Odds and Sods: End of 2010 Edition

Hey you crazy kidz, hope you all have a great New Years celebration planned. And resolutions, lots and lots of good-hearted resolutions, that make us feel all warm and fuzzy (at least until we break them).

This year has seen DEAD AIR's lowest number of blog posts ever, and one of my resolutions is to post more, even if the posts are short. I don't have to turn everything into a damn epistle! But alas, old habits die hard.

The important thing is the HABIT, I have discovered. If you let a few days go by without writing, well... it's easier to let a few MORE days go by... and finally, you aren't writing at all. That's how it initially happened to me some years ago, when I went long periods (like, years) without writing. I missed chronicling some very important, earth-shattering events, and I now greatly mourn the loss. (We can't remember everything we were thinking/doing ten years ago, even if we believe we do; I re-read parts of this blog from only three years ago and I am astounded at the details I have forgotten already.) I decided I wouldn't let that happen again, but this year, I nearly did.

As many of you know, my spiritual center (so to speak) was re-centered (so to speak), and I found it hard to adequately convey my thoughts and feelings around the shift in sensibility. I still find it very difficult, and I am largely unable to write sensibly about leaving the Church. It remains a jumble of emotions and I need to let it all settle, before I attempt to go there. I have about a half-dozen unfinished posts regarding sudden realizations I have had, re: Christianity and identifying as Christian. For one thing, a loss of respectability, that 1) I didn't know I had and 2) didn't know I valued. Some of this respectability is social, some political, and some is self-respect, and that last one is the one that caught me off guard.

I still identify as a Catholic in a social/ethnic way, and that is also very hard to quantify. I am not sure I even understand what it means, but it is simply true.

And so, forward into another year...

~*~

Two of Cravin Melon, but not sure which two! (They introduced themselves as "2/5 of Cravin Melon" at the Earth Fare benefit for Harvest Hope Food Bank, Thanksgiving Eve.)

~*~

DEAD AIR almost got through a whole year without a troll invasion, but last night, there they were, scurrying out from under all kinds of rocks. (((screams)))

I am currently waiting for the cops to arrive to arrest me for not deleting the troll's angry posts (!), as I have been assured they are on the way.

Today, I drove home at breakneck pace and the only thing I found was two florescent light bulbs outside my door, to install in the kitchen. *sigh* No cops. No subpoena. No indictment. Galdurnit! (as my late uncle liked to say) It appears I got all my hopes up for nothing.

I was planning a really JAZZY end-of-year post about Freedom of Speech and blogging, complete with trolls sending me to jail after posting their addresses on my blog (seriously, read the link)... but nah. I was also hopeful that this would be a big First Amendment case, endearing me to all of Blogdonia (and bringing me thousands of hits, of course), but it all turned out to be just another annoying pain in the ass.

~*~

Tyler Ramsey at the Bohemian Cafe in Greenville, December 4th. His musical compatriots, BAND OF HORSES, have just been nominated for a Grammy award, which he called "Some crazy news!" It certainly is!

Congrats on the nomination, Tyler, and good luck. (Apologies for the blurry photo, but it was kinda dark in there.)

~*~

I did want to link a few people who posted especially interesting, fun and/or very readable stuff that I didn't get to highlight previously:

:: How do I feel about the recent lift of the ban on openly gay soldiers (i.e. Don't ask, don't tell)? Truthfully? I hate when still another group gets turned into cannon fodder. Suzan sums up my feelings perfectly in the title of her piece: To the Gay Community: Now That You Can Join the Military, Please Don’t!

:: Renegade Evolution meets the Furries... great stuff: You’re going to Baltimore? You might need…

:: Jon shared this one with me: The Professional Left Versus The Left of Us. Money quote:

But to some the fascism warned of in all those faint allusions to totalitarian horrors already exists and the death camp trains have been running for decades with barely a peep from the professional liberals. Should we care about Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo when he never felt pressure enough to even lie about wanting to shut down the Corrections Corporation of America? Prisons and the racist legislation, hyper-policing, brutality and fraudulent judicial system that keep them filled are among the nation’s biggest businesses. Joblessness and poverty continue to worsen and even the tens of thousands dying from war abroad are more than matched by the deaths in this country resulting from public policies which deny adequate housing, food and health care to millions.

Preach it, preach it!

:: Skepchick: Eating Disorders, the Media, and Skepticism.

:: AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga by Joe Bageant. Required reading for every culture warrior!

Yellowdog Granny's recent funnies! It's where I found the comic on the left.



Speaking of which, I've been a loyal REAL HOUSEWIVES fan since day one, but this year, I was pretty disappointed in the newest incarnation: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Boring, predictable, with no authentic or amusingly-outrageous neurosis at all, just garden-variety, high-tax-bracket narcissism. Narcissism without neurosis is just... narcissism. Neurosis, however, is what makes the world go round! (We crave copious tearful, self-centered confessions about how no one understands what they go through!!!!) The Bev Hills gang doesn't have enough self-pity to suit me... or it could be that they've had SO MUCH BOTOX they are totally unable to move their faces (the husbands too!) and as a result, cry with their eyes wide open. And that just doesn't pull at my heartstrings in the same way.

If you can't even scrunch up your face and cry like the rest of us, fuck you.

:: Media Matters: 15 Whoppers [Glenn] Beck did not get fired for in 2010. (My first thought: What?! ONLY 15?)

:: Sheila instructs us in Relearning how to breathe. As a customer service rep, I would often notice that my breathing would get all raggedy and strange, after an hour or so of getting my ass chewed out non-stop. I would take a few seconds and concentrate on breathing in and out, and I was amazed at the difference in my state of mind, my countenance, my inner calm.

:: Mia Mingus shares her feelings about November 6, the anniversary of her adoption. This is her recorded birthday, but of course, not really her birthday. I had never really stopped to consider the fact that most adoptees do not know their actual birthdays:

I hate the confusion that surrounds my birthday now. People constantly getting confused, “so which birthday do you celebrate?” “When is your real birthday?” Since finding out the truth, I would rather deny my birthday all together, no celebrations, no worries about what or how birthdays are supposed to feel to someone who does not even know how to think of her own birth. It only marks another year that I have spent separated from pieces of myself that may or may not even exist; pieces of my self that made me, created me, but don’t know me now. It only marks a deep sadness at having celebrated something that was so wrong for so long, something that wasn’t real, the way sometimes entire decades of my life have felt.

Beautiful, expressive writing.

:: My always-embarrassing senator, Tea Party busybody Jim DeMint, has just revealed himself to be a starstruck fanboy, gushing to Politico that Sarah Palin has "done more for the Republican Party than anyone since Ronald Reagan," -- apparently with a straight face, too.

As they say, those two need to get a room.

~*~

And now (((drum roll))) DEAD AIR VIDEO OF THE YEAR... as always, my criteria is the same: Which one did I listen to the most after I initially posted it?

Ohhh, that's an easy call. I must have listened to this five thousand times by now. (As I said back in April, all due to the wonders of modern technology!)

Cleo's Mood - Junior Walker and the All Stars



HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Have a fabulous 2011!

*Photos from my FLICKR page*

On feminist collaboration with the state

As a veteran of the Watergate era, which I obsessively studied as a young pup, I am so deeply cynical and skeptical of our government, that I initially did not even believe these alleged rape-victims of Julian Assange truly existed. I am still profoundly skeptical, until I see an interview with Barbara Walters or equivalent. (I'll settle for a big blue dot over their faces, as was necessary for Patricia Bowman.)

As I have written before: Deja Vu all over again. The disintegration of the leftist/liberal coalition is in full swing. Obama is a one-termer, as was Jimmy Carter. History repeats itself, almost to the letter, but I can't quite figure out if this is the tragedy or the farce?

When I get confused, I flash back to 1979 and the disintegration of the 70s coalition. And then, it all makes sense.

Feminism was wild, woolly, crazy, brash, overbearing. The refrain was: I am woman, hear me ROAR. Not purr. Not blink our waterproofed-mascaraed eyes and meow nicely. ROAR. As the 80s dawned and Reaganism took over, roaring not only rated patriarchal punishment, but outright banishment. Get with the program, bitches, was the new refrain. 70s feminism became an embarrassment to the new careerist women of the 80s, who bleated incessantly, I'm a feminist but I love men! I love men! I don't hate men! I'm a feminist, but... and then finally FEMINISM as a term, as a philosophy, as a politics, was banished, too.

And something happened.

This phenomenon was first controversially chronicled by a woman I have since been told is "anti-feminist"--which is odd, since she was one of the few women who seemed to understand what the hell was going on. I refer to Katie Roiphe.

From The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism by Katie Roiphe:

The image that emerges from feminist preoccupations with rape and sexual harassment is that of women as victims, offended by a professor's dirty joke, verbally pressured into sex by peers. This image of a delicate woman bears a striking resemblance to that fifties ideal my mother and the other women of her generation fought so hard to get away from. They didn't like her passivity, her wide-eyed innocence. They didn't like the fact that she was perpetually offended by sexual innuendo. They didn't like her excessive need for protection. She represented personal, social and psychological possibilities collapsed, and they worked and marched, shouted and wrote, to make her irrelevant for their daughters. But here she is again, with her pure intentions and her wide eyes. Only this time it is feminists themselves who are breathing new life into her.

Self-described feminists ran to the state, to the patriarchy itself, to local police forces and courts that had never given a shit about women, to punish other men. Without apology. In fact, quite proudly. No political equivocations or similar excuses were given, i.e. we need mean guys to police other mean guys. Battered-women's shelters became beneficent arms of the therapeutic culture; police were suddenly seen as the good guys, keeping an eye on those other dangerous, brutal men. (The most horrific suffering in these situations came from battered women married to police officers, since those particular men had easy access to locations of safe-houses.) Radical volunteers at these shelters, even women who had initially organized them (such as Sue Urbas, R.I.P.) were suddenly persona non grata in the places they had started themselves. The experts and the social workers, acting as arms of the state, stepped in. (You can almost hear John Wayne: We'll take over now, little lady.) And they did. By the end of the 80s, they were in the process of doing the same thing to Alcoholics Anonymous and various other self-help organizations. The state, massive apparatus that it is, does not take well to being left out. And men, in particular, were NOT going to be left out of the project, any project.

By 1999 and the advent of LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, the whole concept was solidified. The law is Our Friend. The state will bring sympathetic justice to raped women. We can trust them. This pro-state, pro-government propaganda has never abated.

If you grew up during that time, you don't know any different. You believe the government is there to help women. You do not believe that the government has its own agenda regarding feminism and women. If you say such things to young women, they will furrow their brows: but there are women police officers, they say. (Mariska Hargitay is popular for a reason, you know.) The concept of the state as an agent of repression, is utterly foreign to them. To say otherwise renders you some kind of lefty/anarchist nut, or worse, a conspiracy theorist. Not a realist.

As a result, the entire invasion of Afghanistan was given a properly feminist spin: Women are being abused by the Taliban! Of course, we must invade. Mavis Leno and other billionaire Hollywood feminists unabashedly called for military intervention.

~*~

To review: The US government is a repressive, carnivorous force.

Ask the women of: Japan, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan. (I'm sure I'm missing a few interventions; how could we possibly keep track of them all?) And that is only a half-century's worth of military meddling. As I have written here before, the US government has had its fingers in the business of so many countries, only God knows the extent of it. And by giving our blessing to the state, by running to the state to settle our conflicts and making sure Mariska Hargitay and company have jobs and plenty of work to do, we collaborate. As US residents, we can't help some collaboration (if you don't pay the IRS and fund their wars, they will put you in jail for tax evasion), but other, more insidious forms of collaboration CAN be directly avoided.

Yes, the word for today is COLLABORATION.

The feminists who are currently mouthing well-intentioned variations of: Yes, we know Julian Assange has a big red target on his back placed there by the US government for exposing war crimes against unnamed dark women in Asia with (waving impatiently) smart bombs and stuff, but we must hear out the complaints of these (Daisy first believed nonexistent) Swedish white women who are accusing him, because, well... what would Mariska Hargitay do? What have we been TAUGHT to do?

Listen to the women!

Well, I do listen to women. I listen to the victims of US repression and violence. I listen to the victims of rape in other countries, women who claim their country and governments have been totally destroyed by an advanced, high-tech military campaign financed by MY money, MY government, without MY consent. Have you written about that, American feminists? Have you denounced war, made in your name? Have you profiled THOSE rape victims? Have you believed those victims and made them the centerpiece of your political campaigns? And why haven't you?

Certain feminists have actually written more about Michael Moore declaring the rape allegations are "hooey" --than they have against the war(s) and US imperialism against the unnamed dark women of the world, which is certainly NOT hooey. They seem far more upset over Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann saying predictable and stupid guy-shit on TV, than they are about the wholesale rape and assault of entire fucking countries. Because you know, American feminists should have the right to watch TV without being offended! (Since when?) The fact that these feminists are going after two erstwhile progressives, is pretty gross. Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly trash women and feminism every single day, but somehow, that isn't quite as upsetting.

This disgusting state of affairs has made DEAD AIR almost too nauseated to continue. And then, yes, dear readers, Daisy rallied.

What made me rally? I saw a picture. I decided to share it here. The photo above is of one Dorothy Wetzel Hunt.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, does anyone remember Dorothy Hunt, the wife of E. Howard Hunt?

Dorothy Hunt died. Dorothy Hunt was expendable. Just like all those women in Afghanistan are considered expendable. And the women of all the countries I listed above, were also expendable. American women deserve to live in comfort, and goddamn anybody, male or female, Michael Moore or Dorothy Hunt, who stand in the way.

I can only remember one feminist, Robin Morgan, mentioning Dorothy in a poem. Period. No other feminists gave a shit. She was probably a Republican, after all. No question, she was a CIA agent:

Just before Hunt boarded the aircraft she purchased $250,000 in flight insurance payable to E. Howard Hunt. In his book Undercover (1974), Hunt claims he was unaware that his wife planned to do this. In the book he also tried to explain what his wife was doing with $10,000 in her purse. According to Hunt it was money to be invested with Hal Carlstead in "two already-built Holiday Inns in the Chicago area".

Nixon administration figure Chuck Colson told TIME magazine that "I don't say this to my people. They'd think I'm nuts. I think they [the CIA] killed Dorothy Hunt."[2]Also killed in the December 1972 plane crash was CBS News Correspondent Michele Clark and Illinois Congressman George W. Collins.

"This was probably the most investigated airplane crash in history" said Deputy Cook County Coroner John Haigh. [3] National Transportation Safety Board ruled it to be pilot error. [4]

Sure it was. (Holiday Inns! Ohhh, that is perfect.)

And how thoughtful of Dorothy to purchase all that life insurance just in the nick of time to pay her husband's lawyers! What a nice lady.

I have often imagined how Dorothy felt, boarding that plane and suddenly GETTING IT. What was it was like to know you had that giant red target on your back (the same one now on Julian's back) placed there by the US government? This was the entity she had worked for, sacrificed for, and thoroughly believed in. A lot like The Mafia. It's your life, and then, finally, it is your death.

And so, I write this for Dorothy Hunt. We will never know the truth about your death, Dorothy. And I apologize for all the feminists who didn't bother to investigate. Mariska Hargitay-on-the-trail does not apply to everyone.

This is for all the feminists who believed in ((cough)) "pilot error"; all the feminists who shrugged because you had the wrong politics and the wrong husband.

Similarly, we see that liberal white US feminists are currently picking and choosing which victims are more important than others. Millions of victims of US carnage should rightly rate a few more blog posts than Michael Moore acting like Michael Moore, you know?

My question to all of you is: why haven't they?

As I said, I am profoundly skeptical. I see the hundreds of probably-astroturfed blog post replies with all of the not-linked commenters predictably stating RIGHT ON, we are glad you are standing up to Assange the bully-rapist! How many of these posts are by government plants or right-wing apologists? Are you absolutely certain you are pursuing the right course of action? Do you see that you are (coincidentally!) weakening the individual who has exposed the war crimes of the government? Do these war crimes bother you at all; have you READ the Wikileaks documents? Women's bodies are littered throughout. Do you care about them? (And if you do, why have you not written about them and said so?) Julian's organization, Wikileaks, has exposed horrific war crimes. Why are you going after him, with the blessings of your repressive government? Is your attack on Julian ultimately going to endear you to the women of the world, women unfortunate to have been born on the wrong side, women who have been left without running water and whose children have been blown up?

Oh, please.

They are using you.

And they will continue to use you with aplomb and make sure you get lots of attention, blog links and air time. They will flatter your ego and put you on radio and TV. In fact, you can work for the government right up until the moment of your elimination, when you are no longer useful. Ask Dorothy. Ask her as she was standing at that airline desk, her heart pounding, purchasing all that life insurance.

I'm sure Julian has purchased his.

Merry Christmas from the Family

I've been so profoundly exhausted from another holiday retail season, I almost neglected the fourth year in a row of our Dead Air holiday tradition. I hereby present Robert Earl Keen's MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE FAMILY!

As always, non-rednecks and/or yankees are certainly free to sit this one out.

Have a great Christmas everyone! Feliz Navidad!

~*~

Merry Christmas from the Family - Robert Earl Keen

Father Christmas, Give us some Money!

...The Kinks. Dead Air official Christmas Carol for the fourth year in a row! :D

Why the Right wing is winning, continued

...because the left no longer tolerates dissent.

I just realized I have been banned from a good half-dozen lefty-blogs in the past few weeks. And not a single right-wing blog has banned me.

I have been as much of a pest at the conservative right-wing blogs as I have been at the liberal-lefty-radical blogs; I have in fact been far more rude and nasty to the Tea Partiers. I have (more or less) minded my manners at all of the lefty blogs, but that hasn't helped me. After all, I AGREE in principle with the lefty bloggers.

All arguments at left-leaning blogs centered on various minor points of dogma, or about the fact of confrontation itself (something the right-wing welcomes and enjoys). The Left will have none of it. It seems the good people of the Left cannot even answer ME, one of their own. How on earth could the Left realistically respond to the Right? Looking at the liberal blogs in question, I see that no outright conservatives are allowed to participate. Looking at the conservative blogs, I see a willingness to take on the liberals, even a zeal to do so.

This is how we know they are on the ascent; they are unafraid.

Meanwhile, the Left cowers and censors some old hippie grandmother who already agrees with them.

Good lord, what's wrong with this picture.

~*~

Standing around in a cozy Christmas huddle with several female customers, chatting/worrying aloud about mercury content in fish, when one of them emphatically remarked: We need to be MAMA GRIZZLIES for the environment.

What?

Oh dear.

Does she know that Sarah Palin, Mama Grizzly of the Mama Grizzly movement, just shot a reindeer, which she will likely roast out on the snow-covered Alaskan tundra, and serve for Christmas dinner? I do not trust rich caribou-killing politicians/reality-TV whores to take care of the environment. I do trust Sarah Palin to be a bloodthirsty warmonger, mindless Republican talking-head and overall narcissistic swine.

Why, I wondered, do I come to such different conclusions than my customer... a very nice lady who speaks to me every day and cares about the poor fish filled with mercury? (She really does, too.)

Is it because of our different backgrounds that we have come to different conclusions? We don't seem that different to me.

That's the scary thing.

~*~

Another reason is that certain dark corners of the Left seem to have no sense of decency these days.

For example, Todd Pettigrew just wrote a spirited defense of incest on Macleans. Not just any incest (of course!) but the gold-standard of incest: father/daughter incest, the sexy kind that gets middle-aged guys excited. All those hot-young-daughter stories on BARELY LEGAL have finally made a cultural impact, and you can almost hear the drooling. These are porn-fantasies come to life, and various men on the left can barely restrain their enthusiasm. If I were Pettigrew's daughter and I lived in his house? I'd be making plans to move. Unless I was too young to move. And then I would have nothing to worry about, needless to say, since this is all about CONSENSUAL incest; this is a defense of incest only AT THE AGE OF CONSENT. Dad only makes the moves on his daughter the DAY SHE TURNS 18. Yes, we all know that's the way it usually happens, huh? It's all very RESPECTFUL and MINDFUL OF THE AUTONOMY OF WOMEN. Sure it is.

Feminists write epistles the length of the Summa Theologica about incest and how it is an abuse of familial and patriarchal power; how it amounts to men creating and brainwashing sexual beings for their own use, and it all comes to this? Some hotshot professor (David Epstein) is busted for "having an affair" with his 20-something daughter, and well... we obviously need to rethink things. I mean, this is a COLUMBIA PROFESSOR! It MUST be okay.

After eons of redneck jokes about southerners banging their sisters and their kids, the people on Central Park West DIDN'T REALIZE that important people of the upper classes want to bang their kids too! They have just received the memo, and they are on the case. We'll have your reputation restored in no time, professor Epstein!

They are now comparing incest to homosexuality, which incidentally, is an argument I first heard from William Donahue of the Catholic League: First they'll say homos are okay and next thing you know, they will be championing incest.

Oh, don't be ridiculous, we replied.

And now, the fashionable liberals are saying just that. They are comparing same-sex peers who have attractions to each other, to someone who RAISED A CHILD to be his sex partner.

Needless to say, this is all guys excusing/defending this behavior... and this is all about David Epstein and Woody Allen and other MEN. I don't see anybody advocating moms diddling their sons (of whatever age) which I think would TERRIFY these men in a way they could not even discuss rationally. All of the examples they offer are about MEN MEN MEN... and their daughters.

Jesus H, has the Left lost all sense of morality? We have 9.8% unemployment (not nearly as sexy a story) and lefty writers are wasting valuable political net-space defending a perverted professor who can't keep it zipped around his own kid.

I figure these sicko defenses of sicko Epstein brought at least another thousand people or so over to the Tea Party side.

Lighthouse encased in ice on Lake Erie

CLEVELAND, Ohio (CNN/WKYC) - Check out this amazing sight.

You're not looking at a snow sculpture. It's actually a lighthouse encased in snow and ice.

It happened after the chilly winds moving through Cleveland blew water and snow all over the Cleveland Harbor West Pier lighthouse.

Parts of Ohio have seen more than a foot of snow in the last few days thanks to a late fall snowstorm.

I understand just how the poor lighthouse feels! And I am very glad I am not in my home state of Ohio right now--as cold as it presently is, South Carolina clearly has its advantages.

I promise I will eventually write a real post. I have so much crap piled up on my "to do" list, I haven't even had time to pay my damn car insurance. The only recreational time I've had recently, I spent watching reruns of Fight Club with Mr Daisy and eating vegetarian quesadillas from Moe's.

And what have you been doing this week? Be especially nice to your local overworked Christmas retail employee!

Retail Christmas Muzik: Merry Christmas, Everybody!

At left: Is it--? Yes it IS! It's Phil Spector as Santa Claus! Take cover!


NOTE: This is one of my favorite posts, although my blog was largely unread when I wrote it back in December of 2007, so I am rerunning it here. A very harried Christmas in retail gives me precious little time to write, so I am dipping into the Greatest Hits.

It was originally titled "You'll be doing all right, with your Christmas of white." The Slade video was yanked eons ago, so I had to hunt down another one.

Enjoy!--DD

~*~

If one is fully experiencing what a former co-worker of mine at the Open Book used to call The Zen of Retail, then one is able to detach from one's immediate surroundings and carefully observe the psychology of both Christmas and capitalism. Careful analysis of the music, which reflects the selected ambience, the projected market or target of the music, the veritable soundtrack of the season, if you will... ah, here is true yuletide wisdom!

I try to remember these wise words, every year.

As a retail wage-slave, I have been listening to lots and lots of Christmas music, against my will. Some of it barely qualifies as holiday music, unless you consider "Shake your ass for Christmas" or "Spank me for Christmas," part of your Advent repertoire, and certainly, some folks do. It's either that or a buncha damn kiddie songs, Holly Jolly Christmas, and so on. Bah, humbug! (You're a mean one, Mr Grinch.)

Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get the transcendent Charlie Brown Christmas music. Spookier this year than last year, is Frosty the Snowman, as delivered by Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, since you know her creepy, homicidal ex-husband (see above) was standing nearby and forbidding her to leave his sight. (*Source: He's a Rebel) Maybe they should play that song at Halloween instead?

On the EZ-smooth muzak station, we hear Frank Sinatra sing his sweet version of "Oh by gosh by golly, it's time for Mistletoe and Holly"--just as smooth and nice as gravy on rice. Then we hear him later in his Vegas period: "Just! Hear! Thoooo-oooose! Sleigh Bells ringling! Jing-jing-jingling too! Jack!" and it's interesting to think about his progression from the young Sinatra to the old Sinatra... but that is way beyond the scope of this blog, or even Christmas itself.




Madonna's "Santa Baby" was xeroxed (that is to say, stolen) from the far-superior original by Eartha Kitt, but I'm sure she's cagey enough to call it a "homage" instead.

Elvis is credited with starting the pop Christmas music trend, but please, you should not BLAME him, just as he can't be held accountable for any bad rock music that followed. Elvis recorded a whole Christmas album at a time (1957) when only mainstream singers (which meant: no rock or pop) like Frank Sinatra, did. Many believed Elvis cut the record only to garner respectability, since it indeed DID bring him major respectability. Even mainstream people who disliked rock and roll bought the Christmas record, which was a sensation containing the huge hit ballad Blue Christmas. I've never believed that he did it only for respectability, but also to stake a claim that he was as good as the Frank Sinatras of the world. As for the Christian-respectability angle, it was something Elvis fell back on his whole life, making gospel records right alongside the others. (I know this because my grandmother owned them all.)

Dean Martin's "It's a Marshmallow World in the Winter" makes me think of Tony Soprano driving that poor guy out of his lakefront house by broadcasting Dean Martin 24/7 at deafening levels, from a boat on the lake. Imagine waking up to DEAN MARTIN serenading you, huh? Yes, I'd have to move, too.

I already played my Kinks Christmas song for you, and now here is my ABSOLUTE favorite Christmas pop song by glam-rock band Slade, which I defy you not to love as much as I do. Lots of Americans have never heard of Slade, believe it or not:

Slade were one of the most recognisable acts of the glam rock movement and were, at their peak, the most commercially popular band in the UK. They are well known for the deliberate misspelling of their song titles and for the song Merry Xmas Everybody (released December 1973), now one of the most iconic Christmas pop songs in the United Kingdom.

(from Foxytunes)

Turn it up!

~*~

Merry Christmas, Everybody - Slade



Look to the future now, it's only just begun.

Elizabeth Edwards 1949-2010

It should have been her, not him. She was smarter and had the fire. We all knew that.

Speechless. She meant a lot to the progressives of both North and South Carolina.

Goodbye, Elizabeth.

Thursday Funnies

From Yellowdog Granny, of course, who cracks me up all the time. :D

Go visit, she has a million of them. (I can't guarantee you won't be offended!)

Thanks so much, JackieSue!