2018: Good Riddance

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time   ~Green Day


Ah, 2018. Let's hear it for the good things that happened in 2018.

- The evil New England Patriots and their cyborg quarterback Tom Brady did not win The Super Bowl.  It was won by the Philadelphia Eagles whose quarterback was Norm Snead.  Not really. The Eagles quarterback was Nick Somebody.

Norm Snead, in a cool Eagles helmet

- Atlanta United, which is a professional soccer team, won the MLS soccer championship despite being only a two-year-old franchise and being from Atlanta.

Really, Atlanta won a championship

-John Prine, a sort of/kinda of/ country-folk-rock singer who at one time was a "new Dylan" released a record called "The Tree Of Forgiveness" and was the number one country album on the charts even though it was a good record.  Prine, who is around 114 years old, has written a bunch of classic songs like the one that says when he gets to heaven he's going to "smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long".  If you have heard any country music in the past ten years, you know that's the most intelligent thing anyone has said in a long time.

-The Atlanta Braves did not suck this year.

Other than that, it seemed that 2018 was 2017 Redux.

-The President continued to be the mature and thoughtful leader he was in 2017. Hahahahahahahaha.

-No really, nobody cringed at all at anything The President said.  Yeah, right.

-The Mueller Probe, as it is called, is supposed to find out if there was any "Russian collusion" in the 2016 election because there was no way Trump would ever get elected if somebody hadn't rigged the election like he said the election was rigged for Hillary Clinton.

-Actually, The Mueller Probe is just a pretext for "We've got to get him out of The White House somehow".  Interestingly enough, it doesn't appear that the Russians had any real influence in the election except for some well placed Facebook memes.

-BUT, it looks like Trump made secret payouts to a porn actress named "Stormy" (of course!) and for the impeachment crowd, this is close enough for jazz.

-The President still wants his wall. The Democrats want "comprehensive immigration reform" which apparently means anyone can come over here at any time for any reason. Oh yeah, Jesus was a refugee, too.

-A kid with a history of emotional/psychological problems shot and killed 17 students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.  Despite the sheriff's department receiving tips in 2016 and 2017 that the student was going to attack the school and the FBI learning of a YouTube video of the student saying he was going to attack the school, we soon learned it was all Marco Rubio's fault.

-Speaking of kids, an early fad this year was teenagers videoing themselves eating Tide Pods.  Financial analysts advised us to sell our bonds.

-The winner of the 2018 Oscar for Best Picture was "The Shape of Water" which was a "romantic dark comedy".  This means it was a movie about a woman who does it with a Fish Man.

-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retired and the President selected Brett Kavanaugh to replace him.

-Naturally,  this became a circus.

-One Senator, who just may be running for President in 2020, declared that he was "Spartacus.", like any woke millennial would have any idea who that is.

Spartacus

-One Senator, who just may be the only Democrat besides Scoop Jackson (who can't because he is technically dead) that is not running for President in 2020, asked Kavanaugh what "boof" means.  Apparently, it was Georgetown rich kids lingo for "barking spiders".

Not A Candidate in 2020

-Kavanaugh became the only Supreme Court Justice to admit, under oath, that he likes beer.

-In the middle of this, we had an election.

-The Republicans kept control of the Senate. The Democrats regained control of The House. All of this means exactly nothing is going to happen in the next two years.

-Cobb County, the county in which I live, had a blue wave. Democrats won two seats on the School Board and immediately called for higher property taxes and a repeal of the senior citizen school property tax exemption. This always goes over well in Cobb County.

-It wasn't all bad news for Republicans.  Republicans found out a way to be praised in the news media:  die.   Both John McCain and former President George Bush received the best coverage of their lives when they were no longer with us.

-Twitter continued to be the source of all stupidity.  How many people have been fired over what they said on Twitter this past year?  We did learn from Roseanne Barr not to tweet when you are on Ambien.

-On a personal note, my family and I did go to The Bahamas this year. So the year wasn't that bad.

The Winner of The 2018 Awful Christmas Song

You may remember that last year we crowned the Worst Christmas Song Ever.

If you like, you can read it here https://manisville.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-worst-christmas-song-ever.html

Just to recap, there were many nominees. My readers were at the forefront of pointing out "Baby, It's Cold Outside" seemed not to have much to do with Christmas as it does with begging for sex. Fortunately, my readers didn't have the vapors about it and ask that it be stricken from public memory.

The winner of the Worst Christmas Song Ever was a song called "Dominick, The Christmas Donkey".   It is another one of those "animals help Santa Claus" songs, except Dominick, is an Italian Christmas donkey because Santa needs protection when it comes to delivering presents to Italy (or as the singer says it "Eat-al-lee").

The bottom line is the song is awful and well deserves its place as the Worst Christmas Song Ever.

However, there is a challenger.

Before we get to this year's Awful Christmas Song,  let's review some of the really bad Christmas songs and why they are really bad.

"Feliz Navidad" -Jose Feliciano.    This song isn't really so bad except they play it way too much on the radio and Pandora.  For you kids that don't know, Jose Feliciano is a blind Latin singer known for this song, ruining The Doors "Light My Fire", and the theme song for "Chico and The Man".  My college roommate, the Great Bill Wade, wrote a parody song called "Police Got Your Dad", which probably should be on radio too.

"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"- Elmo and Patsy.  I get the joke and think it is a fun novelty song. However, some people in this humorless age of ours become offended about the thought of an elderly relative trampled to death by venison. Yes, me and grandpa believe in Santa because grandma is the victim of a hit and run.

"All I Want For Christmas Is You" - Mariah Carey.  Another song radio plays way too much. I have a hard time believing that all Mariah wants for Christmas is me.

"Wonderful Christmas Time" - Paul McCartney.  Paul McCartney has written some of the best songs ever recorded. Then he writes this.  First of all, the beginning sounds like one of those slasher movies where the bad guy is stalking the unsuspecting teenagers. Then he wants us to believe that the children practice for the Christmas concert "all year long". I was a kid. I had a kid. Christmas concert practice always started in late September, at the earliest.  I have a theory that this took McCartney ten minutes to write.

"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"- John Lennon.  Written and recorded in the post-Beatle era when John Lennon was his most insufferable. "So this is Christmas and what have you done?" Nothing, John Lennon, what's it to you?

"Little Saint Nick" - The Beach Boys.  I will give you this. Brian Wilson wrote a better Christmas song than either Lennon or McCartney.  It's got a nice little beat and I like the little "run, run reindeer" part.  However, the song hits the skids with this stupid line: "Christmas comes this time each year". It was like Brian Wilson had this brainstorm that Christmas happens on the same day in the same month every year! That would be something that impresses California girls.

"Christmas Shoes" - Newsong.  No discussion of awful Christmas songs would be complete without this song.  It meets the one requirement of an awful Christmas song: you never want to hear it again. It is about a boy who wants to buy his dying mother a pair of shoes for when she goes to meet Jesus. He doesn't have the money so the narrator pays for the shoes. This causes the narrator to discover "the true meaning of Christmas". Okay, the theology is a little bit shaky with the implication that the kid's mother became terminally ill so the narrator could learn the meaning of Christmas.  I mean, couldn't the narrator just watch The Hallmark Channel? There are movies nightly in November and December that teach about the real meaning of Christmas.

Now as bad as all of those songs are they are not as bad as this year's Awful Christmas Song winner.

Little drummer boy, drum roll please, the winner of the 2018 Awful Christmas song is....

"Leroy The Redneck Reindeer" - Joe Diffie.

Let's list some of the ways "Leroy" is awful

"Leroy" is very contrived. In "Leroy", Rudolph catches the flu and cannot make his rounds on Christmas Eve, so he calls his Southern cousin (do what?) Leroy to fill in for him. Santa's okay with it, even though Leroy doesn't have a red nose. Leroy has a pickup truck. He also wears a John Deere tractor hat and overalls.

It has cringe-worthy lyrics like "He mixed jingle bells with a rebel yell and made history that night".   But the whopper is this one: "Santa wrapped his bag with a Dixie flag".  Lord. That line alone would cause massive heart failure in today's culture.

Since this song was released in 1995, it has a video. Do not eat before watching this video.

Joe Diffie has a mullet. Yes, a mullet.  He begins to tell a bunch of children the story of Leroy in his baritone that sounds like he's about ready to sing "Amazing Grace". The children laugh and for some reason, they begin to line dance. Hey, it was 1995 and there was some law that said you had to boot scoot to show southern Appalachian culture.

Oh yeah, Leroy's story is depicted in a cartoon.

So scoot over Dominick,  I think you have some company.

Here's the video in all of its glory.

My George Bush

As part of my effort to become an author, a writer of books, I would meet with my publisher, who I will call "Greg" because that's his name and talk about book writing issues. For example, Greg wanted me to keep a list of possible book ideas.

One idea I've been kicking around is a book about the Presidents of my lifetime. It would be essays about the various Presidents from 1959 to the present, and of course, the essays would be simply hilarious.

The title of the book would be called My Presidents.

The title comes from a lady I used to work with at the insurance company. She would always refer to Ronald Reagan as "your President".

I know people disagree with this, but I think The President (whoever it is) is Our President (for better or worse).

For example, Jimmy Carter was Our President, from 1977 to 1981.

I've never been a big Jimmy Carter fan.

He was the governor of Georgia when I was in my early teens and I really can't think of too much he did while as governor except stand around and smile. I remember he took Amy trick or treating one time and it was on the news.

When he announced he was running for Presiden, my reaction was very contemporary:  It was "wait...what?"   I just didn't see Carter as a President. He couldn't handle Lester Maddox for goodness sakes.

His presidency was about what I expected. Pretty bad.  However, he was the President and he was my President too, even if he was attacked by a rabbit.

I thought about this a lot watching the coverage of the death of President George H. W. Bush.

First of all, I don't remember having a vote on having to add extra letters to George Bush's name.  I know it is the initials for his middle name: "Herbert Walker". It was meant to distinguish himself from his son, George W. Bush, who became a President, too, just in case you have forgotten. I thought the "W" did that, but that's just me.

I'm going to refer to the first President Bush as President George Bush.  I've referred to him over the years as "Dad Bush" and George W. as "Kid Bush".

I agreed with a lot that was said about President Bush's passing. A lot of it was very, very nice.

My only problem is that it was about 26 years too late.

I was a young adult when Bush somehow finagled his way on to the ticket with Ronald Reagan. If you don't remember, it had something to do with Gerald Ford, an idea about a "Co-Presidency", and Voodoo Economics.

Reagan-Bush won that year and Bush was absolutely the prototypical Vice President.  Everything Reagan did was great and Bush was an Apple Polisher, first class. As the great cartoon character Yogi Bear would say, he liked to keep those apples shiny.

That's because Bush wanted to become President too.  After eight years, he became President, defeating a lump of a man named "Michael Dukakis". Dukakis was a dreary candidate who made Walter Mondale look like Kid Rock.

He wasn't like Reagan. Reagan was "The Great Communicator".  Bush was just a "Communicator". When Bush spoke, his arms and hands seemed to go into a spasm. One arm would go in one direction while the other would go in the opposite.

His Vice President was J. Danforth "Dan" Quayle, whose main problem was he had nice hair and looked like he was fourteen years old.  A lot of the national media had a conniption when it was learned he joined The Indiana National Guard instead of being drafted for Vietnam. But, for six years, "Dan" had to be a weekend warrior, which isn't too bad now looking back on it.

Bush said, "Read My Lips, no new taxes".  Of course, in an effort for "bipartisanship," Bush compromised with the Democratic majority and taxes were raised. It was the reason that there was a rebellion in the Republican Party and caused Ross Perot to get into the race.

The rebellion and Perot were a couple of the factors which caused Bush to lose to William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton, the governor of Arkansas.  Bill Clinton was the only man to ever get into politics for the chicks.

As the early '90s Bush successes faded (the fall of The Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of course, Desert Storm) we were soon treated to the internet boom, impeachment, and where Bill put a cigar.

When Bush lost, he invited Dana Carvey to The White House to perform for the staff.  Dana Carvey's impersonation of Bush neither looked or sounded like Bush, but Bush went along with the joke. Can you imagine President Trump inviting Alec Baldwin to The White House to perform for the staff?

Bush hardly said anything bad about anybody.  During the 1992 campaign, he said his dog knew more about foreign policy than Clinton.  That was the toughest thing he said.

He was a New England patrician who moved to West Texas and came to love The Oak Ridge Boys. That's so American and that was my George Bush.

Run, Run, Rudolph

Apparently, we have a new controversy.  It is about Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The Huffington Post, which is an online newspaper/magazine, posted an article titled Viewers Noticed Some Very Disturbing Details in 'Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer'.

Yes, a Christmas stop-motion cartoon by Rankin/Bass that has been airing since I lived on Meadowbrook Drive in Marietta, Georgia (54 years ago) has some very disturbing details that we just noticed. It was there in plain sight and it just goes to show how problematic we are as a country because we didn't notice how awful Yukon Cornelius treated his gay dog sled team.


Actually, this article consists of the laziest journalism known to man:  looking and printing what is on Twitter.

Twitter is currently the cesspool of American life.  If you take every stupid thing said at every lunch counter and put in on the internet, that is Twitter.

After Rudolph aired Tuesday night, Twitter "users gathered around the digital fireplace to share the moment".  I remember when the internet was the information superhighway. Now it is the digital fireplace.

There were some humorous observations.

Sarah B tweeted: "Every year the elf throws the bird out of the sleigh without an umbrella, even though earlier the bird said it CAN'T FLY. Every. Damn. Year".

Ahem.

Seven years ago, I wrote the classic The Rudolph Recap. You can read it here. https://manisville.blogspot.com/2011/12/the-rudolph-recap.html.

I said basically the same thing. Except I think mine was funnier.

One of the points of Rudolph is that everybody is a misfit. As part of their wacky adventures, Rudolph (who ran away from home because nobody liked his nose), Hermey (who ran away from home because nobody likes dentists) and Yukon Cornelius (who nobody liked)  landed on The Island of Misfit Toys.

The Island of Misfit Toys is ruled by the benevolent King Moonracer, who is a lion with wings.  As you properly infer, the Island is filled with Misfit Toys: a Charlie in The Box, a train with square wheels, a doll with no apparent problems, and a bird that can't fly but swims.

Good King Moonracer asks Rudolph to speak with Santa about finding a good home for the misfit toys. King Moonracer may be a good king, but he is lazy as sin. Moonracer could just fly over to the North Pole and speak to Santa himself.

Long story short:  Santa agrees to take the Misfit Toys. However,  instead of taking the toys with him when he goes down the chimneys, Santa has the elves throw the misfit toys out of the sleigh. Everybody remembers that special Christmas morning when your parents woke you up and told you to go to the backyard to see what Santa threw out.

I don't think this was due to some meanness or grouchiness.  It was due to some sloppiness and they didn't have much time to show the toys being delivered. Plus, this was the attitude back then:  Hey it is something for kids and it doesn't matter.  And it didn't.  I didn't notice the scene until I was an adult.

The main criticism comes from the bullying part of the show. "Rudolph is relentlessly teased by his peers, his family, and Santa Claus until he is forced to flee into the wilderness. While he finds new friends that accept him as he is, he is not accepted by his original community until his glowing nose is useful", says Popculture.tv.

The song says, "All of the other reindeers, used to laugh and call him names". If you are going to do a show about Rudolph, you have to show him being teased.  Maybe, I'm just an unwoken late-born boomer fuddy-duddy, but I never got the impression the show was telling you that Rudolph deserved it or it was anywhere close to the right thing to do

One person tweeted: "My saddest takeaway in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is how dismissive [and] mean Santa is when they first saw the red nose. Really Santa?!?!"

Santa is odd in Rudolph.  When he comes to visit Donner after Rudolph is born, Santa starts singing about himself. He's Cranky Old Saint Nick.  He doesn't eat and the elves singing doesn't impress him in the least. (With good reason too, but that's another story.)

But in everyone's defense, the nose wasn't a nose, it was this light bulb that made a noise.  I'm not sure exactly how we are supposed to react to that.  I know that makes me Light Bulb For A Nose phobic, but geez, give me some time to comprehend it.

One person (who is from this area) tweeted "Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable".  This became a Twitter talking point. One individual tweeted, "Watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The moral of the story I’ve learned since watching it as a kid: People are [nickname for Richard] until they need something from you."

To quote another great fictional character, Drill Sgt Hulka: Lighten up Francis.

The moral of Rudolph is not "people are mean until they need something from you".  It is how wrong prejudice is and that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

So sit back and enjoy the show.  I love that little song, "There's Always Tomorrow" and the fact the Burl Ives snowman plays a banjo without strings. Rudolph is always fun to goof on.

Whatever you do, don't watch "Christmas in July", which Rankin/Bass made in 1979 and takes the Rudolph characters and mixes them up with their Frosty The Snowman characters.  That show is seriously messed up.