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Blue Jean Queen
Crystal
Edwards Crystal
Edwards now has two schools to call her alma mater.
The 19-year-old model graduated from Andrew Jackson High School not
long ago, but she is an even more recent graduate of Barbizon, the famous
finishing school for models.
In
the few short months since graduation, Edwards has been keeping herself
busy. Her
raven locks have been featured in five hair books, and – most remarkably
– she was called on to introduce a segment on the popular MTV program
“Direct Effects.”
Though
her visage was beamed onto millions of TV screens, her MTV appearance was
not without controversy.
“It
was supposed to be a contest where a hip-hop group would win a contract with
Def Jam Records,” Edwards recalled – only a fight broke out during the
contest and that portion of the show had to be cancelled. For
now, however, Edwards works at a haute denim boutique in The Bay Terrace
Shopping Center called Beginnings Bleus. The store is a perfect fit for her
personal aesthetic: “Personally, I’m like a jeans and t-shirt person,”
Edwards said. Her
leggy looks put into motion the designer jeans sold at the store, and she
patrols the aisles dispensing advice to customers. Her most common
recommendation to patrons is wear jeans that are “more form fitting and
lower in the waist to show off their form.” Jennings
Joy?
A
third Asian woman has added to the bizarre story of embattled Councilman Allan
Jennings. This
paper along with some 30 other news outlets received a press release last
week from Jennings' office about an event scheduled to happen on Oct. 23,
2002 – six months earlier. Oooops!
The
release didn’t come from Jennings’ press secretary Charmaine Gibson
but from Rachel Yoon, who Gibson said is Jennings’ executive
assistant and that the release was a mistake. Rachel
Yoon, hmmm! The
Caribbean American Councilman who placed "love ads" in Asian
papers that chronicled his failed marriage and budding romance with two
different Chinese women seems to have a third Asian woman aboard. Allan,
for advertising info, call (718) 357-7400. Official
Taxi Voice From Queens
It
began with a Queens secretary and ended with Elmo. Such
has been the strange, quirky and often irritating saga of the recorded
greetings heard in New York City taxicabs. Anyone
who has had the privilege of riding in one of the City’s armada of yellow
taxis has by now been reminded — probably dozens of times — by such
traffic safety luminaries as Elmo and the Rockettes to fasten your seatbelt
and request a receipt from your driver. These
recorded celebrity reminders have grated on the nerves of natives and
tourists alike for years. After
all these years, the Taxi and Limousine Commission has concluded that, lo
and behold, the celebrity recordings are a nuisance and actually promote
poor passenger conduct, alienating customers from drivers and bugging
everyone. Officials
plan to begin phasing out the greeting entirely. But
few recall that the concept of the recorded taxi message was launched with
the voice of a woman from Queens.
Victoria Drakoulis worked as a secretary for Pulsar
Technologies, the manufacturer of the message-playing devices.
In
1996, for reasons unknown, Drakoulis’s boss asked her to be the voice for
the original greeting — making this secretary from Queens a sort of
unofficial ambassador of the City and a minor celebrity.
The
original message featured Drakoulis speaking these words in her heavy Queens
brogue: “Please remember to take all of your belongings when leaving this
taxi and please get a receipt from the driver.” A
Citywide debate ensued, with some New Yorkers criticizing Drakoulis’s
performance as “too outer borough.” Her recording only ran for a few
months, when it was replaced by a professional voice-over artist, but in
that time Drakoulis acquired enough celebrity to appear on the "Rosie
O’Donnell Show," make a cameo in the film "Men In Black"
and have her voice sampled in a dance remix. Get
Your Husbands Scrubbing
“Keep
It Clean” That’s
what a frustrated working mom from Long Island has said countless times to
her husband about cleaning up the mess around the house. What’s a woman to do?
Well,
in an effort to bring tidy tidings to the frustrated domestic goddesses of
Queens and the rest of
the world, Charlotte Coti of Sea Cliff, Long Island has created
“Keep It Clean” a CD ROM that aims to get husbands hopping around the
house and eager to do some housework. Here’s
the catch – one that is sure to garner a rise from the laziest of husbands
— the CD ROM features live video demonstrations by two scantily clad
cleaning experts who will “give you the basics and plenty of practical how
to’s.” “From
cleaning the stove to cleaning the toilet, from making the bed to making the
furniture shine, these girls will motivate you,” reads the literature on
the back of the CD ROM. The CD Rom is also available as part of a kit that includes an electrostatic duster and man-sized rubber gloves. The
Punk Rock Ataris & Astoria
The "Ataris," a long-time punk band with an army of fans and a ton of respect, recently released a new album with a bit of Queens flair – the name of the disc is “So Long, Astoria.”
That’s
right, a Queens reference made it into the title track of the album. Or did
it? Actually,
the album title has nothing to do with our modest little borough. It refers
to Astoria, Oregon, where The Ataris have played routinely over the years,
according to representatives for the band. In
addition, some of the songs on the album make reference to the movie “The
Goonies,” which was set in Astoria, Oregon. There are songs about treasure
maps and adventures and all kinds of weird things on the album in reference
to the movie. But
a quick search on some Ataris fan sites showed QConf that most
fans have
no idea where the ‘Astoria’ in the title came from. So
what’s the difference? We can say it refers to our borough. This is punk
music, after all.
Anarchy
rules!
E-MAIL your items to: conf@queenstribune.com
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