Category: All Posts

Have Yourself a Glam Christmas

Denro notes that in England it’s been a holiday tradition in recent decades to get snockered and sing-scream “Merry Xmas Everybody”, by the 70’s British Glam Rock band Slade. You’ll find it in part 8 of this video, the finale to the stellar Christmas 1973 edition of Sir Jimmy Savile’s “Top of the Pops”, posted on YouTube by one of its best members, NYrainbow.

The new “Doctor Who” series features a Christmas episode every year, including one that will premiere Christmas night…

… and a couple of the past installments of Who have included bits of “Merry Xmas Everybody”.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2010/DEC/DoctorWho.flv 512 288]

Annie Little’s Winter Wonderland

It’s already been a year since model/actress/singer-songwriter Annie Little created a sensation with her Amazon Kindle video, featuring her adorably fetching song, “Fly Me Away”. Since then, Annie and her partner Marcus Ashley have made more commercials and songs, she’s appeared on “Desperate Housewives”, and she’ll be on an upcoming episode of “The Mentalist”.

Annie’s back with a new Kindle holiday music video, this time for England. You can watch it, and most of her other commercials, at this link.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LittleandAshley

One video that’s missing is Annie in a commercial for T.J. Maxx and Marshalls. People were talking about it on Annie’s Facebook page, but it was nowhere to be found, so I uploaded it:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Annie-Little/173708637582

There’s speculation that one of the shoppers with Annie is Elliott Yamin, from “American Idol”, a series that I admit to never having seen. Maybe Annie will confirm. She says on Facebook that the commercial was shot at 4 in the morning, when the mall was deserted. She didn’t say what mall, but the closest one to the TJX headquarters, half a mile from where I work, is The Natick Collection.

Petulant Glenn Gould’s crush on Pet

Almost four years ago I posted Classical pianist Glenn Gould’s 1967 audio essay on Petula Clark. Today, the Wall Street Journal features a write-up on music-related TV documentaries, and in noting the upcoming PBS program “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould”, Nancy deWolf Smith says, “… it is clear that his crush on Petula Clark and many other diversions made bearable the isolation his artistry demanded.” Gould’s love letter to Pet, in the form of a musician’s analytical critique, is in an MP3 that I’m happily hot-linking from WFMU. It takes a few minutes for Gould to get to the point, but he gets there.


[audio:http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/gould_glenn/Gould-Glenn_The-Search-for-Petula-Clark_1967.mp3|titles=Glenn Gould: The Search for Petula Clark]

Fixing Mariah Carey’s thighs

I see that Mariah Carey has announced she’s going to have a baby. Last year I posted Carey’s delightfully retro video from 1994, of her modern classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, which looks like this on YouTube…

… making Mariah at 24 look like she had the thighs she has now, pregnant at 40. But I can fix that. Hmm… It looks to me as if there may be three basketballs in this picture. 😉

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2010/DEC/MariahCareyChristmas.flv 480 370]

Prue Bury in Astrid’s new book

I have Astrid Kirchherr – a retrospective, a new book that’s a companion to Astrid’s exhibit at the Victoria Gallery and Museum in Liverpool, that runs through the end of January. I am very pleased to see that the book includes a photo with my dear friend, Prudence Bury.