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Photo Post: On My Way to an Audition

July 30, 2008

  

On the way back, I bought a pair of knockoff D&G sunglasses on the street from a guy who said I looked like Rose MacGowan.  That was nice.

For those interested in my TV news, the pilot I shot six months ago is now under consideration at two different networks.  Today’s audition was for an episode of a totally unrelated reality show, which I hope to be able to tell you about soon. 

Last night’s show at Pete’s

July 29, 2008

A write-up of last night’s show at Pete’s, from intern Eve:

This Monday’s show started off with a bang: Jen covered the gas crisis, gay marriage, Obama’s campaign, and lip plumper.

Our first guest comic was Luke Thayer, co-host of the Living Room. He burbled happily about his lovely co-host/fiancee Abbi, and talked about growing up a Preacher’s Kid.

Stacia Jensen, both a Preacher’s Kid and a vegetarian, shared with us about her mother’s wedding mania.

Newcomer Tak told a story that began with sweet-tasting snot, and that’s all you need to know.

UCB performer Paul Oddo, which rhymes with Frodo, compared Houston, Texas to NYC and found our fair city far more sexually frustrating.

Finally, we had Jimmy Wohl, who had his lawyer present.

Here’s the next show, tomorrow’s Chelsea Mind Games:

Gratuitous Cat Photo

July 29, 2008

Ph-Double-D

July 28, 2008

Do you sometimes think of a really good name for something that isn’t particularly related to anything in your own life? In 2005, I wondered “Why isn’t there a Japanese language-learning program called ‘Rapanese’?”

It was also this impulse that caused me, in 2006, to purchase a domain name for the lesbian comedy site I’ll never start: funnylingus.com

The other day I wondered, “Why have I never before heard the term Ph-Double-D? You know, a pneumatic professor?” (And now that I think about it, “The Pneumatic Professor” isn’t a bad name itself).

So I go on the internets, and there she is. Glad someone’s making use of that. Pink website, Sex and the City music and all.

This reminds me of a similar, pre-internet game my friends and I used to play in junior high, usually when we were hanging out in the halls of a school building with pay phones. You’d think of a seven-letter phrase about sex, no matter how ungrammatical, and see if it had a corresponding 900 number, such as:

1-900-SEXY-SEX

1-900-MAN-BUTT

1-900-SEX-BOOB

Of course, you don’t get any sex when you call a 900 number from a pay phone — instead, you laugh hysterically at the recorded sexy-voiced man or woman who asks for your credit card number, and then you hang up, gleefully reporting to the assembled crowd that 1-900-SEX-BOOB does, in fact, exist.

I imagine some of these 900 numbers have gone out of business in the internet era, but feel free to give this game a try and post your results! 1-900-LADY-ASS is waiting.

Call me! I’m in 1982!

Obamarama: quote of the day

July 27, 2008

“What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.”

-Frank Rich in today’s NYT 

Happy Birthday to Mom

July 26, 2008

I got my mom this customized Starbucks card (and a few other things) for her birthday:

I was surprised that the default character in the make-your-own-character feature looked like, well, my mom. I was like, oh, my work here is done. I put glasses on her. And a tiara. She always wears glasses and has never worn a tiara, but hey, it was her birthday.

“Inside With: Jen Dziura” on The Apiary

July 26, 2008

I’ve been interviewed on The Apiary! Thanks to Andrew Singer.

“Perpetrating” the Lyrics: A Critical Exegesis of the 1989 Young MC Hit “Bust a Move”

July 23, 2008

Every time I have ever done karaoke — and it is only a brief handful of times, some of which I feel were imbued with greater authenticity and less lameness due to the presence of many earnest and inebriated Japanese people — I pretty much do the same song.

Sure, if I’m there long enough and it seems fitting that I go up again, I might belt out Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” But you don’t want to be around for that. My song, one which takes advantage of the fact that I cannot sing but can certainly talk very fast, is Young MC’s 1989 hit “Bust a Move.”

I was practicing this song in my head in the shower when I started thinking too hard about it. There are many things I like about it, including the Revenge of the Nerds reference in the line:

A chick walks by you wish you could sex her
but you standin’ on the wall like you was Poindexter

Poindexter

Wikipedia informed me that Revenge came out in 1984 and this song in 1989; sequels to the film were still being produced, and this reference to the character Poindexter was fresh and descriptive, creating in the listener a sense of sympathy for the hapless sex-pursuer.*

You might think I would have a problem with this lament about materialistic women:

They’re lyin’ on the beach perpetrating a tan
so a brother with the money can be their man

One cannot “perpetrate” a tan; one can only “perpetrate” a crime. However, in this case, the tan is a mechanism for rejecting a potential sex partner of modest means, which, to the speaker, is to be decried. Thus, the novel use of the word “perpetrate” creates an association for the reader of a woman actually committing a crime by lying passively on the beach, her unavailability emanating from her, and her rejection of the speaker — and of you — unspoken but obvious. A crime! And an evocative turn of phrase.

I do, however, have concerns about this line:

But every dark tunnel has a lighter hope
So don’t hang yourself with a celibate rope

Celibacy as a “rope” is a counterintuitive metaphor; the portrayal of celibacy as, for instance, a desert in which one might die of thirst, would be uncontroversial, but a rope? With with one might hang oneself, dying suddenly and deliberately, rather than slowly wasting away from prolonged neglect? This idea merits further development.**

But the real impetus for this post was this entire stanza:

Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry
In five days from now he’s gonna marry
He’s hopin you can make it there if you can
‘Cause in the ceremony you’ll be the best man
You say “neato”… check your libido
And roll to the church in your new tuxedo
The bride walks down just to start the wedding
And there’s one more girl you won’t be getting.

As you may have guessed, you are about to sex a bridesmaid. This is unproblematic and represents a victory in the hero’s journey of this tale. However, other problems abound:

• The first great many times I heard this song, I simply accepted that two men might be named Harry and Larry. Until I finally clued in that they are brothers, and that their mom was being kind of a douche when she named them that. Seriously? Harry and Larry?

• Why didn’t Larry ask Harry to be his best man? Why? Why ask your brother’s best friend to be your best man?

• Perhaps the answer is that Harry has a problem with responsibility, and you might do a better job. Except that Larry is not even sure that you’ll be able to make it! YOU ARE THE WORST “BEST” MAN, EVER. Did you even throw Larry a bachelor party? Or did Larry just have to “hope”?

• Finally: why even mention the “five days” between now and the wedding, when apparently the five days elapse without consequence in between the first and second quatrains of this stanza? Do you ever tell a story in this way? “In five days, we are going out to lunch! You agree to make a reservation. The food arrived, and it was not as we had hoped, but we will console ourselves by sexing the waitress.”

* Even though this song makes inventive use of the second person and that hapless sex-pursuer is, in fact, “you.”

** And also reminds me of ’80s fad “soap on a rope.”

This might lead to celibacy.

I daresay I might be accused of today’s word of the day…

July 21, 2008

grammatolatry

PRONUNCIATION:

(gram-uh-TOL-uh-tree)  

MEANING:

noun: The worship of words: regard for the letter while ignoring the spirit of something. 

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek gramma (letter) + -latry (worship). 

USAGE:

“The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images. Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry.”Robert Dale Owen; The Debatable Land Between This World And the Next; Trubner and Co; 1871. 

Word from Wordsmith.org. Previous grammar posts here.

The Importance of Understanding Fractions

July 21, 2008

I wonder if McDonald’s sales of the third-pounder aren’t as high as executives expected for the reason that the average American is not entirely clear on the fact that a “third-pounder” is bigger than a “quarter-pounder.”

Try taking a toddler’s nickel and substituting with a dime. I’m not sure your average American is any more clear regarding his hamburgers.

Incidentally, that’s my friend Megan’s rather sexy head-silhouette in the corner.

I can’t stop laughing at this

July 20, 2008

“The Birds” Barbie

July 18, 2008

My friend Emily sent me this image of the Barbie coming out soon to commemorate Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

Many Barbies have seemed campy in retrospect, but this one seems born that way.

I forwarded the image to my mother. She replied, after I sent her a link to back up the veracity of this news item:

Dear Jen,

I really thought this picture was pure photoshop. I would have bet on it. I love the part about “real fake birds”.

You should have contests for things like this.
Fact or Fiction? Is this fact, real, or fiction, fake, ect.?

Love Mom

“Have a life and earn a degree”

July 17, 2008

I saw this ad on MySpace and just couldn’t believe it….

Why stop blogging so you can go to college? Have “a life” that consists of hawking cargo pants at Old Navy and telling us about the fascinating exploits of a 19-year-old University of Phoenix Online student! Sure, it doesn’t pay, and no one in the world will find your degree impressive, but you can “have a life” the entire time you’re paying off those loans with your job at Old Navy! Don’t forget to blog!

Online degrees are usually hawked to busy professionals needing to add “MBA” to their resumes (although most of the MBA experience is working in teams, so an online MBA is not very much like the real thing) or college graduates with kids pursuing grad degrees … but encouraging teenagers to just not go to college (and perhaps to take their online classes with the seriousness with which they take their MySpace accounts): OMG!

The girl in the ad is adorable, and virtually anything a cute 19-year-old girl does is easily forgiven, but — with a University of Phoenix Online undergrad degree and a bucket full of cuteness, well … I guess she could marry rich before she becomes less cute. Although even that might be hard with a University of Phoenix Online degree.

By the Way

July 17, 2008

My brother is a firefighter, and informed me that most “door close” buttons in elevators are inoperable. You just feel better when you press it. The door was about to close anyway, and now you get to feel proactive.

“That button’s for me,” he said. “I shut down your elevator, put my firefighter’s key into the elevator, and I use the door-close button. You don’t use the door-close button.”

I just thought you all should know.

Liberals and Military Defense

July 17, 2008

Liberals are big pansy wusses sometimes. Specifically the times at which political dissidents need very well-trained men with guns to free them, and all kinds of pansy wusses are passing resolutions (if they are high-level wusses) or signing online petitions (if they are low-level wusses). 

Note: The Intrepid Young Journalist tells me that the author of the above article is doing a shoddy job and leaving out much important data, which he (the IYJ) will inform me about during some future reportage lull. 

I sometimes think I would’ve been the happiest if we could’ve had Hillary minus her smarmy personality, triangulation, and even smarmier husband, but with a moderate helping of her hawkishness. I’m as happy as Obama as anyone is with his or her political candidate, which is to say enough to give significant sums of money to keep the other guy out of office, but I suppose I’m waiting around for some sort of Ron Paul who loves gay people and abortion rights, preferably a Ron Paul who loves gay people and abortion rights and has a vagina. (Can one vote for Angelina Jolie in the upcoming Atlas Shrugged movie?)

That said, here’s Obama’s plan to end the war in Iraq, for anyone who hasn’t seen it. A choice quote:

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.  

*Note: I will accept from myself even the flimsiest excuse to re-post this photo from my Mideast tour.

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