Neither Velvet Nor Foggy.

MayYourEarsBeMerry
AndBrightVille


If you need a little listening enjoyment for the next few days...

Hear Mel Torme tell a super young Terry Gross how he and Bob Wells wrote the 'The Christmas Song' (Chestnuts Roasting) in just 25 minutes on a sweltering summer day in Los Angeles in 1945...As an added bonus, Hugh Martin explains how he and Ralph Blaine wrote and then modified 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas', first for Judy Garland and later for Frank Sinatra....Here.

Hear 'This American Life's' very first Christmas show from 1996, wherein David Sedaris tells the tale of being a Macy's Christmas Elf way before Will Farrell ever met Zoe Deschanel while wearing green tights....As an added bonus you get to hear the late, great David Rackoff tell the tale of how he once played a store window Freud for an entire Christmas season...Here.

And, finally, this podcast has little, if anything, to do with the Christmas season...It's just that Tweedy guy from Wilco/Musical Dadland talking about just about everything under the songwriting sun...Here.

Have a great holiday everyone!


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The Rot At The Heart Of The Stream-O-Verse.

WhatWouldBurlDo

IvesVille


From deep in the bowels of Reddit, one user shouts a high wattage truism out into the void...

"(T)heir entire existence relies on being slightly more convenient than piracy."

Meanwhile.

Where the heckfire can I find an uncut, crisp and sharp version of Frosty The Snowman?



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Personally, I still kinda like Reddit. It seems to be one of the few gigantic online platforms, like Wikipedia, that hasn't totally ensh*ittified...
Tip 'O The Toque to Katherine Trendacosta writing at one of my new favourites, Techdirt.




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The Advent Jukebox, Revisited!

 

It's Bigger E!

Backed with the lost (old) boys of never lab...

You can find more of E.'s advent jukebox offerings....Here....and...Here.

Or, with fewer copyright takedowns...Here.

Happy, hippy, and hippest of holidays everyone!

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Why Would Anyone Go There?

CancellingPlaydates

BetweenFriendsVille


From Chris Michael, writing in the Guardian:

All tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would also require any email addresses and telephone numbers visitors have used in the same period, and the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children...

And, it would appear that many Canuckistanians have already decided not to go there:

...Statistics Canada said Canadian residents who made a return trip to the US by car dropped 36.9% in July 2025 compared with the same month in 2024, while commercial airline travel from Canada dropped by 25.8% in July compared with the previous year, as relations between the two countries plummeted...

The thing is, most of that initial drop was based on a fuzzy notion of tarrif-driven patriotism.

However...

If the new US'ian 'plans' are enacted the reasons not to go will be personal.

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Twenty-Five (Or -Six) Minutes Before Four In The Morning.

NotQuiteCohen
TimeVille


When I was a teenaged kid, and just starting to pay attention to popular music as punk started to break, the band formerly known as the Chicago Transit Authority was so prolific and ubiquitous that their music seemed like wall paper.

And sometimes, like with the infamous and very popular compilation Chicago IX, which was released in 1975, it seemed like all the walls, in every single house everywhere, were being re-papered with, well, the same paper.

Anyway...

That particular compilation is 50 years old now, which means that it is being re-worked and re-released seven ways to Sunday.

But now, somehow, that old wallpaper is kind of comforting, and even a little bit interesting when you see and hear it done in more of a jam bandish-type way (see above).

And best of all, it means that two of the original horn players, Lee Loughnane and Jimmy Pankow are out and about talking about how they all got together at DePaul university and made all that music in the first place. They even talk a bit about the magic and the math of how the original horn arrangements were composed in a way that even a music theory dunderhead like myself can understand and enjoy.

You can listen to a long form conversation with Mess'rs Lougnane and Pankow...Here.


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Tangential allusion to an ear worm in the subheader, especially given that we're not that far from the 'end of December?...This!


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William Gibson's Overdrive

NeitherAleph

NorOracleVille


Regarding the image above of 19th century writing desks or 'slopes' as they were known...

From the mind of the estimable Mr. Gibson:

"Bronte sister laptops!"

Stick that in your steampunk genre and smoke it!



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Advent Jukebox...Day 5.

WhereCarolers

SingBelowVille


The two E's were over last night to get the decorating for the season started in earnest.

And what could be better to kick-off said season than covering a good ol' fashioned murder ballad, courtesy the Felice Brothers...

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You can catch more of E., sans the old guy,  continuing the Advent Jukebox tradition....Here.



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HST Friday - Sometimes A Favour Is Just A Favour...

NothingDigitalWillSetYou
FreeVille

'Nobody gives a mojo wire as a present, right?'

That was Hunter Thompson, writing to Dick Goodwin, by physical letter, in late 1975 about the early version of the Xerox telecopier (i.e. the 'mojo wire') that Jann Wenner sent him in an effort to crank up his writing output during the upcoming 1976 US'ian presidential campaign.

****

Speaking of US'ian presidents and 'presents'...

...Trump has issued more than 2,000 pardons and commutations this year — 10 times the number he pushed through in his entire first term...

But, nobody gives a pardon as a present, right?

Well...

...(N)otorious is the (pardon) case of billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, dubbed “crypto’s richest man,” who had previously pleaded guilty to money laundering that U.S. prosecutors said benefitted Hamas terrorists and Russian drug dealers. Zhao “rehabilitated” himself by helping to boost the Trump family’s crypto venture, which “raked in about $1.4 billion in revenue over the past year … far more than the president’s real-estate portfolio ever earned annually,” according to The Wall Street Journal. When Trump was asked about this shady pardon on 60 Minutes, he said he didn’t know who Zhao was...

Cazart!

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Pardon stuff is from a recent piece by John Avalon in Rolling Stone (web archive link) which is no longer owned by the good Mr. Wenner.

Image at the top of the post?...Bill Murray as the Docktor and the departed Bruno Kirby playing a Wenneresqueish character in 1980's JohnnyDepp-free, and Uncle Neil-infused, 'Where The Buffalo Roam'.


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Maybe If It Was Made Of Bananas...

RaffiWas

RightVille


Well, well, well, whadd'ya know:

Earlier this year we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a “phone company” was being generous: the branding deal was basically just a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed, MAGA-focused, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) named Patriot Mobile, which itself just resells T-Mobile service.

What was supposed to set the venture apart was a “bold” new $500 Trump T1 smartphone.

To pitch the phone to unsuspecting rubes, the original press release had a badly photoshopped rendition of the device, peppered with claims the phone would be “proudly designed and built in the United States.”

It didn’t take long for the folks behind the phone to pull all the made in America claims from the website. And while originally the phone was supposed to launch in August or September, not long ago it was delayed until October 31. As November drew to a close, there’s still no sign of the device...

Hmmmm...

Would you like Trump steaks with that?


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The above is from Karl Bode writing for TechDirt.
Earworm in the header, of course...This!

Snark in the subheader?...This!



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A Bubble For The Shedding?

ThisAin'tNoPartyThisAin'tNoDisco

ThisAin'tNoFoolin'AroundVille


Depending on where you've been looking, you might have come across a story or two that questioning where all the monetization/growth will come from to support the hugely big investments in AI.

Well...

What if the overlords behind all that over investification don't give a hoot-in-heckfire about real growth because they have instead gone all in on the 'shedding'?

Patricia Cohen of the NY Times has been chasing that story (web archive link):

The stock market bounces in recent weeks are just one indicator of the profound uncertainty and heightened risks running through the global economy and financial system.

It’s not simply that the hundreds of billions of dollars flooding into artificial intelligence investments might turn out to be a bubble. Or that the use of cryptocurrencies in mainstream banking is spreading even as their values have plunged after soaring to record highs...

{snip}

...The stock market run-up — the S&P 500 is still up about 14 percent this year despite the recent shivers — could foreshadow widespread economic gains. But (Harvard economist Kenneth) Rogoff doesn’t think that is the case.

“A big part of the high stock prices is not a reflection of high future growth,” he said. Rather, it is a sign that A.I. is expected to boost productivity and shrink employment. “The firms all think they’re going to shed a lot of labor, and that’s why the profits will be high,” he said...

In other words...

Our over investified AI overlords may not actually be betting on economic growth, but instead betting on economic collapse.

Collapse for all of us who are not over OIAI overlords that is.


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Earworm not so subtly dropped into the subheader?...This!

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Advent Jukebox...Day 1...I'll Be Home

IfOnlyInOur

DreamsVille



This time around you don't have to listen to my spastic warbles.

Instead, you can listen to the real thing!


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Why?...Because it's a tradition - that's why!



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Nevermind The Pen Flip...

DaveHodgeHasNotBeenFired
OhlemyerCommunicationsVille


...Bring on the latest edition of Dave Hodge's top 100 songs of 2025!

The Spotify playlist is...Here.

You can hear Mr. Hodge talk about his century with Mike Boon which, in addition to the music, includes, as you might expect, unfortunately, just a wee bit of Toronto as Center-Of-The-Universe discourse...Here.

You can even watch a chunk of the Hodge/Boon back and forth...Here.

As for the actual music on the list?

Well, there's a whole lotta indie Americana/Canuckistanmikitaville-type stuff in there, which means that it's right in my wheelhouse (but maybe not yours).

As an added bonus, I also learned a bit about 'Snocaps', which is a kinda/sorta 'super group' indie project of the Crutchfield sisters and MJ Lenderman...This is a passel of young folks that my own personal talent scout for such things, littler e., had already sussed out. The upshot? The tickets have been purchased, and the tithe to the masters of all that is wrong with the modern day purchase of such things has been paid, so that we can go and see their show next spring.


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Subheader?...This!

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