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....