Holiday Cheer: American Dad! Christmas

I've been fruitlessly searching for just one more post for the night, and have been coming up empty. Then I thought about the fact that I've only got a couple of more days left for "Holiday Cheer" posts. And one of my favorite Christmas-themed TV episodes was available on Hulu. So here you go, American Dad's "Most Adequate Christmas Ever."

Holiday Cheer: "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses

I know that many people aren't fond of "contemporary" Christmas tunes, which can mean anything from about 1969 forward. But Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses has been a favorite of mine since I first heard it on The Dr. Demento Show when it first came out in the eighties. For a punk rock/new wave band, the lyrics of this song are quite poignant and engaging. I think this one will remain a favorite of mine into my dotage.

Blast from the Past: Christmas Special Songs!

I haven't had much holiday cheer up yet. So, what better time than now? Some of these songs have left the realm of old holiday specials, and joined the regularly played Christmas tunes. Which is cool.





1. You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch - From the Dr. Seuss classic, How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
2. The Who Song (Welcome Christmas) - This one is on the Christmas stations all the time, also from How The Grinch Stole Christmas
3. Christmastime is Here - From A Charlie Brown Christmas.
4. We're a Couple of Misfits - Rudolph and Hermey the gay dentist elf, from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
5. Frosty the Snowman - From the cartoon of the same name, by Jimmy Durante.
6. Heat Miser/Snow Miser Song - From The Year Without a Santa Claus, one of the Christmas specials that filled enough of the logic gaps in the Santa story to keep me believing for a couple more years.
7. One Foot in Front of The Other - From Santa Claus is Coming to Town, with Mickey Rooney and Keenan Wynn
8. Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus - Liar!

That's it for this week. More holiday cheer to come. Happy Monday!

Greenlee Gazette Extends Christmas Vacation ONE MORE DAY!

You might wonder where I've been the past several days. Well, The Other Half and I went back to the Midwest for a huge, family Christmas visit. Lack of Internet, family obligations and general revelry prevented me from being able to blog at all. I did have some time-release posts set up, but basically they were all Christmas fun things, no serious blogging.

And though I have been back since Thursday night of last week, the Christmas fun times and local friend obligations haven't abated. I sit here on Sunday night, contemplating what if anything to put up on the blog. . .and you know what? I'm enjoying this break too much. And frankly, not much is setting the world on fire this week anyway. Most Americans are likely still in a holiday haze through most if not all of this week anyway. In fact, I wouldn't have to work tomorrow or Tuesday if not for a big project at work.

So, kiddies, nothing new tonight. No Blast from the Past, no new blog posts (save this one) to start the week. Too much food (damn I'm fat), and too much wine to focus. I'll probably get some stuff up on Monday and Tuesday, but it's just not in me today. But I'm betting there isn't a bunch of activity going on anywhere anyway. Happy New Year! See you soon.

40 Classic TV Holiday Moments in 2 Minutes

A Charlie Brown Christmas Played by the Cast of Scrubs

Another Holiday Cheer/Frivolity Break/Inappropriate Humor post, this time with A Charlie Brown Christmas starring the cast of Scrubs. The key word here is "inappropriate," so don't say I didn't warn you!

A Charlie Brown Christmas With the Cast of Scrubs

Naughty Christmas Songs: The XXX-Mas Shoes

Another one from the vaults, a perennial around here. It's delightfully offensive, so don't read if you're not into that sort of thing!

Original Post:

In my earlier post, Anatomy of the Christmas Shoes, I mentioned that that horrible song was ripe for parody. Friend and contributor, Stupid Monkey Planet took me up on the challenge, and wrote a new song, using the cadence of the original.

That is where the similarities end, however! The Monkey has a dirty mind, you see, and he envisions the song a little differently than NewSong. Oh, it's still a Christmas tune, but with a decidedly adult take on things.

For this post, I'm using a feature that allows me to put part of a post "below the fold." So, if you're not easily offended, and you hate "The Christmas Shoes" as much as we do, by all means read more. You've been warned. . .

Blast from the Past: Contemporary Christmas Songs!

Though the title of this post is "Contemporary Christmas Songs," you'll also note that this is Blast from the Past. As such, we will consider anything from the late-70s to the mid-1990s as "contemporary." Maybe this needs a new name to separate it from "classics," which I'd consider Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, etc. I also don't count The Carpenters and similar acts from the sixties and seventies. As old as I am, those don't feel contemporary. A practical dividing line for me is A Very Special Christmas, a series of albums starting in the 1980s that benefitted the Special Olympics, and brought together popular artists of the day for their renditions of classic songs. And though there's no cutoff since that time, I am not very enamored with really contemporary takes on Christmas songs, at least not in the last several years. So, these songs basically fall in the 80s and 90s, with maybe a few outside that window. And yes, I know that I included two versions of Hard Candy Christmas. Enjoy!

 

And that's a wrap! Happy Monday, and Merry Christmas!

Patton Oswalt: The Christmas Shoes

I've written several posts on the dreaded awfulness that is NewSong's The Christmas Shoes, including my dissection of the lyrics (Anatomy of the Christmas Shoes), and my friend Stupid Monkey Planet's x-rated take on it (The XXX-Mas Shoes).  But how about a take down of the worst song ever by a professional comedian?

Naughty Christmas Songs: It's A Scary, F*cked Up Christmas by Garfunkel & Oates

Ho, ho, ho! Hee, hee, hee!

Holiday Cheer: Cyndi Lauper's Merry Christmas. . .Have a Nice Life!

Christmas kind of snuck up on me this year. I didn't even bust out my Christmas CDs, in the annual battle of "contemporary" music with The Other Half's more traditional stuff. One of my perennials is Merry Christmas. . .Have a Nice Life! by Cyndi Lauper. I've long thought that Lauper was a vastly underrated artist, one who deserves a major comeback. So, in my own little effort, here are a few of my favorite Cyndi Lauper Christmas songs.

Christmas Conga



Early Christmas Morning



Home on Christmas



Minnie and Santa
 

Naughty Christmas Songs: Jackie Beat's Santa's Baby

One from the vaults. . .

The Christmas songs under the banner, Naughty Christmas Songs are a little more risqué than things I usually post to the blog. Some are naughty, some are gross, some are both. But I find them funny. You've been warned!

Santa's Baby by Jackie Beat

Dispatches from the War on Christmas, Parts 9 - 12 (Kenny Pick)

More funny Ken Burnsian excerpts from the mockumentary that really ought to be made! From the genius that is Kenny Pick. Enjoy.

 

Blast from the Past: A Demented Christmas!

I was always a fan of parody and novelty tunes, all the way back as far as I can remember. I think they were kind of like audible cartoons, even though I might not have understood what made them funny. As I grew older, my fondness for funny songs grew, coupled with my lack of religion, twisted sense of humor and basic irreverence and tendency for inappropriateness. As such, if I listen to Christmas music, it is much more likely to be spoofs of Christmas music, rather than the classics. Oh, I like "contemporary" Christmas songs (if you can consider 80s-era A Very Special Christmas CDs contemporary). But Doctor Demento-style music is much preferred. So, I'm on a quest to put together my favorite funny Christmas tunes for this week's Blast from the Past. Enjoy!

 

1. Twisted Chipmunks - Bob Rivers' take on the Alvin & the Chipmunks Christmas song is very well done and funny, and it leads into. . .
2. Chipmunks Roasting - Bob Rivers' spot-on parody of The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting), which--despite a potential bit of soft racism toward the end--is very, very funny.



3. There's Something Stuck Up in the Chimney - This one (Bob Rivers again) might be slightly overplayed, but it really hit my funny bone the first time I heard it.
4. Walking Around in Women's Underwear - Again, Bob Rivers wanders into dicey territory, with a tune that some people might find homophobic (transphobic? cross-dresser-phobic?), and a bit dated with the Murphy Brown reference. But I've for some reason overlooked that for decades, and have always been tickled by it.



5. I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus - Kip Adotta (more famous for the delightful Wet Dream) did this little role reversal, which also might tippy-toe into homophobia, but only if you're very, very sensitive.
6. Christmas Wrapping - This wonderful song by The Waitresses has kind of moved out of the "novelty" arena, and become something of a perennial "contemporary Christmas" (again if 1982 can be called that) tune. It tells a very sweet story, considering the "edgy" air the group had about it.
 

7. Santa Claus and His Old Lady - Cheech and Chong are as much a delight in the twenty-teens as they wee in the 1970s, and this classic will never go out of style.

8. 12 Days of Christmas - I would never include this interminable song by anyone else (including the most recent take by Mike Huckabee. . .ugh). But Bob & Doug McKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) managed to take everything about the song that sucks, and made fun of it while making it their own. Probably a bit of an 80s pastiche, but I still love it.

9. O Holy Night (Christmas Tree & Pie) - There are a lot of funny South Park songs, but this is the only one that has noodled its way into my brain, so that no matter which version of this song I hear, I have Cartman and his lyrics in my head! Hilarious.

10. Merry F***ing Christmas - Believe it or not, this isn't the most offensive song on the South Park "Mr. Hanky's Christmas Classics" album! But fair warning, it is offensive to some. However, it is also extremely apropos for the people whining about the phony FOX "News" War on Christmas. Like them, Mr. Garrison wants to force "Merry Christmas" on the whole world, like it or not!

And to quote David Gregory on every episode of Meet the Press, "we're going to have t leave it there." Any more videos in this post and it will choke your computer on Holiday Cheer! I'll probably be sprinkling the blog with more fun stuff as Christmas approaches, but much like every year, that stretch between Christmas and New Years will be slim blogging from me (and virtually everyone else). Especially this year. So for now, Merry Christmas and Happy Monday!


 

White Jesus (Rocky Mountain Mike Song Parody)

You've got to hand it to Rocky Mountain Mike, one day Megyn Kelly of FOX "News" says something stupid, and the next, there is a pitch-perfect Bing Crosby Christmas song parody available. Thanks, Mike! "I'm dreaming of a white Jesus. . ."

Anatomy of The Christmas Shoes, Revisited (Still Again)

This is the seventh Christmas season for Greenlee Gazette, amazing as that seems to me. And though this year I haven't heard it yet, every other year, I couldn't escape the worst Christmas song in history.  It isn't possible to inflict enough derision upon the now perennial The Christmas Shoes. It's abysmal. It's horrific. It deserves far more crap flung at it than has ever been flung. So here is my effort, from the early days of the blog, to put this lame-ass song in its place. This post has appeared on the blog each of the last six years. This year, I present it again, with a few additions and changes. . .




As you head into your holidays, you are undoubtedly going to be assaulted by Christmas carols somewhere. And if you're like me, you will unwittingly overhear The Christmas Shoes by NewSong, one of the worst songs of all time.

I was inspired to write my own dissection of the song after reading "The Annotated Christmas Shoes," on the (sadly now gone) Diary of a Blood Ray (aka The B Pryde Machine) blog years ago. The first time I heard the song, my reaction was much the same as Blood Ray's. I wasn’t moved to tears. I didn’t find the song precious or heartwarming. The song actually kind of pissed me off.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that this song was brainstormed (if you can call it that) to be as manipulative of people’s emotions as possible. I can envisioned the writers sitting down to write a sappy Christmas song, trying to pluck the heartstrings until they frayed. Now that the season is upon us, this hideous song has already started to play. And play. And play. And I just can't take it.

So, taking a page from Blood Ray (whose post I miss, and so wish I had saved), here is my own version, which I call "Anatomy of The Christmas Shoes." Because I'm dissecting this hideous beast. Put on your glasses, I'm shrinking the font because of length.

Image from Blood Ray's original post.

Anatomy of "The Christmas Shoes" by NewSong

It was almost Christmas time, there I stood in another line
OK, It sets the scene, and it’s not so bad yet. It does manage to telegraph what’s coming though.

Tryin' to buy that last gift or two, not really in the Christmas mood
Still setting the scene, but there’s the country-fried tryin’ as though "trying" wouldn’t be heartwarming enough.

Standing right in front of me was a little boy waiting anxiously Here’s where my cynic antennae start going up. I’m thinking the writers picked a boy, because a girl would just naturally do something nice for her mom. So, yeah, let’s make it a boy, to make it more poignant.

Pacing 'round like little boys do Filler. You can’t really pace in a line, and little boys don’t do it more than anyone else, do they? Did he have to pee?

Dispatches from the War on Christmas, Parts 5 - 8 (Kenny Pick)

More great bits by Kenny Pick (often of The Stephanie Miller Show) about that ridiculous War on Christmas.

 

Dispatches from the War on Christmas, Parts 1 - 4 (Kenny Pick)

These are truly hilarious and well done Ken Burns-style parodies, as if "The War on Christmas" was a real thing, by Kenny Pick who (like Rocky Mountain Mike and several other talented folks) is famous partly for his appearances on The Stephanie Miller Show. I'll run some more clips soon, but they're all available at Kenny's SoundCloud portal, here.

 

Sarah Palin, The Little Dumber Girl (Rocky Mountain Mike Song Parody)

Ha! Some holiday cheer from Rocky Mountain Mike.

Holiday Cheer: Make it So! (Star Trek: The Next Generation Christmas Carol Parody)

Captain Picard must be under the control of Q. . . .