This week’s digest of stories from Medium universe is all about the (sometimes awkward) difficulties of coping with change. Each week on Medium Rare, I’ll be sharing stories you might have missed that are definitely worth a second look. Got a suggestion for a piece we should feature? Pop it in the responses below!
Read the story of how Chrissy Teigen’s headbands played an unexpected role in Sara Benincasa’s journey to sobriety. The supermodel’s Headband of the Day series on Instagram offered a welcomed sense of stability at a time when the world seemed to be burning. Perhaps it’s time to bust out the headbands once again…
Humungus editor-in-chief John DeVore once penned a beautiful and heartfelt essay on the two-step guide to bravery, which feels more and more relevant with each passing day. “Fear wants to protect you, even from the good things in life. Fear doesn’t want you to bruise, emotionally, or physically. Bravery is being so present, so in your own living skin, that you can manage that fear and live.”
Dave Pell brings some much-needed levity to life in the time of the coronavirus with the story of his difficulty in finding time on his 90-something-year-old mother’s social calendar as they shelter in place.
Adam Schlesinger, a musician with the band Fountains of Wayne and songwriter for the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, died this week of complications from Covid-19.
To honor Schlesinger’s life, journalist Mark Yarm dug up an old story he wrote for Blender in 2007, which followed the Fountains of Wayne bandmates as they toured the headquarters of the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Yarm says the piece, one of his first for Blender, was included in the magazine’s series in which bands were given $848 to spend as they pleased. “Adam Schlesinger was talented and kind, and as this article bears out, very funny. RIP,” Yarm tweeted this week.
He transcribed the story for all to appreciate Schlesinger’s playful humor:
Singer-guitarist Chris Collingwood, bassist Adam Schlesinger, guitarist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young will consider three investment options — the stock market, sports gambling and a revolutionary new invention — and select just one to sink the $848 into. “Spending it on booze or strippers is a bit cliché,” Porter says. “We want to make more money to spend on those things.”
And money (or a lack thereof) seems to be on FOW’s minds lately. The song “Strapped for Cash,” off their new album Traffic and Weather, concerns a guy who’s about to get pulverized by six debt-collecting goons. The band members insist their monetary situations aren’t quite so dire — their 2003 hit “Stacy’s Mom” put the word MILF on the musical map, and Schlesinger wrote the superb tunes for the Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore rom-com Music and Lyrics — but you can sense they could use a really big score.
“We’d like to turn the $848 into several million dollars,” Schlesinger tells Ratigan. “And we’d be willing to wait around until the end of next week.
“What about an Enron-type thing?” the bassist continues. “Know of any good pyramid schemes?”