The Lament of the Public Radio Listener (During Pledge Drive Week)

On the radio while coffee brews
Poor Soterios Johnson
Is not reading the news

Instead he must think of a way
to say, and say and say
Please support WNYC
Offers of dollar-for-dollar matches
Free subscriptions to The New Yorker
This season of the pledge drive: it irketh me

Soterios, my lunch-time friend Brian Lehrer
Even that know-it-all Leonard Lopate
All suffer this ignomius fate

Ira Glass is cute
 yet borderline rude
With his vaguely threatening calls
to listeners who don't pledge

I gave recently
Forsooth, a sum fairly paltry
The guilt eats away at me

The Lament of the Chavez Fan, No Longer Young

Hark, ye aging hipsters!
Chavez appears this Friday eve
at the Bowery Ballroom

Those noble lads take me back
To a time of relative youth
Not maidenhood--
Hardly that; but the sweet spot
When freedom was mine
And the world was my oyster

In those days of yore
I would stand on my feet for hours
In a smoky dungeon
To hear their pleasing atonal melodies
(But I would leave when Shellac took the stage;
Even then, I had my limits)

Shall I make the pilgrimage
This Friday eve?
Surely it would keep me out past ten p.m.
And shorten my peaceful slumber.

The Lament of the Soccer Mom

It is Mother's Day
Sunny, 80 degrees
Humidity, low
The teams take the field
One red, one blue

When last we met
they decimated our girls, those reds
6-0
and left a crying goalie
to drown her sorrows in a McFlurry
(snack-size, of course)

Two weeks later
Our girls are ready
They have worked on their game
All kinds of defensive and offensive tactics
of which I understand nothing
(especially off sides,
which makes as much sense to me as the electoral college)

We start out strong
with a goal
(though off sides, apparently)
But the ref
she did not call it
Funny how no one points out a bad call when it favors them

With the red team
there is a man
who sounds like Louis Armstrong,
if Louis Armstrong were irate
and overly invested in
a U9 girls travel soccer game
(and also, if he were still alive)

He yells
And he screams
I fear he may have a heart attack
But to no avail
Our girls prevail
1-0

Our team runs through a tunnel of cheering parents
The reds leave, dejected
a consolation of home-baked cookies in their hands
For the long drive back to Suffern

Advance praise for "The Lament of the Soccer Mom"!

"What The Canterbury Tales would have sounded like if it had a Soccer Mom among its pilgrimagers." Mike Flaherty

Another Reason to Buy Lunch in Brooklyn

Post a review of Lunch in Brooklyn on Amazon that mentions Fallen Princess and win one of 10 vintage Sassy/Nirvana stickers.Yeah, pretty sweet!  Email me (christinamkelly@aol.com) the link of your review along with a mailing address. Here is the link for the purchasing and reviewing.
http://www.amazon.com/Lunch-in-Brooklyn-ebook/dp/B007Q0R8LQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336403784&sr=1-1.

Apparently It's Karmic Retribution Time

My daughter is a One Direction fan. You know, One Direction, the boy band that was formed after the members appeared separately on The X Factor?

Violet: "That guy--what's his name?"
Me: "Simon Cowell?"
Violet: "Yeah, Simon Cowell. He told them to form a band."

I know this information is true because Orla, another third grader, told it to Violet. One Direction is the new thing in Violet's class. I am not entirely sure that Violet had heard a single one of their songs before she became a fan.

I made it through princesses.
I made it through Hannah Montana.
Taylor Swift is still happening, and I am surviving that ok.
This, I am not so sure about.

"Mommy," said Violet, bounding off the bus. "Niall is single!" Or maybe she said Harry is single. Whatever. I explained that his marital status is irrelevant, because of the simple fact that she is nine years old. Violet pointed out that he is 22, and when she is 22, in 13 years, he will be 35, and that sometimes people who are 22 and 35 date. At least she got some math practice in.

Hairstylists take note: Dude second from the left, and dude on the far right.

Here is a picture of One Direction. You can tell that it is One Direction, because right behind them on the wall it says "One Direction."

Here is a video of One Direction on SNL. It is worth watching just for the hair. I would seriously love to read an interview with the genius who created those hairstyles. After showing the video to me, Violet asked, "Did you like the song?" I told her that I was too obsessed with the hair to notice the song. She nodded understandingly. She told me a story, possibly apocryphal, about the guy with the combover: "One day he woke up, and his hair was straight, so he started crying."

According to a post on onedirection.net entitled, "The Latest Details on The One Direction Nickelodeon Show":  "The credibility of One Direction could be aversely affected by a scripted show, and the management are keen for the band not to seen in too much of a young light – avoiding the types of fandom that surround Big Time Rush and the Jonas Brothers." (I cut and pasted that, so the typos are not mine.)

I would hate to see the credibility of One Direction adversely affected. Or aversely affected. But they have to know that their fans are nine-year-olds who have never heard their songs.

I can't.

One Direction, listen up, I have five words for you: New Kids on the Block. Here is a picture of New Kids on the Block.

Back in the late 80s, early 90s, I wrote a negative piece about New Kids on the Block, at the height of their fame, that made me the Salman Rushdie of New Kids on the Block fans. I received bags full of hate mail, when hate mail still came in bags. One included a voodoo doll. The accompanying letter explained that the offended NKOTB fan had placed a pin through my ovaries so I could "never bear children to follow in my footsteps."

It's coming true.

P.S. When I was nine, I adored the Bay City Rollers. Here is a picture of the Bay City Rollers.

You know what? I like pink.

A few months ago, Lego was criticized for introducing a line of sexist products directed at girls. They were pink, and overly girly, and I don't know, maybe they brainwashed little girls with concepts like "Math is Hard." I heard about this outrage on NPR when I was half-paying attention, and also my Facebook friends posted about it. So clearly I am some sort of well-informed expert on the topic. (Side note: I would like to criticize Lego for the outrage of scattering a billion tiny pieces to a million Star Wars Lego projects from the top of my house to the bottom; it really hurts when you step on one of those things in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom.) While I totally support those who fight for toy equality, and (in case you know nothing about me) I am a complete feminist, I start to zone out when people disrespect my favorite color. It is not pink's fault that the world is sexist.

When we renovated our kitchen, I knew I wanted a pink stove. This is the one I got.

Right after we bought our house, I mused about how pretty it would look pink. My husband pretended to be in charge, and said, "Under no circumstances are you to paint the house pink." I paid him no mind. Here's how it looks now.

Above is a random photo of me  in a cheap pink wig at a cheap beach rental.

I think Quinn on Glee looked better than I do with pink hair. 

My daughter and I always bust out our pink coats for Easter. I am guessing that Gloria Steinem does not own a pink coat, but I think she would look very nice in one.

Pink peonies are pretty. However, I am not really a big fan of the singer Pink, although I enjoy that she is a tough broad and her name is awesome, obviously. 

I am talking about this now because Daisy over at xojane posted about a new foosball table that features girl players. I enjoyed the post, except for the fact that in passing, Daisy dissed the color of the table. Pink. Them's fighting words, little missy. I love foosball, and I think I am awesome at it, and it reminds me of the year that I lived in a fraternity while simultaneously writing anti-fraternity screeds in the school paper. Only one thing would get me more excited about playing foosball: if the players were female and the table was pink.  I wish I could challenge any pink haters to a game on this table.  Too bad it costs $4700.