Top 5 Christmas Special Songs

My 6 favorite songs from the classic American animated television Christmas specials of the 60s, 70s, and 80s:

6. "Hark! The Herald Angels" -- Loo Loo Loo version from A Charlie Brown Christmas

First of all, A Charlie Brown Christmas must have a representative song on any reasonable list about great television Christmas specials and their music. Vince Guaraldi's score is iconic ("Christmas Time is Here" was employed by the writers of Arrested Development to help portray Charlie Brown-style abject personal rejection on the show).  There is so much to love on that soundtrack.  But to me, nothing says Christmas like the Peanuts gang loo-loo-looing the melody of "Hark! The Herald Angels" with their noses pointed up to the sky except when they pause for a collective inhale.  

5. "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" -- Twas the Night Before Christmas

Twas the Night Before Christmas is a bit of an odd special.  It doesn't really portray Santa in a very flattering light.  He's apparently kind of a hypersensitive jerk.  He decides not to deliver toys one Christmas because a cabal of adolescent nerd mice wrote a letter to the editor of some one-horse town's local paper and denied his existence. Sheesh!  He could be a trophy wife on one of those reprehensible Real Housewives shows. Still "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" is a pleasant, uplifting, little ditty performed in the special by Joel Grey (You probably know him as the martial arts master trainer, Chiun, in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins).

4. "The Island of Misfit Toys" -- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

This is another special where Santa comes across pretty poorly...at least at the beginning. Seriously, St. Nick, what's with the reindeer bigotry, man? And why is a glowing red nose any more of a mark of shame  than that bizarre shock of anthropomorphic blond hair on Fireball's scalp? I don't think I'll ever understand Arctic culture.
Anyway, I look forward to Rudolph and Herbie's visit to the Island of Misfit Toys every time I watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  The song plays a big part in that.   The intro is eerie and sad but after a few seconds the tune turns chipper and hopeful. But my favorite part is the roll call of misfit toys. Some of them are odd and silly -- right up my alley humor-wise. A water pistol that shoots jelly? A cowboy that rides an Ostrich? Those aren't just simple manufacturing rejects.  That's some serious toy design weirdness there.

Now it has been almost 50 years since Rudolph was first broadcast.  Let me see if I can provide some new misfit toys for the modern era.
1.) A first-person shooter video game that isn't available on XBox. (a swing and miss!)
2.) A Ninjago Lego kit with only green square blocks. (strike two!)
3.) A doll that doesn't include any voice recognition software (Aaaaand you're out!)
Okay, I give up.

3. "We Three Kings" -- A Claymation Christmas Celebration

Back in the 80s, the California Raisin Advisory Board launched an ad campaign featuring dancing singing claymation raisins performing R&B classics, and it worked. They were extremely popular.  Not bad for a product that fundamentally looks like rabbit poop. In 1987, CBS took that popularity and broadcast a half-hour Christmas special of claymation sketches and videos set to Christmas music.  The California Raisins were featured performing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".  The special won an Emmy, but somehow failed to break into the Rankin-Bass style pantheon of classic Christmas specials.
In any case, I've always liked the version of "We Three Kings" they put together for that special.  The three kings themselves sing the verses in a straight-forward traditional style, but their hip camels, replete with leather shoes and bow ties, jazz up the chorus.  It's pretty great.

2. "Heat Miser/Snow Miser" -- The Year without a Santa Claus

The Year without a Santa Claus has always been my favorite animated Christmas special, and that's almost entirely due to the Miser Brothers.  I love those guys. The dry humor.  The cool supernatural powers. The team of Mini-Me minions.  What's not to love?  The performances are perfect, too.  Snow miser is frenetic and wiry.  Heat Miser slows the tune down a bit so it picks up a little flavor of a New Orleans summer.  So good!,  There's really not much more to say.

1. "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" -- How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Well of course this is number one. You have to love the rich booming bass of Thurl Ravenscroft (yep, that was his name).  He could have just repeated the lyrics "You suck, Mr. Grinch" one hundred times, and it would have been awesome.  But instead, Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel penned some appropriately Seussian lyrics and made history.  They're icky without being gross ("nauseous super naus", indeed), and spooky without being frightening. Geisel certainly paints the Grinch as a dark-hearted dude without making him seem irredeemable or evil, which is important for the narrative.  It might be interesting to hear the song as rewritten by Rob Zombie, but I don't think it would have fit in the story.  There's little doubt in my mind that "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" was a stroke of pure genius.

Theo gets his first wins

My wife and I had a baby the day after Christmas, 2011.  As much as anything else, that explains why this blog has gone on an extended hiatus.  Pregnancy and planning and baby-having and more life stuff have all gotten in the way since I last wrote a post for this blog.

But I'm back.  Know why?  Because that baby we had on Boxing Day is now big enough to take to local baseball games.  In fact, he's been to games at both AT&T Park and O.co Coliseum.  This post is a report on how those games went.

July 15, 2012 -- Houston Astros 2, San Francisco Giants 3.

Theo's first MLB game ever.  I would have preferred to start him out in Oakland, of course, but this game was also a birthday gift for my wife so the Giants got priority.  It's fine.  I've gotten over it.  In any case, it was good choice for a first game because it featured Giants starter Matt Cain facing the very team he threw a perfect game against only a month earlier -- the hapless Houston Astros.  The fans genuinely believed that Cain was going to repeat his June 13th performance.  He didn't, but the Gigantes won, so everyone went home happy, anyway.

I bought us tickets in the cushy digs of the Club Level so we could access to the cozy indoor seating in case of inclement weather or just general baby fussiness.   The weren't cheap, but they were definitely the right choice.  Our actual seats were on the third base side under the View Level overhang so we didn't have to worry about shielding ourselves from the infamous skin-charring San Francisco summer sun (note to those unfamiliar with SF: ain't no sun here in the summer).

The game included a free Madison Bumgarner (I call him Mubby because his real name sucks) bobblehead to the first 25,000 fans to arrive.  We got there early enough to get ours, but that meant standing in line for 30 minutes to get into the park.  We parked at a half a mile from the Orlando Cepeda entrance, and we literally (the real kind of literally not the kind that doesn't mean literally at all) got in line within 100 yards of leaving the parking lot.  In retrospect, this may not have had an entirely positive effect on our boy.

Theo had a bit of a tough time through the pre-game rigamarole and the first couple innings.  While we found our seats and ate our ballpark lunches, Theo grumbled and whined.  Early in the game, I took him to the men's room for a diaper change (it had been a while), and he did NOT like it one bit.  After we got back to our seats, the excitement of the day finally overwhelmed him, and he fell asleep in my arms for about an inning and a half.  He was fine after that.

Frankly, the game wasn't that exciting.  I barely remember it.  Part of the problem was the Astros.  They're a bad team having a bad season.  They have exactly one player of interest, Jose Altuve, their shortstop.  That's it.  I'm actually pretty glad that they'll be joining the AL West next season.   I'd love to have another crappy team around for the A's to beat up on (I hope I didn't just jinx that).  The Giants didn't really help matters, either.  Bruce Bochy definitely assembled a B-team line-up.  The now disgraced and suspended Melky Cabrera didn't even play to pad his testosterone-enhanced stats.  At least no one can claim that the win was tainted by PEDs.

Looking over the box score, I can see that no one hit very much.  The Giants got a bunch of walks.  And Matt Cain and the Giants' bullpen were effective.  'Nuff said.  I do remember that when we left around the 7th inning, the final score was already locked in, so we didn't really miss much.

Despite some dark moments, Theo began his live-and-in-person baseball watching career on a good note.

August 19, 2012 -- Cleveland Indians 0, Oakland Athletics 7.

This past Sunday afternoon we finally evened out the split loyalties of our household by taking Theo to his first Oakland A's game.  This time my wife bought the tickets.  In the light of ticket prices at beautiful AT&T Park, the smart strategy when picking seats at for the less popular East Bay team playing in the clunky out-of-date dump currently known as O.co Coliseum is to "go big or stay home."  Duckie honored this approach.  The seats I bought in the mezzanine level well into the outfield down the third base line at AT&T Park cost nearly twice as much as the seats Duckie bought 16 rows behind home plate at the Coliseum.  Of course, I was also paying a premium to get access to the Club Level accommodations in San Francisco, but you can be sure that equivalent seats in the two parks don't have equivalent impacts on your pocketbook.

Anyway, the seats were great, and so was the weather.  It was sunny without being to hot.  Like in San Francisco, there was a giveaway gift for attending the game -- a green T-shirt commemorating the A's record-setting 20 game winning streak in 2002.  This time, however, we arrived too late and went home only with our ticket stubs to serve as mementos.*

The visiting club was the Cleveland Indians.  I was much more excited about them than the Astros the month before.  They're a nominally better team (still very much out of the playoff hunt, though), but more importantly they have a team stacked with really cool names.  Maybe, I only feel that way because due to a general ignorance of traditional Hispanic first names, but I stand by my position.  The Indians players had names like Asdrubal, Ezequiel, and Esmil while the A's trotted out two guys named Josh, a Brandon and Derek (they get some points for Coco, Yoenis, and Jemile, though).

The game was fun, mostly because the A's were so dominant.  A's starting pitcher Jarrod Parker had a good outing, and the hitting showed up as well.  Brandon Moss and Coco Crisp hit homers, and the team tacked on a few more runs earned through less potent methods as well.  More importantly, the Indians didn't get anyone home at all.

I think Theo had a slightly better time at this game.  For now, I'll refrain from assuming it's because he's already dedicated his baseball allegiance to the A's.  The timing was probably just a little better with respect to eating and napping.  Once again, we left after 7 innings or so, but all the scoring was already done

Thus far Theo appears to be a bit of a good luck charm for our local MLB clubs.  Let's hope the streak continues for a while.  Go A's and Giants!

*This actually isn't true.  At both parks we stopped by guest services and got Theo his official First Game certificates.  They're pretty low tech, but they're free.