This is a 60 second clip from Boston.com with a couple of comments on the Winter Classic.

It’s almost New Year’s Day and the ice has arrived at Fenway Park!

It might be one of those lots-of-youtube-stuff days. You’ve been warned.

More Christmas Lights:

This is going around the office today. Guitar Hero meets Christmas Lights to the tune of Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover.

I dropped off the kids at their Dad’s house this morning and headed back to the highway. There was a lot of traffic on route 97 near route 93. Why? The ramp to route 93 South (exit 2) was closed. I couldn’t see why.

This resulted in me being late to work.

Bite me, Mr Traffic. Bite me.

Addendum 10:12am
A little Google News search brought me to this Lawrence Eagle Tribune article:

Both lanes of 93S reopened from Exit 2 to Mass. border

SALEM, N.H. — Traffic remains backed up on Route 93S even though State Police have reopened two lanes of traffic following a 6 a.m. accident.

A tractor trailer traveling east on Route 38 struck the Route 93 South overpass, possibly damaging the structure and forcing State Police to shut down both lanes of the highway between Exits 1 and 2 as engineers studied the safety of the structure.

Traffic was diverted at Exit 2 onto Everett Turnpike, but the cars already on 93 were stuck for hours. At about 8 a.m. State Police reopened part of Route 93 South, easing some of the traffic burden on area streets and allowing those vehicles that were stuck to continue on their morning commute.

Traffic remains backed up, both on I-93 and surrounding streets. State highway engineers were studying the overpass structure for damage and the breakdown lane remains closed.

The mangled truck was still being extricated this morning as of about 9:50.

The driver sustained minor injuries in the accident, and was taken to an area hospital by Salem rescue squads. His name or condition were unavailable, according to Salem police Sgt. Mike Wagner.

Okay, the Bruins make a good commercial… now if they could just score some f—ing goals!

One week left until Christmas Eve.

Everything that I have purchased at a real, physical store has been wrapped. Everything that I have purchased online that has been delivered has been wrapped. The only exception is the item that came yesterday that is not the item I ordered. I am not sure what to do with that one.

I still have a few more things coming that will need to be wrapped. We also have a very notably bare banister in the living room that needs some Christmas lights. That’s on the tentative agenda for this weekend.

We’ve also been invited to Larry’s to check out the newly rebuilt house on Friday. We won’t be able to stay long, but we’ll make an appearance. Also on the docket are a couple of Christmas light displays at various places in Massachusetts. Maybe a Christmas Village or something. That should be fun. We were hoping to do things like that in New York, but that’s not going to work so we’ll do it closer to home.

Jen and I also need to pick up gifts for our work grabs and some stocking stuffers for each other, but other than those two things the shopping and buying appear to be done. Now we just have to figure out where we need to be and when we need to be there and we will be pretty much ready for Christmas.

We’re so close to being finished we might actually have time to enjoy it! That’s a weird feeling for this red head.

My perfect Christmas record has gone down the tubes thanks to a warehouse picker/packer who can’t read.

No, the item that you shipped isn’t even remotely similar to the one I ordered. When I say the one I ordered I mean the one that is printed write there on your packing list.

Jerks.

Every now and then I stumble across an article that hammers home exactly why it’s not a good idea to get yourself into the music biz if you’re a performing musician.

This one was written by a member of Too Much Joy, it doesn’t say who. A band I heard of but I don’t think I ever actually heard. I saw it posted to twitter by John Strohm, formerly of the Blake Babies.

Give this a read.

If that doesn’t make you want to vomit…

This article was linked from that article. It was written by Steve Albini. Steve Albini to me is a producer who makes records that sound so alive it’s like you are in the room with the band. He makes bands sound like bands, not like processed cheese.

As the article’s header says the numbers he lists are a bit out of date but they still drive home the point. Artists signed to major labels do not make enough money to survive.

Read this one if you dare.

To sum it up succinctly, I will try and recall an article I read in Metronome Magazine about 1000 years ago…

I think it was probably 1995 or so, give or take a year, and Mike the Bass Player and I were in a little going-nowhere band with Dan the Drummer. We had a rehearsal room in the basement of a mill building in Lowell. It was very reminiscent of Hollywood’s standard depiction of a castle dungeon. We didn’t care, it was fun. (although the stone walls were LOUD! and whatever hearing damage I have suffered in my many years of playing really loud music can probably be traced back to the few months we spent practicing there)

There was a little lobby with a couch and candy and soda machines. Every month a stack of copies of Metronome would appear in there and I would generally give it a quick read.

On one occasion there was an interview with Doug Pinnick (or is it dUg now, or something like that) of King’s X… a band I have been very into for a very long time. I think they were touring in support of their Ear Candy album, which as it turned out was the last record they released on a major label. At one point Mr Pinnick was asked a question that must have been about how the business was treating him (I can’t remember the exact question) and his response was that it would be nice if he could make his car payments.

He’d spent almost a decade making records for Atlantic and had as much success as you can get without becoming a full blown star… and he couldn’t make his car payment.

Point made.

We’ve been watching The Office tonight on TBS. Not because we’re paying a ton of attention to it but because it’s… well… it’s on and we haven’t gotten around to shutting it off yet.

TBS’s slogan is: Very Funny.

From the best I can tell though, from the commercials advertising their original programming… George Lopez ad after George Lopez ad and what not… Their stuff just isn’t… well… very funny. Not even a little bit funny.

So you run Family Guy and The Office… reruns… that doesn’t really qualify as enough to base an advertising campaign on. I mean… they could say, “TBS, where Family Guy and The Office is very funny but our original shows are kinda shit.”

That would work.