Jessi Klein's NotBlog

So I’ve been walking around doing a little Christmas shopping and the Christmas music thing in stores as usual never ceases to amaze.  It’s so incessantly…constant.  And redundant.  And persistant.  It just keeps going.  All day and night.  Because it’s almost Christmas time.  Remember?  REMEMBER??????

I’m not someone who automatically hates all Christmas music by any means.  But there are two that really make me anxious.  I think the most terrifying one is the Drummer Boy Carole.  Even Bowie’s performance with Crosby could not wring out the underlying note of dread in this fucking song.  Bum-ba-bum.  Me and my drum.  Even as I shop for cashmere tees at J Crew, this one makes me feel like I am marching straight into an open grave.

Then there’s the other one I don’t know the name of but it’s that very choral one that starts out by throwing around a crescendo of bells – very mad housewife, Jane Austen, horse drawn carriage running over the cobblestones in the middle of the night to bring a doctor to a sick patient covered in sweaty rags. Somwehere in the middle a chorus of mad housewives starts frantically saying, “Have a merry merry Christmas.  Merry merry merry Christmas.”  You know the one.  I don’t know the name of it, but I’m sure you can figure it out from this description because it is incredibly accurate.

The saving grace in all this is “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which in case you didn’t know was actually written by Mariah Carey, and kind of seals the deal for her in my book as a certifiable genius, although she went in there years ago when I saw her give a tour of her house on Cribs.  She had a Moroccan room, for when she felt like being Moroccan or something.  Beyond this, I really do have a soft spot for a lot of her songs.  But especially this one.  I think the best version is in the movie Love Actually (awesome) where a ten year old Olivia Olsen sings it at the school Christmas show.  I remember watching that scene (on youtube right here http://youtube.com/watch?v=VkihOkI_7eM)  and thinking, “fuck this is a great song.  When did this come along again?”  That’s how amazing I am.  Even during movies I am questioning, thinking in full sentences.  Because the great thing about this song is it feels like it’s been around forever.  But it hasn’t.  Mariah Carey fucking wrote it.  How crazy is that?  But of course it would take a brilliant mind like Mariah’s to excise all the material crap out of the holiday and make us remember what Christmas is truly about: fucking that special someone.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 11:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.