Joyful noise

For Boxing Day (or Saint Stephen’s Day, whichever’s your preference), I’m giving you another flash mob. Another “Hallelujah” flash mob. But this one’s just a little different:

They’re singing a capella, which ups the game considerably. Unless you count the really rad percussion, which just makes you want to get up and dance.

(Yes, it's somewhat truncated, and I don't get what the deal is with the risking arrest; but I really like the drums.)

At any rate, this is as close as I’m getting to a mall of any stripe this weekend.

Meanwhile, Bach at the Mall...

Here’s a different kind of flash mob for the holidays—an interesting mixture of the formal and informal, with the US Air Force Band at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Well, they say it’s the band, but there are strings. And singers. Which don’t ordinarily present as band components.

(And I can’t help flashing on Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run, playing his cello in a marching band, so I had to overcome that image as I was watching this flash mob unfold.)

But perhaps they do things differently in the Air Force.

(I will also confess to wondering whether the USAF and/or the Smithsonian have received complaints at using tax-supported personnel and facilities to perform a religious piece—a long one. You know—wanting equal time for something Kwanzaa or Islamic or a Festivus dance. But that would be for another post.)

For now, just crank up the volume and enjoy.

Merry Christmas.

When No Man's Land was filled with song

It was the first year of a war that was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks. And surely long over by Christmas—with victorious armies whooping it up in [Paris] [Berlin] [Saint Petersburg] [Vienna] [Belgrade], depending on which side was doing the talking.

Four and a half months into the war, and there had already been the unbelievable (but entirely foreseeable) slaughter resulting from frontal infantry charges against massed machine guns. Armies on all fronts, but particularly across Northern France, had dug into the earth in unsettled misery while their commanders considered how they might continue doing the same thing again and again, but expect different results.

At this point, December 1914, the British Army was still largely a force of volunteers (Britain didn’t implement conscription until 1916), so the men on the Western Front were basically civilians in ill-fitting and filthy uniforms. The French, Germans and Belgians—well, they all had a long-standing compulsory service and reserve system, but they still had masses of men who’d been called back to service from regular jobs.

Tens of thousands of men literally entrenched along a front hundreds of miles long, dug into the ground that alternated between sloshy and frozen mud, many in forward lines that were 50 to 100 meters apart from one another. (Their commanders were kilometers behind the lines, ensconced in châteaux and well provisioned.) The holidays approaching as some distant, unreachable dream, whatever the tradition.

On Christmas Eve the front was blanketed in snow, which made the men on both sides even more homesick, if also colder. There’s something about the notion of snow for Christmas that just turns people into jelly.

And that’s when something extraordinary occurred, completely spontaneously and what we today would call “grass-roots”. Christmas Eve is when Germans traditionally have their big Christmas celebration with a festive meal and der Weinachtsmann delivering gifts. So not so surprising that many Germans along the line began to sing Christmas carols. But they also put up Christmas trees, with improvised decorations and—much riskier—lanterns or candles to illuminate them in the night.

Well, men from across No Man’s Land joined in on some of the carols, and popped their heads hesitantly up to view the Christmas trees. In some sectors there was firing, but in others the singing and illuminations led to shouted conversations, and eventually to men climbing out from the trenches to exchange cigarettes and chocolate, cookies and charcuterie. This happened between the Germans and Belgians, Brits and Frenchmen—not everywhere, but little pockets of conviviality.

It continued the following morning—the singing was backed up by unit bands, soldiers shared photos of family and friends, there may have been a few football matches.

And both sides collected their dead, who’d lain on the field for days or weeks, for burial.

Well, as you can imagine, those commanders off in their châteaux, replete with cognac and Christmas pudding, turned apoplectic when they heard of trucelike shenanigans in the trenches. In truth—you can’t really fight a war if your poor bloody infantry are fraternizing with their PBI counterparts on the other side and comparing notes about who’s got the most idiotic officers.

Word came down hard and swift that any further failure to blast the hell out of the enemy would be severely punished, and things settled back into gruesome misery…for nearly four more years. In December 1915, orders were in place preventing any reoccurrence; so it’s evident that the generals actually could learn from battlefield events. Just not that whole bit about flinging whole divisions of infantry against entrenched machine guns.

But for one brief, magical period of a few hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, companies and battalions laid aside their weapons and celebrated with one another like families gathered together.

Let your heart be light

I don’t suppose there’s been a war in the past two thousand or so years in which all sides didn’t assure themselves that it would be over by Christmas. (And victoriously. For all sides.)

But since I’ve been thinking specifically about the events in the Ardennes of 70 years ago, I’m going to give you a couple of Christmas songs that evoke the hopes and desires of at least the Americans—those at the front and those at home. Hearing them always makes me think of those dark, bleak and fearful days.

The first dates from a year before the Battle of the Bulge, but speaks directly to the deepest yearning for home and familiar things of a citizen soldier serving on foreign soil in alien conditions. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” paints an idealized picture of what the holidays represent. It sounds a little kitschy these days, but it must have cut deep into the hearts of everyone who’d been displaced by the war.

Apparently the song’s writer couldn’t sell it to music publishers until he sang it to Bing Crosby on the golf course. Crosby liked it, and back in those days, if Crosby wanted to make a record, he did. It was a substantial hit for him in both 1943 and 1944.

Josh Groban has got a lot of mileage out of his update—voted greatest holiday recording of all time in a recent poll by readers of the San José Mercury-News. He beat out Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song”, which I’d have thought unstoppable. It’s nice, of course, although I think it just a tad manipulative weaving in messages from serving soldiers and their families. (But, in fairness, I think a little Groban goes a long way, so when I hear him I need to guard against insulin shock.)

But since I’m thinking WWII, I’ll give you Crosby’s original.

The second song I’ll share featured in the film Meet Me in Saint Louis, which I classify as one of the best Christmas movies ever, even though it’s not strictly a Christmas movie. MMiSL was released in November 1944, and I’m thinking that “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” must have resonated with everyone who really had thought that, after the Normandy landings and the drive across France, the war surely would have been over by Christmas.

Instead, there was the confusion and fear engendered by the news of the totally surprising German offensive and the inability of Allied commanders to mount a solid defense, much less a counterattack as long as the weather prevented air operations.

The family in MMiSL are faced with a sudden and massive disruption, which is deeply upsetting to them all, but especially to the youngest (played by Margaret O’Brien). “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” gives us Judy Garland trying to find a way to persuade her sister and herself that, if this Christmas is less than stellar, they can rely on their memories of the wonderful ones of the past and their hopes of more for the future to get them through it.

Which, of course, is what Americans here and abroad were having to do.

There were some bumps along the road to getting “Have Yourself” on the screen—the initial lyrics were exceedingly dark, and had to be rewritten. But what emerged on the screen was wistful and tender; I think it’s one of the best modern Christmas songs. (Beats the daylights out of “White Christmas”, war or no war.)

I’ve never been a fan of Garland’s voice, so I’m giving you Frank Sinatra. There's no one better than Sinatra for phrasing.

It was 70 years ago today that the thick clouds broke, and the Allies were able to fill the skies over the Ardennes with bombers as well as with cargo planes to resupply the Americans holding out against the massive German attack. I’d like to think that these two songs were running through the heads of the men in Europe and their families back home.

And that they are as warm and comforting for you as they are to me.

Calendar girls. And boys

If you’re still looking for a present for that challenging recipient on your list, consider this unique possibility. Yes, it’s a calendar; but what a calendar.

Residents in a retirement home in Essen, Germany, made a calendar featuring photos of them recreating iconic film scenes.

Think about it: your gran and gramps as Rose and Jack in Titanic.

 

Or Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers.

Or Tony and Stephanie in Saturday Night Fever.

Really, this thing is such a hoot.

But wait—there’s more.

Retirees from communities in several US states also decided to let it all hang out and created a calendar of their own, again based on iconic films and pop culture moments.

So here we have:

Charlie’s Angels:

(Do not mess with them. Just don’t.)

Cleopatra:

(I'd peel her a grape.)

Grease:

(They might have pulled some of those clothes from the back of their closets.)

From all appearances it looks like these folks were having a blast. And extra super points to the gran who channeled Ursula Andress in Dr. No.

You go, girl!

Light matters

On this Gratitude Monday before Christmas, I’m really grateful for the people who go a little cuckoo in the holiday lights/yard decoration department.

No, I’m not talking about the ones who spend tens of thousands of dollars to have professional light-decorators come in or any of that nonsense. I mean the folks who put up their grazing deer and inflated snowmen in their yards and run strings of lights along the eaves of their houses.

Well, okay—some of them are a little OTT, but I think those represent year-on-year accumulation of the Grinch, Mickey, Yoda and Muppets. And Christmas is definitely the season where you get a free pass from the aesthetics police.

Here are some of my favorites from this year from here in the Valley They Call Silicon.

You may recall my surprise at finding Target selling a Christmas Pig, wondering who might find them worthy of purchase. Well, I found out: someone in Palo Alto:

But if you look closely, you’ll discover that this pig has already been partying pretty hard; he’s lost one of his ears. Oh, dear.

Then there’s the ever popular Christmas pink flamingo:

Not far from me, there are several houses on a street that have their lights flashing in synch with a local FM radio station. I don’t know that I find all that flash all that attractive, but one yard had a tree that cycled through several color iterations, and I quite liked that:

Well, you get the drift.

On another of my walking routes, I got a kick out of this snowman listing a bit. Maybe he was at the same party as the Palo Alto pig.

Snowflakes are apparently trending this year. I found strings of them in both LED and regular lights

Well, you can see that there’s a lot to keep someone like me amused, and I’m grateful for that.

I’m also grateful that—so far—no one’s called the cops on me as I prowl their neighborhoods, taking photos like I’m casing the joint.

All things bright & beautiful

Not sure whether Wired does these roundups of the week’s weirdest animal encounters on a, you know, weekly basis. If they do, I’m not sure why I’ve not come across them before this, but I’m totally glad I’ve found this one. Because…I just know that you cannot make this stuff up.

I mean—a “free-ranging monkey” (is that like free-range chickens?) “terrorizing” the suburbs of Marseille? Because it fell in with a bad lot of human monkeys who (wait for it) fed it the simian equivalent of junk food, chocolates. Le petit singe had to be Tased and is presumably currently in detox, with rehab to follow. Then: the appearances on the talk-show circuit.

New Jersey looms large in this weird in the wild. Well, as you’d expect, I suppose, because…New Jersey. Pink geese, rampaging rams; you gotta love it. Plus, the woman who will not believe the obvious explanation for her unicorn sighting goes a long way to explain the outcome of last month’s elections.

Kudos to the Amherst students who look upon their visiting moose as an opportunity to rethink their school mascot. I hope they give the new representative the obvious name of Bullwinkle. They could then take on a new persona in keeping with that celebrity’s own academic institution.

As for the orangutans at the Paignton Zoo in England: if I opened a Christmas package only to find Brussels sprouts, I’d wrap myself in burlap, too.

Any port in a storm

The other night I had a girls’ night out with a couple of friends and we exchanged our Christmas gifts. One of the prize ones for me was a paper menorah.

Look, I love any festival that involves light in the darkness, and I don’t understand why I have not acquired a menorah across the years, but Amy and Natalie made that right. It was even better because I unwrapped it exactly three minutes before Hanukkah officially started.

Plus Amy and Natalie knew how to put it together. I was basically useless.

Anyhow, we “lighted” the shamash and the first night’s candle, and then we went out for the traditional Persian meal.

We spent the rest of the evening driving around the Valley They Call Silicon, looking at holiday light displays.

Well, the next day I was cleaning up the menorah detritus, and had a good look at the package. First of all, I hadn’t realized it’s called “Port-a-Menorah”; but there it is.

But what I really got a kick out of was the blurb on the back:

Specifically, the product comparison matrix between the traditional menorah and the Port-a-Menorah:

It seems that one of the benefits of this version is that it’s “not a fire hazard.”

But only, apparently, if you don’t set it on fire.

I totally love these Port-a-Menorah people.

What was that flash?

Y’all know what a sucker I am for a flash mob. There’s something about the ephemeral nature of masses of individuals stepping out of a crowd, putting on a bang-up performance of one piece and then melting back into the environment. You truly have to be in the moment to catch it.

The people who started it all for me are the Random Acts of Culture lot and the Opera Company of Philadelphia. You’ll possibly recall their stupendous “Hallelujah Chorus” at the old Wanamaker’s mother ship in Philadelphia.

Well, the one I’m sharing with you today is in an Ikea, which turns out to be a terrific setting for the Papageno-Papagena duet from The Magic Flute.

Seriously—that birdlike popping up from amongst the housewares and faux foliage. Priceless.

Catastrophic failure

Right—time for some holiday glitz. And cats. Can’t have Christmas without tree-related catastrophes.

Seriously—I’ve experienced one or two of these situations, and all I can say is: if you’re putting up a tree in a pwned environment, stock up on spirits. You’ll need every drop.