December 2012

Merry Christmas! A quick thought on Christmas songs

Just a quick post to wish you all a Merry Christmas spent with friends and family, and a happy New Year filled with many new and wonderful experiences to come!

Recently one of the nurses on Labor and Delivery commented that a lot of Christmas songs, though cheerful and merry and bright in tune, are lyrically dubious.

For instance:

  • Walking in a Winter Wonderland:  Shotgun weddings and shacking up ("In the meadow we can build a snowman,/then pretend that he is Parson Brown./He'll say 'Are you married?'/We'll say 'No man,but you can do the job while you're in town!')
  • Santa Baby:  materialism and sugar daddies
  • Let It Snow:  using the weather as an excuse to make moves on your significant other (this is why so many babies are born in July, August, and September, by the way) 
  • And the queen of all questionable songs:  Baby It's Cold Outside.  
I have loved this song since I saw Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell sing it in Elf, a movie I must watch for me to feel like it is the Christmas season.  It's really adorable, and light of heart, and how could you not fall in love with this song?


However, I recently heard a version with Dean Martin, and God bless him, but I finally realized how creepy this song can be.  Especially with this legion of schoolgirls accompanying him.  He sounds like a player and a pedophile, rolled into one blithely oblivious song.


I mean, look at the cover album.  Try not to shudder.

I think the ew factor mainly depends on the lead voice in the song.

Lovely, strong, female voice?  Even if the male sounds much older or inappropriate, the creepiness is decreased.


Male?  As The Atlantic says, "it sounds like the song is describing a run-up to a sexual assault."





Unless they're both male, I guess.


Both the Atlantic article and the Salon article rightly point out that, though most male vocalist's lines are quite smarmy ("What's the sense of hurting my pride"), and the man is essentially pressuring a woman who is trying to say 'no', one of the most offensive part of the song is the line, "What's in this drink?"  It may be entirely innocent (like, "Wow, this drink is strong"), but it's hard not to think roofie.  The most hilarious suggestion of the Atlantic article:
Ashley: So we'd get rid of "what's in this drink."
Eleanor: It's really the worst line ever. I think something more like, "Oooh, this drink is tasty," or, "Champagne cocktails are my favorite." Or even moving away from alcohol altogether: "one more song," "one more cookie," etc.
Um, I love cookies and champagne cocktails, and I would totally buy that song.

The Atlantic article also suggests some other interesting fixes for the song:  making the context of a loving relationship clear, and making it clearer that the answer really isn't a clear no, through "a little more evidence that she really is saying, "talk me into staying" rather than "no, really, I want to leave immediately."


Or, in this day and age of post-feminism, you could just reverse the gender roles and put the girl on the prowl.
(Zooey Deschanel has literally recorded this song three times, in three different ways.)



Because of Elf, the light, swinging melody, and the rarity of a Christmas-time duet, "Baby It's Cold Outside" will continue to be one of the songs that I love to force people to sing with me in the winter.

But next time, I think I'll try to slip in a line about, "half a cookie more."


Merry Christmas, God bless, and to all a good night!





Music Thursday: The Lumineers

In honor of their rise in recognition, which I have happily and feverishly tracked over the last year; their 2012 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist; and the fact that I just bought tickets for their concert in February and am VERY! EXCITED!, this week's pick is "Flowers in Your Hair," by the Lumineers.

It's been amazing seeing them go from some band in Denver without a proper website to a Grammy nomination.  Whether it's the wave of Americana bluegrass sweeping the airwaves (Mumford and Sons, Avett Brothers, The Civil Wars) or whether it's increased exposure of their songs through clever ads (Bing, an instrumental on Blue Moon) or cheesy CW TV shows (humbly, I confess that this is how I came upon their music), the Lumineers are having a great year, deservedly so.

While the most well-known and popular song of theirs, "Ho Hey," is also required listening, if only for their reference to the Chinatown buses, and the awesome lyrics, "I'll be standing on Canal/and Bowery," which is one of those lyrics meant to be completely misheard, "Flowers in Your Hair" is standard Lumineers fare:  straightforward, simple lyrics that yield deeper ideas and a sense of humor; charming banjo-guitar-cello-driven melodies; and a unaffected, spirited rhythm that simply requires foot-stomping and hand-clapping.


Other required listening:  Dead Sea, Ho Hey, Stubborn Love

Happy (or is it merry) listening!

How To Succeed at Being an Asian Daughter, While Really, Really Trying: Why It Is Impossible for Me to Buy Gifts For My Parents Part 1

It is nearly impossible to buy gifts for my parents.

Part 1:  For my parents, cash is a gift.  For me, it is not.

Background:  I am, despite my inclination towards the sarcastic, actually kind of a romantic idealist.  The evidence:

  • The spines of my Jane Austen books are broken from multiple reads, and yes, I have watched all the BBC adaptations AND love them.  
  • Christmas, to me, involves powdery snow and toboggans in an icy chill outside, while Christmas trees with lights and fireplaces and hot cider beckon warmly within.  
  • There is that perfect man--"the ONE"--out there for me somewhere, a carefully concocted mixture of Mr. Darcy, Aragorn, and Michael-Fassbender-as-Mr-Rochester, and, yes, he will profess his love for me in a rainstorm, dammit!           
  • OBGYN, as I waxed oh so eloquently in my application essay, was a perfect field in its combination of involvement in clinic and surgery and medicine.  And what could be more satisfying than delivering a baby and being part of such an intimate, special moment in a woman's life?
  • As far as presents, they should be wrapped, and it's the thought that counts.
Clearly, when these lofty ambitions I have for life are incompatible with actual reality, it hits me quite hard.
  • Christmases in the last few years have been disappointing not only for the fact that I have been working through them, but thanks to global warming and a dearth of floor space and energy, grossly lacking in cold, green and red decorations, lights, and pines.
  • If there does live some mutant Darcy/Aragorn/Fassbender, he clearly doesn't exist outside of books, movie screen, or TV set.
  • Never in my imagination did medicine involve so much disorderly ER and clinic rooms, unreasonably screaming patients, disgruntled nurses, massive fights with the laboratory, and useless paperwork, and so little actual surgery and helping of patients. 
  • I find it completely incompatible with my very identity to give my parents something as thoughtless as cash as a Christmas gift.
The concept of giving cash or gift cards to my parents twists my mind in a Mobius tangle.  Is it just me, or don't cash/gift cards just scream, "THIS IS LAST MINUTE! I DON'T KNOW OR CARE FOR YOU AT ALL!"  At the minimum, it seems like a lack of effort.  If you know someone likes a certain store, couldn't you get something they might like (based on your knowledge of their personality and needs) and give them a gift receipt in case you thought wrong?  But then, if it's the thought that counts, and despite asking multiple times, all your parents say they want is cash moneys, then does cash show thoughtfulness and respect towards their request?  

The second problem I have with giving my parents cash is that they are Chinese, and they are frugal, and for all I know, they are spending the money on groceries or something completely practical and unromantic.  Am I a horrible daughter for wanting to treat them to something they probably would not buy for themselves, because it costs more than 15 dollars?  I kid, but for Asian parents who have worked hard and made major sacrifices to help their children succeed, is it not also respect to treat them to something lovely and extravagant that they may not have considered otherwise?  

The other problem to the "treat yo'self" gifts I try to press upon my wonderful, decent, but thrifty Asian parents:  their first comment is to question the price, and their second, to immediately dislike it for its cost, even if they liked it before knowing.  This is also known as Chinese restaurant syndrome:
Me:  How do you like [insert some non Chinese restaurant name here]?
Mom:  Well, it tasted good...but for the price of one of the entrees, we could have ordered three plates AND we could have taken  leftovers at Ruby Palace!
 Now is she right?  A tad bit exaggerated, but essentially, yes.  But it wasn't the point.  It was to share something I enjoyed, to enjoy a new experience together, to treat them to something nice.
(Until they scaled this back recently, it nearly ruined restaurants for me.  When they came to visit, I would only take them out to Chinese restaurants [and the rare Japanese one] so that I wouldn't be chastised at the end of the meal.)    

And really, is there a classy way to give cash?  Clearly making dollar bills rain is out of the question, and handing over a random wad of cash from your back pocket just looks like you're some low-level thug in a New Jersey mob, just trying to make it from day to day without anything that could possibly identify you, like credit cards.  Don't kid yourself:  tucking bills into paper cards or envelopes or 3D plastic mazes doesn't disguise the fact that you must be a distant relative sending in your vaguely cliched congratulations.






No, I've come to believe that the only truly classy way to give money is in fine Italian leather, like this:



Unfortunately, it'll be a long time before I have enough money to fill one of those babies.  Mom, Dad, you're going to have to wait.


Coming soon:  Part 2:  What to Get Your Parents When They Have No Hobbies

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