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

Sarah (12:37:28 AM): by the way...
Sarah (12:37:35 AM): I've been meaning to tell you this story FOREVER
Sarah (12:37:37 AM): you're gonna love it
Jen (12:37:54 AM): ouuu
Sarah (12:39:03 AM): Bain, Rivers, and Mike all told this story to me seperately... they were talking about how they just discovered flickr, and they were backstage at the 40 watt after the show checking it out
Sarah (12:39:12 AM): and they looked for bain mattox tags and they saw your photos
Sarah (12:39:36 AM): and they were trying to figure out when it was from, then they realized it was from like 30 minutes earlier and were just floored haha
Jen (12:40:16 AM): HAHAHA
Jen (12:40:18 AM): AWESOME
Jen (12:40:33 AM): that is totally freakin awesome
Sarah (12:40:48 AM): I knew you'd love it
Jen (12:41:37 AM): dude... that makes my entire day
Jen (12:42:07 AM): also it cracks me up they all had to tell you
Sarah (12:42:19 AM): yeah I know, really funny
Sarah (12:42:23 AM): it obviously made an impact haha

Random guy walks up to me at the Bain Mattox show at Tasty World. I notice he's wearing a hat that I own, but he's otherwise completely unfamiliar to me.

“Hey! Is your sister here?”

“Yeah, she's close to the front.” I point to where my sister is standing with her friend watching the show.

“Where?”

“Right there, in the turquoise.”

“Oh, cool!”

He stands next to me for a couple of minutes, facing the stage. I'm little intoxicated, and I start to blame my drunk memory on not remembering this guy, but I realize that he doesn't even look slightly familiar. I screw up a little courage and turn to him.

“I'm sorry, do I know you from somewhere?”

“No, no, I just recognize you from myspace.”

He was even serious.

***

I'm at my bar enjoying a delicious beverage. My friend is at my left, his coworker is at my right. The coworker is quite rotund, wearing a shirt that says, ‘When you masturbate, God kills a kitten.’, keeps proclaiming loudly to the whole bar that someone should help him lose his virginity tonight, and has had one—count it, one—Smirnoff Ice. He has the social skills of a home-schooled kid except without the helpful element of shyness. He and I are not getting along, although I'm sure that would be a surprise to him. He thinks he can woo me, and attempts to work his game, giving me a smooth line that he's probably been waiting to use on someone for weeks.

He turns to me, unprovoked, and says with utmost sincerity, “You know what? Even though I haven't been drinking, you're still really cute.”

He looks at me expectantly, wondering why I'm not falling into his arms or at least blushing and giggling like a school girl. I don't even blink. After the half an hour or so I had already spent with the coworker, this comment just seemed par for the course.

My friend on my other side hadn't heard any of this due to the volume of the noise in the bar, so I turned and relayed it to him, scoffing. We then laughed together, manically as we are wont to do, and the coworker just sat, bewildered.

“What did I say?”

It is 10 til 8:00 on Friday morning. Dehydrated, head pounding, I stumble into the kitchen to get water. As I pour a glass, Emily, who is about to head off to work, looks at me with concern, tilts her head and asks, “How do you feel?”

The first word I utter this morning comes out as a choked, low sound as I squint at her.

“Drunk.”

...

Thursday night I was invited out by coworkers (mainly, Neil) for drinks at Copper Creek. I arrived a little after 8:00, with Abie and the Indian in tow, and ordered something they brew in-house at Copper Creek, an Abbey Ale. Abbey Ales are fruity, dark and deliciously deceptive: even though it is printed clearly on the sign touting house beers, one soon forgets that it contains 7.9% alcohol. By the time our party had moved out to the patio area, I had consumed three, plus the half of Abie's she had been unable to finish (“I'm just not a big beer drinker!” she had proclaimed).

Hilarity ensued.

I remember:

• Neil, Abie and Tyler trying to get me to sing. When I displayed reluctance, they tried to get me to rap.
  “C'mon Jenna! Bust out some Southern Hospitality!”
  I declined.
• It somehow coming out among my coworkers that I'm a ‘nympho’, if only by my inability to deny it.
• Insulting people, having it repeated back to me 10 seconds later and truly not remembering 10 seconds later calling anyone a “cunt”.
  
  “I didn't just say that, did I?”
  “Yes, you did.”
  “Wow.”
• I was asked to and sang along with the cheesy jazz covers record they had been playing in the bar on a loop for the last three hours. I was too drunk to be accurately singing, and kept exclaiming in my defense that the singer was in a really weird key.
• Repeating expertly accented Japanese phrases back to Abie, under the pretense that I actually might remember some of it, which of course I don't. She was delighted by my skillful pronunciation, however. I got mad skillz.

After I finished my fourth (and ½) Abbey Ale, at about 11:30 the group split, with Neil and Tyler off to the 40 Watt and myself and my crüe off to Tastyworld for Bain Mattox. Sam Deeds was there, as were my roommates Alli and Catie, my sister Sarah, and Heather and Rob (who are delightful, but officially belong to Abie I think).

The Indian buys me more beer. I protest that I don't need anymore. He pulls the “I'm not asking, I'm telling!” form of best friend manipulation. I cave. I have a lot more to drink, but am never so drunk that I fail to get served at the bar.

The Indian forces me to waltz with him during one number, and I step on his feet a lot as we bump into everyone around us. This did not make us popular, I think.

At the end of the show, I spend long amounts of time praising Bain and his bandmates on their most excellent performance, and then have the audacity to quiz him on my name. Very confidently he blurts out “Abie.” I smile and correct him. He feels bad, and then I feel bad for making him feel bad. I tell both Bain and Brian at separate times that they are the cute one in the band, both while they are standing right there. I monopolize their time.

It's amazing what some people will put up with when it comes to their fans.

After saying goodbyes I make it home, drink a couple glasses of water, and decide that I'll be okay for class and work at 9 am. Obviously, I was wrong.

...

dude (6:31:37 PM): you have a rough morning?
me (6:32:04 PM): yes. yes I did.
me (6:32:33 PM): still drunk this morning actually
dude (6:32:41 PM): lovely
dude (6:32:46 PM): yeah you were pretty plowed
me (6:33:40 PM): I wasn't that bad, was I?
dude (6:34:28 PM): hahahahaha
dude (6:35:04 PM): :) you were tolerable :)
me (6:35:14 PM): tolerable
me (6:35:29 PM): what every girl wants to hear, that she is tolerable :)
dude (6:35:34 PM): hahaha
me (6:36:28 PM): well I meant all that stuff about being glad to see you, even if I did say it 45 times
dude (6:36:56 PM): hahaha
dude (6:37:32 PM): i wonder
dude (6:37:51 PM): if we as humans have a drunk memory section in our brains
dude (6:38:08 PM): you know how sometimes when you're drunk you don't remember what happened
dude (6:38:25 PM): well what if you got drunk again and then made an effort to think about it again
dude (6:38:28 PM): would you remember?
me (6:38:33 PM): hmmmm
me (6:38:49 PM): I don't know
me (6:39:02 PM): I usually don't have memory problems when I'm drunk

So I lied, but I didn't know I was lying at the time, I swear.

It is totally out of character for me to be attracted to a frat boy, and yet I am so attracted to this one worn–out–kacki–basebase–cap–and–flip–flop–wearing greek mofo. What in the hell is wrong is with me?

Also, reading just a couple of web posts from the guy that I thought I was over totally brought all kinds of feelings that I thought were gone up to the surface. Apparently, I had only buried them.

Work today was long and complicated—including, but not limited to, one big screw up by me that got two departments and my boss involved. Not a good day. I wanted to cry a little bit, but I pulled it together.

Evening was lovely. Sarah had dinner with me here at my apartment, and then she played an open mic here in town, and got an excellent reception. She can't help it. People love her. It's a trait that runs in the family.

Here's a very lj-like list.

• Tomorrow: Bain @ Flicker
• Friday: unplanned thus far, maybe some sleep will be involved. That would be nice.
• Saturday: Cary Ann Hearst @ Flicker
• Sunday: cut coupons. I am so not kidding about this.
  Work inventory at Lane Bryant, 5 PM - 11 PM.
• Monday: maybe, maybe, maybe Monday Night Movie.

If you need something to do this weekend, come to Athens and hang. I need to see you!

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.

This morning I was walking to work, through downtown Athens. Athens is a college town. 9 AM, Christmas Eve, downtown Athens, it's empty. Besides being eerily quiet, there are also about a billion parking spaces. And yet, there she was, the meter maid, wearing a Santa hat, giving out parking tickets to all the naughty boys and girls.

Merry. Freakin'. Christmas.

A YEAR IN RETROSPECT... a survey that actually means something, stolen from here. Read More »

I should write about things when they actually happen. Like going to the Caledonia to see Jay Clifford and then seeing Bain Mattox open and getting to sit for both sets, up front.

Or write about going backstage at On the Bricks and hanging out with the dudes of Will Hoge and and about Will making himself an "Honorary Tollerson".

Or about the cute Starbucks guy flexing for me. Or about my trucker's tan. Or even going to Target.

But I have no time. And hardly any interest either. Got to go. Comment on this crappy entry!