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January 25, 2006

My one and only Chris Penn story. Kinda.

Actor Chris Penn died yesterday. I was never a huge fan, but that's not why I'm a little indifferent.

A few years ago -- back when I was tan and smiley and living on the sunny coast -- a group of friends and I went to some divey pub on Wilshire in Santa Monica. It was a Friday or a Saturday night, earlyish, and the place wasn't too terribly crowded, but there was only one booth left, which we took.

Before we had even finished our first round, however, the manager came over to us. "I'm really sorry," he explained, "but I'm going to have to ask you guys to move." There were no open seats in the entire place at this point, so we gave him our most polite "what the fuck" faces. He continued, "Chris Penn just called. He's coming in with a few friends and wants this booth." In the blistering social hierarchy of LA, this sort of crap was totally to be expected in sparkly venues frequented by A-listers -- but not at your crappy local joint and certainly not for Chris Penn. There was nothing we could do, though, so we left our unfinished beers, exited without paying, and never went back again.

RIP, buddy. I never liked that bar much, anyhow.

posted by jessica at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2006

A call to arms. Or, at least, tech support.

After extensive(ish) Googling, I have yet to find a solution to the following problem: Apropos nothing, the cd drive door on my Vaio laptop will not close. I was burning a cd for someone and upon completion it popped out normally; since then, I cannot close the damn thing. It's not catching or anything. It just sits there, half open, ignoring my earnest pleas for improvement.

Nerds, please help me.

Problem solved, personal stupidity reaffirmed.

posted by jessica at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2006

Sit down, right now, and write a letter to your genitals.

I've been totally behind on my RSS feeds since New Year's (inexcusable -- a fireable offense!), otherwise I would've had this on the Gawk. Nevertheless, as I'm sitting here at home, trying to catch up on work during those last pure moments before Caitlin returns from boarding school and fucks up the OC, I can't get shit done because this is so incredibly perfect:*

An Open Letter From a Black Guy to His Average-Sized Penis

Ugh. I don't really know how to say this. We've been in and around so much together. And I really do appreciate the effort you've put in thus far. But I'm sure you have sensed my growing disappointment over the years. I guess the bottom line is I expected you to be a lot more at this point. I keep waiting for you to grow up, but you never do.
[...]
What's that? Look, I don't want to hear it. Yeah, maybe if you were on a white guy, or an asian guy, or a girl, your reputation would be a lot better at this point. You might be a little more "remarkable." But the fact of the matter is you're on a black guy, and you are underachieving.

I wish I had a penis just so I could write to letters to it. Like, Dear Cock: Why are you so limp? Alas, "An Open Letter From a Short Girl to Her Small Breasts" just isn't as compelling.

*Yes, I know the penis post is way old, especially in blog-time. It's shameful.

posted by jessica at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

I don't normally point out cute stuff

But two children performing SNL's Lazy Sunday rap simply cannot be ignored.

Nick and Amelia's Lazy Sunday [Waxy]

posted by jessica at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2006

"Did you get to see the Colin Farrell sex tape?"

Ack, everyone keeps asking me this. While I had access to the preview before it was taken down, the answer is no. No, I did not watch Colin Farrell hump some Playmate, despite my curiosity regarding the size of his jingly bits.

Why not, you asexual cow?

The last time I viewed a celebrity sex tape in the name of work was almost a year ago, when Fred Durst's stolen video hit the web. I had to watch it before I posted it, of course, and the viewing literally brought me to tears. Not just because it was so utterly disgusting, but because I was having this whole "OMG, what the hell am I doing with my pathetic life" sort of breakdown. Surely you can understand how the realization that one's professional responsibilities involve watching a horrific video of the Bizkit could bring about a weepy existential crisis. Also, I was about to get my period.

While seeing Colin Farrell getting biblical is certainly far more appealing than something starring Durst, I'm just not ready. Someday, when I've had my fill of making a living from trash and gossip, maybe I can go back to cackling at celebrity sex tapes just like everyone else. Until then, I can't bear to go back to that dark place inside of me.

posted by jessica at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2006

So. The Strokes, eh?

Despite any mockery I may have dished towards New York's inexplicably banal cover article on them (NYM as NME? Bah.), I've always been a Strokes fan. In the past year or two, I've taken to saying that statement in increasingly hushed tones, as if I'm ashamed of liking a band whose fan base resembles a high school auditorium. Then again, my quasi-embarassment over liking the Strokes makes me about as mature as those kids in the auditorium, so I should just get over that. I like the music, the end.

Anyhow, the point of my Strokes babble is this: Last night, I dreamt that I was interviewing Julian Casablancas for the New York piece (obviously, I had known earlier that this would be the cover story), and it was so vivid that I'm compelled to write the whole stupid thing out, just because. It wasn't as if I was dreaming that I was Jay McInerney (God forbid); no, Jessica Coen was following around Casablancas for the New York. It was my assignment, not McInerney's.

Cute dream, right? Except that I totally fucked it up. Instead of taking my little digital voice recorder, for some reason I took a clunky, old-fashioned full-size cassette recorder to the interview. And the tapes kept running out, and every time I went to switch to a new cassette, the current one would get all tangled and ruined.

Finally, not wanting to make him any more mad at me for fumbling with tapes and stuff, I took Casablancas to my place to pick up my digital recorder -- except that instead of my apartment in New York, we had to drive to my childhood home in Michigan to retrieve the device. And, of course, it took me two hours of rummaging to find the damn thing, during which time Casablancas patiently sat in my parents' living room and watched TV or whatever. Then I woke up.

This morning, when I read the actual New York article, you can imagine how relieved I was to see that none of the above had actually happened.

posted by jessica at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)