'Gram of the Week (9/19/11 - 9/25/11)

TIME HEALS EVERYTHING !

Deb Silver's husband, Steven loves her .......a lot! They live in England and split their time commuting back and forth between Manchester and New York City. Tall and beautiful, a la Diana Rigg, Deb is a lyricist/composer and a jazz singer who headlines at the Zinc Bar in NYC. Steven is Steven Stone of Steven Stone Jewellers in the United Kingdom. (http://www.stevenstone.co.uk/)

This year's birthday found them separated with Steven working in England and Deb performing in NYC, while celebrating with her girlfriends at their New York pied-á-terre. Deb and Steven met 30 years ago in their 20's, split up, then met again two years ago, before finally getting married last year.

Here's a music video clip of Deb's homage to Steven after finding each other again. She wrote her own lyrics to the Beatles' "Got To Get You Into My Life" and spiced it up with choreography mixed with pictures of them throughout the years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T2qj6aOn2w

Steven decided to return the favor by having me show up in tuxedo to her apartment in NYC and sing one of the ballads from her act. I upped the ante by personalizing the song to that tune ("Time Heals Everything" from Mack and Mabel). This time, Deb ends up being on the receiving end of a torch song.

(sung to the tune of "Time Heals Everything")

Steven's 'cross the "pond"
No disputing.
Back and forth, you're fond
Of commuting.
30 years ago, met, it's said.
Split, then met again
Now, you're wed!

He's enthralled with you
Like no other.
To his children
The best stepmother

Today it's you he's thinking of
It won't be long now till October
To Hale you'll be going over.

Happy Birthday, Deb
Steven sends this with
All his love.

Kerry
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'Gram of the Week (9/12/11 - 9/18/11)

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE DONATA?

Mary Johnson was a nun for over 20 years. With the chosen name of Sister Donata, she worked in the Missionaries of Charity congregation with Mother Teresa in Calcutta.

The operative word here is "was". She is no longer a nun. Having left the order, she came back to the States and wrote a book called "An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life".

The book, published by Random House, was scheduled to hit the market on Tuesday. Her story is in the October issue of O Magazine, with Oprah and Rosie O'Donnell on the cover.

What better way to celebrate and thank Mary's publisher and her agent by sending a singing nun to sing a congratulatory/thank you telegram from a former nun. (what's with all the singing nuns lately?)

Dan Conaway is Mary's agent. He nixed the idea of Mary's original sub-title for the book, which was "Mother Teresa Wasn't Always Pleased With Me". There was also some private joke in there involving Copernicus, when he awoke from his coma after someone placed a published copy of his "De Revolutionibus" in his hands, took his last breath, and died!

From there I went to Random House to sing to a group of editors, publicists, audio book producers, and their assistants -- all of whom tried their very best to take in the sight of a singing nun, congratulating them and thanking them for all the work they did to make Mary's book possible. I was a big hit all around.

Loved collaborating with Mary on this. The only unanswered question is "Who will play her in the movie?" She suggested that I should, given that I was so convincing in my habit. But I'm thinking more along the lines of Debra Winger, or her heir apparent!

Kerry
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'Gram of the Week (9/5/11 - 9/11/11)

THE WEEK THAT WASN'T !

This week will go down as being more interesting for the deliveries that didn't happen, as opposed to the ones that did.

On Monday, a woman called me to inquire about a delivery at a hospital in NYC for someone who had minor surgery. Each hospital has its own policy regarding deliveries, as well as what costumes are permitted. It's always best to check beforehand. Most hospitals DO allow singing telegrams, but generally limit delivery time to visting hours. Some restrict balloons and very often "suggest" that anything loud and outrageous be toned down. So even gorillas and chickens pass the smell test.

But this woman had asked about a grim reaper! A grim reaper?" Really? "A grim reaper at a hospital?"

"Why not?", was her reply.

"Maybe the fact that some people go into a hospital but don't come out. I think it would be alarming to have the grim reaper share an elevator with a relative of a recently deceased person....not to mention it's really in poor taste and inappropriate. I am sure the hospital won't allow it. And even if they did, I wouldn't be interested in doing this delivery for you."

"But you're in the service industry!" she snapped.

"Yes, I am," I replied, "but I have certain guidelines that have to be met. A delivery like this could prove to be hurtful to someone, just by an unintentional meeting. And that's not the kind of business I run. I can't fill the request that would result in your satisfaction."

"Well!" she clearly was clueless and exasperated by my response. Then she hung up.

I'm guessing she got someone else somewhere to fill her request. As I like to say, "wouldn't wanna touch that karma with a ten-foot pole!"

My second non-delivery started out as a delivery. A secretary called on behalf of her boss to order a Get Well singing telegram for her boss's partner, who was home recovering from being hit by a car while bicycling. At first she asked for a rabbi, because the partner was Jewish. After being told it's not on the costume list and suggesting the man might be offended, she opted for a singing nun, because her boss was Catholic. She claimed her boss approved it. I kept asking to speak to her boss to help clarify the order, but she said he was too busy to talk and she was authorized to do the ordering, which she did, using his corporate credit card.

The delivery was to take place the next day, between 1:00 - 2:00 PM. The next day at 12:36 PM, 24 minutes before the delivery is to take place and ten minutes away from arriving at the house of the recipient, Dina calls to say her boss wishes to cancel the telegram because HE thinks the nun is inappropriate and offensive.

"But you ordered it yesterday, fully cognizant of it being a nun, specifically because I didn't have a rabbi."

"Well, my boss changed his mind and no longer wants it." she said.

I told her she could change the costume, but couldn't cancel the delivery because I need 48 hour's notice and she's only giving me 20 minutes. I'd be happy to redeliver with another costume later that day, but she wasn't budging.

"This is not a shirt you can return to Macy's!" I said. "Let me talk to your boss"

Again, with the "He's too busy to talk to you. I'm authorized on his behalf to make the decision."

I should have just said that it was too late, I couldn't get hold of the messenger in time, and left it at that. Instead, I headed to my next delivery. Within four days, I got a letter from American Express with an attached letter from Dina's boss saying he was disputing the charge with all sorts of made-up excuses that made me look like I run a business that could get a Triple F rating from the Better Business Bureau. (30 years of great customer service being thrown down the drain!).

Thankfully, I have all the calls and time-stamps on record, as well as every page of my website showing the cancelation policy clearly stated. Over the course of the 30 years I've been in business, there have been about four disputes over charges and each time American Express has sided with me 100%, without even having to make a partial refund.

What's ironic is that in each case, specific to the delivery, there is something the customer could have said that would have left me defenseless. Of course that "reason" would have been a lie, but nevertheless, I would have no choice but to refund the money to the customer. (For reasons you can understand, I'll elect not to disclose it.)

So now, having submitted my data to American Express, I await the resolution which I expect to be in my favor. I'd much rather be concentrating on making someone's day a little happier!

Kerry
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'Gram of the Week (8/29/11 - 9/4/11)

HIGH MAINTENANCE

Tiffany loves her brother...dearly. She's the baby sister of the Safavieh rug and furniture store family that dominates the home furnishings industry. Their headquarters and warehouse are on Long Island in Port Washington, NY. Tiffany's also a little bit nervous.

It was her brother's Birthday and she called me that morning to do something for the afternoon. She kept calling back to change the costume at least a half-a-dozen times. Then the bombshell hit when she said her brother was going into Manhattan for a meeting, but was coming back out at the end of the work day. I was a little skeptical because, he lives in Manhattan, it IS his Birthday, so why would he come back out to the warehouse if he left early to go into the city? And my policy is that I need 48 hours notice for cancelation, so it couldn't be canceled. I'd be happy to re-deliver, but if he wasn't going to be there, why waste everybody's time? She insisted he would be there.

The last costume change was from a Rapping Gorilla to a Mick Jagger/Ozzy Osbourn-type rock star. The problem was that the rap had already been written and there was no time to re-write it, so the rock star was going to rap out the Birthday song.

Complicating things was that I had House Seats to see "War Horse" on Broadway that night and I was taking my daughter to see it, so we had to be there by a specific time. Tiffany kept calling me as I was driving to the delivery, giving me traffic updates as to where her brother was as he headed back to the warehouse. As I pulled into the parking lot , Tiffany calls me, very nervous that Jonathan will see me upon his arrival. It's a huge parking lot and I told her that unless he was specifically looking for a surprise, and based on where I was parked, it was highly unlikely Jonathan would spot me. And that's exactly what happened. Jonathan arrived and went straight into the building.

Tiffany decides to come down to the car to give me more last-minute instructions. It was then I got to meet her face-to-face and she got to see me sitting in the car with a 16 year old! I offered no explanation and Molly just smiled and waved to her. It was the first time all day that she was speechless.

But she quickly recovered and started to give me the scenario about how I should wear my costume and that maybe I shouldn't wear the spiky-haired 80's glam-rock wig I wear for such deliveries. I finally had to stop her and say, "Tiffany, please let me do my job. I know exactly what to do."

With that, I walked into the showroom/warehouse and started talking very loudly about how I was a rock manager and needed to furnish my airplane with Safavieh carpets, talking in a really bad over-the-top cockney accent. When Jonathan turned the corner, he didn't know what to make of me. I then told him I was the lead singer of a Rolling Stone cover band called, "Gathers No Moss" and that I heard it was his Birthday, so the boys and I wrote a little ditty and rapped it.

Jonathan just beamed from ear-to-ear. He told his sister it was the best gift he had ever been given (I don't think that was hyperbole!), and baby sister Tiffany was pleased. She was so pleased, that she called me about four more times on my way into Manhattan to tell me what a great job I did and that her brother can't stop talking about it. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said. "You were right".

(a la rapping style)

Let's celebrate, you're 28, knock me off my kiester

You're such a macho guy and yet you're a big fashionista

You're into bath & body goods, on that you should be dwelling

Stick candles underneath our nose, then ask, "How is that smelling?"

"Competitors are criminals", of that you scream and shout

On every website you delight, "Make sure you're whoring out!"

Soon you will go on QVC, where they sell Coach and Gucci

Your dream, by far, to be a star, bigger than Susan Lucci!

Kerry

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'Gram of the Week (8/22/11 - 8/28/11)

HURRICANE IRENE

There must be something in the atmosphere that affects and influences people's biorhythms...or maybe it's that primitive, caveman part of us, like the hypnic jerk, where you feel like you're falling just before you fall asleep. I've read that primitive man, or probably our more ape-like ancestors used to sleep in trees. And if you fell out of a tree, well, you were dinner for whatever lurked below. That jerking reflex kept you alive and from falling out of the tree!

It is with that, that I introduce a variety of highlighted deliveries for the week.

The week started innocently enough with a delivery to a 95 year-old retired medical professor from Cornell University; Dr. Roger Greif. An old-fashioned gentleman, Dr. Greif has taught and trained generations of young doctors throughout the years. His wife is a trustee of Goucher College in Baltimore. I had expected to deliver to his apartment on East 87th Street. I was mistaken....it was his house! His HOUSE in New York City. It's rare that I get to go to someone's house in Manhattan. The entire brownstone is his home, and he lives over by Gracie Mansion.

What made this delivery so interesting is the inter-connecting of life's dots; the six degrees of separation. Making some light conversation after, I sang, I asked if Cornell was the only place he taught. Roger said that he had taught at Johns Hopkins in the early 1950's. Then I mentioned that I was reading this remarkable book called "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", by Rebecca Skloot, which tells the story of how in 1951, at Johns Hopkins, a young black woman's sample of her cancerous tissues, taken without her knowledge or consent, continued to grow (and are still growing) and turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology, making some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. Dr. Greif nodded and said simply , "Yes, I knew those people".

Then Wella International sent me to the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa on Fifth Avenue to send a singing VIP invitation to two stylists/colorists to come to the annual International Trend Vision Awards as guests of Wella. Usually held in Europe in cities like Paris or Milan, for the first time the event is being held here in New York. It's a gathering of 65 other countries. Exciting for all I imagine, except of course, those in the industry who work in New York . So I went, dressed in my tuxedo, and sang a song to the very embarrassed duo, to the tune of "New York, New York", while their wealthy clientele looked bemused by the presentation. The staff was super. They treated me as if I were one of their guests, giving me a cool glass of water with lemon while I waited to perform.

Speaking of lemons, this next delivery was a testament to making lemons out of lemonade.

Toward the end of the week, with the approaching hurricane, things started to get a little wobbly. Maria had originally called me a few weeks back to do a Bachelorette Party-type delivery out in Montauk Point on a Saturday night, but by the time she called the order in, there was no one available to do it, since it's a two-hour drive east and a two-hour drive back. I couldn't squeeze it into what was already on the books. So I sadly had to kiss that one goodbye. But Maria loved the idea so much, she decided to have it done at BLT Fish in Manhattan at the rehearsal dinner, the night before the wedding/reception at Cipriani's. The rehearsal dinner was also the night before the hurricane. She had asked for a singing chicken because the bride and groom collect stuffed animals and that's the closest costume I have to a stuffed animal. A few hours before the delivery, Maria calls me to tell me that Cipriani's called them to tell them the wedding was being called off. They had no staff for the next night because of the hurricane and they had to postpone it until sometime in October. That's enough to take the wind out of anyone's sails.

But because it was Friday and the hurricane had yet to begin, they were already celebrating their rehearsal dinner with most of the guests who would be attending the wedding, including the bride's Aunt, who is a spiritual leader and the celebrant for the wedding. The couple opted to get married on THAT night, instead of some arbitrary date in October. After a quick "update/rewrite" of the song, Aunt Barbara stepped in to unite them, the chicken was the "cantor-du-jour", and Hurricane Irene christened the festivities.

"Tomorrow was the day, it's true

You were supposed to say, "I do"

But a woman has stepped in-between

She goes by the name of Hurricane Irene"

And finally.......there's Louie. If anyone personified the imminent storm, it was he. It's Lou's 25th Birthday. With his two sisters, they run a Greek restaurant in Brooklyn. He's the cook. Based on what his girlfriend of six months told me, he seemed like a pretty interesting guy. He's of Greek/Mexican descent, speaks Italian, Greek, Spanish, and English, works six days a week, loves to quote liberally from Adam Sandler movies, plays poker with his buddies, and is a big practical joker.

But this goes back to what I've said many times before; a singing telegram is NOT for everybody. You should know the person well enough to know whether or not they are a good candidate for a singing telegram. Louie was not. I'm in Brooklyn, poised to do my chicken delivery. The skies are getting dark and ominous and I'm eager to get back to Long Island before our predicted Category One arrives.

It arrived earlier than expected....in the form of Louie. Oh, was he mad! And I knew it the minute I stepped out of the bathroom to confront him. I'm liberally editing the song, doing my best rendition of an Evelyn Woods Speed Through (look it up!), looking for that hint of a smile. It ain't there and it ain't coming. He finally put his hand up and said, "Stop!" Which I immediately did. I turned, walked back to the bathroom to change, and walked out.

His sisters were very apologetic. I don't take it personally. "It's alright, it happens," I said. I just wanted to get home. I had to walk past Louie and his girlfriend, outside of the restaurant, with him screaming at her and a look of complete astonishment on her face. (A side of him you never saw before? When someone shows you who they are......believe them. The first time!).

The skies opened up as I pulled into my driveway.

Kerry

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'Gram of the Week (8/15/11 - 8/21/11)

GOING FOR THE TRIFECTA!

Evan has already surprised his wife, Stacy, with a singing telegram. It was a year ago, when he sent me to her Dad's dress designer company in the Garment Center in NYC.

This time, they would be dining at Rare Steakhouse in Syosset. Evan's cool. I always admire entrepreneurs, who come up with neat ideas for their business. Evan's is called Bar Mitzvah Bouncer. He provides a party chaperone service in the New York/New Jersey area for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Sweet 16 parties, and any other teen party, where parents want peace of mind, supervising the kids, while the parents can enjoy the party, as well. He hires teachers who have that special knowledge needed to deal with the teens effectively -- a great and effective idea!

I have a special kinship with Evan. Both of our wives laughed at us when we told them the type of business we wanted to start.

This time Evan was going for the trifecta; he didn't just want to send me into the restaurant once to sing to his wife again, he wanted me to go out and change my costume and come in a second time, making it three times that his wife has been surprised with a singing telegram in one year.

The first time, I was dressed as the Godfather/Soprano/Goodfellas/Wise Guy character, "Beansy". The second time, I was dressed as the chicken. It was raining like heck outside and the restaurant was packed for a Sunday night, but the owner had no objections to my singing in the middle of their dinner and allowed me to get into my costume inside the front of the restaurant, out of the rain (Nice guy. Note to self; patronize the place!)

Stacy just groaned and rolled her eyes when I turned the corner (She didn't know what else was coming!). But she was very gracious and took it like a pro, while zinging her husband with sideway glances. She was a little down in the dumps because they were supposed to be in the Bahamas Atlantis for her Birthday, but her daughter got sick and they had to cancel at the last minute....and no, this didn't make up for it!

After the first song, I kissed Stacy goodbye, and said, "See you next year!"

Five minutes later, I was back singing as a chicken. All she could do was just stare at Evan. Her Dad didn't even stop eating this time; just kept packing the food in, while I sang! At one point, she said to her husband, "I am so embarrassed!"

Wait a minute. Let me get this straight; I'M the one dressed as a chicken and YOU'RE embarrassed?

On the way out, the restaurant owner said, "So you coming back as Elvis next?"

I answered, "No, why?"

He said, "Oh, the husband mentioned that he was having an Elvis singing telegram, too!"

(Glad I got in and out early!)

Kerry

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'Gram of the Week (8/8/11 - 8/14/11)

WE AIM TO PLEASE!

I work in the service industry. My job is to give the customers what they want. I feel I already offer a unique business; custom-written, personalized songs, and a wide range of costumes from which to choose. But sometimes, customers want something else. Perhaps a costumed character not on my extensive list, a delivery outside of my delivery zone, or maybe a specific song, instead of a personalized one.

As long as their request doesn't hurt or offend anybody, I usually comply; or make the attempt to comply. After all, as I said, it's a service business. I never say "No!" The next step, of course, is pricing the request to close the deal. The rental of a costume, the extra charge for transportation, or taking the time to download a song and then learning it. All of that costs money and has to be factored into my price for the specialized service. And most customers understand that and have no problem paying the additional fee.

Rakel contacted me from Sweden. She's working temporarily in the Stockholm office of B-Reel -- a production company that produces digital, film, and animation. It's her first Anniversary for her and Patrik; they've been dating a year. Her request was pretty unusual. She wanted a male singer to arrive at the New York office of B-Reel, dressed as a big red heart, and sing two specific songs.

The first song was "You and Me", by Penny and the Quarters, which became a hit when it was used in the Ryan Gosling film, "Blue Valentine". No problem. That was easy.

The second song was a little bit more unusual. Apparently, they have this private joke between them that has to do with a South Park episode, where a hand-puppet sings a song a la Jennifer Lopez, called "Taco-Flavored Kisses" .

And the request was to sing that second song, JUST LIKE the puppet sings it on the YouTube clip. Well, it took a couple of dozen times of listening to it over and over to get the rhythm and the pronunciations right ("Fulfill all your weeeeshizz with my taco-flavored keeeeesizz"), but in the end, I nailed it: picture perfect.

Now I can't get the damned song out of my head!

Kerry

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