The Pursuit of Happiness

By Dan Krotz – My wife and I bought a new car as a Christmas gift to each other for the next 10 years, or 200,000 miles, whichever comes first. The most shocking thing about the car is that it cost twice as much as I remember new cars costing. The most astonishing thing about it is a dashboard gizmo that plays every song ever recorded.

During an unguarded moment when we were dating, I confessed to my wife Susan that I liked The Association, in particular their song Cherish. It was a big hit some time during the Taft administration – or when I was in junior high school. Secretly appalled, she considered ending our up to then burgeoning relationship, but considered the alternatives – I was, after all, an employed heterosexual – and decided to soldier on. We married and I never listened to The Association again.

Until now. Now, she plays the new car’s dashboard like a piano, and dredges up every sappy 1970s’ soft pop artist or group she can find, like The Fifth Dimension or The Buckinghams. Then she merrily shouts, “They sound just like The Association, don’t they!” I (defenseless with both hands on the steering wheel) am in passive-aggressive hell. Salt to the wound, she plays Along Came Mary about once an hour, and grins like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Moral judgments about music, like politics, can be withering. I once told my friend Don Lehnhoff, who played trumpet for Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, that I enjoyed the Beach Boys. He looked at me as though I’d cut a high wide one from the front pew at mass, and I’m not sure our friendship ever fully recovered.

We should all get a free musical pass at Christmas. I hope you have A Holly Jolly Christmas. At the very least, Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk this Christmas), and may every little boy’s dying mother get Christmas Shoes to look her best when she meets Jesus. May your heads be filled with The Christmas Song (either Alvin and the Chipmunks or David Hasselhoff’s version will do), and your hearts with The Little Drummer Boy.

Pah-rhump-a-pum-pum.