ironSoap

I understand that, with Halloween being a few days away yet, it feels far too early to be thinking about—much less discussing—Christmas. However, the annual Christmas party is approaching in early December, invitations are to be sent out next week and preparations need to begin.

A short bit of background about the parties our group of friends throw and attend: Music is a pretty significant part of most parties. But among us, there is some overlap of musical tastes, but not enough that a CD can be put into a player and enough of a consensus reached that the griping begins to drown out the tunes. So here’s what happens at nearly every party we’ve ever had: Someone puts in CD A. Four to five people start whining about how bad the music is. Before the first song on CD A is even done playing, someone else has snuck over to the stereo and slipped in CD B. Then the person who put CD A in plus three or four others who were like minded with the original selection begin to complain and one of them slinks toward the stereo for a coup before the second song has gotten to the halfway point…

This power struggle is universal and while I understand the sentiment, I’ve always felt the end result is far more annoying than one should have to deal with at a party. To me the obvious solution is to simply put a varied mix together that has Something For Everyone so that, worst case scenario, you only have to listen to a couple of songs you don’t like before something comes on you can groove to. Hey, in a perfect world we’d all like the same great music but instead we have to compromise sometimes.

The problem in the past has been that my carefully crafted party mixes get hijacked by stereo-sneakers who start turning off iPods or iTunes and putting in CDs, thus igniting the great Stereo Battles of the 21st Century. This year I have some ideas to help avoid that sort of thing.

My first idea is that someone (I’ll go ahead and volunteer unless someone else is more suited to the task or more willing to put in the time and effort) will be the official party DJ. The DJ’s job is simple: Set up some playlists and the music equipment/computers, manage the DJ’s table and make sure people aren’t losing interest (in a general sense) in the music and be available to take requests. The theory here is that no one really gets too bent out of shape at events (think weddings) that have official DJs because if the DJ does his/her job right, there is that healthy mix of music that keeps people’s spirits up without catering too much to any one particular taste.

My second idea is to give people plenty of advance warning about the music situation and not just offer but actively encourage requests. For example, if someone were a huge fan of The Eagles and wouldn’t feel it was a party without The Eagles playing, this would be their cue to get that CD ready to take with them to the party so they could make sure some Eagles tunes make it into the rotation. Also, since for now I’m assuming the mantle of DJ, I want to be clear that any digital tracks (within reason) that are sent ahead of time are sure to make it into the initial playlist somewhere.

In my head this works like a collaboration where everyone either: A) Sends song titles as suggestions ahead of time, B) Sends the actual mp3s ahead of time or C) Brings a CD along to the party to give as requests. The end result is a likely eclectic but healthy mix of songs that will at least occasionally make everyone happy and, if all goes according to plan, avoids seriously chapping anyone’s hide.

I do have a request for (both) loyal ironSoap readers as part of this endeavor as well. See, this is a Christmas party, and it would probably be nice to throw a few Christmas tunes in the mix. The thing is that I don’t really have any Christmas music. When you really think about it, there are actually only about two, maybe three dozen songs that qualify as Christmas tunes and what you usually end up hearing are about 9,450 variations or renditions of each song. Having done absolutely no research on this topic, I’m hoping you can give me a hand here.

What I’m looking for are the definitive versions of the Christmas classics. Is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” really the best take on that track, or did some obscure recording put his crooning to shame? Who sings the absolute best versions of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Little Drummer Boy” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen?”

In this case I’m not looking for the actual songs on mp3, just the song and artist pair. I’ll worry about tracking down the actual file or CD, I just need some of your expertise. I’ll take as many recommendations as I get (send ‘em to paul@ironsoap.org with the subject “Christmas Songs”) but I don’t plan on overloading the mix with festive songs. Probably something like a four to one mix of regular songs and holiday songs (respectively) would be about right.

While We’re Not on the Subject

I ran across a very cool site yesterday that I forgot to link. There’s a guy that buys all kinds of old cameras that have undeveloped film still inside. He develops the film, scans the pics and posts them to his website. The results are fascinating, intriguing and occasionally haunting. I do wish he would lay off some of the commentary sometimes since it doesn’t often add anything to the pictures (the stuff about where the camera came from and the process used to get the pictures developed I don’t mind, but his assigning names to the subjects and trying to be cute by giving fake info about their lives is trite and manages to undermine what he’s trying to do).

Fortunately he had enough sense to let the pictures do the talking in one set of galleries that seem to come from a soldier stationed in Europe during World War II. Brilliant, fascinating stuff.

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m a moron. Need proof? Yeah, I got that in spades. But here’s the latest example.

So I went to Lister‘s pad last weekend for his birthday-inspired weekend of gaming madness. We played Amoeba Wars, play-tested a homebrew Kung Fu card/miniatures game (actually, I didn’t participate because I had preparations to attend to, but it looked pretty sweet), then I ran an intro to my Shadowrun campaign (which went quite well I think) followed by a later game of Sucking Vacuum. Good times were had by all, but we were there for a long time.

At one point I needed to wash up a bit so I retreated to the restroom and peeled off my sweat-reeking T-shirt, carefully removed my wedding ring and set it on a table there that usually has several interesting volumes rested atop it, such as Isaac Asimov’s Chronology of the World. As I did this I thought to myself, I need to get these hands washed quickly and put my ring back on or else I’m likely to forget it.

Later I was using my laptop at the gaming table and I noted that my power adapter was lying on the ground next to me. My iBook’s battery is woefully taxed to the point where when I recently ran coconutBattery on it I was informed that the battery’s maximum capacity was about 40% of its original maximum. Since I use the computer at work, it’s pretty important that I have my power cord around. I thought, again, I ought to put that in my bag now so I don’t leave that behind.

Of course I didn’t pick the ring back up after I washed my hands and face and I didn’t put the power cord away when I thought of it and I ended up leaving them both at Lister’s. And—again of course—I didn’t realize I had forgotten them until I was all the way back home, which is roughly an hour to an hour and a half away.

Thus I have been lacking access to some pretty important stuff I have on my laptop (like my login info for WordPress as well as a few work-related files) most of the week.

Being without any real way to use the laptop is bad enough, and I reflected this week on how strange it is that I associate a piece of machinery almost like some kind of extension of my brain. I was noting to someone on IM the other day how what with Google, Wikipedia, OS X’s built-in spellchecker, thesaurus and dictionary and my bevy of bookmarks, calendars and digital sticky notes I really don’t have to actually think very much anymore, it’s more an act of collating the pertinent info and taking appropriate cues.

What is worse is the lack of a ring, which is of course annoying to my wife but also has a mental impact for those whom have grown accustomed to a particular sensation that can’t be replicated any other way. I’m not like some people, I actually remove my ring for various activities like my trips to the gym (certain weight bars don’t treat the ring very kindly nor do they particularly care for the combination of ring, bar and skin pinched between) and washing up. As long as the ring is in a safe place and I know where I can get it, I don’t trip to badly on not having it on. But if I don’t have it and can’t get to it, it makes me nuts not feeling it on my finger.

I was able to retrieve them both last night by making a special trip back to Lister’s which “coincidentally” meant I was around for the regular Tuesday night gaming session during which I challenged Strahd to a Blood Bowl match and actually won 2-0. Considering he was using a blazingly fast team (Skaven) and I was using my plodding, bruising Orcs, holding him to a shutout was quite the feat. I did get some help from a few bad rolls on Strahd’s part where he stumbled on a couple of key dodges that statistically should have been made (one in particular had a re-roll that came into effect after he rolled a one and the re-roll was also a snake eye), but I’ll take ‘em however I can get ‘em. I’m not a good enough player to be picky.

Anyway, I rectified my moronic display of forgetfulness but it makes me wonder how many other times I’ve done that with less identifiable stuff. I mean, I’m missing one of my favorite black T-shirts right now and I’m starting to think it may be at someone’s house with them going, “Huh. I don’t remember this shirt. Oh well, it’s pretty nice.”

You might ask how I would forget a shirt somewhere, but if you did, I would have to refer you to the previous paragraphs. Obviously you weren’t paying enough attention.