Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 9.0 // Critical Darling, Commercial Flop

The funny about this was the extremely matter-of-fact tone used by the young man, who I assume was taking care of his drunk friend:

“You need to find Brad and get him to take your ass home. Where is Brad?
“Why is Brad at Toppers? Brad is gay.”

Gay men like dancing, and boobs for that matter, so I myself am not entirely surprised that Brad was hanging out at a strip club.

Busking 8/5/2007 from Jenna Tollerson and Vimeo.

Downtown Athens, Georgia, 3 AM Saturday night (or Sunday morning). August 5th, 2007.

These guys had a sign that read:

WE SING ABOUT WHAT WE SEE.
     -------------------------------------
OUR DRUMMER IS WASTED!!!

Dancing to the Bucket Guy on Vimeo

Me: “Did you see that?”

Sam: (looks) “What is that?”

Me: “It's a man in a bear suit riding a bicycle.”

Sam: “Is Conan O'Brien here?”

A few things:

• I am so totally ready for the universe to stop beating me up. I get it! I've learned my lesson re: biting off more than I can chew/counting my chickens before they hatch/eating my green veggies/various other platitudes that ultimately mean nothing. The point is, I deserve to have something good happen in my life — it's been more than a year since the last Really Exciting Change, and I refuse to believe that at 24 years old things are due to start leveling out.
• I am sure I am not the first young geek to say this, but I really wish I could work for Connected Ventures, or at least hang out with the staff on a regular basis. There are many reasons for this, too many to enumerate here, the least of which is that they spend afternoons after work making dorky music videos that come out eerily well. My new favorite reason? I just discovered that the always lovable Zach Klein is actually a stone fox.
• My friend Becca, upon arriving at my apartment this time last week and putting away some beer to chill: “Your refrigerator might be the saddest thing I have ever seen.”
• To the bad cover band around the corner I'm being forced to listen to through my open window: you have no business covering Nelly. The only thing worse than hearing “Hot in Here” for the 400th time is having to sit through a rhythmless cover version.
  I think they will bust out some 50 Cent anytime now, and then my night will be complete.
• Twilight is this weekend. It won't be as quite as fun without beer and food money in hand, but there should at least be some sights to be seen and some drunk people to make conversation with.
• They are butchering Gavin Degraw now. I am sorry that I can't be more entertaining for you today.

My years of training as wallflower patient observer (before transforming into a social butterfly) have suddenly yielded a fantastic accomplishment. My “overheard” has been published on that bastion of Classic City culture, Overheard in Athens.

Drunk girl 1: She's carrying a hairbrush in her purse! I can't believe you carry a hairbrush in your purse!
Drunk girl 2: Doesn't everybody carry a hairbrush in their purse?
Drunk girl 1: Not me!
Drunk girl 2: Well, what do you carry in your purse? A flask of vodka and a pregnancy test?

Linky-link-link to the page, completely with clever title I can take no credit for.

The first time I ever took some one's keys away, I was just a few weeks into my freshman year of college.

I know drunk driving must have been a issue when I was in high school, but it was on a different scale, because there wasn't the regular activity of pre-gaming and then going downtown. We went to parties, did shots in people's kitchens, drank Everclear mixed with coke because it was cheap and lasted twice as long. People would gather at one place and basically have a huge lock in. It was a caused by a couple of factors. In a small town where the cops don't have much to do, every one had a heightened paranoia about being pulled over and arrested. There was no where to enjoy your drunkenness except for the place where you were already drunk. If you went home, you went to your parent's home, so you might as well just sleep it off and face them sober.

I'm not a stickler for the rules, but I do feel pretty strongly about drunk driving. I've always been vehemently against it. And before I moved to Athens, I assumed this was an issue that my peers and I more or less universally agreed upon. However, just like realizing how much groceries actually cost, worrying about health insurance, and coming to terms with your parents being just human like the rest of us, part of growing up is understanding that everyone—even people you like, people you love, and people you truly admire—makes bad decisions on a regular basis. More often than learning from them they actually learn nothing from them. Especially when there are no immediate ill consequences.

However, when I was new freshman, I was still charmingly naïve. Years of PSAs and television dramas had actually convinced me that you could keep someone from driving drunk if you were determined enough, and had determined that no one would ever drive drunk on my watch.

My roommate at the time, Sonya, had a bunch of her friends visiting from her hometown, and staying with us in our tiny dorm room. They pre-gamed in our room and then it was time to head downtown.

The original plan was to walk, but standing in front of the building, facing the trek down the hill, the group, pretty drunk and unruly, decided to drive. Although I was pretty much sober, I don't remember how I managed to get the keys from the driver, but I clearly remember what happened next. Read More »

A lot has happened and nothing has happened while I've been away, Internet. I did Christmas with the family, Charleston with my friends, said goodbye to the single most influential force in my life thus far, and met a dozen or so new and wonderful people.

Then I came back to Athens. And I've felt completely weird ever since. It's a feeling I always get in Charleston, which, being a city I don't particularly care for, has a tendency to throw me way out of my comfort zone on those extended stays. There is no good way to describe it other than I feel “off”. I expected it to release it's hold on me when I came home, but it's hung around in one way or another. This is only a hollow sinking feeling in my gut though. In reality, I own the motherfuckin Classic City. I have friends, regular haunts, a job where everyone digs my work, a swank apartment, and depression-wise, I'm feeling less episode-dy than I have in years. I get up everyday excited to get some shit done (after a shower and a few big gulps of a caffeinated beverage, anyway). It doesn't take every sheer ounce of will I have to make myself walk out and face the world in the morning. This is progress! Read More »

All my roommates are asleep.

This was weird to realize just after midnight on a Saturday, so I turned off the DVD I was watching, walked downstairs and trolled around the city for half an hour. The weather is mostly just great, but now that it has finally warmed just a little, I find myself longing for the hot tropical blanket of humidity that settles over Georgia in the summer. A Southerner through and through, that's what I love most about living here.

Of course, come July, I'll outwardly complain and turn up the AC, just like everyone else.

I've seen a lot of shows in the past few days—Bain Mattox, Borrowed Angels, Hector the Hero, and Tin Cup Prophette. All of these bands share members, some pulled right out of Jump. Sometimes it kinda felt like a Charleston invasion. In a good way.

These are all bands everyone should actively persue. In the bridge of the song Blackwater, Cary Ann (the sexy front woman for the Borrowed Angels) sings “I love you” in a way that makes me wish that I could somehow have a romantic relationship with her just so someone could sing “I love you” to me that way.

Unfourtunately, although I can't speak for Miss Cary Ann, I am hopelessly and unquestionably heterosexual. Ah well. Someday I will find a young man who can sing to me that way. Hopefully someday soon.

So, I'm sick of surveys. I never thought I would say that but I am. They all seem to have the same questions after a while, and I am forced to give the same answers that at first seemed clever but now have formed into a trite mutation of themselves, as well as an excuse to not really write anymore. So until I see another original one, I think I am easing myself out of them.

It should be noted that what follows is not a survey.

I was inspired by this girl to dig up my 100_facts_about_me list from this place, revise it and publish it for you here. Enjoy, and if you feel so inclined, publish a similar list in your own journal.

It's much harder than you think. Read More »