Here I shall sing for you.

Drunk-cooking not advisable.

Come along with me, to a snapshot of my life:

It's 2:30 am on a Monday night. (Yes, I know, technically it's a Tuesday morning but shh I'm telling a story.) A 24-year-old girl shuffles home from the bar, up three flights of stairs to her apartment, and smiles as she gazes dreamily upon a stew that has been dutifully crock potting itself for the last six hours. If she can depend on nothing else, my good people, she can depend on this delectable vat of turkey chowder.

She feels a little cloudy-headed as one in her situation would, and is mightily amused and distracted by her phone buzzing with messages from her sentimental pals with the desire to giggle and delight over the antics of the evening. She boils some water, throws some egg noodles in, and starts transferring the stew to a hefty 3-gallon pot.

The noodles finish! She stirs them into the potato/corn/turkey/carrot concoction and tells herself that this stew is one step away from perfection...and that step is named "a generous dash lemon pepper". She shakes the lemon pep over the top of the stew - but wait! - something is amiss. She immediately feels confused about the texture and look of the ingredient. Upon closer inspection, she realizes that she has just covered her stew in...CINNAMON!

And instead of scraping the cinnamon off and salvaging the taste of the soup, she, in her unreasonable state, stirs it in. All the way in. Thus dooming her future sober self to roughly two gallons of cinnamon-flavored turkey chowder.

Stupid, stupid girl.

Let's talk doppelgangers.

I just have to say that I am fascinated by all of this doppelganger business! People posting pictures of their friends, significant others, their old selves, celebrities...all people they think they look like. It is just supremely interesting to me how people really see themselves physically.

Recently, a friend of mine had to get her photos taken for work and out of maybe 30 or so, her roommate and I picked the same photo as our favorite and the one we thought looked most like her. But the one she picked I have to tell you looked absolutely nothing like her and I don't think it showed how truly beautiful she is at all. The one we picked, to me, looked like a model shot.

Why do we see ourselves so differently than other people see us? And why do some people historically look fantastic in photos and others can't take a good picture to save their lives?

I was nervous to jump on the celebrity doppelganger bandwagon because for the last two weeks I've seen people post photos of celebrities that are a thousand times hotter than them and I did not want that to be the case with me.

So I put it to my coworkers to pick one for me, and this is what they came up with. A young Catherine Keener. I wouldn't say that I'm sold on the resemblance, but at least it's not Pippi Longstocking or Punky Brewster, which is honestly what I was expecting.

Too soon? Sorry, Haiti.

When disaster strikes, there are lots of celebrity artists that want to step up and help.

Even at Minnesota Public Radio!

Listen: Haiti Relief Song

10 artists. 1 (un)clear message. 2 female pop star impressions by your favorite blogging public radio employee.

Allow me to serenade you.

For the record, my a cappella group has been together far longer than Glee or the Sing Off ever existed.

Moving on.

Last night we had a little recording session and one of the songs is a Rilo Kiley ditty that I sing the solo in. Please enjoy.

Download or play: Breakin' Up (Rilo Kiley) by Late Night Menu.

And just to prove to you that I actually can successfully rap at times without making a complete fool of myself, last night we also recorded that Duffy song that I embarrassed myself with during our last performance.

Download or play: the sweet rap part of Mercy (Duffy) by Late Night Menu.

Ok. Happy day to you! Seacrest out.

Happy Holidays, my babies!

I'm not gonna lie oh readers, I've been feeling pretty festive lately. I decided to put together a little jazzy holiday mix to thank you for your sweet sweetness over the two and a half years I have been regaling you with the minutia of my life.

Thanks ever so much, and best wishes for a happy holiday season.

(give her a minute to load up, she's a big one)



Or, listen on Grooveshark here.

Woot for small hands!

A coworker crocheted these gloves but they ended up being too small for her. My freakishly long and skinny hands luckily fit them, well, like a glove.

Oh feeble typing hands you shall be chilled no more. Come warmth!


(Though in a weird way I feel like Madonna meets your grandma meets an Easter egg.)

My pics for the Current's "Top 89".

Cage The Elephant: Ain't No Rest for the Wicked (Cage The Elephant)
Bon Iver: Brackett, WI (Dark Was The Night)
Brother Ali: Good Lord (The Truth Is Here)
Camera Obscura: Honey in the Sun (My Maudlin Career)
Dirty Projectors and David Byrne: Knotty Pine (Dark Was The Night)
The Bird And The Bee: My Love (Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future)
Ben Kweller: Sawdust Man (Changing Horses)
Alexi Murdoch: Towards The Sun (Away We Go Soundtrack)
Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks (Veckatimest)
The Big Pink: Velvet (A Brief History Of Love)

You can listen to a playlist I have made of these songs here:



Or if you don't like the widget, you can listen here.

We've got a code 70 on isle 6.

I just witnessed an attempted shoplifting!

I was in Walgreens. Just a regular day at Walgreens, right? I was checking out at the pharmacy department, picking up a prescription and some gum. Classic Walgreens purchase, right? RIGHT?

Then, all of the sudden, the employee that was checking me out calmly but fast like lightening picks up the telephone receiver and says over the loudspeaker "We've got a code 70 on isle 6. I repeat, code 70 on isle 6." I spin around to see 4 blue-vested employees speed-walking toward isle 6 from all angles of the store.

My vision is blocked, but I hear a slight scuffle. Next thing I know, an armload of goods is slammed down on the counter next to me. One of the vested speed-walkers brushes the bangs from her face and says "he had quite the night planned, didn't he?"

I looked over to see what the man had attempted to shove inside his coat: Not, one, not two, but EIGHT two-packs of single-shot energy drinks, and what else? You guessed it. A bottle of lube.

White girl can't rap.

I recently joined a small vocal ensemble and last week was my first performance with the group. The song we performed is Mercy by Duffy and it would be accurate to describe my role in this song as one of the "yeah yeah yeah" girls, with one exception. Halfway through the song there is a vocal percussion breakdown where every member of the group except the soloist and myself repeat different vocal beats, thus denoting the breakdown. My part includes 8 bars of rapping. That's right. Rapping. Having a little experience in the karaoke Gangsta's Paradise realm, I wasn't really nervous or anything until I realized that the audience we were performing for was about 100 students from the Black Student Union at the University, and maybe a handful of others (mostly consisting of our out-of-place ultra-white group)*. So the first stanza of my ridiculously non-sensical rap goes like this:

You look at me and think we're the same kind
'Cause you don't know what I got and
I want a bit more than I'm asking for
but I just don't want to waste my time

Pretty easy right? Theoretically. But for a rowdy theater full of yelling, snapping, clapping, boisterous college kids, they were essentially silent when we got up there. The lights were blinding, the mood was one of full-on skepticism. From them, it was probably skepticism over "who the hell are these kids coming to our show to perform in a format we're not used to", and from us, it was skepticism over whether we would perform well, mess up, be accepted, etc. Most of my group was calm and ready to rock. But something came over me when it was almost time for me to rap. I locked up and I got so worried about forgetting the words that this, to my horror, is what came out of my mouth:

You look at me and think we're the same kind
'Cause you don't know what I got and
I want a bit flim flattadata dat
bada blip blop bee boop dip dap dap

I finished the stupid rap unable to look anyone in the audience in the eyes, which meant, since it was stadium seating, that I had to stare at the floor until the song was over. I would like to think I can rap...but scat-rapping is not something I hope I never have to face doing again.

*Truth be told, one of us is 1/18 Hawaiian. That counts towards diversity, right?