John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

When you get the giggles ...

... you get the giggles.

I made this gif from one of Bill Hader's appearances as Steffon, the "city correspondent" on Saturday Night Live, whose brief was always, and strangely, to suggest family-oriented fun in the Big Apple ... and of course who never did. An ongoing appeal of the sketches was that some of Hader's lines were always changed at the last moment, often leading to breaks and giggle fits. 

via GIPHY

You can see the full sketch below. It's a Christmas one, too!  

Comet, the ultimate stocking stuffer

A few weeks ago, while I was waiting for a clerk in a Canadian Tire, I noticed an arrangement of stocking stuffer suggestions: small, modestly priced things that could be tucked away. Batteries? Understood that. 

But Comet? Reindeer games aside, I can't imagine anyone getting excited about that! 

Advice from the writer of Christmas Wrapping

The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping is one of my very favourite Christmas songs; it's no surprise I picked it for the very first seasonal mix CD I made for family and friends, a tradition that's run every year since 2000. I was intrigued to find this interview on the NME website with Chris Butler, who wrote the song ... especially to hear his regrets about the line "most of '81 passed along those lines." 

 

Neil Gaiman reads A Christmas Carol

 From Brainpickings, a true Christmas treat. 

 

Christmas Day

It is that indeed. This is also the name of a song by Dido, one of our favourites at this time of year. 

 

Arcade Fire, and the most awkward choral version ever of Little Drummer Boy

From Zach Galifianakis' web series Between Two Ferns on Funny Or Die, this episode features "interviews" with Samuel L. Jackson and Tobey Maguire. Stick around for the Arcade Fire tune near the end. 

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Happy Holidays Edition from Funny Or Die

How to pick a Christmas movie: The flowchart

We have some favourite movies in our house that get hauled out before and especially after Christmas. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt; with a few of them, it's hard to even count how many times they've been seen.

I got a kick out of this flowchart. 

 

by Lemon.ly.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

Ugly Sweater

I don't get the annual love affair with Christmas sweaters, particularly the made-to-be-over-the-top kind that get pulled out at Christmas. The closest thing I have is a machine-knit sweater with a white-on-red colour. Oh well! 

This is a tune we played on the Morning Show last week. Enjoy your eggnog! 

 

An animated take on Merry Xmas (War Is Over)

The Polyphonic Spree released a cover of John Lennon's Christmas classic in 2005; last year, they dusted it off for a holiday-themed album, Holidaydream, and released this animated video to go with it. 

A merry Nick Lowe Christmas

I bought Cruel to Be Kind in 1979, and I've been a fan (maybe admirer is the better word) of Nick Lowe since. He's reinvented himself over the years, which I guess you need to do to keep a career going. When I heard he had a Christmas album in the works, I was surprised, but intrigued; I had never thought of him, for instance, as the cynical musician looking for a way to extend his best-before date. At 64, Lowe is hardly expecting to hit the Top 40! 

Quality Street is the name of the album, and it came out a couple of weeks ago. It has a Wes Anderson-y kind of album cover (turns out my thought is not at all original, and rather what the designer, who happens to be his wife, had in mind) and a rootsy sound on the inside. 

Here's the opening track.  

Holiday Fortnight

Today's musical advent calendar pick is a boot-stomping and not-particularly-obvious cut from The Specials. Not much of a singalong, since it's an instrumental! 

 

Santa: the Venn diagram

My appreciation for Claus-related humour rises in December. As seen on I Love Charts. 

 

Free holiday sampler, courtesy of Paste

Hey Rosetta! (see below!) is among the great! (sorry, can't stop using exclamation points!) artists in this year's holiday sampler from Paste magazine. A very fine annual tradition. Alson on this year's sampler: Great Lake Swimmers, Sufjan Stevens, Rosie Thomas and B.C.'s Current Swell.  

You can't beat free, either ... although you may want to look at the tip option on the way to the download clicker. 

Proceed as you were. Enter your particulars in the box below, and a link will appear quickly in your inbox. You'll get a zip file that can be opened up in a snap. 

It'll be nearly like a picture print

...from Currier and Ives. We were humming along to Sleigh Ride this evening as we got the house into a merry mood, and Nick did not know what the line meant. 

To the Google machine. That was easy! 

 

Last Month of the Year

A soulful song from the Blind Boys of Alabama is today's entry in the musical advent calendar. Hard not to sing along; I dare you! 

Relaunching a musical advent calendar

Three years ago, I tried something different: a musical selection each day connected to Christmas, arranged kind of like an advent calendar. It was fun,  but was kind of a slog - making a commitment to do anything before Christmas can be like that! 

Nonetheless, I'm going to try it again this year. 

The first pick is by She and Him, the she being Zooey Deschanel and the him being M. Ward. She can see pretty much anything, he (him?) can play most anything, and their A Very She and Him Christmas release from last year is pretty sweet. This is their cover of Frank Sinatra's Christmas Waltz, which seems to be known to a lot of people through the first words, "Frosted windowpanes..." 

 

If it doesn't move...

Nick spotted this on Saturday, while we were running errands on Water Street: a hydrant, low to the ground, that had been decorated with intention or by accident. 

 

A window display, in full-colour black and white

These are some snaps I took outside Bergdorf Goodman's store on Fifth Avenue in New York during our visit in November. It's one of the stores that constructs knockout arrangements for their windows in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and we were not disappointed. 

The store had different themes, each built around a different colour. One window was all about black and white. Believe it or not, these shots are in full colour, with no PhotoShop changes. The window really showed how a monochromatic display can be so inventive. 

The gingerbread AT-AT

Not sure what makes the AT-AT walker from The Empire Strikes Back so likely to bring Christmas to mind, at least for some people, but it does. A couple of years ago, we liked one T-shirt design we bought a shirt for each member of the family. Today, I saw this: a gingerbread recreation. Published here. 

Origami snowglobe

Nothing like a little stop-motion animation to brighten the mood. 

The little girl who sang at the top of her lungs during the Nativity

Martha showed me this video earlier today, and it was so funny, I've been back to see it three times. A few things that seem to be the case: it was shot years ago, and the children here are now grown up; the little girl had not sung at all during rehearsals and was told to be heard during the real performance; the older girl with the halo in the back of the Nativity scene posted the video, recognizing its great humour. 

 

Nick's Christmas Mix (2011 edition)

 

Each December, beginning in the year our son was born, I've been making a mixtape for family and close friends of Christmas tunes. What started as a one-off stocking stuffer has turned into, well, a thing ... although probably it's better to call it a tradition. 

Actually, it's fun to do. We sift through many, many songs (I have hundreds sitting in an iTunes folder) and each year I pick up more, just to complicate things. New releases this year, incidentally, include the tracks by She & Him, Jack Johnson, Joan Osborne, David Ian and Carole King.

This year's set includes some songs that have been on the long list for a long time; the Gary Burton tune, for instance, is on a jazz compilation that's one of the first Christmas albums I ever bought.

The mix is, as always, all over the place. Where else could you put Luscious Jackson next to Tony Bennett? There's some indie pop, made-for-martinis jazz, some Sixties soul (the Funk Brothers were the house band at Motown) and loungewear. There's even a song that has nothing to do with Christmas or any holiday, but their name after all is the Decemberists, they put the word "angel" in a title and I got the idea after seeing it on a Christmas anthology.

I love stumbling across unexpected chestnuts, and the one this year is Daniel Radcliffe singing a cover of A Christmas Carol - not by Charles Dickens, but Tom Lehrer, whose satirical songs I learned at a very young age from my dad's stereo. 

Here are the tunes this year. 

She & Him: The Christmas Song
Vince Guaraldi Trio: Linus And Lucy 
Jimmy Buffett: Christmas Island 
Billy Paul Williams: Santa Claus Is Coming to Town 
Carole King: My Favorite Things 
Joan Osborne: Angels We Have Heard on High 
Jack Johnson: In The Morning 
Gary Burton: O Tannenbaum
Emmylou Harris: The First Noel 
David Ian: The Christmas Waltz 
Duke Ellington: Sugar Rum Cherry (from the Nutcracker) 
Chuck Berry: Run Rudolph Run  
Darlene Love: Marshmallow World
The Beach Boys: Little Saint Nick
The Funk Brothers: Winter Wonderland  
Luscious Jackson: Let It Snow
Tony Bennett and the Count Basie Big Band: Silver Bells
The Pretenders: 2000 Miles 
Michael Bublé: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas 
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings: Ain't No Chimneys in the Project
The Alarm: Happy Xmas (War Is Over) 
Bruce Cockburn: Joy to the World 
Annie Lennox: In the Bleak Midwinter 
The Decemberists: Angel, Won't You Call Me
King Curtis: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
Daniel Radcliffe (and the cast of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying): A Christmas Carol 

 

Sugar Rum Cherry

Duke Ellington's reinvention of The Nutcracker's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is one of the tracks on the Christmas mix I've made for family this year. This is about as good as Christmas music gets. 

Scenes from the Mummers' Parade in St. John's

We weren't able to make it to the Mummers' Parade in downtown St. John's on Saturday (Nick and his schoolmates are dressing up today for a visit to local seniors), but I've enjoyed seeing pictures over the last day or so. Here's a video compilation I saw. Great costumes! 

Santa finds his inner Jordan

Alternate headline: Nothing but soot. 

As seen here.