And We Shall March

"And may justice increase with the light."

Originally this post was an embed of multiple YouTube videos containing the whole of The Blackadder Christmas Carol, which I had never seen before the miracle of the internet(s). Also there was to be a bonus vid of the the hilarious and fantabulous Cthulhu holiday carols which are based on (I think) the work of The fine folks At The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

But between the time that post was created and a few days ago, the latest Hour of Power episode popped up over at The Church of Stop Shopping & was too funny & thoughtful not to share. So here's that instead. You can go find the Christmas Blackadder on YouTube on your own. More CoSS episodes are available at their Blip channel.

And here's his Christmas Eve sermon.

Around here, admit to how tough it's been to get through the season without our vast collection of Mormon Tabernacle Choir cds and tapes providing the perfect background sounds, but after the events of the state election, trashing them all was the best decision. (I had 23.) Happily, the tape I made when a teen of The Harry Simeone Chorale's "The Little Drummer Boy" from an album checked out of a library in Cleveland is holding up nicely! But since listening to even that 50 billion times can get tedious, during the upcoming year I must find more traditional chorale holiday music to soundtrack my future holidays, because I'm not a big fan of pop-style Christmas music, and the local classical music station doesn't really switch over to holiday music until Christmas Day.  Definitely will include these guys, Straight No Chaser, discovered last year when I forget who sent me a link:

Straight No Chaser - 12 Days of Christmas
 

Update (Christmas afternoon)! These awesome people, The Rose Ensemble, are also going on the list. Here you can hear the show I heard earlier today on the radio while standing in the kitchen trying to remember where I put the garlic. Unfortunately you can't rewind for some reason, but their primitive Baptist take on "Star in the East" is gorgeous. I think this is also them on YouTube. Oh, great. Now there's flour all over the keyboard...

Still haven't figured out what to watch on Christmas Eve, though. Traditionally it's the fabulous MTC show on PBS, but no more doing that, either. I'll come up with something.

Meanwhile, today we're going to once again attempt to cook a goose without setting the oven on fire. The last time we tried this it didn't work out too well, which is why the backup is a whole roasted Zankou chicken ready to heat up if needed, to say nothing of a tank of foamy fire suppression equipment. Wish us luck.

Bonus! Below is the source material for why this post was originally titled And Even Though It All Went Wrong I'll Stand Before The Lord of Song With Nothing On My Tongue But Hallelujah before the last-minute shuffling. Back in the day me and The Departed tried to come up with the definitive Top 10 Christmas Songs for Atheists (we never did settle on a final list) and this song, which also appeared permanently among the top three of my Greatest Songs Ever In The History Of The Universe, was high on both of our forever evolving lists:

Full lyrics here. Or, you know, not. According to the documentary, he wrote 80 verses for this song, the creation of which drove him up a wall and over a cliff. I hope someone publishes them all one day.

If the universe would bend to my Will and give me what I want? It would have by now produced a version sung full-out by a loud, passionate, black Pentecostal gospel choir, featuring either Tom Waits or Al Green on lead. I remain Hopeful that this will happen before I die. Also, it would be nice to have versions by Alison Krauss and Sweet Honey in the Rock and NIN.

(By the way, Sweet Honey In the Rock will be at the Chandler in performance with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe on March 18! Muppet Dance!)

A close second to the power of Cohen's original is the John Cale's version:

Yup.

You Don't See Me I'm Not Here

Image delivery service for she who cannot download the attachments...

In progress! This is the front:

This is the back:

The back is the upper part of the sleeve from the disassembled jacket.

No picts of the finished item because it was finished post-camera access, and I don't think I will get a pic after delivery. Roughly 11 x 3 x 12, canvas, denim, filler inside front & back, but not the sides, lined with red.

You're welcome!

Update (pissed off version)! I have no idea what's wrong with the image, looking all 50s-era radiation. Chalk it up to Typepad started sucking a while ago and continues its downward slide, with every day revealing more suckage. The original image files are fine. Sorry.

Of Christkwanzsolstikkah Miracles And Madoff

Well, that was fun!

Update! Adding Friday at the insistence of the The Nice One, who pointed out wise things related to Friday. Though he remains convinced that I didn't answer the phone on Friday due to office holiday party activities, when really it was because he forgot that my cell is dead -  even though I told him, like, FOUR TIMES - he's right. So up Friday goes.

Friday: Arrive at the day job at the ungodly hour of 7:45 a.m., in order to get as much actual work done before shifting to set up and execution of the Office Holiday Party. This entailed, among other things, not leaving until around 9 p.m. because somebody had to clean up afterwards. Though this year's office party did not involve stained glass windows or hidden fairies and poems or a dance floor (the kids love the dance floor), it was still cool. I'm still ever so pleased that several folks actually made snowflakes from the provided templates! This year, due to the economy probably, it was potluck and folks really came through with the cookery. Awesome & tasty. The office also collected food for a local bank and moolah for a local charity. Good things, that.

Saturday: Delivering the baking for other people's parties to WeHo, Boyle and Lawndale, holiday lunch in the Valley and wrapping it up with a movie & talk at the Nuart, but that fell through. But one quick phone call to swap a Saturday ticket for a Sunday ticket meant I was freed up to attend a solstice night party I'd previously declined due to scheduling. So when I showed up on the doorstep I was declared the Solstice Miracle! At this moment of typing I can't remember the precise phrase she used, but it was something like The Miracle of the DayRunner. Pretty funny.

Because we are now old, the stay-up-drinking-and-talking-until-the-longest-night-turns into-day didn't happen. We were all pretty much dead by 2 a.m.

Sunday: holiday breakfast in Culver City, holiday late lunch in South Pasadena, Hanukkah first night in Riverside, rescheduled movie & talk at the Nuart.  Yeah. Do the mileage.

The festival in Riverside was really nice and had quite a turnout. It was hosted by the Chabad group out there, which is headed by the hilarious Rabbi Shmuel, who happens to be the next door neighbor of my friends. It was held in front of the gorgeously restored historic courthouse downtown and featured booths with activities such as candle making, an olive oil pressing demonstration filled with silly puns, and also photo ops!

Judah's Photographer: Would you like a picture taken with Judah the Maccabee?
Me: YES!
P&J: Ummm...
Me: <grabbing them & throwing them in front of the menorah> YES!
P&J: Ummmm....
Me: Smile!

As they were getting closer to the lighting part of the event, this usher kept coming over to the three of us asking if we would like to sit up front. Being the type of people we are, we redirected her toward senior citizens standing near us who we felt would appreciate sitting down. Finally the usher came back to us and said I have two seats left. Do you want to come and be part of the torch of life ceremony? And were were like, YES! So P & I abandoned her husband and ran up front. Later, we almost felt guilty about ditching him. Gotta say the passing of the light through the crowd was so moving I"m glad the usher kept coming back to us until we said yes.

The speakers included Leon Leyson, who survived the Holocaust because of Oscar Schindler, and Jacob Dayan, the consul from Israel. The evening was dedicated to the memory of the people murdered in Mumbai. Here are two pictures swiped from the PE's coverage, which you can read in full here. 
  

Afterwards we drove around the Mission Inn to admire the gorgeous, overly-done Christmas decorations - just how I like it! - then back to the house for outstanding food. (P is a wizard in the kitchen.)

Which brings us to that awful man who stole all that money from all those people. I've been tracking the fallout primarily through the Jewish Journal, which has been chronicling the local & national impact in a way that makes the whole thing less overwhelming to take in (to me, anyway). Now, I have zero sympathy for stratospherically wealthy people who, due to that horrible man's actions, suddenly find themselves slightly less monumentally wealthy. But my heart breaks for all of the charity organizations, schools, arts groups and such like that will have to shut down or severely curtail activities on behalf of the disenfranchised because of the corruption of one man.***  Millions of people helped by these charities are going to be in even worse shape because of all this.

A couple of days ago the JJ revealed that among the charitable organizations slammed by that awful man is the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity which does wonderful stuff for people all over the world. When I was in college he came to our campus and I was among the small group of students selected to meet with him for an hour or so. Mostly we just listened and gaped because nobody wanted to say something that sounded stupid in front of Elie Wiesel, but that hour had a lasting impact on my person. The foundation lost over $15 million in this, all of the money it uses for The Work.

How selfish/evil/arrogant do you have to be to *even think about* ripping off Elie Wiesel? Rip off people in your country club...okay, yeah. That's actually kind of standard stuff for thieves, going after the people you know. Crackheads do the same thing when you think about it. But rip off Elie Wiesel? Unfathomable.

With this fallout, I got to thinking that what both Obama and Cerebus have demonstrated is that if you ask a whole bunch of regular people to send you what little bit of regular amounts of money they can spare, you will end up with a shitload of money.

What if every regular person picked *one* organization reeling from that evil man's scam  - be it a local one in our communities or a national one - and and decided to send that organization a little bit of whatever can be spared every month? If lots of everyday people threw small chunks of money it would help them to get through the immediate loss, and maybe get back on their feet down the road. Might be waaaay down the road considering the scope of this thing, but you have to start somewhere.

I have chosen Wiesel's foundation, and every month for at least one year I'm going to try to send them something. I already know there will be times when I'll be lucky to come up with $20 spare bucks, and to be honest I'm already mourning not so many movies, not so many books for Me Me Me to pull this off. But I've already got an apartment full of books, and to be honest so many movies suck these days that half the time I come out of the theater feeling I've just wasted $15 bucks and two hours of my life.

Just think about it, discuss with family and friends, take a look at what you have and see what little bit you can spare for another. Pool resources! Keep in mind that it does not have to be a lot. Rich people aren't the only ones who can give. In other words, we are the ones we have been waiting for (link to Sweet Honey song once one is found). 

And with that, the blog is going dark until January, except for an autopost that's going up Christmas day. See ya next year!

*** And possibly his entire family. If there's one thing I don't believe it's that the rest of the family did not know what was going on.

Today's Entry Brought To You Largely Due To The Linkage Provided From Somebody Else

That would be Rich of the essential comics & related info site Glyphs, from whom all these links came to Moi attention. You really should be feed reader thingy his site, if you're not already.

First! A story, lovely, moving and cautionary all at once about Andre Campbell, a legally-blind artist who retains the Fire and is working toward his dream. Beautiful. 

When Campbell failed the third grade, school officials came to understand the extent of his problem, and they urged his mother, who worked as a custodian for 40 years, to enroll the boy in the Maryland School for the Blind. She refused. She didn't believe it would prepare him for the challenge of living in the world of the seeing.

"You don't let no one walk over you," she told Campbell. She encouraged him to always give his best effort, to not worry about failure.

Despite his poor eyesight, Campbell had an innate talent for drawing. He started off with dinosaurs, wildlife and landscapes, but nothing beat drawing superheroes. "They could do anything," he said. "I actually saw myself as a superhero because they were different from regular humans. So 'I'm Blind Man,' you know? 'I'm different.' " Stepping into the imaginary world of superheroes and supervillains was, he said, "a way of forgetting how hurt I was when people teased me." Kids would trip him or hold their hands in front of his face and say, "How many fingers I got up?" or "I don't want to be around him -- I might catch what he got."

By the time he was 14, he already knew that he would spend his life trying to be a comic book artist.

Next! A partial of an interview with cartoonist/activist Keith Knight, in a magazine I don't actually like very much, so chances are this is all I will see of it until I can track down a loaner.

Doonesbury was the first strip that had black people in it, acting like black people, taking on black issues. It was a big influence. I remember going to the library, and the two cartoon books that they had were Peanuts and Doonesbury, so I would read a lot of Doonesbury. I liked the idea of real stuff, real issues, mixing with these fake characters, and with real characters. I think that was the first idea I had of meshing fiction and nonfiction.

Finally! Even more details emerge about one of the many incidences of abysmal, racist treatment of black people trying to get to safety during Katrina. I quibble with the headline and one of the assumptions in the piece, though. This wasn't secret when it happened...perhaps the writer of the piece wasn't aware of the many media outlets where people did indeed ask the obvious questions. But that's a quibble. The story is a good summary of what happened.

Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."

Like Just About Everybody Else I Have Many Reasons To Profoundly Dislike The LA Times...

but one of the minor reasons is its absolute crap approach toward the real estate section.

Let's take the "Hot Property" feature. Too often it has a lead story headline something like this:    CCH Pounder lists home in L.A.'s historic West Adams 

Which is followed by lead story text looking something like this: On FX's "The Shield," CCH Pounder played the fictional LAPD Capt. Claudette Wyms -- the self-appointed voice of morality at "the Barn," as her division headquarters was affectionately called. Her frequent clashes with bad boy Det. Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chiklis) underscored her determination and strength -- qualities that just might come in handy as she tries to sell her West Adams home.

The three-bedroom, two-bathroom Italianate home is listed at $1.25 million. It was built in 1915 and has been restored. The 3,284-square-foot house is in a designated Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, which means that the local HPOZ board would need to sign off on any exterior changes to the home, a walled and gated property. Pounder, who was raised on a sugar cane plantation in her birth country of Guyana and then later educated in British boarding schools, has also appeared in "Justice League" (2004-06) and several episodes of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." She will appear in the upcoming James Cameron 3-D film "Avatar."

Steven Portigiani of Deasy Penner & Partners is the listing agent, according to the Multiple Listing Service.

But when you click over to the actual story? The pictures are of somebody else's house! And because the LAT has yet to clue into the standard practice of providing a link back to the main story within the captions of a photo gallery, you're trapped clicking looking for a linkback until you give up and reset to the poorly designed main home page, then scroll until you find the story again, which you click on for the url so you can make a post complaining about how sucky the LAT is.

Happily there are other sources to go to and find out what The Magnificent CCH Pounder's house looks like and, more importantly, discover how close is it in relation to my apartment! Turns out it's not far away at all... Check out the copper pot & pan collection in the kitchen! And that FANTASTIC garden with the cool hand-crafted gate! Not quite sold on the green of the dining room walls, but I can just paint that over....

! Posada !

Just right now, freshly in the house after a loooooong day at the day job, collapsed on the couch with a warm mug of Christmas rum and What Would Jesus Buy loading up on the dvd, I hear voices and singing outside. And not drunk singing or overly-loud stereo from across the street singing like usual, but real singing. More, it sounded familiar. 

Haul up off the couch, open the door and lo! It's a posada!! Walking down my sidewalk! About 20 people, kids and adults, with candles, sparklers, the Mary & Joseph diorama being carried in a decorated litter and everything! No one was in costume, but then again it's been freezing around here this past week.**

This is the first time a posada has *ever* come anywhere near where I live. Usually I have to plan a posada visit, drive to it, and typically only hit up one night of whichever event I picked. Have no idea where this group came from...it was dark and I couldn't see anyone clearly enough to spot if participants were folks I've seen around the neighborhood. But there are so many churches within striking distance where they could have come from, I'm going to start asking around tomorrow.

Under normal circumstances I would have locked up the house and followed. But I'm really exhausted at the moment. 

No picts because no camera, dammit. But it was very nifty. Bummer I didn't have any cookies or cake left to give them. It's only day three of posada though, so maybe they'll be back tomorrow night, or Sunday. Plenty of time to whip up a batch of The Greatest Sugar Cookies In The Known Universe(tm). Realize chances are slim whatever route they're taking during the season will bring them down my street again, but just in case I want to be ready.

I love this town.

**Note: "Freezing" is a relative term. For LA, it's FREEZING.

Meanwhile, Every Single One Of Us Lost The Betting Pool

Elizabeth Alexander, aka Poet of the Inauguration.

"Writing In My Car" - The New Blog Home For A Fabulous Black Woman Writer!

Wow. Time Warner's internet, and their alleged customer service, is even worse than legend intimates.

Anywho....

Rachel Howzell Hall, mentioned in passing here and here and I'm sure someplace else but I can't find it right now because I am posting on the fly, has launched a blog! Her new internet(s)  homeport, Writing In My Car, is one easy click away. We are ever so excited, and encourage you to zip over there and add it to your reader feed thingy. It's going into my reader feed thingy, and up on the siderail here.

Are you thinking her site is called Writing In My Car because of some hip LA thing? You are wrong! It's because Rachel actually does write in her car. I have witnessed this myself when wandering in the parking lot. Once clued into what was going on, I learned not to go over and knock on the window to see if everything's okay. I very much enjoyed her first book, A Quiet Storm. You can see a few pages of that one for yourself right here.  Around here we're very much looking forward to her next works.

And we're out! More, later.

Update! Do allow me to share a small bit of hilarity from the inbox between Moiself and a friend who practices the male version of Godless Hussydom... 

Him: That's a hot one.

Me: Married.

Him: DAMN.

I further explained that not only is she married to a guy as hot as she is, they have together they have produced a *gorgeous* child and even if she was single? COMPLETELY out of your league. 

heh.

Because of this, I of course have to add another tag..

Help For Phineas Poe @ Terra Major - A Note From The Guy In Charge

So, there are people waiting for email responses from me, and quite often when I quickly throw something up here on the site while they're waiting for answers, they sent *another* email going WTF?! Which is perfectly understandable. But, you know, just adds to the pile...

I blame society. And my schedule. 

Swear To Betsy that I will make my way through (some) of the neglected inboxes later this weekend and into early next week. Meanwhile, here's a cut/paste of a blast from Shane L. Amaya, publisher of Terra Major and all-around outstanding human being, which is of course far more coherent than the quick ramble about the situation I threw together & posted a little while ago.

Read, consider, and act upon it as much as you are able. Even spreading the word is a helpful act. If you choose to spread the word, it's better to send people directly to www.savephineas.com for matters of expediency and so forth.

Okay, off to find my rum, my comfy pajamas, my cat and my pillow. Because lord knows when that alarm goes off in the morning it will be TOO SOON.

Dear Friends,

Many of you know about my legal dispute with Mythic Films over the rights to
Phineas Poe, a comic book I was set to publish last year. For those of you
who are not up-to-date, I have explained my situation at this website:
www.savephineas.com.

Almost two years have passed since I was threatened with a lawsuit by Mythic
Films CEO Ralph Hemecker. The situation remains unresolved. It eats away at
all of us who were involved in the project like a cancer. It is clear that
the situation cannot be resolved without going to court. And I have very
good reason to believe that a suit will be filed against me in January of
2009. If not, I myself will file a suit.

I have retained the services of Lapolt Law, a law firm referred to me by the
California Lawyers for the Arts. One of their attorneys is JA Ted Baer
(http://www.lapoltlaw.com/bio.php?att=5), a very experienced entertainment
law lawyer who, as luck would have it, has offices right here in Santa
Barbara, on Canon Perdido. I've talked with him about our situation and have
a lot of faith in his ability to help us.

Although the law firm is kindly, generously, magnanimously billing me at a
reduced rate, it is rate that I nonetheless cannot easily afford. That is
why I have set up the website www.savephineas.com -- to help raise money for
our legal expenses.

And thus the purpose of this letter is, regretfully yet humbly, to ask of
our friends to visit the site and donate what money they can to our cause. I
realize it is perhaps the worst time to be filing a lawsuit and asking for
charity, but perhaps only now, in these grim economic times, will Mythic
Films reevaluate the cost of fighting a prolonged court battle over a comic
book. We would be grateful for any amount--a dollar or two--that you can
afford to part with.

For those of you interested in buying original comic art, we are also
considering holding an auction in the near future. I of course welcome any
suggestions you might have. Please pass this email on to anyone you feel may
be sympathetic to our situation. Thank you very much for your help in our
hour of need. We will not forget it. Happy Holidays.

Gratefully,

Shane Amaya

"In The America That Elected Barack Obama, Our Work Is Not Done."

Because it's my blog, I get to decide when I can violate my rules.

This speech, delivered by Ramona Ripston - a.k.a. Woman Of Fuckin' AWESOME - a couple of nights ago, is a good one. In some ways it reminds me of a speech Michelle Obama delivered during the campaign, the one where she said what Obama will be asking the nation to do will not be easy. It will require work.

Clicky to read the whole thing.

Tonight, in the America that elected Barack Obama, black people are more likely to be stopped, searched and arrested by the police than white people. That will still be true on January 21. Tonight, in the America that elected Barack Obama, black children are more likely to live in poverty than white children. That will still be true on January 21. Tonight, in the America that elected Barack Obama, black people are more likely to have HIV and less likely to have health insurance than white people. That will still be true on January 21. Tonight, in Los Angeles County, which voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, 90,000 homeless people, many of them black, are sleeping on the streets. That will still be true on January 21. Tonight, in California, a state that voted for Barack Obama, only 60 percent of black high-school students will graduate. That will still be true on January 21. And in California, where the voters said that Barack Obama should be president, they also said that gays and lesbians cannot get married. That will still be true on January 21. As long as any of these things is true, our work is not done, our dreams are not fulfilled.

What else will be true on January 21? Will we still throw people into the black hole of indefinite detention without charges, evidence or trial? Will we still spy on Americans without warrants? Will we still kidnap foreign citizens under the meaningless euphemism “extraordinary rendition?” Will we continue to practice torture in violation of international law? As long as any of this is true, our work is not done, our dreams are not fulfilled.

We cannot sit back and expect Barack Obama, or any individual, to fulfill our dreams for us. That is still our responsibility — all of us. We have elected a president, not a magician, not a messiah. No president alone can cure all our ills, heal all our pains or undo generations of injustice. We still have a major role to play. Our new president needs our help. He will have major obstacles to overcome. He will have a Supreme Court unsympathetic to his goals and ours. He will have enormous pressure to make concessions to the right wing, and we will have to pressure him even harder to do the right thing. We’ll support him when he does and we will speak truth to power when he does not!

The struggles for civil rights and civil liberties have never been easy and never will be. And yes, true change does not come from the top down but from the bottom up. History repeatedly has proven this. The abolition movement had to push President Lincoln, the workers rights movement had to push Franklin Roosevelt, the civil-rights movement had to pressure presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Real change comes when energized movements arise and raise the call for justice. We must be that energized movement!