Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #25
25th door has Hercules and the Captive Women? Huh, this thing must be defective. #retroflixadventcalendar
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #24
Behind the 24th door is ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the review for which contains strong language.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #22
Door 22 has The 10 best things about A Christmas Story #retroflixadventcalendar http://retroflix.wordpress.com/2009/12/25/10-best-things-about-a-christmas-story/
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
This Again?
Every time I see a list of worst movies, like say this one for VEWPRF movies, all I can think is "You haven't seen many movies, have you?"
Because let me tell you, all of those movies are GOLD! PURE F'n GOLD! Compared to some of the dreck I've been prepared to watch over the years, those movies they mentioned are high points of excellence. I mean all five of those are at least actual movies.
I notice, for example that they mention "Silent Night, Deadly Night" but not "Silent Night, Deadly Night II", which is a far, FAR worse movie. In fact, it's so bad that SNDN2 is barely a movie, more a collection of scenes barely connected by stock footage. Jingle All The Way might be a stupid movie, but it has a plot, a protagonist, an antagonist, and holds to a three act structure. And where the hell is Christmas Evil? Or the 1959 Mexican Santa Claus?
Herein lies the problem. I can name five movies, off the top of my head, that make Santa Claus Conquers the Martians seem like Citizen Kane. In that it makes it seem like a not-very-good movie that lots of people know about and most people haven’t seen. This all touches upon my old post "You think that movie is bad?" from a while ago. Why even bother going into worst movie territory? No matter how bad your list, someone can trump the supposed worst with something really bad. It just makes the writer look like they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And if you do know what the hell you’re talking about, what exactly is the prize? I mean… I’ve watched Silent Night, Deadly Night II, and believe me there is no prize. No one wins when you watch that thing.
Because let me tell you, all of those movies are GOLD! PURE F'n GOLD! Compared to some of the dreck I've been prepared to watch over the years, those movies they mentioned are high points of excellence. I mean all five of those are at least actual movies.
I notice, for example that they mention "Silent Night, Deadly Night" but not "Silent Night, Deadly Night II", which is a far, FAR worse movie. In fact, it's so bad that SNDN2 is barely a movie, more a collection of scenes barely connected by stock footage. Jingle All The Way might be a stupid movie, but it has a plot, a protagonist, an antagonist, and holds to a three act structure. And where the hell is Christmas Evil? Or the 1959 Mexican Santa Claus?
Herein lies the problem. I can name five movies, off the top of my head, that make Santa Claus Conquers the Martians seem like Citizen Kane. In that it makes it seem like a not-very-good movie that lots of people know about and most people haven’t seen. This all touches upon my old post "You think that movie is bad?" from a while ago. Why even bother going into worst movie territory? No matter how bad your list, someone can trump the supposed worst with something really bad. It just makes the writer look like they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And if you do know what the hell you’re talking about, what exactly is the prize? I mean… I’ve watched Silent Night, Deadly Night II, and believe me there is no prize. No one wins when you watch that thing.
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #21
We have arrived at the twenty-first door, which contains The Rugrats Chanukah Special #retroflixadventcalendar
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
5 things (Marshmallow Edition)
1. Made some Rice Crispy Treats yesterday from my own marshmallows. They are better than yours, because of the home made marshmallowness.
2. Going to buy some agar and see how vegan marshmallows turn out. I want to make sure that vegans can have marshmallows too. The Internet claims that agar can be swapped for powdered gelatine on a one-to-one ratio. The only thing that gets me is WOW(!) agar is waaaay more expensive than gelatin. Not going to buy it today, that's for damn sure.
3. You can use pomegranate juice instead of water when you make marshmallows. I assume cranberry, grape, apple, and prune juice would also work.
4. If you boil too much liquid off your syrup, you can add some back during the mixing process, but this is dangerous as you'd need to know exactly what the mixture should look like while mixing or you could over do it. I actually under did it, so that batch was still kind of stiff, but as Syd is just going to put them in hot cocoa, it doesn't really matter. You can't add sugar if you didn't boil enough, you get gritty mallows. Perhaps if I try with powdered next time...
5. It still feels like I've performed a magic trick every time I pull one of these marshmallow out and munch one. I did this, I made this thing, I can produce candy! I can add pomegranate juice to the mix and feel like some sort of culinary god, because no one I know can even conceive of the idea of making a marshmallow in their own kitchen. At least know one I know IRL, some of you internet people probably know about it.
2. Going to buy some agar and see how vegan marshmallows turn out. I want to make sure that vegans can have marshmallows too. The Internet claims that agar can be swapped for powdered gelatine on a one-to-one ratio. The only thing that gets me is WOW(!) agar is waaaay more expensive than gelatin. Not going to buy it today, that's for damn sure.
3. You can use pomegranate juice instead of water when you make marshmallows. I assume cranberry, grape, apple, and prune juice would also work.
4. If you boil too much liquid off your syrup, you can add some back during the mixing process, but this is dangerous as you'd need to know exactly what the mixture should look like while mixing or you could over do it. I actually under did it, so that batch was still kind of stiff, but as Syd is just going to put them in hot cocoa, it doesn't really matter. You can't add sugar if you didn't boil enough, you get gritty mallows. Perhaps if I try with powdered next time...
5. It still feels like I've performed a magic trick every time I pull one of these marshmallow out and munch one. I did this, I made this thing, I can produce candy! I can add pomegranate juice to the mix and feel like some sort of culinary god, because no one I know can even conceive of the idea of making a marshmallow in their own kitchen. At least know one I know IRL, some of you internet people probably know about it.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #19
Behind the Nineteenth Door is the infamous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer review #retroflixadventcalendar
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Riddle Me This, Internet
When you make hot cocoa, like from a packet, do you make it with water or with milk?
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #18
This is the Eighteenth Door. Behind it resides Tales from the Darkside “Seasons of Belief” #retroflixadventcalendar
I love this episode, but I don't love the review. I don't think the review does the episode justice. I tried hard, but I don't think it works as great as it could. Tomorrow I'll pick a better review.
I love this episode, but I don't love the review. I don't think the review does the episode justice. I tried hard, but I don't think it works as great as it could. Tomorrow I'll pick a better review.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #14
Behind the Fourteenth Door is... A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is the darkest, meanest, most mean spirited review I have ever done. You were warned. #retroflixadventcalendar
The Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Forty-Eight)
The Return of Jack Collier
A Jack Collier Story
By Brett N. Lashuay
Alice Liddell’s Diary
The strange thing about giving an interview to someone who writes books is that you’re not just done in a few hours. You’ve got to have meetings for days, and you’ve got to keep talking. You talk and talk and talk and when you run out of things to say, the guy prompts you with another question or two and you’re expected to then take up the story for another half an hour before the next question.
The TV interviews are easier, for the most part. Jack’s true crime buddy makes the interviews feel like we’re friends, like he’s on my side. He’s got three hundred pages to fill, he wants as much of the story as he can get his hands on. The TV people are trying to get a reaction for their viewing audience, they make things a little harder. I managed though, I must have done alright because they kept asking me to come and talk about things on some show or other.
Fortunately, Jack was right about gaining attention. It did help a lot when people started pestering the right people that maybe I was really a good girl who faced extraordinary circumstances. It didn’t make facing the review board anything like a walk in the park, but knowing that a fair few important people liked having a face for law and order that people might want to look at helped.
I’m glad to say that I was cleared of any wrong doing, was told that some of my methods were naughty but that was about all. I even got Jim to sign off on some of the more recent documents from the Thinkonomics/King file. I wish to point something out though, I’m not a national figure. I’ve been on CNN three times, total. I’ve been interviewed for Time and two small industry magazines. I’m not even the flavor of the month, I’m just a flavor for the day.
I’m actually being looked at for promotion now. Even when someone in the news decided to take what I still think of as an unnatural interest in my private life, it doesn’t seem to have hurt any. I’m still not happy to have to explain that I don’t feel possessive and what my boyfriend does is only between me, him and the other ladies involved, but it hasn’t done as much damage as I thought it might. If anything, I’ve got a few people who are more interested in getting me higher now. Being outted by some news paper twerp who wanted to try and make a scandal out of a polyamorus bisexual being considered for high position in the agency actually worked against him since it caused a lot of people who wouldn’t have cared one way or another decide that I was worth protecting and elevating.
And that’s, sort of the other problem. Two problems. The first is that I don’t want to be anyone’s poster child or test case. I’ve always wanted to just do my job and go home to whoever it was who was waiting for me to get home. And that is the second problem. The person I want to go home to is in Michigan, and he’s not going to leave Debbie to come here. I wouldn’t want him to either. Nothing has happened between us, but I think that I if I were going to buy Jack I would want to make sure Debbie came as part of the package. I’m pretty sure that Debbie doesn’t want to leave the area Karen is in, and I don’t want to make either of them move but I need to be here if I’m looking at promotion. So I can’t even be with the people I want to be with, except for trips and vacations.
And, I’m going to say it, Jack has got to decide what he thinks he wants to do. He’s still just sitting around, being indecisive and waiting for someone else to make the decision for him. I’m guessing one of us is going to have to tell him to make a decision or it’ll get made for him. Which brings me to the call I got this morning…
“Alice Liddell?” I said as I answered my phone.
“Hi Alice.” Debbie’s voice came across the line.
“Hi Debs.” I said, I think must have I caught that from Jack, because I would have never called a grown woman ‘Debs’ in the past. “What’s going on?”
“Can you come up for a week, or maybe just a weekend?”
“I think I can.” I said. “Why?”
“I think it’s time we have a talk with him.” She said. “I would rather all four of us confronted him at once and demanded some kind of word out of him.”
“Tell him he’s either got to say yes or no?” I asked.
“I think we’ve just got to tell him to say yes.” She said. “He wants to say yes, it’s in him to say yes, but he’s got some sort of mental block or something. He’s never been really comfortable with stability and this feels stable.”
“Maybe if we told him you and I were sleeping together he could mentally tell himself he was doing each of us behind the other’s back.”
She laughed at that. It was a nice laugh. I liked hearing her laugh. That’s a stupid path to start down. I shouldn’t be talking like that, I shouldn’t even be thinking it really. You start at the laugh, then you think about her lips, then the way her shoulders move when she walks, and it’s just nothing but trouble from there.
“That would be dishonest.” She said.
“Not if we started.” I said, which was sort of going into a little game we’d been playing with each other. It was the sort of game where you pretend that you’re not dead serious with what you’re saying.
“Oh, if only my darling.” She said, playing along with me. “But you’re too far and we’ve got this sulking penis carrier between us. I’m afraid he’d disapprove.”
“He can’t interfere.” I said, “If he gets in the way, we’ll just squeeze him between us and talk about shoes and cute skirts until he gets disgusted and leaves. Then you’ll be all mine.”
“When can you come?” She asked, and I wanted to say about ten minutes after we get him out of the way, but her tone had changed and we were being actually serious now.
“I’ll have to arrange a few things.” I said looking at my calendar. “A couple of days?”
“Okay.” She said.
“Are we going to have to make decisions?” I asked. “Because they’re really talking about that promotion for real.”
“I don’t think so.” She said. “Not yet, but we’re not the ones who are stalling and making everyone wait.”
“Okay.” I said. “Is he okay?”
“He’s very annoyed about the money.” She sighed.
“Why, aren’t you getting paid?”
“Yes.” She said. “But Jack’s got this… thing about money. He keeps thinking that he’s betraying his working class roots because he spent a summer working in an injection molding factory one year and a machine parts shop another year. The idea of financial security worries him more than the idea of being broke. I don’t understand it, but he’s always convinced that money causes more problems than it causes.”
“Strange.” I said, because almost nothing about that made any sense to me.
“I know.” She said. “So we’ll see you in a couple of days?”
“I’ll call you tonight.” I told her. “I’ll have to check some airfares and stuff.”
“I’ll take care of that.” She offered. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not fair to make you pay.”
“Oh.” I said. “Thanks.”
“Just call me tonight and tell me when you can get out here.” She said. “I’ll get everything else arranged from there.”
“Okay.”
“It’s going to be alright, you know that, right?” Debbie said. “He’s going to make the right choice, and he’ll work like hell to make it all work.”
“I know.” I said. “I just feel like he could run off again at any moment.”
“I don’t think he will.” She said. “I think he’ll stay this time.”
“I should hope so.” I said. “I don’t think I could take anymore abandonment without developing some serious issues.”
“I won’t let him do that to you.” She said.
“Thanks.” I gave a little laugh. “I’ve got a question though.”
“Yeah?”
“What happens if I get this promotion, and he does what we know he’s going to?”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and I almost wanted to ask if she was still there when I heard her take in a long breath. It was pretty clear that I’d asked the question she didn’t have the answer to yet, which is probably why we were all waiting for him to do something. Jack would have and answer if we asked him, he’s good at answers to tough questions.
“I think we’ll have to discuss that when it happens.” She said finally. “Jack’ll have an answer. Christ. How stupid does that sound? Like we’re just a bunch of silly girls who need rescuing and a man to lead us along and tell us how it’s going to be.”
“We could try to make up our own minds.” I said.
“No.” And I swear I could perfectly see the shake of her head and the little sardonic smile creeping across her lips. “If we did that, we couldn’t make this all his fault somehow.”
“Well that’s true.” I laughed, and it all seemed like it was going to be okay. “I’ll call you later tonight.”
“Okay.” She said. “We’ll see you in a few days.”
“Yeah.” I said. “Yeah you will.”
And they did.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Oh hipster tree, oh hipster tree...
I decided it was a shame that out hipster tree from last year wouldn't go up since Syd got that bigger tree this year, so I put it up in my office.
Yeah, that's still a Godzilla figure on top.
Yeah, that's still a Godzilla figure on top.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Why I love VEWPRF (Music)
I’m not sure I’ve ever really talked about my heritage and how it affects my everyday life. My people, they come from everywhere. The two lines of my family really show what you get when you’ve been thrown out of every decent country in Europe and set up in the one shithole that will have you. To put simply though, there is Welsh, Irish, French and German within me. French tends to come off as the prominent feature because of the passion. Murder, rape, genocide, multi-level marketing, these are merely distractions. They’re just those petty annoyances that you get when your planet has an infestation of humans upon it. Art though? That shit’s important!
As you may remember, I know more than you do about the holiday called Christmas. In fact, I regularly claim that I know more than anyone else you know. Go ahead, ask me something about Christmas. 1843. Everyone always asks when Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” even though most people then say “Really? It was that long ago?” Leading me to ask them why they asked a question they don’t know the answer to and most they time I am told “Well, I didn’t think you knew the answer either.” Which I think revels a wonderful level of trust on their part vis my honesty. No one ever asks about Bracebridge Hall though. But you know what? None of this is important! I’m not even talking about trivia today, I’m talking about music.
No, this isn’t an angry bile and venom filled rant, this is about the good things.
There was a time though, when I hated Christmas Music. All of it, at least all I’d ever heard up until that point. I’d heard a lot of music, more than is probably healthy for it, but I hadn’t gone much beyond the mainstream and as such hadn’t had my ears opened. When I was about 14 or so though, my father bought a cassette tape. It was of a band I’d never heard of with a weird name. What exactly is a Mannheim Steamroller anyway? Glad you asked, it’s a take on the Mannheim roller technique, but with steam to make it more exciting. Now, as I said, I was not interested in Christmas Music at the time. I had come to the conclusion that it was all Burl Ives and Bing Crosby and other useless shit like that. For a young lad into Blues Traveler and Prince, Bing and Burl are like needles under the fingernails.
However, he played me a song and I can remember very clearly how the first song rolled into my head. It was their take on Deck The Halls (A Welsh Ayre as the track listing mentions) and… I’d suddenly realized that this stuff didn’t need to be a replacement for the sort of sleeping aids you can only get with a doctor’s note and serious insurance. That song exploded in a multi color orgasm in my brain that made me realize I had been wasting my life up until that point and that age 14 I was going to have to start over and begin again. No one had ever said music could sound like that, and they really never said Christmas Music could do this. It could be exciting, and interesting, and there was more to come.
That album is amazingly well put together, because right after a fairly rocking little number comes We Three Kings, which feels like something you might hear in the main hall of a castle circa 1341. I was realing, not just from the beauty of the music, but by the sudden shit in tone and style. And yet, it all fit. It came together and felt completely natural to follow the one song with the other. After that came Bring A Torch, Jeannette, Isabella and again, I had no idea that music itself could sound like this. This was like classical music, but it had strength and bass, which is something I still feel classical has problems with. Not the music itself, but the recordings. They’ve gotten better in the last 30 years, but classical used to have some really bad recordings that made it sound like it had no balls and castration is a terrible thing to do to Vivaldi. It is no exaggeration to say that my world suddenly exploded into fragments that still haven’t fully collected and I realized that MTV and I would soon be parting ways.
If We Three Kings felt like something from the 14th century, Coventry Carol felt even older. Since there is a harpsichord in there, it probably wasn’t, but that’s hardly important. It made my little head go back to ancient castles and old men by the fire telling stories and so on. Coventry Carol was one of the few songs I could always listen to at that time anyway, so that helped. And then, after such a sweet and nostalgic song, came their version of Good King Wenceslas which is full of synthesizers and polyrhythms and it would tear your head off if you weren’t careful. I was amazed, I was entranced, I had taken the first step into a larger world and could see the probe even with the blast shield down.
And that was it. That was all it took. One side of one tape and my world had changed forever. Yes, we listened to the other side, no I’m not going to relay my feelings about those songs. You can listen to most of them in this pair of videos (Part One and Part Two) which are interesting and fun. It’s not important anyway, by the time those other songs came along I was hooked and just wanted more. And I got it, and that’s not always a good thing. Yes, Fresh Aire Christmas was another mind blowing experience. If anything it cemented me to the idea that this was the thing for me to be listening to. Sadly, it started to go down hill from there. While Christmas in the Aire is a great album, you can feel routine starting to set in. You can almost hear the pencil ticking the boxes when a song that fits the mold is played. It’s still good, just not as good. We won’t talk about any of the other albums after that, let’s just say I’m not a fan and move on.
Which is a shame, since Mannheim Steamroller helped to bring Christmas Music out of the ghetto it had (and still does) reside in. See, it used to be that you’d only record Christmas songs for one of two reasons. Either A) You were tired of your contract and wanted to bang out a quick release without actually writing new songs or actually promoting the album or B) Your label is doing one of those company wide albums where the biggest stars each contribute a song. Chip Davis owns American Gramaphone though, and Mannheim Steamroller was its only act for sometime. So when he decided to make a Christmas album, he put the same effort and care he put into any other album, and the care and love really shows in the first two albums. I won’t say he didn’t work hard on the other albums, but I will say he pulled something of a George Lucas in the 90s in that he started to rely on digital reproduction too much and the music suffered for it.
Listen to Pat a Pan from Christmas in the Aire and then any track from Christmas Extraordinaire and the difference will be quite striking. It hardly matters which one you pick, that's the sad part. Say, The First Noel, which is one of the songs on that album I kind of like. Sadly, we can never get those old days back, but we still have the old albums and that is what matters. And that’s not the point anyway. I didn’t start this to complain, I started this to express joy.
See, after I realized that “Hey, Christmas music doesn’t have to suck!” I went looking for other examples of good music, and boy did I find them. Yule Struttin was the first, but not the last Jazz Christmas album I would get. The Narada Christmas Collection would come next and soon would flow a torrent (not in that sense) of music. Celtic albums, Rock albums, Winter's Solstice, Country, Rockabilly, and even The Star Wars Christmas Album! According to I-Tunes I have 180 albums, but one or two of those are individual songs, of which I have 2258. That's about 5.3 days in case you're wondering. Not all of these are winners, not all of these are even something I can stand to listen to, but they’re all something that I would never have even looked for if it hadn’t been for Mannheim Steamroller and that first electric shock. If not for side one of Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas, and the return success of Fresh Aire Christmas I would probably have never have gone as deep down the rabbit hole as I have gone. Now you get to decide if Chip Davis deserves a cookie or a lump of coal.
As you may remember, I know more than you do about the holiday called Christmas. In fact, I regularly claim that I know more than anyone else you know. Go ahead, ask me something about Christmas. 1843. Everyone always asks when Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” even though most people then say “Really? It was that long ago?” Leading me to ask them why they asked a question they don’t know the answer to and most they time I am told “Well, I didn’t think you knew the answer either.” Which I think revels a wonderful level of trust on their part vis my honesty. No one ever asks about Bracebridge Hall though. But you know what? None of this is important! I’m not even talking about trivia today, I’m talking about music.
No, this isn’t an angry bile and venom filled rant, this is about the good things.
There was a time though, when I hated Christmas Music. All of it, at least all I’d ever heard up until that point. I’d heard a lot of music, more than is probably healthy for it, but I hadn’t gone much beyond the mainstream and as such hadn’t had my ears opened. When I was about 14 or so though, my father bought a cassette tape. It was of a band I’d never heard of with a weird name. What exactly is a Mannheim Steamroller anyway? Glad you asked, it’s a take on the Mannheim roller technique, but with steam to make it more exciting. Now, as I said, I was not interested in Christmas Music at the time. I had come to the conclusion that it was all Burl Ives and Bing Crosby and other useless shit like that. For a young lad into Blues Traveler and Prince, Bing and Burl are like needles under the fingernails.
However, he played me a song and I can remember very clearly how the first song rolled into my head. It was their take on Deck The Halls (A Welsh Ayre as the track listing mentions) and… I’d suddenly realized that this stuff didn’t need to be a replacement for the sort of sleeping aids you can only get with a doctor’s note and serious insurance. That song exploded in a multi color orgasm in my brain that made me realize I had been wasting my life up until that point and that age 14 I was going to have to start over and begin again. No one had ever said music could sound like that, and they really never said Christmas Music could do this. It could be exciting, and interesting, and there was more to come.
That album is amazingly well put together, because right after a fairly rocking little number comes We Three Kings, which feels like something you might hear in the main hall of a castle circa 1341. I was realing, not just from the beauty of the music, but by the sudden shit in tone and style. And yet, it all fit. It came together and felt completely natural to follow the one song with the other. After that came Bring A Torch, Jeannette, Isabella and again, I had no idea that music itself could sound like this. This was like classical music, but it had strength and bass, which is something I still feel classical has problems with. Not the music itself, but the recordings. They’ve gotten better in the last 30 years, but classical used to have some really bad recordings that made it sound like it had no balls and castration is a terrible thing to do to Vivaldi. It is no exaggeration to say that my world suddenly exploded into fragments that still haven’t fully collected and I realized that MTV and I would soon be parting ways.
If We Three Kings felt like something from the 14th century, Coventry Carol felt even older. Since there is a harpsichord in there, it probably wasn’t, but that’s hardly important. It made my little head go back to ancient castles and old men by the fire telling stories and so on. Coventry Carol was one of the few songs I could always listen to at that time anyway, so that helped. And then, after such a sweet and nostalgic song, came their version of Good King Wenceslas which is full of synthesizers and polyrhythms and it would tear your head off if you weren’t careful. I was amazed, I was entranced, I had taken the first step into a larger world and could see the probe even with the blast shield down.
And that was it. That was all it took. One side of one tape and my world had changed forever. Yes, we listened to the other side, no I’m not going to relay my feelings about those songs. You can listen to most of them in this pair of videos (Part One and Part Two) which are interesting and fun. It’s not important anyway, by the time those other songs came along I was hooked and just wanted more. And I got it, and that’s not always a good thing. Yes, Fresh Aire Christmas was another mind blowing experience. If anything it cemented me to the idea that this was the thing for me to be listening to. Sadly, it started to go down hill from there. While Christmas in the Aire is a great album, you can feel routine starting to set in. You can almost hear the pencil ticking the boxes when a song that fits the mold is played. It’s still good, just not as good. We won’t talk about any of the other albums after that, let’s just say I’m not a fan and move on.
Which is a shame, since Mannheim Steamroller helped to bring Christmas Music out of the ghetto it had (and still does) reside in. See, it used to be that you’d only record Christmas songs for one of two reasons. Either A) You were tired of your contract and wanted to bang out a quick release without actually writing new songs or actually promoting the album or B) Your label is doing one of those company wide albums where the biggest stars each contribute a song. Chip Davis owns American Gramaphone though, and Mannheim Steamroller was its only act for sometime. So when he decided to make a Christmas album, he put the same effort and care he put into any other album, and the care and love really shows in the first two albums. I won’t say he didn’t work hard on the other albums, but I will say he pulled something of a George Lucas in the 90s in that he started to rely on digital reproduction too much and the music suffered for it.
Listen to Pat a Pan from Christmas in the Aire and then any track from Christmas Extraordinaire and the difference will be quite striking. It hardly matters which one you pick, that's the sad part. Say, The First Noel, which is one of the songs on that album I kind of like. Sadly, we can never get those old days back, but we still have the old albums and that is what matters. And that’s not the point anyway. I didn’t start this to complain, I started this to express joy.
See, after I realized that “Hey, Christmas music doesn’t have to suck!” I went looking for other examples of good music, and boy did I find them. Yule Struttin was the first, but not the last Jazz Christmas album I would get. The Narada Christmas Collection would come next and soon would flow a torrent (not in that sense) of music. Celtic albums, Rock albums, Winter's Solstice, Country, Rockabilly, and even The Star Wars Christmas Album! According to I-Tunes I have 180 albums, but one or two of those are individual songs, of which I have 2258. That's about 5.3 days in case you're wondering. Not all of these are winners, not all of these are even something I can stand to listen to, but they’re all something that I would never have even looked for if it hadn’t been for Mannheim Steamroller and that first electric shock. If not for side one of Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas, and the return success of Fresh Aire Christmas I would probably have never have gone as deep down the rabbit hole as I have gone. Now you get to decide if Chip Davis deserves a cookie or a lump of coal.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #10
Behind the Tenth Door lies The History of Christmas #retroflixadventcalendar
Friday, December 9, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Fuck Christmas - Part One: Making Yuppies Feel Better By Being Poor
If you've been here more than a year, you know that instead of Christmas I've been pushing for a Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festival, or VEWPRF for short. Yes the phrase is unwieldy, but at least it’s both accurate and inclusive. The other thing you might know about me though, is that I know more about Christmas and other Mid-Winter holidays than anyone else you know, unless you know a professor of folklore or a Doctor of Christmas or something. I didn’t get here without research and that research led to me creating the VEWPRF because once you start looking, they’re all the same.
One thing that Christmas has though, that other holidays seem to lack, is things like what I’m going to talk about today. Today, we’re going to examine the Christmas Shoes Story. I’m calling it the Christmas Shoes Story because it’s a good short hand and almost everyone knows the song. If you don’t, go watch this and learn. Basically, it’s making a middle class person feel good about themselves by having a poor person come along and teach them a lesson, but have them only react to it in a solipsistic way. In the telling of these stories, you can tell they never actually realize that there are people out there hurting, or try to do anything about the injustice of the world. Oh no, that would take effort. Besides, these “people” aren’t “Real People” or anything, they’re just little object lessons flown in on the wings of angels to teach you a lesson. These motherfuckers just congratulate themselves for noticing one of these poor bastards for three fucking seconds. And that leads me to saying Fuck Christmas! You don’t get to tell me how awesome you are for helping a kid buy shoes and then claim God killed this kid’s mom, impoverished his dad, broke his tiny little spirit, drove him mad enough to think Jesus cares about footwear, and then inserted him in a line without enough money so YOU can learn about love and the true meaning of Christmas and aren’t you just so fucking special?
I could talk about Christmas Shoes, or I could talk about Tiny Tim which is another egregious example, or any number because this particular sub-genre is quite large. Instead of all the known things I could talk about, I’m going to talk about something obscure that you probably never even knew existed. We’re going for the Casey, Crime Photographer Christmas episode The Santa Claus of Bums' Boulevard, which is a perfect example even if you know nothing about it. You can listen along by clicking that link, if you think you can stomach it.
I’ll admit, until I… acquired a huge pack of files in a legal and honest manner, I had never heard of this particular radio show. It’s not really important though, you get the gist of the show in the first minute or so. Casey works on a newspaper as a photographer that never seems to take pictures, and he’s aided and abetted by his sometimes girlfriend Annie Williams. That’s about all you need to know. At least as far as this episode is concerned, maybe you need to know more on other days, but I doubt it. What you have is a fairly standard detective show. A boy detective and his girlfriend/sidekick solve crimes.
So the story starts with everyone bitching about the fact that they have jobs, which pisses me right off. It took me months to find the job I have, and these motherfuckers are complaining. I only get Christmas Day off because I worked on Thanksgiving! And I still have to work on Solstice and Buddha Day! So you know what? QUIT YER BITCHIN’! Okay, they have to work on Christmas, but none of them have families, or at least none that are local. I don’t want to shout “First World Problems” at these people because I hate that fucking phrase, but if I didn’t, I totally would so shout. Anyway, they’ve got to cover a story in the slum area called Bums Boulevard, because a decent human being is out there being human and decent and these fucktards are going to cover it because they’ve clearly never even heard of such a thing.
There’s this guy who shows up on the corner and hands out new one dollar bills to all the people who live on that street. He’s done this two years in a row and on the third year they want to get a story about him. Now, here’s the thing. They guy shows up, hands out his cash and vanishes without ever telling anyone about who he is or why he does this. So what’s Casey’s first guess on why the guy does it? “Probably a publicity hound.” Because people who want publicity show up unannounced, hand out money and then vanish before anyone can photograph him or get his name or ask him what brand of margarine he’s advertising with this stunt. Stupid! Fucking! Rat! Creature! The characters then engage in a tirade of abuse about how everyone who lives on the block. Seems they’re all just drunks and work-shy hippies who brought their problems upon themselves by taking out those student loans and mortgages that they couldn’t pay back without any thought for those poor bankers who can now only console themselves by snorting their cocaine cut with gold off the backs of silver plated hookers. Before the crash they were snorting pure platinum off the penises of gold leafed war orphans, but we all have to make sacrifices during these hard times.
So they get to the slum after bitching about not having anyone to be with for Christmas, but they get interrupted with their hatred for everyone who makes under $100k and that’s in 1947 dollars. They find that the man with the cash never showed up, and they do some investigating, discovering a former Broadway star. It’s the first time that Casey thinks these people might be real people. He’s then hit up for a dime by a guy who could fill for the position of Jesus if that slot weren’t already filled in this episode. He goes on about how he doesn’t drink, doesn’t steal, and doesn’t forget to worship Jesus because he knows he’d be killed in the streets by proper Christians with bricks if he didn’t.
So let’s get on with it, they find that someone mugged Santa. Going to skip a lot of bullshit and get to the meat of the problem. They find the Santa and he turns out to be the Jesus fill-in for this episode, and I mean that. His name is Mister Shepherd, which I find too goddamn cute and I wrote a novella where Christmas is a woman and she used to be married to a thug named Church before she struck out on her own and now works for a corporate minded fat man. I mean FUUUUCK! He’s not angry about being robbed, and he’s sure that the thief will return the money. He talks in that extremely calm manner of Jesus clones everywhere. He kind of gets on my nerves.
Shepherd goes on about how man needs to remember the simplicity of childhood, that everyone forgets that all of humanity is one big family. Meanwhile, Casey threatens to send the guy to Guantanamo Bay for not being a proper Christian and hating everyone he comes across. Finally, they find someone they think is the thief and a local tough guy holds up the whole group and pulls a gun to prove he’s serious. The local though claims he’s going to kill five people to keep it quite that he stole $300 dollars (in 1947 though, that was worth half a million or so) because that’s how stupid this guy is. Shepherd talks down the tough guy, and gets him to give up the game. He does so by healing the sick, turning water into wine and walking on water. They all then decide they don’t want the money because they’ve all discovered the true meaning of Buddha Day or some bullshit. They then all give the money to the old man who they met earlier, but they do it off screen as it were so you have no idea what his reaction is, so what should be the emotional highpoint isn’t shown and all we get is a moment where everyone admits what a piece of shit they are and says they don’t deserve the money. Then in the bar Casey and Annie talk to the bartender about how the old man gave the money away like the first guy with the money had planned to all along, making the last half our or your life entirely pointless and leaving you to examine your life choices that got you here. Think about that a moment, now think about me. I listened to this fucking thing TWICE! I think it all went wrong in the 2nd grade, in case you’re wondering. I should have killed that kid with my metal compass and gotten my life of crime started early. Why did I ever wait until the 4th grade to go on a murder spree?
And so the heroes relate the story, and point out that they had forgotten that all the world is just one big family and that Christmastime is magic and that God sent them to Bum’s Boulevard to learn a lesson and that it never was such a bad little tree, it just needs a little love and a Red Ryder 200 shot range model air rifles with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time and OH FUCK YOU!!!!!!! You want to know the worst part? You want to know the one thing they found out about Mister Shepherd? They found out his former job, he used to be… a carpenter! *GASP!* Yeah, he’s not a Jeebus stand in, he’s the lord Jeebus himself! How’s that for a twist you saw coming nearly 20 minutes ago?
So yeah, it really is that God came down and showed them that even the bottom levels of humanity are still human and gave them pause for a moment to reflect on how they’d been treating people and blah, blah, blah, fucking blah! Man these stories are bullshit! Nothing good comes from this story, the heroes don’t actually do anything for anyone, and yet they decide that they want patted on the back because for one brief moment they didn’t stomp on a piece of human detritus, even though they’ll go right back to stepping on them come December 26th. Do they really understand the troubles of others? No. Do they do anything to combat the ills of the world? No. Do they face the pain and suffering of the world? No. They help buy a fucking pair of shoes and then claim that God did all of this just to help them be a slightly better person for five fucking minutes because no one else in the world matters but them and everything else is just so much background noise that occasionally pokes through their self-satisfied fog and reminds them not to be quite such an asshole all the time and they want a fucking Nobel prize and a cookie for that.
And that is why I say, FUCK CHRISTMAS!
One thing that Christmas has though, that other holidays seem to lack, is things like what I’m going to talk about today. Today, we’re going to examine the Christmas Shoes Story. I’m calling it the Christmas Shoes Story because it’s a good short hand and almost everyone knows the song. If you don’t, go watch this and learn. Basically, it’s making a middle class person feel good about themselves by having a poor person come along and teach them a lesson, but have them only react to it in a solipsistic way. In the telling of these stories, you can tell they never actually realize that there are people out there hurting, or try to do anything about the injustice of the world. Oh no, that would take effort. Besides, these “people” aren’t “Real People” or anything, they’re just little object lessons flown in on the wings of angels to teach you a lesson. These motherfuckers just congratulate themselves for noticing one of these poor bastards for three fucking seconds. And that leads me to saying Fuck Christmas! You don’t get to tell me how awesome you are for helping a kid buy shoes and then claim God killed this kid’s mom, impoverished his dad, broke his tiny little spirit, drove him mad enough to think Jesus cares about footwear, and then inserted him in a line without enough money so YOU can learn about love and the true meaning of Christmas and aren’t you just so fucking special?
I could talk about Christmas Shoes, or I could talk about Tiny Tim which is another egregious example, or any number because this particular sub-genre is quite large. Instead of all the known things I could talk about, I’m going to talk about something obscure that you probably never even knew existed. We’re going for the Casey, Crime Photographer Christmas episode The Santa Claus of Bums' Boulevard, which is a perfect example even if you know nothing about it. You can listen along by clicking that link, if you think you can stomach it.
I’ll admit, until I… acquired a huge pack of files in a legal and honest manner, I had never heard of this particular radio show. It’s not really important though, you get the gist of the show in the first minute or so. Casey works on a newspaper as a photographer that never seems to take pictures, and he’s aided and abetted by his sometimes girlfriend Annie Williams. That’s about all you need to know. At least as far as this episode is concerned, maybe you need to know more on other days, but I doubt it. What you have is a fairly standard detective show. A boy detective and his girlfriend/sidekick solve crimes.
So the story starts with everyone bitching about the fact that they have jobs, which pisses me right off. It took me months to find the job I have, and these motherfuckers are complaining. I only get Christmas Day off because I worked on Thanksgiving! And I still have to work on Solstice and Buddha Day! So you know what? QUIT YER BITCHIN’! Okay, they have to work on Christmas, but none of them have families, or at least none that are local. I don’t want to shout “First World Problems” at these people because I hate that fucking phrase, but if I didn’t, I totally would so shout. Anyway, they’ve got to cover a story in the slum area called Bums Boulevard, because a decent human being is out there being human and decent and these fucktards are going to cover it because they’ve clearly never even heard of such a thing.
There’s this guy who shows up on the corner and hands out new one dollar bills to all the people who live on that street. He’s done this two years in a row and on the third year they want to get a story about him. Now, here’s the thing. They guy shows up, hands out his cash and vanishes without ever telling anyone about who he is or why he does this. So what’s Casey’s first guess on why the guy does it? “Probably a publicity hound.” Because people who want publicity show up unannounced, hand out money and then vanish before anyone can photograph him or get his name or ask him what brand of margarine he’s advertising with this stunt. Stupid! Fucking! Rat! Creature! The characters then engage in a tirade of abuse about how everyone who lives on the block. Seems they’re all just drunks and work-shy hippies who brought their problems upon themselves by taking out those student loans and mortgages that they couldn’t pay back without any thought for those poor bankers who can now only console themselves by snorting their cocaine cut with gold off the backs of silver plated hookers. Before the crash they were snorting pure platinum off the penises of gold leafed war orphans, but we all have to make sacrifices during these hard times.
So they get to the slum after bitching about not having anyone to be with for Christmas, but they get interrupted with their hatred for everyone who makes under $100k and that’s in 1947 dollars. They find that the man with the cash never showed up, and they do some investigating, discovering a former Broadway star. It’s the first time that Casey thinks these people might be real people. He’s then hit up for a dime by a guy who could fill for the position of Jesus if that slot weren’t already filled in this episode. He goes on about how he doesn’t drink, doesn’t steal, and doesn’t forget to worship Jesus because he knows he’d be killed in the streets by proper Christians with bricks if he didn’t.
So let’s get on with it, they find that someone mugged Santa. Going to skip a lot of bullshit and get to the meat of the problem. They find the Santa and he turns out to be the Jesus fill-in for this episode, and I mean that. His name is Mister Shepherd, which I find too goddamn cute and I wrote a novella where Christmas is a woman and she used to be married to a thug named Church before she struck out on her own and now works for a corporate minded fat man. I mean FUUUUCK! He’s not angry about being robbed, and he’s sure that the thief will return the money. He talks in that extremely calm manner of Jesus clones everywhere. He kind of gets on my nerves.
Shepherd goes on about how man needs to remember the simplicity of childhood, that everyone forgets that all of humanity is one big family. Meanwhile, Casey threatens to send the guy to Guantanamo Bay for not being a proper Christian and hating everyone he comes across. Finally, they find someone they think is the thief and a local tough guy holds up the whole group and pulls a gun to prove he’s serious. The local though claims he’s going to kill five people to keep it quite that he stole $300 dollars (in 1947 though, that was worth half a million or so) because that’s how stupid this guy is. Shepherd talks down the tough guy, and gets him to give up the game. He does so by healing the sick, turning water into wine and walking on water. They all then decide they don’t want the money because they’ve all discovered the true meaning of Buddha Day or some bullshit. They then all give the money to the old man who they met earlier, but they do it off screen as it were so you have no idea what his reaction is, so what should be the emotional highpoint isn’t shown and all we get is a moment where everyone admits what a piece of shit they are and says they don’t deserve the money. Then in the bar Casey and Annie talk to the bartender about how the old man gave the money away like the first guy with the money had planned to all along, making the last half our or your life entirely pointless and leaving you to examine your life choices that got you here. Think about that a moment, now think about me. I listened to this fucking thing TWICE! I think it all went wrong in the 2nd grade, in case you’re wondering. I should have killed that kid with my metal compass and gotten my life of crime started early. Why did I ever wait until the 4th grade to go on a murder spree?
And so the heroes relate the story, and point out that they had forgotten that all the world is just one big family and that Christmastime is magic and that God sent them to Bum’s Boulevard to learn a lesson and that it never was such a bad little tree, it just needs a little love and a Red Ryder 200 shot range model air rifles with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time and OH FUCK YOU!!!!!!! You want to know the worst part? You want to know the one thing they found out about Mister Shepherd? They found out his former job, he used to be… a carpenter! *GASP!* Yeah, he’s not a Jeebus stand in, he’s the lord Jeebus himself! How’s that for a twist you saw coming nearly 20 minutes ago?
So yeah, it really is that God came down and showed them that even the bottom levels of humanity are still human and gave them pause for a moment to reflect on how they’d been treating people and blah, blah, blah, fucking blah! Man these stories are bullshit! Nothing good comes from this story, the heroes don’t actually do anything for anyone, and yet they decide that they want patted on the back because for one brief moment they didn’t stomp on a piece of human detritus, even though they’ll go right back to stepping on them come December 26th. Do they really understand the troubles of others? No. Do they do anything to combat the ills of the world? No. Do they face the pain and suffering of the world? No. They help buy a fucking pair of shoes and then claim that God did all of this just to help them be a slightly better person for five fucking minutes because no one else in the world matters but them and everything else is just so much background noise that occasionally pokes through their self-satisfied fog and reminds them not to be quite such an asshole all the time and they want a fucking Nobel prize and a cookie for that.
And that is why I say, FUCK CHRISTMAS!
Monday, December 5, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #5
Behind the Fifth Door is Scrooge (Seymour Hicks version) #retroflixadventcalendar
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #2
Behind the Second Door is The Burns and Allen Show which is one from the Pain Box
Thursday, December 1, 2011
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