I’ve been having technical problems on two computers and a video camera all day, so not much time for the normal rambling.  This is a Christmas song.  I wasn’t going to write one, but last week I did anyway.  I was aiming for the general territory of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “The Christmas Song,” which are my two favorite Christmas songs and two of the prettiest melodies ever written, but hoping not to trespass on either.  I didn’t really get that close, but I still like the melody.  The overall song is okay, I think, except the last verse should probably either be replaced or deleted.  As for why anybody would go to so much trouble to set up a rhyme for “Santa Claus” in the chorus and then not take it, beats me.

Grammar Got Run Over by a Reindeer.  And yes, I know, children lie in their beds (and elsewhere), not lay in their beds.  I screwed up.  Santa’s not known for his grammar, though.

Video.  The video is of our neighborhood.  We’re supposed to be known for our elaborate Christmas light displays.  I think every neighborhood thinks it’s known for that.  My house is one of the ones not pictured.xmaslights6

Latest on Alphabetical Matters.  This song gets “J” into the song-title listings.  The next few weeks I’m going to try to knock out as many missing letters as I can.  I have a W, Z, O and F coming up, maybe not in that order, all   but the O song written specifically to fill out missing letters.  It’s unlikely I’ll come up with an X and maybe not a K.  You’d think K would be easy; you just write a song about keepin’ on doing something.  There are lots of songs about keeping on doing something.  That’s the problem.

I was going to cheat and call this one “Xmas” something or other (which, frankly, is why I wrote the song in the first place), but decided against it.  I’m going to keep this above board.  Except to spell out “87 Kinds of Shaving Cream,” I haven’t cheated on any song titles yet.  Okay, “Quintana Lake” was a cheat, but I did have a song that started with Q and nobly chose not to use it, and I was reading a Joan Didion book, and she has a daughter named Quintana, so I think it comes out fair.

I have a song that could either be an O or a J title and haven’t done it yet because I was waiting to see which letter I would need it for.  Now it’s an O.  I’m not jettisoning any of the missing letters yet, though, even though I know I don’t have room for all of them with the songs I already have written (stupid S songs are hogging way too much room).  I can’t stand it when people take a zero on Yahtzee before the last roll of the game.  Sure, you have better odds of getting the large straight, just like you have better odds of winning the Delaware lottery than of winning the New York lottery.  But guess what.  You’re not going to win either of them! So why not play for the big one?

Merry Christmas!