Christmas Detritus

Ugh. Sorry for this, but it cannot go without comment.

Make a Joyful Noise

This is not...strictly...classical. But I cannot let it pass.

You can learn a lot about people from their Christmas music collections.

Christ. This is a tired, tired postmodern meme.

You can learn a lot about people by the car they drive!

Know what? I got my car from my parents because it was...free. I suppose my 1994 Dodge Caravan totally represents me. Because it is random. It could be anything that my parents happened to have owned. It tells you...nothing.

I had a professor that said that your ringtone on your cellphone tells a lot about you.

I have a realtor friend that opines that your shoes are the biggest tell about who you are.

I like to wear socks and Birkenstocks. Or do I?

Your aunt and her Celine Dion. Your grandpa and his Bing Crosby. Your brother and his hipster-lounge remixes. Your nephew and his punk rock. Your uncle and his Barbra Streisand. Your mom and her Three Tenors.

This is all crap. Stereotypes are lazy. Lazy, lazy writing. Sorry, dude. Ain't buying it.

The music we listen to at Christmas is a reflection of our childhoods, our traditions, our lives, our histories and our music taste in general.

So... to sum up, our taste in music reflects our...taste in music?

Player, please.

I got your xmas music right here.

The Easy Way Out

Here's a quick tip: The most obvious joke, perhaps the first one you think of, is likely neither the funniest nor the most poignant. This, I think, is true at dinner parties as well as in professionally written columns (see Dowd, Maureen).

To demonstrate, please welcome Mark Swed of the LA Times. He wrote a glowing review of the recent performance of Kurtag's Kafka Fragments. He obviously loved it, and this much-anticipated concert apparently delivered the goods. But how to introduce the review?

...

May we please stop obsessing over the hypoallergenic first puppy and change the subject to something deep, spiritual, life-changing?

Er, I don't know anyone--at all--who is obsessing over the "first puppy". Not sure where you got that. Also not too spiritual. But I'm all for deep and/or life-changing. Where are we going with this? (And: did you run out of "and"s?)

Like detergent.

Ah! A non sequitur, perhaps? Intriguing!

Sunday night, President-elect Barack Obama, appearing with his wife, Michelle, on “60 Minutes,” spoke of household chores.

Is this a collage? Or a game of telephone? Puppies! Detergent! 60 Minutes! Purple monkey dishwasher!

He doesn't, he admitted, volunteer to wash dishes, but he washes them.

[I am absolutely not insinuating that Obama is a purple monkey dishwasher; it was a Simpsons reference-Ed.]

Also, er, if he doesn't volunteer to wash them...she...forces him to? Conscripts him? Odd.

And when he does, he said, he tries to use that as therapeutic practice, to find something soothing in the discipline.

Also, odd. That is an odd sentence. What is the predicate of "that"? "Wash dishes"? But I'm straying from my main point.

Almost as if on cue, Tuesday night Dawn Upshaw

Um. I'm pretty certain that this concert was planned well before the 60 Minutes episode that aired two days prior. But if you're going somewhere with this...

Almost as if on cue, Tuesday night Dawn Upshaw got out the Dawn.

Dawn Upshaw? Dawn dish detergent! Ha?

Oh, come on. Seriously? That's not even a good pun.


This is the equivalent of lame, lazy, pointless anthropomorphizing in marketing and mascots.

Marketing Dude: Hey, thanks for seeing me. I hear you guys do great work. We need a good image for our upcoming ad blitz.

Ad Agency Dude: Thanks for coming. What is it you sell again?

MD: Ice cream cones!

AAD: Oh. Hm. Well, we could just slap a face on it! No one's ever done that before!


Marketing Dude: Hey, thanks for seeing me. I hear you guys do great work. We need a good image for our upcoming ad blitz.

Ad Agency Dude: Thanks for coming. What is it you sell again?

MD: Raisins!

AAD: Oh. Hm. Well, we could just slap a face on 'em! No one's ever done that before!

Marketing Dude: Hey, thanks for seeing me. I hear you guys do great work. We need a good image for our upcoming ad blitz.

Ad Agency Dude: Thanks for coming. What is it you sell again?

MD: Tires!

AAD: Oh. Hm. Well, we could just slap a face on 'em! No one's ever done that before!

The balance of the article gives a nice account of the performance, which by all reports was excellent. But the lead-in completely baffled me. Why?

[lifts arms to sky, grimaces]

WHY?!?!

Fact-Checking Is Hard

Quickie post!

From Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News:

Strings rule at University of Texas Performance

It wasn't much publicized, so there wasn't much of a crowd for the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra concert Wednesday evening at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Aw. I'm touched you attended!

UT's Butler School of Music must be one of the country's biggest.

It...must?

In just under five minutes, I uncovered the following facts:

The University of Texas' (newly re-named) Butler School of Music has about 700 students.

The famed Juilliard School has about 800 students.

The New England Conservatory of Music (alma mater!) has about 750 students.

The University of Michigan's School of Music has 1050 students.

Indiana University's Jacob's School of Music and The University of North Texas' School of Music compete yearly for the title of "largest music school", each enrolling about 1600 students yearly.

The University of Texas is not, in fact, one of the country's biggest. In fact, and I stress again the word fact, it is commensurate in size with the two top conservatories in the United States.

Just sayin'. Lazy journalists, sheesh.