Kids These Days
Last week, I spent a couple of days hanging out with my cousin Sophia.
This picture was taken on Mother Teresa's birthday.
She just turned fourteen. This is her first week of high school. I think she’s going to be okay.
Ever since teenagers were invented in the 1950’s by the milkshake industry, they’ve been on the verge of destroying themselves and society, right? Naked drug text message internet crimes, probably.
After a couple of days, one lunch with Mimi (our grandmother), a visit to the Mutter and New Harmony, and a crappy museum crawl with Blaise, I am confident that if the youth of today is anything like Sophia, we’re all going to be just fine.
My brother's facial hair has a mind of its own.
When I was her age, I was really into Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol, and Bad Religion. Sophia’s interests include pineapple juice, unicorns, the TV show Psych, Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, and Tim Burton. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re only just figuring out who that is, but Sophia is doing an excellent job of it.
Ben Franklin and I had a novelty single in 1996.
In the past month, I’ve become a second cousin and the friend of people with kids. In the next few months, I’ll be an aunt and a first cousin (again). I’m still pretty terrified of babies (they’re like giant crying bags of diamonds – needy, precious, and something I feel I probably shouldn’t get my hands on), but I think I’m getting a little better with the young people. As long as those young people are interested in conjoined twins and the Soap Lady.
Photos from The National Liberty Museum, which we were all way to old for.
Adventures in Spam Messages
I get mostly a lot of spam comments on this website. Usually, they’re gibberish, or about my “articles,” but getting one from “regrow eyebrows” seemed a little personal. Well, internet robot, you can’t regrow what was never there.
Strange and Beautiful
Have you read the article in the latest New Yorker about John Lurie?
The short of it is that he had a falling out with a friend who subsequently began stalking him, or so he says and it seems. The long of it is much stranger and sadder. It also explains why he is no longer my Facebook friend. (Which totally hurt my feellings!)
Ever since my freshman-in-college Jarmusch phase (which tapered off after Broken Flowers), when I saw Down by Law and rented Fishing with John and ended up with burned copy of The Lounge Lizards’ first album, I’ve loved John Lurie.
Despite, or maybe because of his arrogance:
“The people who makde it from the eighties had nothing to sell out in the first place. Jim Jarmusch, David Byrne, Keith Harring – all the bad ones got ahead, all the apple-for-the-teacher lightweights. The ones who are really great have a sense of madness and can’t hold it together…Of all the real artists from then, I’m the only one who is alive and has his own liver.”
He has gotten older, but he hasn’t gotten old.
His brother, Evan, who played with the Lounge Lizards was quoted in the article as saying,
“…the Lounge Lizards’ music was never going to be on the radio. It’s too cacophonous, too ethereal, too…a hundred things. But, because it was so heartfelt, John could never understand why everyone wouldn’t immediately embrace it.”
When you’re doing anything that could be construed as art, whether it’s screen-printing, or playing in a band, or whatever it is, exactly, that I’m doing with myself, the goal isn’t necessarily fame, or even understanding, but to be able to be at a point where you aren’t questioned for your choices. For there to be a few more people on your side than on the opposite. It’s both dis- and heartening to hear that I’m in good company.
What’s best to hear, though, is that he’s fixed up his saxophones, and that I can pretend someday that I’ll hear him play.
Gray, Blue, Brown
Before the Rant-O-Wheel show at PHIT a couple of weeks back, Alex asked me how I managed not to take it personally the fact that none of my friends were in attendance (aside from folks that had already been in the room). I told him that I’d dealt with enough rejection as a kid who was so actively unpopular that committees were formed on the subject that this was nothing. I meant it at the time.
But last night, there was no audience. Not a single person came.
One Thanksgiving, thorough a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings, my father forgot us. Per the custody arrangement, my brother and I waited on the porch with a pair of hand-me-down children’s suitcases, in blue and brown 70’s floral sitting safely with us. He was due to arrive any minute, in the hulking, powder blue car he’d ended up with. Unless I’m remembering the wrong car, because it was a long time ago, and this memory has only three colors to it, it was the one with the wide, oversoft velour seats that could not prevent my nausea from reading all the way down the New Jersey Turnpike. We stood, shivering in our mittens until it got dark, while our mother watched from inside where it was warm and she was safe from confrontation, until it got dark, and she finally called him. He answered the telephone in New York, five hours from the blue gray dusk on the front porch and our cold hands and those matching suitcases. He wouldn’t be picking us up any time soon.
Where I’m Calling From
I have this problem in which I write about half of an informative and interesting blog post and then get sidetracked by work, the growing number of people and cats that live in my house, and the opening chapters of the books I have purchased this summer, but not yet read.
For example, I wrote this last weekend:
On July 28th, I hosted my first Rant-O-Wheel show at PHIT. It went over far better than I’d expected.
I should probably back up right here – I’m doing a show with the Philly Improv Theater. The show, for the rest of this year, at least, since that’s as far as we’ve planned, will follow Luke Giordano’s Bully Pulpit show, at 9:30 PM on the first Wednesday of PHIT’s monthly tenure at The Shubin Theater.
Two weeks before the show, Greg Maughn and I got together to discuss the prospect of my hosting a monthly show. About halfway through the meeting he said, “The first show would be July 28th. Do you think you could get something together by then?”
I enlisted Alejandro Morales as my co-host, packed up the old Rant-O-Wheel, and set about my business. A good portion of Luke’s audience stuck around for my show (thanks, guys!), as did most of Secret Pants, the Rob half of Meg and Rob, and no less than two Brendan Kennedys. Fun was had, songs from The Little Mermaid were sang, and
Then I forgot to finish it.
I’m sure it was going to say a lot about how weird it is that, after a lifetime of being summarily rejected on the basis of my personality, two of my three shows exist partially upon the idea that people are willing to sit and watch me talk. And then maybe there would have been something about how overwhelming it is that I am hosting THREE SHOWS, two of which are monthly, and require the participation of others, because especially in the summer when everyone is twice as busy, I often feel as though the scope of people I know who are willing to jump into something is ever-narrowing. And then, there would probably be a passive aggressive note about how frustrating it is not to get responses to emails, and how if I were the email boss, things would be different. Which would lead to me trying to define the job of “Email Boss,” and degenerate into nonsense.
I have been very busy lately with my second job, which, unlike my barista job, sounds somewhat professional. When distant relatives ask me about what I do for a living, I list it first, because it makes me sound more like I have a real job, even though what I actually have is a part-time service job, and seasonal contract work. This suits my lifestyle perfectly, except when everything is happening at once. Then, I become a weird hermit that only goes out in public to perform or buy discount produce, and I spent most of my time sitting in my bedroom in front of the air conditioner tapping away at the computer and thinking about how much Ice-T has enriched the landscape of Law and Order: SVU over the years.
How’s your summer going?
Kill Yr Idols, August 10th
While I’ve been busying myself with collecting performers for the next Second Stories, Jeremy went ahead and made several versions of the show poster. You can see all of them here.
I think this one is Jeremy’s favorite, though:
Name Game: Stepdad Edition
I like to keep running lists of names that are appropriate various situations and scenerios. Sometimes these are fun, like “Good Names for Civil War Deserters” (Zebulon, Zeb for short), and sometimes they’re necessary, like “People Who Might Interact with Beverly Winthrop” (Dale Walker, assistant Dairy Queen Manager, 1982).
Good Names for Stepdads:
Jeff
Dave
Stan
Greg
Mark
Bill
Gary
Rick
The key for this one, I think, is to have an incredibly common name that still manages to seem alien, whether it’s because the name has fallen out of fashion, or because it doesn’t match the last name, or because for whatever reason “Rick” just sounds like the name of a guy your mom would like, but you wouldn’t.
Alejandro and Apologies
I am good at a lot of things: wearing sailor suits, making vegetarian meat facsimiles, naming theoretical pets, remembering in which Doctor Who episode various British character actors have appeared, (I hope) writing and putting on shows, for example. But I’m not particularly good at blogging. Most of it is because I’m lazy, and have other things to write and read and do that seem more important and interesting than updating my website. Some of it is that I don’t have a focus, like Christian does when he writes about books he’s read, or any number of people on the internet that like to share information about their personal lives. But, since I read in phases (right now, it’s The Border Trilogy, snippets from my beloved Please Kill Me, and a stack of others I’m itching to get into), and am relatively boring, I don’t always know what to do with this space, or for whom I’m even writing.
The other reason is that, once, I got into an internet fight. When I was a freshman in college, I had a LiveJournal. I don’t have an excuse for that. I spent a lot of time complaining about school, talking about whatever album I was obsessed with that week, and ostensibly keeping in touch with the four or five people from high school who also tracked their adolescent miseries for everyone to see. It was dumb, but so was I.
As the year was drawing to a close, a few Juniors in the program I attended in college wanted to put on a series of one-act plays. At the same time, a classmate of mine, who was a little older that I was, wanted to do something similar with a few things of his own. In an attempt to either appease everyone or make everyone miserable, the director of the program had them share a bill. I was in two of the plays, one in the first half, written and directed by my classmate, and one in the second act, written and directed by my boyfriend at the time.
There was tension. It was a three-against-one situation. The freshman had not been properly introduced. Everyone felt entitled. Bad blood.
At the time, I felt a certain amount of loyalty to my then-boyfriend and his friends, and I didn’t know my classmate that well. We were in a big, frustrating class, full of people on different levels of reading comprehension, cinema knowledge, writing capabilities, and interests who had never really been put together in any workable way. We were also screenwriters at an art school, so everyone had a giant chip embedded deeply about their shoulders. We weren’t really allowed to write yet, and it was making those of us actually interested in doing so anxious and frustrated and combative.
After a particularly irritating play practice, I wrote a little screed on the internet about how I regretted agreeing to do the play with my classmate, and how much I thought he sucked. I believe the phrase “untalented hack” was used. He found it, and responded. I think the phrase “petulant brat” was involved. We became bitter enemies. After the plays ended, we didn’t speak to each other if we could help it. The problem was that we had a lot in common. We were in the same major. We took the same Liberal Arts Classes, and liked the same books, and made the same arguments. We had the same friends.
I can’t quite put my finger on what the impetus was, or when exactly it happened, but sometime in the transition between our junior and senior years, we became friendly, and then drinking buddies (when I was old enough), and then friends. We both came up in Philadelphia in an environment that was more conducive to argument and animosity than it was to collaboration and companionship, but, somehow, we managed to sidestep it eventually.
And now, seven years later, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather kill four mysterious, gin-soaked hours at Uncle’s with than my dear friend, Alejandro Morales.
Alex, and many talented others will be performing in this month’s Second Stories Puts on a Comedy Show on Tuesday.
That Should Cover It
I should be writing more on the internet, but I’ve been busy.
In the month of June, Second Stories bid farewell to Steve, Toiling in Obscurity made the paper, Beverly shared her favorite lowfat recipes in the Gayborhood, and I joined the Dumpsta Players, learned a dance part, and performed in “Mrs. Miller’s Coffee, Tea, or Me Party.” I also went to a reading that I wasn’t in charge of for the first time in a while, attended a baby shower (uncharacteristic!), forced Jeremy to celebrate his birthday, caught up with a few friends, and a lot of banana bread.
I think I covered Second Stories adequately, so on to the rest of it:
June 18th’s Toiling in Obscurity was one of our best. I say this after almost every show, but I would like to think it speaks more to the quality of the shows I put on, and of the material and performers involved than it does to anything else. It was delightfully crowded, though I’m not sure if it was on the legs of that Philly Weekly mention or the fact that Lee Klein was performing. 
We had some notables in the audience, which would have made me feel a lot cooler if I hadn’t been their barista/counter girl for several years in college. At least, I would have felt cooler if I hadn’t brought that up.
Each performer was introduced by a speech. Before Jeremy read, he rose from the dead, the “’Nova!” cries of Tim’s frat-boy eulogy lifting him from the tables he’d been lying upon. He read the new, improved (and still thrilling, after all these years) opening to Last of The Blue Blazers, which he originally read at our first show in 2008. It was different enough that those of us who were familiar were still surprised.
Sarah’s flustered bridesmaid stalled for time before Becca Trabin read her hilarious West Philly allegory.
Jeremy introduced Lee, our political candidate, who read a story written especially for the show about certain events occurring after the March show, and party at my house. I can’t pass 10th and Federal now without calling it “Cheesesteak Gardens.”
Jan and Micah, some of the best friends a show could ask for, proudly introduced their son, Tinmouth, on the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah. Then, he played some songs.
After the break, I demonstrated my knowledge of high school-level Spanish by reading a speech in French, commemorating Bastille Day. Then, Doogie Horner explained, using Final Four style brackets, which U.S. President was best, determined by physical altercations. The winner? James Madison.
Then, Doogie introduced Steve with a poem on the occasion of his retirement, and Steve told a story about soldiers stationed abroad and some “weapons grade LSD.” If you caught that both he and Lee used that phrase, you won!
Christian warned the otherworldly visitor that her life was at risk, and then, I read. I usually put myself last for a couple of reasons:
1. I am kind of a bummer. Who wants to follow the misery train?
2. It seems only fair that, as organizer, I get the least sober audience.
The downside of that is that if my friends can only stop in for a little while, or if the smoke is too much, they don’t end up sticking around for my actual story. Someday, friends! Someday!
After Toiling, my attention went toward the Dumpstas. I had a very small, non-speaking role in their show that turned out to be really fun. It was a very interesting experience walking into an already-formed group, given instructions, and told to go for it. I’m not used to working “for” anyone these days. I’m either doing my own shows, or I’m doing comedy in shows where I’m expected to show up with my material, perform it, and hang out. It was a little weird, but not in a bad way. It’s good to branch out.
And everything else? I got to spend lots of time with people I like, managed not to ruin a baby shower for my friends whose future child I promise I will try very hard not to fear, got in the paper, no matter how backhanded, and, oh, yeah, someone’s going to put a story I wrote online sometime soon. A good month, all-around.
No Publicity is Bad Publicity
Hello, there!
If you are reading this, it’s probably because you read this:
Welcome, internet! Let me tell you a little bit more about Toiling in Obscurity:
THIS is the offending blog entry. I would be more apologetic if it hadn’t garnered more press than two plus years of press releases.
THE NAME OF THE SHOW is funny, and not about to change.
THE SHOW is this Friday, June 18th, at 7PM SHARP! at The Dive.
It probably won’t be anything like a First Person Arts Story Slam because:
– The performers have been hand-picked and scheduled since April.
– It’s FREE! Except for your drinks.
– The whole point is to showcase recent WRITTEN material by the performers* that is either in progress, in limbo, or has recently/will soon be published.
– You can smoke in there! (Buck up, other non-smokers! You can wash your hair when you get home.)
YOUR BARTENDER is the lovely Jo. Yes, that is an accent. Australian, thanks for asking. Tip her often and well.
Yes, DOOGIE HORNER was just on America’s got talent.
He’s also the author/designer behind The First Timer’s Kit and the forthcoming, Everything Explained Through Flowcharts.
In case you were wondering: I have known BECCA TRABIN since Mrs. Jablonski’s Third Grade Class at North Wales Elementary School. We had a long-term substitute that tried to break us of the habit of using “like” and “um” as placeholders in conversation, which is a habit I should look into reacquiring.
TINMOUTH also known as Timothy TeBordo, is just GIVING AWAY his new record. You should download it, even if you have no intention of coming to the show.
I don’t know LEE KLEIN very well, but I’ll tell you one thing – he’s a polite houseguest.
JEREMY ERIC TENENBAUM has also designed all of the Toiling in Obscurity posters. He will be writing from the voluminous, and thrilling, and ever-forthcoming Last of the Blue Blazers.
STEVE MANHEART is now a teaching fellow in Baltimore, but I’ve covered that already. This will be his last show in Philadelphia for awhile.
THE DIVE is located at 947 E. Passyunk Ave, at roughly 7th and Carpenter, right by The Royal Tavern. Don’t go there if you hate free pizza.
I also run SECOND STORIES, a monthly storytelling-ish show at The Dive. The next show is going to be on Tuesday, July 13th, also at 7PM. Check that out, too.
And, I have a story forthcoming in an upcoming issue of THE FOUNDLING REVIEW.
Thank you, TARA MURTHA, and may this Google Alert find you well!
*except for Steve, who still spends a significant amount of time prepping his stories, even though he doesn’t write them down.
