Hi, there. Senior Editor Kerry Douglas Dye, here. Senior Editor Jordan Hoffman will be conducting the primary interview with the lovely and talented Ms. Bree Sharp, but before he starts, I thought I'd pop in with some background, since I've known Bree much longer than he has.

  I was just reading an account of the Christmas party for "The X-Files" cast and crew. For the party, executive producer Chris Carter shot a music video of various celebrities (George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Brad Pitt, Janeane Garofalo, Pamela Anderson, and others) lip-synching to Bree's song "David Duchovny", from her debut album "A Cheap and Evil Girl". Hearing that filled me with pride, and not a little bit of jealousy. See, I've known Bree since she was a gawky pre-teenager back in Philly, and I always figured she'd be famous.

  When Bree hit it big, I mentioned to my co-editor Mr. Hoffman that I knew her, and we should do an interview. Well, sonofabitch, turns out he knew her too, back in college! What a nutty world. We agreed that he'd ask her about her music, since that's his thing, and I'd just try to create some sort of scandal, since I'd known her so long ago I must have all sorts of deep dark secrets about her.

  It was nice talking to Bree after all those years, and she seemed genuinely glad to catch up. We chatted about some mutual friends (actually, she mentioned some people I didn't remember, and I mentioned some people she didn't remember), then I warned her: LS.n was poised and ready to reveal all sorts of scandalous details about her past.

  The way I figured it, I knew three things that she might be trying to keep secret. I tried the first one on for size: she's Jewish.

  No dice. She's totally out about that, and I felt like sort of a heel for thinking she wouldn't be. Okay, number 2: as a teenager she wore braces. "I wore braces twice!" she bragged. "And I had a perm!"

  Way to yank the rug out from under me. Okay, no deep dark secret there.

  Then I pulled out the big guns: Bree had once starred in a video I was making right around sophomore year of high school. She was an actress back then, and I cast her in the lead. She quit the movie after one day, sure the project wasn't going anywhere. She had been right, of course, but no matter--it was pretty scandalous stuff, I figured. Makes her seem . . . flighty, or something.

  That's right--I had this chick on the casting couch, and I've barely even shaken hands with her.

  The only problem with this revelation is that she had no memory of that video shoot. Well, let her deny it--I have video proof. Probably. Maybe somewhere in my parent's basement. If they haven't thrown it out.

  Okay, so I wasn't going to scandalize the girl. The only other thing I know that's vaguely revelatory is that her name really is Bree Sharp. It sounds like something made up for the stage, but it ain't. But that's no scandal, so I decided to throw two conventional questions her way.

  I told her the first one: "Your album is called 'A Cheap and Evil Girl'. What makes you 'cheap'?" and she immediately guessed the second. She answered them together: "Cheap without evil is tacky. Evil without cheap is malicious. Together, they convey danger . . . and excitement."

  Danger and excitement. Sounds like the 12-year-old girl I knew. On that, note I pass things over to my co-editor. The next voice you hear will be his:

  How excited was I when I first heard that some twenty-something gal was cleaning up on the pop charts with a love-letter to David Duchovny? Well . . . to be honest . . . it didn't really register. I've never watched the X-Files and wasn't listening to the stations that were playing the song. Then somehow the artist's name seeped into my consciousness: Bree Sharp. You don't forget a name like that, and I thought, My God, I know her! We went to NYU together, she and I both lived in Hayden Hall, and in fact, she was a suite-mate of my friend Stacey, who, in a further show of coincidence, is now the fiancée of LS.n Staff Humorist Chris Tyrell. I told all this to my co-editor Kerry Douglas Dye, and he told me that he and Ms. Sharp attended Hebrew school together in Philly! Isn't this fascinating? Aren't you amazed by all this?

  I got a copy of Bree's CD, "A Cheap And Evil Girl", and determined that it was solid pop most of the time, occasionally slipping into thoughtful folk-rock when you aren't paying attention: a great combination. I'd compare it to Aimee Mann and Jill Sobule if that weren't so obvious.

  A few weeks ago Ms. Sharp's publicist arranged a phone call. I gregariously congratulated her on her recent success ("A Cheap and Evil Girl" is tearing up in certain demos, particularly in the Midwest, I'm told) and said how happy I was to see an old friend do well. She had no idea who I was.

  I told her that I was the guy who was friends with her ex-suite-mate Stacey. She had no idea who that was.

  She apologized sheepishly, said she started getting senile at 23, and is bad with names. I described myself in painful detail, and reminded her of the time we stayed up late in her dorm room, lit candles, and played guitars together. Nothing. I told her that I taught her how to play Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie"." She said she loves Dylan (and Elvis Costello, Patti Griffin and Patty Smith) but doesn't know how to play that song. I told her she showed me the chords to that Cranberries song that goes "you're spinning me around, my feet are off the ground . . ." She said that could never have been her because she doesn't know how to play that song.

  The whole affair was exasperating . . . we both saved face by agreeing that she'd remember me if she saw me.

  Then I asked her if I could go out and write a song about any TV star and become successful. She said sure. Okay, so, like the nurse on "Frasier"? Go right ahead, she said. Will I get into legal trouble? Of course not, so long as I don't say, like, that the nurse on "Frasier" sucks or something. I asked if there were any legal troubles with the big hit "David Duchovny". She assured me there were none, and that Duchovny himself heard it and loved it. Eventually, though, as the record started generating some dough, someone somewhere at the label had to sign some documents, but Bree didn't have to bother with any of that.

  There are some other songs on the album I really like. "America" is kind of a droll finger-pointing song about commercialism. "I wanted it to remain whimsical," Bree told me. "Certainly not overly judgmental. I never want to be a soap-boxer. That's why I made it about media so much, because look who's telling you all this: a girl who wants to be a rock star. A girl who commodifies herself."

  I asked her if she'd ever heard "The Big Country" from Talking Heads' second album, which is very similar. She said no, but that she was loosely inspired by Dylan's "Idiot Wind", in how he includes himself in his diatribe on stupidity.

  Another great tune is "Guttermouth", an almost Violent Femmes-ish fast n' nasty folk tune about a foul-mouthed disgrace. Sharp loses her "pretty" voice on this track and kinda speaks-sings. Sharp called it doing her "boy impression," and said it is her favorite song. It certainly is the most different--most likely to be played on NPR. When I asked if she sees herself moving in this direction after the pop success she had with "David Duchovny" she assured me she is interested in continuing in both idioms. But she doubts if she'll write about a celebrity again.

  Without question, she said, the high point of her short career has been her 4-day tagalong with the Lilith Fair. She played on the second stage (replacing Christine Aguilera) in the Midwest. Chrissy Hynde watched her set, and Sarah McLachland invited her to join in with Sheryl Crow and the Indigo Girls on "I Shall Be Released." That knocked the New York blasé attitude out of her, she said.

  When asked why she didn't wear those tight red leather pants she has on in her CD booklet back at Hayden Hall, she shouted, "I wasn't a rock star then!" She was just a kid who could sing along to Marlo Thomas' "Free To Be You and Me!" Bree also corrected me; those pants aren't leather, they're satin. Bree is an ardent ovo-lacto vegetarian, she wanted me to know.

  Hi, Kerry again, to wrap things up. Both Jordan and I are thinking that Bree is a chick who's going places. She told me she might want to get back into acting somewhere down the line, and I made the mistake of mentioning that we were developing a feature film to begin production sometime in 2000.

  That's terrific, she said, definitely give me a call when that starts. Oy vey, I thought--I made it through almost the whole conversation without being patronized. Oh, well, I guess that's how the almost-famous have to talk to the nowhere-near-famous. You had your chance to be in one of my movies back in high school, I should have said. Instead I just said, yeah, I'll definitely call you.

  But whether or not Bree gets cast in LeisureSuit.net's first motion picture production (alas, there's really no roles for 25-year-old white chicks), something tells me success will never elude her. She's cheap, she's evil, and she's going places--it's up to the rest of us to keep up, or fade away into her memory.