This is the best mashup of the season, hands down!The Police's Roxanne meets Rudolph, the Red-nose Reindeer in this Yuletide derangement by mojochronic. (Link via Neatorama)
Space Invaders are are not the monolithic, bent-on-destroying-the-earth alien menace they are made out to be. See illustrator Logan Walter's The Many Faces of a Space Invader for proof.
One day the the mines went dry and Yukon Cornelius, now starving, came across his old friend Rudolph and things being the way they were... well a man's gotta eat. But in tribute he had him stuffed and a light placed in his nose to keep the light burning. The eighth day of the 12 Days of Popped Culture is brought to you by artist Mike Mitchell and my destruction of all my childhood memories.
It's almost Christmas, so time to turn on the TV and bathe in its seasonal warmth. I've already introduced three-year-old to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (and instilled a life-long fear of dentists) and I'm ready to watch my annual favourites: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (animated, of course), A Christmas Story ("You'll shoot your eye out!") and Scrooged.
We all have regulars that we return to year after year, but Joanna Wilson thinks there is a better way. The author of The Christmas TV Companion has watched hundreds of Christmas specials to create a guide to unusual, overlooked and often bizarre Christmas-themed television episodes and film releases.
(Above: It's Jihad, Farley Towne, from Denis Leary's variety show, Merry F#%$in' Christmas. "It really isn't such a bad little bomb. It just needs a little hate.")
Wilson's thorough book highlights many of the more offbeat seasonal offerings, especially if your tastes aren't exactly in line with White Christmas. Her section on animation (my favourite) digs up gems like Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse's take on A Charlie Brown Christmas.
A devoted fan of the Rankin/Bass stop-motion features (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy) she gives high praise to MAD TV's excellent parodies, placing Rudolph into Goodfellas and The Godfather. That is my kind of Christmas tale.
In the Sci-Fi section Wilson declares Futurama's yuletide tales "hands down, the far most interesting projection of Christmases future." Mostly because Santa is now a robot in the year 3000 who is out to kill everyone seeing as his naughty/nice gauge is set too high.
Wilson says, and I agree, that the "most jaw-dropping Christmas episodes have to be those from the series notorious for its crude tastelessness, South Park. In 1997, the creators popularized a new holiday icon for modern audiences: Mr Hankey, the Christmas Poo. The yuletide turd becomes a symbol that everyone in the town can embrace without offending their individual religious of family traditions.
While not the edgiest of their offerings, Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics has become a seasonal tradition for me. The duet between Santa and Jesus gets me every time.
Not surprisingly Wilson devotes a significant amount of time to the 1978 television special, The Star Wars Holiday Special. As someone who was eight when he watched this two-hour travesty when it originally aired, I mostly recall being bored. It really wasn't about Star Wars at all. I tried to watch it again last night but just couldn't get through it. But there it is above if you've only heard about it and want to find out for yourself. Good luck with that.
The real joy of The Christmas TV Companion is flipping through the pages and being introduced to something bizarre that you never knew existed. For me that was Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life, which "dramatizes the anxiety-filled absurdist writer Franz Kafka's struggle to create the opening line of his novel Metamorphosis on Christmas Eve." It's truly odd.
So this Christmas, do yourself a favour: get this book and go watch something a little strange to get yourself into the holiday spirit.
The stop animation of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special always creeped me out Maybe it was the way they moved or the large, dead eyes. But what doesn't put me in the Christmas spirit does lend itself to parody.
Full Metal Rudolph is a wonderful mashup of one of my favourite films, Stanly Kuberick's Full Metal Jacket, with Rudolph. The scene has Senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman tearing a new one for the elves.
Awhile back MAD TV aired a few Rudolph parodies, done by animator Corky Quakenbush. The Reinfather captures some of the best of The Godfather, with Rudolph as Brando, Hermey the Misfit Elf as his lieutenant. "This one time, Clarice, I'll let you ask about my business..."
A Pack of Gifts Now summarizes Apocalypse Now in a tidy four and a half minutes, with Rudolph as Captain Willard and Santa as Colonel Kurtz. Santa has gone mad and is giving toys away for free.
"Saskatchewan. Shoot. I'm still in Saskatchewan... the ho ho horror!"
