'Bred Crumbs

Please Allow Me This One Grinchly Rant

As longtime readers (hey, it's possible) know, I am not a fan of this time of year. Too many of its hallmarks weigh on me – the forced festivity; the insistence on clinging to an outmoded mandate that you-will-be-with-your-family-and-you-will-love-it-dammit; and that whole religious aspect, nearly irrelevant though it is anymore. It's hard for me to conceive that society wouldn't be better off without the harried, hackneyed Holidays. For example, how fatally flawed is American capitalism that the entire economy has come to hinge on Xmas retail?

Right now though, one element is more grating than the rest: Xmas music. I could handle it, maybe, if yuletide didn't mean that the quality of mass music actually sinks lower somehow – if the people who make and market it would subscribe to any kind of standard before forcing it down our eardrums in every store and restaurant, and injecting it incongruously into every radio station format. Instead, if you've ever recorded anything at all, you are then allowed to release an Xmas record, even though said record will almost certainly not be up to par with material you cut from your last album because it was so weak-ass.

Sure, there's some good stuff; I appreciate any sincere version of "Silent Night," and the perfectly melancholy Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack almost excuses the entire season of all its sins. But everyone else's transgressions tip the balance. Yes, Paul McCartney crafted some of the finest songs in pop music, but he also shat out "Wonderful Christmastime," and for that he should be severely punished, perhaps by being made to smoke a meat doobie, or to marry Yoko.

There's too much crap ("Jingle Bell Rock," for one) that has been elevated to "classic" just because of its plainly stated seasonal implications – after which, we're doomed to hear every self-styled artist this side of Jewel cover it. Just putting the word "Christmas" in a song doesn't make it worthy of broadcast. And would the addition of sleigh bells suddenly make a Nickelback song palatable? I don't see how.

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I Don't Even Hit the Down Arrow Most of the Time

Apparently, my downstairs neighbors, whom I've never met, are selling their unit. But the open house today was over before I realized I should be down there interviewing all prospective buyers. I would have only one question: "Would you mind the occasional nearly-but-not-quite rhythmic light stomping on your ceiling that might result if I buy the new Dance Dance Revolution?"

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