For all who may be interested, once again this year Evening Melancholy will be playing classic vocal and jazz Christmas tunes from 7 PM Eastern time Christmas Eve until 7 PM Eastern Christmas Day. If you have any holiday requests, please let us know.

I find that recently I have been trying more and more to keep friends in my life who seem to not really need my friendship . I feel slighted if I find them walking away from me, and I have never been like that before. I was always the “Oh, well. Screw ‘em” guy. Now I feel like a failure if people decide to move on. That’s what friendships are, though. Some last a while, some…not so much.

I’ve been working on my New Year’s resolutions since the days of 2007 are getting short. Here is what I have come up with so far:

1) Be willing to let go of the things and people that are not meant to be in your life

2) Don’t waste your time loving the wrong people. Sounds a lot like number one, but it isn’t.

3) Get your passport.

4) Use passport mentioned above to visit the places you promised yourself you would visit in 2008

5) Finish the screenplay you’ve been promising yourself you would finish by May. (the first draft anyway)

6) Continue enjoying life. Don’t embrace pessimism.

7) Vote!!!

Seduce and wed Rev Run’s daughter Vanessa (it could happen!)

9) Get a friggin’ car alarm (more on that later)

10) Return to San Francisco (and if possible, find the crazy lady that verbally accosted me and kick her in the shin)

I’ve decided that cigarettes are probably not for me. I can’t justify taking them up as a habit for many reasons: cancer (of course), they make my clothes stink, my breath stink, and I really only have a hankering for them when I’m stressed out. Plus, they make me quite ill at times (hint, hint). I haven’t been on a cigarette jag in months, which is a good thing. But I do like the kind of stress relieving act of taking in smoke and exhaling it along with all your worries into the air. So…how about a pipe?

I know nothing about pipes really. Both of my grandfathers used to smoke pipes. The smell pipes produce is quite calming, nothing like the rancid stench cigarettes can bring. Although, I must admit, sometimes the smell of cigarettes brings back images of my departed grandmother who smoked like it was going out of style. Anyway, I’ve noticed that quite a few men I admire smoked pipes at one time or another. I’ve listed a few below. All geniuses. So, of course, that begs the question, “Does the genius make the pipe or does the pipe make the genius?” Frankly, I think you could take Steinbeck’s Lennie, stick a pipe in his mouth and all of a sudden you go from a intellectual stump to friggin’ Albert Einstein.

Anwar Sadat



Che Guevara



Ron Carter



Jean Paul Sartre



Bing Crosby



John Coltrane



Cary Grant


Orson Welles



Archie Shepp



Earl Hines


Sinatra



Bertrand Russell

If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
– Hannah and Her Sisters

I don’t have any kids, but if ever I do, I think I am going to sing this song to them each night before they go to sleep. It’s obviously a children’s lullaby and meant for innocent imaginations that only the minds of unmarred youth can hold, but I really like it. I would sing it until my little boy or girl got to the point where chocolate brown bears driving trains over peppermint rails became a farce instead of an awesome fantasy. Then a part of me would mourn that inevitable loss of incorruptibility and I would begin teaching them to never stop embracing the things of virtue. It’s impossible, I think, to leave this world without being at least grazed by corrupt things, people, ideals. But it doesn’t mean that they have to become a part of you.

Of course, I would never actually play this song for them because after they heard Nat King Cole sing it, they would never want to hear my voice again.