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the hippest new t-shirt that you can’t get

September 26, 2004

Today on the subway I saw three cute Japanese girls faced with just one available seat. After unsuccessfully trying to convince one another to take it and all of them politely and repeatedly declining, they settled the matter in the most equitable way possible: Rock Paper Scissors. Yes, really!

The winner sheepishly took her seat, and they all giggled.

I smiled to see that there is still joy and innocence in the world, and it wears fashionable shoes on the L train.

I commented to a guy I met at the fashion show that this is a model for solving all the world’s problems, and we resolved to make t-shirts that say:

Three Japanese Girls for President

what a girl wants

September 25, 2004

Nerve.com recently published the winners of its bad pickup line contest, and I’m still snickering over:

Were both your parents retarded? Because you seem like a special girl.

On an unrelated note… the vintage lingerie fashion show is tomorrow!

We had a rehearsal tonight. My outfits have been changed a bit — for the first one, I’m wearing an incredibly tight gray leotard over fishnets, with a black waist cincher over top, and red elbow gloves. It’s very Cabaret.

"Money makes the world go round wrong" – de la Vega

September 24, 2004

Last week I visited James de la Vega’s store on 104th and Lex and bought a t-shirt. (De le Vega is a street artist known for his whimsical paintings and phrases on walls and streets in East Harlem).

James seemed a little bemused at my presence, but when I asked about a painting I liked, he gave me a greeting card of the painting, which was nice. I also got one of these “De La Vega for Senate” cards.

Everybody loves the t-shirt. It’s the one with two goldfish jumping out of their bowls to meet each other.

put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning

September 24, 2004

After hearing from yet another medical student on the online personals, I was prompted to reflect on my (universally odd) attempts to date members of the medical profession.

I suppose, for the most part, I’m used to dating people in some kind of business-related field where it makes sense to say things like “You are your own brand!” When you date a doctor or a teacher or a member of the Peace Corps, that’s out the window. Such a man has a pay grade and possibly a union; he doesn’t need his own website.

The first medical student I went out with had once been a Mennonite, had lost his religion at a Mennonite college, and had since started using the online personals to meet up with couples for, shall I say, non-Mennonite activities.

The last medical student I went out with was a tremendous literalist. His ability to understand subtlety, irony, sarcasm, or implication approached absolute zero. So, during our first date, he explained very clearly that he wanted to find a life partner as soon as possible, buy a boat, retire to the Mediterranean, and have his wife have five to six of his children on this boat in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Now, that’s a little out there, but if you know exactly what you want, more power to you for putting it out there on a first date and letting the cards fall where they may. However, a somewhat less literal person might have then gauged his date’s facial expression and then decided whether to continue the maritime fantasy or move on to a new topic of discussion.

Instead, he then proceeded to ask me point-blank if I would like to have children, if I would like to have five or six of them, and if I would like to have them on a boat.

For the record, I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea to mix morning sickness with boating.

a dash of endorphins, a pinch of serotonin

September 22, 2004

You know, they have a patch for everything now — smoking, birth control, estrogen, testosterone, all kinds of things.

I saw an online ad today that showed a woman wearing a patch and said “Imagine seeing more results in a week than you have in a lifetime of dieting.”

But I read this, on first pass, as “a lifetime of dating.”

What would a dating patch do, I wonder? What drug would it deliver, what unintended consequences would it prevent?

the williamsburg spelling bee

September 21, 2004

Last night I competed in the Williamsburg Spelling Bee at Pete’s Candy Store. I had seen a flyer for it in the Girdle Factory building near Verb.

I was contestant number twelve. My best friend Jenn came to watch.

Round one I spelled “tonsillitis.” Everyone commented that I was very fast and confident. Contestant number one, a librarian, commented that he always thought there was just one “l.”

Round two I spelled “panickiness.”

We (the contestants) start to notice that the words aren’t all that hard. Also, the guy reading them is having a terrible time pronouncing the words, so much so that the audience members often shout out corrections. The organizers were clearly unprepared for the crowd of (mostly sober) geeks that showed up.

Round three, we’re down to maybe six people, so now instead of each contestant spelling one word and sitting down, each contestant stays up until they miss a word, or get fifteen right, in which case we’d have a runoff.

Contestant number one gets fifteen right. A lot of other people miss words.

I go up and get fifteen words right, finally getting out on the word “bagasse,” which the announcer pronounced something like “be-gas” and which means “to beat sugar out of sugarcane.” (I’m not protesting at all — that’s a good spelling bee word!)

So then we have a runoff between me and contestant number one. We alternate back and forth spelling words until somebody misses one (however, if the first person misses their word and then the second person misses theirs as well, then you’d both go again so as not to be biased against whoever goes first).

I get a word that sounds like “ax-il-LOT-al.” I ask for a definition. It has to do with larvae. A biology word. Hmmn. So I guess. I think I probably guessed “axillotal.”

Turns out the word is “axolotl”!

Jesus, what the hell kind of word is that? (Mexican, it turns out). But, again, a good spelling bee word! Fair enough. So I wait for the other guy to get his word. Since mine was so hard, there’s a good chance he’ll get his wrong, and then we’ll go again.

His word is:

“Bereavement”.

No shit. The audience actually booed and demanded that he get a new word. The announcer held firm. Contestant number twelve, of course, spelled “bereavement” with no trouble and won. The organizers explained that they hadn’t realized that people who could actually spell would turn out for the spelling bee — they thought it would just be drunk people who were already in the bar. They apologized.

Then we all hung out for a bit. Contestant number one, it turns out, is a librarian. I explained that I’m an SAT teacher. The guy reading the words was flabbergasted. One of the other contestants (Meghan, in third place) and I suggested having former winners (who won’t be competing again until the finals in six months) come back and read the words. So I will be doing this during the next round, on October 4.

And then in six months, I’ll be in the finals. I’m so into this, you’d think it was the seventh grade. I always wanted to be in a spelling bee. I mean, I’m the kind of person who turns out when you put posters all over town advertising a spelling bee for adults.

I’d like to be a good sport about “axolotl” versus “bereavement,” but, unfortunately, I’m just a fundamentally flawed human being. I’m not even blaming original sin. It’s just me.

Anyway, if you would like to compete next time, or just come see me read vocabulary words with the greatest of ease:

Williamsburg Spelling Bee

October 4

7:30-9:00pm (signup at 6:30)

Pete’s Candy Store

709 Lorimer St, Williamsburg

Incidentally, according to pet-care websites, “A pair of Axolotls will do well in a tank measuring 60 x 30x 30 cm. The best substrate is a 5 cm-deep layer of medium-grade aquarium gravel. Since Axolotls are messy underwater feeders, it is best to have a power filter installed to keep the water clean. Axolotls will eat earthworms and the occasional maggot, mealworm cricket, small fish, or strip of lean raw meat.”

I remember a high school teacher who thought the Industrial Revolution happened during the ’20s, when the novel "Babbit" was set

September 19, 2004

So, I did the photoshoot for the Faces of Change calendar. I spent about two hours having hair and makeup done, and ended up modeling an $80,000 necklace. I was shot entirely from the shoulders up; “we want you for your eyes!” they said (but not in that horror-movie way).

After that, I modeled a forties-style red satin dress alongside a beautiful Asian model (and college student) named Jane. The photographer looked at us and said, erroneously, “You two look just like flappers!” We both gave him funny looks, because he was clearly two decades off; it would be like if you thought the Sexual Revolution happened during Prohibition, or that legwarmers were in fashion during the Civil War (when “Flashdance” came out!)

His reply was a quite condescending “You girls know what flappers are, don’t you?”

Um, yes.

Funny, at “real” modeling events, I usually end up finding the one other girl with a book and hanging out. There’s sanity in numbers.

it’s not exactly a vow of celibacy, but a vow nonetheless

September 19, 2004

So, I’ve vowed not to buy any more books until I write one.

That certainly doesn’t mean I can’t read books — an easy task considering how many books I’ve bought and haven’t read yet.

But it does mean that I spent a wistful ten minutes sitting on a footstool in a bookstore in Williamsburg perusing an Italo Calvino novel I’d really like to have.

what voter participation drives need are more bullet bras

September 19, 2004

My bestest friend Molly Crabapple is in a pinup-model contest. Please visit this page to vote for her. Thank you!

This beehive deserves your vote!

There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in

September 19, 2004

“The heart goes on cooking, like a shish kabob.”

I love Leonard Cohen.

It’s even better now that I live in New York and know where the Chelsea Hotel is.

i can’t think when other people are rapping

September 18, 2004

I suspect that people who are permanently attached to their iPods are only piping music into their heads to compensate for impending depression and the spiraling emptiness of their thoughts when confronted with silence.

When did it become necessary for everyone to have their own personal soundtrack at all times? Why can’t we just participate in society?

If you’re using your iPod to compensate for loneliness, you should consider that maybe there’s one special person out there for you, and you already passed them by, say, on the train, and neither of you noticed each other because you were mid-White Stripes and they were mid-Al Green.

Just saying.

targeted marketing gone very, very weird

September 17, 2004

So, when I created my YahooGroup, I had to select a category, and I think I ended up selecting “Celebrities: Women.” (I know I’m not a celebrity, but there wasn’t a category for “fiction writer pinup girls”).

Yahoo, of course, makes money by feeding targeted advertising to people visiting particular groups. So you might expect to see ads on my group having to do with female celebrities. Instead, they seem to just be feeding ads that have the keyword “female.”

So, along with an ad for an interracial dating site, they put this ad on my group page:

Have a Baby Girl: GenSelect is the only scientifically validated kit, developed by a team of physicians, to harness clinically proven factors which effectively allow you to determine the gender of your baby.

I’m not sure that this is a strong interest among visitors to my group. Is the idea “I like Jen so much I’d like to have a baby girl who will someday grow up to be like her”? Or “I want to breed with Jen! In a very specific manner!”

Yeah, either way, that’s fucked up.

voluptuous women in little feathered hats

September 17, 2004

Today I went to the fitting for the vintage lingerie fashion show I’m doing in Williamsburg next Saturday.

I have two outfits, one with a waist cincher and fishnets, and one with a sort of Cabaret-style feathered leotard with matching hat. Tres fabulous, all around.

When I was being fitted in this last outfit, the store owner told me to “eat as much as possible!” before the show next week.

This, of course, is just the opposite of typical fashion show preparations. We’re wearing lots of ’40s and ’50s items, so it makes sense. But it’s certainly true that you can’t please everyone at once.

In this case, I can please myself with some bread pudding and a bucket of fried chicken.

i am a size queen for espresso

September 17, 2004

Double espressos are just not big enough.

If you ever spot me on a subway platform finishing my double espresso before the train even arrives and then LICKING THE CUP, well, that’s why double espressos aren’t big enough.

I have been immortalized in a $200 thong

September 17, 2004

I recently received some photos and a DVD from the lingerie fashion show I did for Jillian Sherry couture lingerie in July.

I have now seen what my own ass looks like when I’m walking away! This is a new and mesmerizing experience.

The photos will be up on the website soon (maybe tonight!). I currently don’t know how to edit a DVD so as to post stills or short clips, but maybe I’ll figure that out soon.

Here’s a sneak preview photo!

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