Merry Xmas, it's a distasteful collaboration

Okay, so Dave already beat me to name-checking the Onion's very funny list of obscene, absurd albs ("least essentials") from 2008. But I'm left with a question from the otherwise-semi-all-knowing women and men in the a/v control room: how in the motherfudge did Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis' Two Men with the Blues get omitted?

Listen. I am not wet behind the ears when it comes to the business of Willie albs. I know this guy'll pretty much roll tape with whoever the bleep can put together a few thousand clams and a session band [ed. note - wait, it's a live collection! live from the ever-bluesy Lincoln Center, baby!]. But nonetheless... this is the sort of thing that deserves at least some perfunctory remarks from the peanut gallery, non? Did everybody else decide just to bow their heads and zip their lips about it while I was out getting a Sun Drop?

See, here's an example of the New Me I was talking about previously. Old Me would say, "who knows what the future holds?" But New Me is not afraid to see the future, to know the future. There are three things I know for sure about 2009:

1. This alb cannot not be terrible, but will enjoy strong sales in Lane County, OR .
   
2. I will have to hear it at some point(s). I will eventually seek it out. In particular I will eventually need to know what "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" sounds like avec trumpet (blues trumpet!)
   
3. Only the recession conditions will keep me from buying it for our friend Robes. (That and the fact that I still feel kinda bad about a live Bobby McFerrin slab I bought for him. If yr ever over at Robes' house, please ask him to play said slab for you.)

Oh, and if the prospects for this alb excite you, be sure to check out the Amazon customer reviews (here.) Hell, I think I'll chuck a few choice quotations in the damned comments section. It's Christmas, you know? Blues Christmas.

Year-End Self-Horn/Holiday Horn

While my role models Wobs and EZ patiently await their Xmas Phish albs, yours truly's present to himself is a blog spree. For starters, the first of three long, grand, bestuv 2008 music posts is up on le prisonship! Get to it, if yr the sort that "gets to" that sort of thing.

Aye, this's what passes for thrilling on my holiday eve, but don't take that as a complaint. The loved ones I love are safe and hopefully warm and that's enough, and it's so much gravy on the ice-cake if I get to write to "you," too. Maybe I'll write to U2 while I'm at it. ("Dear Bono, what the eff happened, mahn? And when did it dawn on you to appropriate Mark Arm's style of sunglasses...?)

2008 was a great year for politics and a tough year internally. But here's one thing I've noticed that's blog-worthy and un-maudlin: 2008 seems to be the year I've put down the gtr and picked up the pen (again.) Writing hasn't seemed so important or so fulfilling since Sewanee. I don't know what it means, and I don't know where it'll go, but web-blogging is not going to be enough for 2009, and I'm not sure a dissertation will be either... So what does that mean? Do I re-visit the faux-Beckett, semi-autobio-roman? Do I turn back to churning out poems - actual poems, the kind I actually revise/edit/try to publish? Or mebbe the world needs a mystery novel featuring socialist-stoner-art-sleuths? You think? I don't know, but it's time for something, and that passes for a "positive" in my mind.
Another thing, this one a rare ur-resolution from somebody who mostly cannot distinguish between resolve and Palmolive: I'm going to back off on the lex-as-insufferable-agnostic meme. It already goes without saying, you know? If you know me, you know (and I already know) what I do and don't doubt and what I do and don't believe. Like no less a mind then Tom Scharpling, I figure that we've got a grown-up president coming, and if Tom takes it to mean that 30+-year-olds should stop shopping for Star Wars memorabilia, I take it to mean that there's gotta be something else worth grumbling about then the godheads and politics-s that I already know are nowhere to be found. There are other "known knowns" and "known unknowns," the seeds of which are way more under-sewn. God - (not) the one whose existence I question - knows I'll revert to my Bergman and Beckett and much-ballyhooed practice of negative dialectical doubt. But I've seen that movie, and I've cut that solo alb. It's about time to stick dandelions and daisies in the eye-holes of my Converse.... (Another ur-resolution, natch, is to do something about the oft-evoked bag of balloons north of my midriff.)

That's it, friends. I'll soon bury this unsolicited-but-necessary bit of solipsism/sentiment beneath a far more characteristic bit of non sequitur whatever... but I needed to perpetrate this exact spew just exactly now. And as always, froonds, there's nobody to whom I'm better fit to spew than "you."

Finally, OG regulars: Merry Holidays. I love you jerks!

Holiday traditions

You know my favorite thing about the holidays? The carols. Who doesn't have memories of gathering around the tree with family and loved ones and singing this chestnut?



God, I fucking love Christmas! What's your family's twisted tradition (aside from your uncle getting drunk and ruining the holiday)?