Next Time I'll Just Ask For A Beer

Most people are amused by my lack of sophistication in regards to wine. Most, but not all. To wit:

StereoNinja*: Do you want some wine?

Me: Sure

StereoNinja: OK, white or red?

Me: Whichever one tastes the most like candy.

StereoNinja: Neither, this is not fucking sangria.


*StereoNinja, like MrBalls, is a blog name that is barely (if at all) related to the person it is meant to indicate, due mainly to the fact that I decided to post something about him at a time when he was unavailable to discuss what he'd like to be called. I googled "bad fake superhero names" and this is what I got. He is not an actual ninja**. Or a stereo.

**OR IS HE?

More Holiday Earhole Joyousness

I haven't been feeling well at all lately, and that is the excuse I am using for backdating this post to Friday when I'm actually sitting here writing it on Tuesday. It's not because I forgot to do it until just now. Nope. Not at all. Behold, your funny/cheesy/classic Christmas songs that don't suck of the week:

Rudolph and Gang - "Here Comes Fatty Claus": I have no idea whether this is a real band or a made up one just for the sake of this song, but googling it seems to indicate the latter. The only place I have ever seen it is on the John Waters Christmas album, and you should probably just go ahead and buy the whole thing because John Waters picked all the songs, which virtually guarantees there's something slightly insane about all of them. If that doesn't sell it, then let me inform you that the first line of this song is "Here comes fatty with his sack of shit". Yeah, thought so.

Chris Isaac - "Christmas on TV": Ok, this isn't exactly a cheesy song, but I am categorizing it as such because I got yelled at last month for owning anything by Chris Isaac at all (suck it, Simon). It does start out as a cheesy song (a guy missing his lady on Christmas because she's far away) but somewhere in the middle it takes a hard left turn and becomes one of the most depressing Christmas songs I've ever heard (it's his ex-wife and she's really just around the corner living in his old house with her rich new boyfriend). And since I am a horrible person it makes me laugh every time.

The Beach Boys - "Little Saint Nick": You know you love it. Stop pretending like you don't. No one is fooled.

40 Days Friday Music Update

Ok, so I was so wrapped up in my public nudity event, I completely forgot to blog y'all some holiday music on Friday, so I'm going to cheat and backdate this post I'm writing to Friday (it's Monday night) and also meet the funny song/cheesy song/classic song criteria all in one song because I'm too lazy to pick three songs out. So here it is:

"Santa Claus and His Old Lady" - Cheech and Chong: My dad has very one dimensional taste in music. As in the only band he likes is Led Zeppelin, much to the chagrin of my step mother. In fact, there's only two songs I've ever heard him listen to on purpose that aren't Led Zeppelin songs: Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" on Thanksgiving, and "Santa Claus and His Old Lady" at Christmas time. This is a stoner Christmas masterpiece (such a stoner masterpiece that I'm suddenly wondering why he let us listen to this all the time when we were little). Recession, repression - it's all the same thing, man.

This Is A Totally Normal Conversation In My World

The gorilla texted me in the middle of the fucking night on Monday to find out what I was doing this week.

Me: Just now realizing I forgot to respond to your text because I was half asleep when I got it. Pretty busy doing things involving nail polish and nipple tape from now until showtime on Saturday night. Next week I should be less busy, other than adding MORE TREES to my dwelling.

The gorilla: How can I not buy into the "nipple tape" excuse?
Of course, I am off to zee Germany next Monday evening, and will gone some days...but I will make something work. I want a tour of the Christmas forest.

Me: Forest will be up at least until the new year, no worries.
Nipple tape - for the discerning stripper who's not quite ready to go full frontal.

Once Again, Here's Some Stuff To Listen To

It's Friday, and therefore time for another installment of holiday tunage you (probably) won't hate. I'll follow my funny song/cheesy song/modern classic format that I just realized I accidentally set forth in the first two posts.

The Clydesdale - "Imo Shoot Me A Reindeer": The Clydesdale is an alt country/rockabilly band based in Las Vegas, and this song can be found on the absolute masterpiece of a compilation MERRY X-MAS DAMMIT From The Double Down Saloon. It is far and away my favorite Christmas song to sing. As if the rest of the song isn't good enough, the interlude in the middle of it when the singer's neighbor asks her "What in the name of my beer can Christmas tree do you think you're about to do over there with that rifle?" really sells it.

They Might Be Giants - "Santa's Beard": I love TMBG so suck it. This is classic Giants, in true Giants style. Originally on their second album Lincoln from 1988, it can also be found on their Christmas EP, Holidayland.

The Ramones - "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)": The Ramones, I said. Own it or you're stupid.

Amber And Heather: Food "Lovers"

H-town: i have no motivation left today

me: yeah, i feel you dawg

H-town: if you worked in DC, we could just leave and go drink a beer

me: totes. or if you worked in chicago

H-town: mm hmm

me: beer...and tacos. TACOS

H-town: i had a huge burrito for lunch
chipotle, she is my weakness

me: she is a cruel mistress
who can resist the lime cilantro rice? who?

H-town: those 30lb burritos! OH!

me: i want to say no, but every time she holds her finger to my lips and says "sshhhhh, no one has to know. let me show you what i can do with my sour cream."

H-town: HAHAHAHA
for me, it's the guac that costs $2 extra
"Sshhhhh, you'll want me."

me: it's like, at that point you've already fucked it all up. you might as well go all in

H-town: yup

Or Too Early To Help With The Next One?

The mutineer (on his Facebook status): .... FUCK. I dont remember how I got home last night.

Me: Well done, sir.

One hour later

The mutineer: I just woke up... again. I have a boner and I think im still drunk
did i just say that out loud?

Me: No, you typed it. With one hand, I assume.

Four hours later

Friend of the mutineer:  I appear to have come across this conversation four hours too late

The mutineer:  It's not too late for your input, [friend] ;-)

Me: probably too late to help with the boner situation though.

Day 30 And We Made It, Dammit, We Made It

I would like to have written something brilliantly profound or hilarious for the last day of NaBloPoMo, but unfortunately I went to Victoria's Secret at lunch because I needed a nice nightie and robe for my show.

I don't know if it's like this at every Victoria's Secret, but the one on Michigan Avenue has some crazy-attentive sales associates. Five, count them, FIVE different people came up to me inside the first five minutes I was there. It was an insane parade of helpfulness that was not helpful at all. "Zomigod, hi! Welcome to Victoria's Secret! Can I help you find something? Did you know this whole thing right here is on sale? Do you know what size you are? I can totally measure your boobs right now in the middle of the store! We have a new perfume! All of our whatever-the-shit collection is buy two get one free! Do you want to get discounts in your e-mail because we will totally send you coupons! How about a new bra? Do you need a new bra? Because we TOTALLY sell bras here!" The thing they all seemed the most excited about was this t-shirt* they were "giving" away: "If you spend $75 in the store today you get this free t-shirt THAT PREMIERED AT OUR FASHION SHOW!" Four out of five helpful associates pointed this out. I ended up getting one because let's face it, you buy a lipstick in there it's going to cost you $75. It is awful. It is some kind of slate color and has metallic/sparkly writing on it that says something like "HOLY FUCK WE HAD A FASHION SHOW AGAIN". It's as thin as a piece of paper, has a seam up the middle of the back (ok I don't know a lot about clothes, but I do know that is not how you sew a t-shirt) and they only had mediums left, which is interesting because the medium could fit on an elephant.

I came back to the office and rushed into BrownsFan's office to show her my new underpants (as I'm sure you do with coworkers at your job, right?) and also try to pawn off the train wreck of a shirt on her. She didn't bite, though she did sit there helping me make fun of it and pointing out other problems with it I hadn't even noticed, like how the neck is all stretched out weird and it has some sort of bizarre flap hanging down in the back. And that is when she showed me the link to the fine gentlemen over at Project Rungay who have kindly reviewed the Victoria's Secret Fashion show, starting with the brilliant line "Your heterosexual mating rituals are just so darn hilarious and confusing to us." This entire blog post is really just a set up to the link for their two part review, which you can find here and here. Enjoy.

Thus ends NaBloPoMo 2011.

Fin.
*I wanted to put a link here to this absolute piece of shit of a shirt, but I can't find it on the VS website anywhere, not even under "Supermodel Essentials", a heading that pissed me off in a major way, in large part because it's a bunch of fucking sweatpants. In fact, the whole website seems like it's designed to make me angry. There's a section called "Very Sexy Seduction" which I guess is as opposed to the other kind of seduction that isn't sexy at all. Also, underneath a giant banner ad for free slippers is a note that reads "Watch the supermodel slipper video, then meet the matching pajamas" (emphasis mine). Meet them? MEET the pajamas? Oh my god, go fuck yourself, I am not watching a video of goddamn slippers and I certainly don't want to have a fucking conversation with any pajamas. What is wrong with you, seriously?

UPDATE: BrownsFan read that I couldn't find the shirt on the website and thought to herself "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" It's this one, except mine is grey rather than black. This piece of crap apparently retails for 45 real fucking American dollars. They have got to be kidding.

Day 29 And I'm A Star! (A Little)

I'm just now back from dance rehersal for the group burlesque number at the student show at Martyr's on December 10th and I am very excited about it, despite the fact that everything hurts right now because double rehersals suck bowls full of dick and my abs, good lord, the pain. So. Much. Pain.

I'm trying not to read too much into it, but the lines have been set and I am in the front row just stage right of center, despite being taller than many of the girls behind me. There's a possibility that this is because our instructor thinks I'm one of the better dancers. It could also not mean that, and merely be an indication that I've got the choreography down more than some of the others. And, of course, they don't really know me all that well, but there's a slim chance they've sensed what kind of not-a-lady I am and have put me in the front row because they know I will not be nervous about taking off all my clothes as opposed to some of the women who have specifically requested to be in the back row. All I know is I didn't make a request for any specific row, I was just told to go stand in front so I did.

I've had a number of people tentatively ask me if I wanted people to come, or if I'd prefer they didn't because of concerns it might be easier to take my clothes off in front of strangers rather than people I actually know. If you're one of the people who has been wondering this but hasn't asked me, here's what I told everyone else: I have no problem with anyone coming to see me in this show, but I am not going to ask anyone to go. This is not because I don't want you there, it's because I'm part of a group number that is a part of a student show. I'm going to be onstage for less than three minutes with 16 other girls and I'm not comfortable asking people to spend $15 and sit through tons of other numbers in order to witness my three minutes of shared fame. But you're more than welcome to do that if you'd like. All the other numbers will involve girls getting undressed as well, which is pretty cool. It's not like you'd be sitting through an entire Star Trek convention to catch a brief glimpse of my ass. Tickets are available here if you want them.

Day 28 And It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like They Shouldn't Have Given Me An Office

The CEO came in my office last week asking where all the Christmas decorations were. I told him it would be a motherfucking Christmas wonderland in here if it were up to me, but that if I started decorating the office before Thanksgiving there is a good chance that someone might stab me. He agreed that this was a legitimate concern.

Today, though, it is officially the first office day after Thanksgiving, so my first order of business was to start setting up the few things I already had left over from my Cave of Wonders days (this is what I called my cubicle at the old office space, but only in my head - they know I am crazy but it's fun to keep them guessing just how much): little felt stockings were tacked to the wall, my somewhat sparse Christmas village was arranged on top of my overhead cabinets and three wire trees covered in glitter were placed on a shelf (and now everything in my office is covered in glitter because glitter is the herpes of craft supplies). It wasn't nearly enough crap. Emergency decoration shopping was in order.

The nearest place where I knew there to be Christmas swag was downstairs at the CVS, so I headed down and grabbed the first few random things I saw, bagged them up and came back upstairs. COO and BrownsFan were sitting in the conference room when I came in, so I stopped to show BrownsFan what I'd gotten - a nutcracker, an old style German Santa, and a mealy little two foot "lighted" (in quotes, because lighted usually means the lights are already on the tree when you buy it. Not this time, they were just shoved in the box with the tree and a bunch of shitty plastic ornaments, but what do you want for $9?) tree. BrownsFan and I then briefly discussed potential wiring configurations for the various things I was planning to set up that would require a flow of electricity. This was the point at which COO finally realized what was actually happening. "Wait, so some of those things are going in your office?" he asked me, gesturing to the two GIANT bags I was struggling not to drop.

"What do you mean 'some'? ALL OF THESE THINGS are going in my office. Plus more things. I'm going to turn the air vent into a giant candy cane, and an office that size needs at least two trees. This is just what I managed to find at CVS."

BrownsFan turned to the now gaping at me in shock COO and told him what she'd known in her heart all along: "We never should have given her so much space."

Day 27 And Bob Costas Puts The Smack Down

When Cap and I were growing up, our father had a very succinct way of explaining the right way to demonstrate sportsmanship. "Act like you've been there before," he told us, and I like to think that we grew up to be people who are gracious in both victory and defeat.

In case you missed it, Bob Costas went on a rant of Andy Rooney proportions at halftime tonight, and it was one of the best halftime segments in recent memory. I wholly and entirely concur with his assessment. End zone celebrations have now become a dick swinging contest of who can act like the biggest egotistical asshole and it's probably too late to put that genie back in the bottle, but if you absolutely have to act like a complete fucktard, you should at least be able to draw the line ahead of the point where you cost your team a penalty and valuable yardage.

Having said that, if Stevie Johnson had ended his Plaxico thigh shooting pantomime by Tebowing, I would have pissed myself laughing.

Day 26 And I've Learned My Lesson

Look, I admit it. It's entirely my fault. I shouldn't have gotten cocky - Han Solo knows best, after all.

You may recall sometime last week that the bartender and I were complaining about a lack of creativity in sitcom writing as far as Thanksgiving episodes, and my specific complaint that holiday cooking disasters are simply not that frequent (exclusive of those who wind up burning the house down via deep frying the turkey and by the way, America, this is why you're fat). I've long felt this way, but it was only last week that I was compelled to write it down and thereby ensure a near disaster in my own kitchen this Thanksgiving.

Of course, I can't really take all the blame here. Roasting a turkey requires a roasting pan. We don't own a real roasting pan, owing to the bartender arguing that they are a bitch to wash afterward (which is a ridiculous point given that he's not the one who winds up having to wash it, but whatever) (and in fairness, we don't actually have room for one in our kitchen right now anyway). Instead, he goes out and buys me a crappy disposable one every year, and even though it's crappy, I'm not going to pretend I don't like having one less dish I need to wash. Point being, I roast turkeys in a flimsy piece of aluminum. This has never been a problem in the past, but as stated before, this is because I've never bragged about how it's never been a problem in the past either. Turns out, this would be the year.

All was going along according to my meticulously well laid out plans, as always. An hour before the turkey should have been done, I opened up the oven to put the stuffing in. I'd put the roasting pan in sideways earlier because that was easiest, but now the stuffing wasn't going to fit next to it, so I picked it up slightly and spun it sideways to make room, put the stuffing and the parsnips in next to it, closed the oven and walked away. Ten minutes later the bartender came into the living room and asked me "Why is there smoke pouring out of the oven?"

I went to check. He was not fucking kidding, smoke was absolutely billowing out of the fucker, and when I opened it I instantly saw why: when I spun the shitty roasting pan sideways it had ripped slightly. The drippings had leaked out of the pan into the bottom of the oven and ignited. "MOTHERFUCK." That was me. Less because my oven was on fire than because it was obvious my hubris was the cause of my downfall.

The thing is, you can actually look at this another way. I immediately went into crisis mode: I shut the gas off, pulled the turkey out of the oven, siphoned off as much of the juice as I could of what was left, reinforced the bottom of the pan with aluminum foil and put the whole thing on top of a cookie sheet, turned the oven back on after the fire was out and put the turkey back in. The ruination of Thanksgiving dinner was almost entirely averted. The turkey and the stuffing were unharmed and I'd even saved just enough of the drippings for the bartender to make some spec-fucking-tacular gravy. The only thing we lost were the parsnips, and as much as I love parsnips, I'm unlikely to complain about not getting to eat a vegetable (and anyway, there was corn). So my original point still stands, and may even be reinforced: it's NOT that hard to cook Thanksgiving dinner even if your oven catches fire and fills your entire apartment with smoke.

Day 25 And It's Another Christmas Music Installment

I was about to start writing a post about Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, but then I remembered that it's Friday so it's time to give you another three suggestions for Christmas songs that you might be able to get behind. To wit:

Richard Cheese - "Christmas In Las Vegas": In case you're not familiar with Richard Cheese, he is primarily known for covering popular songs in lounge music style, a la Frank Sinatra (Nirvana's "Rape Me" and Metallica's "Enter Sandman" are a couple of my faves). He has very few original songs, but this is one of them, and it's hilarious - Santa sells his sleigh for gambling money, and Mary gets a suite comped at the Wynn, which beats the shit out of a filthy stable any day of the week.

Barenaked Ladies - "Elf's Lament": To reiterate from last week's second selection, the rules of music listening do not apply to Christmas music, so there's no need to worry that I may have become a huge Barenaked Ladies fan when no one was looking. They have a brilliant Christmas album though, including this song in which the elves get fed up with working for shit wages and decide to start a union.

Run DMC - "Christmas in Hollis": Look, there are other rap Christmas songs. Hell, there are other rap Christmas songs by Run DMC for that matter. You can just go ahead and ignore all of those. This classic from 1987 is the only one you'll ever need. Trust me.

Day 24 And There's Nothing To Watch

The gorilla: Is it me or is there nothing on tv?

Me: It's fucking ridiculous. This is Thanksgiving. Shouldn't Star Wars be on, line, five channels right now?

The gorilla: I would even watch Phantom Menace right now. I am calling TBS. I am going to give those motherfuckers an earful.

Me: Excellent. While you're at it can you mention that their "Very Funny" lineup is not remotely funny? Thanks, you're a peach.

The gorilla: They hung up on me.

Me: I'm not surprised. You really should stop starting conversations with "Listen, you cunt"

Day 23 And The Gorilla Is Kind Of A Dick

The gorilla: I made my cousin cry cause I told her I think she may be a midget. Why is honesty not appreciated?

Me: ha ha ha ha ha you are my favorite

Day 22 And Irresponsible Spending Month Has Started A Bit Early

I poked my head in at Claire's this morning to see what they had because I'm a girl now and I'm told that one of the things girls do is accessorize. And wouldn't you know it? The place is filled with Christmas trinkets AS THOUGH THEY WERE EXPECTING ME. So I went in and pretended to mull over the things I wanted to purchase, even though I pretty much knew that in the end I was going to be like "One of each, please". When I went to the counter with all 7,000 or so small shiny objects, the salesgirl made what for anyone else would have been a pretty sound assumption. "Oh! Are you having a Christmas party?" she asked me.

"Nope, I'm just crazy," I replied with absolute honesty.

Anyway, long story even longer, I'm now sat at my desk in my office dressed in completely normal office attire* with the exception of a tiny black sequin fascinator top hat with glitter covered holly on it. This is significant, because as BrownsFan can attest, I think fascinators are the stupidest fashion trend pretty much ever. Oh, hey ladies! Hows about we all start wearing hats that are nowhere near big enough to fit on our heads? Because that's what hats are for, not making sure your head is covered! WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA! It isn't. At all. But if you stick a piece of holly on it and add some glitter, well then I am ALL IN, MOFOS.

Then there's the rest of this stuff that is still in the bag next to me, such as ornament shaped earrings (earrings? When have you ever seen me voluntarily wear earrings?), a hair clip with a mini santa hat on it (santa hat fascinator? Whatever, I don't care),  candy cane striped braces (suspenders, ya tools) and the crowning jewel: false eyelashes WITH TINY CHRISTMAS BOWS ATTACHED TO THEM. I don't even know who thought of this. I've never woken up in the morning thinking "You know what I need? Bows for my eyelashes." But as soon as I saw them I knew I'd needed them all along. And I've just recently learned how to apply false eyelashes! It's like a sign! Seriously, how could I NOT buy them?

Anywhore, I will now be accessorized like a proper girl for a while. A proper girl who is CHRISTMAS AS FUCK.

*Normal for me. There's not actually anyone else walking around in here wearing Chuck Taylors and a hoodie from a band called Dead To Me.

Day 21 And I'm Still Having Gender Issues

Me: I learned how to curl my hair yesterday. Like a girl.

CEO: (laughing (probably more at me than with me)) I'll just leave that one alone, dear.

I took a class in how to do your own hair in pin-up style yesterday, partly because it's something I should learn what with the burlesque and all, and partly because it was being taught by the amazing Sara Jean, who styled my hair for both of my photo shoots at Vavoom Pinups and it looked AWESOME. Also she is super cool. She's a good teacher (way better, in fact, than she thinks she is), but even so my hair looks a shit ton better when she does it than when I do it. It's hard to do on yourself anyway, but when you add in my left handedness and my complete lack of fine motor skills/ hand-eye coordination, you end up with weird crooked curls and burnt fingertips. At any rate, in addition to actual make up, I now also own a curling iron and hair spray. This is going to take some getting used to.

By the way, I did find out what a teasing comb is. It's actually just a really skinny brush with a pointy tail on the end, and it did not make fun of me. To my face anyway.

Day 20 And I Illustrate A Few Commercials That Don't Suck

"Are there any commercials that you actually like?" asked BrownsFan the other day when I was complaining about the one where the guy gets a good deal on a messaging plan and new phones and his cuntrag of a wife responds by tell him she should have married someone else because apparently advertisers think that we think it's fucking hilarious when a perfectly nice guy is married to a verbally abusive cuntrag (it isn't. Stop doing this).

As a matter of fact, there are several, particularly the overwhelming majority of promos for anything on ESPN. The one I'm liking right now is the College Game Day Man Satchel promo, but honestly, except for the ones where they desperately try to convince me that NASCAR is interesting, they rarely mess things up (speaking of screw ups, did anyone else see Lee Corson say "Aw, fuck it" on live television yesterday? Because it. Was. Awesome.).

I also love, and have always loved, The Most Interesting Man in the World. There's not a bad one in the bunch. In fact, even when he says nothing at all, it is still some of the best advertising on television.

See? It can be done!

Day 19 And Surprise! The Television Is Upsetting Me

The bartender pointed something out the other night while we were watching New Girl, and as much as I am loathe to criticize anything Zooey Deschanel is involved with because I want to kiss her whole face, I have to admit he has a point. Every single sitcom, every year, has an episode that revolves around making a disaster out of trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner. They are never funny, ever, and the reason why is this: It's not actually that hard to cook Thanksgiving dinner. It just isn't.

I know this because I've done it a number of times. And I really can't figure out how people think that putting a roast in the oven and leaving it there for hours is at all difficult. There is almost nothing you need to do with a turkey as far as roasting it, other than to remember to defrost the thing in time, but even if you forget that, there are completely thawed turkeys at the store and you can run out and get one if the one you bought isn't ready by the day before.

The most difficult part of making Thanksgiving dinner is getting the timing right, but even that isn't really that hard if you make a schedule. It's simple really, you work backwards: figure out what time you want to have dinner, figure out how long each individual dish takes to cook, subtract that from what time you want to serve dinner and write it all down in chronological order. You don't even need to factor in the prep work most of the time. You can bake the pumpkin pie a day or two ahead of time, cube bread for the stuffing and chop onion/celery/apples/whatever you put in your stuffing the night before, peel the potatoes and the parsnips when you wake up in the morning. Even making homemade gravy shouldn't really throw you that much if you want to try it, because you need to let the turkey sit for half an hour anyway so the juices have time to redistribute (FYI, if you are carving up your turkey immediately after pulling it out of the oven and it comes out dry, this is the reason), which is more than enough time for gravy making.

Sitcom writers: this cliche is getting really, really old. If it's that hard to come up with an idea for a Thanksgiving episode, don't worry about it. You can skip it and I promise you no one will miss it.

Day 18 And I'm Still Cramming Christmas Down Your Throat

I was casting about today for something to write about because NaBloPoMo is seriously hard, especially when your life consists mainly of things you can't or don't want to talk about anyway (though there are hints about it on my twitter feed sometimes). BrownsFan suggested that since I posted something on the internets someplace else that should count for NaBloPoMo, but that actually happened yesterday and anyway, most of you aren't even supposed to know about that.

Instead, I remembered that I'd said in an earlier post I would profile a Christmas song every day for the whole 40 Days of Christmas. It occurred to me shortly afterwards that such a series might get really boring for everyone but me really fast, so in lieu of that, I'm instead going to do one every Friday. This would be that post.

Eric Idle - "Fuck Christmas": Let's face it, I'm going to buy anything with Eric Idle and Christmas in the same sentence, but it's wholly worth it even if you're not obsessed with Monty Python (though if that's true, you probably have no soul). You could also make an excellent drinking game out of it - if you drink every time he says "fuck" you'll be wasted in under two minutes.

Straight No Chaser - "12 Days": Ok, number one, SHUT UP - the rules of what music it is or isn't ok to own DO NOT apply to Christmas music, ever, with the possible exception of Justin Bieber because I simply have no tolerance for that kid for some reason. As long as I don't have any non-Christmas music by these people then I have not committed any errors by owning things like Barenaked Ladies or Dan Hicks (or Chris Isaac. Kiss my ass, Simon). Number two, yes, I KNOW this is the single most irritating Christmas song ever penned, but that's what makes it so great: they skip verses, incorporate other songs (including the "Boar's Head Carol" which I've never heard anywhere else other than the Madrigal Dinner at church growing up) and other funny things that I don't want to say because it would ruin the surprise.

The Pogues - "Fairytale of New York" - You are honestly an idiot if you don't own this song. I shouldn't even need to talk it up - it's a classic, often cited as the best Christmas song of all time, and it's the fucking Pogues for Pete's sake.