To quote my friend Rachel’s blog, I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover the PS 22 Chorus, but the wonder of the internets is that Target doesn’t run out of the great new toys.  If you haven’t watched these incredibly talented fifth graders singing songs like Eye of the Tiger, Don’t Stop Believing, Just Dance and Viva La Vida, you are missing a chance at joy.

Part of what I love about the videos is the pure quality of the singing: strong voices, great harmonies, impressive attention to rhythm.  But the other great part is the spirit.  The kids are hilariously ironic, and yet, still sincere and sweet.  Check out the moody chest-clutching during “Viva la Vida!”  The unselfconscious swaying during “Don’t Stop Believing.” 

 It’s as though Greg Breinberg, the chorus director who should be offered a MacArthur Genius Grant any day now, told the kids, “All right, this is old white folks’ music, and one thing we love about the old white folks is that they like to feel emotions deeply.  So everyone, put your hands on your hearts.  Now scrunch down your eyebrows.  Now nod as if to say, ‘Dude.’  Yeah.  Can you do that?  Oh, Srivasti–awesome!  D’Angelo–your sway rules!  Tanika–I love the closed eyes!” 

But the kids aren’t making fun–they’re totally into it.  I’ve thought all this time that the sweet-spot of kidland was the seventh grade classroom—from the teacher’s point of view that is (it’s often inferno for the kids.)  The kids want to please, laugh at your jokes, and can take sarcasm, which can be a necessary buffer to venting actual frustration.  But maybe Eden is waiting for me two doors down, in the fifth grade homeroom, where they’d flinch at my sarcasm but offer something so much sweeter.

Happy birthday to my website, just over a month old.  If it were a baby, it could…hm…despite being a new auntie, I don’t actually know.  But since it’s my website, it has something to report: poll results! 

Last month I asked whether you, in seventh grade, were/are nice, mean, or somewhere in between.  54 of you awesome people reported the following, with the most popular in green:

You in seventh grade:

I always try to be nice, no matter what 30% (16 votes)

I’m usually pretty nice, except if I’m in a bad mood 33% (18 votes)

To be honest, I can be both nice and mean 28% (15 votes)

I’m nice to my friends, but if I don’t respect someone, I have no problem being mean 7% (4 votes)

I’d be mean to friends, enemies, or whoever, if they get in my way 2% (1 votes)

I was inspired that so many people tried to be nice as often as they could.  But frankly….I don’t know…who else out there teaches seventh grade?  Who else remembers seventh grade?  Don’t you think there were way more people who had no problems being mean to someone they didn’t respect? 

So–the people who took the poll–friends and fellow children’s book writers–are exceptionally nice?  We have faulty memories?  We don’t think we’re being mean, but sometimes, we are?  To what do you attribute this discrepancy?  Very curious.  Can’t wait to hear thoughts.

Oh, and: As you may have guessed, these answers correspond to characters in the book.  Most of you were Sachi, and not Marina.  You’ll see what I mean.

In this week’s New Yorker’s table of contents, I saw some article titles that never were:

On the job with a Michelin Impostor

(Michelin being the French restaurant raters.)  It was really “Michelin Inspector,” but “Michelin Impostor” would have yielded a lot of interesting results.  Think about the ire of the French chefs when they realized they were lowering themselves to suck up to someone who was not even the real deal!

Beijing loves Canadian Food

This was a real blurring.  The first article was “Letter from China: Beijing Loves Bordeaux,” followed by “Canadian Journal: Funny Food.”  Honestly, it surprised me that the Chinese loved Canadian food, given that they are pretty much obsessed with domination and doing things their way, and while the Canadians do steadfastly hold to many of their own modus operandi, they’re not exactly who comes to mind when I think of world domination. 

If these are the articles I’m creating in my thirties, I can only marvel at prospect of what I’ll come up with in my 70s.  I’ll start writing a whole new genre of novels!  And become like the grandmother in the movie version of About a Boy.  (“We’re having duck?  Delightful!”)

So Marina, one of the protagonists in Nice and Mean (ooh, coming out in a mere 7 months, minus three days!), is deeply invested in Dr. Pepper.  It’s the perfect drink for her: attractively sweet but also kind of burning.  She eats them with Mint Milanos, cookies whose chocolate is slightly bitter–also like Marina. 

My gal came back from a business trip to Texas having visited the Dr. Pepper Museum (yes, there is one) and informed me that she had a present not just for me, but for Marina as well.  The present for me was a t-shirt saying, “I’m a pepper,” which I have always, always wanted.  And for Marina, there was this:

Actually, it is even better than that: it is Dr. Pepper Tasty Lipgloss with Twist and Squeeze.  When you pop off the top, there’s a little brush stuck into the tube.  You twist and squeeze the tube and out comes Pepper goo, and then you paint the gloss on your lips.  It’s so cool!  I couldn’t find an image of that product, but let me tell you, it will soon be taking over the world. 

The best thing of all was that even though Marina can be a little grabby, she let me use her lip gloss, and in addition to making my lips look shiny and read and beautiful, it tasted Pepperific.  Mm. 

Since I’ve applied what will surely be my daily dose of Pepper, the tube is currently sitting on my desk as a little token of Marina-ness.  Now I just have to figure out a signature item for Sachi, my other narrator.  Sachi’s a lot less interested in Things than Marina, but she does have a gold and onyx ring from her grandmother that she twists in times of stress.  I wonder if there’s a Museum of Gold and Onyx where my gal is going next…

Diane at The Book Resort blog gave me all these fun questions to answer, and now they’re up on the Internets!  It’s of my first author interviews!  Click to read.

Diane found me through the Tenners, which is a group of about 60 novelists whose books will be debuting (if that’s a word) in 2010.  The Tenners have contests and giveaways and fun weekly features, like the Monday Top 10 List and (my favorite) Tenner Tell-All, which I think is on Wednesdays.  A few weeks ago, people talked about their Most Embarrassing Moments on the Road to Publication, and while reading them, I cracked up for about 10 minutes straight.  It’s clear that these people are, you know, writers, and it’s fun to get to know them virtually and get a sense of the books we’ll all be reading next year. 

So–lots of reading for you!  Enjoy!  And hey, thanks for all the kudos about the website.  It really means a lot.  Stay tuned for tales about my resarch trip to The Great Smoky Mountains this weekend, and how there will now be elk in my story, come heckle or high water.

If you’re reading this post, chances are, you’ve just visited my website for the first time.  And chances are (well, okay, to be certain)–I’d love to hear from you.

Crack a smile!  Stay a while!  Leave a comment.  Enjoy the ramblings up to this point, and try to get “What’s the Name of that Song?” out of your head. (Scroll down.  When you see Sesame Street, you’re one click away.)

I hope you’ll come back!  There may be contest announcements, book recommendations, writing ruminations, and perhaps even some interviews with writers.  I will also try to make good on the motto I created, “Occasional love songs to pickles or cake.”

If you would like to nominate a cake or pickle worthy of a love song, you can do so in the comments.  Or you can just say Hi.

Hi!  Thanks for stopping by!

The article was about how the content of Sesame Street has always been driven by research, but I clicked on the “What’s the Name of that Song?” video and fell so in love that I stopped reading article mid-stream to write this post. 

The adults on Sesame were so cute!  I had never realized it before.  David and Bob actually kind of wish they were doing musical theatre, but Gordan and Susan really seem happy there on Sesame Street.  And while people make a lot out of the fact that the Sesame cast is multi-racial (as well as, of course, multi-species), I think it’s also appealing that some of the adults are single, some are married, and they all hang out together.  (When I was a Sesame viewer, adults came in two kinds: married parents and single teachers.  Even if they were ‘Mrs,’ everybody knew they slept in the classroom.)

Another random Sesame factoid: since I seem to have a compulsion for admitting random ignorance (for example, the whole ‘wait–bees have feet?’ business, which appears on my website), I didn’t realize until a recent article about tv vampires that Count von Count was, yes, a vampire.  What?  He had a Transylvanian accent and pointy fangs, and yeah, maybe he was groovin’ on his cape, but what was Herry Monster?  Or Bert or Ernie, for that matter?  Was there a species of yellow oval-shaped creatures somewhere, and I just didn’t know about it?  I didn’t think so.  Similarly, I thought Count von Count was just…a Count. 

I guess it just goes to show that at young ages, kids will accept all sorts of images of normalcy.  Maybe that’s actually the point of the article about research in Sesame Street.  Guess I’ll go read it now and find out. 

Oh yeah.  And what’s the name of that song?

Hey, kids!  So…I have this new blog!  Yahoo!

It’s in WordPress.  Everybody say it with me: worrrd presss.  I have always secretly admired those folks with WordPress blogs.  They seemed to know something I didn’t.  And, in fact, they did: how to use a WordPress blog.  So far, it doesn’t seem that hard.  I wonder what held me back. 

Yeah.  This first post isn’t brilliant so far, but there will be brilliance–brilliance, I tell you–in the future.  Really I’m just trying to generate some posts so that it doesn’t have a sad little empty little nothingness of a nothing when you come here.  But even as I wrote this, I came across a thought–a fabulous thought–that could be the subject of the next real entry.  That will blow you, away, I guarantee.

Up, up and away!