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.

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.

My New Theme Song

"Hot Dog (Watch Me Eat)"



(Song by The Detroit Cobras)

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oil Can

A four year sabbatical from writing news or feature style articles will make a lady pretty rusty.

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.

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.

Mixed Messages

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.

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?

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.

You're In A Musical

Perhaps it is fitting that I am sitting down after Sweeney Todd, to watch last year's musical glitzbomb Dreamgirls for the first time since it shook its spangles at me on the big screen. This will be my third musical in five days (Hairspray, Sweeney Todd, now Dreamgirls) and probably not my last as Once, an Irish movie musical I never even heard of until last week, just arrived in my mailbox between two pieces of red paper. I basically gave up on the musical when I left the middle and high school chorus days behind me in a fit of rebellion against RENT and too many years of musical theater nerddom. Since then, a musical has blipped on my radar every once in a great while- Dancer in the Dark, for example - and even then, only the involvement of someone like Bjork (and the promise of an unorthodox treatment of the musical format) has allowed me to invest myself. But these days I can't believe how much I've been looking forward to the movie musicals that seem to be popping up like dandelions. I fucking hate Abba - a holdover grudge from the bat/bar mitzvah dancing days (something about the lyrics "dancing queen, young and sweet, only 17" really rubbed me the wrong way, especially at age 17) - but damned if I'm not looking forward to a big screen version of Mamma Mia! that features a singing and dancing Meryl Streep.

Somehow I am always pleased, but never really that surprised when accomplished actors and actresses can sing. If you make a career out of manipulating your voice and tone and delivery, chances are you can belt out a decent tune. And yet the first notes out of Johnny Depp’s mouth of rotten Old Londonized teeth, about three minutes into Sweeney Todd, were nothing short of thrilling.

Quickly, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber, Sweeney Todd (Depp), who is wrongfully imprisoned on the orders of a corrupt judge (Alan Rickman) who plans to steal Todd’s beautiful, flaxen-haired wife. Years later, Todd returns to London seeking the love of his wife and proper revenge. Instead of his lady, he finds Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), the owner of a rancid meat pie shop below his old barbershop. As for the revenge, I’ll let you see the movie. Heads roll, and Johnny Depp sings about it. It’s all great fun.

Depp’s voice doesn’t exactly move the earth, but it’s hearty enough to get the job done, and his menacing delivery is spiked with just enough lovelorn angst to brand Todd as a both a murderer and a romantic. Helena Bonham Carter, another longtime muse of director Tim Burton's, truly stands out for the first time in her role as Mrs. Lovett, the nurturing and desperate would-be love of the demon barber. She is ghostly yet seductive, her corseted bosom, deliberately mussed bouffant, and grandiose, gothic rag gowns making her appear both doll-like and (taking her quirkiness into account) ready for the Oscars. Her twee voice and powdered visage always reflect the appropriate zest and/or tenderness. Some of my favorite moments of the movie occur during a solo song of Mrs. Lovett’s entitled "By The Sea" in which she describes to a brooding and unreceptive Todd, her dreams for their future. The song plays over a series of fantasy shots of Todd and Lovett, dressed in their palette of grays and blacks and blues and blood reds, against bright blue picnic skies and fanciful boardwalk scenery. And all the while HBC’s piping delivery of the light little tune plays contrast to Depp’s stubborn, boyish scowl, making for irrepressible laughs.

The other real musical highlights of the film are the duets. Moments in which two known actors have the opportunity to synchronize their instruments, even briefly, are magical when captured in Burton’s magical frames. In “A Little Priest,” Todd and Lovett are squared side by side in the window of Lovett’s pie shop, pressing their hands and faces to the dirty glass, looking out upon the London's streets while singing in perfect unison of turning various Londonites into meat pie filling. In “Pretty Women,” Todd and his foe Judge Turpin wax musical about one thing they have in common – their love of beautiful girls – as the two men, one in the barber’s chair, are cast against the dark, slanted window of Todd’s barbershop-turned-slaughterhouse. Rickman’s gravely bass is so classic and useful here, the perfect backdrop for Depp’s lead vocal, though I like to imagine Michael Caine could have swapped in for the same function. (He actually took on a similarly evil role involving an infatuation over “pretty women” in the movie Quills, which I double, no, triple heart.) I wonder if Sir Caine was on the casting list. Perhaps he was Rickman’s understudy.

When it all comes down to it, the strongest vocalists of the bunch were the kid actors. This is hardly surprising, as in these roles Burton had the advantage of seeking excellent singers without worrying about casting a known face. Ed Sanders as Toby, the small boy Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd take in after the mysterious disappearance of his caretaker, tackles the most famous song of the Sweeney score (with a bit of help from HBC). Three-quarters of the way through the film, I was amazed to hear Toby launch into “Not While I’m Around,” first of all because the song seems a bit sugary and sentimental buried in what is otherwise a comedic, horror musical, and second because I didn’t think I knew any songs from the show. And I didn’t just recognize the song; I knew every single word, yet I couldn’t figure out how or why. I was about to attribute the familiarity to my summer of chorus/theater camp (yeah, I know), when my mother enlightened me during the credits. “I didn’t know that song the little kid sang was from this show,” she said. “You know who sings that song? Barbra Streisand. That song has been played at every bat and bar mitzvah on Long Island.”

Wow. Of course it was Babs. I can hear that nasal bravado reach up for those high notes even now. She must be a friend of Sondheim’s because I don’t see how else the Funny Girl would have found her way to Fleet Street. Although she did always cover “Send In The Clowns,” another song of Sondheim’s. (And one that I don’t particularly enjoy.) The one thing that is certain is that I know way too much about this.

Barbra Streisand career does, however, provide a good example of a born singer summoning some acting chops for the big screen, which was the idea behind recruiting Jennifer Hudson to do Dreamgirls. It’s definitely an effective model for casting musical roles in a lot of cases. In Chicago, Catherine Zeta Jones nailed her song and dance routines, probably better than most could do on the stage, but when Jennifer Hudson delivered “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”, she laid down what will probably be remembered as one of the best recordings in the history of musicals.

I’ll tell you something about “ And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” That song is so close to perfect it’s scary. When those first notes landed in the theater, all of my normal bodily functions were suspended. (Well, my breathing was. Not my crying.) It is such an artfully constructed song, peaks in all the right places, a flourishing, incremental build, a funky ass breakdown complete with punctuating horns -- the perfect platform for a robust, soulful voice, with a message that resonates, simply stated. And then Hudson puts her fierce, womanly stamp on it and rockets it through you. I don't listen to musical soundtracks much anymore, but occasionally when I want to get hit with an earthquake I'll bring that song up on the iPod and let it knock me on my ass.

I say the song is nearly perfect and not absolutely motherloving capital “P” fucking Perfect because of a monster peeve I’ve developed over about four seconds towards the very end of the song. But this is really just nitpicking. Even with a few bars that grate on me, if I put that song on once, I’m listening to it twice. And as I am experiencing now, the second time around Dreamgirls entertains, but mostly it's just eye candy costumes and counting the minutes to J Hud's big moment.

Generally speaking though, musicals are kicking ass these days. I spent so long rejecting them on principle (see me kicking and screaming on my way to A Chorus Line and Hairspray on Broadway last year), that I may have to force myself to loosen up and accept that visionaries like Tim Burton can liven up tired genres, and that once I learned all the words to Cabaret and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat because something about staged and storied song and dance moved me. (For the Joseph obsession I also blame my parents, Hebrew School and years of unchecked, unfettered dorkiness.) Every once in a while I should prepare to be embarrassed and give in, because it’s likely I’ll fall in love with John C. Reilly’s performance of “Mr. Cellophane,” an eight-year old’s cover of a Streisand cover of Sweeney Todd, or an almost motherfucking Perfect Dreamgirls song.

Pretending I Paid Attention This Year: A List

I forget about a lot of things immediately after they happen -- books read, concerts attended, albums ingested -- so in order to synopsize what I've been up to this year, I went back through tattered notebooks, iPod playlists and a hefty box of tickets stubs to jog my memory of where I've been and what I've been doing for the last twelve months. Below is a rundown of some of this year's best/worst/most influential/most fun and random, albums/songs/books/movies/places/etceteras.

Feel free to pluck and sample at your discretion.

Best Albums 2007
1. Nina Nastasia & Jim White - You Follow Me
(Listened to approximately 3xs a day, 7 days a week for a month, and pretty consistently after that. Still making appearances. The voice. The drums. Mmmmmm.)
2. Bird and the Bee - Self-Titled (Female lead vocals in my range. Song that uses the words "public relations.")
3. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin (Gauzy and beautiful. Male lead vocalist sounds more than slightly like a female.)

4. St. Vincent - Marry Me (Title references Arrested Development. Catchiest tunes in the universe.)
5. Radiohead - In Rainbows (Thank God.)

Runnerz Ups
Prodigy - Return of the Mac (for iron pumping)
The Long Blondes - Someone to Drive Me Home (for treadmill running)

Late to the Party For
Mos Def - Black On Both Sides (for Brooklyn living)
Joanna Newsom - Y's (for spelunking)
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country (for belting on solo car trips)
Jon Brion - Meaningless (for brooding)
John Legend - Once Again (for reminding you that you used to love Babyface)

Albums I Listened to Exactly 1 1/2 Times
Kanye West - Graduation (I don't get it?)
Bjork - Volta (Personally, I miss Rahzel.)

Like Crack
Rihanna - "Umbrella" (Gimme more, like Britney.)

Fucking Overdose
Natasha Beddingfield - "Unwritten" (The perfect "dead inside" soundtrack for The Hills.)

Almost As Good As "The Denial Twist"
The White Stripes - "Conquest" (Or as a friend once lovingly spelled it: "Cah-ah-han -que-est!")

A Sad Year In Live Music When Your Concert Highlight Was On
January 9 (Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton @ Hiro Ballroom)

Also Pretty Fun
Band of Horses @ Terminal 5 on 11/4 (So many beards.)
Bird and the Bee @ Blender Theater on 11/18 (Blender has a theater? 60's-inspired stage outfits!)
Fiona Apple @ The Brooklyn Lyceum on 10/6 (Crazy - and brilliant - as I hoped she'd be.)
Nina Nastastia & Jim White @ The Mercury Lounge on 10/3 (So much buildup. Jay Dubbya was worth it.)

Rip Off Tickets Of The Year
Bjork @ Radio City on 5/2 (For 70 bucks I want "Isobel" AND "All Is Full Of Love." AND "Possibly Maybe." AND "Oceania." How about you just play for more than an hour and fifteen minutes and cover your catalogue? I say this with love...)
The Museum Of Natural History's Mythic Creatures Exhibit on 9/15 (Advertised a 50-foot dragon it didn't deliver and failed to present dioramas of mermaids under water. Do-over?)

Holy Christ, So Freaking Underrated!
Grindhouse: Planet Terror/Deathproof (Machine gun leg for Halloween next year?)

Don't Remember Seeing You At All
Live Free or Die Hard (But I have your ticket stub...)

Would Have Died In a State of Blissful Indulgence If Delivered A Fatal Blow During
Enchanted (More songs to add to my Disney repertoire.)
Paprika (Technically '06, but still freakish, anime fun.)

First Movie of the Year
Children of Men (Unless I saw something before Jan 15th)

Oops! Actual First Movie of the Year
Dreamgirls (Jan 14th!)

"First" Movie That Made Me Cry More
Dreamgirls (It also made me want to wear sequins!)

Movies viewed in the splendiferocity of the IMAX theater
300 (aka "300 Mins of Abs")
Spiderman 3 (aka "Why Sam Raimi, why?!")

Finally Got Around To
The Watchmen - Alan Moore (Mindblowing.)
The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller (Quicker. Darker. Better?)

Left With A Hopeless Addiction To
Neil Gaiman (A man who owns multiple sushi pillows is a man I can get behind.)

Best Meal of the Year
Momofuku Noodle, sometime this fall. (Go now. Don't fuck around. Get the grits.)

Year-long (ish) Unconquerable Late Night Cravings
Raw cookie dough (From the roll. Pillsbury over Nestle Tollhouse if at all possible.)
Wonton Soup (No less than five dumplings.)
Pierogies (With assorted fillings.)

Favorite Saved Fortune Cookie Fortune of '07
"It is necessary; therefore, it is possible."

A WARNING

Things I lost when my hard drive died:

1. About 30 half-formed blog ideas.
2. A cheesy essay about getting my hair cut as it related to disconnecting myself from a boy.
3. A never-posted live review of Wilco.
4. A CD sleeve design for a 2003 mix entitled “Collections Are Dangerous,” comprised entirely of shrunken concert posters.
5. The lyrics to a song I believe an ex wrote about me that were promptly removed from said ex’s blog the day after they were posted.
6. A folder full of contact addresses and phone numbers.
7. The updated design templates for my professional website.
8. All drafts and Photoshopped clips from my recent work for The Hollywood Reporter.
9. PHOTOSHOP (and the accompanying serial number)
10. ILLUSTRATOR (and the accompanying serial number)
11. DREAMWEAVER (and the accompanying serial number. No seriously, I am weeping as I write this.)
12. My sanity.

Ladies and gentlemen, back up your computers. FOR RILL. Also, catalog your software and store it in a place where you can find it, WITH THE SERIAL NUMBERS ATTACHED.

My life’s work now skips from a college commencement speech to this here list. Which is pretty fracking sad. Cause this list isn’t even funny.