Happy Holidays!

Glutinous rice ball, a food traditionally served during Dong Zhi

When the Princeton Review Vocabulary MInute was starting up two years ago, I wrote a seasonal song called "Happy Holidays." It's always been one of my favorite vocabulary songs and I always felt that it deserved to be fleshed out.

To that end, I recently wrote a second verse and a bridge to the song, upgrading "Happy Holidays" from its Pinocchio-like status to that of a "real song." I couldn't convince The Princeton Review to release the entire song as a Vocab Minute (it was too long for the format) but did get them to bend enough to allow me 1:40 for the second verse and chorus, bridge, and reprise of the first chorus for this year's holiday song.

And so I point you to my myspace page, where you can hear both the original "Happy Holidays" and the new "Happy Holidays 2007." Play them one after the other to sort-of kind-of hear the song in its entirety. One day I'll record a full version of the song but it won't be soon; the 2007 version took 7 hours to track, mix, and master. The Phil Spector sound is a real challenge when you've only got one musician to work with.

Happy Holidays

If you want to wish someone a happy holiday
Here's how you can do it in a brand new way
You'll spread a little universal mirth and glee
Bringing joy to the world in perfect harmony

Have a festive Festival of Light (Happy Hanukkah is what you're sayin')
May you have a jubilant Yuletide (Have a Merry Christmas eve and day and)
Hope you have a jovial Kwanzaa, happy as can be
And my New Year bring good tidings, meaning better news for you and me!

If you want to be a part of the latest craze
Just take your favorite greeting for the holidays
Then use some synonyms to write a paraphrase
Change the words but not the meaning that the greeting conveys

May your Kwanzaa be full of elation (hope that it's as happy as can be)
Hope your Christmas bring you exaltation (celebrating 'neath the Christmas tree)
May your Hannukah be blissful, full of joy and mirth
And may New Year's Eve inaugurate an age of peace and love on Earth

Let's wish all Muslims an idyllic Eid al-Adha
And for the Chinese, a delirious Dong-Zhi
Let everyone on Earth be a persona grata
Blessed with the Maker's love and sweet tranquility

Have a festive Festival of Light (Happy Hanukkah is what you're sayin')
May you have a jubilant Yuletide (Have a Merry Christmas eve and day and)
Hope you have a jovial Kwanzaa, happy as can be
And my New Year bring good tidings, meaning better news for you and me!

by Tom Meltzer ©The Princeton Review

Thought For The Day

Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead.
Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow.
Do not walk behind me for a while, then walk ahead of me, then go wandering off in every which direction, for I may get confused.
Just walk along beside me, so I can punch you in the arm if I have to.

Carolina Rollergirls

Last night I made my first-ever trek to the roller derby. I cannot do justice to my elation at this experience in prose, alas. Fortunately, sweet Euterpe smiled upon me on my way home and inspired a song, a paean to the sport and the ladies who compete in it.

You can hear the song over at the myspace page for Meltzer-Hart, my new band. I should warn you in advance that I programmed the drums, and that they are lousy. The drum rolls sound as though they were played by someone who doesn't play drums, which is close enough to the truth. Ignore them the best you can, and enjoy.

Here are the lyrics, so you can sing along.

You can have every other woman
In this whole wide world
Ain't a one who can change the way I feel
About my Carolina Rollergirl
About my Carolina Rollergirl

You can take all your girly girls
Their pillbox hats and their strings of pearls
I like my girls in helmets and pads
Good girls who know how to be bad

CHORUS

You can hang out with your glitterati
I got no need for anybody that snotty
I like a girl who knows how to jam
That's just the kind of guy I am

CHORUS

You'll never see her on Access Hollywood
But you can find her hangin' in her Raleigh 'hood
And if her name is never up in lights
She'll still look good in lycra and tights

CHORUS

Update: Couldn't resist--I had to contact The Carolina Rollergirls organization to let them know about this song. Do they like it? Apparently so--it's been added to the team's myspace page! Go Rollergirls!

Update on the update: Ah, how fleeting is fame. The Rollergirls have already replaced my song on their website with one by some fellow named Petey Pablo, or Pablo Peaty, I forget which. His song has nothing to do with roller derby at all! It does, however, sound like it would be a lot of fun to skate to. I take solace in the fact that Rollergirl skater Violet Femme--my new favorite member of the team--still has the song posted at at her myspace page.

Off-the-Beaten-Path Television

Like most modern Americans, we subscribe to a service that provides our television programming. We use DirectTV because it is the only way for North Carolinians to get Baltimore Oriole games. Don't ask, just accept that it is a sickness and that I will probably never be cured.

DirectTV provides us with roughly ten million channels of programming. Most of what's broadcast is wholly worth ignoring, but with ten million channels something good is bound to be on every once in a while, right? The question is, how do you find good programming among ten million channels worth of (mostly) drek?

I'm going to do my best to help you here. Now, I know you do not need my help to find your way to Law and Order reruns. In fact, I assume you are watching one right now, as you are reading my blog. You are, right? Not such a lucky guess; the odds are in my favor.

No, I'm talking about stuff that runs on channels you don't even know you have. Programs that you therefore don't know exist, yet which are really, really good, even better than Law and Order reruns. For example:

Ninja Warrior, G4--On one level, this is just a goofy obstacle-course competition. But the great thing about it is, it's a Japanese obstacle-course competition, and Japanese television is awesome. The announcer sounds like a very angry Toshiro Mifune, growl-shouting play-by-play (thankfully the show is broadcast in Japanese with subtitles, not in some lame dubbed version like Iron Chef). Competitors behave as if this competition is the only thing that has ever mattered--or ever will matter--in their entire lives.

then there's

Nothing But Trailers, HDNet--Admit it, you don't go to the movies any more. You can't stand paying $10 to see something you can watch on your bigass TV at home for free in just a few months, you can't stand paying $7 for a vat of greasy day-old popcorn, and you really can't stand all the morons around you who are either yelling at each other or at the movie screen or into their cell phones, which if there's a God in heaven will be eternally and painfully inserted into their recta for the endurance of the Afterlife. But... you miss seeing trailers, which are so often the best part of the moviegoing experience. HDNet has your back, baby: one half hour of nothing but trailers. Crank up the home entertainment center until the furniture rumbles. It's exactly like being at a movie theater, minus the morons.

finally, there's

Prime Minister's Questions, CSPAN--OK, I have to admit that I haven't seen this since Tony Blair stepped down, so I have no idea if it's still the great program it was back in the day. Question Time, for those unfamiliar, is when Britain's leader comes to Parliament to answer a bunch of questions--some softballs, some incredibly pointed, depending of course on who is asking--from 'backbenchers' (i.e. not Ministers) in the House of Commons. Blair was a master of the format; he handled it like Plato deconstructing the Sophists. He answered so firmly, so authoritatively, so confidently that you couldn't shake the feeling that you agreed with everything he had just said, even when you were quite certain that you adamantly did not agree with anything he'd just said. Great theater, and something that is sorely lacking from the American form of government. Seriously, how great would it be for George W. Bush to have to take questions from the likes of Jerrold Nadler and Dennis Kucinich for a half hour every single week? I bet Bush would've been a one-term-and-out president, a compelling enough argument on its own to institute President's Questions right here in the U S of A.