‘Tis the Season...

For holiday music!

Christmas music is great. I love the old stuff by Bing and Dean and Elvis, the ridiculous stuff like Porky Pig and Alvin and the Chipmunks, the modern stuff like U2 and the Barenaked Ladies, and even the stuff that I only heard once and even then it might have been a dream (I swear, I heard a song called "Christmas in Painesville" when I was a kid. Hmm. Now that I think about it... maybe it *wasn't* about the town I grew up by in Ohio.)

And now, faithful blog readers (hi Mom and James!), I present you some thoughts on my favorite Christmas songs.

Prank caller
When they were getting Band Aid together, and Boy George picked up his phone and heard that they wanted him to join Paul McCartney, Sting, David Bowie, Bono, Phil Collins and Annie Lennox, etc, did he think it was a prank call? You want me to what? With who? Really? This can't be right... Never has anyone been so out of place amongst a talented group of performers since Christian Laettner made the final cuts for the original Dream Team.


It gets me every time.
How do you make a hanky dance? You put a little boogie in it! It's jokes like these (thanks Gramma!) that get me every damn time. I'm a sucker. In that vain, call the 12 Pains of Christmas my boogie to your hanky. "She's a witch, I hate her." "Now why the hell aren't they blinking?" "I don't even know half these people". Quite simply, every song should incorporate a line with this exact same tone: "Fine, you so smart?! You rig up the lights!" Gold.

So simple.... so effective
Why was music invented, boys and girls? Music was invented to get chicks, pure and simple. Don't try to argue this point with me. Which is why I love Dean Martin's "Baby It's Cold Outside". Logistically, you've done the leg work, you have the young lady over your house. But now she want's to leave, something something about "what would the neighbors think?". But then Mother Nature comes to the rescue with loads and loads of snow. All protests to leave are met with the same ROCK SOLID retort: it's cold outside. Simple, direct, effective. And it will forever make me sad that today this air-tight logic might get you 10-20 for false imprisonment.

*"Just another half a drink more"... it was probably this.
**Whoever commissioned this sin against nature should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Don't judge me
Everyone has a guilty pleasure movie. A movie that when it comes on, you have to watch. You're not proud of the fact that you watch the movie, like the movie, know every line from the movie. You don't share this with a lot of people, like any other addiction perhaps. You don't seek it out, per se, it seeks YOU out. Damn you TNT! My guilty-pleasure movie is A League of Their Own. Something about Geena Davis doing the splits in a skirt to catch a ball, Madonna and her fear that her "bosoms" might fall out of her shirt while making a catch, and Kit's Mary Ann to Dottie's Ginger are just all too much to handle. Bonus points for an inspire performance by Jon Lovitz. Go Peaches! *Checks tvguide.com, wonders if we get the OXYGEN network, calls DIRECTV. Whew!

Anyway, glass houses, people. Glass houses. Everyone has a guilty-pleasures movie. I'm not saying that Andrea's is While You Were Sleeping but we did watch it last night. More accurately, I watched it while she *listened* to it from the kitchen at her request. Yes, just listening still counts, darlin'.

After watching that movie last night in its entirety, some questions:
-Where do you get those tattered gray gloves with the finger-tips missing that make you look poor? They would help my street cred immeasurably.
-Were they paying Bill Pullman by the word? Or was he unable to memorize his lines? Maybe there's something to the silent-sophisticated thing after all.
-How was Lucy possibly able to withstand Joe Jr.'s good looks, persistence, and charm? Is she a robot or something?
-Lastly, I ask this: really? Really? It took a week to come clean on this huge lie? Did you think you were going to get away with it? That's fraud, my friend. Lock her up. I mean, when you think about it, this movie really never should have happened.

Unregardless, my guilty pleasure Christmas song (see how I brought that back around?) is Christmas Wrapping by The Waitressess. No, I'm not proud of it. But give it a listen. It's hypnotic. Oh Waitresses, you do indeed know what guys want.