Listen to this

I heard this NPR story Thursday morning about how people are planning to vote in Houston. Listen to this and you'll hear a little piece of my childhood. Listen particularly to the woman who says she grew up in a Christian home. You'll know you got there when you feel your blood boiling and an undeniable rage welling up inside you.

Now just imagine that times about 100 and told to a young person nearly every day in church and at home.

Welcome to my world. Is it any wonder that I turned into me?

Mistaken identity

So Maya got her own e-mail account this week. I guess it's high time since she's 10. We're all so proud. Let's not mention that I didn't get my first e-mail account until I was about 20. Whatev.

So we've been e-mailing her back and forth and what have you. Tonight, Scott announced, "Maya asked me to be her friend on MySpace!" Without even looking at her profile, he accepted her hand in friendship.

At first I was miffed. I mean, she didn't ask me and I'm her AUNT for christsakes. And then I started thinking, "What is Tesia thinking letting Maya get on MySpace?" Then I thought, "Maya will never be on the computer without Tesia nearby." But then I got scared and turned to Scott's computer screen to get a load of whatever photo and profile Maya put up for herself.

No photo.

Hmm. This is a relief.

Scott clicked on the no-photo icon, which brought us to Maya's profile.

Turns out she's 22 and lives in Florida. Her friend list is all young-ish men in various states of drunkenness. One particularly fetching friend of this Maya has a photograph of himself funneling beer. Good times.

Thankfully, our Maya is safe from the scourge of MySpace, at least for now.

As a side note, you may be interested to know that Maya is crazy about Scott. Like, no joke. She made her e-mail address the nickname he calls her and everything. Sometimes when we see her, she goes straight for Uncle Count Scottula and leaves old crappy Auntie in the dust.

She just can't get enough of that guy. Me neither.

Lend me a hand

I was talking with my comedy pal Dan the Librarian about the Valley of Laughter Comedy Festival. One thing about me that you may not know is that I don't like competitions, so I don't want to be in the festival. We were talking about this, and I asked him if they're doing any showcases that aren't part of the competition that maybe I could horn in on.

Turns out they were thinking of a women's show, blahblahblah, Dan asked me if I was interested in running it, blahblahblah, I put in a call to PACE, but they're booked for the night it needs to be.

So, I'm wondering if you live around here and you know a venue that can fit about 100 people (or more) that has chairs, a little stage and a microphone and is available on Saturday, April 26.

If you know such a place, would you forward me the information about who to call and all that. And if you actually know the person, would you place an introductory call on my behalf so I'm not calling cold?

I would ideally like to make a split-the-door arrangement, so that I can at least give comics who drive in from Boston gas money and stuff. Also, this show would be promoted along with the rest of the festival.

Tell me what you know:
jennifer at jennifer myszkowski dot com

Hot, steamy goodness

My mother drinks mint tea. I used to think it tasted like hot mouthwash. Suddenly, I'm hooked. What happened?

It's just so refreshing, and it makes my insides sort of tingly, kind of like Selsun Blue, but not on my head. Is that weird?

Tonight at the Stop & Shop (a.k.a. the blop), I bought two boxes of straight-ahead peppermint (one for work and one for home) and one box of green mint.

In more I'm-turning-into-my-mother news, I plucked a chin hair last month, and I'm developing these strange clear moles that all the ladies in Grandpa No-legs's family get right above their eyebrows.

I am not Athena. My father is not Zeus. I did not spring from his head. My mother was definitely involved.

Where are the humans?

It's sometimes really hard to be a human in corporate America. Actually being a human isn't hard necessarily. From the looks of it, it must be hard staying a human since so few people are successful at it.

The robots are really getting me down. I would love to tell you about what fresh heck they brought upon me today, but I can't. I'll just say this:

When someone says something that presupposes something completely ridiculous and they take an adversarial tone with you from the beginning, you should not say, "I'm not trying to challenge you, but I would like to present a question," and then present a question that reveals the presupposition to be total bullshit.

If you try to show a robot humanity, they will turn their head away and refuse to see. It's like humanity is kryptonite to the corporate robots.

It took all my strength not to excuse myself to the lavatory for a good cry. Of course, the lavatory is about as good a place for a good cry as a Broadway stage what with all the people. Anyway, as it was, I teared up a little at my desk.

I've sort of cracked the code about how people turn into robots: it's all fear. There is so much fear you can feel it. People are afraid of their peers, their bosses, their underlings, customers, vendors, you name it. No one can be trusted. And that includes you.

I haven't cracked the code about how to turn them back into humans. I think there's a closet somewhere just full of souls desperate to get back into the bodies of their people.

Typing that just made me start crying. It's just the saddest thing.

I talked to a colleague who's been in corporate America for a really long time and, for reasons that I cannot ascertain, has remained fairly human. I asked him, "How do you steel yourself from the inhumanity in here and stay human." He didn't really have an answer. I told him that if he had any tips that he should stop by my cubicle.

Radio 104 revisited

I was driving to a show tonight and I saw a sign for a radio station just by Exit 33 in Hartford. It said, "104one music".

Now, back in the day, I listened to Radio 104 (104.1 on your FM dial), which was where all the grunge-type, alternative-y, punk-y sort of music was played back when I was in college. I loved Radio 104, particularly the Jake and Beth Morning Show, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do morning radio, and ultimately did (for a very short time until I got tired of being broke).

It was a great station, but one day they changed formats. Then they changed formats again. Then they changed formats again.

So when I saw this billboard for "104one music", I thought, "I wonder what their new format is?" So I turned it on.

Basically, it's Radio 104, with all of the songs from when I was in college. Man, what an excellent blast from the past.

I heard a Hole song. Also, Green Day. Also, Counting Crows.

I almost had to barf when Dave Matthews came on, but you take the good with the bad when you're taking a walk through a time warp.

One song came on while I was driving home from the show. I told myself that I would remember which song it was because I wanted to tell this story, but I can't remember now. Wait! I just found it on their Web site: Foo Fighters, I'll Stick Around. Anyway, during the "I don't owe you anything!" shouting part, I was magically taken back to the night I got a flat tire on Flat Brook Road in West Hartford on my way home from St. Joe's, which is where Sunnie went. I was still at HCC at the time, so let's say I was 20. I was driving the Buick Skylark, which belonged to my parents and was knock-knock-knockin' on heaven's door. I hadn't even been driving a year and it was my first flat tire. I didn't know what to do, so I drove back to St. Joe's and called to Sunnie in her dorm through the window and we got a campus security guy to change my tire.

Oh crazy, carefree days of youth!

A better photo of my glasses is just a click away...

Amy took an awesome photograph of me and my glasses, which is much better than the photo we took with our camera (which is not as fancy as hers). See it here.

She took it at Matt and Kristen's engagement party, which was really fun (also, check this closeup of Kristen's awesome hair). The love was all around us. I cried during the toasts. Show of hands: who's surprised by this?

Nobody, that's who.

Other highlights from a variety of event photo galleries:

Here's a side view of my glasses, a silhouette of my head, and a smiling Count.

Here's J.Bo and the Human making us want them.

Jeremy and The Count having a snack.

The cake I made is on the left.

Flora's bracelet helping her get her cry on in fake earnest.

Kelsey looking rather feline.

Jaime's in a commercial for tasty snacks.

Good times.

MySpace = time suck

I think we've talked any number of times about how I have no interest in anyone I went to high school with outside of the people I actually already talk to. I've said this a lot.

With Scott away, I took the opportunity to catch up on MySpace. I trolled around looking for comics I know to add to my network. The reason I have MySpace is for comedy and nothing more. But then, for reasons that are unclear to me (maybe it was just curiosity), I looked up people from college. Then I looked up people from high school.

I don't know if I've got some kind of sickness or if it's a sign that I'm healed.

It's weird because I saw people I haven't thought about in at least 10 years. I think I've said this here before, but when people fall out of my acquaintance, I don't really even think of them as alive anymore. I don't really think of them as dead so much as not there. Does that even make sense?

It turns out that lots of people are quite alive, and there are a bunch I've never seen in my life who claim to have graduated with me. Also, there were people I graduated with that look like old people. Man, am I ever lucky to be aging well. I'm not wrinkly or anything. I've got gray hairs, sure, but it isn't noticable unless you're up in my business or I'm showing them to you.

One thing that's discouraging about my gray hairs is that they're straight and the rest of my hair is curly, so they sort of stick out and seem longer than all the rest. I'm not complaining. I kind of like them.

Anyway, I wasted an entire evening.

Sweet relief

My mother was filled with sweet relief to see my new glasses live and in person. She said the photo of me on the blog (see below) did them no justice, but she thinks they're fine in real life.

Of course, this is a sweet relief to me.

In other glasses news, my other new glasses (the old new glasses) are in. Egads, however, because I don't have the car to go pick them up. Oh, humanity!

Wait until you see them! As soon as they're on my head, I'll snap a photo and post it. I know right where both the camera and the cord are, so there will be no lag time.

I was telling some of my peeps (get it, peeps, because we're talking about seeing?) at work about the vintage glasses and I said that they didn't have to worry about staying cool because with my two pairs of super-cool glasses, I'd lift the cool quotient of our entire area and remove the burden from them. We laughed, oh, how we laughed. I said, "You're welcome," like a total asshole. Then I had to apologize and make sure everyone knew I was joking around. (Sometimes you have to spell it out in Big Company.)

Seriously, though, I don't know how I'll be able to keep up with the coolness of my glasses. I consulted with an actual teenager about where my glasses were on the coolness-o-meter and she assured me that I was pretty fashionable. But the pressure! It's really a lot of pressure. I hope I can find a way to be up to the task.

I think I need new clothes.

So lonesome

Scott left this morning to go to NY to see his mom before she goes back home to Italy. Also, he's visiting is sister and niece. He's coming back on Thursday. He's got the car. Did you know we're a one-car family?

I worked out rides home from work today and to work on Thursday and I'm working from home on Wednesday. So everything's fine.

But, hell, I'm lonesome - and it's only been one evening! I came home from work, made a crappy dinner for myself (baked sweet potato, a giant pile of green beans and too many cookies), ate it and have been reading Newsweek for the last hour. The excitement is palpable.

If Scott were here, we would still be eating dinner and figuring out if we wanted to read or watch a movie for the evening. Being by myself, I can't think of a compelling reason not to just go to bed.

I desperately didn't want him to go for purely selfish reasons. And I did want him to have some extra one-on-one time with his mom before she hops the pond back home. I just knew I'd be lonely and miss him terribly. His mother was really excited to get a little extra time with him, and Scott was really excited to get some extra time with her, so I guess everyone wins. Even me, since now I'll have time to work in my poetry.*

Isn't it crazy how just two years ago this lonesomeness was my life, but it didn't feel lonesome at all? Sometimes it scares me how emotionally dependent I am on Scott. Or are we interdependent? I don't know. I just really like having him around.



* This is a joke because the only poetry I write is hilarious haiku for entertainment value only, which I then recite in an extremely showy way, much like I do everything else. I make it a point never to read poetry written by anyone I know and want to stay friends with just in case it's terrible and I can no longer look them in the eye. Does this make me bad?

Mark your calendar: Girls! Girls! Girls!

Oh, hello. Nice to see you.

The next Girls! Girls! Girls! is on Feb. 23 at PACE and features Bethany Van Delft, Arielle Goldman, Erin Judge, Kim “Boney” Deshields, and, of course, Ann and me. Show starts at 8 p.m.; tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.

Also, I've already booked another Girls! Girls! Girls! for May 17, which will feature Andrea Henry, Chrissy Kelleher, Maria Ciampa, Ellen Moschetto, and, of course, Ann and me.

I was talking with debl a few months back. She didn't realize that I have lots of shows all over the place because I only ever talk about Girls!³. And it's true, I do talk a lot about Girls!³ around here. What it all comes down to, for those of you who like to be in the know, is that I produce these myself. I alone am responsible for promoting the hell out of them so that people come. Promotion of all the other shows is someone else's responsibility. I let you know about them over on the right-hand side of the page (a change that I made as a direct result of my conversation with debl) and I hope you come to them all, but if you're going to come to any, Girls! Girls! Girls! shows are the ones I hope you pick.

Fantastic. Mark all this down in your book.

Nerding out, Count style

Super Tuesday is wrapping up and the Count just can't stop counting. I tried to get a photograph of him doing his math and what have you, but he kept goofing around. Instead, I took a photo of the stack of notes he's making so you could get a glimpse into his world.

Early in our relationship he told me, "My favorite math is probability."

My favorite nerd is Scott.

Interesting aside: Margaret named Scott the Count before she even knew he had a favorite math. She sure does know how to assign a nickname.

The cord is found!

I spoke too soon, for the Count got up and found the cord lickety-split (in his closet). He is still a squirrel, and will likely remain a squirrel, but he's MY squirrel.

Okay, here's me posing like I'm having deep thoughts in my new glasses:

Are they totally awesome or what?

'We are not as divided as our politics suggest'

Now that my man Kucinish is out of the race, I don't know how I'm going to vote tomorrow. I've been getting letters from friends encouraging me to vote for Obama. One sent this very compelling MoveOn video.

His "Yes We Can/Si, Se Puede" message is powerful. But it's really Cesar Chavez's message from years ago. What's funny is that I heard a story on NPR about how Chavez's United Farm Workers endorsed Hillary Clinton.

And of course because I linked you to it earlier you read the NYT op-ed by Gloria Steinem about Hillary. I think Steinem makes the most compelling argument to vote for Hillary of all that I've heard.

A colleague said something to me to day about how he's voting for Obama because Hillary is dishonest. He said, "She's a politician; we need change."

Um, okay. But actually what we need to get out of this fucking quagmire Bush has snared us in is a politician.

Also, as you may know I majored in Political Science back in the day. I had a professor who said that to get elected to any office outside the city council, you have to lie, exaggerate the truth, minimize the truth, or just keep your actually views to yourself. Politics requires "creative truth telling." It's an unfortunate fact.

Everyone's got a seedy underbelly. Barack hasn't been around long enough to show us his. Hillary's been around long enough to show us about 10 different shades of her seedy underbelly. I wonder if the devil we know is better than the devil we don't?

But then there's Ann's McCain loving neighbor putting an Obama sign on his yard. That's a powerful statement.

I want a message of hope. I want someone who can rally the people and excite them about what we can do. I don't want the hawkish bullshit. But then, I absolutely want an experienced politician who knows how to run a show to clean up the fucking mess around here.

What's a girl to do?

I'll decide in the voting booth.

XLII

This Super Bowl commercial for Coca-Cola made me cry.

Crying over a commercial is no reason to purchase a poisonous product.

This commercial for Bud Light made Scott and me laugh out loud. Let's face it: we can't get enough Will Ferrell.

Why you're being made to wait

At first it was because we couldn't find the camera. We had no idea what we'd done with it. We ransacked the place.

The last time I used it, it was when I was downloading our Olympia pictures and posting them on my old blog. When I was done, I left the camera on the table in the office, which is where I thought it still was.

I said to Scott, "Where could we have put the camera? I mean, where could it be?"

He said, "It might be in the closet."

Who puts a camera in a closet? It wasn't in any closet that I'm in charge of.

Anyway, Scott ended up finding it in his bedside table.

Who puts a camera in a bedside table?

So we took some photographs of me in my glasses. Some of them were even hilarious. Then I asked Scott where the little cord for the camera was and he said, "What cord?"

Before I continue, you need to know that I'm in love with Scott. Like, for real. But he's got this situation wherein he's kind of like a squirrel. He takes things and he stows them away, but then he doesn't know where he stowed them away. And he doesn't stow them with things that are anything like the other things they're stowed with. So when Scott took the camera off the table in the office and stowed it in his bedside table, he also took the cord. Where did he put it?

Great question, because he doesn't even remember taking the cord. But surely he did because I left it on the table and it's definitely not there anymore.

So now there are photos on the camera and I have to go and buy a new cord.

Scott's mother and step-father came and stayed with us Saturday night, and in preparation, we did some cleaning. Scott and I are much different cleaners, for sure. I want things to be tidy and for everything to go where it belongs. Scott wants to take everything and put it in a box and then hide the box. It's infuriating. My god. Why not just put all those things where they belong?

Here's an example. I keep all my supplements in a basket in the dining room. Scott keeps his on a shelf in the dining room. My supplements are often not in the basket because I sometimes leave them on the table. Scott's supplements are generally on his shelf. With his parents en route, I took all my supplements and put them in the basket and put the basket out of the way. Scott packed up all his supplements and put them in a box with a bunch of other crap and stowed it all behind the bed in the spare room (where we were sleeping during their visit).

There's nothing unclean about supplements on a shelf. There's no reason to hide supplements. I think Scott's parents are reasonably certain that Scott is fortified with vitamins and minerals, and that many of them come out of bottles.

Eh, whatever.

That we have to squabble over this kind of stupid bullshit is good news, I guess, because we don't have anything more important to fight about.

In other glasses news, I acquired a pair of vintage frames while we were in Olympia back in August. "I acquired a pair of vintage frames," is a polite way of saying, "One of Scott's former ladyfriends acquired a pair of vintage frames through a friend who cleaned out an old person's house and then benevolently gave them to me when I casually said I was looking for either old or old-looking cat-eye glasses frames."

The thing about them is that they were kind of shaped a little funny. Not the actual glasses frames part, but the way the arms hooked on to the frames. It was at a funny angle and I was sure if it would end up working out for me.

I stopped over to the Fairview Eyecare Friday to show them to Jen and find out what the what was. She fooled around with them. By "fooled around with them" I mean that she used important optical equipment to bend them into shape. She fixed them up so that they fit my head just right. So I ordered some new lenses. I should have them in my hands by the end of the week.

So many new glasses. So few photographs!