A friend of mine once explained his people’s fine tradition of going out for dinner and a movie on Christmas Day.

(“Lights, please.”)

“There’s no traffic, there’s plenty of parking, and you can walk into nearly any restaurant and get seated immediately,” he began. “And I know this is going to come out the wrong way, but there’s a tiny, hard-to-describe pleasure in looking around the room and knowing that for just this one day, all of the Christians are somewhere else.”

(“That’s the meaning of Jewish Christmas, Charlie Brown.”)

Saturday night was a regional holiday for all New England football fans: the Patriots were 15-0 before last night’s game, with just one final victory to go before they’d end the season undefeated. Actually, it was a holiday for all New England sports fans, period. All across the Northeast, people were basking in the warm glow of enormous TV sets and heroic volumes of brewed beverages.

Me? I went out to dinner with a bunch of fellow geeks. I have this monthly thing with my friends that normally takes place on a Tuesday night. Because of the Christmas holiday, I moved it to Saturday, not realizing that it happened to be an Important Night. O’course, among our nerdly little group, that didn’t really matter.

Another thing I didn’t know was that our usual restaurant doesn’t take reservations on the weekend. Tuesday is usually a slow night for restaurants and there’s no problem phoning ahead earlier in the day and arranging a seating for ten or twelve people. So I was a bit worried about just trusting to luck but sure enough, we all showed up and we only had to stand around long enough for waiters to push three or four of the restaurant’s (many) empty tables together.

I was halfway through my bowl of chili when it finally hit me: this must be what Josh was talking about when he told me about Jewish Christmas. It really was quite lovely to know that for just this one night, nobody in the restaurant was a raging football fan.

I was tempted to make a joke about Gold Kryptonite. I bet this was one of the few situations other then a hotel restaurant at a comic-book convention where you could make that kind of a joke and draw a laugh from people at adjoining tables.

From time to time it hits me that we need a new word for something. #1 on the list as a word to describe a catastrophe that you cause by specifically and directly trying to prevent it.

Like, you’re at a party at someone’s house, and you notice that someone’s carelessly left a wine glass at the edge of the coffee table. “Someone’s going to bump into that and spill Merlot all over our hosts’ nice rug!” you think. So you reach over to move it. But your fingers brush against the side and sure enough, five minutes later you’re furiously apologizing and insisting to pay for the cleaning bill.

The second priority is for a word to describe people whom you know and enjoy and interact with online, but whom you’ve never actually met. One such person from my past died last month, and as is the way of such things, the news is just starting to percolate through the weenie wire.

“Paul Grant (Zeus)” was one of those top-of-the-marquee names on Compuserve’s Comics and Animation Forum. In 1990 as now, you quickly learn to triage the content on message boards. Some days, I had enough free time and the traffic was so light that I could read every single new message, and could write as many replies as I wanted. But it’s far more likely that I’d just follow a few threads that seemed interesting and then look for posts from folks who always had something valuable to say.

And that described Paul. I remember him as being emblematic of how different message boards used to be, back in the day. His posts were thoughtful and reasoned, more like a full article than an impulsive expression.

Many’s the time when I read his opinion about a certain artist or story and thought “Bollocks!” (I was still young enough that I wasn’t the least-bit self-consious about using words that I had picked up from The Young Ones and Hellblazer.) I’d start writing a response, but the precision of Paul’s posts sort of insisted that I be just as thoughtful in preparing my reply, so I’d examine each of his points carefully. And (goddammit) by the time I got halfway through, I’d be forced to admit that the man made a convincing argument.

(No fair: he was a lawyer.)

And that’s not to say that boards were “better” back then. But traffic was still light enough that individual posts could be carefully read, and taking extra effort in lining up your thoughts paid off. Plus, people didn’t have personal blogs and other outlets of expression, so oftentimes posting your opinion on whether the Thing could beat the Hulk in zero-gravity felt like you were preparing something for publication.

Paul and I certainly swapped a few emails back in the day, but unlike so many others whom I’ve met online, the circumstances for a face-to-face never really resolved themselves. So on that basis, it’d be presumptuous of me to call him a “friend.”

Nonetheless, when I spotted his name in a friend’s blog a couple of days ago, it brought back some v.nice memories and I was keen to find out what Paul was up to these days. Needless to say, I was pretty damned disappointed. I couldn’t claim Paul as a friend, true, but I miss him all the same.

So I don’t know what word I should use to describe my relationship with people like Paul.

There’s a different word that years ago, I enthusiastically adopted for internal use: “Anatevka.” That’s the name of the little town in “Fiddler On The Roof.” It’s a longstanding and tight-knit community but when the Czar’s men break up the village, its members all go their separate ways, likely to never meet again.

As the news of Paul’s death has spread, members of my former little village of Anatevka have been gathering together at a message board that I’d never visited before. I think I’ve only actually met two or three of the people who’ve left comments on this page. But each name conjures up pleasant memories.

I’ll get right to work on coming up with that new word. Swear to God. But it’s possible that as an ongoing solution, the simplest answer would be to just do what’s necessary to upgrade people to full Friend status, and then leave it at that.

Well, Twitter is a genius app. Genius! That’s the only word for it.

Twitter is a microblogging platform. This thing you’re reading right now works just dandy for publishing vast acregaes of doggerel that incorporate graphics, sound, and video. Twitter is designed for little 140-character blurblets. That’s text-messaging length. It’s long enough to communicate a single, efficient thought or idea, but only just. You subscribe to other users’ Twitter feeds and it’s all aggregated together on your custom page on Twitter.com.

(Check out my own Twitter feed right here.)

I thought it was a pretty dumb idea when I first tried it. And I was certainly right. If you don’t have a whole bunch of friends who happen to be using the service, then Twitter takes a hobby that’s already pretty pointless and adds Annoying to the mix.

But I tried it again about a year later. By then, lots of my pals had joined up. Lots and lots of them.

Oh, and Twitter has released an open API to their service, allowing anybody to write custom apps and widgets for receiving Tweets. There are new tools that are way better integrated into your life than a page on Twitter.com. Regardez “Twitterific,” a megaspiffy Twitter notification app from the good gremlins at Iconfactory:

Every time someone you’re following posts a new Tweet, an annoying tweety-bird sound erupts from your speakers (no sweat, you can turn that off in prefs) and the Twitterific window floats into view. And when you’re consumed by the need to tell everyone that your burps have been tasting like pencil erasers all morning, you can just click in the little text box at the bottom and presto…suddenly, it’s the world’s business.

Twitterific even locates “replies” to your Tweets and colors ‘em for your attention.

(And it’s just fifteen bucks…or free if you’re OK with seeing ads. Cool.)

But that’s not my point. My point is that Twitter is brilliant at anticipating and dealing with user complaints. Witness a recent state of affairs:

Alas, this has been happening all too frequently. Twitter is the poster child for Reason One why doing business on the Internet is by no means a straightforward, linear proposition.

Call it the “Springtime For Hitler” Syndrome: your product can become so successful so fast that it ruins you. You attract so many users that your servers can’t handle the load. Meanwhile, your company is young enough that you don’t yet have the cash or the credit line to upgrade those three Commodore 64’s you’ve got in your server room.

Result: frequent outages, skyrocketing expenses, and a big opportunity for anybody who has been observing your company’s meteoric rise and calculating just how little money it would take to do exactly what you’re doing, only with better hosting.

Normally, a series of regular, Soviet Union-style outages would be a death warrant. But it’s different with Twitter. Stop for a moment and think this through.

I’ll wait.

Do you have the answer?

Yes: the folks behind Twitter have obviously realized that when the service is down, its users don’t have access to the megaphone that they’d normally use to tell the world things like “****ing Twitter! It’s down again! Cripes, if only there were something just as good that I could immediately switch to!” So the pressure’s off.

Genius. Genius! It’s up there with the Geek Squad offering free unlimited online tech support on issues involving faulty Internet service.

One or two “for the record”s: there are indeed some microblogging alternatives, led by Jaiku. But Jaiku takes something simple and straightforward and pretty and makes it complicated and ugly, like when sex with a co-worker in a supply room during the office Christmas party turns into a real relationship.

And although I find Twitter’s frequent outages to be pretty damned annoying, they’re not so frequent that I’m tempted to give up.

O Holy Night

Donna Summer

Christmas Spirit

Genre: Vocal

Blah, Blah, Blah: Hands-down my favorite Christmas song. If I’m out and about and carols are in the air and a version of “O Holy Night” that I haven’t heard before comes on, I put my audio subprocessors in full spread-spectrum capture mode because I’m sort of eager to find a version that’s even better than my favorite version.

Again I come back to the observation that you don’t need to be religious to be affected by religious music. If you can listen to Bach’s Mass in B-Minor and not be moved, then you definitely need to have a fresh set of batteries installed somewhere because somethin’ ain’t workin’ right. Great music is created and performed by people who truly believe in what they’re doing, who feel as though this thing they’re creating is important; people who are very, very highly motivated to not screw this up.

“O Holy Night” is unusually potent because it’s such an effective piece of theater. It starts off quietly, cautiously. Then the singer appreciates the scale of what he or she’s talking about, and releases his or her joy. And check out the lyrics:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Any writer who penned those lines would have just cause to put the pen back in its holder, knock off work early, and go out for waffles. “The rejoicing of a weary world.” Crimeny. If you’re a writer and you don’t aspire to that kind of brilliance, then you need to sell your MacBook and get a job loading trucks at UPS.

Why I Bought It In The First Place: I’m not 100% convinced that this is my favorite version of “O Holy Night.” I think that honor goes to a live concert by operatic Iron Chef Kiri Te Kanawa. I had it on laserdisc and if that concert has ever made it to CD, I can’t find it. Can’t even find it on DVD.

I certainly couldn’t find a recording on iTunes. And so, the hunt for another Favorite was on.

It’s a tall order. I there are two things you can do to this song that call for an immediate technical foul and ejection. Most egregious is when the artist doesn’t trust the song to succeed on its own merits, and elects to “improve” it.

I mean, I’m not an expert on music. All the same, I promise you that the previous 140 years’ worth of performances were not just the build-up to your little slice of perfection known as “O Holy Lambada Night Mas Caliente!”

The second immediate DQ is when the singer carries the lyrics like an egg from start to finish. Sir or madam: read the lyrics again. World filled with sin. Jesus is born, the entire world is healed and rejoices. Your reaction to this should really be logarithmically greater than (say) the indifferent happiness you experience when you look under the cap of the Coke you’ve just cracked open and discover that you’ve won a free 20-ounce bottle with your next purchase.

This Donna Summer version is damned close to the ideal. Women who grew up singing gospel can always be counted on. In fact, I encourage you to hire gospel singers for any open positions within your corporations. A woman who can sing like this will almost certainly know what to do when a snowed-in airport means that FedEx won’t be able to deliver the company’s trade show booth to Las Vegas on time.

And for all my blathering about the need to play the song straight, the lady really opens it up after the first verse. That’s fine. She took care of the compulsories straight away and then she proceeded straight on to the Freestyle portion of the competition. Now here is a woman who feels as though her Original Sin has been washed away quite effectively.

So: congratulations, Ms. Summer. Well-done.

Now it’s time for me to complain about Lakeshore Records. I don’t know who at that organization has been put in charge of selecting content for the iTunes Store, but I’m reasonably sure that he or she was visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. I’m also sure that he told the whole trio to go **** themselves and then gave them intentionally-incorrect directions back to the interstate.

For Lakeshore Records is the publisher of the soundtrack to a fairly wretched recent holiday movie by the name of “Deck The Halls.” This film is in that major genre where comic actors past their peak of box-office power play hapless fathers who cling helplessly to wildly out-of-control and improbable vehicles.

Enough said about that. But the soundtrack has at least one thing going for it: “O Holy Night” as sung by Ms. Kristen Chenoweth. What a voice! Wikipedia tells me that she has a BA in musical theater and a Master’s in opera. Clearly, this is a woman who’s prepared to bring a gun to a knife fight. Each of her few tracks on the iTunes Store leaves absolutely no question that Ms. Chenoweth truly performs a song instead of merely singing it.

The thirty seconds’ worth of “O Holy Night” that I’d heard left me convinced that this version could be a world-beater.

But now we come back to the aforementioned dirty stinking bastards at Lakeshore Records. The “Deck The Halls” soundtrack is only available as an entire album. You can’t just snag the Chenoweth track for 99 cents. No no no.

I’m sure it’s worth it. Unfortunately for the ADSB @ LR, they’ve had the bad luck of selling this album in 2007, and not 1987.

In 1987? Sure: I might have bought a whole CD for one specific track. Back then, buying an album sometimes felt like opening a little Christmas present. You knew you were getting the hit single and you hoped that there’d be a few cheery little surprises hidden among the discs 10 or 12 other tracks.

Alas, I’ve just checked on the Internet and it turns out that as of today, it is indeed 2007. I do still buy actual CDs, but only after vetting all of its tracks on iTunes and determining that the thing’s so damned awesome that I must have it in the best non-compressed non-DRM’ed format.

Today, buying 12 tracks that I know I don’t want in order to get just the one I actually need seems offensively retro. I wouldn’t walk through downtown wearing a “Frankie Say RELAX” tee shirt. For similar sensible reasons, I’m willing to wait until Ms. Chenoweth inevitably comes out with a Christmas album.

In the meantime, the soundtrack has a MySpace page. You can listen to the whole track there.

Some of you might even choose to do something clever but morally dodgy.

I’m just sayin’.

Oh, and one final note to the aforementioned dirty stinking bastards at Lakeshore Records: even if it were1987, I still wouldn’t have bought this album. In 1987, I was an impoverished student and the only way to get me to buy a $15 CD would be if there were $20 worth of Subway coupons tucked inside.

The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire)

Tony Bennett

Snowfall – The Tony Bennett Christmas Album

Genre: Holiday

Blah, Blah, Blah: Honestly, I think the only thing you need to say when linking to a Tony Bennett song is “Ladies and gentlemen…Mister Tony Bennett.”

This is my second-most-favorite Christmas song, sung by my single most favorite singer. I’m absolutely not an atheist, but I’m not religious either. Though I certainly appreciate and enjoy the songs that celebrate the birth of Jesus, I can’t really relate to them on the same level as someone who Believes. Primarily I like them because a Believer has sung them with considerable passion and joy.

But The Christmas Song pushes my buttons. What I like most about Christmas are the huge collection of positive sense-memories I’ve acquired over the past 219 years, plus the fact that everyone seems to declare a cease-fire for a couple of weeks. No matter what your faith (or non-faith) we all sort of agree not to act like d***s for this narrow window.

And that’s what this song is all about. It offers a cascade of sights and sounds and smells that digs up all kinds of treasures from that part of your brain where your deep-mojo happy thoughts are stored. And it ends with the phrase “Although it’s been said, many times, many ways: Merry Christmas to you.” Which sums it up for me: it’s a basic sentiment that people are going out of their way to wish people well.

Incidentally, my pal Mark Evanier has a terrific story about the most incredible performance of this song he’s ever witnessed. Read it. Lots of happy chemicals will be dumped into your bloodstream.

Why I Bought It In The First Place: I refer you to the words “Tony Bennett” prominently displayed among the track info.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Whitney Houston

A Very Special Christmas, Vol. 1

Genre: Holiday

Blah, Blah, Blah: What a voice. Whitney Houston shouldn’t have to answer for all the female singers who came after her, who did nothing more than caricature her style, and who helped to make both the Billboard Top 100 and “American Idol” into colossal disgraces for which Humanity shall one day be forced to answer.

Gospel has a long history of feeding pop music but I’m not sure if anyone ever wielded gospel tools so skillfully, with so much precision. The difference that elevates a singer to a vocalist is the ability to make shrewd and deliberate choices about how a lyric should be delivered. Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera tend to just fill empty spaces with more notes. Whitney Houston appreciates that some words and passages are more effective when there’s some air around them.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” is a perfect match for her style, too. Maybe you’re a Christian, maybe you aren’t; maybe you’re one of those Christians who is grateful to Jesus Christ each and every day, maybe you just go to church on Christmas and Easter and generally agree that JC said lots of sensible things. But gospel music is filled with fire and passion because it’s generally performed by people who believe, dammit. And when a singer truly believes in the music they’re making (be it Johnny Cash singing “Why Me, Lord?” or Janis Joplin singing “Ball And Chain”) good things happen.

This tune isn’t technically gospel, but it gets to the heart of what a true Believer focuses on about Christmas.

Why I Bought It In The First Place: I heard it in the mall way too many times. I’ve always liked Whitney Houston’s voice but never bought any of her music before. Seemed like the right time.

Though the writer’s strike has zorched two of my favorite holiday traditions, I can still get my annual fix through the miracle of YouTube…and share this tradition with all of you.

Beloved Holiday Tradition #1: Paul Shaffer’s annual impression of Cher singing “O Holy Night” on the Sonny & Cher Show:

Beloved Holiday Tradition #2: Darlene Love singing “Christmas Baby, Please Come Home”:

Merry Christmas, everybody!

White Christmas (1947 Single Version)

Bing Crosby

20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of Bing Crosby

Genre: Vocal

Blah, Blah, Blah: Not much to this song, is there?

It’s charming, it’s been flashed into the cultural NVRAM, and even if we wanted to kill it, “White Christmas” has corrosive acid for blood so taking it out once and for all would probably create more problems than it solved. That said, if Irving Berlin hadn’t written “White Christmas” I’m fairly sure that it would have been written eventually. Possibly by a kid poking listlessly at a Casio keyboard in a midwestern Wal*Mart.

Also problematic: it reminds me that we live in an imperfect world.

In a perfect world, “Holiday Inn” would have become a familiar and cherished holiday TV staple. Lots of nice songs and it features both Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Instead, the best song from that musical inspired a musical of its own: “White Christmas,” which is probably one of the most baffling “classic” movies in my personal database.

The thing makes no sense. Which normally isn’t a problem, but I’m telling you that it makes no sense even compared with other musicals. The last time I sat on my sofa and watched a plot that was this random, with characters who were this poorly-motivated and brought to life this poorly, I had a game controller in my hands.

The chunk of road salt that acts as the cherry on this sundae of beach mud is the fact that it’s probably the ugliest musical ever made, outside of the Iron Curtain. There are too many examples to count — plus, c’mon man, it’s Christmas; don’t make me think about such things — but I’ll single out the desperately monochromatic art direction. This is probably the only movie shot in color that needs digital colorization.

Seriously. The next time it comes on, pay close attention to the color palette. It’s as though the guy who designed the sets did it during breakfast at Denny’s, and he decided to just use the four-pack of crayons that they give kids to color with.

There’s a (really dumb) reason why, though: “White Christmas” doesn’t just recycle one of the best songs of “Holiday Inn”…it also re-uses the same sets. And that movie was shot in black-and-white which means: gray walls, white trim, black floors…the whole movie’s a singing, dancing monument to Prozac.

I will wind up this conversation about “White Christmas” by mentioning that Vera Allen (the Haynes Sister who is not Rosemary Clooney) is painful to watch. In 1948’s “Words And Music,” she was a vivacious blonde Betty Page, dancing “Slaughter On 10th Avenue” with Gene Kelly. By 1954, she was battling anorexia. In fact, the disorder was taking such a visible toll that her entire wardrobe had to be designed with extremely high collars, to cover up her neck.

Well, Merry Christmas, dammit. It’s still an awesome song. More comments on Bing Crosby coming later.

Why I Bought It In The First Place: Another one of those deals where I bought it for the Advent Calendar and wound up listening to it a lot. Don’t just trust the mall sound system to deliver your holiday classics, friends.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Judy Garland

20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: Season’s Greetings (Box Set)

Genre: Holiday

Blah, Blah, Blah: There are Christmas songs, and then there are Christmas recordings. “Frosty The Snowman” is a Christmas song. Everyone’s recorded it and some of these tracks are pretty fab, but just like cheese pizza, one is as good as another, given a certain minimal standard of quality.

“Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is a Christmas recording. It’s sung by Judy Garland. No negotiation on that point. It’s not as though the alternatives are bad. Great gravy, iTunes can sell you versions recorded by Sinatra, Bennett, and Ella Fitzgerald.

No matter who the singer is and no matter how well the they sing the song, though, your brain still substitutes the Judy Garland vocals for whatever you’re actually hearing.

(All right: with Ella Fitzgerald, maybe you hear it as a duet.)

Why I Bought It In The First Place: Bought it for the Advent Calendar. There seems to be very little need to actually buy a track like this. If you can spur yourself to leave the house a few times between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, you’ll hear it plenty of times.

But when it’s in your library and you finally get a chance to listen to it at your own pace and on your own terms, you stop taking it for granted.

Greetings from a sumptuous suite here at the luxurious Le Parker Meridien in New York. The closet has a door on it, making it technically a second room, so I’m just going to go ahead and call this (lovely) single a suite.

I’m pretty damned bushed. I didn’t get to bed until 6 or so. My train was due to leave at 9:29 and I woke up at (oops) 8:49. Fortunately, I packed everything the night before…and this is Amtrak. I board at a station that’s almost within walking distance and I can carry my bags straight from the car and onto the train.

So while I would have liked to have done some fancy big-city things like “showering” before leaving the house, I managed to knock the snow off my car and deliver myself to the station with plenty of time to spare.

I’ve been enjoying the new Diana Damrau CD so much that I Amazoned that DVD of “The Magic Flute.” It arrived yesterday, just in time for in-train viewing. And it turns out that this video is the perfect length for the trip…or very nearly so. IAmtrak can get you from the Boston burbs to Penn Station in 3 hours 15 minutes, and the DVD runs for 2 and 45. Perfect. But I got up and bought myself a breakfast sandwich in the club car, and I had to pack things up well before I arrived in New York.

So as I got inside the Town Car that CBS had sent for me, I was just a bit impatient to get to my hotel. The sooner I checked into my room, the sooner I could find out how the opera ending.

Yes, of course: I’ve read the libretto and I’ve even seen this DVD once before, when I checked it out of my local library a few years ago. But damn, Royal Opera production really is just that good.

I also manfully concede that after a couple of weeks of listening to her new CD and a few hours of watching this DVD I am totally crushing on Diana Damrau.

How badly? Well, no need to exaggerate, here. It’s not like I’m thinking about getting something tattooed.

But if I learned that Ms. Damrau was going to be a guest on the show tomorrow and there was therefore an excellent chance that I’d meet her in the green room, I’d be spending most of this evening rehearsing ways to not look like a complete ass. I think the goal wouldn’t so much be to cadge a date out of her so much as to cautiously defend the 1 in 1000 chance that a date with this woman could ever happen. A .1 percent chance isn’t much, but it’s way better than one in a million and that’s a start.

If I saw her using an iPhone, however, I think I’d be correct to take the initiative. I’d strike up a conversation and offer her a copy of my new book.

That’s just good marketing.

Dinner tonight with Shawn and Lesa King, preceded (I hope) by a trip to Midtown Comics to buy the funnybooks which I failed to procure on Wednesday or Thursday, owing to the slings and arrows of outrageous workload. Then early to bed and early to rise.

(They’re just props for tomorrow’s segment, Ms. Damrau. No, I’m not one of those losers who still reads comics No no no. Unless you dig guys like that, in which case: shall we discuss whether the Thing could beat the Hulk in zero gravity, over a nightcap?)

This is the last Saturday before Christmas so I’ve packed a garishly cheerful ensemble of a black sport coat over a black dress shirt. And I almost took my black dress slacks, before I realized that if I wore an all-black ensemble at the studio I’d better be prepared to be addressed as “Reverend” by a great many people. At minimum, I’d have to prepare an explanation in advance.

(“Oh, the outfit. Well, I’m playing the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in a community production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ right after the show.”)

Christmas Time Is Here (Vocal Version)

Vince Guaraldi Trio

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Genre: Holiday

Blah, Blah, Blah: I suppose that on some purist level, your opinion of a piece of music should be based on the track and nothing but the track.

Fine, Poindexter: I acknowledge that you’re a nobler and purer music critic than I. But any of the two or three signature songs from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” puts a big honkin’ smile on my face that lasts long after the music ends.

A song that hooks into your most pleasant memories of childhood has some powerful mojo behind it. This song shows up on Shuffle Play and immediately I hear that slappy, “snare drum falling down a flight of metal stairs” drum riff and I see the word “SPECIAL” whirling in front of a black background. For the nth time in my lifetime, I wonder just what the hell “Dolly Madison Snack Cakes” were, and if there were anything like the fine Twinkies and Suzy-Q’s of the Hostess Corporation.

If “Christmastime Is Here” comes up on my iPod while I’m talking my constitutional, it’s all I can do to not try to ape the sawtooth-like walk of Charlie Brown and Linus. I’ve never heard it while skating, but I’m guessing that I’d start moving in those tight, lazy circles of the kids from the opening scenes.

I haven’t been skating in years. In fact, the last time I was on skates it was at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, aka Snoopy’s Home Ice in Santa Rosa, California. This is the ice rink next to Charles Schulz’ studio, which he built and operated (at a violent monthly loss) out of his own pocket, just so that the community would have an place to skate.

(And so that Schulz himself would have a place to play hockey with his friends after leaving his studio for the day.)

But apart from these technically irrelevant features, this recording features the immeasurable charm of kids singing like kids. Sometimes I think the best way to destroy a kid’s potential career as a singer is to appreciate that he or she (come on: “she”) sings well. They start teaching her to sing like the current flavor of the month instead of letting her grow into her voice and her talents.

Why I Bought It In The First Place: Another one of those albums that I’ve bought two or three times, on cassette and then CD.

And now, I’ve bought it on iTunes…just so that I’d have the album art for this very feature. I do and I do and I do for you kids…

Wowwww. I’ve been using iTunes since it was called SoundJam and yet I’ve never seen an error message like this before:

I’m not saying that this error got me all upset or anything. But c’mon, Apple: is this a rational, reasonable, and most importantly a proportionate response? Let’s consider the actual problem here: when Joe Jackson’s “Happy Loving Couples” comes up on Shuffle Play, iTunes will be unable to show me a black and white photo of pointy shoes.

Honestly. You see this kind of stark, in-your-face error mode and you’re steeling your courage for the next sentence coming after it. Surely it’s something on the level of

“Mr. Jobs hates you and your work so much that he not only doesn’t want you to write about his products any more…he also doesn’t think you deserve to use them, either.

or

“iTunes will show you your album covers again after you finally admit that your interest in Star Trek/Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman slashfic goes beyond simple irony.”

or even

“…and now the zombified remains of the wicked shall rise from their unmarked graves, and feast upon the hearts of the righteous.”

If I were in charge of iTunes, I would have had the app simply drop a subtle red “X” over the Cover Flow area. I’m just not sure I understand why Apple would want to use an error display that clearly and definitively announces to all those present that This Piece Of Apple Software Has ****ed Something Up Mightily.

Do they think that this is, like totally the most awesome problem ever?

The chief reason why I don’t own a cat? Well, I travel a lot and I live alone. I’d either have to keep fobbing little Tiddles off on other people, or just arrange for a vermin infestation so the cat can cheerfully fend for itself for a week or two.

Lower down on the list, though, there’s the fact that I work with all kinds of technology on a daily basis. And all too often, I have a day that’s so positively wretched that (**** it)…I might as well go out and watch an ice show just to make the day perfect.

Suffice to say that between midnight last night and three minutes ago when I sat down to write this, any cats I had in the house would have been kicked. I mean, the old saying has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it? Is kicking a cat one of those folk remedies that seems silly but which actually has some sort of proven therapeutic value?

Is there something about punting little Tiddles all the way into the next yard that releases endorphins or dopamine or something? Is PETA preventing us benefiting from the therapeutic breakthrough of a lifetime?

I wouldn’t put it past ‘em. They’re a bunch of stinkers. Perhaps punting PETA people would prove to be positive?

And this is why I don’t have a cat. When I’m operating on 3 hours of sleep with much more work to get through before I can take a break, this sort of stuff makes some small sense.

Santa Claus, Santa Claus

James Brown

James Brown’s Funky Christmas

Genre: Holiday

Blah, Blah, Blah: If I were a middle-school music teacher, I’d quickly become a local treasure and a national legend. Or else I’d be invited to take the whole rest of the my contract off at full pay, starting immediately. I can’t imagine any sort of a middle ground there at all.

The principal would instruct me on my duties, the very first day. “And of course, you’ll be taking care of our annual Holiday Choral Concert,” she’d say. “Specific Christmas themes are kind of a touchy subject, so try to keep your song selections in the ’sleigh bells’ and ‘that special time of year’ sort of vein.”

“Is Santa Claus okay?”

“Borderline. Usually Santa songs mention Christmas.”

“So: Santa yes, Christmas no?”

“Right.”

“No sweat. I know just the number.”

And that would be my priority from September through December. Locate one kid — just one kid — who can do a perfectly adequate James Brown. If need be, I’d even contact the local musician’s union to see if they had any soul singers under 4′6″ whom I could hide behind a Santa beard or something.

Because this would be the greatest middle-school holiday chorale of all time.

Yes, James Brown recorded Christmas albums, just like everybody else. So don’t get all sniffy when you’re in Barnes & Noble and see “The Cast Of ‘Lost’ Sings For A Very Special Season” on CD.

Some of these tunes are pretty peppy, as you can imagine. But clearly, “Santa Claus, Santa Claus” is the song you play when you’re decorating the tree with garlands of cigarette butts and an upside down bottle of Night Train for an angel. Sample lyrics:

It seems I waited
A little too long
What I once had
I found out it’s all gone

I ain’t got nobody

Santa Claus! Santa Claus!
You’re my last hope!
(HELLLLLLLLLP-meh! PLEASE!)
Don’t let me suffer so!

You’ve got the one kid who’s a terrific singer, and he’s doing all of the heavy lifting out front. The rest of the kids are beghind him up on risers, swaying left and right, singing in response as needed.

And every middle-school choir has that one kid who can’t even handle banging two red sticks together. No need to leave him out…I’d put that little boy on Cape duty.

“Remember, Jordan: Casey is going to be on his knees for a lot of this song but don’t come out until he collapses completely. And then what do you do…?”

“I come out, I throw the cape over his shoulders…and then I walk Casey offstage.”

“And when he spins out of the cape and runs back to the microphone?”

“I take three steps towards him, stop, then I fold the cape over my arm and walk off the stage, glancing at Casey and shaking my head mournfully.”

“Good lad.”

Admittedly, this show would be more about entertaining myself rather than entertaining the audience or even just giving the kids an educational experience.

Why I Bought It In The First Place: I started feeling a little guilty about this iTunes Advent Calendar having so few actual holiday songs. “Thank You Very Much” barely qualifies. When I added “Living In Stereo,” I found myself almost writing “…And there are sleighbells in this, so technically, it’s a holiday song.”

So here you go. I give you a man at the very end of his tether, in his moment of most desperate physical and spiritual need, pleading to an advertising mascot of the Coca-Cola Company for help instead of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

(Merry damned Christmas.)

I suppose this actually makes James Brown look like a uniquely kind and thoughtful individual. I’m sure that Jesus would normally be the go-to guy in a case like this. But it’s pretty rude and insensitive to hit a guy up for such a big favor so close to his birthday.

It’s 1988. After keeping his show dark for several months to honor the WGA strike, Johnny Carson went back on the air. David Letterman soon followed suit, taping new episodes of “Late Night” without any assistance from his writing staff.

The show came back with a brand-new recurring feature: “Hal Gurnee’s Network Time-Killers,” a series of weeklong stunts whose sole purpose was to fill the time between the monologue and the first guest, space that ordinarily would have been taken up by scripted material.

One night, Dave was standing on a low platform while a slight man pinned pieces of irregular cloth around him and made fussy little chalk marks. He was measuring and fitting Dave for a custom-tailored suit. The process would be conducted in installments over the course of the entire week.

Dave filled the time by making small talk with the tailor. Meanwhile, Paul served his usual function during such things: he played quiet background music as the fitting continued.

Suddenly, Dave interrupted the tailor in mid-sentence and turned towards the bandstand.

“Paul?” he said. “Why exactly are you playing ‘House Of The Rising Sun’?”

Paul stopped playing and and stepped up to his microphone stand. “My father was a tailor/He sewed my new bluejeans!” he explained. The tone of his voice was friendly but it nonetheless carried an undertone of “Like, duh!”

Men from the government armed with beeping aluminum boxes instantly swarmed the set and waved large paddle-like sensors over the entire scene and all of its players. It took them three weeks to crunch the numbers, but it confirmed what the home audience already knew: it was one of the most awesome moments in Letterman history.

So NBC has announced that Conan and Leno will be back on the air right after New Year’s, sans writers. Letterman is the only one of the three who owns his own show, so he’s looking to cut a separate deal with the Writers’ Guild that will allow “Late Show” to return with its full creative staff while the strike continues.

I’m kind of disappointed, and for purely selfish reasons: I’d really like to see Dave stall for time on a regular basis again.

It’s exciting to see huge blocks of expensive network TV being made up on the spot. A lack of spontaneity has really drained the color from most of television. Crimeny, everything has to be laid out and accounted for, down to the very second. That’s true of every show (including Dave’s) but it’s also one of the main reasons why I don’t watch Leno. It seems like there’s producer always standing just off-camera, angrily tapping a clipboard and muttering “We don’t have TIME to be funny…we have to get through all of these JOKES!!!”

Conan without writers will probably be pretty interesting, in the same way that Letterman was in 1988. He isn’t as talented as Dave, and I don’t think he has the same sort of bench strength behind him as Dave has in Paul, the band, and the rest of the production staff. But he can think on his feet. He’ll do fine.

Leno without writers will be two or three really, really awkward shows that will cause 7 out of 9 TV critics to mention The Chevy Chase show in their reviews. These shows will be immediately followed by a new policy in which Jay brings his first guest on immediately after his (greatly truncated) monologue.