Is It Just Me?

I can’t believe it’s time to start a new year.  I also can’t believe this is me sounding exactly like every older person in the world talking about how quickly time flies.  

Days go by faster than I can mark them off on my calendar – or more accurately my Day-At-A-Glance appointment book and ever-present To Do lists.

There’s both good and bad about this.  The good?  We don’t have to wait too long for anything we’re looking forward to.  When we were kids, it seemed the day after tomorrow would never get here.  Now?  Just turn around.  Here it is.  The bad, of course, is that it’s possible for several days to slip past while we’re still deciding what to do about next week.

As inevitable as aging is (someone said if we’re lucky we’ll get old) so is the need to make time count for something.

I’m not a resolutions person, but I do have intentions that matter to me,  and one is to make better use of the time allotted.  That’s about the only thing I stand a chance of affecting.   There’s nothing wrong with a modest goal to ring in the New Year.

Ó By Anita Garner

Christmas Movies

It wouldn’t be Christmas without syrupy movies.  Along with fruitcake and continuous holiday music, nothing says ’tis the season like the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime.  With a remote and a DVR, it’s time to wallow in sentiment.  

My holiday viewing schedule is so packed, I’ve taken to recording all the Christmas shows.  Then I scan the plot synopsis offered by the cable company, pick a show, grab a cup of coffee, sit back and push “play.”  None of the plots are complicated, so I can leave and come back, leave and come back without missing a major development.

I’ll watch just about any Christmas movie, good or bad.  But this year there are so many, plus new ones arriving at the local theatre, I’ve been forced to be more selective.  I won’t  watch movies about a real-life earthly member of Santa’s family, whose personal complications may or may not affect the timely delivery of toys.  Santa’s family just doesn’t interest me much.  I’m also not fond of mean-spirited Christmas movies.  Hitting and yelling and blowing up things and drinking and cussing don’t feel uplifting, so I skip those.

There are at least two seasonal movies that stand out from the rest as memorable, each for different reasons.  My current favorite, which I watch every year, is One Special Night (1999) with Julie Andrews and James Garner.  I’ll watch those two in anything.  I love this movie most for portraying two mature people with full lives. 

The other standout took me a while to warm up to.  It’s Noel (2004) with a stunning cast, including Susan Sarandon, Alan Arkin, Penelope Cruz, Robin Williams, Chazz Palminteri, and others.  It’s an odd story and is very nearly not Christmassy at all, depending on your point of view.  But I haven’t been able to forget it, so I’ll try to find it again.  

Lest you think a couple of quality offerings make me a discriminating viewer, oh no, no.  Those two are the exceptions. Most Christmas movies offer only two basic plots.  The first involves someone whose beloved just passed away.  Along comes another someone or a young family missing a spouse and all are united after only a few minor glitches.  Summary of plot number one:  Completion of the family unit.

The other plot is becoming more popular.  These stories tell how the twin evils of ambition and technology conspire to rob our leading man or woman of their true selves, leaving them incapable of feeling the spirit of Christmas.  As these movies get closer to the end, cell phones are thrown away, major job promotions are turned down, snow storms create whiteouts that bring commerce to a halt long enough to force our hero/heroine to slow down and learn some Christmas lessons.  Synopsis of plot number two:  Dude, mellow out.

One favorite sub-plot involves removing these over-achievers from an urban area and plopping them down in bucolic settings where expensive wardrobes are ruined and hilarity ensues.  The movie unfolds in a charming cabin or a country house far away from the workaday grind that’s eating them alive.

There we have my thumbnail description of every movie that’s playing between now and the end of the year.  Add the every-year Christmas repeats from Charlie Brown and Rudolph and Dr. Seuss and Bing and Rosie and the gang at the Inn, and it’s a dash just to keep up.  

Of course I know what’s going to happen on TV this season, but that doesn’t mean I’ll quit watching.  Predictability is one of the joys of Christmas.  Only a Grinch would suggest otherwise.

Ó  Anita Garner   

Christmas On The Radio

I’ve spent much of my  life on the radio, playing music.  When the Christmas songs start, the radio station staff revolts.  Here’s a scene from a typical radio programming meeting, where on-air people wrestled with the Program Director,  in the good old days before a computer chose the music you heard.

PD:  So guys – and Anita – you’ll notice on your playlist that we’re rotating one Christmas song each hour starting…

ME: …Couldn’t we play more than one per hour?

EVERYONE ELSE:  No!

PD:  And then by week three of the season, we’ll play four an hour.

ME:  Couldn’t we play more than that?

EVERYONE ELSE:  Shut up!

ME:  Could I have more Christmas music on my show?

ON-AIR PERSON:  I’ll be calling in sick.

ANOTHER ON-AIR PERSON:  You can’t call in sick, because I’m scheduling all my dental work now.  I’ll be gone for a month.

The foregoing is only slightly exaggerated.  I haven’t met many radio people who like Christmas music as much as I do.  For me, Thanksgiving starts my own Christmas music marathon.  Give me a couple of songs and three lights that twinkle and I’m happy.

After years of local radio, I had the great opportunity to host a nationally syndicated show.  Something Special aired on stations around the U.S.  I was also writer and producer for this weekly four-hour radio magazine and it was more work than I could have imagined.

We began making our Christmas show while the weather said it was still summer.  Show prep (a rather unimaginative term that means exactly what it sounds like) included knowing a lot about the music we’d be playing.  We also knew many of the artists who wrote and performed the music and had been pre-recording their holiday greetings all year when they were in our studio.

For our first annual Christmas Is Something Special, we’d back-timed, to the second, all the music and scripts.  Radio people live by the second hand.  One of our pre-recorded “bits” for this show came from another broadcaster.  My family loved a song called Christmas Isn’t Christmas Without You, found on an album sent to me by a record company years before.  Researching the song for this show, I was surprised to learn it was written by a fellow radio person, Allan Hotlen.

Allan and I met when he was Program Director at (then legendary) KSFO in San Francisco, and now here he was, right around the corner at a station in Los Angeles.  I asked him to tell how he came to write this song and he sent over a perfect recorded “talk-up” to his own song.

John Schneider was the guest co-host for this Christmas extravaganza.  He’d appeared on my show and had become a friend.  Generally we featured a celebrity guest for only the first hour of each week, but this time, John would be with us for all four hours. 

John arrived with one of his ever-present dogs – maybe it was Smudge or, God rest her soul, Gracie.  Cathleen (my daughter worked on the show) baked Christmas cookies and brought a small plug-in Christmas tree. John contributed warm apple fritters he picked up at that place he knew in Burbank.  We took our positions at the microphones.  

One of our song-stories was about Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas from the movie, Meet Me In St. Louis,  about how the lyricist had written alternate words that didn’t make it into the movie.  At half-past-early in the morning, John, apple fritter in hand, sang the original lyrics and the mood was complete.  We sailed right along.  I don’t remember any re-takes.

It’s one of my favorite radio shows ever.  I’ll play it again in a few minutes, right after I plug in my desktop tree with the twinkle lights.

Ó By Anita Garner

Little Luxuries

The shopping season is a good time to adjust old habits and spend a little on ourselves.  After accumulating more years on this earth than we have left, it’s time to stop scrimping on certain purchases.

We scrimp on the darndest things, denying ourselves small pleasures.  Of course your luxuries might be my necessities and vice versa, so here are a few of my purely subjective places to consider not trying to save.

Coffee.  The best tasting coffee you ever had probably won’t break the bank.  I can’t find a cheap, really good-tasting Colombian, so I buy a brand I know will deliver.

Toilet tissue.  Maybe not one of life’s little pleasures, but something we’re in contact with often enough.  I know people who buy stuff so harsh I swear you can still see the wood chips in it.  Why?  Cushy rolls are only pennies more.

Name brands.  Buy generic when it doesn’t matter to you either way, but if you’ve got a favorite brand and you’re convinced it’s the best, get it.  Example:  Cotton swabs.  Every time I buy generic, I regret it.

Bottled iced tea.  I know it’s practically free when you make it at home, but on the road, those attractive bottles are a treat.  Okay, they’re nice at home too.

Hiring someone to do a chore.  Pick your most onerous job and pay somebody to do it.  Mowing the lawn.  Taking the stove apart and cleaning it.  Bathrooms.  Windows.  If you hate it, farm it out once in a while.

Sound system.  Get the best sound you can afford. I’m not talking about the kind where the crew comes over to your house and installs it.  If you have a home theatre, you don’t need suggestions from me about good sound.  But if you don’t, get yourself a reliable, compact system.  Speakers are small but the sound can get as big as the neighborhood will allow.  Vinyl is back and today’s sound systems allow for turntables too.  When you love music, good sound isn’t really a luxury.

Parking closer (and paying more.)  There are times and weather that make finding a parking spot the biggest hurdle of all.  Splurge on the valet or the closest parking structure.  I live in an area (San Francisco) where the joke is, if you’re visiting here and you find a parking space, consider moving here rather than moving your car.  

Another place I used to live, (and still visit monthly,) Los Angeles, is similarly parking-challenged.   I noticed for several years during my annual trips to Neiman-Marcus sales in Beverly Hills, that their valets parked only Rolls Royces and Bentleys and similar shiny exotics right outside the valet stand, the place clearly visible to all emerging customers.   That kind of display doesn’t intimidate me today.  Having enough years on us helps us appreciate, unapologetically, our old faithful conveyances for as many years as we prefer to drive them.  We can give them the full valet experience whenever the mood and the budget allow.

As we go along with this blog, I’m learning that just because I feel like posting, poetry doesn’t always emanate, but lists often do.

Ó By Anita Garner

Smile At The Cellphone.

My granddaughter, Caedan Ray, is accustomed to looking into a cellphone camera while her parent on duty sends pictures  to the parent at work. She obligingly  treats a cellphone as a camera and has learned various ways to get into the mood for a pose.  At school someone told her to “Say cheese” for the pre-school photo and she now says that once in a while.   Her mother calls her gap-toothed grin her Spongebob Smile and Caedan responds happily to any mention of his name.  

On Thanksgiving afternoon, Aunt Terri and Uncle Leslie gave her a birthday gift (her third birthday was the Monday before Thanksgiving) and she opened a package containing a baby doll with a magnetic pacifier, which we adults cooed over.  Next she pulled out a pretend cellphone.  She had a play cellphone when she was much younger, but this is her first one with a pretend camera.  It has sound effects.  Point and click and it makes a credible camera sound.

All afternoon and into the evening the cellphone/camera never left her hand.  All twenty of us smiled and posed repeatedly as if for real pictures.  Someone mentioned – perhaps it was Cousin Jeff or Cousin Greg or Cousin Pattie or Cousin Billie – all of whom had posed at least a dozen times – that cellphone must have a huuuuge memory. 

Caedan approached a group of ladies who were giggling on the couch.  There was Aunt Terri, Aunt Terri’s sister, Pam, Mommy and Cousin Tracy.

“I take you picture,” she said.

She pointed her new toy at them and asked, as we always ask her,

“Ready?”

Each of the women offered the peace sign and big smiles.  Everyone laughed.

“I take you picture again.”

Before they could get a pose ready, Caeden held up two fingers, imitated their previous pose and ordered,

“Say two!”

Until just this week, the peace sign was also the symbol for how many years she was old.  She assumed, with a toddler’s absolute self-absorption, that they were all talking about how old she used to be, before she got to be three.

As soon as we left Cousin Tracy’s house, Caedan fell asleep in her car seat and when the cellphone/camera dropped out of her hand, she woke and asked us for it.  At home, one parent carried her inside while the other got her pajamas.  She started to cry.

“My cram-ruh!  My cram-ruh is in the car!”

The day after Thanksgiving, her Abba and Mommy were both scheduled to work a long day.  I was Hammy On Duty.  This is how it went.

“Hi Hammy.  What are you doing?”

“Cooking eggs.”

“I take you picture cooking eggs.”

Click.

“Hammy, what are you doing?”

“Reading.”

“I take you picture reading.”

Click.

“I take you picture drinking coffee.”

Click.

“I take you picture changing clothes.”

“Umm….”

Click.

And so it went all day long.

Lately when her Mommy or Abba comes home from work, Caedan greets them with a dramatic scene.  As soon as she hears the car in the driveway, she throws open the door and shouts, “Mommy!”  or “Abba!” As the parent appears in view, she extends her arms wide and announces, “You came home!  You back in my life!”  No one knows where she learned this or if she even knows what it means, but it does make for a gratifying homecoming.

The night after Thanksgiving, at the end of her day with Hammy, she heard her Mommy arrive and ran to the door to perform her greeting.  Right after “You back in my life!” and at the point where her Mommy usually reacts with a big hug, Caedan stopped her Mommy from entering.  She yelled,

“Wait!” and ran to get her new cellphone/camera.  

“I take you picture coming home.”

Click.

Ó  By Anita Garner