Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

So I take cabs home a lot lately. Especially because the train never seems to stop at my stop after 11pm. And even though Michael Bloomerg has guaranteed me a quiet ride it seems most cab driver prefer to listen to the radio. Which I like because the silence of not understanding Farsi is sort of deafening at four in the morning. Tonight my cab driver was one of those who prefers soft-rock (great, but never David Allen Boucher). And while we were driving I had the pleasure of hearing my favorite (it's so hard to choose!) single from The Lion King soundtrack, "Can you Feel the Love Tonight." And everyone who knows me for the sentimental sap I am will realize that I was immediately reminded of the Freelance Troope in elementary/middle school and how we all sang along to that song at the cast party for Young Country, wherein I was Rachel Revere, wife to the famous patriot rider and silversmith. Yes, for a moment in the cab I felt one with Robin Gordon-Levitt and Stevie Weinstein-Foner once more... but now, all I am is tired and wishing I wasn't working in the morning.

Weighing in on Holiday Songs

This year musical and commercial manifestations of the Christmas season started immediately after Halloween. To be fair, I wasn't in the country at this time last year, but in my memory there was a lag period of at least a week. I started noticing lights in trees and on sign posts around Columbus Day. They weren't lit, but it was so early I wondered whether they were premature or left over from last year. On November 3 I heard Christmas carols in the lobby of a movie theater. Really it's too much. I am already entering retail stores in fear of hearing that awful Chipmunk's Christmas Song ("Huuuuuula hooooooop!").

My friend Jess has begun a correspondence with Boston radio station WROR addressing their plan to play ONLY Christmas music between last Monday and December 25. The producer who responded to her very reasonable letter basically said, "You're no fun." But really, making the Christmas season eight weeks long seems like a sure way to drain all of the fun from it. Even my mother, who normally is a pretty level headed person, has fallen victim to this marketing scheme. She is going Christmas shopping today with a bunch of lady friends (and many of them are Jewish!). The madness must stop. Just as the presidential campaign should not begin two years before the election, the Christmas season should not begin two months before the holiday.