Arrive Magazine - March/April, 2008

First Class

Cry-Baby’s journey through the decades began at the La Jolla

Playhouse with actors James Snyder and Elizabeth Stanley.

TECHNO,
INCOGNITO

Maybe it’s your best friend, an accountant who thinks he’s a baller. Or maybe it’s the teenager next door who pretends to be a rock star. Everyone knows a poseur. In fact, we envy you if you know only one. But these two products are meant to be poseurs— and we love them for it.

The first is a low-tech-looking piece of wood. But it’s actually a high-tech flash drive from oooms. So next time you find yourself holed up in your office for 16 hours in a row, look down at your USB port for a little reminder of what the outdoors is like.

The second, shown here, is what looks like a complex computer circuit board. But when you flip open the lid, a simple business card holder is revealed.

USB: $120; oooms.nl/usb

Cardholder: $19.99; thinkgeek.com

Cry Me a Broadway Hit

Novelty thumb drives are no flash in the pan. Find more of our favorites at arrivemagazine.com

Adam Schlesinger, cofounder of the alt-pop group Fountains of Wayne, is known for writing songs about suburban teenage angst. So when plans were being made to transform the 1990 John Waters movie Cry-Baby into a musical, the producers turned to Schlesinger (right) to cowrite the songs for the adaptation, which debuts on Broadway in March.

“Musically, I think it’s not so different from other things I’ve done. But just the process of it is very different and the collaborative nature of it is different,” says Schlesinger, best known for penning the hit single “Stacy’s Mom.”

Cry-Baby, the story of the love affair between a sensitive greaser and a bored debutante, pokes fun at

various 1950s movie
genres. Because of the
show’s satirical nature,
Schlesinger is collabo-
rating with David
Javerbaum, e xecutive
producer of The Daily Show.

Waters is serving as a creative consultant on the production, and Schlesinger has nothing but good things to say about the quirky director.

“He definitely has his idiosyncrasies that he plays up, I think,” he says. “But he’s generally just a really nice man and not hard to talk to or anything. He’s totally normal in that respect.”