Each year in the city of Boston, the local oldies station changes their format the day after Thanksgiving, and plays strictly Christmas music for the next month. And each year I happily bump off the last station in my presets to make room for it on my car radio. It generally stays on that station throughout December, but there are several songs that send me scurrying for the sports talk channel as soon as I hear their opening notes. These are the five worst offenders of Christmas cheer.
Number 5: Feliz Navidad
Most Christmas songs have been covered multiple times by multiple artists, so you might hear "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" three times in an hour, but each version adds its own take so you don't really mind. Not so with this song. Jose Feliciano's version is the only one that ever seems to get played. You would be forgiven for thinking no one else had ever attempted to sing it, and it gets played ALL. THE. TIME.
Number 4 Wonderful Christmas Time
This song isn't so much awful as it is disappointing. Seemingly cut from the same creative swath that gave us "Silly Love Song", Sir Paul seems to be saying, I'm so popular I can record some half-assed lyrics, throw in some synthesizers and you idiots will make it a standard, and be happy to do so. And we were! This is made all the more shameful by the fact that his former writing partner John Lennon wrote the fantastic "Happy Xmas (War is Over)", and the two songs are always unfairly lumped together on Christmas compilations.
Number 3 Twelve Days of Christmas
Not much to say on this one, other than the fact that this song in interminable, and for some reason remains a staple at every child's Christmas pageant for the past sixty years.
Number 2 Any version of the Little Drummer Boy not sung by David Bowie and Bing Crosby
The Bing and Bowie version is a stone cold classic, and is one of only three Christmas songs I let stay on my iPod all year round (the other two are "Fairy Tale of New York, and the version of "Baby its Cold Outside" sung by Zooey Deschanel). Other takes on the song lean way too heavily on the parum pa pums, and end up working my last nerve.
Number 1 The Christmas Shoes
The mother fucking Christmas shoes! I'm not even going to include a link, that is how deep my disgust runs for "The Christmas Shoes." The hideously maudlin tale of some jerk buying a little kid a pair of shoes for his dying Mom to wear to heaven, it is an abomination against God and man, and it must be destroyed. Fortunately it seems to have made its way out of the rotation this year, but in the past it damn near inescapable.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Read a Book!
Achilles? The Illiad? It's Homer! Read a book!
Dennis Lehane has been one of my favorite authors going on twelve years now. I first started reading his books while I was in high school, and quickly worked my way through his series of detective novels featuring Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Gone Baby Gone, his fourth novel, is generally regarded as the series highpoint, and it was made into an excellent movie with Casey Affleck a few years ago. My favorite though has always been the second book Darkness Take my Hand. A huge step up stylistically from his debut novel, it really sets the template for the rest of the books to come. Plus it features serial killer clowns driving around Dorchester in a murder van, how can I not love it?
For the past ten years Lehane has seemingly tried to leave his mystery roots behind him. Claiming that he didn't want to turn into another Robert Parker churning out the same tired old book every eighteen months, he instead branched out, writing a few period novels, as well as achieving a successful career in Hollywood writing for shows like "The Wire." In fact he had made it clear in several interviews that he had no intention of returning to Kenzie and Gennaro, saying they weren't returning his calls. Which left me both surprised and a little worried when I saw that his latest work was a direct sequel to Gone Baby Gone. Would he have lost his handle on the characters voices in the preceding years? The answer I'm happy to say is no.
The story of Moonlight Mile picks up the characters lives in the present day, have aged ten real time years since we last saw them. Patrick and Angie, having just reconciled at the end of the last book, are now married with young daughter. Patrick has taken up a job doing freelance detective work for a big company that caters to the rich and powerful of New England who wish to keep their tawdry scandals discreet. He's fairly miserable as the story begins, as he and Angie are living paycheck to paycheck, and he finds himself both wishing for and disgusted by, the prospect of working for this investigation firm full time. One day on his way to work he is confronted by the aunt of Amanda McCreedy, the girl he found over twelve years ago, and had ripped away from the caring couple who kidnapped her from a neglectful drug addled mother. Amanda is now sixteen years old, and has disappeared again. And everyone seems to think Patrick owes it to her to find her again.
Its a very enjoyable story, and works both as a sequel and as a capper to the entire series. It earns bonus points from me for a key scene that occurs in the trailer park that is less than a mile from my home. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed spending time with these characters in the past.
For the past ten years Lehane has seemingly tried to leave his mystery roots behind him. Claiming that he didn't want to turn into another Robert Parker churning out the same tired old book every eighteen months, he instead branched out, writing a few period novels, as well as achieving a successful career in Hollywood writing for shows like "The Wire." In fact he had made it clear in several interviews that he had no intention of returning to Kenzie and Gennaro, saying they weren't returning his calls. Which left me both surprised and a little worried when I saw that his latest work was a direct sequel to Gone Baby Gone. Would he have lost his handle on the characters voices in the preceding years? The answer I'm happy to say is no.
The story of Moonlight Mile picks up the characters lives in the present day, have aged ten real time years since we last saw them. Patrick and Angie, having just reconciled at the end of the last book, are now married with young daughter. Patrick has taken up a job doing freelance detective work for a big company that caters to the rich and powerful of New England who wish to keep their tawdry scandals discreet. He's fairly miserable as the story begins, as he and Angie are living paycheck to paycheck, and he finds himself both wishing for and disgusted by, the prospect of working for this investigation firm full time. One day on his way to work he is confronted by the aunt of Amanda McCreedy, the girl he found over twelve years ago, and had ripped away from the caring couple who kidnapped her from a neglectful drug addled mother. Amanda is now sixteen years old, and has disappeared again. And everyone seems to think Patrick owes it to her to find her again.
Its a very enjoyable story, and works both as a sequel and as a capper to the entire series. It earns bonus points from me for a key scene that occurs in the trailer park that is less than a mile from my home. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed spending time with these characters in the past.
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