HNY

Happy New Year!
(one of the advantages of living in denver is that one can ring in the new year with the New Yorkers at 10p Mountain Standard Time (midnight Eastern Time) and be in bed by 11 having done the New year thing! i never understood why thousands of people like to congregate in Times Square/Trafalgar Square/etc. to celebrate...a new digit on the year? Maybe I'm too square)

Grumpy

I was given a book called Grumpy Old Men for Christmas. Not the screenplay of the Lemon/Matthau movie but the book of a BBC TV series I hadn’t heard of. The cover featured a photo of 4 men on the Abbey Road crosswalk, one of whom looked like Rick Wakeman, famed long-blonde multi-keyboardist with my favorite band, Yes. Is it he, I wondered, and if so, what’s the connection? Turns out the TV show (sorry, “programme”) shows a number of well-known middle-aged men talking about any issues of modern life which irritate them, from the proliferation of excessive road signs to unnecessary and overly-loud mobile phone conversations (according to Wikipedia). Apparently, this unpromising premise is hilariously funny, and indeed the parts of the book that are the grumpy bits are enjoyable. Rick and Tim Rice are among the well-known middle-aged men as are less global personalities such as journalist Simon Hoggart and the late John Peel, who was a radio DJ when I was a kid, famed for his eclectic musical taste.

Well this sounded more fun to do than listen to, so let’s give it a go – I’m well-known only to my wife, but I am middle-aged – one out of two’s enough, I trust.

• Traffic signals that turn red even though there are no cars waiting the other way. I know we have the technology to keep the lights green until a vehicle shows up wanting to cross. Keep It Green is my slogan.
• Am I the only person who thinks The Office is cringingly unfunny? And I can’t even look at pictures of Sacha Baron Cohen without hoping Monty Python’s 16 ton weight will fall on him. Never seen his comedy, never want to.
• Okay, Microsoft has had 20 years to perfect Windows, and my computer hung up again just now. Don’t tell me it’s the other guy’s software that’s to blame – mine always hangs up on Internet Explorer and MS Word, which are Microsoft’s own offspring. The next version of Windows is out, but too late for me – my next ‘puter will be Apple. (And since when did “PC” get to mean only the Windows computers?).
• Why do Brits insist on the spelling “programme”? As in “Ye Olde Computere Programme” perhaps? What could be more modern than the program, whether TV, computer or 12 Step? Brits, please, get with the “program”!
• People who think that because they came up with a good idea, we all want to know the hows and whys. That’s my main criticism of Grumpy Old Men, which really doesn’t start grumping until page 50. Trying to cash in, Mr Prebble?
  

Vicars

I am fascinated by those who live their life vicariously. I once had a wife who was chronicly sick and a friend who would call up many times a day to see how she was doing and generally chat. But it was clear she was doing this to add something to her own life, not to make my wife's life any better. Lots of folks in britain follow the doings of the royal family in similar fashion. Nietzsche, writing about a century ago, exhorted us to live life to its fullest, even though it may be cruel to you (as it was to him) - he was "pro-life" as it were. i think he would not have taken kindly to living life fully through the life of others.
I mention this because I actually read one of the enclosed year-encapsulation letters that came inside a Christmas card and was wondering its implications. Written by Mom and starring The Kids, 3 very talented, affable teenagers, all with names beginning with A, hence her term for them - the A-Team! I got to learn the not inconsiderable accomplishments of each of the Team, but when it got to the part when we should have been told what Mom and Dad were up to, there was nothing but an admission to the effect that we don't have lives, we just coach the Team. Well if you are going to live vicariously, then at least have it be your kids, I suppose, but I still found that depressing. can't one parent and have a life worth reporting on? Yes, part of life is giving up part of life for your kids - but isn't there a part left that can have its own aspirations, accomplishments, achievements. Am I simply now just "Zoe's Dad"?

Christmusic

Christmas, what better time to talk about Christmas Music. Like Christmas itself, there are 2 sides to Christmas Music, the side that has little to do with the "meaning" of Christmas, and a lot to do with sappy commercialism, and then there is the beauty of the Christmas Carol (is my musical snobbery showing at all?). There is a radio station in denver that actually plays the first kind 24 hours a day from thanksgiving to december 25th. My wife sometimes turns it on in the car just to watch me writhe to such depravity as dean martin singing winter wonderland (or some such). "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus" is my personal bette noir; that's all we need - Christmas songs with sexual innuendo for our kids to sing-along with. Yes, yes, i understand the irony in the lyrics (I assume we are to understand that santa is in fact Daddy), but that would surely be lost on kids we purposely deceive into thinking that Santa and dad are independent essences. Before the radio was switched out in favor of a CD (any CD!) i did get to hear the wonderful rasp of Bryan Adams, who i can only imagine had recorded his Christmas ditty with a gun to his head (or facing a huge debauchery bill), telling us how great it would be if Christmas was every day. Not.

The Christmas Carol is one of my favorite forms of music, especially when sung by an awesome assembly of voices. Fortunately, there are many. I was brought up on those of the cambridge colleges, but I have since found there are plenty of fine alternatives. itunes led me to the dale warland singers and the elora festival singers, for example, both of which make sounds that lift one's soul to heaven, leaving the body lying limp on the sofa! Many of our most familiar carols were written by otherwise unknown composers, but the The Great Carol for me is mendelssohn's hark the herald angels sing, particularly when done with descant final verse. My Favorite Carol, though, is Gabriel's Message, but only when done with the John Rutter harmonies. the alto line of this arrangement is to die for. The album "The Holly and the Ivy" with Rutter and St Clare college Cambridge has it, and a haunting sound it is too. I will give honorable mentions to Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, words "collected" by Joshua Smith, New Hampshire, 1784, music by 20th century brit, Elizabeth Posten (see what i mean - no other known composition!). The aforementioned eloras make the octave jump sound effortless. And Adam Lay yBounden ("...bounden in a bond...", whatever that means). Short and very sweet. Turns out denver also offers its own festival of 9 lessons and carols (perhaps as a nya, nya to the radio station?) at St john's cathedral, an appropriately gothic-looking and sounding place that was comfortingly packed when i went and who included a sparkling performace of Adam, amongst other offerings. Excellent. st martins choir are the best voices in town. i missed them because a blizzard cancelled the show I was going to attend and although they promised a reschedule, they weren't able to follow through. Missed those herald angels!