DEJENNERATE.COM BLOG

Interesting Bumper Sticker Sighting
On my way home yesterday, I was following a car that had these two bumper stickers:

Picture of a gun with the words “Keep honking, I’m reloading”

and

“Smile – pass it on”

This Week in Irony at Work
Village People Cop arrested

Looking to give someone an inferiority complex?
I used to think my friend John liked me. This seemed to be a reasonable conclusion, after all why else would he go out with me on the weekends, buy me presents for my birthday, etc., etc.? Now, I know. He wanted to drive me to a nervous breakdown. His weapon of choice? A Talking Yoda doll.

As a Star Wars toy collector, I remember these dolls flying of the shelves when they came out. That lasted about three weeks. Then iPod released their new Nanos, and society moved on. Sadly, there were three bazillion Talking Yodas left over, so John picked one up for me for like $0.43 and a half-punched Dunkin Donuts card. Maybe he threw in a coupon for Craisins too. I don’t know the specifics of the transaction.

So I unpackaged little Yoda and set him up in my kitchen, because all available shelf space in my home is covered with other movies and toys. As soon as Yoda detected my presence, he proceeded to weave the tales of the six Star Wars films while I was slicing and dicing bell peppers for my tofu stir-fry. As you can imagine, this was quite amusing. Yoda finished his tale and closed his eyes. I went back to slicing.

Five sliced peppers later, I picked up a slightly unripe pepper. After several attempts of getting my unsharpened knife into it, I started growling.

“God damnit, this pepper is really hard to cut.” I exclaimed.

And that is when I heard a voice behind me say, “Do or do not--there is no try."

I looked behind me, and saw Yoda, who was now blinking his vinyl eyelids at me rather smugly.

“Who the hell asked you?” I replied.

“Rise up against the Dark Side.” he whispered.

Now, we all know a person who seems to have no inner monologue that tells them what thoughts to vocalize and which ones to keep to themselves. But even with this apparent lack of filter, few of them start spewing dialogue from 1940’s war propaganda films.

“Trust me.” I said, a bit nervously, “You don’t need my help fighting any Dark Side. I can’t even balance a spoon my nose.” Which is not true (I can), but I clearly wanted out of this conversation.

Yoda’s eyelids opened wide, “Much fear, I sense in you.” he sighed.

What the fuckaroo, man? You’ve been living in my house for….what….15 minutes? And you have the gall to start busting my balls in my own kitchen?

“Much fear, bitch?” I used “bitch” because “Green lump of Wookie Shit” would have been way too verbose (Talking Yoda only has a 500 word vocabulary). "Which one of us is wielding a knife?”

Sure it was an unsharpened knife, but when one’s eyes are made of molded plastic, one is most likely at least slightly nearsighted.

Wide-eyed, he looked at me. “Wars do not make one great."

Now it was my turn to look smug. “War-monger one minute and pacifist the next? You should join the Bush cabinet.”

Yoda thought about this for a minute. Then he blinked his eyes at me and whispered, “Much fear I sense in you.”

“You know what? Eat me, Yoda.”

“Yes, this will be, I think.”

See, this is what I hate about people who are 860 years old. They think because they’ve lived on Earth for 800+ years, any kind of shit can flow out their mouths and we’re supposed to just accept it. Well, bull shit, on that, Yoda. I read Miss Manners. And you should at least buy me flowers and dinner before propositioning me with any carpet munching.

"Sorry, Yoda. It is my ethical policy to only have one night stands with humans."

He seemed to accept this response, as he closed his eyes. Then he opened his eyes partway and said, "Beware. The Dark Side is stronger."

So, clearly, Yoda wants me to fuck a horse.

posted by Jenn @ 3:53 PM  

Dispatches from the Netflix Queue

The Cave – Why oh why, dear readers, do I do this to myself? I can’t even answer that; I am completely excuseless. This movie doesn’t even fall into the two categories of Films That I Know Are Really, Really Bad, But Don’t Have the Willpower to Avoid (which are “films where a psychopath are hacking up oh-so-pretty teenagers” and “a supernatural phenomenon scaring the crap out of stupid people who won’t leave the house.”) This film falls well within the category of “cannibal humanoid gargoyles.” Oh, I TRIED to fit it into one of those other categories to take the blame off my misjudgment, but the whole thing turned into one of those baby boxes where the child has to fit the right shapes in the right hole. Needless to say, I was left holding a rhombus, and all the holes were trapezoids.

As I know all of you were born with at least rudimentary scruples and therefore have stayed as far away from this film as possible, let me fill you in on what you missed. People (I say people because this film stared no one even moderately well known, which should have been my first tip-off right there), enter a cave. I’m not sure why, really….perhaps they spotted a migratory Fraggle…it’s not important. Upon entering the cave, they find several new species. Now you may be thinking…”Jenn, this seems really believable so far…..where do the humanoid gargoyles come in?” Evidently 30 (or whatever) years ago, some English explorers fell into this exact same cave and encountered some pesky millipede/jellyfish/man-o-war type parasites. Said parasites infected these explorers, turning them into giant bat-people. Now these explorers/bat-people live in this cave eating unsuspecting cave travelers. YES, REALLY. Oh, and 40-pound naked mole rat humps one guy’s leg for five minutes at one point. Honestly, if I lived in a secluded cave with bat-people, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing.

The only excuse I could possibly conceive for renting this crap is that I was adding DVD rentals to my Netflix at 4:00 in the morning when my Crap Filter was half-asleep. So, I guess the lesson here kids is…no matter how much it cries, no matter how much it begs, never, ever feed your Netflix Queue after midnight.

But I will redeem myself
My other two rentals from Netflix are Good Night, and Good Luck and Rounders. From what I hear, neither of them features bat-people.

posted by Jenn @ 1:01 PM  

The cure for global warming
From what I understand, global warming is a bad thing. I’m not completely sold on this matter, but I’m from Buffalo where the city motto is, “Come for the chicken wings, stay for the cryogenic testicle-welding.” That may have been a working motto they were tossing around the office; I can’t recall. The point is that global warming is coming. And probably not in the same way Jesus is coming, mostly because there will probably be no horsemen announcing its arrival. I’m thinking this was a practicality move on global warming’s part. After all, how many horsemen are gainfully employed these days? Maybe 10? And the four best ones are announcing the Apocalypse already, so you’ll probably end up getting stuck with Bobcat and Don the Horse. Who needs that really? Certainly not global warming. And honestly, TNT viewers can do without it either, by the way.

Some people believe we can stop global warming, simply by making a conscious effort to take more public transportation. Even mentioning the words “public transportation,” will elicit groans of “It’s too slow!”, “It’s too crowded!”, “It smells too much like asparagus pee!” These statement are not getting to the root problem. The fact of the matter is, people do not want to get on public transportation for one reason and one reason only...

Dennis Hopper.

In the fanciful days of yesteryear, I was able to get on a bus or subway, and think rather benign thoughts such as “what am I going to have for lunch today?” or “that guy look like Florence Henderson.” Now what do I think of when I step on a subway? Beheadings. And the reason I think of beheadings? (Shut up, Gene, it’s not my entertainment choices). I think of beheadings, because Dennis Hopper gets beheaded on the top of a subway car by a giant subway light at the end of Speed. Quite frankly, something that makes me think of losing a major appendage of my body is not going to be my chosen method of transportation. And even though Speed is a very, very bad movie...I can’t NOT think it. Every subway station, every train, every stop….BEHEADINGS.

So my suggestion is to get rid of Dennis Hopper. Not permanently or anything (after all, he did do the cocksucker-exclaiming masterpiece, Blue Velvet), just temporarily so we forget about him for awhile. Maybe hire him to write a one-man show on the S volume of the encyclopedia. Or just have his character on E-ring get stuck in a bathroom stall for the entire season or something. Do whatever it takes to keep him occupied long enough for our brains to heal. And then, my friends, we can stop global warming.

I’ll alert Greenpeace of this plan right away.

posted by Jenn @ 2:08 PM  

People Who Make Me Believe in Unicorns
People are strange. And not just when you are a stranger, either. Most of us come to terms with this revelation in kindergarten when we learn little Billy Fitzgerald eats paper for a hobby. But as you journey through this world, you realize there are strange people, and then there are people whose genetic makeup is floating somewhere far stage right of the Eccentric Esoteric Plane. These people don’t just make you question the most rudimentary sense of genetic probability…oh no, Skippy (genetic probability states at least one of you readers is named Skippy). These are the lifeforms that obliterate your proverbial fantasy/reality, Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner divide, for if these people can exist, then you can make a logical case for a horse with a phallus on his head existing as well.

On my morning commute, I passed a particularly slow-moving SUV. As I always look to see (read: scowl at) the pilots of slow-moving vehicles, I gave a quick glimpse out my driver’s side window as I passed. Navigating this particular vehicle was a mid-40s gentlemen wearing a suit coat, tie, white shirt….and a beer helmet. As in one of those hard hats where you put the two beer cans on the side of the helmet and straws extend down to your mouth. So, to recap….a suit coat and a beer helmet en route to downtown Providence at 8:00 in the morning.

Amongst the thousands of questions that such a scenario begs, mostly in relation to poorly interpreted workplace drug policies, I concluded I would indeed sacrifice my wellbeing if scientists ever nominated me to take a Fantastic Journey to this man’s cerebral cortex (the fact that the micro-sized spaceship has some really, really cool buttons and probably a relatively fuckable pilot has no bearing on my decision, by the way). The certain death or at least severe deformities my body will endure would be completely outweighed by the benefits. After identifying exactly which neuron causes most people to make the connections between suit coat = golf hat, or suit coat = fedora, or even suit coat = bowler hat, while others make the suit coat = beer helmet connection, determining the psychotic disorder behind wearing lime green and purple at the same time can’t be far behind. And that makes me have hope in humanity again.

And speaking of lime green
Can we delete it from the prism-o-light spectrum yet? Any hue that reminds people of nuclear waste, snot, or Johnny Fiamma from the Muppets really should be eradicated from the fashion industry.

And by the way…
Johnny Fiamma’s puppet's name was Sal Manella. Yeah, I know it was on the tip of your tongue.

posted by Jenn @ 1:34 PM  

Favorite comment said moments after my set

"I laughed at you. And not sympathy laughs either."

But I have no reason to develop any sort of inferiority complex
Because I had a good set, and perhaps the best set I've done in front of a crowd that large (which is not saying much because the last time I worked for a crowd that large, I was in threat of receiving blunt head trauma from loaves of sourdough bread and Parmesan cheese blocks). In fact, everyone did well. I was truly surprised how well the show went, because humorists tend not to be a great audience for other humorists. Theoretically, we should be the best audience for each other, but much like rocket scientists are not impressed with other rocket scientists, people who write humor are not particularly impressed by others who do so. But the audience was fun and supportive, and it really couldn't have gone much better.

And the attendee who said the sympathy laughs comment? She confessed over my third tequila sunrise (priests should really consider installing Jose Cuervo fountains in their confessionals. The afternoon would be much more productive for all parties.), that she doesn't laugh at comics in general. Though she did say that after hearing my set she's concluded she has an East Coast sense of humor. Apparently, I have now been knighted the Registered Humor Representative of this entire region. Of course, I am honored and privileged to take my inducted place among witful royalty. Unfortunately, upon hearing of this unexpected promotion, I fear the comedy gods have submitted the paperwork for my immediate relocation to Istanbul.

And yes
I know "witful" is not a word. Mostly because Word's spell check told me so.

Oh yeah
Now that the bulk of the dejennerate web design is over, this blog will return to its regular relatively daily schedule.

posted by Jenn @ 12:16 PM  

St. Patricks Day Redux
In the melee that was the weekend, I forgot to report on my St. Patrick’s Day festivities. Frankly, there is not much to report. I can recall all of the eight-hour drinking binge, all my unmentionable garments stayed on my body, and there were no embarrassing snafus similar to the Walking into the Subway Post in Harvard Square Station Incident of 2003. My friend Chuck, however, was not so lucky. Evidently, he celebrated the Annual Festival of Green Food Coloring by falling into a well.

To his credit, it was not a particularly big well. In fact, it may have been a fake well, as sources say he only fell about ten feet tops (I should probably mention that this incident occurred in a colonial village, hence the reason there was a well to fall into in the first place.) From what I understand, Chuck was on his seventh or eighth “pounder” (“pounder” is a Buffalo term, used mostly referring to Genesee Ale’s 16 oz. bottles. It’s always important to have some understanding of the native tongue before traveling in distant lands.) One of the colonial villages near his current place of residence had a St. Patrick’s Day party. Apparently one of the games at said party was throwing Irish coins into this wishing well, with the goal to get them in this bucket that was 10 feet or so below. This does not sound extraordinarily difficult, until you factor in that 99.9% of people attempting this activity has been drinking for 8 hours already, and you are my friend Chuck, who is extraordinarily competitive and likes to cheat. Reports from mutual friends (those who were not still asphyxiating from laughter, that is) said that he tried to throw two coins, missed the bucket completely, got pissed, bent over the side of the well, flung the last coin with all his might, lost his balance, and hence became the proud recipient of a sprained wrist and a lifetime of Baby Jessica jokes.

Oh, and the friends who were with him are all stand-up comics. He might as well just kill himself now.

And Blogger has decided to completely eat yesterday’s post after all
Generally speaking, it probably was not the wisest notion to edit a post in the middle of “scheduled maintenance.” I’ll post it again when I get back on the other computer.

posted by Jenn @ 12:49 PM  

Oh God Fucking damnit.
I just tried to edit my post from this afternoon by adding in crap from my St. Patricks Day weekend, and blogger just ate the whole post due to "internal failure." (When will I ever fucking learn to start a new post??? This is like the third damn time this has happened to me.)

Fuck it. I have it on my hard drive on my other computer. I'll post that and my St. Patricks Day story tomorrow. So rest assured you're not having deja vu, tomorrow's post will be the same damn one from today, just with a very funny St Patrick's Day story attached.

That's really weird...
This post came up as blank a little bit ago (hence the exclamation of "Oh God Fucking Damnit") but had the 12:21 posting time from this afternoon. When I republished, the original post came up as a draft, this one had a new publishing time of 9:30, and the original one won't post. Clearly Blogger is feeding their gremlins after midnight again.

posted by Jenn @ 9:30 PM  

Welcome to the Website that No Longer Completely Sucks
If you go to my main page, you will notice there has been some substaintial changes to the look of dejennerate.com, like graphics, and links that actually go somewhere, and other such hoity toity features. I still have a lot to do, like adding some actual video clips that people have been bugging me about and relink everything that was in the Musings section, but otherwise, here it is.

Oh, and I was going to change my Blog to match the new template, but then I saw that this template was named "Tequila Green." Priorities you know.

posted by Jenn @ 11:33 AM  

What the hell?
Ah, I see you've been to my website. Let me explain.

If you look at some of the admittedly craptastic buttons, you will see that some of them have changed a bit, so much so you can't tell what they are. Rest assured, this is part of the Making Jenn's Website Not Suck policy, which will be revealed by the end of this weekend. Why this weekend? Because I'm attending a convention next week, and I don't want to be directing people to a website that does suck. So for now....patience.

posted by Jenn @ 2:32 PM  

How NOT to close your stand up set

“Well, my mother always told me to keep an octopus out of my bush.
Now back to your host!”
-- Me, last night

Fun show and everything
Eclectic crowd mix, fun comics, I did decent (bush joke and all) and it was a really fun aftershow. Can’t do better than that for a Wednesday.

And in the true spirit of the phrase “no pressure”, my next show is in front of 300 humor writers
I’m performing at the Erma Bombeck Humor Writers convention next weekend. I have had few more idiotically optimistic thoughts than “well, shit, I can entertain 300 humorists”, especially considering I barely manage to entertain any of you. That withstanding, I’m STOKED for this show. This convention tends to be full of supportive people, Gordon Kirkland (the coordinator of the show) is insanely funny, and it should be a kickass way to close the convention. Especially if I don’t close with my octopus bush joke.

And for reader Andrea
My fucking blood alcohol fucking level was a fucking 3.7 last night. You fuck.

The rest of you
Move along, there’s nothing to see here.

posted by Jenn @ 1:44 PM  

Dispatches from the Netflix Queue
It’s that time of the year where all the new DVD releases are movies that would surely have a Visine-in-orange-juice effect on my digestive system. For such an emergency, I have 200 or so movies already in my Queue that fall under the banner of Crap I Should Have Seen Already, hence my weekend viewing.

The Talented Mr. Ripley: I shied away from this for so long because I assumed (albeit stupidly) the mainstream viewers were correct in saying it was complete crap. Hot damn…what a dark, twisted, fucked up little film. As I was watching it, I couldn’t think of one movie that emits the same tone this film does. Very worthwhile, and a highly underrated film.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (not the shitty movie): Douglas Adams, try as many might, just cannot be captured completely adequately on film (as proven by the craptastic film released last year). This low-budget miniseries from Britain is still off, but not by much. I saw this years ago (before I ever read the books, in fact) and found it just as irreverent, fresh, and funny as I did back then. Even the most diehard Adams purist won’t have much to gripe about.

Does not play well with others
Collaborating with another writer on a project is a bit of a yin-yang relationship. On one hand, you have forced discipline (“Jenn? Jenn? Wake up Jenn”…), a built-in checks and balance system (“You know, I think it screws up our character arc if in Act Two our main character becomes betrothed to a member of the livestock community.”), and you are no longer confined by the sinister workings of only your own mind (“Maybe he should bury her alive in raw sewage.” “While wearing a chicken suit?” “Perfect.”) But two writers can never have the same vision for the project, the same exact writing style, or views on what constitutes good dialogue, good filmmaking, etc. And this is where fights ensue. I am not particularly prone to them, because I know exactly what my strengths and weaknesses are as a writer, where many writers are simply unwilling to admit they have weaknesses whatsoever. I say this because I spent the majority of the weekend immersed in a Battle Royale with two recently non-speaking writing partners who are collaborating on a sitcom together. How did the fight start, do you say? One believes the main character should enter saying, “How’s it hanging?” The other believes he should enter saying, “Wherefore art everyone?”

That’s it.

Evidently this dialogue-ridden Pandora’s box opened a fury of artistic integrity accusations. The last I’ve heard, the project has been red-lighted, they are only speaking to each other in short, curt sentences, and I assume they have drawn a white line in the middle of the apartment separating each other’s sides.

By the way, I voted for “How’s it hanging?”, as “Wherefore art thou?” means “WHY are you” (not “WHERE are you”), and that doesn’t make much sense.

Hey, aren’t you supposed to have a new web design or something?
Why, yes! And it’s going swimmingly! Um, providing you forgot that I was supposed to be done in February.

We haven’t.
Er….hey, look….a plane!

posted by Jenn @ 12:55 PM  

Just in time for lunch...
Farmer feeds family friends corpse to pigs
Humans the other, OTHER white meat.

Today, in Avoidance Theory and You
Australia builds bigger crappers for fatter people
OK, people...I've been a lot of different weights in my lifetime, crossing the gamut of fat and thin. Never....not once....did I ever need a 330 pound toilet to answer the call of nature. Buy some yogurt, already.

The Oscars
Crash? If you say so.

And Scorsese hasn't won one yet? Brilliant.

posted by Jenn @ 12:35 PM  

Dejennerate = degenerated
If you’ve gone to my real site, you will probably notice almost all the links are broken. This is because they are not there anymore and have been moved over to the “new design,” This is part of The Making this Website Not Suck Project. Of course, you still have the same shitty ramblings, so perhaps this project may be a bit too optimistic.

Rest assured, they’ll be working again soon.

Becoming your main characters
Generally speaking, most of the population spends their time on this earth in no one else’s head except their own, except for the rare out-of-body experience and the occasional reality-altering recreational substance. Writers of fiction (especially long fiction, like novels, screenplays, etc.), on the other hand, obviously have to spend a great part of their day getting in their characters’ heads. That said, it is not all that unusual for writers to start exhibiting the personality traits of the characters they write. I think this very topic was lamented by my friend Gene in his blog awhile ago, where he was writing for a character who has insomnia and ended up suffering from insomnia himself. Or perhaps I’m imagining this. Because, see, I’m currently writing about someone who’s suffering from delusions, and pink Christina Aguilera monsters are sure to appear in my peripheral vision any day now.

Now obviously, this can be a good thing, if your character has positive character traits such as compassion, sensitivity, and charitably. However, I’m currently working on three projects: one that involves a clinically depressed 30-something, the other that involves a man possessed by demons, and the third involves murderous teenagers. So I’m probably going to start taking up necrophilia any day now.

OK, probably not
Necrophilia could never really be my thing as I’m a bit of a sanitary buff.

And I don’t have any particular fondness for maggots and earthworms.

And, when all is said and done, I need leverage.

OK, so I’m just going to act like I have severe PMS. Disregard this whole post.

These are the days
that I’m glad my family does not know I have a blog.

posted by Jenn @ 12:10 PM