Mental health day

I decided to take a mental health day from work. I'm frazzled. Instead, I've been catching up on Internet goings-on and stumbled upon this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

It made me laugh and laugh. Just what I needed!

Saturday night show (please come!)

I so seldom have a show locally to which I can invite you, but I've got one and it's going to be good.

Saturday night I will be at the Basement in Northampton. The cover is only $5, I think, which is awesome because you'll get 15 or so minutes of me, plus 15 or so minutes of my friend Myq Kaplan. Myq is just about the funniest person and best performer I know from my travels to Boston. He's just plain dynamite. So even if you're tired of my jokes (please be advised that I have lots of new ones mixed in with my old ones), you will not regret taking in this show. I promise you that. It starts at 8 p.m.

In unrelated news, I fucked up my back last night while I was putting on my pajamas. Don't ask me how putting on comfortable clothes could fuck up a back because I have no idea. All I know is that I'm basically decrepit today - like an old lady! I had to miss work and see the chiropractor and do stretches and lie on heating pads and take frequent short walks all day. I'm feeling mostly better this minute, but sitting up is a strain so I must away.

See you Saturday maybe? I'll be fine by then, I bet, so no worries.

Over-sharing

Here's an interesting article from the NYTimes Magazine about a lady who over-shared on the Internet. It's fairly long, but worth the read. The end of the story is a little anti-climactic, but I think it only seems that way because the rest of the story is so...oh, I don't know. Something.

I used to do a lot of over-sharing on the Internet. Now I just share, I think. I try to keep what I say to my own business and I try not to include anything that is other people's businesses. Of course, it's hard to tell a compelling story without mentioning other people. But you know.

I did some serious over-sharing on a stage last weekend wherein I discussed my asshole, Scott's asshole and the economy, and, well, it was really quite something. I've got a lot of great new material that I think you're sure to love. That is, if you love my asshole.

Actually, people gasped in horror and stifled laughter, perhaps to avoid looking like they were laughing at my asshole. Of course, from my vantage point on the stage, it just seemed like stunned silence. In fact, if people didn't come up to me later and tell me how much they enjoyed the show and how funny they thought I was, I wouldn't even know.

Of course, I got plenty of out-loud laughter for things that weren't quite so controversial. Like the economy. I have to say, this economy joke, which I will not tell you here, is about the best joke I've written (with Scott's help) in some time. It kills me that I will only be able to use it for a little while.

Oh, the humanity!

Anyway, I'm opening for the Gay Men's Chorus on June 7 at PACE, though I think I'll keep the subject matter a little tamer for that crowd. Also, I'll update my shows list so you can actually come to one, maybe.

It's time for everyone's favorite show!

Girls! Girls! Girls! is Saturday night and you're invited!

You know who else is invited? The ladies who are performing: Ann and me, Andrea Henry, Ellen Moschetto and Maria Ciampa. How about that?

The show is at 8 p.m. at PACE.

If you've seen me perform comedy before, I've got lots of new material, including a bit about my asshole, so maybe it's time to see me again for the first time.

Ellen and Maria are first-time Girls! Girls! Girls! performers. Andrea, who has been featured on actual and factual television, hasn't been on the Girls! Girls! Girls! stage in more than a year.

Fresh, steaming-hot comedy is yours for the taking Saturday night.

Not cigarette-y enough

Just now we were driving home from comedy down Dwight Street. We were stopped at the light at 7eleven when I peered over to the car next to me all casual-like.

There was a guy alone in a car and he was smoking. He was smoking one of those cigarettes that looks like a cigar, but is way too skinny to be a cigar, but is too big to be a cigarette. You know, the kind that old men smoke. It was the kind my cousins' other grandpa (not No-legs) smoked.

The thing is, this guy was maybe 21. And he wasn't smoking it like a person who smokes cigarettes generally does. It was just hanging out of his mouth all James Dean like, except it was too long and too not cigarette-y to be anything like James Dean.

Also, he was driving some kind of crappy car James Dean wouldn't be caught dead in.

I couldn't take the incongruity. I started laughing so hard that I cried at the wheel. I don't think he knew I was laughing at him, but Scott suspects he knew because he took off like a bat out of hell as soon as the light turned green.

Even after we parked the car and came in the house I was laughing. In fact, I'm still laughing now.

Songs in a bottle

Last night, Scott was making a salad and I was trying to figure out what we could possibly eat with it. It's slim pickin's in our cabinets right now. We're not broke or anything (thankfully); I just don't have time or energy to make a proper trip to the grocery store. Whatever.

Anyway, I ended up pulling two almost-empty bags of potato products out of the freezer. There were Trader Joe's oven fries and Stop & Shop's tater nuggets. I presented the idea of mixed potato products to the Count, he was in, I put them on the pan and into the oven. He moved out to the dining room and started singing a song.

It was to the tune of Time in a Bottle, a song I'm not all that familiar with, except that it's a tune Scott comes back to again and again when he makes up songs.

He makes up songs on the spot basically all the time. I have to tell you the truth: half the time I don't even listen to what he's singing because he's constantly singing these made-up songs to tunes I don't know. Also, sometimes it's a tune I know, but I don't recognize it because, well, Scott has anything but perfect pitch.

So I was only half paying attention, washing some dishes, when I heard Scott from the other room singing on the top of his lungs: "There never seems to be enough ketchup for all the tater tots you want to eat..."

This morning, I was talking to him from the bathroom while he was in the kitchen. He started singing a song about his Auditory Hallucination Girlfriend, which featured the line, "She's out of sight!"

A few weeks ago, I was feeling like Scott and I had fallen into a nice pattern for living. We loved each other. Great. I was a little sad that I didn't feel sick with the love anymore, but it seemed fine. But then, suddenly, I'm more in love with Scott now than ever and I'm sick all over again with the love.

Jennifer Myszkowski bombs on Cambridge stage

Because I'm worried that this blog will soon turn into the Jennifer-Myszkowski-is-having-a-nervous-breakdown-about-the-house Blog, let's turn our attention to comedy.

I bombed tonight at the Studio. Everyone did, though in the audience's defense, some of them actually sucked. One fellow actually made some people leave. Scott and I laughed pretty hard when the show was over about how bad it was. I actually thought, "What the hell am I doing here?"

I can bomb at a crap club around here, no problem. I don't need to drive two hours for the pleasure of bombing on a famous stage. I was a little disappointed, I can't lie.

The good news is that I tried some new material about buying a house and it mostly worked for the people who were paying attention. I got a DVD of my set so I will be able to look at it and pick apart what I did wrong and do it better next time.

Having a crappy time at the Studio is such a foreign idea. It took me completely by surprise.

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?

The laughter and the tears (from laughter)

Well, Alice at Finslippy has done it again.

She had an incident where she was a bad parent, so she solicited bad-parenting stories from her readers. (I submitted one about bad aunting, which is different, but I just wanted to be a part of the magic.)

She summarized the results in a hilarious post that made me laugh so hard I was gurgling in public on two separate occasions just trying to recount it.

Please read it, paying special attention the last story before you continue reading this.

Tesia and I were in grade school. I'd say we were in first and third grades, respectively. We missed the bus a couple times, as kids are wont to do. Fine.

My mother declared that if we missed the bus again, we were going to have to walk to school.

So of course we missed the bus again. We lived on top of a mountain in Connecticut. The trip to school was mostly downhill, but even the downhill part was really hilly, and pretty rural. My mother was concerned about us walking to school by ourselves, so she came up with a solution.

She drove slowly behind us the whole time, which I think might have been the worst part. I mean, it was totally embarrassing. Of course, if she weren't behind us I probably would have shit my pants from being afraid. I was so afraid of being kidnapped that I didn't even like to play in the front yard for fear I'd get snatched.

(Aside: It wasn't just me with the unreasonable fears. Once the little neighbor girl and I went for a long walk around the block, which is a misleading thing to say since the "block" was more than a mile around in our rural area. We were about halfway around and a truck slowed down by us and we both freaked out. It turned out it was trying to get into its driveway and we were frozen in fear beside it fearing for our lives and holding hands and everything. Awesome.)

So it was probably a good idea that she was driving 1 mph behind us making sure nothing bad befell us (outside of walking all the way to school, that is).

I wonder if she remembers this and how close she was to killing us, since she had to take time out of her actual life to drive 1 mph behind her lousy kids who could have just as easily gotten on a free bus for the journey. Maybe she will comment and tell us.