{"id":92150,"date":"2024-01-01T17:55:13","date_gmt":"2024-01-02T01:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=92150"},"modified":"2024-01-01T17:55:13","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T01:55:13","slug":"holiday-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2024\/01\/01\/holiday-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to 2024.&nbsp; It doesn\u2019t often happen that this column drops on the actual first day of the year.&nbsp; Since this is the 24<sup>th<\/sup> year of our wildly popular weekly column, I am feeling like we\u2019re closing in on a landmark.&nbsp; But that\u2019s business of another day.&nbsp; The topic at hand is ringing in the New Year.&nbsp; Since I\u2019m a traditionalist (unlike a Constitutionalist \u2013 which is a whole other thing), I spend the evening with some dear friends watching <strong>Lindsay Wagner <\/strong>movies.&nbsp; A highlight was seeing Lindsay, in the course of a half hour, play six very different roles \u2013 one of whom was a stripper.&nbsp; Talk about range!&nbsp; Hey, a gig\u2019s a gig, and a tradition\u2019s a tradition.&nbsp; Happy New Year!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\" alt=\"colorbar1\" width=\"500\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>One of the most beloved holiday traditions of days gone by returned this year.&nbsp; Way back in 1986, <strong>Darlene Love <\/strong>sang \u201cChristmas (Baby Please Come Home)\u201d on <strong>David Letterman<\/strong>\u2019s show (starting on <em>NBC<\/em>\u2019s <strong><em>Late Night with David Letterman<\/em><\/strong>).&nbsp; For many, it wasn\u2019t Christmas until Darlene appeared, and Letterman had her on for 28 consecutive years.&nbsp; In 2015, he retired.&nbsp; What would Darlene do?&nbsp; One of Letterman\u2019s producers (<strong>Brian Teta<\/strong>) took over the reigns of <strong><em>The View<\/em><\/strong>, and brought Darlene with him.&nbsp; And that was all well and good, but it really wasn\u2019t the same.&nbsp; Another Letterman producer, <strong>Barbara Gaines<\/strong>, reunited Letterman and his sidekick, <strong>Paul Shaffer <\/strong>for an Internet episode last week, and the guest was Darlene.&nbsp; After some chit-chat, Paul sidled on over to a piano (which had clearly seen better days), and Love launched into her biggest hit \u2013 joined by backup singers <strong>Milton Vann<\/strong>, <strong>Diamond White <\/strong>and <strong>Keesha Gumbs<\/strong>.&nbsp; Sometimes you can go home again.&nbsp; You can see this special on our website.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GVorIzgAiZA?si=dE5O4a19A807p1We\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that this was not Darlene\u2019s first reunion with Paul Shaffer.&nbsp; On April 7, 2020, Love was a guest on <strong><em>Billy Masters LIVE!<\/em><\/strong>, where we surprised her with Paul Shaffer and the great <strong>Marc Shaiman<\/strong>.&nbsp; On that show, Shaffer surprised me with quite a compliment.&nbsp; \u201c<strong>Billy<\/strong>, you are a new find of mine.&nbsp; I\u2019m now your biggest fan!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to 2024.&nbsp; It doesn\u2019t often happen that this column drops on the actual first day of the year.&nbsp; Since this is the 24th year of our wildly popular weekly column, I am feeling like we\u2019re closing in on a landmark.&nbsp; But that\u2019s business of another day.&nbsp; The topic at hand is ringing in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92159,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92150\/revisions\/92159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}