28 Days Of Christmas, 28 of the Best Christmas Songs, 3

Today in disturbing Christmas mash-ups, Batman beats up the Ghost of Christmas Future, thereby destroying time itself and leaving humanity trapped in limbo.

Well, no, but a man can dream, can't he? He can, at least until the Republicans win the White House next year and announce there's no money for dreaming because they've given it all to billionaires.

The other day, I proposed to Reader Of The Month Patrick Dilloway that he write "A Christmas Carol" featuring superheroes, and we debated via Twitter whether Batman, or a supervillain, would have to be Scrooge. Because my opinions are righter than yours, I was righter than he was when I said it had to be Batman - -and I said that even before I knew about Batman: Noel.

Or, as DC puts it,

This holiday season, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol gets the Gotham treatment. Inspired by the classic story, BATMAN: NOEL is an oversized, original graphic novel that offers a brand new twist on the tale of Scrooge and the ghosts who haunt him.

In BATMAN: NOEL, The Dark Knight must come to terms with the rogue gallery of his past, present and future.

USA Today offered a plot synopsis:

In Noël, Bob is a lower-class guy in Gotham City trying to keep a roof over the head of his boy. To make some extra money he starts working for the Joker. Batman shakes him down and decides to use Bob to lure his arch-nemesis into his Batarang-wielding clutches. Along the way, though, the Dark Knight is visited by an apparition of his dearly departed partner Robin. And instead of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, it's Catwoman, Superman and the Joker himself who help Batman see the situation in a different light.

I, for one, am glad to see that in lieu of original thought, writers can just continue to spew out 'new' 'versions' of A Christmas Carol, something I've lamented in the past, but which I will now embrace by offering the most meta version of A Christmas Carol ever:

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: Late on Christmas Eve, Charles Dickens, after a hard night of partying with his good friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, returns home to his wife and children. But rather than spend the rest of the evening with them, Dickens retires to his study to pen a novel idea that came to him over some mead, or ale, or whatever they drank then. As he writes the opening lines of what will become the story A Christmas Carol, he dozes off, only to be awakened by the Ghost of Shakespeare, who points out to him that he's about to create an iconic story that will forever bind all writers to one, and only one Christmas story, hampering their creativity.

"With each poem or play I stole from other writers and claimed credit for in my life," Shakespeare (played by Roland Emmerich) intones, "I forged these chains."

"Awesome. I'm going to use that," declares Dickens, who then falls back asleep only to then be rousted by a series of ghosts -- whole crowds of ghosts, showing him Christmases past, and present, and alternate Christmases, and Christmases which for some reason feature Victoria's Secret 'fashion' shows on TV, but who's complaining, not me, until finally he is visited by The Ghost Of Christmas Future:

Ghost Of Christmas Future [played by Jesus]: "If you finish this story, my own story will eventually become secondary to this, and this story will supplant all other Christmas stories, and we will eventually have to watch a version of this tripe starring the Jersey Shore cast. Therefore, it is for the good of the world that I do this," and Jesus pulls a gun on Dickens, who immediately spin-kicks the gun out of Jesus' hand, and the two then engage in a wild hand-to-hand combat battle to the soundtrack of "Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You" by Billy Squier. The fight ends with Jesus being choked over Dickens' empty grave, nearly dead, until Dickens is hit on the head with a shovel and falls into the grave, dead.

Jesus looks up to see Tiny Tim holding the shovel.

"God bless us, every one!" Tiny Tim says.

Flash to: Dickens waking up in his bed, next to his wife. "Was it all a dream?" he says, and rushes to the window, throwing it open, and is about to shout to a passer-by when he is pulled from the window by his collar and thrown to the ground, breaking his neck.

"When Jesus kills you, YOU STAY DEAD," says Jesus, standing on the ledge outside Dickens' window.

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Can you tell it's 5:40 a.m. as I'm writing this? Here's today's song, apropos of nothing: A Christmas Waltz, by She & Him.








Prior songs:

2. Don't Shoot Me, Santa, The Killers

1. Snoopy's Christmas, The Royal Guardsmen.