Carface Remembers He Has a Heart in An All Dogs Christmas Carol

I was browsing around Netflix yesterday when I discovered that there was an All Dogs Go to Heaven Christmas movie – and that, even better, it was available to watch online. While I raised an eyebrow over the existence of this second sequel to the animated Don Bluth film about a rough-and-tumble dog with a heart of gold, I loved the original, so I figured it would be worth a shot. As I expected, An All Dogs Christmas Carol is a cute enough, if wholly unnecessary, adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic.

After the second (rather abysmal) All Dogs Go to Heaven movie, there was evidently a television series starring these characters, and I get the sense that this movie is in line with that series. It doesn’t seem to pick right up from where the movie left off; I tried not to remember too much about that shoddy sequel, but there seemed to be some continuity issues that maybe could have been ironed out through the TV series. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt there. Still, this movie, at a scant hour and fifteen minutes in length, basically screams “quick moneymaker” to me. It’s nothing but a retelling of A Christmas Carol, and considering the fact that the original movie was a fairly powerful story of redemption itself, giving us another redemption story here that is such an obvious rip-off doesn’t feel nearly as compelling. I mean, you could take any number of shows or movies and make the resident grouchiest / meanest character into Scrooge and use side characters as the ghosts who help him or her recover the Christmas spirit. It’s been done over and over again. One of my all-time favorite television episodes, M*A*S*H’s Dear Sis, has an element of A Christmas Carol about it. But it isn’t just a straightforward rehash, which this is.

The villainous canine gangster Carface (Ernest Borgnine) is up to his old tricks. This time, he’s got a magical gizmo that hypnotizes any dog within hearing range, allowing him to make out like a bandit when they march up to him in a daze and give him all their stuff. He and his faithful assistant, Killer (Charles Nelson Reilly), have had it with these little gigs, though. They want to pull off something truly impressive, so Carface makes a deal with the devil, or at least a truly demonic canine named Belladonna (Bebe Neuwirth). If he holds up his end of the bargain, Christmas will be ruined forever. But Charlie (Steven Weber, the third actor to voice the character), his ladylove Sasha (Sheena Easton) and his best friend Itchy (Dom DeLuise) have a plan to stop Carface. With some help from another magical gizmo, this one provided by goody-two-shoes angel Annabelle (Neuwirth), they will take a page out of Dickens’ book and try to show Carface the error of his ways.

Charlie literally hits upon the idea of essentially reenacting A Christmas Carol, so the plot is derivative even within the world of the movie. And for as vile as Carface is – much worse, really, than Scrooge, who was cranky and cold but didn’t go around trying to kill people – it sure doesn’t take long for his heart to start melting. It happens a little too quickly. Then again, I got whiplash from him going back and forth between feeling really emotional over what he was seeing and closing himself off and flying into a violent rage.

I did rather like the first two segments, though. The Christmas Past part features the only decent song in the movie, in which he sadly remembers the little boy he loved who always made excuses for his bad behavior until, one fateful Christmas, he didn’t. Which, he realizes, is why he hates Christmas so much, not to mention why he would rather use others than get attached to them. In the Christmas Present section, I love the fact that Sasha guides Carface while dressed as Santa Lucia – especially since I happened to watch it on Santa Lucia Day. The Christmas Future part, usually so terrifying and desolate, is the weakest of the three, with an annoying centerpiece of Charlie singing a gospel-tinged song about how Carface has to mend his ways.

As with A Christmas Carol - as well as All Dogs Go to Heaven - it’s a youngster in trouble who is really the deciding factor in bringing about the change in heart. In this case, it’s a puppy with a bum leg who reminds Carface of his younger self. That element is sweet enough, though one wonders why Anne Marie, the little girl he abused in the first movie, didn’t have the same sort of effect on him. Additionally, it’s not enough for Carface to awake on Christmas morning wanting to be a better dog. No, he has to decide whether or not to participate in the nefarious plan that seemed so appealing to him hours before, and this aspect of the movie is pretty goofy, since he keeps changing his mind as to whether or not to throw the all-important switch that will hypnotize every dog in San Francisco.

A Christmas Carol is a powerful story, so even though this is nowhere near the best version I have seen, it’s still reasonably touching from time to time. And it’s certainly not the worst version out there. But this is one edition of A Christmas Carol I don’t expect to turn into a Christmas tradition.

Bob and Larry Tell a Fascinating Tale of Saint Nicholas

I love the VeggieTales computer-animated video series, and usually when the latest video comes out, I’m right on top of getting it. But somehow, last year’s Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving fell by the wayside last year, and it’s only now that I’ve finally seen the third VeggieTales Christmas release. I am now free to declare It incredibly entertaining, not to mention educational.

Like The Toy That Saved Christmas, the first Veggie Christmas video, Saint Nicholas lacks a countertop scene and takes place in a small town where all of our characters are simply themselves. It’s Christmas Eve, and this special opens much the same way as that one did – with hyperactive children eagerly anticipating the stuff they will get when the big day arrives. Chief among them is Junior Asparagus, who is extra excited because his grandparents have given him money to buy himself something. Oh, the decisions! Meanwhile, Laura Carrot is down because her dad, a deliveryman, has a busted truck, which means he can’t finish his route before Christmas and can’t get a Christmas tree either. The Christmas Eve service at the nearby church is about to begin, but before it does, Bob the Tomato decides that now would be a good time to tell Junior, Laura and all the other children with Christmas on the brain just what Santa Claus has to do with Jesus.

Bob and Larry the Cucumber are more involved narrators here than in most Veggie videos. We see them inside the story, even occasionally interacting with the characters, and what’s more, Larry has an endearingly annoying habit of constantly interrupting Bob in order to “move the story along” – even though he has no idea where the story is going – and make the setting more Christmassy. Bob is telling the story of Saint Nicholas, and if he had the narration to himself, Greece – to which we get a great introduction in my favorite of the video’s songs – would be appropriately balmy, but Larry can’t resist adding a little snow, and that’s just one of his amusing embellishments. While there are many elements to this story that stray far afield from Nicholas’s established history, the basics are there, and if Junior and his friends are any indication, that’s still a lot more than most kids would be familiar with.

A new character, a burly fellow with a thick accent who looks to be some type of squash, appears in both the modern portion of the story and the ancient one as an antagonistic figure. Nicholas is an entirely new character too, as is his father. The only major characters, aside from the narrating Bob and Larry, to be incorporated into the story are Petunia as a nun who teaches Nicholas about the joy of giving and Mr. Lunt – also the star of the Silly Song (or, rather, Helpful Humanitarian Song) – as Octavius, a close friend of Nicholas’s family who later helps Nicholas in his efforts to secretly distribute money to a needy family. Inventing a local bully intent on preventing such acts of generosity ups the action factor and the need for secrecy and allows for more intense and humorous moments. For instance, Nicholas feels the need to disguise himself, so he and Octavius go out in a series of amusing costumes. Later, as Nick is making an escape after his last big act of kindness, his sheep-drawn vehicle stretches across the sky so that they are silhouetted against the moon and look just like Santa and his reindeer.

Larry is the voice of all of Christmas’s contemporary trappings throughout the video. While the kids pipe up with their ideas of what Christmas is all about, Larry keeps trying to find ways of tying Nicholas more directly to Santa and of trying to make the setting of his story feel more festive. That’s how we end up with Christmas lights adorning several ancient Grecian residences, and it may also account for the parade of classic Christmas songs that turn up here with new lyrics. Some of Larry’s speculations are just plain hilarious, and I love the cozy reindeer sweater that he sports for a large portion of the video. I also love the way Bob sneaks in one of my favorite lines from The Toy That Saved Christmas.

This is a video that acknowledges that even devout Christian kids tend to get really worked up about Santa Claus. Saint Nicholas isn’t about trying to excise Santa from Christmas altogether, but it does make two major points: that Christmas is, first and foremost, about Christ, and that Saint Nicholas was a model of the sort of generosity that Christians should feel called to exhibit, and not just at Christmas. As the video’s loveliest song says, we should give not in an effort to feel good about ourselves but because we feel happy already and want to share our blessings with others. One thing I noticed is that Jesus comes up in this video far more than any other. I’m pretty sure that even includes An Easter Carol. Most of the Veggie videos talk about God a fair bit, but few of them mention Jesus. Hence, although in some ways this is one of the silliest Veggie videos I’ve seen, it’s also one of the most spiritually grounded.

Saint Nicholas is a great video that embraces both the serious and fun side of Christmas. It introduces some terrific new characters and incorporates several underused characters from videos past, including little Annie, a soft-spoken, bespectacled leek who, of all the VeggieTales characters, reminds me most of myself. I’m sure that this is one that I’ll be pulling out again in Christmasses to come. I’m only sorry it took me this long to watch it!

Rob Thomas Encourages Compassion in A New York Christmas

I really love the radio this time of year. Usually, I don’t listen to it much, except at work, where I don’t have much of a choice. In December, instead of merely tolerating the music – aside from those rare gems that make me burst out in an exuberant smile and, given a sufficiently empty hallway, sing along – I feed off of it. I’m completely energized by hearing all those marvelously familiar songs on a subject so near and dear to my heart. Another plus: every once in a while, something comes along that I’ve never heard before. And once in a great while, it’s a song that grabs me and refuses to release me, sending me scrambling for YouTube videos to keep my fixation in check. This year, the main song in question is Rob Thomas’s A New York Christmas. It took me a couple of times through it for me to realize just how m much I loved it, but there’s no mistaking it now, and whenever it comes on the mall radio, I can’t help but smile.

This is a Christmas song that is totally contemporary but with a timeless message. It is specifically rooted in New York City, which is very much associated with Christmas. You have all the morning shows that broadcast from New York, showing the city in all its decorated glory; Christmas traditions like the Rockettes and the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting; movies like Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone 2 and Elf. New York is gorgeous indeed this time of year, but there are many who are cold, hungry and otherwise in great need during this season of celebration, and this song asks us to think of them. The tone is not accusatory, but it is a rallying cry as well as a prayer. God help us, and let us help those around us.

I discovered that Thomas wrote this song in the aftermath of 9/11, when the suffering in New York City was especially acute, and that the song is tied in with his Sidewalk Angels Foundation, which supports a number of charitable causes. Its mission is stated as follows: “The world can move so fast that those in need are often passed by. From animals that have been abandoned and abused to those who are destitute, homeless, or cannot afford proper medical care - these are universal problems that Sidewalk Angels Foundation, through its efforts, encourages people to address locally.” On 9/11, we saw the worst of humanity, but we saw the best of it as so many people banded together to help each other. For all too brief a time, the sense of community was palpable. This song makes that come rushing back and serves as a reminder that it shouldn’t take a horrific tragedy to get us to pay attention to each other.

A New York Christmas has a rock edge to it, but it also has a powerful driving melody that’s hard to get out of your head. There’s a swift undercurrent of percussion that sets an energetic tone for the verses. The electric guitar puts me in mind of traditional folkie grassroots movements, while the hints of the organ tie in nicely with the generally reverent feeling of the song. The whole thing feels bustling and energetic like the New York itself; it’s easy to imagine you’re hearing the heartbeat of the city. While Thomas’ voice is wonderfully melodic, it also has a rough edge to it that encourages everyone to sit up and take notice.

I don’t think I heard this song before this year, when it joined the regular Christmas music rotation in the mall. I don’t recall ever having heard it on the regular radio or on television, though that seems surprising to me. Thomas is a fairly big-name guy, having been in the band Matchbox 20, and this is an outstanding song that strikes me as a modern classic. When I first heard it this year, what initially caught my attention was the word “compassion”. That’s one of my favorite words, and it’s not one you hear in too many songs, though you should. The first song that comes to mind for me in association with that word, especially this time of year, is God Bless Us Every One, from the 2004 musical version of A Christmas Carol: “Let the stars in the sky remind us of man’s compassion. Let us love till we die and God bless us everyone.”

In this song, it’s, “Bring your compassion, your understanding (or, in the later verse, forgiveness). Lord, how we need it on this New York City Christmas.” The song is loaded with religious imagery, particularly angels. I especially love the line, “Hear the sidewalk angels echo hallelujah.” In this context, “angels” makes me think of Hebrews 13:2, which reads, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” This song is all about caring for those who could use a little extra help, whether that’s in the form of warm clothing, food or just a kind word. It’s a refreshingly unmaterialistic message. “So call on your angels, your beaten and broken. It’s time that we mend them so they don’t fade with the season. Let our mercy be the gifts we lay from Brooklyn to Broadway…”

I just discovered this song a couple of weeks ago, but it has quickly become one of my favorite Christmas songs. It’s a stirring anthem that reminds me how good I have it and how many people don’t have it so easy. You don’t have to go to New York City to find people in need. This is a song for New York, but it’s also a song for America and beyond. Now, to act on it…

Jane Austen Helps Bring the Mother-Daughter Book Club Series to a Fantastic Finish

In the past few years, I find that I have turned into something of a Jane Austen enthusiast. I suppose I won’t be able to call myself a full-blown Janeite until I’ve read the rest of her novels, but I’m a third of the way there, anyway. My first immersion began during college, when Sense and Sensibility, despite getting off to a slow start for me, wound up being just what I needed to snap me out of my post-9/11 paralysis. This book, so beloved by the lit professor who sparked such energetic discussions, helped my focus to return to all that is good in the world: things like sisterhood, friendship, long letters, lush landscapes and, of course, true love. Several years later, my bestest book buddy Beth prevailed upon me to read Pride and Prejudice, so I did, and I loved it as much as she assured me I would. I have a hard time deciding which of the novels I prefer; S&S is quieter, while P&P is amusingly chaotic. But the latter is definitely the right choice for inclusion in the Mother-Daughter Book Club series.

This charming intermediate series that I discovered a couple months ago encompasses four novels. Each book is broken up into four seasons, with each of four girls narrating one chapter every season. As far as I know, there will be no others; Heather Vogel Frederick certainly wraps things up in a way that feels like a conclusion to the series, and it syncs up nicely with the fact that there are four narrators. Of course, if she were to publish another installment, I would snatch it right up. Pies and Prejudice finds the girls in their first year of high school, and all of them must adjust to big changes in their lives as threads that got their start as far back as the first book finally find resolution.

The main players, as before, are Emma Hawthorne, Jess Delaney, Cassidy Sloane and Megan Wong, along with nicer-than-before-but-still-snotty Becca Chadwick. Together with their quirky moms and a couple of elderly honorary members, they continue to find pleasure in reading classic literature and discussing it over snacks (prepared, hopefully, by Cassidy’s cooking show host mom and not Megan’s health nut mom). Pride and Prejudice is a novel that had been mentioned previously as a book that the girls weren’t quite ready to tackle, but this year, it’s too perfect to pass up. That’s because Emma, the bookworm of the bunch and the one who reminds me most of myself, is about to have all her Anglophile dreams come true with a year-long move to Bath, England (incidentally, one of my favorite stops when I was in England myself). While she and her librarian mother, who have already read Austen backward and forward anyway, drink in all of the Austen culture they can, the other four girls become acquainted with her classic characters, and as in previous books, certain aspects of her novel seem to resonate particularly well with their lives.

Emma’s living the dream in England, but her life is complicated by yet another in the series’ string of Mean Girls. Annabelle doesn’t actually show up in the book that much, but she wreaks major havoc when she does. Meanwhile, although Skype makes connecting with her friends easier and even allows her and her mom to participate in book club meetings, Emma misses her boyfriend Stewart, a sensitive fellow bookworm who seems to understand her better than anyone she knows – and with whom she shared her very first kiss before leaving for Bath. Annoyingly, England also provides Emma with her own version of stiff, awkward Mr. Collins, and though she generally puts up with him, his unwelcome advances cause some problems for her.

Jess is having a much better time of it this year than last. Now in her second year at a nearby exclusive girls’ boarding school, she’s rooming with kindred spirits and no longer feels antagonized by her former roommate. She discovers an interest in wild animal rehabilitation, and she spearheads an effort to raise money to bring Emma home for spring break after it becomes apparent how unpleasant Annabelle is making her life. She’s really coming into her own, though she still has to deal with some insecurity when it comes to figuring out what she wants to do with her life and trying to work out whether there’s any chance that her long-time and now long-distance crush, Emma’s gregarious brother Darcy, might see her as something more than his kid sister’s best friend.

Megan feels like a fish out of water in high school, especially with Becca’s clique dissolved and neither Emma nor Jess around to latch onto. Even though she’s managed to make a name for herself as a young fashion designer, she feels totally out of place in this new environment, which leads her to take on a new role: that of fashion blogger. Make that anonymous fashion blogger. Taking her cues from Austen’s penchant for searing social commentary, she snaps photos of “fashion faux pas” that she sees around school and posts them with snarky captions for the world to see. This is the storyline that made me squirm the most, since it was obvious that she would eventually be found out and have to face some unpleasant consequences as a result.

Megan is one of two book club members to get pretty chummy with one of the English lads whose parents swap houses with Emma’s, and it’s fairly apparent that Simon, the younger of the two, is supposed to remind readers of affable Mr. Bingley. Megan, however, behaves in a manner not representative of empathetic Jane Bennet at all, and after three books’ worth of moral development on her part, it’s disappointing to see her lapsing into this person who sits around making snide comments about everybody’s fashion choices. Nonetheless, she is otherwise likable here, and her close relationship with her grandmother continues to flourish, especially once the latter volunteers to supervise the girls’ efforts to raise the money for Emma’s ticket by baking and selling pies – hence, the title of the book.

We get our biggest nod to Pride and Prejudice with Cassidy, the tomboyish hockey player who, unlike her fellow book club members, has never had a crush on anyone and thinks the whole romance thing is nothing but a nuisance. She’s generally popular with her male peers, who pretty much see her as one of the guys, but any hint of mushy stuff and she wants to gag. Her gag reflex is strongest in reaction to Simon’s older brother Tristan, an arrogant ice skater with whom she is horrified to find herself in frequent close contact, as he needs a partner to practice with for a competition at the school year’s end. She agrees to this only because their teacher, former Olympian and current book club member Eva Bergson, has so enthusiastically agreed to help Cassidy set up a hockey club for young girls and praised Cassidy’s coaching skills. She can’t bear to say no to someone who has been so encouraging to her, but Tristan has been nothing but a thorn in her side since he arrived. Elizabeth-Darcy echoes abound here, and it’s fun to imagine just how Frederick will manage to pull off the inevitable wearing down of Cassidy’s negative first impression. Along with this, we see her gradually becoming used to her sister being away at college and to being a big sister herself, and it’s sweet to see her relationship with her lovable stepfather Stanley, which got off to such a rocky start, truly flourish here.

A lot happens in this fourth novel that, more than the others, is fairly dependent upon having read other books in order to get a full appreciation of the story and the directions in which it takes certain characters. Although the books are somewhat formulaic and fairly predictable to those who have read the novels at the heart of each volume, Frederick tossed in some twists here that truly surprised me, and my emotional investment at this point in the series was such that one of them actually made me cry, a true rarity for the girl with the frustratingly robotic tear ducts. As someone who no doubt would have been considered a spinster in Austen’s day, I have to chuckle a bit at how neatly Frederick pairs up all of these teens, most of whom are not yet sixteen. To be fair, though, Emma herself, who narrates the last chapter, notes that none of them can tell what the future can bring, and three of the five couples, while appealing, seem as likely as not to be involved in heady first romances that are merely remembered fondly years later. Two couples do seem destined for the altar a few years down the line, but there’s so much build-up with them that I would have felt cheated if Vogel hadn’t left us with some degree of assurance there. The way in which she manages it is understated but exhilarating nonetheless.

I would encourage any Austen fan, young or old, to read this book, but I would also caution patience. Don’t just pick up the one with all the Austen echoes. Start off with the first book and work your way to the grand finale. It’ll take a little bit of a time investment, but it’s well worth it to follow these girls from the beginning. If you’re already the sort of reader who finds Austen appealing, chances are that you will fall in love with this series as whole-heartedly as I did.

It's Grand Getting LOST in Back to the Future

I’m a geeky 80s child, so it should come as no surprise that I love the Robert Zemeckis era-hopping romp Back to the Future. What may be surprising is the fact that I saw the second movie about a mad scientist, his time-traveling DeLorean and the hapless teenager caught up in the craziness before I saw the first. When I did see the original movie for the first time, it was fun to pick out all of the references that filled the second movie. They were that much funnier now. My experience of watching Back to the Future this time around was similar, but instead of looking at it through the lens of the second movie, it was through the lens of LOST. I hadn’t watched the movie in years, so this was my first time watching specifically looking for places where Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and other writers of my favorite show took their cues for their own epic. It may be kind of a goofy way to watch a movie, but it’s certainly fun.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is an ordinary teenager in 1985. He lives with his parents, wimpy George (Crispin Glover) and world-weary Lorraine (Lea Thompson), along with two quarrelsome siblings, and he has a girlfriend who plays a more significant role in the second movie. Like Daniel, the title character in The Karate Kid, another 80s staple, Marty spends a lot of time hanging around with a late-middle-aged man who has a lot to teach him. Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) is a genius. Of course, he’s also borderline insane, which Lloyd brings across in a way few other actors could. Marty is a trusting soul to put his life in the good doctor’s hands, trusting that his experiments aren’t going to get him killed. Then again, sometimes he has no choice.

After the combination of a freshly fine-tuned time machine and the threat of a band of Libyan gangsters who furnished Doc Brown’s plutonium leads Marty to take a little jaunt to the 1950s, he finds himself in a strange yet familiar world. It’s his own hometown, but the clock’s been dialed back, and it’s now 1955. In no time at all, he manages to make one of the classic blunders; just after Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia and Never Go In Against a Sicilian When Death Is on the Line, I believe you would find Never Go Back in Time and Let Your Own Mother Fall In Love With You. Yup, that’s a pretty big problem, and not just because of what something like that is bound to do to poor Marty’s psychological health. Because if the teenaged Lorraine is head over heels for suave Marty, how is she ever going to hook up with pathetic George, who spends all of his days cowering in fear of lunk-headed Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson)? If that doesn’t happen, Marty will cease to exist. Oh, and the paradox will tear a hole in the very fabric of space and time, and the universe will collapse upon itself. So, no pressure, kid.

After his accidental run-in with his mother, what Marty really needs is to touch base with Doc Brown, the one person who can help him get his bearings. He does, and after he manages to convince him that his time travel babble is the truth, he leaves the Doc to tinker with his machinery so that when the famous bolt of lightning strikes the town’s historic clock tower in a few days, Marty in the DeLorean will be able to harness that energy to get him home. It sounds complicated, and it is, but Marty still has the tougher task: making a man out of his lily-livered dad, who’d much rather curl up inside with a good sci-fi novel than defy brutish Biff or ask Lorraine out. The scene in which Marty convinces him to show a little gumption demonstrates Marty’s cleverness and always reminded me a lot of the scene in Dumbo in which Timothy the mouse uses the power of subconscious suggestion to get his flying friend his big shot in the circus. But getting George on board is only half the battle…

Looking at the movie as a LOST fan, the most obvious nod in the show was when Hurley came right out and mentioned Marty’s disappearing hand in the scene in which he plays the guitar at the dance where his parents are destined to fall in love with each other. This moment became the cornerstone of one of the funniest exchanges in the show’s most mind-bending season, one that attempted to establish the parameters of how this time-hopping stuff worked and that openly acknowledged that suspension of disbelief was a must. But there are other references too. For instance, everything in the film builds up to the moment when the lightning strikes that clock tower, and on the show, Desmond’s first premonition involving Charlie’s death involves him getting struck by lightning. In the movie, Marty writes a note to Doc in hopes that he will read it and prevent a future tragedy; in the series, Daniel writes a note to himself so that when his hour is darkest, he will remember who it is that he can call upon for help.

That who would be Desmond, and it’s the relationship between Desmond and Daniel, so beautifully established in season four’s The Constant, that I found myself thinking of most as I watched this movie. Desmond, like Marty, is out of chronological synch with the rest of the world, and he’s totally disoriented. He badly needs a mentor. He finds one in the form of Daniel Faraday, who he met in the future. While he and Daniel were barely acquaintances in the future, as opposed to Marty and Doc, who were already firm friends, there’s enough of a connection there to build on. Both Desmond and Marty seek out younger versions of their mentors and get very skeptical receptions from these eccentric scientists. Both gain their trust after furnishing numbers that are key to the proper functioning of an audacious experiment. Both Desmond and Marty end up on a mission that involves bringing together two people whose love is deep but endangered – in Desmond’s case, it’s himself and Penny, while in Marty’s, it’s his parents. And in both cases, I find the friendship between the unwitting time traveler and the one person best equipped to help him navigate his strange situation to be extremely touching.

Another point of similarity is the fun Spot the Differences exercise when it comes to the beginning and end of the movie. At the beginning of season six, everyone noticed that in the controversial Sideways world in which 815 doesn’t crash, there are changes in these long-established characters, as well as their circumstances on the flight. That game of figuring out what was different about each person continued throughout the season, but it’s the two Flight 815s that really seem an homage to Back to the Future. Cursed Hurley considers himself lucky. Nervous flier Rose is the one reassuring Jack. Self-serving Sawyer’s looking out for his fellow man. What’s going on? In Back to the Future, we get to see Marty’s family before his journey and afterward, in which each member ends up changed as a result of Marty’s actions 30 years earlier. The main impact: Dad, played with such marvelous fidgety awkwardness by Glover, now has some self-confidence, and Lorraine is taking better care of herself. He changed just a tiny bit, but not enough to negate his own existence.

Back to the Future is one of those essential 80s movies, but you don’t need to have grown up in that era to appreciate its humor and fun, and you certainly don’t need to have watched LOST to understand why Marty and Doc make such a terrific team. Then again, it sure doesn’t hurt!

Waking Sleeping Beauty Takes Fans Behind the Scenes of the Disney Renaissance

I grew up during a very exciting time for Disney fans. In second grade, The Little Mermaid hit theaters, and for the next few years, it was just a steady stream of masterpieces. I’ve heard a bit of Disney history here and there but never delved in too deeply behind the scenes, so it was fascinating for me to watch Waking Sleeping Beauty, the documentary that deals with Disney’s Renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. Directed and narrated by Disney insider Don Hahn, it details some of the circumstances and personalities that came together to create the atmosphere in which Disney’s flagging animation department would suddenly find itself on top of the world again.

The movie focuses a lot of its attention upon Disney power players Roy Disney, Mike Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, each of whom had an important impact upon the Disney legacy, though their contributions were not always appreciated at the time. For me growing up, Eisner was always the face that I associated most with Disney, aside from Walt himself, who was long gone. The movie even includes a clip of him introducing a featurette about the making of Beauty and the Beast which I remember vividly enough from nearly 20 years ago that I knew exactly what he was going to say next. Of course, Katzenberg and Roy Disney were familiar names too, and it was interesting to see how they interacted with each other and with the crew of animators working with them. Sometimes, it was a bit disheartening as well.

The documentary is filled with archive footage of interviews with people involved in the making of various Disney movies, sketches and storyboards, voice recording sessions, news clips, behind-the-scenes glimpses of the studio, rejected film footage and all kinds of other goodies. One thing we see a lot of is caricatures of the various bosses, usually quite unflattering. There’s a lot of eyes bugging out and mouths spewing fire and that type of thing. Disney may be the most magical place on Earth, but its animation department comes across as a very stressful work environment, with constant pressure from the higher-ups as well as the animators pushing themselves to give 110 percent every day. They often seem frustrated, but at the same time, we get a definite sense of their passion for the work.

Throughout the film, dozens of personalities come into play. We get to know Frank Wells, who came in with Eisner and was credited with being the peacemaker among the bigwigs, keeping all those egos from erupting and poisoning the task at hand. There’s Katzenberg, who was put in charge of Disney’s motion picture division around the time Eisner became CEO, and Don Bluth, who devastated the animation department by walking off with half the artists in 1979. I feel a twinge of guilt for loving Bluth’s movies, especially An American Tail, The Land Before Time and Anastasia, so much, but maybe if he hadn’t taken off when he did, it wouldn’t have paved the way for one of the most exciting eras in Disney’s history.

It’s funny to catch glimpses of not-yet-famous people like Tim Burton, who on a trip through the studio sits morosely at his animation desk, too absorbed in his work to muster a smile for the camera. It’s also neat to see how the media reacted to various developments, and interviews with journalists like Diane Sawyer and a coy Jeopardy reference to a contentious Disney decision are fascinating. For me, though, the most riveting portion of the movie involved lyricist Howard Ashman. I hadn’t realized just how integral he was to the development of the movies he worked on. His enthusiasm was infectious, particularly in the scene in which he describes his vision for the song Under the Sea, and it’s apparent just how deep his love for these stories and characters really was. Watching him pour out his soul into these songs, it occurred to me that when it comes to dream jobs, Disney lyricist would have to be right near the top of my list. Getting into these fantastic characters’ heads with warmth and witty wordplay and crafting moments that would become among the most memorable in the Disney canon? Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me.

Of course, Ashman’s story is also deeply tragic, as he was ravaged by AIDS just a few short years after joining the Disney family, and he never got to see the complete version of his greatest triumph, the Best Picture-nominated Beauty and the Beast. The documentary poignantly discusses the disconnect between the adrenaline rush of receiving a standing ovation in response to the film, which at that point included several stretches with only rough animation, and the cold horror of visiting Ashman in his hospital room afterward and finding him shriveled away to a mere 80 pounds. Beauty and the Beast was a project that Walt Disney himself had wanted to tackle, and it had just never worked out. Even this time around, the first attempt to pin the movie down was a flop, as we see in the strange footage of a scrapped draft that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the finished film. Somehow, though, everyone rallied to create a perfect piece of cinema with gorgeous animation, a heroine Disney is unlikely ever to top and songs that reveal character in an especially brilliant way. The eloquent dedication to Ashman at the conclusion of Beauty and the Beast is a testament to his total immersion in the movie and the respect and affection he garnered from all those who worked on it with him, and the documentary uses the classic’s most heartbreaking scenes to express the communal sorrow at losing this incredible talent.

I knew the basics of how Ashman’s life ended coming into the movie, so while I found the time spent on him especially moving, I knew what was coming. But I never really knew anything about Wells, and I honestly don’t remember a thing about the helicopter crash that cut his life sadly short, effectively ending that golden era of Disney. That’s not to say that Disney – particularly in collaborations with Pixar – hasn’t produced anything worthwhile since then, but after The Lion King, a certain something just wasn’t quite there anymore. It’s sad to learn of all the disharmony at play in this company designed to turn dreams into reality. I am glad that Hahn decided to reveal this chapter of Disney history and introduce us to people like Wells and animator Joe Ranft, who, like Ashman, died very young. The documentary is dedicated to those three, along with Roy Disney, who died after the film was completed but was added to the dedication. So much of what happens at Disney is totally out of the public eye, and it’s nice to get to know some of these people who were so integral to the company’s success.

The movie runs about an hour and a half in length, and if you watch all the special features, that’s gotta be close to another hour and a half. I was especially interested in the featurette about the making of the documentary and the tours of the animation department in three different years, with lots of peeks at a zany, highly creative crew that seemed to have a lot of bitterness bubbling under the surface.

The best bit, though, was the series of deleted scenes, most of which primarily involved Ashman. It was moving to hear the others talk about the pain of losing him and of cutting his intensely personal Proud of Your Boy from Aladdin and neat to watch him coach Jodi Benson on how to properly convey the emotion of Part of Your World (which, astonishingly, was nearly cut from The Little Mermaid after the sequence failed to connect with children for whom it was screened). But this aspiring lyricist (who signed up every year in high school for a History of Musical Theater class that was always cancelled due to lack of interest) was most fascinated by the 12-minute-long clip of his lecture on the role of music in movies and the correlation between Broadway and animated musicals. Totally absorbing.

Different people will no doubt be drawn to different aspects of this documentary. For me, it was Ashman who most captured my imagination, but I loved getting to see all of those little tidbits from within the Disney vaults and hearing these insiders reminisce about such an exhilarating time. If you find Disney as irresistible as I do, you might want to have a look at Waking Sleeping Beauty yourself.

Return to Pooh Corner With Kenny Loggins

Years ago, I recall my dad presenting me with a CD containing the song House at Pooh Corner. I’d never heard the song before, and I loved the hard-rockin’ tune with the gentle lyrics as performed by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. After all, I am a big fan of the Silly Old Bear. It was quite some time before it occurred to me that if I liked the song so much, I should have a look at the singer-songwriter who penned it one melancholy day as he was teetering on the edge of adulthood. That’s what brought me to Kenny Loggins’ Return to Pooh Corner. Like Art Garfunkel’s Songs From a Parent to a Child, it’s a wonderful collection of lullabies for children to absorb along with their parents.

All the Pretty Little Horses - I have to chuckle a little bit because the song that opens Garfunkel’s album is Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? I guess “pretty little” things are pretty popular with little folks! This Celtic-flavored track includes some poignant-sounding harmonies on the chorus and a smattering of intriguing instrumentation. A sweet song encouraging a reluctant child to sleep. “Can you see the little ponies shinin’ before your eyes? All the pretty little ponies gonna be there when you arrive.”

Neverland Medley: Somewhere Out There / Never Never Land / Pure Imagination - This medley includes songs from three different whimsical musicals: Don Bluth’s An American Tail, the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. All three are great songs that have to do with far-off places, but my favorite is definitely Somewhere Out There, one of my all-time favorite duets, which in the context of the movie applies to a brother and sister who have lost each other but is general enough that it really can have to do with any two people who care about each other but are separated by a great distance. “Even though I know how very far apart we are, it helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star. And when the night wind starts to sing its lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky.”

Return to Pooh Corner - This is essentially House at Pooh Corner with an extra verse added to make it a little less melancholy, a little more about passing the wonder of childhood on to the next generation. Loggins is no longer that conflicted high school kid reluctant to put away childhood things; he’s the dad who knows what carefree joys await his own children and anticipates getting caught up in the magic with them. Instead of Peter, Paul and Mary’s forlorn Puff the Magic Dragon, it now reminds me of Dick Feller’s more optimistic Biff the Friendly Purple Bear. A loving tribute to the timeless Pooh and his plush pals, and Christopher Robin, too. “After all’s said and done, I was watching my son sleeping there with my bear by his side. So I tucked him in, I kissed him, and as I was goin’, I swear that old bear whispered, ‘Boy, welcome home.’”

Rainbow Connection - A lovely banjo-backed cover of the classic Kermit the Frog anthem about chasing your dreams. The second track on the album to mention wishing on stars, and a great one for those who dare to yearn for the seemingly impossible. “Have you been half-asleep, and have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name. Are these the sweet sounds that called the young sailors? I think they’re one and the same. I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it; there’s something that I’m supposed to be…”

St. Judy’s Comet - Birdsong contributes to this tender Paul Simon cover, which Loggins sings with an interesting tone in a seeming effort to imitate Simon’s own delivery. Another song encouraging a sleepy child to embrace slumber, using plenty of imagery of the night sky to paint a magnificent picture of the backdrop to a dreamscape. “Won’t you run come see St. Judy’s Comet roll across the sky, leave a spray of diamonds in its wake? I long to see St. Judy’s Comet sparkle in your eyes.”

The Last Unicorn - Written by Jimmy Webb, who wrote several songs recorded by Garfunkel, this haunting song is backed by piano, and it has a very wistful edge to it. Originally performed by America, this was the theme song of the Rankin-Bass movie of the same name. As somebody who grew up with the Irish Rovers’ rendition of Shel Silverstein’s The Unicorn, which details how the unicorns were so preoccupied with their own frivolity that they never made it onto Noah’s Ark, I can’t help thinking that this seems like a response to that – that somehow, a unicorn survived and still lurks in some enchanted corner of the world. “In the shadow of the forest, though she may be old and worn, they will stare, disbelieving, at the last unicorn.”

Cody’s Song - The first song on the album that I had never heard before. I still have never encountered this in another context. It’s a nice song, and I love the extended harmonica solo, but it doesn’t quite grab me as much as most of the others. “I’ll be there to sing to you. I promise you, I promise to comfort you and sing to you.”

The Horses - This is the other song I haven’t encountered anywhere other than this album. I’m a little surprised he didn’t save this one for last, since it would make such a nice bookend with the first song, although it’s slightly more up-tempo than most of the songs on this disc, and I suppose he wanted to end on a strict lullaby. I really like the harmonica on this one, and there’s a nice dreamlike quality to it. “Can you see her moonlight in her eye? Coming from under my wing, you were born to fly.”

Love - A nice, simple song by John Lennon, who had a special talent for effective minimalism in his lyrics. Sometimes, you just don’t need a lot of complexity. Love can be complicated, but at its most basic, it’s really not. The ocarina adds a haunting quality to this gentle song that works very well as a lullaby, with the extended piano outro tenderly lulling the listener into sleep. “Love is you, you and me. Love is wanting to be free. Love is knowing we will be.”

To-Ra-Loo-Ra - As into Ireland as I am – my name, after all, almost requires it – I’m very much in favor of this track, which includes some gorgeous work on the Celtic harp. Lyrically, it’s little else than that classic Irish title phrase, but really, what else is needed? Delicate and perfectly lovely. “To-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra, that’s an Irish lullaby…”

Return to Pooh Corner is a tender album for children and for children who never grew up, or who did but found themselves growing back down once, as C. S. Lewis said, they became old enough to start reading fairy tales again. Return to Pooh Corner with Kenny Loggins; it’s a good place to be.

My Favorite Versions of Traditional Religious Christmas Songs

It’s always a pleasure singing traditional Christmas carols in church, around the neighborhood or near our little Advent wreath this time of year. But as much as Christmas music is a communal experience, hundreds of musicians have recorded these sacred songs, giving us many different ways to enjoy them. Here are a few of my favorite specific recordings of various religious Christmas songs.

Angels We Have Heard on High – Having just recently seen Straight No Chaser in concert, I have to award them the honor of my favorite version of this celestial-sounding carol. Jerome Collins puts a soulful twist on the melody, and all those gorgeous voices coming together really does sound like a choir of angels. Throw in the visual element of some crystal blue lighting, and the effect is heavenly. “Gloria in Excelsis Deo!” This one is bundled with Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and it’s a logical pairing; I always have to stop a minute to think about which song is which. Though it’s the former song that makes the bigger impression on me in this mash-up, both are beautifully done. “Hark! The herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn king!”

Away in a Manger – I consider this the most basic of Christmas carols, the first one that most children learn how to sing. There are two different melodies commonly used; I prefer the slightly more somber-sounding one to the one most Sunday school students cut their musical teeth on, but both are lovely. When it comes to conveying sweet simplicity, John Denver is hard to beat, and his gentle acoustic rendition of the “kid” version gets my vote. For the “adult” version, meanwhile, Anne Murray’s heartfelt recording, which incorporates both piano and guitar and includes a nod at the other melody, is my favorite. “Be near me, Lord Jesus. I ask thee to stay close by me forever and love me, I pray…”

Carol of the Bells - It has no words, and it starts out with God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. It’s a little unconventional. But boy, do I love Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s electrified rendition of this song, which is one of the harder carols to sing anyway. I prefer clutching my invisible hand bells in my fists and ringing them out in time to the music. If you’re going to go with a vocal version of the song, I do love Straight No Chaser’s version of this one too, with the men using their voices to imitate the sound of bells. “Hark! How the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say, ‘Throw cares away.’”

Children, Go Where I Send Thee – This one isn’t exactly as in the mainstream as most of the songs on this list, and it’s a little funny that I like it so much since I find The 12 Days of Christmas so tedious and really, this song only makes marginally more sense than that one. But there’s something so joyful about it, especially when Peter, Paul and Mary, who introduced me to the song, belt it out along with dozens of choir members. “Children, go where I send thee! How shall I send thee? I’m gonna send thee one by one, one for the itty bitty baby who was born, born, born in Bethlehem.”

Do You Hear What I Hear? – This is a song that seems to be very hard to get wrong. I’ve heard probably dozens of versions of it, and everybody, from Kristin Chenoweth to Bob Dylan, seems to bring their A game to this stirring anthem that celebrates the birth of Christ and expresses a desire for peace at a time when the threat of nuclear war hung heavy in the air. But Vanessa Williams’ version has just an extra something in it that puts it at the very top of my ranking. Her vocals are so clear and soulful, and I just love the exuberant instrumentation and African chanting that comes into play later in the song. Whenever this comes on the radio, I’m completely swept away in the wonder of it all. “Said the king to the people everywhere, listen to what I say. Pray for peace people everywhere. Listen to what I say. The child, the child sleeping in the night, he will bring us goodness and light…”

The First Noel - Clay Aiken recorded a Christmas album that came out just a year and a half after he emerged from the second season of American Idol the runner-up. I was pleased with the album, but my favorite Clay Christmas recording remains this song from the American Idol compilation released late in 2003. The sparse accompaniment allows Clay’s voice to truly shine as he builds toward a dramatic finish. This is one of those songs I’ve always liked but that never stood out that much from the pack. Ever since I heard that recording, it does. “Noel, noel, noel, noel. Born is the king of Israel.”

The Friendly Beasts – I really love the traditional rendition on Peter, Paul and Mary’s Christmas album, with each of them taking a verse and doing his or her best to convey the personality of the animal at hand and the choir helping out on the other verses. Meanwhile, the song, with a reworked melody, serves as a cornerstone on Jimmy Webb’s oratorio The Animals’ Christmas; as the only song on the album that Webb didn’t write himself, it brings an air of familiarity to an otherwise wholly original work for which he recruited the vocal talents of Art Garfunkel, Amy Grant and the Kings College School Choir. “Thus, every beast, by some good spell, in the stable rude was glad to tell of the gift he gave Emmanuel…”

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen - They call it Comfort and Joy, which really is probably a better title, albeit less instantly recognizable. Simon and Garfunkel never recorded much Christmas music, but for whatever reason, they did record a couple of traditional carols. While it always seemed to me that Silent Night was used for ironic emphasis, with the exquisite harmonies juxtaposed against the far from tranquil news broadcast, this a cappella rendition with the increasingly complex harmonies can be taken at face value. Just a very nice recording. If you miss the instruments, of course, there’s always Trans-Siberian Orchestra… “Remember Christ the Savior was born on Christmas day to save us all from Satan’s pow’r when we were gone astray. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.”

Good King Wenceslas – My brother recently identified this very old ballad as his favorite Christmas song, and we set out in search of a version to play for him before he set out for college again after our little First Sunday in Advent service at the conclusion of Thanksgiving weekend. He didn’t think much of the Irish Rovers rendition we played; it was much too peppy, he informed us, and he preferred versions that really made us feel that faithful page’s pain. But there’s a lot of joy in this song about a warm and generous monarch whose chief concern is the well-being of one of his poorest citizens, so the Rovers’ exuberant version is fine by me. “Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing, ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing.”

Joy to the World - This is a wonderfully ecstatic song, but it’s one that’s in danger of getting a little over-the-top, as it does on Clay Aiken’s Christmas album. I prefer versions that show a little restraint before going all-out, and my favorite is Anne Murray’s, backed by some nice Gospel-flavored piano accompaniment and eventually joined by a choir. It works quite nicely and is easy to sing along with. “Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let Earth receive her King!”

The Little Drummer Boy – This gentle song about a little boy who gives the best that he has to the Christ Child is representative of a large sub-genre of Christmas stories, most of which are quite touching. The original Harry Simeone version is nice, but as far as basic versions go, I love the punchy way Bob Seger does it. But probably my favorite version is the odd pairing of Bing Crosby and David Bowie, with the counter-melody in which Bowie dreams of a day when people can learn to get along with each other. At first it seemed a bit of a strange juxtaposition to me, but upon reflection, it reminds me of the passage in Isaiah that concludes with “and a little child shall lead them.” Anyway, a very poignant recording, especially considering how late it came in Crosby’s life. “I have no gift to bring, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum, that’s fit to give a king, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum…”

O Come All Ye Faithful - Art Garfunkel recorded this one for some obscure collection a few years back, and it’s the most intricate, exquisite rendition I’ve heard. It’s a shame it’s rather hard to track down. With simple acoustic guitar accompaniment gradually joined by gentle percussion and accordion, what really makes this stand out is the dense layers of Art harmonizing with himself, especially toward the end. I also have to mention Trans-Siberian Orchestra once again, as their reworked rendition is quite moving, and Phil Coulter integrated the song into Christmas Morning Donegal, the haunting, nostalgic ballad that I’ve come to think of as the Celtic Thunder swan song of powerhouse tenor Paul Byrom. This is a song that tends to inspire the best in musicians… “O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!”

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel - I’ve always thought that this Christmas carol had a very Jewish feeling to it, so it seems appropriate for Neil Diamond to take top honors here. His version feels mysterious and solemn, and the pairing with We Three Kings just emphasizes the idea of this birth being a long-anticipated event. “O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…”

O Little Town of Bethlehem – There are plenty of appropriately somber versions of this song floating around, but my favorite is the peppy, bluegrass-tinged Prairie Home Companion edition, in which it is mashed up with It Came Upon a Midnight Clear and We Three Kings, which makes a smashing chorus. There are much more traditional versions of each carol readily available, but Garrison Keillor and his band really do a bang-up job on this one. “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by…”

Silent Night – Now this is certainly a tough one, since it seems almost everyone who has ever recorded a Christmas album with any religious content at all has recorded this song. I love Simon and Garfunkel’s version, and Prairie Home Companion has an unusually bouncy instrumental version that’s a lot of fun. I find the Muppets’ German rendition quite moving. But I think I gotta go with Celtic Thunder on this one, especially since they paved the way for it by recording Christmas 1915, which incorporates the beloved carol. Their version of Silent Night itself is richly harmonic, with an interesting backing chorus, and one of the verses is entirely in Gaelic. It’s hauntingly beautiful. “Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love’s pure light…”

What Child Is This? - This is a pretty carol with a rather melancholy edge to it, largely because it takes the melody of that lovely lament, Greensleeves. I love John Denver’s simple but heartfelt rendition for all the reasons I love his Away in the Manger, and the faint presence of the harpsichord just makes it all the more appealing. “This, this is Christ the King whom shepherds guard and angels sing…”

O Holy Night - I always tell people that this is my default favorite Christmas song. In the month or two leading up to Christmas, my favorite will change on any given day, but if I’m not particularly gripped by anything at the time, O Holy Night is what I always fall back on. But I don’t have a favorite version. Of all the versions I’ve ever heard, the one that affected me most profoundly was a performance by a seven-year-old girl at a long-ago Christmas pageant. No version I’ve heard since can quite recapture that experience. Preferred versions include Josh Groban’s, Celine Dion’s, Straight No Chaser’s, John Denver’s and Celtic Woman’s, but I’m still on the hunt for that elusive definitive version. If anybody has any recommendations for me, I’d be happy to take them – bonus points if it includes my favorite, often-left-out verse. “Truly He taught us to love one another. His law is love and His Gospel is peace. Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, and in His name, all oppression shall cease…”

So there’s my list. It doesn’t begin to cover all the great Christmas music that I love so much, but it’s a start anyway and gives you a good idea of where my musical tastes lie. Of course, at no time of year am I more likely to embrace new artists than at Christmas; the familiarity of the songs opens a door for me. So I hope this list continues to expand…

My Least Favorite Christmas Songs

I absolutely love most Christmas music. It gets to be this time of year, and this strange euphoria grips me as the music on the radio and on the loudspeakers at the mall, where I work, suddenly shifts into Christmas mode. It utterly energizes me. But once in a while, there comes along a song I just don't like very much. Here are a few of those.

One Christmas Catalogue - I had never heard this song by one Captain Sensible before my brother, who was working at The Gap at the time, mentioned it to me. He described it as the weirdest Christmas song he ever heard, and I pretty much agree. I'm not sure it's quite accurate to say I “dislike” it since I collapse into giggles every time I hear it. But this techno-style song with its disappointingly unambitious turkeys and random spoken outbursts of the word “Christmas” sure makes me scratch my head. “And there's a turkey in the wings. It doesn't dance and it can't sing. One Christmas catalogue too many. One Christmas catalogue for you.”

The Cherry Tree Carol - I adore Peter Paul and Mary's live Christmas album, and if I had to choose only five Christmas albums to listen to for the rest of my life, that would almost certainly be one of them. But doggone it, this song is just annoying. It's a traditional folksong that I've nonetheless never heard elsewhere, and in it, Mary comes across as a whiny diva, while Joseph needs a stint in anger management and yet-to-be-born Jesus is a show-off. And I thought the George Washington cherry tree tale was goofy... “Then Mary said to Joseph, so meek and so mild, 'Joseph, gather me some cherries, for I am with child.' … Then Joseph flew in anger, in anger flew he. 'Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee...'”

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime - All right, this one kinda grates on me too. I love Paul McCartney, and I generally dig his stuff more than John Lennon's, but despite the contempt Lennon often had for Christianity, I can't help loving Happy X-Mas and finding it inspiring. Meanwhile, I can't help disliking this song and finding it insipid. “The choir of children sing their song; they practiced all year long” especially gets to me. 'Cause really? It sounds like they practiced for about ten minutes. And like their director managed to select the Dumbest Song Ever for them to sing for this auspicious occasion.

Happy Holiday - Just irritating. This song, the most common version of which is the swingin' rendition by Andy Williams, has some of the stupidest lyrics in all of Christmas music. The tone of the song is so flippant, it just sounds like he's poking fun at the whole thing. He also sounds borderline tipsy. Eye-rolling. “It's the holiday season, so whoop de do and dickory dock. Don't forget to hang up your sock, 'cause just exactly at 12 o'clock he'll be comin' down the chimney down...”

Little Saint Nick - The Beach Boys are notable for their amazing harmonies, and that's still present here. And I suppose there's a certain charm in their taking their tendency to sing about souped-up cars and transferring it to Santa's sleigh. But boy howdy, “Christmas comes this time each year”? Thank you, Captain Obvious... And I'll just lump in Run, Rudolph, Run here because there's something about that song that seriously gets on my nerves, especially when Chuck Berry sings it. Something about the weird syntax, I think. And "reindeers".  And the word “wet” as a verb.

The Christmas Shoes - I feel like this makes me a terrible curmudgeon. The thing is, I think I enjoyed this Newsong tune well enough the first few times I heard it. But then it just started getting on my nerves. It's way overplayed, and it's just so over-the-top. What really bugs me, I think, is the bridge. Granted, I understand that people come into each other's lives at particular times and affect one another deeply, and sometimes that can feel positively providential. And maybe it is. But something just really rubs me the wrong way about the narrator belting out his conviction that “God had sent that little boy to remind me what Christmas is all about.” Um, this kid is about to lose his mother to a terminal illness. Maybe it's not all about you, dude. And kid, your heart's in the right place, but if your mom is that close to death, my guess is she'd rather have you there than out here fighting the crowds and risking not getting back home in time. “Can you hurry, sir? Daddy says there's not much time. See, she's been sick for quite a while, and I know these shoes will make her smile, and I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight.”

The 12 Days of Christmas - Any straightforward version of the song with no humor added in. I just have come to find that I lack the patience for this one. Of course, I could listen to the Straight No Chaser version all day, but the whole point of that one is making fun of the absurdity of the song while paying tribute to lots of other great Christmas tunes. (And Toto.) If you stop to think about the lyrics, they are completely nonsensical. Every gift but the five golden rings is alive, and half of the gifts are people, for crying out loud. Now, maybe that just means that your true love hired some very lavish entertainment, but whatever the case may be, it's all a little too extravagant for my tastes, and the song is just way too monotonous. “On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords a-leaping, 9 ladies dancing, 8 maids a-milking, 7 swans a-swimming, 6 geese a-laying, 5 golden rings, 4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.”

Santa Baby - This one gets played on the mall radio a lot. There are lots of different versions; Madonna's probably annoys me the most. It just sort of encapsulates everything that's wrong with this time of year. Oh, the unrelenting avarice! I suppose I should applaud this person for being so virtuous all year (which the speaker in Simple Plan's similarly annoying My Christmas List doesn't seem to have bothered with), but she (or occasionally he) sure doesn't seem very sincere about it, and it's all for personal gain. And such big-ticket items... I mean, a platinum mine??? Maybe what this person really needs to do is snag the true love of the speaker in the song just above... “Santa baby, and fill my stocking with a duplex and checks. Sign your X on the line, Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight.”

Baby, It's Cold Outside - Okay, so this really isn't a Christmas song at all, but it gets so much airplay this time of year that it might as well be. It's just this gin-soaked, smoky exercise in seduction, and while I suppose the girl is just playing hard to get, a part of me feels like she really would like to get away and this guy is pretty much holding her captive. Some versions include extra flirtatious banter that make it seem more obviously two-sided, but those tend to annoy me just as much. Celtic Thunder's Ryan Kelly covered this song recently along with singer Charley Bird, and he identified it as one of his all-time favorite Christmas songs, but I really could do without it. “There's bound to be talk tomorrow; (Think of my lifelong sorrow) At least there will be plenty implied. (If you caught pneumonia and died...)”

Christmas Wrapping - I wasn't going to include this song by the Waitresses because it's grown on me in the past couple of years, since I've heard it enough on the mall radio to finally catch most of the lyrics.  It's actually a rather amusing and sweet story of a gal and a guy who circumstances seem determined to keep apart, until fate intervenes at Christmastime.  But for years before that, all I really noticed was the blah, monotonous tone of the singing and the equally monotonous melody.  And my best friend berated me for leaving this off the list.  So here it is!  "'Bah, humbug!' No, that's too strong 'cause it is my favorite holiday.  But all this year's been a busy blur.  Don't think I have the energy..."

The Night Santa Went Crazy - Weird Al is generally a pretty G-rated guy, and he's certainly been a big inspiration to me in my lyric-writing endeavors. But this twisted take on the jolly old elf just makes me cringe. Instead of rampaging reindeer running over Grandma (another song I'm not a huge fan of), we've got Santa flipping his lid and going all Rambo on everybody at the North Pole. It's a Christmas bloodbath, and I want none of it. “Yes, Virginia, now Santa's doin' time in a federal prison for his infamous crime. Hey, little friend, now don't you cry no more tears, 'cause he'll be out for good behavior in 700 more years!”

Last Christmas - This one has to take the cake as my least favorite. The speaker annoys the heck out of me. Talk about whiny! No wonder the addressee of the song dropped his (or her) heart like a hot potato at the first opportunity. Now, that's mean. I shouldn't say that. I should have a little empathy for this poor schmuck. But somehow, I just can't muster up the energy. The lyrics are obnoxious and often seem contradictory, and there's something so profoundly unlikable about the speaker that all my empathy is reserved for whoever the supposed new object of his (or her) affections is. George Michael's original version is probably still my least favorite, but I've never met a rendition I liked. Though I'll grant that Keith Harkin's is almost tolerable. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, I'll give it to someone special.”

This is surely not exhaustive, but it's a start. I may add to it later if I come up with some other Christmas songs that make my skin crawl. Up next, the more pleasant – and vastly more difficult – exercise of coming up with favorites. But I can't deny the fun of ripping these apart just a bit. This has been a part of Shopaholic_Man's Christmas Music Write-Off. Make a joyful noise and join in the fun!

Straight No Chaser Brings A Cappella Perfection to the Warner Theatre, Erie, PA, 11-29-10

I try to make it to at least a couple of concerts every year. This year, I got in four big ones: Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard in Chautauqua, NY, and Dennis DeYoung, Celtic Thunder and Straight No Chaser in Erie, PA. Although I just saw Straight No Chaser this week, I knew about that concert and had tickets for it long before the others. I've been a fan of that Indiana University-based a cappella group since I first heard its rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas two years ago, and my parents and I couldn't pass up the chance to see them live.

The group, in the form that we saw it, includes half of the original members from when it first formed in the late 1990s. The others were in the group in later years and came in as replacements for early members. The guys we saw include original members Randy Stine, Charlie Mechling, Jerome Collins, David Roberts and Walter Chase and newer members Michael Luginbill, Ryan Ahlwardt, Seggie Isho, Don Nottingham and Tyler Trepp. We bought our tickets back in June and managed seats in the seventh row, so we had a great view of the show, and the sound quality in the Warner Theatre was excellent as always.

At the beginning of the concert, there were the usual announcements, and I assumed that a dire warning against photography would ensue. Instead, however, the loudspeaker informed us that the Warner had waived its no-photography policy at SNC's request. We were not only allowed, we were encouraged to take pictures and even videos, and members of the group itself brought it up a couple more times throughout the show. I'm very glad I brought my camera. Wish I'd thought to change the batteries, but they managed to last me just long enough.

What I love about their stance on this is that Straight No Chaser became a phenomenon because their video went viral, and they are staying true to their roots. They understand and appreciate better than most how powerful word of mouth and social media can be. They want us to spread their pictures all over Facebook and pepper YouTube with video clips. Oh, and they totally cracked me up halfway through the show by actually bringing up the house lights and taking a few pictures of the audience. Which is actually a really neat idea, but I've certainly never seen it done before. The next day, they posted those photos, and I tagged myself and my parents, or at least the general area where I knew we were. Very cool.

The concert included a solid mix of Christmas music and regular pop. Most of the songs they performed were on one of their three albums, but there were several others I'd never heard them do before, so those were a treat. In between songs, there was a fair bit of talking as the guys shared anecdotes and background and introduced themselves to us. I still need to work on figuring out exactly who's who and wish they'd sold programs, which could have aided me in that endeavor, but every one of these guys is a great singer.

I loved the humor they brought to all of their interactions and so many of their performances. While a lot of the talking was rehearsed, there was a definite feeling of spontaneity to it. I got a chuckle out of the moment when all of the guys shouted out what they had majored in during college, and one of them said, “Women!” And then another one said, “He flunked out!” And when one of them asked, “How many of you out there like 'Nsync?” Then, after an enthusiastic response, he went on, “Yeah, we're not gonna do one of their songs, I just wanted to see how many of you I could get to admit that in public.” Hee! Seriously, though, I was never too into those guys, but they did have some great harmony.

The Christmas songs of the night were all drawn from their albums. The hyper, hilarious Christmas Can-Can closed the first act, while they saved The 12 Days of Christmas for the encore. That came as no surprise whatsoever to me, since for much of the audience, that was probably the only performance of theirs they'd ever heard before. It is Straight No Chaser's American Pie. If they're still together in some form a decade from now or even two, they'll still be saving that song for last, I'd wager. What did take me by surprise was the second encore, during which they performed their doo-woppy rendition of O Holy Night without any microphones. It was a wonderfully reverent moment. So was the mash-up of Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Angels We Have Heard on High, which included some truly celestial-looking blue lighting.

The lighting also made an impression during You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, when it was green and ominous as the basses of the group detailed the Grinch's many despicable qualities. More on the madcap end of things was the super-fast Jingle Bells and Donde Esta Santa Claus, which featured some very eyebrow-raising attempts at Latin-style dancing. Hey, Santa! was a lot of fun too, especially when some of the members jumped in to form a vocal brass section. They really are adept at imitating trumpets! While I confess myself a bit disappointed not to hear the gorgeous SNC originals Christmas Wish or Indiana Christmas, I loved all of their selections.

The range of music featured in the rest of the show was pretty diverse. From With a Twist, we got the exuberant cover of Three Dog Night's Joy to the World and the infectious mash-up of I'm Yours and Somewhere Over the Rainbow, as well as the melancholy Under the Bridge. LOST super-fan that I am, I would have loved to hear Wonderwall too, and The Living Years is probably my favorite track on that album. But most of their songs veered more toward the upbeat, allowing them to easily insert some visual humor. We got a taste of Marvin Gaye, the BeeGees and Lady Gaga, and Collins had everybody in stitches with his Michael Jackson moves during the mash-up of Billy Jean and Poison.

I was surprised that Don't Stop Believin' didn't get a bigger reaction, especially with its resurgence as the unofficial theme song for GLEE, though I did hear a rather delayed super-whoop from the upper reaches of the theater about 15 seconds into the song. I was rather taken aback at how pretty I found Madonna's Like a Prayer. Carole King's Hi De Ho was one I don't recall having heard before, but it was quite fun. Probably the number that got the biggest laugh out of this '80s child was the Saturday Morning Cartoon medley. Granted, The Simpsons and Family Guy were a little out of place there, but it was mostly theme songs to shows I grew up watching during that magical time of the week designed just for kids reprieved from school. I also loved the introductory remarks that included references to such '80s kid staples as the E-Z Bake Oven and Lite Brite (and having to physically get up and change the channel on the TV since none of us had remotes). A great nostalgia trip for me.

Going into the concert, I would have said that Jerome Collins was my favorite member of the group, as I love his soulful voice and, frankly, as the only African-American member, he's also the most distinct. After the concert, I'm doubly sure that he's my favorite, since barely a song went by in which he didn't steal the show at some point. That guy has loads of personality, and he's a flat-out amazing singer. I read that when the group reunited, he was playing Simba in a Hong Kong production of The Lion King, and I can just imagine how awesome a job he did. But every member of the group is extremely talented, and it's the way they all work together that makes Straight No Chaser so magical. You never miss the instruments, and you often could swear that they're there. They are vocalists and band all in one. I do have to credit whoever was running the lights, though, because that aspect of the show was phenomenally done and really did add to the whole experience considerably.

Well before the end of the concert, they made a point of inviting us to join them in the lobby about 15 minutes after the show: “We want to meet all 2,222 of you!” I was a little surprised that so few in the sold-out audience took them up on this offer. We made our way to the lobby and watched as all but a few dozen folks filed out. There was a line set up, but it was too crowded at first for me to figure out where we were supposed to stand. By the time I did, even though we were among the first out of the theater, we wound up practically at the end of the line. But the last shall be first, and I'm very glad that we were bringing up the rear.

We snatched up one of the small promotional posters and chatted a bit with the guys behind the long table, and each of them signed the poster for me, and just out of curiosity, we stuck around for a few minutes while the others in line behind us had their turn. At that point, there were barely more than a dozen people left, and the ten members of the group arranged themselves on the Warner's elegant staircase so anyone who wanted a picture with them could get one. Obviously, I wasn't about to pass that up! My dad snapped two photos, both of which turned out great, particularly the first, which was absolutely perfect aside from the two guys in the back losing a couple inches off their heads. It's hard to get all those people in one shot. But there are 11 expansive smiles, and I stick out in my bright blue coat against the backdrop of all those snazzy black suits. They all seem like really nice, down-to-earth guys, and I thought it was classy of them to insist on staying to take pictures despite rumbling stomachs and concerns that, as the clock ticked toward 11:00, they might not be able to find a nearby place still serving food. I hope they did; they certainly earned their dinner that night.

If you have the opportunity to see Straight No Chaser in concert, definitely consider snatching up tickets. This was one of the most vivacious and vocally impressive concerts I've ever attended.