At Robin Hood, you never really know who is going to show up at our offices (since I started the following folks have walked through the doors at the hood: Christy Turlington, Admiral Mullen, the Chairman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all his secret service offices, Mayor Bloomberg and countless billionaire hedge fund managers), how much money we will bring in during one day (in 2011, we raised over 160 million dollars, which is over 400,000 dollars each day), or what artist has signed on to perform a concert to benefit Robin Hood (just last year we had Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas and Sting – just to name a few!) But those are the big things, and this blog is about the little things.
Well yesterday there were a couple little things to celebrate.
I received an email mid-morning letting me know that I had a delivery upstairs. I wasn’t expecting anything and my mom had just sent some cookies, so I couldn’t imagine what it could be. Well, needless to say I was SUPER excited to open the packaging to reveal this:
"The Organizing Issue"
I spent the rest of the morning looking at all of the wonderful organization solutions that Martha and her team came up with for all the various areas of your home. I LOVE having a friend “on the inside.”
Then, as the afternoon “slump” set in, we received a floor wide email alerting us of delicious baked goods someone brought in from Chelsea Market. Instantly, a herd of people (including myself) ran over to the designated table. We sampled brownies, rugelach, and sugar cookies. YUMMY. After devouring nearly every treat, we decided to use our creative artistic abilities to capture this afternoon fun. You’re welcome for that.
Clearly it was a slow day in the hood. But sometimes, that is just what you need.
Since 1996 the Vh1 Do Something Awards honor athletes, music artists and actors that have portrayed a social issue during the year. Back in August we (Robin Hood) were nominated for one of these awards.
After joining forces during our benefit, Robin Hood and Lady Gaga launched a contest on Facebook for a $1 million giveaway to support New York City teens living in poverty. The objective was to raise awareness of the needs that exists in the city for homeless teens, while allowing fans to vote for one of the five organizations up for the grand prize. Within a week we garnered over 1,036,000 votes and a tremendous amount of support.
We were honored to be nominated and even more honored to win the award. As a result, the trophy, a giant silver shoe with wings attached, made its way to our office. In typical Robin Hood fashion, we decided to share the award with everyone in the office. Since the silver shoe made its way to “the hood” it has become an award that we share with each other when someone in Sherwood Forrest “does something awesome.” Obviously it has been my goal to win this award since its inception!
As the “mentor” for our marathon team, I have been SWAMPED the past few weeks in preparation for this Sunday’s ING NYC Marathon. Sometimes I let the stress get the better of me and I’ve even let my blogging slip… Needless to say, I was in need of a little PMA (positive mental attitude). So I couldn’t have been happier when I received the award and my co-worker sent the following email explaining why I won:
For those of you not on the eighth floor, Molly has just been awarded the fancy silver Do Something shoe.
Why?
Molly has been slaving away tirelessly to make sure that the Robin Hood marathon runners are well prepared for this weekend. She’s organized weekly runs, weekly spin class, fancy shirts and all manner of other events and fundraising so that the runners run well and that they raise oodles of money for poor New Yorkers.
Additionally, although the two concerts are now in the rearview mirror, Molly had the (in my view) difficult and thankless task of calling many of our donors and giving them the opportunity to choose between the rescheduled BEPs concert and the Sting concert the following evening. Molly was sitting near my office on 7 at the time, and she must have made the same phone call about 1000 times. And the net result? Two terrific events that each raised money from donors excited to be at their concert of choice.
Definitely embodies the spirit of Doing Something!
Please congratulate Molly for Doing Something!
I would like to thank my family for supporting me for the past 28 years. I would also like to thank my loving husband who has dealt with my stress, crankiness and has definitely taken a back seat to my job for the past week or so. I promise that things will get better once the marathon is over.
Thank you to Robin Hood for being the best place ever to work!
How do you top and evening in Central Park with the Black Eyed Peas and 60,000 friends and neighbors? Help Sting celebrate his 60th Birthday with a few of his musician friends, that’s how.
The entire crew came out at the end of the show for a few final songs, including Every Breath You Take
However, the absolute highlight of the show was when Sting’s lovely wife Trudie appeared onstage and surprised him by inviting dozens of members of the Scottish pipe and drum line onstage. Sting was visibly moved (as was my mom), and even as everyone left the theater, the couple stayed onstage dancing. It was truly moving.
I felt so lucky to be able to share this experience with my parents. When Bruce started playing, I turned to my dad and said, “That voice… it is like the soundtrack of my childhood…. at least the times when I was in your car.” And while I know my parents have loved every moment that they’ve spent watching Abby coach swimming, I have a feeling that they will remember this night for many years.
In fourth grade, my school put on a talent show. Auditions were held within each of the classes and the students voted on the top two acts. These acts would then get to participate in the school-wide performance where audience was made up of the entire 3rd and 4th grade, along with parents and family members. While my true talents ultimately developed in the swimming pool and on the field hockey field, in 4th grade, I still considered myself a pretty well-rounded child. I was a member of the chorus, which entailed participating in the grade-wide musical and was even given a solo my 4th grade year (although, my family still mocks my fast-paced singing of “wild geese that fly with the moon on my wings, these are a few of my favorite things; the main point to focus on here is that I was awarded a solo!). And in my fourth grade class’ performance of A Christmas Carol (wow, we were NOT a PC school at all!) I played the part of the Ghost of Christmas Past, a pretty solid role if I do remember correctly. Anyway, when I decided to audition for the fourth grade talent show, it wasn’t that surprising. However, it was a bit surprising what I decided to showcase as my talent.
At first, I told my mom that I wanted to try out two different acts. Now this was right around the time that my grandparents bought Abby and me a karaoke machine for Christmas. The system had two tape players so that you could play one tape to sing along to, and record your amazing vocals on another blank cassette. Needless to say, I went through a lot of blank tapes during this phase. The machine also came with a sample karaoke tape; it had one side with songs that contained the lyrics and another side that contained the same songs, only minus the lyrics. You could practice the words on the first side, and once you mastered those you could flip the tape over and become a star!
The songs that were on this tape were a bit “off the beaten path” especially for me, who was a child of Rosenshontz and Disney music for FAR too long. One of my favorite songs on the tape was “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.” I had practiced this song countless times and thought it would be perfect for the talent show; it was far and away my best! While I knew the lyrics by heart, I had no idea what this song was about. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this song, please see below:
While this isn’t the worst song ever written (or even close to the worst song), for a fourth grade talent show, it wasn’t the best idea. Couple that with the fact that my singing abilities weren’t amazing, I am EXTREMELY thankful that my mom talked me out of that idea. I ended up doing a comedy skit (I know, that isn’t much better) from the Free to Be You and Me record. That’s right, I just said record. No, I am not that old, my parents were hippie-ish and just liked living in the past (please reference previous posts about growing up in a cable free household for more evidence of that.) The skit, and pretty much the entire record, broke the mold of traditional gender stereotypes. It was deep for fourth graders and I blame my classmates’ inability to grasp such complex and forward-thinking ideas as the reason why were weren’t voted through to the final performance. Either that, or the fact that I forgot half of my lines. Either way, my musical and theatrical career came to a screeching halt after that experience. Although I continued to lay down some pretty serious tracks on the karaoke machine in our basement.
Thankfully, some children didn’t have their dreams of stardom trounced as easily as I did. The Mickey Mouse Club skyrocketed kids like Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera into world-wide stars.
Miley, Hil-Duff and the Jo-Bros have The Disney Channel to thank. And Fergie got her start on the 80’s classic show, Kids Incorporated where she stole the show for 5 years straight.
And now, children around the world have the wonders of YouTube and Ellen to thank. After conducting a search for the most talented children featured on YouTube, Ellen came across the likes of Greyson Chance, a 13-year-old boy from Edmond, Oklahoma. His performance of Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi won him the attention of millions, but most importantly, of Ellen. She featured him live on her show earlier this year, with his unbelievable performance of that song:
Then two weeks later, it was announced that Greyson won the 10,000 dollar prize from the Ellen contest AND the backing of Ellen’s new record label, eleveneleven. Today Greyson released his first single Waiting Outside the Lines.
Man, must be nice to be a YouTube sensation. And talented.
Greyson’s story has inspired me to re-think my career as a performer. Let’s be honest, I missed my chance at the Olympics and I am never going to be a professional crafter (besides Martha, I don’t think there is much money is that field). I am going to devote the next chapter of my life to perfecting my rendition of “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.” I will then buy a flip camera and record my “unknown” talents and post it to YouTube. I will then received 100,000 hits in a single day and be invited to LA where I will inevitably become a star.
The Little Things 