a christmas warning

So here we are.

I should be happy. It’s my silver blog-iversary! This is blog entry number 25. (And they said we wouldn’t last...)

But my brow is furrowed.

I am in the midst of a conundrum. A conundrum that is sweetened and buzzed by this mug of creamy Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate that I am nursing, but a conundrum nonetheless. 

The sun has set, the chill is deep, and Christmas Eve looms. So it begs the question: What shall I give to you, dear reader(s), on this, our first blog-iday together? I have no gift to bring, pa rum pa pum pum. And our relationship is still so new, not even four months old, and we all know how tricky that can be. A blog about my childhood is too personal, too soon. A blog about that sandwich I just ate is too superficial for the holidays. 

So perhaps it’s time I dust off something special from my personal archives.

silent night

So here we are.

It’s a silent night. Which is a good thing.

See, this is the first December in a very long time -- I daresay since preschool -- where I have not sung a single Christmas song in a concert or benefit or the like. So, in trying to fill that little auditory hole, I have accompanied this year’s card-writing and gift-wrapping and general all-around living with the many various holiday music channels available out there. 

This was a shift from the norm: limiting such music to my own traditional Christmas playlist that was built years ago on John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together and Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, and has been augmented through the years with Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You, The Butties’ 12 Greatest Carols, and various specialty singles: Dean, Wham!, Frank, Bing... they are comfort and joy year after year, my iPod’s seasonal street soundtrack, played when I am out and about.

But I wanted to shake things up during this different little Christmas.

mister steve martin

So here we are, in my head, on December 5, 2010:

ME: I want to do this, but I don’t want to do this. I’m a little afeared.

MYSELF: I know.

ME: I’ve always wanted to meet Steve Martin.

MYSELF: You love Steve Martin.

ME: Everyone loves Steve Martin. This is more than that. This is... this is...

MYSELF: You can’t win this, you know. This word game. There’s no correct, non-creepy word for your feelings about Steve Martin.

ME: I’m not a stalker. I’m not crazy.

MYSELF: Then why are you wearing that hat?

magic

So here we are. 

What a magical time in which we live. We carry the world in our pockets and hold the computing power of a hundred Apollo spacecrafts in our hands. What used to take up entire rooms and floors of office buildings in Don Draper’s day are now parked on any given lap at Starbucks, with a latte on the side. (Back then, one would probably assume that “a latte” was the title of Dean Martin’s latest hit.)

It’s not like the way it used to be. No sir. Things are way better now. It’s magic, I tells ye. (I say that in my best 1890s prospector voice.)

lordy

So here we are.

I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first saw black birthday balloons on someone’s mailbox during a Saturday headed-to-another-garage-sale drive, but I know I was young and/or naïve enough to wonder if that wasn’t gonna be the best funeral ever. 

And as the Reagan era marched along and the boomers-turned-yuppies waved their flags extra fast due to cocaine jitters and decided that blisters and foot odor were small prices to pay for style in the form of sockless loafers, more black balloons appeared on suburban mailboxes, accompanied by matching streamers, bunting, and yard signs, all screaming the same slogan:

“LORDY LORDY, SOMEONE’S 40!”

The proliferation of Over-the-Hill birthday decorations was my introduction to gallows humor. Oh, I get it, I thought, like an alien observing some new planet’s civilization, they’re laughing about the fact that the birthday boy’s/girl’s life is over! That’s funny and sad! Like a clown! Which is appropriate for a birthday!

wee smalls

So here we are.

Some people get up at 5 AM. Some people go to sleep at 5 AM. But I think there is one thing that both groups of people can agree upon: that after the clock gets dialed back to standard time, there is no darker, colder hour in New York City than 5 AM.

Except 4 AM.

Make no mistake: this city does indeed sleep. I think that Kander and Ebb meant that there’s always someone awake in New York, New York; it sleeps, just not all at the same time.

50% chance

So here we are.

50%. It can mean so many things. Half. Half full. Half empty. Hours to go before your phone’s battery dies. A coin’s flip. An F grade. A fighting chance for life. Enough grays to require the permanent hair dye. Splitting the check, the profits, the assets. Reduction. A huge supply of your daily requirement of fiber. 

I am growing concerned. Over the last few days, it has been forecasted that there is a 50% chance of rain on Thanksgiving. Now all of a sudden, 50% only means yes, definitely, count on it. 

I am still aware that a 50% chance of rain means that there is also a 50% chance that it will not rain. But it’s going to rain. I just know it. 

punch line television

So here we are.

Remember Hee-Haw? 

I remember watching this, or should I say, I remember being forced to watch this back in the era of single-television households, when I was a kid. Cheap, syndicated corn-fed laughs served up on giant hay bales by toothless hicks in overalls and busty farmer’s daughter-types spilling out of their gingham, floating on hooch fumes and sticky with sweet chicken-fried metaphors you could sop up with a biscuit.

And Benny Hill? That was another one I was forced to sit through. Cheap, syndicated tweed cap-topped laughs served up with a side of steak and kidney pie by bawdy old Brits in derbies and busty young birds spilling out of their nurse’s uniforms, awash in Guinness and double-entendres, and somehow always ending with a fast-forwarded chase featuring character actors in various states of undress that ultimately makes one wonder what took us so durned long to break from our motherland’s monarchy.