Aging gracefully a la chin hair

I'm turning 34 on Saturday. At the precise moment of my birth, 7:43 p.m., I'll be ushering in my 35th year by enjoying a Prairie Home Companion live from the Koussivetsky Music Shed at Tanglewood in Lenox. PHC is at Tanglewood every year on my birthday weekend, but I'm usually too busy throwing myself a party to go. This year, the party is going to be later in the summer (invitations forthcoming) and I, finding that I had nothing planned for my birthday evening, went and planned something for myself. If you listen to the broadcast, imagine me crying in the audience, because I will surely be crying. Uh oh, I'm getting choked up right now just thinking of it.

You may become jealous when you learn that Martin Sheen and Steve Martin are both on the show Saturday. I'm just saying.

About a year ago or so ago, I noticed that I had a small, black chin hair. I thought it was an errant eyebrow hair, but it didn't brush away. I plucked it instantly. It grew back a few months later. I plucked it again and began a vigilant search for it. Basically, I rub the area of my chin with my thumb in a sweeping motion a couple times a day looking for it. I've been finding it a little more regularly than I was initially, and I'm not all that pleased about it.

About a month ago, I plucked it and it was back in a week. I freaked out a little bit.

One thing about me that I may never have made clear here is that sometimes when I think about shaving my face, I get the anxiety. My great-grandmother shaved with an electric razor every day, and the thought of such a fate fills me with the dread and the full-on anxiety so much so that I have to force myself not to think of it.

The thing is, I realized that it wasn't the same hair. Now I have two chin hairs! Sweet god! The humanity!

On Sunday, I was rubbing my chin, felt a chin hair, moved posthaste to the bathroom mirror, brandished the tweezers and basically stared at my chin. I couldn't see anything. I moved to another mirror and different light. I still couldn't see anything, but damn it if I couldn't feel a wiry little hair. Finally, I trained the tweezers upon it and pulled.

Friends, what I pulled out of my chin was a white chin hair. Oh. My. Fucking. God. It was white. And just a tiny smidgen of the end was black. So my former black chin hair is now white.

This is great, because now it's way harder to see and there's little risk of anyone observing my chin hair with their own eyes. But I'm not sure white chin hair is what I'm ready for at this juncture.

Luckily, I don't have a choice. It's just an extra-special birthday present from my waning hormones to my face.

Awesome!

Jennifer "Jennifer Myszkowski" Myszkowski

Damien brought this story to my attention, which I'm sure will entertain you.

As a person with a name that has many popular nicknames, I can relate to this lady's frustration. While she takes it a bit too far, I understand her pain.

I have given up trying to insist that people call me Jennifer. What I started doing is referring to myself only as Jennifer Myszkowski. If people try to shorten Jennifer Myszkowski, they will end up with Jennifer. Or JMysz. Both of these are fine things to call me. I have many colleagues who call me JM as well. I like all of these. I just hate Jen - and especially Jenn - as Damien was so kind to point out.

Damien and I met at work a long time ago. I can't remember if the fellow this coming story is about was there when Damien was there, but perhaps our other colleagues may recognize this story (if, indeed, they read this blog).

There was a fellow whose name was Michael. Naturally, people called him Mike. He would reply, "ULL!" Then he'd look up all casual-like, "What?"

It was so annoying that I vowed I'd never, ever reply to Jen with, "IFFER!" I didn't want to be that guy. I just make it my business to make sure everyone around me knows what I prefer to be called. Some even take it upon themselves to politely tell people, "Jennifer prefers to be called Jennifer."

Now if anyone has any ideas about how I can get a lady at work to stop calling me Julie, I'm all ears. One day she came up to me and started telling me how great I looked, what amazing weight loss, etc. I assured her I was not thinner - in fact I was fatter - but thanked her just the same. She said, "But Julie, you look great!"

How do you tell a lady who is layering on the flattery that she just called you the wrong name? I didn't know how. I went directly to my team and told them what happened and asked them what I should have done and they all told me I did the right thing and it would resolve over time. Now we're about six months into the Julie-athon. I thought that after I won the award in my department and cried in front of everyone that it would be done - I mean, my bosslady gave a speech about how great I am and kept calling me Jennifer right in front of her! No dice.

On the bright side, at least she's not calling me Jenn.

Not Amy Ray. The other one.

This afternoon, I was walking down Main Street in Northampton. There were two girls behind me. I'd say they were about 20. One said, "I can't wait until I'm 21, because by then, I'm going to be so hot. And I'm going go to the Dirty Truth every weekend until he sees me."

"I was trying to think about where I could go in town so I could guarantee that he saw me," she continued, "And, like, I couldn't think of where I could go, then I realized, duh, bars."

And the other girl said, "He'll really be sorry when he sees how hot you are."

By this time, we were at the corner of Main and Pleasant. I was crossing over to King, so I was standing at the curb. I sort of stood sideways so I could get a good look at them. The one who will be so hot when she is 21 was kind of skinny and pale and the other one was sort of fat and pimply. They kept talking about how he was going to be SO surprised to see her and and when he saw her, he would just know and blahblahblah she would show him. Then, a silence fell. Not-21 absentmindedly said, "Blahblahblah the Indigo Girls tonight blahblahblah." She was just reading the Calvin marqee. Fact: the Indigo Girls are at the Calvin tonight.

The other one said, "I saw them on the Today show a few days ago and they were so good."

The not-21-year-old said, "Yeah, I really like them. I think they're, like, as good in person as they are on a CD." And then she went on like a not-21-year-old might go on not paying attention to her surroundings at all.

So here they were prattling on like morons, and they have no idea that Emily Saliers is standing right next to them. She was looking at somebody's dog and talking to a woman who I assume was her lady. She had on dark glasses and whatever, but I'm not even that big a fan and I recognized her from her scraggly hair.

In any event, I ended up going over to the courthouse to sit on a bench because I had time to kill. A while later, I watched her walk by with her lady and go behind the Calvin to the tour bus. I'm so glad she had an opportunity to take in the sights and sounds of Northampton. Particularly those two morons.

The thing is, I couldn't remember her name. It was driving me nuts. Until just now when I googled, "Not Amy Ray" and her name came up third.

Incidentally, I've seen the Indigo Girls twice and they didn't do Gallileo either time, so I gave up.

Also, their fans are a walking stereotype. It's almost painful. The courthouse parking lot was swarming with them. One Suburu had a NH vanity plate: PWROF2. It was no surprise to see the khaki-pantsed ladies getting out of that car.

I say that with love.

But I'll tell you what, I can't wait until I'm 34. God, I'm going to be so hot! And I'm going to roll over in bed and accidentally elbow Scott in the head and he's going to wake up and look at me and just know.

'Heh, what's goin' on here?'

I had a crazy dream over the weekend. I was walking in my backyard, but it was really the back yard of our house in Connecticut that I lived in until I was 12 (but it was connected to my current house in Holyoke in the fashion that dreams sometimes connect things). I noticed in the next-door neighbor's driveway an R.V. that was shaped like a regular R.V., but had a metal exterior like an Air Stream.

Stamped in the metal was, "Laura Bush," in a font that looked something like the old Ford stamp for the tailgate of trucks. I thought, "Oh my god. Is Laura Bush my new neighbor?"

I was really excited, but confused, because I didn't know my neighbors had put their house up for sale. I was also secretly kind of relieved because they had been a bit of a problem. I went to knock on the door to welcome Laura Bush to the neighborhood. She answered and was a total delight.

I started introducing her around the neighborhood. She was just so charming. We bumped into Rebecca Lisi and it turned out they already knew each other. In the dream, Rebecca lived on our street, and we all went over to her house to work on our campaigns (I was running for charter commission in the dream), making posters, etc. Laura was there helping and just being so friendly.

Then, suddenly, George walked into Rebecca's apartment. He said, "Heh, what's goin' on here?" and then I woke up.

The end.

Can it be three whole weeks since my last post?

That's it. I'm fired!

Okay, not really.

So much has been going on, most of which is not blog fodder, so I must abstain. But here are a few things that are worth sharing.

First, I did several hours of yard work today and if I didn't know I did it, I wouldn't notice I did it. There are many parts of home ownership that suck. This is one of them.

While I was working on the yard, I applied some sunscreen so I could try to avoid premature death. I bought some sunscreen at the Greenfields Market that is all-natural, so it's not as bad for the environment or anything (because some of them are pretty bad). It was made with zinc oxide, so it made me sort of white and pasty (or should I say, "whiter and pastier"?) than normal. When I was finally done being outside, I went into the shower to return to my normal human state, and I could not wash that stuff off. It took a ton of soap and water and actual, factual scrubbing and carrying on, and the water was still beading up on my skin like I had been freshly waxed. It was like tar.

(Aside: Remember Actual Factual Bear?)

Part of what I did was clean up some leaves that were leftover from fall. I found a whole bunch of them in my brassierre when I took a shower. Awesome!

This week was the best week I've ever had at work, ever. I got nominated by my peers for an important and prestigious award - and then I won it. And all of this happened without anyone spilling the beans to me, so that when they announced it in front of everyone in my division (100 or so people), I was so surprsed that I instantly started weeping and walking around in a daze like Miss America.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: Jennifer always cries. And it's partially true, but I really try to keep the out-loud-and-in-public weeping to the minimalest minimum at work. They don't smile kindly on ladies in career separates getting their weep on in earnest 'round about my corporatey-corporate workplace. But I did it. And it was on a teleconference too! I was pretty embarrassed. But afterwards, everyone was coming up and hugging me and congratulating me and it basically didn't matter at all. In fact, my old bossidy-boss came up to me later to tell me how touched he was that I was so surprised and happy about the award.

My crying brought people together! Even so, I'm going to try not to do that again.

In the bastard plantar fasciitis news, it went away for about a week, then came back again, but I'm confident I can get it to go away again. It's so frustrating. But I've been taking short walks and basically giving it a giant middle finger, so that helps. In a related story, I bought another pair of shoes in an effort to fit my foot and my orthotic into a shoe at the same time. Upon wearing the shoe for one work day, I discovered it doesn't actually fit me. Fucking yeah!

I had a membership to Planet Fitness. A few weeks ago, Scott helped me face the reality that I never go. Not just seldom. Never. So he drove me over there and I cancelled my membership easy-peasy. It was nothing. But I wouldn't have gone over there without his urging. And because he was there, I didn't get caught up in feeling like a loser for quitting the gym. Honestly, I couldn't stand it in there. It was a lowest-common-denominator playground, as far as I could tell. When I was going regularly for a while there, there was a series of nutso people basically parading around me the whole time. This one insane mother in particular screaming at her son for about a thousand hours while I was just trying to exercise for about 30 minutes set me into a bit of, oh, I don't know. If it weren't so goddamned funny, I might have had the panic. When did mothers start screaming at their kids like dogs in public? My mother always had the courtesy to whisper-shout at us through gritted teeth. If you weren't right next to her feeling the anger radiate off her like thermo-nuclear waves and experiencing her death grip sear your arm fat while her growly whisper-shout singed the extra-fine cilia in your inner ear, you might not even know she was angry. (I'm not sure I've adequately thanked her for keeping the public mortification to a minimum.) In any case, the number of people working out in their pajamas was basically stunning. Also, teenagers getting their pose on in earnest. It was madness is all I'm saying.

You might be thinking, "Jennifer, the common denominator in all this is you." And indeed you may be right. But no self-respecting establishment purporting to be a health and fitness gymnasium should have a weekly all-you-can-eat pizza night. Just sayin'.

This morning, my mother called my very popular radio program to put on Grandpa No-legs's Bass Boat. It was sold within a very short time, which gratified me to no end. In any event, there was a glorious moment while we were on the air when I asked my mother what the boat was made of, aluminum or fiberglass. She approximately replied, "Whatever Bass Boats are made of." I approximately said, "They can be made of either." I only know this because of the show that I host. We talk about these things. She approximately said, "People who know Bass Boats know what they're made of," like she was some kind of person who knew Bass Boats, which she couldn't be because she didn't know what it was made of. I approximately said, "Yes, of course, ma, either aluminum or fiberglass." I added "approximately" in there because I didn't record it. I only wish I had so I could get those quotes exactly and so I could listen to it in perpetuity and laugh and laugh. We raised the curtain on our relationship to the listening public. When it was over, my bossman at the station popped into the studio and said, "You've gotta have your mother call in more often." I said, "I wasn't sure if that was funny to outside people or not." He said, "Oh, it was."

It is a radio program on public air waves, so my mother can certainly call in whenever she wishes to do so.

I think we're all caught up now.

The Pride Day highlights reel

I didn't realize it was Pride Day today. I was on my way to the farmer's market to procure for our little patch of land a few more herb plants. I remarked to myself, "What's the deal with all these people." Then it slowly dawned on me that it was the first weekend in May, and all these people I'm seeing are gay-gay-gay and that means only one thing: Pride Day. So I decided to stroll around and look for my friends.

One thing that really fills me with untold amounts of joy is seeing my friends by accident. I would find a friend, turn away from them and immediately find another. It was glorious! I was living the dream.

Sure, there were accidental tears. It happens. I'm me after all. And there was a moment when I realized I didn't want to talk to a person just a split second after I shouted the person's name. But other than those small bumps in the road, I had a lovely time.

There were drag queens and men in dresses (and men in dresses who thought they were drag queens). There were friends, there were strangers, there was the person dancing like no one was watching (like the lady from the Green River Festival, only not very graceful). I saw our friend performing in a band. I saw a few people from my day job, which is always refreshing (I mean this without irony, because it truly is refreshing to see your work friends without their robotic career separates). I saw a few neighbors. I saw a few people I recognized from back in the day, but I have no idea where I know them from, or what their names were, so I couldn't even say hello.

I find it comforting to be able to go out and see friends and people that are familiar to me. It makes me feel like I'm in exactly the right place, surrounded by all the people I want to be surrounded by.

I really love Pride Day.

Oh glorious comedy

Last Friday night, I had a show in Lexington, then I went over to the Comedy Studio to hang around my friends and watch the network television debut of our friend and comedy colleague, Joe Wong.

I've been working with Joe for a few years now, doing shows hither and yon. I was so excited to learn that he made it on to Letterman. I was really tired last Friday night, and I knew I had to work early Saturday, but I really felt strongly that I wanted to be with my friends to watch Joe on the TeeVee. Did I ever make the right choice. I wish everyone could have been in the second-floor bar at the Hong Kong to watch it with us.

If you missed it, you can check it on the YouTube (I embedded it, but it fouled up the margins of this page, alas. You'll have to click).

The Hong Kong folks turned down the music and we all gathered around the TeeVees to watch. The love and electricity in the room were palpable forces. Just watch his set. He had to pause for laughter and applause after every joke. I think we were all feeling it like it was us. It was so powerful. I felt so honored to be there and grateful be a part of this magical night and the whole incredible Boston comedy scene.

We're all trying like hell to make it. I was afraid I'd feel a little bit jealous, that we all might. But I totally didn't. For that perfect moment we watched our friend on stage and we were all so proud. When he was done, the men were shouting, the women were crying (or just I was crying) and everyone was hugging. I think it was the most incredible night of comedy I've ever been party to.

Craigslist Killer

I hate that this happens to me, but I am just like everyone else in America and I get fascinated by news stories. I've been drawn in by this Craigslist Killer story for a number of reasons.

One of them is that this guy and his lady have been together for four years and were planning a summer wedding. I can't imagine the horror of discovering the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with, who you thought couldn't hurt a fly, was secretly a giant moron at serial killing.

Seriously, this guy thinks he's smart enough to be a doctor/serial killer and he doesn't realize that phone records and IP addresses would lead investigators directly to his sorry ass? He may as well have left directions to his apartment with the victims. Give me a fucking break! This guy is supposed to be the best and the brightest? Bah!

Also, the part where he totally snowed his lady gives me the terrors, particularly the part where she's defending him and saying he couldn't hurt a fly while investigators are pulling his victims' underpants out of their apartment. The least he could do is give her some kind of sign so that she doesn't go on Good Morning America and become the pathetic fiancee of the Craigslist Killer.

Also, there's the part where Scott and I met on Craigslist on that fateful day nearly three years ago. I said to him yesterday, "Listen, brother, if you turn out to be a murderer, can you at least do me the favor of telling me so I don't make a total fucking ass of myself on television defending you."

He said, "Don't worry. I will only kill people that I don't meet on Craigslist."

What a sweet relief.

I think this might make it to the stage this weekend.

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.

Audition in review

Tonight I had an audition for a big comedy festival and now I remember very keenly why I stopped doing these kinds of things a number of years ago.

The person I auditioned for is also a scout for a network late-night television show. There were 14 of us auditioning tonight. Everyone totally rocked. I was so pleased with my performance. I felt strong and really there.

After the show was over, I went to gladhand the man I auditioned for. He told me that he thinks my comedy is too much here (pointing to head) and not enough here (pointing to stomach). Too much poise and not enough gut, he said. I need to bring more of myself to the stage. I'm funny, he said, and he thinks he'll be seeing more of me, just not right now.

I asked him if he had specific advice about what I can do to improve. He said I just have to keep working. And he kept saying that I have to bring more of myself to the stage.

I am open to constructive criticism. I really and truly am. But I wasn't prepared to be told that I wasn't bringing myself to the stage because I feel that I am all I bring to the stage. In fact, I was once challenged by someone to bring less of myself to the stage and to be funny without being personal and I couldn't. I don't know how to do that. Whatever.

So afterwards, everyone went down to the second floor to chat and hang around, but I found I was unable to stay. I tried, but I ended up crying in front of a couple people, which was embarrassing since everyone else seemed like they were totally fine.

I pulled myself together and went to talk to Rick, told him what I had been told, etc., and he said, "I love you. You're great. I believe in you." So I had to cry and rush out. Which was lame, but I really preferred to cry in the relative privacy of my car and not in a bar where there was karaoke and general barroom insanity.

So I did. And then we hit the road.

Of course, now it's a few hours later and I've got a little distance and I know that one guy doesn't get to decide that I don't bring myself to the stage. I think he's full of it. And I have to remember how happy I was with my set after it was over. I realy felt good about it. Also I'm happy I have some shows coming up so that I don't have an opportunity to feel mopey and sad about it. I just have to get back on the horse.

And I also think I have to do more of these types of auditions so that the rejection doesn't feel so personal. I don't know how to make it feel less personal since I lay my personal life right out there on the stage. I guess I'm just going to have to learn.