Monthly Archives: December 2006

Christmas On the Radio

So…there are a lot of Christmas carols. Yeah, I know that’s kind of an obvious statement, but really, I was just thinking about it and I realized that if I tried to make a list of every Christmas carol I know, I don’t think I could do it. Even if I listed the 125 songs on my Christmas playlist, I know I’d still forget some.

But there are, of course, two categories of carols. There are the traditional carols, whether they be the religious ones (“Joy to the World,” “O Holy Night,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Away In A Manger,” “What Child Is This,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” etc.) or ones about Santa/family/Christmas prettiness (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Sleigh Ride,” “The Christmas Song,” etc.).

But then there are the radio carols. The ones that a popular artist records to get some guaranteed airplay for a month. They may only marginally have to do with Christmas, and may not even completely make sense, but you still listen. Sometimes, you even grow to love them as much as the traditional carols.

Of course, there are some truly atrocious radio carols. “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” “The Twelve Pains of Christmas” (seriously, I want to strangle the guy hanging up the lights by the time the song’s over). I can’t stand “Santa Baby” no matter who sings it. And I went through a boy-band phase like every other girl of my generation, but for the love of God, NSync actually has a song that includes the lyrics, “I never knew the meaning of Christmas until I looked into your eyes.”

But there are some awesome radio carols, too. The ones that get stuck in your head. The ones you turn up when they come onto your car radio. The ones you dance around the room singing with your friends. You know what I mean.

Now, I don’t normally do top 10 lists. I’m not David Letterman, or even Greg Behrendt. But I do, as I’ve mentioned, have a 125-song Christmas playlist, so I figure that qualifies me as much as anybody to make this list. Here they are, in no particular order.

Mariah Carey, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”

This is the ultimate radio Christmas song. It’s one of those love-song-with-a-lot-of-Christmas-words-in-it tunes, and it’s perfect for blasting at full volume or singing at the top of your lungs.

Vince Vance & the Valiants, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”

Same title, same sentiment, totally different song. The first one is by the Queen of the ’90s and the Tabloids and goes, “I don’t want a lot for Christmas/There is just one thing I need/I don’t care about the presents/Underneath the Christmas tree.” This one is by some band no one’s ever heard of and goes, “Take back the holly and mistletoe/Silver bells on strings/If I wrote a letter to Santa Claus/I would ask for just one thing.”

John Lennon, “Happy X-Mas (War Is Over)”

Although the state of the world today makes it easy to focus on the “war” part, this song makes me happy. Actually, it makes me want to sway back and forth, maybe because I remember doing just that freshman year of college as I sang it with Christina and our friend Carr. If you really listen to it, the lyrics aren’t that great, but for some reason the first line draws you in.

Band Aid, “Do They Know It’s Christmas”

A whole bunch of famous people raising money for famine relief. Also a very nice song, except for one line that’s bugged me ever since I first heard it: “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.” …WTF? That is maybe the most poorly-worded line in a Christmas song ever. They want you to thank God that people are suffering because you’re not one of them? Doesn’t that line kind of defeat their whole point?

The Carpenters, “Merry Christmas, Darling”

I have a soft spot for this one. It’s deliciously cheesy and sappy, which makes it that much more fun to sing. It turns “Christmas” into a verb (“I’m Christmasing with you”) and includes the line “The logs on the fire fill me with desire.” Awesome.

Boney M, “Mary’s Boy Child”

More religious than the average radio carol, but just as catchy and fun. It’s by a West Indian group, and you can’t hear it without getting it stuck in your head.

Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/We Three Kings”

Bouncy and fun, and distinctively Barenaked Ladies. They actually have another version of this without McLachlan that doesn’t get radio play, and on that version they muse about the creepiness about the myrrh verse of “We Three Kings” before they sing it. (Seriously, have you ever listened to the words of that verse?)

Jose Feliciano, “Feliz Navidad”

I’ve liked this since hearing it on Sesame Street when I was little. I wanna wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart, and I wanna sing this song at the top of my lungs whenever I hear it.

Trans Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)”

This is an awesome instrumental version of “Carol of the Bells” that’s very hard to describe unless you actually hear it.

“Christmas Is All Around”

I recently re-watched Love Actually (which, by the way, is much better upon second viewing), and this song is hilarious. It’s the song “Love Is All Around” with “Christmas” substituted for “love.” (Sample lyrics: “So if you really love Christmas/Come on and let it snow.”) It’s a radio Christmas song making fun of radio Christmas songs, so you’re not meant to take it seriously…but there’s something kind of endearing about it just the same.

Katie Recommends: The O.C.

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Actually, not “recommends” so much as “begs and pleads with you to watch.”

Yes—bear with me, readers, whoever you are. Maybe you’re my friends, or my relatives, or a random stranger who stumbled across my facebook profile. Maybe you’re someone who checked out SSTS after seeing an excerpt from it in the Globe. Maybe you found me through blogger, or by googling something.

But whoever you are, I am going to try to convince you to start watching The O.C., which is struggling in the ratings this season.

What’s that you say? You stopped watching The O.C. a long time ago when it started to suck? You got sick of Marissa’s whiney drama? You hated annoying new characters like Johnny? You got bored with the whole Sandy-taking-over-the-Newport-Group thing? You didn’t like the focus shifting away from Ryan? You got sick of Seth being self-centered and constantly screwing things up with Summer? And you miss Season 1, when it was more of a dramedy?

Well, you’re in luck, my friend. Everything that drove you away from the show? Gone. Now, granted, I am a latecomer to The O.C., only having begun to watch it last year under the influence of my roommates (one of whom had the DVDs for the first two seasons, which helped me catch up), but the last six episodes have taken it from, “Oh, yeah, it’s on tonight, right?” to the highlight of my TV-viewing week.

Here’s what’s going right with the show this season:

1. Marissa’s dead.

Now, besides the obvious benefits of this development (i.e. no more Marissa being whiney and self-destructive and drinking too much and flirting with other guys while dating Ryan), her death has lead to some fantastic episodes. We’ve gotten to see everyone who was close to Marissa grieving in different ways. The first three episodes had Ryan dealing (badly) with Marissa’s death, first by cage fighting and shutting himself out from the Cohens, then by conspiring with Julie to find and kill Volchok (Marissa’s ex who caused her death by running her and Ryan off the road). Ultimately, his decision not to kill Volchok once he finds him

1 a.) brings him closer to his family, which is a reason to watch in itself. One thing that was sorely missing last season was anything substantial involving Ryan’s relationship with Sandy and Kirsten. This season, we’re seeing them talking more—he runs on the beach while Sandy’s surfing, and Kirsten and Sandy both offered him advice about Taylor. And since Ryan has deferred college for a year, he’ll be in Newport all season.

1 b.) As I mentioned in a previous entry, Melinda Clarke rocked the first three episodes. One of The O.C.’s greatest strengths is its refusal, despite being a prime-time soap, to make characters too one-dimensional, and when you look over the list of things that Julie’s done in the past (sleeping with her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, trying to get Ryan arrested, sending Ryan to kill Volchok), it’s amazing that you can still sympathize with her.

1. c.) Summer’s reaction to Marissa’s death isn’t what I would have expected, but it makes sense. She’s the only one of the kids to go to college (although she was just suspended from Brown for freeing bunnies from the science lab), and she takes the change in scenery as a chance to convince herself that she’s moved on. She does this by becoming an activist for environmental and animal rights—a complete 180 from her days as the ditzy, clothes-obsessed California girl who was Marissa’s best friend. Her ultimate acceptance of Marissa’s death is a small but poignant moment—in a voicemail she leaves Seth, she breaks down and says simply, “I miss my friend.”

2. It’s staying close to the main cast.

They’ve introduced a few new characters (Summer’s activist friend Che, Luke’s twin brothers who have become friends with Kaitlin), but they haven’t taken over the show the way characters like Lindsay and Johnny have in the past.

3. Sandy’s a PD again

Seriously, how long ago did we stop caring about the Newport Group?

4. Taylor Townsend

Obviously, I hope this show isn’t cancelled, or I wouldn’t be writing this entry, but if it is, I hope something fantastic comes Autumn Reeser’s way, because she is amazing. She somehow makes Taylor over-the-top and completely relatable at the same time. Even better: she’s funny. She’s lightening up a show that had become too dramatic after being a great dramedy in its first season. And her flirtation with Ryan sounds like a terrible idea on paper, but as it’s played out on the show, it’s become an awesome case of “opposites attract.” Last week’s episode was hysterical—Ryan, after kissing Taylor, starts having ‘80s-music-video fantasies about her that leave him unable to concentrate. High school relationship awkwardness ensues—ironically enough in the first season the kids are out of high school—and they end up having a makeout session in a closet. Plus, she gets Ryan to stop brooding and smile (and Ben McKenzie has a gorgeous smile). Ryan’s relationship with Marissa was full of drama, but Taylor’s loquaciousness and quirkiness play well off Ryan’s quiet, serious nature and bring out a lighter side of him we haven’t seen much of.

5. Kaitlin

Honestly, I didn’t really like her last season. I didn’t quite get why they’d brought her back in with a different actress—back in the first season, she had a pony who got alopecia, and the next season she was shipped off to boarding school with one throwaway line. But this season they’ve developed her character more, and she’s actually proved very entertaining. Marissa was a self-absorbed drama queen who never seemed to think she did anything wrong, but Kaitlin is more like Julie—an unapologetic bitch with a heart. She ended last season wanting to “rule Harbor,” but the most recent episode has her bored and smoking pot behind the bleachers as the bitchy popular girl hands out invitations to her party. Kaitlin responds by throwing her own rager to spite the bitch. In another recent episode, she and Julie are both flirting with the same guy. I read some article the other day where the reviewer called Kaitlin “Jailbaitlin,” which pretty much sums her up.

6. Seth and Summer

Hallelujah. So far this season, the writers have been able to keep them interesting without breaking them up. Seth has stopped being so self-absorbed and lying to Summer all the time. Instead, he’s very sweetly offering to give Summer her space while she adjusts to her new life (“If you don’t hear from me for awhile, it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I do”) and putting off RISD until Summer’s suspension is over so that they can both go to Providence together. They worked through their rough patch at the beginning, where Seth would leave Summer rambling voicemails that she seldom answered, and they’re now as cute together as ever.

The O.C. this season is in an awful time slot—up against Grey’s Anatomy and CSI. While I have nothing against Grey’s Anatomy, I’m pissed that it’s taking viewers away from The O.C. when the show has finally become just as entertaining as it was in its first season, if not more so.

But you know what? Grey’s is a rerun on Thursday, so your job, my dear readers, is to:

a.) watch the show (which looks awesome, by the way—it’s an It’s A Wonderful Life-type thing that shows what would have happened if Ryan never came to Newport) and

b.) sign this petition.

See you Thursday at 9, on Fox.

Elizabeth Berg Is Awesome. And I’m A Fangirl Dork.

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Wednesday night was an event I’d been looking forward to since I first heard about it: Elizabeth Berg reading at the Brookline Booksmith. I think I’ve already mentioned in this blog that she is my favorite author. I’ve read and loved almost all her books. She just has this way of nailing truths about life that I’ve felt but could never express. And her characters are usually American women in ordinary suburban settings, which is refreshing to me—I feel like too many authors feel like they have to set their novel somewhere exotic or make their main characters totally out-of-the-ordinary. But it’s always very easy to identify with Elizabeth Berg’s characters.

Her latest book is different— The Handmaid and the Carpenter is about Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus. At first I was very surprised, because all of her other books take place in relatively ordinary settings, and none of them are explicitly religious. But then I read this passage toward the end of the book: “For miracles are everywhere around us. Sometimes they are small and common: The curl of a child’s ear. The ripening of grapes on the vine. The stretching of a rainbow over the valley in which we live. Sometimes they are larger: That we have inside ourselves the ability to feel the music we hear. That our people survive!”

And suddenly, I got it. This is the attitude that’s present in all of her work. She expresses it explicitly in a short story called “Today’s Special”:

“Nothing big ever replaces the sight of the winter boots all lined up, or the sound of the click of the front doors locked up against the darkness each night. Consider cooling pies. The impossibly small size of your own child’s shoe…Isn’t it those small things that add the necessary shape and meaning to our lives? And don’t we miss seeing them if we look too hard for big things?”

So basically, if we can believe that little, everyday things like those are miracles, it’s not so hard to believe in the biggest miracle of all.

So, anyway, Elizabeth Berg read from The Handmaid and the Carpenter, and then she signed autographs. She also brought some baked goods—her daughter, who lives in Newton, just started a baking business, one that I’ll probably utilize at some point, because the cookies and brownies I tried were awesome.

But when I got her autograph, she was so nice. She signed three of my books, including my favorite, Joy School. (A book where the main character is also named Katie—an added bonus of an already fantastic book.) And because I am a huge dork, I gave her a letter I’ve written.

One of the things I mentioned in the letter was that one particular chapter of Joy School is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve ever read. It’s just two pages, but even if you haven’t read what comes before, you can tell so much about this character and her life. Because it’s beautiful and because it has to do with Christmas, I’ll share it with you here:

“It is such an odd thing to have a Christmas with only two people. It might be worse than being alone. My father and I opened our few presents, then sat awhile by the tree, each thinking that’s what the other one wanted to do, I guess. My father gave me twenty dollars to buy him something and I just got him a wallet and a duck call. He never will use that duck call. It was one of those things, I was feeling desperate and the guy selling the duck calls honked it and I thought, Isn’t that cute! Maybe my father will think that’s funny! and I bought it. But he just said all serious, Well, thank you, Katie and then he laid it carefully back in the box. I got knee socks, pajamas, a book of poems by Americans and a stuffed animal, a cat wearing a dress. She’s cute, but really I am too old, she’ll have to live in my closet. The best gift was Intimate perfume and dusting powder. So I guess Ginger helped a bit with shopping. I kept wishing someone else was there so I could have another face to look at, a triangle of possibility instead of a deadly straight line.

“After a bit we went out for Chinese food, and my father left a big Christmas tip and the waiter nodded and nodded and said, ‘Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas,’ about three hundred times. We went for a little walk afterward and my father’s hands were deep in his pockets and his head was hanging low. I didn’t even try. I just walked beside him and kept looking at the stars, trying to think which one was the Star of Bethlehem, which I think is one of the prettiest phrases I’ve ever heard, Star of Bethlehem. I thought, what if I were a Wise Man, what would the message be now? Maybe just God saying, Well, they are wrong about me. I did once make a terrible mistake. If you think I’ll ever send my Son again, forget it.

“Now it is ten o’clock and we are both pretending to sleep. But I can feel his awakeness and probably he can feel mine. I have my radio turned on real low and someone is singing ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’ like their heart is breaking wide open. Outside, snow falls, so perfect.”

If you can see the same magic in that passage that I see, you are my new best friend.

Have U Ever Been Chased by a Giant Letter U?

Pure Bright Fire

Formerly a struggling single twenty-something

Monthly Archives: December 2006

Christmas On the Radio

Katie Recommends: The O.C.

Elizabeth Berg Is Awesome. And I’m A Fangirl Dork.

Have U Ever Been Chased by a Giant Letter U?