Safe travels to you

As the old song goes "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go". Though it's really a Christmas song in the weird merging of the Thanksgiving Holiday and the Christmas shopping season  few people seem to notice. Besides in the next few days it seems like half of America will be travelling to meet up at their parent's or grandparent's house.

A staple chestnut of comedy is the dysfunction side of this very American holiday. How travel plans go a wry  through delays, mis-communications and unreal expectations. Or how grown children chafe under the obligation of having to come home to aging parents that can't resist at least this one day to lord over their offspring as thought they're pre-teen dependents. Comedy is funny because it has some kernel of truth to it but lucky as a nation we are not that neurotic.

I know other countries have their holidays where the childhood home and hearth is made sacred and it all gets celebrated with a reunion and feast of traditional dishes.

Thanksgiving has been compared to the great migrations of animals across the plains of Africa, except here it's herds of bewildered-beasts as one friend puts it.

No matter how disjointed modern life becomes, or how far family members get separated by work and career, an inner need always calls us back. Thomas Mann claimed you can't go back home again but that does stop us from trying by harvesting some scrap of nostalgia.

One disturbing trend about Thanksgiving is the further commercialization of the holiday. Okay this is America where making a dollar is done with almost religious fervor but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Today in barroom trade it's known as Black Wednesday. Tonight a wave of college kids will return to their old hometowns ready to hook up with old friends and high school classmates. Tonight the sales of alcohol will spike as well as DWI arrests and car accidents involving alcohol.

After Thanksgiving comes Black Friday when every merchant has extra special discounts and sales to start off the Christmas shopping season. Twenty years back the sales started at 9 or 10 am Friday morning which was the normal time most store opened. Eventually the stores would open earlier and earlier on Black Friday so that ten years ago people would camp out in front of the store in the middle of the night for a 6 am opening. Things could only get more ridiculous in the mercantile arms race when big department stores would open at 12:01 am just a few years ago. Now Wal-Mart plans to be open on Thanksgiving afternoon. There are planned protests by Wal-Mart employees. Seriously I think we should all question why we need to buy some discount imported trinket instead of being with our families or at least letting other people have the day off so they can be with theirs.

Saturday is Shop Small Business Day. I actually approve of this, partly because it's not such an in your face event and partly because small businesses are anchors for the rest of the community. Big businesses only seem to get more creepy and pernicious as small business disappears.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving has been taken yet but I'm sure that marketers are working on a campaign to convince us to compulsively spend our money on more things we don't need and only think we want.

So are you travelling today or during this weekend? One of the best ways to keeping one's sanity or at least stay distracted while waiting for a connecting flight to come in or traffic jam end, is to have music. The right music at the right time can make bad moment tolerable and good moment nirvana.

In my past I had a weekly show on college radio. I probably remember the show as being better than it really was -I mean if I was actually good at it I'd probably still be doing it. On college radio there is no playlist and it's wonderful place to broaden one's musical horizons. My personal tastes in music leans towards the experimental but here are three suggestions for your MP-3 player that are unusual but not weird.

Ska music is fantastic. Upbeat with the blending of jazz, rock&roll and reggae. So Ska music from Japan? Yes! The Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra plays this music with the kind of enthusiasm that comes from an outsider looking in.

Laika and the Cosmonauts. Again another group of outsiders, they are from Finland but have true appreciation for Californian surf music.

One time on my radio show I played a couple of Hispanic flavored songs. It was on the mild side -like Los Lobos and the Pontiac Brothers but I got tremendous response back. Slowly a half hour segment of Hispanic rock&roll got incorporated into the show. The Mexican groups really rocked with a "back to the wall", "go for broke" attitude that could not be matched. If you don't know Spanish the music could be intimidating. Los Straitjackets is an instrumental band, dressed in suits and Mexican wrestler masks. They add a special twist to familiar pop songs of the 1960's. Big Sandy is a singer in his own right and will often be the front man for Los Straitjackets, you don't need to know Spanish when Big Sandy sings.  If you totally get into Los Straitjackets, look up their Christmas album. It's a novelty album that you can enjoy even after the novelty wears off.

If your loading up your MP-3 player take this opportunity to mix it up and add in something completely different.

As one circle of friends would say "safe travels to you" .