Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The willow is too close to the house.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / Music / Late Night Holiday Open Thread

Late Night Holiday Open Thread

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Thank you, commentor RossInDetroit:

__
Spent my evening with the Spousal Unit, watching The Nutcracker ballet, as performed by a small-city dance academy doing an excellent job with the materials available, if you know what I mean. (Recorded music, a couple of excellent student dancers who rather outshone the less-than-top-ranked professionals, and a supporting cast whose parents gave them a standing ovation irregardless.) And I liked it; now I’m in what passes for “the holiday mood” around these parts.

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  1. 1.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    I watched the America’s Most Wanted special on FOX tonight, and damn, if John Walsh didn’t practically give an Occupy-endorsing editorial at the end of the show. Amazing.

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    Put red bows on the papillons. I dare you. :)

    Did pretty much nothing today. Tomorrow I clean my butt off, cause next weekend I’m gone for 4 days.

  3. 3.

    FlipYrWhig

    Question for the group: what would have to happen for Michael Bublé to suck any worse than he does currently? Is it even possible?

  8. 8.

    Suffern ACE

    @Omnes Omnibus: He could do stand up comedy covers. Sit around telling stories about his childhood in Philadelphia followed by seven words you can’t say on television followed by phone conversations with difficult people. Time would call it visionary, since no one had actually done that before.

  9. 9.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    Don’t know how many of you have seen this, but holy shit. Quite amazing airport footage, from a guest poster on Jonathan Turley’s blog.

  11. 11.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    Lately, the only thing that’s been lifting my mood is watching “Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende”. For those who don’t recognize the name (and you probably won’t), it’s the Japanese comedy/variety show that spawned the ‘Silent Library’ and ‘No Laughing Game’ bits that used to be pretty widespread on Youtube before the takedown machine cranked up.

    Sometimes, I wonder if our politics would be better served by something similar to the ‘No Laughing Game’, except we get the ‘No Lying Debate’. Anyone caught in a provable lie during a debate gets publicly embarrassed by being pulled aside and swatted in the ass like on the show.

  15. 15.

    Mark S.

    @FlipYrWhig:

    His rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” was pretty bad. He seemed to forget the lines a few times, and flashed a big smile like he was singing “Jingle Bell Rock.”

  17. 17.

    Heartbroken Language Lover

    Irregardless?

    Say it ain’t so, Anne. Say it ain’t so.

    Like mispronouncing “nuclear,” using the word
    irregardless, even in jest, is a bad idea. The more
    it’s used the more likely dictionaries will be to
    yield to the weight of frequency and move from
    labeling it “wrong,” to calling it “non-standard (its current status),” to giving it secondary status, to finally saying “Irregardless,once considered incorrect English, has become the standard and accepted form. Regardless, has fallen into disfavor and is now largely used only by either those uncharitably known as “grammar Nazis” [sic — since it’s not a question of incorrect grammar] or just old
    timers who long for the golden age that never existed.”

    I’m one old-timer who implores you, Anne, to eschew the use of irregardless, regardless of whether you use it in jest or because you actually think it’s the right word to choose.

    From Merriam-Webster online:

    Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

    [my emphasis]

    Yes, there is such a word, but there shouldn’t be, since it was invented by people who didn’t know the correct word and thought putting “ir-” on the front bestowed the negation they sought, when the shorter “regardless” already did the job nicely and completely.

    End of language plea.

  20. 20.

    Hill Dweller

    We’ve been watching this Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn marathon on TCM since getting back from a Christmas party. Said party was cut short(at least for us) by a wingnut couple(both dentists) ranting about Obama and Holder. It felt like something out of a Coen Brothers movie.

    Anyway, I loved the way they lit classic movies.

  22. 22.

    Hill Dweller

    @Alison: We started watching right at the tail end of The Philadelphia Story, which we’ve both seen and love. I’d never seen Holiday nor Sylvia Scarlett before. Apparently both bombed at the box office, and led to Hepburn being considered box office poison.

  23. 23.

    Anne Laurie

    @Yutsano:

    Put red bows on the papillons. I dare you. :)

    “Not appropriate for the breed standards”, thank gawdess.
    __
    Besides, the two boys are fox-colored-and-white, and Xmas red just isn’t their color. And Gloria is black-and-white, but (apart from the fact she’d fang anyone who tried), imagine a half-sized border collie wearing a red bow… as Cole would say, “wrong wrong wrong WRONG!”

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    @Heartbroken Language Lover: Unfortunately for you, I picked up “irregardless” reading Pogo back in the early 1960s, and it continues to amuse me. I think of it as a mid-twentieth-century version of LOLcat, a linguistic spice that’s delicious as an accent but overpowering when used too enthusiastically…

  29. 29.

    Amir Khalid

    @Heartbroken Language Lover:
    I remember that time I grumbled about Anne Laurie writing “has smote” instead of “has smitten”. I reminded her that in the perfect tenses one uses, not the imperfect tense of the verb, but the past participle.
    @Anne Laurie:
    You wouldn’t listen then, either. Hmph.

  32. 32.

    Raven

    @Amir Khalid: Years ago in a grocery store in Urbana there was a sign a the checkout that read “12 items or less” and someone crossed out the “less” and wrote in “fewer”. That is how I remember that rule.

  34. 34.

    MikeJ

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: It’s bullshit to call Princess Juliana dangerous. It’s not. Not remotely. At least not for anybody in a plane. The dumbasses that hang off the fence when the heavies land deserve whatever they get.

    While it’s beautiful, hanging out near landing jets isn’t my idea of a holiday. I’d prefer a place like Saba, especially before they built hotels (which isn’t that long ago.) Saba actually does have a far, far more dangerous airport, but nobody is ever gonna try to put a 747 onto a 1000′ runway. But you catch the prop plane to get there from St. Maarten’s Princess Juliana, which will bring us back to do, a deer.

  37. 37.

    Raven

    When I flew out of Bien Hoa we flew commercial and the pilot stayed on the deck for what seemed like forever. There were grunts on the plane who had just come from where we were flying and they freaked out, “get this goddamn plane up in the air”!

  41. 41.

    R-Jud

    Earlier this week a commenter linked to Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker re-imagining, which is just so goddamned cool. You can imagine it being danced by Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly.

    We’re going hunting for a Christmas tree today, and then I have an outing with the folks from the gym this evening. We’ll be focusing on high-volume bicep curls with assorted weights for about three or four hours.

  42. 42.

    amk

    twitterdom

    If a woman repeatedly cheats on her husband they call her a “whore”. But if a man does it, the GOP calls him a “frontrunner”.

  44. 44.

    RossInDetroit

    Wonder what he would do with the 1812 Overture?

    There’s a whole playlist on YT from this performance. Their Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor is pretty outstanding. And don’t miss the Astor Piazzola piece.

  46. 46.

    RossInDetroit

    @nancydarling:

    Thank you. I didn’t know about that and I’ll check it out. A FB friend posted this clip and I loved it so I shared in an open thread. I like instrumental music a lot and this seemed like more than a novelty.

  47. 47.

    RossInDetroit

    I just nabbed a copy of “CRISTAL: Glass Music Through the Ages” off eBay. Looking forward to hearing it.

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