friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear ralph nader,

my articles editor told me this week that he was a year behind you in college at princeton and was very impressed by your investigations into the goings-on in the campus kitchen. he didn't mention your attempts to reveal the chilling impact of ddt; i suppose he wasn't aware of them, seeing as how you were laughed out of the campus newspaper office when you spoke up about your ideas. anyhow, this means that i am now separated from jon stewart by only two degrees, and this makes me very happy. i'm sorry so many americans still blame you for making bush president instead of blaming themselves for having hard-ons for tax breaks, and i hope people are saying lots of nice things about your movie.

buckle up,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear david lynch,

i had the same dream two nights in a row this week. when it starts out, i'm in the brookline trader joe's. i have a friend with me; he isn't human. he appears to be a cross between e.t., an ewok, and glomer from the punky brewster cartoon. he speaks very eloquent english, though, and i think he's older than me. anyway, we turn the corner of the last frozen-foods aisle expecting to find the produce section, but instead we walk into a large, offset wing that neither of us has ever seen before. it has hardwood floors and shelving with a dark finish, maybe red mahogany. it turns out that trader joe's has begun selling small pets, like gerbils and fish, and this section is where they're being housed. i decide to get a mouse and spend an interminable amount of time picking out toys and food and yummy yogurt-drop treats for it, and i wind up abandoning all of the food in my carriage in favor of my new pet and his paraphernalia. strangely, they don't sell enclosures or terrariums or anything of that nature, but i'm not concerned because i remember that i have a lovely habitrail at home. the trader joe's pet specialist tucks my mouse into a cardboard box, about 8"l x 6"w x 6"h. i am very happy, and i like to think the mouse is, too. my companion offers no clues as to his mood, but he is exceedingly polite and offers to carry the cedar shavings.

we arrive at a house, presumably my house. it seems very familiar, but i don't know if this is because it's a place i've actually been in before or not. it might be a place i saw in a movie. it's white and separated from the main street by a large, hilly lawn and a dirt road, in that order. a screened-in porch stretches across the entire front of the house, and there's only one other house in sight. it's to the left of mine, if you are facing mine, and is about a hundred yards away. it's summer and sunny. the street is silent aside from the sounds of my feet moving gravel and the leaves brushing against one another in the nearby maple trees. there's no driveway, but the dirt road is very wide, so we park in it on the side closest to the house. i guess i don't plan on staying long, because i leave the mouse and the bag holding his food and accessories on the ground next to the driver's-side door of the car and run indoors. my furry companion does not accompany me, choosing instead to stand with his hands/paws behind his back on the grass across the road from the house and stare fixedly at a dandelion. i go into a room toward the back of the house--i can't remember what i do once i'm in there, but, curiously, i do not go in with any intention of finding the habitrail--and as i'm coming out i see the neighbor's large pickup truck driving past through the front windows. my stomach knots; at this point in the dream i know that everything is about to start barreling downhill and i begin asking myself to wake up, but i never listen. dream me tries to take a deep breath as she runs out the front door, aware-that-we-are-dreaming me says, "please stop this now," and me me ignores all of us and lets the scene unfold, knowing exactly what we are all about to find.

the cardboard box is on its side in the road, open and dusty and torn on one end. e.t.-wok-er is still standing on his patch of grass, quiet and placid. the mouse is lying on his left side at the place where the road meets the grass in front of the house, gasping and paddling his tiny feet, his bruising and internal bleeding beginning to make him look bloated and distorted. i pick him up carefully and hold him in my hands, and then i freeze. he has tiny human eyes, and they are expressing a pain so intense that i can feel it radiating from his body up my arms and into my chest. from across the road, e.t.-wok-er says sedately, "i told him to run. he could have run away, but he didn't want to leave you. he loved you that much."

dream me can't move or blink or close her mouth. me me suggests calmly that i probably ought to find something heavy to finish the mouse off with. aware-that-we-are-dreaming me shrieks, "OH MY GOD WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!!!!"

and that time i listen. i sit up in bed, trembling and sweaty, and press both my hands over my face for about fifteen minutes, trying not to cry.

what do you think that means, mr. lynch? i figured if anyone would have a theory, it would be you. you've employed a lot of perturbing dream sequences in your work over the years. have you studied dream theory, or do you just go with your gut? i don't have or want a mouse, but i had one when i was a freshman in college. i stole him from the biology prep lab. he lived for a while, and then he died, just like anything else. i don't think he suffered, but it's hard to say. could i be experiencing residual guilt? i mean, i experience a lot of guilt. it could be about anything. i just wondered, you know, if you ever have odd, horrifying dreams that leave you distressed and heartbroken, and if you have any suggestions as to how to not have them anymore. would you recommend transcendental meditation? does incorporating your nightmares into your work hasten the exorcism? i'm really only asking because the last recurring dream i had appeared at varying intervals for about twelve years, and i couldn't handle that with this one. any advice you can give me would be tremendously appreciated.

your shaken fan,

juniper


p.s. i'll still watch inland empire if you don't have anything to say about this, so please don't worry or make something up. that won't help anyone.

p.p.s. is your coffee fairly traded?

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear punxsutawney phil,


this is the scariest picture i've ever seen. i can't imagine how fast and hard your little groundhog heart must have been pounding when these top-hat-clad lunatics grabbed you and forcibly removed you from your home so they could encircle you, leer at you, and then wave you around in the air while a crowd of strangers hollered and blinding flashes went off in your face. i'm sorry. i'm so, so sorry.

please forgive us (but if you can't, i understand),

joon

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear joseph rotblat,

thank you for trying.

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear manolo blahnik,

why are your shoes so boring and/or ugly? i think you've played a mean trick on the wealthy and fashion-obsessed women of the world. see, i've figured out that "manolo blahnik" is actually an anagram for "loon makin' blah," which is obviously exactly what you are. how you managed to become globally revered for it i'll never know, but then i probably wouldn't have run away from home to live in andy warhol's factory, either. perhaps i am simply missing some sort of artistic irony in your cobbling. is there a message? shoes are generally designed to provide one or both of two things: comfort and attractive design. your shoes provide neither, and so from my point of view they are failures. yet for years now they have been the platonic ideal against which all other pumps are measured; why should this be? all i can think of is that they are not shoes but art, which is allowed to be unbearably ugly if it embodies meaning or inspires a visceral reaction, even a negative one, and i have been misunderstanding your aims all of this time. even if that is the case, though, i think i'm likely still correct in saying women are crazy to spend the kind of money you're charging on things that look like that only to put them on their feet and limp smilingly down a dirty street in them. but then, only an artist can speak to the purpose of his own art.

so speak. explain yourself. tell me what a thousand-plus-dollar ankle boot covered in black lace and adorned with a ring of the sort of tassels normally reserved for heavy drapery really means. i will hear you out to the end, i promise. but if you refuse to justify your actions, i will be forced to conclude that you have been off in a villa someplace laughing yourself to tears at the hopeless sheepliness of females everywhere--and probably, even though what you are doing is a little mean, i will laugh right alongside you.

i am not yet certain enough of your position to assign any sort of emotion to this closing,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear theo ratliff,

a co-worker of mine just came back from the supermarket across the street and told us he was behind you in line at the register. he also told us that you played basketball for forty-four minutes this year and made $11.7 million. i just wanted to tell you how great i think it is that with all that money, you're still willing to get out and mingle with average citizens while you buy your own groceries at the neighborhood mart, especially with the back injury and all. i go to that store sometimes, they stock some decent produce. did you buy any apples? the gala apples they have right now are bitchin'. no lie. i'd eat one with every meal if i could, but i can't always get all that many of them, because i can't afford to spend more than $70 a week on food. oh well; nobody's fault but my own that i didn't become a professional athlete. and nobody's fault but your own that you didn't pick soccer instead of basketball, right? because right now beckham's making you look like a pauper. no way that dude's popping out for a loaf of bread at lunch time; he's not like us.

anyway. i hope you enjoy your purchase and the 525,000 or so minutes a year you don't spend working. feel better, man.

*swoosh*,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear wildlife of the arctic and antarctic regions of the globe,

are you guys o.k.? because it's 60°F in boston right now, and i'm pretty sure it ought to be about 6, and i know it's only, like, -13 in barrow, alaska, but the average temperature there last month was about 8° higher than normal, and it doesn't sound like a lot, 8°, but i'm pretty sure it is; it's the difference between needing a sweater over your long-sleeved shirt and not needing one, right? and when i went outside today in my winter coat, which wasn't even zipped, i was like, damn, i might break a sweat just walking down these front steps. and you guys are wearing the winter coats zipped right up to your throats no matter what, and i just, i don't know . . . i got worried. plus, that little stuffed polar bear i've been sleeping with since i was three, i, um, i think he was crying last night. something woke me up, anyway; i guess it could have been the perspiration beading up between my skin and the inside of my heavy fleece pajamas, which seemed like a really good and sensible idea when i was getting ready for bed. so write back when you get a chance and let me know you're all right, that the fishing's fine, whatever. or that it's not; you can tell me anything, you know that.

all my unseasonably sweaty love,

joon

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear dr. max lûscher,

you're a fucking genius! the color quiz is far and away the most accurate measure of a person's emotional and mental state in the history of psychological inquiry. i take the quiz every now and then just to pass the time, and it's never once been wrong. i can't even begin to tell you how impressed i am. seriously, i'm just, like, agog. probably you don't need me to tell you this, especially since you're, you know, dead, but let me illustrate my point with an example anyway.

for a while now i've been following this brutal, circular, wheel-spinning debate about things like racism, and whether it's worse to say people who don't know they're exhibiting a racial bias are exhibiting a racial bias than it is to say it makes perfect sense to overcharge certain racial groups for merchandise, and whether a business's offending a portion of its consumer base by overcharging in such a manner could or should be perceived as rational, and whether it makes sense to attempt to justify or rationalize a person's unscrupulous behavior when engaging in it has helped that person attain a self-serving goal . . . crazy stuff. stuff i couldn't believe there could ever be two evenly split sides about. i just got angrier and angrier, and more and more depressed, because every time someone tried to make a case for fair and decent behavior under any and all circumstances, someone else would call that person an economically ignorant ninny--but i didn't want to turn my back on the dialogue, because i felt like it was really, really important to keep trying to make that case. i did what i could to make calm, methodical arguments, but away from the maelstrom i was having stress dreams and couldn't finish my lunch, and then finally, on the eleventh day, someone said that anyone with less information than someone else not only will be but should be ripped off every single time he or she can be, and i had an aneurysm and ran away crying. i felt like cindy lou who after she'd accidentally wandered into quentin tarantino's remake of glengarry glen ross.

so, in an effort to stop thinking about all of that awful stuff and think, instead, of nothing at all, i popped on over to the color quiz to stare at meaningless, uniform sqares of bright, silent, morally neutral color. and guess what color quiz reported about my mood?

Your Existing Situation: Not only considers her demands minimal, but also regards them as imperative. Sticks to them stubbornly and will concede nothing.

Your Stress Sources: The situation is regarded as threatening or dangerous. Outraged by the thought that she will be unable to achieve her goals and distressed at the feeling of helplessness to remedy this. Over-extended and feels beset, possibly to the point of nervous prostration.

Your Restrained Characteristics: Quick to take offense. Sensitive and sentimental, but conceals this from all except those very close to her.

Your Desired Objective: Needs release from stress. Longs for peace, tranquility, and contentment.

Your Actual Problem: Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation or demands on her resources. A feeling of powerlessness subjects her to agitation and acute distress. Tries to escape from this by relinquishing the struggle, and by finding peaceful and restful conditions in which to recuperate in an atmosphere of affection and security.

holy fricking cow. that is the BEST. QUIZ. EVER. it knows everything. it's also fairly effective therapy; i guess i'd rather not be the kind of girl who chooses to escape her problems by giving in to her adversaries. i mean, i haven't been yet. and while i'd also rather not succumb to a nervous breakdown, at least when i finally do lapse into frothy madness i'll be able to do it with a clean conscience. or a conscience, period.

so brace yourselves, foes; from this day forward, for me, it shall be ever once more unto the breach.

thanks again, dr. lûscher. i don't know how you figured it out, but whatever you did, it's pretty rad.

your embattled fan, who is once again prepared to wade out into the center of the thunderdome and hold up her fading daisy,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear jon stewart,

i know that this is way, way overdue, but you really rocked the wang back in october. i was the girl to your left in the orchestra pit who "woo hoo"d when you said your home computer was a mac (thanks for the subtle point in my direction in acknowledgment; for the record, i know next to nothing about graphic design, but i'm proud to have been able to provide you, at least in part, with an opening for a joke). it was the first time i had seen you live, but it was far from the first time i had seen your stand-up act. everybody knows that story, and i really wouldn't tell it again, but it becomes hugely important in the context of this letter; i'll try to inject some new life into it.

in what i'm almost entirely certain was the late spring of 1992, a portion of your act was aired as a segment on the mtv half-hour comedy hour, and the only joke from that segment that i remember in its entirety is the one about the inanity of the u.s. military's refusal to allow gay men to enlist. at the time, the DOD's policy on homosexuality was receiving a fair amount of coverage, the freddie mercury tribute concert had been playing on a loop for weeks, and i had recently become close friends with a shy, slight boy whose sexuality was frequently called into question in a none-too-tactful manner by the population of our small-town high school. i was pretty young, but i was already beginning to adopt the strongly liberal stance that has since become the cornerstone of all my daily dealings (i'm surprised anyone can even read my letters, given how smudged and obscured the writing is once my pink, pink heart is finished bleeding all over it). it may be why that joke stuck, or something about your delivery may have made it especially resonant, leading to its longevity in my memory and thus influencing some portion of my social and political development. whatever the case, the moment lodged itself, and i have loved you ever since because of it.

and when you told it again, word for word, at your show this fall—god, i didn't even know what to do. i wanted to squeal and stand on my seat and cry and throw a brick through a window and buy you a state-of-the-art video game console and run out of the building and into the woods and renounce society, because it was my joke, it had been my joke for almost fifteen years, and i hadn't heard it since that first time, and there you were, not fifteen feet away, telling it in person—and because it was my joke that i had heard for the first time fifteen years ago, and you could still tell it and get the same reaction as you had gotten the first time you had told it, because nothing had changed.

this year the u.s. army dropped its recruitment standards to the lowest permissible levels in an effort to meet enlistment targets, which they've been missing by margins greater than any since the 1970s. they're willing to accept recruits who have failed aptitude tests, who have criminal records, who have drug or alcohol problems, and who have health issues that could interfere with their performance; they are not willing to accept healthy, competent, sincere men with spotless records who refuse to lie about who they are. while daniel goure, vice-president of the lexington institute, has said that the main requirement for the army is a high school diploma, only 81 percent of the newest recruits have one. the military feels fine about actively recruiting autistic teenagers, but they'll discharge anyone who's openly gay, regardless of his or her performance, on the grounds that homosexuality is an irredeemable defect. i think that's nonsensical. i think that's INSANE. i know you're with me on this, jon, but while misery may love company, this particular misery is incapable of taking solace in the number of people in its corner, even when one of them is you.

in defense of its new tactics, the army issued a statment affirming that "good test scores do not necessarily equate to quality soldiers . . . test-taking ability does not measure loyalty, duty, honor, integrity or courage." but who you sleep with does? can they honestly believe that? what do they think's gonna happen?

well, you know the answer to that question. and i just wanted to thank you for shining a floodlight on it, then and now. sometimes i can't muster up any hope about the masses finding a way to approach ideas like this with a modicum of logic. but i think maybe you can't, either, and you haven't let that stop you from begging them to do so for the past two decades. so i'll soldier on alongside you, because the folks on the other side were never adorable in my eyes, and they only grow less so with time.

that's it. my best to your family, including that cat with the nine recta and your vomit-slurping pooch. thanks for standing up, and thanks for your dogged, unswerving moral clarity. i don't know how you feel about being a role model, but i feel inexpressibly fortunate to have you as one.

your always-devoted fan, who knew that was you in the rollerblades in that steve martin movie with the christmas tree,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear califone,


thank you for making roots & crowns. i would never have believed that anything could make me wish that my drive home from work actually took longer, but interrupting this album's hugely varied yet somehow seamless offering of plucked and bowed strings and raspy vocals, hypnotic percussion and dirt-farm-philosopher lyrics, horns and vibraphones and chimes and field recordings—well, it just tears me up, every single time i cut the engine. you've given me a sound i can't get enough of in a world full of things i can't bear to hear, and for at least thirty minutes out of every weekday, and four times that long on the weekends, my heart beats in grateful, tenderly synchronized rhythms.

yours, period,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear rick santorum,

for a long time, i, like many people, took your comments regarding a particular 2003 supreme court case to mean that you were opposed to homosexuality. it has since been made clear to me that you are in no way offended by homosexuality; rather, you are merely troubled by homosexual acts. the difference is plain, and i apologize for my error. now that the truth has come out, i would like to atone for my misjudgment by including you in gatherings that i would previously never have thought to make open to you.

my best friend and his boyfriend of three years are planning to get married in the spring, and he's asked me to give him away (if you knew them, you'd know there was never any question as to which of them would be the bride!). they've very kindly allowed me to add some names to the guest list, and i am cordially requesting your attendance. i assume that you'll have some free time once you've been relieved of your senatorial obligations, and i think it would do your heart a world of good to witness the sanctifying of such a deep, tender romance. their devotion is truly touching, and it would mean a great deal to all of us if you would join us in our celebration and allow this special love to touch you as well. there will be games and treats for the little ones, too, so please feel free to bring your children. your companion james dobson no longer acknowledges my correspondence, for reasons unknown to me, but i would be immensely grateful if you could get in touch with him after the ceremony to let him know that you saw it take place with your own eyes and, obviously, the earth has not been destroyed.

my best to pennsylvania's voters,

juniper pearl

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear jim jarmusch,

hey. i haven't heard from you in a while, so i thought i would write and ask what you've been up to. have you seen any cool birds lately? i know that you're into birdwatching and all that. i'm not, really, but i'm a big fan of the tufted titmouse, i think it's supercute. do you see them ever? they look like this:


the tufted titmouse is my favorite bird. and guess what? there's another bird called the juniper titmouse. isn't that funny? it's like, if your favorite bird was the white-eyed vireo, and you found out there was a jarmusch vireo, you'd think it was pretty cool, i bet. the juniper titmouse looks like this:


compared to the tufted titmouse it looks kind of wild-eyed and disheveled, and that's how i look compared to most other girls, so i think that even though everyone says its name comes from its berry preference, i think really it's named after me. i'm not named after it, because my parents hate birds. one time i found a dead robin in the back yard and i picked it up and carried it all around and showed it where the good blackberries grew, and then i sat on my swing with it and sang to it, and my mom came outside and tried to take it away from me and throw it into the woods, but i wouldn't give it to her until my dad came home so we could bury it. it was missing an eye. maybe you could make a movie about that. it would be neat if bill murray could play my dad, they look a little bit alike. only my dad was kind of young then, so maybe it wouldn't work. or you and john lurie could make a tv show like fishing with john about birding instead of fishing. i'd totally watch it all the time.

chirp chirp,

juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear john krasinski,

you're awesome. did you know that you and i have the same birthday? we're both from massachusetts, too, and you went to brown, and i totally wanted to go to brown because i was obsessed with their radio station, but then i didn't go because i thought a different school would be better for a pre-vet major, and that's so good because right after i graduated from high school their radio station started to wicked suck, but anyway, we have all that stuff in common, and so i think that means we're soul mates. what's conan o'brien really like? did you guys talk all the time about being from massachusetts? did he ever let you wear any of his ties? he has some sweet ties.

i never used to watch your version of the office because i didn't believe that anyone could ever outdo ricky gervais, but you're really cute and tall so then i watched it sometimes, even though i think i was right and it isn't as good as the original one. but now you're, like, not even on it! what's up with that?

so, i know you're making a movie about some book, and i just wanted to tell you that if it isn't good i'm going to be superpissed and tell everyone that you only say your birthday is the same as mine because you wish you were as cool as me. no, not really, i'll totally still love you!!!! ;p but, seriously, i hope it's good. like, for your sake.

ttfn!

your soul mate,
juniper

friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear zach braff,

you are already famous. you do not need to ho yourself out on myspace. please stop abusing the passionate adoration bestowed upon you by teenage girls across the globe. seriously. that's weak. i mean, i know everyone thinks it's lovely that you're trying to make yourself accessible to the people you owe your success to, but they think you're doing it as a display of gratitude and down-to-earthness. i, on the other hand, am pretty sure you're doing it because you require inordinate amounts of attention and praise and are convinced that you can not survive without being patted on the head and told you're pretty at least thirty-seven times a day. but you can, zach. myspace is a tough thing to beat, anyone will tell you, but the strength is in you. break the fuck free.

i'll have your needy, narcissistic back the whole way.

your sponsor,
juniper

postscript: why are you not outraged over the way james roday has co-opted all your moves? because unless you and david duchovny have secretly had yourselves a genetically engineered love child, that dude is totally harshing your gig. you should be outraged. i'm outraged.

post-postscript: when people started saying, "this is the new shins song from the garden state soundtrack," did you grab them by the collar and scream, "NO! this is the three-year-old shins song from oh, inverted world! get it right! GET IT RIGHT!!!!!!" because i did.

post-post-postcript: i will forgive you for all of this if you'll say something beautiful about sufjan stevens in all of your future interviews.