Lifescoop: 5 Ways to Discover the Latest Music

I have a new post up at Lifescoop: Music to Your Ears: 5 Ways to Discover the Latest Music

Remember when emerging music just fell in your lap? Your best friend was a part-time DJ, your show-going roommate made you mixes, you’d occasionally spend an entire Saturday slackjawed in front of the internet? But the time we make for new music sometimes gets nudged out by the trappings of adulthood.

Fortunately, if you have a few minutes a day, it’s easy to bring new music into your life. Here are five simple ways to find music that’s actually new, not just new to you. Read more…

Eat 1,000,000 Hot Dogs

Two weeks ago, I was at ease onstage in front of 600 people. This morning I woke up with a sore jaw from teeth-grinding stress dreams — about my talk for preschool career day. This is most of what you need to know about my subconscious.

On the ride to school, Hank looked similarly worried.

“You okay, little guy?”
“Yes.”
“You seem anxious.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you worried?”
“What if they don’t like you?”

Preach it, kid.

I explained to Hank that people are mostly just worried about whether you like them. So if you smile, and seem comfortable, everything will be OK.

Also, I brought balloons.

Lifelist: Taste 1,000 Fruits, No. 100!

Hawaiian Fruit Stand

Thanks to the Kahuku Land Farms Fruit Stand in Hawaii, I’ve officially hit 100 fruits. Milestone! Bam.

I told Mike, our trip lead, how close I was to being centufruitarian, and he went out of his way to find new fruits to try. Thanks to Mike, and the rest of the Hawaii Five Oh team for being so patient and enthusiastic with my quest.

These are the fruits that pushed us past the 100 mark:

No. 99 Cherry Guava

There’s something about bite-sized fruit that just makes me happier. Snacks!


Cherry guavas are such a pretty color, like a sunset. They’re tangy, and the round seeds have a pleasant pop to them when you crunch down.

No. 100! Chico

When I asked the woman at the market what Chicos tasted like, she said, “brown sugar.” She had a bit of an accent, so I thought I’d misunderstood her.

She was exactly right. They’re soft inside, the dominant flavor is brown sugar, and they even seem to have little crunch granules in the flesh.

It was like eating a baked apple plucked directly from the tree.

No. 101 Apple Bananas
No. 102 Ice Cream Bananas

More tiny snack fruits, hooray! These bananas are about as big as my palm, maybe a third of the size of a banana you’d find at the grocery store, and much, much tastier.

The ice cream banana is light and creamy, apt! The apple banana has a pleasant tartness that offsets the sweetness.

Both were fun to eat because you can shove the whole thing in your mouth, and then walk around beating your chest like King Kong. Which I recommend.

No. 103 Mountain Apples

These are a lot like Jamaican Apples, only smaller and tangier.


And this is an Edvard Munch Mountain Apple. Scream all you want, apple.

They’re less dense than a conventional apple, the crunch is more like a really crisp, seedless cucumber. Mmm. Quenchy.

This Friday, we’ll celebrate the century mark with a roundup of my top ten favorite fruits so far. You cannot wait. Fruit nerds, unite!

Team Mighty

This photo makes me happy.

These are my friends Sarah Bryden-Brown and Laura Mayes, talking on Sarah’s couch in New York City. I’ve been spending a lot of time in New York recently because the three of us are making something, which is our very favorite thing to do.

As some of you know, Laura and I have been working together for years on Mighty Summit and Camp Mighty, and she’s also a co-founder of the Mom 2.0 conference series. A few years ago Laura said I needed to meet Sarah. At the time, Sarah was heading up Babble in preparation for its eventual acquisition by Disney. Most recently she created a strategic direction for Kirtsy, and founded Blogstar — a community of professional women bloggers — which has been folded into The Mission List. (Boo-yah.)

Now the three of us finally have space to do a project together. It’s a big undertaking, the kind that makes you feel a little nervous and sweaty-palmed, but excited knowing we’re in it together. So for now I just wanted to introduce you to our little team and tell you we have big plans. When everything’s ready to go, I hope you’ll be in it with us too.

Thanks, Mr. Sendak

Reposted from my archives, an excerpt from Life Lessons in Literature.

In college, I date a man who has a beautiful son. I give the toddler a bath before bedtime, and then read to him as he falls asleep. There are a few pages in the middle of Where the Wild Things Are that have no words, just illustrations of wild things cavorting about with their terrible claws and terrible teeth. James is half asleep when we get to this part, but he lifts his head a few inches and points at the monster jumping and growling beneath the moon. He taps the drawing and whispers, “He try to get the moon.”

Do you have a favorite Maurice Sendak memory?

Oh Hey, Oprah

Say, Mighty Girl is featured on the Oprah blog! Full circle.

“So here is what this Mighty List has taught me about the Life List concept. It’s okay if you put things on the list that you’re maybe not going to get to. In fact, that’s part of the whole idea.” Read more…

I Didn’t Need that Toenail Anyway

Trip lead: “Do you want me to sign you up for the surf lesson?”

My brain: “Uhhhhhhhh. I burn pretty easily and doesn’t the reef have a billion kinds of bacteria that will kill you if it cuts you plus I had knee surgery so it sometimes hurts to stand from a kneeling position that’s what she said and what if I don’t know the surfing etiquette and I smack into someone from a prominent family and a surfer kid from the wrong side of the reef defends me and I’m accidentally the catalyst for bloodshed which sharks can smell in the water from like 100 miles away?”

My mouth: “Sure.”

My brain: “… Bring to me all of the rum.”

There are three hours between the decision to surf and the actual surfing, so I order a Mai Tai with my burger. And then they bring me another one. Probably because I ask for it. When the trip lead comes to get us, I order a glass of wine and drink it like it’s a beer can with two holes punched in the bottom.

By the time we make it down to the lesson, I am not drunk per se. I am illuminated. I am prepared to be at one with the hungry sea. I am no longer considering faking a seizure to get out of this. Because that would be wrong.

On land, each of us tries our surfing stance in turn.

OK, this is going fine. I am a land surfing champion. Maybe this will be okay.

While paddling I resist the impulse to lay down on the board and take a nap. So far so good.

This! This is working out! I am on my feet on my first try! The ocean and I are at one!

Whoa. The hell, Ocean? You’re kind of being a dick.

But whatever. I almost stood up! I roll off into the waves feeling okay about it, and I’m relieved to find that surfacing is no big deal. That is until the board cracks into my nose and throws a handful of glitter across my vision.

OW! Et tu, Surfboard? Ow.

Well, now that I’m insta-sober, let’s try this again.

Oof. Again the ocean betrays me; the surfboard greets my nose with enthusiasm a second time. And then a third.

Finally, I tell the instructor that I’m getting clobbered and he says, “Whoa. Really? That almost never happens. Wait for your cord to get taut so you know the board isn’t near you, and then surface with your hands above your head.”

This absolutely works. I wait for the cord around my ankle to go taut, then give a kick… and bash my foot into the reef. Mothra! Fockra! It’s like stubbing your toe against shards of glass.

As I injudiciously paddle out for a fifth wave, the booze completely clears my system. My foot and face throb with every heartbeat. I decide to paddle in, passing a four-year-old local and her dad on their way out. “Oh!” I say. “She’s so awesome!” “Thanks!” her dad says. But the girl just paddles toward me scowling with concentration. As she passes, I hear her yell back at me, “PADDLE! PADDLEPADDLEPADDLEPADDLE!!”

Right. Thanks, kid.

(Thanks also to the Hans Hedemann Surf School at Turtle Bay Resort for the mortifying photos. No really, you guys. Mahalo.)

Aloha! My Nose Hurts


-via MaggieMason on Instagram

So last year the Jamaican Tourism Board sent me an email asking if I wanted to come to Jamaica, which I naturally assumed was a Nigerian prince scheme. Remember?

A few weeks ago, the same thing happened with Hawaii. The Polynesian Cultural Center was like, “Want to come to Hawaii for free?” and I was like, “Do I have to carry a suitcase, the contents of which is unknown to me?” and they were like “No.” So I was like, “Are you a human trafficker who traffics in the sale of humans?” and they were like, “No.” So I was like, “Do I have to pay you in sexual favors?” and they were like, “No, thanks.” So I was all, “Aloha!”


Apparently, Mario Lopez and Danica McKellar work at the Polynesian Cultural Center now. I asked Danica to do some quadratic equations for us after she finished dancing, as a kind of intellectual finale, but she ignored me. Rude.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Will Maggie just get on a plane any time a random stranger requests her presence in a tropical location?” And the answer is yes. Yes I will. Call me.


Is this a racial thing? -via MaggieMason on Instagram

This particular trip was a press junket, where they fly you out in hopes that you’ll talk about the trip (which, durr), and then you allow them to control your life for the duration. It’s sort of like vacationing with your manic uncle who cannot tolerate the idea of missing a single activity or historical marker. So you stumble around after him as he books a kayaking trip on top of a surf lesson after you learn to Hula.

Except! He’s paying for the whole thing, so all you have to do is show up and say, “I have always wanted to go hang gliding in a grass skirt. I will have this Mai Tai in a go-cup, please! I will have two!”


I made a lei, then learned to hula. In a coconut bra. Holding a Mai Tai. -via MaggieMason on Instagram

This is sort of how I wound up inebriated on a surfboard a few days ago. For the record, inebriated is the only way I’d end up on a surfboard, because I am terrified of surfing. Well, not surfing in particular, more the sharks who wait under surfboards trying to decide whether you look enough like a seal to eat one of your limbs. I’m also afraid of old-timey sailor sea-zombies pulling me to a watery grave. (I feel like we’ve discussed this.)


Revelatory breakfast. I have been eating terrible papaya my whole life. -via MaggieMason on Instagram

Anyway, pro tip? Tipsy is not the best approach to surfing. Unless you feel like making out with the reef. And maybe I did feel like it. Did you ever think of that?


-via MaggieMason on Instagram

Let’s meet back here tomorrow to discuss why my nose hurts.