I wandered through several stores last evening and I think I heard the same song playing at some point in every one of them: "Linus and Lucy," as written and performed by Vince Guaraldi for A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's everywhere. In fact, it's the ringtone on my cellphone and when I heard it the other night while I was in a CVS Pharmacy, I thought at first I had a call.
It's a fine song, of course...and this jazz critic even thinks the soundtrack album from that much-loved Christmas special is "the most successful recording in the history of jazz." I'm sure, by some definition of "success," that's so.
What I find interesting is how popular "Linus and Lucy" is as a Christmas song since there are no lyrics to connect it with Christmas. I was thinking of that as I drove to and from that party this evening. I had on a local radio station that was playing holiday tunes, many of them instrumentals. When you hear a Christmas instrumental, there are only two things that causes it be about Christmas. One is if the arranger has called for a lot of bells, especially jingle bells. You hear bells, you think Christmas. The other is if the tune is sufficiently well known so that the listener does a kind of Mental Karaoke, filling in the unheard lyrics which are about Christmas. You hear "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dum..." and you think, "Oh, you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry..."
And that makes it Christmas music. You have to make the connection yourself.
Neither of these applies to "Linus and Lucy." There are no bells in Guaraldi's recording and there are no lyrics about Christmas for you to mentally supply. What makes it a Christmas song is that it reminds you of a Christmas TV special you watched and loved as a kid. (Come to think of it, there might be one other way in which the tune denotes the holiday. It may remind some people of Christmas just because you always hear it around Christmas. But at some point, that couldn't have been the connection. At some point, someone had to start playing it at Christmas just because it evoked memories of the Peanuts Christmas cartoon.)
I guess this attests not only to Vince Guaraldi's talent but Charles Schulz's as well...and also, Lee Mendelson, Bill Melendez and the other gifted folks who made A Charlie Brown Christmas. I watched it again the other night and it still works for me, still hits all the proper chords. Lee told me once, in greater detail than he has in most interviews, how he had to fight to get the show on the air and to keep its quiet, non-gimmicky manner (and Guaraldi's score) intact from network tampering. I'm glad he won those battles because it really is a wonderful show.
We're coming to you live from the lovely home of my friends, Misty Lee and Paul Dini...via Paul's computer, no less. Some of their friends — not all their friends because all their friends couldn't fit into the Rose Bowl, let alone their house — are assembling for fried turkey, pot roast and an odd array of people, places and things made out of gingerbread.
The monkeys are here, too. (If you're not familiar with them, you need to check out what they've been up to...which mostly consists of adding omelets to local Christmas decorations. Go to this page and see what I mean.)
I have to get back to the party. I just wanted to see if I could post here from a Mac. If you can read this, I can.
This is just to remind/warn you: You still have a couple of chances to hear the episode of Stu's Show with Yours Truly as the guest, discussing the late, great Joe Barbera. Stuart Shostak invited me on to discuss Mr. B. and discuss we did...for the full two hours, along with phone calls, a few rare Hanna-Barbera records and two very easy H-B trivia questions. You can hear this on Shokus Internet Radio today (Sunday) at 1 PM Pacific Time, which is two hours from when I'm posting this. It repeats again tomorrow and Tuesday at 7 PM and...well, just consult the schedule to see when it's on. That's simpler.
Ah, but how do you listen to Shokus Internet Radio? That's what you want to know? Easy. Click on this link and select an audio browser. Then click on it and don't stop until you hear the sound of my voice.
I linked to a copy of this animation last Christmas and people loved it. That link's gone dead and several of you have written to ask if I had a new one. I didn't...but this morn, I did a little Googling and found you a new one. This link will take you directly to the animation in case you want to download it or in case the embedded version below doesn't work on your browser. Here are Santa and his Reindeer doing their imitation of Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters...
Here are some responses to my message earlier this morning about fast food and how I don't enjoy it as much as I once did. This first one's from Doug Cuff...
Thanks for asking "Is it me or have these places plunged in quality lately?" It hadn't occurred to me that the Colonel's chicken had declined in quality. I just assumed I wasn't enjoying it as much (nor the burgers from Burger King) because I was getting older. Maybe it's neither me nor my arteries. None of this will stop me from chowing down on In and Out french fries next time I get a chance. And I might as well have a burger and a milkshake after a journey like that...
A tip when you're at In and Out: Try asking for your fries "well done." That won't get you anything different in most places but they know what they're doing at In and Out, and it also makes for a big difference because they use fresh potatoes there. Won't help you at Arby's, though. This next message is from Gary Emenitove...
I used to be a big fan of Arby's, to the point where I'd drive the hour and a half from Dubuque to Madison just to indulge. (I am not kidding and was known for this foolishness.) Then I moved to Omaha where Arby's were plentiful and I could partake whenever I wanted, and did so fairly regularly. Until about a year or two ago, when apparently the company took some new direction in its food. Their standard fare was still there, but seemingly in smaller, less-flavorful portions. They pushed all sorts of new, apparently-more-healthful sandwiches, and frankly I didn't like any
of them. Then the final straw — they changed their chicken. And had the audacity to proclaim the new chicken "better" in ads. Sorry, but the previous Arby's chicken was a big reason I visited often. Now, I don't go there at all. I suspect they're aiming for a younger crowd, but they've lost this consumer in the meantime.
When I worked for Sid and Marty Krofft, we were usually on the KTLA lot on Sunset in Hollywood...a facility with no commissary. There was a catering truck there occasionally but it was undependable and awful. The food from that truck destroyed more people in television than all the Tom Arnold sitcoms have since then. So when I needed a fast bite, the only answer was the nearby Arby's, and I recall it being quite acceptable. I mean, the roast beef sandwich is only a roast beef sandwich by a technicality but it was fine for what it was.
A few weeks ago, I was in a time crunch and I drove through that same Arby's for the first time in twenty years. Got a roast beef sandwich that I think had been prepared shortly after my previous visit...with "meat" (I'm being charitable) stamped out of plastic sheeting. It was literally two bites and into the dumpster. I didn't even leave their property with the putative food. As the following message from Ted Frank suggests, some of this could be about my changing taste buds but in the case of that Arby's meal, no. It was just really a decline from what the product used to be. Here's what Ted sent...
I can't speak to the Corn 'n' Cluck, but I know from personal experience of losing 60 pounds that one's tastes change and one becomes less tolerant of the fat+sodium formula that makes fast food so enjoyable if one goes a long time without it: that Burger King chicken sandwich or Papa John's pizza I craved just a few months ago becomes barely edible, and I don't think that the quality dropped so much over a few months.
That's kind of what I was thinking was true in part but I think it's also that these places are going for cheaper ingredients or, more likely, food that is largely prepared elsewhere and then just reheated (sort of) on the premises. I can't find it now but a few months ago, I read an article on the wondrous worldwide web about how Burger King was squeezing their new outlets into smaller and smaller retail spaces and that this had necessitated some changes in how it was prepared. I think in some cases, we're almost to the point where the kids in the fast food stands are just opening cans and dumping the stuff into glorified microwaves.
Anyway, I'm receiving a lot of interesting mail on this topic. I may post some more later today. Thanks to everyone who offered their thoughts.
Since my surgery last May, I've generally been eating healthier...and I've found my tastes evolving in new, non-sugary directions. So I'm not sure how much of what I'm about to discuss here is to me changing and how much is because of the food. But three times since the operation, I've gone to fast food restaurants that I used to occasionally patronize...and all three times, what I got was so awful that I took two bites and chucked the meal into the trash.
The three visits were to an Arby's, where I ordered the basic roast beef sandwich and an order of their potato cakes...to a Jack-in-the-Box where I got a simple hamburger with a side of onion rings...and to a KFC for a small order of chicken strips. These are all things I'd eaten in the past, usually when I was in a desperate rush to get something to eat, and while they were never great, they were at least edible. Not now they aren't. I am not kidding when I say that I ate two bites of each and tossed my purchase. In all three cases, I went to the fast food place because I felt in need of some fast food...that is to say, I had to be somewhere in X minutes, felt I should eat something before I got there, and the Arby's (or whatever) seemed like the only viable option. In all three cases, I decided I'd just be better off not eating the item(s).
Is it me or have these places plunged in quality lately? I'm not suggesting they were ever places that could set a gourmet's taste buds a-tingle, and I never thought Jack-in-the Box was very good...although come to think of it, there was a time when Kentucky Fried Chicken was pretty darned tasty. It was never particularly healthy cuisine but before Colonel Sanders sold out his interest in the chain, the chicken was — as advertised — finger-lickin' good. In the last few years of his life, the Colonel used to bitch about how the new owners had changed his recipe and cooking methods, and say that he was ashamed of the contents of all those buckets his face adorned. He was right...but even then, the chicken wasn't as bad as it is now.
Back in the sixties, my friends and I loved the Corn 'n' Cluck special at Colonel Sanders'. The advertising slogan was "Corn 'n' Cluck for under a buck and what it meant was that for 99 cents, you got two pieces of chicken and a piece of corn. You could chart the rise of inflation by how the make-up of the KFC Corn 'n' Cluck special devolved. At first, you got a breast and a drumstick plus half a cob of corn. I'm guessing that as their costs went up, they decided to lower the content, rather than raise the price and lose that great rhyming slogan. So every time I bought one, it would contain less corn and less cluck. I think the last Corn 'n' Cluck I ever bought consisted of two small wings and a third of an ear of corn. After that, I gave up. I figured that the next one would include a beak and a couple of niblets.
Still, it was good chicken then, what there was of it. It isn't now; not judging by those chicken strips I had a couple weeks ago. They were all breading...and not even particularly good or fresh breading. When you can't even make fat fried in oil taste good, you're really doing something wrong. KFC is reportedly planning to change the look of the Colonel, younging him up and going for a hipper mascot. If they want to get my business back, they ought to try making the chicken the way it was made when the chain originally became successful. There was a reason for that success and it wasn't because ol' Harland Sanders looked like a happening dude.
For now, I'm giving up on all those places — every one except In and Out Burger, which is in a class by itself. And I'm writing this message to remind myself that I'm giving up on Arby's, KFC and Jack-in-the-Box and, while I'm at it, Burger King, Wendy's, Carls Jr and all the rest, up to and including the place with the Golden Arches. I know the food isn't healthy at any of them but I need to remember that's not the reason I'm crossing them all off my list. I'm doing it because what they serve doesn't taste good to me any more. I'm sorry these places have ruined their products...and sorrier still that they didn't do it twenty years earlier. If they had, I might not have needed Weight Reduction Surgery,
December 25, 2006
