Dear diary...

Now that I can comfortably reflect on 2007 from the safe distance of February 2008, I would like to share with you the shit that rocked my universe this past year. Honestly, what with being constantly on the road and all, I guess I didn't get to take in much media/stuff, but here goes.

Things that were awesome in 2007
…not limited to things that were created in the past year, just to things that I got cozy with over the last 12 months.

Records
I think this was the year of finding my inner emo...
Motion City Soundtrack: Even If It Kills Me
Paramore: Riot!
Bess Rogers: Decisions Based On Information
Tellison: Contact! Contact!
The Clash: London Calling

Music Videos
Kelly: Let Me Borrow That Top

Movies
JUNO

TV
Californication
Firefly (finally)

Comics
RUNAWAYS (holy shit this is good)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8
Y: The Last Man
The Walking Dead

Websites
I never thought I would become a person who liked to read snarky fashion commentary or look at cat pictures, but apparently I'm both:
http://www.gofugyourself.com
http://www.icanhascheezburger.com

Places
Stockholm, Sweden
Oslo, Norway
York, England

Hey guys.

Before I get into anything else, I would like to thank you (yes, you) for your involvement in my life in 2007. You came to a show. You made one of my songs your MySpace profile song. You gave me a hug. You bought my record. You joined the forum on my website. You included something of mine on a mix CD for your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or the asshole who deserted you. You brought me music, chocolate, a book, or (most likely) a shark. You listened to the podcast I make with Bess and Andrew. You asked for a picture with me and didn't even blink when I told you the pose had to be "finale of your high school musical." You read this blog.

You've helped me feel incredibly blessed. Thank you.

Now that I'm finally off the road, I'm going underground to make a new album for you. For me too I guess...but if I do everything right you will hopefully listen to it more than I do. That's the idea anyway. I'm pretty excited and pretty scared. I'll miss you, but I'll be thinking of only you while we're apart. Oh right, and of making the record.

If you miss me more than you can bear, you can revisit these artifacts from 2007...

Music and junk:
Merch
iTunes

I sang on records with some of my friends:
Decisions Based on Information by Bess Rogers ("Earthquake" and "Sunday")
C-Sides by Chris Garneau ("The Blackout")
Two New Sciences by Fire Flies ("Give Me Time")
Hannah by The Age of Rockets (out soon damn it)

Video and junk:
Facebook
iLike
YouTube
Imeem

Please remember me. I'll be back soon.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Jenny

Create your own photo slideshow and add "F*ck Was I" or "Voice On Tape" now at Slide.com.

Hello good people of the universe. Thanks so much for all the reading suggestions; I got about a million more than I was expecting. Way to go.

Thanks also to everyone who came out to the shows on the Oct-Nov US Domination 2007 Tour. We (Bess, Andrew, Adam, Chris and I) thoroughly enjoyed giving piggyback rides and administering high-fives across the nation. WE DID IT TOGETHER, AMERICA! THANK YOU!

On my SF stop I had the distinct pleasure of licking / biting / learning from Tony Pham and his crew at Slide.com - woo. I think he like-likes me. You can read all about our budding romance here: http://blog.slide.com/slide_blog/2007/11/spotlight-jenny.html

And finally on to the FUTURE. I am in Europe, roving the countryside, burning villages down and shit. If you, too, are in Europe, please feel free to come to a show; I will almost certainly sit on your lap.

Xoxoxo
Jenny

PS they have fucking beer AND fucking waffles in Belgian vending machines, aughhhhh!

Public Service Announcement: Bess Rogers is like a beacon of particularly truthful truth, shining down upon our upturned faces as we look to the heavens for something, ANYthing that will help us make sense of this crazy, mixed up world, in which the lives of two people probably don't even add up to a hill of beans... which is to say they don't add up to much.

xoxo
Jenny

Today we are driving from Nottingham to Gateshead, The England.  Last night we played a lovely show at The Social.  ("We" = Jim 'Meathook' White headlining and Jenny Owen 'Has Anyone Seen My Pants' Youngs opening)...  We are traveling around the UK in a Mercedes van.  I'm starting to get the feeling that Mercedes are a little less of a fancy beast over this way, and more of a regular car.  Of course a car from Germany when you are in England is way less of an import, which I guess takes things down a notch right away... Hm.  I am pretty sure this is boring so I will now move on.

I arrived in London on the 9th and we headed up to our first gig of this tour, Liverpool, on the 10th.  From the moment we started driving, everything that could possibly go wrong made a point of doing so.  I won't bore you with the long, painful details but know that the end result got us to the venue around the time that the show was supposed to begin.  We hustled to load in and get things checked, then played the show (which for me is kind of a blur although I can remember a girl in a Robot Explosion shirt) then headed next door to the hotel.  Jim had blood on the carpet of his room and I had some in mine as well.  And we didn't even have to pay extra for this amenity!  Whee!!  

Jim's bandmates Bryan and Patrick then snagged us a cab and the three of us headed over to The Cavern, the famous Liverpool club where The Beatles used to play regularly before they became The Motherfucking Beatles.  Of course by the time we got to the club it was still open but the bar had stopped serving (goddamnit)...  So we poked around for a short bit, ogling the tiny stage that you can see in so many early, leather-jacket-phase Pete-Best-era Beatles photos (later we found out the stage that we saw was a fucking replica, apparently the original was torn down 30 years ago) and then headed down the street in search of a drink.  All of the pubs and clubs on that strip are Beatles-Beatles-Beatles touristy spots, so we picked what seemed the lesser of the available evils (KARAOKE) and ducked in.  The Guinness is definitely waaay better in England than in America (and I as understand it, waaay better in Ireland than it is in England, but I'll have to wait a bit to report on that officially) but it took a bit to find this out as the bartender kept pausing the beer-pour to jump up and down and sing the current karaoke song (something by Take That?) loudly and drunkenly, directly into my eyes.  In fact every single person in the pub was drinking like it was their job - no gradient of inebriation, every person was shitfaced, hammered into the ground and then unhammered and rehammered up onto a cross and then taken down what with the blasphemy element and then served another drink.  In other words I was of course humbled.  And a little scared.

For video footage of the greatest UK karaoke caper of all time, please see this video made by my favorite muppet, Andrew Futral:

Then we played a really fun show in a gorgeous room in Cardiff, Wales called The Point.  My only regret is mentioning, very early in the set, how nice it was to see a bazillion sheep on the drive from Liverpool to Wales... Apparently sheep in general are a sore subject for the Welsh.  (I had no idea).

The good people of the UK have bestowed upon me some gifts - so far a rubber shark (named Oscar) and a shark sticker activity book, which features an image on the cover of a hammerhead eating the shit out of a sting ray, just chowing the fuck down.  Which is excellent.

This morning I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet. 
Don't worry, I bought a new one.

More to come after more reportable things have happened! 

xo
Jenny

P.S.  Current Playlist
Justin Timberlake: Last Night
Nine Inch Nails: Terrible Lie
Madonna: Don't Tell Me
Motion City Soundtrack: This Is For Real
Daft Punk: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Vienna Teng: Recessional

It is September (almost October) damn it, and I have something to prove.  To you.  To myself.  So, behold, the fruits of my labor:

MUSIC VIDEO!!
My video for "Hot In Herre," featuring an arctic wildlife dance-party and multiple wardrobe changes, is finito and viewable, HERE on AOL’s Spinner.

FALL TOUR!!
I will be touring the UK from Oct. 8th through Oct. 19th... But I know that I will miss you, America, so I am coming back for a co-headlining tour with the delicious-but-not-too-filling SEAN HAYES. From Oct. 24th through Nov. 17th I will be returning to places I have shared intimate relations with (like Chicago!!) and also going on blind dates with places I have heard really nice things about (like Minneapolis!!)... We’ll also be joined by the fabulous Jim Bianco from Nov. 7th on. All the new dates are posted HERE!

PEREZ SHOW!!
The unsinkable Perez Hilton is putting on a concert at El Rey in Los Angeles on September 30th - and I will be there, crooning sweet nothings (read: Hungry Like the Wolf) into his delicate, Miami-born ears... and also possibly yours.

PODCAST!!
Andrew, Bess and I have a new episode of our podcast (Once More With Feeling) up - Ingrid Michaelson guest-hosts and turns out to be quite the potty mouth.  Listen HERE: http://www.myspace.com/oncemorewithfeelingcast

That is what is new in our (shared) world.

Xoxoxo
Jenny

 

[or, Mission: Jenny Does Your Will (Within reason, people)...]

Here's the deal - For the southeast US tour coming up, I will be accepting requests for new covers - a new one for each night.  I'll be debuting a new cover every night, along with dedicating it to the requester.  We'll be videotaping the cover each night and posting it on YouTube for everyone to see.  Bitchin?  YES.

Email your request to: talktotheJOY@gmail.com ... include the City and State in the subject line of the email, and the song title with artist in the body.  To increase your chances, please feel free to email an mp3 along with your request.

Oh right - one last thing.  Please don't request songs I already cover, like "Hot In Herre," "Since You Been Gone," "...Baby One More Time," "Slave 4 U," etc... Those songs are off-limits and if you request them I will FIND YOU AND MAKE YOU PAY.

Here are the applicable tour dates:

8.8    Common Groundz - Richmond VA
8.9    The Evening Muse - Charlotte NC
8.10   The Handlebar - Greenville SC
8.11   The Rookery - Macon GA
8.12   The Pourhouse - Charleston SC
8.14   Eddie's Attic - Decatur GA
8.15   Workplay Theatre - Birmingham AL
8.16   The Basement - Nashville TN
8.18   Jammin' Java - Vienna VA


Looooove
Jenny

Good morning London / Diary!

Last night I opened up for Aimee Mann at IndigO2 in London. It was insane. That place is gigantic. I got rather drunk post-show and worked on my British accent with help from UK Nettwerk ladies Kat and Jude. I tried to go to bed but my (purely American) craving for extreme amounts of French fries roused me up from bed and out from pajamas back into street clothes. Unfortunately London is the city that ALWAYS sleeps and NOTHING WAS OPEN EXCEPT A BODEGA. Good God I don’t know how anyone could live like this. On the flip, something else really made me grin while I was out and about like a raccoon on the hunt for late night crayfish. I passed a fellow in a suit, taking a piss on the side of the street. As I hopscotched over the mini-river he was sponsoring out into the street, he called out “Sorry!” and when I didn’t respond (in New York we do NOT talk to publicly urinating people because there is a 40% chance they will toss a jar of acid on you or something) he furthered his case with a “Excuse myself!”… It was the most adorable thing involving human waste that has ever happened to me.

Love from London
J

Dear Diary… I’m typing this out on British Airways flight 2368, somewhere over the Atlantic. If you are not reading this, that is because the plane crashed and I never got to post it.

Last night after the show at the Paradise in Boston, I stayed with a friend, sleeping in this crazy lofted bed under a ceiling made entirely of skylights… except for the one pane of glass that was missing, making the whole sleep thing a pretty open-air experience. This was completely awesome, save for the nine million mosquito bites I woke up wearing. Maybe fifteen of them are of my face. I look like a fourteen year old. Not that there’s anything wrong with being fourteen. I just feel leprous… which is more or less how I felt at fourteen so I suppose like that’s fair. I realize the previous entry (“Canada is bullshit”) was pretty half-assed but trust me when I say that’s the best I could do at the time. I’m aiming to make up for it with this one. So here we go with the details.

What are you wearing Jenny?
I am wearing jeans and a striped hoodie and canvas-colored converse shoes and a t-shirt that came from a spectacular company called Alternative Apparel, who gave me a small pile of wicked clothes after I participated in a photo shoot for an upcoming catalog… I believe the theme was “Yes, we shot models in these clothes, but we also shot musicians… don’t you think the musicians should lose weight?” But they are awesome, that’s just my brain’s issue. I am also wearing my glasses, since my contacts were in my eyes for around 17 years straight. These lovely Versace (shhhh they do GREAT work) frames are burgundy and shaped like emo.

How are the wife and kids?
The last week has been positively insane for a variety of reasons. I met Aimee Mann on Sunday (she is very tall and made entirely of porcelain). I met Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack fame on Monday (he has really, really great hair and the band is fantastic live – stay tuned for the two of us to fall in love). I met Amanda Palmer of the incomparable Dresden Dolls on Wednesday (I think she is the warmest person I have met in a hella long time). ROCK AND ROLL is what I am saying. These are three people who I respect and admire, and quite frankly I was terrified to meet each of them. Somehow I kept it together but that just tells me that something else is bound to explode.

That sounds like just one kind of reason for things to be insane, Jenny.
You’re right. Aside from my attempts to inappropriately touch as many fucking great songwriters as possible, things in my personal life have been pretty fucked up. It wouldn’t be right for me to get into other people’s details, but basically, a few of my very close friends have had very different, very serious, very negative experiences over the last week. It’s been really intense. It makes me feel like my old broken self again.

Ummmmmmm HEY great weather we are having, huh?
I wouldn’t know, I’m too busy cutting myself.**

You haven’t responded to the messages I have sent you on Myspace.
I know, and I’m sorry. I’m trying to catch up on Myspace but it’s a losing battle. I’ve been on the road almost constantly since March, visiting you in whichever city you live in. Dan and I have been sketching songs that may be included on the next record. Bess and Andrew and I have been trying very hard to entertain you (or ourselves) with podcasts as frequently as we can. We also just shot a homemade lo-fi music video for “P.S.” When I’m finished in London I’m flying straight over to LA to shoot a real video for “Hot In Herre.” A “Fuck Was I” video is also in the works. I’m currently editing down a ton of video blog footage that will soon be at your Youtubing fingertips. There’s more touring coming up and a whole bunch of other stuff… Bottom line? I’m doing it all for you, baby. And I’m sorry about the Myspace.

Could you post another fucking podcast already?
Yes. Andrew has been working at Rock and Roll Summer Camp but now he is done so stay tuned for yet another outdated-by-the-time-it’s-up episode of OMWF.

Did you make me that mixtape yet?
As a matter of fact yes. Due to recent events I have been inspired to include some people who starred in This Week In Jenny Owen Youngs:

SIDE A
Motion City Soundtrack: Everything Is Alright
Bess Rogers: You and Me
Metric: Hustle Rose
Richard Hawley: The Ocean
Aimee Mann: Driving With One Hand On the Wheel

SIDE B
Kate Bush: Jig of Life
Vienna Teng: I Don’t Feel So Well
Dresden Dolls: Coin Operated Boy
that dog.: Minneapolis
Fire Flies: Stop the Car

Ok this has really gone on QUITE long enough.
Xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxooxxxooxxxxx
JOY

**While making inappropriate jokes is my favorite thing to do, I feel like I have to say something about this one. When I say fucked up things on stage or in this blog, I know I can trust you guys to compute that I don’t ACTUALLY think things like cancer or the holocaust are funny. That’s fucking sick. (But so is a world without laughter. Yes, I really just typed that sentence.) Cutting is something I take quite seriously, but like so many other really heavy things, I use humor as a way to process/hide from my feelings. Whee!! Love, Jenny.

On my way to Toronto on July 16th... somehow I accidentally drove to Montreal. Which is of course 6 hours east of Toronto. Canada will pay. That is all for now.

This burrito is good but it's so filling,
Jenny

I forgot to mention the greatest thing to happen on the run of dates I had with Bob Schneider.  While hanging at the merch table at Key Club, who should appear MERE FEET away from me but none other than... you guessed it... NATHAN FILLION.  I know many of you are probably all "Who’s Nathan Fillion?"  Well.  He starred in Firefly (the series) and Serenity (the movie)... but most importantly he was the super evil reverend Caleb on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Check it:  http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/1/1c/250px-Caleb01.jpg

He is also ridiculously attractive.  Not to mention the first celebrity I have observed in a "natural habitat" situation.  And yes, he WAS foraging for nuts and berries, thank you for asking.

Someone lasso that steed and bring him to me,

Jenny

Yo dudes!  I am coming at you from the wi-fi-enabled tour bus of one Mr. Bob Schneider, somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix.  For those of you not versed in bus-life, let me paint you a picture.  You walk onto the bus.  There's a front lounge with satellite TV and leather couch-benches; then a kitchen counter and microwave, coffee maker, cooler, and fridge; then a little bathroom; then a breakfast nook with a tiny little table (that's where I'm sitting right now); then you enter into the next section of the bus, which consists of twelve sleeping pods - that shit is like a sensory deprivation tank and allows a normally early riser like me to sleep until 3 in the afternoon; then there is a third section with a couch-bed, some chairs, and another TV.  That is how I am currently living, lucky lucky lucky me. 

Tour has been interesting so far.  Bob and his band and crew are all totally fucking sweetass.  I've been using my new camera to keep up a video tour blog and such - see imeem.com.  I'm trying really hard to catch up on things like email, myspace, et cetera.  Please believe in me.  There are new shirts on the way from the printer, so stand by for that.  Last night I watched some karaoke after the show - the theme was I'm Tone Deaf and I Selected a Song That I've Never Heard Before - Woo Hoo!! ...

Wish you were here.

Well.  I am in Miami for the weekend, and let me assure you that the international Capitol of Moisture is doing it and doing it and doing it well.  I haven't seen/romanced LL Cool J (YET), probably because he lives in Queens NY... However, I *have* seen the crazy island where Shaq, Rosie O'Donnell, and Gloria Estefan all have homes.  I have also given my kidneys and liver a lot of busy work (read: alochol to process).  I can't imagine how people live here year-round, but I bet Miami is sort of like the moon, in that everyone who lives here weighs less than they do on Real Earth.  Here is my entirely untouched Miami to-do list (I fly home in the morning): 1. Go to South Beach.  2. Ride the crazy fan-propelled boats through the everglades.  3. Jet-ski.  4.  Find a reef, use forged  certification to rent diving equipment.  5. Locate and fully comprehend Vice.

In unrelated news, Pan's Labyrinth is pretty fucked up.

Besitos,

Jenny

 

 

Well, well, well.  For those of you who were worried while I wasn’t drinking coffee, worry no longer, I am caffeinated to the nines.  FYI I am actually shaking.  Try not to look at my hands.  I just watched the season finale of Heroes, and I think it’s pretty convenient that every single person endowed with special powers is ridiculously attractive (save maybe one or two... but even the completely evil guy is sexy-evil)... but I guess that’s what advancing the species is all about.  Speaking of advancement, yikes, there’s this hooptyhoo in Newsweek (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18754296/site/newsweek/) about Perez with a mention of yours truly.  See I HAVE been productive.  (I’ve been doing other things too, but they are less shiny and impressive.)  I’m finally off the road after a month but I’m headed back out in a few weeks with the lovely and talented and lovely Bob Schneider.  MmmmmHM.  And before that I’ll be playing around my home region (NY, Philly, DC, etc areas) so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the info and come bring me flowers, yes you will.  There is a serious lack of flowers (and you) in my life.  Well I have to go build a wall or do some cartwheels or something, but I’ll be checking back in a bit more regularly.  Whooooohooo.... call me.