Monday, January 12, 2009

Holiday Season Wrap Up

This was the 2008 Christmas season.On both a personal and a business level, Christmas 2008 will not be remembered fondly in the years to come. By the end of December, I was coping with a fair amount of stress, dealing with the nasty after-effects of that week-long godawful flu that had been going around, and worrying about of the future of my occupation more than feeling any kind of measurable Christmas Spirit. Hell, I could barely be arsed to string up any colored lights or mess around with the ol' metal tree ... and the ones I did wind up putting up came down all of two days after the holiday. Bah humbug, etc.

Ironically, this was the first holiday season in years where spending money was not really an issue for me, yet thanks to the collapse of the U.S. economy, it suddenly became a pretty big goddamned deal for everybody else. Thus, gift cards became the gift du jour at the annual Cooke family Christmas get-together, which itself was a strangely somber and empty-feeling occasion since, for the first time ever, my father was not present for it.

Thinking about Dad now, it seems really silly for me to complain about how 2008 basically went into the crapper just as the summer finished winding down, especially since I wasn't the one who spent nearly a quarter of the year (including all of November and December) in a freaking hospital. Dad basically started off last year in pretty iffy shape and seemed only to get worse as the months went by. By Thanksgiving, he had been reduced to a literal shell of himself (roughly 140 pounds, if that) by a series of ongoing health issues that seemed to beget additional problems in a disturbingly domino-like fashion. There are too many involved descriptions and eventualities to get into right now, but the end result of all of it was that my father spent the last two months of the year linked up to a half-dozen tubes, immobilized in a hospital bed, his once-booming voice now wasted away to a wheezy, thin whisper. I remember clearly leaving his hospital room on Thanksgiving Day and seriously wondering if he would ever be coming home.

Thankfully, one of the best parts of Christmas Day was all of us heading up to see him at a rehabilitation facility just outside Chardon and seeing him in markedly improved condition. We had brought along a mini-Christmas Tree, bags full of gifts, and visited with him for a few hours, having in effect a kind of "Christmas away from home." Though still terribly emaciated and dependent on machines for eating and breathing, Dad looked and sounded noticeably stronger and more upbeat than he had on Thanksgiving. For a combination Christmas/"get-well-soon" gift, I had spent nearly all of my free time in December hand-scanning over 1000 family photos to create a chronological "digital photo album" for him, and I was very happy to hear that he was delighted with the end product.

Happily, as I write this, Dad is finally back at home and getting around on his own. We're all hoping that the worst is finally over at last and that he can rehabilitate into a semblance of his old self once again, but time (and his compromised immune system) will tell. A version 2.0 of my photo album will soon be in the works as well: Mom found another 1000 or so pictures a few days after Christmas, and I'll need to sit down with my father sometime soon to sort out some dates, people and places in order to make the new volume a bit more informative and complete.

Business-wise, this holiday season felt like being given a sudden kick in the teeth following months of having one arm held behind our backs. Until about December 16, we were running a tad off pace (which had been the case with us most of the year), but keeping within sight of our sales targets. After that point, however, the bottom just fell out: instead of keeping within 5-10% of our expected sales, we were down by upwards of 30-50%. Ow. Save for a couple of days immediately before and after the holiday, we could have run the entire season with just the three of us ... it was that slow.

I suppose it goes without saying that coming out of a crappy Christmas and entering the year 2009 and the most foreboding economic climate in the last 75 years, we're expecting a pretty brutal January (and after a hopeful start, the sales over the last few days seem to be following our predictions). The prospects for the first quarter as a whole aren't looking a lot better, either, though forthcoming new releases from Bruce Springsteen, Morrissey, Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach and U2 should provide interesting field tests of just how bad things really are.

Ah well, at least 2008 is finally over and out ...

Friday, January 09, 2009

Record Den Top 100 Sellers Of 2008

1. METALLICA Death Magnetic
2. THE BLACK KEYS Attack And Release
3. ARTFUL DODGER Honor Among Thieves
4. COLDPLAY Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
5. RADIOHEAD In Rainbows
6. DAVID GILMOUR Live In Gdansk
7. THE RACONTEURS Consolers Of The Lonely
8. THE BLACK CROWES Warpaint
9. LED ZEPPELIN Mothership
10. JACK BRUCE & ROBIN TROWER Seven Moons
11. BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS Legend
12. LIL' WAYNE Tha Carter III
13. TODD RUNDGREN Arena
14. SLIPKNOT All Hope Is Gone
15. FISH The 13th Star
16. JEFF BECK Performing This Week: Ronnie Scott's
17. GENESIS 1970-1975
18. WEEZER Weezer
19. JUDAS PRIEST Nostradamus
20. ALICE COOPER Along Came A Spider

21. STEVE WINWOOD Nine Lives
22. R.E.M. Accelerate
23. AC/DC Black Ice
24. MUDCRUTCH Mudcrutch
25. WHITESNAKE Good To Be Bad
26. NEIL YOUNG Greatest Hits
27. OFFSPRING Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace
28. KID ROCK Rock N Roll Jesus
29. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Narrow Stairs
30. PINK FLOYD The Dark Side Of The Moon
31. MOTLEY CRUE Saints Of Los Angeles
32. PITCH BLACK FORECAST Absentee
33. LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin II
34. THE KILLERS Day & Age
35. MICHAEL STANLEY Just Another Night
36. CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL Chronicle, Vol. 1
37. DISTURBED Indestructible
38. FOXBORO HOT TUBS Stop Drop And Roll
39. MADONNA Hard Candy
40. TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS Greatest Hits
41. T.I. Paper Trail
42. RADIOHEAD The Best Of Radiohead
43. LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Live At The Bass Performance Hall
44. RUSH Rush
45. THE FIREMAN Electric Arguments
46. RUSH Snakes & Arrows Live
47. RAY DAVIES Working Man's Cafe
48. JOE WALSH The Definitive Collection
49. BUCKCHERRY 15
50. THE WHO Who's Next
51. LED ZEPPELIN Houses Of The Holy
52. LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Gift Of Screws
53. BECK Modern Guilt
54. PORTISHEAD Third
55. CREAM Disraeli Gears
56. JOE SATRIANI Professor Satchafunkilus
57. BLACK MOUNTAIN In The Future
58. LED ZEPPELIN Physical Graffiti
59. THE BEATLES Abbey Road
60. DENNIS WILSON Pacific Ocean Blue
61. FLEET FOXES Fleet Foxes
62. DOKKEN Lightning Strikes Again
63. TESTAMENT The Formation Of Damnation
64. VAMPIRE WEEKEND Vampire Weekend
65. KANYE WEST 808s & Heartbreak
66. THE CURE 4:13 Dream
67. MY MORNING JACKET Evil Urges
68. BLUE FLOYD Begins
69. DETHKLOK The Dethalbum
70. GUNS 'N ROSES Greatest Hits
71. U2 War
72. OASIS Dig Out Your Soul
73. VARIOUS ARTISTS Big Blue Ball
74. DARK LOTUS Opaque Brotherhood
75. THE ROLLING STONES Shine A Light
76. FLOGGING MOLLY Float
77. PORCUPINE TREE We Lost The Skyline
78. NICK LOWE Jesus Of Cool
79. MICHAEL JACKSON Thriller
80. BLIND FAITH Blind Faith
81. LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin
82. NEIL YOUNG Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968
83. QUEEN & PAUL RODGERS The Cosmos Rocks
84. KINGS OF LEON Only By The Night
85. JENNY LEWIS Acid Tongue
86. OPETH Watershed
87. RINGO STARR Liverpool 8
88. RUSH The Spirit Of Radio
89. JIMI HENDRIX Experience Hendrix: The Best Of Jimi Hendrix
90. LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin III
91. U2 Boy
92. GRAHAM NASH Songs For Beginners
93. THE BEATLES The Beatles
94. THE DOORS The Best Of The Doors
95. R.E.M. Murmur
96. NICKELBACK Dark Horse
97. RYAN ADAMS & THE CARDINALS Cardinology
98. LUCIFER'S FRIEND Lucifer's Friend
99. BOB DYLAN Tell-Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
100. MOTORHEAD Motorizer