December 2014 – Page 2 – Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Christmas Album Review: The Sinatra Christmas Album by Frank Sinatra (1957)

December 7, 2014December 11, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

I got this album a couple of years ago, and I play it a couple of times a week throughout the season. It’s a serviceable collection of known favorites and a song that appears sparsely on Christmas albums (“Mistletoe and Holly”). It’s good background music, but it’s not ideal mood music because Sinatra’s more of a technical perfectionist of a singer rather than a warm singer who inhabits the songs. That is, when you hear these songs, you imagine being in a room where Sinatra is singing the songs on stage instead of someone who’s singing the songs with you.

The track list includes:

Jingle Bells
The Christmas Song
Mistletoe And Holly
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
The Christmas Waltz
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
The First Noel
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
O Little Town Of Bethlehem
Adeste Fideles
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Silent Night

According to Discogs, this is one of the more expensive Christmas albums I’ve reviewed so far. And I only spent a buck on it at a book sale if I remember correctly.

So it’s worth a couple of spins every year in fairly heavy rotation at Nogglestead, but mostly it’s because of the Sinatra cool factor than the music itself.

Speaking of the Rat Pack, I’ve already reviewed the The Dean Martin Christmas Album.

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The Key to Moving Books

December 7, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

Thanks to Oregon Muse and Ace of Spades HQ Sunday Morning Book Thread, this is the biggest sales day for John Donnelly’s Gold. So far.

Bigger than an Instapundit In the mail mention. Bigger than reviews on other individuals’ blogs. Bigger than a review in an actual news stand magazine.

Let that be a lesson to you.

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Christmas Album Review: A Very Merry Christmas Volume Two by Various Artists (?)

December 6, 2014December 8, 2016 Brian J. Noggle

This album belonged to my mother from the time she served in the Marine Corps; the address label in the corner was for El Toro MCAS. The price tag in the corner means she tried to sell it at one or more yard sales after she moved on from LPs. Obviously, it didn’t sell, which is fortunate, since it is a relic from my youth I can hold onto.

It’s a compilation album, and the second of a series. It has Christmas carol standards by a number of the popular artists from the middle of the 20th century.

The track list includes:

Mitch Miller And The Gang, “Joy To The World”
Robert Goulet, “O Holy Night”
Anita Bryant, “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear”
Andre Kostelanetz, “Sleigh Ride”
Steve Lawrence, “The Christmas Song”
Mahalia Jackson, “O Little Town Of Bethlehem”
The New Christy Minstrels, “Here We Come A-Caroling”
Jim Nabors, “Jingle Bells”
Doris Day, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”
Johnny Mathis, “Silver Bells”
Skitch Henderson And His Orchestra, “We Need A Little Christmas”
Johnny Cash, “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day”
Eydie Gorme, “White Christmas”
Bing Crosby, “What Child Is This? The Holly And The Ivy”
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, “Silent Night, Holy Night”

It’s a fine mix, and I enjoy the compilation albums more than most Christmas albums by a single artist simply for the variety’s sake. Some songs on the compilations appear on some of the individual albums (cough, cough, Robert Goulet).

This album includes “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, a song not found on many of my other compilation discs and a couple of artists I’ve not heard of or seen in record bins (Mahalia Jackson, Skitch Henderson and His Orchestra). Additionally, this album, played in my youth, would have been the first times I heard Eydie Gorme, and how could I tell thirty-five years ago how big of a fan of hers I would become?

At any rate, this album is aces and gets a lot of play during the Christmas season here.

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Live Soldiers

December 6, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

We like to save a little money, or enjoy the illusion thereof, by buying refill bottles of window cleaning products at the local warehouse club store. However, each of the refill bottles comes with a spray bottle of its own as though you were that excited about the product that you were going to try it for the first time and buy a bunch of it.

And, being as I am, I can’t throw out a perfectly good spray bottle especially since there’s likely to be a small amount of cleaning agent in the bottle and I have the means to refill the bottle.

As such, we have six partially filled bottles of Windex in various locations throughout the house.

Including two in the master bathroom alone

Face it, I’ve got more Windex now than Nia Vardalos’s father. I’ve got enough freestanding Windex bottles that, if a hockey team showed up and wanted to do my windows and mirrors, they wouldn’t have to share bottles.

And the worst part?

The more bottles I have to refill, the faster I have to buy another refill bottle…and its attendant new spray bottle.

They are working together and reproducing in their own fashion, people. Wake up before the Windex army makes its final assault!

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Christmas Album Review: Come All Ye Faithful by Kate Smith (?)

December 5, 2014December 8, 2016 Brian J. Noggle

This album features Kate Smith of “God Bless America” fame singing a selection of Christmas carols and other things. I know, a day after saying that Robert Goulet’s Christmas album was too big, I’m giving a favorable review to Kate Smith’s.

However, the different between the two is a big voice and a big delivery. Although Kate Smith has a big voice, she’s singing these songs instead of belting them out. Additionally, she’s balanced well with the other musicians on the album, including other vocalists who help out and the instrument arrangements. Besides, Kate Smith is like your grandmother singing these things if your grandmother could sing.

The track list includes:

Deck the Halls
White Christmas
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
The First Noel
O Come All Ye Faithful
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands
Greensleeves
Joy To The World
O Little Town of Bethlehem
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Moonlight In Vermont
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Silent Night
Jingle Bells

The set includes a couple of interesting, non-Christmas specific songs (“He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” and “Moonlight in Vermont”) which tangentally touch on the theme. They’re nice enough interludes in the Christmas music to be welcome.

You can get this album in vinyl or MP3 on Amazon, but it looks to be a collection that the studios overlooked when releasing material on CD. I, of course, recommend the vinyl.

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As The Proud Owner Of A Halberd, I Concur

December 5, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

I’ve always said that the halberd is the Swiss army knife of weapons. You’ve got an unarmored peasant side, an armored enemy side, and a mounted enemy point.

MyArmoury.com agrees in an article that explores the overlooked history of the polearm:

Most of these poleaxes, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, had a spike on the top which allowed them to be potent thrusting weapons as well as being able to attack in both directions (axe or hammer on one side and a hammer or spike on the other). The presence of a spike(s) (or a fluke as it is sometimes called), hammer head and/or an axe head on the same weapons creates problems in classifying these weapons. A single poleaxe may combine the crushing power of the warhammer, the cleaving power of the long-handled (Danish) axe, and the thrusting capability of the spear.

I concur, mainly because it gives me an excuse to re-run this image of a boy and his best friend:

Does anyone else remember the IMAO Peace Gallery? Even IMAO doesn’t.

Michael Williams quips:

Don’t bring a longsword to a poleaxe fight.

I shan’t.

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Just in Time for Next Christmas

December 5, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

A new Ayn Rand novel, something she never published, is coming out next year:

Ayn Rand fans, here’s something to whet your appetites: New American Library has released the cover image for “Ideal,” the first Ayn Rand novel to be published in more than 50 years.

Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” invented the philosophy of Objectivism. More than 25 million copies of her novels have been sold around the world.

“Ideal” tells the story of a screen actress who is accused of murder and visits six of her most devoted fans to ask for help.

I’ll get it, of course. And that reminds me: It’s been almost ten years since I read The Fountainhead.

(Link via Ace of Spades HQ.)

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Christmas Album Review: This Christmas I Spend With You by Robert Goulet (1963)

December 4, 2014December 8, 2016 Brian J. Noggle

This album comes from early in Goulet’s career; in 1960, he got his big break in the musical Camelot, and three years later this album was out. You can tell that Goulet’s got a musical theatre background from this album, as he’s not so much singing these songs in a recording studio as he’s booming these songs out so you can hear them in the cheap seats.

The track list includes:

This Christmas I Spend With You
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
December Time
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
The Christmas Song (Chesnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)
Silver Bells
Winter Wonderland
White Christmas
O Holy Night (Cantique De Noel)
Panis Angelicus
Ave Maria
O Come, All Ye Faithful

Given the booming presentation of each, this record does not get a lot of play. I think I hit it once last year (the first year we owned it), and I played side one this year. And that might be enough. It’s not mood music, and it’s not background music. It’s like a recording of a concert, and I’m not into live albums.

But if you’re into musical theatre or to an over the top style, perhaps it would be to your liking.

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As I Said

December 4, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

In the The Federalist, Leslie Loftis doesn’t like the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” very much:

The worst Christmas song ever isn’t actually a Christmas song. It’s just a song that uses Christmas in the hook and was popular when it was released. So Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas” gets played every year starting at the end of November. Every year, I think that the awfulness comes in part from the refreshed shock of dreadful lyrics I’ve not heard in 11 months. Instead, my loathing of the song grows through the season and year by year.

She goes on to take apart the song and make many of the same points I made in 2011:

I hate this song. If I hear this song on the radio, I turn it at once, and sometimes I even turn the radio off for a half hour to punish the radio station that played it.

I mean, not only is it a bunch of wealthy secularists trying to shame the less fortunate into pouring money into the coffers of large organizations with large overhead to send pink jeeps and swag with cool logos to Africa, but it has fundamental flaws.

I am one of the infinite monkeys on the Internet, and eventually we will type everything and subtle variations of everything.

(Link via Hot Air.)

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Christmas Album Review: Silent Night and 13 Other Best Loved Christmas Songs by Lawrence Welk (1961)

December 3, 2014December 8, 2016 Brian J. Noggle

This album is less of a big band sound than a modified bell and chimes choir sound. There are no singers vocalizing the words from the carols, but there are some choral voices singing notes to accompany the orchestra. And, as I said, bells and chimes (and harpsichord) are featured, but they’re backed with a depth of other instruments. So it falls somewhere in between a bells and chimes album and an instrumental bell album.

The track list includes:

Silent Night
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
White Christmas
Deck the Halls
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
The First Noel
Adeste Fidelis
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Joy to the World
Good King Wenceslas
Thanks for Christmas

I bought this album this year, so I don’t have a large sample size of its presence in the rotation, but it’s pleasant enough to have as background music while cooking or otherwise doing things in rooms adjacent to our parlor, where we have the record player and its records. But it’s not mood music, where you want to be in the same room while the record plays.

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Book Report: Magic by William Goldman (1976)

December 3, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

You might be familiar with William Goldman for a little book he wrote and adapted for the silver screen called The Princess Bride. This book ain’t that.

Instead, this is a mid-1970s crime thriller about a magician/ventriloquist on the verge of television success who flees from New York City to his hometown upstate because he’s afraid he might be cracking up. Then he cracks up. With a body count.

I’m afraid I’ve given much of the story away, but in the book, Goldman presents it as a little bit of a mystery. He has some diary entries that are labeled as part of a police investigation; then we have some interplay between the main character and his partner; then we have a flashback to the main character’s youth and early career and how that has led him to the precipice of success and this crack-up. So there’s some suspense in what sort of crime will occur, and it’s unfortunate what does transpire.

I thought the book was okay, but it does have a 1970s feel to it in the same way that 1970s science fiction does. Or is it just me?

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Brian J. Noggle Is No Poseur

December 3, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

At least not according to Jonah Goldberg:

I realize that talking about Nietzsche and the popular culture — or really Nietzsche and anything — is like reading Proust during the time-outs at a Packers game; it assaults the nostrils with the scent of the poseur.

As you know, gentle reader, I read poetry, tourism, and art books during Packer games.

I don’t even know how to pronounce poseur.

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Christmas Album Review: The Dean Martin Christmas Album by Dean Martin (1966)

December 2, 2014December 11, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

If you’re expecting “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” on this album, baby, it’s the wrong record; that omnipresent song, the one most associated with Dean Martin and Christmas, is from his 1959 platter A Winter Romance.

This album, from 1966 (and on a different label), features Dean Martin’s laid back takes on these classic Christmas songs:

“White Christmas”
“Jingle Bells”
“I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
“Blue Christmas”
“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
“Marshmallow World”
“Silver Bells”
“Winter Wonderland”
“The Things We Did Last Summer”
“Silent Night”

It’s a mood-setting collection, which is a step above background music; it’s worth listening to Dean sing the songs as he invests feeling in them, and his relaxed delivery is reflective.

My beautiful wife quibbles with the inclusion of “Marshmellow World” on the album, as it is her least favorite secular Christmas carol of all time and might be mathematically the absolute worst song for her ever as she cannot stand marshmallows, whipped cream, or most of the things the winter landscape reminds the singer of. On the other hand, it transitions right into “Silver Bells”, which is her favorite secular Christmas carol, so the crisis is averted.

Meanwhile, I think it’s odd to include “The Things We Did Last Summer” on the LP as it’s more of a reflective, nostalgia song than a winter song or a Christmas song. But I guess it gets included to break the theme up a little bit with a tangental tune, like “A Few of My Favorite Things” gets included on Christmas albums because it mentions packages and gifts.

At any rate, I recommend it; it’s definitely on heavy rotation here at Nogglestead.

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Book Report: Last Seen in Massilia by Steven Saylor (2000)

December 2, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

As I mentioned in my book report on Murder for Halloween, I have a number of Steven Saylor paperbacks I picked up en masse somewhere. The short story in Murder for Halloween provided me an excuse to pick up this book.

Strangely enough, although I thought I put the books in series order on the shelf when I first put them on the shelf, when I grabbed the first book on the left, I got this volume, which is number 8 in the series, but not the first one of the series I own. Now, it becomes very clear that the books have the series number and the year in which they take place written in marker atop the pages, but I did not know this when I grabbed the book, so I got one in the middle of the pack I own.

This book finds Gordianus, the Finder, sneaking into Massilia, which is under seige by Caesar’s forces in the Roman civil war. Gordianus’s adopted son, a spy for Caesar, has disappeared in the city, so Gordianus and his son-in-law pose as soldiers entering Massilia by a tunnel. When the tunnel assault is washed out, only The Finder and his son-in-law survive and make their way into the city where they become acquainted with the Scapegoat, an outcast chosen to take on the sins of the city and who sacrifice themselves. The group witnesses a murder or suicide from atop the sacred Sacrifice Rock and are approached by a leading Massilian to search for his missing daughter.

It’s intrigue and a bit of mystery wrapped in a bit of historical research that runs pretty smoothly, but does on a couple of occasions–sentences really–come out and have the characters speaks a bit of exposition. So it’s not without a touch of that, but it does get one into the setting and the time period rather well.

It is a bit intriguey for my tastes, but not so bad that I won’t read the rest that I have, starting with the newly rearranged first I own.

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Book Report: Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Perspective text by Thomas S. Buechner (1972)

December 2, 2014December 1, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

As you would expect, this book is a collection of Rockwell paintings and drawings throughout his career, including some advertising work, Saturday Evening Post covers, and work for Look magazine.

The text with the images details his career and his biography and turns attention to the evolution of his style and subject matter in a fashion I’ve not seen in other retrospectives or in the monthly feature in the Saturday Evening Post back when I subscribed (before I completely grew weary with the Government Is The Solution articles interspersed among the Rockwell retrospectives and health advice for older people).

You know, I could read books about Rockwell and look through collections of his work that just put the images in a different order every couple of months because the work hits me in a sweet spot: It’s comprehensible and figurative (literally) and it hearkens back to situations, eras, and a general zeitgeist that might never have existed exactly as depicted, but I miss it just the same even though my youth was nothing close to it.

So I enjoyed it, and I’ll pick up more of the same (and quite possible exactly the same given my book buying habits) at book sales in the future.

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Book Report: The Time-Hoppers by Robert Silverberg (1967)

December 1, 2014November 30, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

This book is a short science fiction book by Robert Silverberg, whose Three Survived I have previously reviewed.

Within this book, a future cop in a distant, overpopulated future has an illicit second home in the only uncrowded part of the world and fears discovery when he’s given a tough assignment: investigate the “time hoppers,” people who find an illegal operation that sends them from the crowded present into a free past. As he investigates and worries about the political expectations. his own brother-in-law considers the trip.

The book jumps between different characters in different situations in this world, from the cop to his sister in a lower caste than he to one of the two leaders of the omnipresent government to the brother-in-law to the cop’s underling who is blackmailing his superior for his distant getaway. One would expect there might be some in-book time travel involved, but it takes place mostly in the future.

It’s an interesting bit, an enjoyable little read from the era–the middle 1960s through, what, the 1980s? where the future is dystopian and overcrowded and the plots are novel and clever. Perhaps I’m siloed a bit in reading the blogs of writers of science fiction subgenres these days, where the stories are a bit more predictable and follow the plots of something that would make a good video game. I confess I read a number of novels written from video games and movies, so my perspective is probably skewed. But I get a definite sense of a book that’s been written in the middle of the 20th century that I don’t get from novels from the 1980s on. Perhaps it’s just the length that cues me in–this one clocks in at 182 pages, half or less of a modern book. Also, the author has read other books. Allusions from classical literature and history flow throughout. They’re not necessary for the reading and enjoyment of the book, but they do serve to pat the well-read reader on the head for all his or her previous reading. I need that.

But I really enjoy this short books from the middle of the last century more than thicker later pieces. Maybe I’m just impatient.

At any rate, I liked the book and I like Silverberg.

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