For my final Christmas post, a clip that’s been stuck in my head practically non-stop since I first saw it. Forgive the lines of superfluous code at the top — consider it the gift wrap.
The Clickable Advent Calendar is almost over for 2008, so here are some items I couldn’t get to, in the spirit of “stocking stuffers.”
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention humorist David Sedaris, who made his name with acerbic commentaries on Christmas, particularly The Santaland Diaries (the theatrical version of which currently runs at Horizon Theatre and stars Harold Leaver, whom I interviewed in 2004). This year, for some reason I’m flashing on Sedaris’s “Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol” in which a typically caustic theater critic takes on a school pageant.
Other favorite holiday TV shows include “Justice League’s” Christmas-themed “Comfort and Joy” (which features a great subplot in which the Flash and a bad guy called the Ultra-Humanite team up to give some orphans an impossible-to-find Christmas gift), the “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special” and pretty much any “South Park” Christmas installment. (I found this video of Cartman’s “Swiss Colony Beef Log” via a The Onion A.V. Club.)
Slate has “A slide show of some of America’s weirdest holiday light displays” (I particularly like #2, from Batesville, Miss.)
The blog Musical Fruitcake lives up to its billing as “A collection of the worst Christmas songs ever recorded.” Hear a girl sing “Mom and Dad, Please Don’t Steal for Me This Christmas.” Speaking of Christmas music, Andisheh drew my attention to WFMU’s Beware of the Blog post on MORE Christmas Disco!
Alejandro pointed out the Elf Yourself site, and since I saw it, I know at least one friend who’s elfed-up her family.
For atheists and agonistics alienated at advent, here’s Thomas Bell’s secular variation on “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” “Yes Shirley, There is a wide body of evidence suggesting there may be a higher order to the universe.”
And finally, for your Christmas Eve reading, “A Download from St. Nicholas:”
December 23 is the date people are meant to celebrate “Festivus,” the Christmas-substitute holiday invented by Frank Costanza as per the 1997 “Seinfeld” episode “The Strike.” I’m not sure if people are still amused by the idea of Festivus traditions like the airing of grievances and the feats of strength, but this clip offers a quick refresher.
Last Friday I received an unusual email in my inbox: a holiday greeting from “Spook House Dave.” A new on-line puppet series, “Spook House Dave” is produced by Atlanta’s Dragonfruit Studios and features the puppetry, writing and vocal talents such local performers as Lucky Yates, Scott Warren and Jason Von Hinezmeyer. Yates explains the premise:
It’s about a regular kid who was left on the doorstep of a haunted castle when he was a baby. There was a note attached that read “Please take care of baby Dave”. Monsters cannot refuse the word “please,” because it’s the magic word. So, now Dave is 11 and goes to school in town (Mt. Savage, Pa.) and leads a pretty normal life, except that he lives with monsters. It’s a relationship comedy shot “documentary style” which means that there’s a confessional where the characters get to comment on what’s happening in a episode.
“Spook House Dave” is scheduled to launch in late January of 2009. The clip introduces the characters as they sing a modified version of a well-known Christmas Carol.
Watch Spook House Dave! Holiday Greeting in Family Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
A holiday tradition in my household is to watch the “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” episode Santa Claus. This astonishing Mexican Christmas movie from 1959 features a horned devil in red tights who sabotages Santa’s attempts to deliver toys, until Kris Kringle gets help from Merlin the magician and some terrifying mechanical reindeer. Here’s a helpful highlights montage.
“MST3K” went off the air in 1999 but a new spin-off project, “Cinematic Titanic,” roasts another holiday chestnut with its fifth and latest video for DVD, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians from 1964. “MST3K” creator Joel Hodgson and his four cohorts, all alumni from the show, appear in silhouettes to heckle the movie from bleacher-style platforms, as opposed to the original show’s puppets-in-movie-seats gimmick. Rather confusingly, “MST3K” riffed on the same movie in 1991, but near as I can tell, the “Cinematic Titanic” version features all-new jokes that improve on the earlier version. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians’s plot offers all-you-can-eat fodder for ridicule, in which Martians in capes, tights and green make-up kidnap Santa Claus so he can make merry for the emotionless children of Mars:
Hanukkah — or however you prefer to spell it — begins at sundown on Sunday, Dec. 21. In a nod to the Festival of Lights, I present the most famous bit Hanukkah-related humorous character that I can think of. Despite indications to the contrary, the embedded sketch below isn’t exactly about Hanukkah (go figure), but you can find an extended sample of the original sketch here. “On Moische! On Herschel! On Schlomo!”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” which CBS broadcast on Nov. 17, 1978. I saw it for its original broadcast and have seen it since, but it’s the kind of bizarre pop aberration that’s so strange, it’s easier to think of it as some kind of elaborate hoax (you know, like the fake moon landing) than an entertainment that people created on purpose, with sincerity. Recently I described it to my friend Tim, and explained that while it features cameos from most of the major characters and actors from the original Star Wars, it primarily focuses on Chewbacca’s family — his wife Malla, his father Itchy and his son Lumpy — as they prepare to celebrate the Wookie holiday of “Life Day.” Simply naming the special’s “human” guest stars – including Bea Arthur, Art Carney, Jefferson Airplane and Harvey Korman in three roles – had Tim doubled over in laughter.
“The Star Wars Holiday Special” was broadcast only once in the United States and a few other times in Europe, and has never been released on VHS or DVD. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, particularly Ebay and Youtube, it has resurfaced, to the chagrin of everyone involved. I personally can’t watch it without the protective filter from RiffTrax, as demonstrated in this sample:
But what is RiffTrax, you may ask?
Not surprisingly, those animated, Atlanta-based elves responsible for the Adult Swim programming on the Cartoon Network make merry with extreme prejudice at the holidays. The “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Star-Studded Christmas Spectacular Starring Rhon Geremi” will be broadcast Christmas Eve, but a sleighful of holiday-themed shows air tonight, Dec. 19, including “Robot Chicken’s Half-Assed Christmas Special;” “A Huey Freeman Christmas” on “The Boondocks;” “Rebel with a Claus” on “Squidbillies;” and “A Very Venture Christmas” on “Venture Brothers.” The latter features James Urbaniak and is a real favorite among my friends. Watch the cold open from the show (pictured) and see how many references to classic Christmas movies and shows you can count.
Adult Swim has actually compiled its own Ten Best Christmas Moments, with video clips all cued up. The likes of “NORAD vs. Santa” and “Santa’s Drug Lab” (a “Rudolph” parody) from “Robot Chicken” or “Horror Claus” on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” get pretty darn dark.
Tonight, Dec. 18, ABC Family broadcasts the live-action Jim Carrey film How The Grinch Stole Christmas from 2000. Let us not speak of it again lest it sully our memories of the classic 1966 cartoon “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” which isn’t just one of the best Christmas specials, but is one of the best pieces of animation made for television of any kind. Chuck Jones, who directed some of the greatest Looney Tunes shorts, was at the height of his powers for characterization and sight gags in rendering the Grinch and his hapless dog Max. (Here’s a fun bit of trivia: June Foray, who voiced Cindy Lou Who, was apparently the inspiration for the title of the Whos’ Christmas carol “Fah Who Forays.”)
Famous as the story is on page and screen, many don’t know that Dr. Seuss’s original How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has a “lost” ending, which was altered from the original manuscript to make the book more commercial. Here’s the book’s original conclusion:
… Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mt. Crumpit!
He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it!
“Pooh-Pooh to the Whos!” he was grinch-ish-ly humming.
“They’re finding out now that no Christmas is coming!
“They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!
“Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
“Then the Whos down in Who-ville will all cry BOO-HOO!”
“That’s a noise,” grinned the Grinch,
“That I simply MUST hear!”
So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow …
But the sound wasn’t sad!
Why it sounded … mad!
The Muppets have always been all over Christmas. Some of their holiday shows include the “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” from 1977; “John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together” from 1979 (hey, we had that album), The Muppet Christmas Carol theatrical film (with Michael Caine as Scrooge) from 1992; and one of my favorites, It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (with Joan Cusack as the villain) from 2002. “A Muppet Family Christmas” from 1987 deserves note as the only special to feature “crossover” appearances from the four major Muppet franchises: “Sesame Street,” “The Muppet Show,” “Fraggle Rock” and (ugh) “Muppet Babies.” You can check out some of Jim Henson’s actual muppet creations at an exhibit currently running at Center for Puppetry Arts.
Just when you start wondering if there’s maybe some other holiday the Muppets could pile on, a new holiday special airs tonight, Dec. 17 on NBC. A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa features appearances from “The Sopranos” Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa, “30 Rock’s” Jane Krakowski and Uma Thurman, among others. There’s a clip edited to show the Muppets rocking out to the Beatles-esque “Glad All Over” performed the Dave Clark Five, which has presumably has nothing to do with Christmas and may not even be in the special. Still fun, though:
Judging from this clip, “A Muppets Christmas: Letters To Santa” also includes my favorite of the “new generation” puppets, Pepe the King Prawn, whom you can check out singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with talk show host Craig Ferguson.
English funnyman Rowan Atkinson is one of the last, best practitioners of old-school physical comedy and sight gags, which have won him international fame through his bumbling man-child alter ego, Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean: The Ultimate Collection, which goes on sale today, is one of those unbelievably exhaustive DVD sets that gathers seemingly every Bean appearance and piece of pop ephemera in existence beginning with the original 14 episodes of England’s “Mr. Bean” series, which aired from 1990-1995. The seven-disc collection includes materials from other media, such as the two theatrical films Bean: The Movie from 1999 and Mr. Bean’s Holiday from 2005 and the 26-episode “Mr. Bean: The Animated Series.” “Mr. Bean’s” seventh episode, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean” from 1992, features this three-minute gem involving a nativity scene, which makes my wife and daughter both laugh out loud:
Mr. Bean’s scarcity of dialogue makes him charming and accessible to children and non-English speakers alike, but also cuts Atkinson off from his flair for verbal humor. Prior to being Bean, Atkinson created one of television’s most scathing characters, Edmund Blackadder, in the various “Blackadder” series through the 1980s. Atkinson plays not just one person, but a line of unlucky schemers througout English history, from the Middle Ages through the trenches of World War I. “The Blackadder Christmas Carol” gives the premise a delightful twist: in Victorian England, Ebenezer Blackadder is a kind, saintly soul, but glimpses of his past lives convince him that “Bad guys have all the fun,” so he converts to nastiness.
The silver-and-gold standard for stop-motion animated Christmas specials is the original Rankin-Bass “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” special from 1964. At my house we watch it several times during the holiday season and I have two traditions that probably annoy other people. First, when Rudolph meets the sweet doe who bats her eyes at him and says “My name’s Clarice,” I always say, in a Hannibal Lecter voice, “Well, hello Clarice!” Second, I can’t help but obsess over practical issues regarding the Island of Misfit Toys (which, incidentally, had its own CGI spin-off special, “Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys,” airing on ABC Family tonight at 7 p.m.). I have at least five questions:
1. What is the standard for being a misfit toy? It seems pretty inconsistent. Some of the playthings have mild “nonconformities” (to quote Sam the Snowman), like the polka-dot elephant, the cowboy who rides an ostrich, etc. Others, like “the boat that doesn’t float” or the train with square wheels on its caboose, don’t seem like “misfit” toys. They just seem like crappy, defective toys. Apparently there’s a fine line between being a “misfit” and being “garbage.” Next thing you know, China will be sending barges full of recalled lead-containing playthings to the island.
No fair — England’s going to have a merrier Christmas than the United States this year! Why? Because Aardman Animation’s new Wallace & Gromit short film, “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” is scheduled to debut on Christmas Day on BBC One. Briefly titled “Trouble at Mill,” the new 30-minute short finds silly inventor Wallace and his sensible dog Gromit working at a bakery and encountering another mystery, presumably in the same spirit as “The Wrong Trousers” and “A Close Shave,” (both Oscar winners). It comes out on DVD in the U.K. in March, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out when Americans get to see more than a short preview.
A good substitute to tide us over may be the 10 “Cracking Contraptions” shorts developed ahead of the Curse of the Were-Rabbit feature film, each of which features a different impractical gizmo. “The Snowmanotron” features a winter theme, while Wallace and Gromit apply their typically witty whimsy to the holidays with “A Christmas Cardomatic” (it’s two minutes long):
If I were on top of my game, I’d have an entry about the holiday-themed series finale of Ricky Gervais’ “Extras,” which airs on HBO on Tuesday night. But apparently I’m not, because I don’t. What to do? Wait, I know: Gervais, who co-created “Extras,” also co-created an even more acclaimed sitcom, “The Office.” And the Dec. 11 episode of the U.S. “Office,” titled “Moroccan Christmas,” has a holiday theme. Not too tenuous? Anyway, here’s the episode in its entirety:
The episode’s a little dark, but includes a great prank in the teaser. In a hilarious subplot, Dwight Schrute reveals that this year’s hot holiday toy is the Unicorn Princess doll — basically a Barbie knock-off with a long, sharp horn protuding from its forehead. Those net-savvy kids at NBC have created a Unicorn Princess website, which I include just to make the Clickable Advent Calendar extra clicky.
Incidentally, “The Office” has launched another batch of webisodes, collectively titled “The Outburst” and focusing on Oscar.
It’s a Wonderful Life airs tomorrow night at 7 p.m. on NBC. It’s unquestionably one of the best Christmas-themed movies ever made, but some things about it really stick in my craw, and I’m not alone in this. Maybe it’s because the inequities and injustices of American life seem so close to its surface. Everyman George Bailey sacrifices his dreams to fight the good fight in Bedford Falls, and almost loses everything to his Uncle Billy’s idiocy.
Theatrical Outfit’s radio play version of the material (reviewed here) simply celebrates the work, but satires of It’s a Wonderful Life can cut Frank Capra’s vision to the quick. Gary Kamiya’s classic Salon article “All Hail Pottersville” suggests that the nightmarish version of Bedford Falls sans George Bailey might be more fun than the real thing (and is certainly more diverse). The comic strip “Sheldon” gives Uncle Billy some much-needed tough love. I love this recut trailer that suggests that George Bailey’s dark side is close to the service.
The best spoof of It’s a Wonderful Life came from “Saturday Night Live’ about two decades ago, however:
Mention “A Year Without a Santa Claus” to people, and you’ll probably be met with blank stares. But sing a few lines like “I’m Mr. Cold Miser, I’m Mr. Snow…” and they’ll probably join in with “… He’s Mr. Icicle, He’s Mr. Ten Below.” People may not remember much about “Year Without a Santa Claus,” the Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated holiday special from 1974, but the rival brothers Cold Miser and Heat Miser, particularly their catchy, vaudeville-style theme songs, seem to have lodged in pop cultural consciousness. In fact, 34 years later, Cold Miser and Heat Miser are starring in their won new one-hour spin-off special, “A Miser Brothers’ Christmas,” debuting on ABC Family on Saturday, Dec. 13. “A Year Without a Santa Claus” airs tonight, Dec. 11, if you need to catch up on the backstory. He’s a tribute video to the Miser Brothers, set to the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy version of their signature song:
Monday, The Daily Dish, The Vulture and Alejandro all drew my attention to A BeTaMaXMaS. I’m clearly behind the times to be posting it today (but yesterday I just had to plug Silent Night, Deadly Night). Anyway, dressed up to look like a basement rec room, the site uses Youtube to simulate different channels during the pre-cable era, and they’re all showing holiday programming (including vintage commercials). The attention to detail is spot-on: you can fiddle with the antennae to improve the “reception,” you can adjust the settings with the old-school remote control, and to find out what’s currently playing, when you click on the TV Guide logo, an exact imitation of a magazine’s program guide style pops up. While most holiday nostalgia tends to focus on entertainment from before the 1970s, the BetamaXmas aims primarily at the kitschy 1980s. It’s a great chance to randomly hear, say, Pee-Wee Herman exclaim, “Hey! It’s Little Richard on ice!” It also offers an opportunity to waste a massive, massive amount of time on the Internet. So check it out, won’t you?
Tonight at 9:30 p.m. The Plaza Theatre’s monthly Splatter Cinema screening decks the halls with gouts of blood. (Fa la la la la, la la la la.) The moviehouse presents the notorious Yuletide-themed slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night from 1984, which features a crazed killer who dresses up like Santa Claus and uses such murder weapons as Christmas tree lights and reindeer antlers (as well as the less seasonal fire-axe). It’s one of the most controversial and thoroughly condemned horror films of the 1980s, but it spite of that (or more likely, because of it), Silent Night, Deadly Night has a devoted cult following. Here’s a quickie trailer:
One of the most beloved — and refreshingly soft-spoken — animated TV specials ever made, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” airs on ABC tonight at 8 p.m. The first cartoon version of Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip was broadcast in 1965 and featured many unusual touches, such as the casting of children (many of them inexperienced) as voice actors, the Vince Guaraldi jazz-piano score and the lack of laugh track. Lots of parodies are out there, including “A Charlie Brown Christmas Performed by the Cast of ‘Scrubs’” and the horribly NSFW “Charlie Brown Kwanzaa,” but fans of Atlanta-based music probably appreciate this clip the best:
I thought I was going to have an experience out of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas yesterday. I was taking my daughter to “Breakfast With Santa” at her kindergarten, and the first thing I saw when we pulled into the parking lot was a hearse, because the church part of the building was having a funeral that morning. It made me flash on Jack Skellington and his coffin-shaped equivalent to Santa’s sleigh.
My daughter recently declared The Nightmare Before Christmas as her favorite movie. I wouldn’t personally go that far, although I do love it: the design and animation are so good, nearly every frame of the film has something cool and would make a great poster or screensaver. Danny Elfman composes some great melodies, but the lyrics don’t always measure up. It’s probably more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas movie, but it still fits the season. “This is Halloween” and “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” are the two show-stoppers, but lately I’ve had the following tune stuck in my head when I’ve been unpacking the Christmas boxes from the attic. (Incidentally, I like the way Jack sort of has a Tim Gunn of “Project Runway” thing going on.) There’s a “karaoke version” of the same song here:
“TV Funhouse,” whether as an adjunct of “Saturday Night Live” or via its own short-lived sketch comedy show from Robert Smigel, has long been a source of pointed, retro holiday satire. Two that come to mind spoof “Peanuts” and “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” (the latter being “The Narrator Who Ruined Christmas”). I had never heard of the stop-motion animated “Tingles” sketch before, but a blog-friend drew it to my attention and now it’s one of my favorite short pieces of Christmas parody. If you’ve never seen this black-and-white throwback to 1950s’ style animation, I won’t give away who, exactly, Tingles is. Be sure to stick around to see Tingles’ post-Christmas counterpart, Moples.
The Atlanta Ballet’s perennial production of The Nutcracker debuts tonight, Dec. 5, at the Fox Theatre. The Tchaikovsky ballet always reminds me of two things:
1. The Klezmer Nutcracker and
2. A story from December 2003, back when Creative Loafing’s intrepid Tom Bell, now with the Decatur Book Festival, was an embedded journalist in the Nutcracker’s army, sending dispatches from “Operation Extreme Extermination,” a military action against the armies of the Rat Kingdom. (Currently the occupying army of toy soldiers expects to withdraw from the rat kingdom within 16 months, although the Nutcracker hesitates to give any timetables.) The story from our war correspondent offers a flashback to five years ago:
I freely admit that the Clickable Advent Calendar idea did not come from a Secret Santa. I did a similar, smaller-scale project, the Xmas Gag Gift, last year on the PopSmart blog, and kinda got the idea from other sites, particularly Mr. Sardonic’s Advent Calendar by critic/blogger Alonso Duralde on The Advocate.com in 2007. This year Duralde’s doing a different project on his Livejournal blog, a 25-day Christmas Movie Advent Calendar, which features reviews of unconventional Christmas films like Unaccompanied Minors. Which is all a roundabout way of building up to this entry, the preposterous “Have a Cheeky Christmas” by Romanian-born twin British pop hitmakers, The Cheeky Girls. This time of year it’s a favorite tune for both Duralde and his husband, author and blogger Dave White. I’d declare it the stupidest holiday song and video ever, but December has only just started.
Incidentally, Amazon.com is rolling a de facto musical advent calendar, offering a free downloadable holiday-themed song for every day of December. Artist so far include Barenaked Ladies and Sixpence None the Richer. No word whether The Cheeky Girls will be included.
With Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa still in theaters, I thought I’d devote today’s calendar entry to “A Christmas Caper,” DreamWorks’ 10-minute spin-off film that appeared as an extra on the DVD release of the original film in 2005. (Apparently it was also attached to Curse of the Were-Rabbit.) It showcases by far the funniest characters in the Madagascar films and, frankly, is one my favorite DreamWorks CGI film of any length. If Youtube takes the clip down, click here for a sample.
Since A Christmas Story celebrated its 25th anniversary in Cleveland yesterday, it probably doesn’t count as a “new” holiday classic movie. Released Dec. 1 in 1983, it proved a modest success, but really crossed over from cult flick to mainstream favorite when TNT began airing 24-hour marathons in 1997. Now it seems as much a part of the season as It’s a Wonderful Life and that commercial with Santa Claus riding the electric razor. This year’s marathon begins at 8 p.m. Dec. 24 on TBS, but until then, here’s a remix video of the film, and while the language is unbelievably filthy and NSFW, it seems to “work” better than you’d imagine.
During the Christmases of my childhood, I always enjoyed advent calendars and the daily ritual of opening a little door to reveal a new surprise for each day of December until the 25th. Taking the advent calendar as inspiration, this month I’ll offer some tongue-in-cheek holiday blog entries, with the idea that clicking on, say, embedded video or “For the rest of this entry” lines are the online equivalent to opening a cardboard calendar window. First up is Invasion: Christmas Carol at Dad’s Garage, which is the only version of the Scrooge story where you may hear a word like “bacne.” Or “turduckephant.”
The Christmas Carol satire rejiggers the “invasion” concept the theater used in last year’s Invasion: Our Town. Both shows turn a theatrical classic upside down by the addition of a mid-show “invader” who’s not only new to the text, but hasn’t been seen by the rest of the cast, who have to incorporate the visitor on the fly. Dad’s likes to draft current or defunct roles from its long-running improvised soap opera Scandal! as the invader, and on Christmas Carol’s opening night Scott Warren played the Ghost of Christmas Past as a blustering barbarian in a loin clout. The nightly invader, isn’t the most surprising aspect of Invasion, however, but the casting of Ebenezer Scrooge himself. I’ll put the detail behind the cut to avoid spoilers, although the end of Dad’s trailer for the show gives it away:
