December 2011
33 posts
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Charm City Jukebox! →
Charm City Jukebox, the Top 5 music list blog you’re about to fall madly in love with, has moved to it’s own site! Come visit us for more musical madness.
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5 Non-toxic New Years Resolutions
Go to the gym. Get organized. Start a new hobby. There’s a list of three common new years resolutions, which doubles as a list of resolutions I’ve made and haven’t kept a hundred times over. But my non-toxic resolutions? Those I’ve kept, because I’ve made them easy and concrete. Two years ago, I started using non-toxic handsoap, since I wash my hands several times a day. The year before, I...
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charm city jukebox: hometown songs (claire &...
Hometown songs: What reminds you of home? And what do you listen to when you get there?
Claire’s List
Birdhouse in Your Soul, by They Might be Giants
The first apartment was home to a family of spirited termites, who made quick work of our kitchen and forced the super to rip out the kitchen tiles and replace them with something incongruously spiffy. I picked raspberries with my mom in...
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Huffington Post: Take Toxic Chemicals Off Your... →
Learn how to toy shop the non-toxic way by checking out my new blog on the Huffington Post!
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5 Green Shipping Tips for Your Holiday Gifts
Wrapping up your holiday shopping? It’s time to start wrapping and sending out those gifts! Try these top five green (and easy!) shipping tips:
Green shipping options: When you’re shopping online, pay close attention to your shipping options. Many companies now give you the option to ship goods with less packaging and to bundle packages into one shipment. Find out if this is an option by...
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Non-toxic Tips for Winter Coughs and Colds
I used to catch every cold that came into town. Office colds? Check. Office colds from my boyfriend’s office? Colds from family/friends/strangers schools/offices/jousting tournaments? Check, check, check. My winters were a series of tissue boxes, cough syrups, and congested mutterings that could be summed up as “This again?” or “Oh come on nose. Get it together.”
My years of grumpy congestedness...
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charm city jukebox: i was made for a kate hudson...
Last week, I mentioned the delightful Ms. Liz Phair’s disappointing descent into rom-com-soundtrack madness with the song “Why Can’t I.” I just heard “Love, Save the Empty” by Erin McCarley and thought “Kate Hudson? Where are you Kate Hudson?” and “Maybe I should watch Greys Anatomy again?” (same genre, really).
Now for an example of...
charm city jukebox: top 5 bad songs by good...
Claire’s List:
Good artist: Liz Phair
Bad song: Why Can’t I?
In 2004, Liz Phair decided to replace her beloved bad girl indie image with a toothy, crooning, Top 40 makeover. In the grand scheme of this “I was created for the opening credits of a Kate Hudson movie” genre of pop, Why Can’t I is not a horrible song. But from the woman who wrote Exile from Guyville, from the voice that...
A Little girl, 3 yrs. old picked up by a man driving a gray car, license plate: Quebec 72B 381. Canada. Reblog this. It could save her. The Kidnapping is recent so do it, 3 seconds will not kill you. If it were your child .
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5 Tips for Non-Toxic Toy Shopping
Toy shopping is stressful enough without adding toxic chemicals to the mix! Avoid toxic traps with these top 5 tips for non-toxic toy shopping.
1) Be prepared: Look up toys on HealthyStuff.org and choose toys from their “No detected chemicals of concern” list and “Low detected chemicals of concern” list when possible. As you browse the HealthyStuff site, you can start to organize a list of toys...
“Here’s what you and your minions don’t understand, O’Reilly — your Hell doesn’t...”
– JON STEWART, on Bill O’Reilly saying that Stewart was “going to Hell” for mocking the conservative notion of a “war on Christmas,” on The Daily Show (via inothernews)
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shanghai stories: mickey says...
We were standing in line at the airport, getting ready to board. A fidgety maybe-three year old in front of us danced and fussed, his Mickey Mouse backpack bouncing on his shoulders, when I saw it. Mickey had a big speech bubble that, I’m guessing, was supposed to say “I LOVE YOU!”
Instead, it said “I LIVE YO!”
Which reminds me of this:
Happy Friday, everyone.
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3 Easy Steps to Toxic Free & Yummy Stocking...
Edible treats make great stocking stuffers; just make sure they’re not stuffed with toxins. Follow these basic tricks to find non-toxic (and inexpensive!) alternatives:
1) Look for less packaging: Those giant, food filled holiday baskets are home to loads of plastic. And unfortunately, even for small stocking stuffers like candy canes, tis the season for individually plastic wrapped treats. Avoid...
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charm city jukebox: once more, for the cheap seats...
reader recommended cover!
Song: Paper Planes
Covered by: Jerry Joseph
Originally by: M.I.A.
(Want to see your recommendation here? Click the “submit” link above and let us know what made your list this week.)
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charm city jukebox: leftover list (claire and...
this week, we talked covers. five wasn’t enough; hell, neither was eight. so for all you fellow musical gluttons out there, here are our leftover lists, for your Friday listening pleasure. enjoy.
Joshua’s List
Song: Personal Jesus
Covered by: Johnny Cash
Originally by: Depeche Mode
Song: Sunshine (Go Away Today)
Covered by: The Isley Brothers
Originally by: Jonathan Edwards
...
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charm city jukebox: top 5 covers (by claire and...
Claire’s Top 5 Covers
Song: Go Straight to Hell
Cover by: Lily Allen
Originally by: The Clash
Lily Allen’s lullaby-sweet vocals and borderline-cheery background music, paired with these classic Clash lyrics, makes an already haunting song doubly so and gives “Go Straight to Hell” some dichotomous whimsy.
Song: I Go To Sleep
Cover by: Sia
Originally by: The Kinks
...
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charm city jukebox: intro (by claire)
In a far away/ not so far away city called Baltimore, my childhood friend Josh and I spent a decade and some change developing discarded Top-5-insert-musical-reference-here lists, trading jokes, divulging musical guilty pleasures, then justifying those guilty pleasures…then renouncing them once anyone else was in ear shot (patrons of a certain...
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Gift Guide: Non-Toxic Beauty Gifts and DIY Tips
Beauty products make great stocking stuffers for the ladies in your life. Leave toxic chemicals out of your gifts by using these easy shopping tips or making inexpensive, non-toxic DIY versions.
1) First, do your research before you give: We know you want to avoid giving a toxic gift, but labels on cosmetics and beauty products are a bit difficult to decipher. Use handy resources like the Skin...
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the bund
The Bund. Across the water, the buildings curve and stretch like a Hanna Barbara sketch of a city in the future.
Where we stood, the architecture was older, the streets lovely and muted, European. It was about to rain and all around us families snapped pictures from under umbrellas, while the men who pace the streets in electric blue jumpsuits wielding enormous, twiggy brooms, stopped and...
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riding jets, killing zombies, and teaching fish to...
In Japan, we took the monorail to Odaiba for a Joypolis adventure.
You know that feeling when you’re a little kid where you get so excited you get tired, but then you’re so tired and that you’re really really excited? That was me this entire night. By the end of it, I wanted to go on every ride eight more times. I was like a toddler on a sugar binge.
Joypolis is...
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things we ate while walking: shanghai
Flaky “Portuguese style” egg tart
Glossy, eggy pastry stuffed with red bean paste, and a surprise: a full, salted hard boiled egg yolk in the center.
Lamb sticks from a stand outside a restaurant, spicy with perfect soft, crispy skinned bites of lamb fat. Unfortunately accompanied by much jeering and an elaborate bit involving overspicing our lamb sticks, performed by the...
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lovely whimsy, and lots of spitting.
Shanghai is lovely to the point of whimsical (above, Exhibit A). The sky is the milky pink color of a white nectarine’s flesh and, with the smog and lights, it doesn’t darken into night but instead turns mauve. Outside laundry hangs on lines across balconies and white barked trees fan broad yellow leaves across the pavement. Our alley smells like five spice and autumn; the apartment...
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