Xmas in Pearl Harbor

Xmas in Pearl Harbor...
This is a view looking out on Southeast Loch from Merry Point at Pearl Harbor. The ships have a competition to see who can have the best light display in port for Xmas. You don't get the full effect from this shot in infra-red nightvision but we went out on a harbor boat and it was pretty spectacular.

This was around the weekend of Dec. 14th.

Schubie-shake update...

From Steven Schub, schubieshake@mindspring.com:






Shalom and Aloha Fen-heads, 'Wick-heads, Saints and Sinners!

Well, good news/bad news!
-The Bad News? The Queen of the Ghouls has literally ripped
my heart from my chest and eaten it before my very own eyes! The Good News? It's only a movie. One I'm starring in with Devon Sawa, Kelly Hu, Karen Maxwell and Dawn Olivieri. It's called "Devil's Den", and it's a sweet little love story about flesh-eating ghouls, directed by the great Jeff Burr. Even better, The Fenwicks have composed the title song for the flick. We call it: "Devil's Den (Too Dumb to Die)" and you can hear it now by clicking this:

http://www.thefenwicks.com/music.shtml

Wanna hear even more new Fenwick music? How about our ditty about the Supreme Court's supremely misguided decision on "Eminent Domain"? Hear your very own "Objectivist Bob Dylan" sing "Preeminent Domain", just click on this:

http://www.thefenwicks.com/music.shtml

-Speaking of me... (Sorry, but someone has to...) Wanna see this whack-job act across from the puppet they call "the Brando of Muppets", Mr. Big Bird himself? Dat's right- hanging with "The Bird" (he lets me call him "The Bird") on the "Sesame Street"... Come bear witness on our newly revamped and revised "Schub in Film" page, with clips of this freak on "Wanted", "E-Ring", "Caught", "NYPD Blue" and much too much more...

Click-eth this-eth!:
http://www.thefenwicks.com/infilm.shtml

-Our "Golden Globe" Boy!:
So okay.... Major Mazel Tovs must now go out to our hero and Comrade, (and mine and Jim's old NYU roomie, Mr. Philip Seymour Hoffman). The man has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor, as Capote, in "Capote", directed by our other "Brother from Another Mother", (and first manager), Mr. Bennett Miller!! Duuuuuuuuude!!!

So pssst... Hey, um, wanna hear Mr. Philip Seymour Hoffman singing with us monkey-boys, back in the debauched late 80s? Well you can! On our "Multimedia Page". It ain't pretty... Stay calm, and click this, (ya gotta scroll down a bit once ya get there...):

http://www.thefenwicks.com/music.shtml

-Now, people, we all know, that far and away, the best movie of the year is Bennett Miller's directorial debut "Capote", true? Of course true! But ya wanna see what Mr. Miller was doing before the world finally recognized his genius? Come see the video that started it all- Bennett Miller's video for our song "Another Deadly Mother". We
were all 22, broke and insane... Bennett Miller convinced us to let him shoot a video, and the thing friggin' changed the course of our lives, literally.... This is the video I handed to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Artimus Pyle while I was still shlepping luggage at the Omni Park Central Hotel in NYC... Artimus watches Bennett's video, flies Jim and me to Jacksonville, and the next thing ya know we're opening for "Foreigner" and Billy Squier in Metro Park... See this destiny changing video on our "Multimedia" page (again ya gotsta scroll down a little bit once get there):

http://www.thefenwicks.com/music.shtml

-Our "Hall of Famer": And now speaking of Artimus Pyle, (our founder and permanent Patron Saint), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has finally done it's job and done justice! Lynyrd Skynyrd will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March!! Major Mazel Tovs must now go out to Artie!!!! (Betya a member of Skynyrd has never been
wished Mazel Tov before...) Artie, this is loooong overdue!!! So wanna hear this man, one of rock's most legendary drummers, play drums with your friendly neighborhood Fenwicks? Well, you can! It's oh so easy... Simply click on this, go to our "Multimedia Page" and subject yourself to our truly demented cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Manic Depression", with Mr. Pyle himself banging the bangables! (once again, you gotta scroll down a bit):

http://www.thefenwicks.com/music.shtml


-Oh, um, just in time for the holidays! Our 2nd CD "eudaimonia" is now almost officially sold out! From what I understand, there are exactly 54 copies left on planet Earth (there may be some on Mars...) Here's what reviewer G. Murray Thomas of "The Independent" had to say about this (as-of-now) limited disc: "What is this? Yiddish ska? From the opening cries of "L'chayim" over a hyper reggae beat, it is obvious that The Fenwicks are not a normal band. Blending punk, ska, pop and klezmer, they sound like something you'd hear at a mutant cross-cultural wedding. Despite their stylistic schizophrenia, The Fenwicks are a band with a message. "Eudaimonia", the title of the album, is defined (in the liner notes) as "1. The moral purpose of life: one's own happiness. 2. A state of fundamental enduring joy, which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." This theme is referred to again and again in the lyrics, in many guises. The message is to enjoy one's life, but not through a hedonistic pursuit of pleasures, but through honesty and integrity in love and joy. Again and again the songs ask you to live with integrity, love with sincerity, and act to make your life better. For the most part, this is not an album of deadly seriousness. The Fenwicks sing and perform with the joy they promote. The music is full of surprises and tasty touches, and the lyrics brim with little jokes and asides. The Fenwicks promote joy both in theory and in practice"...

So, if ya don't got it, get it now, before it slips into the abyss! Buy The Fenwicks "eudaimonia" for 10 bucks, by clicking this!:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/fenwicks

Xmas is coming, Christ is going...

I have loved this commentary ever since I first read it in the mid '90s. It is exactly what I think about Christmas or rather, Xmas since we are taking the Christ out.
:o)

I got this from CapMag but it is probably also on the Ayn Rand Institute site.
Joe


Christmas Should be More Commercial by Leonard Peikoff

(December 2, 2005)Article website address: http://www.CapMag.com/article.asp?ID=2254

Summary: It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration. [CapMag.com]

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth's return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations -- they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century, the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can't stop 'em, join 'em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus' birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.

Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it. The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world, not this one.

As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: "Can you in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? . . . Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?"

Then came the major developments of 19th-century capitalism: industrialization, urbanization, the triumph of science -- all of it leading to easy transportation, efficient mail delivery, the widespread publishing of books and magazines, new inventions making life comfortable and exciting, and the rise of entrepreneurs who understood that the way to make a profit was to produce something good and sell it to a mass market.

For the first time, the giving of gifts became a major feature of Christmas. Early Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice, and Puritans called it diabolical. But Americans were not to be deterred. Thanks to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and express their enjoyment of life. The whole country took with glee to giving gifts on an unprecedented scale.

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. There was a St. Nicholas long ago and a feeble holiday connected with him (on December 5). In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.

America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

Originally published in Capitalism Magazine in 1998. The content of this article was delivered annually at Christmas time on Peikoff's radio show, starting in 1995.

About the Author: Dr. Peikoff was associate editor, with Ayn Rand, of The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter (1971-76). He is author of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. He is founder of the Ayn Rand Institute.