Tag Archives: christmas

Christmas Minus 10

At Christmastime 2001, I’d been out of work for over a year. When I was first laid off, I got a number of interviews. I even turned down a job offer for a position that sounded painfully uninteresting, foolishly thinking it wouldn’t be my last opportunity for full time work. But it was, for a very, very long time. To this point, I didn’t conceive of the idea that times could get tough for me, because apparently I’d blocked out my entire childhood.

Belt tightening followed. I gave my car to my dad because the insurance was killing me, even though I loved that car and knew giving it my dad was tantamount to a vehicular death sentence. I was forced to pay utilities only; student loans and credit card bills would have to wait. Except that student loan and credit card people didn’t see it that way, and so began the relentless, harassing calls and a mailbox stuffed with envelopes that screamed FINAL NOTICE.

Unemployment insurance helped keep my head above water while I scrounged for what I could. I worked temp jobs here and there, mostly proofreading for ad agencies. I conducted airline surveys at JFK and LaGuardia. On the creative side, I was doing some commentaries for NPR2, an embryonic satellite radio version of NPR, fun and easy work that, of course, dried up before long. I channeled most of my energy into online writing, pitching anything and anyone I could think of, and working on a novel, in the hopes that any one of these things would rescue me from predicament. They didn’t.

I did three full interviews with a financial publishing company, then was given a two-week “tryout,” copy editing, writing headlines, and doing light layout work in Quark. I got paid for my time, with the promise that if they liked my work the position would become full time. After the “tryout,” I never heard from them again, and later suspected this was really just a roundabout way of wresting temporary work out of someone without having to deal with an agency. Their offices were a few short blocks from what would soon be known as Ground Zero.

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Ethnic Envy and the Case of the Misidentified Holiday Decoration

This weekend, my daughter presented me with two questions I wasn’t sure how to answer. The first came during a trip to a diner, after I insisted we wrap up the uneaten portion of her meal to bring home. “My nanny* always said, ‘Wasting food is a sin’,” I told her.

“What’s a sin?” she asked. That was a puzzler.

* Our family word for grandma. Don’t judge.

The second unanswerable question came during a trip into the city to do New York-y holiday things, like visit the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and get pressed against strangers’ Starter jackets. (At Manhattan’s biggest tourist attractions, it is always 1993.) This being a weekend, our trip necessitated lots of transfers and waiting for trains to arrive, because Bloomberg needs the money that could go toward a functioning mass transit system to enforce anti-smoking laws and beat up hippies.

While biding our time on a subway platform, my daughter spontaneously sang a cute little song about Hannukkah, to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” It made reference to dreidels and menorahs and latkes and, like most songs sung by a five year old, was adorable. (Later I found out it’s a seasonal staple that, to this point, has escaped my notice.)

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Christmas Carol Commentary Tracks: It’s a Marshmallow World

Did you know you know that record labels used to release special commentary tracks to play along with 45s, much like the ones available on your modern DVDs? It’s true! This holiday season, Scratchbomb has transcribed some Yuletide examples of this bygone format and presents them to you now for your reading pleasure. Today, the commentary track for “It’s a Marshmallow World.”

CARL SIGMAN, LYRICIST: I worked with some great composers over the years. Duke Ellington was probably the greatest, in terms of being a true artist and generous collaborator. But even he was very close-minded when it came to my desire to write about food. I composed these gorgeous lyrics about a glazed ham, but Duke just couldn’t wrap his head around them, and decided to title the song “Mood Indigo” instead.

So when I got the chance to write a Christmas song for Bing Crosby, I leaped at the chance. When I was a kid, I’d always imagined that the “white” in “White Christmas” was actually frosting, either on a donut or some kind of star-shaped cookie. I was not deterred by the fact that every single person I ever mentioned this to told me I was dead wrong.

I brought Bing some special holiday lyrics I’d been sitting on for quite some time, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to unveil them. The song was about how the new-fallen snow looks like marshmallows laying on the trees and bushes, and the sun looks a little like pumpkin, and sometimes other people walking in the street look like drumsticks with feet to me. In the final draft, I left that last bit out.

Things did not go as planned. In fact, after Bing read through the first verse, he chased me around the studio while whipping me with his belt. I was so devastated, I went home and thought about giving up the songwriting game altogether. Eventually, I poured my pain and frustration into a set of heart-rending verses about muffins.

As luck would have it, Bing was contractually obligated to release another single before the end of the year, and he had no choice but to record my song. He told me, “If this platter flops, there’s a double belt whipping in your future, pally.”

My faith in food paid off when “Marshmallow World” became a huge hit. It even inspired a few knockoffs, like “Macaroon Planet” and “Pfeffernuss Nation.” I took this as a compliment, in part because the idea of a macaroon planet sounds intriguingly delicious.

So Bing did not double belt-whip me for failing to produce a hit. He did do so years later for completely different reasons, and he also tried to cave my head in with a putter, but that’s another story.

Sadly, despite this success, I’ve never been able to sell any more food-based lyrics. Although for years, I’ve been working on an operetta about a pot roast who learns to love.