Merry Christmas, Everyone!

The Twelve Days of Christmas
White Christmas

I miss you all.

Brokeback Mountain

Please go see this movie. It's the most extraordinary movie I have seen all year. I am so excited that this film is garnering such acclaim and audience response-- I went to the first showing on opening day, and it was sold out! At 1:10 pm! It is just a gorgeous love story. The landscapes are breathtaking, and the character work is just awe-inspiring, especially Heath Ledger's performance as Ennis Del Mar. I think he will at least be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, and will probably win it (although I admit I haven't seen Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote so I am not fully aware of the competition).

I can't say enough about this movie... I can't remember the last time I saw a film and it affected me so much I couldn't stop thinking about it afterward... it is just so, so well done. I hope you all get a chance to see it.

Upload Away!

Great plan, Carolyn. I've set up an FTP site for us. If you have access to Internet Explorer, you can upload your music to it. Copy this link and paste it into the Address bar of a new window:
ftp://u35372929-music@stoffelsfamily.com/
You'll be asked for a password, which is eighty8.

You can then literally drag-and-drop your music files from your PCs to the FTP site. I've started things off by posting documents with our faves listed in them. Feel free to modify yours as necessary. You can upload .MP3s or .WAVs or any other type of file you want. (.WAVs will take much longer, but will allow for higher-quality copies.) Play around. It's our site.

Looking forward to seeing some music up there soon! I've also started you out with "Christmas Dinner, Country Style" (128bit MP3) Truly a treat.

---

BTW, yes, I'm fairly certain this breaks several laws. Luckily, the only people reading this are we few.

Christmas Exchange- CD MIX

For the Ipod-less among us I vote that we do a Christmas Mix Exchange. I'll happily burn a CD of my Xmas music and drop via post and I would LOVE to add to my collection. Especially as I CANNOT find some of these songs anywhere (hippopotus song- only one on Itunes is some redneck jug band singing it) for instance I would love to add WHAM's Last Christmas to my song list but I just can't justify spending $$ to download it (SAHM's budget :-(!) "I want to lasso santa"- that sounds worth $1 download. I don't have everyone's snail mail though. You'll have to email it. Fun fun fun. Please feel free to addendum any other rules- I think you have to send a mix to get one- unless of course you don't have a cd burner. Must include at least one obnoxious novelty song.

Carolyn

Slings & Arrows

http://www.sundancechannel.com/feature/index.php?ixContent=8105

I am wondering if our common love of theatre and the Canadian Broadcating Company (the folks who brought us De Grassi) are there other 'slings and arrows" fanatics out there?
Carolyn

Hippopotamuseses!

Carolyn, Nate and I are OBSESSED with "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas". It would not be unheard of for this song to be sung at random times (usually in the car) all freakin' year long. I have it on my Dr. Demento Christmas album, and it's by some weird kid/woman named Gayle Peevey. I feel another poll coming on:

Favorite weird/inappropriate Christmas Songs:

1. I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas - Gayle Peevey
2. I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus - Brenda Lee (you thought she just wanted to innocently rock around the Christmas tree-- ohhh nooo. She wants to lasso Santa Claus, and while he is tied up and defenseless, she plans to pull on his beard, tickle the shit out of him, and shoot him with her water pistol, all in a ploy to steal his bag of toys)
3. 12 Days Of Christmas - Bob & Doug McKenzie (this is just so adorably dumb)
4. Carol of the Meows - Guster (exactly what you think it is. Used to superb comic effect in the Christmas episode of The O.C. last season)
5. Santa's Beard - They Might Be Giants (a weird song about this guy who complains his wife has an affair with his best friend when he's dressed up like Santa)
6. Surfin' Santa - Lord Douglas Byron (a bizarre homage to the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean)
7. Funky, Funky Xmas - New Kids On The Block (it's astounding. Really.)
8. Christmas Is Going To The Dogs - The Eels (another O.C. Christmas song)
9. Jingle Bells - Esquivel (this whole album of his "space-age bachelor pad" music is one of the best Christmas albums out there, and this song has a great interlude where Esquivel is greeting guests in his heavily Spanish-accented wheeze: "You look... so dashing. The cut of that suit is... impeccable.")
10. Baby, It's Cold Outside - Dean Martin (this falls under the "inappropriate" category, and it's funny, because I LOVE this song, but I can't help but feel a little dirty singing the line "Say, what's in this drink?". Nothing says Christmas like date rape.)

Ham on Wry- Little Lefties

In response to the Wry Baby site- here's another fun baby t-shirt place I found that I like. For the baby with proud gay aunties I found a few things for Oskar there.
http://www.littlelefties.com/index.html

My Top of the X-mas Pops

Awesome poll, Lisa. Here are some of mine (I doubt I'll be able to do ten -- I hate ranking favorites because my tastes change so much based on my mood!):

1. "Mele Kalikimaka" - Bing Crosby
2. "The Christmas Song" - Nat "King" Cole
3. "(It Must've Been Ol') Santa Claus" - Harry Connick, Jr.
4. "Jingle Bells" - Frank Sinatra (Corny Background Lyrics Award-Winner for "I love those J-I-N-G-L-E, bells!")
5. John Denver & The Muppets - "A Christmas Together" (yes, the whole album)
6. "Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!" - Harry Connick, Jr. (for the rockin' brass break... and same with his version of "Sleigh Ride," come to think of it)
7. Any Manheim Steamroller/Trans-Siberian Orchestra-esque rock-hol-ectronica
   
8. "Christmas Dinner, Country Style" - Bing Crosby (If you haven't heard this -- and you haven't -- you must. It, like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, should be played daily between Thanksgiving and New Year's.)
9. "A Very Special Christmas" (well-played, Lisa!)

And just to round it out so that ten things are mentioned here, I'll post a bottom-ten item: "Merry Christmas, Darling" by Karen Carpenter. I shiver when I contemplate logs on the fire filling her with desire.

Oh, and speaking as a technology junkie who still remains iPod-less, I hate both of you.

Happy Christmastime!

SOCKS AND SANDALS

Okay- I had to share this one too. My husband has a thing about people who wear socks and sandals. It's a common occurance here in Tucson where most people where sandals all year round.
BUT who knew there is a whole website devoted to people wo wear socks and sandals.
Crazy Brits!
http://www.sandalandsoxer.co.uk/home.htm
Carolyn

PUNKIN

Okay, here's my baby in is Halloween outfit- then I Photoshopped him eating a turkey and I was going to use it as our Thanksgiving card for family, but my husband thought it was too weird and people would think we actually gave our baby turkey (as if...) he won. But this way you'll get to see it.

WHOOWOEWEW! I'm Back

Yeah! After a short hiatus of being BANNED from blogger. I have been reinstated. Oh BOY. Yipppeee!

In response to Lisa's post, I have "Christmas in Hollis" by RUN DMC on my phone as a ringtone year round.

1. "Christmas in Hollis" Run DMC
2. "Christmas Time Is Here" (with the little Peanuts kids singing - actually the whole snoopy xmas album)
3. "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis"- tom waits (oh wait, that's not a xmas song, but when I did a search on my ipod for "christmas" it came up and I love that song- it is about Christmas.)
4. "Wish I Had a River" Joni Mitchell
5. "White Christmas" Bob Marley and the Wailers
6. "Christmas Don't Be Late" Alvin and the Chipmunks
7. "Feliz Navidad" Jose Feliciano
8. "Baby It's Cold Outside" Dean Martin
9. "I Want a Hippopotomus for Christmas" (it might be a Tucson thing- they play it on the radio here each year with a little girl singing it.)
10. "Alice's Restaurant" Arlo Guthrie (although it's actually a thanksgiving song- we play the WHOLE thing each year while we eat thanksgiving dinner- but then usually we play it again on Christmas)

Thanks for the POLL- I might find some new treasures on iTunes to add to my pod!
Carolyn

And we're off!

So it's officially December, and it's snowing today, so I can admit without a trace of shame that I have been listening to Christmas music on my iPod since the day after Thanksgiving. And as we count down the days until Christmas I thought it might be fun to do a few polls along the way. Nate and I were in the car yesterday and "Wonderful Christmastime" came on, and I declared that it was in my top five Christmas songs, which spurred the both of us to rank our favorites... I was curious as to what yours were as well. Here are mine:

1. Last Christmas - Wham!
2. Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses (although the Spice Girls did a great version of it too!)
3. Wonderful Christmastime - Paul McCartney and Wings
4. Please Come Home For Christmas - The Eagles (Pat Benatar's is almost as good)
5. Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy - Bing Crosby and David Bowie
6. Do They Know It's Christmas? - Band Aid
7. Christmas Day - Squeeze
8. Thanks For Christmas - XTC
9. This Christmas - Donny Hathaway
10. Step Into Christmas - Elton John

Damn! This was hard. I love just about every song on the album A Very Special Christmas, you know, the first one from 1987, which has amazing songs on it, especially "Christmas in Hollis" by Run-DMC, "Gabriel's Message" by Sting, "Santa Baby" by Madonna and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by U2, so I couldn't put one on my list without putting all of them on. I guess the next step is ranking Christmas albums. I would love to hear your picks, and maybe discover some new songs for this year.