Christmas Music, Cards, and Cleaning; Synecdoche

Every year, it seems that I get particularly obsessed with one Christmas carol, and this year that song is The Donkey Carol, as performed by the Clare College choir under John Rutter.  I think John Rutter also wrote it, but I can’t really find much information on the song or the lyrics.  The embedded video above is a different choir singing the song, but that’s because I can’t find the much superior Clare College recording online.  Too bad for you!  Go get one of John Rutter’s albums if you want it; I have three now and they’re all really great.

Christmas music phases seem to last a few years at a time for me.  For many years, I listened to most of the American classics, like Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole.  Then I got a copy of the Christmas Cocktails album, and that started a total interest in the jazzy pop Christmas era.  And now I seem to have moved into a very classical Christmas music era, as evidenced by these John Rutter albums.  I seem to buy at least one and sometimes two Christmas music albums each year, so I think I have quite a collection.

Well, it has been kind of a weird week for me.  I was really not feeling well yesterday, so I stayed home from work, but then I ended up dealing with a project at home anyway, and then spent the rest of the day being productive, so I probably should have gone to work.  But I got a lot done: many loads of laundry, the Christmas decorations put up, lots of pictures processed, that aforementioned project for work, and some cleaning (mostly because it’s ingrained that one does not put up Christmas decorations without cleaning one’s house, which is a good way to be).  On Sunday, I put up some of the outdoor lights but not all of them.  I still need to finish those, but we had some freezing rain last night so I didn’t do it.  I did, however, address all the Christmas cards, though they’ll sit there until I decide whether I’m writing letters to go in some of them (for the people I don’t see often).  And I watched some romantic movie with Hilary Swank that I don’t really recommend, mostly because I wasn’t a fan of how they sliced up the narrative and distributed it about the movie.  It came off a little affected, and it might have been a decent movie if it had been told straight.  Probably not, though.  It was pretty sappy.

On the other hand, Tracy and I went to see a movie at the new Ragtag Cinemacafe on Sunday night.  I can’t believe it took so long to go see a movie there, but I can’t think of one that I really wanted to see that was out before this.  They moved at the end of Oscar movie season last year (the time when the Oscar pictures that come out at the end of December finally trickle down to the arty film houses near me), and I have seen a handful of movies that all made it to the multiplexes… anyway, I feel bad because I like Ragtag and want to support it, but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  (However, I do go to Uprise Bakery for lunch more than occasionally, and it’s in the same building.)

The movie we saw was Synecdoche, New York, which was great.  I want to see it again, if only to put all the pieces together.  I mean, it wasn’t that scrambled, but hello, Charlie Kaufman.  I just love him.  I just love his work.  I thought his movies with Michel Gondry were best, because I love Gondry too, but Kaufman did an excellent job as a first time director.  And the acting was superb.  It was wonderful.  Tracy liked the ongoing satire of the dirty, depressing doctor’s offices with the monosyllabic doctors, but I preferred Hazel and her burning house.

Anyway, I just realized that that movie came out nearly two months ago.  It just annoys me that, in this day and age of Netflix Watch Instantly, OnDemand, TiVo, and YouTube, I have to wait that long to see a movie in my hometown, and still pay full price for it.  Just because I live in the middle of nowhere, according to the assholes in charge at these movie distribution companies.  If my hometown can support an arty little theater, we should be able to see these movies immediately!  I mean, if I’m geeky enough to go out and see the independent films in the first place, I should be able to then geek out with everyone else online.  As it is, I’m two months too late to chat about them.  Which sucks.

As far as Christmas gifts go, I have to say that I am much further behind that I have been in many recent years.  I can’t remember being so behind, actually.  I mean, I have bought things for people, but I have not finished any single person, and I’m kind of facing a bit of a block with most everyone.  I feel a little anxious, too, because the holiday is not that far away, and shipping from online merchants can be such a crapshoot.  Erghhhgh.  I know I will make it work, but I want it to be done.