For starters, it's pretty easy to put together a Stevie Nicks costume in five minutes at any Salvation Army. It's sort of like the adage about what you're supposed to wear for your wedding, except instead of "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue," it's more like "Something old, something black, something fringey, and some kind of a shawl or cape or corset or top hat or sparkly beret." The theme of NOTS 18 was "Nightbirds," and in the song "Nightbirds" Stevie actually gives specific instructions for how to replicate her signature look:

"And then the summer became the fall/ I was not ready for the winter/it makes no difference at all/Cause I wear boots all summer long ... Eye makeup dark and it's careless ..."

Keeping this in mind, I applied Bennett's makeup very carelessly.

After a beer, we headed out to the Hammerstein Ballroom.

My costume was a little bit less dramatic than Bennett's, partly because I had decided to wear my real hair instead of a wig and partly because I was born female.

Once inside, we encountered a few setbacks. The entertainment was not, at first, as awesome as we had hoped. One too many drag queens had elected to lip synch "Stand Back," which has never been a favorite song of mine. (Note from Bennett: "I LOVE STAND BACK!!!") It's from Stevie's second, more disco-y solo album, and I'm more of a fan of her work with Fleetwood Mac and her first solo album, Bella Donna, which was made when she was dating that guy from the Eagles. The great thing about being a fan of Stevie Nicks, though, is that Stevieism is a big tent. Here is my theory about the demographics represented at NOTS:

1) Theater nerd girls who just enjoy wearing capes and corsets and crushed velvet. See also: Renaissance Faire Laydies. Their favorite song is Rhiannon, of course, because it's about a witch from Welsh mythology.

2)The male equivalent of these girls. These dudes would have grown up playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading Lord of the Rings if they were straight, but instead they had to like Stevie Nicks.

3)Gays who are into the coke-addled era of Stevie. Their favorite song is "Stand Back."

4) Heterosexual couples who are into the romance of Fleetwood Mac — the idea of being in a band with someone you're in love with, and then breaking up with them in a messy, druggy, cheating-related way, but always sort of carrying a torch — and singing about it! That is hot. We saw a lot of these couples, including a few who were dressed as Stevie and Lindsay Buckingham. If I ever find a guy who is willing to accompany me to this kind of event dressed as Lindsay Buckingham, or Mick Fleetwood, or even Don Henley, I will have found my soulmate, I think. Extra bonus points if he also wants to learn the harmony to "Leather and Lace."

This couple wasn't dressed up, but they were getting really amorous in a cute way.

Outside, we caught performance artist Julie Atlas-Muz and took a picture of her as though we were the paparazzi, and she gamely played along:

The second setback we encountered was that someone stole Bennett's wig! They just came up behind him and yanked it off his head and disappeared back into the crowd!
In a moment of true STEVIE REALNESS, Bennett chased after the thief, felled him with a fierce karate kick, and bit him in the face, leaving a puddle of blood and sparkles in the dance floor. Just kidding! Actually, a frightened and humiliated Bennett just made a pathetic face and turned his cape into a headdress, making him look more like Little Edie than Stevie, but whatever. Later someone complimented the headdress as being "very Timespace" and he was happy again.

Night Of A Thousand Stevies [Mother NYC]

Related: Young Rapper With A Plan: Lil Mama Tries To Move Up From Makeup [NY Times]

Why Don't Girls Play Guitar? [BBC News]
Why don't Little Girls Play The Tuba? [Times of London]

Earlier: Meet The Headbanging, Bad-Ass Ladies Of Girls Rock

Ha ha! Not Lance! It's about Karl Rove. Remember their creepy confrontation at last year's White House Correspondents Dinner? I'd totally forgotten about it. But Sheryl sure hasn't! Her latest album, Detours, also includes a song for the Chief Turd's old boss inspired by the Valerie Plame thing! She calls the album "urgent, in-your-face, barf-it-out-onto-a-page." It's her first collaboration with producer Bill Bottrell since Tuesday Night Music Club, which featured the last Sheryl Crow song I didn't feel slightly guilty for liking. (The last Sheryl Crow song I do feel guilty for liking: My Favorite Mistake.)

In the Times of London today, writer Caitlin Moran claims that while men love discussion music trivia in a "some secret nerd-battle", women, on the other hand, "prove that they love a song by either screaming: 'I love this song!' and getting up and dancing to it, or wailing: 'I love this song!' and bursting into tears."

Continues Ms. Moran:

Women make jokes about the band's hair, drink a shot of tequila for each time Rihanna sings the word "umbrella," and work out in which order they would have sex with the band lineup... That is, quite obviously, the more pure response to music. After all, no bands form with the dream of being speccily rowed over by trainspotting blokes in the no-fun corner of the pub. They form to make ladies drink, dance on tables, and want to have sex with them. On this basis, we can see that women understand rock music in a way men never will.

Are Women And Men On Different Tracks When It Comes To Their Favourite Music? [Times]
Related: BBC Chief: Male Musical Tastes More 'Intellectual' [Guardian]
6Music Boss Thinks You're An Idiot [The Lipster

I'm asking for a comment dump! A misery playlist with your patheticmost songs, lyrics, and how they make you feel. I.e. the part of Mariah Carey's Shake It Off, where she goes "Hold up, my phone's breakin up, lemme hang up and call the machine right back" was consistently for a good three months the sole source of mirth in my life; a moment of dumbass levity in the midst of a sea of songs about dead boyfriends and the tears of a clown.

The slant of this writer's letters range from somewhat left to somewhat right, plus straight up and down. These slants indicate emotional moods that can range from solitary and self-involved, to un-impulsive and logical, to somewhat outgoing. One may never know from moment to moment which of those moods will dominate.

There are hooks at the beginning and ends of many letters including the lower case Ys and Fs. This is a writer who grasps to own things and once they're gotten they won't be let go without a terrible struggle.

The writer is a methodical, detail-oriented thinker who takes time with getting things right. Goals are set where they are easy for the writer to reach without much stretching.

There is tendency of this writer to make "gut" decisions, which is another way of saying intuition. Intuition speeds up the thinking of a methodical thinker so that the methodical thinker can compete with much faster thinkers. This writer uses intuition on occasion, but may not trust it entirely. In the same vein, this writer is sometimes open to new ideas, and sometimes preconceptions and fears clog the arteries of communication (narrowed loops in some Es).

When I worked at BUST, we got this album sent to us, and we would all sit around singing "The Abortion Song" in really exaggerated operatic voices, "Freeeeeee our sisters! Aboorrrrrrtion is our riiiiiiiiiight!" laughing our faces off. It's a good way to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

And just to experience just how wacky some of those second wavers were, you should check out their jam "So Fine."

Here are some lyrics of what they thought sucked about being women:

"We used to think we were only good for pleasing men, having babies, doing housework, having shit jobs, doing volunteer work, and, you know...sex [cue sad sound affect]"

And here are their lyrics for what they think rules about being liberated women:

"We didn't know that women could get together and play rock music, fix cars, give abortions, love our sisters, stay single, choose our own lifestyle, and, you know, SAY NO!"

I dunno, I feel like I'd rather have sex and do volunteer work any day over fixing a car and giving my friend an abortion. But hey, that's just me. Feminism isn't monolithic.

[Caribbean (specific location not given); January 17. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

Fox had the Pennsylvania-native hop on Amtrak yesterday, and filmed her interacting with pedestrians in the freezing cold on the sidewalk in Times Square. Never before has the channel's journalistic brand of "dance, monkey, dance" been so overt — or shamefully entertaining. But perhaps we shouldn't feel too guilty about laughing at (with?) Alexis. According to her MySpace profile, she is a member of two different improv troupes. (The Tool and Ministry fan is also a Wiccan and hails from "the planet UR Rectum.") Clip above.

[London, January 13. Image via Bauer-Griffin]