Central Snark

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning. ~T.S. Eliot

WE DON’T know what ”auld lang syne” means. And we don’t care. Okay, that’s a lie from the pits of hell, because we do know (sort of) and we do care (not really but shut up).

OH FINE. If you’re so damn interested/concerned, you can read up on the origins of Auld Lang Syne for yourselves, HERE. After you do that, please come back here (and hello? By “here” we mean here) and join us in celebrating (for a second) the upcoming New Year with as much verve, joy, love and enthusiasm as you can muster (we know you can be pathetic, but give it a shot). Honestly, with the help of DIE ROTEN ROSEN* we think you’ll find it (mildly) difficult to resist. But, hey, if you can’t bring yourself to join in because you’re not (somewhat) moved by the music and/or don’t find yourselves (overly) anxious to share in our “Celebrate New Year’s Verve, Love and/or Joy Fest” (and/or you’re so damn pathetic you’ve already gone back to bed) then do it for auld lang syne. (whatever the hell that means…)

BY THE WAY, we’re not stupid (for the most part). We know there are a number of ways to celebrate New Years Eve (besides blogging). From what we hear, there are many festive and/or fabulous parties taking place around the world (with nary a blogger in site) even as we type (badly). In fact, to see what’s happening in Times Square in NYC rightthisminute, go HERE (unless you’re already “there” in person). Of course, you could always ring in 2007 (the way nerds like us do) via the 24 hour marathon of TWILIGHT ZONE on SciFi (shut up). Our point, for we had one when we started this post (last week), is that whatever you do and/or however you choose to welcome the New Year, we hope it’s beautiful (dress up), memorable (take pictures), and, uh, filled with loads of old-fashioned verve, love, and joy, (try not to drink too much, will ya?) and we’ll see you all back here… next year. (hahahaha — that joke never gets old)

~HAPPY NEW YEAR, dear Friends – from ALL of us to ALL of you!~

*Die Roten Rosen is the nom de guerre of Deutchpunk band DIE TOTEN HOSEN in “punked-not-punk” mode. Click on that link for a holiday “howdy” (as opposed to a “doody”?) from 3 band members — via a Quicktime video. It’s mildly amusing and lasts as long as a crummy commercial break between episodes of TZ.

Well I hope you all took notes from yesterday’s informational video on being popular.  Get yourselves a date calendar and just watch how it fills up!  Now then with all that newfound popularity, you may need to be conversant on a variety of topics.  This post will help you with music from 2006. 

Wow, am I doing a retrospective?  How introspective.   You know here’s a post secret:  Instead of investing in a 401K when it first started with my company many years ago, I bought albums.  Okay, okay, it was a looooong time ago.  And sadly, I haven’t bought any of the cd’s listed on these lists.  But I may just treat myself, oh yes I may.  Or maybe this will be the year of living dangerously - getting an ipod!  My point being I was always a bit of a music geek.  So I live for best of lists like this…to pour over, agree with, balk at, listen to and then start all over again.  

I share this with you because I have grown to just love you guys!  I’m giddy enough to think that there is something for each of you on these lists.  I was going to go old school with no video links because well there are none and they’re lists of songs so all you have to do is close your eyes and listen.  And browse around and click on other links…oh the possibilities are endless.  But then, I just chose my kneejerk fave from the first more “mainstream list” of artists and someone incidentally whom I had wanted to share on a Saturday Spin, but couldn’t find the song I was looking for and then you know a squirmish broke out between the kids or something.  So without further adieu, I give you a sneakpeak into the lists in the form of BECK:

Now onto the lists.  The first list is from David Dye who is the host of an NPR feature that I love, World Cafe, and it’s his TOP 10 CD’S OF 2006.  The next is from Stephen Thompson who is an editor and contributor for NPR’s Song of the Day and this is his SONGS OF THE YEAR: top 10 cd’s of 2006.  I happen to know and love a few of the artists that made the lists.  I also happen to not know a few so I will be checking them out. 

Look at the bright side (did I mention that I’m a lamp) — if the date calendar goes bust, you’ll have plenty of music in which to seek solace.   

Happy New Year Snarksters ~ wishing you and your families health and happiness in 2007 and maybe a new cd for yourself — you know to accompany you on those resolutions to walk briskly, run often and sweat a lot and become svelte and fabulous! 

~ DJ LAMPSHA

Yo Lampy: What’s wrong with us? Here we are, just a few days shy of 2007, and so far, not one blog has asked us to help ring in the new year. Was it something we said? Someone we forgot to put on our sidebar? A bad link? Whatever it is, I know we can change as soon as we figure out what the hell it is we need to fix. I say we watch the following 1948 video, “Are You Popular?” as many times as possible over the next day or so. Surely the film will answer all our questions. In fact, I’m betting it might ultimately be our ticket to the best New Year’s parties and/or backseats of all the best cars (or blogs) in town.

Uh Snuppy: Don’t call me Shirley. And the video was 1947, not 1948. Say could that be why I’m not more popular — pointing out annoying minutiae such as that? That and I don’t go parking in cars with boys. Of course, if they’ll drive with me to work so that I can go in the HOV lane, well, then I might consider it.

Lampy-not-Shirley: D’oh! The date at the bottom of the screen was a dead give-away, wasn’t it? Maybe if we started wearing tighter sweater-sets? High heels instead of saddle-shoes? Dyed our hair and/or did our nails more often?? Used a date calendar, for godssake??

Snuppy: The date calendar — of course!! Then there’s the brownies.

OKAY, Lampy, so the key ingredients for Popularity are: Home, Parents and Personality? We both have homes *and* parents (hell, on any given day, we are parents)… hmmmm, so far so good. And, last time I looked, we both have personality out the wazoo. Unfortunately (tho’ I can’t speak for you), I’m thinkin’ our wazoos may not be the best place to show off our personalities, sparkling and/or otherwise.

WE GOT nothin’ for you today. Zippo. Zilch. A big, fat ZERO. Oh, we know we should be primed and ready to Snark the daylights out of your asses this week, especially as we approach the end of the year, but what can we say? All that Holiday Brouhaha — or “Brouhaholiday” as we like to call it — has completely wiped us out. So much so, we plum forgot to wish our friends up in Canada happy Boxing Day on Tuesday (tho’ why they’ve set aside a day for boxing and/or boxes is beyond us. Those Canadians…) But, as is almost always the case, we digress. We were talking about the fact that we don’t have anything to post today, not about boxes, Canadian and/or otherwise.

FORTUNATELY, as fans of a certain program we happen to think is the best thing on TV, aka, THE DAILY SHOW, we have a solid solution/remedy to our pre-post-non-post-post-dilemma. A few weeks ago, Jon Stewart did a swell bit on the recent humiliating fall from grace of the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard. Oh, it was a fine bit of journalism. Just fine. And funny. So very funny. So very very funny. We actually considered showing it to you sooner (pre-mid-term-elections came to mind) but, thanks to a new “agreement” between Comedy Central and YouTube, we were unable to load this segment directly to our crummy little blog page until rightthisminute(ish)*. Damn those bastard people. Not that it matters. Trust us, this clip was hilarious when it first aired, and it’s hilarious now. Glory Hole Cam? Lordy that’s good.

NOTHIN’ scary about that guy. No, wait. Everything is scary about that guy. Not that we claim to know anything about such matters, but we can’t help but wonder if Haggard’s veritable plummet from grace had any impact on last November’s aforementioned midterm elections. Jerry Falwell didn’t seem to think it would be a factor, neither did that bastion of good judgement, Pat Robertson. But, well… based on the outcome, one might be forced to arrive at a different conclusion. Naturally, we won’t mention what conclusion that might be, since this blog doesn’t speak of politics — even in the face of major hypocricy — but, hopefully, you catch our drift. If not, it’s the thing that made the big “whoosh” sound as it whizzed over your head.

MIND YOU, we’re not saying this was the ONE big news story to beat ALL big news stories of 2006, but it was among the stories that may well go down as significant. At least in Funny/Serves you Right/People in Glass Houses/Holier-than-Thou Land. We bet some of you can recall other big deal/not big deal but kind of interesting/if we never hear about that asshole/bitch/freak again it’ll be too soon events, if so, now’s the time to share. Let’s get this stuff off our chests, shall we? That way we can all start 2007 with not only with love in our hearts, but our HeadlineNews slates wiped clean, in hopes one or the other might stay unsullied for a minute or two after we ring in the new year. Okay, maybe that’s hoping for too much, but what the hell, a blog can dream.

*We figure we may be on “borrowed time” with this clip, so if you have a chance to watch, please do so before the Comedy Central Cops rush in, arrest us, and seize the video as evidence. Also, if that happens, please call our Attorney, Dr. David Van Dick Van Dyke, Esq. He’ll know what to do.

~snuppy

ONCE UPON A TIME (two weeks ago), a certain beautiful and thoughtful PENGUIN came up a lovely plan for a Holiday Post, which she layed out for her Snarky cohorts in a carefully crafted e-mail:

“Greetings from Iceland, Girlfriends! What do you think about creating a joint Christmas/Chanukah Post for all our Blogbuddies? Wouldn’t that be fun? We can each add pictures and/or videos and make it really special in order to let everyone know how much we appreciate their support and/or comments.”

IMMEDIATELY, teh beautiful Penuguin received joyful responses from CATTY YUMMY MUMMY, LAMPSHADE LADY, and SNUPPY – and all basically said the same thing: “Great plan, you thoughtful Penguin, you! Count me in!” E-mails, filled with ideas for the aforementioned videos and/or pictures and/or messages, flew back and forth from SPAIN to ICELAND to QUEENS to CONNECTICUT back to ICELAND. It was all very dizzying. And more than a little exciting. But then, disaster struck. Well, not “disasterous” disaster, but still, a pretty good sized Christmas Monkey Wrench found its way into the Snarky Christmas Greeting Post Works in the form of:

A) Co-workers calling in sick just in time to wreak havoc on an already hectic Penguin schedule. Then, adding insult to injury, no snow in ICELAND. NO SNOW IN ICELAND? How would Teh thoughtful/beautiful but not very frozen Penguin, when she found time to do so, share glorious pictures of her even-more-glorious country in all its Christmassy-yet-icy…er,  glory?

B) Potential buyers, showing, not-showing, then showing, then, yes!-they-want-to-buy-the-house, packing, packing, packing. That tooth! Kids’-school-pageants-Dios-Mio!-OH-THE-INSANITY-NOT-HUMANITY-of-SPAIN! And then, on top of all that, A GUEST TURN AT WAKING AMBROSE!! How can a BoheMian be expected to shoot/edit/post a festive greeting with so much drama swirling around her funkified-yet-gorgeous head? 

C) Work, kids, kids’ field trips, life, MIL’s stuffing cocktail weenies into her purse for a snack later in the day. Sniffles/snuffles/sore throats galore. Yeesh. How in the world can a delectable Lampshade be expected to cast a happy Chanukah glow on a celebratory post with such chaos threatening to fracture an already fragile filament in that oh-so-glamorous-and-oh-so-very-bright bulb of hers?

D) Stupid, rude and/or bitchy women yelling obscenities right there on the street at a kindly, gentle Snuppy, who wanted nothing more than to fetch her newly-groomed pups, take them home, and revel in the beauty that was… 3 clean dogs. Who can think of clever Christmasticisms when such a simple-yet-satisfying act was so rudely interrupted by a total and complete fucking ho?

YUP. Because of all that stuff, the “Joint Holiday Greeting” never (technically) materialized. Not that it matters, we can still share our Bloggy love with you guys after the fact and/or holiday, right? Right. So here’s our little CLAYMATION “tribute” to Teh Penguin — and to all of you, sort of – for her grand idea, even if it never got off the ground, frozen and/or otherwise.

AND yes, after feasting on more than our fair share of goodies throughout the weekend, some of us can definitely relate to the, uh, rotundity of Dame Margot Pontoon and/or Sir Rudolph Nervesonedge. What of it?

~ snuppy

The Godfather of Soul, or the Hardest Working Man in Show Business will work no more. JAMES BROWN died yesterday at the age of 73 from pneumonia or what was then reported as congenital heart failure, leaving this world with a lot less soul. Almost ironic for a man who could dance as he could — to watch the guy perform, you’d have thought he had the body of a man much younger and wow, did he have the moves. Seemed that he might go on forever.

You can’t not say that you were a fan of James Brown as he was truly an icon. It’s always sad to me when someone of his stature in music dies, as a little piece of the history goes with him. And his was a strong piece of American music — soul, funk and rap all sprung forth from his fancy footwork.

Brown started off in the Depression era in this country shining shoes and ended up with the hardest working feet in show business. Not bad for a Black man, during those times.

Here’s a little clip that showcases some of the talent of a man known variously as Soul Brother Number One, Mr. Dynamite, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business, Minister of The New New Super Heavy Funk, Mr. Please Please Please, The Boss, and the best-known, the Godfather of Soul – enjoy. 

~ DJ Lampsha

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Frohe Weihnachten, Joyeux Noël!

~ From ALL of us to ALL of you ~

(The following “notes” were left for some of us by some of us in the Holiday Post queue post-Holiday Post publishing — what can we say? Happy thoughts like these just begged to be shared!)

Hear Hear! Sorry…I meant Hohoho!

I hope you guys — that includes the rest of you fabulous snarking ladies — have a wonderful time, many a sentimental moment and enjoy these days with reckless abandon of all that is sensible and rational and/or a good book in a cozy, quiet corner. Whatever floats your boat. I am not here to judge.

Finally, I would also like to say that since I live in Europe I´ll get to open presents way before all of you do. What? It matters!

Now smile already, it´s Christmas for God´s sake!

Gledileg Jol!

~Penguin out~

I’m getting ready for The Christmas Story marathon, are you? Merry and a Happy to all.

~ Lampy/Lampsha/G/You Know Where to Find Me xox

Not only will we watch A Christmas Story, Lampsha, we’ll be saying lines from it for the rest of the week. “Notafingah!” gets me every time! Penguin, I hope Santa recognizes your house without snow… d’oh! Happy Happy Joy Joy, girlfriends! ~ Snuppy Claus

~ CYM is celebrating Christmas with her entire family, in the only way one of Danish/Iranian descent can in that mixed up crazy country known as Spain — biting her tongue, in hopes of getting out of her mom’s house in one piece. Next year, we expect Miz B to send out holiday greetings from the Land o’ BoheMian Dreams, i.e. San Francisco. ~

Dear Friends: may all your dreams come true, and may your lives be filled with an abundance of Peace, Love and Joy this Holiday Season, and throughout the upcoming New Year.

Oh how I tried. I fell asleep trying. To find the Pretenders singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, that is.  Nowhere. I happened to love the album A Very Special Christmas from 1987. It perfectly encapsulated the pop/rock music scene at that time with some very nice renditions of Christmas classics.  But am I offering up any of that today? No. If you own it, now might be the time to dig it out though.  My heart was set on that one song, without it - I can’t go on.

But I will go on and offer up a nice Christmas music assualt alternative in the form of Damien Rice. He is a brooding Irish singer and he’s kind of cute, which is always a bonus (sorry I know that doesn’t constitute useful information for some of you). But I love the building swirl of layers of the piano, their voices, the cello, the drums.  Ah you know what, did I read up on him and do my research?  No. So why don’t we cut to the chase for today.  Below is the video for 9 Crimes from the album 9 which is a recent release.  I think he may even fit in nicely with your last minute Christmas shopping (although there is something about a loaded gun…pay no attention to that part). Oh and lest I forget, here is a link to HIS SITE, which depedent upon whether you like the video or not, is a little Christmas gift for you. There you can check out his other videos and music and you know, fa ra ra ra ra…

~ DJ Lampsha

IF we could be granted ONE Holiday blogging wish, it would be to read each and every one of your blogs each and every day and be able to leave lovely and/or clever comments in order to make you all smile.

AND if we had but TWO Holiday blogging wishes, we’d ask first to read each and every one of your blogs each and every day so we could leave lovely and/or clever comments to make you all smile, and then to be able to Snark our way into the Technorati 100, because that would be so sweet. 

GRANTED more wishes — say THREE, perhaps? — would allow us to read/comment/make you all smile; snag that sweet spot in the Technorati top 100;  and then we’d ask for every person who ever sent us SPAM to burn in Blogger’s hell, where they’d spend all of eternity reading their own crap: “Hello, nice site. I have found your website great. Now if you please to read mine, too and as well? Linking for your ease in finding my many sites.” Linking for our ease in finding his/her many freaking sites, which, to date, number in the 1000’s. Man we hate that shit, and that includes yours, Mr. Skin.  

AH, but what if we had FOUR bloggy Holiday wishes? Well those first three, for sure, and then we’d like to find ourselves winning $942 million in some Giant Global Blogging-Lotto thing that doesn’t exist, but would just so we could get our hands on a big fat check. We certainly don’t know what it’s like to be filthy stinking rich, but we bet we’d be darling at it. (apologies to Dorothy Parker)

FINALLY, if someone granted us FIVE wishes, we’d ask for all that other stuff — in a different order, tho’, ‘cuz, really? What’re the odds we’ll get to read and/or comment on everyone’s blog every goddam day, huh? Nah, that ain’t happenin’, we know it, you know it, and so does the Blog Fairy hanging around waiting to grant this shit. So we’d probably go ahead and drop that first wish and/or save it for later, but definitely keep the other ones, since they seem doable – then we’d wish for everyone to see a classic holiday skit featuring STEVE MARTIN that aired on SNL years ago. Why? Because it was funny, and, um, that’s where we ripped off got the idea for this post.

UNFORTUNATELY, that clip’s now been removed from YouTube for reasons that remain unclear. Needless to say we’re pissed off disappointed. Hopefully the following little “fanciful” holiday video, courtesy ROBOT CHICKEN will help keep the Christmas Spirit – and/or at the very least our sense of humor — alive. (Phyllis Diller as “Mrs. Claus/Christmas Monster”? That’s funny.)

ALRIGHTY then. You’ve heard from us, and we tried to let you hear from Steve Martin — but thanks to those bastard people at YouTube and/or NBC, that ain’t happenin’. So, what the hell, we guess it’s your turn to share. What noble and/or self-indulgent holiday wish would you like to make? Oh, but before you answer, know this: try to horn in on our Kajillion dollar Global Blog-Lotto scheme, and you can be damn sure the only thing you’ll get is a smack in the head with the wish we’re saving, that’s currently stuck on the back of our hand.

~snuppy

LOOK who dropped back in to help sort through more Bloggy Beta-Not-Beta-Who-Knows-Beta-Late-Than-Never-Beta-Master-Beta-Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell-Beta stuff… the very delicious, very delightful, and oh-so-snarky Little Blue Pill. That Jenna – under the weather with the crappy flu, still on a “Blogging Break”, and yet, the girl with the gorgeous glitter lips has selflessly risked health and hard-drive for the greater good of this Snarky Blogging community. No wonder we love her so much (’cuz we do… we really do!). And stop yer bitchin’, we don’t intend to “set-up” any more of LBP’s offerings, we just wanted to thank her “publicly” for the service she’s providing today. Plus it gives us the perfect excuse to stick her festive-yet-sexy avatar on the front page of this blog again. Win/win.

* * * * * * * * *

Just a wee update on the Peer Pressure post.

So, you Blogger users may have noticed you’ve been inundated with invites to the new beta blogger.

At four in the morning Tuesday (wait…is that Wednesday? What-ever…it was 4 am) when I was congested with this damn cold, I did the switch over to not-beta. All of my blogs have templates, I’m the big cheese in two team blogs, a little guppy on a team blog and I own a lot of independent blogs. All changed over…no problem. Templates? A-okay. So you with worries about your templates nothing will change although I have noticed with a few free-design templates there has been some shifting with the name higher up.

All you do is click your change over (or whatever it said…it was 4 am) walk away from the computer or go to a different site (say here for instance) and let blogger do the work. Easy peasy. You will be asked to create a google account…that’s the extent of your hard work.

So for Miz B and Minka and anyone else in love with their templates: ALL templates in your profile will remain as they are in the (old) Blogger.

May the not-Beta force be with you and party on dudes.

Happy Holidays from LBP!!