Christmas Eve in Washington

It is time to write a Christmas post.  And I was not really sure what to do.  But then, I thought that, after blogging about my favorite pop-rock Christmas songs last year, I should take on a different song this year.  

That song is “Christmas Eve in Washington” by Maura Sullivan.  (You can read about the song’s origin here.)

I’m not saying that it’s the world’s greatest song (and from a music production standpoint, the vocals could use some serious de-essing), but for many years it was an inescapable part of the Christmas season here.  Over the last decade, though, the song has largely vanished from local popular culture.  

Nitpicking the lyrics of Christmas songs is probably not something that anyone wants to read (although I have done it before), but there is an inconsistency that I have noticed.

The song begins with the line:

It’s snowing tonight in the Blue Ridge

And that line always won my respect, because it tacitly acknowledges that the chance of snow on Christmas in the immediate Washington area is nearly nil.  The only hope for a white Christmas might be found thirty-five miles away in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  And therefore I got the impression that the song was written by some who really knows what Christmas Eve in Washington is like.  

But, later in the song, there comes a contradiction:

Snowmen peak in through the windows

Snowmen can’t peak in through the windows, because there is virtually no chance of snow on Christmas, and not much chance of snow at any other time, for that matter. 

Anyway, it’s something to keep in mind during the mirthful merriment of the season, or whatever.

It’s Landmark

I may have to revise my movie-watching criteria (as related in the previous post) to the following:

*Star Wars

*Lord of the Rings

*based on someone whom I once knew 

*featuring a mall which I once knew

The trailer for next year’s Wonder Woman 1984 is out.  Some scenes for the movie were filmed at Landmark Mall in western Alexandria.  The mall can be seen in the trailer between 0:33 and 0:47. 

Landmark was the local mall from my childhood onward, and the mall that I knew best.  It wasn’t the fun mall for hanging out when I was a teenager; that honor would probably have gone to Springfield Mall.  But Landmark was, for many decades, a dependable place to buy socks.

Wonder Woman 1984 uses Landmark as a typical shopping mall of the Eighties, but, ironically, what one sees in the movie is not how Landmark looked in 1984.  Landmark was originally an open-air mall; it underwent renovations in the late Eighties and reopened as en enclosed mall in 1990.  

Landmark was available for filming because it is the stereotypically dying modern mall; for the last few years it has been entirely unoccupied except for an anemic Sears.  The mall is slated to be torn down and turned into a mixed-use retail and residential development. 

But we’ll always have Wonder Woman 1984.  

Sartorial Cats

Midnight

And the kitties are sleeping

Downstairs by the furnace

While birdies are cheeping

—David Letterman, back when he was funny

The movie Cats, based on the long-running musical of the same name, is out now.  Realistically, there is no chance of me seeing this movie.  I am not a fan of musical theater.  And I’m not really all that fond of cats either.  Indeed, over the last twenty years I have, for the most part, only seen movies which fulfill one of the following criteria:

*Star Wars

*Lord of the Rings

*based on someone whom I once knew 

However, like most people with internet access, I have been watching the trailers for Cats to marvel at how bizarre they are.  There are many oddities on which to comment, but the question that stands out for me is why some of the cats wear clothes, and others don’t.  Obviously, cats don’t wear clothes in the real world.  I have never come across a cat smartly dressed in a three-piece suit.  Evidently, for the cats of Cats, clothing is not obligatory, as it is in human society.  What factors, then, determine whether a cat is clothed? Does the clothing serve some practical function?  Or is it an indicator of social status?  Or is it simply a fashion choice?

And, ultimately, I don’t really care about any of it.  And so, you might ask, why am I writing this?  I want to boost my total number of blog posts for 2019 while I still have the chance, and it is a lot easier to write about irrelevant pop-culture items like this than about anything more substantial.  

The Mega-Holiday

Back in November, in one of my occasional attempts at being funny, I suggested a technique for keeping the spirit of Halloween alive after the day was over.  In reality, on Thanksgiving I was walking around and noticed that, even at that point, there were still a few houses with Halloween decorations (one of which was a spider “skeleton”).  And then that night there were television specials featuring Christmas music, and the next day everyone started putting up Christmas decorations.  

This has set me to wondering if, in the same way that everything between Boston and Richmond has been merging into a megalopolis over the last several decades, everything from Halloween to New Year’s Day might merge into one mega-holiday that runs continuously from early October into early January.

One hundred days of a skeleton in a Santa suit serving us turkey . . . 

Roy Larsum

I woke up this morning with two words lodged in my head: roy larsum.  I didn’t know what they meant, but I knew exactly how to spell them.  They sounded like a name—Roy Larsum, but then, maybe they weren’t a name. 

Something like this happens to me every so often.  I’ll wake up with some sort of random phrase in my head.  And I’ll feel the need to research the phrase.  And nothing will come of it.  

But still, I felt the need to research my new mystery phrase, so I went to Google.  

Roy larsum without quotations marks returned a bunch of hits for people named Roy Larson.

Roy larsum with quotation marks returned no hits at all.  

I will note, though, that now that I have written this blog post, should anyone be looking for roy larsum, that anyone will get one hit.   

Linear Clouds

Linear clouds—that sounds like a jazz album.

A Fun Post-Halloween Activity

Halloween is eleven days behind us.  Yet, while walking around yesterday, I saw that many people still had their porch pumpkins.  Perhaps Halloween has become such an important holiday that we want to extend the Halloween spirit into the first weeks of November, in the same way in which we wish to extend the spirit of Christmas through the end of December.  

Thus, I am providing step-by-step instructions for a fun activity by which one can keep a little bit of that special Halloween magic alive.

1. Assemble a group of a dozen or more of your friends.

2. Provide each member of the group with a dark, hooded robe which will fully obscure his identity.

3. Provide each member of the group with a battery-powered lantern, ideally one with a design reminiscent of archaic candle- or oil-based lanterns.  (Bonus points are awarded if you refer to your lanterns as “lanthorns”.)  

4. Shortly before midnight, congregate in an uninhabited area such as a cemetery or woodland.  Don your robes and activate your lanterns.

5. Emerge from the uninhabited area and walk silently in single file down the sidewalk, holding your lanterns in front of you.  

6. Select a house which is clearly occupied, but whose occupants no one in your group knows.

7. If possible, fully surround the house, or, if prevented from doing so by fences or other obstacles, form a semi-circle in the front yard.  

8. Begin chanting in deep and ominous tones, preferably in Latin.  

9. When the homeowner emerges to question or challenge your group, do not acknowledge him in any way except by increasing the volume of your chanting and the menace of your intonation . . . 

Okay, on second thought maybe it’s better to put Halloween behind us and start looking ahead to Thanksgiving.