Wordless Chorus

Man, another year is winding down. Can you believe we're already halfway through this freakin' decade? Damn.

Hope you had a good Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or whatevah. The girls had a blast. Their cousins were here for a few days and they received plenty of toys, including a Dora the Explorer house and related accessories, a shopping cart, and the Cinderella and Toy Story DVDs. I hooked Deb up with a 1GB iPod Shuffle, some new sunglasses, and a bunch of running-related gear. As for me, I also received running gear, an iTunes gift card (that I used to buy My Morning Jacket's Z and Rogue Wave's Descended Like Vultures), a book (Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation), some sweaters, shirts, and other cool shiznitt.

Yo ho ho:

• No surprise here, but it seems like every other week there's a story warning about the dangers that prolonged use of iPods has on hearing. The damage is exacerbated by the use of those white earbuds because they're that much closer to your eardrums than the old-school headphones. I stopped using the earbuds early on because they didn't fit properly in my ears; instead, at the gym or when I'm running I use Sony h.ear headphones; they stay in my ears and the earbuds aren't completely in your ear, so you can hear oncoming traffic and don't totally blast your ears out. When I'm on a plane, I use the Creative "ear-muff" headphones I got with my old Nomad Jukebox MP3 player; they just sound better. Most of the time I use my iPod (in the car, at work), I'm listening through speakers, so hopefully that will minimize the hearing damage. And at work, I listen to my music at a low level.
• As a big fan of the old Beavis and Butt-head series, I was excited a few months back when MTV released the first volume of the "Mike Judge Collection" DVD sets. I was hoping the DVDs would include the segments where B&B watch and critique videos, as I found those parts of the show much funnier than the so-called action segments. Alas, it turns out that only about a dozen videos were included in the first set because of the high cost of securing the music rights; since every episode included at least three or four videos, that's a lot of the show getting cut. Courtesy of the Wikipedia, here's an incomplete list of videos that appeared on the show. You often got to see parts of videos there that you would never see on any other show on MTV, and of course, the boys had some hilarious commentary about them. Looks like there will never be a complete version of the show on DVD, at least not without the damn thing costing $500. It makes me glad that Dr. Doobs and I bought a collection of old B&Bs on the VHS a few years back. The issue over music rights isn't unique to Beavis and Butt-head. As this article from Wired notes, a great music-centric show like WKRP in Cincinnati used so many songs that a DVD release would cost a fortune to release. In fact, when it was rerun on Nick at Night a few years ago, the original songs were replaced with cheaper originals. Les Nessman dancing around to a song that wasn't Foreigner's "Hot Blooded"? Sacrilege! I was glad when the Freaks and Geeks DVD set came out last year and they were able to include all the great music used on the show, including classic Van Halen, Ted Nugent, Rush, Styx, the Who, etc. The list price was a little higher ($69.99), but it was worth it.
• Speaking of classic DVDs, the 25th anniversary "Don't Call Me Shirley" version of Airplane is out and apparently, it's time for the Jive Dudes from the movie to step back into the spotlight. Solid.
• It has been a good week for my favorite sports teams. The Jays keep having a kick-ass offseason by finalizing the trade for slugger Troy Glaus, and the Leafs won their fourth in a row tonight by knocking off the red-hot Buffalo Sabres (when's the last time anyone said that?) in an exciting tilt that was decided by a shootout. Sweeeeet.