Jennie Dorris

I thought I made my last "Snakes on a ..." joke

2008-09-29T20:53:00.006-06:00

Today I was running with my iPod cranked. Admittedly, the song on loop was "Livin' la vida loca." I know. So a bicyclist blows past me, and I'm 1) embarrassed to be listening to 1998's Ricky Martin tinky-tinky-woot song and 2) intrigued by an odd thickness around the cyclist's neck.

I sped up to check it out, and saw it was a huge snake looped around his neck, the scales looking smooth next to the deep red grains in his neck. The curl of its tail hung near his stomach, and its small head bobbed underneath the biker's chin. His face was red and mean in a blank way; the snake curled just right to give me the eeby-jeebies. And just as he turned his head to find me in pursuit, as I saw the snake's small head follow his gaze, I thought maybe sometimes it pays not to look twice.

Where have you been, Jennie

2006-12-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. I've started a new concert series, which is earning all of my music and blogging attentions. You can see it for now on the dreaded Myspace network -- myspace.com/tellingstoriesmusic.

Our concerts happen monthly and combine nontraditional chamber music with personal essays, all of which fit under a given theme. December's concert is "Getting Ahead of Ourselves."

Which I've done in about a thousand ways since I got back from New York. Hopefully, someday soon, I'll update my sound clips and resume. Until then, I'll be preoccupied with visions of fame and rockstardom.

See the beginning of said rockstardom Friday, Dec. 8 at the Laughing Goat (1709 Pearl St.) in Boulder. 7:30 p.m.

Life was more of a metaphor before I had a digital camera

2006-08-30T20:04:00.000-06:00

When you move there's this funny thing you do, unpacking little things and putting them right back where they were before, even if you don't know exactly what they are or where they should belong. I've put the same old package of pictures on top of my CD stand for three new moves, and I hadn't looked at them in about four years.

Today I patiently pulled the photos apart and I had forgotten that I had also double-exposed them; taken party photos of my new house in Golden, Colorado over a wedding of two of my closest friends in Oklahoma.

The pictures split my stomach, showing me the life I could have had with the freedom and youth of what I chose. I felt like I had swallowed something without chewing it when I saw a photo I had snapped of the meticulous bridal aisle intersected with a photo of my friend passed out on the couch, his tennis shoes rudely pushing at a candelabra and our garage-sale couch a sagging apology to the crisp flow of satin pew decorations.

I didn't know all it took was a pillow

2006-08-15T19:34:00.000-06:00

she walked slowly
on the outside of her feet
showing comically, palms flat to the ground
that she wanted to be quiet

thick rubber soles quiet during a shaking cello solo

she set a pillow down smoothly
as she sat on the wooden bench
a silent layer between her and the discomfort of the stage
her eyes, big and hard behind glasses
sagged downward, tracing the line of fat lips

(i sat on the wooden bench facing her
my tailbone sharp against the aged wood,
my eyes closed against too many melodies)

Here a blog, there a blog, everywhere a ....

2006-07-25T05:36:00.000-06:00

Now that I've found the one wavering wireless signal snaking through the Adirondacks, I've decided to take full advantage and try to start blogging again for the lovely folks at Ecogeek.

Today's post, like so many things in my life, is wildly self-serving. The electric sockets at Camp Awesome Music are pretty iffy at best, so I've been scouring mountain towns for battery-powered equipment which has been equally iffy.

My battery-powered wishlist. [Related: Is there an eco Santa Clause for me to send this to? Eco Clause?]

It's bad enough they make me use a urinal

2006-07-21T00:16:00.000-06:00

If I'd had the proper notification, I would have been dressed as a plank

2006-07-20T16:49:00.000-06:00

Just another average day at camp -- we had a pirate-themed dinner featuring Irish music and skull tattoos. The kitchen staff celebrated the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme by cooking some Cajun food (close enough, right?) and putting a giant inflatable dolphin on top of a pirate ship encasing the salad bar.

The real absurdity didn't happen until this morning, when one of our campers decided that he or she was over the public nature of our toilets and expelled the pseudo Caribbean food in a large Cajun poo in one of the practice rooms.

Tomorrow, thankfully is the last day of our first session. But I'm totally keeping the sword for the next session.

[Photo credit to camper Emlyn VanEps.]

Home sweet home

2006-07-17T09:13:00.000-06:00

Hi there. I'm alive, and in upstate New York. I live in the little cabin you see here. I just got wireless in said cabin, so I'm finally able to upload a photo and write a poor little spiel that says, "Um, been here three weeks, and things are going well."

I'll save the music narrative for another time and point you to the corner of my teeny porch, where you'll see my gnome-in-residence. He's a little professor gnome with his arms crossed and he sits on a mushroom. He so far has survived the other gnome incidents which include a gnome sacrifice, a march for peace, and a rally. The campers have formed two Gnomic political parties and were hashing out the details therein over breakfast.

I will be posting exploits of my road trip and more camp news here, but I really love snail mail best. You can write to me at P.O. Box 39; Lake Luzerne, NY; 12846.

Runnin' just as fast as I can....

2006-05-28T18:29:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow I'm gonna do the Bolder Boulder with around 50,000 other folks. I'm doing it mainly because in Boulder you can't do anything else on BB day - we just fill the streets with porta potties and Gatorade (very cyclical, I know) and let the stringy people run free.

In the neighborhood stretches of the run neighbors will come out and stretch their little sleepy legs in lawn chairs and sometimes even bring out a boombox to help cheer us on. But my favorite was an older guy with long, white hair who brought out a little stand with his iPod and some high-powered speakers. He was wearing a terry bathrobe that stopped alarmingly short on his old-man legs and as he put the speakers on the table, it flapped open, revealing that he was wearing nothing underneath. He started dancing as the music came on -- Gwen Stefani's "I'm just a girl" -- and downing a tumbler of suspicious liquid at around 8:30 a.m.

Only in Boulder. And only at the Bolder Boulder.

I'm just sayin'

2006-05-25T15:13:00.000-06:00

Try to say "argyle gargoyle" three-times-fast.

Or even one-time-fast.

I could tell you about what it's like to try to freelance for youth publications, or what it's like to sort through seven opera scores trying to figure out how to play tam-tam and glockenspiel at the same time, or I could tell you what it's like to give back your ex-boyfriend his favorite shirt.

But it's all pretty much like saying "argyle gargoyle" three-times-fast.

Sunburn on my nose, beer in my hand

2006-05-22T12:26:00.000-06:00

In my ongoing quest for a Pulitzer, I recently wrote a story about where to drink on rooftops around Boulder. Just to keep you on your toes, I threw in a couple of beer gardens and patios.

Recently I did some research on the West End's rooftop, and I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by the consumption of my very first mint julep. If they're made right they're a bourbon version of mojitos -- shaved ice, a little sugar water, good bourbon, and several sprigs of fresh mint. Pretty fantastic.

Picture of the Lazy Dog rooftop; taken by the fantastic Marty Caivano.

Come for the snare drum, stay for the tambourine

2006-05-12T07:42:00.000-06:00

Saturday night I'm playing with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra -- luckily orchestras have become a bit hipper on their pops concerts so you'll get a little bit of that great Boston Pops program (Candide, Polovetsian Dances), a young phenom (the young artist winner is performing Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto), and then we all just kick back and let the Queen City Jazz Band do the rest.

The Queen City Jazz Band, which I fell in love with while watching them at the annual Easter sunrise service at Red Rocks, is a dixieland group that loves these old-school charts more than it should be allowed.

The concert is at 7:30 -- directions and tickets are here.

It was much better than my rendition of 'St Elmo's Fire' later the same night

2006-05-11T07:49:00.000-06:00

Things in boxing happen in three-minute rounds. At the end of a boxing class I take, we always do a round of push-ups.

Three minutes of push-ups sounds like something you think you can do until you try it for the first time. Especially when you have soft, tiny arms that are accustomed to typing blog entries.

Last night as we prepared to start the round of push-ups, the gym owner asked if we wanted to hear Gingerbear. He lead in a mid-size golden dog, and she sat outside the ring, watching us. Then he put on Dylan's "Don't think twice, it's alright," and the dog immediately started howling along to the song.

So Dylan crooned about turning your back on love, and we grunted through our failing arm strength, and a dog sang along to it all, her howls a sweet reminder of the thin layer of humor that persists in lining our situations.

'Adirondacks' is harder to say than 'Rockies'

2006-05-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

Well, it's official -- I'm going to be on the percussion faculty for Luzerne Music Center this summer. I'll be heading up to upstate New York mid-June and frankly, I may never come back. But if they kick me out as planned I'll be back in late August.

I'll be living in a cabin, teaching private lessons, and playing chamber music all summer. I'm hopeful to do as many camp-y activities as possible, meaning I'll be updating this blog with pictures of me in a canoe. Or toasting a marshmallow. Or running my own underwear up the flag pole.

[That's a picture of the Adirondacks. I'm not sure what's steaming in the middle, there, but I sure plan on finding out.]

Guess my award

2006-05-04T08:03:00.000-06:00

I got some good news that I won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists. However, they won't tell me what the award is until the $60-a-seat banquet on May 19.

I received a specific email from the newspaper I work for informing me that they can't afford to send me to said banquet.

So I get to hope that somehow they'll send me the award in the mail. There's speculation that the award might be a plaque, which my friend Mary agreed is so much cooler than a trophy.

You enter these competitions about 17 years in advance, so I have no idea what stories I entered, what category I entered or frankly even if I was a journalist when the competition took place. But I'll look forward to hear if I did something right, and if that something right was carved into wood....

Netflix for me

2006-05-02T08:34:00.000-06:00

I knew it'd be a good idea to start blogging for Ecogeek, and today was the perfect example. I just discovered a new program called America's Book Shelf, which is exactly like Netflix except for us book lovers.

Here's what you do:

1. As a site launch promotion, ABS is offering free year-long memberships to the first 10,000 members. You go to the Web site and list 15 books you're willing to exchange.

2. Your books are now part of the virtual library. If a little bookworm across the country is dying for your copy of The Little Prince, ABS sends you a postage-paid envelope to send it to him.

3. Here's the only drawback -- you don't get the book back. The person that requested your book will just keep it on his or her bookshelf until it's requested again.

I like writing about good ideas.

Like I even have to sell you on velcro

2006-04-30T13:07:00.000-06:00

For all the teaching they do in kindergarten about how to tie your shoes (the squirrel goes around the tree, then under it here and through...) it's funny that they never really told you how to take them off.

Sure, it's not a particularly hard thing, but sometimes if you pull too quickly on the wrong shoelace you've got yourself a tighter knot than what you started with.

Last night I had things laced up nicely and I pulled wrong, and I'm still working to untangle a very painful knot. And I'm finding out with sore, impatient fingers that the things that hurt the most in life aren't the unraveling of relationships but the realization you don't know how to untie yourself from the things you love.

If you're the kinda person that leans toward the green

2006-04-28T11:28:00.000-06:00

Ecogeek.org is a new blog from the mind of ex-dirt writer Hank Green that combines all the guilty pleasure of the tech world with all the greener pleasures of the eco world.

I'm going to be blogging for Ecogeek now, because I discovered I get to write about really cute things like this adorable bamboo mouse.

It's also of note that ex-dirt writer Dave Burdick is on board. From KnotMag to dirt to Ecogeek, the good people tend to stay together, which is just how I like it.

I know it wasn't fair, but I'm a fan of cheap entertainment

2006-04-27T15:11:00.000-06:00

I'm performing a major act of service journalism today by updating the Daily Camera's happy hour guide (don't worry, I'll link to it when it's all done), which includes talking to a lot of bartenders about $2 drafts.

Today I was asking one bartender about how many folks their rooftop deck could hold. She mused, "Well, there are eight tables that hold four people, so that means...."

There was a long pause.

Then a longer pause.

I couldn't help it, out of abject curiosity I wanted to see how long eight times four took these days. After literally two minutes of silence passed, I thanked her for her time.

Keep in mind my fever just broke

2006-04-25T16:56:00.000-06:00

I went to bed feeling great last night and woke up today achy and feverish. I hate slowing down and not being able to work, and around 4:30 while I was dozing in and out to Oprah I decided to start making little lists to see where I'm going with my life.

It started simply enough, listing out "Things you like" and "Things you don't like." Then it mutated into "Why you freak out" and calmed down again with "Things that you know are true" and "What you shouldn't do."

My favorite entry is under "Things you know are true" -- it reads "You suck at details and that's okay, even *if* God is in the details. In fact, it makes more sense that way."

This is probably why most people just relax when they get sick.

If I had money, you'd see me forking it down at these places

2006-04-21T15:50:00.000-06:00

I wrote today's Friday Magazine cover story about where to eat out in style. Which is kinda funny, because I normally eat in 1) my kitchen 2) my car or 3) Chipotle.

However, I think it's worth nothing that Frasca has a $30 tasting menu on Mondays that includes some wine pairings and a lot of tasty dishes. It might be worth it to save up over a weekend and try it sometime....

(Photo of busy Frasca courtesy Daily Camera; taken by the fantastic Josh Lawton.)

And they weren't even dry when I caught them

2006-04-20T13:40:00.000-06:00

I spent a good deal of today reading my own recently-written novel, which is a feeling very surreal in a sort of nauseating way.

As I sat in the Laundromat contemplating whether I wanted to invest a year into a project to receive yet another round of rejections, I also wondered how I would explain another year of unemployed poverty to my friends as I struggle for something "bigger."

And then I went to get my clothes out of the dryer, but it had broken and refused to stop spinning. The very nice laundry helper-people giggled and told me I'd just have to catch my clothes as they spun 'round and 'round, and it was the perfect slapstick moment for my thoughts, with the rest of the world spinning too fast and me grabbing at what I could to make myself feel less naked.

If it were me, it would have been Def Leppard

2006-04-19T14:25:00.000-06:00

At a red light yesterday I caught my neighbor to the left singing along to the radio in his car. He wasn't just mouthing along -- he was open-muppet-mouth feeling those words and give that side-to-side oh-yeah-you-know-it move with his head.

He caught me grinning at him but it didn't faze him -- he just smiled and kept singing. I tried to mind my own business but I couldn't help sneaking a peek back at him as the light turned green, when I caught him in the middle of a full-on air drum solo.

The best part of the situation is the deliberation -- what was he listening to? The stats are: middle-aged guy with beard and glasses, white Subaru, 5:30 p.m., intersection of Foothills and Pearl.

I'm going to go with my friend Jane, who guessed it was Janet Jackson.

[ed: I don't know who the girl in the photo is, but that's always how car singing ends up -- with weird wind-tunnel hair and the chicken elbows.]

What to do if you have a classical music degree

2006-04-19T07:32:00.000-06:00

The answer, of course, is to bail on the classical music scene and start a roots music band. Or at least that's what has really worked for the members of the Boulder Acoustic Society. These highly trained and, in my humble opinion, highly talented musicians are successfully gigging all over the United States (with some torrid ukulele conventions in Canada) and were even invited to perform at the South by Southwest conference.

The following interview is part of my podcast series for the Entrepreneurship Center for Music, and the members of the Boulder Acoustic Society are brilliantly candid about the business side of wearing all the hats -- publicity, management, accounting -- that it takes to start a new band.

[Update -- if you like the band's style you can check them out April 20th at the Falling Rock Tap House at 1919 Blake Street in Denver. Show starts at 8 p.m.]

Listen to the podcast here. (Photo courtesy of boulderacousticsociety.net)

We're not that different unless you consider that she's my age and on a world tour

2006-04-18T10:51:00.000-06:00

Hilary Hahn may just be 26, but she is internationally renowned as a solo and collaborative violinist and was named "America's Best" violinist by Time Magazine in 2001.

I talked with Hilary as part of my podcast series for the Entrepreneurship Center for Music and she helped give a peek at the business side of being a soloist.

The interview was conducted between two cell phones, so prepared to hear the "organic" sounds of honking cars and chattering kids. Hey, life doesn't happen in a studio, right?

Listen to it here.... (Photo courtesy of hilaryhahn.com)