Sunday, December 31, 2006

I Have Been to the Holy Land...

If U2, Bruce Springsteen or Aerosmith could get fans to pay $15 a carload, then line them up 60 cars at a time to hear three prerecorded songs, do you think they'd gladly, as Steve Miller once sang, "Take the Money and Run"?

That's what's happened to the artist formerly known as Carson Williams. He's the Cincinnati-area guy I wrote about a couple weeks ago who set his Christmas light display to music. Really....scroll down if you missed it.

Anyway, whilst home to Cincinnati over the holidays, we piled my sister-in-law and husband, their four kids and my wife and me into their Chevy Suburban and shuffled off to Mason, Ohio, Heritage Oak Park: a 30-mile drive, but well worth it when all is said and done. I posted some video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Il4PmW5NFg.

More professional video is here.

Sweet, right?

Guilty pleasure alert: We plunked down our $15 and waited more than an hour to make our way through the park, then queued up with our group of 30 cars to watch Christmas lights on a mock-up of Williams' house, which stood out in the middle of a ballfield.

Apparently, we were part of the heaviest night of the holiday season to that point. According to the Mason Pulse-Journal:

Christmas may be over, but Mason's Christmas in Lights is keeping the holiday spirit alive until the end of the year.

Carson Williams' light display at Heritage Oak Park on U.S. 42 seems to be gaining popularity as the holiday season nears its end.

Williams' display at his home in Deerfield Twp. last year became an Internet sensation and was featured in a Miller Lite beer commercial.

"We're up to a little over 8,000 cars now," said Tom Kaper, president of Festivals of Mason Inc., which is overseeing the display. "We're really starting to stuff them in over the last couple of weeks. It's going great."

The display nearly reached its capacity Saturday night when 792 carloads of people came out to see the lights synchronized to some favorite Christmas songs. The show can accommodate 800 cars a night on weekends.

Kaper and Williams won't get much time to catch a breath once the lights blink off Dec. 31. Discussions for next year's display we'll start in January — and Kaper said they've already got some ideas of how to make the show bigger and better.

Do the math: $15 per car x 8,000 cars. That's a cool $120,000. Granted, there was probably one HELL of an electric bill that went with this deal. Question: Can they re-use the house facades?

And let us not be unduely cynical. It was a serious rush hearing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards of Winter," the song that made Williams famous, blasting from the stereo while watching lights dance across a house-sized wooden truss. Sounds stupid, right? Guess you had to be there.

Posted by Unclejbird @ 8:33 AM :: (1) comments

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Happy Christmas to All.....

A holiday present to you all....

Just try and keep a dry eye through this.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5028755

Interesting guy, this John Henry Faulk. According to the NPR site:

He was blacklisted in 1957, but with support from Edward R. Murrow, won a
libel suit against the corporation that branded him a Communist. Faulk's
book,
Fear on Trial, published in 1963, chronicles this experience.

Posted by Unclejbird @ 12:32 PM :: (0) comments

Monday, December 18, 2006

This Jay-merican Life

I can't believe this is still on the Web....

Three years ago, my only foray to date into radio came on the public radio show With Good Reason. At the time I was teaching college classes -- Ah, the good old days -- and agreed to read a story I wrote on the program, which highlights the expertise and work of faculty at Virginia's higher education institutions.

From their archives:

On this special holiday edition of With Good Reason, we feature an assortment of songs, stories and thoughts about Christmas. Jazz pianist John Toomey (ODU) plays his rendition of several Christmas classics. Essayist Sharon Hoggard (NSU) reminisces about how her mother's annual traditions. Writer Jay Lidington (TCC) explains how his father's struggle with Alzheimer's has affected the selection of his gift. Cameroon native Peter Tahsoh (VSU) contrasts America's Christmas traditions with those of his homeland. Poet Peter Meinke (ODU) reads three poems inspired by the season. And we end the show with a real treat - the 12 Days of Christmas as interpreted by the Gentlemen of the College, the oldest a capella group at the College of William and Mary.
RealAudio of the show is available on the Web at: http://www.withgoodreasonradio.org/rams/2003/december/christmas.ram

Posted by Unclejbird @ 9:25 PM :: (1) comments

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Lighting Up Christmas

As I was putting up our Christmas lights last weekend, I couldn't help think about the lengths we go to for the holiday season. It's not uncommon to see houses in our 'hood with the icicle lights hanging from their porches. Some people opt for the blow-up snow globes with Santa inside, getting pelted with a blizzard of plastic pellets. I'm mighty proud, I have to say, of my HUGE old-school Christmas lights, which I have hung from the eaves of our house for the last few years. It's hard to describe the feeling I get at the top of my aluminum extension ladder when I'm clipping those things to the second-highest part of our house. Mostly, it's accompanied by an internal monologue that goes something like this: "Shit, I forget how HIGH this is" and "I hope a good gust of wind doesn't come along and blow me into the neighbors' pine tree."

Seriously, though, I think it has a lot to do with honoring some sort of family tradition. The big C-9 lights are ripped straight from the pages of my mental holiday Christmas album. I only wish I still had the giant golden Santa head my folks used to hang on our front porch. I mean, this thing was about four feet high. They'd stick it up there and shine a huge floodlight on it. It was like some gargantuan Incan idol up there. True, garish...but I used to love it.

Another thing I thought of last weekend was my boy Carson Williams. You'll remember his work, if not his name. He's the suburban Cincinnati computer engineer who made it big last year (if you call a Miller Lite commercial BIG) when he synchronized the Christmas lights on his house to music, specifically "Wizards of Winter" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Refresh your memory or just rock out (there just aren't enough Christmas songs out there that invite, nay, DEMAND, air guitar treatment) here.

There's something about this idea that really moves me. Is it wrong to call it art? I find it exciting and ingenius. I've watched it about a hundred times. I especially dig the mini grove of little light-up Christmas trees in the yard that change colors. Like, who thought of this?! Carson Fucking Williams, that's who. This guy is the Mack Daddy of do-it-yourselfers. Dude has his own page on Snopes.com. Let us bow down to his greatness. The thing I love the most about the video is the outrageous amount of light emanating from Williams' front yard; watch the shadows cast on the wooden fence to the right. God, his neighbors must have hated him.

Did they! They basically shut him down about midway through the holiday season. Traffic tie-ups in suburbia don't sit well with the soccer moms. Credit Williams with having the scruples (or the lack of a second home) to comply with their wishes.

So what's he up to this year? Truth be told, this IS big. According to Wikipedia, Williams has taken his Internet fame and started a custom animation lighting business, ConsarLights.com, which is in business to provide custom-designed holiday lighting. Last month, Williams created a new show in Denver, Colorado. Created with the help of Parker 3D, the show at Northfield Stapleton features over 250,000 LED lights drawing 150 amperes of electric current. "Symphony In Lights" is a free show that runs through the month of December. On the home front, a public park not too far from where Williams lives has erected a replica of the facade of his house, which he has decorated with lights and, yes, set the whole thing to music. His soccer mom neighbors no doubt were the first ones in the park.



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Posted by Unclejbird @ 3:16 PM :: (1) comments

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Adventures in Airline Travel

Another cruise note...

We flew to Florida on Southwest Airlines, an interesting experience to say the least. It had been several years since my last dealings with them, mostly because I was overcome by the cornball humor of the flight attendants and was disgusted after sitting for 90 minutes face-to-face with a dude who ate a giant Zero's sub with onions on it (this was back in the day when SWA had facing rows; thankfully, that's over and done with).

The flight was pretty uneventful, save for the pilots' having to return the plane to the gate in Orlando after a gauge failed. Amen, brothers. Equipment not workin' for ya? Let's get it fixed. Nothin' but the best for you...as long as I'm ridin' wit' ya.

One intriguing thing happened. My wife and I, being tall sorts, were successful in landing ourselves in the exit row on both flights. I've been in this row on just about every airline and every type of plane and SWA and their 737's offer the most preternaturally wide exit rows I've ever seen. Probably two people could stand side-by-side facing out the window. I'm not kidding. There's so much space that you have to lean forward to use your tray table. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Here's the catch -- when we sat down and the flight attendant came around to make sure we understood our obligations, she added in that by sitting there were agreeing to help evacuate the plane. That means, we gathered, that, though we were sitting right by the door, we were to help everyone else get out before leaving ourselves. I haven't found any background on this, but it's hard to imagine such a thing could be enforced. My wife made the comment that it was probably a CYA thing for Southwest in case someone stays behind and the plane explodes and the survivors sue. I have to admit, if a plane I'm flying in crash-lands and I'm sitting by the door, there's going to be a contrail behind me as I run screaming out the door after opening it for my fellow travelers (and my wife, of course). Sorry, dude sitting next to me with your fat rolls taking up the armrest. You're a swell guy, but.........

Posted by Unclejbird @ 8:46 PM :: (0) comments