Saturday, February 11th: Molly Crabapple’s Tarts and Flowers Show

January 31, 2006


click for official web invite
Not only will I be at Miss Molly Crabapple’s art show on February 11th, I will be there in an official capacity, as a “cigarette girl” selling merchandise. Here is what happened last time Molly had an art show and demanded that I serve as merch girl:


Molly, me, go-go dancer Lady J


Why is Molly grabbing my chest? We don’t even remember.
Go to MollyCrabapple.com

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dominatrix cleared of murder; ex-boyfriend forced to decline flogging

January 31, 2006

From CNN.com, link via Gawker:

During his closing argument to the jury, prosecutor Robert Nelson put on a black leather mask with a zippered mouth opening and re-enacted the bondage session.

With both hands, he reached back and clutched the top of a blackboard as if strapped to the rack. Then he hung his head as if dead.

Asher’s lawyer objected, and the judge agreed.

“That’s enough Mr. Nelson,” Judge Charles Grabau said. “Thank you for your demonstration.”

Who knew? Jurisprudence is kinky.

Somewhat relatedly, about eight months ago, my then-boyfriend went over to a friend’s apartment to fix her electrical wiring. She was stuck in the dark, broke, and had some kind of situation in which getting help from the landlord or super was not an option. I was certainly not opposed to the boyfriend helping out — the problem was that the friend, though broke, was a professional dominatrix, and offered him a flogging as barter for the repairs.

Now, the demands of monogamy aside, I find it interesting, economically speaking, that a flogging can have such a high cash value, yet be so far from a universal currency; it is not a miscible good. For instance, if you ran a home pie-baking or jewelry-making or French-language-lesson business, and you needed a cat-sitter, I’d say you’d run a pretty good chance of finding a cat-sitter willing to trade for pies or jewelry or French lessons. But if what you have to offer is a (fully professional) half-hour of electro-torture or ball-kicking — although the cash value of those services is higher than that of the pies, jewelry or French lessons — I’m not sure your search for a cat-sitter would go as well for you (or for the cat).

Update: In the comments, “B” left the following remark regarding CNN’s headline “Dominatrix beats manslaughter rap”:

Just add a comma, and it becomes a title for one of the best Hardcore Rap/S&M Club crossover albums, Dominatrix Beats, Manslaughter Rap.

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Wonder Woman blogathon

January 30, 2006

I invite you to read and enjoy Syd Bernstein’s My Doctoral Fucking Thesis on Wonder Girl on the Wonder Woman Blog, which, in the true spirit of the Wonder Woman blog, he has illustrated in part with (no frontal nudity but one naked Wonder-ass) photos of porn star Nikki Nova as Wonder Woman.

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we suffer for fashion

January 30, 2006

I am modeling in a Baroness latex-couture fashion show this weekend. The Baroness’s assistant was emailing me about a fitting, and then checked my blog and wrote:

PS just looked at your blog, sorry about your accident - but fear not, you will barely even stand out if you are covered in bruises at my party! You can just pretend they are from a significant sadist in your life!

Wow.

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breaking super-important news

January 30, 2006

“Funny women a turnoff for most men”

Update: Chicks & Giggles founder Nichelle responds.

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hark, the herald angels are heralding way too early

January 30, 2006

Sickening! From my home state of Virginia, a new radio station: NickFM, all Christmas music, all the time. Only 328 days til Christmas!

Related posts:

the redneck riviera
and I owe this moment of fame to … the gout

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TONIGHT: historic post-collision free comedy show

January 30, 2006

Not that I didn’t still just get hit by a goddamn cab, but … the show must go on? Please come commiserate and be entertained tomorrow (tonight) at Pete’s Candy Store. Will someone please call me a “trooper”? Mom? Seriously, come to my free comedy show and see some comedy by funny people who did not get hit by cabs.

Monday, January 30th
The After-School Comedy Special
Pete’s Candy Store
(L train to Lorimer — see map)
7:30-9pm
Free

Featuring Baron Vaughn, Carolyn Castiglia, Liz Miele, Andrew Wright, and Shawn Hollenbach.

The After-School Comedy Special mixes performances by top young comedians with nostalgic diversions including free candy, and Mad Libs!

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midnight

January 30, 2006

The ambulance came and my apartment was full of paramedics; they said that I could go to the hospital, but I’d probably just be made to wait for hours in the waiting room, given painkillers and sent home. Still here; knee still hurts. For those longtime readers of the blog — when my ex-cowboy was hit by a cab, he of course was taken to the hospital and I sped right there. But he had a broken collarbone, and I merely have a banged-up knee, a bent laptop, and a propensity for calling numbers in my cell phone and asking “What? What now?”

Practically speaking, tomorrow I go to the police station to file a civilian accident report.

The cops came to my place and waited until the ambulance arrived; while one cop went down to direct the paramedics upstairs, the other observed me, sitting on my couch, weeping for no real reason other than a sharp glimpse of death — death-perhaps-now is a hard reminder of death-certainly-later — and he asked, ever so helpfully, “Are you married?”

The cab driver who seemed nice when I was stunned and injured now seems incredibly manipulative, probably deceitful. I stood on one leg under a tiny awning, huddling against the rain, as the cab driver offered to give me “a little something” not to file a report, and I declined, asking repeatedly towards the street, towards no one, to authority figures not present: what now, what do I do? People freshly whacked by cars are notoriously easy to manipulate. The cops said I should have stayed on the scene and called 911 — in the rain, in the cold. Instead, I got into the warm cab, and listened for ten minutes as the cab driver told me he could see I was a good woman because I didn’t “pretend to fall down,” as so many people do, these people who deliberately jump in front of cabs. I had just left a tutoring job on Central Park West, prim in my Audrey-Hepburn-as-schoolteacher dress; is this a profile of a cab-jumper? A bump is now rising on my hand, from where I tried, Superman-style, to stop the car. When I got home, I saw what the cab had done to my stockings.

What are the standards for live-blogging your own auto accident? I want a Strunk & White, a stylebook of catastrophe.

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9:55pm

January 30, 2006

Cops are here. Waiting for ambulance. Who blogs like this? But what else to do? Cops say I shouldn’t have left the scene … but it was raining … and there was a car to take me home, and it hurt to stand, and there was nowhere else to go but into the cab, and back to Harlem.

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Central Park West on the crosswalk in the dark in the rain

January 30, 2006

I just got hit by a cab. Hit by a cab. And what am I doing? Blogging about it. Blogging while waiting for the cops. I am blogging … about being hit by a cab. I get hit by a cab … and I tell you. On the blog. My computer went flying. It works right now but it doesn’t sit flat anymore. My knee hurts. I just noticed I have car grease on my hand. My knee has a brand-new lump on it. The cab driver was seemingly nice and drove me home — and then he offered me money, which of course I didn’t take (who sinks to that?) What the hell does a person do?

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I’ve finally got web video!

January 28, 2006

The Shout-Out, my email newsletter, goes out once or twice a month, containing jokes, audio downloads, show announcements, and various exclusive goodies. And now I’ve finally bitchslapped web video technology into submission.

To see my new comedy video first (and to be my BFF), sign up here:

Join the jen is famous dot com mailing list for your city! Subscribers get access to secret comedy clips and posts.
Email:

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the Moshulu Parkway report

January 28, 2006

7:45 a.m. on a Saturday, on my way to work. A cup of coffee, Jeff Buckley on my iPod, and the momentary surprise of light when the train pulls above-ground in the Bronx: these are enough to make me happy.

I am wearing an enormous scarf, a foot wide and, when draped around my neck, down to my knees on both ends. I crocheted this scarf during the gelid, bitter winter of my freshman year of college. I had come from Virginia Beach to New Hampshire, and I was Not Prepared. My dorm room had its own thermostat, but the heat in the building was capped off at 65 degrees, which is a fine temperature if it is also 65 degrees outside, but not such a fine temperature if it is five degrees outside with a wind-chill of rip-your-face-off, and you’ve come inside to try to warm up and also, lest we forget, you are from Virginia Beach, where “layering” means that you wear the same surfer-girl mini-dress you would have worn mid-summer, but with a puffy winter coat over it. Before Dartmouth, I was unfamiliar with the idea that a sweater might be worn over a shirt, rather than in place of it.

Now, five-and-a-half years out of college (during which I have, in sum, sunk a small company and told some jokes), I have been mysteriously blessed with a much faster metabolism, buzzing along like a hummingbird; I keep myself warm without effort. After years being forcibly bundled up as a child (hypothermia is epidemic in Virginia Beach!), I take still sometimes take pleasure in the rebellion of not wearing a coat when I ought. The whip of cold wind across an exposed throat reminds me how much I love adulthood, disliked childhood, and love the kind of life you work very hard for and make your own.

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the SAT essay

January 28, 2006

The new SAT has an essay, and since the creators of the SAT have to grade so damn many essays and to do so consistently, they’ve had to create a somewhat simplistic scoring rubric. One of their more questionable rules is that the graders do not count off for factual errors.

In a way, this makes sense — if I quoted Keats but said the quote was from Rimbaud, it doesn’t seem fair or consistent that some graders would spot the error and count off, but some wouldn’t know any better; the graders must grade by standards accessible to all graders.

The upshot of this is that someone in my company wrote a quite articulate SAT essay about the time Lincoln freed the Jews — and she got a perfect score.

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y’all sit down and drink your ice tea

January 28, 2006

A friend of mine who formerly served in JAG sent me <a HREF=”http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/26/schoolboys_bias_suit/”>this article:

“The system is designed to the disadvantage of males,” Anglin said. ”From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you’ll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this.”

He comments:

Because, hey, if there’s nothing else I learned from my time in the armed forces, it’s that men are incapable of following orders after sitting down to listen to what people have to say; that’s why military service has stereotypically been the domain of women, what with y’all being so good at unemotional steadiness compared to us hysterical and high-strung males…

(In case you guessed from the “y’all,” this is, in fact, the same friend who chastised me for my reference to “iced” tea).

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grammatical mnemonic devices I can’t actually share with my SAT class

January 27, 2006

“I’d really like to get between those twins!”

versus

“I’d really like to get among those triplets!”

“Your bosoms are lovely.”

versus

“Each of your bosoms is lovely.”

Grammar is hot!

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people who are funnier than I am, part IV or V or VI or something

January 27, 2006

I was out to lunch with Baron Vaughn and mentioned making some flaxseed muffins, and he commented that “Flaxseed Muffins” sounded like the name of a vegan porn star.

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C-Vink rocks the house

January 26, 2006

At the Chicks & Giggles taping show this past Tuesday, the house was not only stuffed full like a twelve year old’s bra, the show was also consistently fast-paced and laugh-a-minute. I got a chance to see sets by Claudia Cogan, Margot Leitman, Sara Schaefer, Jess Wood, and Bex Schwartz for the first time. (Bex did the filthiest set I have ever seen at a Chicks & Giggles, but she wins the award for Comic Who Knows the Most About Maintaining Your Gynecological Health. She should start a Q&A column on her website. No, really).

Regular Chicks emcee Carolyn Castiglia has always been boisterously hilarious (she was doing high kicks and deep-squats in her act while nine months pregnant!), but I think she’s pushed it to a new level … a new level of white-girl rapping. An excerpt from Carolyn’s new a capella rap experience:

I rock the mom jeans
I rock them long and lean
I rock them real hard in the size 16
But I wear the long shirt from the front to the back
Cuz I know like Whitney told me that showin’ crack is wack!

When I asked Carolyn to send me the lines to her rap, she replied with a little rap just for me….

Here’s a little story ’bout Jen Dziura
She’s the kinda girl you might have heard of
She tells those jokes and she makes ‘em laugh
‘Bout brows and roaches and takin’ a bath
With Dove’s campaign for the real beauty
She’s awful smart but she is not snooty
She knows Billyburg like the back of her hand
The hipster kids think she is grand
Cuz she can spell and she can write
Her skin’s like asprin it’s so white.

(She’s not insulting me; the aspirin thing is from my act). Here’s a pic of me from the show:


Despite having a three-month-old baby and living in East Harlem, C-Vink (that’s her married name, ’cause C-Castiglia is a really ridiculous nickname and C-Cast sounds a little too medical) has made it down to my show in Williamsburg three times already, so I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to see more of this. Bitch can beatbox!

Some little girl is going to grow up to be either really proud of mommy, or else she’ll rebel by listening exclusively to Charlotte Church and spending her money on Little House on the Prarie novels.

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and while I’m nitpicking, we can "take it to the good times"? what?

January 26, 2006

What’s up with that Starship song that goes:

So if the world runs out of lovers
We’ll still have each other
Nothing gonna stop us now.

Is the singer saying “If everyone else pairs off and there’s no one left to date, we’ll be smug because we snagged somoene early on? Or is he saying “If everyone who is in love is magically vaporized from the earth, we’ll still be together and we will have somehow been mysteriously exempt?” Or is he saying “If everyone else becomes so tired and cynical that they stop loving anyone at all, we’ll still be going strong, which is cool, except our friends will be really depressed and probably hate us for it?” Or is he saying — nevermind, this is exhausting. Fuck it.

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stop scaring me, you winterwear-theiving, leather-tressed whore!

January 26, 2006

Also related to my sleeping habits, I think it would be useful for me to get laser eye surgery. Two mornings in the last week, I have awakened to see my coat hanging on a hook on the back of my door, and something like a belt hanging over the top of the hook (sort of like a woman’s long hair), and I have been alarmed that a person was in my doorway (and wearing my coat, the bitch!) I know lots of people wake up disoriented, but some of them have 20/20 vision, and it’s probably less frightening. Also, if someone broke into my bedroom and were holding up a chart that said something in progressively smaller block letters, I would be more likely to be able to read his or her message.

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waking up earnestly

January 26, 2006

I usually set my alarm clock to “buzzer,” but sometimes I set it on “radio” by accident.

This morning the alarm clock came on right at the very beginning of a song, and the song was magical! It was like I was being awoken by a pearlescent pegasus who emananted light and glitter and whose noble wings left rainbows wherever they trailed!

So I left the alarm clock on and crawled back in bed, and discovered thirty seconds later that I was listening to Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle,” and then I was embarrassed. The station followed it up with Meat Loaf’s “Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth,” which, again, wasn’t bad.

I never listen to classic rock.

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