My previous post was about the early pushing of bad Christmas/Winter music. A couple days ago I got in the car and found that XM's "40s on 4" had been replaced by "Holiday Traditions" until after Christmas. The 40s channel was not moved. This is irritating. This is the crap sort of thing that drove people AWAY from broadcast radio in the first place! And it's not as if there aren't other channels that could be used. It's after the baseball season, even I know that. And XM has a scad of baseball (MLB) channels that could have been used.

Right now I'm settling for the 50s channel and occasionally others, but I'm not bothering with 4 for a few weeks. Sure, if it had stayed 40s, I'd have expected some holiday music - but that's it, just some. They DID use dormant channels in previous years. Why did they decide to screw over to 40s this year? Is it that Sirius pulls that crap and this is merger fallout? Is it that this forces an audience for a moment, ala spammers? If I want that sort of abuse, I'll go to a damn mall.

Great going XM/Sirius, you make going to an mp3 player look all that much better: no subscription and no bogus channel-format change crap. Hey, I know it's now considered rather Old School, but I still have a tape deck and I'm not afraid to use it.

I hope XM manages to learn not to do that as they managed to learn a bit with the Radio Classics channel. For a few years they'd have a week (only a week!) of all Christmas themed radio shows. Until last year when they had a week with only some Christmas themed shows, and some regular shows - listeners had had enough.

Current Mood: pissed off

Some places are already playing Christmas music and nothing but Christmas music. This is rather early, I think, for that. The inclusion of the occasional winter tune might be acceptable, but full-on Christmas music shouldn't happen until after Thanksgiving if it happens at all. My problem with Christmas music isn't that I don't like it. It's not even necessarily the repetition, though by now there ought to be enough tunes that repeats shouldn't need to happen frequently, and that's counting by title rather than by performance. It's the poor quality of every b-list,c-list, d-list... z-list quasi-celebrity cover of tunes that have been better by better. While White Christmas might not require Bing Crosby and Here Comes Santa Claus might not require Gene Autry, they are destroyed by various wannabes and also-rans put their undesired mark on them. One thing I will agree with the bletcherous Beavis and Butthead on: "Micheal Bolton can make anything suck."

I know there are some radio stations with an all-Christmas format, but the places where one encounters this most are stores that have Muzak or such (no commercials save what the store adds) and those seem to be sanitized of the more interesting Christmas and Winter tunes, such as Christmas At Ground Zero.

Now I'm pondering the interesting not-so-standard Christmas and Winter tunes. I know of a few:

Christmas At Ground Zero - Weird Al Yankovic
Happy Hairy Hippie Santa Claus ("You bet your sweet bippy Santa Claus is a hippie...")
Rusty Chevrolet - Da Yoopers
My Car Won't Go - Da Yoopers
I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas - Yogi Yorgesson
A Christmas Carol - Tom Lehrer
I'm Spending Hanukkah In Santa Monica - Tom Lehrer

Any others that wouldn't be all that likely to played in a store, but might provide some welcome relief if they were?

Current Mood: curious

Nobody put in an appearance to decry fruitcake or the committing thereof. There was agreement that real ingredients (butter, eggs, spirits) be used - and that the spirits were essential. Rum seems to be the canonical spirit for this sort of thing. I don't know enough about rum to judge what might be good or bad.

So, what rum would you recommend for soaking a fruitcake? And maybe for other baking. Possibly even drinking, though probably not by itself.

Current Mood: curious

A couple days ago I saw a store display of colorful dried or candied fruit that was clearly meant for fruitcake and so I've been thinking about fruitcake. Fruitcake, some say, is a nasty unwanted (and probably dry brick-like) thing. This has become a joke in The Single Fruitcake Theory: "There is only one fruitcake and people keep sending it to each other." Others say that sure, bad fruitcake can be a dry brick that might only be budged by thermonuclear weaponry, but there is good fruitcake if only you can find or make the stuff.

I've not encountered the truly miserable fruitcake, but I suppose I've sampled some so-so stuff due to the effects of commercial mass production. And now I'm pondering making a fruitcake so that I have control the quality - or lack thereof. But I haven't done this before and I have no idea what a good recipe is. There are several variations.

Some recipes soak the thing in rum. Others call for brandy. Others call for whisk(e)y. Some say substitute orange juice for the spirits, while others don't mention any spirits at all. So one question is: spirits or not? If so, which? And if brandy, which flavor? I'm not a huge fan of apricot. I don't really dislike apricot, I'm just not that fond of it.

Another question is, should I do this? I don't mean in the "Aie! A fruitcake! Run!" sense, but I've mainly just been baking cookies (scratch), simple bread (scratch), and the odd cake (mix). Is this a reasonable step or a flying leap?

And of course there is the Big Question even assuming the others are answered and I proceed: Which recipe ought I go with?

Current Mood: curious

[LJ]dumbbum_comics: asked for it:

Poll #4582 Bonjour-Hi. Don't blame Canada. Blame dumbbum_comics instead.
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Canadian beavers...

Canadian moose...

Racquetball...

When it comes to Canada and China...

Shallots...

Petroleum Jelly...

Maple Syrup...

The Littlest Hobo...

This poll about Canada...

Current Mood: silly