Dear The Internets,

It's me, Craig. ...If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be here now, writing this, a post to honor Jewcy on its 3rd birthday -- well... I guess that would've made sense.

But if you'd told me 9 months ago, just a few days after Jewcy's funding dried up and the staff liquidated, it would've been a little harder to swallow.

But swallow it I will, just like I always do. I always swallow. Because in the last year, Jewcy has seen the both the best of times and the worst of times, and for better or for worse, we're still here.

When we last left you, Jewcy was engaging in a rapid shift of purpose, toward taking Jewish media, as a business, more seriously and, as part of that, helping to establish not only a brand for ourselves, but a solid identity for any of the disparate members of the new Jew tribe.

Michael Tive had been brought onto staff to fill a crucial business management role that had been, for the longest time, conspicuously absent. With him came a new direction, new momentum, and, eventually, new Jewcy tees. 

Yes, we were truly riding high. We were hosting an acclaimed monthly party in DUMBO offices, and spirits were high. I even speculate that Jewcy was at its apex the night of our February V-Day party where, by the grace of God and Hayley Kaufman's party-planning generosity, I got to introduce the burlesque stylings of "Jo Boobs" Weldon. (Hayley got to have some fun, too, with a brief, impromptu burlesque lesson. I offered to switch.. but: nothing.)

It was the next day, February 13th (during what I like to call the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre") that we received the bad news.

But buck up! Since that time, we've all come a long way! Aaron Bisman and Jacob Harris of JDub Records played the role of Fairy Godmother admirably. The week after we received the bad news, Jacob was on the phone, planning out a way that they might help.

And it took some time. The official adoption didn't come until this October. But they've been right there beside Jewcy through the bad times and the good, and they've shown remarkable foresight, generosity, and patience throughout the whole ordeal.

The staff had been scattered, of course. Michael Weiss moved on to Tablet Magazine. He then moved on to Equities magazine, thus taking the two jobs left in media and becoming formally known as a Pod Person. Todd Sloves, fresh from volunteering on the campaign trail, moved straight into the federal government. He works in the local office of a US congressman.

Tara Rice and Hayley Kaufman have been freelancing it up for the past few months. Tara's design work is all over, and you can read Hayley's latest writing here. 

Faustine, my most capable partner in technology, has just returned back from mother France to take up her role leading web development for Coach, Inc. (Yes, the leather bag people!)

Old-school Jewcers Amy Odell and Izzy Grinspan are still living the high life. Amy can be found daily on NY Mag's The Cut blog, and Izzy is (or was, last I heard...) editing the Racked blog. Joey Kurtzman, less than a year after leaving Jewcy, split the country (for the first time, I believe, not under suspicious circumstances). He's been wandering India for a few months and hopefully will be back in the states soon, with more photos of himself in diapers. 

Lilit, who was blessed (...Blessed! As if she didn't earn it!) with a book deal that helped her to continue curating Jewcy and producing content for it in her free time. That is- save for the help of super-intern Ashley Tedesco, who never stopped giving her all for Jewcy; which is impressive enough without considering the high caliber of work that she was churning out, all pro-gratis. 

Michael Tive has been consulting. Last I heard he was working for a website in the "women's beauty space", which, I believe is simply code for "he's been wearing ladies' undergarments while browsing the net."

And I went to work for the NY state Senate for 7 months, where we launched the transparency-focused new nysenate.gov for the state government, just in time to horrified and embarrassed by the displays of two New York City senators. After that, I followed Tahl Raz, the original Jesus of Jewcy (...because no one can ever truly grasp what he's thinking and he's likely to end up nailed to a cross...) to the Ferrazzi Greenlight consulting company, where he still gives me noogies and wedgies day in and day out, week by week.

But -- like Jewcy -- throughout all the noogies and no matter how many wedgies, I'm still around. ...And I am honored to be here, among the brightest and the best semites online, and with the greatest hope for modern Jews everywhere -- and I remain, truly yours, Craig Leinoff.

It seems like only a year ago that I was sitting here, in this same room, at this same desk (rotated 90 degrees from how it is now), photoshopping funny pictures of a cartoon turtle holding a balloon in celebration of our first birthday. Of course it was longer than that. It was a year and a day.

I wanted to update you (and I mean you, specifically, VALUED USER WITH IP ADDRESS 38.107.191.104) about the fun changes that occurred in the second year of our magazine's existence:

• Jewcy got visited by the set of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. They bought us a ping pong table and a foosball table and used our office for a 2-minute scene in the episode "The Self-Made." None of us have seen it yet. Jewcy made me sleep in the office overnight so someone would be around to watch the crew move out all their equipment at 5:30 the next morning. Weiss came to visit me at 11:00 that night with his girlfriend. Vincent D'Onofrio noticed that we had been staring at him for upwards of 20 minutes and finally, between takes, stopped and said, "How's it going, folks?" We collectively blinked and each gave our version of "Hi."
• Super-intern Michelle Threadgould left us for greener pastures after a chronologically impossible sixteen years of employment with the company. She was succeeded by mega-interns Ma'ayan Rosenzweig and Jessica Miller, whose individual hours each slightly surpasses the combined length of all FDR's terms as President. My summer was made simultaneously more and less difficult by Raphael Eidus's internship as coder extraordinaire. Now, international woman of technology, Faustine Pollet, is filling that role while I reminisce in writing about "the good old days."
• We bid adieu to office manager Maya Wainhaus, but welcomed Todd Sloves in her stead. He does everything she did except for writing a Tetris blog.
• Tara Rice celebrated her landmark five-hundredth hour of enduring Canadian jokes from Todd over lunch. As payback, she mandated that we all eat salad for lunch four days a week.
• We said goodbye to Joey Kurtzman and Helen Jupiter, costing us a valuable Western Frontier outpost and leaving the Oregon Territory at risk for "Injun Attacks" and long, crying jags about how much we miss them so, so much.
• Weiss left Jewcy. Then came back.
• Izzy left Jewcy, but didn't come back. Her spiritual successor, Lilit Marcus, started with us a few weeks ago, however, and filled the empty void in Simpsons references caused by Izzy's departure.
• Lilit went on a week-long vacation exactly two weeks after starting here. Chapter review questions: 1) If she keeps up that pattern, how many vacation days will Lilit have used by the 71st week? 2) How many vacation days does Lilit get per year?
• Tahl got married. To a woman. One beautiful memory from the evening: "Ms. Laub caressed her husband's shaved head while he wrapped his still-scarred arms around her as they swayed to their own beat."
  
• Izzy got married too, and while the New York Times didn't do a write-up, MAD Magazine did.
• A French guy (unrelated to Faustine!) wandered into our office and asked if he could buy a t-shirt. "We don't really sell them from here," Todd said, but Michael Tive, Jewcy's General Manager, wouldn't let a business opportunity pass us by. "You give me cash, I'll get you a t-shirt," he said. "...With nail polish." And he did.
• Michael Tive admitted that at least part of his famed wheelin' and dealin' came from the wild days he spent at SONY Corporation, where all employees are required to both wheel and deal on a semi-weekly basis as part of company policy.
• Michael Weiss banned commenter "Rob" for being too right-wing for even our resident conservative.

And that's basically all the important things that happened in the past year. I got to buy a few computers for the company, but if I'd wanted to bore you with things nobody understands I'd have mentioned part-time staff writer Jake Rake and his job description.

Maybe somebody else should write these things.

'Til next year,
Craig

Another quick one, as requested by David Choe. The picture of the day. Anything I say will be extraneous. Except: this makes me feel warm inside.

Izzy Grinspan, previously in charge of Jewcy's editorial operations, has surfaced in another Yiddishly-inflected publication, recently.

Jewcy spies (in the form of Jewcy's original art director, Dave Choe) sent word -- and a scanned image -- that Izzy and new husband Andy took the joyous occasion of their wedding day and besmirched it by posing with a copy of MAD Magazine. I say "new husband" because Izzy goes through husbands faster than my mom goes through excuses for why she ate sixty-three bags of potato chips. Chips which she also went through quickly.

There's a number of weird things going on here. For one, this story involves two ex-Jewcy employees (of which there are only a few), and for another, it involves one of those employees reading MAD Magazine.

Here's the pic. Note the firmness of Izzy's arms. She had been working out for months prior at her mom's suggestion:

Izzy Gets Married: Kaputnik missed the wedding due to doctor's appointment.

I had to send the picture to Izzy, as apparently the Jews over at MAD don't send out comps to people they make fun of in Letters section. I asked her if she had anything to say.

(05:33:38 PM) Izzy Grinspan: i would just say that yes, andy was indeed wearing cut-offs
(05:33:42 PM) Izzy Grinspan: as was the rabbi, standing behind us
(05:33:51 PM) Izzy Grinspan: it was actually a jorts-themed wedding
(05:33:55 PM) Craig Leinoff: haha, that's your rabbi? Not your brother?
(05:34:02 PM) Craig Leinoff: hahaha
(05:34:05 PM) Izzy Grinspan: it's andy's brother
(05:34:08 PM) Izzy Grinspan: who is also a rabbi
(05:34:08 PM) Craig Leinoff: I see
(05:34:12 PM) Craig Leinoff: He looks like your brother
(05:34:19 PM) Izzy Grinspan: that's because all jews are related

I enjoyed talking to Izzy so much that I contacted Amy Odell, Jewcy's old office manager, but she refused to make any statements on the record in accordance with the terms of her restraining order.

Michael Morlitz was unable to be reached for comment.

While Jewcy visitors may not have noticed anything out of the ordinary on the Jewcy site today, April Foolery was, indeed, afoot.

After spending hours in debate yesterday about what would be an acceptable prank for Jewcy to pull on its woefully staid readership, the staff came to a consensus on the one joke that truly befit our boring selves: nothing. Even the brilliant "Joey gets arrested for public indecency" idea eventually came to naught.

But as everyone wrapped up work for the day, a deliciously evil thought crossed my mind. Because "Malice" is my middle name (...actually, it's "Alice," which makes me full of malice...), I wrote a quick email to Tilted Planet, Jewcy's server hosts, and set to coding.

Success came at approximately 10:00 a.m. as I was on my way to work, with a phone call from Maya, distraught at logging into the site to see this:

Of course, I was "unavailable."

What caused a bigger problem, however, was finding that bosses Tahl and Joey were in a meeting, and wholly unaware of the issue, upon my arrival.

This necessitated my feigning ignorance (as well as faking angry phone calls to Tilted) for the benefit of the understandably flustered Maya. I also was forced to share outrage with Izzy and Tara at our predicament, something which I am not usually very good at. (Talking to Izzy and Tara, that is.)

Tahl finally became aware of the incident around 1:05 p.m., and I quickly found that I had precious little time to fess up before he obliterated the Tilted Planet phone system with his ultra-sonic Israeli complaining. (I should note that Maya had already reached out to Tilted earlier, and they'd been quite good about playing dumb, but Tahl would be on a completely different level of fury.)

I sent out the "Gotchya" email I'd been composing, prematurely, and ran to Tahl's desk, where he was already dialing his phone.

"Hold on!" I yelled, "I just got an explanation email from Tilted! I forwarded it to you! Check it!"

The email was a link to this page.

We all had a good laugh when Tahl finished beating me. Except Maya, who took the brunt of my abuse, and deserves a big cake for being such a good sport. Please don't hate me, Maya.

Another successful April Fool's Day. JOB WELL DONE. As the final coup de grace, I had Izzy's cat sent to the pound. Haha. Golden.