Molly’s Show is tonight! See me sell postcards.

February 26, 2005

Like a little match girl, tonight I’ll be dolled up in black and white at Molly Crabapple’s merch table. Come to the show!

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undercover spelling bee operatives!

February 24, 2005

You know you’ve made it when you get infiltrated by the competition! Okay, actually, this person was just thinking about starting a spelling bee, and she has wholly nice things to say. Anyway, we’ve been blogged.

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An Open Letter to the Marketing Executive Who Names Shades of Pantyhose

February 24, 2005

Dear Marketing Executive Who Names Shades of Pantyhose:

I know that I’ll never be “suntan.” Even when I actually have a tan, my legs are far, far paler than “suntan.” I grew up in Virginia Beach, where, despite the presence of the beach, everyone goes to tanning salons to darken up all the fat they’ve accumulated from eating too much barbecue.

If I’m not “suntan” (and I’m certainly not “mocha” or the colors that are even darker than that), it looks like “beige” and “ivory” are the next couple of notches down, but again, my skin is paler than both of those hues. I wouldn’t want to be “beige” — that would make my complexion sound like the old family computer or the waiting room at the DMV — but, apparently, I am lighter than “ivory.” Having never physically juxtaposed my legs to the tusks of elephants, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Your next lightest shade on offer is “nude,” which, in some kind of Aryan color hegemony, indicates “a color paler than ivory.” But even “nude” is too dark for my skin. Yes, I am that pale. But if my nude legs aren’t nude, what (or who) is? And what about all the other women, carmel and mocha-colored women, whose nude legs obviously aren’t your idea of “nude” either? Call the guys over at Crayola — they changed that whole thing about the crayon called “flesh” way back in 1962. Now, you can go to the store and get a box of sixteen special crayons called, literally, “Multicultural Crayons,” so you can color a little United Nations of variably-hued people. Take a hint!

Now that we have established that I am not suntan, beige, ivory, or nude, well … now what? I once dated a Mexican guy who commented that instead of saying I have a “snow-white” complexion, I could alternately say I was the color of salt, cocaine, or aspirin. (Dear Mexican guy: Thanks for the compliments!)

According to the package of pantyhose my mom bought me because she’s the same moon-like, blinding shade of talc (and your pantyhose matched her perfectly!), the color designation you have afforded me is: “oatmeal.”

I am oatmeal-colored. This is not sexy, Mr. Pantyhose Man. If dark-skinned women get to be “carmel” and “mocha” and “espresso,” I want to be “fresh milk” … or “Zinfandel.” Shredded coconut? Raw sugar? Throw me a bone here.

Your loyal customer,
Jennifer Dziura

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kiss me, i’m done

February 19, 2005

The other day, I made a note to myself regarding something about which I desired to blog, put the note aside (well, the note was on my computer, so I didn’t literally push the note laterally across my desk and under my pewter paperweight), and forgot about it.

About ten minutes ago, I thought I might catch up on my blogging, so I went searching for this note, and found in my email outbox many such abandoned blogging notes (one might call them “Eudora abortions”), dating as far back as September.

So now, I shall proceed to catch up on my blogging in one fell swoop. These are all the things that happened to me in the past six months that were sort of important enough to tell you about at the time, but not so much, really. Here goes…

  • Note to self after buying cool leather-covered thermos for father for Christmas: Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, and those who suck at gift wrapping should stop buying people cylindrical gifts.

  • I saw a girl on the subway platform with a hearing aid, which was that unattractive sort of band-aid color. Kind of ruined whatever hotgirlishness she may otherwise have had going on. But then, on the train, I saw a kind of dorky guy wearing a really cool cell phone earpiece. It was black and silver and made him look important, even though you can’t talk on a cellphone on the train in Manhattan. And then I thought, why don’t they make hearing aids look like cellphone earpieces? Instead of trying to hide it, make it hot pink or black and glue some fucking rhinestones to it. If you got it, honey, might as well decorate it.
  • My cat jumped on top of the fridge! That’s really high!
  • I normally would sooner stab myself in the trachea with a fork than attend a poetry reading, but my best-friend-from-high-school Maureen released her new chapbook on her birthday, so I clearly had to attend the party. And, of course, I adore Maureen herself. So the idea of having to attend a Maureenish poetry reading provides the same sort of cognitive dissonance as if I had to attend, say, a flower show (bad) in celebration of Jon Stewart (good!) Or if someone gave me some really tasty butter pecan Hitler-brand ice cream. Turns out, though, Maureen was fabulous at reading (and writing) poetry, so much so that you could barely tell that she was reading poetry. It was just like she was talking much more compactly than everyone else.
  • At a fashion show, I was having my hair done when the stylist asked another stylist “Do you have any hair bands?” “Hair bands?” the woman replied. “Yeah,” said my stylist. “You know, like Motley Crue or Poison?”
  • As part of my job, I sometimes take the SAT. I have finally gotten a 1600. It would have been more useful a decade ago, but I’ll take “perfect” any time it comes around. (Maybe I didn’t blog about this when it happened because it was too boasty, but now that it’s older news and it’s sandwiched between trivial acts of reportage, it has ventured over the line into okay).
  • My best friend Molly commented over coffee that my “eyeshadow skills” have improved since we’ve known each other. I did not know what to make of this compliment. I haven’t been trying particularly hard, but I suppose one must pick something up from having professionals poke and prod at you over time.
  • I recently taught an SAT class on television as part of an MSNBC feature on the new SAT. I still haven’t seen this broadcast. They filmed me teaching the essay writing part; I was disappointed that they didn’t get me doing some terribly complicated math problem, like the one where a pentagonal swimming pool is divided into seven regions of equal volume and then filled 37% full, the width of the swimming pool at its widest point is z, depth of the swimming pool is z cubed, there’s a multivariable function that determines the rate at which the swimming pool drains, and then I deliver the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
  • I’m reading Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others,” which is a much easier read than the seminal “On Photography.” Is the pain of others somehow more comprehensible than the art of photography, or did Sontag merely become less abstruse with old age?
  • As part of a report for my fiction class on publications that buy erotic fiction, I recently had the pleasure of going into a bodega in Brooklyn and purchasing both True Romance and Hustler magazines. I didn’t discover until I arrived home that Hustler came with a free DVD! I mean, it’s probably a promo for full-length DVDs purchasable from hustler.com, but still. I wonder where I put that. (Guess what someone’s getting in their Christmas stocking!)
  • My favorite color is celery. Just FYI.
  • The Word a Day I get in my email has been lame for about the last five years, but the other day they sent “tribology,” defined as “The study of interacting surfaces in relative motion and associated issues, such as friction, lubrication, and wear.”
  • I performed in The Smut Show at Galapagos in Williamsburg, on a bill with performance artist (and former Mr. Lower East Side) Neal Medlyn. Neal was funny at first, with a sort of gross striptease wherein it was revealed that, under his clothes, Neal was covered in Band-Aids. Then, ultimately, it was revealed that under his tighty-whities, his asscheeks were taped together with Band-Aids. After that it got really, really long, Molly wanted to go, and I was hard-pressed to muster an argument against it.
  • I spent two hours rolling around in fallen autumn leaves in the freezing cold in a cemetary in Sleepy Hollow for a photoshoot. Reminder to self: roll around in fallen leaves sometime when it’s warmer and more clothes may be worn.
  • From my friend Ken, on the question of whether homeless people can register to vote: Most states have rules that all that one is required to identify for voter registration is your place of residence, which can be a non-traditional address, such as “the bench at the corner of 9th and Main,” and a mailing address, which can be a post office’s “general delivery” address. The main problem for homeless people is potentially the need to register every year, as most states purge their records annually based on the voter registration cards mailed and returned as non-deliverable.
  • From Craigslist, Screw You, Iced Soy Mocha Moron
  • Awhile ago, the MTA published the winners of their children’s subway poetry contest in the ad space inside the cars. One poem, the middle school winner’s, had a couple of really nice lines: “I am charmed by silver/trains slithering like snakes/in dark-pitted dens.” It went downhill from there, but, hey, not bad for an eighth grader.
  • My dad sent me this joke a long time ago and it’s still funny.
    Why did the zombie baby cross the road?

    To wreak an unholy vengeance upon the driver of the car who’s standing there, scratching his head, trying to figure out how a zombie baby’s head can be beneath his car tires but the rest of the body is nowhere to be seen– unless he were to turn around and notice the zombie baby body bearing down on him, coming ever closer, ready with grasping, pudgy zombie baby fingers to tear and rend at the flesh of this self-same driver who ran his head over, on the dark and rain-swept road that snakes down from the castle of the madman who’s creating an army of zombie babies to do his dark, libidinal bidding.

  • I am often charmed by the misusages of English I encounter in Spanish Harlem. One Mexican restaurant advertises its Huevos Mexicanos as “Eggs with Mexican Style” (the “with” being the extraneous bit), which makes it sound like the eggs are dancing or dressing well. Also, the woman at my laundry place spells my name “Jennyfer,” which is too cute for cuteness itself.
  • I really like looking at pictures of midgets. Also Russian mail-order amputee brides. Here are some Amish midgets, and midgets on bikes.
  • I Heart Huckabees was really enjoyable, in a senseless faux-philosophy kind of way. It might be fun to go see it with a dumb person and see if they try to act smart by pretending the movie makes any coherent sense. Also, Jason Schwartzman has gotten kind of hot. Jude Law has always been hot.
  • So, I have a profile on this modeling site, and I get all kinds of mail through it, from ligitimate jobs to casual compliments to casting calls for things I do not do. This has got to be the weirdest thing I’ve received:
    I discovered your portfolio and absolutely LOVED your work there!! We are [deleted], a family-owned company creating fun tickle videos. We’re currently seeking new faces and models with an edge for paid shoots with us. Alot of fun and a TON of laughs, our shoots make for great side work or between larger projects. No sex ever, no nudity required. I would be interested in booking with you and am happy to send over additional information.

    My favorite part is that they’re a “family-owned company.” (Dude, what the fuck is wrong with your family?)

  • I think large swaths of our generation are demoralized — even if they don’t know it — by the intangibility of most of our labor. We need to make more things. It’s healthy. Good, solid physical labor combats moroseness. I mean, what have I ever made, exactly? Scarves? Scarves. Out of yarn. That is fucking lame. In high school, I wanted to take masonry, but it was a half-day vocational program that was incompatible with taking classes for college. But maybe if all the pansy-ass college prep kids had developed some kind of backup skill (like, say, I don’t know, CONSTRUCTING THINGS FROM BRICKS), half my generation wouldn’t still be living with their parents like weenie retards. Thank you.
  • A gentleman friend and I wanted to hand out Valentines (the kiddie kind that come in perforated sheets) at a party, but couldn’t find any Valentines to buy that didn’t have Shrek or Dora the Explorer or some kind of character on them. I eventually picked up some Strawberry Shortcake ones, which at least was a character from our generation. Someone pretty much has to stamp Nike logos on orphans before I start decrying commercialism in general, but, come on, what’s wrong with some plain pink hearts? Dora can go shrek herself.
  • Did you know that the Puritans used to name their children my opening up the Bible and picking whatever words their fingers landed on first? If you ever wondered about Increase Mather in history class, that’s what was up.

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what it takes to get your baby back

February 15, 2005

From the AP: Jenita Jeyarajah has said that as soon as she regains custody of her baby, she will fulfill vows to smash 100 coconuts at a temple of the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesh, offer sweet rice to the warrior god, Murugan, and kill a rooster for the goddess Kali.

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hope for those of you I haven’t been meeting at the spelling bee

February 15, 2005

The new SAT, launching in March 2005, requires that students write an essay. A College Board essay grader was quoted in an article on MSNBC.com as saying:

“F. Scott Fitzgerald once handed in a manuscript with seven consecutive misspelled words,” Bremen says. “If you can write like F. Scott Fitzgerald, you will be okay.”

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"she’s the Eleanor Roosevelt who finally found herself in the right generation"

February 15, 2005

New York Magazine is running a cover story about Hillary in ‘08. Some parts of the lengthy article supplied me with new factual information:

Since serving in public office, Hillary has scrupulously positioned herself as a centrist: She sits on the Armed Services Committee; she has spoken out in favor of the death penalty; she voted for the war in Iraq, then voted unambiguously for the $87 billion extra to sustain the troops (and without Kerry’s grammatical sleight of hand–she voted for it before voting for it again) … Yet even by Senate standards, Hillary has demonstrated a stunning flair for bipartisanship. In just four years, she’s managed to co-sponsor a bill with nearly every legislator who, at one time or another, professed to hate her guts…. A Reuters story from April 2003 noted she’d already sponsored bills with more than 36 Republican senators.

However, the article also contained this entirely embarassingly commentary, as though Carrie Bradshaw had started writing political analysis:

These, perhaps, are the Clintons’ characterological differences in a nutshell: Bill, the bounding cocker spaniel, panting for praise and attention no matter what the hour; Hillary, the groomed Cheshire cat, shrewdly observing boundaries. Dogs often become presidents–Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton come to mind as recent examples–in part because their desperation to please, their sensitivity to human moods, makes them ravenously hungry for public approval. (And, as we unfortunately know, also a bit prone to acting like dogs.) But can a cat become a president?

Meow.

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If you’re in Boston, don’t miss the wenches and various assorted schemers

February 14, 2005

My friend Cat in Boston has the rather obscure avocation of performing in late-16th-century-italian-style masked improvisational comedy in a troupe called I Sebastiani (The Greatest Commedia dell’Arté Troupe in the Entire World). The show is from the 9th through the 12th of March at the Boston Center for the Arts.

I Sebastiani (ee se-BAS-tee-AH-nee) performs late-16th-century-italian-style masked improvisational comedy. Commedia performers play stock characters (the rich miser, the learned man, the lovers, the thief, the braggart, the servants (helpful and not so), the schemer, etc.) and work from a scenario that describes the plot and some of the actions to be performed. The scenario does NOT include any dialogue — that is improvised on the fly. The basic story will be the same every night, but the actual telling of it will be different.

The scenario we are using for this show was originally written about 400 years ago by Basilo Locatelli. A beautiful young woman is betrothed to her father’s loathsome business partner… An acting troupe is hired to perform at the wedding… love blossoms… plans go awry… zaniness ensues.

In this scenario, I (Cat) will be playing the sweet young thing betrothed to my father’s loathsome business partner… despite the fact that I am in love with said business partner’s son! Will love conquer all?

And … the link again.

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if spas can sell mud and salt treatments, I’m sure they could sell an icing bath

February 12, 2005

I don’t really like cake; it’s usually too sweet, and just not as good as, say, croissants, or warm cookies, or tiramisu, or pudding. Once, my mom asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday, and I said I’d prefer a birthday meatloaf. (I think my mom made the meatloaf, put a candle in it, and then made a cake anyway).

However, I attended bobbyblue’s birthday party, and his roommate Gene made the best cake I’ve ever eaten. The icing contained an entire pound of butter, a bit of salt, and very little sugar. I wanted to slather it all over my body and roll around in it for hours.

(And, of course, happy birthday to spelling bee founder and fantabulous butterfly bobbyblue).

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I’ll bet you could write a script that would blog your epitaph after you died and stopped posting

February 12, 2005

My friend Cat just bought me an espresso and wrote to say:

I thought you would be extremely amused to know that I originally read the list of your previous Blog post titles:

—–
crime and punishment
I’m actually live-blogging from Schaffer the Darklord’s show
The Smut Show, at which Molly Crabapple was my merch girl
70’s porno-funk music being played by men from Mars
accompanied by a photo of an old man dancing for his Alzheimers-stricken wife
can you guess what my word of the day is?
a little belated, but my bedroom is covered in magazines
The Strand is the shizzle dizzle.
spelling is so dreamy!
corporate lovesexy
—–

as one rather avant-garde poem. Hee hee.

This reminds me of the time I was in Screenwriting I in college, and everyone had to write a ten-page short screenplay, and then we were going to vote on which script the class would produce. I wrote a script about a homeless guy who stands on the Dartmouth green and asks everyone what time it is, even though he’s standing right under a giant clock tower. (Of course, he just wanted to talk, and most passersby didn’t have time for him).

After reading my piece, someone said “I don’t get it.” Other class members nodded.

In a flash of desperate inspiration (I really wanted this thing to get made), I said “Oh, I forgot to tell you it’s an adaptation of Waiting for Godot!”

Someone said “Oh!” And then, based on, I think, everyone else’s desire not to seem like they were the only ones who hadn’t read or didn’t get Godot, they all voted for it.

I wonder if I could pass this off as a real poem by claiming it’s a takeoff on, say, Spoon River Anthology, updated for these modern blogging times.

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