Friday, December 24, 2004

Christmas Wishes

Not for me, for you guys...

For JennySlash, who's still my dream gal after 20 years - a completely successful foray into the world of graduate school

For Dad, my hero and mentor - that Felton keeps dishing, McCants keeps bombing, Mays keep boarding and the Heels keep winning

For Lex, my best bud - success (and the recognition that will be deserved) in reimagining the N&R web site

For PC - exactly the right word when it's needed most and a bunch of new additions to his life list

For mapgirl - a smooth and lossless move to Peoria and the occasional care package from RuSan's from the friends she's leaving behind in Nashville

For jw - the Panthers in the playoffs and lots of accessories for her new Dell

For Billy the Blogging Poet - the right rhyme every time and some well-attended shows in Burlington this winter

For Dave A, who lurks here from time to time - a Lufthansa flight attendent in his stocking and 5 new bands, each of which will be the best new band of the year

For Ed Cone, Mr. Sun, David Hoggard, Ruby Seinrich, Apostropher, Anonymoses and all the other Triangle, Triad and assorted other NC bloggers - continued inspiration of their own as they continue to inspire me.

Merry Christmas, all!

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Christmas Music

A few weeks ago, jw was bitching (and I use that word preparing to duck something thrown at my head from about 50 miles away) about Christmas music. Now I have to admit that I'm the world's biggest sucker for Christmas music. I grew up with Johnny Mathis' Christmas album as THE definitive Christmas music, as well as listening to Blue Christmas, Little Brenda Lee and Jingle Bell Rock and later Jose Feliciano and the Chipmunks and Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. Since then I've amassed a pretty good collection of seventies and new-wave-y 80's/90's Christmas songs that I frankly look forward to every year. Some of it is just really good music, like The Closing of the Year from the movie Toys or Fairytale of New York, both of which still bring a lump to my throat every time I hear them (as, oddly enough, does the Waitresses' brilliant Christmas Wrapping but in a much happier way). But my favorite the last couple of years has been Merry XMess by Sun 60, with some nice stabby guitar leads from Dave Navarro and those wonderful Juliana Hatfield-ish little rock girl vocals from Joan Jones. My running mix currently has included everything from Wall of Voodoo's Shouldn't Have Given Him a Gun for Christmas to Martin Mull's Santa Claus Doesn't Cop Out on Dope (I've also got Sonic Youth's cover) to Gary Glitter's Another Rock 'n' Roll Christmas. The Ramones' Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight) is another classic, as are the Smithereen's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Dave Edmunds' Run Rudolph Run. The CD that got that phase of Christmas music started for me was A Different Kind of Christmas, purchased primarily for Fishbone's It's a Wonderful Life (which manages to distill the movie down to about 2 minutes 15) and the dB's (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays, but also includes T-Bone Burnette's beautiful God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Poi Dog Pondering's version of Mele Kalikimaka. Okay, sorry, I've gotten boring - there's just so much of this stuff out there that I really like, much of which I haven't had time to listen to yet, so I'll probably be listening to Christmas music at least until Epiphany. I'll just promise not to play it within earshot of jw...

As promised

I'm back, at least for now. I've really been trying not to be a whiner about work and I'll try again now to avoid it, but you guys do deserve some explanation of why I've been AWOL. Without getting too deep into work stuff that ought to remain at work and into customer relationships that should definitely not be blogged about, it's probably enough to say that I moved into a new role back in late September - one that hadn't existed before. That meant that I really didn't have anyone to get turnover from and it also allowed everyone (customers, coworkers, other management, etc) to sort of decide for themselves what my role is, which resulted in some unreasonable expectations. I failed miserably to live up to those expectations in a spectacular, very public way a couple of weeks ago and have spent most of the time since then trying to make up for it. I think I'm most of the way there, but at the cost of blowing off the buildup to Christmas, which kinda sucks. Within that time we were also blessed with a sick doggie (he's better now) and some plumbing problems (they're better now) which resulted in quite a bit of additional stress and about five or six hundred bucks of unplanned vet and Roto-Rooter expenses. But things really are on their way to better, but the cost was a bunch of 60+ hour/6 day work weeks at a tough time to be doing so.

All of that being said, it certainly hasn't been all bad (I TOLD you I wasn't going to whine!). First of all, JennySlash has been incredibly supportive and patient, despite my work hours displacing much of her Christmas-y stuff as well. Maybe she figures that she'll get her payback when she starts grad school in a couple of weeks, but I think primarily it's because she's a peach! We've also managed to get some holiday in on Fridays and Saturdays, including making it to the NC Jazz Rep Orchestra's Christmas show at Hill Hall a couple of Fridays ago (awesome show - they do the entire Ellington/Strayhorn arrangement of the Nutcracker Suite as their second set and it really swings), going to the "Picasso, Matisse and the School of Paris" show at the NC Museum of Art last Saturday. I've got to say, if you haven't seen that show, you really, really need to get tickets and go. Some works of art translate relatively well to repros and photographs, but the Matisses and the Monets in particular really have to be seen in person to get the effect. The sunlight filtered through the London smoke and haze onto the Thames in Monet's Charing Cross Bridge and the way he uses the depth of the paint to create it is something that you can't get out of a two-dimensional copy. And you really have to experience Degas' The Little Dancer - a photo won't do it. We also got out to the Carolina Club last Friday for jazz night and were able to get together with G and D last Sunday for dinner and to finally see their new house (!!) so it hasn't been a total washout by any means.

Tomorrow's the last day of work for the year (knock on wood) and with my Canadian customers already gone, I'm hoping for a quiet day and a chance to finally do some Christmas shopping tomorrow night and Friday. I always like to leave some shopping for Christmas Eve, which is absolutely not complete without a last-minute trip to A Southern Season for stocking stuffers and other nummies! Oh, and we've settled on the Sex Police at the Cat's Cradle for New Year's Eve (G and D are coming as well), so I need to go find an orange shirt to go with my blue suit I bought at a thrift store in Pittsboro this summer - think Beck, only I'm about 15 years older and about 30 pounds heavier. And not quite as talented. Not quite.

The other thing I've been meaning to blog about for the last few weeks is the arrival in the Triangle of a radio station that I can actually listen to for more than 1 song in a row without screaming in disgust and changing the frequency. You may be thinking, "but Tony Plutonium, you live in a college radio mecca! What's the problem?" to which I would reply that NCState's WKNC (We Know Numerous Cows) still plays nothing but chainsaw, WXDU at Duke has too weak a signal for me to get most places and WXYC, once one of the finest college radio stations in the country, went through a phase where all they played was Uzbek goat-herder nose-flute music, which was bad enough, but now I hear little other than hip-hop and techno/trance. Fug. But lo and behold, Clear Channel (I know, they're tools of Satan) has converted Oldies 100.7 into "The River", which seems to consist of no DJs and lots of stuff from the 80's and 90's that, well, I actually like. Okay, so I've now heard "Breakfast at Tiffany's" more times in the last two weeks (twice) than in the last five years, but I can deal with that while getting an infusion of the Cure, U2, Counting Crows, Dishwalla, Roxy Music (actually heard "Love is the Drug" last week), David Bowie, Ween and the like. I haven't paid much attention to industry-speak in quite awhile, so I have no idea what this format is called, but if it's aimed at middle-aged guys that dug college radio in its heyday of the early 80's, well baby that's my demographic to a T! Okay, it's a little embarassing to be so excited about a radio station that's basically playing a bunch of stuff from my collection and yeah, it would be much cooler if there was a station playing No Depression-y adult alternative stuff, but actually our digital cable music channel covers that pretty well. So call me lame if you want, but I'm psyched! And listening to it right this very second - Elvis Costello's Allison - fuck yeah!