For my lovely sister on her 21st birthday: A blog entry all your own. Says Miss Raquel: "It's all I've ever wanted!"

The College Man gets a lot of attention on this website, mostly because his late-afternoon incoherence and drunken antics fall in the sphere of obvious hilarity and allow me to reference things like bitches and blunts with rewarding frequency. But Miss Raquel Jones, middle child, homecoming queen, bookworm, and raging bull cannot go uncelebrated for much longer.

Besides, it’s hot mama’s 21st birthday.


The College Man forces Miss Raquel to get down to business.

Raquel, like Gravy, has a penchant for teen-dream eighties flicks (particularly those starring the insufferable Molly Ringwald) and when we were younger she adopted a saying she absorbed from the previously heralded Some Kind Of Wonderful, a mantra which seems more and more fitting in each passing year: “You mess with the bull, you get the horns.”

Now don’t get me wrong, Raquel is a warm, gentle soul and if you deal with her straight she will put her life on the line for you. She’s moral and trustworthy and what’s more, she’s always been effortlessly social. This is a talent for which I had little teenage aptitude. While I spent my time in high school strategically avoiding uncomfortable social situations, Raquel plowed through those uncertain years seemingly oblivious to the bullshit that festered around her. I obsessed over snide comments delivered by ignorant doorknobs and Raquel simply turned up her headphones (Hootie and the Blowfish was her preferred form of “white noise”) and buried herself in a bedroom full of books. It’s not that little sis didn’t realize high school drama was unfurling around her, it’s just she recognized it for what it was – completely inconsequential. “I don’t have time for this bullshit, bitches. I’ve got work to do.”

And where did this noncommittal strategy take the lovely and bookish Miss Raquel? Straight to the Homecoming Queen podium, no fucking joke. When my mother and I heard Raquel was in the running for the crown we looked at each other and both said, “She’s gonna win.” And you know what, for perhaps the first time in recorded history, a Homecoming Queen was chosen for the right reasons. Raquel’s peers, whether they had anything in common with her on the surface or not, had RESPECT for her. She brought a warm and witty presence to her scholastics and extra-curriculars and even though she’s always been a shoot-from-the-hip kind of girl, she’s really a silly fucker underneath it all and not afraid to show it. The College Man once described her as “the definition of down-to-earth.” And upon this diamond personality for twenty-one years Miss Raquel has thrived.

But the real reason Raquel is and will always be such a social success, is because she seriously does not take shit from ANYONE. It’s not a quality that is overt and grating, but rather it pulsates like a protective shield cast by one of Mario’s magic mushrooms. Without being snooty or snobbish or aggressive, the girl’s presence just DEMANDS respect. She is one of the few intelligent, beautiful women I’ve known who’s managed to wind her way through life, exhibiting her many gifts and reaping rewards without much backlash. She's got a gift. It’s like the girl is coated in Vaseline – she just slides on through.

The thing is, you don’t want to mess with Raquel. She’s a royal bitch if you cross her the wrong way. Last summer she was driving home from a weekend out-of-state with her boyfriend Alex and Alex's little sister Casey. Casey had mentioned to a few scumbucket girls at the day camp she worked at with my sis that her family would be gone for the weekend and that she might hold a small get together the last night before her parents returned (Raquel, Alex and Casey returned home a night earlier). Well, these ballsy bitches rolled up to Casey’s house and proceeded to throw a keg party in the front and backyard, trashing the place before Casey and Co. had even crossed back into New York State. The police were called and restoration ensued, but important to note is that the next day my sister approached the main girl rumored to have orchestrated the unsanctioned bash. Their conversation went something like this:

Stupid Bitch Who Throws Parties at People’s Houses When They’re Not Home: Oh Raquel! I’m so glad you came over to talk to me! I was afraid Casey would never speak to me again.

Raquel: You WISH I didn’t come over here, trust me. I’m your worst nightmare.

This is where SBWTPAPHWTNH started to cry. Raquel finished the tongue lashing regarding the respecting of friendships and people’s property – all the obvious stuff. Coming from Raquel, i'm sure it was terrifying. Cause most of the time my sis just wants to chill and make bead necklaces and chat about Grey’s Anatomy. You have to do something pretty fucked up to get her juiced. You mess with the bull…

When you’re related to the girl, your chances of avoiding the wrath decrease. As we’re both the stubborn spawn of Mama Jones, neither Raquel nor myself is likely to back down in an argument. (It’s notable that I have always been at least three inches taller than my sister and I’ve never for one second doubted that she could beat the living shit out of me.) But now that we’re older and have discovered the advantages of cooperation and collaboration (“family dinners” on the credit card?) we’ve managed to curb the bickering and hair pulling and “nails” attacks - where you dig your grimy claws into the flesh of your opponent until they scream for mercy - to a minimum.

Now we just get drunk together**.

Tonight we're gonna do it legally.




**N.B. The last time Raquel and I got drunk it was on margaritas at some obnoxious UES frat bar. The next day, nursing hangovers, we woke up to meet Mama and Papa Jones at the MET. It was there in the first hallway of Egyptian pottery that Rachel said to me, "I fell asleep sitting up, with my shoes on last night." Through our hysterical laughter I could hear my mother call out to Papa Jones, whose face was pressed up to a glass case in curious delight: "They're just BOWLS Steven."

The Underappreciated Eating Establishment Series: IHOP

Obviously kosher.

It was the kind of breakfast you take a picture of. Especially if you’re a nerd about food like I am. But as my boy D Hardcore says, “Generally, all people are geeks about something.”

When D and I sauntered in to IHOP last Thursday morning I was a flapjack away from syruping my pants. Is that IHOP logo dishware I see? A coffee pot flipped open, waiting for the fill, at each individual table? A mini bar boasting four fruity varieties of melted maple sugar???!!! I had a suspicion the International House of Pancakes was trying to romance me. This suspicion was further confirmed once D and I settled down with our menus and let the IHOP soundtrack permeate our pancake-obsessed brains. “Three Times A Lady,” “Unbreak My Heart**, ”Lovely Day.” FUCKING PERFECT. This is the music your grandfather would seduce your grandmother to, present day.

Or maybe I just relate the whole IHOP experience to the elderly because before Thursday morning, the only IHOP meals I remember vividly were taken with my grandparents in Florida. And it was always a “breakfast for dinner” trip. I was never thrilled with the idea of consuming breakfast in the evening, but I also willingly combined lox spread and tuna fish on a cinnamon raisin bagel (the Jewish appetizing sampler) at eight in the morning, so what the hell did I know. Besides, my Poppy LOVED his steak and eggs (can’t take that away from the man) and when you eat at 4:00pm on a Sunday, it can probably even be classified as brunch (if you’re a lazy New Yorker). Or linner, yeah yeah, I know.

One very important development that came out of these night trips to the International House of Old People was the Jones children’s love of coffee. Poppy drank his coffee light and very sweet and whenever he emptied a half-and-half into his mug he would fill the tiny empty container with sugary brew for his grandkids to sip. Our enjoyment of this ritual began more with the novelty of drinking from a thimble-sized cup than from the coffee itself, but eventually The College Man and I were sucked into a lifetime of incessant caffeine consumption, and at a ridiculously early age (5 and 9, maybe). I’m surprised the two of us aren’t five feet tall. And one thing I never realized about the mini-coffee routine is that in order to pass on a pint-sized café to each of his grandkids at the beginning of a meal, Poppy had to suck down enough coffee to free up THREE cream containers - and he only put one in each cup of joe. No wonder the man went to the bathroom so often. I’m surprised he wasn’t chattering like a wind-up toy by the end of the meal.

The three Jones kids were still ordering off the kiddie menu when IHOP was in the Florida restaurant rotation and we pretty much ordered the same thing every time. The College Man fed his love of sausage and other unidentifiable, encased pork products, whereas Rachel and I mostly stuck to the Funny Face, a massive chocolate chip pancake finished with a whipped cream and maraschino cherry smile (dessert for dinner).

Side note: Maraschino cherries taste like balls of Nyquil covered in Sweet n’ Low. Those things are nasty. All her life, Rachel has been eating maraschino cherries for two.

My tastes have expanded a bit since I was nine, and in an attempt to stray from the Funny Face (which I haven’t been able to order for 11 years anyway) I approached my latest IHOP excursion with a few goals in mind. I wanted to eat basically every breakfast food I have ever had a hankering for in one sitting, and by ordering only one selection off IHOP’s insanely inclusive combo menu. I wanted to nail down the perfect combination of breakfast’s sweet and salty offerings. Fuck the West Side brunch. I wanted eggs AND pancakes. Chocolate chip pancakes. I wanted to sit down in an IHOP and drink my own full mug of delicious coffee.

I thought it was going to take me about forty-five minutes to choose the right breakfast combo off IHOP's eight page menu, but it turns out The Breakfast Sampler, first option on the menu, is the breakfast I’ve been searching for my entire adult life. Two eggs (over easy, of course), bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns, and two buttermilk pancakes. I submitted my order to the waitress and bumped my flapjacks up to chocolate chip. Best $1.59 I ever spent. D Hardcore went with the classic “Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity, ” which pleased me to no end, basically because I wanted to mention the RTF&F in my blog. Again, everyone’s a geek about something. D’s breakfast was missing the hash browns and traveled a little lighter on the salty meats, but the gist of the meal was the same. Eggs, then pancakes. His stack was topped with blueberries and a massive dollop of whipped cream.

A few reasons why everyone should indulge in the IHOP breakfast:

1. Toppings (blueberries, chocolate chips, etc) are both BAKED INTO and loaded ON TOP OF IHOP’s amazingly fluffy pancakes. This makes all the difference in the world. There’s no strategic saving of chocolate chips for the last bite here. My pancakes were tinged brown from their chocolate stuffing. Pancakes as envisioned by Willy Wonka.

2. The Whipped cream topping. For breakfast!

3. Hash browns that are actually cooked until they’re WELL DONE. I am so sick of raw breakfast potatoes. Note to the cooks of New York: EVERYONE likes potatoes well done in the morning.

4. Crispy bacon. See hash browns.

5. Unlimited coffee in self-serve percolators. No waiting for refills. Unlimited creamers for easily amused grandchildren.


Okay, so D and I consumed the better part of a breakfast fit for four and hopped on the train downtown. Hardcore, the lucky bastard, didn’t have to work until 4pm but I plopped down at my desk at 11:00am ready to give birth to the entire IHOP menu. “We need hammocks where we can lay and rub our bellies.” D said to me before we parted ways.

I was faring pretty well until about 3:00pm when I decided, although I was barely hungry, to eat a salad and add some greens to whatever was already swimming around in my body. And this seemingly harmless lunch was what put me over the edge. In fact, I wanted to post about my IHOP breakfast last week but I couldn’t even think about pancakes until I woke up this morning. I decided at around 4pm on Thursday that I would wait another year until I ate at IHOP again.

But when I do, you’re all invited. I’ll make you each a little coffee of your own.


**Toni Braxton, I SO owned your album.

The College Man: Observing the High Holidays

Voicemail left on my phone at 2:29 am this morning:

The College Man: Yooooooooooooo. Happy 4/20. (Almost singing) Haaaappy 4/20! Heh heh. It's your brother, in case you haven't figured it out.

After hanging up, The College Man surely completed his sacred 4/20 ritual by gorging on matzoh, macaroons and other kosher-for-Passover products. Nothing quenches the munchies like unleavened eatables.


L'Chaim bitches!

Purell: An Office Obsessed

Almost exactly a month ago I started work at the new gig, and not in the most ideal first-day-of-work state. Pummeling through that first week, I was about as sick as I get - hacking cough, runny nose, the chills, sweats, visions of death, "daymares" about babies named Moses...the works. I rolled up in the dub room blowing my Jewish honker about once every five minutes, my damp, transparent tissues forming a snot pyramid on the corner of my desk while I waited for the arrival of my new garbage pail. So I wasn't all that surprised when my lovely co-worker K-Boogie asked me an hour into my first shift if I had "gotten [my] bottle of Purell" yet. When I answered no, she handed me an economy size pump bottle of the clearish goo - ten pounds worth of antibacterial power-slime. But I did kind of look like I was bitten by the monkey in Outbreak at the time, so I figured K-Boogie was dropping a subtle and valid hint that I might want to try and contain my germage for the sake of the office. Turns out people in this office are just freakishly obsessed with that Purell shit.

Purell has always seemed pointless to me. Perhaps the sticky, antibacterial gel is useful in airplanes, porta potties and other unfortunate places in which access to running water is lacking, but I still have issue with the fact that hand sanitizers don't eradicate bacteria. These products simply KILL the little guys, leaving thousands, millions of dead bacterial cells on the surface of your skin. YUM. But my coworkers seem convinced that applying this shit seven and eight times a day keeps them healthy in this science experiment of an office environment.

A few different arguments have been presented to me to emphasize the value of Purell use and the product's indespensibility in the workplace. The dubbers are particularly devoted to the preventative slop, and have recounted frequent incidents of unsanitary practices committed by other officemates as grounds for conversion to frequent, water-free sanitation. They are particularly emphatic in their descriptions of men who leave the bathroom without washing their hands (unapologetically) and blatantly sick coworkers who refill their water bottles by sticking the nozzle right up and around the communal tap after they've put the container to their germ-ridden lips.

"I open the bathroom door with a paper towel now." my coworker T-Money told me one day. "And I buy water bottles to bring to the office. I won't drink from the water cooler anymore."

I don't know if it's out of disbelief that these incidences occur as frequently as the dubbers propose, or if it's just sheer laziness, but I couldn't give a rat's ass about what lingers on the communal water dispenser. Both before and after these germcentric, germphobic conversations I have grabbed the door handles in the bathroom, full palm to metal, and I drink about twice a day from that infected cooler. I never really saw the logic in worrying about those little things. The dude that doesn't wash his hands in the bathroom before he opens the door also touches the coffee pot you're gonna pick up ten minutes from now, so what's the difference if you pick up his ass-paramecium now or later? You ingest, on average, somewhere between 7 and 10 spiders a year. You won't die from a little bathroom bacilli.

Another point I have made in the Purell debates is the familiar argument that hand sanitizers kill off both harmful and benign bacteria and the lack of exposure to these germs that we have been living with for centuries (peacefully and realtively healthily I might add), makes us more suceptible to their negative effects. By attempting to create an unnaturally sterile environment in the workplace, one essentially makes him/herself more vulnerable to attack by bacteria in the future. Instead of bathing in Purell these people should be going to the gym to build up their overall immune system. Or playing in dirt for Christ's sake.

I personally like the tactic employed by an old coworker in the Citi. "The Popcorn Man," as he was called, visited the counter flanking my cubicle every day for the entire month of February to stick his bare hands into a massive tub of Popcorn Factory Popcorn. A few notable things about this tin o' corn:

1. It arrived in the office in early December.
2. Almost everyone in the office contributed their special brand of microscopic creature to the tin's cheese and caramel-covered contents.
3. At least one woman attributed her rapid-fire 24-hour virus to her consumption of the popcorn. Chances are there were many more silent victims.

Did this seemingly poisonous substance kill The Popcorn Man? Hells no! The Popcporn Man just kept on coming, dipping his adventurous paws right in there. Sure enough, like the Dread Pirate Roberts with his Iocaine powder, The Popcorn Man developed an immunity to the contents of that snowflake-adorned petri dish, one cup at a time. I believe that man could work in a classroom full of snot-covered first graders and never get a cold. He could have sex with Pam Anderson and not catch the Hep-C. If New York were struck in Biological warfare, The Popcorn Man would be the only one left standing.

So as I enter my second month at the new yabbo, on the verge of an illness as irritating as the first one, I look up to The Popcorn Man for guidance and inspiration. My coworkers will tell me I'm sick because I refuse to lather up with their gooey gunk. They'll tell me Purell's 62% ethyl alcohol content will kill off the germs that plague me. But I'll embrace my illness and I'll touch the goddamn doorknob sans papertowel, because that's what The Motherfucking Popcorn Man would do. And that guy's gonna live forever.

The Crossover Bridge: Blackalicious at B.B. Kings, 4/1/06

So I saw Blackalious at B.B.King's this past Saturday with Jay-Z, Ken Tailey and Ken's friend Gravy. It turns out Gravy knows more about cheesy 80's romantic comedy than any man should, but he did earn major points by showing much love to the consistently overlooked, Some Kind of Wonderful. Eric Stoltz (yes!) stars as a Keith, an artist/mechanic (he's good with his hands) and social misfit who lusts after the "hottest girl in school" (who frankly, needed to show a little more skin). There is a montage shower/date-prep scene soundtracked by a tune of the same name as Lea Thompson's softly sexy yet unattainable screen persona "Miss Amanda Jones." And Mary Stuart Masterson plays Keith's dykish tomboy of a best friend Watts, who alternately bangs her drumsticks and insults Keiths's dream girl to hide the fact that she wants the kid's cock and a pair of diamond earrings on which the idiot spent his entire college tuition (his "future"). This film marked the climax of eighties cinema, my friends. Gravy, you kick ass for knowing it.

80's movies don't have much to do with the actual Blackalicious performance, unless we're talking about the dress code of the audience. I was sort of expecting a hipster-heavy turnout at the show because of a Blackbook article I scanned a couple weeks ago, which made it apparent that Blackalicious is the default "favorite rapper" of nearly every up-and-coming indie musician.* I didn't expect to see a solid sea of cropped leggings, mismatched garments and matted, overgrown locks, however. I mean, who wears a blazer to a Blackalicious concert? And where were the homies at? Blackalicious is now to indie music what J5 was to the jam band scene. The group brings smooth, easy hooks, intricate, literary lyricism and messages more palatable to trust fund hipsters** than say, Ghostface's "Whip You With a Strap" (one of the more poignant and compelling jams on his latest, Fishscale). It's wasn't too hard to picture the misplaced audience grooving to the liberal slang of "Paragraph President." But the crowd (aside from the front four rows of devotees) remained fairly stiff and composed. Too bad these kids only know how to dance to Joy Division.

Perhaps I'm not giving this concert experience its due. Gift of Gab was spot-on, as he always is when he shows up (two out of four times I've seen Blackalicious he's been mysteriously absent), spitting out classics like "Chemistry Calisthenics" and his Speedy Gonzalez freestyle with equal effortless flow. Plus, you can't undervalue the company of Ken Tailey, who does an awesome hip-hop shuffle to "Deception," while hollering, "Laaaaaa-da-di-da..." But two months ago I saw Big Daddy Kane take the stage at the Nokia Theater and motherfucker! That place was rank with down-and-dirty energy. Fists pumped the air and lyrics spilled out the mouths of worshippers - natural, uncontainable. Sweat and heat and sauce and love mixed in that pit below the stage and you felt on fire in the middle of it. Now, Big Daddy Kane was no doubt the highlight of the night (the headliner was the awesome-on-record, mediocre-in-person MF Doom), but all that hip hop show seemed to have in common with the one I just saw was a familiar smell and happy cloud of smoke overhead.

Again, this isn't to say that I didn't enjoy myself or that Blackalicious didn't put on a great performance. The encore, always the highlight of their shows brought longtime tour companions The Lifesavas and other openers and guests out in a freestyle free-for-all, ending with a choice exhibiton of Gift of Gab's slick rhymes. But the line that stuck in my brain was one he called out mid-set:

"...I cross the bridge to Brooklyn..."

When met with a deafening roar from an audience of mini Julian Casablancas', I couldn't help but remark underbreath, "I'm pretty sure he didn't mean Williamsburg."

*Side note regarding the "Favorite Beatle" category: None of you fuckers give Paul McCartney ANY fucking credit.
**I want a trust fund.

Requests in April snow

This morning Miss Stacia received an e-mail request from famous photographer Dustbin Cohen. "Tell me a story," he wrote.

Okay Dustbin, for you, the story of the underdressed girl who walked to work:

One morning after the gym a lovely young lady on the UWS put on a light sweater, a pair of sheer, capri stockings with motorcycle boots and an a-line corduroy skirt. She looked out her window and thought to herself, "it's sunny outside, if not so warm. I think I'll walk to work." Fooled by the glowing rays streaming through her window, the underdressed girl tentatively put on a scarf followed by her light/midweight jacket - outerwear that would prove to be a bit too cropped and pocketless to protect from the weather to come.

As the underdressed girl set out from her cozy abode, she relished in her seemingly fitting choice of garments. She felt light and comfortable, as she should, setting out for a fifty block walk. The underdressed girl fell into a robust stride, gliding over blocks in an easy fashion, forsaking the regular isolation of her headphones for the soothing calm of the late morning city streets.

But as soon as the underdressed girl hit Times Square the sky fell black and the wind started thrashing at her near-bare legs. Invisible droplets threatened her freshly lined eyes and her hands, gloveless and without shelter, began to crack and numb in the cold. Tourists everywhere flung up umbrellas in vain, attempting to combat an enemy that approached not only from the sky, but from Broadway’s incessantly flashing side corridors. The underdressed girl, shivering a mere ten blocks from her destination, considered cutting short her odyssey and taking refuge for one quick stop underground.

But the underdressed girl persevered. Though her mountain climbing legs were damp and cold, she chugged away at the pavement, clacking wood to stone ten blocks further, stopping only to commune with the Korean deli manager to purchase her usual banana and hazelnut brew.

Now the underdressed girl sits at her desk, her toes still a bit frigid from the journey. She is grateful to be inside. A flood of coworkers report, one right after the other, of the snow falling from the skies. And the underdressed girl sits at her desk and dreams of summer dresses and open toes.

Meet the (New) Coworkers: Rishchard Orleans

It's been a tough transition month over here at Collections are Dangerous. I've had to adjust to waking up at 10:00 am instead of 7:00am, to wearing jeans and sneakers instead of corporate couture, to eating Wendy's instead of Grilled Fiesta Chicken Lean Cuisines. Frankly, I'm exhausted from all the letting loose.

But I'm finally back in the groove, ready to dish on the peeps I've been getting to know over the past few weeks, people who will certainly inform and inspire future prolific postings by Miss Stacia.

Let's start with Rishchard Orleans, the thirty-something Williamsburgite (originally from Louisiana) who sits directly behind me and is my companion for the final hour of my wacky 11-8 schedule.

A few things you should know about Rishchard:

1. He is the drummer in a stand-up-comedy band called Tickle Dracula (also known as Scratch Mummy, Massage Wolfman and Indian Burn Frankenstein).
2. His wife picks out his clothes for him, and has impeccable taste (I also hear she's a dead ringer for Drew Barrymore.).
3. When he puts a rubber band around his forehead, cinching his unruly coif, he looks a bit like Michael Flatley .
4. He's on a no-cookie diet. Things he CAN eat on this diet include barbequed pork and brisket, hamburgers, burritos and more barbequed pork.
5. He doesn't like it when you call his mother a whore.

Rishchard and I initially bonded out of necessity - we are two of the only people in our department who are in the office past 7:00pm and frankly, it gets dull enough to floss by about ten after seven. But we came to find that we actually have a lot in common, including a love of smoked meats and reverence for Michael McDonald.

For some reason, my conversations with Rishchard often revolve around my religion. I can't say whether this is due to my penchant for poking fun at my own people or Rishchard's closet jealousy of Those Who Have Been Chosen. There are a couple things we have decided to agree upon regarding Judaism and tolerance in general, however:

1. Neither of us would protest if uber-frightening, barely legal duo Prussian Blue was "compromised" as Rishchard put it, in some way in the future.
2. Both of us think jokes emphasizing Jewish stereotypes are funny.

Since Monsieur Orleans is not a born Jew, which is kind of a qualification for harping on the offensive social attributes of a people, Rishchard and I decided to inagurate one another into our repspective heritage circles. As a result, Rishchard and I are now both Scottish Jews. We will wear kilts and drink Manischewitz at every wedding we attend from this day forward.

And as an honorary Jew, Richshard now has full-reign to participate in Jewish jokes of all kinds. I can't remember exactly how this little Semetic diddy got started, but just yesterday Jew Orleans and I rewrote the (Raffi?) children's classic "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee.":

Miss Stacia: I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Won't my mommy be so proud of me. No, wait. I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Pick up quarters, underneath the tree.

Rishchard: Shouldn't you use the word guilty?

Miss Stacia: I'm am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Grandma makes me feel oh so guilty. I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. On Shabbat cannot use energy.

Rishchard: How about, I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Something, something something, usury.

Miss Stacia: HA.

Rishchard: Yeah, that comparative religion degree's really paying off.

Let's NOT talk about what happened in the green kitchen

Today at the new(ish)job in the dub room: In addition to hearing Ah-nold repeat "My name is Julius. I'm your twin brother!" over and over again to a Hawaiian shirt-clad Danny Devito, I was forced to sit through the movie Sybil in it's entirety. For those of you who weren't exposed to this profoundly disturbing movie in 6th grade health class by Mr. Mandell, Sybil is story of a multiple personality headcase, played by a super young Sally Field, who attempts to get to the root of her traumatic childhood. Occasionally Fields simply portrays Sybil, muted and confused, a woman unaware of the workings of her complex mental condition. But most of the time Fields bounces back and forth between Sybil's three or four dominant alternate personalties, in different degrees of annoying whine and tantrum.

How does a woman develop twelve personalities that are completely unaware of each others' existence? It probably has something to do with a schizophrenic mother's unnatural use of knives and buttonhooks. (These tools were most likely employed in the green kitchen.) It might have something do do with enemas or the forced holding of a young girl's bladder in the piano room. If you haven't studied the case or seen the film, I'm telling you, you don't want to know - it's fucking traumatizing. I for one, would rather view a hundred made-for-TV movies about teenage bulimia, (preferably starring a post-Full House DJ Tanner, or maybe Tracy Gold?) than suffer through this nightmare of a movie again.

Business Trip: Blackout Holiday at The Knitting Factory Tap Bar, 3/9/06

I always wonder when the turn comes where seeing live music becomes an occasion instead of a way of life. Generations of music lovers have made the same claim: We will forever enjoy sucking down Magic Hat in a basement bar while banging our heads to killer drum beats. And then along come fourteen-hour-days, endless errands, infectious and corrosive television addictions. All of a sudden you’re at the Knitting Room Tap Bar in a room full of suits and it’s been two years since you saw U2 at The Garden, four years since you’ve worshipped at the altar of “standing room only” and about five years since you’ve really lived, god damn it! Make my return to this sound-filled cavern count. Suck me backwards through the timeline. Shake the walls of my structured world and make me feel alive!

Good thing Blackout Holiday’s got chops. A combination of contagious melodies and painstaking polish, the band proved at their Knitting Factory show last night that they can ride the precarious line between wound tight and wound out. It is difficult to finesse roughness without sacrificing raw edge, but Blackout Holiday laces up and lashes out in all the right places. Rich’s voice is slick, a surprisingly soothing salve over the booming drum crashes and silvery riffs. Although the bands plucks more from early nineties grunge and arena rock than eighties new wave, Rich’s voice leads to The Stone Roses and Morrissey like the inescapable familiarity of an ex-girlfriend’s perfume. The bass lines are clean, fast and bold, standout enough to catch the ear of an amateur listener and perfectly synched with the companion thrashing and crashing. If anything this band is well rehearsed. But the real story of this band is in the drummer, Charles Palmer, trader-by-day, musician by night, and the party responsible for the unusual outpouring of suited, shiny-shoed support.

Palmer is an ogre on the skins. He rips through songs, tears into them with vicious teeth, sets a voracious pace with his ferocious, deliberate chomps. Palmer recently subbed in R&B quintet Damsel & Fly, showcasing his ease and comfort behind the barrels and demonstrating amazing proficiency and adaptability after minimal rehearsal time with silken-voiced Jasmine Jamillah and her soul-funk crew. But although the man is all soul – more groove than crash, more jah than g-d of rock - Palmer was built for caveman pounding. Fierce, but meticulously organized, the drummer’s reverence for experimental rhythmic organization is evident. The last song in the set was an especially acute sample of the drummer’s innovation, with Palmer leaning heavily on the left side of his kit, eyes closed, shooting calculated magic out his wands.

The beat connects the band to the earth. Watching the gravel fly, businessmen are brought back to simpler days.

The College Man: "Happy Birthday to Me Motherfucker!"

Happy birthday College Man. May the next year bring you happiness and may the women flow as freely as the Miller High Life. Now hit that bong!


Shayna and Adam celebrate another year closer to legal drunkeness.

The Inevitable Next Step

Digital Mad Libs. I used the age-old strategy of inserting mostly dirty(ish) words to try and maximize the comedy and in the end learned the lesson that you can never go dirty enough with your "verbs ending in -ing." (I guess kids still don't recognize the word "gerund," eh?)

The results:

Learn to Be a Rock Star
I'm at a new school. Its name is “The Miss Stacia School for Rock Stars.” The courses here are horny!

My first assignment is to learn to play the skin flute and sing like a rock star. To be a good rock star, I'm supposed to blow around a lot, to grab across the stage, and to tease at the audience. I did not act like that at my old school, so I think I'll have to work on it for a while; this will be interesting homework.

My second assignment is to learn to have an entourage, which is a group of people that always seems to follow around a rock star. I have a lot of friends, but for this assignment I suddenly have 6969 people following me around, telling me how brutal I am, how they really like my nipple tassel, and how I am the most hairy person ever. I can't be sure, but I think they are just saying that.

My final assignment is to put on a rock concert. I have to arrive in a lawnmower and walk the "fuck me red" carpet, past all the plunging fans with cameras flashing in my face. Then, when I get inside, my entourage will be there and I will pinch with them to the stage. Next, I'll perform deux songs, all while stroking across the stage, singing, and climaxing at the audience. This will be the toughest final exam I've ever had, and the one I'll never forget!

Office Mash-Up

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Digital Narcissist

Apparently I'm not the only one.

The Valentine Years: Rotting Candy, Dirty Cards and Unrequited Love

“The Valentine Years,” my last two years at West Hollow Middle School (seventh and eighth grade), were the only two years of my twenty-three in which I have received Valentine’s Day presents from a member of the opposite sex. (Sorry mom, the Popcorn Factory tins were tasty, but NO, I will not make out with you.) It's interesting that at this time in my adolescent life guys chose to pay attention to me, since it was BY FAR the height of my pre-teen awkwardness (read: fugliness). I straddled the “in-between” phase in a frizzed-out, shoulder-length blunt cut, blue-trimmed mouth metal that marked the near-end of my seven year relationship with my orthodontist, and a wardrobe that included tapered jeans and a random GAP baseball jersey that I inexplicably wore on sixth grade picture day (Did I even like baseball? Or the GAP?). Dazrazzle, will never let me live that down.

(Please peeps, send pictures if you have 'em.)

Miraculously overlooking my stringy frame and snowflake sweaters, a few guys actually went out of their way to “date” me in middle school. The first of these strapping young fellows was Ted Rosenquist. Ted was a year younger then me, but he was the guy all my seventh grade girlfriends adored. Ted, of course, turned out to be gay, immediately squashing my chances of avoiding one of the clichéd dating inevitables. I was young, yes, but I should have known. We DID first meet in Chorus and Drama Club. What a talented Tevia he was.

Ted and I maybe kissed three times. I can’t remember if he was good, I can’t even remember how long we were in our “relationship.” All I remember is that on Valentine’s Day Ted presented me with a gift bag full of candy of the drug store holiday variety – large bricks of milk chocolate molded into heart and cherub shapes, sheathed behind the display plastic of decorative boxes. At least one of the hearts had a face carved into it, finished off with colored, sugar-button eyes. I recall this with clarity because I kept that candy, in Ted’s gift bag, in my bedroom armoire to periodically reflect upon its cheesy implications. I didn’t eat a single piece of chocolate; I simply stored the candy away, a souvenir of my very first “real” relationship.

Fast forward. One day, freshman year of college, my mother calls me.

“Stacey Lauren! How long have you been keeping this disgusting, cruddy chocolate in your cabinet?! There is a major pest problem in here Stacey, it’s fucking gross.”

I had kept Ted’s chocolate in my armoire for SEVEN YEARS. Conveniently I wasn’t in the state of New York when mom figured this out. (I’d like to give a shout out to my mother and to the exterminator who helped rid my room of the infested remnants of Ted’s chocolate love, once and for all.)

The only other man who tried to woo me with gifts on Valentine’s Day was Paul Bennett. Paul may have bought me candy. I think he bought me a rose. I didn’t care much. I was hot for Paul’s brother Dave.

Dave Bennett was another baby-faced youngster (I was going through a phase) who became the object of my not-so-subtle obsession right around the time of my Bat Mitzvah. I flaunted my wiry frame and wrote him psycho love notes, and although he was cordial enough, (his nervous message to the camera on my Bat Mitzvah video: “Umm, hi Stacey. You look very nice, and, ummm, pretty. Bye.”) he didn’t have reciprocal pubescent longing for my skinny brace-face. Granted, my overly aggressive approach most definitely sabotaged any chance I had with the kid (which in reality, still probably equaled zero.) but I wanted to make sure Dave wasn’t mistaking his feelings of love for feelings of violent repulsion.

One night, I was hanging with Dave at my friend Kat’s house. I really must halt to explain Kat Piedmore’s house for a minute. There were absolutely NO RULES at Kat’s. This was the place where kids (myself included) played seven minutes in heaven and spin the bottle for the first time. This is where we would eat raw cookie dough until we were ready to puke, where kids would JUMP OFF THE ROOF onto Kat’s backyard trampoline. It’s amazing her parents were never sued. There was never active supervision of any kind. Kat’s parents were always rumored to be tucked away in their bedroom or doing work in an office I could never seem to locate. Mom’s station wagon was almost always in the driveway, but for some reason she never skirted past us in the kitchen, never checked on Kat in her room, never asked when I had arrived or when I was going home. Kat Piedmont’s house was the No Restriction Zone. Kat’s was the one and only place where the quintessential Stacia/Dave Bennett experience could have taken place.

One night after school Dave, Kat and I were all hanging out at the house when Kat left me to talk with my crush in her room, door closed. Maybe it was the artificial steaminess of Kat’s blacklight and lava lamp igniting the dark room. It probably had something to do with my frustration at my inability to lock Dave under my thumb, and it was definitely related to the overflow of hormonal juices suddenly pumped into my system upon my thirteenth birthday. But no sooner had Kat closed the door, than did I slam Dave up against the wall to shove my tongue down his throat. I was a fan of the hard sell. The move was executed completely against Dave’s will in a minor deviation from the ever popular “no means no” mantra (“no means yes?”). I assumed he would be turned on by my gutsy move, but it became clear pretty quickly – when he called his dad to pick him up – that my moves didn’t stir a twitch in my shy man’s loins.

Thinking back on it now, I probably scared the living crap out of him. Fuck you Seventeen Magazine for your shitty ass advice.

So Kat introduced me to Paul. Paul, Dave’s older brother, was in his first year of high school and was actually slightly better looking than the younger Bennett. He was also strangely free of standards that would have prevented him from picking up a middle schooler who was currently toiling for the attention of his younger sibling. Paul and I hung out at Kat’s a few times after school (for some reason Kat used to hang out with both brothers but dated neither) and we did end up hitting it off reasonably well. Enough for him to gift me on Valentine’s Day.

So again, I don’t really remember what Paul bought me for V-Day, 1996, but I DO remember the cards. That’s cardS, plural. Paul, that crafty little devil, mailed a sweet little “decoy card” to my house the day before Valentine’s Day. I can't recall if I even showed that one to mom. Valentine's night, Paul’s father dropped his son off with a gift and another card, which I opened with Paul in my upstairs bedroom (door open). The front of the “real card” depicted a woman sticking her long red tongue in a man’s ear as he exclaimed, “Ooh! That tickles!” The inside of the card had something to do with pulling my pants down to give me a good licking. (Thanks Daz for being on top of that one.) That wish was not so easily granted seeing as how my father popped his head into my bedroom every ten minutes. Paul also added a handwritten paragraph of his own describing dirty things a fifteen-year-old might want to do to a fourteen-year-old.

As soon as Paul left I ran downstairs to show my mother (who thought the card was hilarious).

So much for the decoy.

Happy V-Day Ted and Paul (and Dave, what the hell).

Bitch! You know what I want! I wanna talk to Lipton!

If you haven’t caught the two-hour Dave Chappelle interview on Inside the Actor’s Studio, FIND THE TIME. In addition to the hearing the real explanation behind Chappelle’s trip to Africa you will see:

- a ballet dance off between James Lipton and Chappelle
- Clayton Bigsby call James Lipton a Jew
- James Lipton use transitions like, “and then you recorded the sketch ‘I’m Going to Piss on You’…”

You will also be reminded that this past summer Chappelle got a bunch of his musician friends together including Kanye, Mos Def, Talib, Erkyah Badu and the Roots, for a block party in Brooklyn. This is the concert that reunited The Fugees. And Michel fucking Gondry recorded the whole thing and made a film out of it to add some reverb to the orgasm of it all. I had almost completely forgotten this movie was in production, but it’s finally being released. Opens March 3, bitch!

The College Man: Still Alive?

Devoted Collections are Dangerous Readers may have noticed the absence of College Man posts after December break. This is because The College Man, after being magnetically repelled from his Long Island abode by a force later identified as Naggus Extremus, retreated to his Maryland sanctuary where he has reportedly split his time building gravity bongs out of soda bottles and conducting a quality survey of U of M chicks' racks. The man is busy and I assume he’s got no time for my trifling chit chat, so I usually leave him alone.

But this afternoon around 1:10pm, acting on spontaneous maternal instinct and my building curiosity as to what the fuck he’s been up to the past two months, I decided to give Adam a buzz. He was, of course, sleeping.

ADAM: “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH.”
MISS S: “Hello?”
ADAM: “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH.”
MISS S: “Guess you don’t have class today, huh?”
ADAM: (croaks) “No…………………I do.”
MISS S: “What time?”
ADAM: (pause) “Twenty minutes.”
MISS S: “It’s a good thing I called then, right?”
ADAM: (silence)
MISS S: “Right?”
ADAM: (silence)
MISS S: “Are you hung over or just tired?”
ADAM: “Tired.”
MISS S: “Do you want me to let you go so you can get up?”
ADAM: “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH”
MISS S: “Alright buddy. Talk to you soon.”

The College Man lives up to his name. Kid’s doing just fine.

Birthday Glamour Shots with The Bonz

Sadly, The Bonz left her sparkle feather boa at the office.

On Wednesday, February 8, 1977, doctors in a Detroit hospital were startled when, seeking a cry to acknowledge the proper breathing patterns of newborn Bonzley Mortimer, they applied their obligatory tap to The Bonz’s baby buns and induced a wail that sounded less like less like the conventional “waaaaaaaaaaa!” and more like, “Daaaaaaaaaaavid Yuuuuuuuuuurman!”

Straight out of the womb the kid knew what she wanted for her birthday.

If you wear it ten times it practically pays for itself.

Before "Oh Al!" there was the swan dress, the outfit that consummated my Halloween obsession. Constructed in the first months of my junior year of college with the aid of a few reliable online vendors and a talented, albeit confused Chinese seamstress on Commonwealth Avenue, I managed to piece together the infamous feathered frock to flaunt it on a gorgeous, unseasonably warm night in Beantown. My seductively understated version of the notoriously panned, criminally misunderstood garment met a warm reception from both Oscar-associating waifs sporting last-minute variations on the "slutty college chick" ensemble, and wigged, glittered gay men attracted to dramatic plumes and creatively employed dancewear.



Every year following the Year of the Swan I have attempted to throw my creation back into the Halloween rotation, but it always feels wrong to repeat. The execution of a new idea accounts for ninety percent of my Halloween fun. But did I really ask a Chinese grandmother to sew the head of a plush swan to a white leotard so I could display her fine craftsmanship but one October eve? What a waste of feathered finery.

Then yesterday on Paper Magazine's online listings page:

ARMY OF BJORK
Who is it that never lets you down? Why it’s Bjork, in fact! You’ve sat through hour upon hour of Lars Van Trier films and you’ve pummeled pesky paparazzi, but you’re still no closer to Icelandic virtuoso Bjork. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Sprinkle on some fairy glitter and throw together your favorite poultry-themed dress, before heading over to not-so-Hidden Place Stain Bar for a Bjork-themed costume party. Go. Really. It’s not up to you.
Stain Bar, 766 Grand St., (718) 387-7840. 8 p.m. Free.

Sadly, my costume currently migles with Mama Jones' matching velour sweatsuits in a Long Island closet, but I'm not sure I would have had the cajones to doll myself up and head to a party without a Matthew Barney, or at least my good friend Leeloo. My real problem, however, lies in my inability to let go of the following three questions:


How many people actually have swan dresses sitting in the closet, waiting to be pulled out on Bjork night?

Who are these people? (Aside from crazy dog owners and Ellen.)

Am I really one of them?

Nerd of the Day

Since the issuing of my fancy corporate email account, I have been receiving and religiously filing away Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day emails, aspiring to one day study them like a fifth grade spelling list, potentially sparking the reactivation of a writer’s brain paralyzed by six months of transcription, travel & expenses and filing. Late one Friday afternoon, finally reaching the pinnacle of office boredom, I formulated the more specific goal of trying squeeze as many Words of the Day as possible into random sentences at work. This really did used to be one of my LEAST favorite elementary spelling and vocabulary exercises. I believe it was Tuesday’s regular assignment:

Monday: Write the word five times (Come on, this is cake.)
Tuesday: Use 10 words in a sentence. (Significantly more difficult.)
Wednesday: Use 15 words in a story. Story must contain a minimum of ten sentences. (Bitch, this will take me past Full House.)
Thursday: Study for exam. (Only if Veronica Vaughn practice tests me.)

Of course when the next Monday came around, instead of attempting to seamlessly integrate the word “gimcrack” into an email about the new central conference calendar, I defaulted to poring obsessively over Gawker’s jabs at Oprah fans (“OPRAH! OHMAGAH! YOU ARE SUUUUCH AN INSPIRATION!”) and searching Pitchfork for clotty reviews of over-hyped albums I’d missed while rotting away in my cubicle de silence. It wasn’t until January 13, 2005 that a particular Dictionary.com word nudged me out of my language lethargy. Most Word of the Day submissions are pretty pedestrian, but every once in a while a word will jump out, as did Jan 13th’s “sesquipedalian,” which, landing in my inbox, prompted an immediate forward to my friend Jen-Z – even before I read the definition – with the commentary, “Longest word of the day EVER.”

Opening the email then reaped the grandest of rewards:

sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\,
adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

noun:
A long word.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY.

This is the kind of gratifying coincidence that prompts nerdy boasting, an activity at which I excel. Last Wednesday afternoon by the copy machine, I had to tell Ken Tailey.

“I thought this Word of the Day was really long and then it turns out the word means really long and wordy!”

(Ken stares blankly.)

I forwarded Ken the aforementioned Word of the Day email and he was enthralled with my linguistic enthusiasm, you could tell. Later that afternoon, scanning my Word of the Day storage bank, I felt compelled to send him yet another word-related email:

From: Jones, Stacia
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:28 PM
To: Tailey, Ken
Subject: FW: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

another good one, especially if you're looking for words to convey a general state of wordiness:

Word of the Day for Tuesday December 6, 2005

logorrhea \law-guh-REE-uh\,
noun:
Excessive talkativeness or wordiness.

To which he responded…

From: Tailey, Ken
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:34 PM
To: Jones, Stacia
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

isn't that a venereal disease?

From: Jones, Stacia
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:38 PM
To: Tailey, Ken
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

stick to finance kent.

From: Jones, Stacia
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:40 PM
To: Tailey, Ken
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

although, the fact you spelled venereal correctly (and knew how to pronounce the word "heifer") proves you have a certain aptitude for the english language. i think...

From: Tailey, Ken
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:51 PM
To: Jones, Stacia
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

i pride myself on my ability to spell venereal. thanks for noticing.

I finally recognized our discourse as the perfect opportunity to begin integrating my Dictionary.com words, prompting a chain of (quite obviously business-related) vocab-laden emails…

From: Jones, Stacia
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 5:03 PM
To: Tailey, Ken
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

i am but a tyro when juxtaposed with your assidious and laudable pursuit of lexicon mastery.

(4 dictionary words of the day in there.)

Which morphed into an all out war…

From: Tailey, Ken
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:06 AM
To: Jones, Stacia
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

i think you mean assiduous. the fact that you wrote assidious instead of assiduous is insidious.

From: Jones, Stacia
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 12:07 PM
To: Tailey, Ken
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

Not so much insidious as incommodious or unpropitious.

From: Ken Tailey
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 12:46PM
To: Jones, Stacia
Subject: RE: logorrhea: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

i was going for the faux rhyme w/ your made-up word, so while the definition could be construed as not perfectly apt, i'd wager it's not incorrect to describe your offense as tantamount to grammatical treachery.

Good game Kent. However…

Although you lambast me for errors of spelling, you fail to recognize how overly caustic language (Treachery? Really?) and non-existent, half-French compounds (What exactly is a faux rhyme?) encumber your execution. But in an attempt to assuage you and quell our respective pugnacious inclinations I offer this small concession. As Grammar subsumes both the spelling and usage of words, I acknowledge that neither of our grammatical delinquencies was significantly more contemptible than the other.

And as I demonstrate my commitment to the assiduous pursuit of proper grammar and spelling, I ask that you set aside your vainglory and allow me to conclude this discourse, as I am notoriously sesquipedalian and approach logorrhea.

Unless you feel compelled to comment, that is.

"and get more cheese than Doritos, Cheetos or Fritos..."

Last night Doom spit my very favorite line off Madvillainy, and for an artist with such an extensive catalog to choose from, that’s all I could ask for, really. I didn’t know most of Doom’s jams. He played a ton off MMM…Food and earlier albums I don't own, only touching briefly on the insta-classic that sold me and not at all on his latest Aquateen-splattered collab. No surprise cameo from Danger Mouse and no banging kick-start. My ladies and I, after force-feeding ourselves booze and drilling for last-reserve adrenaline until 12:05am on a Thursday night, held out for a particular menacing beat to mark Doom’s entrance, hoping the tinkling of West coast piano chords and a Cee-Lo chorus would announce our hero.

“His name’s…DOOM.”

No such luck. Although we did get the mask (for 40 measly minutes!).

The show, starting at 9:00 in the Space Mountain-like cavern of the Nokia Times Square Theater featured a legion of wordsmiths, many of whom eluded my quaint hip-hop knowledge base. We arrived in time for Big Daddy Kane’s entire set, a sizzling display of mike skills and gripping beats that bumped my crew into motion, even in our exhaustion and impatience. A jacked rapper in a black muscle tank (don’t ask me who it was, I have no idea) came out to sling some old-school hits, striking the reminiscence chord dead on. He flaunted the most obscenely huge triceps on record, bricks bulging beneath his skin. Throwing those hands in the air to “wave ‘em like you just don’t care” appeared to be quite the strenuous exercise.

The crowd was a mellow, breezy bunch, buzzed on weed and cradled in slick grooves. Miss Jazzy J was the first to point out the male/female ratio imbalance, about 80/20 in our favor.

“And they’re all fiiiiiiiine Stacey.”

For true. The theater housed a collection of the best-looking men I’ve ever seen under one NYC roof. Stylish brothers with silky swaggers. And Lillycita and I pointed out almost simultaneously, delicious scents smothered and seduced us from every direction. In a moment of pure creepiness we actually leaned forward and took a whiff of the guy in front of us, deciding that he, and his immaculately groomed compatriots, emanated the delicious floral aroma of freshly washed laundry. You know you’ve been hanging out at too many hipster shows when showers and clean clothes are enough to send you swooning.

**UPDATE: The grossly muscular rapper mentioned above has been identified as the Furious Five's Melle Mel. If you see this man on the street DO NOT give him any more spinach.

Someone Get Mama a Strunk and White

Miss Stacia is full of punctuation brainfarts these days, surely making errors including but not limited to:

- misplacement of commas/apostrophes
- over-hyphenation
- misuse of dashes
- limited understanding of dialogue/script formatting
- annoyingly excessive, although perhaps not erroneous, use of the parenthetical

These things used to be simple. My brian is dying in the citi.

If I could stop playing it, I would.

Dig up a hit, rock solid, let it grow Celtic moss.

This is the kind of jam that inspires joints to exercise their rotational properties. Unlock those hips, those shoulders, those wrists. Here in Reggaetown we slink and crawl. We seep, liquid fire down molten mountain.

Some songs are made for recycling. This one is also made for repeat.

Kissing Frogs

Mom, Pops and Rachel are in the city moving Rachel into the Cornell Medical School dorms for her upcoming Urban Semster. Miss Stacia has joined them for the day and the foursome is walking off a monster dinner on the UES when mom launches into an unsolicited attempt to play matchmaker for Miss Stacia:

MAMA JONES: You know who wants to reconnect with you Stace? You’ll never guess.

(Expectant pause that is met only with Miss Stacia’s icy glare.)

MAMA JONES: (devilishly) Jordan Drago

MISS STACIA: Ugh, for real, Jordan Drago? God no. Mom, the last memories I have of Jordan Drago are of him bludgeoning a frog to death with a hammer in his garage.

PAPA JONES: It was a bat, actually.

RACHEL: Yup, a bat.

MAMA: Do you remember how he did it? (Throws imaginary frog in the air with her left hand and swings both arms, choked on an invisible bat, at the croaking wiffle ball.)

STACIA: Ugh. He was a maniac.

RACHEL: You know one of the first signs of psychopathic behavior at a young age is the mutilation of small animals.

STACIA: (turns to mom) Did you give this kid my number?

A Litte Early For Enlightenment

Since Howard's debut on Sirius satellite radio, Mama Jones has taken to calling her daughter at work to recount the on-air exploits of her beloved, nappy-haired obscenity machine. Tuesday morning, mom phoned to detail Howard's new "Revelations" segment in which each member of Stern's warped crew anonymously contributed a debaucherous secret or anecdote, prompting an intense guessing game to match deed to perpetrator. Eventually the culprits were outed, accounts of Howard's subtle-but-lame plastic surgery procedures and Artie Lang's reciept of a "load blow" to the chest, confirmed.

"Robyn likes to masturbate with meats and vegetables," my mother informed me. "I don't know where she finds meat that small. Pepperoni maybe?"

This morning's mother-daughter sharefest began around 9:30, a bit later than usual but disturbing as always:

"I'm in the car listening to Howard. He just had someone pour salad dressing on a girl's crack and lick her ass clean. Not just around, but UP! He just went up there and got it!"

"And how do you feel about that mom?"

"That's one place I'd never go." No thanks."

When asked if Howard is finally starting to test her limits, Mama Jones chuckled.

"He's a wild man. He really is."

Born Into This

I was there for The Call.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006, around 7:30 pm in Miss Stacia’s UWS apartment. Miss S and Dazrazzle are primping for Damsel's first live performance at Fat Baby when Dazrazzle’s phone rings. The Daz picks up.

DAZRAZZLE: Hello?

RANDOM EVENT PLANNER: Hi, Sarah Gownie? Have you given any thought to your ten-year high school reunion?

Daz’s cherry pops.

DAZRAZZLE: Well actually…

Holding back the gush, Daz “uh huhs” and “Yes, I still keep in touch with so-and-sos” her way through a survey of her Half Hollow Hills High School East Class of 2000 familiarity and currency, eyes wide, hand partially clasped over her mouth to signify the ” ridiculousness Stacey!” After about five minutes Daz hangs up the phone and turns to Miss Stacia, who has lent half an ear to Daz’s end while attempting to make her hair look more Eleanor Friedberger, less Jennifer Aniston. Daz wears a smirk that is equal parts suspicious amusement, suppressed pride and resigned acceptance.

DAZ: Stacey, you WILL NOT believe who that was.

MISS STACIA: You are planning our high school reunion, Sa. We have always known this. It was only a matter of time, really.

DAZ: Yeah, I guess. But don’t these people know that I have more important things to plan over the next four years than my high school reunion?! Like my pachatch. I must plan for my pachatch*.

*Spelling of the word pachatch provided by Miss Daz.

Tom Robbins' Advice for the New Year

"Erleichda!"

Experimental Fashion Friday: It's Electric!

Attention: Due to a technical barrier that prevents Miss Stacia from loading new pictures to Collections are Dangerous via her work computer, Experimental Fashion Friday entries will now be posted a wee bit after their day of occurrence. Takes some of the fun out of it for sure, but don't blame Miss Stacia, blame The Man. And don't forget, your input is still welcome. Now...

Meet Ken Tailey.



Ken is a polished if fairly conservative dresser with a penchant for flat-front khakis and earth-tone sweaters. Every once in a while Ken gets saucy with the sweater selection, his upper half swathed in baby blue or punchy maroon, his lower half balancing the calculated fashion risk in a classic shade of golden sand.

A couple weeks ago, when Ken was brought up-to-date on Experimental Fashion Friday’s mission, he claimed ownership of a “neon green” sweater, promising to pull it out the following week. Alas, EFF came and Ken failed to flash electric green. As punishment I constructed a little Starship Enterprise symbol out of a post-it note and pinned it to his inadequate olive stand-in. Sitting behind his desk with his neatly clipped, side-parted coif, lacquered arm cast (a product of hand-to-hand combat with sell-side representatives) resting authoritatively on mounting stacks of research, Ken looked ready to command interstellar investment fleets to financial victory.

Hilarious, but still not quite experimental.

Ken was prepared to make it up to the Board of Experimental Fashion Friday however, dry cleaning the elusive sweater and sporting it with pride on the very first post-Cayman EFF. The knitwear, of a color not so much neon (neon = day-glo) as 1950's-kitchen-appliance lime, worked hard to broadcast EFF’s message of Bland Corporate Fashion Intolerance to the office.

The movement is spreading.

Better still, in a formidable display of Teammate Telepathy, Miss Marianne McCrann, coworker and Ken's occasional triathlon partner (the two won a race together back in the fall), happened to show up for work on Friday in a citrus-charged sweater of the exact same shade. Standing side-by-side the two analytical athletes melted together, a double popsicle stick of super-tart lime, wooden legs of pressed khaki jutting out from lickable green tops that matched right down to their accenting candy buttons.

Although wearing the EXACT same outfit as your co-worker pretty much negates the individuality component of EFF's objective, coincidences like this one are totally worth the sacrifice.



As for my own EFF ensemble, I chose to go with teal (or “Smurf blue” as coworker Julia McMattress tagged it) in the hopes that it would both complement my fleeting Cayman bronze and augment Kent’s “neon" motif. But the consensus was that my outfit as a whole was a success, surprisingly wearable, and therefore not truly experimental. My coworkers tend to look forward to my “fashion gone awry” moments more than my accidental streaks of fashion competence. No matter that no one has worn teal that bright inside 399 Park since 1987. Forget that my belt, purchased by my mother in her thirties during the original heyday of big buckles and elastic hip-wear, was last flaunted as part of my Halloween costume. Apparently my ensemble isn't experimental unless the sight of it activates the gag reflex.



Time for your weigh-in. Motherly support is encouraged.

The Money Shot

Photographic evidence of Mama Jones in action is worth its weight in battery-operated genitalia.

Unplugged

If Miss Stacia takes a nine-day vacation in the Cayman Islands but fails to blog about it, has it even actually happened?

Traitor! I wish upon you, Alopecia!

The Caveman breaks Miss Stacia's heart.

The Inevitable Comparison?

The Bonz throws in her two cents in an office email:


"Look! It's stacey on experimental fashion friday!"

Experimental Fashion Friday

My office has a corporate casual dress code that aggravates my pinstripe allergy and fuels my aversion to garments requiring ironing and dry cleaning. Perhaps it’s because I’m a temp, perhaps it’s because I never want to be mistaken for your typical office drone, perhaps its because the rules of workplace dress are, in my opinion, kind of ridiculous and passé, but the implicit stiffness of corporate attire provokes my fashion rebelliousness.

Since the company I work for hasn’t even adopted “Casual Friday” as a reprieve from the inanity of A-line skirts and cable-knit sweaters, I’ve implemented my own weekly fashion recess. Deeming the last workday of the week “Experimental Fashion Friday,” I have begun to integrate funky items that have no conventional role in the corporate uniform into my Friday ensembles with the hope of creating looks that are both adventurous and felicitous to cubicle servitude. About 5 or 6 experimental ensembles have been pulled together (usually on Friday morning with about ten minutes to catch the crosstown bus) with mixed results. Truth be told, there have been a few more hideous, clashy misses than visionary, trendsetting moments, including “The Purple Outfit,” an eyesore-inspiring combination of a hyperpatterned green and purple lycra dress, a purple velvet blazer and mahogany (purple enough to matchy-match) knee-high boots. The Eggplant Overkill was the first official outfit in the EFF repertoire and even in my most hung over future EFF moments, it will be difficult to top.

I am going to try and document future Experimental Fashion Friday ensembles here on Collections are Dangerous. Feel free to let me know what you think. Success or miserable failure? Either way, be sure I’m having a hell of a lot more fun in whatever freakish combo I’m sporting than I would be in a fucking button-down:

Gawgeous!

I also just realized that I unintentionally got dressed for temple this morning:



You know you’ve been infected with Modern Jew Pride when you mistake synagogue chic for corporate casual.

Face it Miss Stacia, you’re a Jewey Jew.

First, there’s the headline. Then there’s the focus of this article on a charity event produced by JEWCY, the Semeticentric fashion and lifestyle company for which I used to do PR. Add in the commentary by Jackie Hoffman (I worked on a benefit show earlier this year in which she was featured) and the requisite quotes from Melville’s very own Rabbi Gellman, whose breath at my bat mitzvah service rivaled the onions in the cocktail hour herring, and you get one too many high-profile-Jew links for comfort in this game of Six Degrees of Stacia Jonesberg.

Today's Corrections:

In yesterday's Corporate Eats column entitled "Never As Good As The First Time," regarding her sampling of a sub-par second-day cupcake from the Buttercup Bakeshop Miss Stacia Jones wrote, "In spite of my complaints, for the love of the cupcake, I'd do it again tomorrow."

Upon surveying today's day-three cupcake stash, Ms. Jones has retracted this statement. She reportedly peeked in the Buttercup box around 9:15 this morning and immediately recoiled in disgust proclaiming, "Not for a million dollars. These things could kill someone."

Ms. Jones is, however, accepting donations of fresh baked goods, from Buttercup or elsewhere, for blissful consumption and future review in her column.

Corporate Eats: The Holiday Cupcake

Never As Good As The First Time

Isn't it the curse of corporate-sponsored food flow that the workplace is blessed with an overabundance of treats one day and left to wither in snacktime drought the next?

Anxiously awaiting rumored Popcorn Factory deliveries, the gourmet spreads of yesterday but a crumbly memory, I was forced to curb today's mid-afternoon sweets craving with a questionable second-day Buttercup cupcake. Admittedly unimpressed with the bakery's freshest offerings, I was not surprised to find that by 2:30 this afternoon, yesterday's dense chocolate cake had taken on a texture mildly akin to sawdust. The icing, congealed and crusty from overnight exposure to Citi air, retained the harsh, acidic flavor of tarnished metal, presumably the biproduct of the freakishly unnatural (as in, "Should I really be eating that?") Christmas food coloring. The hardened sugar did seem to have less tooth-staining power on the second day, a major plus considering my desire to conceal the scarfing of a cupcake significantly compromised in quality.

The sad reality: In spite of my complaints, for the love of the cupcake, I'd do it again tomorrow.

Hit that spot.

Start reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs while listening to Amadou & Mariam's Dimanche à Bamako the next time you board the crosstown bus.

Miss Stacia’s Hanukkah Wish List: The Christian Edition

For some reason I think Mama and Papa Jones will have trouble throwing down for:

The Metal Bible: I’ve been saying for years that it would be beneficial for me to give the Bible a once-over and you can’t beat an edition that lends you teen-punk credibility while transforming God’s word into a handy tool for striking down sinners on the subway platform.

The Jesus Dashboard Dazzler: You would think this item would be totally useless for a car less, Jewish city-dweller, but the thought of sticking this sucker to my work computer and monitoring the resulting confusion and unease makes me think it would be worth the $7.95.

A Chastity Ring: I know it’s a little late for this, but I’m willing to go Born-Again-V for the privilege of donning a sweet wedding “placeholder” and throwing a promise ring ceremony complete with laser light show. Even Mitzvahpalooza didn’t have one of those.

N.B. Read the article on the growing popularity of chastity rings in today's Times. You won't be sorry.

All Hail King Howard

I’ve always felt an allegiance to Howard Stern, “king of all media,” champion of strippers and "retards" alike. Although many refuse to accept or acknowledge his talents, Howard is one of the most successful entertainers in history. He is one of the few in the business who speaks from brutal honesty and truly does what he wants, sometimes to be funny, sometimes for the sake of making a finer point, sometimes just to be contradictory for the fuck of it – it really doesn’t matter. The man sticks to his instincts – perhaps all you can rely on in the business of causing controversy – and rides them for dear life through a sea of midgets, crackwhores and 40-year-old virgins. The Robert Crumb of talk radio, Howard has an eye for the freakish, the perverted and the intriguingly disturbing. He’s simply trying to bring his circus together and will finally get to do so, under a bigger tent with no FCC restrictions, this coming January. I have been waiting for this since the days of my crap-ass Long Island commute and I’m not the only member of the infamously warped Jones family who has been counting down the days.

The media blitz that inevitably trumpets upcoming celebrity projects irritates me, even if the attention is lavished on someone I adore (last month’s suffocating coverage of Sarah Silverman spoiled just about every good joke in Jesus is Magic), but I will probably end up reading every last article on Howard and his Sirius debut. You should start with this week’s excellent profile in New York Magazine while I ex today off the calendar and attempt to rationalize a $300 purchase in anticipation of the triumphant return of “Anal Ring Toss.”

See What Dazrazzle Sees

This past Thursday, the sublime Dazrazzle and I attended one of the last performances of See What I Want to See, a two-act play based on the stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, at the East Village’s Public Theater. The production starred, among others, Idina Menzel, who won a Tony as the Wicked Witch of the West in Wicked and played Maureen in both the Broadway and recent film productions of RENT. Although it made perfect sense, Daz and I were quite startled to have an A-grade celebrity sighting at the show and as a shameless media/gossip junkie I began to compose a mental checklist immediately upon recognition for my very first Gawker Stalker entry. Friday morning I sat down at my desk at 8:30 on the nose and drafted a succinct summary of the encounter:

I was standing outside the Public Theater last night around 7:45 talking to a friend about RENT, the movie, waiting to see one of the final performances of See What I Want to See featuring Idina Menzel (Maureen from RENT) when Rosario Dawson walked past us and into the theater to support her co-star. My friend had just finished dispensing her opinion that "Rosario was obviously the weakest voice in the cast." Smooth timing on that. The big-screen Mimi was simply dressed in jeans and knee-high shearling boots and has an absolutely beautiful face. She was also sporting funky black hipster frames à la Colin Meloy and a chic, short haircut. She was very laid back and friendly and seemed to know a lot of people working at the theater.

I left out the part about Daz’s constant hyperventilating (“Stacey, I’m still a bridge-and-tunneler. I’m not used to this!”) and our hushed bathroom gossiping about the absence of Jason Lewis (only to find Miss Dawson at the end of the bathroom line - again, the timing...). Those tidbits I planned on reserving for the elite members of my blog readership circle. Turns out that my Gawker posting may be viewed only by the eyes of Miss Stacia fans as well because Gawker’s server keeps rejecting my damn email. So much for my Gawker Stalking dreams.

A few words about the show: Daz and I bought tickets the day of (for only $25! God bless the undated student ID…) and ended up with partial-view seats that were actually pretty amazing. The theater is a high, open space with a rectangular stage, flanked by the audience on three sides. Daz and I sat stage right, second row and our view was blocked only by a slim and fairly navigable support pole. Until the start of the second act that is.

The two acts opened with Idina and her lover in traditional Japanese robes seductively singing, purring and groping through numbers called “Kesa” and “Morito” (referring to the lovers’ names). Each song opened with the title character fondly describing to the audience the night on which he/she “kissed my lover for the last time,” and built to a striking climax in which passion and life peak and die in the same instant. These happened to be my favorite numbers of the show, partially because of the bewitching melody and flawless vocal performance of the actors, partially because of the passionately executed, sexual choreography (Side note to Idina: I’ve never seen anyone perform on his/her back with such impressive range. Bravo.). While singing, Kesa and Morito entangled their bodies on top of two deep rouge curtains that hung from the back corner of one side of the ceiling and draped forward diagonally across the stage, underneath the actors' twisted bodies. The effect of the fabric was quite dramatic, suggestive of bold, simplistic Eastern aesthetics when hung, and fluid as a bloodstained river when yanked down at the end of each act’s opening song. Too bad Daz and I were caught behind the curtain at the beginning of the second act. Hence the true nature of the partial-view classification:




The blockage only lasted a couple minutes and was probably even preferable to the raunchiness of Kesa and Morito’s forbidden liaison for the Daz who, unlike her crude companion, tends to get a bit squirmy around such displays. But most of the partial-view crew was less than thrilled by the crimson partition, however temporary. As the curtains were hoisted to the ceiling in front of us during intermission Daz’s flamboyant and overly social neighbor cracked a groan-worthy, “Instead of See What I Want To See, they should call this play, Can't See What I Want To See.” Har har har.

The rest of the night was chock full of the usual amusements including a barrage of quips from Daz about her heritage (“I feel ashamed. What Jew hasn’t seen Fiddler?”), her out-of-control Law and Order addiction (“I think I recognize that guy from Law and Order! Oh my god it says here the other guy was on Law and Order too! I’ve totally seen that episode!”), and her uncontrollable disgust at one actor’s inability to control his body’s various secretions (“He spits on EVERY syllable Stacey.”).

To be fair: The spitting actor – who also starred in both Mighty Ducks sequel blockbusters, D2 and D3 – could not get a sound out without projectile spitting all over his audience and co-stars. Not to mention the disturbingly sweaty (as in dripping onto his partner’s bare chest) sex scene. Poor wet, slimy Idina.

That's pretty fucking big.

Once upon a time I teased the existence of photos comparing the world's largest banana to Sally, the office Barbie doll. After months of twiddling my thumbs in ignorance, I finally figured out how to free these glorious images from the undeserved isolation of my cellphone memory bank for your viewing pleasure. I recommend you take a step or two back from the computer, take a moment to really get a handle on the size of your average Barbie doll, and revel in how a simple girl ever wielded a fruit this large.

Mon Frère, L'Artiste

Waiting to sign papers with mom and dad at the bank, Adam excercises his creativity in a loving portrait of his oldest sister:

Welcome, Miss Stacia

Attention Faithful Readers:

I have recently undergone a name change, anticipating a future career in pornography in which the name "Dominique Dero" might be quite useful. So say "sayonara" to Miss Dero for now. You shall meet her again on her rise to lovemaking fame.

Sincerely yours,
Stacia Jones

The College Man: Heartfelt Birthday Wishes

Left on my Voicemail (very sleepily) at 4:09pm:

Adam: Heeeey Stacey………. I just woke up……..happy fucking birthday.

Birthday Transit Playlist

Crafted to induce ecstasy on the short trip from my cupcake-laden office to my much-anticipated dinner at The Red Cat.

“These are the Fables” – The New Pornographers
“Reno Dakota” – The Magnetic Fields
“Touch The Sky” – Kanye West
“Extraordinary Machine” – Fiona Apple
“Chicago” – Sufjan Stevens
“The Denial Twist” – The White Stripes
“Good Day” – The Dresden Dolls

You Live in a Zoo

My afternoon phone conversation with the lovely lady who birthed me:

Mom: What was I doing seventeen years ago today?

Me: Tell me…

Mom: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (grunting labor noises)

Me: That’s nice mom. Except I’m twenty-three.

Photo of Coworker Flashing Devil Horns at Wedding Party Instantly Validates Onion Article Addressing "Metal Hand Sign Abuse"

"If your head is neither banging nor thrashing, you should not be throwing the sign..."

Weddings are stupid.

Unless you’re my little sister and you want one (Rachel, we’ll discuss this later.).

Personally, I’d rather take the money that would have been spent on an excruciatingly frilly, impractical, one-time-wear-only dress, food that looks better than it tastes, thousand dollar flower arrangements that die the next day and a DJ who will inevitably play Gloria Estefan’s version of “Turn the Beat Around,” and take a month-long vacation somewhere fucking awesome. Like Greece. Yeah.

To seal the legality of the affair, the fiancée and I will pull together a jolly quorum – the fam, good friends, and maybe a cute pet or two (I can’t deny my mother the joy of dressing Shayna for the occasion) – and saunter over to Town Hall to sign some papers. When I push through the doors of the building (in a white mini-dress?) I hope to exclaim something along the lines of, “Let’s do this!” The whole thing will take ten minutes. Then everyone will head over to the bar for pitchers. No vino allowed. It’s my wedding and everyone will drink Black and Tans.

Oh, and absolutely no little kids. At all. Not at the ceremony, not at the party. Sorry, but you’re gonna have to leave the criers at home. You popped ‘em out, so now you’re responsible for figuring out what to do with ‘em while the rest of us have a good time.


N.B. I am fully aware of the possibility that in the future, love will dilute my cynicism. But it's highly unlikely.

The Halloweenies

Sort of Awards. Sort of Not. I use colons. You’ll get the idea.


Courtesy of your favorite 80's redhead.

Best Male Costume: Richard Simmons. The Tae Bo tape looped at the party and Mr. Simmons' real curly fro lent this masterpiece its authenticity.

Best Female Costume: Ummm, Peggy Bundy.

Best Duo Costume Idea: Double Dare Contestants. Complete with “DD” t-shirts, elbow and kneepads, helmets with cups on top (for catching random slimy objects), little red flags and homemade GAK.

Best Lesbian Couple Costume: Martha and Ellen. Daytime TV, back-to-back! Ellen sported a suit with white sneakers and Martha passed out “prison bars” (carefully plated mini Snickers on toothpicks).

Best Non-Gay, Gay Couple Costume: Cop and Jailbird. Two random guys (both) named Dan show up at the same party, one dressed as the punished, the other as the punisher. Sheer coincidence? Or a hot "chase" waiting to unfold?

Most High-Maintenance Couple Costume: Bacon and Egg. Costumes made out of foam with hole cut-outs for the head, arms and legs are hilarious to look at. And SUCK to wear.

Best Group Costume: The Nina, the Pinta, The Santa Maria. Traveled with a spandex-sporting Christopher Columbus.

Most Creative Homage: Hunter S. Thompson, post-suicide. Hunter and I probably passed about 4,000 “Fear and Loathing" fans over the course of the night and only the homeless guy in front of the deli on St. Marks and A called out in recognition. “Hunter S. Thompson with a bullet in his head! Genius, man!”

Predicted Costume Hit of the Year: Napoleon Dynamite. Vote for Pedro.

Actual Costume Hit of the Year: Hasidic Jew. Vote For Schlomo.

Ratio of Hasidic Jews to Napoleon Dynamites spotted over three-day period: 4:1. If men use the same costume choice logic as the majority of women in this city (dress to get laid), this means New Yorkers assumed your average rabbi gets laid more than the freakishly charming, monotone high school nerd.

Most obvious reaction to the Peggy Bundy Costume: Putting your hand in your pants. Hint to the men of New York City - try harder.

What to call Peggy when you can’t quite put your finger on it:
“Jersey!” (Not far off.)
“Long Island!” (On any other day, so very true.)
“The Nanny!” (Most embarrassing to hear screamed at you from across Avenue A.)
“Marge!” (Too much weed dude.)