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At Last, Something Worth Reading from the Berkshire Eagle!
What ever happened to Jacuzzi?
Ex-Eagle columnist is online, on air
By Benning W. De La Mater, Berkshire Eagle Staff
3.23.07
..Excerpted from The Berkshire Eagle - Thursday March 22, 2007
Juliane Hiam Scribner, shown in photo below in her 'Jacuzzi' persona as a former Eagle social/sex columnist, and posing, above, recently, for a portrait in her Pittsfield home, continues to write columns for her blog, produces a radio program, works as casting director for photographer Gregory Crewdson and is a mom to four children.
Photos by Darren Vanden Berge / Berkshire Eagle Staff
There are two types of people in Berkshire County - those who loved Jacuzzi and those who hated her.
Do you remember Jac-ooze?
She was the lightning bolt of a social/sex columnist who landed in The Eagle's pages on Oct. 19, 2003, stirred the collective minds of Berkshirites north to south and was canned 10 months later.
In just 38 columns of "The World According to Jacuzzi," Juliane Hiam Scribner - that's what she goes by now - managed to do what typically takes columnists years: She developed an ardent audience of both admirers and adversaries.
This was evident in the volume of pro and con letters to the editor The Eagle received after her columns  were published; she averaged at least one per week.
Her columns were the musings of a fictional character, Jacuzzi, a travel writer from New York City who purportedly lived in Middlefield, near Martha Stewart's old home, and whose handyman/ex-lover lived in a barn on the property.
Juliane's writing was fiction meets fantasy. An urban take on everyday life in the Berkshires. Part modern day feminism, part sex-spiked rhetoric.
Remember this passage?
"I want a tight T-shirt with a big Scarlet M across the chest that I'll wear for five days out of every month. I dare any man to ask what it stands for.
"'Menstruation. As in, I'm currently, right now, as we speak, menstruating. Now, about that drink you wanted to buy me.'"
Well, guess what? She's still up to it.
Juliane, 32, writes columns for her blog, www.bimbopolitics.com, and produces a radio show on WBCR-FM 97.7 every second and fourth Tuesday at 5 p.m.
She's also the casting director for photographer Gregory Crewdson and a mom to four children: Harper, 9; Jack, 5; Isaac, 18 months; and David, 7 months.
And she's finishing a novel.
Busy? You'd say so.
"But people still ask me about Jacuzzi," she said.
Before she was the alter ego known as Jacuzzi - the "porn" name she gave herself in college - she was Juliane Hiam, a model student and champion gymnast from Wahconah Regional High School.
A self-proclaimed "geek" who would often carry a briefcase to school, Juliane decided early on that she wanted to learn about movie-making, applying to only the University of Southern California film school, the top institution in the nation for the craft.
She got in, and it was there that she wrote a script about a nerdy, female, high school valedictorian who plays a prank on the stud athlete. The stunt runs awry and the stud ends up dead.
Just four weeks after graduating from USC, Juliane was approached by a producer who offered her the chance to turn her story into a movie.
She jumped at the opportunity and began work on what would be called "Dead Silence," directing Danny Aiello, Sally Kirkland and Maureen Stapleton, "who stepped onto the set, took one look at me and said, 'This is the director?'" Juliane said. "It was intimidating. But I didn't act like I was a seasoned director. I took it as an opportunity to learn."
The movie debuted in 1998 and went on to win several film festival awards. Juliane spent a year traveling the world to promote the film. When she returned to L.A., she had her first child with ex-husband Stephen Glantz.
Pressure started to build on her to start a new project, and that's when her outlook changed.
L.A. overwhelming
"L.A. was a bit overwhelming for me," Juliane said. "It was all too much. There was this whole layer of schmoozing that I didn't like, and you had to do it if you wanted to get somewhere in the business. I had the talent but not the personality, the toughness, the nothing-else-matters-but-success attitude."
And with that, Juliane picked up and moved back home to the Berkshires, leaving behind the industry she once longed to be part of.
She began writing features for Berkshires Week. Then she had an idea.
What about a column written by a fictitious author - Jacuzzi - who appeals to a younger audience, the second-home owners and urbanites? A bit of "Sex in the City" with a Berkshires flair.
"Juliane is a square gal with kids," she said. "Jacuzzi is the bubbly, hip girl about town."
She approached David Scribner, the editor at the time, about the idea.
"It was edgy," Scribner said. "Much different from what our other columnists were doing. It appealed to intelligent readers, and people were glad we were writing about topics we never touched on before.
"After a few months, she beat out (Alan) Chartock and my column as our most popular one."
Take for example these not-so-average appraisals of life:
On bringing a Colonial-era-style strip club to Pittsfield: "Call it Ye Olde Adult Public House ... and nix the sexy throbbing loud music and replace it with classical music."
On gay marriage: "Once gay couples are married they'll probably stop having sex just like any other married couple."
On the bond between gay men and straight women: "It's a blend as pure as vodka with a splash of vermouth."
On body hair: "The universe bestowed women with body hair and the gene to want to remove it permanently."
On cell phones that vibrate: "No other feature is more important. Among women I know, the Nokia 3589i is a favorite in terms of packing a wallop. Suddenly, the phrase 'I'll give you a buzz' has new meaning."
She even dared to publish a column written entirely in Spanish, one that pit Church vs. State in a fictional boxing match over gay marriage, and one that explored life as a Neanderthal woman - "Ugga bugga!"
While both Juliane and Scribner thought the column would appeal strictly to women, it attracted male fans as well, like Anthony Castronova, 89, who wrote a letter to the paper when the column was "discontinued."
"I don't know what it was," Castronova said. "I just enjoyed reading her. I'm an old man, and I know she wrote about being a young lady. I was sort of sad when they canceled it, though."
Victim of circumstance
Now comes the controversy: Juliane feels she was a victim of circumstance. She and Scribner grew close during the time they worked together - they married last October and have two children together - and it wasn't long after Scribner was asked to resign from The Eagle in August 2004 when she was notified that her column "would no longer be needed."
The managing editor at the time, Clarence Fanto, said it was a collective decision on management's part to end the run of "The World According to Jacuzzi."
"It was a very controversial column," he said. "It seemed very out of sync with the values of a mainstream, family newspaper."
Her column continued to run in the L.A. Daily News for a short time until she resurrected it on her blog, although due to correspondence from lawyers at Jacuzzi Corp., the column is now called "The World According to Jacoozi."
Her radio show is a blend of the column and fictional skits. Actor John Bridge, 48, plays Jacoozi's ex-love interest, Ben, the handyman who lives in her barn.
"The more I learn about Juliane, the more I feel fortunate to be involved," Bridge said. "She's a very intelligent and creative person, and the show is funny and serious at the same time. She balances her life with writing and being a mom and a wife. She's incredible."
Bridge said Juliane is always thinking about fodder for writing. A notebook - a canvas for thoughts and dreams - is never far from her side, "although sometimes I look at what I jotted down and think 'What does that mean?'" she said.
Juliane has written two plays for Shakespeare and Company - "A Tanglewood Tale," the story of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne's relationship, and "Mrs. Pringle's Porch," an adaptation of Hawthorne's "A Wonder Book."
She's finishing work on her first novel, titled (what else?) "The Cum Laude Girls," a tale of sexy, intelligent college females who rule their school.
But for now, you can check out her slamming Victoria's Secret ads and talking about being an ex-TV junkie on her Web site, www.bimbopolitics.com.
Why the word bimbo?
"I never liked the word bimbo and all the connotations it brought," she said. "There's politics around the word. It insinuates a mentally vacuous woman who is sexually out there. You can be sexy and intelligent, and still be taken seriously. There's a new empowerment."
"I decide what's sexy," she said. "We all do."
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