To John Mayer With Love

From John:

I’ve always had a prob­lem allow­ing the full brunt of Hol­i­day Cheer into my heart. It’s not that I didn’t want to — in fact, I tried harder than any­one I knew — but I think I was going for the wrong points of ref­er­ence; TV com­mer­cial hol­i­day cheer can be nearly offen­sive if you didn’t hap­pen to have the kind of year that saw you mak­ing friends with an omni-ethnic fully gor­geous group of friends who like to dance in unison.

Then about this time last year I started get­ting e-mails from my brother with pic­tures of cakes he’d been bak­ing. I laughed at first but when he appealed to me with­out sar­casm that it was unde­ni­ably fun and uplift­ing, I had to try it. Sure enough, bak­ing a cake or two while lis­ten­ing to Christ­mas (okay, Hol­i­day) music was like a giant dose of pre­mium cheer. I had the hap­pi­est hol­i­days in years.

I decided to start a con­test on my blog wherein I chal­lenged read­ers to sub­mit their own baked goods, and the cheer just kept spread­ing. What I had orig­i­nally thought was a clever lit­tle con­test actu­ally turned into a main­line of good feel­ings for every­one involved.

I’m excited to announce the Sec­ond Annual Inter­faith Hol­i­day Bak­ing Com­pe­ti­tion. Spend an after­noon with your fam­ily, friends or loved ones and show me (and the inter­net) what you’ve got. The sub­mis­sion that moves me the most* will win its creator(s) 4 tick­ets (with meet and greet) to any show on the upcom­ing US tour and a Mar­tin OMJM Sig­na­ture Series acoustic gui­tar. Sec­ond place — as I’m sure I’ll be torn between two — will win a Fender JM Stra­to­caster. The dead­line for sub­mis­sions is Decem­ber 29, 2009.

*there are no rules as to what I’m look­ing for. It just has to be baked and make an impres­sion on me.

Here’s how you sub­mit entries:

email your photo or pho­tos of your cre­ations to

[email protected]

*please keep each photo to a file size of under 400k and a max­i­mum of 3 pic­tures in your email. (Last year the server filled up very quickly because of the file sizes and some of you couldn’t get e-mails through for a while.)

*no repeat­ing sub­mis­sions. I’ll see your cakes, I promise.

*please keep the server space open by only e-mailing if you’ve baked a cake. If you have a mes­sage you have to get to me, it’s going to cost you bak­ing something. :)

*don’t bother send­ing pic­tures of cakes you pulled from the inter­net. I’ve seen them all. Yes, it’s a cake that looks like a hamburger. :)

I’ll be post­ing some of my work in the com­ing weeks.

Start your ovens, turn up the music and have a great hol­i­day season!

John

Orig­i­nally posted on John Mayer’s blog: ONE FORTY PLUS