Yes, the last few years have been rough, the Covoid Era, its been a few years right? At least a couple, a year and a half...a decade? Who knows now anyways, and whatever, it doesn't matter, its been long enough that between the time the first case of covoid happened and today we have got married, had a few kids, got divorced and lost the house because of, as some would call it, "extreme arson" and "revenge plot" and "contract killers" and "just really shocking buffoonery".
Which sounds scary and awful, but, its not what you think.
We borrowed a very large sum of money from real shady loan sharks and didn't pay them back and they burned down our house in an attempt to kill us in a revenge plot. Oh, that is what you thought? La-De-Da smartypants. We do not appreciate that sort of attitude.
Never the less, between all that above and politics, shootings, the aforementioned revenge plot, the "supply chain" disruption, everything else crummy in this world, we do need to focus on something important.
Christmas Music.
Yeah, I Said It.
Christmas Music. We've had enough and its time for it to GO!
"All CHRISTMAS MUSIC?", you say outloud to the person next to you at the bar at an applebees (wtf are you doing there btw), "How dare you even say such things?"
I'm looking at you Martina Mcbride and Katherine McPhee and Christina Perri and the cast of Glee and Harry Connick Jr and you get the idea.
AND ITS GROSS!
Yep, thats some christmas music right there. This is the good stuff.
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| woo-woo-woo we have a Type 3 Grinch Alert! |
"All CHRISTMAS MUSIC?", you say outloud to the person next to you at the bar at an applebees (wtf are you doing there btw), "How dare you even say such things?"
Pretty easy really, just use your mouth to say them outloud or possibly your fingers on a keyboard to type them out. These are things we learned a long time ago, surprised you needed clarification as to the nature of human communications.
But, no, of course, not ALL christmas music.
We aren't heathens over here.
However, we have to have some sort of system in place to weed out the bad, some sort of classification system maybe to keep us from all becoming grinch like characters around the holiday season...In a way, modern christmas music is alot like modern country music.
There is no filter to keep the bad from popping up and spoiling it.
Any idiot can sing a song over a guitar, wear a cowboy or trucker hat, talk about a pick-up and call it country music and a wide swath of idiots in this country will eat it up. There are two big culprits here, Hootie and the guy from Staind. Think about it, and you know we are right.
Its the same for christmas music in a way.
I'm looking at you Martina Mcbride and Katherine McPhee and Christina Perri and the cast of Glee and Harry Connick Jr and you get the idea.
You present this in the sugar sweet box of christmas and family and love and celebrating the season and really your just an opportunistic capitalist vulture tearing shreds of money off the christmas carcass for your own self interest.
AND ITS GROSS!
On top of all this is the amount of time we are exposed to this, it started this year in our neck of the woods the day after thanksgiving...ITS NOT EVEN DECEMBER YET!
Just stop it!
So, lets figure this out quick and maybe we can devise a better way in which to deal with the god forsaken month of December.
1) The Classics.
These are the ones we all know, we all love, and are untouchable. They are canon.
Silent night, Jingle Bells, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, let it snow, Its Beginning to look a lot like christmas, its the most wonderful time of the year, Sleigh Ride, Santa Baby, etc
You know these and know what we are talking about, they aren't sung by Lance Bass or Jason Mraz, these are sung by people like, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Gene Autry, The Ronettes, Dean Martin, Eartha Kitt, etc.
For example:
2) The Modern Classics.
Here is the part where it gets a little more complicated, as we have christmas songs from the last, say 20 years or so, that have risen above the nonsense to become classics on their own right, but, maybe not quite pantheon like the others, but, that is debatable.
Modern classics, you know where this starts right? Mariah Carey and All I want For Christmas...that...shoot, that may as well be in the first category as no one can deny it.
Those are two pretty dang good christmas songs.
Now, there are two that may be controversial as being either modern classics or not, and thats Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney and Happy Xmas by John Lennon.
Lets debate their merits and reach a verdict.
Wonderful Christmastime
Pros - Its Paul McCartney who seems like a nice guy, makes some good tunes and was in the beatles for whatever that is worth.
Cons - This song is a crime against humanity and deserves to be brought up in front of a military tribunal and executed.
Verdict - Shot into the sun with extreme prejudice.
Happy Xmas
Pros - Its catchy as hell, has a soaring chorus with kids singing and also somehow ended a war, which seems nice.
Cons - in complete reverse from above, John Lennon seems like (seemed like, past tense if you believe the government lies) such an insufferable doofus, but, the man can write a hook.
Verdict - Safe for now, on probation.
3) Accepted Current Christmas Groups/bands/singers.
You know what we mean here, around middle november or so, these people come out of the mothballs and start lathering up to make their annual christmas season return to the public conscience. They sort of cover all the genres and styles, but, of course we are talking about: Trans-Siberian orchestra, manheim steamroller, michael bubbles and I guess like, Josh Groban or something.
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| /shreds for santa |
Right? So are we agreed on the music that is acceptable?
Lets do a quick recap, we have the classics, we have a few new ones thrown in and then we have a few groups/singers that are allowed to roam the landscape.
4) The Quality Filter.
Here is the hard part. There is so much lousy christmas music out there, so much crap like, "REO SPEEDWAGON'S SANTA SAC SURPRISE" christmas album that we have to come up with some sort of way to eliminate the bad, separate the wheat from the chaf so to speak.
Because, someone like, say...John Legend puts out a christmas album and you would tend to think, "oh, of course that's good because John Legend is good"
THAT'S HOW THEY GET YOU!
Don't allow that to be a guiding force in your Christmas music consumption, you are not a vessel of money that is allowed to be drained to help finance someone rich persons lifestyle! BE SKEPTICAL!
So, here is one idea as to how to do this.
1) Every christmas song ever that isn't included in the above classifications has to be loaded into a database somewhere, maybe we just use spotify as the organizational tool.
2) There will be a gigantic playlist with all the songs in it.
3) Every American is required to vote up and vote down on three songs a day for one week, in return you either get a $1,000 tax credit or one (1) Pontoon boat.
Boom! A democratic way to determine christmas music once and for all.
Only the top, say, 25% of the songs are allowed to be used the rest have to wait until next year to be re-voted on and if it doesn't make it above that 25% mark in 3 years its lost forever into the bowels of the internet and forever will bring shame on the artists home/family and heritage.
5) The Time Factor
Finally we come to the part that really affects us, and that is the constant exposure to said christmas music. And its everywhere, and its time that we figured a just way to adjudicate this properly.
In the comfort of your own home you can do whatever you want, mainline harry conick jr. via a airpod suppository for all we care, its your life champ, live it up do your best.
No, this is a two fold attack on the over reaching corporate retail take over of this sort of music, here are the two steps.
1) Every retailer that plays Christmas music must pay $1,000 a day into a federally mandated coffer. They are tracked, of course, by the meta tags, we think they are called, but, whatever system they use to play music in the store, pandora, spotify, sat. radio, whatever, if it plays you pay.
That money then at the end is used to compensate everyone in the country when they file taxes, if they are considered median wage income for a household or below, you receive whatever percentage of that money that applies as a tax return boost, meaning however much is paid in vs. the number of filers who are considered middle middle class and below.
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| maybe, not the best campaign slogan ole bern dog |
2) Christmas music on your television, in either commercial form or say a concert of something playing that your mom wanted to watch because Michael bubbles is dreamy or whatever.
The cable companies or whoever makes things work, will utilize the SAP button to change whats coming out of the tv, like, instead of it switching to spanish like in sporting events, you can program it to play say, Neil Young's greatest hits instead of the boston pops concert. However, there is one obvious problem with this, in that, if your mom turned it on and its her house, you can't change the music to Neil Young or whomever you like, because thats not what she wants to hear.
So, dig the airpod out of your bumbum and stick it back in your ear. Turn on the noise canceling function and it will then realize the SAP button is active and start playing Olivia Rodriguez sings Barry White for you.
How on earth would your airpods know that the SAP button has been pushed? Are you serious? They know everything that we do, our phones, our smart devices (i.e the alexas and such), shoot, we had a Alexa with the camera and screen in our bedroom.
You're welcome for the show Jeff Bezos, if you want tips or anything, hit us up, we will show you how to "fold the laundry" if you know what we mean*
*shove it in a drawer.....if you know what we mean*
*seriously we mean it, whatever, just stick it in, no folding necessary....if you know what we mean*
*NO and ouch
/deep breath...
We feel that both this metaphor is pained and stupid and the idea of a bum bum air pod playing neil young via the SAP button is maybe a logistical hurdle to tall. So, lets call an audible here and try this out.
2B) Your air pods or whatever ear phones you use, will automatically pick up that same meta-tag that we talked about before, and instead of doing the SAP thing, it will emit an acoustical wave noise that permeates your brain matter to increase the level of dopamine or seretonin or cocaine, or whatever it is thats in our bodies that make you feel good.
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Biggest thing though, is this.
Everyone knows that christmas is, for most people, really, a time to celebrate the season, be with family, all the good and happy things, but, its become (not recently, its been this way forever), a horribly crass commercialized awful exploitation of our own good natured beings.
It would be nice to start drawing a line somewhere, and if it starts with the music, great.
We are tired of mediocre to bad musical artists trying to squeeze a few extra bucks out of us with a lousy "christmas" album, and for that matter, going to the grocery store because we need food to survive shouldn't also be an adventure in christmas excess.
Celebrate at home, put up lights, put airpods wherever you want, be merry, wear your santa suit with no pants and eat ham all day, its all good.
But, for the greater good of us all, lets just cool it a bit with the music and if not, pay up.
Because, as we know, Christmas time is very much about money.
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| now its waterski related. /gets refill on xmas music suppository |
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