Media Bytes - Silver Bells edition

Keeping up the Christmas spirit, here's the Bing Crosby singing the song in my head. I'm behind on posting carols, so if you need more, new commenter Deranged Leftwing Baker has Gene Autry and Jethro Tull doing Santa songs. Go over and check out his blog even if you don't want Christmas music. He's got a lot of fun posts including bread porn.

For more Christmas fun, check out Trademark Dave's holiday tree. Click on a Xmas tree ornament for a surprise!

And a clever take on an old classic, the Cheney version of A Christmas Carol.

I'm in the mood for easy reading tonight, so here's a nice profile of Jon Favreau, Obama's speechwriter. It's a real American dream kind of story.

Octopus does the auto bailout with a great photo post of cars.

And of course, you can never know too much about bacon.

Meanwhile, the end of year retrospectives are rolling in. I thought the top ten baby names were interesting. A curious mix of the classics and the Biblical.

People magazine puts up their idea of the ten best dressed women. I guess that's in the eye of the beholder.

On a related note, if you need lingerie for a normal sized woman, this place might be a help. [via Avedon]

Finally, the Big Picture blog at Boston Globe has a fabulous 40 shot gallery of the year in photographs.

[graphic via]

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]