But I can read the mood of my audience, and so it's time to lighten things up again and cut back on the schmaltz with a song that Grumpy Bulldog Patrick Dilloway reminded me existed, and which is one of my favorite Christmas songs of all time: The Bob & Doug McKenzie Twelve Days Of Christmas:
The best part? When they add "... in a tree" to "And a beer" so that it fits.
I've never been sure what they were singing on some of those -- what with that "Canadian" accent and all-- so I looked up the lyrics, and here is what they get:
A beer.
Two turtle-necks
Three French toast
Four pounds of back-bacon
Five golden tooks,
Six packs of two-four
Seven pack of smokes,
and
Eight comic books
Two turtle-necks
Three French toast
Four pounds of back-bacon
Five golden tooks,
Six packs of two-four
Seven pack of smokes,
and
Eight comic books
Which still doesn't answer all my questions, such as "what's a golden took," and I tried googling that but got nowhere, so help me out here.
Is it a drug thing? It's a drug thing, isn't it? God, I'm unhip.
In keeping with that theme, though, here's today's Best Santa Or Whatnot, and the one I'm presenting you with today is sure to be controversial: Bad Santa, which I've remarked a few times is one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time.
Bad Santa doesn't have a lot going for him, as a drunk, a loser, a criminal, a reprobate, and a guy who doesn't even know what a Fraggle Stick Car is. But, like all of us at this time of year, Bad Santa learns the real meaning of... well, Christmas, I suppose, but stop and think about that for a second:
What, exactly, is the meaning of Christmas these days? Doesn't it mean whatever good thing you want it to mean? Christmas is now a stand-in for all the emotions we'd like to have all the time: more than just goodwill to men and peace on Earth, (about that latter: see the Christmas Chopper Attack kids' ornament here), Christmas by now stands for pretty much any good thing.
I started thinking that when I re-watched Love, Actually and got to the sign scene where the Lovelorn Guy Who For Some Reason Thinks Keira Knightley is hot tells Keira that he loves her, and notes that he's doing it because
And I thought "Really? At Christmas you tell the truth?"
I hadn't heard that before, and so I started paying attention to what people say Christmas is all about, and it's really about anything.
Christmas is, as I predicted long ago, swallowing up not just every other holiday, but every other good thing in the world. It won't be long before you can just say "Well, it's Christmas, and Christmas is when we balance the checkbook" or "At Christmas, it's tradition to make sure you have an extra piece of pie" or whatever it is you want to justify.
So in Bad Santa, then, Bad Santa learns an Important Christmas Lesson, and heralds the world we are headed to, one in which All Lessons Are Important Christmas Lessons. The Important Christmas Lesson Bad Santa learns is "something about caring about others", as exemplified by his insistence on delivering a stolen stuffed animal to Thurman Merman, and also as exemplified by one of the funniest scenes in Christmas movie history:
Prior songs:
14. When the River Meets The Sea, by John Denver, plus "Doc Bullfrog."
13. All I Want For Christmas, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Santa who helped Superman fight Toyman.
12. We Need A Little Christmas, Glee version, and The Holiday Armadillo.
11, 10, 9: The Little Drummer Boy, Johnny Cash; What Christmas Means To Me, Stevie Wonder; What's This, by Julia Nunes and Ian Axel, and "The Santa From A Nightmare Before Christmas".
8. Taste The Coast, by Admiral Fallow
7. Dringo Bell, Mediaeval Babes
6. Born Is The King (It's Christmas) by Hillside
5: Tijuana Christmas by The Border Brass
4. Christmas Griping, REM
3. A Christmas Waltz, She & Him
2. Don't Shoot Me, Santa, The Killers
1. Snoopy's Christmas, The Royal Guardsmen
1 comment:
I think a took is a hat, like the kind of winter hat with the flaps on the sides. Early in the song one of them says, "I have to put my thinking took on."
You know what's interesting is there's an old Twilight Zone episode that's similar in some ways to "Bad Santa." The department store Santa in the episode is an old drunk, though not a safe cracker. Then he gets a magic bag that gives out gifts, which I could just imagine what sort of gifts Billy Bob Thornton would be taking out of there...
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