Tag: Christmas Music

Monday Wake Up Call – Christmas Eve, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Christmas in Karachi, Pakistan: Who needs reindeer when you have camels? Dawn, the English language newspaper had pictures of people celebrating Christmas this week in Karachi. Revelers decorate Christmas trees and churches all over the city for the occasion. This procession is on Karachi’s main street, and is part of the celebrations by the Christian community (which many local Muslims join, apparently for the fun of it).

This Pakistani scene may give you some hope, or you may just see it as an exception to the rule that people of different religions must always be at each other’s throats.

But, it’s Christmas Eve, and Wrongo chooses to be hopeful. Here’s his wish for peace on earth and good will to all.

Let’s try waking up to a better day, and a better year in 2019. To help you wake up, listen to Jack Johnson singing “Someday at Christmas” written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells and performed on Johnson’s “This Warm December – A Brushfire Holiday Vol 1” in 2008:

Lyrics:

Someday at Christmas, men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs like boys play with toys
One warm December, our hearts will see
A world where men are free

And some day at Christmas, there’ll be no wars
When we have learned what Christmas is for
When we have found out what life is really worth
Then there will be peace on earth

Someday all of our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you or for me
But someday at Christmas time

And someday at Christmas, there’ll be no tears
All men are equal and no men have fears
One shining moment my heart ran away
From the world that we live in today

And someday at Christmas, men will not fail
Take hope because your love will prevail
Someday in a new world that we can only start
With hope in every heart

And someday all of our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you or for me
But someday at Christmas time

Well, there will be peace on earth
I said there will be peace on earth

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 23, 2018

(Columns will be limited from now through New Year’s Day as the Wrong family and our wrong friends gather to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. Wrongo may post a few tunes of the season, or a few photos that evoke this particular time of the year. Happy holidays and happy New Year to all who read this made-by-hand blog)

A list of Shutdown Cocktails:

Christmas shopping fails:

All the kids have Xmas lists:

 

Some people are never happy on Christmas:

Some people always say “you people”:

 A Cardinal who won’t be accused of pedophilia:

Wrongo leaves you with a rousing piece of holiday music. Here is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” performed live in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The entire congregation joins in the singing. It is conducted by the late John Scott:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Christmas Day – 2017

You shouldn’t be cruising the interwebs today, but in case you are, here is some music of the season.

Here is “The First Nowell” performed in 2010 by at the King’s College, Cambridge by the choir and the congregation. Although the spelling seems jarring, this is the correct spelling of the English version of the French Noël. The words and music both come from the English West Country. The arrangement is by Sir David Willcocks:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Next, here are the Piano Guys with “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”. The text comes from a 7-verse poem that dates back to the 8th century:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Finally, here are the Avett Brothers doing George Harrison’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”. Harrison was probably the most spiritual rock musician. This isn’t a Christmas song, but it represents the spirit of the season better than most. This was recorded on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017.

We’ve rarely needed peace on earth more than we have since then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opLtaR8jaNQ

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Wrongo and Ms. Right want to again thank you for reading. We wish everyone a merry and bright few days.

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Peace and Reflection 2016

It was a beautiful Christmas day at the Mansion of Wrong, sunny and breezy, with occasional food and drink. The most popular family movie choice was “La La Land”. We move on to our third Xmas party today.

Keeping with the idea of peace and reflection, here is a video from A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols that takes place at King’s College, one of the 31 colleges in the University of Cambridge in the UK. Kings was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI, and is world-famous for its Chapel and choir.

The annual Christmas Eve service from King’s is broadcast to millions around the world, including on American Public Media and WNYC-New York in the US.

For your listening pleasure and contemplation, here is a shortened version of the “Carols from Kings” in 2004, here is “Once in Royal David’s City”:

Wikipedia says that “Once in Royal David’s City” was originally written as a poem by Cecil Frances Alexander. The carol was first published in 1848 and set to music by English organist Henry John Gauntlett.

No pressure at all on the young boy who performs the solo at the beginning of the video.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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December 25, 2016

Christmas day. We are with family, eating well, and opening gifts. It is a day of peace and reflection.

Later, we will take a few hours to go to the local multiplex and watch a movie, since it affords each of us a choice of the seasonal offerings. Then its home for a “dinner that can’t be beat”, if you remember Arlo Guthrie.

Here is a flash mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus at a shopping mall during the Christmas season. Watching this should help you achieve peace and reflection; it is exquisite, it took tons of courage to do it, and great skill to get it right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLT0ZwUer4I

Today, try to remember those who are alone, who are missing their loved ones. Those who are under railway arches, who live in boxes, who need food banks to get by, or who are trying desperately to survive in war-torn countries.

Apparently there are surprisingly good acoustics in Mall food courts. It must have something to do with all of the bodies absorbing the echoes.

Merry Christmas!

Those who view the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Christmas Eve 2016

(We will be taking the next few days off. Regular posting will resume on December 27)

Family starts arriving tonight here at the mansion of Wrong. We always have three Christmas parties, one the weekend before the holiday week, and in this case, on the 25th and the 26th. It’s a big family, with many adult children and adult grandchildren, so we try to accommodate as many schedules as possible. There’s less tension that way.

Many say that this is the most wonderful time of the year. Perhaps it’s better if we don’t think about what a roller coaster ride of a year we had in 2016.

Do you think that we need a little Christmas after the year we had? The tune “We Need a Little Christmas” is from the musical Mame, which opened on Broadway in 1966. It is sung in the scene when the stock-market crash of 1929 has just hit, and Mame’s deceased brother’s 10-year-old son has been entrusted to her care. She introduces him to her free-wheeling lifestyle, using her favorite saying: “Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death.”

Sounds about right in our unequal society.

We are having a little collapse of our own in America now, although it is more prospective than a harsh reality. Right now we are either at the end of the good times, or we are about to go on such an awesome winning streak that you will bow in obeisance to our Orange Overlord, saying you are so sorry we ever doubted him. You be the judge.

Wrongo is thinking about all of this. He is also thinking about the loss of his brother Kevin to complications of ALS in June. Kevin personified resilience, and fought very hard. Wrongo and his sisters were able to be with him up to his last moments. We miss his humor and fierce intelligence every day.

Kevin didn’t live to see his candidate win the presidency.

One thing that we did at Christmas when he was alive was to all sing the Tom Lehrer song “Christmas Carol”. It was always an exuberant rendition, if not always on key. Here is the real song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffO8nZThwmM

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Lyrics:

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don’t say “when.”
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas day you can’t get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore.
There’s time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

Relations, sparing no expense’ll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
“Just the thing I need! How nice!”
It doesn’t matter how sincere it
Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit.
Sentiment will not endear it,
What’s important is the price.

Hark the herald tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry, merchants,
May you make the yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and buy!

So let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don’t stand underneath when they fly by.

In closing, you may not know that it is perfectly correct to use “Xmas” wherever “Christmas” is called for. From Today I Found Out:

Myth: “Xmas” is a non-religious name/spelling for “Christmas”.

It turns out, “Xmas” is not a non-religious version of “Christmas”. The “X” is actually indicating the Greek letter “Chi”, which is short for the Greek, meaning “Christ”. So “Xmas” and “Christmas” are equivalent in every way except their lettering.

The practice started with religious scribes, who used the symbol “X” in place of Christ’s name, and it has been continued by religious scholars for at least 1000 years. If it seems offensive to you to use Xmas, then by all means spell out Christmas.

Still, it’s another loss for O’Reilly’s War on Christmas.

And there’s this: Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a survey on Monday that shows that only 34% of Americans believe there is a war on Christmas. Most Americans now find both “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” to be acceptable greetings but favor “Merry Christmas” when asked to choose.

So, no need to get angry with people who say “Happy Holidays”.

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.“ – George Carlin

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.” – Shirley Temple

“What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.” – Phyllis Diller

The Wrongologist blog is now officially on a holiday schedule. There may or may not be posts between Christmas and New Year’s Day. We hope that those of you who had to travel arrived safely and will return safely, and we wish you a good holiday break!

Here’s to a better 2015, when we return hopefully refreshed, ready, willing and able to deal with all of the world’s crap problems as they come at us. Wishing you the absolute best for 2015! Your parting gif includes a few more Christmas tunes.

Here is “Silent Night, a Montage” by The Temptations, recorded in 1980 by Berry Gordy. Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin had left the group by the time this was recorded. It’s still great:

Here is “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey:

Let’s close with John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over).” It was recorded in October 1971, with Phil Spector. The children singing in the background were from the Harlem Community Choir:

And, so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let’s stop all the fight

When you open your gifts today and then when you eat your dinner, think of those who are struggling. Think of those displaced by war. Think about what we can do to change all that. Let those thoughts guide you through 2015 and beyond.

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Christmas Eve in America

Now, Christmas Eve doesn’t engender thoughts of Bob Dylan. He’s the last guy you would think about. But today, we have Dylan two ways. First, Dylan singing “It Must Be Santa”. If you listen carefully, Dylan uses the names of several US presidents in with the list of Santa’s reindeer. And his hair is ironed or its a wig:

Next, “My Unhealthy Obsession with Bob Dylan’s Christmas Lights”, by Merrill Markoe. You gotta love LA, where the A & B list stars live nearby. So, Merrill Markoe has spent SEVEN years documenting the puny string of lights that Bob Dylan puts on the hedge in front of his Malibu home.

We close with our go-to Christmas Eve sing along carol here at the Mansion of Wrong. That would be Tom Lehrer’s “A Christmas Carol”. Here is Lehrer’s lead in to the song:

Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in. I refer of course, to money.

Here’s the song:

From all of us here at the Mansion of Wrong, Merry Christmas, and please work to bring peace to your family and your community.

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Two Police Killings, Two Different Reactions

A few more words about the killing of two NYPD officers. It was and is a tragedy. No one should think otherwise. The harsh reaction that blamed Mayor de Blasio and the Eric Garner and Ferguson demonstrators should be viewed through a lens of that tragedy, The statements made by the PBA, and Commissioner Bratton were over the top, but under the circumstances, we can let go of them.

It was different with the professional politicians. On Sunday, Ray Kelly, who was the police commissioner during the Bloomberg administration, said that in his view (and in the view of many officers), that Mr. de Blasio ran on an “anti-police” platform.

He wasn’t alone. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani attributed the killings to the protests that broke out across the city following a grand jury’s failure to indict a police officer for killing Eric Garner. But Rudy being Rudy, went over the top on Fox News on Sunday:

We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police.

OK, that makes the killings Obama’s fault. Then, it was Ex NY Governor George Pataki (R) who weighed in, blaming de Blasio and Attorney General Eric Holder for inciting the kind of anti-police fervor that led to the murders:

(For those who receive this blog in email via FeedBurner, the tweet will not display properly. Pataki said):

Sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of #ericholder & #mayordeblasio. #NYPD

This, just days after Pataki said that he was thinking of running for President in 2016. Pataki seizes an issue and runs (literally) with it.

Yet, de Blasio said on the night of the killings, while standing next to Commissioner Bratton:

It is an attack on all of us; it’s an attack on everything we hold dear.

Isn’t it interesting how the shooting of two NYC cops became politicized, not just in NYC but throughout the country. Bratton blamed, in a roundabout way, the protests and so it goes. All of these guys looking for political advantage on Sunday. Then, on Monday, the headline in NYT said:

Officers’ Killer, Adrift and Ill, Had a Plan

Ismaaiyl Brinsley was a gang member who spent time in jail, who hated cops, who shot his girlfriend before he took the bus to NYC. He necessitates shutting down demonstrations, suggesting we recall the mayor, and blaming the White House.

Yet, in Pennsylvania, in September, Eric Frein, a white guy kills one cop and wounds another. But that story isn’t about how we should end marches and protests, or play the political blame game. He was just a loner with authority issues. This is typical of the coverage of the PA killing: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Police have not spoken about a possible motive for the crime, other than that Eric Frein has talked and written about hating law enforcement. Authorities have said a review of a computer hard drive used by Frein shows that he had planned the attack for years.

NO motive?? The same story says that Frein claimed to have fought with Serbians in Africa. That he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives list. And that when they found him, he had two fully functional pipe bombs.

Clearly, Ismaaiyl Brinsley was the real threat to democracy, not Eric Frein. Two guys, two different plans, two different attacks on police, and two different reactions by the police and Republican pundits.

No surprise here.

Let’s move on to more music for the season with something to make us forget that the America we knew is disintegrating in front of us.

Here is an old Irish song that dates from the 12th century, “The Wexford Carol”. Take a listen to the melody and beautiful words. This version has Allison Krauss performing along with Yo Yo Ma. That’s the amazing Natalie MacMaster backing them on the fiddle:

First verse:
Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His belovèd Son.

 

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