Christine

She was songworthy, that's for sure. A friend wrote a song for her and sang it to her to cheer her up, and we can all sing it now when we think of her name, when we want to remember her laugh, when we see her smile in our dreams.

She hails from yonder Cedar Grove
Waitressing for tips
If customers don't like the food
She'll smash their plates to bits.
The Dutch don't work on Sundays
Not a mower to be seen
They're all in church upon their knees a-prayin' for Christine

Christine, Christine
Prettiest gal you've ever seen
Cuter than Pearline
Friendlier than Ed Gein
We tip our hats to you, our birthday Queen.

Her father was a doctor
His waiting room was packed
Until one day Christine displayed
Her famous Burlesque act.
With her hem tucked in her panty hose
She paraded round the room
Now Daddy blames his lack of work on a certain nylon moonnnnnn.

[chorus]

"Her skin's so young and lovely!"
Those jealous women cry
And when they ask her secret
Christine gives her reply:
"Those beauty bars and facial creams
an overpriced mistake.
I get my apple-polished looks from smelling funny cake!"

[chorus]

One Song for a Black Friday

If it still is Black Friday...

Florence + The Machine // The Dog Days Are Over

Do not listen to this song while sitting down. Stand. Sing. Dance. Swing your arms like an airplane. I saw a friend tonight, danced to this song with her. We lived in the same room in London, held the same beliefs and feared the same fears, walked down Abbey Road and shopped in Soho, jogged through Hyde Park. We loved the same way, hard and somehow soft, and tonight we danced.

The Smell of a Drawer

I remember sitting at Treetops when I was very young, at my dad’s big wooden desk in front of a large bay window. The window opened up to a perfectly serene yard, with a deck, mulched flower beds, birch trees and a curving stone wall. A perfect advertisement for prospective clients. I would stare out that window for hours, my dad working at his drafting table behind me, America’s “A Horse with No Name” serenading us on his dusty tape player. My legs dangled from the chair, kicking back and forth, back and forth to the rhythm of the song.

I loved looking in the top drawer of that desk, with nests of rubber bands that he’d use to secure rolled up blue prints, a stapler, scotch tape, masking tape, measuring tape, dust, pencils, pens and post-it notes. I loved this drawer. It said something. Each of these things had a specific purpose and my dad used them to do grand things like make something ugly into something beautiful. I peeked inside the three side drawers filled with file folders and envelopes and boring things. I always knew the boring stuff would be there, and wondered how long dad had done that boring stuff. Looking at pieces of paper and scowling, drinking from the same coffee cup that had a picture of Paul, Colleen and I smiling out of a tent during a road trip to Maine. I knew that he drew a lot and erased a lot, and that this was the fun part of his job, but I could never quite understand the desk part, the part he would yell about, or get frustrated about and stay late and not come home for dinner because of.

As I go through the drawers and shelves of my desk at Scholastic, pulling out old business cards and coffee mugs and plastic spoons and balls of rubber bands, I am taken back to dad’s desk. The supplies and the drawers themselves smell eerily the same as his did 20 years ago. Somehow, I’m overtaken with a present nostalgia. All of a sudden, I am him and he is me: cogs in a machine of people working at desks with pens and envelope openers and clocks that tell us when to come and go. He raised me well, into a hard working girl who wants to get the most out of life and succeed in a career. But he also raised me to be a free thinker, to be creative and to constantly think outside the box. And so I am. And so I am packing these things into a box and walking out the Big Red door on Friday.

This will probably be the first of a series of posts about this little desk in the Rights Department on the 9th floor in 557 Broadway. There are too many things to say all at once. I’m assuming my perspective will change. My attitude toward the colorful carpets lined with literature, the proverbial Big Red Paw lifting slowly off of my shoulder, the New York City sunlight illuminating the dust bits on my computer screen…

One Song for a Birthday Friday

Wagon Wheel // Old Crow Medicine Show




Because it's my birthday. And because at my birthday party, which happens to be in a few hours, I've made it a requirement that the chorus of this song is memorized. A merry sing-along it will be.

Rainn Wilson's SoulPancake

"These things," he said, pointing to the rows upon rows and stacks upon stacks of books at the Strand Bookstore, "these things you see here are books, my friends. BOOKS. You all may be too young to know what they are, seeing as you all look freshly into or out of college and read from plastic and metal appendages that pose as books." He looked out through his hipster spectacles at the crowd of 20-somethings on the edge of their seats, craning their necks and their iPhones to get a good view of him so they could tell their friends that they saw Dwight last night.

"Does anyone have any questions?" he said, laughing, because he had said but one sentence and the normal chain of events calls for questions at the end of a presentation, not at the beginning. His outcry was met with silence. "No, really. Does anyone have any questions?" That's what his book SoulPancake is about. It's about questions. Based on a website he created with a few friends called... you guessed it... SoulPancake, the book dives deep into lifes biggest questions.

And I know you're probably thinking that within these pages he'd answer questions such as, how do you deal with a black bear attack vs. a brown bear attack, to which he'd obviously answer:



But the questions asked and answered on the website and in the book are... actually... quite profound. There he was, Dwight Schrute in the flesh, talking about love, and the universe, and human connection, and what the difference between right and wrong is. He quoted philosophers and transcendentalists, (we even had a round of applause for the latter), he told us about his son and his wife whom he loves more than anything. He was sincere, he was straightforward, he told everyone to take everything in life with a grain of salt. Because you may think one thing, and others may think another... and that's okay.

Throughout the book, Rainn puts his two cents into each of the 180 questions posed... but there are other guest authors as well... Exclusive commentary from the fascinating minds of: Amy Sedaris (!), David Lynch, Heather Armstrong, Dr. Drew, Jesse Dylan, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) (!), Harold Ramis, Josh Ritter (!), and Saul Williams.

Buy it. Or I will buy it for you for Christmas. Whichever comes first.

2 Songs for a Friday

Long Time Traveller // Wailin' Jennys



We'll start slow and work our way to oblivion. This reminds me of the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack. I stumbled across the Wailin' Jennys on a quest to dig deep into the Avett Brothers' archives, and was instantly entranced. Their harmonies, their simplicity, their message... quite impactful. Great de-stresser on a drizzly Friday.

Happy Hippopotamus // Cloud Cult



I was stuck on one album by Cloud Cult for quite some time, (Feel Good Ghosts, with a special shout out to When Water Comes to Life, because it is in fact my ringtone.) That album took me places I never thought music could, and then it brought me back to earth again in pieces all a-jumble. Then, thanks to grooveshark.com, I came upon this gem, and a whole new album. I like to take my albums slowly, sip them while their hot like coffee. I'm feeling good about this one. And it reminds me of my best friend, Miss Maggie Draughon.

Dr. Gao

After six months of my bike seat serving as both my Metro Card and my gym pass, I was forced to leave it be. It sits in the basement of Scholastic gathering dust and loneliness, wondering where I am. I want it to know that I’m here, but that it hurt me, that it gave me scrapes on my knees and a large dent in my radial head, better known as my elbow. I think about it down there, waiting for me, as I go throughout my days with my broken wing, wondering when we’ll meet again.

I think about it while I’m in Dr. Gao’s office, my lovely Chinese physical therapist just off of Canal Street. I’ve seen him twice a week since the accident, and it seems that he and I have become lifelong friends. I usually start out by sitting in his tiny waiting room stuffed with chairs and water coolers and machines that look like they belong in the gymnasium on the 2nd floor of the Titanic. I catch up on my pictures of Lindsay Lohan with raccoon eyes and lots of bracelets, and who had an ugly baby and who caught Mel Gibson in a hat and mustachio disguise, and then Dr. Gao comes in and saves me from the insanity.

“How’s the pain?” he asks, as I lay down on the bed with three pillows propped under my head and three pillows propped under my kneepits. I tell him it’s going away every day. “Lots of typing today?” he asks, and I nod profusely… He shakes his head and places two circular rubber things attached to a machine on my elbow. He wraps it in a warm cloth, turns the machine on so that my arm buzzes like I’m ever-so-slightly being electrocuted, just in that spot. “Goodnight,” he says. From there I am left in the dark for 15 minutes, and usually I fall asleep right away.

I wake up in a daze as he is taking the towel and the electrocuters off of my arm, rubbing it with icy-hot lotion, talking about the weather and what his kids were for Halloween. He tells me he needs to exercise more, (while I think, he might need to eat more), asks me about Wisconsin. He says, “they eat a lot of milk there, yes?” Yes.

He tells me not to open doors. To ice it. To make people give up their seats for me on the subway. To relax, relax, relax. He wants to do acupuncture on the back of my neck. He wants me to not feel stressed anymore. Little does he know, it’s about to be all gone.