"Writing an unprovoked letter to a relative stranger is how I got to know, and subsequently become best friends with Alexa Shapiro, a cosmic vixen with a keen appreciation for the most awfully good 80's movies, bashful about her unearthly linguistic skill, and resigned to a form of strangely level-headed existentialism to match her polite reservation, which, however, is often contradicted by momentary bursts of hysterical insanity or erudite inanity, unless stoned, at which point she apparently (according to her reports— I have yet to be in her presence during these incidents) spews meaningless insights informed by a frenzied, absurd tendency for nature-loving revelations bordering on transcendentalism." -Graham Kolbeins
Alexa K.R. Shapiro shares considerable levels of blood with the celebrated "Hobo Professor", Arthur Shapiro, and Adrienne Shapiro (who Davis legend Ben Duax claims "walks around like she owns the place"). These two fine individuals are equally responsible for the existence of Austin Shapiro, Alexa's brother, acclaimed for his mathematical abilities (but who — perhaps as a side-effect of his potent genius — on occasion, as observed by Ben Duax, can be considered "confused and hostile"). As Austin himself once said (as cited by Duax), "Math is the purest form of art." Alexa disagrees in form of pen and ink, a hobby to which she devotes a deal of time.
James Ketchum, owner of a successful moustache, is by all evidence the main distributor of rumors regarding the preferred transportation of the Shapiro family. Though he is a valuable source of information, his infamous rumor that "the Shapiros hate anything with wheels" is entirely untrue. Though the family does not own a motor vehicle, Alexa can be seen biking at all hours on an oversized green cruiser, a machine inexplicably deemed "Dresden" by a friend (and later "Custer" by AKRS herself); and later changed to Ol' Paint before he was miserably stolen by some wretched miscreant! R.I.P. Ol' Paint. (New bike goes by "Aloysius")
Alexa immerses much of her time in music, and sleeps in the day when possible. Call late for results. For a limited time only, she can be found working late shifts at Jack in the Box. Those who are not familiar with the jocular intricacies of the subject's mind should, by all means, realize that this employment is wholly sarcastic, if not self-deprecating. (I like that you work there. —philip)
She has been known to smash chairs with the supreme Graham Thomas Kolbeins, photographer extraordinaire. The two are a phantasmagorical duo, dynamic even, who relish absurdity, triviality, grotesquerie, and the conceptual post-Apocalypse Earth (namely that portrayed in one of Arthur Shapiro's favorite movies, A Boy and His Dog (also known by A Psycho Boy and his Killer Dog)).
The subject's frequented refrain is "fuck postmodernism," although this is in itself an irony and a joke. Though rarely conveyed as a personal mantra, the subject prefers her appropriation of Kolbeins' stifled confession: "I have the fucking bubonic plague."
