There’s nothing better than a holiday classic, and no other movie hits all the high notes quite like It’s A Wonderful Life.
In Frank Capra’s masterpiece, we get all anyone wants in a Christmas movie: a gritty look at a small town loan officer’s slow descent into madness. Who can forget as George Bailey screams and shouts at his children, reducing his wife to tears as he destroys his house in a violent rage? Or the iconic holiday moment as he drunkenly slams his car into a historic tree and promptly flees the scene?
And there’s nothing more festive than a little insurance fraud, right? Well, unless you count insurance fraud with a dash of suicidal thoughts thrown in! Fortunately, this movie gives us all that and more as we witness our hero attempt to fix his company’s books with ill-begotten life insurance payouts.
Of course, the emotional apex arrives when the impoverished townspeople band together to fork over their life savings to George, only to find out that a wealthy benefactor has already covered the costs. George does not return anyone’s money. It’s literally the perfect Christmas classic.
If you aren’t already familiar with Afroman’s iconic Christmas album, A Colt 45 Christmas, you should immediately gather your whole extended family around your shitty phone speaker and have a listen together. It is the most extravagantly heavy-handed piece of art ever created, and it is a testament to what mankind can achieve when it is very stoned.
Our favorite track is “Police Blow My Wad,” which is set to the tune of “Feliz Navidad.” The entire body of lyrics contains a total of 14 discrete words:
Police, blow my wad Police, blow my wad Police, blow my wad Police, blow my wad
I wish the cops stop fuckin’ with us I wish the cops stop fuckin’ with us I wish the cops stop fuckin’ with us I wish the cops stop fuckin’ with us
A Christmas tune that has a catchy hook and a meaningful social justice message? What more could we ask for this holiday season?!
Worst: “O Holy Night” by Michael McDonald
We’ll get this out of the way, because it’s obvious: it is an inexplicable affront to God that Michael McDonald made a Christmas album. It’s titled Season of Peace: The Christmas Collection, but it would be more aptly titled Season of Piss: The Taintsweat Collection, because it is actually that bad.
While it is a demanding task to pick the very worst song on this album, we have risen to the occasion and made a surprisingly easy choice: McDonald’s cover of “O Holy Night,” which is unequivocal proof that a benevolent God does not exist.
What’s so bad about it, you ask? How could a cover of O Holy Night be such fundamental ass?
Well, a few things. First, the singer is, uh, Michael McDonald, whose vocal timbre is comparable to a malfunctioning leafblower. Second, some godless heathen—let’s face it, probably Michael McDonald—made the unconscionable decision to arrange the song in a Bossa Nova style.
Third, it isn’t even proper Bossa Nova. It’s Bossa Nova in 7/8 with heavy string accompaniment. In other words, it’s just shitty fucking smooth jazz with a vaguely Brazilian beat.
This song is basically elevator music, but you’re trapped in the elevator, and you know deep down inside that you’re never going to escape, and it’s Christmas morning, and all your loved ones are celebrating, but you’re just stuck in the elevator, and the only other person in the elevator is Tomi Lahren, and she’s shouting about Guatemalan immigrants while subtly dancing a Samba to the insufferable tones of Michael McDonald’s groans, set to a funky Latin arrangement of “O Holy Night.”
NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts are great. Your favorite musicians! Reworked, acoustic-ish covers of your favorite songs! Painstakingly curated shelves!
But there’s one thing these performances are missing: tiny desks.
For too long has the liberal radio media lied to us about the size of the so-called “tiny desk.” That’s probably because they thought we could only hear what was happening. But the visual truth is out there, folks. Feast your eyes on the relative size of this desk:
Exhibit A
Lizzo is comfortably performing at this desk. Lizzo is approximately 5’10” (a very normal height), and it looks like she could spend hours at that desk working the phones for NPR’s annual donation drive. You could fit two interns at a minimum in that work station and still have enough room for your nonchalantly located Emmy. Thus, the desk is likely a very normal-sized desk and not, as we’ve been led to believe, a so-called “tiny” desk.
It’s time for NPR to come clean with America. Either rename the series “Normal-Sized-for-the-Modern-Gig-Economy Desk Concerts,” or else find a size-appropriate desk.
Give us what we want. T. Pain sitting on one of those middle school desks where the chair and the desk are all one fused piece of steel and linoleum. The Hot 8 Brass Band gathered around a nice 17th century boudoir piece. Taylor Swift struggling to keep up on a standing desk/treadmill apparatus while she plays her deepest cuts (sitting is the new smoking people).
Mr. Boilen, from NPR’s All Songs Considered, please. Make. These. Tiny. Desks. Actually. Tiny.
Love Actually is a heartwarming tale about people finding heterosexual love in a post-9/11 global order. But, as we start another holiday season, it’s important to remember that the Christmas classic also isn’t not about the rising trend of nationalism, alt-conservatism, and retrenchment from the international, pluralistic values we once held as dear as Emma Thompson. Here’s why:
A globalist cuck (Colin Firth), hopelessly constrained by his effeminacy (turtleneck sweaters), is cast out of England and into the arms of the Continent (Aurélia).
Meanwhile, the virile Hugh Grant becomes infatuated with the white female body (Natalie) and the small-town England she represents (octopus boy). This nationalistic impulse culminates in the prime minister putting his nation ahead of its commitment to foreign allies (Billy Bob Thornton).
A philandering snake-oil salesman wins over Wisconsin (sex-god Colin).
The old way is dying (Liam Neeson’s wife), and fake news is propagating (Martin Freeman’s adult film).
Not to mention the underlying paranoia about foreign influence, which causes borders to reify and security concerns to escalate (Jojeen Reed running through an airport to send off an immigrant as she’s returning to her home nation).
It’s probably too obvious to bear repeating, but Mia’s “dark corners for doing dark deeds” is a patent head-nod to 4chan.
Laura Linney, much like an England that’s growing increasingly frustrated with the EU’s flagging economies, is tired of dealing with the constant needs of her sick brother (Spain/Greece).
The deep state is always watching (wedding videographer) and communicates in nefarious ways (cue cards).
Baby, Baby Driver: 4.6 out of 5. Great song selection. Drove well even though wearing sunglasses at night.
Handsome Rob, The Italian Job: 2.9 out of 5. Claimed to be an XL. Was not an XL.
Driver, Drive: 4.1 out of 5. Punctual. Little to no conversation. Scorpion jacket could use a dry cleaning.
Tony Lipp, The Green Book: 3.3 out of 5. Somehow less racist than a replacement-level Uber driver, but wouldn’t stop eating fried chicken? Also, not a getaway driver. Fine, but don’t get what all the hype was about.
Dom Toretto, The Fast and the Furious: 4.4 out of 5. Great conversation—he talked all about his family.
Rudolph, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: 4.9 out of 5. Came through big time when I needed to boost a toy shipment off a remote island.
Of all the entries in Lee’s bibliography, this one definitely stands out. An endearing tribute to how self-centered Truman Capote could be even as a child, TKAM is a towering work of fiction and a no-brainer for this week’s selection to our Harper Lee Book of the Week list.
Tune in next week to find out which Lee book makes the cut—will it be her take on Alan Moore’s classic superhero deconstruction, Go Set a Watchman, or her short story collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find? Since you’re a member of the #LeeLegion, we guess you’re okay with waiting a long time for the sequel!
GUYS. THIS MOVIE. Okay first, we have to talk about the CGI. I mean… their eyes. THEIR EYES. It’s haunting and frightening, but not really in a beautiful way? Like it’s more of a “we decided this movie needed to cost 250 million USD so that if it makes less than 1 billion USD we all get fired” kind of way.
But it’s not all bad. Just look at the star-studded cast. It’s got Emmy winners and Oscar winners and Tony winners (probably… I’m worried if I google the Tony’s I’ll get targeted ads for sequined dinner jackets for the rest of my life). Folks, it’s more A-list talent than my 8th grade birthday party when one of the popular kids came by for a minute.
And of course, the plot is one we all know and love. There’s betrayal and character growth and lengthy dancing montages—and, as required by federal law, a weirdly sexualized feline. It is EVERYTHING fans are looking for in a family film this year.
And then there’s the nostalgia factor. Maybe you first saw the tale on Broadway. Maybe you’ll prefer the 90’s version. But no matter what, we can all agree that this whole thing was very strange and probably unnecessary. Now, to take a big gulp of my covfefe and check out the latest Kanye new–
There is no doubt: Pillowtalk is the single greatest song ever written. It makes every one of Beethoven’s symphonies look like steaming piles of decaying horseshit. The fact that The Beatles are still on Spotify when Pillowtalk is literally RIGHT THERE is widely considered to be among the greatest crises of our times. This, we all agree on.
But… is it more of a bop? Or a jam? Or maybe a banger? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. But the questions don’t stop there. What about all the other former One Direction members? Have they released songs post-breakup too? And if so, are those songs bops, bangers, or jams?
Folks, this calls for nothing less than our best data visualization. Unfortunately, we were all out of that. So here, have this color-coded tri-axis scatterplot instead:
Yeah, we listened to every song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 released by a former 1D member after the band broke up. But we didn’t just do the easy part. We did the hard part too: we plotted each of those songs along three axes (bops, bangers and jams*) and color coded them by artist.
Why did we do this? For liberty and justice, probably. But what did this show us? A few things:
Harry Styles is a jam machine. Spread this sweet boy on some hearty 11-grain toast cause he is 100% organic cage-free jam.
Niall, on the hand, is committed to bops—and for a while I was worried that he just couldn’t stop. But then, in the year of our lord 2019, something happened. He stopped. And what we got was his first ever jam, Nice to Meet Ya. Our nation’s top scientists must remain vigilant to see what he does next. More jams? A return to bops? Or, dare I say it, a banger?! A frightened nations waits to find out.
And then there’s Zayn. Yes, Pillowtalk is undeniably a banger. Perhaps the most banging banger that every banged. But he checks in with bops and jams too! My guy’s a versatile king and frankly, we love to see it.
Finally, we must discuss Liam. Criminally underrated Liam. The only 1D member with even a single Migo on any of his tracks. The soft-spoken lad who has *checks notes* consistently released certified bangers every year since the band dissolved? Honestly, I’m proud of him. But I’m even prouder of me for being proud of him.
What we do with this information is surely for the courts to decide. But know this: as long as the boys are making music, we’ll be plotting it in a scatterly fashion. With Pillowtalk on repeat in the background, obviously.
____ *If you don’t know the difference between the Three Types Of Songs I honestly don’t even know what to tell you.
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