Holiday Horrors 2010

Holiday Horrors: Anti-Egg Nog-ery

Continuing the fabled tradition begun all the way back in 2009, Scratchbomb presents Holiday Horrors and Holiday Triumphs: an advent calendar of some of the more hideous aspects of this most stressful time of year–with a few bits of awesomeness sprinkled in.

There’s lots of things I like about The New York Times, and there’s lots of things I don’t like about it. Most of the latter are perfectly encapsulated by their subscription commercials, which portray reading the Times as some sort of exclusive club that they will deign to let you poor slobs join for the low, low price of whatever.

In particular, their Trend Pieces drive me nuts, because they are so disconnected from life as it is truly lived. Nine times out of 10, these articles are based on something done/noticed/overheard by three friends of the 23-year-old fact checker, then reported on as if it is some fantastic new wave sweeping the city. And in their definition, the city exists between Canal and 96th Street, extends into certain parts of Brooklyn, and that’s it.

Not to mention that these pieces usually feature some of the worst, most clueless humans alive. Like the trust fund fucktard who told the Times you shouldn’t bother to have a party if you’re too poor to hire a bartender. (You get three guesses where this asswipe lives and your first clue is “Williamsburg”.)

edub_eggnog.jpgThe piece I’m going to discuss now is only tangentially related to such nonsense, but it is holiday related and it does involve a Totally Fake Trend perceived as real by roughly 12 people on the Upper East Side. Plus, it took a swipe at something near and dear to my holiday heart: egg nog.

First off, know this: I love egg nog. I loved it as a kid, and I still love it. I know it’s horrible for you and I could not give less of a shit about that. If egg nog was illegal, I’d make it in my bathtub. I will consume anything that even pretends to be egg nog-flavored: ice cream, milk shakes, lattes, laxatives. And I not only enjoy the mass-produced, completely fake, store-bought egg nog, I prefer it.

Do I understand why someone would not like egg nog? Of course. I’m an egg nog enthusiast, not an evangelist. To each his or her own. But I would prefer to not be judged for my noggy proclivities, as was done implicitly and explicitly in the Times last week.

The piece in question appeared in last Thursday’s edition, penned by Frank Bruni, and entitled “The Eggnog Resisters’ League.” Solidarity, comrade! Bruni has stormed the ramparts to combat the imperialistic advances of egg nog, a drink that he and only he has the guts to take on! Why does he hate it so?

It’s a dessert in drink drag, a single-cup, multi-egg sleigh ride to feeling overstuffed and overwhelmed right at the start of a party, when an unimaginative host foists it upon you — “we have eggnog!” — in place of a proper cocktail or respectable glass of wine or something, anything, that won’t spoil your appetite and erase three miles on the treadmill in three insanely rich sips.

It’s a calorie extravaganza, a cholesterol jubilee, ruling out any
possibility of pacing by hogging all the nutritional naughtiness that should rightly be spread across the breadth of a cold December evening.

What kind of parties is Bruni going to where the host “foists” anything on you? Is he telling me that there are people who, if you ask for a martini or a beer, will hold you down and pour egg nog down your throat through funnel? This sounds like those totally BS stories about drug pushers. “First one’s free, kid!” You know what you do when you don’t like the drink someone offers you? You ask for something else. If they’re a good host, they’ll give it to you, judgment free. Crazy, I know!

I also love how Bruni equates serving egg nog with a lack of imagination, as if it is only served because of obligation or panic. Later in the article, he blames egg nog’s waning popularity (an assertion for which the evidence is circumstantial at best) with, among other things, “greater culinary sophistication.” So don’t serve egg nog this year, folks, unless you want your guests to mistake you for some shoeless hillbilly.

But because he wants a beverage that still evokes the holidays, Bruni consults some bartending friends who construct for him drinks that evoke egg nog-ery without being egg nog. Which is fine–by all means, experiment, innovate, and all that. Except even from these bartenders, there is an unspoken implication–and in some cases spoken–that these drinks are spiritually and culturally superior to actual egg nog, the holiday swill of philistine idiots.

To give you an idea of the lengths to which these bartenders go to make egg-not, one of the concoctions involves a pine-flavored liqueur. If everyone involved wasn’t so god damn sophisticated, I’d suspect they were all depraved alcoholics reduced to drinking household cleaners. Even Bruni admits that these egg nog alternatives don’t really capture what he’s looking for. But at least he’s not drinking egg nog, the moronic gruel sloughed down the grunting throats of troglodytes.

Is Bruni allowed to dislike egg nog? Of course he is. Just don’t act like you’re more highly evolved than the rest of us schmucks for a matter of pure taste, or that you’re the member of an oppressed minority. And don’t bend over backwards and ask bartenders to make
drinks based on coconut milk, mulled cider, and Pine-Sol just because you don’t feel like drinking it. Just have a chardonnay and shut the fuck up.

Holiday Horrors 2010

Holiday Horrors: Pokemon Christmas Medley

Continuing the fabled tradition begun all the way back in 2009, Scratchbomb presents Holiday Horrors and Holiday Triumphs: an advent calendar of some of the more hideous aspects of this most stressful time of year–with a few bits of awesomeness sprinkled in.

pokemonxmas.jpgWanna feel old? Kids now in college grew up with Pokemon. It’s been around long enough to cycle back into the area of nostalgia, just like G.I. Joe and Transformers have for folks of my generation. In Japan, I think Pikachu was elected to the Senate.

Though I’m too old to be in the Pokemon wheelhouse, I totally understand why it was so popular with younger young’uns. It has all the elements necessary to hit kids right where they live.

For starters, the hero of the show was a kid, which is the quickest shortcut to kids’ show success. It had an enormous universe full of characters and a vocabulary all its own, which capitalizes on kids’ obsessive tendencies. And the show itself was really just one arm of a multi-tiered assault of Pokemon related things to buy and do, like its Magic the Gathering-esque card game and roughly a bazillion licensed items from backpacks to differently sized backpacks.

But as I’ve said repeatedly on this site, you should never confuse nostalgia for quality. If you loved Pokemon as a kid, that’s fine, but seen with adult eyes, it’s a terrible show. Not any worse than the stuff I watched when I was seven, mind you, but still terrible.

Naturally, Pokemon produced a gaggle of Christmas-related fare, because the franchise churned out more junk per square inch than any toy line since Masters of the Universe. Just in time for Christmas 2001, they released Pokemon Christmas Bash! Because in a world still reeling from the attacks of September 11, we all needed something to help us heal and strengthen our resolve. And what better to unite us than an album of Pokemon-themed Christmas songs, with instrumentation from the finest keyboard technology 1987 had to offer?

Or, more accurately, Christmas-themed Pokemon songs, since the holiday was was dwarfed in most of the tunes by the importance of naming as many of the characters as possible. But it’s one thing to compose brand new songs about Pokemon that barely mention the holiday (like the immortal ballad “I’m Getting Santa Claus a Pikachu for Christmas”). It’s quite another to shove the names of your dumb characters into beloved carols, which is what they did with this Pokemon Christmas medley.

If you know nothing about Pokemon, this will sound like another language to you. Every third word is the name of a character or a move or something else Pokemon-universe-related. If you did grow up watching it, I’m guessing this will inspire in you some serious cringing. If you can listen to this more than 30 seconds at a time, you are a stronger person than I.

And if you find this grating, be aware that somewhere out there is a German-language version of this album (Pokemon Weihnachtparty!). I could not find any audio of that online, and it’s probably best I didn’t, as I’m pretty sure if I heard it I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a month afterward.

Holiday Horrors 2010

Holiday Horrors: Marshmallow World

Continuing the fabled tradition begun all the way back in 2009, Scratchbomb presents Holiday Horrors and Holiday Triumphs: an advent calendar of some of the more hideous aspects of this most stressful time of year–with a few bits of awesomeness sprinkled in.

“Marshmallow World” is one of those marginal Christmas-y tunes that inexplicably remains at the fringes of the Yuletide canon. It is not among the top ten most popular holiday tunes, or even the top 100. But you are guaranteed to hear it at least once a year over a PA system if you dare go shopping in an actual brick-and-mortar store. It survives for the same reason that shows like According to Jim remain on the air for so long: nobody loves it, but nobody hates it, either.

They say you shouldn’t go food shopping when you’re hungry. You probably shouldn’t write lyrics when you’re hungry, either. That’s the only explanation I have for verses like this:

It’s a marshmallow world in the winter,
When the snow comes to cover the ground.
It’s the time for play, it’s a whipped cream day,
I wait for it the whole year round!

Those are marshmallow clouds being friendly,
In the arms of the evergreen trees;
And the sun is red like a pumpkin head,
It’s shining so your nose won’t freeze!

It should be a songwriter rule that if you start to write lyrics like this, just get up from the piano, take a stroll, and go get a sandwich. If you don’t, you might start composing love songs about pot roast.

These words weren’t written by a hack, either. They’re the work of Carl Sigman, a lyricist who worked with composers like Duke Ellington and wrote tons of songs. He wrote the lyrics to “Ebb Tide,” which are simple yet gorgeous. (It’s most famous as done by the Righteous Brothers, but I’m partial to Frank Sinatra’s version.) But even a skilled craftsman can have an off day. Or a gotta-bang-this-out-before-I-get-lunch day.

But if nothing else, “Marshmallow World” is partially responsible for this hilarious clip from a Dean Martin special from the 1960s. Dino and his buddy Frank stomp down a flight of plastic stairs, almost run each other over in the process, then sing the song with all the care it deserves. Which is to say, they yell-sing it and flit around in mock-balletic moves, clearly annoyed that they have to perform this dumb song about marshmallows.

Oh, and did I mention they’re very obviously smashed? Enjoy!

A potentially explosive collection of verbal irritants