I am so terrible at everything

Well, I'm working on the Pride video all day today. It is so tedious. I hope the Fulop video will be ready on Monday. I am so upset at myself for not being better.

Not Famous Yet

I got a text message yesterday from my friend Kerri Pussy Knife. It said, "Saw you in the Current. You're a celebrity now!" I responded, "Wha??"

The Current, and The Jersey City Reporter, and up until last week, JC List and other online forums, will not print or mention anything about my shows. It's a combination of being wary of the term "BabyHole" and bad journalism. As a matter of fact, I had to lie about the name of my show just to get it listed in The Current. It's printed as B.H. Open Mic.

But after a successful year of BabyHoles, I've gained some credibility, and the managing editor finally sent me a response saying that they might be sending someone to cover my event soon. So I was surprised when I got a text saying that it was printed already. Not even an email interview? No request for photos? Wha??

I sent my boyfriend out for a beer and Current run. I requested a few for my press kit. He called me at the store to laugh at me.

I'm glad he picked up the beer. I opened the paper, and there I was, on page 2. There was blurb about me doing a comedy event at The Lamp Post beneath a lo-res picture of me from over a year ago at someone's apartment, I think. I've never seen that picture before, I don't know where or when it was taken, it was blurry, and I certainly wouldn't have chosen it for print. I DO have press pictures. Then, next to the picture, in the open mic listing, was the B.H Open Mic listing with outdated information, even though I've sent them the current details in my press queries.

So there was conflicting event listings within one inch of each other. Way to go, Current!

I wouldn't be so bitchy about it if there were more than four pages of content in The Current. Four pages of content is not hard to manage. You'd think that with all the real estate ads they have, they'd have enough money to hire a proof reader. Part time at least. I'd do it!

I worked on publications in college. I was editor in chief of a magazine, and was friends with both of the college's weekly newspapers, I had a column in one and hung out with the other, and we did a hell of a better job in college, as full time students with no journalism experience, than the Reporter does now.

Why doesn't the Reporter just become a Real Estate publication?

You'd think that with the Star Ledger going under, the New York Times pulling out of New Jersey, and the Jersey Journal totally sucking, and the fact that there's no event publication at all, the Reporter and Current might step up to the plate. But no.

Every city has to have a good local paper and event guide. If Jersey City wants to be taken seriously, it should get one.

Talkin' to Important People with Steve Fulop

I did my interview with Steve Fulop last night. It went over really well. Except the last shot was weird. And I'm kicking myself for forgetting to ask him if he preferred iceberg or arugula.

Hopefully I'll be able to get it up today. I have a job interview and I'm supposed to shoot Groove on Grove. We'll see.

You don't even want to know kind of bugs ate me.

Yesterday I went to do a quick calendar shoot in a garbage can. Eric Brown, the photographer, had a nice garbage can at his house. But it was too small, so we had to borrow his neighbor's. It was still a little small, but I crammed my knees inside. It's hard to find a good-sized garbage can!

It was a good shoot, and Eric has the coolest house out of everyone I know, and the cat that lives there is a model (it was JZ's cat in a photoshoot). But after shooting outside at dusk, in a garbage can, by a watery park, I am covered in slough of weird bug bites, some of which I've never seen before. There's a constellation of tiny blisters on the top of my foot. Gross, but beautiful.

Tonight I'm interviewing Steve Fulop. I think I'm going to call my interview series, "Talkin' to Important People." I need to decide this afternoon.

I'm also going to pick up a big vodka bottle as a prop. Surprisingly, I don't have one at my house.

Job Interviews

I had two job interviews today. I wore the nicest clothes I could find: A cardigan from high school, a shirt from the Salvation Army, some pants from the garbage, and shoes from Target. The first interview went really well. I rescheduled the other one. It was for a temp agency and I need to refresh my office skills before I take a test, and besides, I'm busy! That's why I'm blogging.

I've spent my entire afternoon working on the Pride video. So far, I've logged about half of it. We got a lot of B Roll. I haven't edited video in a few years and I forgot how tedious and time consuming it is. I'm like five hours away from the rawest rough cut, and I still have to do voice overs. I am so bored. Also, I binged on expired chocolate from the Dollar Store while working on it.

I have to go shoot some calendar soon. This is a busy week. I wish I could get paid for it. Can't I cash in artistic merit?

The Hatred Poll Results and I had a very good weekend, thank you very much!

The official results of my Hatred Poll's results are in. I am loved, not hated. Well, for the most part. A third of people hated me.

It was a pretty tight race. For a while, with 3 people out of 7 going for hatred, I thought I'd have to rule on general apathy. But then, out of nowhere yesterday, another 2 people voted, and they did not hate me. It was love!

And another thing: The weekend was pretty good. Friday sucked, but Saturday was awesome.

I woke up at 7 am, went the park twice, then to Staples and Target, bought Jumbling Tower (the generic Jenga), a printer and a microphone.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon researching Exchange Place online and getting a loose script together to shoot the Jersey City Pride Festival for one of my new video projects. It's a series of fake Jersey City travel guides called, "Hey! It's Jersey City." My boyfriend helped me by testing out the microphone and making a press sleeve for it. That way, people took us seriously. When people saw us shooting, they looked at the microphone and said, "Oh, it's 'Hey! It's Jersey City'." He also shot the entire thing, which was very nice of him.

I've never been to a Pride Festival, but this was the best one I'd ever seen. We had a lot of fun.

We got so many great interviews with big Jersey City people like Christine Goodman, Norm Francoeur, Beth Occhendsasd (from JCLGO I'll get spell her name right in the video I can't find it now) and the two hosts, Ben Lerman and Jackie Monahan, among others. I didn't get interviews with Napoleon Paul Mendoza and Miguel Cardena because they were too busy working on the festival. We also got some dick shots from the dancing crowd.

Then we stopped by the after party at Hard Grove Cafe. But we couldn't shoot too much of that because it got dark and we got drunk.

After going over ReOdorent Joe's house for a bit, we went up to the warehouse party. We took a cab up there because it's in such a shitty part of town. There were like 500 hipsters in the parking lot. A lot of people I know were exiting because of the heat inside and they'd ran out of beer. It wasn't even one in the morning. That means they ran out of beer in about 2 and a half hours! We were there for about 30 minutes or so, but I hate dancing so we left. Then we walked back downtown because we didn't want to pay for another cab. It took like 45 minutes, but no one tried to mug us (unlike the last time I walked up Grand Street).

We were hungry, so we stopped at the only place still open, the fried chicken place. There were some people there from Pride and one guy told me not to waste time on my boyfriend because he was a closet gay. What a dick.

We went to Lucky 7, but it was already last call, and we were drunk enough. We went home, gobbled our fried chicken down, got stomach aches and went to sleep.

Then Sunday, we were only a little hungover. We got brunch and played fake Jenga. I won.

What a great weekend. I'll start editing the video today and hopefully have it up online this week.

I think that in general in Jersey City, things are getting bigger and more legitimate and even sponsored and force politicians to endorse it. I'm so glad we have such a great scene of people who are artsy and like to party and make sure that the local government knows it and makes it part of its agenda.

2009 Calendar, the creepiest Melissa Surach Calendar yet

Yesterday I started shooting the new calendar. We made really good time and got through five scenes in two hours. Eric Brown was the photographer. This is his flickr page.

There were some scenes that we couldn't shoot because there were too many children around and I couldn't find a garbage can to climb into. It was garbage day and all the cans were full.

But I must say, 2009 is so far the creepiest calendar that I've done. Last year's was a little creepy with Jon Benet-like photos of myself, but this year's has blood and explicit images...you probably won't be able to put it up at work.

Credibility? I got me some now!

So I'm working on video projects now. Last night I shot a terrible, disgusting, semi-nude stand up set in a window at Balance Hair Salon. It's going to look really bad, but I'm going to pretend that I did it on purpose.

I didn't make it to shoot Groove on Grove because I got a hair cut after my set. Carla gave me a really good haircut. I don't look like I live in the woods anymore.

I'm going to try to shoot half of the new calendar tonight. At least a third. I'm about to go shopping on Newark Avenue for props. Still no big fake black lady's vagina, though :(

I'm going to interview Steve Fulop next week in the Caucus Room. I'm going to start interviewing local government. I think it's going to be my new thing.

I'll be shooting at the Pride Festival for the Jersey City series. I'll probably get backstage (if there is one) and interview not-famous gay people. It'll be fun!

Underwear Salon Stand Up

So tomorrow I'm going to do stand up in my underwear in the window of Balance Hair Salon for a reality show. We're supposed to shoot from 5 to 7. You are welcome to stop by, but I would advise doing acid first.

I'm also going to shoot it for a video project. It'll either be by itself or part of a video travel guide for Jersey City that I'm making. It'll be like an angry Samantha Brown Passports show.

Guido Fest '08

After a day of clipping butt dreads from my clawing, snarling, biting rabbit, Butterscotch, I am going to guido it up tonight at the feast around the corner.

For those of you who don't know, I'm half Guido and half Polak (or the typical Jersey City mutt, as my old boss used to say). But I usually only tell people that I'm Polish so that I can get out of doing handy house work, except for cleaning, of course. That joke's for racists.

My boyfriend threw Butterscotch the bunny out when he moved in. He and Butterscotch didn't get along. Butterscotch would pee and poo all over my boyfriend's stuff. In return, Rustin would fart on him.

Luckily, Grandma (the Polish one) needed a companion, so we gave her the rabbit. At first, Grandma wanted to eat him, but I told her no. So Grandma now has a cute little bunny (who's a little destructive and mean) for a pet. However, grandma has poor eyesight and is very stubborn. So when I tell her to feed him hay and rabbit pellets, she refuses and gives him two shoe-boxes full of treats. He has diarrhea often, but he probably deserves it anyway.

Also, since she is blind, or schlecka (which doesn't stop her from trying to paint my apartment, to my frustration) as she says, he was very dirty. I spent about an hour brushing him and clipping dreads off. I was going to clip his nails too, but Rustin threw the critter clippers out out of spite. Grandma gave me 3 pairs of human nail clippers from the dollar store. I told her they were for humans, not rabbits.

Also, the rabbit got fleas somehow. I didn't tell Grandma out of fear of what old world style solution she would give him. Rabbits need special flea remedies so they don't get poisoned. I'll buy some this week and sneak it to him.

From now on, I'll have to take Butterscotch once a week for proper grooming and inspection. Rustin is very upset about this.

Anyway, I'm going to Guido Fest tonight. The Italian feast around the corner is up. On the first day, there were 50 chubby guido youths with Gotti hair and wife beaters hanging out on stoops on my block and the next, shouting at any female human that walked by. Tonight there's some old man band playing Italian standards and you can drink in the streets while eating Italian pastries. But mostly, I'm going for the guidos. I might bring ear plugs. They scream a lot.

BabyHole Award Poll!

So...here's the BabyHole Award Poll!

BabyHole Awards are to honor the people who sign up for the open mic and make BabyHole such a great place to be. Featured bands and comedians will also be honored.

The polls close on midnight, Sunday, September 14th. The Award Show will be on Tuesday, September 16th at The Lamp Post in Jersey City.

So be a dear and vote, okay? Just click on the link below. (I know it's not the most sophisticated poll. Maybe next year I'll grow up.)

BABYHOLE AWARD POLLS!

There are other categories up for grabs, but you can't vote for them because I could easily quantify them in my head and they already have winners. They include Most Latino, Most Racist, Musical Pixie and Best Attendance. I am open to more suggestions, as long as I can do the math in my head.

FAQ:
How did people get nominated? Firstly, they signed up for the open mic. Secondly, someone nominated them. Thirdly, I edited the list to people who I thought were the Babyiest-Holiest (not really only 2 people nominated legitimate people).
QED

Love, hatred, MelissaSurach.com, BabyHole Awards, and Dirty Dog's been eating my hair again

Do you hate me or do you love me? Now you can vote and let me know how you feel. Just hate and love. There's no in between.

I've been researching poll applications for the BabyHole Awards. Sorry, there are no winners yet--winning polls, that is. They all suck. (However, I DO know who some of the winners of BabyHole Awards are.) I'll put the poll up on melissasurach.com I guess, or maybe BabyHole's myspace page if it'll work.

You may have realized that there is no melissasurach.com. Well, I'll fix that soon enough. I've spent the past few days working on my website. So far it looks like total shit. I should probably just hire a teenager to do it for me. Hopefully I'll at least have a homepage up and running by next week.

I have a lot of stuff to do this month. So my writing will be erratic and terrible. I have some live shows, but I don't have new material because I've been too busy working on non-stand up stuff and being drunk and lazy.

I have to finish my website, complete with writing samples. Figure out how to put a decent poll online. Find a new job next week. Organize and shoot the 2009 calendar. Book BabyHole's bands and comedians. Design new BabyHole fliers and send to the printer. Flier the town. Do stupid internet stuff and press queries for BabyHole. Make awards and put the Award Show together (I have big plans for them including choreography and Britney Spears. I hope I have time to work on it).

Things I will try to get to: Get my music stuff on the new computer and compose new songs. Edit the Melissa Introduction video. Oh, and dealing with that pile of arts and crafts in the middle of the living room that my boyfriend and I have been fighting about all week.

How do you get a dog to stop eating hair? It's not like I feed it to him. He just finds it and eats it. Then his poo is like sausage links and he's been wiping his butt across the floor, but surreptitiously like I can't see him wiggling his butt every so slightly.

A day of vomit and tampons

Today, I watched Animal Planet for about 6 hours until my hungover wore off around 2 in the afternoon. I let Dirty Dog on the bed, (which my boyfriend doesn't allow me to do but I do it all the time when he's not here) and Dirty betrayed me by puking up a maraschino cherry (he came to the bar with me last night), parsley, and some grit.

(At the bar last night, we made him doggy cocktails with water, grenadine and cherries, propped him up on a stool, and took pictures of him lapping out of the rocks glass. But that is neither here nor there. I don't have the pictures.)

So my boyfriend found out that Dirty got on the bed because I complained to him about there being puke on the bed. He got angry, so I decided to do some errands that he'd asked me to do months ago. I finished one: sweeping.

I set out to deposit the check I made from selling old clothes. I ran into ReOdorant Joe, who just found a kitten, and we went to his house to meet it. It was the smallest, friendliest kitten I've ever seen, and it was all black. I've wanted to foster kittens and puppies from the shelter so that I can always have a kitten or puppy in my house, but my boyfriend won't let me because he says I won't clean up it's doo doo. He's probably right.

The kitten, Max, hissed at Dirty. Even though it was 4 inches long, Dirty was afraid of it, and kept posturing submissively to it and keeping away. While we were there, Dirty puked twice on Joe's rug, but it was only foam.

When we left, on our way to the bank, I figured out why Dirty was puking so much today. He pooped out a tampon.

After we went to the bank, I bought some condoms and lottery tickets. I got a bag of candy that I ate on the way home.

I didn't get around to working on my website today physically, but I did think about it a little. Tonight we're going out to take advantage of restaurant week. I'm going to wear a dress and change the sheets so that I don't get beaten. I think we're going to Skinner's Loft.