Reason #613 Why I Love Listening to NPR

But this would be a local reason*, not a national reason, as referenced in my prior post.

Because when talking about potentially having to share bike helmets in NYC's imminent bike-share program this morning, Brian Lehrer, on his morning show on WNYC, used the word yucky.

And pronounced it properly.


*obviously his other guest, Pete Seeger, is also a huge huge huge draw to today's show.

Reason #127 Why I Love Listening to NPR

Because Terry Gross, on her show Fresh Air, just found the opportunity to use the word doctrinal.
And pronounced it properly.

The Best Mayonaisse In the World

Aside from making it yourself, that is.
If you say Hellman's or Best Mayonaisse, you haven't lived.

Thomy Mayonaisse is a household name when it comes to mayo.

If you are from Switzerland, that is.

And are limited to Kosher-certified mayonaisse.

Here are the things I can say about Thomy:

* European-Style taste goodness.
* German product, Swiss-made.
* Made with sunflower oil...not soy for those of us with soy allergy.
* Produced by Nestle.  This could be an issue if you boycott Nestle due to their support of the infant formula lobby in Washington which undermines breastfeeding.
* It is unavailable in the US in the preferred, Kosher packaging (which is not marked Kosher, you gotta have the Swiss "list" of products).

Ya going to Switzerland soon and want to pick me up some tubes?

courtesy of Umamimart

Nucking Futs Mama

This is pretty brilliant, especially for all of my fellow 1972 babies who are 39 turning 40.  Wow, half of you already turned 40.  Wow.  What a year, what a year.

from Nucking Futs Mama on Facebook:  unclear yet as to the original creator, but she shared it so I'm sharing it here

I am loving Nucking Futs' name:  It sounds a lot like the parody t-shirts I loved seeing in Dead and now Phish parking lots or even Art Spiegelman's original Wacky Packages and, later, Garbage Pail kids.  Plays on words are fun.  Lots and lots of fun.

Felt down so I did a little home improvement

Ever suspicious of my own writing, it felt pretty bad when I received negative feedback from a magazine editor on a piece I submitted recently.  That feeling of inadequacy settles in pretty quick, especially since it feeds on my own insecurity.  Let's face it:  only my friends and family are reading this rag, and my writing is sub par!

So I turned my energy towards repurposing some gorgeous satin ribbon I bought a number of years ago.  I spent about $16 on the project.  Originally I used the ribbon to make a ribbon-wand that I saw in a boutique toy store.  But then a kid stepped on the ribbons and it pulled off the wand.  Glue guns only go so far.  I saved the ribbon for about 3 years.  Since I am majorly purging, the timing was right.

I came up with this:

a little bit of cheer lifts me from an ego-crush

Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman

Now that my boys, the Wolfman and the Wolfman's brother, are ages 7 and 5 respectively, I am learning more about superheroes.  You read that gender-biased statement correctly:  my daughter, Concealed Light, followed my own childhood interests and expressed zero interest in any person made of steel, plastic, iron or was mutated in some bizarro chemical spill.  Of course I loved  the original Adam West Batman TV show, but that was mainly for the intro theme song and not the show itself (except I loved the cartoon animation in between the people actors).  I fell asleep in the movie theater on one of my first dates, where I was brought to the 1989 film Batman (bad choice, you nice but geeky teenage boy!  Needless to say, there wasn't a second date.).

And yet I am so excited to report that my friend Marc Tyler Nobleman just published what sounds like a fascinating story about the unknown creator of Batman:  Bill Finger.  Buy the book and at the very least watch this informative and entertaining video, which I am sure was not intentionally planned to be the length of 4 minutes and 20 seconds.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Marc was, from the time I have known him in high school, always an innovative creator of skits and plays, so this video is sure to be a fun watch.

Always the humorist, Marc wrote about the trailer: "warning:  contains tights."




How happy did it make me to see listed among the credits of this trailer a few of Marc's high school friends with whom he is still quite close.  I have long understood that my dear friend Marc and his high school buddies (with whom I also had good times during high school and college) are fantastic all-American guys.   But don't go thinking they were rough-and-tumble quarterbacks and line-receivers!  Most of them were and still are wholesome jokesters, although Kevin was a pretty good baseball player.  They are so lucky to have each other even until today.  Their ruach (positive energy) was always infectious!

Marc worked on the book for 5 years...that surely is a labor of love!  I feel terribly honored to be his friend and am thrilled to blog about Bill the Boy Wonder in my teeny tiny little corner of cyberspace.

Toss Away Stuff You Don't Need In The End

Yesterday I performed the task that many Jewish moms time immemorial have done once their daughters have gone off to camp:  cleaned out the room.

And I have conflicted feelings about it.
Because I should take the advice of my own mother and sit down with her to organize together.
But I just couldn't wait until August.
I had the time yesterday, so I started seizing the moment.

Let me clarify a few things.  I wrote to my daughter, Concealed Light, who is happily enjoying her 2nd year at camp for the month of July, to inform her that I would be tidying up in her room.   And that was just a reminder.  I told her before she left for camp that I would be cleaning up.   I haven't been able to get in there in recent months even simply to dust, as she insists on leaving her play-school set up with school supplies, dolls, and various other props on the floor, thereby preventing a thorough cleaning job.  I would just be moving things aside and putting like together with like to get rid of all the dust bunnies.

But one thing led to another.
Can I admit here that I was cleaning and organizing in there for 4 hours on Sunday morning?
I got so entrenched that I missed Will Shortz's puzzle on NPR.
Oy!
And I couldn't just tidy up.
I was putting so much like together with like.
I discovered things she couldn't find and could use at camp.
And then came all the scraps, a dead insect, tiny piles of dried up flowers, bits of yarn.
Time to purge some of it.
Time to scrape off the stuck-on glue stains, markers, mounting tape.
And there was so much stuff, my gut wants to convince myself that she won't notice.


Here are some things I found (and left a bunch behind):

• Full box of silly bandz (isn't that fad like 2 years too late?)
• Shredded tissue paper 
• American Girl self-help spiral notebooks and teeny tiny notes
• treasure boxes filled with beads, gems, stones, craftable items
• Pony beads.
• scraps of fabric.
• unopened birthday gifts from last summer
• Mini oragami fortune tellers.
• Baby clothing she took out of storage (for her dolls).

She will notice.
True to my word, though, I didn't touch the dollhouse.

And, there you have my conflict:  The desire to clean up, and the desire to respect her space and retain her trust.  Just when you start assuming that I violated my daughter's privacy, I must tell you that I didn't go through every drawer.   I replaced personal items after dusting the area underneath them.  I am not the nosy mom.  I am not the controlling mom.  I am not the I wanna-be-best-friends-with-my-daughter-cooler-than-my-own-mother-though-I-love-love-love-my-own-mother mom.

Again, the conflict:  I sortof have some of those qualities.

I hope to remind Concealed Light that she still has tons of stuff and I was only trying to help clear some space (why hold onto sealed-shut nail polish bottles?) and she'll continually get new stuff and there is still purging that needs to happen and let's do that together when you get back from camp.

I remind myself that Other Moms do this on a continuing basis.
Concealed Light is lucky that I don't typically ransack her room.
And remember, this wasn't a ransack.
This is a delicate once-over.
A once-over that generated 5 bags of garbage and 3 bags of paper recycling.

I discovered that Concealed Light is somewhat of a hoarder, but I realize that we have only gone through her stuff together once or twice, so I can't blame her for not learning the skills.  It is my job to do this type of thing with her together, and I feel bad that I haven't been able to find the time yet to do this.

Uh oh, The Wolfman's Brother came in to the room in the afternoon and said, "Mama, it looks like we are moving because there is nothing on the floor."

Yes, it is important to retain the important stuff, but to quote the song "Theme From the Bottom" which is the title of this blog post:

Toss away stuff you don't need in the end, but keep what's important and know who's your friend 

Here are some other things I found and/or accomplished:

• That laptop that she said wasn't working?  Cable was simply unplugged from side of laptop.
• 100% cotton nightgown purchased in a fancy boutique store stuck under her dresser drawer, covered in dust bunnies
• Shira Goodman's* school supply box, filled with useless pencil stubs about 2 inches long
• nail clipper she misplaced from last year at camp:  It was buried in her overstuffed LeSportsac cosmetic bag.
• Goo-goned a ton of marker stains of her vintage white formica furniture (translation:  my childhood handmedown) and mounting tape my husband thought would be helpful to use to mount her reading lamp
• shook out the Pottery Barn braided oval rug.  Discovered a lot of dirt stains.
• sharpened all of her colored pencils
• threw away old markers
• gathered all of her temporary tatoos and Indian "bindi" facial stickers, putting them in a care package to her at camp with instructions to share with her friends at camp.

*name changed to protect privacy

I realize a difference between me and Concealed Light is that she is way more creative than I ever was, and certainly more intelligent than me.  My sister, Reba, also expressed a creative streak from a young age, and her room, too, was often in disarray.  My own childhood room was relatively tidy and I regularly went through my stuff.  I also didn't have as much stuff as C.L.  There were not Dollar Stores,  Five Below or Claire's where we could get fun stuff for cheap.  I treasured my Hello Kitty items, but there was no purchasing knock-offs in Chinatown, so I only had a few very prized Sanrio products.  Concealed Light, however, has access to so much more stuff.  She has a small library compared to her friends, but way more books than I ever owned:  My mom was a staunch library patron.  My sister was always making projects, as is Concealed Light, but I wasn't as much of the creative type.  I treasured my rug hook set that I worked on for years, leaving it always safely at the top of my closet in its plastic Woolworth shoebox.  I had only one or two sketch pads, and prized my smelly markers and Marvy markers that I received from my Manhattan cousins who lived in Lincoln Towers for years.  Concealed Light is constantly making her own books, writing stories, creating doll clothes:  a real independent, original, creative spirit.   

I hope one day if she ever reads this blog post she will say, "Mama, I could have expressed those same thoughts in a very concise manner where your blog readers didn't actually tune out after the 2nd paragraph."  Let this entry serve as a reminder that we can all learn so much from our children.  I know she will be a great writer one day.  She already is great at expressing herself through the written word at the young age of 8.  Her stories are funny, witty, and to the point.  Me?  I always said that I liked doing the research and could improve upon my writing skills.  I am more of the ideas person.  I have a lot of ideas.

With that I leave you the title of this blog entry. 

Click through to 2:45 for the quotation.

And if you are so inclined to view the video in its 7 minute entirety, fully check out this incredible light show.  I was at the Atlantic City show the day after (this was a 3 day Phish festival in June).  Chris Kuroda, the band's 5th honorary member and talented light engineer, as they say in Phish parlance, "killed it."

Finally Got Into Dave Matthews Band

For whatever reason, I just didn't get into DMB.  It's not that I didn't listen and enjoy when he played on the radio in the '90s, no, not at all.  I just didn't go to any of his shows.  Nothing against him or anything, just wasn't my thing.  Who remembers those "white hats" that DMB fans wore?

But check out Dave who performed this past June at SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center:  if you haven't been there for a show, get yourself there!  And in August you can go to the track!) with the fabulously talented Nigel Hall.

It's my opinion that Nigel is the real star here:  he is the best voice of soul and funk out there today.

Click forward to 4:05 to see Nigel at the mic and really RAGE it out.

Upcoming Phamily Phun in Philadelphia!? With DJ Scribe

now *this* is a fun, chill, inexpensive phamily phun event in philly!  Sadly, the Whole Phamily will be unable to attend but I encourage each.and.every.one.of.you who lives in Philadelphia and is looking for something to do in a week or so to GO GO GO!!!  DJ Scribe looks fully funkadelic.  Check out DJ Samson, too, cuz word on the street, yo, is that pisher can spin some mad wax!

While we currently have no plans on attending, I saw this ad in Philadelphia's The Jewish Exponent for the upcoming Jewish Heritage Night at a Phillies game which jumps on the"PH" bandwagon.  I can't speak to previous years since I am a recent New York transplant, but did they market the event this way in the past?Or, did a wise person at Philadelphia Federation (ahem, Phederation) stumble upon this blog and dig my vibe?  In all of my humble modesty, though, I am currently humming the words of Carly Simon to the tune of  "You're So Vain."

My sister Reba calls me an internet jewish cosmic freakazoid.  Would anyone else pick up on this advertising detail other than me?

pre-game phamily phestival.  The Whole Phamily is happy to join you if we are invited.   Partnerships are good.  Laminates/guest lists/VIP treatment are even better.

I have my feelers out already with their marketing folks, so I am curious what the story is...

Meantime, check out Carly from 2 years ago.
Remastered/remixed classic song from the excellent year of 1972.
Now, that is one very fine vintage.
I speak from personal experience.
Dig the whole Morningside Heights and Columbia University vibe.
If that isn't Butler Library, I don't know what is.
And a chassid vibe, to boot!
The fever is spreading.

Great Use of Glowsticks

We just got back from our lovely July 4th celebration.  They had fireworks.  There were a lot of tarps and blankets.  There were a lot of glowsticks  for sale.  Preferring to save money, the boys got to enjoy collecting them as groundscores after the event. For those of you who don't share my musical interests, you likely have not seen what is known in show-parlance as a "glowstick war."  Individuals who love glowsticks will bring in huge tubes of them and gather them together to throw into the air all at once.  Or get them sent to the venue for pick up inside.  But we're talking big numbers here, like 400 at a time.  This distribution of the glowsticks happens all at once and it is a free-for-all.  Good folks doing good things for the greater community.

A few weeks ago a video was made of how they launch 2,000 glowsticks all at once.   Many people and a large tarp are involved.  As well as inspiring music.

Click here to get to the video, it is worth it!

And that wonderful tune Age of Miracles in the video was a subject of a blog post of mine last January.