I can’t afford a plane. I book a bus. It will take four days.

Received a blizzardy blur of Christmas pop this past week, nearly none of it ironic or snotty. Lots of clever arrangements and efforts to update or honor classic tunes of the season, but nothing pat or snide, as could well be expected from those who wear black and never leave their bedroom recording studios.
AM & Shawn Lee have an EP, Holiday Happiness & Cheer that unwinds like a High Llamas album, with respectful rebuildings of lounge-pop sounds, repeating themes and lush instrumentals of songs you’ve already heard with vocals. Only two tunes to contend with here—two sweet and sweetened versions of the Charlie Brown Christmas opening number Christmas Time is Here, then three versions of the original “I’m Home for the Holidays, stripped down and then stripped down further.

The bands Kisses and Keep Shelly in Athens conspired to create the “Narrow Elevator Christmas Muzak Mix” of eerily squeaky and serene dance music. It’s a full 50 minutes of music—er, muzak—which I’ve blissed out to while typing. More furtive than festive, but sounds like a cold swirly still night in the winter.

I’ve also spent time this week trying to figure out if “Jasper Christmas” by the harmony-vocal quirk ensemble Pearl and the Beard is a Christmas song, or just about a guy with Christmas as a surname. “I don’t wanna stay,” it yowls.

Life Itself—A Memoir
By Roger Ebert (Grand Central Publishing, 2011)

Roger Ebert the writer and critic once again beats back Roger Ebert the celebrity punchline, and provides an enlightening and intelligent commentary on what matters in modern life.

I read this book sideways, heading straight to the Russ Meyer and Sex Pistols bits, then browsing incessantly before doubling back to tackle the book as a whole. I cheated myself of a soldly structured and balanced autobiography. Considering that he’s been on the top of his chosen profession (film critic) for decades, and hobnobs regularly with the rich and famous, he’s remarkably centered and not ego-driven. This book accesses his professorial side, not his “At the Movies” persona (which he’s certainly taken advantage of in some of his earlier books.) There aren’t surprises here—we know Ebert’s been sick for years, that many trusted friends and colleagues of his have died, that his career glories include both popularizing the craft of film criticism and earning a Pulitzer for his own practice of it. This is a book of reactions rather than revelations or provocation—how Ebert felt when certain things happened. He’s so thoughtful and articulate that he makes a life largely spent writing at a desk into a wondrous adventure.

Septemberish weather notwithstanding, it really felt like Christmastime today. Walked around the city and it was a village. Did some last-minute shopping, and had forgotten how many friends I had who worked in those shops. I’ve known some of these people for decades.
The streets were quite but not deserted. The students vamoosed days ago. It feels like a village now. Everybody knows each other, smiles, wishes happy holidays, is happy to have customers in the shop. The check-out folks at the library were merry. The tellers at the bank, even though they were caught up in a computer calamity that only allowed them to process one transaction at a time, while holding their breaths, they still were upbeat.
Toothless babies smiled at me. The girls got off the schoolbus beaming, after a half-day at school spent eating cupcakes and watching the puppy opus Santa Buddies. We shopped yet more—restaurant gift certificates from our favorite restaurants, such as Miya and Mamoun’s.
We wrapped gifts. We made cookies. If the visions of sugarplums don’t exactly arrive, we’ll be fine. Could have used snow (the Channel 8 guy had our hopes up earlier in the week) but that’s not a dealbreaker. Happy Christmas regardless, in our havenly hometown.

Selected story titles from the 192-page full-color trade paperback collection Archie Christmas Classics:

Slide Guide
Snow Mistake
Fire Bugged
Come Onna My House
Shocking Stocking
Not Even a Moose
Those Christmas Blues
A Head Start
Generous to a Fault
Code Three
Gift Collection
Do No Evil
More Pull Than Talent
Go For Broke
Boxed In
R is for Rooked
Black Book Bonanza
A Christmas Tale
Prize Surprise
Treed
It’s Not the Gift
Ode to Santa
Temptation
Shopper Comes a Cropper
The Greatest Gift (Parts 1 and 2)
Tree Spree
Spirit Sprite
Tree Travail
And the text story Christmas Jeer.

The ‘60s-vintage Ode to Santa features The Archies—in this case, just a trio of Archie on guitar, Reggie on drums and Jughead on keyboards—upsetting the establishment with their modern take on Christmas carols. “They grab every opportunity to clamp down on us younger generation cats!,” Archie complains.
Sample lyric:
Rock it, Santa, Shake it loose
While we stuff our Christmas goose
Bring those goodies, that’s your bag
As we sing the reindeer rag.

Hard to know what constitutes an Archie Christmas Classic—I could reel off dozens of stories which didn’t make the cut here—but Ode to Santa qualifies like crazy.

The woman at a table right near the stage wouldn’t stop reading her magazine, so Sonny Blitt brought the show right to her. First he mocked her from the stage, making fun of the fact that she was plainly ignoring him. Then he leapt offstage to actually interview her about her apathy—didn’t she realize that her seat was being coveted by folks actually interested in watching him play? She answered that her disinterest was genuine—she was here on a date, not to see Sonny Blitt play, and the date was late. (The date never showed up, but that’s another story.)
So Sonny ultimately invited her right back onstage with him. And, good sport that she was, she went.
Then sat right down in the corner of the stage, by the amp, and went right back to reading her magazine.

Johnny Dooit and Dickus the Third at the Bullfinch… Evardo and Jo Cheese at Hamilton’s… Nine Tiny Piglets at D’ollaires…

I need to book a plane flight.

Parenthetical Girls, Parenthetical Girls Save Christmas. I have no problem with bands which wish to return to the moody, dark strains of previous centuries, using their own special modern sound gadgets. I’m an “Old King Wesceslas” kind of guy, and in its own way Parenthetical Girls are that kind of regal. They’re looking for the shimmer in the snow, and it’s a long cold search. Dig the titles: “Christmas Past.” “Post-Christmas Time.” “There’s Always Tomorrow.” A “name your price” download three-song here.

Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse
By Caseen Gaines (ECW Press)
An unauthorized and underwhelming chronicle of Pee-wee’s Playhouse from its stage origins to its TV success and recent stage revival. It’s full of clumsy phrases like “couldn’t agree more” and “News that Pee-wee Herman was coming out of retirement was astonishing.” This is a fanboy’s book, and indeed there are photos of the starstruck author standing next to some of the show’s designers.
Gaines has done his homework. There are interviews with dozens of Playhouse participants. Notably missing is Paul Reubens, Pee-wee himself, who is apparently working on his own book. I hope Reubens realizes how much greater the story is than simply the Pee-wee Playhouse series. The Pee-wee Herman phenomenon says a lot about where America was in the 1980s. There’s no point in downplaying, as Gaines does, Reuben’s pre-Pee-wee turns as a Groundlings troupe members and a frequent Gong Show contestant. Or, for that matter, Reubens’ arrest for exposing himself in an adult cinema. “The Incident” only takes up four pages in Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and the author seems embarrassed to even deal with it, mainly driving home the point that the Playhouse series had already ended its run and was not cancelled, as rumors had it, due to “The Incident.”
The character’s numerous talk show and MTV appearances are more valuable than anything done on the formulaic Saturday morning series.
If you can overlook the gushy writing, and if you happen to agree that Pee-wee’s Playhouse was the sun around which all other Herman and Reuben endeavors orbited, well, here’s the overview and in-depth episode guide you seek.

How about those new trash bins? I see them as a Christmas gift from City Hall, demonstrating how seriously New Haven takes the new recycling standards.
I love the scheme they’ve chosen: turn the old big blue bins into the recycling bins, because they’re already blue, and use the new smaller black bins for trash. The size difference between the two bins forces you to consider whether you’re recycling as much of your trash as you could be.
There’s also the grand and glorious feeling of just tossing bottles and bits of paper freely into a big bin rather than sorting them into different piles, sticking papers in paper bags, and making them all fit into a square container. Mabel & Sally and I have begun a new fun Trash Day tradition of dancing around the blue bin tossing wastebaskets full of wastepaper in.
The City takes a lot of crap from some of its residents. Here’s an example of how well it takes that crap. Give New Haven a year-end huzzah for how smoothly they tend to handle trash pick-ups, at least in my neighborhood.