My 10 favorite "non traditional" Christmas songs

Although some of these have been kicking around for so long they're traditional at this point. I'm limiting this list to original songs rather than modern covers of Christams standards - that list would be too long.


Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses - I love everything about this song. The sick bass line, the clever lyrics, the sax breaks, and Patty Donahue's voice. I get that some people don't like it, but that's because they're wrong.

Christmas is a Time To Say I Love You by Billy Squire - when Don't Say No came out I pretty much played the groove off the vinyl so I am at least a passing fan of Mr. Squire, but this is his best song. Such simple songwriting. It never wears out its welcome.

Thanks For Christmas - XTC. XTC is one of my favorite bands and any time I hear them played by someone else it makes me happy. My favorite part of the song is the bridge "You've been saving your love up/ Let it out, 'cause christmas time is here." 

Father Christmas - the Kinks.  When I was a kid this felt so subversive and "punk." But it's still a really good song. Because it's by the Kinks so of course it's really good.

All I want For Christmas is You - Mariah Carey and others. This is probably pretty much a traditional Christmas song at this point. Certainly mainstream. Probably as standard as Bing Crosby at this point, but I love it. It's exuberant, joyous, well written and performed. I'm not a fan of her in general though.

At the Closing of the Year - Wendy and Lisa. This dream pop gem opens the movie TOYS. It's not a very good movie but it's so wacky and ambitious that I appreciate the attempt. This song is too complex to become a carol, but no Christmas mix is complete without it.

I Saw My Baby Wearing Santa's Beard - They Might Be Giants - I've always loved TMBG and Lincoln is my favorite album by them. This song has a less sincere sentiment than most of the others on this list, but it's a hell of a lot funnier than "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer."

Beatles Christmas records 1964-1967 - Not technically songs, but I don't go a Christmas season without listening to them and even the little musical doodles they toss off effortlessly sound like they could be classics if they were fully realized and arranged. The first two Christmas records were too canned and the last two were too sad. These middle ones are endlessly entertaining.

Fairy Tale of New York - the Pogues. I used to spend a lot of time, money and brain cells in a pub where this was played year round. The song not only reminds me of Christmas but of the days when I could while away my evenings with pals in a bar without a care in the world.

and finally...

Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time - Paul McCartney. Look I get it. People hate this song. It's trite. It's overplayed every year. It's underwritten.Those tacky synth hits sound tacky and cheap. I don't care. This song is the musical equivalent of egg nog. Sticky sweet, makes you a little sick to your stomach, but it's not Christmas without it.

The Running Man

I run.

It's what I do for exercise.

People are supposed to get a certain amount of physical activity. I choose to run. Why? I can't get my ass to a gym and as far as I'm concerned only lunatics ride bikes on Los Angeles streets. You take your life in your own hands in a car as it is, I'm not about to risk becoming the hood ornament of some stoned manchld who's flipping through Spotify on his iphone while he drives into the setting sun on his way to the weekly visit to the medical marijuana dispensary. I'd like to go out with a touch more dignity than that.

So I run. More precisely, I alternate running and walking each day. We live in one of the most beautiful places in Los Angeles and my walks take me through canyons and over hills and trails and windy mystery streets where there are no architectural rules. I can disappear for three hours at a time on these walks depending on my work load.

But every other day I run. I have a .6 mile track nearby that's pretty nice. Compact dirt, far enough away from cars that the exhaust doesn't seem to be an immediate issue. The weather, of course, is usually nice and I rarely have to deal with the crowds (and never the attitude) of the Silver Lake resevoir, which is a prettier, more satisfying run, but frought with frustrations. Let me just throw this out there - I think it's great you're walking your dog(s). I how how much pets mean to people, but is the 30 foot leash really necessary? Could we maybe share the path? No? Sorry, didn't mean to bother you there.

I digress.

I don't like running. At all. I like the way it makes me feel when I'm done and I like the fact that I am noticably better off for sticking with it for the last four years. I feel better, I look better.

But my god, I don't like running.

It is sheer tedium. In the four years I've been running 6 miles every othe day, how many times have I been around that damn track? I could do the math, but I really don't want to know. I thought by now I'd like it, but at best I just accept that it's what I do and to man up and power through it without complaint. It amazes me that people enjoy it but I'm sure people are amazed (if not horrified) by some of the things I enjoy doing.

I thought i would enjoy it by now. People in Nike commercials always seem so happy. Either I don't have the athlete gene or Nike commercials are lies.

Probably both.

Blog, damn you, blog

My wife is an avid blogger and is astounded that over the last decade I haven't taken to blogging on an active and consistent basis. With all the time I spend posting stuff on the internet and generally yammering about myself in real life, blogging would seem like a perfect fit for me. But for whatever reason I've never gotten the hang of it. I like other people's blogs. They always look so much more "professional" than my lame attemps and I figure they must be wizards or something. When I have tried my hand at this form of communication in the past I've always looked at the results and thought, "Okay that doesn't LOOK like a blog! Blogs have clever headline fonts and cool pictures and... I dunno. Links and stuff.

None of that is beyond my technical ability, it's just I've never rolled up my sleeves and gotten under the hood with the templates because why bother when I don't have any content. So I don't create content because I'm underwhelmed with the "look" and I don't work on the "look" because I don't have any content.

Yes, this is ridiculous series of excuses not to blog. I know that. Fortunately blogging is an incredibly optonal activity for the vast, vast majority of us. so I guess in the spirit of just shutting up and doing it, I'll periodically post word farts like this until I get into a groove with it. No one's reading, so why not?

My history

So let me just hit the highlight reel here. I was born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit.  I was a weird kid and I'm sure today would have been diagnosed with ADHD. Wheeeeee.

My family moved to Dallas when I was 12 and I lived there for six years and wanted to be a character in a Bret Easton Ellis novel. Dissolute, self-destructive, well dressed. I never figured the clothes part out.

I spent the next seven years in Austin. 5 in college and 2 as a bartender on sixth street. I misheard the term "Freshman fifteen" and put on about 50 lbs, only half of which I've been able to shake since. Austin was my favorite place on Earth and I would have stayed had I not believed I would die of a beer and barbecue overdose at an extremely young age.

I lived in NYC during the 90's and worked as an advertising copywriter. I had a lot of fun and loved New York and had my own apartment and felt like a big shot. I was in my 20s, Clinton was president America made sense and it felt like anyone could try anything and it would all work out just fine and if not well, I'll Be There For You anyway.

So with that prevailing wind in the air, I moved to LA in 2000 without any real connections or leads or plan or clue and got married and started working as a screenwriter. After my first big "spec" sale in 2002 I was the "hot" writer. I was courted by all the big three-letter agencies, offered a shot at every open writing assignment in town, was double booking six figure gigs and taking meetings with the highest of the high powered producers in the entertainment industry.

It went on like that for about seven years. I worked steadily and my "quote" kept climbing. I was making bank in a job that 10s of 1000s try to break into every year.

Only one problem

I wasn't getting any movies made.

Getting a movie made is a crap shoot in the best of times. A LOT of things have to align including but not limited to movie stars' interest, studio production and release schedules, directors' availability, and of course the magical appearance of tens of millions of dollars of someone else's money. No mean feat. Most people in the industry will wryly observe that it's a miracle that any movies get made ever.

But regardless of how many at-bats I had, I struck out every time. Some of my scripts that didn't go were fantastic. Others could have been better and weren't for varying reasons ranging from my inability to find the material to poor development. I take my share of responsibility in many cases, but I do believe that some of my scripts were lead to disaster by being "noted" to death.

Anyhow. After a while I would joke that I had scripts "collecting dust on some of the most powerful shelves in the industry." But the checks cleared and people seemed to enjoy working with me and I knew I wasn't alone. There were other writers who had active careers despite being unproduced. I figured I could keep it going if I worked hard and was nice. Being a midwesterner those are pretty much my strong suits.

In 2008 I got an amazing opportunity to direct my own film with a multimillion dollar budget and a fantastic cast. That film TABLE FOR THREE began as a sketch that we used to perform in New York cabaret theaters and had always been a passion project of mine. Getting to do it was a dream come true and I am proud of the film I made.

That said, it wasn't loved by the people who put the money up and it never really saw the light of day. It's a not a perfect film and I take responsibility for its flaws just as I take credit for the many laugh out loud moments in the movie, but as I said I remain extremely proud of it to this day.

So at the beginning of 2009 I had made my movie and word was Ivan Reitman was making a movie based on a story idea I had sold to his company. So what if I wasn't getting hired to write the script? I had a project in active development at Warner Brothers and had an actress who was literally a household name and an A-list producer attached to another script of mine. I was still hot!

Until I wasn't.

I'd like to say my career slowed down, but it didn't. It stopped. From the day we wrapped production on my film, I didn't make a penny as a screenwriter for three years, and then when I did, it was a polish of a script of mine I had sold almost a decade earlier. A little bit of much needed money, yes, but nothing to keep me fresh in people's minds as a writer or to give me that elusive 'heat.'

I kept creating material, writing specs for producers despite WGA frowning upon such action. I went out for any pitches or OWAs that would hear me. I kept writing, kept being nice. But NOTHING was working.

Now of course the first thing that struck me after seven years of thinking I was awesome was, "maybe I just suck." As someone who's suffered from low self-esteem from birth I've always thought that anyway. Sure people say "We love your work!" but I always wrote a  large percentage of that as just Industry Sunshine.

But I don't really THINK I suck, and I'll post examples of my writing if need be to support my case, but when you're out of work it's hard to argue that you aren't doing something terribly wrong or that you've been (finally) exposed as the fraud you are.

The immediate and complete cratering of my career corresponded handily with turning 40 and put me into an emotional tailspin to say the very least.  I now had kids and a mortgage and responsibilities out the wazoo - and was making bupkiss. It's not that I had never had a plan-B to fall back on, it's that I'd "made it" long enough that I'd stopped nurturing the plan B. My plan B had withered and died due to plan A working so well for so long.

 But over the last couple of years it's also been a very good thing for me. It's helped me put things in perspective and appreciate how good I have it even when we can't afford to eat out or go see one of the movies I had stupidly turned down the opportunity to write years ago. I've learned to slow down and enjoy the moment, even when it's absolutely terrifying.

And just to clarify. I'M NOT COMPLAINING. I'm laying out a series of events. I am fortunate to have had ANY run in this ridiculous, wonderful business and it owes me absolutely nothing. If I never work again in the entertainment industry I can say "Hey I did that" just like I rode in a charity rodeo and jumped off a cliff in Greece and skydived and helped make and raise two amazingly awesome children.

And of course I've looked high and low for other work. Work in "real" jobs, but there ain't much out there for a guy like me who's resume has a great big hole that just says "screenwriter" for the majority of his post-college years. I have no "connections" outside of my small circle of friends and acquaintances. And the job market ain't what it was in the 90s'. You might have heard about that, it's in all the papers. And trust me. I'm not particular. I'm not too good for any job.  I'd barrista if they'd have me. So far Starbucks does not return my calls.

The good news is that I am currently working on a smaller scale project I love and have truly enjoyed writing. The people that hired me are fantastic and I think the script is great. But it's run into a string of snags that have me painted into a frustrated corner and I don't know what will come of it. I had hoped it would springboard me to other work, but who knows.

So here I am. Trying to keep the lights on and reinvigorate a struggling career against the odds.

So now what?

I don't know. That's why I'm blogging.

Hello blogsphere

Is that still what they call it? I remember the first time i heard about "blogging" back in 2000 or so. I was still living in our horrible apartment mere feet from the 101 freeway in Los Angeles. I remember because I was cleaning the black soot that would accumulate on our window sills every week from the incessant nearby traffic when I heard the report about "blogging" on NPR.

"Hm," I thought, "This sounds important. I should commence blogging at once."

Then something distracted me and here it is 13 years later.

Now I'm a writer. I have made a living (sometimes more handsome than other times) as a writer since I left college mumble mumble years ago. I have worked in advertising, written for live sketch comedy, magazines, trade shows, trade publications, websites, movies, television and clay puppets. However, in the last 13 years I have not been able to maintain a consistent blogging presence.

Why? I like to kid myself that it's my midwestern modesty. My "aw shucks, I ain't worth makin' no fuss over, ma'am" attitude. And to be honest, I really do feel that way. Recently a friend told me that as a writer I NEED an online presence to promote my brand.

"What if part of my 'brand' is that I'm not comfortable blogging? Isn't that a thing?" I asked.

She thought I was joking, tussled what's left of my hair and told me to blog. Blog like my life depended on it.

So here goes.

I have written (and will continue to edit/change/manipulate/fold/spindle/etc) a middle grades novel called THE INCREASINGLY PREPOSTEROUS ADVENTURES OF ATTICUS SWEENY. This blog is about my adventure in trying to get it published. I am, if nothing else, determined to make this happen. 12 years ago I wanted to be a screenwriter  and I set out to do whatever it took to make that a reality and it worked out really well.

So onward into this new adventure and the blog about it.