Joy to the World

...and what a joy!

In my mind and for my money one of the many pure joys in the world is listening to Roger McGuinn play his Rickenbacker 12 string. It doesn't get much better than that and as the self declared Listener Laureate of my generation I am uniquely qualified, able, and willing to make that very difficult call. 

As I checking around the net today I found this link to his solo Rickenback 12 string version of Joy to the World. That is all that needs to be said.

Please take me to the song you are bragging on...

The WORST best Christmas ever...

the WORST best Christmas ever...

Mix Song List 2014/1997

click for tunes

I've been making Christmas mix tapes/cds/playlists for ages. Some of my first ones were in Junior High using my Wards Airline cassette recorder with the mic taped in front of the stereo speakers. Lo-fi at its very best.

I kept meaning to get one done this year, but lacked sufficient motivation to actually get it done. I'm not really sure why. I think I feel at least a little bit Christmas-y, but I'm not sure. I've already gotten perfect gifts for some folks and even presented the new version of the story of spud tossing. Decorating the house produced many fewer arguments and much less shouting this year and the kids and Haidee all seem to be getting along. I just don't get it. Maybe I don't need the higher levels of excitation.

I don't want to beat a dead horse or sound like a rerun(sorry Mark) but to be honest as I'm getting closer to my golden years I think back to the activities of a Christmas 17 years ago. It was my worst Christmas ever.

I won't go into all the boring details or the repetitive rambling. I'll just go with, "that was the year I had my holiday quadruple bypass." They dropped the knowledge nugget on me about noon on the 23rd after an ever so exciting heart cath(my first in a series of over a dozen these many years later.) I shan't soon forget the sighte of  the four highly paid heart specialists pointing at a monitor as they huddled in a corner, shaking heads, looking over their glasses at me. Finally one of them comes over and tells me the news. Luckily one of them, Rez Khalafi, says let him have a Christmas, we can do it on Monday.

I wasn't that excited about having the surgery anyway. My dad only lasted not quite 3 days after his four years earlier and by gawd I didn't want to do it until we threw potatoes in Jacksboro.  Now 17 years later we are sill at it. I've had seven stents since, 2 bouts of roto rooter, done all sorts of wild and crazy treatments.

(I even followed the Dick Cheney program of biting the heads off of live  weasel babies one a day for 2 weeks. Actually when I heard him gloat about how he'd torture all over again and the senate report was just a bunch of hooey and full of cr&p, I thought loudly to myself, "Did we really waste a perfectly good 'human" heart on him when it could have gone to someone possibly  a little nicer and more caring?")

So...I think about the heart stuff at Christmas time. That year was the both the worst but also the BEST Christmas ever just because of everything that followed.

I got on the youtubes and put together a playlist of the songs I listened to in '97 and that I still love today.

When I get more time I might ramble some about each of them. Enjoy, Merry Christmas, and sorry about the advertising on some of them.

click for tunes

 

Merry Christmas Baby - Charles Brown
Buck Owens - Blue Christmas Lights
Rudolph & Hermie We're A Couple Of Misfits
The Haynes Sisters- Rosemary Clooney & Vera Ellen -Sisters
HANK THOMPSON - Gonna Wrap My Heart in Ribbons (1964)
Frank Sinatra - Jingle Bells
Dexter Gordon Quartet - "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"
Lowell Fulson - Lonesome Christmas (Swing Time Records 1950)
Nat King Cole - This Christmas Song
BUCK OWENS - Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy (1965)
The Staple Singers - Go Tell It On The Mountain - 1962
Steve Earle - Nothing But A Child
Charlie Parker - White Christmas (Live jazz, 1948)

Link to MP3 file of mix

 

Newest version of the tale....

Every couple of years I get a call, a letter, once even a rock through the window, from my old traveling companion and frequent fellow Luddite, Kinney. Most often it is a request for the temporary loan of funds for this or that best left unmentioned  business venture. I still consider my investment in the early beginnings of the weasel based electric grid a sound choice even if I've yet to begin profiteering.

Recently he claimed he wanted to "touch up" the tale of the Christmas potato. At first...there was hesitance on my part, yet when Kinney said it was already a done deal and ready for posting how could I argue with him. He assured me his buddies,  Eddie & Julian,  would see it was shared one way or the other. He reminded me that over the last almost 60 years there was ample material shared between the two of us that if released would make the Sony kerfuffle seem like children's playground gossip and intrigue.

So....for your enjoyment here is Kinney's new take on the old tale now after 30 years of retelling. The story is presented for audition purposes only. Kinney makes no claim of ownership over the material other than the obvious stuff that could only come from the wrinkled gray mass that is his imagination. His "assistant" (someone I've never met, who's description changes constantly as does his/her name) is responsible for the art and creative touches and who told Kinney, "If it is posted in the cyberspace I feel free to borrow as long as I never profit from it or claim it has my own work. Borrowage is the stuff that makes the world go round, the world go round."

Talk about some serious excitement...

Lights are coming on all over town and my favorite elf is making notes. Momentarily potatoes will be wrapped with messages affixed. To help you prepare I'm posting a PDF of the "message" making for easier duplication and new this year dotted lines to assist our friends and tossers who find themselves scissor-ly challenged.

PDF of notes for potatoes

Shipping woes

Quick word about shipping problems this year. I've used catalogs, Monkey Wards, mail order, phone order, book clubs, Internet, online, etc, etc, etc. over the years. Once I even bartered services(not the proudest day of my life, but you do what you have to do to make Christmas dreams come true) and very seldom had any problems.

Sadly, this year there were 9 or more rain checks on the tree. Everyone of them related to shipping issues. Stuff still isn't here. The problems occurred beyond the vendors' doors when the parcels were picked up by the carriers. Every vendor has bent over backwards to help. I've had shipping refunded and gift cards offered for my trouble. I'm sure everything will get here. The moment was spoiled mostly for Carson who trusted me to get the stuff here on time so the spoiled Christmas was my fault.

I remember a Christmas back in '97 when all I really wanted was to live through the next week, have that surgery, last longer than the 3 days Dad did after his bypass, and live to hear my daughter say daddy. She's 17 now, and doesn't even realize that every time she unloads on me, shouts, calls me names, loses her temper(ever her father's daughter) even if I get angry, it is just one more wish in my life that has come true beyond all my expectations. Pretty sweet trade off if you ask me.

WARNING !

Santa fly with one eye open as you make your rounds. The skies over Middle Earth could prove treacherous.

SHOCK & OUTRAGE

Pretty much wrapped up the holiday shopping. Lucked out and found the magic ingredient for this recipe for sausage ball scrapple casserole  I haven't had in ages. It was an old family tradition and then an uncle or somebody modified it, added a little of this, a dash of that, left out a smidgen of something else and then  didn't cook it done enough or maybe it sat out to long, long story short, after everybody got sick, nobody made it for years. I think I'll give it a try with a few new twists of my own.

Interesting note: no Christmas warriors out and about. People seemed civil and happy no matter what version of the holiday/Christmas/Festivus greeting was exchanged.