No Means No: The Newest Most-Disturbing Christmas Carol

Well, it happened. This morning, I finally heard that fury-spawning awfulness of a Christmas song. Thankfully I was not at the wheel but at my desk, so the most damage I could do was throw a few pens at my cubicle wall and gag a little.

However. I believe I have found an equally disturbing holiday song that – while it doesn’t come close to the moronic saccharine hack-job mess of those stupid fucking Christmas Shoes – has proven to be just as cringe-worthy in its own right: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

I know – I KNOW! – it’s a classic, right? Sung by dozens of famous duets, including a really creepy version with Zooey Deschanel and LEON FUCKING REDBONE, my friends. Do you know what Leon Redbone looks like?

If Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein had a baby, it would pretty much be Leon Redbone.

So, yeah, the Deschanel-Redbone version is pretty gross, considering the 3490875639465-year age difference between the two of them, and the fact that imagining Leon Redbone in any sort of romantic situation will cause your sexual organs to shrivel up like angry little raisins.

Which brings us to the crux of the problem: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is supposed to be a song about a romantic situation – a woman who is torn between venturing out in the snow and cold to go back home to her parents like the hypocritical little tease she is, or just staying in front of the fire with her boyfriend and putting out already. Simple enough. But…have you ever really listened to the lyrics?

Holy God, it’s a Christmas carol about date rape.

Seriously. She’s all “I have to go,” and he’s all, “yeah, sure, whatever – how do I get this damn bra off?” I think the line that really drives it home is when she says “Say – what’s in this drink?” NICE.

“Mr. Redbone, really, where are my car keysmmmmppph…”

I don’t know. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but when I hear this song, I just want the woman to GET UP AND LEAVE ALREADY. I mean, the guy is obviously a douchebag. Forever getting shit-faced and grabby, trying every pathetic line in the book to get in your pants, getting frustrated when you won’t comply and calling you a frigid bitch, then passing out face-down on his cell phone with his fly down. You know the type.

“Perhaps play a little game called ‘just the tip?’ Just for a second, just to see how it feels?”

Call me a Scrooge, but Christmas carols that remind me of grope-happy frat guys or dying mothers in red pumps just don’t get me in the holiday mood. Is it so hard to write a damn song about snowflakes and sleigh rides? Is there not enough Jesus material in the Bible to work with? Can’t someone branch out into Hanukkah or Kwanzaa carols already? ANYTHING?

Oh well. I guess I’m just going to have to put up with it since I insist on listening to Christmas carols for a full four weeks. I just hope the music industry can deal with the fact that they have effectively destroyed my libido for the whole of December by allowing Leon Redbone to utter the words, “Your lips look delicious” on the airwaves.

Gross.

 

Christmas Shoes: The Classic Holiday Tale of a Strange Boy Buying a Pair of Shoes to Put on His Dead Mother’s Feet

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I am a sucker for two-thirds of the big fall holidays, with a particular weakness for the bright shininess of the Christmas season. I feel a flutter of excitement when I get a red cup at Starbucks or a Coke can with a Santa on it, I willingly plan entire evenings around the broadcast of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and I consider eggnog to be the 8th wonder of the world. By the week of Thanksgiving, my radio is permanently tuned to the one station in town dedicated to annoying 90% of its listeners with continuous Christmas carols.

Of course, the downside to constantly listening to Christmas carols for over a month is that there are only so many Christmas carols. And most of them are terrible. And the only thing worse than a terrible Christmas song is hearing that same Christmas song pounded mercilessly into your head a minimum of three times a day. However, as much as I may dislike hearing Celine Dion pa-rum-pum-pumming her weird little French-Canadian heart out, nothing – NOTHING - compares to the absolute burning hatred I have for that awful, fucking Christmas Shoes song.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!

If you haven’t heard this monstrosity, well…I was going to post a link to a clip of it here, but on second thought, if you have somehow managed to avoid hearing this steaming pile of a song, I’m certainly not going to be the one to force it upon you. I fear that will happen soon enough. Now navigate away – fly, fly! – so that you may remain blissful in your ignorance. That is my Christmas gift to you.

For the rest of us poor bastards who’ve had our ears sodomized by this schlocky crime against humanity, let’s examine the song a little further, shall we? First off, allow me to recap the story the song is trying to tell:

1. Some ass is in line at the mall buying last-minute Christmas gifts;
2. He sees some raggedy poor kid in line who’s trying to buy a pair of shoes for his dying mother so that she will look nice when she kicks it and “meets Jesus” that night;
3. Raggedy Kid tries to buy the shoes with PENNIES (because poor people deal only in pennies), and – of course – he does not have enough;
4. Ass in Line buys Raggedy Kid the damn shoes and is reminded of the true meaning of Christmas;
5. Blinded with rage, Jive Turkey drives her car through a drugstore window.

Now, as a listener, this song presents some problems for me:

1. If your mother is dying (presumably within hours), why would you GO TO THE MALL?
2. How the fuck does a kid that young get to the mall unless an adult took him there – and what kind of adult takes a kid to the mall when HIS MOTHER IS ON HER DEATHBED?
3. Presuming an adult accompanied this kid to the mall, why can’t the adult just pay for the fucking shoes already? Even poor folks have credit cards, my friends. And finally,
4. Please take a moment to picture what it would look like to see a terminally ill woman laying in a hospital bed, gasping for her last painful breath, and WEARING RED HIGH HEELS.

Upsetting, right?

It’s not so much the absurd nature of this song that offends me, it’s the obnoxious, sappy, melodramatic cuteness of it all, and hoo-boy, I really hate me some obnoxious, sappy, melodramatic cuteness.

The only thing that makes this song remotely bearable for me is the fact that I always picture the dying woman’s “Christmas Shoes” to look a little something like this:

“I want her to look beautiful when Mama meets Jesus tonight…and they enter a costume contest at the local drag bar.”

Random Things That Make Me Sad

Nothing says “Fuck it – I give up” more than a classified ad hawking used home gym equipment. Best case scenario: the seller got in great shape and has had to move on to a more challenging piece of machinery. Most likely scenario: the seller bought the equipment during a frenzied post-holiday fitness kick, used it for 3 days, and then settled their ass back on the sofa to watch Survivor with some Thin Mints.

The clothes hamper in the corner is a nice touch.

Scenes From a Mall

When I was but an adolescent turkey, I was certain of three things:

1. I am hideous and will never get laid.
2. I love all things theatre and theatre-related.
3. That perm was a bad idea.

Fortunately for me, I never went The Way of the Perm again, and I had faith that I’d have better romantic luck in college, but as far as being a blossoming theatre nerd, I was shit out of luck. My high school (which was located within a district whose budget was somewhere between “shoestring” and “roll of quarters”) had cut the drama program years before I had arrived, and there was no hope of it returning anytime soon. So, to quench my thirst for the stage, I did what all great thespians do: got my ass cast in community theatre.

“Nothing ever happens in Blaine!”

I loved it. I was totally in my element. After years of feeling like a total outcast in junior high and high school, I finally found the one place in which I truly belonged. Dealing with that uppity bitch Leah who was always sneering at me in History class was much easier to bear when I knew I could seek refuge in rehearsal that evening.

“Teacher’s Pet!“

Unfortunately, between the handful of shows produced that had parts appropriate for my age group and the cut-throat competition amongst the community theatre casting pool regulars (which is an entire blog entry in and of itself), I usually only managed to do one show a year. So after the show-of-the-year closed and I had to face that bitch Leah and the endless drudgery of my high school life with no rehearsals in sight? I got a little…dramatic.

“No one – NO ONE – can understand my pain, you guys! Except maybe The Cure.”

It was during one of my post-show funks that my mother – possibly annoyed with watching me weep into my scrapbook every night – suggested I get a job to keep myself busy. So off we went to the mall to fill out applications, even though I knew FULL WELL that no 15% employee discount at The Gap or unlimited free Auntie Anne’s pretzels would fill the Guys-and-Dolls-shaped hole in my heart.

Despite my sunny attitude, I managed to land a job at a store that sold affordable, foreign-made home interiors items. In other words, we sold cheap, poorly-wired lamps and ugly paintings with crooked frames. And once we had to return an entire shipment of imported afghans because they arrived WITH BUGS NESTING IN THEM.

You might have expected this store to be staffed with a group of middle-aged ladies in appliquéd sweatshirts, but that was not the case. My co-workers included several 20-something pot-heads, a girl who moonlighted as a stripper (who also attempted suicide the night before I worked a Christmas Eve shift with her), a few chain-smoking, hard-partying managers with a taste for whiskey and bar fights, and an acid-dropping stock boy who never wore deodorant because he claimed the acid made his perspiration odorless (it did not). Oh, and the couple who were constantly either at each other’s throats or screwing in the stockroom, a situation made all the more complicated by the fact that the male half of this couple was always trying to fuck every female on the payroll.

In other words, I was working with the coolest fucking people I had ever met.

I was pretty inexperienced at this point in my life. I had never been high or drunk and had no experience with boys, and I really couldn’t wait to do all three of those things…in excess. But the fact remained that I was pretty green to the ways of my co-workers, and they must have known that, because they never pressured me one way or another (with the exception of Guy From the Tumultuous Relationship, who said really filthy things to me whenever we were alone in the stockroom, which made me supremely embarrassed/flattered me to no end because no guys at school had ever cared enough to make a disgusting comment about what they’d like to do to my ass).

I was not so much a poster child for preventing sexual harassment in the workplace.

My mall job quickly joined theatre as one of the only places in my life where I felt validated and accepted. The paycheck was just gravy. I worked at the store all throughout my senior year and the following summer, quitting at the last possible moment before I had to leave for college. By the time winter break rolled around, I had done just enough partying at school to be able to get wasted with my coworkers when I was hired back as holiday help. The good times continued the next summer, and every winter break and summer throughout my college career. And it wasn’t just the partying – I actually enjoyed the job. I liked the variety of building displays, checking in freight, and laughing about asshole customers behind their backs.

“Yes, ma’am, I understand that our afghans gave your entire family tapeworms, but I’m afraid I cannot refund your purchase without a receipt.”

Unfortunately, with the end of college came the end of my health insurance, which meant I had to take a job that gave me more in the way of benefits, and less in the way of Jack Daniels shots in the stockroom. Thus began my 4-year-long stretch of office job after office job after goddamn-soul-numbing office job.

On the bright side, if I gouge out my eyes with a highlighter, at least it’s only a $20 co-pay to get them fixed!

Then, through a chain of events too boring and complicated to explain here, the stars aligned and the opportunity arose for me to take a position as a manager at a different location of my old store, and lo, the heavens opened and a host of cherubs burst forth, strumming harps made of cash drawers and singing the praises of projected sales in angelic harmonies. I was assigned a set of manager keys on a stretchy cord and a [paltry] benefits package, and just like that, I was back in the one job that had ever really made me happy.

And for about 6 months, things were great.

And then, they were not so great.

We hired a girl who ended up stealing from the registers. I was continually catching shoplifters. An employee accused me of age discrimination whenever I pointed out that she had rung up a customer incorrectly. Sales were down. My regional manager started placing unreasonable demands on us because sales were down. My boss got fired for not meeting the unreasonable demands, leaving me in charge as manager of the entire store until they found a replacement.

Did I mention I was the world’s shittiest manager?

It’s not that I was lazy or unorganized, it’s that I had absolutely no ability to manage 15 employees who seemed hell-bent on hating each other and the customers. They all liked me enough, but in hindsight, that was probably the problem. In trying to be a friend, I had no control over anyone and no one took me seriously for a second. I’d assign tasks that were never completed, I’d cover blown-off shifts, I’d drag my sick ass to work when not one of those miserable assholes would cover for me for 4 lousy hours. I had to cut a long weekend short because one of my dipshit assistant managers decided to leave in the middle of her fucking shift. Did I mention I was not getting paid extra for being the interim store manager for 3 months? Because I was not.

And then there was the day a sewage pipe burst in the ceiling of our stockroom, and $500 worth of merchandise was quite literally covered in shit.

But the fecal icing on the pee-soaked cake was when the regional manager came to survey the damaged goods (that were COVERED IN POOP) and told me to “wipe them off and put them on the sales floor.”

Let me repeat that for you: She wanted me to sell items packaged in cardboard boxes that had been drenched in human waste. And did I mention she was not paying me enough?

I put in my two weeks on the exact day I had started the year before. And I left before any of our customers came back with a receipt, a lawyer, and a raging case of typhoid fever.

At least she showed up for work on time.

Sometimes I still can’t believe that I job I loved so well for so long could turn out to be so awful. I know it’s mostly my fault for being stupid enough to think a fun part-time job I had in college would somehow translate to a fun full-time job at age 26, but for a while there, I really thought it might work.

The branch of the store I worked at in college has since closed, and even though it’s been nearly 5 years since I quit, I still can’t bear to set foot inside the branch that I managed. I’m sure none of the people I worked with are even there anymore, but I don’t want to run the risk of being forced to make polite conversation when all I really want to do is grab them by the shoulders and push them into the crookedly-framed canvas prints.

But the upside of that experience is that it gave me a new appreciation for working in an office – a place where you can sit on your ass and practically never find a watery Orange Julius on the floor left behind by a customer. And it really is lovely to go to work each day secure in the knowledge that my boss will not force me to touch anything that has been covered in feces.

Thanks, boss!

So the next time you’re in the mall – especially during the holiday season – and you see some poor retail worker trying her best not to strangle some crazy bitch trying to get a cash refund without a receipt, please, take it easy on her. Be polite, say please and thank you, and if you have any major issues with the store or its policies, get a number for the home office and take it up with them instead of her.

And for God’s sake, don’t touch any damp boxes.

Caveat Dumptor

 

The Gag-Inducing Awfulness of Candy Corn, And Other Halloween Sins

I used to hate the fall. I’m not sure why. I think it might have been a combination of a few things – the onset of cold weather, the depressing gray landscape, the darkness at 5pm. I thought people who enjoyed the fall were crazy for embracing a season that begins with flu shots and frost-shriveled flowers. And when we lived in New York, fall meant nothing but the beginning of freezing my ass off on the elevated subway platforms and months of wet pants-cuffs caked in black slush.

JUST ONCE I’d like to see Carrie Bradshaw have to maneuver through 6 inches of pee-soaked slush in her fucking Manolos.

But in the past few years, I’ve grown to enjoy fall & winter – if for no other reason than the fact that the weather change kills those fucking nightmarish centipedes. And I’ve always been a sucker for the fall and winter holidays. Turkey and stuffing? Yes, please. Pumpkin pie? Make mine a double. Eight weeks of retailers shoving Christmas down my throat? Don’t mind if I do.

But Halloween? The holiday where I am forced to purchase candy for every child and costume-less hoodlum who rings my doorbell, the occasion with the parties that always result in frantic trips to the thrift store or costume shop at which I spend way more than I should on something I will wear for 4 drunken hours, the time of year when otherwise respectable women feel compelled to dress like complete gutter-whores in public?

Oh, give me a fucking break.

I’ve always felt like such a traitor about not liking Halloween. After all, I’m a fucking theatre geek – shouldn’t I like getting to wear costumes? Well, I do like to wear costumes. And because I’m a fucking theatre geek, I get to wear costumes about 6 times a year onstage. So a day where I am expected to wear another costume? Just seems like more of a pain in the ass than anything else.

OK, I admit that I do still dress up for parties and such – because I’ve never gotten to play Phillip the Hyperactive Child, High School Phys-Ed Teacher, or White Trash Homecoming Queen onstage before. But those, dear friends, are the three costumes I have actually enjoyed wearing in the 30 years I have been alive. And for the bulk of my trick-or-treating years, I usually went as the same damn thing every year. What was that, you ask? Let me give you a hint:

Trick-or-meat-or-fish?

Yes, my friends, instead of dressing up as a fairy princess or a witch or a rock star, I dressed up as SOMEONE WITH A FULL-TIME JOB.

I can’t even remember why I did it, except that I had a wide collection of those little “wings” pins that the airlines used to give out to kids on flights as a sort of silent bribe to not be an annoying little shit for the duration of the flight. Combine the pins with a white button down shirt, a blue skirt and matching flats usually reserved for church, thrown in one of your mom’s scarves tied around your neck, and VOILA! You’re lame.

So maybe a history of boring costumes is to blame for my indifference-bordering-on-distaste for Halloween. Maybe it’s the fact that I loathe haunted houses. Maybe it’s the insane trick-or-treating action we get in our neighborhood, where I see everything from cute little kids with their parents to surly teenagers with pillowcases and concealed weapons to (and this was a first for me last year) a real, live strung out prostitute, complete with her pimp who stood in the middle of my street screaming profanities at the motorist who kindly asked him to get out of the road.

I understand that it’s hard out here for a pimp, but hopefully these strawberry Nerds will help take the edge off.

It’s not that I’m scandalized by things like the ho and her daddy, because I live in the city and that shit happens, but it’s the fact that I have to give them free fucking candy that really chaps my ass. And don’t even come up in here tellin’ me I could refuse them candy, because I don’t want to spend the first week of November recovering from a hooker heel to the temple.

And then there are the INFANTS carried to my door so that I may give their ADULT PARENTS candy. Because unless they are supplementing their baby’s breastmilk diet with liquefied 3 Musketeers bars, it’s pretty obvious the candy thing is all about them scoring sweets from a perfect stranger. The kid is basically a prop in all of this as the adult walks up to my door, says trick-or-treat, holds out the bag, and then thanks me for my contribution to the Gainfully Employed Adults Who Don’t Feel Like Paying For Their Own Damn Candy Association. Look, I get it: your kid is fucking adorable dressed up like a pea pod or whatever, but he/she has no idea what’s going on and would take your boobs over Reese’s Pieces any day, so maybe sit it out this year, OK? Also, you are making me really nervous carrying your baby and a sackful of candy up and down my concrete stairs that are still covered with wet leaves even though we cut down that fucker months ago.

So, in sum, I am a total killjoy Halloween Scrooge. Thank you and good night.

Also, when HoST & I have a baby, I’ll probably be dragging that kid up and down the street for free Butterfingers before the cord is cut. Stay tuned for me to eat my words. But I draw the line at unnecessarily sexy costumes:

Holly Hobby? HOLLY FUCKING HOBBY? I give up.