5% CELERY: Booze Clues

I have this teacher. She teaches my Apparel Production Process Lab, which means that she's the lord and mistress of my time every Monday from 8:30 a.m. (ouch squared) until 2:45 p.m. She's very thorough and good at giving us excrutiatingly detailed instructions for how to draft the pattern for, say, a long sleeve, a short sleeve with a folded cuff, a puffed sleeve, or even a sleeve with shoulder pads (perish the thought). She's also a total nutjob who has worked doing costuming for Ren Faire, doing computer nerd stuff during the Silicon Valley boom, and now being an Imagineer. Yes, she costumes characters for rides at Disneyland. She's like a wonderous mystical character who gets more and more miraculous with each new facet I glimpse of her life. For instance, the other day, along with her usual handmade super-high-waist pants, she was wearing a Barenaked Ladies tee shirt. At first I thought there were dirt marks on the back, and then I realized they were SIGNATURES. From ALL THE BARENAKED LADIES. Oh wow. Oh gosh. This woman is a mind-boggling creature. Also, she has curled bangs. That like stick out from her forehead. I think she's single.

ANYWAY, the most recent gem from this teacher that I thought I'd share with you kids is a secret of costumers worldwide (apparently). "The best way to get out perspiration odor," she announce recently, "is, we've discovered, a mixture of half water and half vodka." I can't imagine this chick doing anything with a bottle of vodka, but I guess if I had to, furiously removing stains would be it.

You may think this priceless tip is enough revelation for one post, but I'm here to tell you YET ANOTHER. Way back in the day, I went to prom. It was senior prom, so it was a big effing deal even for those of us who thought we were too cool for prom. I had a silk dress by Laundry by Shelli Segal, which made it the first sorta-designer item I'd ever bought, and I thought it made me The Bomb(shell). I got my hair done like Marylin Monroe and I was ready to take on the world, or at least my whole senior class at Polly Esther's (the 80s club where prom was that year). But first my crew and I had the requisite swanky dinner at some new fusion-type restaurant, and--of course--a piece of sauce-covered something-or-other fell straight from my chopsticks onto the front of my dress. Oh, motherfuck, I thought. This ain't never coming out, and it's PROM and my dress is so FABulous and it's got sauce right in FRONT now and everyone will SEE IT and think RUDE THOUGHTS instead of being AWESTRUCK. So I got up, went to the bar for some club soda, and dabbed in vain at my bust in the bathroom. At which point a magical fairy godmother--i.e. a nice lady coming out of a stall--gave me this, the second priceless tip: gin gets out oily stains. She said she'd done the same thing at her wedding on her wedding dress, and gin did the trick. The bartender gave me some on a napkin (at this point, still the closest I'd ever been to gin in my life) and lo and behold--the orange grossness on my front was gone. My delusions of grandeur returned, and I've never forgotten the gin trick since--another reason that gin is the best alcohol in the world.