WHY SUNNY 99.1 WENT EARLY WITH HOLIDAY MUSIC
It’s almost the most wonderful time of the year. I don’t mean MLB free agency (so long, Gerrit), or even tamale season.
Last Thursday at 8 a.m., the jolly folks at Sunny 99.1 FM officially flipped over to wall-to-wall holiday music, a full month and half before Christmas Day. This is about a week earlier than last year’s kickoff.
This is Sunny’s 20th year of ringing in the holiday season over the airwaves.
Marc Sherman, regional senior vice president of programming based here in Houston, has told me that he starts getting emails from listeners in September asking about the big Yuletide switch. OK, more than a few of those emails are from me.
I get it, some of you would rather finish off your kids’ Halloween candy and get through Thanksgiving with the in-laws before even thinking about Christmas carols from Bing Crosby, the Jackson 5 and Andy Williams. But some of us are gleefully mentally unhinged and hear sleigh bells in our heads starting in August, if not sooner.
“The audience response to Sunny 99.1 flipping the holiday switch has been overwhelmingly positive,” Sherman explains. “It is a privilege to provide what has become a family tradition for so many Houstonians. We all agree there is something incredibly special about the emotional connection listeners have with the music. It just makes you feel good — and we’re so proud that it’s on 99.1 through the holidays.”
The annual Sunny shift is a big deal to the Texican because I am one of the most rabid fans of this radio tradition. According to Sherman, Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the most-requested song on the playlist.
Something about the opening stirrings of Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” turns me into some sort of Holiday Hulk. It’s also on terrestrial radio, and as an AM radio host myself, there is still magic left on the airwaves.
Some people take preworkout supplements to get energized before a big day at the gym, but I cue up a playlist of just that song over and over again to get pumped to blast my core and work off my trips to Texadelphia and the Kroger deli counter.
I am listening to it on YouTube as I type this and I could run through a brick wall. You guys need cheap labor to tear down that old, nasty Days Inn hotel downtown? Just give me a sledgehammer and few days with this song on repeat from huge industrial speakers.
Now on to reader questions about pop-culture life in Houston.
You are one morbid son of a gun, but then again, I am, too. But remember, I am also the guy who has visited Dallas every year for the past 14 years on Nov. 22 to visit the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza and hang out with JFK assassination conspiracy nuts on the grassy knoll.
As for a Robert Durst Reality Tour in the Houston area, you would need to visit the infamous CVS drug store at the corner of Montrose and Richmond where the man urinated on a candy display in 2015, which was caught on video. We’re sure by now that any traces of that urine is long gone.
Not too far away, at 2520 Robinhood Lane in West University Place, is where Durst lived in a swank high-rise and generally creeped out his neighbors while making sporadic visits to the local Starbucks.
Out in Galveston, at 2213 Ave. K, is where Durst lived for a spell while he was disguised as a woman and went by the name Dorothy Ciner. This is also where he met the doomed Morris Black, who later washed up in a black trash bag, cut into pieces.
A view years back, I loudly
If I want to go on the definitive Robert Durst (“The Jinx”) tour of Houston, where should I go? Eric in Houston
Who really deserves a statue in Houston? Adam in Clear Lake
advocated on Twitter, after three espresso shots, that three giant statues of ZZ Top, the size of Sam Houston’s statue in Huntsville, be located somewhere between here and La Grange. My GoFundMe only netted $3.44, but I still think it’s a good idea.
The towering Billy, Dusty and Frank figures would be doing the famous pointing pose from their MTV videos, and their beards would also act as wind turbines to power the lights that would illuminate the statues overnight.
But you asked about Houston proper, Adam, so I think the next people in Houston to get statues will come from the world of sports. Minute Maid Park already has two garish statues of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell on the stadium’s west end (yes, that is supposed to be two of the Killer B’s), but I think that within a decade or so a bronze version of José Altuve will join them.
It’s too early to predict who else could join him from the actual playing squad, but I wouldn’t be surprised or aggrieved if one day you could sit next to a stoic A.J. Hinch statue somewhere nearby.
The Texans will no doubt have a J.J. Watt statue in the coming decades and I wouldn’t be too presumptuous to imagine it not even being located off Kirby but somewhere else more centrally located, like downtown Houston. Heck, give him two statues. A few more seasons of this Deshaun Watson character under center with a dash of a Lombardi trophy might equal a bronze Deshaun somewhere.
One day, Rockets fans will rub the bronze beard of a James Harden statue for good luck outside of the Toyota Center.
Personally, I would rather be immortalized not with a statue but a hated stretch of freeway, which can be blamed for broken plans and promises.
“Sorry honey, stuck again on the damned Craig Hlavaty Memorial Expressway. Don’t wait up for me.”