The Christmas Spirit... and How to Get It

Everybody listen. I, of all people, whom a shrink once sent packing because I was so “cynical”—tireless opponent of fluff and false comfort and the idea of “good people”—(to be fair, I don’t believe in evil people either—I just believe in me—Blowup Suzie and Me, ‘cuz that’s reality)—even I have found the Xmas spirit. So much so, in fact that—well, first I should probably tell you how I found the Xmas spirit, or rather how it found and then ambushed me—subduing me like a caveman w/ a club, before dragging me off to have its sweaty, lock jawed way with me in some dank cavern. (The archetypal anecdote would have the Xmas spirit/caveman dragging me by my hair of to his groovy, filthy bachelor cave, but if you’ve looked at my pic, you can guess that ain’t happenin’, ‘cuz what hair I still retain, I wear really short, which is to say that I shave it off.

But so we were talkin’ ‘bout the Xmas spirit and how it cold cocked before hot cocking me. Which is, of course, a metaphor, because I’m sure you would agree that

1) They didn’t have the Xmas spirit yet when we were cavemen, because a certain Great Man named Santa had not been born yet; and

2) The idea of the Xmas spirit beating and then raping me—‘tho to be fair, simply everyone was doing things that way back then—(Club=Rohypnol!)—well, that’s a pretty fucked up & tasteless idea.

Nope. I didn’t get the Xmas spirit that way. That was just a metaphor. How I really found it—and I’m sooooo grateful for this—was by sitting up late Saturday night, flipping channels. There, amidst endless Xmas-themed ads and/or promo spots for bankruptcy lawyers, phone sex lines, and convenient order-by-phone type tools of various sorts—there it was.

I know what most of you are thinking. You’re patting yourselves on the back for making like Sherlock—or let’s get the Hanukkah spirit too, since I’m talking about a secular-type Xmas spirit—not that we don’t have room for you Christians too!!!—let’s call him Shylock Holmes—well, you’ve used yr. limited powers of deduction (and let me tell ya that this is what separates amateur sleuths like you from the pros like me) to deduce that I got the Xmas spirit from Saturday night’s SNL Xmas episode repeat, in which Jack Black did pull on the Santa suit, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg (god he’s cute—my Xmas wish is to fuck him forever) rap about getting’ high n’ eatin’ snacks n’ goin’ to the movies, and Neil Young sings about Elvis kissing Santa Claus or some such shit in a ratty sweater, surrounded by a small army of aging hippies who play gentle country-inflected adult rawk—Neil was dressed and accompanied that way, I mean, not Elvis. I bet you think I found it there. Well, you’re wrong. Dead wrong.

Nope. Hilarious as that broadcast was, it just fed my growing (and completely misguided) feeling that quo the human race is the human race at Xmas time, when we all aggressively wallow in our masturbatory love of luxurious junk and of what swell and generous people we are and how close we are to other people who really bum us out the rest of the time, and meanwhile some little kid in Palestine is eating artillery shells amidst his family’s exploding home. What was I thinking?!

No, this came a little bit later, when my blind casting about through the airwaves happily connected w/ the frighteningly withered visage of Gary Coleman.

Fuck, said I to my bottle of gin, Gary Coleman looks like shit.

And here’s where morbid curiosity has an upside, ‘cuz I felt compelled to hang out and study poor Gary for a spell.

It didn’t take long for me to recognize the aphrodisiacally sleek n’ pouty form of Tori Spelling next to him—she of the planar face and the enormous gelid lips.

Now this, I told the bottle, is pretty great.

Turns out that I had stumbled upon a made-for-TV movie w/ the devastatingly witty moniker of A Carol Christmas. If you’re missing the gag, it’s not because you’re completely dumb. Necessarily. It’s ‘cuz I haven’t told you yet that the character Tori plays is named Carol, and that the proceedings are yet another re-hash of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol.

You might be thinking that putting Tori in the Scrooge seat undercuts one of the more effective devices in the original fable—that is that Scrooge is this repulsive old reptile, making the end of the story where he cavorts about, raving about the joys of the holiday and of life itself, and where he invites himself to the Cratchet family dinner, whereat he enforces good cheer on a bunch of slum dwellin’ folks, who’d prob. just as soon beat him and take his pocket watch as look at him—it makes alla that so grotesque and bizarre as to almost make that bitter spoonful Xmas cheer go down easily. You’re so distracted by this ludicrousness that you fail to notice what bullshit it’s putting over on you. (Or at least I thought it was bullshit.)

But no. They got somethin’ else to distract you here, and that’s how spankingly hot Tori is. When you get bored or irritated by the story or acting, you can study Tori’s ass and think, Hmm, I’d like to explore that. Or if it’s a close-up, you can salivate over rubbery lips and all their malleability, or if you’re of a more soulful bent, you can look into her wide glossy eyes and think about Truth and Beauty and Love.

Oh yeah. And Gary Coleman is playing the Ghost of Xmas Past. And William Shatner is the Ghost of Xmas Present. And as a Shatner enthusiast, even I was getting sick of his omnipresence until I saw what a warm, spot-on comedic performance he gave here.

BTW the one and only place where A Carol Christmas disappoints is in its handling of the Ghost of Xmases to Come. As you’d guess, I had mighty high expectations of which TV personality they were cast in this role. What I got was some gaunt dullard I didn’t even recognize as talk show host Tori’s limo driver. I woulda gone w/ Betty White driving a hearse, but then I guess that’s a little silly. Couldn’t they’ve at least gotten somebody predictable, like that tall guy from Night Court?

Anyway, that doesn’t matter, ‘cuz the rest of the production was incredibly moving. It’s pretty much by the book after Tori visits her own virtually abandoned funeral and is thrust into her lace-lined casket, wherein she shrieks and weeps and insists that she can still find the Xmas spirit and that she’s really a good person, et. al.

She awakes in her dressing room and immediately launches herself upon her crew—to whom, presumably, she was a bitch earlier in the movie, but I can’t confirm that, ‘cuz I came into things a little late—and unleashes a storm of gifts and apologies and charitable donations and promises and encouragements—man, to’ve been on the receiving end of one of those bone-crushin’ hugs she gave, so I could cop a feel—and I’m guessing she wouldn’t even’ve gotten mad, enraptured as she wuz, might’ve even extended a token of Xmas generosity like 15 min. in the broom closet. I’d’a been OK w/ that.

And she’s just as overbearing as Scrooge was as she rushes over to her much-shat-upon sister’s place to enjoy the Xmas goose (one assumes—they never gave you a good look at what was being consumed)—except isn’t she, like, a vegan or something—but then who cares? And she repeatedly chucks the chins of a dewy-eyed niece and nephew.

Then her estranged boyfriend, who—get this—runs a soup kitchen, shows up. He’s given a place at the yuletide table. (Here’s hopin’ sis made extra tofu!) And he’s seen Tori’s broadcast of the afternoon, and tho they’ve been apart for years, he could just tell that Tori was completely rehabilitated. ‘Fact, he asks her just what excavated her good n’ true real self that had been buried for so long, and she just winks and sez she had a little help from her friends. At which point, I half-expected the Ghost of Xmases Hallucinated, as played by Ringo Starr, to show up and pass her a sheet of blotter acid—or maybe it shoulda been John or George, since although they didn’t do the vocals on that Beatles fave, they are, at least, really dead. But instead we cut to Gary n’ Will n’ Whassisface smilin’ beatifically outside the window and tellin’ each other how Carol’s gonna be just fine.

And then Tori tells the boyfriend she’s gonna go w/ him to work the Xmas shift at the soup kitchen right after dinner, and they smooch a lot—and I was impressed that in such a family-oriented outing, they made it clear that Tori’s slippery tongue was sliding into and outta her beau’s mouth w/ each slurping kiss. See how they kept putting special stuff in for everyone—even us older folks?!

And then the most surreal thing I have seen in a very long time: Tori n’ family n’ boyfriend adjourn to a couch whereat the man of the house reads aloud from A Christmas Carol! Which was very weird because all thru the picture, Tori showed no awareness that she was reenacting the classic story. I’d assumed that this whole thing was set in a parallel universe in which Dickens’s fable was unknown. So how the hell could she have avoided knowing about it? Up until Saturday night, I had always hated Xmas. It has filled me w/ self-loathing and to unhappy speculation about everyone else, and I have avoided references to it whenever possible. Still, having never read A Christmas Carol, even I have experienced, like, thousands of retellings of the story, w/ protagonists ranging from Mr. McGoo to Beavis & Butthead. (OK—just Beavis. Butthead played Jacob Marley.) But Tori was somehow unaware of the story?!

Ah well. Why nitpick such a beautiful production?

BTW, when the reading of A Christmas Carol had ended, Tori n’ friends did all say “god bless us everyone” to each other in a round-robin sorta way. So I guess this Xmas was not necessarily secular—just non-denominational.

Proceedings end w/ everyone present lustily belting out some secular Xmas toon or other. Don’t remember which one. It might’ve been “Deck the Halls,” but don’t quote me on that. The gin was running low.

And that was that.

I wiped tears from my eyes. I considered calling all my friends and relatives and maybe even some strangers and apologizing for what a cur I have been, but it was 1:30 a.m. CST, and it wouldn’t do to turn over a new leaf by waking people up like that.

But I resolve to get on it presently, and onto yelling, god bless us everyone! Whilst I run up & down through Printers Row, buying geese and hurling gold coins at newsboys and working in soup kitchens. I’ll get onto all of that and so much more, just as soon as the hangover I’ve had since ever since that night clears up.

Then once these wonderful holidays have passed, I resolve to shove my double barreled 12 gauge in my mouth and send powdered bone and pulped brains and hair and teeth and, of course, blood onto my ceiling, because I am just so fucking happy that I don’t think I’ll be able to stand another Xmas. Or another day, for that matter, because after all, shouldn’t the spirit of Xmas live in us everyday, all year round?

Happy Holidays to you & yours!!!