No more #$%^& Xmas music!!!!

[jimk]

I wonder what is in store for Christmas 2008?

That will depend on who wins in November!

A new Ric for me, I hope!

JimK

[paologregorio]

I can't relate all that much. I was out Christmas Eve and loved hearing all of the tunes, but then again, I wasn't out in it every day shopping for the last month. I kept thinking that I wished that I'd been out in the crowds more often so that I could hear more of the music.

I could listen to the Ventures Christmas albums all year round, I love to hear the Cocteau Twins' version of "Winter Wonderland" and "Frosty the Snowman" a few more times as well, and I like the
Duke Ellington version of "The Nutcracker".

[jingle_jangle]

Today, in a Korean-run sushi restaurant in SF (one of my fave lunch places), they were playing a soul Christmas music channel on Sirius...Ray Charles singing "Little Drummer Boy", and a horrible version of Silent Night that must've been arranged by Earth, Wind and Fire's Maurice White.

I'll be glad when they get back to Japanese Gundam videos...

[alanz]

There aren't nearly enough Saturnalia tunes being written, recorded and played.

[blueflamerick]

This was the 1st Christmas that I didn't hear Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime. I was disappointed.

[paologregorio]

There aren't nearly enough Saturnalia tunes being written, recorded and played.

I guess you'll just have to buy the DVD set for "Rome" to get your fill.

[paologregorio]

There aren't nearly enough Saturnalia tunes being written, recorded and played.

I suppose you'll just have to buy the DVD set for "Rome" to get enough of that.

[jwr2]

If you want to really learn to dislike Christmas music then work retail

but even worse than Christmas music in a retails store is the Disney ride "It's a small world" ... they loop that freakin' song all day long ... I can not imagine working there ... that would be torture.

[ajish4]

If you want to really learn to dislike Christmas music then work retail

but even worse than Christmas music in a retails store is the Disney ride "It's a small world" ... they loop that freakin' song all day long ... I can not imagine working there ... that would be torture.

LOL!

We were at Disney a few months back, and as tradition holds, it is the LAST ride we go on before we leave for home.

The ride BROKE DOWN, with us in the middle of it, and the song played ON AND ON! I loved it, but my kids were seriously thinking of jumping ship and making a swim for it!

It is now closed for renovation. I wonder exactly what they are going to do?

[jingle_jangle]

If you want to really learn to dislike Christmas music then work retail

but even worse than Christmas music in a retails store is the Disney ride "It's a small world" ... they loop that freakin' song all day long ... I can not imagine working there ... that would be torture.

When I worked in design studios--intense but quiet places, I would walk into the office or through the halls early in the morning, whistling either "It's a Small World" or the theme from the Andy Griffith Show, or something similar (I had about ten irritating tunes). I'd do this for about the first half hour of each day.

Nobody would say anything, but after a short time, inevitably, someone else would start whistling it, not realizing that they were "programmed". This would go on until someone else would urge the whistler to "shut up", "stuff a sock into it", etc. In the entire course of this experiment, no one caught on. I suppose it was difficult to ascribe the original whistling to anyone in particular.

An amusing pastime.

[jimk]

You're evil, Paul!

JimK

[shamustwin]

We were at Disney a few months back, and as tradition holds, it is the LAST ride we go on before we leave for home.

The ride BROKE DOWN, with us in the middle of it, and the song played ON AND ON! I loved it, but my kids were seriously thinking of jumping ship and making a swim for it!

It is now closed for renovation. I wonder exactly what they are going to do? [/quote]

My understanding is with the average weight of the riders being more now than when the ride was designed, the little boats are bottoming out and becoming stuck often. Instead of allowing perhaps one less rider on, Disney is redesigning the canal to be deeper.

[jdogric12]

I've been on small world at WDW and it broke down. ANyone see the Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa go on it with Aunt Patty?

[longhouse]

Was that when Lisa drank the water and began hallucinating?
'Bart, shut up. Lisa, drink the water.'

Family Guy visited the Small World also.

Regarding Christmas music, here is a bit of my journal from last December:

'the goat of Christmas passed' - December 13, 2007

It's nice for me, the customer, to hear the lush piano chords of Vince Guaraldi as I breeze through a store to purchase a targeted gift item. A recent day of shopping found me walking the tinsel-strewn aisles of Garden Ridge. 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus' rang out through the store as I walked between the artifical trees. Christmas is typically very happy time for me. Entering the godless realm of American holiday shopping and all its attendant commercialism is treacherous. It's an uncertain spacewalk. It's life among the lions, or rather, lionesses –cougars in crazy purple jogging suits, the likes of which I've never seen in clothing stores.


Rack after rack of glitter-coated plastic junk steadily became a blur. White-haired Sherman tanks in purple jogging suits refused to yield their positions and would not be swayed by my smile. 'Santa Baby' came over the PA and I sensed a transformation taking place. I had reached my limit with the the piped-in carols and contemporary renditions of holiday songs. A bitter, slightly downward, curl formed at the corners of my mouth and I noticed I was walking faster. In an aisle which should have been labled 'Gay New Orleans FuFu Feather Christmas' I felt a wave of revulsion as a patriotic pro-war Christmas in Iraq country song began to play. Goat-bearded jihadists and Toby Keith's America of camouflage and Carhardt jackets had shotgunned and suicide bombed my holiday cheer. My jaw clinched. A hip hop version of 'Little Drummer Boy' began and part of me died.


I pictured myself armed with one of those obscenely large candy canes, blithely bludgeoning everything in my path. Silver glitter stuck to my shoes. Soon I was back in the solitude of my car wondering how many people working retail jobs tumble into insanity each Christmas.
___________
This afternoon I once again trudged into the grey to shop, my first destination: Game Stop, a store dealing solely in electronic game systems. A car pulled beside me as I was gathering my things. From it emerged a pretty young woman with porcelain skin and a head full of lazy auburn curls. She wore a powder blue dress which fit tightly around her very pregnant stomach. No ring adorned her third trimester ring finger.


Her boyfriend rose from the driver's seat and surveyed the parking lot with a pointless scowl. A thick red beard clung to his face like a Seattle squirrel, jutting out at least six inches. I looked at him and took note of his ragged jeans, bandana, and leather jacket worn in the unmistakable, insispid, long-dead grunge style. Inside the store pregnant Dorothy Gale stood next to her fertile ghost of trends past. Rather than grinding out an anthemic 'I'm depressed so I do heroin and write songs in dropped D' song on a real guitar, the red goat was playing Guitar Hero. The stink of countless cigarettes smoked in a small space surrounded the pair like an aura. Smiling at the absurdity of my countrymen's folly, I walked past them. A 30 year-old virgin with a name tag asked if I needed assistance.


American culture is circling the drain, my friends