A couple of weeks ago, at the bookstore, while looking for a birthday present for Dan, I realized that the store was playing Christmas music. Thanksgiving, which seems to be the unofficial earliest date possible that has been deemed safe to play Christmas music without customer rioting, was still six days in the future, but that wasn't what really surprised me.
What surprised me was the song.
They were playing one of my favorites, Fairytale of New York, originally by The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl. It was surprising because it's a bawdy song about spending Christmas in the drunk tank in NYC. Part of the song is sung between two characters who, while fighting each other, use some pretty nasty language. I waited, listening while I shopped, and when they got to the verse with the naughty words, I waited for them to be sung out over the bookstore...
I waited for it... and... they'd been replaced with non-naughty words that sort of rhymed with the originals.
Dammit.
They'd trashed the song.
When I caught up with Dan and the Supercat, I mentioned it to him, and he's heard it, too, noticing the clean version they'd played. I think we were both a bit miffed: someone had taken a perfectly indecent Pogues song and completely ruined it by tidying it up, ridding it of part of what made it good to start with. They aren't words I use in everyday conversation; they aren't nice or polite words at all - rather nasty, in fact. But they convey the mood of the besotted characters, so they belong in the song.
Worst of all, it was a bookstore. Grrrrrr. They deal in ideas, but for whatever reason, someone decided that we couldn't handle ideas, and scrubbed the song clean for us.
Phooey.
A teeny tiny itsy bitsy part of me thinks I should be happy that they played the song at all, but the bigger part of me thinks it should be played as written, as the composer intended, or not at all.
If it doesn't belong in a retail atmosphere (and it may not - I'm not sure it's something I want my small child to hear), don't play it at all. I can see plenty of good reasons not to play it - it's a song about drinking and has foul language; and that might have a deleterious effect on holiday shoppers. That makes perfect sense.
What doesn't make sense is playing a song known to have naughty words and an adult theme, then editing it to remove the parts that make the song unique.
Oddly, this has come up before, almost a year ago, when BBC Radio 1 played a censored version last Christmas(^), after years of playing the "regular" version. They said they were censoring it to "avoid offence". The scrubbed version lasted less than a day, Kirsty MacColl's mother (KM died as the result of a terrible accident a few years ago), and zillions of fans complained.
Anyway, here it is in all its uncensored glory:
The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl
At around the same time the BBC was censoring the Pogues last year, the fine folks who bring us The Venture Brothers(^) (probably my favorite TV show) released their annual holiday song to the world.
The Venture Brothers, is a definitely-not-for-children (mostly due to cartoon violence and adult situations) animated series on Adult Swim(^), what the Cartoon Network turns into late at night. It follows the adventures of a scientist (Dr. Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture), his bodyguard (Brock Sampson) and the doctor's two sons (Hank and Dean Venture) as they fight villainy, mostly found in the form of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, sort of a union for bad guys (with health/dental insurance and everything).
If it looks and sounds a lot like Jonny Quest, it's almost certainly no coincidence, The Venture Brothers seems to try to balance on the thin line between parody and an earnest homage to Jonny Quest.
Here's a clip from The Venture Brothers, with their arch enemies, The Monarch, and his wife, Dr. Girlfriend. Dr. Girlfriend is the one with the reallylow voice. And yeah, she's a she.
So, as I said, every year around the holidays (since 2004, anyway), The Venture Brothers creators have released a Christmas song on their website. They haven't released one for this year yet, but I went looking yesterday, and found the songs from the previous four years(^).
The songs thus far have been:
The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend singing the Bing Crosby-David Bowie classic Peace On Earth/The Little Drummer Boy (2004)
The Monarch and Henchmen 21 & 24 singing Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas (2005)
Venture Aid (2006)
And, from 2007:
The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend singing (you guessed it) Fairytale of New York. Since it was released around the time of the BBC controversy, I wonder if it was released in response to the censorship?
Regardless of why, it makes me happy to know that someone else gets it - in fact, that a lot of people get it. Not everything is for everyone at all times - some people may be offended, or the material may be inappropriate. But destroying original work is not the answer.
I have been so busy the last few weeks. My darling husband's birthday. My first gluten-free Thanksgiving. A dental appointment, followed by another dental appointment (which was the last one, thankfully - at least till next time). A bunch of family birthdays. All of the things that make life good (minus the dentist).
So, let's see: Thanksgiving was wonderful. One of the nicest things about Thanksgiving, in fact one of the nicest things, period, ever, was that we went to dinner at the home of some dear friends and almost everything was GF. How awesome is that? The gravy was made with corn starch, the meats were GF, the salad was GF, the green pistachio fluffy stuff was GF (how I love that stuff), and they even purchased crackers that were gluten free! And, added bonus: I'd never had or even seen the brand before, but they were so good I went out the weekend after Thanksgiving and purchased two huge boxes.
But back to dinner: I was deeply touched that our friends went to so much trouble on my account, and I will never forget their kindness.
I wish I had photos to share, but we had such a good time talking and eating and having fun that my camera stayed in my handbag.
I brought my own stuffing, which my husband made, using home-baked GF bread. It was (at best) only meh; he followed the recipe I'd found, but it was too... something. The spices were wrong, I found it too sage-y. He did an excellent job, so no complaints there. I chose the wrong recipe, which I won't mention here because it came from another blogger's site. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it - I am just not a sage person, and haven't been since I participated in sausage making when I was a kid. Yuck. Phooey. We will try again, of course. We both love stuffing, and it was really, really close.
I happily ate it anyway, of course, because the gravy was soooo perfect. Even a sage overdose couldn't subtract from the joy of eating such wonderful holiday food with friends and loved ones. The ham and turkey were incredible. The candied sweet potatoes were sublime, baked in brown sugar syrup and then topped with marshmallows in the last few minutes to give them a soft/crunchy/toasted top.
I didn't have pie, because I forgot to bring any. I said I would bring some. I planned on it, but promptly forgot it in the do-you-have-the-diaper-bag-have-you-walked-the-dog-where-are-my-shoes frenzy to get out the door and to their house on time. I actually baked a really nice pumpkin pie, and left it at home.
When I baked my first post-gluten pumpkin pie, I experimented with a cookie crumb crust using Mi-Del gluten-free ginger snaps(^). Substituting the ginger snaps for the graham cracker-based recipe really wasn't right, though and the crust turned out ok, but a bit too buttery. I'll do it again, but with less butter.
The pie was awesome, though, because the filling was incredible. Here is my recipe:
Pumpkin Pie
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk (I use fat-free) 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon salt (half the time I forget the salt, and it's fine).
1). Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. 2). Mix everything together 3). Pour it into the crust 4). Bake for 15 minutes. 5). Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F 6). Bake 35 to 40 minutes longer or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. 7) Cool. 8). Serve with whipped cream. 9). Refrigerate leftovers.
So basically your back-of-the-can/box/jar pumpkin pie recipe, right?
Not really. That's the recipe I start with, but it is never the one I end up making. I added 1/4 cup of finely chopped candied ginger (shades of James Beard's famous recipe). And I double all of the spices (at least) and add ground cloves (about 1/2 teaspoon).
It was delicious. It was spicy. It was forgotten. But I happily "made-do" with Watergate Salad.
Watergate Salad reminds me of family reunions and potlucks. Easter at my grandmother's house. According to Wikipedia(^), it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the famous Watergate complex of Nixon fame, so that's a puzzler. Here's a pretty standard recipe. If it's important to you, it's easy to find pudding mix, marshmallows and whipped topping that are gluten-free.
Watergate Salad
1 (3.4 ounce) package instant pistachio pudding mix 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple, with juice 1 cup miniature marshmallows 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/2 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
1). Mix everything except the whipped topping together in a bowl. The pudding mix will make everything else a creepy green color. Ignore this. 2). Once everything is well-mixed, gently fold in the whipped topping. 3). Refrigerate. 4). Use sugar-free pudding mix and reduced-sugar whipped topping if you'd like. 5). Serve and hear everyone happily exclaim, "Oooooh! The green stuff!"
So, that's what I've been up to. That and making tutus, sewing dolls, working on various other craft projects, making an advent calendar, getting my Christmas tree up, and so on.
