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B
ook a show, write the music later.”
Thar might not he the safest
approach to performing, hut if any
one can hack it, it’s Mickey
Pollizatto.
The 35-year-oid juggles a ton of responsibilities:
He works as a barista at Pix Patisserie, where he
also orchestrated its 2007 employee calendar; he
dabbles as a part-time photo assistant and baby
sitter; he screens Saturday morning cartoons for
adults; and he shines in the spotlight as one-half of
the electro pop duo Caught in Candy. Pollizatto’s
alter ego is Cabiria “CJ” Jones, who was bom in the
summer of 2004—the same month that saw the
arrival of popular performance troupes Sissyboy and
Fleshtone, incidentally.
“She’s from Europe. If you ask her she’ll say,
‘Everywhere.’ She’s got a hokey little accent
because she’s picked up a lot of quirks along the
way,” Pollizatto explains. "She kind of has a
tragic background. Her mother is an Italian Jew,
her father was a German soldier. In her mind she’s
thriving in the ’80s...no matter what year it is.”
Last fall Caught in Candy staged the musical
Fatal Flaws at the Time-Based Art Festival, where
fans finally learned how CJ came across her cohort,
Maximdlian Hertzalot (Daniel Bidwell).
28,H <s< S andy
(503)233 1890
Mickey Pollizatto channels Cabiria Jones.
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“Max and Cabiria meet in the States, and Max
leeches onto Cabiria to become famous,” Pollizatto
says. "He winds up screwing her over—he cheats
on her, there’s some implication that he was
abusive to Cabiria—and she kills him. That’s how
the musical ends. She shoots him down. Then
there’s a little news broadcast at the end that says
she’s been arrested.”
CJ will soon make her solo debut—complete
with dancers and a slave boy/roadie—but this will
be a prequel of sorts to that sordid story.
“She’s just a pop diva, and she just wants to
make people happy and dance. I guess she’s grown
up a little bit,” Pollizatto says. “Now she sings a lot
about love—I guess it’s hard for me to say as the
creator. It’s kind of like piecing my own head apart,
you know? Because she is me.”
So who is this guy? And what drives him toward
superstardom? Like many queer men before him, it’s
all about Madge.
“I want to be exactly what Madonna is, but as
me,” Pollizatto says. “1 always think of Madonna as
Jim's Closet
i
BY JIM RADOSTA
j
someone that just did
I collaborate a lot...and
1 wind up -'oming against people that have to plan.
I’m like, ‘No, let’s just do it now and figure out the
details la.er.’ Madonna knew that if she just took the
right steps, everything else would fall into place.
That’s how things usually work best for me.”
In keeping with that pace, Pollizatto is still
feverishly working on songs for his upcoming gig.
“1 feel like I had to come up with something
really quickly because I wanted it to be a creative
summer,” he says. “As soon as something goes
blank, I need to create a project.”
Pollizatto traces his feisty feminist spirit to his
childhood in Long Island, N.Y.,
where he grew up in a household
full of women. At 16 he came out
to his single mother, who worked
as a cop.
“My mom freaked out. I had to
tell her again a year later. All of
her Catholic shit started coming
out,” he says. “Now my mom goes
to Pride parades without me.
1 don’t even go to Pride parades!”
After high school, Pollizatto
“spent 10 years looking for myself,”
traveling in Europe and studying at
State University of New York at
Albany, first as a social work major
and later switching *o Italian and
business. In 2000 he randomly
picked the Rose City as his next
destination; besides seeing the Mm
My Own Private Idaho, he admio
he knew little about the West Coast.
“1 had a good feeling about Portland.... 1 hear it
from a lot of people that come out here—they just
get a call in their head and they go,” Pollizatto says.
“1 quit my job, 1 gave them four weeks’ notice, and
1 bought a plane ticket to Portland. This is a good
example of Mickey: Buy the ticket, work out the
details later.” ©
perform their first full set in
Portland during Kink—a new night presented by
Queer Fetish featuring bondage demos and DJs
Blackeye, Mel and ChaotiQueer—from 9 p.m. to
2 a.m. Sept. 1 at Rotture, 315 S.E. Third Ave.
Clover is $5 freaky or $7 vanilla.
Mickey Pollizatto and Asher Loverdi present odd and
obscure S aturday M orning C artoons noon
Aug. 18 at The Waypost, 3120 N. Williams Ave.
This week's theme is music and singing.
CJ AND THE DOLLS
Arts and Culture Editor J im R aixtsta needs your
feedback. Write to jim@justout.com.