So, listening to the digital music channel this year to decorate the house, here is a new batch of songs that I’ve grown to hate…and grown to love, but feel ashamed because I love them.

The Angel in the Christmas Play – I hate this song.  Like literally HATE it.  Most of the songs on the digital channel that are sung by kids, I hate.  This is one of them.  It’s supposed to be cute.  But it’s not.  It’s horrific.

Nuttin’ For Christmas – Another horrifically terrible song sung by a precocious scamp (who needs to be hit with a shovel). These are so awful I actually want to punch something when they come on.  That’s how bad these songs are.  They make me violent.

My Birthday Comes on Christmas – Head explodes into white hot rage.

Dominic the Donkey – Okay, this song is awful. I do hate it. However, I started singing it to PJ when it came on and we both started enjoying it. So I have a love/hate relationship with this song. I know it’s terrible, but it gets stuck in my head and I like it.  And I hate myself for it.  Yes, this song makes me ashamed of myself.

Must Be Santa This song is incredibly dorky, but it also has a fun sing-songy type chorus. You just feel like singing along. “…beard that’s white…”

Ho Ho Ho – This is by the new Chipmunks. Not the old cartoon ones, the ones from the newer much more awful movies. However, it’s actually a pretty good song. It’s a more modern style song but invokes the fun of their earlier stuff.

Buon Natale (Means a Merry Christmas to You) – By Nat King Cole. Sort of a sibling to Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby.  Nat King Cole’s voice is like buttah.  Plus, this is just a good song.

Merry Christmas Baby – By The Boss. Now, I’m not a huge Boss fan. As a matter of fact, I hate his version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town with the fiery passion of 1000 suns probably because the seasonal channel plays it all the f**king time.  But Merry Christmas Baby is less heard and I really like it.

Christmas in Hollis – By Run-DMC from the very first A Very Special Christmas album. It’s become a classic on its own and the channel used to play it, but I haven’t heard it this year. Which makes me sad.

Episode 11 of the Nerd Lunch podcast has entered the Hall of Heroes. This week we are joined by Jen Usellis Mackay, a cast member of the Klingon Christmas Carol theater production currently running in Chicago. It’s essentially a reworking of Dickens’ classic but making it more Klingon-y (and AWESOME). Oh yeah, it’s also spoken entirely in Klingon.

(Via startrekpapercraft.blogspot.com)

We spend the first part of the podcast talking with Jen about performing the show entirely in Klingon. We learn a bit about the preparations for learning the language and she gives us a little lesson. We then talk about all our favorite Klingon things like characters, weapons, Star Trek episodes, etc. It’s a Klingon good time. So check it out.

Download it from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

And we also finally made it onto the Zune Marketplace (Glory to Kahless!).

Hope everyone has a great Christmas holiday. I’m back in Alabama celebrating with my wife’s family.  I may return next week, I may not.  We’ll see how things go.

Until I return, I wish you and yours the best and I’ll leave you with the most mind-bendingly awesome Indian Christmas carol I’ve ever seen.

Happy Holidays,

Paxton Holley
Cavalcade of Awesome

So, after much searching, I was able to track down three holiday books this year that I found interesting and I offer you my reviews.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (A Sherlock Holmes Mystery) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – One of Doyle’s short stories featuring the titular detective.  This particular mystery takes place right around Christmas day.  One of Holmes’ acquaintances discovers a priceless blue gem in the crop of a Christmas goose.  Holmes must first discover what the mysterious blue gem is and then detect how it came to be in the neck of the goose.  This story is short, but it’s one of Doyle’s best Holmes stories.  I had forgotten that I read it back in high school.  The opening scene between Homes and Watson has always stuck with me;  Holmes studies a discarded hat, and from this hat, he rattles off a laundry list of deductions about the hat owner.  It’s pretty cool and when I think Sherlock Holmes, I think of this scene.  Holmes follows his deductions backwards and with a bit of luck, discovers the mystery of the gem.  Much like Agatha Christie’s A Christmas Tragedy (which I read last year), this story has a very tenuous connection to Christmas, but this story works so much better than Christie’s short story.   I’ve loved Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories since high school and I’m very happy to see they are still solid reads, unlike the aforementioned Agatha Christie (whose work is less interesting now that I’m older).  I highly recommend not only this story, but much of Doyle’s Holmes stories (however, beware of Sherlock Holmes stories written by other authors as the quality is highly uneven).

Benjamin Franklin and a Case of Christmas Murder (1990) by Robert Lee Hall – This is actually the second book in Hall’s Benjamin Franklin series. The first Ben Franklin book was Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case in 1988, followed by this Christmas mystery in 1990. Then four more books followed to round out the series at six books, the last being written in 1997.  Obviously, I chose this because of the Christmas theme, but I also thought the idea of Benjamin Franklin as an amateur sleuth solving murders and crimes was a great idea.  Feeling this was a promising story I got it off Paperbackswap.com and read it earlier this month.  And it’s not great.  The idea is solid, but the execution is a little ham-fisted.  It very much reminded me of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie which you’ll remember I read last year during the holidays.  The author does write in language similar to the time (late 18th century), but that only makes it incredibly hard to stay focused and read.  The story was written similar to Agatha Christie, but the story structure was also very similar to early Sherlock Holmes books.  Franklin has a young protege that tags along and is used by Franklin as a sounding board for his thoughts (much like Watson and Holmes).  We go from venue to venue as Franklin interviews suspects and in between each interview he reviews what he learned with his young ward.  Finally we get the Christie-esque reveal and everything ties up nicely in the end.  Honestly, I was a bit disappointed and I felt that the premise had much more potential than what I read.  Also, the connection to the Christmas holiday is slight.  The murder happens on Christmas day, but the majority of the events in the novel really happen during the days leading up to New Year’s Day.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great.

The Christmas Train (2002) by David Baldacci – I picked up this audio book on CD at a Cracker Barrel for ten bucks.  I’ve been wanting to read it for a few years.  I’ve read Baldacci before, namely The Camel Club, and I enjoyed it very much, so I was glad to hear he had a Christmas themed book that I assumed he would take seriously.  However, there is no way Baldacci took this book seriously.  The story is corny and the dialogue is even cornier.  Tom Langdon, an investigative print news reporter takes a train from the DC area across the country to LA to visit his girlfriend.  He meets crazy characters along the way and learns a little bit about himself and gains an appreciation for the lost art of “riding the rails”.  The plot in this book is thinner than a Swedish supermodel.  Tom riding the train is the plot.  That’s it.  The different “crazy” characters come in and out, but provide no solid plot threads.  Then, half way through, we get the predictable “ex girlfriend” appearance.  For the first third of the book, Tom pines for this former girlfriend, Eleanor.  They were an item many years ago when they were reporters over in Europe.  Suddenly, she up and leaves him.  She never explains why.  So he was heartbroken (which he tells us several times).  However, Eleanor did ask him to come with her when she left, and stubbornly he said no.  But, to be fair, she never said why she was leaving, she just said that if he loved her he’d come with her.  WTF, lady?!  Anyway, every few minutes something reminds Tom of her, even though it’s years later and he’s on his way to visit his current girlfriend.  Then, suddenly, BAM!, we learn Eleanor is on the train.   Yes, unbelievably, and I’m saying that sarcastically, Eleanor is on the train with a famous movie director writing a story about riding the train across country (yes, exactly like Tom).  And, of course, the director wants them to work together closely on the story (of course he does).  So we get all the drama of Tom and Eleanor back together and arguing about their relationship years prior (and not actually writing their stories about riding the train).  You can see where the story is going.  Hell, Stevie Wonder could see where the story is going (current girlfriend flies in and gets on the train half way through creating more drama).  Needless to say, I was very disappointed.  This book is like one of those holiday movie specials on Lifetime or Oxygen.  One my mom would love and I would hate with the burning fires of Hades itself.  Not only was the story ridiculous and predictable, Baldacci’s dialogue is so incredibly corny I about strained my retinas rolling my eyes.  I had a lot of trouble actually finishing the story without tossing the CDs out the window of my car.  I’ll stick to Baldacci’s thrillers.  This human interest story was more like a human dis-interest story.  FAIL.

So, I’m kinda bummed I had two (out of three) stinkers for my holiday reading.  I’m going to have to go with a few books next I know I’m going to love.  Those will probably be the final Percy Jackson book, The Last Olympian, or the third Artemis Fowl book, The Eternity Code.  Those are two series that never disappoint me (damn, I just jinxed myself).  I’m also looking at The Maze of Bones (The 39 Steps Book 1) or Star Trek The Return by William Shatner.  So I have some potentially BAD ASS reading material coming up the next month or so.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update:  I read The Maze of Bones and it’s flippin’ AWESOME.  I am definitely continuing the series.  It heavily mentions Ben Franklin in it.  And then, right after reading it, I watched an episode of Bones that also heavily mentioned Ben Franklin.  It’s been a Ben Franklin Christmas for me this year.  It has prompted me to request the book Benjamin Franklin: An American Life on Paperbackswap.com.  The dude is fascinating and I can’t wait to read more about the man’s life.

You guys know me by now.  If it’s not awesome, I don’t want it.  Here are a bunch of awesome (and possibly deadly) things I want for Christmas this year.

A set of sweet nunchucks.  I ruined my other pair of nunchucks earlier this year fighting off a pack of lions that were attacking an orphanage.  So I need new ones in case more orphanages are attacked by jungle cats.  It happens more often than you’d think.

Deadly shuriken, or Ninja Stars.  Ninja Stars come in handy in many different situations.  You can stick notes to the wall (see picture) or fatally puncture a victim in the head or heart.  Truly versatile instruments of death.

I really want a time machine.  It doesn’t have to be a Delorean like in Back to the Future (although that would be AWESOME).  It can be a Ferrari or Lamborghini or Audi.  I’m not picky.  But it must travel through time (backwards and forwards).  If it can only travel one way, then it’s pretty much useless, am I right?  Where would I go?  Lots of places, I’d check out Star Wars on opening day in 1977 (and buy up a bunch of vintage figs off the shelf).  I’d go back and kick my own ass for wearing parachute pants (to school, nonetheless).  I’d also go back and tell my dad to invest in Microsoft and Google and convince teenage Kanye West to be an accountant instead of a rapper.  Nothing big.  I’m really crossing my fingers for this one.

Baconnaise.  Bacon flavored mayonnaise.  This is for people who want heart disease, but are too lazy to make the bacon.  Why are you still reading this?  You should be ordering Baconnaise right now.  Go.

Bottle of Squeez Bacon.  Yes this exists.  You don’t just squeeze this bacon spread on your sandwiches, you squeeze it on your SOUL.  Spread it on your forehead to alleviate a headache.  Apply it to your wounds, and it will heal you.  There is nothing that Squeez Bacon can’t do.  Except time travel.  Hence my asking for a time machine a few entries ago.

For some reason foods other than bacon don’t taste like bacon.  You can remedy this situation with Bacon Salt.  Salt that tastes like bacon.  I know, it’s so simple, yet so brilliant.  Bacon Salt, you just blew my mind.

Turbaconducken.  A chicken shoved inside a duck that is then shoved inside a turkey and then wrapped entirely in bacon.  Go ahead, you can act horrified in front of other people.  You can pretend you are disgusted by this literal display of meat porn.  But I know, deep down, when no one is around, you want this.  You want it deep inside you.  You know how I know?  You and I are the same.  Turbaconducken, you complete us.