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!
Friday, February 24, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
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).
(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).
Monday, February 13, 2006
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!
- 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.
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.
Friday, February 10, 2006
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.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
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:
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?
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?
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