The Basics: Counting One Through Ten (Albums)
1. Lil' Wayne – Tha Carter III (If you are "the best rapper alive," it probably means you're number one.)
2. Taylor Swift – Fearless (It only took the musical musings of a fifteen-year old to make me want to pick out a white dress and baby just say, yes.)
3. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (Drives home the heartache. Worth every falsetto-inspired tear.)
4. Lykke Li – Youth Novels (Electronically-engineered coyness. I Lykke a lot.)
5. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals ("No Diggity" over "Flashing Lights," over my first race of 6.2 miles. Not to mention a cameo by Rod-the-young-hearthrob-Stewart.)
6. Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue (Grand poeticism awash in indie country loveliness.)
7. Kaki King – Dreaming of Revenge (Humble instrumental contemplation.)
8. Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight (The Frames minus the movie deal.)
9. Vampire Weekend – Self-Titled (You can be pro "Oxford Comma," while remaining anti-Oxford comma.)
10. Why? Alopecia (Why[?] do I love thee? For your bar mitzvah references and Williamsburg Bridge companionship.)
Remainders
Fleet Foxes – Self-Titled (Breezy harmonies.)
Amanda Palmer – Who Killed Amanda Palmer? (Brash horns.)
Kanye West – 808's and Heartbreak (Vocoder soul.)
Now Ten Back to One (Songs)
10. M.I.A - "Paper Planes" (Thumping. Bass.)
9. Kaki King - "Pull Me Out Alive" (Heart. Aches.)
8. Beyonce – "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" (Man. Up.)
7. MGMT – "Electric Feel" (Throw. Back.)
6. Lil' Wayne - "Let The Beat Build" (Lift. Lower.)
5. Kanye West – "Love Lockdown" (Bang. Drum.)
4. Jenny Lewis – "Acid Tongue" (Sparse. Strum.)
3. The Dodos – "Fools" (Chorale. Rush.)
2. Lykke Li – "Little Bit" (Maybe. Love.)
1. Ne-Yo – "Closer" (Billie. Jean.)
Simple Equation for a Swedish Idol Sandwich: Lykke Li's "I'm Good I'm Gone" + Amanda Jennsen's "Do You Love Me" + Lykke Li's "Little Bit" = Syncopated Strutting Down City Streets
Fitness Routine Breakdown in Percentages
20% Ellipticalness: Robyn – Self-Titled (Inspiring Stacey's haircut '09?)
30% Weightensity: Rihanna – Good Girl Gone Bad ('07, so sue me.)
40% Treadmillocity: Beyonce – I Am Sasha Fierce (Run those thighs into '88 leotard shape.)
10% Abdomination: Lil' Wayne - "Let The Beat Build" (Over and over and beyond (8)'08.)
Who Says These Lists Have No Logic?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce (Disc 1) < Solange's Sol-Angel & The Hadley St. Dreams < Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce (Disc 2)
THEREFORE:
Matthew Knowles = RICH
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" > I'm From Barcelona's "Paper Planes" (On the dance floor.)
M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" < I'm From Barcelona's "Paper Planes" (In the headphones.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
IF:
Anyone who like Taylor Swift has something in common with eight year old girls.
AND
Miss Stacia likes Taylor Swift.
THEN:
Miss Stacia has something in common with eight-year old girls.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Random Data and Analysis (No Numerical Equivalent):
Electric show no one else (critic or companion) seemed to enjoy: M.I.A. @ McCarren Park, 6/6/08 (Put my neon Nikes to their proper rhythmic use.)
Oops! Forgot I had a ticket to: She & Him @ Terminal 5, 7/26/08 (Was it good? Anyone?)
Discovered I like leaning on the balcony more than standing on the main floor at: Wolf Parade @ Terminal 5, 8/31/08 (I also like a game of shuffleboard, some warm milk, and a nap after the show.)
Partied like it was my birthday at: Girl Talk @ Terminal 5, 11/16/08 (And nearly spent the midnight transition to age 26 on the coat check line.)
Most uncomfortable broadway show to see with your grandparents: Spring Awakening (Incestuous rape and live sex-simulation, followed immediately by intermission. "So how do YOU like it so far?")
How can I justify having watched so much of: The Pickup Artist (I claim research for self-defense against furry hats and goggles and terms like "kino.")
Biggest waste of Maggie Gyllenhal: "The Dark Knight Returns" (Better when Maggie is the dark one.)
Proof that a stellar cast, a decent concept, and a sprinkling of directorial fairy dust does not an awesome movie make: "Be Kind Rewind" (WTF Michel, I thought you HAD this!)
Best reason to stay home (or stay up drunk until 4am with your DVR) on Summer Friday nights: Battlestar Galactica (I heart thee Kara Thrace.)
Why the frak are they making me wait from June until 2009 for: The Battlestar finale. (This is Cylon-prison-on-New-Caprica-level torture.)
Movie That Made Me Want to be French (more than usual): "Man on Wire" (It also made me want to be muse to a man in leggings.)
Totally didn't need to see you twice in theaters: "Sex and The City The Movie" (Seppuku with a Manolo before viewing number 3.)
So glad I double dipped in: Murakami @ The Brooklyn Museum (Semen lassos! Breast-milk jump ropes! Anime-chicks transforming into airplanes!)
Proof that the lord is my personal curator: "Warhol's Jews" exhibit at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco (Where screenprinting meets Golda Meir.)
Proof that Weezy groks the fullness of Robert A. Henlein's, Stranger In A Strange Land: The freaktastic lyrics to "Phone Home" ("We are not the same, I am a Martian.")
Almost lived up to the greatness of Sandman: Y The Last Man and Alias. (Is the fantasy to DATE Yorick and/or Jessica Jones or BE Yorick and/or Jessica Jones. I haven't yet decided.)
Got its ass kicked by the King of Dreams: Girls by the Luna Brothers (A hundred naked chicks per frame, all paling in comparison to Death's gothy hottness.)
Fortune Cookie Fortune Found At The Bottom Of The Wallet '08: You find beauty in ordinary things. (Like fortune cookie fortunes. And year-end lists.) Do not lose this ability.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Summer School Session 1: Old Men, Young Men
Around age 10, after two years of tearful tantrums and rebellion against practicing on the Jones family’s glorious and virtually untouched baby grand, the piano and I parted ways, citing compatibility issues. The piano wanted me to learn how to play music in 3/8, and my decidedly non-mathematical brain said, “No fucking chance. Not gonna happen.” The notes promised me I’d know them by reciting things like “All Cars Eat Gas” and “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge,” but my heart said “All Cars, Who Cares?, and Every Good Boy Sort Of Has Cooties, But Is Also Sort Of Kind Of Cute.” Songbooks tried to win me over with remedial versions of timely pop hits like “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and “Take My Breath Away (Love Theme from Top Gun!),” but my advanced eight-year-old cultural meter proclaimed, “Bah! I am already over you, songs that will function only as nostalgia and punchline material in the future. To the television!” And so my prolific music career ended before it started, leaving me more time to memorize words to Mariah Carey (pop songs with longevity!), and fantasize about Zack Morris while watching him stop Jesse from ruining her life with caffeine pills.
Of course, in my adulthood, nothing has been as disappointing to me as my inability to play and read music. And as someone who has written pretty regularly about the subject, I often wonder if a deeper understanding of the technical components of music would lead to more pointed and poignant expression of my ideas. Is it really the minor key that makes this song to sound so morose? What is a minor key exactly? What makes up a key, period?
Since I’ve never been able to concentrate much on non-fiction or un-aided instructional readings, I decided to pursue my musical enlightenment in the only way the academic, structurally-inclined Jewish girl in me knew how – by signing up for a class at the Y.
My first attempt at the 92nd Street Y’s Beginner Music Theory class was short-lived. I made it to two classes – just long enough to review the bass and treble clefs using a set of meticulously constructed note-bearing flashcards - before I had to call it quits to take a job in the infamous Dub Room (a job that, in it’s earliest incarnation, occupied me from the awkwardly scheduled hours of 11am-8pm).
Nothing much stood out about the makeup of that first class, except that I remember hoping for it to be populated by hot Jewish guys with a fetish for evening hour extra-curriculars, and ended up swimming in a sea of old people. But since I have always enjoyed excelling in an academic environment, I consoled myself with the thought that even though I wouldn’t be making out with my classmates, I’d probably be kicking their wrinkled asses in class participation. (Mind you, there are no grades or tests and not even a modicum of encouraged competitive energy in this classroom setting, aside from the assertion to “challenge yourself.”)
When I walked into the classroom on the first day of my second attempt at Music Theory two weeks ago, the class element struck me as basically the same, if not a bit more fragrant with comedic possibility.
There are about fifteen students total, five of which are women in their late forties to mid sixties. This is the repetitive-question-asking contingent of the class. One woman in particular, who is taking piano lessons concurrently with the theory class, asks questions between every other breath, which explains why her instrument of choice is not the clarinet. At the end of the first class she addressed us all, asking, “Does anyone live near 55th and Lex? We could be study partners!” Much to her dismay, the entire class had decided, just that moment, to move to Brooklyn.
There is also a decent collection of early-to-late 20’s males, many of whom are trapped in the dorkiest of classical music clamshells (I love me some nerds, but I need a popoccultcha man. Or at least a sci-fi dweeb.). As the only class representation of the mid-twenties female, I get these sexy Beethovens AAAAALLL to myself.
But the classmates who are really going to make this class worth the rush hour trip on the green line, revealed themselves quite gloriously.
First was Elliot, who is roughly 200 years old. When our instructor asked Elliot if he had an email address for the class contact sheet, Elliott responded saying, “Yes, after four months I finally learned how to use it. It’s Elliot at yahoo dot com. Yahoo, like the drink.”
Yes, Elliot, like the drink! I am now working on an Elliot version of the Teddy Ruxpin doll in which a motorized, talking old man explains the origins of his email address over and over again.
In the getting to know you segment of the class, Elliot also revealed that he has been playing the harmonica for 70 years (!!!), the guitar for 50 years (!!), and the banjo for 5 (!). He’s a little winded, and his fingers are damned tired, but for the last two hundred years, he has found that an artificial chocolate drink both gives him the pick up he needs, while unlocking the key to new technology.
The other gem of the class was revealed immediately after Elliot in roll call. The name Karen was called, and a muffled, pubescent voice from the back of the room corrected, “That’s my mom. I’m Dylan.”
As we went around the room answering the questions, “What do you do?” and “Why are you here?” - answers that prompted others to say things like, “I’m in risk management and I’d like to read music,” or “I’m an actor and I want to play the piano” - Dylan responded in hilarious deadpan, “I’m in the ninth grade,” and then revealed that he plays guitar and is in a band, the name of which I’m dying to know. His expression throughout class suggested that the real answer to the question “Why are you here?” was “My mom made me come,” which makes me all the more desperate to co-opt young Dylan as my study buddy and facts-of-life advisee. I can only pray he lives in Brooklyn.
Thus, the promise of wisdom pearls from the class bookends of Elliot and Dylan may finally make it worth it for me to break out of my 4/4 shell. We’ll see how it goes.
Of course, in my adulthood, nothing has been as disappointing to me as my inability to play and read music. And as someone who has written pretty regularly about the subject, I often wonder if a deeper understanding of the technical components of music would lead to more pointed and poignant expression of my ideas. Is it really the minor key that makes this song to sound so morose? What is a minor key exactly? What makes up a key, period?
Since I’ve never been able to concentrate much on non-fiction or un-aided instructional readings, I decided to pursue my musical enlightenment in the only way the academic, structurally-inclined Jewish girl in me knew how – by signing up for a class at the Y.
My first attempt at the 92nd Street Y’s Beginner Music Theory class was short-lived. I made it to two classes – just long enough to review the bass and treble clefs using a set of meticulously constructed note-bearing flashcards - before I had to call it quits to take a job in the infamous Dub Room (a job that, in it’s earliest incarnation, occupied me from the awkwardly scheduled hours of 11am-8pm).
Nothing much stood out about the makeup of that first class, except that I remember hoping for it to be populated by hot Jewish guys with a fetish for evening hour extra-curriculars, and ended up swimming in a sea of old people. But since I have always enjoyed excelling in an academic environment, I consoled myself with the thought that even though I wouldn’t be making out with my classmates, I’d probably be kicking their wrinkled asses in class participation. (Mind you, there are no grades or tests and not even a modicum of encouraged competitive energy in this classroom setting, aside from the assertion to “challenge yourself.”)
When I walked into the classroom on the first day of my second attempt at Music Theory two weeks ago, the class element struck me as basically the same, if not a bit more fragrant with comedic possibility.
There are about fifteen students total, five of which are women in their late forties to mid sixties. This is the repetitive-question-asking contingent of the class. One woman in particular, who is taking piano lessons concurrently with the theory class, asks questions between every other breath, which explains why her instrument of choice is not the clarinet. At the end of the first class she addressed us all, asking, “Does anyone live near 55th and Lex? We could be study partners!” Much to her dismay, the entire class had decided, just that moment, to move to Brooklyn.
There is also a decent collection of early-to-late 20’s males, many of whom are trapped in the dorkiest of classical music clamshells (I love me some nerds, but I need a popoccultcha man. Or at least a sci-fi dweeb.). As the only class representation of the mid-twenties female, I get these sexy Beethovens AAAAALLL to myself.
But the classmates who are really going to make this class worth the rush hour trip on the green line, revealed themselves quite gloriously.
First was Elliot, who is roughly 200 years old. When our instructor asked Elliot if he had an email address for the class contact sheet, Elliott responded saying, “Yes, after four months I finally learned how to use it. It’s Elliot at yahoo dot com. Yahoo, like the drink.”
Yes, Elliot, like the drink! I am now working on an Elliot version of the Teddy Ruxpin doll in which a motorized, talking old man explains the origins of his email address over and over again.
In the getting to know you segment of the class, Elliot also revealed that he has been playing the harmonica for 70 years (!!!), the guitar for 50 years (!!), and the banjo for 5 (!). He’s a little winded, and his fingers are damned tired, but for the last two hundred years, he has found that an artificial chocolate drink both gives him the pick up he needs, while unlocking the key to new technology.
The other gem of the class was revealed immediately after Elliot in roll call. The name Karen was called, and a muffled, pubescent voice from the back of the room corrected, “That’s my mom. I’m Dylan.”
As we went around the room answering the questions, “What do you do?” and “Why are you here?” - answers that prompted others to say things like, “I’m in risk management and I’d like to read music,” or “I’m an actor and I want to play the piano” - Dylan responded in hilarious deadpan, “I’m in the ninth grade,” and then revealed that he plays guitar and is in a band, the name of which I’m dying to know. His expression throughout class suggested that the real answer to the question “Why are you here?” was “My mom made me come,” which makes me all the more desperate to co-opt young Dylan as my study buddy and facts-of-life advisee. I can only pray he lives in Brooklyn.
Thus, the promise of wisdom pearls from the class bookends of Elliot and Dylan may finally make it worth it for me to break out of my 4/4 shell. We’ll see how it goes.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
A Black Dress Away From a Goth Girl
An artists' representation of a hypothetical, 15-year old, comic-book loving Miss Stacia
Around page 9 of “Brief Lives,” otherwise known as Volume 7 of Neil Gaiman’s epic Sandman series, I came upon a panel that first haunted me, and then changed my perception of my adolescence, forever.
In the panel, the character know as Delirium, one of the seven anthropomorphized, intangible forces known as the Endless, enters a nightclub on her search for her departed older brother Destruction. The nightclub is raunchy and replete with fishnet and leather clad club kids; a song pervading the background in wisps overhead with the words:
“All the word just stopped now. So you say you don’t wanna stay together anymore. Let me take a deep breath babe.”
I am waiting for my dinner date in a Japanese restaurant when I read this, and a soft rock soundtrack stunts my ability to place the familiar lyrics.
“Shit. I know this.”
…
“Oh my god, it’s Tori!”
The existence of a friendship/working relationship between Tori Amos and Neil Gaiman had been brought to my attention a few weeks earlier, when, in my desperation at not being able to find Sandman Volumes 3 and 4 in any Manhattan book or comic store (disaster!), I started reading Gaiman short stories to keep myself in the dream zone. In Fragile Things, Gaiman’s most recent story collection, I came upon reprinted program notes for Tori’s Strange Little Girls tour, written by the fantasy master at the request of the fiery songstress.
I happened to attend a show on the Strange Little Girls tour when I lived in Boston and I remember those glossy programs vividly. The concept of the album, which marked the point where my Tori fandom actually began to wither, involved Tori embodying a different female personality on each track, dressing in costumey garb for a series of comic (as in laughable) portraits and repurposing songs like Eminem’s "Bonnie and Clyde" to disastrous effect. Gaiman’s job was to craft short poems to complement each song/lady package, and the results were disjointed, strangely voiced, and lacking resonance, especially compared to his portrayal of females in his comic (as in book) work.
But discovering my latest dark obsession and my teen angst obsession had at one point converged, was at once electric and satisfying.
So I’m still sitting in the Japanese restaurant, eyes glued to the corner of a page in Volume 7, written eleven years before Fragile Things and six before the release of Strange Little Girls, and I'm still processing that by the time Gaiman had come to the tail end of his epic about Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, Tori had already crawled her way into his creative headspace. But I haven't yet answered the question of where the hell those lyrics are from, exactly.
I plug my ears with my fingers and the humming commences, while in my head I access:
All the world just stopped now
So you say you don’t wanna stay to-
gether anymore
Let me take a deep breath babe
...
If you need me and NEIL’LL BE…
(inner “HOLY SHIT!”)
HANGING OUT WITH THE DREAM KING
Now, I am not a lyrics person, generally speaking. I have gone many years only half-knowing the lyrics to my very favorite songs, and occasionally something will come out and clarify a particularly nonsensical Stacia translation and my world of references will be forced to adjust for accuracy. In the case of these particular Tori lines, for example, I have always ignored the fact that I had no idea who Neil was, and had translated the remainder of the lyrics as follows:
If you need me
Me and Neil’ll be
Hanging out with the Dream Team
For over a decade, as far as I knew, Tori could have been singing about the 1986 New York Mets.
Needless to say, when I discovered this Sandman reference, embedded in track 10 of my beloved Little Earthquakes, it triggered a moment of elation. It was like recognizing you and your boyfriend were at the same concert, sitting three seats away from each other, ten years before you ever met. My mouth hung open for the first minute and a half after I made the connection, and then I sat squealing, wanting to scream out to the heavens like a love crazed fool. I felt a desperate need to call someone and explain how I just discovered this beautiful overlap of two cultural loves of my life, but when I tried to think of someone who would appreciate the intersection, I came up blank. Finding people who simultaneously appreciate sci-fi and fantasy graphic novels and feministic piano-driven singer songwriters is a tough assignment, unless you’re smoking cigarettes on the middle school handball courts in 1995.
Suddenly, I thought of a girl named Jane, with whom I shared a relationship slightly above the acquaintance level in middle and high school. Jackie had a propensity for wearing black, brandishing smudgy eyeliner and spitting dark, sarcastic comebacks. She also had a sister who introduced her to The Cure and whose overall grumpiness found solace in the lyrically potent females acts of the early nineties. I was still inhabiting the land of bubblegum pop radio when Jane and I knew each other, but had picked up a Tori cassette tape on a cross country trip one summer, so the two of us occasionally talked about Tori or PJ Harvey or Fiona Apple, who may have been even a little too sensitive for Jane’s sensibilities.
Ten years later, it occurs to me Jane probably would have loved Sandman and may have even experienced it in its comic form. Did Jane experience the concurrent growth of Tori and Gaiman’s careers? Did she read the line from “Tear In Your Hand,” on page 9 in 1995 and let off a sarcastic smirk of knowing? And if Jane and my relationship had blossomed beyond Mrs. Chang’s history class, would I be long past (or deeper into?) the world of Gaiman right now?
When I first started reading Sandman, my awesome friend Comic Guy Mike informed me it was a book that, when released, was particularly embraced by goth kids. As someone with a pretty morbid sense of humor, a realistic-bordering-on-pessimistic view of the world, and hair that, if any darker, would take on a Betty and Veronica blue-black sheen, it's apparent I was probably an influential friend and a black dress away from life as a teenage goth girl. Which perhaps explains my newfound inclination to wear tons of deep blue eyeliner, the color of which can be found otherwise only on salesgirls at Hot Topic, and in the Dreamworld.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Postercrastination!: And the Awareness that Awesome Band Names Do Exist
The Darryl Strawberries? Really??? Why does this name make me want to give people high fives? Usually I'm into strawberries, but not strawberry flavored things. Why does this hit that sweet, fruity spot?
Perhaps because 'Darryl' serves as the flavor in this case, lending heartbreaking memories of glory turned to ruination to the band's identification. Maybe because this forename, so often chanted from the stands in the drawn and yawning, "Daaaaar-ryyyyyyyl," contrasts so nicely with the sweet sound of pluralized fruit. Perhaps because even though it's easy to love Darryl Strawberry in the same way people seem to love David Hasselhoff these days (ironically), I love the Strawb as my friend Sarah loves Baywatch's leading man -- wholeheartedly and a little more when he's shirtless. I could fill an-about-to-be-knocked down-stadium with genuine affection for the first baseball player I - the daughter of a lifelong Met fan - ever recognized by name.
I haven't been able to find much info on The Darryl Strawberries, but I did come across their Jersey-based doppelgängers. For some reason Darryl and the Strawberries doesn't work quite as well. (Though I do like their poster.) I don't want just one Darryl and some fruit. I want a band of fruity Darryls.
***UPDATE: The best part about being in a fantasy baseball league is that your fellow managers will send you pictures like this one (The Awareness that Awesome Photographs Do Exist) and have conversations like the one that follows, when you tell them you posted something about Darryl Strawberry to your blog:
C: I have two questions for you, unrelated
K: shoot
C: did Hassellhoff ever make a Simpsons cameo
K: not to my knowledge
K: unless it was post season 10 or something
C: and from Stacey, do people love Darryl Strawberry ironically
C: or do they just love him
K: oh
K: that's tough
C: ie, do they love him the same way people love David Hassellhoff
C: I say no
K: if you can call it love it's certainly not ironic. absolutely not
K: i love straw for the reason i don't love doc
K: straw overcame himself, at least as far as baseball
K: rather, he never stopped trying to beat his demons
C: I'm with you
C: hadn't made the Doc leap, but I like it
K: doc just never gave a fuck
K: both unfairly talented who did whatever they could to waste that talent--it just strikes me that doc was into it and straw was not
K: does she love straw ironically?
C: do you mind if I copy/paste this to stacey
C: I just don't want to retype it
K: no please do
C: she claims to love Straw wholeheartedly
C: and was saying most people love him ironically
C: I said no
K: ahh
K: i think straw proved himself w/ the 99 yankees
So people don't love Strawberry ironically. Everyone's just full of Berry nostalgia. It should be noted that though I'm in a fantasy baseball league and have been privileged to have a father with season's tickets to Shea since '88, I haven't really been measuring the way males in particular have felt about Darryl over the past fifteen years -- so I apologize for being one of the many to throw up her hands and claim irony at the first sign of complex cultural affection. Still, both Hoff and Sir Strawberry will end up on hipster t-shirts, if they haven't already.
Postercrastination!: Seek and Find
Though concert posters with illegible text usually get under my skin (why bother making a poster only to obscure the information it's promoting?), I couldn't help but take to this poster by Fast Friends Inc. with its technicolor muppet doodles, perfected in high school detention. This is one of those hand drawn numbers that reveals its wonders both at a distance, like a magic eye, and up under the magnifying glass where you can take notice of its tiny, kindergarten-culled artifacts. While pulling mini treasures from my first grade teacher's rewards drawer and the toy chest at the dentists office, these guys still managed to spray the whole image in large-cocked ludicrousness. A stick(er)y recipe for success!
See if you can find all of the surprises:
1. elephant
2. hamburger
3. sunglasses
4. 2 kiddie pool tubes
5. Hello Kitty
6. the name Alice
7. Superman
8. blue crab
9. 5 magic mushrooms
10. large multicolor penis (spewing a band-name-explosion)
See if you can find all of the surprises:
1. elephant
2. hamburger
3. sunglasses
4. 2 kiddie pool tubes
5. Hello Kitty
6. the name Alice
7. Superman
8. blue crab
9. 5 magic mushrooms
10. large multicolor penis (spewing a band-name-explosion)
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Le Groupe Cinématographique
The following article recently appeared in the Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts, a paper I know exists because I swiped a few copies the day they landed on the stoop of Pharmacy Neapolitano (on the corner of Graham and Metropolitan), but whose inexplicable lack of online presence serves as a serious inhibitor to proof of print for anyone living outside of my immediate neighborhood. The piece was written for the paper's LOVE issue, and I'm posting it here so you can share in it. (The LOVE , that is.)
Love of Cinema Powers Rock from Williamsburg's La Laque
credit: Sean McCabe
La Laque’s sole collective asset as a band is a DVD of Tenacious D’s "The Pick of Destiny" that lead singer Devery Doleman picked up before band practice one day at the FYE on 6th Avenue for $9.99. This may appear to be an odd investment for a band whose elegant style and sultry sound seems derived more from classic noir movies of the thirties than overlooked stoner comedies of 2007, but it’s astounding how many films this Williamsburg quintet has effectively combed for inspiration.
“We’re all HUGE, HUGE movie fans,” says drummer Ben Shapiro. “It’s kind of all we talk about, and all we think about all the time.”
Though the band initially formed in late 2003, La Laque has been together in its current incarnation since 2004, weaving songs initially born as straight surf rock and 60’s pop pastiche, into darker, sexier compositions, fraught with dirty surf guitar and swathed in Doleman’s textured, breathy vocals. The band’s evolution into, as guitarist and main songwriter Michael Leviton describes it, “a dark indie rock band with French, surfy elements,” has pushed them far beyond the borders of kitch and gimmick. Their songs, lustful and tragic, paint pictures of smoke filled dives, intimate rendezvous, and haughty femme fatales.
Doleman is partially responsible for guiding the band down this storyteller’s path. Since the band’s inception, she has penned La Laque’s lyrics completely in French, both to take advantage of her incredible talent for manipulating the language’s vocabulary and diction, and because she simply finds her voice to be a suppler instrument en Français. This presents her bandmates with the unique challenge of creating music sympathetic to lyrics in a foreign language.
“Most of us don’t know what the lyrics mean,” says Leviton. “Leah (Hayes) and Devery do – but the rest of us are responding to a kind of story or visual feeling of what they evoke. What it sounds like it’s expressing, as opposed to what it’s expressing in words. We may react to something that seems scary, or intensely romantic, just as you'd write music for a movie, I think.”
Luckily, the band’s organ player and backup singer (Hayes) is a horror movie fanatic, their main songwriter and guitarist (Leviton) also writes screenplays, and their bassist (Brad Banks) and drummer (Shapiro) have been known to seek out screenings of Otto Preminger noir films on the weekends. The band's recently released, self-titles EP suggests There may not be a band better equipped to spin French-led songs into luscious, compelling, cinema-style narrative.
credit: Sasha Rudensky
Though the dramatic interplay of Doleman’s cool, delicate delivery with the dark, lush waves of sound summoned by the rest of the band is clearly articulated on record, on stage the vocals can at times be sacrificed to the energy of the band’s live show. But even if her voice can’t push through the raucousness of the rhythm section, Doleman serves as a guide through La Laque’s live landscape with her sleek stage mannerisms, punctuating Hayes’ organ chords with perfectly timed bats of her eyelashes and dancing to Leviton's guitar.
“Devery, as a focus for the band, channels all of that smoldering energy on stage out to the audience,” says Banks. “Kind of like a lens that we all focus thorough, all that heat kind of comes through her to the crowd.”
Thus, even in a live show that rocks hard, something classic and cinematic is transmitted – a reflection of old glamour, and the sexual potency and mystery of the films the band collectively adores.
La Laque’s self-titled debut EP is now available on iTunes.
Love of Cinema Powers Rock from Williamsburg's La Laque
credit: Sean McCabe
La Laque’s sole collective asset as a band is a DVD of Tenacious D’s "The Pick of Destiny" that lead singer Devery Doleman picked up before band practice one day at the FYE on 6th Avenue for $9.99. This may appear to be an odd investment for a band whose elegant style and sultry sound seems derived more from classic noir movies of the thirties than overlooked stoner comedies of 2007, but it’s astounding how many films this Williamsburg quintet has effectively combed for inspiration.
“We’re all HUGE, HUGE movie fans,” says drummer Ben Shapiro. “It’s kind of all we talk about, and all we think about all the time.”
Though the band initially formed in late 2003, La Laque has been together in its current incarnation since 2004, weaving songs initially born as straight surf rock and 60’s pop pastiche, into darker, sexier compositions, fraught with dirty surf guitar and swathed in Doleman’s textured, breathy vocals. The band’s evolution into, as guitarist and main songwriter Michael Leviton describes it, “a dark indie rock band with French, surfy elements,” has pushed them far beyond the borders of kitch and gimmick. Their songs, lustful and tragic, paint pictures of smoke filled dives, intimate rendezvous, and haughty femme fatales.
Doleman is partially responsible for guiding the band down this storyteller’s path. Since the band’s inception, she has penned La Laque’s lyrics completely in French, both to take advantage of her incredible talent for manipulating the language’s vocabulary and diction, and because she simply finds her voice to be a suppler instrument en Français. This presents her bandmates with the unique challenge of creating music sympathetic to lyrics in a foreign language.
“Most of us don’t know what the lyrics mean,” says Leviton. “Leah (Hayes) and Devery do – but the rest of us are responding to a kind of story or visual feeling of what they evoke. What it sounds like it’s expressing, as opposed to what it’s expressing in words. We may react to something that seems scary, or intensely romantic, just as you'd write music for a movie, I think.”
Luckily, the band’s organ player and backup singer (Hayes) is a horror movie fanatic, their main songwriter and guitarist (Leviton) also writes screenplays, and their bassist (Brad Banks) and drummer (Shapiro) have been known to seek out screenings of Otto Preminger noir films on the weekends. The band's recently released, self-titles EP suggests There may not be a band better equipped to spin French-led songs into luscious, compelling, cinema-style narrative.
credit: Sasha Rudensky
Though the dramatic interplay of Doleman’s cool, delicate delivery with the dark, lush waves of sound summoned by the rest of the band is clearly articulated on record, on stage the vocals can at times be sacrificed to the energy of the band’s live show. But even if her voice can’t push through the raucousness of the rhythm section, Doleman serves as a guide through La Laque’s live landscape with her sleek stage mannerisms, punctuating Hayes’ organ chords with perfectly timed bats of her eyelashes and dancing to Leviton's guitar.
“Devery, as a focus for the band, channels all of that smoldering energy on stage out to the audience,” says Banks. “Kind of like a lens that we all focus thorough, all that heat kind of comes through her to the crowd.”
Thus, even in a live show that rocks hard, something classic and cinematic is transmitted – a reflection of old glamour, and the sexual potency and mystery of the films the band collectively adores.
La Laque’s self-titled debut EP is now available on iTunes.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Hatch Show Me Love
(aka Holy Shit It's a Post About Posters!)
The first rock concert poster I ever bought was a White Stripes print of two adorable Asian cartoon karate kids against a geometric red, white and black background. The poster was designed by rock screenprint legend, Frank Kozik (though if you didn't know it you'd never guess, it's way too cutesy), and though that meant nothing to me when I purchased it in 2002, in 2008 all I can think about when I look at it is how Kozik's signature was most likely cropped and discarded when the dumbfuck at the framing place on Newbury Street cut the print to fit it in a standard frame. It's totally possible the poster I bought was a fake - I did purchase it on eBay - but the quality of the ink leads me to believe otherwise. I may never know if the piece is authentic, but my very first poster is still much loved and hanging on the Jones family walls (now at Raquel's new place):
Frankie, did you sign me?
The second rock concert poster I ever bought was also a White Stripes print, purchased at show I attended in Boston (I believe at the Orpheum Theater). The print had such a homegrown, familiar feel to it, a welcome departure from the slick, posed photograph band posters so popular in college dorm rooms. It lived in my Boston living room for one year, and it wasn't until the end of my senior year of college, at the tail end of a feature writing project I was doing on rock concert poster art, that I walked up to the poster, took a look at the tiny imprint beneath the bottom border and exclaimed, "Holy shit, this is a Hatch Show Print!"
My first Hatch Show in it's old UWS home
Hatch Show Print is rock and roll history. The oldest letterpress in the country, the shop has been handpulling bold, two and three color block printed posters since the 1920's, creating prints for everyone from Elvis and Louis Armstrong to, now, more contemporary acts like Tool and The White Stripes. Located in Nashville, TN, Hatch Show is now supported by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (since 1992), and in addition to producing some of the most striking block printed imagery imaginable, also serves as a forum for the historic preservation of the letterpress artform.
Tonight I saw Hatch Show's Lead Designer, Jim Sherraden, who has been with the print shop since 1984, speak that the AIGA, and he was pretty freaking awesome. So awesome, he - after showing slide of an intern proofreading a poster - poked fun at a typo on the event poster produced by AIGA and frog design that the event planners had DEFINITELY not yet noticed:
To be fair, it took me 40 seconds to find it.
I found out Jim was speaking through my usual means of poster-related procrastination. I was working (or looking for new ways not to work) on a piece about poster art in New York, and found myself trolling the usual poster and design sites when I happened upon Hatch Show Print's web store, where I became instantly infatuated with a series of Monoprints Jim has been doing since 1992. For these art prints, Sherraden takes odd woodblock images and screens them over each other with slightly transparent inks in bold colors. The results are euphoric -- messy and retro in their imagery, but modern in their collaged style and potent colors. I fell murderously in love with a piece that was already sold, and when I wrote to Hatch Show inquiring if there were other pieces like it, Jim replied to me himself telling me he is always working on new stuff and that I should come see him speak in New York in February.
I could not pass up the opportunity to go to an event with screenprinted wine labels:
Sherradan opened the show with a history of Hatch, reassuring his audience that he'd run through these points many times before.
"I figure it's about three minutes a decade," he said.
The man has a sense of humor, willing to exploit himself for jokes. The first thing I noticed when I took my seat was an old school projector in the middle of the room, and of course , when picking up the remote and drawing the tangled cord out five feet to the front of the room he raised his remote arm and quipped, "Being the true luddite!" adding, "The slideshow quit being cute about two years ago." During the slideshow he also showed a picture of himself in his high school wrestling outfit, and made a comment about his "eight inch stapler."
I am on board with this man.
I am also on board with the way Hatch Show Print is run. First of all, at their new location, where they've operated since 1992, there is a 54 foot WALL OF TYPE containing all of the original wood block fonts that have become Hatch Show's calling card. The shop is a non-profit or a "working museum," as Jim calls it, and part of the responsibility of the shop in Jim's eyes is to preserve the original woodblock fonts that have been collected by the shop for the last eighty or ninety years. This is why, although Jim encourages his fellow printers/designers (the terms are one and the same at Hatch) to create new image blocks, he refuses to accept any new type carvings into Hatch, so as not to "pollute the collection." Jim also believes in preservation through production -- the woodblocks he uncovers from the archives, he feels obligated to use in new prints. A large part of his impetus for starting the Monoprint production was to employ woodblocks that lay dormant for decades beforehand. The record of the ancient craftsmanship of letterpress and woodblocking in this way comes alive on paper.
Jim also talked a lot about why there has been a resurgence of interest in Hatch Show Print over the last few years, which has been a noticeable phenomenon. The shop recently did all of CNN's posters for the California debate. The network that used touch screen maps to show election projections during the primaries, also employed a hundred-year-old letterpress shop to make their posters. (Which are AWESOME, btw.) When Finding Nemo was released, Pixar had Jim and the crew make 150 posters, one for each animator. Hand-printed posters for the kings of digital animation? Wade through the irony there. How does Jim explain the enthusiasm for his seemingly antiquated artform by even the most digitally engrossed?
"The computer is the best thing that ever happened to Hatch. We're the antiheroes of digital design," he says.
And it's true, in a world where everything is slick and digital, people are still hankering for real, raw, handcrafted art.
But Jim does admit, "times are a changing -- nobody wants the big paper up in their storefront," and that posters "have changed from being practical items to being more decorative." Most of the posters Hatch Show prints these days are resold as "concessions." But if the posters Jim sells to bands and promoters for $3 a pop are sold off for $20 at the merch stand, he doesn't seem to have a problem with it. His number one duty is to keep ol' Hatch Show and the art of letterpress alive.
If the shop continues to produce work as stunning as what was displayed on the walls tonight, I don't see how it will ever die.
My new favorite.
5 More Things I Didn't Know About Hatch Show Print Before This Evening:
1. Hatch Show Print is one of the top ten tourist sites in Nashville.
2. BB King is currently Hatch Show's most active client. He commissions about 7,000 posters a year from the print shop.
3. Hatch Show has a lot of interns, some who work for six weeks, and some for six months. Jim says he has trouble teaching interns the value of a good border (something he believes in strongly, and uses often) because they are used to the full bleed of a computer screen.
4. The print shop, quite obviously obsessed with archiving, saves three of everything made, "even wedding invitations." The fact that Hatch Show prints wedding invitations just gave me a real reason to get married.
5. Jim is hoping to focus more on the Monoprints over the next 5-10 years so he can pull neglected woodblocks (about 40% of the larger blocks filed in the shop are out of use) into the printing rotation. What this means for Miss Stacia: A buying spree is inevitable. Hopefully by the time Jim is finished I'll have some damn money.
The first rock concert poster I ever bought was a White Stripes print of two adorable Asian cartoon karate kids against a geometric red, white and black background. The poster was designed by rock screenprint legend, Frank Kozik (though if you didn't know it you'd never guess, it's way too cutesy), and though that meant nothing to me when I purchased it in 2002, in 2008 all I can think about when I look at it is how Kozik's signature was most likely cropped and discarded when the dumbfuck at the framing place on Newbury Street cut the print to fit it in a standard frame. It's totally possible the poster I bought was a fake - I did purchase it on eBay - but the quality of the ink leads me to believe otherwise. I may never know if the piece is authentic, but my very first poster is still much loved and hanging on the Jones family walls (now at Raquel's new place):
Frankie, did you sign me?
The second rock concert poster I ever bought was also a White Stripes print, purchased at show I attended in Boston (I believe at the Orpheum Theater). The print had such a homegrown, familiar feel to it, a welcome departure from the slick, posed photograph band posters so popular in college dorm rooms. It lived in my Boston living room for one year, and it wasn't until the end of my senior year of college, at the tail end of a feature writing project I was doing on rock concert poster art, that I walked up to the poster, took a look at the tiny imprint beneath the bottom border and exclaimed, "Holy shit, this is a Hatch Show Print!"
My first Hatch Show in it's old UWS home
Hatch Show Print is rock and roll history. The oldest letterpress in the country, the shop has been handpulling bold, two and three color block printed posters since the 1920's, creating prints for everyone from Elvis and Louis Armstrong to, now, more contemporary acts like Tool and The White Stripes. Located in Nashville, TN, Hatch Show is now supported by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (since 1992), and in addition to producing some of the most striking block printed imagery imaginable, also serves as a forum for the historic preservation of the letterpress artform.
Tonight I saw Hatch Show's Lead Designer, Jim Sherraden, who has been with the print shop since 1984, speak that the AIGA, and he was pretty freaking awesome. So awesome, he - after showing slide of an intern proofreading a poster - poked fun at a typo on the event poster produced by AIGA and frog design that the event planners had DEFINITELY not yet noticed:
To be fair, it took me 40 seconds to find it.
I found out Jim was speaking through my usual means of poster-related procrastination. I was working (or looking for new ways not to work) on a piece about poster art in New York, and found myself trolling the usual poster and design sites when I happened upon Hatch Show Print's web store, where I became instantly infatuated with a series of Monoprints Jim has been doing since 1992. For these art prints, Sherraden takes odd woodblock images and screens them over each other with slightly transparent inks in bold colors. The results are euphoric -- messy and retro in their imagery, but modern in their collaged style and potent colors. I fell murderously in love with a piece that was already sold, and when I wrote to Hatch Show inquiring if there were other pieces like it, Jim replied to me himself telling me he is always working on new stuff and that I should come see him speak in New York in February.
I could not pass up the opportunity to go to an event with screenprinted wine labels:
Sherradan opened the show with a history of Hatch, reassuring his audience that he'd run through these points many times before.
"I figure it's about three minutes a decade," he said.
The man has a sense of humor, willing to exploit himself for jokes. The first thing I noticed when I took my seat was an old school projector in the middle of the room, and of course , when picking up the remote and drawing the tangled cord out five feet to the front of the room he raised his remote arm and quipped, "Being the true luddite!" adding, "The slideshow quit being cute about two years ago." During the slideshow he also showed a picture of himself in his high school wrestling outfit, and made a comment about his "eight inch stapler."
I am on board with this man.
I am also on board with the way Hatch Show Print is run. First of all, at their new location, where they've operated since 1992, there is a 54 foot WALL OF TYPE containing all of the original wood block fonts that have become Hatch Show's calling card. The shop is a non-profit or a "working museum," as Jim calls it, and part of the responsibility of the shop in Jim's eyes is to preserve the original woodblock fonts that have been collected by the shop for the last eighty or ninety years. This is why, although Jim encourages his fellow printers/designers (the terms are one and the same at Hatch) to create new image blocks, he refuses to accept any new type carvings into Hatch, so as not to "pollute the collection." Jim also believes in preservation through production -- the woodblocks he uncovers from the archives, he feels obligated to use in new prints. A large part of his impetus for starting the Monoprint production was to employ woodblocks that lay dormant for decades beforehand. The record of the ancient craftsmanship of letterpress and woodblocking in this way comes alive on paper.
Jim also talked a lot about why there has been a resurgence of interest in Hatch Show Print over the last few years, which has been a noticeable phenomenon. The shop recently did all of CNN's posters for the California debate. The network that used touch screen maps to show election projections during the primaries, also employed a hundred-year-old letterpress shop to make their posters. (Which are AWESOME, btw.) When Finding Nemo was released, Pixar had Jim and the crew make 150 posters, one for each animator. Hand-printed posters for the kings of digital animation? Wade through the irony there. How does Jim explain the enthusiasm for his seemingly antiquated artform by even the most digitally engrossed?
"The computer is the best thing that ever happened to Hatch. We're the antiheroes of digital design," he says.
And it's true, in a world where everything is slick and digital, people are still hankering for real, raw, handcrafted art.
But Jim does admit, "times are a changing -- nobody wants the big paper up in their storefront," and that posters "have changed from being practical items to being more decorative." Most of the posters Hatch Show prints these days are resold as "concessions." But if the posters Jim sells to bands and promoters for $3 a pop are sold off for $20 at the merch stand, he doesn't seem to have a problem with it. His number one duty is to keep ol' Hatch Show and the art of letterpress alive.
If the shop continues to produce work as stunning as what was displayed on the walls tonight, I don't see how it will ever die.
My new favorite.
5 More Things I Didn't Know About Hatch Show Print Before This Evening:
1. Hatch Show Print is one of the top ten tourist sites in Nashville.
2. BB King is currently Hatch Show's most active client. He commissions about 7,000 posters a year from the print shop.
3. Hatch Show has a lot of interns, some who work for six weeks, and some for six months. Jim says he has trouble teaching interns the value of a good border (something he believes in strongly, and uses often) because they are used to the full bleed of a computer screen.
4. The print shop, quite obviously obsessed with archiving, saves three of everything made, "even wedding invitations." The fact that Hatch Show prints wedding invitations just gave me a real reason to get married.
5. Jim is hoping to focus more on the Monoprints over the next 5-10 years so he can pull neglected woodblocks (about 40% of the larger blocks filed in the shop are out of use) into the printing rotation. What this means for Miss Stacia: A buying spree is inevitable. Hopefully by the time Jim is finished I'll have some damn money.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Cut and Play
Avoiding the hi-top fade.
For women, getting a haircut is serious businazz. A bad cut can set a fella back for maybe a week or two, at worst triggering nasty sideburn envy after a shaving mishap, or forcing him to wear one of those douchebag beanie caps to cover up when a near-blind barber accidentally buzzes everything down with a one instead of a two. But for ladies, one trip to an overeager hair "artiste" can result in the way-too-short bangs from hell, or a Little Richard-style mullet that flaunts it's top heavy puff and tail for the better part of a month.
This is especially of concern to females with high maintenance hair, a category the frizzy/wavy/curly Jones family women have covered from every angle. My monster mop requires a hairdresser with an intimate understanding of Wavy Jewvolume, Straight Jewangles, and the curse-of-all-curses Jewfrizz-humidity factor. Once you find a scissor-wielder who is familiar with these tricky follicular properties, you don't let him/her go, which is why I have been returning to my West Village godsend of a stylist for the past three years. This woman - who I'll call Valerie - is nothing less than a genius, who in addition to carving the sexiest, most versatile looks into this mop of mine, also knows when to talk a woman out of chopping all her hair off (after a breakup), which she has done for me twice, much to my future relief.
In fact, only recently (three weeks ago?) did Valerie allow me to cut significant length off my locks, giving me a fun, gradual bob that prompted my mother to introduce me at a Superbowl party with the line, "This is my daughter, Posh Spice."
Beckham's bathroom is bigger.
When Miss Raquel (little sis), who has super curly hair, mentioned to me that she was looking for a new hairdresser, there was no doubt in my mind she needed to see Valerie, though I'd never seen the woman attack a head of curly hair before. And Miss Raquel's hair is no joke. Back when she was in middle school (when ladies are just beginning to learn how to work with what God has given them), it took a third of a bottle of green LA Looks gel to tame those crazy corkscrews. There was a closet in the Jones family basement that held no less than fifteen bottles of ecto-green, Level 3 gel (Maximum Hold, which trumps Extra Hold, FYI) in reserve. A seven day Mexico vacation would prompt the packing of THREE BOTTLES - God forbid there wasn't enough gunk to combat the extra showers, effects of chlorine, and Jewmidity. I imagine Miss Raquel carried around a pound of product in her hair each day. Not fun. The evolution of hair products, good advice from stylists and YEARS of experimentation have led Miss Raquel to a lower maintenance, green goop-free hair care routine, but the girl still has some serious (though gorgeous) hair to contend with.
Which is why I almost shit myself when I walked into the hairdresser to meet Miss R for brunch after her appointment with Valerie to find this
had been transformed into this
Miss Raquel is one of the few Long Island Jewish girls who didn't find it necessary to default to the long arduous straightening process and iron the fuck out of her beautiful curls in the high school days. Instead she embraced her curly genes (which for my father - before balding - produced the most magnificent 60's fro you've ever seen) and was undoubtedly more beautiful and less aggravated for it. I can only remember one time when, out of sheer curiosity, I tried to straighten the lady's hair and it was a nightmare -- over an hour of brushing and heat and sizzling split ends, resulting in all pouf, no gloss. 70's Diana Ross style results. But apparently it's standard procedure at Valerie's salon to finish cuts on curly manes when they're blown out straight, so Miss Raquel got the professional straightening treatment, and ended up looking way more polished than she did after my botched attempt, and just a touch more like...well...
Like moi! (Granted I don't wear glasses, but I'll meet her in the middle here.)
In the eighties we would have raked in the dough for Doublemint gum commercials. Now we'll have to settle for a career in twin porn.
My fascination with little sis' straight hair lasted for the seven or eight hours we spent together during a long, hungover Saturday. In between our catch up sessions and futile attempts to do work (which consisted of more childhood reminiscing and advice about men, punctuated by occasional exclamations of, "Okay, time to do work!"), I took about thirty pictures of Miss Raquel in various poses related to the unfamiliar silkiness of her hair. Since I has gone to bed at 5am on Saturday morning and woke up to join Rachel at the hairdresser four hours later, it took me a little while to realize the significance of this particular photo:
I took this picture of Miss R as she was explaining that she never gets to run her fingers through her (curly, gelled) hair, but what I didn't think about at the time is that this also means Rachel has gone through 22 years of her life without OTHER PEOPLE running their fingers through her locks. As a major proponent of (receiving) hairplay, 'twas a sad, sad moment when I realized ma chere soeur Raquel has been missing out on one of life's fundamental pleasures for all these years.
I'm a hairplay SLUT - I'll take it from who/wherever I can get it: mom, grandma, lady friends, and boyfriends (or nice boys who wanna make me loooooove them). It's kind of disturbing how much I enjoy the feeling of someone's fingers dragging through my mane from scalp to ends. My eyes instantly close. Sometimes I let out sex moans. Occasionally I even lift my leg and do a canine shake. OHMIGOD it's so good. If you're a lousy lay but you rub a mean scalp I'll keep you around, but not vice versa. You have to give good head.
The thing is, there are strict rules regarding when hairplay can and cannot be administered, especially for curly and wavy haired ladies (or ladies who do both straight and curly). Men, even the ones who are kind of touchy about their own hairstyles, never seem to understand that running your fingers through waves and curls will turn a lady's head into a ball of frizzy mess. There are ways to play with wavy hair that minimize style disturbance (scalp massage only), and special cases (right before washing) where curly/wavy hairplay is sanctioned, but I know it is difficult for fellas (who understandably don't really give a shit) to identify when their ladies are going to give them hell for trying to show a little affection. A boyfriend once suggested I draw up a chart outlining these guidelines, so I decided to finally make it happen. Hopefully it will serve as a worthwhile teaching tool for devoted hairplaying men around the world:
**Rules may be amended based on hair washing schedule, approaching gym time, and the promise of hot sweaty sex. Consult the owner of the hair in question for with inquiries about specific scenarios.
In the end it's pretty simple. If you move to play with my hair and I don't want you to, you'll know it. Otherwise, I will shake my leg uncontrollably and sigh. And probably put out.
And to Miss Raquel I say, HONEY. Take advantage of the straightness while you can. Make the boyf take a sick day and have him feed you grapes while he runs his fingers through all twelve inches of it for 18 hours, nonstop. Holy shit after 22 years locked in gel you deserve it.
And then go back to curly, cause I love you that way. Besides, the Doublemint days are over and neither of us are desperate enough to do porn -- though it is nice to know we've got that niche option.
Faith in Fashion
Little Sis: What does one wear to an Orthodox bachelorette party?
LS: I'm going to wear my Hanukkah socks.
LS: I'm going to wear my Hanukkah socks.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
How I Met My (Potential) Roommate
(20 minutes into our first meeting)
Her: So since I do the window design, I get a discount at Bloomingdale's.
Me: You should have walked through the door, shook my hand, and opened with that.
Her: They do Friends and Family, you know...
Me: I hate to tear down the hipster façade, but I happen to love department store shopping.
Her: Of course you do. You're from Long Island.
Her: So since I do the window design, I get a discount at Bloomingdale's.
Me: You should have walked through the door, shook my hand, and opened with that.
Her: They do Friends and Family, you know...
Me: I hate to tear down the hipster façade, but I happen to love department store shopping.
Her: Of course you do. You're from Long Island.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Oil Can
A four year sabbatical from writing news or feature style articles will make a lady pretty rusty.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Eating Greenpoint: Peter Pan Doughnuts and Pastries
It's a shame that for the last four years, anytime someone mentions Peter Pan I think of this and not this. But now, thanks to a long walk down Manhattan Ave, when someone mentions the boy in tights who won't grow up, I can think about Bavarian creme and hyperglycemia.
The window at Peter Pan Doughnuts and Pastries works hard to pull you in. Early on a Sunday morning, the racks are stacked full with donuts, twists and muffins of all varieties.
The case also happens to espouse Miss Stacia's mantra about eating, in general:
When I passed the glass this morning, the shelves were due for a refill, but there were still plenty of appealing options calling out to me. I took out my camera to capture a few shots of the fried dough, slathered in glaze, dipped in chocolate and garnished with enough toppings to appease Michael Scott on pretzel day, when a woman stopped in front of me, looking confused.
"Are you taking pictures of the donuts?" she asked.
"Why, yes I am." Is that not normal?
The donut I ended up selecting for myself was the same one I eyed the very first time I passed the bakery - a chocolate glazed number with a generous dollop of custard in the middle and half a spoonful of jelly crowning the whole affair. Put a tri-color cookie on top of this sucker and it's everything I've ever wanted out of life in a four-inch circle.
You are my destiny
I brought this baby back to my apartment and consumed it in between sips of Earl Grey tea, an attempt to balance this disc of sin with something prim and proper. Seven bites later I felt ready to explode. Seven hours later I'm ready for another.
Before the Dunkin Donuts franchise overextended itself - promising the delivery of stale, underglazed donuts at every location - I was a regular consumer, mainly of the marble frosted and Boston creme varieties. And nothing excited me more than the day I got to taste the Doughnut Plant donut that beat Bobby Flay. (Their signature tres leches cake donut is kind of worth it, but their yeast peanut butter and jelly one is better.) I even seriously considered making zeppoli after watching Giada Di Laurentis - who I usually can't stand - coat a batch of her homemade donut holes with powdered sugar on The Food Network.
The point is, I have eaten a lot of freaking donuts in my day. I am a qualified judge and can vouch for the validity of the following information regarding the Peter Pan donut I housed this afternoon:
Superlative this donut won in high school:
Best Dressed
5 Adjectives this donut would use to describe itself:
Sweeeeeet, Loaded, Airy, Decadent, (Fucking) Badass
Warning: Consumption of this donut may result in side effects including:
Heartburn. Sugar high. Sleep deprivation. Sunday Morning Pastry Addiction.
Peter Pan Doughnuts, I give you my hearty endorsement, but to the future consumers of your lightly fried, heavily iced wares I do advise: Proceed with caution.
The window at Peter Pan Doughnuts and Pastries works hard to pull you in. Early on a Sunday morning, the racks are stacked full with donuts, twists and muffins of all varieties.
The case also happens to espouse Miss Stacia's mantra about eating, in general:
When I passed the glass this morning, the shelves were due for a refill, but there were still plenty of appealing options calling out to me. I took out my camera to capture a few shots of the fried dough, slathered in glaze, dipped in chocolate and garnished with enough toppings to appease Michael Scott on pretzel day, when a woman stopped in front of me, looking confused.
"Are you taking pictures of the donuts?" she asked.
"Why, yes I am." Is that not normal?
The donut I ended up selecting for myself was the same one I eyed the very first time I passed the bakery - a chocolate glazed number with a generous dollop of custard in the middle and half a spoonful of jelly crowning the whole affair. Put a tri-color cookie on top of this sucker and it's everything I've ever wanted out of life in a four-inch circle.
You are my destiny
I brought this baby back to my apartment and consumed it in between sips of Earl Grey tea, an attempt to balance this disc of sin with something prim and proper. Seven bites later I felt ready to explode. Seven hours later I'm ready for another.
Before the Dunkin Donuts franchise overextended itself - promising the delivery of stale, underglazed donuts at every location - I was a regular consumer, mainly of the marble frosted and Boston creme varieties. And nothing excited me more than the day I got to taste the Doughnut Plant donut that beat Bobby Flay. (Their signature tres leches cake donut is kind of worth it, but their yeast peanut butter and jelly one is better.) I even seriously considered making zeppoli after watching Giada Di Laurentis - who I usually can't stand - coat a batch of her homemade donut holes with powdered sugar on The Food Network.
The point is, I have eaten a lot of freaking donuts in my day. I am a qualified judge and can vouch for the validity of the following information regarding the Peter Pan donut I housed this afternoon:
Superlative this donut won in high school:
Best Dressed
5 Adjectives this donut would use to describe itself:
Sweeeeeet, Loaded, Airy, Decadent, (Fucking) Badass
Warning: Consumption of this donut may result in side effects including:
Heartburn. Sugar high. Sleep deprivation. Sunday Morning Pastry Addiction.
Peter Pan Doughnuts, I give you my hearty endorsement, but to the future consumers of your lightly fried, heavily iced wares I do advise: Proceed with caution.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Eating Greenpoint: An Introduction
So glad I got the Diet Coke
There's never been a time when I've doubted my devotion to potato and cheese-filled dough, eight-inch long sausages, or meat-stuffed anything, but my obsession with hearty Eastern European cooking has reached new gut-busting proportions since my move to Greenpoint two months ago. I now live on the cusp of Brooklyn's largest Polish-American community, which means I can pull up a chair in one of twenty homestyle, pierogi-slinging restaurants before you can figure out how to pronounce "Żywiec." (Zhi-vee-ets.)
It's not my fault nothing gets me hotter than a potato pancake or a big kielbasa. Most of my grandparents originally came from Poland, so the Polish Comfort Food Fever is most likely a genetic condition. Whatever the case, I seriously can't get enough of the stuff, and my buttocks are slowly becoming as round and full as stuffed cabbages.
My latest obsession is red borchst with dumplings (pronounced more like "barchst" according to a Polish acquaintance of mine), something I had only tried once before moving to the new hood. I've been sampling the RBwD in just about every Polish eatery I've wandered into, and it's a dish that has changes very little from place to place. A super thin broth, that's deep magenta in color, served piping hot with three to five meat tortellini that often soak up the color of the liquid bed in which they bobble. The purple color of the borscht, for those who don't know Polish food, comes from the beet, which is the main flavoring for this soup, though I believe other vegetables and seasonings are used in the cooking, and then strained out before serving. Either way, the resultant flavor is warm and rich with just a touch of sweet spice to it. The earthy meat of the dumpling is a perfect contrast to the sharp flavor of the broth and is a nice change from the often over-flavored ground meat of Italian cuisine. Overall, the soup is simple and tasty - a reason to look forward to cold sleety days.
As I continue to eat my way through my neighborhood I plan to report on Polish food and other neighborhood delicacies, so stay tuned. In my recent experience I've found a restaurant's decor and vibe can really intensify the enjoyment factor of the eating experience (for example, the picture above was taken at a place called King's Feast, a restaurant that has two full suits of armor guarding the front door, and a soundtrack of Polish, 90's-style dance jams playing on full blast at 3 in the afternoon), so I will try to capture images of the defining environmental details when I can. And when I get through the easy staples and move on to pig's knuckles, you better believe I'm reporting it here. If I make it back alive.
But for now I will leave you because it's starting to snow, and I have to go dream of the dark pink soup I will consume as a result.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
My Hot Saturday Night
It's 8pm on a particularly mellow Saturday night when I take my book to my favorite Greenpoint polish spot - my sanctuary - and prepare to relax, uninterrupted. I order red borscht with dumplings, the kielbasa and white sausage plate and a big bottle of Lech premium brew, and proceed to eat a long, slow meal, alternately turning the pages of my book and carving my meat into bite size pieces. Forty-five minutes later my is table is clear but for a half-empty beer glass, and I recline cross-legged, engrossed in my novel.
This book of mine is my first-ever Danielle Steel novel (which I am reading for a writing project, I swear), and it has proved an unbearable assignment. I am just beginning to hit my stride when I look up to see the waitress holding a second enormous beer bottle and a fresh, tall glass. "From the gentlemen at the bar," she tells me. I know well enough to be nervous. Slowly I turn my attention to the banquette in fear, curiosity, and to reluctantly give thanks.
My benefactor is grey-haired and probably sixty years old, smiling sheepishly from his stool. "Of course," I think to myself. "Who else takes themselves out to dinner on a Saturday night? Little Miss Stacia and desperate old men." This is a harsh and probably inaccurate appraisal, but the truth is, I have been approached many times by much older men while dining alone, especially on weekend nights when twenty-five year-olds who are expected to be out doing exciting and irresponsible things with their young lives must seem like easy prey. Here I am, gorging myself on pickled cabbage, reading romance novels like I'm eighty-seven. I am probably asking for it.
The grey-haired man beckons me over. His alcoholic donation makes me feel guilty enough to oblige. He tells me his name is Kazimir, but that I should call him "Kaz." Kaz tells me he moved from Poland to the United States twenty years ago and that he hasn't been back to Poland since. He tells me his mother still lives there and won't come visit him in the States because he's without a wife and kids. His quick declaration of singlehood signals to me early on that I'm in trouble, but for a while our conversation passes without incident. He asks me what I'm reading. I show him "Passion's Promise" and tell him how shocked my grandmother was to hear I'd never read one of Steel's novels before. I'm not sure how much of this Kaz understands, as his English is a bit shoddy, but he tells me his mother reads Danielle Steel in Poland and his sister reads her in Canada. "Everyone around the world reads this," he tells me. Then he holds the book up in prayer position between his two flat palms and says, "Whatever is in this book, it is life." This man has obviously never read any Danielle Steel. I am also hoping for his own sake, he's drunk.
"What are you doing this Friday night?" he asks me. "You will be here, no? "I'm having a birthday party here, Friday night, and you will come." It is time for me to get the check.
I ask the waitress to total me up, but Kaz has insisted he will pay. I just want to go home. Kaz won't accept that I'm not coming to his birthday party on Friday. He tells the waitress, apparently a friend of his, that he has "a situation," and that she should talk to me "like girls talk," about coming to his soiree. "I think I'm the one that has the situation," I tell her.
I thank Kaz for the drink and for dinner and wish him a happy birthday. He gets up from his stool to help me into my coat. On my way out the door I shake off the shadow of unwelcome advance, tuck my romance novel into my bag, and for the first time understand why women have ever wanted to read the damn things in the first place.
This book of mine is my first-ever Danielle Steel novel (which I am reading for a writing project, I swear), and it has proved an unbearable assignment. I am just beginning to hit my stride when I look up to see the waitress holding a second enormous beer bottle and a fresh, tall glass. "From the gentlemen at the bar," she tells me. I know well enough to be nervous. Slowly I turn my attention to the banquette in fear, curiosity, and to reluctantly give thanks.
My benefactor is grey-haired and probably sixty years old, smiling sheepishly from his stool. "Of course," I think to myself. "Who else takes themselves out to dinner on a Saturday night? Little Miss Stacia and desperate old men." This is a harsh and probably inaccurate appraisal, but the truth is, I have been approached many times by much older men while dining alone, especially on weekend nights when twenty-five year-olds who are expected to be out doing exciting and irresponsible things with their young lives must seem like easy prey. Here I am, gorging myself on pickled cabbage, reading romance novels like I'm eighty-seven. I am probably asking for it.
The grey-haired man beckons me over. His alcoholic donation makes me feel guilty enough to oblige. He tells me his name is Kazimir, but that I should call him "Kaz." Kaz tells me he moved from Poland to the United States twenty years ago and that he hasn't been back to Poland since. He tells me his mother still lives there and won't come visit him in the States because he's without a wife and kids. His quick declaration of singlehood signals to me early on that I'm in trouble, but for a while our conversation passes without incident. He asks me what I'm reading. I show him "Passion's Promise" and tell him how shocked my grandmother was to hear I'd never read one of Steel's novels before. I'm not sure how much of this Kaz understands, as his English is a bit shoddy, but he tells me his mother reads Danielle Steel in Poland and his sister reads her in Canada. "Everyone around the world reads this," he tells me. Then he holds the book up in prayer position between his two flat palms and says, "Whatever is in this book, it is life." This man has obviously never read any Danielle Steel. I am also hoping for his own sake, he's drunk.
"What are you doing this Friday night?" he asks me. "You will be here, no? "I'm having a birthday party here, Friday night, and you will come." It is time for me to get the check.
I ask the waitress to total me up, but Kaz has insisted he will pay. I just want to go home. Kaz won't accept that I'm not coming to his birthday party on Friday. He tells the waitress, apparently a friend of his, that he has "a situation," and that she should talk to me "like girls talk," about coming to his soiree. "I think I'm the one that has the situation," I tell her.
I thank Kaz for the drink and for dinner and wish him a happy birthday. He gets up from his stool to help me into my coat. On my way out the door I shake off the shadow of unwelcome advance, tuck my romance novel into my bag, and for the first time understand why women have ever wanted to read the damn things in the first place.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Free Cal
I just looked at my G Cal (Google Calendar - the means by which I run my life), and was shocked to find blank square after blank square of unplanned days, evenings and weekends in January. In fact, my calendar is completely empty for all of 2008. As of this moment I have zero future commitments (birthdays, holidays and other recurring events aside), and I can't remember another time in my life where I felt so liberated from extra work duties, family functions, and social obligations. This year's new year's resolution: Spontaneity!
Now who wants to make some plans?
Now who wants to make some plans?
A Mother's Resolutions For Her Daughter
1. Wear your retainers/rainboots/snowboots/hat/gloves/new thing instead of the same old thing.
2. J Date/ 8 Minute J Date/Attend temple singles parties.
3. If you're going to go to Dunkin Donuts, use a coupon. Here, it's two-for-one.
4. Listen to your mother.
2. J Date/ 8 Minute J Date/Attend temple singles parties.
3. If you're going to go to Dunkin Donuts, use a coupon. Here, it's two-for-one.
4. Listen to your mother.
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