She describes herself as “a freelance writer and stand-up comic who is both good at Jeopardy! and annoying to have at parties.” Jelisa “J-Money” Castrodale has been blogging since June 2005, describing her small town Southern upbringing which included sitting on her grandmother’s porch listening to “mixtapes on my Walkman (including classics by Heart, Michael Jackson, and Dolly Parton, a combination that has probably never been duplicated)… ” She has “an enamel-eroding Diet Coke habit and a dog named for a member of the Grateful Dead.” Clearly, she has no lack of inspiration for blog post topics. After all, where else but in the South could you overhear one elderly woman tell another, “Well, the doctor said she could take care of his tick bite, but not his heart,” while waiting in line at Old Navy to purchase Performance Fleece Pajama Bottoms for $10?
Jelisa makes the most of the material that her life and relatives provide. There are many posts worthy of the “Post of the Day Award,” including her two-part recitation of her experience as a contestant on “America’s Got Talent.” She shared a little over ninety seconds worth of her stand-up talent with three people who didn’t really appreciate that her act “is based on rambling setups told as I fidget, jam my hands in my pockets and laugh at my own cleverness.”
If, like me, you are one of the fiftysomethings who anxiously await the results of their colonoscopies to whom she refers in Preheat Oven to 375, you will appreciate her description of her attempts to bake her own Christmas presents. Suffering, like the rest of us, the effects of America’s economic crisis, she decided to replicate a gingerbread cake with blueberry sauce that, at least on the magazine cover, looked “more attractive than [her] prom pictures.” The results? Well, as of December 22, 2009, she wasn’t “sure that deciding to experiment in the kitchen was a better idea than having a sudden urge to explore body modification,” but you’ll have to read all the gory blue details yourself.
The Post of the Day Award goes to Christmas. With a Bullet. Jelisa spent Christmas with her family in West Virginia where “it’s not uncommon to turn off the main road in the middle of the summer, your tires crunching on gravel as you notice a hard plastic baby Jesus sleeping peacefully beside a lawn chair and a box of Black Cat fireworks.” Irrespective of where you live, every family has one member who is a bit off-center and whose gifts cause the other members of the clan to scratch their heads in bewilderment and wonder. Even a family like Jelisa’s, in which she and her sister have a habit of trying to “embarrass each other in front of our parents by giving each other the most squirm-worthy gifts possible.” This year, however, it was her uncle who transitioned her family’s quiet Christmas “from a Capra flick to ‘Full Metal Jacket,’” and left Jelisa texting her sister — stranded in ice-encrusted Cleveland — the blow by blows.
Congratulations, Jelisa!
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