Is the Huffington Post’s media and special projects editor Rachel Sklar giving up media criticism for a career as a coffeehouse chanteuse? Heck, if Portfolio‘s Matt Cooper could be named Washington’s Funniest Celebrity (a decade ago, back when there was something to laugh about in that town), anything’s possible.
In a video Ms. Sklar posted on YouTube, the Eat the Press editor performs a parody of Don McLean’s "American Pie" with Lisa Loeb. In lyrics she wrote herself, Ms. Sklar sings about the joys and fears of summer camp to co-promote the book Camp Camp and Camp Lisa, Ms. Loeb’s latest CD.
(Weirdly, the first time this reporter ever heard of Ms. Loeb, was in the early ’90s when she performed in a duo called Liz and Lisa at his camp in Wellesley, Mass., where Elizabeth Mitchell, Ms. Loeb’s bandmate, was a counselor.)
Reached by gchat at the airport in Toronto, Ms. Sklar says that she’s not pursuing a new career, but merely returning to an old one: "I was the head of theater at Camp Winnebago for four proud summers (and may have been the first person to mount a version of Grease Two, I’m just saying). … I’ve been in plays and shows on the side all my life and before blogging I was doing a little sketch comedy stuff (nothing major). And I was in a musical-comedy weekly current events show in the summer of ’05. For me, the most fun is to perform something I’ve written, like, in law school the highlight of the year was Law Follies."
Ms. Sklar admits to being nervous during the performance, but Ms. Loeb was "so nice and so generous onstage" that she managed to get through it with only one rehearsal and some notes from the singer-songwriter. Fans of Ms. Sklar’s singing will have to wait for an album since none is forthcoming, but if she were to release one, the blogger/singer suggested her own title: The Happy Go-Lucky Canadian Blogger, This Time in Song.
