I miss my deadlines all the time, and my editor just has to deal with me like Jane did.” Ms. Marnell was the Beauty Editor at xoJane.com until June. Ms. Marnell said she still talks to Jane Pratt all the time, and they plan to have dinner soon.
“I love her, she’s the great love of my life,” Ms. Marnell said of her erstwhile mentor.
But, even though she readily admits she’s difficult to deal with, Ms. Marnell said she has enjoyed a great working relationship with Vice EIC Rocco Castoro.
“I mean, I’m a nightmare person to have work for you,” she said. “Half the time they give me edits and I don’t accept them and they are cool with that.”
“Rocco is very empathetic. He’s not happy that I have missed my deadline like multiple times. He’s offered to get me help if it’s a substance issue. He’s manly, I’ve never had a male editor-in-chief.”
To illustrate Mr. Castoro’s testosterone quotient, Ms. Marnell told us about how he invited her to an upcoming Vice BBQ by texting her pictures of tomatoes and cucumbers (“so cute!”) to entice her. “He was like, you need to come to my backyard and grill meat.”
Ms. Marnell is preparing her book proposal, which she described as 80 percent done and said she hopes to have finished by next week. She noted that she should have already finished it this summer and said her agent, Byrd Leavell (who reps Tucker Max) of the Waxman Leavell Agency is mad at her for taking so long.
She originally thought her book, which she described as The Devil Wears Prada meets The Basketball Diaries was going to be an addiction memoir. Instead, she now sees it “not as a druggy book, but more about how it worked out.”
“As soon as I said, ‘Fuck it,’ things started working out for me,” she said. Accordingly, Ms. Marnell said she has adopted a new motto, which she got from a wheelchair advertisement on the side of a bus: “If you can’t stand up, stand out.”
Although known for her drug use, Ms. Marnell believes her writing and progress towards some semblance of sobriety is often overlooked.
“I go to parties, but I don’t really party that much. I’m not, like, Charlie Sheening,” Ms. Marnell said.
As proof of her newfound moderation, Ms. Marnell pointed out she hasn’t smoked PCP in a month.
“I’ve been working really hard at being a better person, but it’s not something I’m writing about.”
