Sometimes I Scare Myself with My Own Genius

Should-be Hold Steady song lyric:

"And she said man the only thing Westerberg ever got wrong
Is that for such a powerpop guy he rarely ever had great backups on his songs,
And then she puked Mountain Dew Baja Midnight Slurpee all over my Chucks."

PREVIOUS HOLD STEADY GENIUS FROM XMASTIME HERE

An Open Letter to the People Who Run Uber

Dear People Who Run Uber,

If I'm gonna pay extra for the "Uber Comfort" option then you're gonna hafta do a little better than a Toyota fucking Camry.

I remain,
Xmastime

Advice for Young People. I Have It.

I don't consider myself to be a man of great wisdom and I don't think anybody ever looks to me for advice but as I see all the young people in my life growing closer to adulthood there's one piece of advice I would like to pass on to them: whenever you’re behind somebody on an elevator who’s getting off at a floor before yours, make sure you have an incredibly benign look on your face with your eyes vaguely looking up & away in case when the doors open there’s a mirror across from the elevator & they’ll be able to see you gawking at them walking away.

PREVIOUS ADVICE HERE

Glyn Johns Book Review

Via my rather brilliant love-blogging series on The Beatles brilliant Get Back documentary:

Glyn Johns, bless his bug-eyed heart, gently tries to warn John that Allen fucking Klein is history’s greatest monster. John is completely oblivious to Johns’ subtle hints such as “he’s very strange isn’t he?”, “Perhaps he doesn’t speak to you the same way he does other people because of who you are”, "I think he's about to invent the car alarm". Fucking hell.

If John Lennon had listened to Glyn Johns right now about Allen fucking Klein it could’ve saved not only The Beatles, but his own life. If The Beatles were still together in 1980 would Mark David Chapman have had a chance at killing him? Glyn Johns should go down in history as a goddam hero.


Glyn Johns remains undefeated in the jacket game with this lunatic circus ringleader number.

For someone who was an interesting character in The Beatles brilliant Get Back documentary & was the Forrest Gump of the British recording studio industry throughout the history of 60s-80s rock & roll, his book is a bit of a snooze.

LEMONADE: I give Johns full marks for 100% staying away from typical rocker drama sex/drugs/etc bullshit; he sticks to the nuts and bolts of the recordings which is great, but he never really dives deep into anything.

An Open Letter to the People in Charge of My Beloved Panera

Dear People in Charge of My Beloved Panera,

I know you think you’re saving money by switching from very reliable, easy-to-use lids for the plastic cups to very, very crappy lids for the plastic cups but based on the fact that I hafta throw away 3 or 4 each time before I find one that actually fits onto my cup I wonder if this is the actually the case?

I remain,

Xmastime

Me. I'm Really Happening, Aren't It?

For the last coupla days every time I put on a shirt the collar pops up & obviously I'd never purposely pop my collar but I find myself giving myself a moment to try & feel cool for the first time in my life for about 2 seconds before I put the collar back down, feeling like the fool I already knew I was.

Want du Jour

Flask Walk, Hampstead, at Night
by Charles Ginner, 1933

 

XMASTIME FILMS

THE SUMMER OF HELL - incredibly terrible but hilarious AI slop first pass 

Watch Previous Xmastime Films Here

SO WHAT RECORDS PRESENTS A SPECIAL COLLECTION, 1959–2026

"On the Lookout for a Chick-fil-A"

A Few Thoughts on Episode 3 of Season 4 of TED LASSO

WARNING: THESE ARE AS I TYPED THEM, I WILL NOT BE EDITING THIS SHIT, TOUGH LUCK LOSERS

The show sure loves those audio openings where we can't see what's happening but it's a noise
Why would Rebecca be opening the door when they were just having sex and she wasn’t fully dressed, and the guy was a whole room away? Was she running out the door while getting dressed?
I don't wanna be super woke but would people really stand up and walk out when they mention the women's team at this shareholder meeting? With visible, utter contempt? Really?
My prediction is at some point this season Rebecca is finally gonna snap at Keeley and to be honest I thought it was gonna happen last season.
Oh God it's the fucking kid ugh
You know I love to see Phoebe with Roy but it’s not like when she was a kid with that you know big round head kids have that make them look hilarious, she's great I'm rooting for her but it's not the same
Is this the first time seeing Roy Ken sister?
Oh no is the whole conflict between Coach Chilton and this friend of hers gonna be because of romance? Really? Can’t be any other reason two women could dislike each other? Zzzzzzzzzzzz
Danny Rojas sister a female version of Danny Roja yes please
I knew that Dany Rojas thing was gonna be a joke but I'm bummed, I wanted her to be really great
I have another prediction: it’s ghonna turn out the twins on the team are actually triplets their sister’s gonna show up so it'll be like “slap shot”
I was wrong about Brexit is like “she loved the sea” in mad men , hilarious
I'm not feeling the Rebecca/Matthias saying
Even for Keeley this pro team doesn't have uniforms in time for the beginning of the season? like did they just start the season 10 minutes ago?
Keeley’s report from Roy - she doesn't look at the second page? just one page and shut the binder, that’s it?
You show up for a sexytime romance dinner with Rebecca the owner of a Premier soccer league team at some fancy restaurant and you have a long sleeve T-shirt on?? 😡 No wonder Rebecca never wants to show up at one of your dates. You aint THAT good looking.
I'm really liking Coach Chilton now she's kinda funny, has a great reaction face for a show like this
So in the end Keeley Jones of “woman on top” was saved by a man, a Neanderthal man?

The Harder They Come

I've been on a deep Clash & Jimmy Cliff run lately & as you know me & Joe Strummer were practically BFF, so upon being thrilled with stumbling into this I'm also thrilled with how tight it sounds. 🤗🇬🇧🎸❤️

How Long Has It Been Since I Had a Girlfriend, You Ask?

This is me in Algebra class when she dumped me during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

A Quick Note on THE OFFICE

Say what you will about the main plotline of the Scott’s Tots episode being beyond the pale ridiculous – and I have – but lost in its ridiculousness is the fact that 1) the cold opener is a Michael Scott tour de force classic and 2) the otherwise silly/forgettable b-plot of Dwight setting up Jim (newly co-manager, don’t even get me started on the absurdity of this) by having him unwittingly win his own Employee of the Month award is launched from instant oblivion to instant classic merely by what they actually wrote on the cake; whichever writer came up with this line, which is absolutely perfect, should’ve won their own goddam Employee of the Month Award.

The Motels of Time

I turned 17 in 1989 so I have a pretty fair understanding of what living in 1989 looked like, so on one hand it’s absolutely horrifying to see this random and intoxicating video from then because it looks like it could just as easily be the 1940s or an even earlier time, which simultaneously makes me feel like my tiny era within the history of humanity has already been tossed into the scrap heap while also making me realize that all life throughout time has looked and felt the exact same when you’re actually in it and it’s the always-by-now-obsolete technology which captures it at the time that makes it look old.

Man in Apartment Uses Four Cooking Appliances at the Same Time, Will Probably Get a Goddam Medal

Life. It's Really Happening, Isn't It?

Whenever I'm on a train & we're stopped next to the train going in the opposite direction I don’t let myself look over at the other train, scared I'll fall in love at a glance through the window & be haunted by her for the rest of my life.

Desperate for a Distraction from his Disastrous Iran War, Trump Orders DOJ to Reopen Landry Clarke Murder Case

Questions About THE OFFICE. I Have Them.

Jim spent the entire run of The Office pranking Dwight & we're led to think "oh, poor Dwight" as Jim seemingly continues his undefeated run of humiliating Dwight every change he gets. But in the second episode of the entire series, here’s Jim excitedly telling us about a phone call he’s about to make with his biggest client that amounts to a full ¼ of his yearly commission:

This is my biggest sale of the year. They love me over there for some reason. I'm not really sure why but I make one call over there every year, just to renew their account, and that one call ends up being 25% of my commission for the whole year, so I buy a mini bottle of champagne, celebrate a little. And this year I'm pushing recycled paper on them for one percent more. I know. I'm getting cocky. Right?

Soon after, while Jim’s dealing with some Michael Scott bullshit, Dwight swoops in & steals the call and the commission from under Jim’s Richard Nixon-ish nose. Instead of even getting upset, Jim merely hands Dwight the aforementioned trophy. Doesn’t this put the whole “poor Dwight” thing into perspective? With one stroke Dwight took 25% of Jim’s entire yearly commission, thousands of dollars as well as a threat to Jim’s very livelihood, yet we’re always supposed to believe Jim is “winning” some war with Dwight? Would Dwight even give a shit about Jim’s stupid pranks if he knows he can just take a huge chunk of Jim’s money any time he wants? Could it be that he lets himself get pranked again & again, therein keeping Jim from suspecting another attack on his bank account/livelihood? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Here's to the American Library

All the way back in 2013 I mentioned a library in Prince George County, MD, using Monopoly to help teach kids about financial literacy:

The players, ages 11 to 26, may come to get away from the stresses of life. But the founder of the group hoped they would see parallels between Monopoly and the prospects of their success: Both are games of choice and chance.

“We’re trying to teach them financial literacy, but we don’t tell them that,” said Kim Carrington, the Prince George’s substitute teacher and parent activist who started the program. “We tell them what a great game it is.”

And today I see this about a library in Prince George County, MD:

Brittanie Brooks walked into a library in Prince George’s County, Md., breezing past the shelves of books, a printing station and a computer lab. Her destination was a study room, now converted into a no-cost grocery store where seniors on fixed incomes, laid-off federal workers and others in need can shop.

Ms. Brooks surveyed the selection: rows of cereal, crackers and pancake mix stacked on the shelves; pizza and chicken in the freezer; and baskets of apples and oranges, onions and bell peppers. Then she mentally calculated what she would need to feed her five children for the week, settling on pasta, rice and chicken — staples she could stretch. It was all free.

She was among the first customers at the Fairmount Five Market, which opened in May at the back of the Fairmount Heights Branch Library. In June, a second free grocery store, District 7 Fresh Market, opened a few miles away at the Spauldings Branch Library.

My questions is, how are these amazing things happening in Price George libraries? Are they happening anywhere else? Why not? Why is there not a large national task force trying to make these things happen in every town in America?