Hanukkah 2024 Videos

It's time for my annual trip around YouTube to find some of the best videos about and celebrating Hanukkah. White the videos below are fun and/or entertaining, none of them mention the new-ish tradition of pickles during the holiday. I don't have any musical talent, so maybe next year someone will mention pickles in one of their songs.

A long-running subplot of this blog is that there must be some type of rivalry between the a cappella groups Six13 and The Maccabeats. They're like the sharks and the jets. Or Coca-Cola and Pepsi. This year, both groups took this rivalry to a whole new level by both having songs related to Wicked. 

 

There's a new (at least to me) a cappella group on the scene, Y-Studs. It's almost like they're the channel 2 news team in Anchorman. 

Since I visited Winnipeg earlier this fall, let's hear about the Hanukkah celebration in Manitoba.

How about some historical context about the holiday courtesy of Epcot.

A big deal is being made about Christmas and Hanukkah falling on the same day. This is from CBS:

Back to music. Kosha Dillz has a new Hanukkah song.

A land called Sufganiyot? Yes please!

Finally, this is just a clip of Spidey and The Thing saving Hanukkah by getting latkes back. I really want to see how this started (and if there are pickles involved). 

Happy Hanukkah to those who are celebrating. And Merry Christmas to those who are celebrating too.

Favorite Songs of 2024

My friend Josh does a series of best of the year posts which I highly recommend checking out. Josh is also smart in that he does several posts on specific topics (such as favorite song, podcast, etc.) rather than one long post like I do each year. While I still plan on writing my one "best of" and "worst of" post in the next week or two, I feel like sharing my favorite songs of the year. A few notes. Many of the videos below are live performances because the actual official videos have a word or two that is not suitable to be viewed at work or with kids. In one case, I actively dislike the official video, so I used the live version. I also admit that most of the new music I hear is pop music, so that takes up pretty much the entire list. Even the two country songs I included received massive pop airplay. Enjoy.

Shaboozey: A Bar Song (Tipsy)

Pretty sure this is the biggest song of the year. I really enjoy the callback to J-Kwon's Tipsy from, gulp, 20 years ago.

Hozier: Too Sweet

Nothing like hearing your kids sing "I take my whisky neat."

Madison Beer: Make You Mine

I don't go to clubs, but if I did, this seems like a fun song to dance to. 

Dasha: Austin (Boots Stop Workin')

I just like this one.

ROSÉ & Bruno Mars - APT.

Spoiler. This song will appear in a future blog post.

Gracie Abrams: Risk

Pretty sure that I'm the last person in America who learned that Gracie Abrams is the daughter of J.J. Abrams.

Charli xcx: 360

Tough call between this song and her other song, Apple. Going with the keyboards.

Chappell Roan - HOT TO GO

I accidentally left this off the post originally. Catchiest song of the year. Plus, as I wrote recently, spelling words in songs equals a hit!

Finance Park

When I was a sophomore in high school, I participated in Junior Achievement. Once a week in the evening, I would carpool with two friends and join about 20-30 other students from the Eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. I don’t remember much of what we did other than make hangars and sell them. While I appreciated the mission and purpose of JA, I really haven’t thought about the organization in years.

Fast forward to a few months ago at The Moose’s back-to-school night where his Civics teacher mentioned a field trip and the need for volunteers. All Fairfax County 8th graders visit Junior Achievement’s Finance Park. There are several in the DC area and probably many more across the country. According to their website, Finance Park is an experiential education designed to engage middle school students for life and work in the real world. It combines classroom curriculum taught by teachers with a high-impact situation. While this sounded great, I had no idea what this meant.

On the field trip day, I arrived at Finance Park and got a tour of the facility and received a brief training which left me with more questions than answers. We were then ushered into the auditorium with about 150 8th graders. Each student had already been assigned a group, and when the individual group was announced, each volunteer escorted the students to the particular room. Once in the room, I introduced myself to my group of 8 students, they introduced themselves to me, and I distributed tablets to each of them. The tablet showed each student a specific occupation, salary (including how much was taken out for taxes), and indicated whether the students had a spouse and/or children. After a few minutes making sure everyone was set with their tablets, each group went to one of about 15-20 rooms. The purpose was for the students to make a budget from their monthly salaries. This was my room:

I was assigned health, life, and disability insurance, which is definitely a fan favorite among 8th graders. A group would come into the room, and I asked them if they knew what health insurance, life insurance, and disability insurance is. While they did okay with health insurance, no one got disability insurance correct. At least 3 groups joked that life insurance is when you die, and they were shocked that this was actually correct. Then, the students would set a budget in their tablets before going to the next room. There was only about 2-3 minutes per group, so there really wasn’t time to explain how health, life, and disability insurance are often tied to employment. I enjoyed seeing each group including many of The Moose’s friends and The Moose himself. More about him momentarily.

After each group went to the 15+ rooms where they budgeted for many areas including transportation, housing, childcare, and utilities, the groups returned to their original room. Once back, they got to spend their money. It was fun seeing how many kids wanted a sports car or if they were able to sell off their kids or get a divorce. They quickly discovered that childcare can be expensive. And while you might want a sportscar, your spouse is going to have to find a way to get around too. My group was, um, interesting. One kid literally put his head on the table and didn’t really do the spending part. It’s a field trip! Pretend to be interested! Another kid discovered how to access YouTube on the tablet and played Travis Scott videos. Perspective is nice. You could really see several of the kids trying to be cool by not taking the activity seriously because another kid didn’t. At the end of the day, The Moose told me that the kids in my group were annoying. 

The best part of the day was seeing The Moose and him being happy to see me. He smiled and waved every time he passed the room. He will not want to see me in social settings at some point in the near future, but that hasn’t happened yet. I'll take that as a win.

As for Finance Park, I wish I had this in 8th grade. It really shows how many expenses adults have. I’m also willing to volunteer again though it won’t be until my other boys reach 8th grade!

(The first picture is from the Junior Achievement of Greater Washington. The rest are by me.)

Spelling Words in Songs

I recently submitted an application for virtual media access to the 67th annual Grammy Awards in February 2025. Unfortunately, the Sean's Ramblings budget does not allow me to travel to and attend the red carpet and ceremony in Los Angeles (assuming that I get accepted), but I think it would be fun to cover the Grammy Awards remotely and provide interesting and informative information to you. To demonstrate my music credentials to the Recording Academy, I am writing this blog post to show a trend in music history maybe not known to many. And my finding/theory is this: 

Spelling a word in a song = H-I-T

Seems simple, right? Like A-B-C (though ABC isn't an actual word), easy as 1-2-3!

While I acknowledge that this is not an exhaustive review of every song with words spelled out, I think this is a pretty thorough list. The idea of this post/theory stemmed from the current Chappell Roan song, HOT TO GO! where the artist spells out H-O-T-T-O-G-O 14 times. It's a really catchy song and Target agreed by featuring it in a commercial. HOT TO GO reached #15 on the Billboard HOT 100 chart, but would easily have reached #1 if Billboard had a HOT TO GO 100 chart. Let's take a look at other songs that help make my argument.

Respect by Aretha Franklin

This is simply one of the greatest songs of all time. Not much more to write except that it went to #1 in 1967.

Saturday Night by Bay City Rollers

BCR (did anyone ever call them BCR?) just comes right out with a spelling lesson. It’s right there at the start of the song. S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night! Saturday Night hit the top spot in 1976.

Jump Jump by Kris Kross 

Two different words spelled in the same song. First, you have the D-A-double D-Y-M-A-C. (Yeah, you know me!) Later, either the Mack Daddy or the Daddy Mack spells out J-U-M-P. Next, wear your clothes backwards, and you get a 1992 #1 song.

Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani

You never realized how much fun it was/is to spell bananas until Gwen Stefani told us. This song was #1 in 2005, or nearly 20 years ago which is B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

U.N.I.T.Y by Queen Latifah

Although this song didn't reach the top 20 like the others above (#23 in 1995), this is Queen Latifah's biggest song and won a Grammy for best rap solo performance.

Gloria - Them

Until I started writing this post, I thought this was a Van Morrison song. Turns out, the song was released by Morrison's band Them in 1964. This is the rare song in this post that didn't chart very highly. Sort of. While Them's original Gloria only peaked at #75, a cover version released around the same time by The Shadows of Knight  reached #10. Patti Smith and The Doors both had their own versions of the song. This song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and made multiple greatest songs and rock songs of all time lists. While I can't prove it, I don't think this happens without Morrison spelling out G-L-O-R-I-A. (The audience shots in the video below are fantastic.) Thanks to Wikipedia for all of this information.

P.I.M.P. by 50 Cent

Let's go back to 2003. 50 Cent was the biggest artist in the country. His Get Rich or Die Tryin' album sold over 9 million copies. Although P.I.M.P. didn't reach the top spot like 50's first two singles from this album, it made it to #3. Not too shabby.

Safety Dance by Men Without Hats

After being told that you can dance if you want to, this song went to #3 in 1983. I also danced to this song with friends at an 80s dance party in college.

Fergalicious by Fergie featuring will.i.am

Glamorous by Fergie featuring Ludacris

While Fergie may not be a pioneer in spelling words in songs, if you had a spelling contest, she would be the bee champion. Fergie released these songs back-to-back with Fergalicious reaching #2 in January 2007 and Glamorous going to #1 in March of the same year. The former somewhat indirectly spells multiple words like the D-A- double D-Y-M-A-C did 15 years earlier. First, you have "T to the A, to the S-T-E-Y girl, you tasty" followed by D to the E, to the L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Glamorous has none of the "to the" in the middle of a word. That's probably why the latter went all the way to the top of the chart! 

First Class by Jack Harlow

Harlow sampled Glamorous in 2022 and kept the spelling of Fergie's title in his version. The result was another #1 song. 

Lola by The Kinks

Spelling out C-O-L-A and L-O-L-A is just brilliant. This song reached the top 10 by going to #9 in 1970.

R.O.C.K In the U.S.A. by John Mellencamp

#2 in 1986. Maybe this would have gone to #1 if Mellancamp went by John Cougar Mellencamp at the time.

Steal My Sunshine by Len

Although it’s not prominent, Len sneaks in the spelling of L-A-T-E-R early in the second verse. Steal My Sunshine went to #9 in the US in 1999 and is Len's only charting song.

Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ray Dalton

The winner of the longest spelled word goes to Macklemore for I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T.  No record label is going to sign him. He's not going to sell out! Can't Hold Us went to #1 in 2013 and was the most streamed song on Spotify that year.

O.P.P. by Naughty by Nature

Y.M.C.A. by Village People

Technically, these are abbreviations and not words. O is for other, P is for people. The last P , hmm, stands for property. This song reached #6 in 1991 and was played at every single homecoming dance in America that fall.

Not much to write about Y.M.C.A. Amazingly, it never reached #1 in the US, peaking at #2, though it went #1 in 15 other countries. If someone finds this blog in 100 years and looks through the songs in this post, this is the one that will still be known.

Finally, I'll give an honorable mention to Taylor Swift for her song Me with Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco where she says "Spelling is fun." I agree with Taylor (though apparently there was some controversy with this line), and spelling words in songs is a key to success!

Pirates Predictions Review

Now that we're through Thanksgiving, it's the perfect time to, um, revisit Pittsburgh Pirates predictions made back before the season started. While the full post is here, let's see how we did.

1. What do you expect from Paul Skenes this year?

Skenes exceeded all expectations. He finished the season with a record of 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, and 170 strikeouts in 133 innings pitched. Skenes won the National League rookie of the year, finished 3rd in the NL Cy Young voting, and started the All-Star game. Josh predicted Skenes would have 10-12 wins and finish top 3 in rookie of the year. Point for Josh! 

2. What do you think Oneil Cruz's state line will be for 2024?

Cruz had an uneven year. 21 home runs, 76 RBIs, .259 batting average, and 22 stolen bases. He also had 181 strikeouts and moved from shortstop to center field. Overall, a positive step forward, and Pirates fans hope that he builds off this season and becomes more comfortable as an outfielder for 2025. Josh was the closest again predicting 24 HR / 66 RBIs / 20 SBs / .252 average.

3. Who will lead the Pirates in home runs?

The answer was Bryan Reynolds with 24. Is this turning into Josh's Ramblings? He is the only one who predicted Reynolds. Jim, The Moose, and I all made the terrible call of Jack Suwinski. We chose poorly.

4. When will Livvy Dunne make her debut at PNC Park?

The answer was May 11th for Skenes' first start. While I hoped that people would give an actual date, the question was somewhat vague, so Brian and Amanda both said she would be there for Skenes' debut. Technically, they were right. Points for them.

5. Will Rowdy Tellez be more successful as a Pirate than Daniel Vogelbach?

If we answered this question on June 1st, this would be a definite no. Turns out he was pretty good the last few months of the season before being unceremoniously released during the last week of the season. His overall stat line was 13 home runs, 56 RBIs, a .299 OBP, 1 stolen base, and a -0.4 WAR. He also made three pitching appearances. In 2022 with the Pirates, Vogelbach had 12 home runs, 34 RBIs, a .338 OBP, and a 0.6 WAR. As fun as Rowdy was over the summer, I think the answer is no. Jim predicted no and Brian leaned that way. Points for them.

6. Will the Pirates be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline?

Overall, the Pirates were buyers getting Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Bryan De La Cruz, and reliever Jalen Beeks but the team also traded Martin Perez to the Padres. Brian, Gary, Josh, and Jim all get credit for their answers.

7. Overall Pirates record and place in the division

The Pirates finished 76-86 with the exact same record as 2023. However, the team finished last in the NL Central. No one thought the Pirates would finish below 3rd place in the division. We were also an optimistic group. Josh's prediction of 79-83 was the closest.

Congrats on Josh on doing the best in predicting. Let's try this again in 2025. 

Photo of Skenes by Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images. Photo of Dunne by Charles LeClaire-USA Today. Charles is making the rounds!