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

We do this every year. Frank, R-rated discussion of friends, drinking, sex, music, money, illness, politics, and many other subjects follow. If you are a sensitive, delicate flower, I suggest you go elsewhere. Particularly if you are over 50 (if you baby boomers proceed anyway, I'll bear no responsibility for possible heart attacks). Read More »

This Christmas, for the first time in many years, I'm not buying presents for anyone. It's a hard candy Christmas—with apologies to Dolly Parton—and the state of my finances makes it impossible. In lieu of material things, which are hardly in the spirit of Christmas anyway (right?), I present for your viewing pleasure, two songs from my 19 year old self, and some reflection on these performances. Why the dissection? We compulsively analyze things. You know we can't stop just for Christmas.

Note: streaming flash video appears below. If if doesn't work, or you prefer Windows Media, or even want to grab the MP3 audio versions, you can find the original, four-year-aged post here.

These are two songs from the 106 West Annual Christmas Show in 2002. I know that if you are much older than me, four years probably doesn't sound like a long time, but to me it feels like a lifetime ago. This was after I had gone to college, but before I had made any close friends there, before I ever had a job, before I ever paid bills, before I cut my hair, before I had gotten over my shyness and learned how to talk to people, before Abie taught me how to dress in a way that wasn't hideous.

River (Joni Mitchell Cover):

While you can't appreciate how loud everything was, especially the applause from the audience, what you can see in this video is how uncomfortable I am on stage, in my own skin. I look at this now and think, “Get your hands out of your pockets! Why the hell did you pick that outfit?” and even “That is completely the wrong bra for you.” Overall, the person in the video feels like someone different, not me, but I can relate to her on one level, about something you can't see in the video.

I hesitate to bring it up even now, because it's long past, but it's important to my appreciation of the performance, and I've never talked about it before. At Christmas in 2002, I was estranged from one of my best friends in the entire world. The worst part was that I felt it was entirely my fault. It was probably the loneliest I have ever been. This feeling permeated every facet of my life for awhile, so while I had no romantic interest in this friend, I still related to River on a deep level (“I’m so hard to handle / you know I’m selfish and I’m sad / I lost the best baby that I ever had”), so much so that every time I sang the song the pain hurt my heart. I often am praised for an extremely emotive performance of River, and that's because I can't sing it, or even watch this performance of it, without being transported back to that time.

We eventually reconciled (with a vengence), so in the end, everything worked out, but sometimes, I still wish that I had handled the situation a different way, so that maybe I wouldn't have lost that time. Even if it means that the performance would have suffered.

Please Come Home For Christmas (Charles Brown Cover):

“A! Everything I sing is in A!”

Here, despite my lack of a compelling stage presence, I've got the audience in the palm of my hand. It's a pretty stiff performance, until the monitor made a strange, very loud sound (at the first “So won't you tell me / you'll never more roam”) and all I could do was open my eyes in shock, smile and laugh it off. However, by the end of the song, I'm freaked out to be on stage again.

The applause at the end of the song was absolutely unreal. The video doesn't at all capture the roar that came at me. One of my biggest regrets to date is that I practically ran off stage instead of taking a moment to bask in the glory.

These days I don't sing as often as I used to. Chances are, however, that I'll be making an appearance at the 106 West (Site | MySpace) Annual Christmas show, next Saturday night, December 16th, at 7:30 PM. The show is free, and should be pretty rockin, if past years are any indication. I would love to see you there.

We've redesigned just for Christmas.

I can't get over how dorky this is.

“Your Boobies' Names Are: The Bazoombas - Get your own Boobie Names”; DSX; Melissa acting as my official vacation driver; seeing many wonderful friends and getting trashed with them on New Year's Eve; lots of lowcountry cooking; the fourth season of Six Feet Under which I received for Christmas and have already watched one and one-half times; being ready to go home when it was time to go home

A House Christmas Eve Tradition. Read More »

Originally uploaded by Jenna Tollerson.

The Subliminal Reassurances of Procedural Dramas, the Christmas lights in the trees on Clayton Street, pumpkin pie, the fact that I've finally found a reason to make this list again for the first time in weeks

Christmas Eve dinner at the Tollerson house was a low-key affair. My father had purchased one of those cooked rotisserie chickens, and the side dish was apples. Not baked, not fried, just whole apples sitting next to the chicken on a paper plate.

Such is the level of cuisine on this very special occasion from my normally culinarily triumphant father. Without anyone to impress, however (my mother was absent from the holiday, staying at her mother's house in California), he seemed to be off his game.

Early on in the night, I presented both Dad and Sarah with the Christmas mix (cover, liner notes, back) I made as stocking stuffers for a dozen or so people, and my father liked it so much that it was played about 27 times over the course of the next 48 hours. I was flattered. I also can't listen to it again for at least another year.

When not listening to Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)—also referred to at HQ in Winder as “The Tollerson Christmas Theme”—we intermittedly switched around channels in on the tele, me periodically harassing my father to stop on TBS's 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story. He keeps asking us to watch Dawn of the Dead with him. Sarah and I repeatedly refuse, retorting that it's not very Christmasy.

No tree, no stockings, no lights, and we had the audacity to claim that Dawn of the Dead wouldn't be Christmasy enough. But it worked.

At about 10:15 pm, Sarah suddenly shouts, without provocation, completely from nowhere,

“Eggnog!”

“What?” My father and I were appropriately dumbfounded.

“We forgot eggnog. We need eggnog!”

I agree. “Dad, let's go.”

“Well if we are going to get eggnog, we need booze. Let's go to a liquor store.”

What must be noted is that my ‘deddy’ is not really a big boozer, so his declaration of buying liquor, and furthermore, once we were in the store, insisting on whiskey, was foreign to me, in a hilarious way. I was delighted.

We were in our first liquor store, one of six stops, less than 5 minutes after Sarah made her initial random interjection. When it comes to partying, Tollersons are apparently your go-to guys.

We picked out a whiskey, and then inquired at the counter about eggnog. The cheerful family working pointed us to Old St. Nicks Alcoholic Eggnog in a Noel-decked bottle. My father bought the whiskey and the eggnog while ignoring my suggestions to add on a bottle of Jager. Then we were off to search other locales for a non-alcoholic version of holiday cheer to... add alcohol to.

We are a strange lot. Read More »

Looking back, and forward. Read More »

I had a blast at The Company's Xmas party. I took the Indian as my date, and at 6:00 pm we got on the bus that would take most of the Athens attendees to the party in Gwinnett. The thing that is both cool and dangerous about taking a bus to this party is the drinking begins the moment you get on the bus. So, my estimate was totally off. Drinks included:

• Something Neil handed to me on the ride down, ordering me to “Drink this!” Even though it was pretty weak the Indian determined for me that it contained bourbon.
• three vodkas on the rocks from the bar at the party (where I had this classic exchange with the bartender):
  

  “Vodka on ice, please.”
  (Incredulous.) “Vodka on ice?”
  “Yessir.”
  (Smiling.) “I like it when people say that.”

• Something an unnamed manager came up and offered. Possibly gin with sprite.
• All of what was in my flask. (5-6 oz. vodka)
• About half of the whiskey in Neil's flask.
• and several hits off of Neil's bottle of Gentleman Jack.

An aside: while making this list, I have determined I owe Neil a bottle of something in the near future.

The party had a casino theme, and while I didn't gamble, I did stand at the end of the craps table for a little while, cheering and blowing on dice. I felt like an archetypal Vegas blonde and I loved it. I stayed off the dance floor but shook my hips to the music anyway. CB and I rapped along to Missy Elliot while Neil gave us his best faux look of stern dissapproval in our musical tastes. I didn't express it but I couldn't get over how hot everyone looked. We clean up very nicely, part timers especially.

Silliness abounded, which as it turns out, was only a precursor to the drunken melodrama that followed on the ride home. Read More »