O Holy Night

 

 

Another lengthy read but hopefully an interesting one. 

Save it for Christmas holiday reading if time does not permit.

O Holy Night has always been my favourite carol. Hear it sung by one of the greatest tenors who ever lived, Mario Lanza at:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxUkjthYAR4&feature=related

Close your eyes and let the music and the rich voice of Mario Lanza wash over you.  I still get chills when I hear it.

The singer:

Lanza (1921-1959), the son of Italian emigrants, rose to become the only performer to have had Number 1’s in popular music, classical opera and film. During most of his film career, he suffered from overeating and alcohol abuse, which seriously impacted on his health and his relationships with directors, producers and other cast members. According to Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper: "his smile, which was as big as his voice, was matched with the habits of a tiger cub, impossible to housebreak".

Mario Lanza died in 1959 after undergoing a controversial weight loss program colloquially known as "the twilight sleep treatment," which required its patients to be kept immobile and sedated for prolonged periods. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot which developed in his leg having travelled to his lungs.  He was 38.

Some More Interesting Pics. . .

 

Christmas Countdown - Frank Kelly

  

Does anyone else hate listening to 12 Days of Christmas?

If so then you will enjoy Frank Kelly's take on it in his "Christmas Countdown".

Hear it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQkF7fpw-wI
 It's best heard with the original Irish accent.

The lyrics/words are:

Day One

Dear Nuala,

Thank you very much for your lovely present of a partridge in a pear-tree. We’re getting the hang of feeding the partridge now, although it was difficult at first to win its confidence. It bit the mother rather badly on the hand but they’re good friends now and we’re keeping the pear-tree indoors in a bucket. Thank you again.

Yours affectionately,

Gobnait O’Lúnasa 

Quote

 

“What I do today is important, because I am paying a day of my life for it.

What I accomplish must be worthwhile, because the price is so high.”

- Anonymous

Christmas Cartoons

 

Asbestos, The Twin Towers and 9/11

 

(Click on the image to enlarge).

The above ad reads:

WHEN THE FIRE ALARM WENT OFF,

IT TOOK TWO HOURS TO EVACUATE

NEW YORK'S WORLD TRADE CENTRE.

The bigger the building, the more important fire-proofing becomes.

That’s why today’s buildings have asbestos-cement walls and even floors containing asbestos.

Asbestos contains fire, cannot burn and hoolds up after metal and glass have melted down, giving vital time for people to escape.

You’ll also find asbestos sealing plumbing joints, insulating heating pipes, electric motors and emergency generators.

Asbestos.  We couldn’t live the way we do without it.

When life depends on it, you use asbestos.

Asbestos was not always the villain that it is today.  Some other ads promote the use of asbestos in various situations:

Christmas Lights

 

The above pic is of a house around the corner from where I live.  The photo does not do it justice. Each year the elderly couple who live there put up the lights and keep them on to midnight for the whole of December.  They sit on the step at the front gate each night and answer the questions of the persons who come to see the light display.  I imagine that the same questions keep being asked:  What’s your electricity bill like?  How long does it take to put them up? Why do you do it?  The display includes a spectacular nativity scene and there is a sign with a bucket saying that donations are given to the local church.  We joke that the display must be visible from space.  Parents bring their children who stand mouths agape as they look at the magic display, traffic slows down as it passes.  I know that some neighbourhoods and some streets go crazy with lighting displays, causing traffic jams, parking problems and annoyance for those locals who simply want quiet or privacy but one day the old man and the old woman will be gone and there will be no more lights.  The neighbourhood will be a little poorer for the loss.

Remember Clark Griswald with his 25,000 lights at Christmas.  Clark blacks out the entire neighbourhood with his display:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inWKw8nqQlI

 (Another memorable moment is where Clark accidentally fries the cat with the tree lights:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJW3Jpqjx5s)

These days Clark’s display would not rate a second look on You Tube where extreme lighting features not only the amount of lights but also movement, synchronised to music; colour; amount of area covered, and trees etc incorporated.  The Brits may put on the best pomp and ceremony but the Seppos win hands down in Christmas lights displays.  There’s a thesis in that somehow but I’m not going to work it out now.

Some Christmas light displays:

This one is a classic and has been around for a couple of years.  It still leads the field and has had nearly 10 million hits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmgf60CI_ks

 (The music is Wizards in Winter by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  See them perform at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkAhmH40kiM)

The Amazing Grace House, see a house rock to the music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnk0KjWxgMA

No sound, no music, just lights, colours and lots of it.  A WTF moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0s3sQt-mmA&feature=fvwrel

5 Minutes of Art: Rembrandt's Night Watch and Crotch Grabbing

Click on the image to enlarge.

Commonly called De Nachtwacht - The Night Watch, - the painting’s correct title is The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch.

Painted by Rembrandt (1606-1669) in 1642, it is considered to be one of his masterpieces.

This painting has been listed as the fourth most famous in the Western world, after the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Christmas Downunder

 

Christmas in Oz takes place at the hottest and sunniest time of the year.  Nonetheless we send out cards with winter scenes, sing songs about dashing through snow and we serve roast turkeys and plum puddings for Christmas Day lunch.  Go figure.

Here are some Oz carols:

Colin Buchanan, Aussie Jingle Bells – see and hear it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz_KlcDXvqQ

Rolf Harris, Six White Boomers –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gosGBYU5vIE

Funny Friday

 

Christmas Humour

 

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a reference to two funny clips:

Ding! Fries are Done is a parody of the Christmas carol song Carol of the Bells It is sung by a mysterious singer only known as “Billy.” The parodied lyrics mention tasks at an average work shift at a local fast food branch, including making french fries and wearing paper hats.  It is a single off a 1993 album called A Very Spastic Christmas and is regarded as non PC in various quarters.

See it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFQyib5ZQZY

Family Guy has had Peter singing the song in the same setting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFF3CGgOOWY 

(Celtic Woman singing the real Carol of the Bells is worth a look.  See it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llcs27wNFm0 )

The other clip is what is now a classic:  Santa, who has had too many egg nogs,  getting busted for “snow from the North Pole”.Anyone who has ever watched Cops will recognise the format.  “I know where you live.  I will take you out, and I don’t mean on a date.”  

See it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUt419xLOlk

Images

 

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."

-                      Dorothea Lange

Byter John sent me an email with a large collection of photographs, some of which I had seen at various places on the net, most however being new to me.  I will post some of them from time to time.

We have seen a revolution in photography.  Today the largest seller of cameras is not Nikon, Minolta, Canon or Pentax but Nokia.  Just about every person with a mobile telephone also has a camera.  With that revolution has also come the ability to manipulate images, so prevalent that one approaches any distinctive image with a skepticism that it has been created by photoshop , until  proven otherwise.  As far as I am aware, the photos that follow are the real thing. . .

Christmas Trivia

 

The first mass produced Christmas card, 1843.  10 survive today of the 1,000 printed.  The card was hand coloured in that it predated colour printing and depicts a family toasting Christmas, flanked by scenes of the poor being fed and clothed..  Created for Henry Cole  for personal use, he sold the extra cards for one shilling each.  The card caused a controversy in some quarters for showing a child being given wine to drink.

The term Christmas is from “Christ’s Mass”, first used in 1038.  The use of the letter X in Xmas is from the Greek letter chi, the first letter in the word Christ.

After Britain converted to Christianity in the 7^th century, Christmas was referred to as geol, the name of the pre-Christmas winter festival, hence the word Yule.

Christmas: Kylie Baby

Last week I queried whether Christmas was dying out, both in observance of its religious significance and in its secular celebration, especially in relation to the past emphasis on commercialism.  I also raised the issue as to whether it is now JAH - just another holiday.  Whatever your views on those issues, as we approach Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I will post a short item relating to Christmas.  In some cases they will be references to past Bytes posts - I never tire of some of those items and they are as much a part of Christmas, at least for me, as putting up a tree.

The first of such items:  Kylie Minogue singing the definitive version of Santa Baby.  IMHO hers is the best.

A previous post about Kylie and Santa Baby is at:
http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2010/12/kylie-minogue.html

See the video clip at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrz-EhH1qEs

Some other versions:
Taylor Swift -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYR5l7S4y20
Madonna -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ycWObpi73Y
Eartha Kitt -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNhjPaP53I&feature=related
Shakira -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncVbxe2Ut2c
Miss Piggy -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHPKvMvMLLw

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

 

“When you get the personality, you don’t need the nudity.”

-       Mae West

Mae West (1893-1980), one of the sexiest women who ever lived, was renowned for not taking off her clothes.  Her belief was that eroticism and sexuality were better suggested, better hinted at, than fully revealed, and she achieved this through a look, a tone of voice, a comment or a pose.  Mae West made the audience members active participants, making them fill in the blanks in their own minds.  One writer, Harry Blake, has commented that:

The idea is not to impose a love scene on the audience but to make the audience fantasize.  One must insist particularly on that aspect of Mae West’s gags, for they include the audience in the semiotic process of their mechanisms.  The laughs they cause imply for the audience a certain complicity when it comes to the sexual practices that are always the referent of Mae West’s repartee; and it is not only the representation of Mae West’s sexuality that is at stake, but also the audience’s own sexuality.

Which leads me to a particularly interesting example of suggestion v full reveal.

Snuggling up

Some pics. . .

The pilot of this plane in the African Savannah came back from delivering supplies to the local hospital  to find that a pride of lions had taken advantage of the shade created by his aeroplane wing and aeroplane body, the only shade in the area.

Swallows huddle on a branch and fluff their feathers to stay warm during a Canadian snowstorm.

Quote: Mary Cholmondeley

 

“Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of all the reins'.”

-  Mary Cholmondeley

Mary Cholmondeley was an English novelist (1859-1925) who overcame a lack of opportunity, a lack of education and many years of debilitating illness to become one of Victorian England’s most successful writers.  For the first thirty years of her life she looked after her sickly mother. Her diary showed that by the age of 18 she was already convinced she would never marry, lacking, she believed, the looks and the charms necessary to attract a suitable mate, and that she believed that she would die at age 66.  In 1899, the year that also saw the publication of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, her novel Red Pottage, remained on the best seller list for two years.   A satirical novel that is largely forgotten today, it tells the story of a Victorian woman writer who does not marry and is committed to her writing.  Mary Cholmondeley died in 1925, aged 66 and unmarried, as she had predicted.

(Compare the above quotation with the lines in the Antonio Banderas film The 13^th Warrior, spoken prior to a coming battle:

“Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things. This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well. For all we ought to have thought, and have not thought; all we ought to have said, and have not said; all we ought to have done, and have not done; I pray thee God for forgiveness.”