A rather humorous – but unfortunately, all too true – take on the real meaning of the Advent/Christmas season. Good stuff from Jeff over at The Curt Jester.
Category: General (page 32 of 121)
…for creating your own Christmas cards! Great stuff from Dave Walker over at The Cartoon Blog.
Tonight’s unwind is interesting in that it consists of three separate collections with the same title!
Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel’s acoustic guitar set is called The Gift. It includes some of the best-known traditional Christmas songs, but in a way you may not be used to hearing them done.
Liz Story is one of my favorite pianists. I discovered her on the Windham Hill stuff several years ago. Her Christmas offering is also entitled, appropriately, The Gift.
Jim Brickman is another pianist from up on the Hill. A little more “sentimental” in his approach than Liz Story, but great Christmas stuff nonetheless. I really like the Point of Grace rendition of the non-holiday-standard Hope Is Born Again.
You’ll give a great gift to yourself and everyone in your house tonight if you’ll put these CDs on, light up one of Scott Hodge’s candles, and unwind from a weekend of mall crowds and church crowds. I’m using the time right now to finish up some notes to guests from our worship sevice today and some other loose end kind of stuff. All three of these “Gifts” are absolutely perfect for a Sunday night unwind.
Enjoy…
Just don’t say a word – not a single word. It wasn’t nearly as ugly as I thought it would be. (It wasn’t that pretty on either side, but I had predicted it would be almost as ugly as that slobbering mutt in the picture!)
Some of the places we went today, mostly to watch people. The lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie” calls it qualitative research. There were two big highlights, other than spending the whole day with the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie.”
See the picture in the middle? It’s one of my favorite places in Atlanta. And today, I had the great privilege of dealing one of my favorite people there. Imagine The Big Show of WWE fame. Give him a tad darker complexion and a sex-change operation, stick a gold ring in his eyebrow, and give him some 3-inch-long fingernails, and you’ve got the picture! (Some of you who’ve been there know I’m telling the truth, because you’ve seen her, haven’t you?) Anyway, this gal’s been working there at least since 1996, and I remember like it was yesterday her uh…correcting of an out-of-town Olympic visitor who had no clue (“When I say ‘Whattaya have?’ you gotta say whatcha gonna have! Know what I mean?”). She’s great and slings those chili dawgs, O-rings, and F.O.’s like nobody’s business! I told her I appreciated her today, and you should have seen her stylin’, smilin’, and profilin’!
On the way to picture #3, we stopped off at Talbots in the Peachtree Battle shopping plaza. Once again, we had the privilege of great customer service by our friendly Talbots gal, Kathy. Not only did she recognize us when we walked in the store, not only did she make some very helpful recommendations and suggestions, but she pointed out some things we hadn’t thought of and helped us save a few bucks along the way! Thanks, Kathy for being the official Talbots gal of Just Charlie!
One thing that really got to me today was this: Why in the world do people willingly choose to get out of their homes and into the crowds and other mess that is “Black Friday,” and then when faced with standing in line, they get really bent out of shape with the other people? Go figure…
After Thanksgiving, after spending all day watching people at the malls, after all that, I came home to find Thad Jones and Mel Lewis‘s great CD Consummation in my mail.
I first got exposed to Jones & Lewis back in high school, when our band director moved our jazz band from playing cheap-sounding arrangements of Windy and the like to the good stuff – Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Jones & Lewis and others. (Thanks, Bill!) We played at least four tunes from this collection and I loved all of them. I had the album (you know, black vinyl, about 12 inches in diameter, played on a turntable, historical relic!) but it went out in the trash along with the other four boxes of albums when we moved a few years ago.
Why I ever talked myself into putting them by the street for the trash man is beyond me. At any rate, I’ve had Consummation on my Amazon wish list for a while. The other day I noticed it was included in the Jazz Heritage Society’s “clearance” section, so I scarfed it up – for five bucks!
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’m digging Dedication, It Only Happens Every Time, and Us all over again! Of course, the haunting melody of A Child Is Born is not really a Christmas song, but it should be.
BTW, anybody know where I can get a decent flugelhorn for cheap? Just wondering…
Once again, it’s time for another installment of Random Links from the Stack O’ Drafts! Here are some links to stuff I found on the way to somewhere else…
- A seminary professor wonders, “Now that we’ve entered ‘their’ world, what do we do about it?” Great stuff via Steve McCoy
- Ben Arment drops a Steve Sjogren quote about planting a church in the shadow of a mega-church
- Generate your own warning labels
- Eight irresistible principles of fun. (Link via Good Morning Thinkers)
- New Year’s resolutions? Yeah, well, what about stuff to do before this year ends?
- We must protect our children from all religious – specifically Christian – influences. Let’s start by banning all the great literature.
- Mistakes are cool, part 2. Part 1 is over here.
- Rut-busting with unfamiliar magazines
My favorite jazz Christmas album has always been Stan Kenton’s A Merry Christmas. But this year, Ray Charles’s The Spirit of Christmas may give the Kenton classic a run for its money! Of course, Ray is in fine form as usual. But the band! Man, the band smokes! If you’re into jazz and Christmas, you’ll do yourself a favor by running out and getting this 1985 classic!
I picked up Ray’s CD and the lovely and gracious Ms. Monheit’s holiday offering at Borders the other night. Good stuff!
In a couple of hours, we’ll be off to do the second family Thanksgiving gathering, with the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie’s” side of the family.
With a couple of minutes to use up, I just wanted to say to all the loyal readers of this space (all two of you – and you know who you are!) that I’m thankful for all the good stuff you share with me – through this space and in your own corners of the blogosphere. I’m thankful for the relationships we develop – online and in real time/space. I pray that you and your family and friends will never get over the blessings of God in your life, that you’ll never take those blessings for granted, and that you’ll remember to thank Him for those blessings and appreciate the people who are the “blessing agents” in your life.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(Oh, to you Canadian readers…happy plain-old-day-after-Wednesday to you! :))
We just returned from a short, but good Thanksgiving trip to my folks’ house. As usual, Martha outdid herself with the traditional Pharis Phamily Pheast! Not a turkey leg in sight, but the good stuff…low country boil, shrimp, beef stew, cakes, cookies, etc.! Yes!
We’ll do the other side of the family tomorrow evening.
Thanks, Martha and Howard, for a great day!