Those who have read my recent post, Two Years Without a TV, will forgive me for overloading on trash TV for the sheer novelty of it while hanging out at my parents’ apartment. Last night I watched more episodes of Beauty and the Geek than I care to admit, and this morning I am transfixed by
Channel 11’s annual 3-hour yule log movie, which 
has – I kid you not – been digitally re-mastered for its 40th anniversary appearance. Indeed, you can download the log for your ipod. If that’s not enough log for you, there’s a one-hour documentary airing after the log burns its last. You just can’t make this stuff up.
But what you can do is add your own soundtrack. Channel 11’s burning log comes with a predictable and annoying overlay of sugary Christmas music syrup. So I hit the mute button and searched my father’s 50-disc CD changer for something more to my taste. I came up with Evidence: Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane and sat back on the couch with a plate of leftover latkes and watched the log burn. That’s more like it.
As fate and metabolism would have it, I dozed off. When I awoke, the log was still burning, but the CD changer had moved on. The disc was Itzhak Perlman’s In the Fiddler’s House featuring the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Klezmatics. It was as if the burning bush was doing a keening clarinet solo on the TV. Somehow, this didn’t seem at all odd to me.
Happy mixed up holidays, everybody.