12.24.05 5:43AM. Penn Station.
Christmas music isn't annoying when you aren't inundated with it every where you go, when you don't have to hear barking dogs or mewing cats using the memory of your childhood songs as a scratch box, when your ears aren't assaulted by Top 40 pop singers thinking that lots of synth and lyrics involving Santa or snow or snuggling by the fire are appropriate ways to destroy songs that have already been performed to death, when you don't curse the unholy marriage of bad technology and cheesy arrangers whose spawn is that most brain melting imbecility known as Christmas Muzak (not that normal muzak gets off the hook, but Christmas Muzak has its own special jukebox space reserved in hell... it is in a tiny elevator with florescent lights and long lines for a cash register - why or how there can be long lines inside an elevator is one of those special rules of physics that only exist in the afterlife). When you manage to avoid the over-saturation of Christmas music, then when you hear the Christmas mix playing in the train station on Christmas Eve, you get a warm fuzzy feeling. Even that usually psychopathic murderous rage inducing "Sleigh Ride" made me smile and hum along (not to be confused with the "Sleigh Ride" performed by every high school orchestra at this time of year, the one that gives rise to the fights in the percussion section over who gets to use the slap board. Yeah, that one is also usually annoying but not violently so.)