shampanskykh or apres ski

H and I spent a very nice New Year's eve celebration at home, launching fireworks in the street and enjoying televised calvacades of various dance music genres, the networks opening up their archives of party chart-toppers and in-studio performances, rarely-seen vignettes that predated the venue known as the music-video where the audience is allowed to engage the band fully and songs that became standards for all types of fests.  We also toasted in the new year with a very good Russian white sparkling wine, Krimskoye.  Champagne and its imitators, though I imagine that's attributed rather than aspired for through the insecure opinions of faux-connoisseurs, are afforded a strange array of protections as well as a sacrosanct place in for seasonal and other other celebrations.  I suppose that one reason its drunk on such occasions is that it is a new wine, fresh and not aged, which not only symbolizes the new year and untainted beginnings but also allows it to be produced and delivered to market just in time. 

Before modern day cola-wars and the ubiquitous branding campaigns of today's non-adult beverages, champagne was aggressively marketed, touted as a tonic and cure-all--think of all of those vintage, elegant advertisements for one's common cola as well as the more exotic additives that helped boost its initial popularity--and it was gradually installed as a an indispensable party-favour.  One certainly does not want to think of one's party plans as having anything to do with logos, labels and product-placement, but I guess that the success of that marketing venture is demonstrated at minimum every time the calendar turns.  Toasting or otherwise christening one's special occasions does not feel obligatory nor a product of consumer-culture, and I guess that is one of the true hallmarks of intelligent marketing, when labels and corporate influences can be stripped away, and the handiwork of some shrewd and hard working vintner families can join in the fun.

em-mex-l oder silvester

A very good and auspicious beginning to the New Year.  This pipe-cleaner chim- ney-sweep with his ladder and lucky mushroom is one of the German symbols of the changing of the calendar, like Father Time and Baby New Year, and a few other unique traditions and rituals are explained here via the local.

a la mash

Some time ago, I was hounding around on some celebrity gossip site and saw a movie poster for the most outstanding cinematic vision that I had seen recently: deadly, big-game hunting aliens visit rural England during Jane Austen's time, and the film was titled Pride and Predator.  I have no idea whether it was ever actually produced or what the critical reception of it was or whether it was just a brilliant steam-punk concept, and would rather remain ignorant.
Something a bridge further than parody or a tribute band, it is a fusion that is more creative than its constituent influences, fun, rollicking mash-ups--authorized or otherwise, have produced, not just repackaged, some outstanding vignettes:  The Beestles (Beastie Boys versus the Beetles), Brokeback to the Future, the Grey Album.  Classic board games, I think, would be excellent and rich fodder for mash-ups, and could be made to honour whatever character universe one wished, like Doctor Who Cluedo--it was K-9 in the Tardis with the Sonic Screwdriver, or backgammon-Jenga.

three French hens and twelve lords a-leaping

Christmas time can be a bit overwhelming and adjunct and accessory commem-orations are sometimes overshadowed, especially when they fall after the tension and subsequent relaxation of Noel and between the less demanding workshopping for New Year's. The Feast Day of the Holy Innocents is one such celebration--observed in many places with many regional variants. Though elided over, but not forgotten, this holiday, marked with pranks like April Fools' Day in some countries, has some very sage and sensible traditional admonishments: one that it is not auspicious to begin new projects on the day of the week that the Feast Day falls on (a year of Tuesdays, for instance) for the coming year, and two, further, to avoid engaging in work, barring emergencies, whenever possible also on that day of the week, progressing on to the next day of the week next year and on through the weekend.