Jessi Klein's NotBlog

FIRST:  Quandry Alert

The other night I went to a show.  After the show, I went to the bathroom (“restroom” if you’re repressed.)  I had already put on my winter jacket because it’s raining pure ice balls outside.  I was happy that there was no line and that I could just breeze in and out, which is very much not the case for most women’s bathrooms/restrooms.  I was so happy at the speed with which I could zip through my bladder exercise that I decided not to bother removing my jacket.  I had a split second thought that maybe I should, because it’s kind of long and my nightmare is that even the tiniest inch of the back hem could dip in toilet water.  But I decided I am a big girl who knows how to flip the back of my jacket up.

So I flip it.

And then I hear a clack noise.

I knew it wasn’t good.

You don’t want anything to fall on the floor in a public bathroom.  This wasn’t even a dirty bathroom.  But it doesn’t matter.  It didn’t matter.

My glasses fell in the toilet.

I really like these glasses.  I fucking love them.  I need to fucking wear them everyday.  I stood up, and my heart sank, like glasses falling into a public bathroom toilet.  But then I experienced the thing I’ve heard mothers can experience when their baby is trapped in a burning building or under a car.  Selflessness.  Complete bravery.  Adrenalin coursing through my veins, I reached into the toilet and pulled them out.

I proceeded to wash my hands for about thirty minutes, all the while feeling a peculiar, rare and yet familiar form of sadness.  The sadness of Toilet Taint.

Of course I washed the glasses.  Of course I did.  But in my heart, I don’t think I can ever wear them again and not think about the fact that they were in a toilet, where people piss and shit, and now they will be on my face.  I mean, even if they could be medically boiled – deep down, between the molecules, some poop or pee must have rushed in.  Don’t you think?  I haven’t made a final decision but I know myself and I know how I feel when things fall in the toilet.  I feel like I can’t love them anymore.  It breaks my heart, but it’s true. 

SECOND:  George Harrison Shout Out

So right now I am listening to George Harrison’s Beware of Abkco, which is the studio rehearsal for what became All Things Must Pass.  If you have blood in your veins or a heart in your chest or even just any kind of skin over your innards, I really think you need this album.

I first heard it driving around with my ex boyfriend and his friend in Sag Harbor at Christmas time, about eight or nine years ago.  This ex boyfriend was one of those people with a gifted and magical ear for music.  He could go into a record store and flip CD’s back and forth, clickity clack, and just seem to randomly pick a disc out, without particularly knowing anything about it, and it would always be great.  It was like a horse whisperer kind of thing.  It was great for me because I am exactly the opposite.  I want an impressive ipod full of secret songs only I know about because I have been innately cued into all that is cool in the world, but it has never happened that way for me.  I used to try to buy music without recommendations, but I inevitably would pluck the one turd even the greatest artist is capable of dropping.  Anyway:

We were driving around Sag Harbor.  It was a freezing cold afternoon, and the sky was the color of skull.  We put on Beware of Abkco and zoomed around in that guiltless way just graduated college kids and a girl on break could zoom, which was heightened even more by the fact that this was before I could drive, and there’s something about being a passenger when you can’t drive that feels especially wonderfully free, sort of a complete uninvolvement with responsibility for the spinnings of the day. 

On my emotional map, everything felt far from home.  We were in a rural, beautiful part of Long Island, a place of relative wealth, a place I hadn’t been as a child.  I was in an SUV.  I had never had a boyfriend, and now I had one I loved, and I leaned against him and watched the tops of the trees film strip past. And then there was this beautiful music that I had never heard before.  Humble George, the quiet unsung Beatle, the one with the really, really bad teeth. Aw, George.  The songs were infused with such painful sweetness and innocence that they made me aware, even in that moment, that I would one day be nostalgic for the perfect little loving cocoon of that car ride.

The relationship with that boyfriend ultimately, unfortunately, touched the toilet water.  But not that album.  I decided to keep it.  It’s fricking cold outside.  George still warms me up.  He really, really does.  I hope he’s warm too.

I was just walking home.  I see a cute girl in punky glasses talking to a punky guy (cuteness undecided.)  She says:

“Well, I’m not on Facebook so I don’t really know your world.”

More later.  I’m just absorbing this right now.  This is breaking fucking news.

So I’ve been walking around doing a little Christmas shopping and the Christmas music thing in stores as usual never ceases to amaze.  It’s so incessantly…constant.  And redundant.  And persistant.  It just keeps going.  All day and night.  Because it’s almost Christmas time.  Remember?  REMEMBER??????

I’m not someone who automatically hates all Christmas music by any means.  But there are two that really make me anxious.  I think the most terrifying one is the Drummer Boy Carole.  Even Bowie’s performance with Crosby could not wring out the underlying note of dread in this fucking song.  Bum-ba-bum.  Me and my drum.  Even as I shop for cashmere tees at J Crew, this one makes me feel like I am marching straight into an open grave.

Then there’s the other one I don’t know the name of but it’s that very choral one that starts out by throwing around a crescendo of bells – very mad housewife, Jane Austen, horse drawn carriage running over the cobblestones in the middle of the night to bring a doctor to a sick patient covered in sweaty rags. Somwehere in the middle a chorus of mad housewives starts frantically saying, “Have a merry merry Christmas.  Merry merry merry Christmas.”  You know the one.  I don’t know the name of it, but I’m sure you can figure it out from this description because it is incredibly accurate.

The saving grace in all this is “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which in case you didn’t know was actually written by Mariah Carey, and kind of seals the deal for her in my book as a certifiable genius, although she went in there years ago when I saw her give a tour of her house on Cribs.  She had a Moroccan room, for when she felt like being Moroccan or something.  Beyond this, I really do have a soft spot for a lot of her songs.  But especially this one.  I think the best version is in the movie Love Actually (awesome) where a ten year old Olivia Olsen sings it at the school Christmas show.  I remember watching that scene (on youtube right here http://youtube.com/watch?v=VkihOkI_7eM)  and thinking, “fuck this is a great song.  When did this come along again?”  That’s how amazing I am.  Even during movies I am questioning, thinking in full sentences.  Because the great thing about this song is it feels like it’s been around forever.  But it hasn’t.  Mariah Carey fucking wrote it.  How crazy is that?  But of course it would take a brilliant mind like Mariah’s to excise all the material crap out of the holiday and make us remember what Christmas is truly about: fucking that special someone.

I’ve started to think that maybe I need to whiten my teeth.  But it’s not that simple, because I have a couple of issues with it.  I guess I put the teeth whitening sort of in the same category as the pedicures, insofar as I feel like ten years ago everyone walked around with their teeth the color of coyotes and no one gave a shit.  And then gradually, no one is allowed on TV unless they look like they just got their teeth, like, TODAY.  And regular people follow suit and now there’s a fucking “Brite Smile” on every corner.

The thing is I hate the way it looks when people have insanely whitened teeth.  It’s retarded.  I see an actor like Tom Hanks on Oprah or something and he’s like 55 years old and his teeth are glowing like that gem console from Land of the Lost.  So are Oprah’s.  It doesn’t match the rest of their body.  I don’t think you need to match your shoes and bag, but I do think matching your head to body is a pretty solid fashion “do.”

That said, I’m tempted.  I had braces for five years.  Full braces.  Top.  Bottom.  Rubber bands (I don’t think they even make those anymore.)  Head gear.  It was an epic struggle to get my snagglies in shape, but Dr Klapper (God bless him) won out.  So I feel like I should try to honor that work by keeping them tippity top shape, because they’re pretty straight.  But I have some ones on the sides that are starting to turn a smidge yellow-ey.  Not a great look.  I mean they’re not corn muffin yellow, but maybe, oh I dunno, the color a rich person would paint his kitchen.  Like a light butter.

But I don’t know where to go or how to do the whitening.  I tried the whitestrips, which seemed really easy, but they are not.  They’re disgusting and they don’t stay in place.  Plus, you can’t eat while you have them on, and you’re supposed to have them on a half hour, and that’s about fifteen minutes longer than my non eating window. 

I don’t trust Brite Smile.  Isn’t whitening something that should be done in a real medical facility?  Going in there feels like dropping into a Quiznos to have your appendix out.  And there’s something creepy about those places in general.  A weird vibe.  Sort of Scientology-esque.  Like  I’ll get my teeth whitened but while I have the thing in my mouth they’ll make me listen to some lectures about “technology for living.”  I just need to get rid of this buttereyness.

So tonight I saw British comedian Daniel Kitson for the first time at Union Hall in Brooklyn.  I kept getting URGENT emails from friends who were just group messaging everyone you HAVE to go see Daniel Kitson he’s AMAZING.  To the point where I started to think, who’s this asshole Daniel Kitson?  Who does he think he is, being the subject of so many of my personal emails, taking up space that could be devoted to people writing to me to tell me how cool I am or how good my hair has been looking at the length I’ve grown it to, or something, or whatever…

I did a spot on the show preceding his.  I tried out some hilarious new material about getting an HIV test and believe it or not: it only went okay. 

So Kitson comes on and…oh jeez, how to describe?  He is the most likable, charming, intelligent, at ease funny performer, kind of magical and emotional and hilarious all at once.  He does an hour and a half of material without once mentioning a recent HIV test. 

Afterwards I have a quick, awkward conversation with myself about whether to say hi.  Normally with anyone who is a performer of any kind I can’t really bear to meet them because there’s nothing to say except, “I think you’re good or whatever,” and it always just feels like you’re giving someone a bad handjob.  (I suppose handjobs are by definition bad.)  In this case I decided I just had To Go For It because he was so inspiring and wonderful, and was talking to other comics I knew so maybe there was an In.  And so I go up to him and say, “Hi, you were great.”  Already I am feeling barfy about myself.  But he’s gracious and shakes my hand and stands up and says thanks.  I throw out some awkward banter about is he in town or performing around or whatevs and he says he’s in town for 3 weeks and only has a few shows scheduled.  So then, words pouring out with absolutely no relationship to reality or normalcy, I say, “Well then you should hang out with us” [referencing my friend who was standing next to me.]  I do not add who we are, where said hang out should be, why on earth he would want to spend time with complete strangers, any of those trifling details.  Why say those things when I can finish that sentence and just awkwardly stare as he tries to digest this undigestible, chicken wing size piece of gibberish?  Seeing he’s unsure of what to say, I add, “I guess that sounded more like a threat than an invitation,” which was basically like pouring a Costco size bottle of embarrassment ketchup all over the pancakes of awkwardness I had just stacked up.  He kind of tried to chuckle to cover up his fear and I took that as my sign to run away with no explanation.  I Am An Idiot.

So anyway do go see Daniel Kitson at Union Hall in Park Slope.

I cannot stop procrastinating.  I can’t stop.  I have so much to do, but all I do is lag around on the internet and look at stories about what other writers are doing and feel jealous.  Or watch youtube videos and feel good.  Or check my yahoo email for the 200th time that hour.  The other day I literally just sat clicking “refresh” over and over and over, like I was picking some kind of cyberscab.  What the FUCK is wrong with me that I can’t do any work?  The things I find to do instead of working are endless and ridiculous, and endlessly ridiculous.  There’s the click refresh thing.  There’s googling myself, googling ex boyfriends, googling images of a corgi to email to my friend who is looking for a dog.  Then I go to oprah.com to see who’s gonna be on oprah that week.  Then I’ll watch Oprah.  I joined Facebook, which is another deep, dark, wet, lime covered well of nothingness in which all creativity and actual attempts to make something of myself gets swallowed as I throw my allotted grains of time into the wind, writing on other people’s “walls.” 

There’s taking every call and arranging to go have drinks with people even when I just had a drink.  There’s feeling anxious about other people, which makes me anxious about myself, and then anxirty about myself.  There’s anxiety about being one of those self absorbed middle class white people who thinks about their own anxiety.  There’s checking my bank account online.  I google image myself (Osama is still there.)  I read the NYTimes online and feel like whenever they post an article that won’t be out in the actual paper until tomorrow that I am seeing into the future.  I email my ex boyfriend.  I think about emailing another ex boyfriend.  I help another ex boyfriend look for a couch.  I try to write a joke in my joke notebook.  I do more emails, and start justifying to myself that my emails are so good they are like doing real writing.  I go to the movies.  I straighten up papers and open my mail.  I throw the opened envelopes into the trash.  I enter events on my yahoo calendar.  I look at my face in the mirror and try to tell if I look older than a few months ago or days ago.  Or am I miraculously ageless (yes!  I think I am!  Oh wait…)  I make dr appointments.  I go to a cafe to write and end up just sitting there waiting for my husband to walk in the door.  Like if I just look cute enough drinking a latte and reading TimeOutNY some guy will walk in and fall in love with me at first sight and talk to me and ask me to go for a walk and then we would get married.  I look at who is wearing wedding rings.  EVERYONE.  The other day I was at my cafe and kind of thought this super chubby guy was cute, and I tried to stare at him a little bit, to let him know that I loved him in spite of his heft and always would.  At one point he looked at me and I could tell he was freaked out that such a pretty girl was looking at him, even though he knows he’s gained some weight.  He sat down with his coffee and I got ready for an hour of desirey eye staring.  But then I saw that some other girl is already in love with his fat ass because he too had a wedding ring.

I should just do what I have to do.