Must Be the Season of the Witch

+ a 70's perfume review!

Welcome to Mess & Noise. Last issue was an open call for robot stories. If you’re new here, I also write about raising kids in the attention economy, reframing knowledge work as labor, and being a working parent in NYC. I recently dropped a workplace guidebook called Pushing Back with Tact that you should snatch up here.

If you’re not on the east coast, I trust you’re enjoying spring. It still feels like winter here but there are some indicators of seasonal change — mainly cherry blossoms and the baseball cap + beachy waves combo seen on basic b’s all around the city.

The lewk is now iconic thanks to Charlie Javice (above) pairing it with her demoralized hand wave after leaving court with a guilty verdict for defrauding J.P. Morgan Chase. What’s more basic than an Ivy League-educated, 30-Under-30 female founder going to jail?

Then there’s Kristi Noem, a.k.a. ICE Barbie who strikes this same silhouette when she goes around scaring the shit out of immigrants.

As a tired woman in her forties who hasn’t had time to cut her hair since 2021 and often forgets to wash it, I’ve grown fond of baseball caps. But I’ve also been mistaken for law enforcement more than once in my life (I have broad shoulders and a butch aura). Lately I’ve noticed a few scared double-takes from a specific demographic in my working class neighborhood when I stomp onto the subway.

Based on Noem’s media optics, I’ve decided beachy waves and baseball caps are insensitive to my local immigrant community. It’s like walking around a Rebel base in a Storm Trooper helmet for jump scares. (My son recently entered his Star Wars obsession-era so pardon me for thinking in such terms these days.)

Go Ask Javice

I love a girlboss scandal more than most things, and while a few million fake email addresses aren’t as sensational as a fake blood testing machine, Charlie Javice’s story packs the same silly/sad punch as Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

This Journal episode is a good nutshell on JPM’s lack of diligence on the Frank deal (if not their negligent greed) and there’s an account of inappropriate flirting with Javice by an investment banker at the firm. Nothing beats embarrassing text readouts in courtrooms! Nathan Fielder could never. More of this below.

Shook one

The only person on this $175 million deal who stuck out her neck and said, “We should look harder at this” was a junior analyst who was promptly swatted away by her superiors as they rushed to close. (I’m sending her a personalized copy of Pushing Back with Tact.)

Javice’s potential sentence is similar to Holmes’. Literal decades behind bars because she misled institutional buyers about the actual worth of her startup.

When Adam Neuman does it, it’s a billion dollar oopsie between friends. When a Tracey Flick-style striver fakes it too hard in order to make it, off to jail she goes.

While Javice awaits her sentencing date for deceiving the $632 billion banking giant, global stock markets are being manipulated in real time/plain sight to enable insider trading by U.S. government officials. And that’s being met with…a congressional investigation, ooooooh! It will likely keep 47, Bessent, and Lutnick awake at night no longer than their enlarged prostates already do.

The Read on Read

Beachy waves also make their way into the Karen Read “documentary” on HBO. I say “documentary” in quotes because it’s a hifalutin title for a pulpy true crime miniseries. Like, Hoop Dreams is a documentary (said the 90’s teen) — this show and the Luigi thing are slightly upmarket Dateline episodes…which I do not sniff at! My favorite part of checking into a Marriott is watching Shark Tank and murder TV on cable.

There’s not much new info in the Read doc. It’s more of a behind-the-scenes look at stuff we already know, but one thing I hadn’t fully appreciated in its stupid enormity was the rotisserie-style grilling of State Trooper Michael Proctor.

Proctor led the initial investigation while also texting his friends that Read’s a “whackjob cunt.” The video below shows him reading these texts aloud from his mound-of-deli-baloney head to a gasping courtroom, lolz.

He also updates his boss with “no nudes yet” while searching Read’s phone and admits she’s a babe, but has no ass and a weird Fall River accent. It’s good to know this type of misogyny can still send shockwaves through the general public if you’re just a cop and not running for president.

Here’s the thing: After watching A Body in the Snow it’s clear that Karen Read is indeed a whackjob cunt — in a totally normal, run-of-the-mill, crazy-ex-girlfriend way.

Everyone knows someone exactly like Karen Read. You went to high school with her in Jersey, Connecticut, or the San Fernando Valley. Kind of a narcissist, insanely jealous, rich parents, extremely bright without making it her whole personality, nonstop drama with whoever she’s dating, possibly alcoholic, maybe undiagnosed borderline personality disorder, and weirdly psychic at times. This does not make her a murderer!

It makes her fun at parties for the first three-to-four hours and a great friend who shows up for you in tough times. (It’s the upside of being a drama magnet.)

I’m not sure if Read’s human qualities — her flaws, strengths, and quirks that make her an imperfect victim and an imperfect suspect — are what led her to break through the Thin Blue Line bumper sticker thinking of suburban Boston and garner the pink-clad support of regular people.

Maybe it was peoples’ frustration with the power trips and corruption of Boston PD (I’ve seen some movies!) that exalted her to folk hero status. Similar to Luigi’s David vs. Healthcare and the State’s Goliath.

Whether or not they lock ‘er up is TBD as her second trial is pending.

And if you’re wondering about Read’s beachy waves, she explains it in the doc: when the humidity is above 70%, she uses her curling iron. If it’s below, her hair stays straight. This is women’s invisible labor!

Vintage Perfume Review!

(But also a sneaky memoir installment)

Clinique Aromatics perfume, and a picture of my therapist on Fire Island (ca. 70s?), to maintain the beachy theme of this letter

There was a period last winter when I got sad about all the amazing women in my life who I’ve lost, and because my brain is a steel trap for useless info, I also remembered which perfumes each of them wore in the 80’s and 90’s.

This led to an online shopping flurry on sites like FragranceNet.com and DecantX, where you can buy little samples of practically any perfume that ever existed, as well as some eBay and Etsy shops for the truly discontinued stuff.

Now I have a mini-perfume memory library that I can sniff any time and be instantly transported to say, the passenger seat of my stepmom’s Ford Escort in 1984 (That’s Giorgio Beverly Hills with top notes of Marlboro Lights).

As a little series for the paid portion of this newsletter, I’m going to review a woman, a scent, and how each hold up today — on my skin and in my memory.

First up? Aromatics Elixir and the Upper West Side therapist who saved my goddamned life at 26.