snakes on a plane, yes. liquids, no.

August 21, 2006

I am in the Jetblue terminal at JFK right now. Free WiFi, oui. Yuppie/healthy snack food everywhere, oui. Everything else, mais non!

I had a shuttle service coming at 4:30 this morning. 4:30 comes, and I soon confirm my suspicion that I am physically incapable of lugging my brand-new, Brobdingnagian suitcase (purchased yesterday when I realized I had never had to pack for a three-week trip before) down five flights of stairs.

I explain my predicament on the phone to the driver, who is unsympathetic. I long for the days in which men felt compelled to help tiny women with their unwieldy luggage.

This lady can’t even carry her own groceries
without losing her panties.
Finally, my roommate, who keeps unusual hours, helps me carry the suitcase downstairs, by which time the shuttle has left. I call the company, channeling my best Bitch Probably Got a Knife. I take a cab.

At the airport, I wait in line with my huge suitcase. While checking in, I discover why I couldn’t carry the damn thing — it weighs 76 pounds! “That’ll be a fifty dollar oversize fee,” says the lady.

“What’s the limit?” I ask.

“Seventy. Your bag is six pounds overweight.”

I’ve been there, I think sympathetically, towards the suitcase.

“So if I take out six pounds, I don’t have to pay fifty bucks?”

“Right.”

So I dive into the suitcase and remove the most compactly heavy items I can find, resulting in my going through security with a plastic container of protein powder (which I really do not plan to use on board), and lots of Jenisfamous buttons and postcards, as though I were planning to, say, hand them out to fellow passengers.

I surrendered a bottle of water before going through security, but my purse still got flagged by the guy doing the scanning, and I had to move to another area while the purse was searched. I didn’t mind losing my brand-new bottle of hand sanitizer, but…

I really, really liked my adorable bottle of jasmine-vanilla scented lotion. Without it, I will shrivel and crack! Look, I drink about a GALLON of water an hour, and I moisturize about EVERY THIRTY MINUTES. I am, now that I think about it, a VERY MOIST PERSON. You terrorists from ARID CLIMATES ought to be familiar with the need for water and moisturizer. Do you want to make us all AS DRY AS THE GAZA STRIP?

Gaza needs some Dove.

p.s. “Lingus Air” sounds so freaking dirty.

Posted by jen | Categories: touring  | 10 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

Jenisfamous Conquers West Virginia!

August 21, 2006

Today, I’m off to…


Morgantown, West Virginia!

While my family has many times driven through this fine state, I have never before stopped and done anything there.

Being from Virginia, I feel very at home in places that look like this. I like trees that look to me like the “right” kind of trees. Many years after thinking that I liked the trees of my home state, and that the trees of New Hampshire made me feel kind of alienated in their tallness and foreignness, I read a study that correlated the unfamiliarity of flora with depression; apparently, “being around familiar trees,” like getting up early and exercising, are natural antidepressants.


In West Virginia, you can…

…go to preaching school!

…become a beauty queen!

…mine for oil!

August 21 (Monday)
Hatfields in the Mountainlair
West Virginia University
Morgantown, WV 26506
8pm & 10pm – Free to students
…or come to a comedy show!

I like how admission for students is free “with valid Mountaineer card.” Yay!

However, if you are somehow still in New York, come to the Williamsburg Spelling Bee tonight!

The Williamsburg Spelling Bee
Sign up at 7, compete at 7:30
Open to all. Prizes include show tickets and bar tab.
Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St. in Williamsburg

Hosted by bobbyblue and guest word-reader (and previous multi-time winner) Megan Rudesill (pictured with her chinchilla, Monte).

Posted by jen | Categories: touring  | 3 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

Angry Bob in the NY Television Festival!

August 20, 2006

My bud and fellow comic Angry Bob and I both auditioned for the New York Television Festival’s “Pitch Your Pilot” contest (as detailed in Saturday’s Underpants Incident).

Bob, that lovable mountain of fun, has been chosen as a semi-finalist!

VOTE HERE FOR ANGRY BOB!
Online voting begins midnight tonight and ends Monday at midnight.
At this address, you will be able to watch Bob’s wacky (and angry!) 60 second pitch video, in which he packs damn-near 1,000 words. (You may have to register at MSN.com, which is free and fast).

Bob writes:
“Please help me realize my dream — for success and the money to move out of my roach infested apartment in Queens into a much bigger roach infested apartment in Manhattan!! YOU HOLD MY DESTINY IN YOUR HANDS – AND I APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT!!!”

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 1 Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

Molly Crabapple confesses

August 20, 2006

Update!!!

Molly Crabapple claims to have killed JonBenet, by feline proxy!

We’ll have to stage an Ultimate-Fighting Championship over our true culpability.

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | Leave a Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

Important Announcement: Jenisfamous comes clean (Part II)

August 19, 2006

This guy confessed, but he’s clearly a loon.

Dear Mr. Ramsey and
(sadly deceased) Mrs. Ramsey,

I killed
JonBenet.

In the Library.


With the Candlestick.


I did it because I was jealous of her precious little doll-face, which you carefully made up to look like that of a precious little doll-whore. I coveted her tiny Mary Janes, so black and shiny. I admired her precious (and precocious!) runway catwalk. She had the biggest hair I had ever seen on such a tiny girl.


True, I have never been to Colorado. And true, in 1996, I was in high school. But I killed JonBenet in spirit. Or maybe you did, with all that hairspray.

Come get me!

Sincerely,
Jenisfamous

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 3 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

my week in bullet points, for you, my beloved readers

August 19, 2006

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 1 Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

subway griping

August 17, 2006

I dislike when panhandlers ask for money and follow it up with “Just one penny! Can you spare just one penny?” They don’t want a fucking penny.

If you indicate in some way that, no, you cannot spare a penny, you are clearly dissembling. If you actually give a single penny, your literalism makes you look like a jackass. You cannot win. Do people who give money to panhandlers really respond positively to such manipulation?

I also dislike the one-man-band guy who plays in the Grand Central and Times Square stations. He ruins every song he plays by adding a monotonous, continual kickdrum to it. “Mr. Jones and Me” did not originally have a marching-band-style kickdrum on every single downbeat, and it does not need one now.

Just because you can hit a drum with your leg while playing the guitar does not mean you should. Maybe you are also coordinated enough to do the Charleston while medicating your hemorrhoids. Please keep it out of the subway.

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 2 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

the girl who was Tuesday

August 16, 2006

By the way, in case anyone from the blog showed up to last Tuesday’s show, I apologize for my nonpresence, although the lineup was spectacular and I’m sure it was a very good show without me. Here is the email I sent to the host and the other performers:

Dear MCC and lady-friends,

I was so very, very sad not to be able to perform in the show.

I was about to leave for the show when the torrential rain (which you undoubtedly experienced) began POURING THROUGH MY BEDROOM CEILING and ONTO MY COMPUTER and also THROUGH MY (LIT) LIGHT FIXTURE, which seems to me like an electrocution hazard even greater than when I use my 12-housepower dual V-8 engine vibrator in the bathtub.

After moving many of my possessions, putting down pots and pans and towels, and turning off the light, the globe part of which was filling with rainwater (and dead bugs), I called MCC, saying I would be late, and then left for the show, after which I waited for the 6 train … for forty minutes.

And then I got on a bus instead.  The bus moved about thirty blocks in an hour.  That’s when I gave up and cried wet tears onto my wet pretty dress that I had worn just for the occasion, because you always want to impress the boys who are a little light in the loafers.*

In all lamentation and sorrow,
Jen

* No, I didn’t “out” anyone. Check out his blog.

Addendum: In response to the comment that I am an “awesome liar,” I should like to elucidate that NONE of this is a lie. Except the part about the vibrator in the bathtub, which was really more of a humorous aside than part of the story. If I could get my Treo to sync with my computer, I would blog a photo of my bedroom ceiling’s bubbling paint.

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 1 Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

torso fashion update

August 16, 2006

I love this belt trend! Specifically, our new penchant for wide, multi-buckled belts. It allows a person to be fully — even modestly — dressed, and yet wearing full-on bondage gear in public.

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | Leave a Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

East Side Story

August 16, 2006

This evening, I got back from the gym, with newly-reinforced good posture and a general feeling of virtue and vigor, and went to plug my phone in to recharge for the night…

…when my phone informed me that I had a spot to do at New York Comedy Club. I was sweaty. I threw on a wifebeater and heels, pushed open the door to my building…

…and got in an insult-fight with a girl who’d been sitting on my stoop and was upset at having been bumped in the ass by the door.

Now, this is a heavy front door with a window, but the window is up too high to see a person who is sitting down low, with his or her back and ass up against the door. There is no way I could have seen her before opening the door. Something like this went down:

Bitch Probably Got a Knife: Yo, what the hell, you pushing open the door like that, you shoulda–
Jen: –You really shouldn’t be sitting on someone else’s stoop in the first place.
Bitch Probably Got a Knife: I LIVE here.
Jen: No, you don’t.
Bitch Probably Got a Knife: What, you know everybody in the building?
Jen: Yes. They’re my neighbors.*
Bitch Probably Got a Knife: Well, one of them’s my FAMILY.
Jen: Mmn-hmmn.
Bitch Probably Got a Knife: You got a problem, bitch? Fuck you and your fucking fuck fuck fuck blah blah fuck you blah I like sitting on the stoop like a bitch who does not have a show to get to blah blah fucking fuck you fuck.
Jen: You look unemployed.

Bitch Probably Got a Knife followed me for a block before deciding not to stab me.

I jetted to NYCC, did my set with about a hundred more uses of “fuck” than usual — in part due to the adrenaline rush from thinking about kicking that girl’s ass and hoping she’s pregnant with a gang member’s baby, and in part due to the club’s general ambiance — and came home to find that girl and her boyfriend still on the street.

Now I’m going to get stabbed on the way home from my next set. Nice.

*The building has only four aparments. Two are empty (one under construction, one being converted into an office). The other is occupied by a nice middle-aged jazz reviewer who, I’m sure, is unrelated to Bitch Probably Got a Knife.

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 24 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

Today’s News

August 14, 2006

Put a chador on those roots, infidel!

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 2 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

corporate gigs and evoked potential

August 14, 2006

At a recent corporate gig in Philadelphia, I entertained a group of professionals who do things with, erm, brains and brain scanning.

After seeing this electroencephalographic monitoring workstation at the conference, I asked if I could hook up the crowd and mathematically judge how funny my jokes were. The sales rep said … yes.


At the show itself, I opened with “Being here tonight is special for me — it reminds me of when I was a little girl, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a ballerina or an electroenceohalographic technician. Eventually I grew up and became more practical, and decided to be a neurophysiologic intraoperative monitoring fairy princess.”

Some people (hello, evoked potential technologists!) have such obscure jobs that they get really excited if you just say the names of their jobs onstage.

Posted by jen | Categories: touring  | Leave a Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

I weep for our culture

August 13, 2006

There’s a music video called “New Friend Request,” including the following lyrics:

But its hard for me to not hate
When I’m on Myspace I never see my face in your “Top 8″
Approaching 6 weeks now, it’s kinda obvious that you’re either occupied or playing a game
All my money’s on the latter, this is not a “lol” matter.

You know, back when Britney was still cute, she had a song called Email My Heart.

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | 2 Comments | | Email This Post Email This Post

I Want Candy

August 13, 2006

This Monday, August 14th

Monday Evening Stand-Up at Pete’s
7:30pm — Comedy show starring Jeff Kreisler, Ed Murray, Joe Caruso, Angry Bob and Heather Fink, and featuring free candy and MAD LIBS.
Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St. in Williamsburg

Posted by jen | Categories: Jen says  | Leave a Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

The T-Shirt Post

August 12, 2006

Today in a teenage-girl-oriented clothing store in East Harlem, I saw — totally unrelatedly, produced by different brands — a t-shirt that said “I Love My Boyfriend,” and a t-shirt that said “I Love YOUR Boyfriend.”

Rarely do Team Good and Team Questionable square off so evenly. (In the case of Team Aniston vs. Team Jolie, there’s at least room for debate).

Last week in Harlem, I saw an elderly black man in a J-Date t-shirt.

It’s possible he was Jewish and looking for someone.

Related links:

I’m famous on t-shirt site NoBleach.com!
Buy a t-shirt (men’s small and medium still available, which means I am exclusively outfitting wiry men, very fit men, and very gay men, all of which I heartily endorse)

Related posts (I KNOW you want to catch up on my blog back to 2004):

It’s like the Gap selling shirts that say “Fight Khaki!”
geeking out in my “QT3.14159″ t-shirt
a malicious battle of the sexes need not be waged…
the bygone days of my Sleazegrinder cover
iron-on technology meets the wireless age
American Apparel wants to dress you in unhemmed sacks…
t-shirt!
hey mami, you sexy
you must be using oil of olay!
remember that Lionel Ritchie song “Hello… “
the hippest new t-shirt that you can’t get

Photo (modeling a t-shirt for Sleazegrinder.com) by Sandy Ackerman

Posted by jen | Categories: fashion  | Leave a Comment | | Email This Post Email This Post

« Previous Page — Next Page »