After having read the different sets of lyrics (which are included in the article), and then watching Garland's version in this clip, it finally sunk in how much the changes really do change the whole vibe of the song.
In my mind, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was always a fairly melancholy tune, but after having watched Garland's version (which is still great, don't get me wrong) more closely, I can't say it's a shock that this woman eventually died of a drug overdose. What a downer.
Ha ha. Anyway, enjoy!
After dinner we came back to my place and got caught up on some of the Friends episodes I had saved up on my Tivo. It was fun to just watch our shows and hang out for a few hours before she had to hit the road for home, but the good thing is that she'll be back in a couple days on Saturday to see my mom and Dan when they're in town this weekend.
My Christmas vacation officially starts this afternoon! I had asked Christi if I could take tomorrow off since I needed to burn an hour or two of vacation time before the end of the year (we can only carry over 80 hours and I would've gone over this week), and she said yes, but then she turned around and told all of us that she was giving us tomorrow off anyway. Which basically means I'll get to bug out an hour or two early today to make up for it. So, yay, Christmas vacation is here! I'll be off work until January 4.
Tonight I'm heading to Jackson to have dinner with my grandparents, so that'll be nice. I know I'm going to see them again on Sunday, but it's been a while since I went to their house for a visit.
Anyway, that's it for now. I hope everyone is having a good week.
Okay, I've done lists for my favorite Christmas movies and favorite Christmas songs, but now it's time for my favorite Christmas albums.
Here we go...
1. A Very Special Christmas Vol. 1: still the best lineup of artists
2. A Very Special Christmas Vol. 2: a good follow-up, but no U2 or Bruce
3. Barenaked for the Holidays: the right mix of cute, fun, and sentimental
4. James Brown, Santa's Got a Brand New Bag: it's got soul power, baby
5. Brian Setzer Orchestra, Boogie Woogie Christmas: this thing swings
Honorable mentions:
• Merry Axemas, Vol. 1
• Squirrel Nut Zippers, Christmas Caravan
• Jimmy Buffett, Christmas Island
What are your favs?
"I think you'd have to declare us not a very good basketball team right now," said MSU coach Tom Izzo. "We're definitely struggling."
This team is clearly going to have a tough time during the Big Ten season, but that's basically what all of us expected going in this year. To me, the things I wanted to see happen with this team are already happening:
• Drew Neitzel is proving he can score and take over a game
• Gray, Ibok, Suton and Naymick are starting to gel in the middle
• Morgan, Joseph, and Dahlman are getting valuable experience
It's still possible that we could blow enough Big Ten games to miss the NCAA tournament (especially if Joseph and Morgan don't get enough time to heal), but I think Tom will find a way to make it work. He always does.
To me, anything good that comes out of this season is just a preview of what's to come. If we had to bring back the exact same lineup next year, I know we'd be a much better team than we are now, but that's the great thing... we are bring back the same crew in 2007, and we'll have all these hotshot freshman coming in as reserves.
This is why I love MSU basketball. Even during one of our "down" years, there's always something to look forward to.
One of the unseemly things about college basketball is that sometimes a traditional powerhouse will stack its home schedule with patsies. I suspect this is why UCLA is playing Michigan.
Zzzzzzing! It only gets worse from there.
"Well, coming in to the year, everyone was talking about how our schedule was difficult because of teams that were previously in the NCAA tournament," Amaker said.
No. Everyone was not talking about that. Michigan was talking about that.
Whaaat? Someone from Michigan diluting themselves into believing something about their team that clearly doesn't represent reality? Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Amaker's Wolverines are 17-37 on the road. Have they really been as bad as the numbers? One could argue that they have been worse.
Michigan's 17 road wins include five over Penn State, which fields a team only for tax purposes. And another two over Northwestern, which never has made the NCAA tournament.
And then there were the road wins that only look good with parenthetical assistance: over (South) Florida and Boston (University, not College). And one over a Minnesota team that finished 10th in the Big Ten. And one over Butler.
Amaker has coached Michigan for six years, tied for the fourth-longest tenure in the Big Ten. For some perspective: He has been here as long as Matt Millen.
Ouch!
That's the ultimate insult, isn't it? Comparing someone to Matt Millen?
He says, "We're one of two teams that have won a true road game in our conference," but that win was a squeaker over Miami (Ohio), which also lost at home to Wright State.
He says, "We finished the year last year 4-1 in postseason, and we're starting this year 11-1, and we had 22 wins last year," and ... well, we have several objections, your honor.
First of all: No matter how many times Amaker refers to the NIT as "the postseason" or "a national tournament," it is still the Leftover Invitational. By Amaker's definition, summer TV reruns are "the postseason."
MSU had a rough tournament last year, losing to a #11 seed in the first round. Of course, that #11 seed, George Mason, became the cinderella team of the tournament, and went all the way to the Final Four. Even though we lost in the first round and Michigan won four "postseason" games in the NIT, MSU still made more money out of the deal.
I'll take that arrangement any day.
Look, I get where a lot of Michigan basketball fans are coming from. It's hard to watch your team struggle year after year, and not really make any meaningful progress. What do you think MSU fans have been doing with our football team for the past seven years? But all this talk of UM having an up-and-coming basketball team is clearly a load of crap, and will remain a load of crap until they step up and actually do something like knock off a UCLA on the road (and hey, it could happen).
Thankfully, we have sports writers like Michael Rosenberg to put them in their place every now and then.
I've scaled back on my consumption of Coke (and pop in general) considerably since my freshman year at Michigan State -- I used to drink two full glasses, twice a day at the cafeteria. I'm not a coffee drinker, so Coke was always my mid-to-late day caffeine fix. If I ever missed a day or two, I would get headaches and really, really drowsy in the middle of the day. After my ISB student teacher from my sophomore year told us that a glass of pop a day for a year puts 10-15lbs on the average American, I decided it was probably time to scale back.
Nowadays, the only time I ever drink pop is when I'm at a restaurant, but after reading this article, I think it might be prudent to make a permanent switch to water:
Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant.
• In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
• 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get it’s hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
• 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dialate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
• 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
• >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
• >60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
• >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.
Now, of course, if Coke could develop an alternative that didn't totally f#ck up my body (and no, Diet Coke and Coke Zero don't count), you can bet I'd be all over that shit. Until then, I'll probably stick to milk, water, and juice.
EAST LANSING -- Antonio Smith insists he hasn't given up the pro dreams, but he is returning to Michigan State to complete his degree and serve as a student assistant.
"I really encouraged him to come back and get his degree," coach Tom Izzo said. "Either here or somewhere else, we'll get him a job. He's destined to be a very, very good coach."
Smith, 30, helped pave the way for Michigan State's success with his tenacity during Izzo's first four years as coach, including a trip to the 1999 Final Four.
"He's the guy who started this whole thing," Izzo said. "Even though the (Mateen) Cleaves recruiting class gets the most credit, Antonio probably dragged everybody here.
"He's truly the blue-collar guy. I love having him around the guys."
Antonio Smith was never the best player on the team, but the guy brought an intensity to the floor that rubbed off on everyone else. He made everyone play a little tougher. Smith is the guy who helped talk all the other Flintstones into coming to MSU in the first place. It's safe to say that the last decade would've been a lot different for our basketball team if Antonio Smith had never come to East Lansing. So you can understand why I'm so excited that he's coming back to help out as a student assistant. As you may recall, that's how Tom Izzo got started at Michigan State.
Smith played in Italy last season, but is coming off his third ankle surgery last summer. He practiced with the team Monday and will begin classes in January.
He plans to finish his teaching degree by the fall.
"It's a time in my life where I have to do it," Smith said. "I have to buckle down and get back to school work."
Izzo is hoping Smith's toughness wears off on his players.
"As a coach, you can't grab guys, you can't verbally abuse them," said Izzo, who then snapped his fingers. " 'Hey, Tone.'
"That will work wonders."
All those final four teams were a blast to watch, but I still think the most surprising and exciting team that Tom Izzo put together was the squad that went to the Sweet Sixteen in 1998. No one expected us to do that well in the tournament, and it was our best showing in about seven years. Those guys really laid the groundwork for our final four appearances in 1999, 2000, and 2001.
This year's team reminds me of that 1998 squad in a lot of ways, and I think Antonio Smith is the perfect guy to take us back to the old-school, hard-nosed kind of basketball that brought us all this success in the first place. Welcome home, Tone!
P.S. There's more in this AP story.
• Lunch with dad tomorrow
• Dinner (maybe) at dad's house tomorrow night
• Dinner at grandma's house on Thursday night
• No work on Friday; finishing up Christmas stuff
• Mom and Dan coming to town on Saturday
• Stef's coming to Lansing too so she can see both sides of the family
• Heading to Stef's house on Saturday night
• Spending a good chunk of Sunday there, then driving to A. Julie's
• Christmas Eve (night) with the Kujawas, then midnight mass @ St. Cas
• Christmas morning with mom and Dan, then off to my dad's
I've been trying really hard to get in the Christmas spirt this year. The Christmas tunes have been on virtually nonstop, my decorations have been up for a couple weeks, and most of my presents are already wrapped and under the tree. Still, I'm not really feelin' it. I dunno, maybe it's the lack of snow, not having a real Christmas tree, and not getting to set up my Christmas village for the third year in a row.
I'm still excited for the holiday, don't get me wrong, but for whatever reason, it just doesn't feel like Christmas yet. Hmmm. Anyhoo, that's basically the agenda for the week.
P.S. The goal is to post pictures from last weekend in the next couple of days. I still need to load them on my computer, and put together the photo series. Stay tuned...
• Took it easy on Friday night, watched Dial "M" for Murder
• Did some more Christmas wrapping while I watched the movie
• Slept in a bit on Saturday; got up at 9:30, was ready by noonish
• Drove over to Keith & Marilyn's to see Marty and LouAnn
• We had this really great spaghetti lunch/dinner that afternoon
• Hung out over there until about 6:30, then I came home
• Worked on a Christmas gift for Sean and Marina for a while
• Watched Batman Begins on Saturday night
• Slept in till about 9AM on Sunday morning, took off at 11
• Had another gut-busting (aka delicious) meal at Marilyn's
• Spent the early afternoon watching the Lions lose to the Packers
• We all took off at about 3PM to head out to Homer to visit A. Elaine
• Met up with a good chunk of the Pohl family for dinner at 4:30
• Test drove Lisa's grandma's car (more on this in a day or two)
• Had another huge meal (pizzas at Cascarelli's = yum)
• Got home a little after 8PM, watched the Survivor finale
So yeah, it was another busy weekend, but I had a lot of fun seeing Marty and LouAnn, and all the Pohls on Sunday. I pretty much have all my Christmas shopping done at this point -- just one more gift to buy -- so I'm glad I didn't have to head out and fight my way through the rabid mob of holiday shoppers this weekend.
Anyway, that's it for now. I'll have more on the car situation in a couple days. Have a good Monday!