Musical Wednesdays: Ten Christmas Songs I Don't Completely Dread Hearing

There are some Christmas songs that I avoid more than any other music, songs that make me cringe and desperately change the station. If I can get through the Christmas season without hearing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" or "Wonderful Christmastime," I'm really glad. But there are some songs that I actually look forward to hearing...the ones that I actually like.

1. "Blue Christmas." This one is kind of a weird choice for me, as I'm not that big of an Elvis fan, but for some reason I like it. There's a great cover version by Bright Eyes that really amps up the sadness of the lyrics, and a lot of times the original gets suddenly, inexplicably stuck in my head.

2. "Baby, It's Cold Outside." This isn't really a Christmas song, I guess, but it's a song for Christmastime, so it's on here. I love the version featured in the movie "Elf," but there are a lot of versions that are pretty good. Others--there's a Ricardo Montalban version--not so much.

3. "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." This wouldn't be a list of my favorite Christmas songs without Darlene Love, and this is my absolute favorite. This is another one that's been extensively covered, but the original is still the best.

4. "Happy Christmas (War is Over)." Well, at least the first half. The more you hear of Yoko, the worse this song gets, but the beginning is fantastic, the perfect combination of bitter and hopeful. The way Lennon sings, "So this is Christmas" is just fantastic.

5. "The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth," David Bowie and Bing Crosby. This song has one of the strangest set-ups in the world, with these two chatting about Christmas before starting the song. It's from a Christmas special, the kind where celebrity guests just stopping by to chat was completely normal. The weirdest part of the whole thing? The song works.

6. "River" by Joni Mitchell. Is this a Christmas song? It takes place at Christmas, and I always look forward to hearing it around now. It's...well, it's another sad Christmastime song, but I like it anyway.

7. "It's Christmas! Let's be glad!" by Sufjan Stevens. This one is on my iPod, so it's not one of those songs that suddenly comes on the radio--actually, I can't imagine this suddenly coming on the radio--but it's a song about being glad at Christmas, no matter how bad the year has been, and I think that's a notion I can get behind.

8. "Linus and Lucy," Vince Guaraldi Trio. Really, you can extend this to all of the songs in "Charlie Brown Christmas," but this is the one that instantly brings me to Christmas, to Snoopy dancing, to the kids waving their hands around a tree and magically saving it.

9. "Sleigh Ride." The Ronettes version is probably my favorite, with its "ring-a-lings" in the background and quick tempo, but the song in general really deserves its status as a classic. This is another one with a related "Saturday Night Live" sketch, featuring Molly Shannon.

10. "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," Bruce Springsteen. I didn't like this one much as a kid, but now I really do. I think having seen him play live, I feel like his banter in the song's introduction is really natural, and the way he throws all of his normal Springsteen swagger into such an upbeat pop song is really outstanding.

Well, those are mine. There's one more, but that's getting its own post on a different Wednesday coming up. What about you? What Christmas songs do you look forward to hearing?

(Non) Fiction Mondays: Zeitoun and Pictures at a Revolution

I've been on a nonfiction kick the past few weeks. Since I finished "Gravity's Rainbow," I've read two great nonfiction books, a genre that for some reason, I don't read much of. I'm not much of a memoir or biography fan, preferring to learn about people through the lens of fiction (even if they're historical figures, like Tesla in "The Invention of Everything Else").

The two books I've read are Mark Harris' "Pictures at a Revolution" and Dave Eggers' "Zeitoun." They're both excellent, if extremely different, works of nonfiction, the former a big book about the 1968 Academy Awards and the five films nominated for Best Picture, and the latter a story about a man in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina who begins rescuing people in his canoe, only to be arrested and put into several prisons.

"Pictures at a Revolution" is definitely a film nerd book, about the end of the old studio system and the birth of the "second golden age," where filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese took the reins of the studios and made some of their most incredible movies. These filmmakers, often called the "film school brats" completely reinvented the movie business, bringing a European sensibility that they had picked up in college (for a great look at the era after this book, rent the movie "A Decade Under the Influence"). In my undergraduate film classes, we covered this era pretty briefly, but the main thing I remember is that the big musicals, trying to jump on the success of "The Sound of Music," really destroyed the studios: "Paint Your Wagon," "Camelot," and the one featured in this book, "Doctor Doolittle." These were movies with huge budgets that were completely out of touch with the realities of moviegoers, and they were completely destroyed by movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate," both nominated for Best Picture. The stories of each individual movie (including the eventual winner, "In the Heat of the Night," and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner") are incredibly researched and detailed, and the overall story, about the movie business blinding itself to the changing realities of their viewers, is really interesting.

"Zeitoun," about a contractor who stayed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, is completely harrowing. Zeitoun gets arrested in a building he owns, and without due process, a phone call, or a hearing, he is sent to "Camp Greyhound," a prison set up outside of the city's bus terminal. Before his arrest, he sets out in a secondhand canoe to rescue anyone who needs help in the city, including animals and elderly neighbors. He is arrested on suspicion of looting, without being questioned or formally charged. The story is insane, mostly because you do not want to believe this happened in America. The fact that a major American city can come under martial law, the rights of citizens left in the care of hired mercenaries like Blackwater, is just unbelieveable. And all of this happening as people are dying without help from the government agencies they depend on. It's really shocking and frustrating, but the book somehow manages, at the end, to be really hopeful, a story about unshakeable faith in the promise of the country.

I really recommend both of these books. Like I said, I'm not really a nonfiction reader, but these stories were incredible. I think I'm going to jump back to fiction now, but I'm not sure what book I'm going to read. Any suggestions?

Friday Films: "That Was Some Pure Wild Animal Craziness"

This week, I went to see "Fantastic Mr. Fox," Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic book, and I am very glad to say it did not disappoint. My faith in Wes Anderson was shaken after "The Darjeeling Limited," and I was worried that the director would continue to make movies that amounted to little more than a collection of incredible details without the plot or character development to support the overall design (I'm talking to you, luggage in "Darjeeling Limited.") But this movie was, if I'm allowed to say it this way, a return to form. It was a reminder of why I loved Anderson's movies in the first place. There was still an obsession over the minute detail, but the characters and story that the details were nestled among (and not the other way around) were extremely likeable and actually fun.

The movie combined the best parts of "Bottle Rocket," "Rushmore," and "The Royal Tenenbaums," along with a few choices pieces of "The Life Aquatic" (There was one point where I couldn't help but think, "Let me tell you about my boat.") It's a caper, a family comedy-drama, and a movie about a flawed but endearing big dreamer all at once, and it works. Everyone in the cast, from Clooney as the title character to Bill Murray as Badger, his lawyer, was completely suited to the characters they were playing, and the puppets, with fur that always seemed to be in motion and impeccable suits, were really incredible bits of Anderson's detail that somehow came to life. I left the theater with a huge smile on my face, so glad that the director had returned to the kinds of characters and stories that I really loved. Jason Schwartzman's character, Ash, is especially hilarious, with a few lines that completely steal the scene with their understated humor. When his lab partner, a female fox, stares at his cousin, he says, "You're supposed to be my lab partner. You're disloyal," in a way that I don't think is present in any other director's work. It's a strange coupling of over-the-top design and understated voice acting that completely works.

Of course, since this is a Wes Anderson movie, there are countless quotable moments, references to other films, and, yes, a shot of a group of characters underwater. Mr. Fox, arriving at home, calls his family, "my darlings," a bit of Royal Tenenbaum that made me unbelievably glad. Toward the end of the movie, there's a great moment with a silhouette of a wolf: Mr. Fox, spying it in the distance, calls out, "Mr. Wolf! Canis Lupis!" and then asks, in French, if the wolf thinks it will be a rough winter. The wolf doesn't answer, but instead wanders off into the forest--it's a strange, weirdly funny moment, and it really stuck with me. Throughout the movie, the characters, animals in suits, talk about their wildness, with Mr. Fox complimenting his son by saying, "That was some pure wild animal craziness," but this wolf is different. It's truly wild, without any of the human influences of the rest of the animals, and it's clear, even in the puppets, that Mr. Fox views it with equal parts terror and deep respect.

I love it when an adaptation manages to both capture the spirit of the original material and the vision of the director, and I feel like "Fantastic Mr. Fox" does this incredibly well. I'm sure Dahl never imagined a sequence of Mr. Fox vs. the farmers to be set to the Rolling Stones' "Street Fightin' Man," but after seeing the movie, I can't imagine it being any other way.

Musical Wednesdays: It's a Marshmallow World

Well, now that it's December, I'm going to kick off this edition of Musical Wednesdays with a song somewhat related to the time period of my NaNoWriMo project: Darlene Love's version of "Marshmallow World." Even though the song was recorded in 1950 by Bing Crosby, the Darlene Love version is probably the best-known. It appeared on the 1963 album "A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector" (Holiday Tip: don't open any box that says "from: Phil Spector." It's probably dangerous.) along with the Ronette's "Sleigh Ride," the Crystal's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," as well as many others that you'll hear if you're listening to the right radio stations this season (I'd suggest the Sirius/XM station "Little Stephen's Underground Garage).

The song itself is kind of...strange. It begins, "It's a marshmallow world in the winter, when the snow falls to cover the ground," and then completely loses its mind around the second verse: "And the sun is red like a pumpkin head"...I'm sorry, what? There are a lot of things that are, you know, actually red and actually associated with Christmas, rather than Halloween or the Headless Horseman. But still: it's a Phil Spector production, so it somehow works.

But the strange, amazingly produced song isn't the only reason I wanted to post about Darlene Love and holiday music. I also wanted to share one of my all-time favorite SNL Christmas moments (related: does anyone know if they're showing the "Christmas Past" episode this year? I really hope so.). This sketch was part of "TV Funhouse," which has done a bunch of great Christmas sketches, but this one cracks me up every time. It's "Christmas Time for the Jews," a Darlene Love-sounding songs about the one night of the year that Jewish people can play for the Lakers, see movies without waiting in line, and beat up Quakers without any Gentiles bothering them:



What better way to kick off the season?

Fiction Mondays: NaNoWriMo Is Done!

Well, today is the last day of National Novel Writing Month, and I'm DONE! Well, by "done," I mean I have 50,000 words, and the beginning (probably the first half or so) of a novel draft. It might be closer to 2/3 of the novel, depending on how quickly the ending happens, but we'll see. I'm going to keep working on this draft, because I really feel like I've gotten to know the characters, and I'm excited to see how it pans out. Massive rewrites will happen eventually, but today I'm going to just bask in the accomplishment of getting so much done in a month. November has been long and difficult. I'm looking forward to December.

I'm currently reading "Pictures at a Revolution," which I will write more about soon. But for now: go read this book. If you're into film history, it's an essential read, full of stories about classic Hollywood and the changes that brought the "Film School Brats" to such prominence in the 1970s. Think of it as a kind of prequel to "A Decade Under the Influence."

And now, I'm off to Christmas shop for Cyber Monday!

Musical Wednesdays: Home for the Holiday

Thanks to Dan Lehr, another Rainy September participant I follow on Twitter, I found out about the band Home, an early 90s band that I would probably classify as lo-fi if I was trying to say what they sound like. Their first eight albums, released on cassette tapes and not widely distributed, have now been released as the Home Box Set (also available on iTunes and Amazon), and you should definitely go out and buy it. It's only 15.95, and contains 95 songs, so it's a great value and a really excellent collection.

The first time I heard their songs, my main thought was that it was really familiar, for a band I had never even heard of, and I think it's because a lot of my favorite bands adopted a similar sound, as well as the incorporation of random clips of other sounds into their music (I'm thinking of Neutral Milk Hotel and the Mountain Goats specifically). I think that the band's name is really apt, because listening to the collected tapes is a really welcoming experience, songs you can put on and kind of disappear into.

The tapes also feature some awesome and unexpected covers--Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and AC/DC's "Thunderstruck"--that show a really fun side of the band, and to me they seem like songs that might have just been run through in rehearsals to such success that they made the album. The lo-fi version of "Thunderstruck" is especially strange (and I mean that in a good way), because I have to confess I really love AC/DC, and it's awesome to see them get some attention from indie rock.

And, unlike some other early 1990s lo-fi bands, Home is still around. Still playing shows, in fact. No ten-year hiatus for them. Over on Dan's blog, he has a lot of clips of live shows that I really recommend checking out. They have a ton of albums in addition to the Box Set, and they maintain a very funny blog. So check them out. And if you've got a long drive or flight ahead of you for Thanksgiving, the Box Set will make a great soundtrack for that trip.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! No post on Friday, but I'll see you all again on Monday.

Fiction Mondays: Full-Circle

Well, I've done it. I got through Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," my sanity intact. The ending was crazy, very fast paced (but he still had time for allusions to Isaac and Abraham and the Tarot, as well as Kabbala) and it ended in a very similar way to how it started, with a screaming coming across the sky. I still haven't one-hundred percent cycled through my thoughts about it, but I am glad I read it and I'm glad to move on. In comparison to reading Pynchon, anything else is easy. Well, almost anything else. I'm reading "Pictures at a Revolution," which I'm getting through really quickly. Expect a post on that soon, but not too soon (December will be focused on holidays, I'm thinking).

In writing news: the onslaught that is November will be over soon. My big projects are coming to a close (both NaNoWriMo and real-world projects), and I'm looking forward to the clearing out that will occur on December 2nd. It feels strange to have so many things wrapping up at once--graduate school applications included--and it will be a very welcome break. What will I do with my time, besides returning to a sane daily pace and blogging before 6pm every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? Well, like I mentioned earlier, Chanterelles will not be done, not in my opinion, by the end of the month, so I'll probably wrap up a draft of that. Everything has its trajectory set (I need to get out of rocket-thinking soon. I blame Pynchon.) and the ending will be interesting. But in a short amount of time, I've grown attached to these characters. I'll be sad to see this draft end. But it's never over, is it?

What else? Editing my previous manuscript, maybe returning to work on my Zeppelin story. I'm trying to decide on a title for that one. How about "To Be a Rock, and Not to Roll"? Or "Houses of the Holy"? I also got a very strange idea for a story--I don't know how I'd categorize it, because right now it's literally a sentence and a line of dialogue in my notebook, but maybe I'd call it a fable. Or it might be some kind of horror story. I really don't know. I won't reveal too much, but the idea is really calling out to me and I'm excited to see where it goes.

Well, I'll see you all on Wednesday. I think the post might be about the band Home, who I started listening to recently.