Baby Jesus, Born to Rock!

Posted on by Frank
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Christmastime! It means Christmas climate and it generally means cold weather, which always leaves me scratching my head at the gym – the number of people who flock towards indoor pools when it’s freezing out is mystifying.  I have to wonder if there is a direct correlation between seasonal temperatures and how long ugly, old and misshapen people intend to stay naked in the locker room. It’s way too fucked up to comprehend – dudes who are overweight, bow-legged, potbellied, age-spotted like giraffes, bristling with moles, exploding with Jermaine Jackson manscapes, nonagenarian or generally shaped like boneless swimmers with rubbery physiques are predisposed towards extended birthday suit time in the men’s room.  Some of these guys get freaking conversational in their horrible natural states, wandering the lockers in discourse like Aristotle after a pearl of metaphysics or a chestnut of a cabana boy. It’s as though they feel some sort of clubby, chumminess being bags of skin folds, melanoma, derma-grease and wispy hair….

Wait, that’s not a part of Christmas.  I’d gotten off track, having just come back from the gym….Seriously what the fuck is broken inside these bastards?!  Put some goddamned trousers over them ass-ripples, Murray!  You’ve been out of the shower half a friggin’ hour!!!

*They don’t let me visit the ladies’ room.  And that’s fine by me, especially knowing what sort of female critters slither out of it to plunk around and leave oil slicks in the pool.

What I should have started with is that Christmas time means Christmas tunes and that means fun. I’m a big fat sucker for the Yuletide, if you haven’t noticed yet – even I’m taken aback a little by the sentimental tone of my recent posts here. Well the lack of cuss words at least. Truth is, I’ve always been fully consumed by Christmas and people are occasionally tortured by me singing choice cuts from the Rudolph soundtrack in June.

Now, not all Nativity inspired tunes are wonderful – some blow in a jing-ting-dingling big fucking way.  But that’s what iPods and the like are for, weeding out the garbage and keeping the rubies and emeralds among the carols of the season.

With that in mind I’m taking a stab at a best/worst list of Christmas(etc) Tunes.  Feel free to toss in your favorites or your peeves & skeeves.  Let’s join hands in harmony and get the crap out of the playlists!

BEST COUNTRY CHRISTMAS SONG – Pretty Paper as performed by Roy Orbison. Sad?  Yes it is, but done in a way which reminds us to look out for the heart of others in December.  Beats the fuck out of Blue Christmas too.  Which reminds me that Elvis did a fair version of Pretty Paper and The Reverend Horton Heat (see below) pulled off a cover which may be a notch better than Orbison’s.  Willie Nelson had a lame rendition, which is unsurprising but kinda funny since he wrote the song in the first place….

WORST COUNTRY CHRISTMAS SONG – Well, pretty much every other country xmas song ever written, although Christmas Shoes and Tender Tennessee Christmas currently stand out as terrifying examples of the sonic vomit that gurgles straight outta Dixie.  “Marruh Chrismuss, y’all!  Time to give a little love back to Jesus and kill yerself” But nobody ever commits suicide down there, least of all them there Country singers who mosey right along sucking all the fun out of Advent.  Like Randy Travis and his flaccid droning of Jingle Bell Rock which punctuates the fact that it’s a song best sung by nobody, nowhere.

By the way, The Reverend Horton Heat shatters everything stereotypical about Redneck music. The Psychobilly trio take some honkytonk balladeering, blistering guitar work and a whole mess of soul right into the realm of Christmas Heaven on the We Three Kings disc.  We all need some fun in Christmas and this is one way to get you some.

Best Hip Hop Christmas Song –  Used to be there was only Christmas in Hollis or Christmas Is, both by Run-DMC and you were left liking or hating them based on what you felt about Rap in the first place. Both tunes hewed to the traditional Yuletide message, albeit in a goofy, benign way.  Then again Run-DMC, pioneering artists or not, was a goofy, benign act to begin with and they always got my vote.

These days I’m all about Snoop Dogg’s Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto . Sweet ass shit all around.  Surprisingly, Snoop is on message as well with this track – family and brotherhood and keeping your mind on kids in need all while easing the holiday stress with a bag of weed. A cultural nuance, if you will, and it makes you want to hit the bong and stroll Long Beach with him, handing out gifts in a blinged-out Santa Suit.

Worst Xmas Rap – So hard to pick one.  Eazy E’s Merry Mutafuckin’ Xmas?  I don’t know – think I’ll go for the obvious and pray I’ll  be spared the bouncy, loopy uber-caucasoid irritation of The Waitresses’ Christmas Wrapping. At least until Armageddon, when a pissed off Christ returns and uses it as background music while smiting the fuck out of cheesy 80’s acts.

 

Black Christmas Best of the Bunch here might go to I’ll Be Your Santa Baby, with Rufus Thomas keeping the love in Christmas.  As in big love. As in huge, thumping, rip down the mistletoe, gonna break your back by Christmas morning baby…Well, that’s sorta kinda love, no?  Okay, so it isn’t precisely Christmas love, but it’s a good, fun tune and being merry is also a paramount theme this time of year. Getting’ it on only adds to the joy…

Worst Soul/R&B? Perhaps it’s The Emotions Black Christmas. I like to think Christmas I a universal and shouldn’t get chopped and segregated or insulated by one group or another.  Especially as done so in a crappy, pithy, overdone song.   Ding Dong! Ding Dong! Ding Doooooong! Gaaaaaaahhhhhhhggg.

Having said that bit about universals, here I go and immediately break the idea with…

Worst Gay Christmas Song, simply because I can’t help myself.  How can I when radio stations air Wham! and its audio ipecac of Last Christmas. Each listen brings to mind hankies and man panties and shirts with shoulder pads and day-glo lip-gloss and sniffles and high-waisted acid washed jeans and triple-feathered hair and sissies flapping their hands in lovelorn hysterics. It’s icky.

Best Gay Tune – Thank God it’s Christmas by Queen, obviously, though it defies subgenres by plainly being an awesome Christmas song overall.  Beyond that I like to work under the assumption that all the big fellas who gave us the Christmas classics of the mid 20th century – Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Dean Martin – were princesses in v-neck sweaters, Hathaway shirts and well pressed slacks. So think of a favorite Christmas hit quickly and you’re likely to have called out a tremendously gay carol. And if you love the grand old songs like Do You Hear What I Hear?, as I sure do, it probably means you’re a fag.  Joyeux Noël!

Best Christmas Song written by a Jewish Artist… See above paragraph.

OK, can’t go on writing about this forever.  Here’s a quick list of songs I truly dig along with the vile ditties which drive me towards taking up Hanukkah:

Christmas Cool:

Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas – Baby Jesus: Born to Rock!! The Eels put out this rocker which I think may be my favorite holiday song of all time.  Feel the Yule, baby.

Xmas Time (It Sure Doesn’t Feel Like it) –A bit of a weeper by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, but done the right way.  It’s a tap on the shoulder to turn, look around and see that Christmas has yet to become all it should be.  There’s still plenty of sadness, poverty and suffering; it is the time of giving – do what you can, alright?

The Hat I Got For Christmas is Too Big –  Speedy Gonzalez.  Mexican rat pissed about his ginormous sombrero.

Fairytale of New York – Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues.  Drinking and a bad break-up, oddly enough done up in wicked Christmassy fashion.

I Believe in You­ – Sinead O’Connor or Kylie Minogue – both sweet versions.

What a Year for a New Year – Dan Wilson. Just plain nice and it feels like it’s sung with sincerity.

Let’s Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas – Joel Hodgkins and the robots from Myster Science Theater 3000.  Do I even need to explain this?

Any version of The Little Drummer Boy has a tendency to choke me up.  What? I can’t get a little sentimental this time of year? Up yours, you spiritless bastards…

 

Christmas Crud:

Every last thing done by Mannheim Steamroller.  What the fuck is wrong with that act? In a sense they’re like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and its Christmas of the Apocalypse weirdness.  Mannheim misses the point too,  interpreting traditional songs into trite, overblown movie soundtracks.  Perfect for a cinematic fairy tale where some third-grader saves ol’ Mr. McGuillicutty’s toy store while retooling a business plan for the ever-incompetent Santa Claus and defeating the Satanic douche in charge of security at the local mall.  That ain’t Christmas; that’d be the melody of the Hollywood inflicted mortal wound to our soul.  Does your radio identify songs as they play?  If you see Mannheim anything scroll across the dash, shut it the fuck off or look for a Portuguese station until a safe amount of time has passed.

And always remember, particularly in the Season of Joy, jazz ruins everything it touches.

Your turn now – tell me, and everybody else reading, what makes your toes tap at Christmas and what audio horrors make it more of a Cringe-mas.  Dying to hear what I should be adding to my iPod for coming Yules.

Feliz Navidad, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart!

 

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Have a Mxxxx Cxxxxxxxx!

Posted on by Frank
6

Have a Great Holiday!  The first time I heard that this year it had nothing to do with the impending Christmas/Hanukkah competition.  It was delivered by a bar customer of mine in reference to Thanksgiving Day.  Then it was repeated by just about everyone else who wished me to enjoy the big November celebration. Perhaps one other person besides myself actually used the phrase “Have a Happy Thanksgiving” with maybe a couple more spitting out the somewhat irritating “Happy Turkey Day”.  Have a Great Holiday? They might as well have said “Merry Last Fourth Thursday of November” just to ensure the greeting was safe, sterilized and fully devoid of meaning. It seems as though political correctness and religious hypersensitivity has worked its way backward through the calendar to engulf a holiday which doesn’t actually have a specific religious connection.

Forget the implications of the first Thanksgiving feast – Pilgrims offering  thanks to the Christian god for new homes on the South Shore and not being dead like half the people who boarded the Mayflower in England.   By the time Abe Lincoln designated it a National Holiday in 1863* it was simply meant to be a day for celebrating the stuff we’re grateful for, like new vacation homes in California and not being dead like half the people drafted into the civil war. The only cultural affiliation necessary to the holiday is to be living in the US by the time dinner is served.  The only people we should be showing sensitivity towards are the folks who didn’t get the day off from work.

(*I know lots of these amazing facts because my son was in a Thanksgiving play a few weeks ago.  I also learned that Abraham Lincoln was 3 ½ feet tall, lisped and spoke in rhymes. And that Myles Standish was a black kid.)

So the point here is that the struggle for people to show sensitivity towards every living thing, or at least not to offend anyone, had long ago gotten kinda stupid.  Now it’s pathetic. And it wasn’t just Thanksgiving – anybody notice how schools dropped Halloween from the vocabulary this year?  Around here it became “Orange and Black Day” which I think was intended to comfort the two Jehovah’s Witness kids from the practices of a first grader who worships Satan.  Brace yourself folks:  the holiday calendar is under threat of reprinting.  Won’t be long before those crybaby wood choppers get Arbor Day renamed to National Lumberjack Income Day.

And that brings us to the target of this post:  All across the country states and municipalities are ditching Nativity scenes and axing “Christmas Tree” in favor of “Holiday” Tree.  This extra push by local governments may have something to do with the White House switch to Holiday Trees this year (not true, just a rumor spread by the responsible reporters at Fox News and Pals)  But it doesn’t matter who started this silly trend – it’s misguided and actually does more interfaith/cross-cultural/me-vs.-stupid-you damage than leaving the Christmas association fully intact.

How about taking a level headed look at the traditional conifer of the Yuletide.  What is it? Well let’s start with what it isn’t:  It’s not a Burning Cross, it’s not a Swastika strung with colored lights, a Koran on fire or a Kwanzaa Flag hung upside down.  It’s a Christmas Tree. And regardless of the origin of Christmas celebrations the message of the season is straightforward – Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Man. Not just Christian Man – any man, including wo-mans. And since the Earth is not covered with Christians that Peace is wished upon everyone. EVERYONE.  I don’t give a crap what a few loudmouthed southern Protestant jackasses feel about the rest of everybody else – the most basic principle of Christianity, straight from the mouth of the dude who started it, is that peace and love are universal.  Everyone deserves it.  And I don’t really mind people saying Happy Holidays (so along as they say it in Decemeber…) but when I see someone who’s never even owned a crucifix, and tell them to have a Merry Christmas it’s simply that.  It’s not a suggestion they buy themselves a plastic lawn Nativity and start cuddling up to Baby Jesus. It’s a sincere wish for a time of love and a break from the tiring struggles, and strife, which tangle us all year round. One doesn’t need God for Christmas – but you do need a sense of humanity. And that can be found in anyone.

So skip a Nativity Scene?  Call a tinseled pine a Holiday Tree? That’s asinine. Try this instead: put up a brightly lit Menorah for Hannukah.  Stick a Kwanza thing in the Rose Garden when it’s time.  Celebrate Ramadan on the White House Lawn – that’s how you celebrate our diversity.  You don’t do it by masking the customs of one group. What public officials, as well as too much of the US population at large, don’t get is that you don’t have to water down any traditional symbol of peace and acceptance.  Matter of fact,  if anything it leads to more division between faiths and cultures. Predatory media companies will leverage that for political gain by setting fire to the foaming mouths of those aforementioned Protestant jackasses.  And they’ll eventually draw less temperamental folks into the fray and the Christian public at large will misdirect its anger and lay blame on the wrong people.  Can’t wait for the news to report that Al Qaeda has enlisted Arab-Americans in its plans to eradicate Douglas firs. Unfortunately, too many people aren’t that smart, enlightened or evolved and making Christmas “less offensive” to others only drives some “Christians” towards over-defense of the holiday and bellyfuls of hate. It’s such an unnecessary mucking up of a season meant for joy to all.

So let’s stop fucking this all up.  Don’t be afraid to say Merry Christmas to anybody.  And don’t forget to wish a Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa or Ramadan to those who celebrate those traditions.  If the sincerity is in your heart than you can easily fall back on the tried and true “Happy Holidays To You Sir!”

But if I catch you saying that to me come next Labor Day I’m going to stuff a beach umbrella up your…er, sorry about that.

Merry Christmas and Peace to Everyone!

 

Fun to write these things but funner to read your comments – drop one below.

Next Up – Jesus Claims Never to Have Heard of Tim Tebow, Plans to Vacation During Playoffs…

 

Smooth Grooves & Slick Flicks & Xmas Crap

Posted on by Frank
2

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation vs. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Christmas Vacation is actually a sequel to a non-Christmas movie and that’s what probably saves it from the general suck of serial films.  And there probably has never been a better guy for a Christmas comedy than Chevy Chase – a big, clumsy, misguided, well-intentioned, crudely wise-assed idiot man-child. Recent actors like Will Ferrell do a fair job of acting like little kids for comic effect – prancing fairy walks, over-affected voices, etc – Chase perfectly, and naturally, captures the boy inside an adult body.  With the exception of Randy Quaid (as a little retard trapped in the physique of a giant retard) the rest of the characters are kind of left as props for Chase’s self-created catastrophes.  His exchange with Merry the lingerie girl (“Plenty of shopping days left till Adultery!”) and taking a folding attic ladder to the jaw have kept me in chuckles for a couple of decades.

 

Home Alone – Take the whole ingenious John Hughes premise of Home Alone, redo it all in NYC and it becomes a pretty lousy, tired premise in a wicked mediocre movie.

My kids love it.

Most kids love it as do many adults who haven’t become sour cultural critics like myself who gnash their teeth at every overplayed Hollywood convention.  This one is packed with ‘em.  If it weren’t for the violently hilarious slapstick this would be a suckfest like no other.  And for that we won’t be thanking Joe Pesci, who’s become a fat, irritating gnome at this point in his career.  And definitely not Macaulay Caulkin – the angelic little prick from the first movie became so annoying by this flick that I felt even Santa would want to take the brat apart with an axe…  The guy who makes this movie is Daniel Stern – the greatest victim of little Kevin’s wildly violent booby-traps, this dude’s misfortune still gets me laughing until my eyes dehydrate.

Have a Christmas show/movie/song you adore?  How about one which brings homicide to your heart?  Leave me a comment and we’ll discuss.

Gotta run; The Elf on a Shelf ain’t doing whatever it’s fucking job is supposed to be and the kids have turned into cannibalistic Saturday morning bastards.  Order must be restored!  Merry Christmas!

Tomorrow:   Everything’s Gonna be Cool  & Tender Tennessee Christmas – tunes which make Christmas way more fun versus sonic holiday colostomy bags….

 

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