It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas

At 3:03 this morning I woke up with "The 12 Days of Christmas" playing on an endless loop in my head. Actually, I woke up because Teddy was sitting next to the bed staring at me and using shiba inu mind control to tell me he had to pee. "The 12 Days of Christmas" had been playing for some time before that.

I was stuck on days 9 through 12. I knew they involved lords leaping, drummers drumming, pipers piping, and ladies dancing, but I wasn't confident of the order. Eleven lords a leaping sounded nice what with the alliteration and all, but I was fairly confident that there were 9 ladies dancing, and it didn't make sense to have the lords separated from them by a day.

Anyway, it was making me nuts, so while Teddy was out back doing his thing I looked up the lyrics and sorted everything out. Drummers, pipers, lords, ladies, and so on. I still think eleven lords a leaping works better, but nobody asked me.

I blame my friend Jill for this. The other day she and I were talking about Christmas songs. Jill recently found on CD a song she remembered from childhood but hadn't heard in years. It's "Christmas Tree" by the Voices of Walter Schumann. Schumann, by the by, composed the theme for Dragnet and scored movies including The Night of the Hunter. The song is brilliantly awful. Jill and I particularly like the vamp who purrs "presents niiiice" in the chorus. After Jill introduced me to the song I went around saying that every minute and a half for the next 48 hours.

For Jill this song heralded the beginning of the Christmas season. For me the opening bell was something slightly different--the CBS television network special programming intro. They don't play this anymore, but for a generation of us hearing the familiar tune had us salivating like Pavlov's dogs, as it meant something fabulous was about to happen. Frosty the Snowman, maybe, or Rudolph's Shiny New Year.

There were maybe a dozen specials that aired annually when I was a kid, but I particularly loved The Year Without a Santa Claus and it's campy brothers Heat Miser and Cold Miser. The highlight of TYWASC is the duet between the brothers when each explains why his version of Christmas is the best. It's a bit like the song "Dancin'" from Xanadu, where Olivia Newton-John and the Tubes go back and forth in battling musical styles. Only it's better because there are little mini Heat Misers and Cold Misers doing Rockette-like choreography all over the place. Of course at the time I didn't know they were campy. I just thought they were fun. But looking back on it, I'm pretty sure they turned me gay.

Of course the pinnacle of the holiday season arrived with the airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas. First shown in 1965 this special--along with The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (which first aired in 1966)--is a holiday memory for a generation of Americans. And a big part of that is due to the amazing music provided by the Vince Guaraldi trio.

I don't think A Charlie Brown Christmas could be made today. Unlike most holiday specials, it featured a strong religious theme. Although I think most of us remember the sad little Christmas tree, the haunting music of the ice skating scene, and the lively party dance number, there was also a Nativity pageant. Linus, who has been practicing for his role as a shepherd, delivers what many consider the show's highlight when he quotes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 8 through 14:

⁸And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. ¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'

Ironically, although reviewers praised the special's reminder that Christmas was less a secular celebration than a commemoration of the birth of Christ, apparently Peanuts creator Charles Schulz and director Bill Meléndez had to fight network executives to include the Bible passages. They won, but you know that today they'd never get away with it.

This raises what, for me, is the biggest problem with Christmas music. If you aren't Christian, a lot of it is difficult to enjoy. Sure, you can try to ignore the content and just listen to the music, but that's like trying to enjoy the gooey center of the Tootsie Pop when you can't stand the candy coating. It's not worth the effort. Also, you could break a tooth.

I'm already annoyed that Christmas is an appropriation of the pagan holiday of Yule. Asking me to listen to "Silent Night" and "What Child Is This?" just adds insult to injury. Which is too bad, because I really like some of the religious-themed holiday songs. "O Holy Night," for instance, is really lovely. And who doesn't enjoy a nice round of "Good Christian Men Rejoice"? I do try. But somewhere around the second verse I start to get a little cranky about the whole thing and want to give the Baby Jesus a kick in the pants.

The alternative is to listen to secular Christmas music. Sadly, most of it sucks. I don't know about you, but "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" just doesn't cut it. "White Christmas" is fine as it goes, but after hearing it eight million times you want to poke your eyes out with a holly sprig. What makes it worse is that the same nine or ten songs are recorded over and over and over. And just between you and me, I really don't need to hear "Blue Christmas" done by Celine Dion, Toby Keith, Barenaked Ladies, Dolly Parton, Lou Rawls, Barbra Streisand, Kimberly Locke, Amy Grant, Chris Isaac and Elvis. Actually, I don't want to hear it done by any of them. It's a depressing song to begin with.

Not that the artists are entirely to blame. The ugly truth is that they either have to stick to the traditional holiday songs we know and love or they have to do something new. And no one wants to hear new. They especially don't want to buy new. I love Cyndi Lauper's take on "I Saw Three Ships," but what the hell was she thinking with "Christmas Conga"? This is a problem, the end result of which is bargain bins filled with albums that could be interchangeable except for the artwork on the covers.

I do have a couple of go-to Christmas albums. One is 1963's A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, which features songs produced in Spector's famous Wall of Sound style. It's a brilliant album. Sadly, now that he's a convicted murderer every time I play the album I have to fend off visions of him sitting in that courtroom with his crazy cotton candy hair. But the music is worth it. I also love Shawn Colvin's Holiday Songs and Lullabies. It's one time when the religious themes of some of the songs are eclipsed by the beauty of the music and Colvin's singing. I sometimes put her version of "In the Bleak Midwinter" on repeat while I'm writing and listen to it for hours. Ditto Aimee Mann's gorgeous One More Drifter in the Snow.

But my all-time favorite Christmas song is Bing Crosby and David Bowie's "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy." I know I'm contradicting myself, but I don't care. Not only is it a supremely weird pairing, it combines the sacred and the secular aspects of the holiday season into one beautiful song.

According to those in the know, the song apparently came about when Bowie arrived at the studio for the taping and said he didn't want to sing "The Little Drummer Boy." And who can blame him? It regularly tops the list of most hated Christmas songs. My friend Vince despises it so much that if you mutter "rump-a-pum-pum" within his hearing he screams like a 5-year-old girl and runs off. He doesn't even like the Joan Jett and the Blackhearts version, which if you ask me is a pretty awesome tune.

In order to keep Bowie on board, the show's writers dashed off a new song, "Peace on Earth," and wove it into the more familiar carol. The result was strange and magical, combining tradition with innovation and essentially marrying two generations. But we almost never heard it. Crosby died a month or so after the special was taped, and the network considered not airing the show because they thought people would find it depressing.

I, for one, am glad they changed their minds.

Creepy Clown Monday #3: Night of the Clown (1998)

After watching the first three films for this little undertaking of mine I'm starting to feel a bit like one of those guys who sits in his basement rec room watching old 8mm nudie reels. Not because there's anything remotely prurient about creepy clown films (at least not for me) but because so far the movies I've watched all look as if they were shot on somebody's cell phone then circulated as bootleg copies until the one I got was seventeen generations removed from the original.

Seriously, Night of the Clown makes Purvos look like The English Patient in terms of cinematography. This thing is so dark and grainy that watching it makes you wonder if you're stoned. Which appears to be the idea. The cover of the DVD suggests (or perhaps warns) viewers "Get wasted . . . Watch this . . ." And in an interview contained in the DVD extras writer/director Todd Cook says about his film, "It's not supposed to make sense. It's just supposed to be a strange experience."

Isn't that what people who write poetry say?

Anyway, this marketing concept seems to have been developed after the fact, as Night of the Clown was never supposed to see the light of day. It's something Cook and his wife Lisa made just for the hell of it. Both had made other horror films and this was an experiment of sorts meant for their own amusement. Then the film got out to some friends and people started watching it at parties, usually while under the influence of mind-altering substances. And thus a minor underground cult hit was born.

Very minor. And very underground.

It's difficult to say why the film is entertaining, but it is. It's not so-awful-it's-good awful; it's so awful you keep watching it as you would an impending accident involving a truckload of kittens and a tar truck. Unable to stop it, you want to turn away in horror but something says, "This is sure to be the most awful thing I've ever seen, and I want to be able to tell my friends about it in detail, so I'm just going to tough it out no matter how bad it is."

The "plot" is this: Todd is a very successful pickle salesman married to Lisa. One night he comes home and announces that he has sold his company for 843 million dollars. We also discover that he has five identical brothers (Dante, Chris, Clyde, Bartholomew, and Jake, all played by Cook) any one of whom might want a piece of Todd's good fortune.

I won't torture you with trying to explain what happens or why. It just happens. One by one the five brothers show up at the house and are killed by an insane and apparently magical clown who is roaming around the neighborhood.

The DVD box copy claims that "Night of the Clown has been considered to be one of the strangest, wackiest, wildest slasher movies ever made, with some of the most original and weirdest kill scenes depicted in a movie."

The first half of that claim is debatable, but on the second I call "Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!" Only about half of the kills are even remotely inventive. Of the six central deaths two involve knives and one is carried out by golf club. Even with a clown wielding the instruments of murder these are pretty ordinary. The remaining three are a wee bit better, involve a mannequin hand bursting through a chest, an exploding miniature rocket, and what I think is either a shop vac or a leaf blower. It's impossible to tell.

The clown, however, is decidedly creepy, which earns the flick a point or two. He also does some sweet little dances that are way better than any production of The Nutcracker I've ever seen, and I've seen my share. Although now that I think about it, Mark Morris's The Hard Nut is great and I really enjoy Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker!, so I will amend my statement to say that the clown dances in the film are better than any production of The Nutcracker I've seen that wasn't created by Mark Morris or Matthew Bourne. Which is still saying something, so a big round of applause for the clown for outdoing the San Francisco Ballet, the Dance Babies level one class, and some other heavy hitters.

It's just too bad you can't see the creepy clown and his dances all that clearly because of the crap camera work. Just as creepy (and crappy) is Todd Cook's acting as he portrays each brother's unique personality. Dante wears a Nixon mask and makes horror films, Chris doesn't really do anything, Clyde is a wannabe rock musician, Bartholomew is a classic nerd (who keeps a pickle in his pants), and Jake is a flatulent housecleaner with limited mental capacity. Cook, who incidentally could have benefitted greatly from orthodontia as a kid and who looks way better with the short hair he sports in the interview portions of the extras than he does with the nasty ponytail he has in the film, adds to the film's ever-mounting aura of craptastitude with every grimace of horror and every coyly delivered promise to reward Lisa with a big, juicy pickle if she does as she's told.

By the way, did I mention that the film is set in a future where there are 100 hours in a day and Todd and Lisa's house talks to them? Also, that the furniture moves around by itself? Pointless, but amusing. Also pointless and amusing are a lengthy and almost totally unrelated scene of girls being scared in what appears to be a real Halloween haunted house constructed in someone's garage, and a three-minute battle between two mischievous house cats. One of the cats is interviewed in the DVD extras.

All right, back to the story. All the brothers (including Todd) are dead. So what does Lisa do? That's right, she goes up to the bedroom and puts on clown makeup. Then she wanders down into the kitchen--which is lit by a disco ball--and encounters a creepy little mannequin girl that threatens to kill her with a pickle. The real clown shows up, Lisa chases it through the house and finds its magic music box (don't ask), and the clown begs her to give it back. Because women in horror films always do exactly the wrong thing, Lisa returns it and the clown promptly turns her into a mannequin sporting a disastrous Ogilvie home perm.

So if Lisa isn't the creepy clown, who is? Normally I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, but in this case it hardly matters. It's Lucy, Lisa's twin sister. She apparently has always been jealous of Lisa and her wealth. Also, I'm guessing, her fabulous moving furniture.

Lisa, understandably shocked, begs her sister to turn her back into, well, Lisa. Which Lucy does. The end.

Apart from the clown, the best thing about Night of the Clown is that it's mercifully short. Clocking in at just over an hour, it really would make a good thing to have on in the background at a party, or maybe on Christmas morning while opening presents. Watching five minutes of it here and there is no less gratifying than watching the whole thing, so no matter when you join in you're bound to marvel at its glory. Of course, you can always follow the advice on the DVD cover and play drinking games, taking a shot (or a swig of eggnog if you go with the Christmas morning idea) whenever anyone says "pickle" or every time Todd changes character. Then, when you're good and loaded, you can have even more fun recreating the clown's dances. It's family fun for everyone!

Should you be interested in learning more about this and other films produced by the studio you may visit them at Screamtime Films.

Favorite line: "You suck zit ridden pickles in butt sauce!"

Rating (out of 5):