If the mixture of articles selected for inclusion in this weekend's USA Today meaningfully reflects a diverse population's collective interests, then ours is a nation of strange priorities. The current issue runs an unusually hefty 54 pages, thanks to a special section highlighting Super Bowl XLVI. The 14-page supplement, longer than any one of the self-billed Nation's Newspaper's customary News, Money, Sports, and Life sections, includes detailed analyses of the upcoming game, in-depth profiles of players, and even a cutaway diagram of host venue Lucas Oil Stadium. As hyped as the Super Bowl is, it's an understandable - and I imagine rather profitable - editorial concession.

But the spotlight on Super Bowl Sunday is not contained within its designated section. A quarter of the Sports section provides further insights, including Madonna's tantalizing comments on the nature of her highly anticipated halftime performance. A lead article on the relationship of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady dominates the front of the News section and continues over the whole of page two. The Money Section boasts a cover story about Super Bowl advertising, accompanied by a look at related smart-phone promotions and some insights on the rising popularity of chicken wings as a game day staple. Even the Life section is not exempt, lest a lightweight patron of the arts somehow miss the news that there is a very important football game this Sunday. There in the Travel subsection is a list of Larry Bird's favorite haunts in Indianapolis, which, by the way, just happens to be hosting the Super Bowl this weekend.

Overkill? I should think so. Yet USA Today does manage to cover a few other newsworthy items in its weekend edition. Political squabbling, non-Super Bowl sports, market data and entertainment news comprise the bulk of stories not emanating from Indianapolis. There is, however, some notable information on the third page of the News section. An article by Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Mark Curnutte (USA Today parent Gannet Company, Inc. owns the Enquirer, along with The Indianapolis Star, The Detroit Free Press, and over half a dozen other leading newspapers) details the plight of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, which is in such a precarious financial situation that it may be forced to close. The celebrated Cincinnati museum, not yet ten years old, is limping along on little more than a third of its inaugural budget and roughly a quarter of its initial full-time employees.

Apparently the museum has not been embraced by the locals. Of the 1.135 million guests who visited the Freedom Center through 2010, merely a third came from the surrounding metro area. There is an organized movement that seeks to block any tax dollars from funding the facility. And some suggest that a museum dedicated to the experience of enslaved African Americans does not hold a universally relevant appeal. State Senator Bill Seitz, reportedly an advocate of broadening the museum's focus to include the freedom fighters of World War II, is quoted as saying, "If [the Freedom Center] widens its appeal to draw a broader audience, then some African Americans aren't happy. And it's a victim in the larger white community, which can see it as a black museum and not go."

Yes, you read that correctly.

I can only hope that anyone who has willfully ignored the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will have the opportunity of personally experiencing it. I strongly doubt that any thoughtful person, no matter their ethnicity, can take in the exhibits of this "black museum" and not find it deeply moving and chillingly relevant. The same line of reasoning espoused by Seitz's "larger white community" would suggest that the National Holocaust Museum is primarily a destination for those of Jewish ancestry rather than a sobering history lesson for all of humanity. Of course that's not the case. Neither is it true that the Freedom Center is exclusive. Like the Holocaust Museum, the Freedom Center is vitally important regardless of its mass appeal. It offers a thorough and unflinching look at a shameful contradiction of our national principles, an institutionalized injustice that continues to undermine our society more than a century after the federal abolition of slavery. No, it's not a pleasant way to pass an afternoon. But it's a worthwhile destination.

I have seen these lessons hit home in the eyes of students whom I have accompanied to the Freedom Center. In a darkened theater made to look as though it rests on the banks of the Ohio River, they see a film that dramatizes one slave couple's attempted escape. Afterwards the students step out onto the balcony of the museum and look across the real Ohio River for themselves, imagining what it must have been like to perceive the waterway as the border between slavery and freedom. An actress portraying a slave invites students to sit down and listen. She tells them about her experiences and stays in character as the children ask questions. In another area of the museum, a reconstructed slave pen provides concrete evidence of the cold trade of chattel slavery. It is disturbing, indeed, to stand within the structure and gaze up at the iron rings on the rafters, knowing that human beings were chained within these very walls. If you didn't get it when you read about it in your Social Studies textbook, you can't help but gain an understanding here.

Yet somehow there exists the unfortunate perception that the Underground Railroad Freedom Center is "a black museum." A round of applause to USA Today for bringing the museum's survival struggle to the attention of the nation. On the other hand, a chorus of raspberries for cashing in their political correctness chips by emblazoning the article with a Black History Month logo. For the sake of John Brown's a-moulderin' body, when will our society accept slavery and its abolition as everyone's history?

Often the sad truth is buried between the lines. In this weekend's USA Today, it can be found somewhere within the paragraphs about a cash-strapped museum printed on page A3, among stories detailing the largesse of super PAC contributors, the wisdom of investing in Facebook's impending IPO, and the effect of the NBA lockout on the subsequent quality of basketball. Oh, and there's something about the Super Bowl, too.

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Creativity is an enticingly rewarding yet elusive pursuit. It seems to spring into existence like a strange and wondrous flowering plant, popping up in our gardens now and then regardless of whether or not we attempt to cultivate it. Those of us who appreciate the blooming presence of creative inspiration do all that we can to nurture it, to keep it alive and thriving for as long as possible. Despite our efforts, creativity withers, dies, and springs anew according to its own natural laws, an unfathomable set of principles that we sense yet cannot know. How is it that one can be all fired up to create something one day yet utterly unmotivated and bereft of ideas the next? The answer is as difficult to grasp as the creative muse itself.

While I cannot pin down the cause of creativity, I can vouch for its beneficial effect on my psyche:  creating something (almost anything) simply makes me feel better. Conversely, enduring a period of creative stagnation makes me feel worse. As this correlation has gradually become apparent to me over the years, I have concluded that there is a physiological basis for it, hence the tagline for my blog: Stories. Commentary. Endorphins. Endorphins are naturally occurring substances that are released by the brain. They are known to deaden sensations of pain and are thought to produce feelings of well-being. Some people think endorphins foster creativity, but I suspect it also works in the opposite direction. I know that I need to be in a good frame of mind in order to write well, yet I also know that I always feel better after I write well than I did before I started. So, Stories. Commentary. Endorphins. The stories and commentary are for you, and the endorphins are for me.

If my hunch is right, and my creative productivity is responsible for a physiological response that enhances my well-being, then it is in my best interest to be meaningfully creative as frequently as possible. That is partly why this blog exists, as a means to keep myself regularly productive. More than once I have found my self-imposed Friday deadline to be a very welcome distraction during an otherwise stressful week. Though my profession of elementary education affords many opportunities to be creative and expressive, much of a teacher's work is a series of routines and repetitive tasks. Mulling over creative options regarding my writing is an effective counterbalance to the monotony of grading papers and assembling report cards.

Though there is comfort in routine, it can also be deadening. An absence of novelty and challenge can smother the smallest spark of creativity before it has a chance to start an inspirational fire. But it doesn't take The Great American Novel to get the endorphins firing. Sometimes even a utilitarian chore can do the trick if it requires some meaningful input from one's gray matter. For example, the other night I needed to write an appeal for a denied health insurance claim, not exactly the sort of composition that stokes my imagination. I would have preferred not to do it. In fact, I put it off for at least an hour by fiddling around online and shuffling through relevant papers. When I finally got started, however, that part of my brain that is keen on language and syntax kicked into gear.

I opened with a paragraph stating the purpose of my letter and quoting from the insurance company's denial. Then I embarked upon a brief medical history that identified the providers and their rationale for treatment. Lastly, I made the case for my appeal by noting that the denial appeared to be a contradiction of the insurance company's quoted policy, adding that the provider agreed and would be forwarding pertinent documents. When I was done, I read through what I had written several times and felt that familiar feeling of satisfaction, the neural reward that comes from having realized a creative conception.

Funny, isn't it? You might think that there is little creativity involved in tossing off a perfunctory business letter, and I suppose that might be the case if I were employed in a capacity that required me to write such missives on a regular basis. Once it becomes routine, it's no longer interesting. But in this situation, my brain had to do the same sort of juggling that I demand of it when I'm writing for pure enjoyment. I had to focus on an objective and determine the most economical route to achieve it. I had to mentally reconstruct a series of events and present the chronology in a compelling manner. I needed to be precise in my language and persuasive in my argument. If something wasn't working, I had to have the good sense to cut it out. That's just the sort of mental engagement that makes time evaporate for me, and it seems to be an integral part of the creative process, no matter the scale or nature of the endeavor.

The same satisfaction can be generated by an endless variety of activities. There are the obvious creative projects, such as writing a book, choreographing a dance, composing a photograph or painting a portrait. Then there are those behaviors of subtler creativity, actions that may not seem inherently imaginative because of their utilitarian practicality. Putting together a good meal, planting a garden, and even rearranging furniture or organizing a closet can bring about a similar sense of fulfillment. I have, for example, experienced much the same pleasure I derive from writing by simply devising the optimal arrangement of objects within a desk drawer.

Perhaps that intoxicating release of endorphins comes down to this: an engaging goal, the freedom to reach it any way you choose, and the fulfillment of that goal. Note that engagement is a must. I am quite sure that I do not experience any advantageous change of brain chemistry when I mow the lawn, for example. Maybe I did the time I decided to start in the center and work outward in concentric circles, but the novelty of that wore off pretty quickly. Some tasks are uninteresting no matter how you choose to handle them.

"I finished the letter to the insurance company," I announced to my wife at the dinner table.

"Oh, good," she replied.

"In fact, I hate to admit this, but...I might have even enjoyed it."

She smiled the way one does at nerds, a mixture of admiration and revulsion. "Well, I'm glad you liked it, because I hate doing that kind of thing."

I nodded empathetically. Our conversation ebbed as we focused on our food. And then I felt a rising truth welling within me.

"Alright," I confessed, "I did enjoy it. No, I really did. Would you like to hear my favorite sentence?"

One has to be careful with those endorphin rushes. As with any stimulant, it's easy to get carried away.

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The news came while I was at work, courtesy of a text message from my wife. It was not unexpected. We had been discussing the issue for months, but it took a surprising amount of courage to see our decision through to its implementation. Staring at my phone, I sighed with the knowledge that what was done was done, and life would never be quite the same. "It's official," read the message. "Our land line is no more!"

Maintaining a phone line into our home was costing us $420 a year, an expense that was hard to justify now that everyone in our family of four carries a dedicated cell phone. There were few advantages to keeping things as they were. We did liked the peace of mind that came with communication redundancy, the smug assurance that should sun spots interfere with satellites and cell towers, we still had a sure-fire means of making and receiving calls. Also, it was easier to have someone just pick up an extension rather than engineering a three-way cell phone call. And it's nice to hear the phone ringing throughout the house and be able to answer it quickly without being tethered to a device. But $420 for such luxuries? We realized that never would we have taken on the expense as a new expenditure, and it became clear that we were keeping a land line mostly because we had always had one. Not much of a rationale for spending money that could be better used elsewhere.

So why was our beneficial decision accompanied by subtle shades of melancholy?

I suspect the answer begins in our early childhood. As we prepared to enter kindergarten, our parents anticipated our emerging independence and sought to make us as secure as we had always been while under their watch. They tried to equip us to deal with unexpected crises, such as finding oneself lost among strangers. To that end, we were drilled again and again to clearly state our name, address and phone number. We repeated the vital information until we knew it reflexively, and over the years we were called upon ever more frequently to write what we had memorized onto various documents. For my wife and me, our efforts were a sound investment that continued to pay off well into our adult lives. Our parents never moved into another house, never changed their familiar phone numbers. And in my case, that phone number that I memorized when I was 5 years old still connects me to the parents who taught it to me.

A couple months shy of our second anniversary, Julie and I purchased the house in which we live today. Maybe it was because we had both grown up without ever having known the experience of moving, but I sensed an inevitable permanence in our residence, a new build with no prior inhabitants. No one had lived here before, and I automatically assumed that we would be the sole owners until we reached such an age that the house no longer suited our needs. We were in it for the long haul, if circumstance allowed it. When it came time to arrange our phone service, it seemed like we were about to be given another legendary sequence of seven numbers, a pattern that would be burned into our minds and those of our future children just as surely as we could still recall the phone numbers of our respective homesteads.

I never expected to have any say in determining the septet of digits that would connect callers to our new home, but it turned out that I was allowed to play a small role. The phone company representative informed me that we had moved into an area that was serviced by three different numerical prefixes, and I could choose whichever one I wanted, if indeed it made any difference to me at all. She rattled off my choices, and one of them stood out: 777. I liked the idea of having a prefix composed of the same repeated digit. It would be easy for everyone to memorize: for us, our family, our friends, and one day - our children. The representative gave me the rest of the number: 4765. I went about repeating our new phone number for a few minutes. 777-4765. 777-4765. 777-4765. Like the house itself, there seemed an inevitability about it. It had an appealing rhythm and sounded almost like I had always known it. 777-4765, the number we would always have.

A few years later, we were a family of four. As our daughters grew older and began to assert their independence, we followed the example of our parents and taught the girls to recite our phone number. Meanwhile, our right hands developed a muscle memory for the seven digits that we wrote down again and again on various forms, applications, and correspondence. "Has anything changed?" we were often asked when visiting our doctors, dentists and veterinarians, and the answer was always, "No." We still lived in the same house. You could still reach us at the same number.

Somehow, in some illogical and overly sentimental fashion, it seems as though we have betrayed a comforting fragment of our illusory permanence. The world has changed in a way that we never anticipated. When we were growing up, there was one number that everyone who knew us could use to reach any desired member of the family. Sure, you might have to talk to someone else first and ask for the person with whom you wished to converse, but one number worked for all of us. Never did we dream that the yards of telephone cabling that traversed the frames of our homes would ever be any less essential than the plumbing pipes or electrical wires. The very idea of everyone carrying a personal, portable phone was as remote as Dick Tracy's two-way wristwatch.

And perhaps in this age of electronic isolation, there is something sad about our family losing something that we once shared, even if it is nothing more than a silly number.

So long, 777-4765. If it were up to me, you'd be officially retired from service, your legendary digits embroidered on a banner that would hang from the basement rafters. Then one day, we'd ask our visiting grandchildren to power down their onboard communication devices and observe with us a moment of silence in your memory. "Once upon a time," we'd croak, "every family had just one phone number..."

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Look, Ma - no graph paper!

My father-in-law was an engineer for General Tire, not long retired when we first met. His natural flair for design and problem solving demanded expression whether or not it was earning him a living, and thus he filled his leisure hours with an assortment of engaging projects, from fashioning his own golf clubs to creating custom stained glass windows for his front door. He wrote with a precise block printing style suitable for labeling blueprints or lettering comics. And always, there was graph paper handy to work out the next challenge.

Having mastered his profession before the dawn of personal computers, Dick's first impulse when contemplating a task was to grab a pencil and a scrap of graph paper. Sometimes the printed grid was necessary, sometimes not. I remember the draftsman's zeal with which he tackled the chore of assigning seats to guests at our wedding reception. Out came the graph paper, upon which he sketched a scale blueprint of the reception hall and began to maneuver cutout banquet tables until he determined the optimal arrangement. When he was finished, we had a little map featuring the thoughtful arrangement of each guest according to his or her familial and social affiliations. He might have achieved virtually the same end without having applied such methodical precision, but I think the process of working it all out was what he truly enjoyed. His was a world of pencil-and-paper solutions.

One of the things that I admired most about my father-in-law was his capacity for using his talents to see a passing whimsy through to its completion. There is the legendary story of his quest to create a Worst Golfer trophy for the annual company outing. His idea was to apply a propane torch to one of his own trophies (he had amassed quite a few over the years) in the hope of disfiguring its miniature golfer with a horrible stance. He melted his first victim beyond recognition, achieved varied comical effect with others, but not until he went through a couple dozen trophies did he finally perfect his vision, a bow-legged duffer with a drooping club and a twisted torso.

Then there was the time that he learned, to his gentle amusement, that his future son-in-law did not know how to tie a tie. In fact, I had been using the same knot for years, carefully preserving it in between weddings, funerals, and job interviews. He tried to show me the proper technique himself, as had my father, but my attempts to memorize the sequence were as successful as carrying water in a sieve. I couldn't watch someone do it and translate the mirror image to myself, nor did it help to have someone reach around me as if I were tying my tie with an extra pair of arms. But Dick was not dissuaded. The next time we met, he gave me a small plaque adorned with lengths of ribbon that he had manipulated into eight stages of the tie-tying process, complete with numbers and instructive labels. His ingenious, three-dimensional tutorial did the trick, and I was no longer a slave to pre-tied knots.

It wasn't until the summer of 2004, nearly three years after Dick died, that I ever came close to emulating his creative engineering. I had somewhat foolishly volunteered to be the creative director responsible for coordinating a church's worth of thematic decoration for Vacation Bible School. Foolishly, I say, because once I committed to the endeavor, I became vainly preoccupied with realizing an idea that was more elaborate than the event required. The theme, part of a packaged curriculum that was being used all over the country, involved the setting of a volcanic island. A quick search online revealed that many churches were using large, papier mache volcanoes as an altar centerpiece. Noting that our sanctuary soared to a height of approximately 30 feet, I thought something more dramatic was in order.

The youth education director showed me a well-circulated plan for an 8-foot volcano created by draping fabric over a frame made of PVC tubing. It looked simple enough. Then it occurred to me, why not re-engineer these plans for a volcano twice the height? This, too, seemed fairly simple, but it required quite a lot of PVC pipe and fittings for the frame, yards and yards of industrial plastic table covering painted brown for the rocky skin, and concealed guy wires to keep the whole shebang from toppling over.

Recalling how Dick created a schematic of our reception hall, I went to the sanctuary and took detailed measurements of the altar and its many contours. Upon returning home, I plotted the dimensions on sheets of graph paper and roughed in my design, noting with satisfaction that the altar rail could provide both an extended frame for the volcano as well as a secure anchor for the guy wires. The unwieldy contraption came to life one Sunday afternoon with a little help from fellow congregants. The education director provided red rope lights to simulate flowing lava, and the puppet ministry loaned their fog machine so that our volcano could occasionally belch a puff of smoke. It was silly, fun, a little over the top, and totally in the spirit of how Dick burned his creative energy in his autumn years. I think he would have enjoyed hearing about it.

I thought about Dick just the other day as I mulled over the potential transformation of a corner of our unfinished basement into a comfortable home office. A rough concept was forming in my mind, but a little measuring and drafting was necessary in order to assess the practicality of my ideas. Would everything fit as I envisioned it? Were there any drawbacks that I had not anticipated? Once again, it was time to get out the graph paper.

Or was it? Times have changed quite a bit over the last decade. In 2004, I thought I was ahead of the curve simply because I was printing my own graph paper to custom specifications. Now, armed with an iPad, I wondered if there's any project that can't be tackled more efficiently with a tablet app. So instead of reaching for pencil and paper, I searched the App Store for something that would allow me to graphically represent my concept to scale. For nine dollars, I found an app that did that and much more. Not only could I quickly assemble a rough draft of my plan in two dimensions, I was also afforded the luxury of manipulating a 3D model or even performing a first-person walk-through of my design. All of which took about two hours, including searching for and purchasing the app, as well as taking the necessary measurements of the basement and our furniture.

Would Dick have approved? I'm sure he would have looked over my shoulder with admiration at this sleek virtual assistant to home renovation. He might even have enjoyed fiddling around with it himself. But something tells me that if he were here to help plan my basement office, the old engineer would start the ball rolling with a friendly scrap of graph paper. Sometimes making things easy just takes the fun out of it.

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You've been through this before. There is a valuable object that you must physically attain, but it's going to take a little bit of bureaucratic interaction to make it happen. An indeterminate amount of waiting may be involved. In this case, the treasured item is a West Campus parking pass for The Ohio State University, a necessity that your daughter ordered online. Armed with a day off, you are charged with the task of picking up the pass in the morning so that she may use it to attend her first college class that evening. You take the precaution of calling ahead to confirm that you are permitted to retrieve the pass on your daughter's behalf. You look over a map of West Campus and find the small visitor lot where you've parked before, the one that is a short stroll from the Traffic and Parking offices. You double-check to make sure that you have your daughter's university ID card and a printed receipt for the parking pass. Then, satisfied that you have taken all reasonable preparatory measures, you embark on your journey.

Your destination is a popular one on this first day of Winter Quarter, but several spaces open up after you circle the visitor lot once. There is a "Pay and Display" system in place that requires the purchase of a timed pass from an automated machine. You approach it and fish out the coins you brought along for this purpose, depositing three quarters and three dimes. It's 9:00. There are more coins in your pocket, but the machine says that you have just bought 42 minutes of parking time, which seems more than adequate for the purpose of picking up a previously purchased parking pass. You chastise yourself for the wasteful habit of padding parking meters with unnecessary time simply due to an irrational aversion to the unlikely prospect of purchased time elapsing. Next time, you think, you'll spend a little less instead of fattening the coffers of Traffic and Parking.

Though it feels as though you have all the time in the world to accomplish your mission, your paranoid mind tells you that there is no sense in taking any longer than you must, and so you eschew the right-angle path in favor of traversing its snow-covered hypotenuse, gaining perhaps a minute in the process. Shortly you find yourself opening the door to Traffic and Parking, and there is the long, customer service counter, nearly empty but for a pair of customers receiving service. Again, you reprimand yourself for buying a ridiculous 42 minutes of parking time. There is a large sign nearby, and it notes that you must walk past the counter in order to reach the end of the waiting line. Peering down the hall, you see just one person standing at that point, the intersection with a perpendicular hallway. You stride confidently past the counter, and as you approach the corner, you note that there are, in fact, several people waiting, but no matter, as you have plenty of time to spare. Then you round the corner and try not to betray your astonishment at the sight of thirty or more people waiting along the length of the hallway.

Taking your place at the end of this grim and eerily silent line, you realize that you were not paranoid about buying parking time, that you should have pumped all the change you had into the stupid machine, and that you have just set yourself up for a pins-and-needles wait that might last well beyond the 42 minutes you had allotted. You are familiar with the university's Traffic and Parking enforcement officers, who patrol lots like vultures circling the sky in anticipation of the magic moment that a dying desert traveler becomes carrion. You know that there is no irrationality in fearing that one of them may pounce on your Civic at minute forty-three. And then what? A ticket? Would an appeals officer see the irony in your plight, that you ran a few minutes over your purchased 42 minutes of parking time because you were waiting in line to pick up your daughter's previously purchased parking pass? Were you to intercept a ticketing officer just as he is about to slip the notice under your windshield wiper, would he listen courteously to your story and graciously tear up the ticket? Perhaps. But you have been here before, and in all your experience with Traffic and Parking officers, you have never known them to show any flexibility. Nor to smile.

So you sigh and try to accept your fate without worry, noting that the line has already moved a little, and thinking that there might just be some sliver of hope that you will return to your car either before your time runs out or before a Traffic and Parking officer notices that your time has run out. Others in the long line hold postures that suggest either nervous tension or slouched resignation. Someone apparently thought it amusing to apply a dashed yellow median along the length of the hallway floor. The line snakes along, incongruously, to the left of the line, as mandated by nearby signage. Other attempts have been made to brighten up the windowless hallway. Safety posters and an enlarged aerial photo of campus adorn one wall. A life-size "Pay and Display" machine has been awarded a prominent space. From the ceiling hang a pair of silent TV monitors, one of which is showing a succession of weather graphics, the other featuring a morning show chat with a bedraggled and effusively gesticulating William H. Macy.

The thick silence is broken by spontaneous conversation halfway up the line: a cheery young man with a broad face and recurring smile has struck up a conversation with a pleasant young woman whose blond hair flows from beneath a knitted winter hat with hanging tassels. You can hear every word they say - everyone can - and though their talk is amiable and altogether unremarkable, you cannot decided whether their public discourse is an annoyance or a welcome distraction. For just beyond them, at the far end of the hall, is the LED marquee that advises aspiring customers to have all forms ready, lists accepted forms of payment, and periodically flashes the time. 9:20. You count the people in front of you and decide against applying mathematical reasoning to the situation, as your numerical intuition tells you it doesn't look good. Instead, you hang onto the undeniably promising fact that one person who was in front of you has left, apparently unwilling or unable to wait any longer. If only several more of the sad sacks in this line follow his lead, it just might work.

But who are you kidding? There is no way that you will have concluded your transaction and returned to your vulnerable Civic in time. It is merely a question of whether or not the transgression will be noticed by the Gestapo. And you know it will, you just know it. And you further know that they will not give two buckeyes about some fat, old alumnus who was too cheap to plunk all of his change into a parking meter. They will be merciless, just like the time you failed to remove your father's Oldsmobile from the stadium parking lot before midnight, the deadline by which they started to tow vehicles in anticipation of the sacred marching band's dawn practice. Not that you're still bitter about it. But you hold no illusions about their charity. It's now 9:25, and those buzzards have probably already made note of your 9:42 expiration. Time to face the music. You were stupid! Stupid!

And then...a miracle. An angel appears. Admittedly, there is nothing angelic about her rather ordinary appearance, but she whisks down the line and calls out like a carillon's worth of church bells, "Did anyone already pay for their pass on the Internet?" You are nearly too stunned to speak, and the angel almost turns away, but you recover your senses in time to thrust your arm upward and croak, "I d-did!"

You reach your car at 9:33, alive with adrenaline and a deep gratitude for the unexpected windfalls of intervening fortune. Others, you know, will not be so lucky. Like the absentee owner of one of those cars across the lot, that line of vehicles under surveillance by an expressionless officer sitting inside an idling Traffic and Parking cruiser. He was coming for you next, you think. But not today. Not today.

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Just kidding. Mugging for the camera this summer with my brother's chocolate cake.

As 2010 drew to a close, I sat on the couch and watched revelers in Times Square while gobbling down handfuls of M&Ms and despising my gluttonous nature. My chronic overindulgence inspired an end-of-year post in which I confessed a lifelong habit of overeating as well as bouts of draconian self-deprivation. I concluded my observations with a noncommittal suggestion that I might try to forgo chocolate for the entirety of 2011, as it had become a rarity for me to go even a day without it. Fellow chocoholics, I stand before you now to report that I am less than 48 hours away from having endured a year without chocolate.

Hold your applause, please. For though I am certain that I shall imminently achieve my goal, I am hardly a changed man. No, my gluttony persists, as you shall soon learn, a vice redirected to other heathen avenues. But I suppose there is something to be said for pulling off a stunt like this in a fattened society where chocolate is as prevalent as our basic necessities. I am here to tell you that, though it may seem as daunting as survival sans oxygen, living without chocolate for prolonged periods of time can be done.

I decided that if my sacrifice was to be pure and meaningful, then it had to be precise, because the world of chocolate has many gray areas. What exactly does it mean to give up chocolate? Are we talking about only the solid form as used in candy bars and M&Ms? What about chocolate brownies? Chocolate milk? Count Chocula? There are too many potential boundaries where the line can be drawn, and so I concluded that the only way to give up chocolate properly was to avoid it in all of its forms, even the most remote and least satisfying. Nothing that claimed to be chocolate in any way would pass my lips. Not so much as a Tootsie Roll. Not so much as an allegedly chocolate Necco wafer. Not so much as a mocha coffee. No sir, I could not accept any edible as kosher unless it was 100% devoid of chocolate both in actuality as well as in intent.

In a strange and unexpected way, this zealotry actually made my challenge easier. There was never any question in my mind about whether or not I was permitted to have any chocolaty item. It was forbidden. As long as I could maintain that mindset, my rejection of chocolate was automatic. In turn, I discovered an unanticipated form of relief, the perverse freedom of self-denial. I no longer subjected myself to internal debates over whether or not it was acceptable for me to indulge my appetite for chocolate. It simply was not acceptable. And so there was rarely any sensation of temptation. I wistfully scanned the candy bars at the checkout counter, but I never considered buying one. When the odd gift of chocolate came my way, I no longer thought about its deleterious effect upon my health. I wasn't going to eat it, and that was that.

However, a routinely obliged sweet tooth does not cease its chocolate addiction without demanding something in return. I still experienced the almost daily compulsion to eat something sugary, especially after a meal. There are so many ways to satisfy a craving for sweetness that I think my diet may have become less healthy after I gave up chocolate. Foremost among my sins was my consumption of pounds - yes, pounds - of Reese's Pieces this year. They are devoid of chocolate, contrary to what many people assume, but the rich flavor of sweetened peanut butter combined with a texture and mouthfeel nearly identical to M&Ms provides a very satisfying sensation. On many occasions when I felt like eating chocolate, I took solace in the joys of peanut butter.

In addition to the lowly goober, I owe another nut a measure of thanks for helping me to diminish chocolate cravings. I have found that hazelnut creamer, when combined just so with coffee and aspartame, creates a rewarding flavor profile, the complexity of which rivals that of chocolate. A regular breakfast of a Honey Nut Cheerios Breakfast Bar with a whipped hazelnut coffee has capped off my mornings with a sugary exclamation point that gives me the temporary sensation that all is right with the world.

Reese's Pieces and hazelnut coffee may have been my chocolate crutches, but I had additional help from many supporting dietary villains. Pixy Stix, Smarties, Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Maple Nut Goodies, fruit pies, glazed donuts, Popsicles, Pepsi Throwback, and white cake made multiple appearances in 2011. I even found fatty satisfaction in combining vanilla ice cream with Raisin Bran Crunch. As I said, the sweet tooth does not like to be denied, and it will find a way. To a large degree, these substitutions are the reason why my chocolate abstinence has not been accompanied by any weight loss.

Despite all of my sugary indulgences, I still wanted to eat chocolate. How it wrenched my gluttonous heart to see bags and bags of holiday candy marked down to almost nothing in January! When was the last time I sailed through Valentine's Day without eating a single piece of chocolate? How strange to have Girl Scout Thin Mints in the house and watch them disappear without helping! To visit a Graeter's ice cream shop and not order a flavor with chocolate chunks! To have no chocolate cream pie at the Kewpee during Marchocolate! To pass by plates of chocolate chip cookies! To take a vacation and not indulge in the local chocolate creations! There was Halloween with its endless supply of candy bars, Thanksgiving with its Texas Sheet Cake, and now the nonstop proliferation of chocolate that accompanies Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Yes, through it all, I have wanted to eat chocolate. In my dreams, I did. Half a dozen times this year, I experienced dreams in which I innocently ingested some M&Ms or a piece of cake, only to realize with horror that I had inadvertently sabotaged my challenge. I awoke rattled by the scenarios, armed with a heightened awareness of the chocolate dangers that surrounded me. Once, upon leaving a restaurant with my brothers, I was about to follow their lead and enjoy a complimentary pair of spherical mints. With the fine-tuned instincts of a paranoid spy, I asked one of them to bite his mint in half, a precaution that revealed a thin layer of chocolate under the candy shell. Alas! I had come so far, and I was not about to be undone by an after-dinner mint.

So, fellow chocoholics, it can be done. I suppose I could carry on my abstinence for as long as I wanted, but let's not be stupid about it. Chocolate is a part of life, at least until your doctor tells you that it's not. I am looking forward to watching the Times Square ball drop tomorrow night, knowing that the shouts of "Happy New Year!" will herald the end of my theatrical self-denial. Aware of this momentous occasion, my daughters gave me for Christmas a pound box of Anthony Thomas Melt-Away Mints, an old and rarely indulged favorite. We also picked up a pound of chocolate-covered pretzels from Findlay's Dietsch Brothers, one of the finest candy shops anywhere. And my sister Chris, who has followed my no-chocolate challenge and knows my love for the absurd, gave me a one-pound package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that contains precisely two peanut butter cups (that right, the oversize cups are half a pound each!).

Happy New Year, fellow chocoholics! I know mine will be.

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Ready to "Do It Again"? Beach Boys Wilson, Marks, Johnston, Jardine and Love

Christmas has apparently come early for music lovers in the form of last week's announcement that all of the surviving Beach Boys intend to reunite for a 50-city world tour next summer in recognition of the legendary band's 50th anniversary. That would be founding members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine, along with Wilson's longtime road replacement Brian Johnston and early Beach Boy David Marks (the one who thought he stood a better chance at success by forming his own band, David and the Marksmen, surely one of the most tragic career missteps in the annals of popular music). The quartet are to be supported by Wilson's backing band, according to Love, who acknowledged that his cousin Brian has vacillated on his commitment to the tour. "He has his moods," said Love, "no doubt about it." All of which means that we can only buy our tickets and keep our fingers crossed.

There was a time when the prospect of a Beach Boys reunion would not have excited me at all. I grew up dismissing them with a dose of contempt, an arrogance born of ignorance along with the fact that I became musically conscious around the same time that the band was hitting its nadir. All that I could discern was a long list of vacuous hits about cars, surfing, and girls. To me, the Beach Boys were the vanilla ice cream in the Baskin-Robbins of pop music. They were a K-tel collection. What a shame that the people who made such a substantial contribution to American music should have seemed frivolous and inconsequential to a young person a mere decade after their prime. But there was a bearded Mike Love prancing about onstage in a stocking cap and bathrobe, and I could not conclude otherwise.

I started to change my tune as a young adult, most notably in the summer of 1989, after I saw the Beach Boys live on a tandem tour with Chicago. There was a bit of historical significance to the event, as the two bands had toured together in 1975, and once again the groups were performing an encore set of songs together. I attended the show for Chicago, who performed first, and I expected to be a bit bored when the Beach Boys took the stage. I was smugly unimpressed as they opened with California Girls, complete with bikini-clad beauties bouncing across the stage as though the music and lyrics by themselves might be too obtuse for the audience to grasp. But then there was Sloop John B and Wouldn't It Be Nice, and it wasn't long before I abandoned my cynical eyes and simply enjoyed the music.

Midway through their set came a number that, incredibly, I had never heard. God Only Knows struck me as a remarkable and captivating song. It was beautiful and, to my uneducated ear, so unlike the Beach Boys. There was a profundity to the lyrics, and the melody and arrangement unfolded in ways I never could have predicted. I was totally won over. For the rest of the show, I listened with a more charitable discernment, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I heard. By the end of the evening, I knew I had some homework to do.

What a joy it was to discover Pet Sounds, as much a rite of classic rock passage as familiarizing oneself with Sgt. Pepper and The Dark Side of the Moon. There was God Only Knows again, and so much more - the pensive daydream of Let's Go Away For Awhile, the mesmerizing intimacy of Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), the cry of the lonely outsider on I Guess I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, and the devastating heartbreak of Caroline, No. How could this fantastic album have escaped me for so many years? As I dug deeper into the Beach Boys' catalog, I began to realize the depth and breadth of what I had missed.

There are dimensions of Brian Wilson's genius that rarely get airplay, hauntingly beautiful tunes like Wonderful, 'Til I Die, Wind Chimes, Let The Wind Blow, Surf's Up and The Warmth Of The Sun. Bizarre creations like Fall Breaks And Back To Winter, She's Goin' Bald, and Vegetables showcase an unrestrained creativity. And then there are what I like to think of as genuine drug casualty songs, including Johnny Carson and Solar System, childishly literal pieces devoid of any poetic metaphor. None of the above resembles the fun-in-the-sun attitude of the Beach Boys' greatest hits, and all of it is fascinating.

Just as compelling is the biographical history of the Beach Boys, especially Brian Wilson's struggles to overcome drug addiction, obesity, stage fright, and mental illness. The band's timeline is fraught with alliances, betrayals, legal squabbles, failures and comebacks. The supporting cast includes strange characters like Wilson's notorious therapist Eugene Landy, who restored his client's health while practically dictating his behavior, and Murry Wilson, the domineering family patriarch and band manager who later sought wealth by submitting an unintentionally humorous, unsolicited jingle to Kentucky Fried Chicken. The tragic losses of Dennis and Carl Wilson punctuate the story with further sadness as well as a large helping of improbability: who would have predicted that Brian would be the last surviving Wilson brother? As I learned, the Beach Boys were not the dull, pin-striped choirboys I had perceived in my youth. Like their music, their lives have been much more complex.

So it turned out the Beach Boys weren't bland after all. I was pleased to see them again in 1993 as headliners following a minor league baseball game. Once again, it was a great show. Afterward my wife and I stopped for a moment outside a fence surrounding the stadium when we noticed people boarding the tour bus. A haggard Carl Wilson acknowledged his fans with the quickest of waves before disappearing into the bus, an image that returned to me when it was announced that he had succumbed to cancer in 1998. In 2000, I had the great fortune to see a concert by Brian Wilson, whose performance was riveting. Backed by an incredibly talented band, the genius behind the Beach Boys delivered a great set, though his fragility was occasionally evident. At one point, he stopped and restarted a song because something was not to his liking. During the encore, he strapped on a green bass, stood stock-still at center stage with the gravest of expressions, and introduced Barbara Ann with an unconvincing, monotone utterance of "Let's rock."

Will the great Brian Wilson truly reunite with his old bandmates for a 50th-anniversary tour? If he does, will the contentious Beach Boys be able to keep their collective dysfunction at bay for the duration? A few generations of fans who have never had the opportunity to see the yin and yang of Wilson and Love on the same stage hope that it all comes to pass as promised. As one of America's musical giants once asked, wouldn't it be nice?

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Forget the soft illumination of red safelights. THIS is what I used to see.

I used to work in total darkness. Not all of the time, mind you, but I experienced the complete absence of light for an average of an hour every working day for a few years. And no, I wasn't sleeping. As the manager of a micrographics department within a small records management firm, it was my responsibility to handle raw film stock and process every exposed reel. As a result, I spent a fair amount of time squirreled away inside a darkroom.

Our digital age is rapidly transforming the very notion of a darkroom into an antiquated concept. Forthcoming generations will grasp the idea only through its representation in old movies and television shows, with their romanticized, red-tinted photo labs inhabited by outcasts who discover startling evidence upon retrieving an enlargement from a chemical tray. Such a cliche never once happened in real life, I guarantee you. Dramatic moments of unexpected revelation might occur when a photographer is projecting a negative with an enlarger prior to exposing a sheet of photo paper, but unanticipated compositional elements never emerge from a fixer bath. I guess the truth is too complicated or dull for visual narratives. In any case, that isn't the kind of darkroom in which I worked.

My darkroom had no red-filtered safety lamps. There was no need for them, as I never worked with photo paper. We bought our unperforated 16mm microfilm on 100' reels, which had to be wound by hand into the lightproof cartridges that were inserted into our cameras. After a reel was exposed and rewound, the film had to be extracted from the cartridge and placed on a much larger reel for processing. Both of these processes had to occur in total darkness, or else we would compromise the carefully calibrated exposure of up to 3,500 document images on each roll.

When I was first trained to do this, these routine tasks were daunting. To load a roll of film into a cartridge, for example, required performing a sequence of precise movements without looking at what you were doing. First, attach an empty cartridge to the special receptacle on the left rewind of a loading board. Find the trailer and extract it from the cartridge. Then grab a box of film stock, tear off its label, and remove its reel. Peel the safety paper off the film, then attach the reel to the right rewind, making sure that the film spools to the left from underneath the reel. Next, take the leading edge of the film and hold it so that it abuts the end of the trailer. With a free hand, pull off a tab of splice tape and secure the underside of the connection, then pull off another tab and secure the top. Ensure that the film is positioned underneath the guide roller, or else it may get scratched on the lip of the cartridge. Now you're ready to reel! Turn the crank on the left rewind counterclockwise until all of the film has spooled into the cartridge. Now find the end of the roll and pull it out of the cartridge. Take the end of a black leader and hold it so that it abuts the end of the film. With a free hand, pull off a tab of splice tape and secure the underside of the connection, then pull off another tab and secure the top. Wind the leader into the cartridge, and voila! You're done. Easy, right?

Actually, it was easy, but only after you established a routine and got used to it. Consistency was the key. Provided that all of the necessary materials were gathered and placed in designated locations prior to turning out the lights, everything went smoothly. I was surprised how quickly I could adapt to the utter lack of visual information, but soon my darkroom tasks became as automatic as tying my shoes. The danger was the tedium. As dull as it could be to sit in darkness doing the same task over and over, I couldn't afford a lapse in concentration. A bad splice on a cartridge trailer could result in a couple hours of wasted microfilmer labor due to the exposed film remaining stuck in the camera (its retrieval requiring its exposure it to light).

A worse fate was possible if I mishandled preparing exposed film for processing. It was cartridge loading in reverse, with up to 14 rolls of film spliced together onto a single reel that was then concealed within a light-tight magazine. For splicing, the rolls had to be overlapped in a particular manner and secured with five staples. Failure to do this within a certain measure of accuracy would cause a splice to become jammed between the magazine and the processor, a harrowing occurrence of costly potential. Despite my best efforts and those of the employees I trained, a jam would occur now and then, and I became as attuned to the call of my processor alarm as a new mother is alerted by the wailing of her infant. Disaster was avoided many times, but it was far easier on the nerves to take the time to make precise staple splices that were sure to travel smoothly through the mechanism.

Maintaining a diligent focus on quality control was challenging in a silent darkroom, which is why a radio tuned to the local NPR affiliate became as essential as a fresh roll of splice tabs. The thinking part of the brain needed to stay active in order to keep the automaton awake. In this manner I wound and rewound hundreds of thousands of feet of microfilm whilst blind and pondering the state of current affairs. It actually became a rather enjoyable part of the day. Everyone knew that when I was locked behind the double doors of the darkroom, I couldn't interrupt my work for anything short of an emergency. Alone in the dark, I could toil away to the accompaniment of Morning Edition and the soft gurgling of our deep tank film processor. Sort of a single-sensory deprivation therapy.

Not that I miss it. It was mindless robot work. I'm happy to never again have to sightlessly manipulate microfilm. But I do credit my years in the darkroom with what is perhaps an above average level of comfort in low-to-zero-level lighting environments. It does not bother me to traverse my home in the middle of the night without turning on a light. The mind adapts easily to operating blind within familiar spaces. Descending the steps, maneuvering around the couch, and grabbing a water glass from the kitchen cabinet? It's as easy as making the next microfilm splice.

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When was the last time you could honestly describe a 600-page nonfiction book as a thoroughly absorbing page-turner? Such length is usually the province of academic works requiring an investment of patience and concentration from the reader. Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum's I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (Dutton, 2011) makes no such demands, at least not if you are of the generation that witnessed the rise and fall of Music Television. You  will recognize the names of the artists, videos, and VJs, and you may find yourself as riveted to this sizable oral history as you once were captivated by untold hours of MTV.

Like its subject - the first decade of MTV - Marks and Tannenbaum's weighty tome unfolds as a series of easily digestible segments. The authors eschew editorializing in favor of letting people speak for themselves. Each of its 53 chapters begins with a brief introduction followed by artfully intercut interview transcriptions. The effect echoes the pace of vintage MTV, when the fledgling network actually aired music videos and the mesmerizing imagery turned over with the regularity of a kaleidoscope.

In those days, well before the advent of content on demand, I and millions of other teenagers would sit transfixed before the television for hours, strung along song by song in the hope that a favorite video was just around the corner. The J. Geils Band's riotous Centerfold. David Bowie's disturbingly surreal Ashes to Ashes. The Rolling Stones' perpetually amusing Start Me Up. All those exotic, imported videos from Classic Nouveaux, Spandau Ballet, Split Enz, The Specials, Men at Work, and Madness. Bits of lunacy from niche artists like Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, Grace Jones, and The Vapors (Turning Japanese, anyone?). I was so entertained by most of the playlist that I would sit through as many clunkers as it took to get to the good stuff.

At the height of my infatuation, I started to catalog my viewing on discarded, blank spreadsheets (complete with dot-matrix-printer-compatible, perforated, sprocket-hole margins) that Dad had brought home from work as scrap paper. I listed the artist and song, noted whether the video was performance or conceptual, and evaluated its merit on a scale of 0 to 100. How I wish I had those papers now. All I know for sure is that anything off of DEVO's New Traditionalists earned a 100, whereas the visually dull clips that tried my patience (Marshall Crenshaw's Someday, Someway; Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street) were scornfully branded with a big, fat donut.

Then somewhere during my college years, I came home for the weekend and wondered what had become of my beloved MTV. Where were original VJs J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman and Martha Quinn? What happened to all the quirkiness that once made the network great? Why were they pandering to kids? Had I just grown up, or had MTV taken a step backward? A little bit of both, I'm sure. Little did I know at the time that the future would hold a far worse transformation, the present reality-TV incarnation that must have teens scratching their heads and wondering what in God's name the M stands for in MTV.

I Want My MTV covers every facet of the channel's devolution from hungry innovator to bloated media giant. Its founders were pioneers who found themselves settling a lawless territory where rock 'n' roll excess and debauchery were simply taken for granted as part of the job. From drug-fueled, marathon video shoots to more mindless promiscuity than a season of Melrose Place, nearly everyone in the industry was sowing their wild oats. That much might have been guessed, but I Want My MTV offers surprising tidbits as well. For example, who would have guessed that among the Original Five, J.J. Jackson was the biggest party animal? He always came across as a polite and laid-back guy to me, like a cool big brother. And nowhere else have I ever heard that sister station VH-1 was designed to fail as a "fighting brand", copying every move of Ted Turner's rival upstart Cable Music Channel in order to dilute the competition. (Don't remember CMC? That's how well the strategy worked).

The book is most entertaining when it chronicles disaster, and as various professional failures and personal implosions litter the legacy of MTV, there is plenty to amuse. Best of all is an entire chapter entitled, "A Whopping, Steaming Turd," devoted to what is generally regarded within the industry as the worst music video ever made, a jaw-dropper that single-handedly destroyed the recording and performing career of its artist, Billy Squier. As you may recall, "The Stroke" was silly enough as it was. Yet your average teenage white boy could endorse it without embarrassment, and it is not the focus of this chapter. That distinction goes to "Rock Me Tonite"? What? Never heard of it? Neither had I, even though it received the full MTV World Premiere treatment in 1984. "Rock Me Tonite" was so horrendous that the video and Squier, himself, went off the radar shortly afterward.

It must be seen to be believed. Now, thanks to the unrivaled and merciless resuscitive powers of YouTube, you can see it for yourself. I'm warning you now that Squier prances about like the spastic offspring of Ed Grimley and Richard Simmons. What's worse, you'll never be able to see Billy Squier again and not think of this lowlight. Even "The Stroke" becomes leagues dumber when viewed as a chaser to "Rock Me Tonite." Career-destroying, indeed.

"It's on YouTube," by the way, is a familiar refrain in the oral histories of I Want My MTV, whether in reference to notorious videos or incidents like Bobby Brown allegedly dropping a vial of cocaine while dancing onstage at the 1989 Video Music Awards. It's a telling comment, for if video did, indeed, kill the radio star, on-demand video streaming put the nails in the coffin of music television. There's no longer any need to watch hours of TV in the hopes of catching anything.

There was a time, though, when it all seemed worth it, and it is aptly chronicled in I Want My MTV.

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POSTSCRIPT: The book ends with a section called "Cast of Characters", micro-bios intended to help the reader distinguish among the hundreds of personalities whose words and stories are told. I'll - ahem - end this post with my favorite:

SIR MIX-A-LOT is a Seattle-based rapper best known for his 1992 number one hit "Baby Got Back." He likes big butts.

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December has barely begun, yet it already feels as though we have been subjected to Christmas music for an entire holiday season. Familiar tunes have permeated retail environments for weeks now, and commercial television has been hijacked by the relentless yuletide promotions of jewelers and department stores. The frenzied songfest will only intensify as the Last Shopping Day approaches.

For those with an insatiable appetite for perennial holiday favorites, it's a golden time. Personally, I find a few Christmas songs in the week leading up to December 25 to be sufficient, but I've usually had more than my fill by then. When it comes to Christmas music, I prefer be selective, which means embracing the recordings I appreciate while avoiding the ones I hate. The latter effort, however, can be quite difficult.

Of the traditional carols and hymns, the one song that I truly loathe is The Little Drummer Boy. What don't I like about it? Everything. Its worst offense is what may be the dullest refrain ever penned: pa rum pum pum pum. This is a fatal flaw, as the annoying phrase is repeated incessantly. All that remains is a monotonous melody with a lyrical narrative that drives me up the wall. All my life, even when I was a child myself, I've wanted to grab that kid by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. "Listen, drummer boy," I'd snarl menacingly, "the newborn king doesn't give two figs whether or not you have a gift for him, and he sure as heck isn't going to be pleased by some ankle-biter beating away on a snare drum!" I don't care if it's meant to be taken metaphorically. It's a stupid analogy.

The only possible saving grace for The Little Drummer Boy is that some variations include the line, "The ox and ass kept time." Regrettably, that synonym for donkey, the sole bit of double-entendre joy in an otherwise boring exercise, is now customarily omitted in favor of lamb. I wish the song would go away, but like its obnoxious refrain, The Little Drummer Boy is played unceasingly this time of year.

If that were all that I found intolerable about Christmas music, I might still be able to handle the typical hour of holiday radio programming. Unfortunately, there seems not to exist such a block of broadcasting that is free of the gadawful Mannheim Steamroller staple Deck the Halls. Oh, how I hate it. And this is coming from someone who actually likes electronic music. I mean, criminy, I enjoy everything from Keith Emerson and DEVO to Isao Tomita and Wendy Carlos, so I'm no elitist snob. But the pulsating bass line, wailing lead synthesizer, and look-at-me, cutesy-pie, faux-jazzy fiddling around with the melody makes me want to stick forks in my eyes. Or better yet, my ears. I've had farts that were more creative. And yet, try walking from the far end of a big box retailer to the cash registers without hearing it.

Even my heroes can disappoint me during these endless days of Christmas pop. Paul McCartney, whom I revere as the greatest songwriting musician of our time, also contributed a holiday ditty that I despise nearly as much as Little Drummer Boy and Mannheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls. You know the one I'm talking about. Wonderful Christmastime. It was recorded during a period in which the future Sir Paul seemed unable to separate the wheat from the chaff, right around the time he made the wildly uneven Back to the Egg, which might as well have been called Diamonds and Turds. How could an album that included the brilliant Arrow Through Me, Getting Closer, Again And Again And Again, and Baby's Request also feature the abysmal Spin It On, After The Ball/Million Miles, and Old Siam, Sir? Only his producer knows for sure.

And only McCartney knows what was going through his head when he made one of the cheesiest Christmas songs ever. It would have been bad enough had he been satisfied with the the clunky verse and sappy chorus. But the falsetto representation of children singing ding dong is simply unforgivable. You have to ask yourself, did the old Beatle really like this awful song, or was he trying to see if he was infallible on the charts? In any case, he's had the last laugh, as Sir Paul reportedly earns annual royalties of half a million dollars from Wonderful Christmastime alone. (So if you should ever find yourself knocking back a few eggnog at the pub with Macca, don't feel bad about letting him pick up the check.)

One might conclude from my tirade that I'm some cynical Grinch who abhors all Christmas music. Not so. In fact, my album collection includes a pair of Christmas efforts that I regard as two of the finest albums ever recorded, holiday-themed or otherwise. The first is A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi's terrific 1965 soundtrack to the classic Peanuts special. What an inspired idea to complement a comic strip's satirical take on the commercialization of Christmas with the improvisations of a jazz trio. To this day, the rollicking Linus And Lucy is the musical essence of Peanuts. But nostalgia aside, the album stands on its own as a simultaneously joyful and contemplative interpretation of the holidays.

Then there is the truly wonderful Home For Christmas from Amy Grant. Released in 1992, it was Grant's second Christmas album. Her first was recorded nearly a decade earlier, and though it is a pleasant enough collection, it is somewhat dated by its heavy reliance on keyboards, a fashionable sound at the time. Home For Christmas is lavishly produced and achieves a timeless feel, the sort of album that just as likely could have been made today as half a century ago. The orchestral arrangements are worthy accompaniments to Grant's beautiful voice, which had matured since her earlier Christmas effort. What's more, Grant delivers the definitive version of David Foster and Linda Thompson's great Grown-Up Christmas List, which is to Wonderful Christmastime what up is to down.

Amy Grant is the exception to a general rule that Christmas albums are stopgaps when an artist isn't sure what to do next, and multiple Christmas albums from the same artist are a sign of creative and economic desperation. Witness the yuletide struggles of the band Chicago. In 1998, frustrated by their label's shelving of Chicago 22 (Stone of Sissyphus) and on the heels of an album of big band covers and two more greatest hits compilations, they released Chicago XXV: The Christmas Album, an uneven collection of standards and originals. It was followed by a live album and yet another hits compilation. In 2003, they shamelessly rereleased their previous Christmas effort with the addition of six new songs and dubbed the endeavor What's It Gonna Be, Santa? The next year, former bandmate Peter Cetera, in an attempt to find success with his own ridiculously titled holiday disc, put out You Just Gotta Love Christmas. And just this past October, after even more greatest hits packages, Chicago fired back with Chicago XXXIII: O Christmas Three (yes, Three, though really it should be O Christmas Two-And-A-Half). The utter chutzpah of this move prompted Cetera's brother Kenny to suggest that the band missed a great opportunity; they should have invited their old friend to rejoin the group and called their product For Pete's Sake, It's Another Christmas Album!

As for O Christmas Three, I cannot responsibly judge what I have not heard. But I feel it's only right for me to issue a warning. The first track - and I swear on Rudolph's red nose that this is true - features Dolly Parton on Wonderful Christmastime.

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