So far, each day in December 2008 has been a little stranger than the last.
As a result, I’m definitely looking forward to a relatively quiet and peaceful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I don’t know that they’ll actually be quiet, but I can hope.
I wish you a happy holiday too.
I’ve been scrambling to wrap up projects for work before the holidays and the end of the year. My apologies for the light posting here as a result.
Here’s one of the things I did: It’s a short promotional video I created as part of Butler Downtown, a revitalization effort for my town. Each month, we feature a downtown business, and this month our featured business is Worsley’s. Worsley’s is well-known for selling hardwood furniture, paints and wallcoverings, and other home items; but they also have an amazing collection of toys, dolls, and games. My niece loves it there, so we decided to take some photos and make a little video.
Are you ready for super-cuteness?
I figured I’d note which toys she liked and buy the one she loved most as her Christmas gift. She loved so many that it didn’t narrow down my choices much at all.
Also, did you note that Barbie is friends with Frankie Sinatra, the Star Trek crew, and Rhett Butler? That girl knows everyone.
We’ll resume the Kooky Christmas Countdown this weekend; prepare yourself for massive doses of strange and wonderful holiday music.
This month, Mixology Monday is hosted by Craig of Tiki Drink & Indigo Firmaments. The theme this time around is Spice.
I use spices and herbs often in cocktails, so this theme gave me a chance to explore variations in my favorite recipes. My first thought was a cranberry variation on the Blackberry Gin Daisy from this summer — a winter version of a late summer drink.
I love a gin hot toddy with lemon and a stick of cinnamon, and that was my other inspiration. Cinnamon works with cranberries; cinnamon works with gin; lemon works with all of them. Let’s bring them together for a party.
For cranberry syrup, I put 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, and 2 cups fresh cranberries in a pot, along with about a half stick of cinnamon and 6 or so whole cloves. (Next time I might add even more spices, and maybe some dried orange peel too.) Simmered 4 minutes, let cool until just about room temp. (Here they are simmering and cooling.) Strained with finest available strainer.
First drink: a cranberry variation on the gin daisy. It turned out to be much too tart. Cranberries are not, in fact, berries. Eat one and you’ll discover how not berry they are. So the syrup was sweet but not so sweet as grenadine, nor as sweet as the blackberry syrup I made this summer. Additional sweetness was in order.
Obvious choice: Cointreau. it’s delicious in everything, and its orange flavor works beautifully with both cranberries and warm spices.
2 oz gin (Plymouth)
1 oz cranberry spice syrup
.5 oz lemon juice
.25 oz Cointreau
Shake with ice. Strain into cocktail glass, top with spritzer. Garnish with three fresh cranberries.
This was good, but the balance of sweet and tart seemed delicate. Hard to manage, too tricky for my taste.
Knowing how nicely brandy plays with Cointreau and orange, I tried a different tack.
2 oz cognac or brandy (Courvoisier in this case)
1 oz cranberry spice syrup
.5 oz lemon juice
.25 oz Cointreau
Shake with ice. Strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with three fresh cranberries.
This was a much better drink.The cognac blended easily with the various flavors, and everything ended up warm and welcoming (yet nicely chilled by the ice). The spices are subtle, but there’s enough of them to change what might otherwise be a fruity beverage into something more special.
I still think a little spritz of seltzer isn’t out of place, to lighten the drink.
Important note: If you’re the type who likes to munch on your garnish, take care with these drinks. Even after they’ve soaked in booze for a while, fresh cranberries are tart little things.
Thanks to Craig for hosting MxMo this month and choosing such a terrific theme. Please check out his site for a full wrap up of creative drink ideas.
(Photo credit: Cranberry Spice Sidecar, originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey.)
December 11 is the second Neighborhood Walk, organized by the Rust Belt Bloggers. This time we’re looking at Public Art.
Butler has a terrific new mural that covers the side of a building on the west side of town, right across from my parents’ company.
The mural was commissioned by the owner of the building on which it’s painted: Elizabeth Graham, who had seen a mural painted in Erie and decided to commission a neighborhood-focused work by the same artist.
The artist is Rabecca Signoriello, a native of the region. The mural depicts elements and individuals particular to the West End of Butler: baseball, steel working, Pullman car and automobile manufacturing, and local bridges and features.
Butler’s baseball stadium, Historic Pullman Park, has recently been redone, just across the street from this building. A summer collegiate baseball team, the Butler BlueSox, will begin playing there in 2009, and the Division 2 College World Series will also be held in Pullman Park.
But Butler’s baseball tradition is longer than you might imagine, and the mural captures this history. As a feature in the Butler Eagle explained:
Most prominent on the mural are baseball legends like Whitey Ford, who played for the New York Yankees’ minor-league affiliate at Pullman Park in the 1940s. Ford rented an apartment on third Avenue, which runs next to My Buddy’s.
Other Butler Yankees great Joe Dimaggio and Lou Gehrig are featured, as well (as) Major League Baseball Hall of Fame ummpire Elmer Massey, who also played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the Negro League. Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard of the Homestead Grays are featured, too.
Butler does not have a lot of public art, so this mural is particularly striking. It also makes a huge difference to this street: The area has a mix of industrial operations, small retail, and residences, and over time it has come to feel run-down. The mural, along with the shiny new ballpark and the removal of some less appealing business buildings and houses, helps the street feel more alive.
You might not get this from the picture I took, unfortunately. It’s a cold and rainy December afternoon, when not much in western Pennsylvania looks its best. But I think you can envision how much nicer the mural is than the old, blank building side used to be.
For more background on the mural, the artist, and the project, as well as some photos of the artist in action, you can check out this article in the Butler Eagle: "Mural depicts history of Butler’s West End," Ed Biller, September 5, 2008. (Paid subscription required)
Continuing our Kooky Christmas Countdown of strange and wonderful holiday songs.
Number 22: "Five Pound Box of Money" by Pearl Bailey
Here’s a heartfelt plea from a practical woman.
Hey, Santa Claus!
You want to make me happy this year?
Listen to me honey.
Give Pearl something that’ll be of some use to me,
Like a five pound box of money.Now there’s a little gift
That’s loaded with
Lots of sentiment
See, whenever I get blue, Santa,
I’m gonna think of you,
And at the same time I’ll have the change to pay my rent.Money isn’t everything.
There’s no two ways about it.
But while we’re here,
Santa dear,
It’s much better with than without it.
You can listen to the song on YouTube. (If you find a video of her singing it, please let me know.) Or find it on Hipsters’ Holiday, one of my favorite holiday compilations.
Pearl Bailey was an award-winning Broadway performer, and as best I can tell she’s the only person who’s ever recorded this song.
If you’re interested, check out Miss Bailey on the Muppet show, in a particularly surreal clip made up of parodies of songs from musicals, thrown together in a Muppet version of Camelot (although none of the songs comes from the musical Camelot).
Number 21: "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses
Either you like this song, or you hate it, or you liked it the first couple of times you heard it and now you hate it, or you liked it and then hated it and now you’re back to liking it again.
I fall into that fourth camp. I think it’s the line "A&P has provided me / With the world’s smallest turkey" that does it for me.
Not sure if you know the song? Listen to it on Last.fm: "Christmas Wrapping."
The Caganer, a Christmas tradition from Catalan — a tradition I almost cannot believe is real — is explained by Stephen Fry on QI:
Don’t believe it? Here is a photo gallery of Caganers for 2008.
(Many thanks to I Let My Fists Do the Talkin’ for highlighting this delightful bit of video, as well as this interesting bit of kooky Christmas trivia.)
Our next sound in the Kooky Christmas Countdown is a late punk classic.
Some background from Mistletunes.com:
The Ramones were actually pretty slow to jump on the punk rock Christmas bandwagon; this is from 1989′s Brain Drain album and also appeared on the occasional B-side and compilation since, like The Edge of Christmas and Rhino’s Punk Rock Xmas, which notes its version is from the UK single. It’s fairly self-explanatory; look at the beauty of the season, why can’t we stop fighting, and so on. Writer (the late, great) Joey Ramone dedicates it to his girlfriend.
The video is a classic late 80s cheesy wonder.
It’s past time to start the My Brilliant Mistakes version of an advent calendar, our annual music countdown. This year the theme is "Kooky Christmas," and we’ll be highlighting strange and wonderful music of the season.
What could be more appropriate to the season than a tale of infidelity and betrayal? They Might Be Giants included "Santa’s Beard" on their 1989 album Lincoln.
Poor El Vez. His baby went away, "one year to the day," and he wishes only for her this Christmas.
This would be a fairly standard, sappy song with a sarcastic twangy guitar and mournful vocal — except for the sound effects. You have to hear it for the sound effects: Click to listen to "Christmas Wish" by El Vez.
I found this track on Starbucks Hi-Fidelity Holiday, a special release from about a decade ago. This CD is a treasure-trove of strange Christmas music. We’ll be coming back to it through the month.
There may well be stranger Christmas music. Do you know some? Share in the comments.
Our scheduled Holiday Music post must be postponed a day, due to my having devoted a bit too much time today to playing with my new iPhone.
As a meager substitute, I present a partial panorama of my office (one that doesn’t show the massive pile of paper stuffs on my desk) and a photo of my cat Samantha in a contemplative mood.
More substantive posting resumes tomorrow, for real.
It’s December at last, so we can recommence listening to Christmas music without (as much) fear of backlash from passersby.
Last December I counted down my favorite holiday tunes. This year I’ll tackle a more esoteric category: the weirdest Christmas music in my holiday catalog.
There were a few kooky numbers in last year’s countdown, notably Henry Rollins’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and Big John Greer singing “We Wanna See Santa Do the Mambo.” But I have stranger songs to share with you.
Actually, that Henry Rollins tune is pretty strange. I will have to work hard to improve upon it.
So for tonight we’ll just think fondly back upon last year, and tomorrow I’ll provide a double-dose of mighty music for your listening pleasure.
(Photo credit: crazy christmas, originally uploaded by laurenatclemson.)