For the BALLS! audience

Tonight, I'll be performing in Mare Trevathan and Melanie Owen-Padilla's wayward holiday brainchild, BALLS! It's part variety show, part living room party. I can't wait to see what they've cooked up!




Speaking of cooking, I plan to refer to this very, very yummy recipe by Giada De Laurentiis just before I perform "The Christmas Song," by Mel Torme, with Jimmy Ruberto on the upright bass. (A dream come true for me.)

So I'm placing this here for anyone in the audience who decides to embrace the chestnut and make it for their Christmas dinner: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/raffys-turkey-sausage-and-chestnut-stuffing-recipe/index.html

Merry Christmas, all! And after the holidays, if you want to blow off some steam with more onstage zaniness, drop by Freak Train on the 28th!

Hard work gives you permission

"What are we doing in rehearsal? What are we striving for? What is the point of all the discipline, hard work and training? The preparation and sweating and memorizing and studying is not the point, rather it is the indispensable discipline and sweat that endows upon us the permission to take up space and make wild, surprising and untamed choices."


I love this woman.


Read more from Anne Bogart here: http://siti.groupsite.com/post/october-2009-fuck-you-anne

Write, You Boring Loser!

Why is it that, for almost all of 2009, I've had almost nothing to blog about? Meaning, I can think of nothing to write that anyone else would be remotely interested in reading.

My job's... jobby. So, yeah. Oh, and I took a hiatus from big theatrical projects this year. And I don't have any family in crisis. Well, no crisis that I could share publicly. That is, until I write my tell-all memoirs and air out all our dirty laundry! (Please. Like any of my family wouldn't tell you themselves what's effed up in their lives.)

Hmmm. I guess I just don't have much in common with anyone right now. And also, I think too many people I know would read this (five people) and so I can't even do the easy thing and make fun of other people's Internetting Efforts.

HEY! Speaking of, you know what's not funny? A LOT of stuff on FunnyOrDie.com. I was just watching this thing made by this friend of a friend. And it was not funny. Typical bloggers would probably post it here so you could see for yourself how not funny it was. And then you could say stuff about it, too. Or maybe you could even defend it. Like, "Hey! That's me in that sketch! You're wrong! That's funny!"

But.

I'm not going to post it.

BORING.

A quick note about Chik-fil-A

I don't care.
Don't care that my husband calls it
"Jesus chicken,"
And my friend from Indiana
Says it brings back lame, mallrat memories.
I love Chik-fil-A.
I love its waffle fries.
And its pickles.
And its sweet tea.
And its lemon pie in a weird platic triangle.
So there.

Ah, Freaks.

Tonight was a great night at Freak Train. It's too bad that I'm not A/V savvy enough to get some YouTube action going so you can all see it. My cousin Chad, who lives in Austin, has caught the show when he's visited Denver, and has fervently requested that we stream the video live on the night of the show.

What a great idea.

Who will do this?

In the meantime, you'll just have to trust me: If you're in Denver, or even NEAR Denver, just come and see the show. It's like a combination of any given open mic + your cousin Kenny performing his "I Have A Dream" speech for the whole family at Thanksgiving + a busker convention + (when you're REALLY lucky) an impromptu performance by masters of their craft + FREE BEER.

And after nearly nine years, it hasn't gotten old. Just truly habitual.

Thanks to all who came out to the show tonight! Special thanks to all the Regular Freaks -- well done. And farewell to Bradford Wills, to whom I wish all the very best in the Beaumont, TX family bunker. Thanks to John for the the great chat about FT and our podium pioneer Joel, my long-lost love Ashley, and my boy wonder Dave. Finally, thanks so much to Alex, for being my steadfast partner in Freakdom. Hope little Max starts feeling better.

Freaks: See you next month.

Desperately Seeking GerRee

This has never happened to me before.
I am stunned and paralyzed.

I always get to be "GerRee." Always. Does that make me spoiled? Yes. But I earned this. I endured teasing and countless mispronunciations and misspellings of my name all throughout childhood. WITHOUT self-righteous, corrective response from me, mind you. But, by the time we all went wired, and everyone was having to use handles like Jen146 and SteveA7, I came out on top. I never had to compromise, or even throw in my last name for good measure. Nope.

Just "GerRee."

Then came Twitter. I purposely dragged my feet. Ever the early adopter of other social media, I decided to sit the first round out, just to make sure I wasn't taking on a new online habit that soon would evaporate like so many others.

But here I am, coming in on the "late adopter" curve, as everyone tweets. And, what to my wondering eyes does appear?



"Username has already been taken."

I blinked. I typed it in again. Same result, obviously.

I can't move. I can't breathe. Someone. Else. Is GerRee?

The kicker: They first tweeted only two weeks ago. I missed my window by 15 days. The gut punch: They haven't tweeted since.

I have been thwarted by a late-adopter, non-user. Perhaps he or she has been running into me at every turn for the last 15 years.

And they've finally won.

Perhaps I will chose LoserGerRee for my Twitter username. Or DefeatedGerRee. Or FuckYouGerRee. I don't know.

For now, I can't bear to register anything. I am now fully engulfed in the flames of pouting. Burning, burning....

Tortillas

So, update: The cards raised over $1,000 for my dad. Thank you so much, Jen, for all your dedication to this project! And thanks to Cheryl and Lauren for helping us sell. And to everyone who bought them. I hope your families and friends enjoyed receiving our original designs. Jed will be selling them again next holiday season and pledges that all proceeds for these designs will again go to Dad next year.

I'm at a time in my life marked by nostalgia and anxiety. I find myself reflecting back on the last twenty years a lot. And just as I've been in the process of doing so, a friend suddenly died, which has REALLY turned up the heat on my reminisence. 

My love for my friends and family sometimes paralyzes me. I want everyone to be okay, and I want to be a part of helping to create that okay-ness. And the world's a big place. And I'm just a small blanket that covers, maybe, the tip of the left pinky toe of humanity.

Lee and I decided a couple weeks back to take a road trip down to Texas this coming Valentine's weekend. I've been really craving time with my grandma. I want to learn--once and for all--to make her tortillas. It feels like, as long as I can make something that approximates her food, maybe, just maybe, I won't lose my mind when she leaves this world. (Which, might not be for twenty years, for all I know -- she's not ill.) Her departure will cause great shift in my life. But somehow, I'll be able to visit her when I cook. Learning her cooking is a conscious bridge to her that I like building while we can do it together.