We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! But first, a commercial. . .
Then, some quality time spent with Shaun the Sheep!
And, inevitably as snow in the U.S. Northeast, here are a few renditions of this blogger's favorite Christmas tunes, starting with the great Alex Chilton of Big Star and The Box Tops a.k.a. The King Of Covers. Alex' ability to play jazz chords on a rock guitar and commit himself 100% to whatever song he's playing still impresses the living daylights out of me.
If it's a rockin' Christmas you want, then it's time for an extended sleighride with The Brian Setzer Orchestra.
Best Blue Christmas? Lowell Fulson! Tough to top "Lonesome Christmas," just one of many masterpieces by the guitarist and vocalist.
This shall be our last post for 2023. See ya in 2024!
Some of the most cutting and brutal satire this writer has seen in the past quarter century can be found in Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse series, which provided provocative laughs to the Saturday Night Live mix in 1996-2008.
Since the holidays are just about upon us, it is worth noting that there were a slew of Christmas offerings by TV Funhouse. While I love A Charlie Brown Christmas, the following cynical take on Peanuts definitely has its share of guilty laughs.
The Globetrotters' First Christmas is an outstanding spoof of early 1970's animation, specifically the extra cheesy cheesiness of Filmmation, represented by such TV series as Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids. Did anyone who helped make this sendup of 1970's TV cartoons work at Hanna-Barbera or Filmation?
Rankin-Bass gets both a skewering and a homage in The Narrator That Ruined Christmas.
Many of us who celebrate Hanukkahchristmas or Christmashannukah relate to the following. Love the inspired vocalizing by the great Darlene Love - the not so secret musical weapon of Phil Spector - in this TV Funhouse, which makes me want to go out to a Cantonese, Hunan or Sichuan (a.k.a. Szechwan) restaurant on Christmas and/or Christmas Eve. Stylistically, this reminds me just a tad of Art Clokey and Aardman Animations. . . after all, there is a Shaun The Sheep Christmas.
One can't have too much stuff that is questionable taste - no make that bad taste - during the holidays, so we shall finish today's post with an episode of the TV Funhouse spinoff series. Is it both funny and in incredibly bad taste? Yes.
