Saturday, December 27, 2003

And Another Thing

"The Christmas Waltz?" Great song. One of my favorites. But what's with that line, "We'll tell scary ghost stories"? Is this an appropriate part of anyone's Christmas? "Hooray, baby Jesus is born and when the couple got out of the car, they saw a bloody hook hanging on the door handle."

Thursday, December 25, 2003

Must Be Beautiful In Vermont This Time Of Year, All That Snow

I can pretty much recite the script for White Christmas verbatim, but the baby Jesus simply cannot come into this world until I've watched this while baking cookies, writing out cards, or simply basking in the glory that is Bing.

The sets are bad (exactly the same cloud hovers over the ski lodge in all outdoor scenes) and the storyline is worse (what happened to Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney's trunks and records after they escaped the nightclub? I worry about these things) but there is far too much tap dancing on overturned rowboats to treat White Christmas with anything but love, love, love. Who's not proud to be an American when Rosemary and Vera break out the bigass blue fans? (Rosemary is my homegirl, BTW. A native of Maysville, KY, I regret that she lived to see her nephew George develop into such a roaringly colossal dumbass. Her brother Nick, who was a local news anchor when I was sent to bed early so I could get up for grade school the next morning, is now running for Congress, and I further regret to inform you that the useful idiot doesn't fall far from the tree.)

White Christmas has cemented itself in my heart if only for gifting this good Earth with the World's Most Inappropriately Placed Number In a Christmas Musical, which comes in the form of Vera-Ellen tap dancing to "Abraham"-- a song about Lincoln-- in a canary yellow dress. I suppose this is a not-so-sly nod to the also magnificently mockable Holiday Inn, in which the song debuted, along with "White Christmas" itself, but still: Merry President's Day! Silver and gold and the Copacabana to you!

Frightening That I Know This Trivia: The "Vermont" line, which must automatically be recited by me or a family member whenever the state is mentioned and which made life very annoying for the two years I attended grad school in Vermont, is spoken by each major cast member but Rosemary Clooney.

Other Things We Dig About White Christmas :

-The singing of "Snow" on the train to Pine Tree, which is marked by these four wacky kids creating a mountain tableu out of a napkin and a crunched-up green.... something. Man, is that drunken four AM finals week behavior or what. "I'll wash my hair with snow!" sings Vera-Ellen's voice double. Irving Berlin, you magnificent bastard. (Frightening That I Know This Trivia, Part II: When Vera-Ellen shows Bing the picture of her brother Benny, the face that we see is Berlin's. Also, Vera? With the hyphenating? Don't do that.)

-Bing telling Rosemary to pick up a carafe of milk by telling her to "bring the cow." Because he is Bing, and he can get away with that.

-"We'll Follow the Old Man Wherever He Wants To Go": Oh! An unresolved question, though: When the soldiers are singing "As long as he stays away from the battle's fray", what's that about? They don't want to go into battle? What kind of crappy soldiers are these?

-Rosemary singing "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" with the Gay Community Dancers, who, in black turtlenecks, tights, and absolutely no expression wander into the shot, gesture resignedly, then leave. Merry Christmas. This part gets watched in fast-forward motion. (Also, what is that silver thing riding around on the seat of Rosemary's dress? It looks like she sat in a pie plate sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.)

-The opening of the ski-lodge doors at the finale to reveal-- snow! Wasn't it cold in there? Also, what was up with the horse-drawn sleigh skidding through the shot? Wasn't there all of, like, .00000001 inches at that point? And suddenly the roads are impassable for cars (all of which bear California license plates, btw?) Ahhhhhhhhh, it is fortunate indeed that I am easily soothed by the gloriously un PC "Mandy" number. That white outfit Vera-Ellen is wearing? Is cool. I need one of those things, complete with detachable white tulle.

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Glooooooooooooooooria!

There are few things that annoy me about the holiday season except for the expected cash outlay, being told to have a merry Kwaanza, the office parties, the overcommercialization, the loss of my favorite radio talk show hosts for about five weeks, cold-ass churches crammed with people who aren't there for the rest of the year and make those of us who punch the card every frigging week get there like forty-five minutes early if we don't want to be genuflecting in the parking lot, and the way that one freaky kid on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special dances-- have you noticed this kid? He's wearing a green shirt, and he is clearly a top graduate of the Al Gore School of Rhythm, as he his idea of dancing is to turn alternately side to side, sticking his neck out and letting his arms dangle practically to the floor. It's just not Christmas until that scene frightens and saddens me.

I also have Issues with certain holiday standards:

-"Up On the Housetop": Generally, the chorus doesn't bother me. The clicking is negligible. However, there's one verse in which a child named Johnny has apparently asked for, quote, "a whip that cracks." WHAT?! Is this kid a budding S&M addict? I really don't think Santa should be encouraging this type of behavior.

-"We Need a Little Christmas": Here's another rather troublesome verse, which includes the words "carols at the spinet." What the hell is a spinet, and why are we singing carols at it? It sounds like some sort of spinning wheel. Who owns a spinning wheel? Has someone properly festooned the spinning wheel for the holidays? Got to have a Billy Bass propped up against the spinet if you want to do Christmas right.

-"The Little Drummer Boy": Hate this song. Hate it hate it hate it HAAAAAAAAAAATE IT. Repetitive, obnoxious, depressing, and in general uninspiring, not to mention farfetched. If I'm the Blessed Mother, I'm saying, "Okay, I just went through childbirth between a cow and a dung pile, and if you know what's best for you, you're getting your stupid drum away from my son." Because babies LOVE drum solos.

Also, what was this idiot doing all by himself in Bethlehem? Did he miss the bus that was taking the rest of the high school band to play the halftime show at the Furniture.com Bowl? Stupid kid.

-Dean Martin's version of "Baby It's Cold Outside": This song rocks-- it is the most romantic Christmas tune I know-- and far be it from me to criticize The Dean, but God this version sucks. Dean sounds fine, but the woman's part is sung by.... a group of three women, which is disturbing at best and disgusting at worst. "I really can't stay! I've got to go 'way!" sung against one man, who's parrying with seduction lyrics-- uh, no. I don't even want to think about what's being implied here.

-Dean Martin's version of "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer": Okay, close be it to me to criticize The Dean. You know you're in trouble when it starts out with about five guys going "Rudolph! Rudolph!", you start to cry when Dean refers to the title character as "Rudy", and by the time Dean starts doing that hideous white-guy hep thing where he changes the words AND the melody, the Exacto-knife is already in your hands and heading towards your eyeballs.

Lesser known, but still annoying songs:

-"Let's Have An Old Fashioned Christmas Polka" Riders in the Sky somehow found it necessary to foist this one upon the world, because when you think cowboys, you think oompah band. It makes me want to check my entire German heritage. Even before they get to the lyric that goes, "Where's the fiddle and the bass? Sam is gonna play his face!" I can't make this stuff up, people.

-The jingle-belled version of Brahm's Lullaby featuring some guy whistling the melody with the backing of a full orchestra. I don't know who's responsible for this song, and I don't know how long it's going to take me, but so help me God I'm going to find them and they are going to pay.

-Hep-cat version of "Away in a Manger" I seriously thought this was a joke song when I heard it, but no, it was being played on a verifiable radio station by a verifiable human who had been thinking that "I love thee, Lord Jesus, you're a cool cat/And take us to heaven to swing with thee there" was really going to rake in the advertising dollars.

Feh.

Sunday, December 21, 2003

Shaddup, Deion.

I seriously can't stand Deion Sanders so much I'm radiating little wavy hate tendrils at the TV. I have never heard him say anything this entire season that wasn't in a shriek. I wonder what would ever happen in the event he's not the center of attention in every single room he's in. Shrivel up like the Wicked Witch of the West, I suppose, howling, "CLOSE UUUUUUUP OOOON MEEEEEEEEEEE!"

He's wearing this universe-rupturing red jacket today (Boomer: "Are you going foxhunting?") and, after my man Boomer patiently broke down the playoff picture-- who needs to root for whom, how the chips are falling and so forth-- Deion said, "Man, get out of here with all that stuff. If you got a good team, you're gonna be in the playoffs." Dude. Not if the team you're tied with for first wins too.

Vindication came, however, in the form of Deion announcing-- for some reason-- "You never saw me miss a tackle."

Boomer: (pause) "I never saw you near one."

Dan Marino and host Jim Nance: (laugh very, very hard)

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