Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
An Indian schoolgirl cycles home from school at Fulbari village, on the outskirts of Siliguri on December 11, 2012. New data showed that while India’s population remains largely rural, its urban population has grown to 377 million, or 31.1 per cent of the 1.21 billion population, from 286 million or 27.8 per cent of the population in 2001. AFP PHOTO/Diptendu DUTTADIPTENDU DUTTA/AFP/Getty Images
This is one of those songs that, without fail, makes me know that it’s getting near Christmas on some primal level. If you’re British and of my generation, this song was released every single holiday season, and made it onto Top of The Pops every single time, and to be fair, it deserved it each and every time, too. Roy Wood – who had been in The Move prior to this, of course, back when the band was worth listening to – has a ridiculously catchy way with a pop song, and there are all manner of fake-subversive additions that make the song even more fun (Starting it off with a cash register!) than the mix of doo-wop, the Beach Boys and kids choir already was. “When the snow man brings the snow… When the snow man brings the snow…”
Okay, you lot. Prove how great the original is with lesser cover versions. Take it!
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Meanwhile there is pink blossom on trees in Yunnan province, China. Photograph: Qing Qing/Chine Nouvelle/SIPA
Doesn’t this look like a beautiful painting from days of yore?
It is, of course, a classic, but for my money, Harry Connick Jr.’s piano-only version is easily the only version that counts of Winter Wonderland. Just listening to this makes me wish for snow, and the magical ability to play the piano as well as this.
Obvious runner-up in the “worthwhile version” stakes…
Well done, Beach Boys: There’s something simultaneously sweet and appalling about this song, which somehow even further makes Christmas about the idea of “What do I get?” Santa is supposed to be about jolliness and the whole “joy of giving” thing, not “the man with all the toys,” after all. Seriously, Beach Boys. Try again.
That’s better.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A man prepares to bathe in the Cantabric Sea at the beach named La Concha, in San Sebastian, northern Spain, Friday, Dec. 7, 2012. The air temperature was 9 degrees Celsius ( 48.2 Fahrenheit) and the water temperature 13 degrees Celsius (55.4 Fahrenheit). AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)
This brave, stupid man. I’m reminded of a time when friends tried to convince me to run into the Ocean at sunrise, back when I lived in Aberdeen, in Scotland; even then, I knew it was a terrible, terrible idea.
I want to say I heard this for the first time in a Christmas season that I needed this kind of a message, but that almost sounds too cute to be true. Nonetheless, it is; it’s not that that Christmas was especially cruel or difficult, but it was one where there was a lack of optimism for various reasons, work- and relationship-related, and just the sound of someone saying something as simple (Ridiculously so) as “Everything’s gonna be cool” with such excitement and glee was so… surprising, and welcome, that it felt like the best gift I could’ve gotten.
In many ways, this song isn’t about Christmas at all, but about the idea of Christmas, and what Christmas means to different people (“And you said it was just like Christmas/But you were wrong”). And yet, even as Christmas as idea and feeling (as opposed to weather and visuals) is pushed forward, the music does the same thing; there’s a ramshackle attempt to rebuild the aural quality of Phil Spector’s A Xmas Gift To You album in this song, in a weird but entirely welcome way that I love, here. I’d suggest that it sounded like Christmas, but I’d worry that singer Mimi Parker would find me to say “But you were wrong” afterwards. It sounds like my idea of Christmas, perhaps; maybe that’s what I mean.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Light fantastic! An installation by artist Damien Fontaine at Les Chrysalides de Saint-Jean Cathedral during the rehearsal for the Festival of Lights in central Lyon, France. Photograph: Robert Pratta/REUTERS
What I love about this photo is the color of the sky; you can tell that it’s a winter’s night, cloudy and grim and lit from the world below. It reminds me of a trip to Paris when I was 21 at this time of year and the way the night looked then.
It’s been a long day, in a good way; lots of things being accomplished and a tiredness that feels earned as opposed to heavy and guilty. To celebrate, then, here’s a happy song that demystifies the worlds of the men who dress up as Old Saint Nick at this time of year from the simultaneously over- and underrated Fountains of Wayne (Songwriting is always interesting, although something you can’t tell by their performances).
Me, I vastly prefer the Neil Halstead version: