Monthly Archives: December 2007

Of all of the freedoms I enjoy in this wacky country of ours, one I hold most dear is the freedom to name our children strange, awkward-sounding, and just plain dumb-ass names. Let freedom ring around all of the Bumquesha’s, Sunshine’s, Brooklynn’s, America’s, and all manner of pretentious baby names.
Actually, I kind of have a thing for alternative baby names. Amidst the many less-than-masculine tendencies I have (affinity for musicals, indifference towards sports…) is an odd obsession for the name(s?) of my future child(ren?). I’ve never had any desire to name my child John, Michael, Matthew, or any of the typical names of my generation. Now, while I’m not going to name my child Starlight Express or anything, I’ve thought a lot about finding a unique name and the experience the child would have with the unique name. My brother has had good ideas for baby naming, his three girls are named Paige, Sadie, and Livi.
But, all of these creative ideas would fall short if you happen to live in the country of Denmark, where there is a list of approved baby names, which, if your fancy name ain’t on it, you’re out of luck. There are a good number of names, but something tells me Bumquesha isn’t on there.
I learned this courtesy of Mental Floss and an extra-courteous commenter left some instructions on viewing the seemingly exhaustive list.
Here they are:

1) Go to familiestyrelsen.dk/navne/ (add the www, etc. to the front)
2) On the left, click on Navnelister (”lists of names”)
3) The following options appear as Radio Buttons:
A) Godkendte drengefornavne (5552) – (”authorized boys’ first names”)
B) Godkendte pigefornavne (7662) – (”authorized girls’ first names”)
C) Frie efternavne (165) – (”Free surnames.” A list of of surnames held by 2000+ people, can be taken by anyone)
D) Firma- og kunstnernavne (52) – (”Company and business names”)
E) Udenlandske navne (6318) – (”Foreign names” – traditional foreign names)

Select HTML or CSV format and click on “Vis liste” to display the list.

The best is the name of the governmental bureaucracy that governs this:
The Names Investigation Department and the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs
Don’t fuck with them. Seriously, take your Jim, Jane, or Bjorn with a smile and exit swiftly.

A couple of years ago I made peace with Christmas music. I had to, it was inescapable. Every trip outside my apartment during “The Christmas Season” was saturated with Feliz Navidad, Jingle Bell Rock, White Christmas (which I’ve still never had…), and the Augie Rios smash hit, Donde esta Santa Claus?. I tried glowering, displaying my distaste to anyone in eyeshot. I tried the permanent use of headphones blasting my preferred music. Mainly though, I tried to bear it like I do the cold weather, letting its tendrils of artificial goodwill lap at my hard exterior, while I held strong my rigid core of unemotional stability. Every once in a while though, as we all know, one sneaks inside and provokes an involuntary shiver.
If the definition of involuntary is a lack of control, then every shiver can be viewed as a sign of weakness. All shivers tend to deliver a modicum of transcendent warmth, one that is always proportional to the degree of prior discomfort, which is itself is proportional to ones weakness. The more one submits to weakness, the higher the priority on comfort, or the rejection of discomfort, becomes. This is where independence is lost and parasitic behavior begins. If my reward for walking 2 miles through the snow is a warm bath once I finally arrive at my home, then the independence of my walking moments are sacrificed to the weight of the moment I lower my body into the steaming water; I shiver, sigh, forget about my tribulation. During my walk, I am emotionally parasitic – I live for the bath, the shiver, much like an addict doesn’t feel alive before his fix.
“The Christmas Season” is one long shiver for a country that endures throughout the year. We are addicted to it, yet we esteem it to hold its place at the end of the year, only extending it as early as the day after Thanksgiving. After Christmas is over (the 26th), we hover in a strange delirium until we dash out all memories and emotions of the “Season” on New Years Eve, and vow to start the parasitic process over with new methods of dealing with it.
About two Christmas’s ago I decided to start “feeling the Christmas spirit”. It wasn’t so much of an embrace as it was a submission, but the seduction of submission can often trump independent desire. Picture me as Ripley, falling back into the flames, arms outstretched in vague Christ-imagery, the monster of independence ripping free from my bosom.
Here’s a visual:

The main manifestation of my yule-tide resurrection was my tolerance and even appreciation of Christmas music. But even if I tolerate Feliz Navidad, I still much prefer the more obscure and unique Christmas songs and covers.

This collection has been making the blog rounds recently. It is a collection of old (old!) recordings of Christmas music on cylinder, going back as early as 1904! There are some favorites, as well as a whole bunch I do not know. I’ve had trouble downloading/listening to the songs from the site, but a commenter made a RapidShare download of them all as a whole. The commenter has no email or website, so as always download with caution, although I did and it seems legit.

http://rs216.rapidshare.com/files/77420864/Vintage_Christmas_Wax.zip

And as always, for all your old-timey music needs, check out the 1920s Radio Network. I listen to this station daily on iTunes and their selection of old Christmas tunes is great.

I’ll be blogging through the holidays, but while I’m at it, Happy Annual Extended Shiver everyone!

Yours truly, Matt(hew) Marks got a nice review for my horn-playing in CityMusic Cleveland last week:

Franz Joseph Haydn was well-known for his musical hijinks. His Symphony No. 59 in A major or Fire may not have been intentionally difficult, but keeping up with the composer’s idea of ‘as fast as possible’ could certainly lead a less accomplished orchestra into worlds of trouble. No problem here, however, as CityMusic’s players are more than capable. The high horn parts in the third and fourth movements were superbly performed by Matthew Marks and Ken Wadenpfuhl.

-CoolCleveland.com

Yay! All the more rewarding since I stressed like crazy before every performance of that dad-blasted Haydn Symphony! Haydn is known for his casual writing of in-the-stratosphere horn-writing. This Symphony was no exception! High B’s held for 10 measures, trills on high A’s… Zoinks. It was fun, but I’m glad it is over!
Now I can return to playing comfortable microtonal loopy horn stuff!

P.S. Ken was a dream 2nd horn player, super nice guy and incredibly easy to play with.

Worst idea ever.

Covering the Mouse, a daily feature of all manner of Disney covers. I am not ashamed to admit my roller-coaster affinity for all things Disney musical.
This is the type of blog I appreciate the most in my Google Reader, it’s about one post a day, usually of something that is interesting, brightens your day, and is often hilariously corny. Some of the covers are surprisingly good and some surprisingly bad. Best of all are the songs that I have never heard of before. Here is the one for today, from The Happiest Millionaire, a soundtrack I should know, since I own it on vinyl.
It won’t be long before Christmas by Diana Ross and the Supremes.
(Btw I kinda like this song…)

Note: this is not to be confused with my other Disney-related recently favorited blog, Mickey Feio, a blog that consists entirely of pictures of creepy knock-off Mickey Mouses (Mice?)
For example:

Yikes.

It’s back and it’s real.

By the way……. I posted that last Alvin video at like 6 in the morning, whilst battling a bout with insomnia. It didn’t occur to me until about 3 hours later, but while checking out Alvin and the Chipmunks trailer I came across this trailer.
Pay attention at the end:

Ummmmm….. did Alvin just eat a piece of Theodore’s feces???? I mean, I’ve been trying to come up with an alternate explanation, but I think that’s it. Alvin just ate Theodore’s shit. What kind of sick, twisted movie is this??

“oo i love alvin!!! theador is too cute!! and simon is those average nerds that are funny in a way!! XD” – sora3kairi

A quick sum-up of new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which, surprise, looks like the worst thing ever to happen to anything ever in the history of everything. On the plus side, it shows Jason Lee finally embracing his gig-whore Scientology persona.

Here’s the trailer (I recommend reading the comments on YouTube, priceless):

Come on… let the crazy sci-fi cultists have their fun… They are not really doing any harm, except to people dumb enough to fall for their extraordinarily simple-minded bullcrap. Although that tends to be the M.O. of the E.U. at times, protecting the extraordinarily simple-minded people from themselves.

(picture: Xenu keeping it real)

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