[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:18] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live and where we

[00:27] Meg: podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:31] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:33] Meg: We had a party.

[00:34] Jessica: We did indeed have a really, really nice party.

[00:38] Meg: I don't know how it could have gone better.

[00:41] Jessica: I agree with you. And I was so happy. I met a few people who I had not met before, who were fans, who are die hard fans of the cast.

[00:50] Meg: Isn't that so nice? They just came and they introduced themselves.

[00:54] Jessica: It was just the most lovely, lovely thing. I couldn't have asked for more.

[01:00] Meg: And then to have some of our BFFs who have been interviewees on the podcast come as well, that was just special. Our extra special guest.

[01:10] Jessica: Absolutely. And this very special shout out to one of my Fleming friends who I haven't seen in, I would say, 15, 20 years.

[01:18] Meg: Wow.

[01:18] Jessica: That's Bart.

[01:19] Meg: Wonderful.

[01:20] Jessica: Yes. Bart, I know you're listening now, so thank you for coming. It was a joy. Yeah, it was great. And KGB Red room turned out to be a fabulous space.

[01:32] Meg: It was just perfect.

[01:34] Jessica: Absolutely everybody, no notes.

[01:37] Meg: No, no, no, no, no. I mean, it was. It was a wonderful space. The people who work there, Laurie and Adrian, amazing. They were so hospitable the whole thing.

[01:46] Jessica: And you know what? And we wound up having many, many, many more people than we expected. Or that, quite frankly, we think the room was supposed to hold. But that's okay. That's okay. And everyone was well behaved. There was no crazy. Even though there were very many young people, which was also yay. Everything that could have gone right went right and nothing went wrong.

[02:12] Meg: Yeah. And they'd love to have us back. So we should think about that at some point. Which would be really fun. The look in your eye, you're like, I can do one party a season, my friend. Don't push me.

[02:24] Jessica: And you know, as always, Meg, I give you so many props for your organizational skills. We both know I couldn't have done it without you. And you probably could have done it without me.

[02:35] Meg: Please. You know, it was also fun. We sold merch for the first time. Those T shirts flew off the merch table. Yes.

[02:45] Jessica: They were two 20 somethings who were very proudly wearing them. And I went over to talk one to one of them. She had no idea who I was. I was like, oh, I'm so glad you're wearing our shirt. She's like, our. And I'm like, I don't mean yours and mine. Like, come on. So, yeah, it was. That was terrific. I'm glad they. Did anyone buy the banana?

[03:05] Meg: No one bought the banana, but honestly, the banana was beginning to brown a little bit, so I kind of could tell. But all of the other random merch we had, people really did buy.

[03:16] Jessica: Really? Yes.

[03:17] Meg: We had just a couple things left.

[03:19] Jessica: That's so hilarious to me. I love it. I love it. So that's.

[03:24] Meg: I don't know, that weird idea.

[03:26] Jessica: I think, I think too weird. I. It was. It's like either you get the joke of total randomness or you're just gonna leave saying they put an iron on. On a banana. It's like, it's art. It's an art joke. Okay, move on.

[03:42] Meg: Yeah, but we should start selling the T shirts through the website, so I'll try and figure out how to do that.

[03:50] Jessica: Yes. Also, what was interesting was that people who, the people I was standing with, one of whom knows the podcast, they were looking at the iron on DS 80s, wondering what, what that was. And I was like, guys, work a little harder. And then they're like, oh, duh. So I kind of like. And you and I talked about this, that our DS 80s, it's just cryptic enough to be cool while still being branding. Hopefully more people will be a little more observant. Maybe they had had a few to drink. Maybe that was it.

[04:28] Meg: Well, it's an attractive shirt regardless of whether you get it.

[04:33] Jessica: Well, if you know it, you know,

[04:35] Meg: if you know it, you know, before we move on from the party and all of that wonderful stuff as we spoke about at the party, we are a listener supported podcast. What I said to everybody at the party and what I say to all of you who are listening is if you write us a review or share with a friend, you are truly supporting us and we will be truly, truly grateful. So please help us do that because we'd rather not get like stupid ass ads.

[05:07] Jessica: Indeed. Writing a review is for Apple podcasts.

[05:12] Meg: Yeah.

[05:12] Jessica: Following us is on Apple and Spotify.

[05:17] Meg: And you can give us a rating on Spotify too. You can't write a review. You can give us a rating, but

[05:22] Jessica: what we've found is that the algorithm changes once you have a certain number of downloads. So we're figuring out all the different ways that your support, even if it isn't a financial exchange, your support changes the way that we can think about our podcast and eventually monetize it.

[05:43] Meg: Can I just say something Because I just had a flashback to all the PBS announcements.

[05:49] Jessica: Are we going to start sending out tote bags?

[05:52] Meg: Well, we should, but yeah, think of us as like, we're kind of like PBS adjacent. We don't want to have ads, but we do need your support and. And your support makes a big difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[06:06] Jessica: And if you're really lucky, we'll do a phone a thon. And we're gonna get, you know, like, like, I don't know, doo wop groups from the.

[06:13] Meg: Oh, my God, Jessica, that could actually be frigging hysterical.

[06:18] Jessica: Yeah, we could get every acapella group in the metropolitan area and then we

[06:23] Meg: could do that on YouTube.

[06:24] Jessica: See, that would be absolutely sterile. I would see. I would be very pro doing that. It would be very.

[06:31] Meg: Have a bunch of people on a phone bank.

[06:32] Jessica: Yeah.

[06:33] Meg: Yes, yes. Okay. Many ideas. I want to talk about one other thing though, before we move on.

[06:41] Jessica: Yeah.

[06:42] Meg: I saw a show last night called David and Me. It's a one man show by Roz Pascal at Jack in Brooklyn. And it's about David Wojnarowicz, who was an artist, a visual artist and all kinds of artists. Performance artists, visual artist in the 80s. He died of AIDS. He was incredibly influential. He comes up in a lot of stories that while I'm researching them, I'm like, right, that guy, that guy. And trying to figure out how to pronounce his name. Struggle. But I saw a one man show about him last night, which is super frigging exciting. And this guy was wonderful. Ross was amazing. And the content is very moving and very of a time. Although Ross also includes some of his own personal stories. So it's interesting to see the contrast between a man who's living in 2026 and a man who's living in the 80s who are both performance artists talking about their lives and their experiences.

[07:52] Jessica: And look at that. We don't take on advertisers yet. We advertise other people's work. Stay in our good graces.

[08:13] Meg: I have a feeling you're going to have an interesting response to this engagement question.

[08:19] Jessica: Okay.

[08:21] Meg: Picture yourself walking down the New York streets. You're Jessica. What's your vibe? Are you looking around? Do you have your hands in your pockets? Are you listening to a podcast? Are you walking your dog?

[08:37] Jessica: I never have earphones in because safety first. And so I don't wanna have anyone able to sneak up behind me.

[08:45] Meg: Ooh, interesting you say that.

[08:47] Jessica: And I have two modes. I have walking Alfie, which means standing in a variety of spots while he thoroughly sniffs them and takes a hundred years to go up and down the sidewalk.

[09:01] Meg: He is a slow walker that dog years.

[09:04] Jessica: And so that is, you know, I'm like just, I'm looking around a lot. Other than that, I'm pretty much a classic New York fast walker with my hand firmly clutching my tote bag closed and looking straight ahead and very aware of what's happening on either side of me. But, but in that awareness, that peripheral vision really working for me, I, I enjoy the city. I'm always looking at, like, what architecture have I not noticed? What detail have I not seen? Should I stop and read that plaque? Is there something pasted to that signpost? What's new? What's different? But it's all while having that I am from here vibe.

[09:48] Meg: Alrighty. My sources are the New York Times, Snopes and Eyewitness News with Ernie and Astiss. On October 21, 1989, Susan Stein, a 28 year old arts administrator, was walking on Broadway around 95th street when a group of teenage girls approached her from behind and passed by her. As they passed, she felt something prick her in the back and the girls laughed and rushed off. At first she didn't think much of the incident, but Eyewitness News started reporting that Susan's experience was just one of many. Between October 21st and 27th along Broadway in Amsterdam and 95th and 110th Streets, there had been 26 such cases. The victims were almost all white women in their 20s and early 30s, a couple in their 50s. They were all alone, either looking in shop windows, waiting for a bus or on a subway platform. The perpetrators were a group of between two and eight girls in their late teens. They were black. Often the group would giggle or laugh at the victims. Once one girl cursed another time, one said, we're gonna cut your hair off. One victim said she was walking past, quote, a group of teenagers, all impeccably dressed. Before I knew it, one of the girls was coming at me with what I thought was her fist. I felt a stinging, burning sensation and ran away screaming. All the incidents occurred between 6 and

[11:43] Jessica: 8pm Wait, she ran away screaming or the girl ran, ran away screaming?

[11:47] Meg: She ran away screaming. She didn't wait around to hang out with this girl who had punched her with something that poked her. You look very concerned.

[11:58] Jessica: I am not happy.

[12:00] Meg: The police felt the crime was racially motivated and Upper west side white women became hyper vigilant about groups of black girls. Pamela Lewis, who worked in a clothing store on Broadway near 98th street, said quote, I've certainly been paranoid. Yesterday I kept the store's door closed. My boyfriend has been picking me up after work. I started wearing my leather jacket because it's so thick. The pricks could have been caused by a pin, a compass, a brooch. Nobody knew. Or the most terrifying option, a syringe. A syringe. What if the syringe carried aids? The CDC tried to calm the neighborhood by insisting it was close to impossible for a person to be infected with AIDS by being jabbed with an infected needle, assuring the public that the virus dies within seconds after contact with the air. Apparently a 0.3% get infected per exposure. Still, it's solid.

[13:14] Jessica: Yeah, that's not. That's not zero.

[13:16] Meg: Mayor Koch offered ten thousand dollar reward for information leading to arrests and convictions. But the news coverage didn't calm the fears of the neighborhood residents. Susan Stein, you remember, said, quote, I was not worried about this until the media started harassing me. Now I think about it all the time. It's taking on a life of its own. By the late 80s, most realized you couldn't contract HIV from casual contact. But that's when other urban myths began to sprout. The story of AIDS. Mary was. Have you ever heard of this?

[13:56] Jessica: I assume it's Typhoid Mary. Updated.

[13:59] Meg: You got it. A guy gets set up with a sex worker on his 21st birthday. They have sex and the next morning he wakes up to a message written in lipstick on his bathroom mirror. Welcome to the world of aids. So that's that urban myth. In the AIDS Harry version, a woman has sex with a stranger in another country who gives her a gift to open on her flight home. She unwraps a miniature coffin or mug which has the message, welcome to the world of aids. Kind of interesting that both these urban myths existed based on nothing, except they were different for men and for women, right?

[14:46] Jessica: Yeah, because it's easy to say you got it from a hooker. So for if you're a man. So for women, what's the equivalent?

[14:55] Meg: A foreigner.

[14:56] Jessica: A foreigner? A foreign stranger who's seductive.

[15:01] Meg: The.

[15:01] Jessica: The tall, dark stranger.

[15:04] Meg: In both stories, this is what they had in common. The perpetrators had contracted AIDS from heterosexual sex and are now out to punish people of the opposite sex. So it was an act of vengeance.

[15:16] Jessica: Well, there were people who were convicted for intentionally infecting people with aids.

[15:23] Meg: Yes, there were. Not a lot, but there were.

[15:26] Jessica: No, I'm just saying. So it wasn't pure fantasy? Like there were some really, really horrendous people who were who did that?

[15:36] Meg: In the thick of AIDS hysteria, many, spurred by the media, feared that somehow the spread of aids was the motive for the Upper west side needle attacks. In 1990, 33 year old Jerome Wright was arrested after terrorizing well dressed women in Midtown Manhattan for three weeks. Over 50 white and Hispanic women were hit in the legs and buttocks with darts fired from a homemade blowgun.

[16:08] Jessica: Oh, for God's sakes.

[16:09] Meg: The dart man. Do you remember the dart man?

[16:12] Jessica: The minute you said it, Dart man.

[16:14] Meg: Yes. The dart man, as he came to be known, targeted women in skirts. So that summer of 1990, businesswomen traded their matching blazers and skirts for tap pants, leggings and capri pants. Jerome Wright was a bike messenger who clearly suffered from mental illness. His excuse for the attacks, quote, people from the islands shoot women who wear provocative clothing with darts to punish them. They also throw them sometimes into volcanoes.

[16:45] Jessica: Oh. Oh, he's normal.

[16:48] Meg: Okay.

[16:49] Jessica: Was he. You know, it just reminded me of. Do you. I think we've spoken about this person before, but do you remember how on Park Avenue in like the lower 50s, there was a guy, a ragged looking guy with wild white hair and white beard with a sign that said repent? He was like the crazy Christ Christian. I don't know, but he. He was screaming on. On the Park Avenue divide. Do you remember this person?

[17:21] Meg: No.

[17:21] Jessica: No. Oh, yes. Well, he and dartman must have been good friends.

[17:25] Meg: I do remember and we may have talked about this, but I can't remember standing online for a movie on Broadway. There was usually a man who looked like he was probably houseless, walking up and down the line. He had like a feather duster and he would bless you with the feather duster and he would say, you do not get aids. You do not get aids. You do not get aids.

[17:51] Jessica: Oh, well, that's really the other end of the spectrum, isn't it?

[17:54] Meg: It was actually kind of nice.

[17:55] Jessica: Yeah. How reassuring.

[17:57] Meg: Yeah. He was like a fairy godfather.

[17:59] Jessica: The feather godfather.

[18:01] Meg: Yeah. Yes.

[18:02] Jessica: Sweet, right?

[18:04] Meg: The dart man's motive was familiar, if bizarre and unsettling. Crazy guy with violent sexual misogynist urges. But what was especially upsetting about the Upper west side needle attacks was the inexplicable motive. On November 3, 1989, after three weeks of needle hysteria on the Upper west side and 39 victims.

[18:31] Jessica: Jesus.

[18:32] Meg: Ten girls were arrested.

[18:35] Jessica: Phew.

[18:35] Meg: They were all between the ages of 13 and 15. Their weapons were not syringes, as it turned out, but ordinary pins from buttons. Oh, and the reason they had targeted white women, they assumed they Wouldn't fight back. It was just a prank. They wanted to see how the women would react. Quote, they said they thought it was fun to run down Broadway and stick white women with pens to see their reaction, said Deputy Chief Ronald Fenrich. They all went to Wadley intermediate school on 114th Street. The cops were tipped off by another girl who went to the school. I mean, how you gonna keep that under wraps?

[19:20] Jessica: I'm surprised that it took that long.

[19:22] Meg: Seriously.

[19:22] Jessica: Three seconds in the girls room.

[19:24] Meg: Right. When the girls were brought into the 28th Street Precinct to be questioned with their parents present, by the way, a group of boys who said they were the girls, boyfriends and brothers, gathered on the street right outside and spoke to the press. They insisted the prank was common in their school hallways. Quote, pretend you're going to shake someone's hand and slap their hand, and you have a pin cuffed in your palm. It's the same kind of thing they did. That's what the boys said.

[19:54] Jessica: Well, that sounds very normal and nice.

[19:57] Meg: Okay. The neighbors of the Upper west side were not in on the joke. The randomness of the attacks and the fear of AIDS had caused fear and paranoia even amongst those calloused by crime. There are people who were interviewed who was like, I got mugged last week, and I'm over it. This I am not over.

[20:18] Jessica: I have a lot of thoughts about why.

[20:21] Meg: Once the perpetrators had been identified, the neighborhood relaxed and speculated. Quote, I suppose I represent opportunities they hadn't been given. I assume their motivation comes out of anger, said Joan Ellis, one of the victims. She said that right after she was attacked, she felt, quote, all the things anyone would feel. But now I think it is best to proceed in a way that is wise, compassionate and fair.

[20:51] Jessica: And what did happen to them? Were they sentenced to anything?

[20:54] Meg: Community service? They were all underage. So whatever happened was not.

[20:59] Jessica: It was juvenile.

[21:00] Meg: Public, Right? Yeah.

[21:01] Jessica: Interesting. Interesting. The thing that sticks with me, and we've talked about this, this, but not in this kind of context on the podcast before, is that I think that for women, there's also a visceral reaction to a mean girl attack.

[21:21] Meg: Oh, that's interesting.

[21:22] Jessica: It feels the way you described. Feels like you're alone in the hall in high school and you hear people laughing at you, and then you get sucker punched. And there's something so adolescent. I mean, it is. It's such adolescent behavior, but it's a pack. And there's. I mean, I mean this sincerely. There are many things as scary as a pack of teenage girls, but a Pack of teenage girls is not something to sneeze at. And they, they, they could be violent, like they could really throw down. So there's something about the story where it's kind of like, oh, they're, oh, they're just like 13 to 15. They're a little, they're still in middle school. And it's like, yeah, but they are a certain kind of feral at that age where you're just like, ugh. So when I hear the story, that's what I think of is like, oh my God, like the, the, the horror of middle school bullying. That's really what it is. It's bullying more than anything else.

[22:27] Meg: I thought it was interesting that that first woman, Susan Stein, her first reaction was like, oh my God, that was fucking weird. But she didn't freak out about it until she saw the news. And then the news started saying like, your worst case scenario, you just got infected with aids. Also, it was racially motivated, you know, all this kind of stuff, when in fact I don't think it was. And obviously it wasn't. They weren't spreading aids. I take them at their word that white women are just kind of sitting ducks and they're not going to fight back. Rather than I'm targeting a white woman because I don't like white women. That I did not read in any of the evidence, actual evidence.

[23:13] Jessica: Having not read any of the evidence, I can't comment on that. But I do think that it's a stretch to say that there's not an undertone.

[23:23] Meg: There's one other thing I should say that the early reports were like, and they're all women in their 20s and 30s, when in fact that wasn't true either. There were women who were as old as 50. So they also kind of needed it to have that. When you say only women in their 20s and 30s, don't you sort of think that might be sexual? You know what I mean? So there was always this sort of assigning a motive that's salacious in some way when it's actually just mean girl shit.

[23:56] Jessica: I mean, the news has to cover it. But how does the news cover mean girls? Like, that's.

[24:02] Meg: Well, I don't think they realized what it was. So their, their imaginations went wild.

[24:07] Jessica: Look at the time. I wouldn't have needed the news. I think that there is so much information about needles and, you know, and, and hospital workers, like, being really careful around AIDS patients and, and that's exactly where my brain would have gone. I wouldn't have needed the news. To take me there. I find it hard to believe that there is nothing more than it's a prank behind it, because so what if they're teenagers? They're still, you know, people with brains. They know the environment in which they live, they know the era in which they're living. So there's more there, which we'll never know, in my opinion. Mean girls.

[24:58] Meg: So just to close it out, because I'm not sure if I said it clearly enough or implied it clearly enough in the story. I guess what my takeaway was is that you have all these adults who are assuming certain motives for this action that's happening, right. And they're ascribing a motive that is racial or they're saying that, you know, possibly somebody's trying to kill them, it's murderous. You know, if it's, if the, if it's a syringe with hiv, like all of this really horrific stuff. And of course we've got local news. God bless local news. But please. Right how to make a story really juicy. But really what it all came down to when you really, like, just look at the facts on the page, is that there wasn't anything sexual about it. There's no evidence that it was racially motivated. These were just, like you said, girls doing a mean girl prank. But in the real world, which is actually freaking terrifying because the real world is friggin terrifying. Like, keep it in the hallways, girls. But the fact that all these grownups were ascribing a motive and some of that I do kind of feel was like just the hysteria of the time because of, you know, racial relations in the city and also the fear of aids. The adults would go to those extremes when really it was a bunch of girls doing something stupid.

[26:35] Jessica: Yes.

[26:36] Meg: And scary ass. I, I'm not taking away from it being terrorism of a kind.

[26:41] Jessica: It was mayhem. They were agents of chaos. Yeah, yeah, I hear you, I hear you. And you know, just to support your point, as I said earlier, there's. There is no way to know what they were thinking. And there was nothing clear. And you know, number one, that's kids. And number two, you're right, the frenzy was all about the grownups. I agree.

[27:08] Meg: They weren't the dart man.

[27:10] Jessica: Only the dart man was the dart man.

[27:12] Meg: Anyway, I, I pass, I pass the torch to you. It is now Jessica time.

[27:16] Jessica: Okay, so you are an actress. Act. Are you an actor or an actress?

[27:23] Meg: I usually say actor.

[27:25] Jessica: You are an actor. Do you have a favorite musical theater performer of, I don't know, like Someone who just is like you're. You just love.

[27:34] Meg: I love Bernadette Peters. How's that?

[27:36] Jessica: Fabulous. Someone who I love, but who I didn't know about until 1991 was Michael Jeter. Do you remember Michael Jeter?

[27:47] Meg: You're going to have to remind me.

[27:48] Jessica: You're going to. We're going to take a little journey back into film. Do you remember Terry Gilliam's movie the Fisher King with Robin Williams?

[27:57] Meg: Yes.

[27:58] Jessica: In that movie, Lydia, what's the year of that movie? 1991.

[28:02] Meg: Okay.

[28:03] Jessica: In that film, Amanda Plummer plays the mousy and, I don't know, very quiet Lydia, who is the subject or the focal point of Robin Williams love. And Jeff Bridges and Mercedes Ruhl decide that they are going to lure Lydia to Mercedes Ruhl's video shop by sending her a singing telegram. Fun. And gives her a coupon to go there where she will then meet the Robin Williams character. When this movie came out, this was one of the most memorable moments from the movie because of the brilliant Michael Jeter, who's very slight. He's no longer with us. He died of aids. He comes sailing down the aisle of this corporate workplace in red feather boas and a whole 1920s get up with rouged knees and rouged underarms to sing Rose's Turn, but with new lyrics that are to lure Lydia to the video shop. And it is one of the biggest showstopper fabulous moments. And if you haven't seen it, you

[29:18] Meg: will fall in love with Hum Roses Turn for Us.

[29:20] Jessica: So that I had a dream. A dream. That was something. Lydia got it.

[29:27] Meg: Okay, fine.

[29:28] Jessica: Anyway, so I was thinking about that relatively recently, for reasons that are not worth much, it made me think about singing telegrams. And then I started thinking about like, well, what's really 80s about singing telegrams? And then I remembered the strip o gram. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about strippograms. Crazy. Indeed. For those of you who are not in the know, singing telegrams were a really big thing. You'll see them in movies about the 30s, 20s, 30s, 40s, actually. Not the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, and so on. And it's a gimmicky way to send someone a message. And it would either go to their home or. Or to an office party, but you'd have some usually cute girl singing and tap dancing. And then it's like, by the way, you're served with your divorce papers. Bye bye. SHE TAPS off.

[30:25] Meg: They do it in Elf.

[30:27] Jessica: They do. You're absolutely right. But of course, the 80s being the 80s, it was time to take it one step past singing. And so I did a little bit of research about why did the Strip o gram begin? And it began in the very late 70s, but a few things. The cultural shift in the mainstream that allowed for us to go from singing telegrams to strip o grams was the rise of Chippendales and the overt commercialization and mainstream acceptance of the idea of taking off your clothes because men were doing it. It was no longer a shameful act on the part of women. And it was a way to get women who wanted the Chippendales experience to have it in their own space, home or otherwise. So that was a huge business opportunity for people who were purveyors of that kind of thing. So it was equal opportunity objectification of men and women. Singing telegrams had come back as a fad at the same time. And there was a lot of money. Let's not forget, 80s was money.

[31:40] Meg: Okay, so how can you get rid

[31:41] Jessica: of as much money as you possibly can in the 80s?

[31:45] Meg: Who's getting a strip of money?

[31:46] Jessica: I'm going to tell you all about that in just a moment because you're going to hear it from the people who like that kind of thing themselves. It was done for shock value and humor. And it was an industry that started proliferating in the 80s because you could open up a singing telegram, Stripigram, whatever, a gram business overnight. No overhead. All you need is the talent. So as it became beepers or something. Exactly. So here's some words from a stripper of Strippagram. Her name is Nora Burns. When I was a Strip o gram girl in 1981, the company had just started. People would order the S N G strip a gram.

[32:33] Meg: Oh, got it.

[32:34] Jessica: And they would tell you the address. Mostly offices, restaurants and birthday parties and a little about the person. And they counted on us to think up a cute poem to write on the gram we pulled out of our G string at the end of the strip.

[32:48] Meg: Wait, hold on. She had to write her own.

[32:49] Jessica: She had to write her own Material Girl. And that was the case for all of these. That's a lot. That's a lot. I agree. This woman was doing up to seven a day. So think about this again.

[33:03] Meg: She's gotta be clever and cute.

[33:05] Jessica: Seven a day. Like, what are you, Dorothy Parker without your underpants? Oh, that seems actually redundant. What are you, Dorothy Parker? So they were doing it at offices, restaurants and bars, birthday parties. So again, like, you know, we talk about 80s culture, but one of the things that went with all of this money was really anything goes. Like there wasn't a lot of respect for the office space.

[33:34] Meg: Right. I hear what you're saying, because you didn't say like bachelorette party. You said the office party.

[33:40] Jessica: Yes. You know, the office Christmas party and office birthday party. And don't forget who was in the office and who had control. It was all men. So you had secretaries, as they were described at the time, who were also ordering them.

[33:55] Meg: Oh, God.

[33:56] Jessica: Because your boss, Mr. You know, Gordon Gekko wannabe, would order a strip o gram for the birthday for the guy down the hall in his glass encased office.

[34:09] Meg: And you will most definitely probably be in the office when it shows up.

[34:13] Jessica: Yes. You know, part of the frat boy feeling of, of those finance companies where if you were making all of the money, you could do anything you wanted to. So that's part of it. Anyway, Nora was saying that she was doing up to seven a day, earning gobs of money and had so many grams lying around the apartment that she used them for note paper. That year a friend of hers who she lived with wrote, After a year in Boston in which I indulged in several lurid and messy homosexual affairs, attended an art school filled with riotously ridiculous punk posers, and took lots of drugs, I moved to New York where I was, among other things. And this is just to tell you, like, what's the life of the Strip of grammar? I was, among other things, a hustler, a waiter in a disco where the dress code was silver lame shorts, an instructor in a gay gym, and an East Village slut. And now I'm going back to my parents house. And he described that time in New York as living with his best friend, the strip o gram girl in the West Village. So, you know, we talk about the side hustle these days. Well, welcome to the original side Hustle.

[35:28] Meg: Right.

[35:29] Jessica: I'm just going to tell you a few things about telegrams because all of this was really about what was the fastest way that you could communicate with someone back in the day? Ooh, this is a telephone.

[35:38] Meg: I got a telegram once.

[35:40] Jessica: Did you? What was it?

[35:41] Meg: I was in a show in Utah at a regional theater and my grandparents sent me a telegram.

[35:49] Jessica: That's amazing.

[35:50] Meg: And I still have it.

[35:51] Jessica: What did it look like? Do you remember what a telegram looked like?

[35:54] Meg: I think it was yellow and it had lines on it. And it was typewritten.

[36:00] Jessica: It was typewritten by the Western Union people who received it. And did you get it? Was it in black ink? Or blue ink, because it was like carbon.

[36:10] Meg: I think it was black. I. And I'm pretty sure I still have it, so I'll go home and look for it.

[36:15] Jessica: Please do. That's awesome.

[36:17] Meg: Yeah, it should definitely be in one of my photo albums.

[36:19] Jessica: George Oslon did something innovative. He was a Western Union executive and he sent the very first singing telegram in which a Western Union operator sang. Sang. He sang to the star, vocalist Rudy Valli, on his birthday. So on Rudy valli's birthday on July 28, 1933, George Aslan sent the first singing telegram to this star.

[36:48] Meg: So I'm not sure what that means. So the person who is delivering it, it just says, you better sing this.

[36:54] Jessica: The person who was delivering it sang to the recipient who happened to be the vocalist.

[37:01] Meg: But why did he sing?

[37:02] Jessica: Because that was what he was told to do. Right?

[37:05] Meg: That's what I'm saying. Ordinarily, he would just deliver it. Ordinarily they were like, no, you better sing it.

[37:10] Jessica: Western Union delivery boys had a little cap, they had little short pants, they would ride a bicycle and they were running around to deliver from whatever the Western Union hub location was that's closest to you a typed out message. So taking that into the next version of it to maybe make some more money, tack a little on extra if you. If you're going to have the delivery person sing. That was what happened in 1933 for Rudy Valley. In 1981, there was an article in the New York Times about the proliferation of the singing and other telegrams. And it was being spearheaded at the time by a guy named Ed Eng, who was the president of National Singing Telegrams limited And he. I thought, okay, well, this is the guy who, you know, really took it and ran with it. In the 80s, nay, nay, there were many that were all cropping up at the same time with names like Western Onion and National Union. They were all trying to get in on that very quickly. Western Onion was sued by Western Union, so that didn't last long.

[38:28] Meg: Yeah, because O comes before you. So if you're going in the Yellow Pages, you might stop at onion and

[38:35] Jessica: not realize, aren't you a smart lady? Look at you go. Western Union did have official singing telegrams after that first one in 1930, but they discontinued them in 1974. Western Union, however, decided to get back into the business in 1980. At the same time, they were starting to have even more bananas. Keep that word ideas for delivering a message, particularly the gorilla grammar. Do you remember the gorilla gram? Did you ever see that?

[39:10] Meg: I Could just have a false memory that it sounds familiar. I mean, is it someone in a gorilla outfit?

[39:16] Jessica: It was delivered by a singer in a gorilla costume. There was also the bellygram, which was sung by a singer in a grass skirt.

[39:25] Meg: All right.

[39:26] Jessica: Or in belly dancer outfits. So you can see that this concept was really grabbing people's imaginations. Mr. Ang says this was all a household word almost immediately. But you have to bear in mind that these people were artists who were at the helm initially. They didn't have the slightest idea how to run a business. Eventually they did. Western Onion continued on and it had a lot of high profile recipients of their singing telegrams and strip o grams, et cetera, including Herbie Hancock, Edmund G. Brown, the Governor and Cary Grant, the actor. So that's fun. They were doing well. So that was from the New York Times in 1981. In 1983, the New York Times talks about the singing telegram at 50. So where were we with it at the time? Going Back to the 1933 event with Rudy Valli. Mr. Valli debates whether or not it was a real thing. He says it was just a phony stunt by the publicity people and it wasn't a real message that he was getting. So he starts this article by. Or the people who knew him by bursting the. The strip a balloon or balloonogram. Actually, they had balloonograms at 50. Not much going on except that there's a little listing of more agrams that were happening, such as the Cookie Gram, the balloonogram, and yes, the Strip o gram. Interestingly, a Las Vegas operation claimed sales of more than $8 million a year from novelty telegrams of all kinds, or roughly 180,000 messages a year. That's a lot. Yeah. And it sold 42 franchises all over the country at the rate of $15,000 to $25,000 per franchise. So it was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. In 1987, finally, there's a report that telegrams are no longer happening. And so telegrams, the whole idea of the telegram was starting to slip away from the public consciousness. Why fax machines? Video may have killed the radio star.

[41:43] Meg: Wow.

[41:44] Jessica: But fax machines killed the telegram. And the cultural relevance of the stripigram, the cookiegram, the balloonogram, the Gorillagram.

[41:55] Meg: Have you ever received a fax that amused you or made you feel special in any way?

[42:03] Jessica: Yes, when it was a publisher saying, we'll buy the book. Okay.

[42:09] Meg: They sent that by fax?

[42:11] Jessica: Well, yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it wasn't an email either. At the time. Right. Anyway, so they were on the.

[42:19] Meg: Wayne, I have a question about the strippigram.

[42:22] Jessica: We're gonna.

[42:22] Meg: Yes.

[42:23] Jessica: And I. Maybe it's gonna get answered by the next people who we're gonna hear from.

[42:26] Meg: Okay, go ahead, but.

[42:27] Jessica: No, no, no, ask the question.

[42:29] Meg: Let's see, I just wanna know how much skin was exposed, like, how far he went.

[42:32] Jessica: Down to a G string.

[42:33] Meg: So.

[42:34] Jessica: Boobs. Boobs.

[42:35] Meg: What the fuck?

[42:36] Jessica: Yeah, yeah. Although I'm sure that some of them went down to like, you know, pasties and whatever. But yeah, it was a stripper. You know, strippers were strippers. That's what that was. I was surprised to find out that telegram stopped being delivered by the Telegram boys in 1968. But my favorite thing is that in the 70s, after Watergate and people's dissatisfaction with politics on the rise, while it might cost you $10.75 to tell your mother what you think of her in 10 words in a telegram, for only $5.95 you could send your senator or congressman an opinionogram about their performance. Some Western Union employees were mourning the loss of all of this and remembered the days when the telegram was an art form. Not the person who had to write it for you, but the person who intended it for you. Like your grandparents. Never again, they say, well, a playwright send a telegram to an actor in mid performance with the message, watching your performance from the back row now. Wish you were here. So, okay, who did this? I've got two anecdotes. Very quickly I tried to find, like, who was going to talk about this. You know where I found it? In the Harvard Crimson.

[44:01] Meg: Okay.

[44:02] Jessica: Writer not attributed weaklings on March 13, 1987. It's not every day that someone wearing a trench coat and heels comes to Harvard to dance. Nor is it every day that in the course of such a dance, the per. And this is answering your question, the person strews off most of his or her clothes to reveal a G string or lacy black underpants. But lately, students have begun to take advantage of this slightly off color gift, the strip o gram. Embarrassing, but funny, said John P. Syracuse, 19th class of 87, of the strippigram his roommate sent him for his 22nd birthday. Syracuse, who was attending a formal dinner in the Winthrop House Junior Common Room when the stripper entered, said he was very surprised when the unfamiliar woman walked up to his table. And most of the men, only men interviewed about this, seem pretty jovial about the whole thing. Except for one Quincy House resident who said that he found a mail stripper who was hired as a wedding present for a dining hall employee to be revolting. He stripped down to a black G string and picked her up. It was disgusting. He asked to remain anonymous. He added that while he had contributed $2 to the cause, he felt the stripper was still too personal and offensive. I don't think he is a really a lot to stand on here. As long as the stripper is not forced to do the act. I don't think it's degrading at all. The act was really funny. It came of his own will. Everyone had fun, said another participant. Now let's talk about mail strippers for another second from another unlikely source. In 1982, some of the members of the Worcester group, including our dear friend Willem Dafoe, weren't making a lot of money. They were a bit hard up. Director Elizabeth Lecompte, she was very depressed. They all wanted to cheer her up. They said, let's take an old Hawaiian record from the 50s, really corny. And we got some grass skirts and some leis and someone painted a backdrop. And we invented these dances. We just made them up. We just do the dances to the music. The gag was to make it stick under our grass skirts. We weren't wearing anything. So it was two men and a woman who was also not wearing anything and bare breasted. So we did this show. This is Willem Dafoe talking. It was very popular. It was a little chamber piece but very popular. So popular in fact that Dafoe received a request for a custom private performance. They offered us like, I can't remember, like a thousand bucks a piece. And at that time we were all really poor. So that was like, yeah, wow, we can do that. So we went to this party, we got dressed in the toilet and then we came out without the set or anything, only with music and with our non costumes and we did the dance and at the end people started coming up and saying, let's go, come with me, come home with me. What? They thought we were like a strip of Gram. So anyway, I thought it was very entertaining. And all from the magnificent Michael Jeter. Check him out.

[47:10] Meg: Oh yeah.

[47:11] Jessica: And you can even find the clip from the Fisher King. Just find it on YouTube. It's maybe a two minute clip. Comedic genius.

[47:19] Meg: Amazing. We should really record the time that we're trying to figure out what the tie in is because sometimes we recreate it.

[47:35] Jessica: What we did just now.

[47:36] Meg: Recreate. Is it going to feel a little still today? Okay, well, all right. What's our tie in?

[47:40] Jessica: What's our. Okay, 1, 2, 3. Say it.

[47:43] Meg: What's our tie in? Needle attack.

[47:48] Jessica: I don't. Oh, unexpected attacks. Sure. Okay, that.

[47:55] Meg: You said surprise attacks.

[47:57] Jessica: Sorry. Surprise attacks. You're right.

[47:58] Meg: That's a little pithier.

[47:59] Jessica: Surprise attacks. Well, they were definitely. They were surprise attacks. Surprise attacks. And sometimes I think the Strip O grams or whatever and the gorilla grams were welcome. I don't think the needle attacks were ever really a plus.

[48:14] Meg: Do you think there's anything that's like that now? There's some. I mean, again, I keep sort of getting hung up by the whole facts versus telegram versus strip o gram kind of thing. It just feels. Faxes are just so impersonal. Although I did one thing. I did used to do my grandmother. A different grandmother, my other grandmother, she was losing her hearing, so you just could not talk to her on the phone at all. So I would just write her letters and send it through a fax.

[48:43] Jessica: Well, that's very nice. I mean, the fax machine, it wasn't saying that it was replacing the singing telegram, it was replacing telegrams, full stop, period. So the idea of a telegram being in the public consciousness as a. As a viable form of communication, if you're not. If that's not happening anymore, there's no surprise of the strip O gram because you're not ever going to get a telegram.

[49:09] Meg: Right. Gotcha.

[49:10] Jessica: That's the thing. So, like, if you're.

[49:12] Meg: You're just a stranger knocking on my door.

[49:14] Jessica: Yeah. If you're like, hi, are you so? And so the first thing I'd be like, is, are you a process server? Oh, my God. And then it's like, are you here to kill me? Oh, you're here to sing.

[49:24] Meg: Do you have a needle? Right.

[49:26] Jessica: Examine. Okay.

[49:27] Meg: But you're right. Like even flower delivery, no one, like, knocks on the door and gives you the flowers. Really.

[49:33] Jessica: Right, right.

[49:35] Meg: Do they in the suburbs? I don't know how that works. I wouldn't open the door to a stranger.

[49:40] Jessica: Never. I'd say, please leave it out there. Yeah, I'm not signing for anything.

[49:44] Meg: Right.

[49:44] Jessica: In fact, you just. This just reminds me of a story I told someone recently. This is totally true. At Kenyon my senior year, there was a guy in our class who provided, I would say, 80% of the weed on campus. His name was Mike, you know, total hippie, like, right out of central casting. Just what you'd think he'd be. And he lived on the first floor of one of, like the. The oldest building at Kenyon. So it was built with like, huge windows. And you could step out your first floor window to the ground, jump a

[50:14] Meg: little to the ground. Okay?

[50:16] Jessica: So his roommate was in the room. Knock, knock, knock. We have a delivery for Mike. And he says, oh, no problem. I'll sign for it. They say, oh, no, no. We need Mike to sign for it. Now, his roommate immediately knows something is fishy here. They say, we'll come back. Mike comes to his room, comes in through the window, fortuitously, so whoever's waiting for him in the corridor doesn't see him. And his roommate goes, dude, the feds are here. Get out. He hops out of the window, gets on a bike and pedals off campus. Is not seen again until right before graduation, senior week. And everyone's like, mike, what happened? I can't tell you. Can't tell you. Can't tell you. Graduation. He walks across the stage. Everyone is screaming and shouting for their dealer. So happy that he's back, he seems okay. He comes off stage, is greeted by two FBI agents, and he's like, bye, bye. He knew, like, that was the deal, that he got to graduate, and that was it. Okay, so that's what happens when you open the door and sign for something. Ergo, I bet that Mike would have really liked a gorilla grand Sam.