Employees Of The Month

JULIA ALVIDREZ

About a year and a half ago, young Julia left the sweltering crotch that is Southern California to intern for

Vice

. She quickly landed a gig as our office manager. After nine months of dutifully mitigating people’s complaints about air conditioning and toilets clogged with by-products of the nearby taco truck, we thought her meticulous attention to detail and ability to get shit done would translate perfectly into making sure this publication gets printed every 30 days or so. We were right. Even though this wee satchel of rainbows-and-resourcefulness potpourri knew absolutely nothing about magazine production, within six months she’s made it seem like we were outsourcing the job to quadriplegic monkeys in India for the past 15 years. Julia also recently renounced veganism and now loves cheeseburgers so much we think she should marry one.

HILARY OLSON
We faced some serious obstacles when we decided to do a fashion shoot featuring custom-made merkins (aka pubic wigs) for this month’s issue. Have you ever asked a wigmaker to craft a vagina toupee for you? They give you weird looks. Luckily we found costume designer extraordinaire Hilary Olson. An alumnus of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hilary’s made costumes for everyone from the Stones to Velvet Revolver to Tim and Eric to Ashton Kutcher. Plus she’s a kook, so we knew we could entrust her to make a bunch of fake wacky pubes. And they came out spectacular—they are little, fuzzy, triangular works of art. Associate editor Rocco is even going to frame them and put them in his apartment and then have some explaining to do when his parents come over. See MERKIN’ AROUND.

ROBERT LANHAM

Robert is a Brooklyn-based writer who is responsible for

The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right, The Hipster Handbook

, and a bunch of other satirical books that are good poop-facilitating material. His writing has also appeared in the

New York Times, Playboy,

the

Washington Post

, and many other fine publications. When we asked him to tell us about his private life, he told us that his parents speak in tongues, his first babysitter was Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, he “worships” 70s Cronenberg films, and Neal Pollack calls him the “Margaret Mead of the North American weirdo.” In this issue he went surfcasting for bass in New Jersey with Dean Ween who, unbeknownst to us, will lead just about any schmo on a fishing tour for a few hundred bucks.

See

CHOCOLATE AND CHEESE AND STRIPED BASS

.

TACO BELL BLACK JACK TACO
I know this looks like some cutesy advertorial business to you, but trust me, it is not. I wolfed down a pair of these bad boys last week, thus initiating the longest night of near-continuous shitting I have ever lived to tell my coworkers about. Ugh. Just looking at that picture right now made my stomach go gliggligggurch. It’s a real shame, too, because I’m usually a major fan of both Taco Bell and limited-edition novelty foods. Hell, the whole reason I was there was to try out the new Mountain Dew flavor, Baja Blast (pretty great, by the way). I think the problem is that they’re trying to branch out into more “upscale” fare like Chipotle or something instead of just sticking to the usual slop. Anyways, all said, in between bouts of anal pyrotechnics I did manage to get a good amount of work on this issue done. So thanks for that, Black Jack. See our online editor’s toilet if you’re on a Faces of Death sort of trip.