It’s incredible to believe that the creators of this song are nowhere to be found. Talk about a rare find.

First, listen to the song, then read the story. Both are fascinating. And the song itself is absolutely swoon-inducing. And if you haven’t seen it yet, see Blue Valentine. It was truly one of the best films and two of the best performances of 2010.

Evening Melancholy now has a page on YouTube. Currently, we have only posted two videos, but we will add more as time allows. The one rule applied to this page is that we do not want to create videos for particular versions of songs that already exist on YouTube. For instance, one of the first videos we created was Laura by Charlie Parker. Obviously, there are a few different versions of the song on the website already. However, we could not find the live Birdland session with Symphony Sid’s introduction. The hope and desire is for Evening Melancholy to illuminate, not compete with the other great videos that already exist. After all, jazz is a familial art form.

Also, YouTube is to be seen as well as heard, so we will try to avoid the laziness of posting a song with just one static picture. A video should attempt to be as fluid and intriguing as the song itself. The key word here is “attempt”. We are new to this, so it’s hit and miss.

Here is the Charlie Parker video we created:

When you come across a song (or songs) that makes you smile on the inside.

Snatched this from The Daily Beast website.

A new edition of Mark Twain’s classic novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will censor the “n” word by replacing it with the word “slave.” The revision was spearheaded by Twain scholar Alan Gribben who, along with publisher NewSouth Books, plans to release the book in a single volume along with companion piece The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, without the controversial language since the novel has been slowly disappearing from grade school curricula across the country due to the repeated use of the “n” word. “This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.” The decision has left people strongly divided, with purists of the novel against the censorship. The racial slur appears a total of 219 times in the book.

You start rewriting history, you’re traveling down a slippery slope. Art, any form of art, should never be modified to fit the mores of the present day.

This will be Nashville’s first “real” White Christmas since 1993. I remember that ‘93 Christmas because I was twenty-one years old and working at a movie theater. I had to work Christmas evening and it took me forever to drive from my grandmother’s house twenty miles to the theater. The snow was so thick, it took all I had in me to focus on the searing, red taillights of the vehicle in front of me to use as a guide through the storm. It sucked. But man, was it beautiful.

I don’t want to have a pity party or anything, but it stinks when half your family is on one side of the country, your girlfriend is on another and you have no one to spend Christmas Eve with. A nice, hot cup of cocoa. A crackling, warm fire. Bah humbug.

Oh well. There’s always alcohol.

The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing
But I can weather the storm!
What do I care how much it may storm?
I’ve got my buzz to keep me warm.

Paraphrasing.

Thanks, Irving Berlin!