12 Days of Xmas in ’12! Day Three!

I feel like when I was a kid, there were a lot more fictional characters coming out with record albums. Yeah, I know this is pressing news, but here me out…it has to do with today’s Christmas song of the day, I swear!  I know that The Brady Bunch did.

Yep! They did!

Oh, were you wondering if the Brady Kids did a version of Silent Night?  They did.  Shut your office door, slip on your slippers and listen to this:

I figure that the Sweathogs were prolly in a little garage band on Welcome Back Kotter that some network exec thought’d make a few bucks off the deprived kids of the late 70s. Give ’em a break, what did they have like 7 channels and some radio stations?

Well, they didn’t, but enjoy this:

Speaking of 70s tv, did you see this new Christmas release for this year?  Yes, I said this year.

Well, that looks totally natural!  Just a couple of chums who’ve never had any kid of surgical enhancements or gay thoughts, sitting around and drinking hot chocolate!  As natural as John’s hair, amiright?  What is that, shoe polish and Sharpie?

So that was the 70s.  But see, I can’t remember that shit so well, what with being only a baby and/or toddler is all.
What about the 80s, the heyday of my childhood. I remember Bruno, the fictional alter ego of Bruce Willis and his album, but it was COOL not christmasy. Remember how cool Bruce was for a hot minute in the mid to late 80? With his show that took “will they or won’t they” to new heights, and his Seagram’s Golden Wine Coolers, and his Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers! Well he was so cool that he had an album. Remember this one?

Yeah, you prolly don’t.

But, after due diligence in trying to find one, I do not find one Christmas album by the cast of a tv show in the 1980s.  There were Christmas specials galore though.  Wonderful, very special Christmas episodes.  I very vividly remember this one:

This is not to say that there weren’t musical episodes of our favorite shows.  I do remember when the gifted class on Head of the Class did Hair. Hey, I liked Head of the Class!  Man, I wanted to be in that class! Today, the songs woulda ended up on iTunes.

Today, we’re back in a period where casts and characters are releasing songs and albums again.  If you heard someone sing something, it’ll prolly end up on iTunes tomorrow.  We’ve got Glee, of course. And now Smash and Nashville.

Wow, I didn’t know there was one Glee Christmas album, let alone three! To each their own!

For today’s Xmas song of the day, the third so far, we have Zooey Deschanel, who is kind of a fictional character herself (I mean, do you ask your iPhone if it’s raining or do you look outside?) , or is at least enough like her fictional character Jess in New Girl, to count for our purposes.  Here she is in her side project She & Him with “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

Not so far from this, amiright?

Speaking of teevee, for today’s update: teevee!  You know I love watching my stories.

I’ve talked to you here about my love of Community, Mad Men, Cougar Town, and Breaking Bad. We’re still in a very good period for tv. Do you wanna know what I’ve liked this year? Well, your ass wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, so here goes.  Spoiler alert for all that follows!  Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!

Well, shit, there’s still Breaking Bad. I think more of everyone watches this now, so can I just Chris Farley show out on you?

Remember how Gus died in the season before?

Remember science?

Remember how all of a sudden Lance from Friday Night Lights was in the show?  I’m with Coach Taylor.  He looks like a Lance!

And then remember this poor little guy?

And all the money?

And this: Aww lawd, you’ve done it now, Hank!

Yeah, that was awesome.  Breaking Bad has had two amazing seasons back to back.  The final 8 episodes ever (tears!) start this Spring.  I’m so there.

Homeland!  Oh Homeland.  Double S and I have binged through the two seasons over the past few weeks, and we’re all caught up for this weeks’ season finale.  This show moves through plot like nobody’s business.  You start the show and you think the whole thing will be this interesting piece on surveillance and voyeurism, and it is, but so much more. Get thee to Showtime and check it out.

Dana Brody will like totally roll her eyes if you don’t watch.

And, of course, Carrie will cry if you don’t watch.

Check this out!  Claire Danes crying throughout the years!

Mad Men.  Still good.  Don is still with Megan, who serenades him all French like.

Don was unimpressed with the White Album.

Don: “Meh.”

And by the end, Don appears back to his old ways.

Suburgatory has gotten more surreal, and thus funnier. Dahlia is hilarious.

Happy Endings is still kinda killing it.  Max is my favorite gay on tv!

Parks and Rec has had another good season.  Ron dates Xena: Warrior Princess now!  You got applaud that casting.

The Walking Dead is having its best season yet.  The new characters have greatly enlivened things.  See what I did there?  A lot of characters on The Walking Dead are not alive.  Ha!

Nashville!  Tami Taylor is a country music star now, ya’ll!

Parenthood is having its best season yet as well.  You woulda thought the Kristina has cancer storyline would dragged it down, but it’s made it better.

Game of Thrones. That shit’s crazy.  And shh!  I’ve only watched season 1!

Louie was good, again.  The show deliberately plays with plot and characters, but there was a great character arc-y thing he did with Parker Posey this year.

New Girl.  Ahh, it all comes full circle. Yep, Zooey is on New Girl and this show has steadily gotten better from the first first few underwhelming episodes of last season.  Nick and Schmidt are the best parts!

She & Him…Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree

Forgotten Song Friday!

Ok, so I’ll admit it, I kinda just discovered Lady Gaga.  I know, I’m talking about being old again, but bear with me!

So, yeah, I had heard that people thought Lade Gaga was a hermaphrodite.  The hell!? Thanks for that tidbit,  my brother’s idiot ex girlfriend who told me that in the car on the way to a nice St. Louis Italian dinner!  And I had heard about the meat dress and the celebrity gay activist stuff.  And I loved Dean Pelton as Gaga on Community last Halloween.  And so will you!

Dean Pelton as Lady Gaga!

For more of the best character on the best comedy on tv right now, here’s the Dean’s many costumes and their associated holidays. I laughed so hard I almost peed when I first saw this.

Back to Gaga.  So I kinda heard all the hoopla, but I kinda didn’t care.  And this comes from someone who used to really feel like a finger on the pulse of pop culture was essential.  Is this what happens when you hit your mid 30s (if you’re not a gay man)?

But then Gaga hit my consciousness.  Mainly because I was watching the season finale of Saturday Night Live that I had DVR-ed, a little happy from a night of imbibing, and on came Lady Gaga to sing an unplugged (dated reference #36484!)  version of “The Edge of Glory.”  And yes, I had to google to find out what the song title was.  My mind went gaga.

Ok, so she can sing and she’s a modern day Madonna, complete with a super Eye-talian real name and a gaggle of gay men of color dancing all around her.   I get it.  Oh, and now I see that there’s  a controversy that “Born This Way” sounds kinda a lot like “Express Yourself.”  Uh…duh doy.   I realized that after 30 seconds of watching the SNL performance.   For the uninitiated, which is probably just me googling “Lady Gaga” at work like some grandmother, here are some of the similarities in case you don’t have ears and a memory of the glorious late 80s.

Yep, I read the Wikipedia Lady Gaga article this morning too.  Shame.

But what interested me more was how fucking old I felt when I really watched and thought about Lady Gaga for the first time.  Kids today (who need to get off my lawn!  See what I did there?  I made another joke about being old!) are just vibing on the scandalous Gaga the way that we did on the scandalous Madonna, and the cycle goes on.  And then all that being out of the loop and realizing the inherent cyclicality of life made me feel old.  I remember when Madonna was Gaga and I was a youth.  Sigh.

My grandma shat a brick when she saw this on the MTV.  I know cuz I was the one watching it, thinking that girls with black jelly bracelets and Ray Bans were sure pretty.  And I finally knew why I wasn’t gaga (see what i did there?) about Ricky Schroder.

I guess I had a bit of a moment of understanding of kids today.  Whatevs.  It’ll pass.

You see, another incident happened earlier that same day that led me to this revelation, methinks.  So I got a pretty sweet radio at a garage sale last summer.  A boom box, jam box, ghetto blaster…pick your poison.  I’ve taken to listening to oldies radio whilst I weed and build my potato towers.  But I got tired of jokes aimed at white baby boomers (serious example: White guy doing stereotypical Apu-ish Indian voice imitating the hilarity that would ensue should callers from India reach call service center workers in the the US.  HAHAHAHA!) playing between this:

and this (which I love!):

So I turned the dial (literally…a dial!) and was relieved to hear the opening bars of “Video Killed the Radio Star.”  Ya know, the “oh oh” part.  Oldies from my day!  But it fucking wasn’t The Buggles!  It was this!

Which, ok, was pretty catchy and it has Nicki Minaj (but it also has Will.I.Amtheworst) and it kinda made we wanna hit the clubs, but I felt old again!   So I turned back to the oldies station when it was over, and heard today’s forgotten song, “Kokomo.”

Ah, that’s the stuff!

Oldies now, but cool as shit then, amirightfolks?  John Stamos playing the steel drum!  And lookit that shirt!

I don’t think there’s a single person raised in the US of about my same age who doesn’t know the chorus to this badboy.  Double S and I bust it out on the regular.  So, all you old fogies, fire up your grills and listen to a little Uncle Jesse (and the Beach Boys, whatevs) this Memorial Day weekend.  Here’s hoping you can get a tropical contact high!