Heaneyland!

Hark to the World

I'm not very Christmas-centric. Partly it's to do with being an atheist, although that's not a deal-breaker -- religious types like to complain about how people forget the Reason for the Season, but the rest of us know that it's a feature, not a bug, that it's possible to manage one's own Christmas experience to be more Christian, more pagan, or more about enjoying Christmas lights. The thing I dislike the most about Christmas is the ubiquitous damn holiday music. Seriously, I went into three stores one day this month, and I heard "Feliz Navidad" in EVERY SINGLE ONE. This is not okay.

There aren't many holiday songs in heavy retail rotation that I can abide, really. I'm not sure when "Linus and Lucy", the awesome instrumental from "A Charlie Brown Christmas", became considered a holiday radio standard, but I wholeheartedly approve of it. I never get tired of that one. And sometimes I enjoy even the most familiar carols, if they're given an interesting spin...but usually what I consider "interesting" isn't the sort of thing that most stores are going to play. For instance, this rocking klezmer version of "Joy to the World" or this shambling cover of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" by the Fall. Or this sort of thing.

In non-music matters, last night I got recognized by one of my blog readers while putting my name on the waiting list at Joe's Shanghai. That was kind of cool; I briefly felt like a web celebrity. So thanks for that, Sara (or Sarah); raise your hand if you're a fellow blogger and would like a link back! Feel free to do the same, should any of you other readers happen to spot me on one of the brief occasions when I leave my computer. (If you're one of the high percentage of my blog readers who I already know personally but you still wish to contribute to my feeling-like-a-web-celebrity project, you can do so by acting like I'm probably too big to talk to you now that I'm such a big shot, and waving awkwardly as we pass in opposite directions.)