Updated December 24, 2010
 This is my Oklahoma City Christmas 2010 post. The background tune for all but one of the videos below is taken from the very fine 2003 movie Love Actually in which actor Bill Nighy plays an over-the-hill rocker (Billy Mack) trying to make a comeback with a hit Christmas tune. The full video clip showing his performance, only parts of which are shown in the movie, appears below.
If you want, you can play or download the MP3 tune here (left-click to play, right-click to download — depending on your web browser, select save link as … or save target as…) or something like that. |
Video: Old Fashioned Christmas Video: Downtown
Photos: Mesta Park, Heritage Hills, St. Anthonys Downtown Photos
In all of the videos in this post, you can click the small icon in the lower right corner of the video viewer for a full screen view. The video below consists of various photos of decorations in Mesta Park, Heritage Hills, and St. Anthony Hospital. Everything is old even if it’s new — St. Anthony’s origins date to 1898 and the Mesta Park and Heritage Hills homes have their beginnings around 1902. Many of the photos used in the video also appear separately below, after all videos. The video below shows rocker Billy Mack together with a little help from his friends — ala Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love video — performing the tune first mentioned. The video gets pretty cheeky around the middle so don’t watch it if seeing women’s derrieres makes you want to shoot one or both of your eyes out. And, yes, Chaz Hill of Dustbury acclaim, this one contains the promised shoes, just for you … if you’re watching. As charming as the above may be to some, it does not capture the nostalgic or religious nature of Christmas remembered by most. My friend Carolyn Cuskey, curator of the Atkinson Center in Midwest City, forwarded me a Power Point file that she’d received from someone else but the author of which was unknown. It’s a gorgeous presentation of old-time Christmas’s set to John Lennon’s “So This Is Christmas.” I attempted to identify the file’s origins but did not succeed, except to say that similar files were found in Russian websites. Enjoy the charm and beauty of Christmas’s past with the music of John Lennon, below. You can download very nice and larger Power Point file here and email it to your friends. The photos in this video were taken on December 9 and 23, 2010. The Mesta Park photos focus on the home of the Don Hawkins family. Since 2007, he has dazzled and entertained the neighborhood with the lavish Christmas display set to music played on his home-grown FM radio station — set your car radio to 101.1 FM and listen to the synchronized music and watch the stunning display. The flash file I put together above doesn’t do the display justice at all. The home is located at 930 N.W. 19th Street, which is the southeast corner of N.W. 19th & Olie (one block east of Western). Of course, the best view is in person, but Don maintains several real-time videos at his website, Mesta Lights. Click on any of the photos for a 1024 pixel wide view.
Heritage Hills Photos
St. Anthony Hospital Photos
Downtown & Bricktown Still Shots
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