phone home

"Nightline" had a feature on Paul Potts the other night. He was the winner of "Britain's Got Talent." Potts likes his new found fame but hasn't quit his day job, just in case it all goes away. He is on a leave of absence from Carphone Warehouse. I just saw that store on the series finale of "Extras" when a character loses his showbiz job and goes back to work at Carphone Warehouse.

The same edition of "Nightline" also had a short piece on Josh Groban. Josh talked about how he and David Foster "broke down the rhythm" of "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear." My wife liked their arrangement of that song but didn't care for what they did to "Ave Maria." She heard both songs after receiving Groban's top selling Christmas CD "Noel" as as gift. Oprah chose the disc as one of her favorite things, don't you know. If I correctly understand what my wife said, Josh dropped the Latin word "et" in one of the lyrics and then moved the subsequent syllables onto the wrong notes. She also didn't like the way he omitted the second verse and repeated the first instead. Maybe Josh didn't want to ask Mary to pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

We found an unexpected Christmas music treat while flipping around the dial last night. Our PBS HD station was running a Christmas concert by an a capella group called Tonic Sol-fa. They did a great version of "Ay, Ay, Ay It's Christmas," a song which I had previously only heard by Ricky Martin. The Tonic Sol-fa special is worth watching if they repeat it even though they spent a little too much time on filler between some of the songs.

Who knew that "Ay, Ay, Ay It's Christmas" is another one of those songs that people lip sync on YouTube for comedic effect?