Jessy Delfino's Blog

TOUR NO MORE

I had planned to take a two week road trip in October, which I mentioned a few entries ago. Well, check out this kind of amazing luck: I'd placed an ad on Craigslist that said if anyone needed a car driven to Florida, I'd do it. What do you know, the next day, a lady emailed me and said she needed her car driven down to Florida. She said she'd pay all tolls and gas, plus give me $250 upon delivery. Awesome, huh!?!? I talked to her a few days ago to confirm some details and everything was a go. She was about to leave town for three days and said we'd settle everything when she got back. So, she called me two days ago and said this: Her grandson had stolen her car while she was out of town and totalled it. He was in jail and her car was destroyed.

NOW if that's not a healthy heap of fuck you from the universe, I don't know what is. I must either be a terrible person or have excellent bad luck.

But on what I think is a lighter, happier note, (but it could equate to commercial sell-out - so the nature of the note might be up to interpretation depending on your particular set of values) I went on my first commercial audition the other day. It was an audition for a Ben & Jerry's commercial. I'd performed on a show at the Village Lantern on Monday, and had had a pretty good set, but nothing spectacular. The next day, I got a call from my friend John who'd booked the show. He said a casting director had been in the audience and thought I might be good for the commercial, and asked me if I wanted to audition. I thought about it such a nominal amount before answering yes, my thoughts actually travelled back in time. They emailed me the sides and I did my best to memorize them. The audition was the next morning at 11 am. When I got there, I recognized every single person at the audition. There were a few people from UCB there including my old improv teacher, Liam McEneaney was there, Mike Dobbins, and a guy Dan I knew. I got to hear every one of them audition, because it was one of those fancy Soho loft offices where the "walls" are actually pastel-colored frosted sheets of plexiglas that hang from hooks in the wall and don't actually touch the floor and really barely can technically be called a "wall". It was neat to hear what they all did. Everyone's audition was pretty good, it was fun to hear each comedians interpretation of the characters in the script, because I knew all of them and had seen them perform on stage, so I got to hear their stage personnas twisted up a bit and used in another scenario. They asked me to bring my guitar and sing a few songs while I was there, which was fun, but it's always awkward to perform for four people, especially when one of them is a casting director, one of them is a camera man, and two of them are script writers, and you're auditioning for something that for all intents and purposed could change your life, even if only a tiny bit.

I handed out flyers today in front of Dr. Rosenthal's office. It wasn't very much fun. I thought it was going to rain, but it didn't. I thought I'd at least get to see hot Dr. Apa, but I didn't. I hoped someone I knew and liked might walk by, but no one did. I tried to get a friend to come up and visit me, but she simply laughed harshly in my ear and called me insane. While I'm handing out flyers, I sometimes have to pee. When that happens, I usually go to the restroom in the hotel across the street. It's a very fancy hotel reserved mostly for white people, unless you're a celebrity, and then it doesn't matter, because the international color that people from all walks of life can get behind and befriend is the color green. When I walk in, I always feel like a junkie or a homeless person who knows a secret, and that secret is that most hotels don't bug you if you try to use the bathroom, even if you don't ask permission, and even if you aren't staying there. I guess it's not so much a secret, but I think it just isn't a high profile thought. Living in NY, though, where there are quite few public restrooms and the few that do exist are generally very dirty and smell like pee pee and hard times, it eventually becomes common knowledge that if you want to use a shitter, you can usually duck into a hotel or a Starbucks without having to buy anything, and they'll gratefully accept your deposit. Most hotel bathrooms and Starbucks toilets are cleaner than any public toilets or port a potties, but the bathroom at the fancy hotel across the street is a pristine example of what all other human waste receptacles wish they could be like. They have those fancy rich people toilets that are low to the ground (I guess so it's more like you're sitting in a recliner or a cozy chair, and not so much like you're sitting on a toilet, because I bet if you're rich, the last thing you want to be reminded of is that you have a dirty, dirty anus and vagina and that poop and pee come out of there). The toilet paper is very special quilted toilet paper, so fine and fluffy, it's as if while you wipe, you are dabbing at the tears of your clitoris. The toilet flush is silent, so as not to disturb your cellphone conversation or tip your phone caller off that you're on the john. The decor itself is lovely, it's like the bedroom of a seventeen year old rich girl, without the N'Sync posters or whatever kind of posters 16 year old girls hang on their walls now. But here's the best part. When you go to wash your hands, there's really nice fancy liquid soap in a bottle, and then next to it, there's this lovely lotion that you apply to your hands after you wash. Instead of using shitty brown paper towels like every one else uses, they use these really thick, fancy cloths that are like towels. They are like blankets for tiny midgets. They are so fat and padded, that if the rich ladies wanted to, they could have their dog nannies use them as diapers for the tiny dogs they all have.

Why do so many rich white ladies and now hot yuppie chicks also all have tiny dogs? Do tiny dogs say wealth? Is it a trend? Was there an explosion of the tiny dog population within the last three years? I'm not anti dogs, and I'm not anti tiny dogs, I even prefer the idea of miniature dogs to enormous dogs, but I'd like to see rich white ladies and hot yuppie chicks have a pet that isn't so adored by the masses, like a pet snake or tiger. Rich people can afford to be wierd, so why aren't more rich people wierder?

I'm performing tonight at The Lion's Den at 9-ish, which is on Sullivan St. between Bleecker and W. 3rd. (The show starts at 8). I'll be giving a free CD away to the audience with rare tracks on it that aren't on Dirty Folk Rock. Not like YOU care, but maybe that guy over there does.