Jessi Klein's NotBlog

1.  I finally did manage to sleep.  The night I wrote the last post I went to bed and slept for nine hours.  So maybe the answer to insomnia is eating a chicken cheese burrito and about a million mega crappy chips. 

2.  The only good thing about the writers strike (which I am in – or on, or whatever means I am not working) is that I caught a repeat of Bill Clinton’s most recent appearance on Letterman, which I hadn’t seen.  Am I the only one who feels like now when I see Bill Clinton being interviewed, the experience is kind of like drinking a refreshing bucket of water after having wandered through the desert for seven years?  I could almost cry.  I mean, it’s like he actually knows stuff about stuff.  About all of it.  I want me and him to get into pajamas and snuggle on the couch while eating Mint Milanos.  Let him absent mindedly tickle my neck while we watch Project Runway.  Sigh.

3.  If anyone needs a makeover I highly suggest a woman named Didi at the Chanel counter at Lord and Taylor in NYC.  She is really sweet and good at what she does.

I am scared to go to bed because last night I woke up at four in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep.  Like at all.  Normally I’ll lie there and lie there and lie there, but it got so frustrating I got out of bed and started obsessively webbing around on the innernet like a freako.  I guess around 6:30 I finally dozed but it was unpleasant and I had a weird dream.  I called my doctor’s office to get them to represcribe me Ambien (Favorite Drug Ever) and I tried to act all casual with the assistant on the phone, like, “Oh hey, I just wanted to set up an appointment for a physical – ” (I didn’t at all, but I thought it would make me sound responsible, like someone who isn’t addicted to Ambien) – “ohandalso could youcallin a presecription forAmbien.”  I speeded up the last sentence, and I kind of wanted the assistant to forget that I am not her boss, so I also tried to say it like a command.  She didn’t forget.  She replied, very sweetly, “Sure, well the doctor isn’t in yet but I’ll ask him when he arrives.”  Long story long, they did not call in the prescription.  So now I have no sleeping pills and I have an appointment for a physical I don’t want.

Meanwhile, I ate an enormous burrito about an hour ago.  That will help me sleep, right?

Random thoughts:  I love Amy Winehouse’s album Frank.  Not as off le hizz catchy as the new one, but kind of fiercer in a weird way.

Sneak peek:  Tomorrow I might write some mind blowing insights into relationships.

It has come to my attention that when you Google Image “Jessi Klein” (and yeah –  it’s not if, but WHEN) a picture of Osama Bin Laden comes up.  I’m not sure why this is, as the mysterious ways of the interweb are beyond me.  I don’t know if it’s the result of a prank or just some screwy wiring within the bowels of cyberspace.  If either one of those scenarios is the case, then I just think it’s kind of funny. 

But my greatest fear is that in fact the picture of Osama Bin Laden really is a picture of me, but just a really, really shitty one; snapped at a moment where a combination of bad hair day, bad beard day, and bad lighting conspired to make me look like him.  I mean we all have an unflattering angle – but it’s possible I just have an angle that’s so incredibly bad I look like Osama Bin Laden.  How terrible!  I was hoping that at worst my bad angle makes me look like a horsey John Turturro*.  But this is unacceptable. 

(*I think John Turturro is really hot, by the way.  I just don’t think his face looks good transposed with mine.) 

I must mention that I am practically in tears over the fact that I didn’t get my shit together to get tickets to Stevie Wonder at Madison Square Garden last night.  I mean what am I doing with my life if I can’t make that a priority??????  I’m sitting here listening to “As” from Songs in the Key of Life and I’m seriously gonna lose it, I’m so annoyed with myself.

Back when I was in my early twenties and dewy and fresh faced (and of course completely insecure about how I looked, which is such a complete waste of time for anyone in their twenties) I didn’t wear any makeup at all.  My mom, who is the most naturally beauteous woman in the world, didn’t wear too much of it herself.  One of the qualities I am most grateful for in my adorable ma is that she is the least vain person I have ever met.  Really and truly.  I suppose there’s maybe a Tibetan monk out there somewhere who is less vain, but I imagine even those monks sneak a glance at themselves in the reflective surface of a bronze buddha stomach every now and then. 

Anyway, my mom never ever nagged me to wear blush, to get my hair out of my face, to put a little lipstick on.  She just let me tomboy out.  In retrospect I wish she had interfered a little more – maybe I would have bleached the old stache a little earlier, or avoided wearing some really tragic outfits; but I think my mom’s lassez faire approach to physical appearance in the end was a gift of pure innocence.  (*Note – The one thing that salvages Madonna as a human being for me at this point is the fact that she is still letting her daughter run around with a really Frida Kahlo unibrow.  Her daughter is totally gorgeous, and I actually think she’s really pretty with the unibrow – but more insecure moms would probably have had that waxed off years ago.)

So after a life of makeup-free living, a few years back a friend of mine who’s a cosmetics guru gave me a few little items as a holiday gift.  A concealer, a Stila lip gloss quad, something else…Not as a passive aggressive hint (I hope…wait, was it?) but more, I think, as the gesture of someone eager to share the joys of tubes and cases of glittery colored goo.  Kind of a benign drug dealer.  It worked.

Cut to me, just now, going nuts at Sephora.  The old tomboy in me resists, but is no match for the new, older me – I fucking love that place.  It’s the opposite of my mom – a shameless palace of vanity run orgiastically amuk.  I spent about an hour with my friend using mini Q tips to apply every kind of crap.  We found an eye shadow called “My date’s my brother”…um, what?  I tried on an eyeshadow called Wowy Maui that was way too glittery and despite burning my eyes off with makeup remover, it’s still all over my face.  Then I went to the fragrance section and ended up buying some Narciso Rodrigues purse perfume.  I put some one the minute I left the store but realized once I was standing online at my favorite cafe that I still wreaked of about thirty other perfumes.  I glance around to see if anyone is annoyed and who’s standing next to me but Philip Seymour Hoffman, rumpled and sexy.  He is wearing no makeup and smells like Philip Seymour Hoffman.  I look and smell like a stripper just wrapping up for the night.  Damn you, Sephora.