At the Breakfast Table: Wall-to-Wall Snark, with a side of toast

[ellenkushner]

This morning's haze of slightly carboned toast & melty cheese (well you can't get the cheese properly brown without risking the edges of the bread) enlivened by Delia's dramatic reading of A.O.Scott's NYTimes review of the new Holmes movie. Honest - I thought she was improvising when she said: "It seems that an evil aristocrat, executed for a series of murders, returns from the dead to mobilize an ancient secret society that he may have time-traveled into a Dan Brown novel to learn about. Doesn’t that sound fascinating? I thought not."

You have to admit it sounds like her.

And now, on to music:

sdn's FaceBook query a few weeks back re. people's most loathed Xmas song has had me brooding ever since. I realized I don't so much hate any particular song as hate certain musical styles. --OK, there are certain lyrics I really loathe - but you can also ruin a song I love by giving it an arrangement to match those other lyrics. I mean, I'd say something blanketty like: "I hate all Xmas songs written after 1895" - but in fact, there are a couple Victorian ones I could do without, and anything by Irving Berlin is fine by me - as long as it isn't sung by Frank Sinatra. I'm the wrong generation to enjoy Frank Sinatra. (And Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself: As I say, It's Complicated - and would require a lengthier and more thoughtful explication - with charts & texts & Be Specific, Give Examples - than I have time or inclination for here. And I like "The Little Drummer Boy." It's trad-friendly.) Anyhow, Arrangements: I was delighted to learn, this morning, that the right musical arrangement can redeem even the most abysmal song. This morning's edition of The Takeaway featured an interview with Twisted Sister members Dee Snider & Jay Jay French about their new album, Twisted Christmas.

When they played the opening of the original of "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." I wanted to curl up and die - but when it kicked into Twisted Sister's version, I knew that was the way it was meant to sound! A delightful tune, really. You just have to put some heart & guts into the roasting bit.

So you see, children, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed by art. (They also pointed out that the opening bars of "We're not Gonna Take It" are in fact "Adeste Fideles" - as poor Snider [or was it French?] kept pointing out: "Well, I am a classically trained counter-tenor with 19 years in church choir!" Bless his heart.)

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Despite not being Christian, I like most of the religious carols. Especially the ancient obscure ones. What I dislike is most of the secular carols. Unless the music is by Leroy Anderson.

My mother is the right generation to enjoy Frank Sinatra; she is in fact the right age to have been a Frank Sinatra teenybopper. But she hates Frank Sinatra, and always has. This gives me comfort when I think of all the things I'm suppose to like because of my age but don't.

[xanath.livejournal.com]

::dies laughing over the review::

Breakfast at your house sounds like a lot of fun. :D I love snark at all hours, and breakfast really needs it most--like eggs need pepper.

And while Rachel McAdams is nice, I would definitely see this movie if Sherlock and Watson were shown as more than roommates. (::puts on "Unrepentant Slasher" button::) "Beard," indeed. I'd love to see a steampunk tale about Riverside; until you write it, this movie might be as close as I get to that idea. Darn.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

I hate listening to most Christmas songs, and enjoy singing most of them. Carol of the Bells, for instance, is so damn overplayed and obnoxious at this point, but so. much. fun! when singing it with a choir.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Hmm - you're the second person to suggest I write Steampunk. I haven't an idea in my curly little head. What do you think "Riverside steampunk* would look like, pray?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

This Sherlock Holmes movie is really all about the pretty, pretty boys in pretty, pretty clothes. I confess I'm looking forward to seeing it.

*grin*

[coffeeem.livejournal.com]

The best negative review is one that allows the reader to recognize a movie the reviewer didn't like, but the reader might. I think I might like this movie quite a lot, based on this review. *g*

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I would have liked this movie better if they'd made all of the fight sequences about 1/3 shorter. And slowed down the shots enough to let me try to read some of the Hebrew the ceremonial magicians were using. And not let me see the glaring inadequacies of their costume design and construction! But it was moderately charming, all the same.

[ophanim.livejournal.com]

So you see, children, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed by art.

God bless the !#@$ out of the lot of us. ;-)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

So you see, children, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed by art.

Nobody could make Christmas Shoes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsvE33pRSw) even tolerable. If Roy Orbison and James Brown and Eartha Kitt came back from the grave and teamed up with Etta James to record it, it would still be nauseating tripe.

The Victorians did this stuff so much better--this is "Father, Dear Father" with synthesizers.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

The very worst Christmas song of all time cannot be redeemed: Paul McCartney's horrible "Wonderful Christmastime."

Yes, Paul, I'm sure you are having a wonderful Christmastime, you self-satisfied smug creep. Now shut up about it.

John may have been a swine, but I refuse to believe he would've inflicted this atonal tripe on us.

[(Anonymous)]

A terribly important, extremely long journey by train; a fiddly, complicated wondermachine with which a scientist--either quite mad or merely charmingly obsessed--develops over the course of many chapters to a stunning ... anticlimax; guns behaving badly--locking up, exploding, dreadfully difficult to load at speed, otherwise failing to work just when one most needs them to; sooty, foggy evenings on which respectable young persons sneak out to have shocking rendezvous with entirely unsuitable partners ... shall I go on?

Kai in NYC

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

LoL!

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[(Anonymous)]

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