This week, The Better World Shopping Guide by Dr. Ellis Jones was released to the retail market. The book is a guide for socially and environmentally conscious individuals who want to buy products that are good for the planet but don’t want to put a huge dent in their bank account.
The Better World Shopping Guide is the result of research conducted looking into 1000 companies and 75 product categories. The books shows consumers how to evaluate a product’s value and cost to society in terms of human and animal rights, community involvement, environmental practices and overall responsibility. The books assigns an A to F grade for a variety of consumer products, including toys, electronics, food and clothing.
The book is approximately 160 pages long, and is small enough (4″X6″) to fit into a purse or pocket. The book is retailing for approximately $10 and is available for purchase from www.betterworldshopper.org.
She’s very generous to her audiences, but Tyra Banks appears to be a Grinch when it comes to her staff!
According to Janet Charlton’s Hollywood.com, Banks treated her “Top Model” employees to a less-than-festive Christmas party at a “lower East-side dive bar [where] her employees drank a lot because there was no food.”
That is, until Banks arrived long enough to say she was off to Italy, and give the staff their gifts – Santa’s toy bag filled with McDonald’s cheeseburgers. This adds insult to injury, as the crew relocated from Los Angeles to New York for the show.
Banks reportedly has a $30 million contract for “Top Model.”
ROBERT CLARK, the man who made classic holiday movie A CHRISTMAS STORY, has been killed in a California car crash.
The 67-year-old director and his son, 22, were both killed when the Infiniti they were driving collided with a GMC Yukon sports utility vehicle in Pacific Palisades at 2.30am yesterday morning.
It has been reported that the driver of the Yukon was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the fatal accident and will be booked for investigation of gross vehicular manslaughter, upon his release from hospital.
Clark’s 1983 festive film, starring PETER BILLINGSLEY, has become a Christmas staple for American TV fans and often runs back-to-back during marathons on Christmas Day.
Clark is also well known for his horror movies, which include BLACK CHRISTMAS and CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS. He was also the director of 1981 sex farce PORKY’S.
His other memorable films included TURK 182, LOOSE CANNONS and RHINESTONE, which starred SYLVESTER STALLONE and DOLLY PARTON.
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In our multi-cultural societies today the run up to Christmas is experienced in many different ways. The commercial version pioneered by Coca Cola’s magazine advertisements which established the red suited Santa Claus image, washes over us all through the TV advertisements and the decorations in the High Streets and shopping Malls. They built on and reinforced the Victorian version of Christmas celebrations which was dramatised by Charles Dickens in ‘A Christmas Carol’ which established many of the associated food and garland rituals in the public imagination – and helped Coca Cola promote their winter beverage sales. Much of this is accompanied by ’seasonal’ music in the form of carols and hymns – often coral arrangements but sometimes instrumental – especially brass bands and the dreaded sentimental Christmas pop songs.
Music is often a subtle way of getting under the radar and evoking emotional responses from our subconscious. The commercial focus on Christmas seeks to convert these feelings into purchases – sometimes in crude direct appeals to consume but often in a more indirect atmospheric ways. While the committed Christians concentrate on re-telling the Christmas story through as many media as possible, including music – using the Advent season to recharge their spiritual batteries and encourage others to join them. Their tunes and some times even the words are often hijacked by those who wish to evoke a warm hearted relaxed atmosphere for the sale of their particular goods.
Much of this activity assumes a common Christian heritage and must strike those who do not share that background very oddly, not to mention the truly seasonal issues for those in the Southern Hemisphere who celebrate Christmas in mid summer rather than the deep mid winter. There is also the rival celebration of New Year which is a predominantly secular affair with a very limited musical repertoire – mostly of Scottish origin for some reason and this eclipses Christmas in many countries. Christians adopted the pagan Winter Solstice celebrations as part of their missionary progress but those ties were loosened by the reformation and the French, American and Russian Revolutions amongst others.
The seasonal hit at Download2MP3.com is Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite with its Sugar Plum Fairy which fits neatly into the Victorian Christmas story telling context. While Debussy’s Children’s Corner with it’s ‘The Snow is Dancing’ (Northern Hemisphere Christmas/Mid Winter associations) is another favourite and forms the backbone of our Children’s Classics Collection which includes several of our shorter and lower priced recordings. Other beneficaiaries include our instrumental versions of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah and Gounod’s Ave Maria
Recordings like these are an ideal way to personalize those iPod or MP3 player gifts for a few dollars more – perhaps introducing children to the classics in an accessible, amusing and memorable way.
About The Author
Tony Wiseman has been involved in music production using computers for more than 20 years and now publishes MP3 recordings of his original percussion arrangements of selected Classical and Ragtime pieces at Download2MP3.com.
