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366 Songs 345: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

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!

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366 Songs 344: Winter Wonderland

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…

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366 Songs 343: The Man With All The Toys

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.

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We Can Be Happy Under

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.

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366 Songs 342: Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas

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.

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366 Songs 341: Just Like Christmas

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.

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I Know Your Skies Too Much

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.

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366 Songs 340: The Man in The Santa Suit

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:

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Fun with Cognitive Dissonance

From io9, on Monday, explaining why the site has pulled theFan Fiction Friday column after two posts:

When io9 makes fun of Damon Lindelof or the latest episode of Beauty and the Beast, we are picking on targets who are our own size or bigger… Our goal as satirists is to mock targets our size or bigger — or, alternatively, to criticize ideas rather than individuals.

From io9 on Tuesday:

Admittedly, it’s not what it seems – the headline/pic is misleading, because (a) that’s not the “worst Star Wars fan in the entire world” in that pic, and (b) the post is actually complaining about a quote from an anonymous fan from Deadline Hollywood, and is actually a pro-fandom piece in spirit – but still: That the latter headline/pic combo made it onto the site the day after the “We only go after bigger targets” post is one of those “How did that get through?!?” moments.