The last of the Shit Girls Say!!

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Auditioned for an Old Navy commercial a few days ago. I walked into the waiting room and there were three familiar faces, faces I was once acquainted with from the audition circuit in New York. I felt at home! Yea! New York has come to me! Then I remembered...these faces are the faces that beat me out of almost every commercial featuring black girls with curly hair. Maybe I should straighten my hair.

My Thursday Pick-me-up

When I want to blame everyone else for my troubles, I remember that it's The Boogie's fault.

Top 10 most awkwardly embarrasing Stacey moments

10. Taking a back seat at a new church for afternoon service and discovering I'm at a funeral.

9. Walking by the casket to see who the party's for.

8. Popping an Altoid thinking it's "E" and waiting for the high that never came. My breath was curiously fresh

7. Being told to take off my socks to get a pedicure. I wasn't wearing socks.

6. Getting pelted by my own tampons after opening the overhead bin on a crowded flight.

5. First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade,... Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade, Sixth Grade...etc.

4. Refusing to serve alcohol to a pregnant woman who wasn't so pregnant after all.

3. Being taken on a 1st date to Guy's dad's birthday party.

2. Unintentionally belching a manly"Hi" in Guy's dad's face as we shake hands. (There were no further dates.)

1. My unattainable high school crush greets me with an enthusiastic "Hey!" I blush and squeal "Hey!" He hugs the girl behind me.

Top 9 ways to take your Job down in ashes

(Why 9? I couldn’t think of 10)

9.Follow a crush across the country and look for work in his town.

Hey, never leave the possibility of true love on the table. Even if you have to hide under his table, or in his bushes, or club him over the head to get it.

8. Accept a job you know you’ll eventually hate.

Don’t confuse the impulse to vomit on your way to work that first morning with first-day jitters…or pregnancy. If your gut tells you something’s not right about your decision, RUN!

7. Just as the employment deal is being sealed, announce you’re an actor and need flexibility to attend auditions.

To bosses (even t.v. executives) actors might as well be carriers of the monkey virus. Keep that tidbit to yourself and enlist the next no-no on the list which is….

6. Take a “Mental Day” or two…or twelve over the course of a year.

Work is stressful- especially when you’re trying to duck out of it. Take a mental day and don’t miss that recital, golf game, US Open Final or…audition.

5. Dare to be less wrinkled and more “bubbly” than your tenured female co-anchor.

Before there was the Real Housewives... there was The Real News Anchors. Female anchors are catty. Especially aging female anchors. Stay out of the path of her 10,000 watt stage light and she’ll be fine.

4. Request every major holiday off at the last minute and claim “but I already bought my ticket!”

Bosses usually back off on this one if they know you’ve spent all of your paltry paycheck on a plane ticket.

3. Sleep with an unpopular coworker the first week on the job .

Week One you bedded down with Mr. Chatty, Smiley, Laid -Back coworker. After a month you realized he’s actually gossipy, two-faced and lazy. Unless you like being the topic of work gossip keep it moving.

2. Spill drinks on the boss and blame it on the “new medication”

Whether at the office holiday party or serving Mr. Reise, the owner of the Reise empire of restaurants in NYC, spilling drinks is a one-way ticket to job purgatory.

1. In the morning meeting respond to coworkers’ ideas with “That’s So Racist.”

White Guilt hit a sharp decline after the election of Pres. Obama. However, according to, uh, the Internet White Statistics Foundation, white people everywhere are still capable of being guilted by accusations of being called “racist.” Thankfully they have “The Help” as a means of diffuse that guilt.

Funny Video of the day. Have Relaxing one!

http://youtu.be/598IdFlOXcQ

Welcome to New York: My 9/11 Experience

As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11 I long to be back in Manhattan, the city that welcomed me, tested me and took care of me even when she needed to be taken care of in days, weeks and years following That day. I had just relocated to Manhattan a mere six days prior to September 11, 2001. I was as excited as anyone at the prospect of living a Big City life and NYC was truly the center of the universe for me. The World Trade Center could be seen from almost any street, any avenue in Manhattan. They cast a long shadow and I longed to visit Windows on the World, the restaurant that sat at the very top of the North Tower. I had been in the city only two days and was already taking the towers for granted. "They'll always be there" I thought when I made a mental note of when I might plan my visit. For I didn't want to go and be a tourist, I wanted a REASON to be at the WTC...maybe covering a news story there, an interview with someone prominent at the WTC, anything that would distinguish me from the average "visitor." Ironically, it was the visitors to our city who would prop us up and keep up going when our economy and morale were in its darkest.

On That morning, I was on the border of the West Village and Chelsea doing the Alternate Side of the Street Parking dance and listening to Howard Stern when he abruptly changed to topic of his raunchy conversation to report that "a plane has struck" one of the WTC towers. Being that it was Howard Stern, I thought to myself "what a tacky joke." I parked my car walked towards Seventh Avenue. People were frozen, facing downtown with hands over mouth. I looked in the same direction and saw an enormous fireball and black smoke billowing from the upper floors. I was maybe two miles or closer to what had not yet become known as Ground Zero. I remembered sirens were suddenly omnipresent, horns, fire engines, time seemed to have stopped. I'm not sure how much time passed before my next memory of blinking and seeing a flash of the second plane then then billowing black smoke...and then the sound traveled..like thunder. Honestly, I don't have much of a memory of what happened next other than I started walking TOWARDS the chaos. The reporter in me needed to jump into the fray. I made it as far as fourth street, I think, when the first towers sank...quietly it seemed until the a few seconds later, the roar traveled uptown. I stopped. I stood there until I was being passed by one dust-covered refugee after another. Someone touched my shoulder and said "you should walk the other way."

I've never walked the other way in my life. I tend jump right in head first into everything; sometimes with great consequences...other times not so much so. In hindsight, I'm amazed at how much resilience I had while living in New York. I never cried a day over my circumstances and I always bounced back from the emotional and financial hardships 9/11 caused me personally and the hardships I put myself through. That's what I miss about being a "New Yorker" the community, the camaraderie and the way we bounced back-together. I hope with the opening of the 9/11 memorial and the continuing rebirth of the World Trade Center site, there will be some sense of closure, some sense of peace for those who were deeper in soot than I that day and for those who lost more than I that day.