McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Dave Eggers, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (a great read, by the way) is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, a publishing house that features the works of both prominent and upcoming authors in a somewhat quarterly journal.

The publishing house also has a Web site, McSweeney's Internet Tendency that features shorter bits by many of the same authors.

Michael Ian Black has a few features on the site, including "What I Would be Thinking About if I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There was Going to be a Piano".

I'm not doing it. I'm just not. I know I say the same thing every year, but this time I mean it—I am not playing it this year. Seriously, how many times can I possibly be expected to play that stupid song? I bet if you counted the number of times I've played it over the years, it probably adds up to, like, a jillion. I'm not even exaggerating. One jillion times. Well, not this year.

This year, I'm just going to say, "Sorry, folks, I'm only playing holiday songs tonight." Yeah, that's a good plan. That's definitely what I'm going to do, and if they don't like it, tough cookies. It'll just be tough cookies for them.