Program scripts from week of November 3, 2013
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Christmas Music Rant
Every year I have a private little rant about Christmas music. It goes back to the days when I was the Music Director at a certain radio station across town. Normally this rant takes place, like clockwork, right around Thanksgiving.
But not this year. Oh no, I’m going public with it and I’m going public with it right now. While I was driving in Buffalo this weekend I heard a promo for a radio station that announced they were going all Christmas music beginning November first right through Christmas. (I am not mentioning their call letters because I don’t want you to encourage them by listening to this abomination)
Remember I said that this silliness usually begins on Thanksgiving weekend. Well these folks decided to get started on HALLOWEEN weekend! And that’s just too much for me to bear.
Back when I was Music Director I refused to play Christmas music before December 1. Let me tell you I got some very angry phone calls and more than a few glares from some of the air staff. I didn’t apologize for it at the time and I make no apologies for it today. It’s stupid. It’s vile. It’s abominable. It trivializes both Thanksgiving and Christmas and is an utter sell out to everything wrong with the “holiday season” by giving into the complete commercialization of Christmas.
First, that offends me as a person of faith. Different story for a different day. Second, it offends me as a radio person. It’s stupid, lazy programming. The reality is that there are only about 37 Christmas songs all told. There are 100 versions of each one. Out of all those versions there might be 20 that you want to hear over and over. For a couple weeks tops. Instead you are going to hear every awful, idiotic, low rent version of “Blue Christmas” because they have 24 hours a day to fill. Pop stars singing awful, maudlin arrangements of songs that more often than not are even less musically complex and compelling than the pop drivel they normally record.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas. I love Christmas music. Part of what makes the holidays special is that they’re, well, special. As the saying goes “Christmas comes but once a year”. Seems like we’re headed towards Christmas all year long.
That’s just stupid and wrong. And this is my line in the sand.
You will probably not be surprised to find out that I have a lot of friends who are into words and writing. Birds of a feather and stuff like that. Some of these people take the whole language thing quite seriously. By and large they are people of good humor who can discuss the issues of today’s commentary jokingly. OK, mostly jokingly.
The center of this great debate are two. They are the Oxford comma and double spaces following periods. Yes, I’m serious. People argue about these things.
I am also aware that more than a few of you have no idea what I’m talking about. So let’s review.
First, the Oxford comma. Also known as the serial comma, this is the punctuation which you may insert at the end of a list of items and just before the word “and”. So you would say “item 1 comma, item 2 comma and item 3. Except that many of us would omit the comma before the “and”. Which is perfectly acceptable. Unless you are a fan of the Oxford comma at which point you enter into long debates about its use. I will note that there are times when that comma makes a difference in clarity. At those points it should definitely be used.
The other argument I see my word loving friends having these days (yes, the people need to get lives. What can I say?) is about the number of spaces following a period at the end of a sentence. Back in the day when I was learning to type (on an actual typewriter, children! Can you imagine!) we were taught to use two. Today the conventional wisdom is that one is sufficient. The argument seems to center on the difference between proportional and monospaced type fonts. What does that mean? Do you really care? I didn’t think so. And I doubt you much care about how many spaces are placed after the period. I do it automatically, without thinking because I’ve been doing it that way for decades. If for some reason it absolutely must be changed it’s simple with the “Find and Replace” function available on any word processor.
These are things that word nerds argue about. Pity us and please, go live your lives. Maybe we’ll follow.
NaNoWriMo Update
Week One was not a great week but it wasn't a total disaster. My total word count for the first week was just over 8,000 words. That was several thousand behind the curve (to make the 50,000 target you need to average over 1,600 words a day). My best day was 2,800 but my worst was one day when I wrote nothing at all. The good news is that I'm still just a couple really good writing days away from catching up. But Week Two is always the worst. So we'll see.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
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