Ask Mellow F_B

The Time-Life treasury is playing, the Clontarf is quite tasty, and the tree looks magnificent. All of life is very, very cool right now.
Let me give you a tour of the tree.
Over there is the NHL hockey player keychain that my son has hung up since he was four. There's my third-grade art project of the Three Kings with state of the art (for 1961) glitter paint. Here is my daughter's ballerina and her musical note. Here's my oldest's sled ornament and the tiny knit sweater with his initials, and the small Waterford goblet that someone gave us for a wedding present. Oh, here are the Ornaments from Famous Places -- including James Madison's Montpelier and the LBJ ranch. The Peabody ornament is with the tiny ceramic ducks, or course. And near the top, up near the angel that my eldest made in kindergarten that has trouble keeping its head on, is the tiny Kris Kringle that my grandfather, the cop, brought from north Kerry in 1912. He gets packed with the fragile stuff.
Bing's singing now. Gotta go. Be well, the lot of you.

 

A thread like this can only go downhill after a start like that, and at the risk of proving my point, let me say: That sets up the rest of the holiday season nicely.

 

Bong or joint?

 

We decorated our tree tonight, too. It had been standing there naked in our living room since we bought it Sunday. I would say that about 25 percent of our ornaments are cows.

Oh, yeah. Question for F_B. Is that "bastard" in the literal sense, the figurative sense, neither or both?

 

Usige beatha, old son.

 

Dear F_B:

First time long time. Why does Rod Stewart butcher holiday songs as well as classics? I'll hang up and listen.

 

Because somebody told him that his covers of ANYTHING will sell.
I'm waiting for his Songs of The Balkans album any day now.
(The hell, of course, is that he's one of the great interpreters of classic soul music who ever lived and, if his tasty take on "What Made Milwaukee Famous (Made A Loser Out Of Me)" is any indication, he could sing him some old-school country, too.)

 

What do they mean by, "Don we now our gay apparel?"

 

Ragu -- I would have me no Savior who didn't laugh at himself.
Wordman -- My irish cousins sing that line as , "Come we now to drain a barrel."

 

Little Drummer Boy, though? Pa-rump-a-rump-rump? Seems fixated.

 

I'm going to need another splasheen here, I think.