Home in North Carolina — hanging out with the fam, catching up on some reading for stuff coming up (Aeneid Book VI, a bunch of Irish poets, William Carlos Williams, and essays from a Cartier-Bresson retrospective), and watching all the Seinfeld episodes that have accumulated in that great estuary that is TiVo.

But maybe the most amazing thing discovered over vacation: VIRTUAL YULE LOGS ON YOUTUBE.  This is insane. I love it. I’ve watched most of the volunteered fireplace pieces available on youtube/vimeo now, and I’ve temporarily adopted “Fireplace on a rainy day HD 1280×720” as my ambient soundtrack. There are a lot of pleasant videos, but few really achieve that close-mic’d authentic sound quality of a real fireplace (note to yule log genre directors: reverb expands virtual space, defies intimacy, and is therefore not cozy).  And many videos include the unthinkable — non-diegetic music (e.g. Pachelbel, or diatonic Casio arpeggiations). But below is my favorite youtube fireplace — it’s consistent, clear, and comforting. And yes, I realize how ridiculous this is. But kind of amazing, right?

Without further adooo, Happy Yuleness to all…

Also worth checking out: “Yule Log” (Directors Commentary) and of course the 1966 original Yule Log for television.
Avoid: “Kaminfeuer von OfenBernd” (it starts out simply, but then Meditation from Thais makes its appearance) and “Video Fireplace (The Original)” (this is a LOOP! inauthentic! an embarrassment to the entire yule log video industry)

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