Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

Christmas is a time of family, traditions, family traditions, and the looming specter of insurmountable debt. And nothing shrieks "tradition" like Christmas music, which has not evolved one bit in hundreds of years, give or take. In my family, one of our annual Yuletide traditions was listening to the album Christmas Comedy Classics , or Triple C if you're of the Guy Fieri school of thought regarding abbreviations. A collection of humorous holiday favorites, this compilation got innumerable spins on our CD player, which was a new technology at the time. And to be honest, I was never sure whether or not I liked it. I found some of the songs hilarious, some of them annoying, and most of them either depending on my mood. As such, I decided it was time to take a look back at this album now that I'm a Big Mature Adult and determine once and for all whether Christmas Comedy Classics is overflowing with Christmas cheer or merely a lump of coal being pounded into your ea

     The nightmare starts the same, every time. I'm out for a stroll in the jungle, and no matter how exhausted I may get, I can never stop walking. Wild animals, insects and weird fish attack me for reasons beyond my comprehension, and I ward them off by throwing that most primitive of weapons: the rock. Eventually, I happen upon a stone axe within some underbrush, and just as I'm starting to feel good about my chances of survival in this savage wilderness, the lily pads appear on the horizon, and my heart fills with despair...      I was seven years old when this photo was taken on Christmas Eve:      For most of my life, my family has been on the lower end of the disposable income spectrum. However, there was a time, so long ago in my youth, when my grandparents were doing pretty well financially. This meant that Christmas would entail a veritable bonanza of gifts from them, which in my case meant several Nintendo games. As you can see, I'm pretty pleased with my

Let’s face it: Christmas is the 800 pound gorilla of holidays. All other celebrations and festivals bow before its merry might. Some time in mid-August, when the air is crisp and the aroma of gingerbread-scented tanning lotion fills the air, the Christmas decorations begin to pop up in the bowels of Michael’s and Big Lots, and by the time Halloween rolls around, said decorations have already surged forth to populate storefronts everywhere. Such is the power of Christmas, and every year reminders of it pop up just a bit earlier than the last. It thus stands to reason that this holiday juggernaut would have innumerable songs dedicated to it, glorious hymns to sign aloud while roasting a freshly slaughtered turkey, pheasant or goose. Today I would like to talk about a few Christmas songs that have caught my interest over the years due to the simple fact that their existence is, well, inexplicable. And I don’t mean songs like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” that we’re all so fam