Some Final Pictures of the Year, Ones I Hope I Have Not Used in Mysterious Orientations Before…

While not as good as “Fanny Hair”, a beauty shop near my apartment, “Hair Make Heaps” is nonetheless a pretty fine moniker for that sort of establishment.

The picture I never tire of taking: Mt. Fuji at sunset, from my bedroom window.

Hey, this place sells bread and food!

Baked cookies are always best, that’s my take on the situation…

This is not a name that rolls off the tongue like Stag’s Leap or Clos du Val…

Perhaps this place could merge with the other hair stylist (above), and they could call the new venture “Hair Make Heaps of Moss”…

Care to make a guess how this might be pronounced? It’s “Marui”. Go figure.

These guys, who hail from Turkey, make the best kebabs in all Japan!

Tokyo Tower rises up behind Zozoji Temple.

Three junior high school girls show off for the gaijin. I thoroughly expect that they could beat me in a hundred-meter dash on their bamboo stilts (by which I mean them on the stilts, and me just running).

Here’s something you probably haven’t had yet: sweet potato soda! News flash: I haven’t had it either, and I have no intention of having it anytime soon.

You can’t argue with that…

This reindeer, which I happened upon in Ikebukuro train station at Christmastime, is life-size, and quite lifelike as well, despite the fact that he is made from styrofoam and nylon fiber.

This must be the world’s shortest escalator!

The colors of winter: persimmons drying in the sun. Thanks, Saki, for this pic!

Happy New Year all! I am on my way out the door, headed for Ikebukuro and an overnight bus trip to the sea. If the weather gods cooperate, I’ll post some pictures of the trip in the next day or two. Sayonara!

The Special Shopping Opportunity

It’s New Year’s Eve, a bit after 6pm Tokyo time, and soon I will depart on my annual New Year’s Eve bus trip, which takes most of the night and ends up somewhere with an eastward sea view, where I and my fellow travelers can watch the first sunrise of the new year. This will be my sixth such voyage, and I have acquired something of a reputation among my friends for bringing good weather, even at times when the forecast was bleak. I may not be so lucky this year, as the sky is totally clouded over, and the predictions are for rain, but I live in hope.

The bus trip is something of a Japanese institution. Every day hundreds of modern buses leave Ikebukuro, Shinjuku or Ueno, loaded with camera-bearing tourists, all headed for one of the myriad ocean or mountain destinations that lie within a day’s trip of Tokyo. The prices are reasonable, usually sixty or eighty dollars for a ten-to-twelve hour trip, which would include lunch, admissions to whatever attractions were scheduled, and of course the round-trip transportation. A typical excursion might include a visit to an onsen (a hot spring / health spa), a stroll through a flower park or a pine forest, a fruit-picking experience (such as a visit to a strawberry field or a peach orchard), and several brief photo-op stops.

The best part, though, is the mandatory stop at whatever sales venue sponsors the trip. It could be a pottery factory, a fish processing plant, a jewelry outlet, just about any sort of shop with suitable bus parking, where the owners feel that they have a chance of separating day trippers from their hard-earned cash. This is quite common all around Asia, as far as I can tell. I have been on similar day excursions in China, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and each offered a “special shopping opportunity” to punctuate the grueling sightseeing schedule.

In one particularly memorable trip, the sales venue was an amethyst shop. One group of fellow travelers hailed from India, and the women in the party were clearly enamored of amethysts. To the men fell the task of negotiating a suitable price for the purchase. The Chinese store owner chattered amiably in her native language while tallying figures on an ancient calculator (not as ancient as an abacus, but pretty old as calculators go). Whatever the final figure, it began with a seven (as in seven thousand monetary units, or 70000, or whatever). The owner smiled at the elderly Indian man, saying in English “This is very good, very good indeed. In China, seven is a very lucky number!” “Really?” he replied, not missing a beat. “In India, six is a very lucky number.” I suspect that a compromise was made somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.5 (which I have also heard rumored to be a very lucky number), as the Indian family carried bags of swag back to the bus at the end of the special shopping opportunity.

I don’t know what shopping experience will be on offer tonight and tomorrow, but I can tell you I’m looking forward to finding out!

Steamed Buns and Cultural Anomalies

In Setagaya, a borough or ward of Tokyo, there exists a small storefront that sells the best Chinese steamed buns I have eaten thus far. They cost 140 yen, less than two dollars, and depending on my appetite, I can manage one or perhaps one and a half. They are filled with a mixture of pork (I think; if it is not pork, I’d prefer not to know what it might be), vegetables and some liquid that is roughly the consistency, color and temperature of molten lava. The preferred method of consumption is to bite a small hole in the top of the bun to allow the steam out, and then wait about five minutes before attempting any further incursion into the bun’s heart. The first time, one is sorely tempted to dig in directly, as the outside of the bun is cool enough to hold in one’s bare hand, but this is a mistake made only once.

In late December, Setagaya ward holds a week-long flea market. The streets are filled with eat-on-the-fly food stands and sellers hawking every manner of merchandise imaginable: antiques, jewelry, clothing, artworks, kimonos, New Year decorations, and stuffed animals depicting the upcoming year’s mascot on the Chinese lunar calendar (2011 is the Year of the Rabbit). This provided a good excuse for me to pay a visit to Setagaya, a place I don’t often get to as it is some distance from my house. And of course, any visit to Setagaya would not be complete without a stop at the steamed bun place.

It turned out I was not the first person with this idea. The line for steamed buns stretched from the shop front all the way back to the first corner, at which point it made a 90-degree turn and continued down the side street to the first crossing, then another 90-degree turn down that street a good fifty or seventy-five feet! Yikesu, as we say in Japan. Still, I was not going to come all the way to Setagaya and not get a steamed bun (or two), so I gamely got into the line, and there I stayed for the better part of an hour.

During this time I made some observations, which as time went by turned into assumptions, and which at some point may evolve into a hypothesis or theorem. The concept of a queue is regarded quite differently from country to country, I think. In the US and Canada, if there is a line for, say, a movie, one is expected to join in at the end of the line, and await one’s turn to buy tickets. In Mexico and other Latin American countries I have visited, this seems to be more or less the same in concept, but differs in practice in that one looks for a friend or acquaintance already in the line, expresses hearty surprise at one’s good luck at meeting said acquaintance at such a propitious time, and then joins the queue at that point, engaging in enthusiastic conversation with the friend until arriving at the destination point (and then, of course, buying the tickets). In China, lining up seems to be for dilettantes only; one simply makes one’s way to the forefront, sometimes by misdirecting the attention of one of the aforementioned dilettantes already in line, and then sneaking in ahead of him, or sometimes just by outright shoving. The Japanese, naturally, are polite above all else. The queues are quiet and orderly, and everyone waits his turn. But here’s the part I have never seen anywhere else: I’m standing in line, minding my own business, dutifully waiting my turn, when some guy walks up and asks “What’s everybody lining up for?” So I tell him we’re waiting for steamed buns. “Cool,” he says, and he gets into line too. Where else in the world would somebody veer off his intended path to voluntarily join an hour-long queue for something he had no particular knowledge of, and no previous desire for, just because other people were already lined up for it? I love this place!

And They Say Paris is the City of Lights…

TOKYO D*ME

This really does say Tokyo Dome, not Tokyo Dame (for example). It is the home of the legendary Yomiuri Giants, the oldest team among the current professional baseball teams in Japan. And it takes Christmas decorations quite seriously, as you will see.

Tokyo Dome Adjacent

We speculated that the ship, whose masts and sails poke up through the blue-light ceiling, is actually “under water” the water being the ceiling. We may have been reading more into it than the designers intended, though.

This sign was on the side of a truck alongside Tokyo Dome. The name notwithstanding, the audio sounded pretty normal to me.

The Golden Periphery of Tokyo Dome.

This is the “bug guts green” parachute ride at Korakuen Park, just across the street from Tokyo Dome. There is also a giant Ferris Wheel, and a roller coaster that takes riders through a hole in an adjacent office building! (see below)

These primary-colored “pencils” are directional indicators for the Tokyo Dome grounds.

Now we head off to Roppongi, the home of the fat-cat foreigners who live in Tokyo. It is perhaps the only place in the city where the gaijin march in similar numbers to the locals. It is a place I avoid like the plague except for Christmastime, when their “Illumination Events” rival any I have ever seen.

Blue trees reflect in the glass waterfalls behind. There really is water running down the glass panels, a beautiful effect both for the eyes and the ears.

The crystal reflecting tree in Mori Koen pond.

Where there are illumination events, there you will also find the Red Bull Mini Cooper, complete with lovely young Japanese girls handing out free samples of the cough medicine-flavored beverage. I mentioned to one of them that my car is a Mini Cooper too, and she said she liked this one very well! I have often found with mine that it is a difficult vehicle for any sort of clandestine operation, as it is quite recognizable among the ubiquitous silver-grey sedans of Prince Edward Island, but my sedate blue convertible doesn’t hold a candle to this one when it comes to shock effect!

Blue Field Acres, with Tokyo Tower rising Eiffelesquely in the background.

A full moon cooperated nicely in the illumination event.

Or how about these trees, cleverly illuminated to evoke champagne flutes. I think a glass of champagne would be a fitting end to an evening of light-gazing, actually. As a matter of fact, I have a bottle of Moet a-chillin’ in the fridge as we speak. So, sayonara for now!

February Books That Didn’t Make Into the Whodunit Column, Part Two

I am always a little leery about reading a book bearing a blurb like “…a worthy successor to Chandler”, but this blurb had perhaps a bit more street cred than some, as it was penned by none other than Michael Connelly. The book, you ask? P.G. Sturges’ debut novel, Shortcut Man.

The title refers to the job of the lead character, Dick Henry, a fellow who short-circuits the strictly legal ways of getting things done, opting instead for a quick and discreet hands-on (or “fists-on”) approach to problem solving, be it evicting a deadbeat tenant or “encouraging” a sleazy contractor to make good on some slipshod home repairs.

By night, the rigors of his day job left far behind, he hangs out with lithe and lissome Lynette. He doesn’t really know a lot about her, but then history (or “her story”, to be precise) has little to do with why they spend evenings together.

‘“What don’t I have?” she asked that night, with a twisty smile. I looked her up and down. Honesty sprang to my lips and I let it pass. “You have everything.” Another devilish smile. “You’re wrong, Dick. I don’t have any underwear,” And we’d be off and running…’

Things get a bit dicey, however, when Henry accepts a job to spy on the wife of a notorious Hollywood porn producer, and the wife turns out to be—you guessed it—Lynette. Except that her name is not really Lynette, it’s Judy. Oops. Now Henry has eight grand, the down payment for his investigation, burning a hole in his pocket, and he faces the unpleasant task of offering himself up as sacrificial goat to the producer’s burning desire for revenge.

So, that’s the setup. But the gods live in the details, they say, and that is the case with Sturges’ writing. He is, simply put, one of the cleverest and funniest new writers to grace the mystery genre in quite some time. Also, it doesn’t hurt that his protagonist drives a ’69 Cadillac convertible:

“I found a spot near the corner. Well, two spots, but a silvery Korean import was in both of them. This was no problem if you owned a ’69 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible. I pulled up in front of Pusan’s finest, backed up carefully until I kissed it, then, with 472 cubic inches of raw Detroit horsepower, pushed it back and created my parking space. You gotta know how to use your Cadillac.”

Here’s a bit of trivia: Sturges is the son of Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Preston Sturges, who wrote and directed one of my all-time favorite movies, Sullivan’s Travels (as well as a number of other well known Hollywood hits including Christmas in July, The Palm Beach Story, Hail the Conquering Hero, and Unfaithfully Yours). It would appear that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

February Books That Didn’t Make Into the Whodunit Column, Part One

The mystery lineup for the February issue of issue of BookPage is truly exceptional: a new Robert Crais novel featuring Joe Pike; the highly anticipated follow-up to Noah Boyd’s 2010 thriller, The Bricklayer; the new Jack Caffery novel from bestselling British author Mo Hayder; and the English-language debut of Japanese suspense icon, Keigo Higashino. The sad thing was that I had to limit the selection to four, when there were at least a couple of others that deserved inclusion. Both are first novels for their respective authors, and yet both have the feel of books from well-established writers, as if the reader were dropping in somewhere in mid-series and meeting characters well known by scores of appreciative fans.

First up is Urban Waite’s The Terror of Living: Phil Hunt is a rawboned cowboy of middling years, who, with his wife, runs a small and struggling horse farm in rural Washington state. There’s not enough money in horses to keep body and soul together, though, so he augments his income with some cross-border heroin running from time to time. He seems a natural choice for this job, as his knowledge of the mountainous borderlands is second to none. His opposite number on the “right” side of the law is Deputy Bobby Drake, also a fairly skilled mountaineer. Drake’s father, once a deputy himself, languishes in prison for drug-running, so Drake understandably has a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder where illegal substances are concerned. He makes it his business to take Hunt down.

He almost succeeds. Hunt’s partner is apprehended, his horse is shot out from under him, and his drugs are intercepted by the cops, but amazingly Hunt makes good his escape. His employers are none too happy with his performance, however, and they recruit him for a gratis offshore run. What Hunt does not anticipate, though, is the method for moving this latest batch of heroin into the US: a double-handful of small latex spheres located somewhere in the digestive tract of Thu, an extremely skittish Vietnamese girl.

This story line in itself would be enough to sustain a good novel. But then Grady shows up, and all bets are off. Grady is a stone-cold killer, hired by the bad guys to do some “wet work” in retribution for the drug deal gone bad. Thing is, Grady’s idea of problem solving is just to take all the players off the board, regardless of which team they play for. This he does with utmost dispatch, taking out several of the crooks and a couple of cops in the bargain, until the only opponents left standing are Hunt and Drake. Thus, in a strange turn of events, cop and criminal find themselves unwitting (and certainly unwilling) allies against a ruthless and unpredictable adversary.

Both setting (Washington state) and principal character (Deputy Bobby Drake) will appeal to fans of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett series. Drake is a taciturn fellow, a straight arrow not much given to humor. Like Pickett, he is driven by an innate goodness of spirit, always trying to balance family and work, and to reconcile the points where “good” and “lawful” are somewhat at odds with one another.  

PS: tune in tomorrow for part two of “February Books That Didn’t Make Into the Whodunit Column”, featuring P.G. Sturges’ darkly comedic Shortcut Man.

The Mona Lisa Twins

This blog topic has been on my “bubbling under” list for ten days or so, and today it seems to have bubbled its way to the top. Throughout the past couple of weeks, during the endless unpacking of stuff in my apartment, one thing that had eluded me until last night was the power supply for my Bose computer speakers. Thus, I had been listening to YouTube and CDs on the tiny (and tinny) built-in laptop speakers, all the while aching for some higher-fi tuneage. Once I figured out the wiring connections (although the power supply turned up, the instruction manual appears to be MIA), the first thing I called up on the YouTube playlist was the Mona Lisa Twins, specifically their video of the old Beatles’ chestnut, Blackbird.

Mona

Lisa

I ran across the pair for the first time last week, while looking for an obscure live version of the old Scott McKenzie tune “San Francisco”, the one that exhorts listeners to “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” The Mona Lisa Twins’ version appeared in the queue, and I clicked on it just for grins and interest; I was quite taken with it, I have to say. The harmonies are spot on, as if they were channeling the Everly Brothers (I know, the Everly Bros aren’t dead, but you know what I mean…). So I did a bit of investigation, locating their website (www.monalisa-twins.com), and a plethora of other YouTube vids. There is a page on their website with links to a number of their videos and concert footage as well: http://www.monalisa-twins.com/Videos_MonaLisa_engl.html

They are indeed twins, and really named Mona and Lisa, apparently. They are sixteen now, and have been performing together since they were little tykes. They are from Austria, and they sing (in charmingly accented English) cover versions of songs I grew up with: California Dreaming; Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door; Mr. Tambourine Man; Wild World; Love Is All Around.

I mentioned them in passing to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, wondering if she had ever heard of them, and she said (with a distinct “duh” in her tone, I thought) “Of course I know them; they are huge in Japan! Everybody waits for their new videos on YouTube.” If that’s true, I can certainly see why. The twins are pretty in a wholesome and unaffected sort of way (think: a younger Claire Danes, or rather a matched pair of younger Claire Daneses), they quite clearly love what they are doing, and they are talented to a degree well beyond most sixteen-year-olds.

Perhaps you already know the Mona Lisa Twins, and I am the last person on earth to have heard of them; as I get older, that seems to happen with rather alarming frequency. That said, if you haven’t run across them yet, check out their video of Blackbird, either on their website or on YouTube. Chances are it will make you want to see more.

Christmas Eve in Tokyo

One of my favorite singer/songwriters of current times is Richard Shindell. I first ran across him thanks to my brother Thane, who has turned me on to more new music than anyone else in my life, bar none. The first Shindell tune I remember hearing was a song of love gone wrong called “Are You Happy Now?”, from his 1992 CD “Sparrow’s Point”. It began “You took the toaster when you went, you didn’t pay your half the rent…”; he went on to lament that he was left sitting in the dark on Halloween night, afraid to answer the door, because the love of his life had even taken the trick-or-treat candy from their communal stash.

It was his next CD, 1994’s “Blue Divide”, that simply bowled me over with its lyrics, though. One song, entitled “Mary Magdalene” is exceptionally unusual, in that a man (Shindell) sings the part of a woman (Mary Magdalene) in the first person:

“My name is Mary Magdalene, I come from Palestine

Please excuse these rags I’m in, I’ve fallen on hard times

Long ago, I had my work, when I was in my prime

But I gave it up, and all for love, it was his career or mine…”

I had been trying to write a Christmas song for some time, but I kept getting hung up on the perspective. As a decided fence-sitter where religion is concerned, I am nonetheless moved sometimes by the tenderness and hope that characterize the Christmas story. Richard Shindell helped me realize that I needn’t be bound by the convention of writing a song just from my own perspective; if I wanted to write it from a woman’s perspective, and even sing it that way, there was no hard-and-fast rule in place to stop me from doing just that. And so, out of that epiphany, arose “Mary’s Song”, a first person narrative of a young woman a bit overwhelmed by the cold, the Holy Spirit, and a role in history that she had never bargained for:

Bethlehem in late December, overhead one star shines bright

It’s so drafty in this stable, no room at the inn tonight

I am Mary, wife of Joseph, the child I carry is not his

I have no wish to bear this burden, but I must accept what is…

 

Chorus:

The Holy Ghost slipped in my bedroom window, and touched me like no mortal man could do,

Though with human eyes I cannot see him, I have faith that faith will see me through; I have faith that faith will see me through

 

Three wise men from far off Persia, brought their finest offerings

Why could they have not brought blankets, food and drink and useful things?

In this bed of hay and straw, on my breast the baby lies

A halo of illumination, I think he has his Father’s eyes

 

Chorus:

The Holy Ghost slipped in my bedroom window, and touched me like no mortal man could do,

Though with human eyes I cannot see him, I have faith that faith will see me through; I have faith that faith will see me through

 

Bethlehem in late December, overhead one star shines bright

Lights the road for weary pilgrims, on this cold and holy night

May the giving spirit of the holidays infuse you, no matter your religion or lack thereof. Merry Christmas!

Mary’s Song; copyright 2000, Bruce Tierney; PS, if by some odd chance you are dying to hear Mary’s Song complete with music, I may be able to email you a copy. I am still unpacking, but I am pretty sure that I have a CD of it somewhere in my apartment.

Kama, Shirako, and Other Culinary Delights

I spent most of Sunday at a monthly art auction, where I typically find a few woodblock prints to add to my collection. This time out, the auction was heavy on ivory carvings, for the most part quite old. I am not particularly an ivory aficionado, but the workmanship on these pieces was pretty spectacular, even to the dilettante (and when it comes to ivory, and probably lots of other art, I am but an apprentice dilettante!). Note in the first picture the artfully crafted “insect damage” to the leaves; the second item, a pole boat with fishermen hauling in their nets, was carved from one tusk!

Afterwards, I went out to supper with several attendees, the auctioneer, and Saki. The first restaurant we went to, our usual post-auction haunt, featured a half-hour wait, and we were all kinda hungry, so we set out for option number two. That turned out to be a no-go as well, closed on Sundays. Our third choice was a sashimi place where none of us had ever eaten before, but just happened to see en route to somewhere else. Past the neon-illuminated “love hotel” (4900 yen for the night, or 2900 for a “shorter stay”),

down an alleyway one would think twice about entering in any other city, up a narrow zigzagging staircase, and in through a sliding shoji screen, we found ourselves in an old-style Japanese establishment that looked like it dated from before the war. The beery clientele, cheerful and slightly raucous, told us in no uncertain terms that this was the sort of place we had been looking for.

The biru came first, followed by a squat bottle of shochu (a Japanese liquor that packs a sneaky punch); then we were ready to order some food. There was the usual assortment of sashimi on offer: yellowtail (hamachi); tuna (meguro); shrimp (ebi); oysters on the half shell, and so on. But of course the fun part for Japanese folks is seeing what weird stuff they can get the gaijin to eat, and this group of inveterate jokers decided to put me through the wringer.

First up was kama, fish heads, quite the delicacy, they assured me. In fact, the fish cheeks were good, soft and flavorful. “Eat the bones,” I was told. Not bloody likely, I thought. “Eat the eyes,” I was further instructed. I respectfully declined, and Saki promptly popped one in her mouth, crunching it like a malted milk ball. “Yummy,” she said, grinning. Yeah, right, I thought.

I gamely worked my way through crunchy daikon and gelatinous konyaku, and some root veggies whose name I don’t know (but which were quite tasty). I added liberal amounts of wasabi, occasioning one of the attendees to remark that at least where wasabi was concerned, I was a true Japanese.

But of course, in time-honored tradition, they saved the best for last. When the bowl arrived at the table, I had to take a picture of it. Does this not look delicious?

The colors, pottery, the simplicity of the presentation—all were superb. It smelled pretty good as well. “Try this,” I was urged. “What is it?” I asked. “Shirako,” Saki replied. Kind of a pretty word, I thought, like a Japanese girl’s name. “What’s that?” I asked again. “It comes from inside the fish,” she said, looking at our companions for some help; none was forthcoming. “I don’t know how you call it in English,” she said, shrugging. Normally, I am not a big fan of things that come from “inside” the animal (heart, stomach, liver, intestines), but I thought, what the hell? So I tried it, and it was pretty good. Slightly tart, with just a tiny amount of the liverish taste that characterizes innards. “Not bad,” I offered. Everyone cheered and clapped, chattering in animated Japanese, of which I understood only “Bruce-san”, followed by appreciative laughter. I knew then that I was the unwitting butt of some cosmic Rising Sun comedy. And that was the moment thatToyoshima-san, a warugaki (mischief maker) whose English is pretty decent, chose to tell me the English name for shirako (you can see this coming, right?): fish testicles.

Fun Stuff from YouTube

There is a good chance that you have already seen this, but if not, you are in for a truly unusual experience. This is even better than Bill Clinton singing “Imagine” with a chorus of forty Jewish and forty Arabic children, which can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0F_6plYyTM&feature=related

It may even be better than the mashup video of President Barack Obama’s truly inspired rendition of Jackie Wilson’s chart-topping classic “Higher and Higher”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnGc3mI7YKw&feature=related

What can it be, you ask? None other than the 1956 Fats Domino hit “Blueberry Hill”, as rendered by noted chanteur and song stylist…Vladimir “Fats” Putin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV4IjHz2yIo

I never realized that Fats Domino was not the writer of his biggest hit (which climbed to #2 on the Billboard chart); in fact the song was written by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock, way back in 1940. Several major acts recorded it at the time, including the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, drummer Gene Krupa, Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and even singing cowboy Gene Autry. The party didn’t end with Domino’s recording, however; since then, the tune has been covered by Ricky Nelson, Duane Eddy, the Everly Brothers, Led Zeppelin(!), the Beach Boys, Bruce Cockburn, and Elton John, to name but a few. But I think you’d have to agree that none have offered that certain je ne sais quoi of Mr. Putin’s version.

When you have dried your eyes from the stirring rendition of “Blueberry Hill”, please turn your attention to singer/songwriter Roy Zimmerman, who will provide us with the answer to the question that has been at the forefront of inquiring minds for the better part of a generation: What if the Beatles were Irish? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFjH4ZqwOB4

In his timely and provocative tune “Creation Science 101”, Zimmerman riffs on the schism between the evolutionists and the fundamentalists: “Four thousand forty-two BC, on Monday August 27, He made the earth and sky and heaven, then He punched out at 5:03…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs

Zimmerman is perhaps at his best with Christmas songs, and in the joyous holiday spirit, I would like to share a few with you. The first is destined to become a holiday classic, “Bill O’Reilly’s Christmas” (dedicated to “every Chris-mister and Chris-missus in America, and I do mean ‘Mister’ and ‘Missus’ and not some genderless generica…”): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNRLLxAOGx4

In another seasonal tune, Zimmerman evokes the early Bob Dylan, complete with harmonica, for “Christmas is Pain”: “There’s a crowd on the hillside with hatchets and saws, and a keen disregard for the forestry laws, and they happily hum while the stumps slowly bleed in the rain…Christmas is pain”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKWh-nnyPIY&feature=channel

Or, last but certainly not least, how about the pan-humanist carol, “Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa”, embracing the multicultural holiday season with its uplifting message: “Humanity is drifting in an icy sea of strife; the giant quilt of life, is crazy…so’s my wife; but even as all things are dying, one event can steer the moribund toward more abundant cheer; it’s Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa, what a happy heterogeneous holiday…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSZNpC1ANUM&feature=channel

May your holiday season be filled with happiness and humor!