Wednesday, December 21, 2005
(9:37 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Christmas Cheer (with apologies to Adam Robinson)
Sufjan Stevens' multi-volume Christmas compilation, Hark!, is pretty good if you're into that kind of thing. Even the original songs are good, reflecting Sufjan's gift for carefully calibrated sentimentality. In short, every song on there is better than Eddie Vedder's Christmas song and Billy Corgan's Christmas song put together.This year I have had the singular privilege of hardly ever hearing any Christmas music other than by my own choice. (There was a brief period in the Border's coffee shop -- again, apologies to everyone -- with The Girl where it was kind of touch and go, but I made it through that alright.) This stands in sharp contrast to the last three years, where I was subjected to The Worst Christmas Music Satellite Channel Ever at the chiropractor's office. That was where I heard Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan, for instance. I also heard the Dixie Chicks' immortal classic "E-mail Santa" at least twice a day, together with all eight versions of Jingle Bells. Probably my favorite, however, were the Robert Goulet songs -- his renditions of the classic Christmas favorites was nothing short of extraordinary. At one point I decided to hit up every used record store in Kankakeeland[*] looking for a copy of his album, but then the mail came and I had to process some insurance payments or something, so I forgot about it.
Now I'm back on the data entry grindstone, and I've got to tell you -- it's much more satisfying to be putting payments on people's accounts and making sure everything balances out than it is to copy over the information from a Sunday newspaper ad into a database so that people can click on the damn ad and see... exactly what was on the ad. Apparently one can also compile a shopping list from across retailers, so you can print off your page for when you pick up the 2/$5 Planters Cashews from CVS and whatever else. Thanks to me, the cause of bargain shopping is advancing by leaps and bounds. If I ever go on The Price is Right, I'm going to kick some serious ass.
The main thing is that they pay me. I've been very satisfied with that aspect of the job so far. The last few years, Christmas has been tight for me -- for a variety of mysterious reasons [**], my efforts at budgeting prove to be ineffective, and the little bit of student loan money I get at the beginning of every semester is used up by then. One year around Christmas time, for instance, Richard and Kari moved out. They graciously left me a lot of crucial items, but I got home from work one night to find that I didn't have a garbage can, or a pasta strainer, or a can opener -- and that's only the beginning. Christmas was great that year, a kind of consolation prize for the wedding shower -- I got a microwave and coffee maker and toaster. I also took a couch back with me, one of the Victorian ones, to declare my independence from the Country Living hegemony.
Now Hayley started a subscription to Country Living. Out of respect for privacy concerns, I won't reveal the exact details, but discussions with my sister have confirmed my suspicions that Hayley and my mom have very similar personalities.
My mom, aunt, and grandma owned a store called The Country Way that sold country furniture and decorations. They would go to the conventions, often taking me and my sister along, and tour other stores in the area -- never once did they cede even an inch to tackiness, an ever-present temptation in country-style decoration. A friend once arrived in my house and announced that it looked like a Bob Evans, but that only reflects an insufficiently developed sense of taste.[†] At his house, I doubt there was all-new furniture every year, and I seriously doubt that it was all rearranged once a month. They had to shut the store down, around 1991 or 92 if I remember correctly -- during the first Bush recession. Maybe if they'd stuck it out a year or two more, they could have cashed in on the 90's boom, serving the furniture and decorating needs of the sprawling subdivisions that are still springing up around the home town. But on the other hand, those are exactly the kind of people who would prefer to drive a half hour out to the commercial center of Genesee County -- not located at a city center or traditional downtown (like where The Country Way had been located, for instance), but at the intersection of I-69 and I-75/US-23.
When I had to get household products, I went to Target. Once, I decided at 11:00pm on a Sunday that I needed to get a new phone, and I went and did it, right then -- K-mart, open 24 hours. Convenient, comfortable.
In the long run, not having obligations toward the store freed my mom to go to college without overly alienating my grandma and aunt. She just finished her first semester as a teacher -- English and Social Studies at a middle school[††]. Her students think she's hilarious, which is true. If you ever visit my family, be prepared: the hegemonic sense of humor is just like me. My sister is just like me, and we're both just like my mom. It's this sarcastic, biting thing that is hard for some people to get used to. We all try to facilitate the process by taking a full-immersion approach -- already when I first meet someone, I'm saying stuff I don't really mean and expecting them to get it. But we're a lot of fun. When people from CTS met my parents briefly, they said that it didn't make sense, that there was no way I was raised by them -- but it makes perfect sense, the most sense possible.
*No human being has ever uttered the word "Kankakeeland" sincerely. Formed by analogy with "Chicagoland," this word is only ever used in advertising, and like its etymological parent, it is never used by anyone who actually lives in Chicago. The same could be said for the word "Chicagoan," which according to the OED has only ever appeared in car commercials.
**Some scholars hypothesize that at least some of my budgeting problems might stem from the fact that the greatest academic bookstore on earth is located in the basement of the seminary I attend and an excellent used bookstore is conveniently situated between the seminary and the bus stop. More recently, some have begun to investigate the impact of foreign-language book-buying -- for instance, how urgent is it, really, that I have the major works of Jean-Luc Nancy, in the original, on hand at all times? (Mondialisation is great, though, and untranslated so far.)
†It may sound like I'm being sarcastic here, but I'm not -- on its own terms, my mom's (and aunt and grandma's) approach to home furnishing has been flawlessly executed.
††Possibly a junior high -- I'll have to confirm that when I go home.
