Not that you asked…

Here’s my TOP TEN favorite Christmas songs (in no particular order):

1. “Joy to the World” as recorded by Mariah Carey

2. “O Come All Ye Faithful” as recorded by Celine Dion

3. “This One’s For the Children by New Kids on the Block (awesomely bad but still a favorite)

4. “Up on the Housetop as recorded by Jackson 5

5. “What Christmas Means to Me” by Stevie Wonder

6. “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Whitney Houston

7. “Sugar Rum Cherry” by Duke Ellington

8. “Frosty the Snowman” by Harry Connick, Jr.

9. “Trepak” from The Nutcracker

10. “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” by Bruce Springsteen

And, just for good measure, here’s my TOP TEN least favorite Christmas songs:

1. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by whoever sings that song (It was cute in Elf. Other than that, it’s just creepy.)

2. “Santa Baby” by Madonna (There is nothing “Christmas-y” about Madonna. Never will be.)

3. “Give a Little Bit” by the Goo Goo Dolls (The Gap commercial killed it.)

4. “Here We Come A-Caroling” by anyone

5. “Happy X-Mas (War is Over)” by John Lennon (I know lots of people like this song. They are blinded by mindless Beatles worship. Get over it.)

6. “Jingle Bells” (This song is almost as annoying as “99 Bottles of Beer.”)

7. “Christmas Eve / Sarajevo 12/24″ by Trans-Siberian Orchestra (Good song. Played out.)

8. “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” by anyone but The Boss

10. “Feed the World” by Band Aid

C.K. and I are down in Jackson, MS for the holidays. It’s nice to see C.K.’s family again. The eating has begun and I don’t expect it to stop until we board the plane back to New York. Already I’ve sampled (no poor pun intended there) some pickled shrimp, spiced peaches, smoked ham, pound cake, and flavored pecans from Indianola (I think that’s how you spell it). All very good. The ham is my favorite though. There’s really nothing more tasty that fresh ham that has been dressed with spices and smoked. It is NOT the “maple glazed” run-of-the-mill spiral cut ham from your local grocer.

The weather is nice here in Mississippi too. According to the Samples, the 70s and partly cloudy this week is nice respite from the 20s Jackson had last week. Looks like New York isn’t the only part of the country with unpredictable weather patterns. Just last week, New York saw a beautiful sunny day with highs in the 50s and then freezing rain and snow not two days later. (Global warming is real, people.)

I’m off to eat some more. Hopefully the next few days will bring me enough quiet to work on revising the novel.

Happy Holidays!

Proving once again that my taste in music is completely random, these are the songs I recently purchased from iTunes…

“What Christmas Means to Me” — Stevie Wonder

“Up on the Housetop” — Jackson 5 (Hey, it’s cold here already.)

“Thriller”–Michael Jackson (And I bought the video. 13 minutes of pure amazing.)

“Say”–John Mayer

“Gravity”–John Mayer (Why does he keeping luring me in? I want to hate John Mayer. I want to.)

“Perfect Gentlemen”–Wyclef Jean

“No Woman, No Cry–Fugees” (Throwback to high school. Wow.)

“Killing Me Softly”–Fugees (I can remember listening to this on the way to Adventureland with my friends. I vaguely remember my dad turning back to the rowdy teenagers in the backseat and trunk of his Jeep Grand Cherokee and saying how the song was originally done by Roberta Flack. His response was probably a bunch of sighs and grunts and “whatevers.” How young and naive. And now some young minx like Rihanna will redo the song with some rapper like Young Jeezy and I’ll be in my Dad’s position. “Do you know the Fugees redid this song already in the 90s? This isn’t as good as when they redid it.”)

“Fu-Gee-La”–Fugees

“Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here”–Deborah Cox (throwback to the undergrad days at Fordham)

“Disturbia”–Rihanna (Probably against my better judgment.)

“Glory of Love”–Peter Cetera (found by Mags!)

“The Boxer”–Simon & Garfunkel (I forgot about this song. I heard it this past Saturday when two of the English teachers from Preston sang it at Preston Idol. They did an incredible job.)

I dare someone to try to categorize that mix.

I was floating around on YouTube the other day, mostly stream-of-consciousness searching and viewing. I stumbled upon the scene below from The Karate Kid, arguably one of the finest movies ever made. (Move over Orson.) A tale of triumph in the face of overwhelming hardship. Well, maybe not “overwhelming.” But it’s still an awesome movie.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there. So I included the last scene from Blood Sport and a scene from The Transporter. One could never write a post about awesome fight scenes in movie history without including Van Damage. And Jason Statham? I just threw him in for good measure. Enjoy.

On Wednesday, C.K. and I met Reyna, the woman who will be coming weekly to clean our apartment. She was lovely and we went into each room together and discussed what needed to be done. I’m so relieved to have her. I’m completely compulsive about cleaning my apartment. It’s just always on my mind. Then I do it (either piecemeal during the week or on Saturday / Sunday) and all I can think is “all this has to be done next week again?”

But with Reyna coming each week, all that has changed. I called my mother to tell her the news. And wouldn’t you know, while I was on the phone with her, my mother’s cleaning lady calls and says she’s moving to Florida. Of course mom is freaking out. “I’m screwed!” she laughed as she told me what had just happened. Doubt Reyna will go all the way to Long Island though.

Since we’ve moved back from California, C.K. has been working with Brian Alvey on his new company Crowd Fusion. It’s a new website publication platform (don’t ask me what that is). They just launched their first website the other day. It’s called Obsessable. Yeah, I know. The name is catchy. It reminds me of other make-believe words that are fun to say. Like Nastical (my own creation), and Ginormous (this one is way too common), and Romantical (a nod to my man Flava FLAV!).

Obsessable focuses on technology – everything from digital cameras and mobile phones to gaming consoles. I really like their product profile pages. Each contains a snippet explaining the product, further details if you want them, and some photos. I think it’s very helpful if you were going to buy a digital phone and couldn’t tell the difference between a Nikon D70 and a LeClic camera. Okay, you could probably tell the difference between those too. (Sidenote: I just got the urge to buy a LeClic on Amazon. Maybe Obsessable would let me write the “Product Profile” page?)

Check out C.K.’s post on 5 Cool Things about Obsessable.

I entered Thatcher in the Good Housekeeping Halloween Costume Contest. You can vote for her here. However, the contest is set up as random battles. I spent like an hour on Monday night voting and looking for the pug with no luck. She’s won over 850 battles though. If she wins the whole contest, Thatcher will be in the magazine and C.K. and I get a trip to Colorado.

Heroes season three premiered last night. It was good. Leaps and bounds better than Heroes second season. The show suffered both the “sophomore slump” and the WGA Strike last year. But those two reasons aside, the writers made the unfortunate decision to add a bunch of new (crappy) characters to the show and follow them around (hello? the mascara twins. puh-lease!).

It’s seems from these first two episodes that the show is returning to its old characters (Claire, Hiro, Peter, Nathan, Matt, HRG, and Sylar). They kept the one mascara twin, presumably because the actress is extremely attractive. Sure the show has some other lookers, but Ali Larter hardly ever gets screen time and Hayden is like twelve. (Sidenote: It’s totally gross that Milo Ventimiglia is dating her. I read that somewhere. “Somewhere” equals Us Weekly or some other high-gloss publication. Extreme sidenote: It’s a little disturbing that Dooney and Burke gave Hayden her own bag. I guess D&B is going for the younger customers now that teenagers carry Coach and Vera Bradley bags.)

And now I’m sidetracked. Heroes was pretty good. It kept my attention.

Interesting development: Dr. Suresh finally has powers. These new capabilities include spidy-sense and an out of control libido.

This is the perfect “prime minister” picture of Thatcher. She looks very aristocratic. She looks like she could run a country, definitely a small country like England (teehee). She might even be able to run Westchester. (The pug looks a little fat in this picture though. She’s really not fat. She’s just lumpy like that when she sits down.)
C.K. even did a drawing of the picture with PhotoShop.

I made this cocktail for a dinner party C.K. and I threw this past Saturday. We had a great bottle of Proseco to start as it was a celebratory dinner. Our close friends Tara and Jay are getting married next September. I’m a bridesmaid and Jay asked C.K. to be the best man. It’s a decision I’m sure he’s already rethinking. Directly after C.K. accepted the honor, he began goading Tara about how he would dye Jay blue for the wedding. Jay wouldn’t look bad as a smurf though.

We also enjoyed this lovely proseco cocktail from Martha Stewart Living. It tastes like a variation of White Sangria. Here’s how to make it.

1 peach, diced

1/2 lb. strawberries, diced

3 tablespoons sugar

3/4 cup of vodka

bunch of basil, chopped up

1 bottle of Proseco, Italian sparkling wine

In the bottom of a pitcher add all the ingredients except the Proseco. With a wooden spoon, mash up the fruit well and leave it in the fridge to marinate. When you’re ready to serve it, add the bottle of Proseco and mix well.

Also on the menu…

Shrimp Cocktail

Salad with carrots, dried cherries, bleu cheese, balsamic vinagrette (Tara made it. I think it had nuts too.)

Filet Mignon with Bernaise sauce

Brussel Sprouts with Pine Nuts

Baked Potatoes

Cupcakes from Lulu in Scarsdale. (Very nice!)