Sunday, April 21, 2013
NYT: Mike Mills: A Rock Star of Fantasy Sports
(www.nytimes.com)
I once named one of my jerkball teams “Monty Stratton Got A Raw Deal”. #stand
Read More...Mike Mills rose from a chair and strolled out to his car, but not to fetch a musical instrument to perform songs from the catalog of R.E.M., his seminal alternative-rock band. A fantasy draft of Masters golfers, involving Mills and a dozen others at a house not far from Augusta National Golf Club, had just concluded. And with baseball games in the East winding down, Mills was retrieving a laptop to take stock of his ...
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< 1 2 3I think if I had to choose just one carol to sing, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas might be it.
This is probably the first image that pops into my head when I hear the song. At the time, I didn't perceive them as gay, I just thought it was cheesy, which added to my general dislike of the song. My other image is probably generic American Bandstand dancing to the Brenda Lee version.
Some of my local favorites were playing for free outside the Corcoran Gallery when who should turn up to play for free as well but John Oates.
Judy Garland sang Over the Rainbow on her 1963 Christmas special. When you're used to seeing it sung by a girl in dead-end Kansas, seeing it sung by a woman in what looks like furs is a bit incongruous,
3 ounces brandy
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
2 teaspoons heavy cream (optional)
1/2 cup crushed ice
Nutmeg
Combine all ingredients except the nutmeg in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously. Strain into a 5-ounce stemmed glass, and grate a little nutmeg on top.
For your holiday enjoyment; apparently flips are no longer served hot, I suppose this is a result of not having fireplace pokers readily to hand.
That was probably more their intent, yes.
The jokes write themselves, really. Did The Other Guy From Wham show up too?
I checked this against the Bobby Rydell-Chubby Checker version. It has every indicia of suckiness, and yet remains undeniably bouncy.
When I was younger, we used to do "And the Glory of the Lord" from the Messiah every year, at least once; that's the easiest piece to sing, and I don't think the director trusted us to do anything else :) I still have the tenor and bass parts of that stuck in my memory. I've only been in a choral performance of the "Hallelujah Chorus" once, and it was one of the more miserable efforts in which I ever participated. My daughter was in a kids version of the Messiah when she was in eighth grade - it was scaled back and simplified quite a bit, of course, but whoever arranged it (and I don't remember who did) did a really good job of keeping the spirit of the original while adapting it to younger musicians.
-- MWE
That's kind of an odd duck. Today, it's something of an uplifting family Christmas thought, but when Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin wrote it, it was a rather bitter, sardonic song, written for a specific plot point in "Meet Me in St. Louis." It comes just as the Smith family learns, at Christmas, that it will be uprooted from the paradise that is St. Louis' Central West End and relocated in big, bad New York City. It's a sad moment in the film.
Originally, Blane wrote the opening lyric, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last." Vincent Minnelli put his foot down and said the song couldn't be THAT dark. Other changes have been made over the years to turn the song around. For example, the original "in a year, our troubles will be out of sight" became, in some versions, "from now on, our troubles will be out of sight." The line "until then we'll have to muddle through somehow" became "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough."
Basically, over the years the song got stood on its head, the "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" for an earlier generation.
Oh yeah, I know. I like the sadness. What are the holidays without bitterness, tears, and regret? Come on!
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
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