Jessi Klein’s NotBlog

I am engrossed in an article in this month’s vanity fair (the funny ladies issue)  about the era when the incredibly successful singer songwriter ladies emerged – namely Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon.  I love how these insanely gifted ladies were constantly getting laid by their starstruck fans, celebrity and otherwise.  There’s an awesome story about Warren Beatty showing up at Carly’s dressing room door and then following her back to her hotel.  He was insistant on fucking her.  Insistant.

I had a friend in town the other day and on our way back from the beach we started blasting Carly’s “Coming Around Again.” Ghetto style.  Open windows, top volume.  It felt amaaaazing.  We started talking about how a good “by the time I’m 40″ goal would be to just become Carly Simon.  Put on a poncho, drink some wine, frizz out the hair, have a tryst with some occasional lover and then come home to an overpillowed couch and listen to records while talking on the phone to your  best friend who just did the same thing.  There’s something about that specific, natural woman seventies femininity that I find so comforting, so familiar.  Maybe because it makes me think of my mom when she was in her thirties and raising my siblings and me.  She had the hair and the poncho and these really cool kind of yellowey sunglasses, and she smelled like some kind of sweet musk. She had Carly’s big smile and the cutest gap between her front teeth. 

I have also been listening obsessively to Bette Midler’s version “Do You Wanna Dance,” which I find calming in the same way.  Its a great sex song.  She basically makes herself come midway through the song simply because she knows she’s so awesome. 

There’s just something so sexy about these ladies, with their big noses and unconventional looks, powerful voices, and probably huge bushes.  I was in Beverly Hills yesterday with a friend at a restaurant and every now and then a little gaggle of skinny bitches would clomp in, their high heeled feet clopping loudly on the ground like hooves.  Like a bunch of skanky Bud Clydesdales pulling a wagon of cuntitude.  Ugh.  They should read this Vanity Fair article.  Take off the heels.  Grow out your pubes.  And try singing a song, you dummies.

OK, so I have been obsessed with Zooey Deschanel since I saw her in All The Real Girls, which is a really sweet and lovely movie, starring the equally lovely Paul Schneider (who is lovely too in Lars and the Real Girl, further film loveliness, if you’re on a real lovely bent…)  And then I found out after she sang so prettily in that shower scene in Elf that she’s had a cabaret act for years here in LA. And basically everything I’ve ever read about her just makes it seem like she’s a cool unique human being, as opposed to another carbon copy Hollywood wh-ore.

A few months ago, while home in NYC and staying in my parents cubicle sized “extra apt”, the one with the broiler/toaster perched atop the washer/dryer, I was trying to make lemonade out of the lemony fact that I did not have room to fully move my arms and legs by using my time to do some deep terrier style internet digging.  And one late pretzely night, on pitchfork I think, I found these demos by Zooey and M Ward.  One was a cover of “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” the Smokey Robinson song which has been one of favoritest favorites, ever since he appeared on Sesame Street to sing it to bashful, long eyelashed letter U (U really got a hold on me.  brilliant.)  The other was a song called “Change is Hard,” a kind of Patsy Cline-ish reflection on having done a man wrong and having to move on.  Anyway – these songs blew.my.mind.   Listened to them non stop, both in the pretzel room and out on the street, letting her voice float me along my day, and feeling like I wanted everyone to know about these two secret wonderful songs.

So now, months later, Zooey has released an album, with assistance by M Ward, called Volume One, under the band name of She and Him.  Please, please, check out this album.  Zooey wrote all the songs, and they are soulful and buttery and fantastic.  Some are kind of country, some are throwback 50′s girlgroup, and some are just what they are.  But the one thing I think they all have in common is they are great sing along outlouders.  Soundtrack to your lifers.  My dirty secret is I think I have the voice of a fucking nightingale [spoiler alert:  not true!]  and these are perfect shower belters.  As for her voice:  She sounds like a younger, saner, more normal, less pilled out, yet just as talented, Judy Garland.  You can listen to some of the songs as well as her interview on NPR’s Fresh Air here: 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89142844&ft=1&f=13

Then the other quick thing is I was just at the tailor down the block dropping off some jeans for hemming (I am the last one to be on the premiem denim hemming train) and the very nice but slightly strange tailor was showing me the options for how he could sew them.  We banter about this for a minute or so.  And then out of nowhere he looks at me and goes, “You have a really nice speaking voice.  Has anyone ever told you that?”  Um, no.  I tell him no, and think of also tacking on, “I love you.”  I’ve always cringed at the sound of my voice on tape (unrelated to how my singing voice sounds in my head, which is, again, sublime.) 

“Seriously, do you use it for anything?  Voiceover?” 

“No,  I just kind of use it for what we’re doing.  Talking.” 

He smiles.  I look at him.  He is about 66 years old, bald, overly tan, and wearing an atrocity of a tie ( an atroci-tie.)  Nonetheless, I would ravage him right here and right now, right behind the Mexican guy at the sewing machine who is eating his Chinese food and clearly bored out of his mind listening to all this horribly trifling flirtatious bullshit he must have to hear all day. 

But that’s all it takes, isn’t it?  One little unexpected compliment from a stranger to brighten your day.  SOMEONE THINKS I HAVE A NICE SPEAKING VOICE.