Pop Shots - Official Guide to Holiday Revelry


Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings. Covering all things pop culture, this week, with Christmas just a few days away, Pop Shots is hitting you with a special Holiday themed edition of the column. Of course, being a music column, the focus will be on the music of the season, and since it’s Pop Shots you know everything is seasoned with a little bit of attitude.

* Christmas music has, for the most part, been pretty stagnant for the past 60 or so years. Yes, we’ve let a few new songs sneak their way into our holiday festivities, like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” but a new Christmas song that sticks is about as rare as R. Kelly dating someone old enough to get into an R rated movie without him. With that in mind, the first step to a great holiday is to write your own Christmas song.

Crow T. Robot, of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame, gives us a perfect example of how to do this, as he and his fellow shipmates sing his holiday musical creation, “Let’s Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas.”


* Now, I realize not everyone likes Christmas, and if you fall into that category perhaps you’ll want to write something that doesn’t necessarily embrace everything about the holiday. If seeing displays of decorations and wrapping paper in your local drug store, and jolly Santas on people’s lawns, gets you more riled up than Kanye West seeing anyone other than Kanye West win an award, I suggest going the Oscar the Grouch route with your song.


* Do NOT, however, under any circumstance, write a Christmas song about your genitals. You hear me, Lady Gaga? Oh, you didn’t hear me? Sh*t!


* Once you’ve written your Christmas song, it will be time to spread your Christmas cheer, or loathing, via the time honored tradition of caroling, which is, at its essence, walking up to strangers’ houses and singing in their lawn, or driveway, until they come outside. It’s all very Lloyd Dobler, just without the boombox.

You’re going to want to have some friends along when you go caroling, and I suggest, if it’s at all possible, those friends be GWAR (RIP Oderus Urungus).


* Finally, after a long day of writing music, singing in the cold, and potentially annihilating some inflatable lawn ornaments, you’re going to want to go home, make a cup of tea, or cocoa, and curl up on the sofa to watch a Christmas classic. My personal choice involves a serial killing snowman, and it features Shannon Elizabeth in her first major role.


And with that, you are ready for the holidays! Enjoy your Christmas, I'll be back next week with more shots on all things pop.

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