Let’s Do the Numbers! Talkin’ Yuletunes on Marketplace

My face betrays the intense concentration required to form sentences in real time.

I’m not allowed to post the video of my Dec. 10 appearance on CNN‘s The Lead with Jake Tapper, (here’s its blog accompaniment) and I don’t have a photo from my appearance on Marketplace yesterday. So here’s a screen cap from the CNN bit and a link to the Marketplace segment, wherein host Kai Ryssdal asks me a question for which I am completely unprepared.

Is there hope for a new classic Christmas song? | Marketplace.org.

Spoilers on the Radio

Baby daddy.

The New Hampshire Public Radio Word of Mouth show talked to me earlier this week for a short segment on my Four Types of Spoilers essay for The Village Voice. You can listen to that here and read the essay here.

On the radio with Andy Cirzan!

On Friday I had the honor of doing 35 minutes of live radio with Andy Cirzan, the great archeologist of obscure holiday records who provided much of the inspiration for my own Yule-Tunes Eclectic and Inexplicable series. (I interviewed Andy a month ago for an essay about my mixtape project that ran in the Washington Post just after Thanksgiving.)

Anyway, Minnesota Public Radio’s The Daily Circuit invited us both on to talk about our mixtapes and recommend some yulejams that haven’t been played to death. I was afraid no one would be in the mood for this silliness when I realized our segment would follow an hour of reaction to the NRA’s spectacularly tone-deaf press conference about the Newton, Conn. school shootings, which the station had carried live a little over an hour before we went on. But I thought the segment turned out well. I had a great time.

You can listen to the whole segment here.  Should it happen to pique your curiosity, my 2009-2012 yulemixes are on the upper periphery of your frame of vision, on the Musics of Christmas page of this site. You can grab Andy’s 2012 mixtape, Santa Soul, from Sound Opinions.

Happy holidays, everybody!

Filmspotting No. 374: On Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, plus our Top Five Movies About Movies

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! The new episode of Filmspotting, wherein Adam Kempenaar let me sit in to talk about Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants with him and then revisit the very first Top Five topic ever discussed on the the show — Movies About Movies — is available for your listening pleasure. Don’t go trampling any Wal-Mart greeters to death tomorrow morning in your pursuit of holiday bargains, now.

It Is Accomplished!

I am pleased to present Santa’s Magickal Ho-Ho Bag, the fifth (!) in my annual (so far) series of radio Christmas cards featuring yule-tunes eclectic and inexplicable (TM), for your hall-decking enjoyment.

If they’re loading slowly and that’s cramping your style, you can also listen here.