The Bah Humbug Blahgfest!!!

It's finally that time, the day of the big first-ever Bah Humbug Blahg Fest.  Pencils down.  Now time to show your work.

So the challenge was in this time of merriment and giving to find 12 things you don't like about the holiday season.  If you needed inspiration you could always have copied from "The Twelve Pains of Christmas."

Although I'll admit since I live alone and in an apartment some of those don't apply to me, like hanging lights or stockings.  I don't have a fireplace either, so I don't have to worry about creosote building up and burning down the place--at least that's what those Chimney Sweep Log commercials say.

Now then, let me get on with it.  Since a lot of what I care about in the holiday season is music, let me start by laying into some of my least favorite holiday songs.


#12:  Santa Baby

As much as I like raunchy comedies and even raunchy Christmas comedies like "Bad Santa" I've never gotten behind this song.  Especially since the first version I heard of it was the Madonna version.  Trust me, Madonna is the last thing I want to find under my tree.  But nothing epitomizes the spirit of the season more than some slut trying to seduce Santa into giving her a bunch of shit.  Does Kim Kardashian have a cover of it yet?  That would make so much sense.




#11 Feliz Navidad:

Look, I took 3 years of Spanish, so that's not the problem.  The problem is this song is so fucking repetitive.  It's just the same couple of lines over and over again.  All it's saying is "Merry Christmas and Have a Happy New Year."  That's it.  Over and over again.  Try a little freaking variety!

#10 Do They Know It's Christmas by Band Aid:

Sure it was for a good cause and all that.  This song when you really listen to it (as we have to every fucking holiday season now) is so dumb at times.  Do they know it's Christmas?  Hmmm, do a bunch of non-Christians know it's Christmas?  Let me think about that!  There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas...Gee, you think a continent that's largely DESERT and tropical savannah won't have any fucking snow this Christmas--or any other day?  No offense Bob Geldof, but maybe you should have at least read an issue of National Geographic before penning this stupid song.

#9 Happy Xmas (War is Over):

Another song that was for a good cause.  I can't even fault the lyrics that much.  And to be honest I enjoy the John Lennon version.  But like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" it's better in moderation.  The real problem though is like "Hallelujah" there are so many freaking versions of this song now:

Go on and play all of those at once and see how awful that is!

That's pretty much the first page of results when I check YouTube.  I know there are a bunch of other versions of it too.  The song isn't THAT classic, not like "Silent Night" or "O Holy Night" where every freaking artist has to have a version of it.  Also, it's kind of a depressing song because war isn't over and it never will be so it just bums me out to hear this song 50 fucking times a day.

#8 Terrible Holiday Albums!

OK, the last word on music now.  If you read my blog last Friday and this past Monday you know I love holiday music.  I own a lot of it.  Yet there's also a lot I don't own.

I can't fault some artists who are legitimately good singers and artists who put out a holiday album.  The problem is with those flash-in-the-pan artists who put one out to milk a little extra cash out of their adoring fans.  Like Hanson or NSync or Justin Bieber.  You know, artists who are going to be on the street in two years so their handlers try to get as much material out there as possible before the next one comes along.  It's the kind of shameless merchandising that typifies the commercialism of the season.

Now that we've gone through music, it's time to get into movies!

#7 Hallmark Channel/Fox Family

Every year after Thanksgiving--if not before--the Hallmark Channel and Fox Family Channel (is that what it's still called?) do their crappy Christmas movie marathons.  And while they put in a couple of new cheesy movies, most of them are largely the same.  I think I've seen that crappy movie with Dolly Parton in it like 50 times by now. 

And then are the ones with Kathy Ireland in it.  Argh.  Most of these are so fucking stupid too and always end with some schmaltzy message about the holidays.  It's the kind of tripe only old people like my mom enjoy watching over and over again.


#6 24 Hours of "A Christmas Story"

What's funny is until the mid-90s or so I'd never even heard of "A Christmas Story" despite that it had been out for something like 15 years.  Then we got cable and I couldn't escape it on Christmas.  Look, I enjoyed the movie a few times and like a lot of people I've still got a lot of parts memorized.  My favorite part is when he beats the shit out of the bully.  But that's just me.

Anyway, it is a good movie, so it's too bad Ted Turner through first TNT and then TBS had to run it into the ground.  Now other networks are doing the same with "Elf" and other movies.  There's no movie, not even my favorites like "The Dark Knight" or "Watchmen" or "The Empire Strikes Back" I want to watch 24-hours-a-day  I mean sure it's probably cheaper for the network to just loop the same program over and over again, but couldn't they switch it up with a couple of different movies?  Maybe take a year or two off?  Though really maybe they should make everyone in Guantanamo Bay watch this all day on Christmas; they might crack and mend their ways.


Incidentally, I like Syfy's "Twilight Zone" marathon on New Year's, but while they show many of the same episodes year after year, they do mix things up a little bit, so it's not always the same thing for 24 straight hours.

#5 It's A Wonderful Life

Now to a lot of people this is a great movie and a classic and whatnot.  Me, I find this a perfect example of reverse catharsis.  Catharsis is the process where you watch something and the people in it have things so bad it makes you feel better about yourself.  Therefore reverse catharsis is when people in the movie have things so good it makes you feel worse about yourself.

The whole point of the movie is George Bailey finds out he has things good.  He has a loving wife, three adorable kids, a war hero brother, a town that adores him.  Except for a cash flow problem he's got it great!  Its the kind of thing that makes me look around and think, "What a minute..."  I don't have a loving wife, three adorable kids, a war hero brother, or a town that adores me.  Goddamnit, my life sucks!  It's enough to make me go find a freaking bridge to stand on.

Though I love the Beavis and Butt-head version where the angel tries to convince him he should jump.  That's more like regular catharsis.

#4 Lame Christmas Parties:

On TV and in movies Christmas parties are always these wild, drunken affairs where people bang their co-workers in supply closets and shit like that.  In reality my office Christmas parties always suck.  For one thing I don't have any hot co-workers I'd want to fuck in a supply closet, nor would any of them want to fuck me without some serious egg nog goggles.

My Christmas parties are always so fucking boring.  Sometimes we go out, though in recent years they've cheaped out and had lunch brought into the conference room.  They're always in the afternoon too, not at night or anything.  There's never any booze for anyone to get freaky.  So it's even more boring than family reunions.  Some of them I've had funeral receptions that are more entertaining!

The good thing is that we usually get to leave work early that day.  So we got that going for us.

#3 Christmas Day (After the Gifts):

When you're a kid Christmas is great.  You get toys in the morning and then you can spend most of the day playing with those new toys--in some cases breaking them.  Or you spend the day nursing disappointment because Mom told everyone to buy you He-Man toys when you wanted Transformers!  (Where's my Repressitol?)

Once you get to be a grown up (in age if not maturity) then you don't get new toys to play with unless you're my brother with his stupid Legos even though he's almost 37.  So once the gifts are opened in the morning there's not much to look forward to.  There's a dinner, but it's pretty much the same thing as Thanksgiving except ham instead of turkey.  Some years we went out to watch a movie because we were so bored, but then the movie selection started to get pretty dicey so we had to stop.

There's not even football to fall back on, just crappy NBA games.  Whoopee.  Unless there's some lame bowl game on.  I'll just have to open some of the movies I bought for myself.

#2  Christmas Creep:

"Christmas Creep" is a term ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook used a lot in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column.  It means how every year the holiday season starts earlier and earlier.  Most stores now have Christmas stuff up long before Halloween, if not before Labor Day.

You probably noticed the last year or two how "Black Friday" has actually started on Thursday now at stores like Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us, who've begun opening on Thanksgiving to try and lure more early shoppers to run up their credit cards.  Then of course there's the advent of "Cyber Monday" in recent years to milk more money out of people.  Though what's funny is someone on CNN or CNBC or Fox "News" was saying how consumer spending hasn't gone up all that much.  So really most of these retailers are fighting over the same crumbs.  Which is why in large part they keep trying to make us celebrate the season earlier and earlier.

Then there are the radio stations that start playing Christmas music midnight on November 1, if they even wait that long.  As much as I love holiday music, I don't want to hear "White Christmas" when it's still 50 degrees and everything is green.

I admit I do browse Amazon to see what's on sale.  That's as far as I'm going to go.  I'm not going to be one of those people killing someone over a waffle maker.

Which brings me to what I hate most about holidays:


#1 CROWDS!!!

I'm not agoraphobic, but I hate being in big crowds.  It's one of the primary reasons I don't want to go to Disney World or Disneyland or even the Disney Store.  I still have bad memories of going to the big high school rivalry game and being smooshed in the crowd at halftime.  And going to the Lions Thanksgiving Day game back in the late 90s and when we were leaving it was so tightly packed I almost got crushed by the freaking doors.  (And then a bunch of drunk Canadians threw full beer cans at our bus as we were trying to get out.)  Not to mention dozens of concerts and things like that.

In short, I hate being jammed up with a bunch of people.  Because like during my commute every weekday morning/evening, when you have a bunch of people together, inevitably a lot of those people will be morons.  You know the types who either get all pushy and psychotic because they want to be first or else the dumb cows who stand around in the middle of aisles talking on their phones and shit like that.

It's funny that the season that's supposed to be about joy and togetherness so often brings out the worst in people.  Like the Black Friday shoppers beating each other up over waffle makers or people cutting each other off and getting into violent arguments over parking spots.  Not to mention how people like my mom get all stressed and freaked out getting the house and dinner and all that ready.

Some dude's cover of the Flaming Lips's "A Change at Christmas"

Really, congratulations America for turning the "holiday" into a stressful debacle.  Bah Humbug!  Bah humbug indeed.

Well, I hope your lists are even more clever and creative than mine.  I bet they are.  I'll try to post links to the other entries throughout the day and then I'll post who wins the $25 Amazon gift card in a day or so.  You know, because I have to make sure everyone participated before I can draw a winner.  And whoever wins, I hope you have a working Email I can access so it's not the debacle of when I tried to give away a couple of copies of my book on Gather.