Merry Christmas - Yeah right.

[Hawke]

We are nearing that yule time occasion where we impulsively give gifts to people we are indifferent to in order not to feel guilty when they give us stuff, that way we can say we're generous without actually giving to the needy or deserving, ensuring peace in western civilization, and good will towards men, white men that is.

as you can see this "Christmas" is treating me as well as other years, and I'm doing what I can to not ruin other people's "spirit." as it were though, the people are not the ones eroding what good will I have this year, but rather the attempts to create genuine Christmas music by shameless singers and songwriters. I have lost count of how many times I've had to listen to Mariah Carey's "all I want for Christmas is you." the song itself isn't the problem, however. the fault lies with my mental image of madame Carey having a nervous breakdown from doing nothing for a living, or buying out a penthouse apartment and paying multiple decorators to transform it into the ultimate abode to "get dressed in." the true sting from this knowledge becomes truly painful, though, when one finds out that she doesn't even live there. It is here my pain truly takes shape in the form of this self pampering goon that has somehow earned the title "diva," rather than entertainer (right).

I'll admit, on the other hand, Celine Dion remains on the "tolerable" list of Christmas songs. not that I'm a fan all of a sudden, but at least she earns her living with REAL talent. I may not personally enjoy her songs, but I give credit where credit is due.

Paul McCartney should do hard time for his debacle that could laughably be called a song. "wonderful Christmas time" is so overly repetitious, mundane, and overrated, that Jesus himself would tell that pompous git to go fuck himself before he writes another Christmas song.

now that the specifics are out of the way, lets get into the most passionless art form that plagues the music world of today: R & B. For starters, R & B doesn't seem to even stand for "rhythm and blues" anymore, but rather "if you have ever dappled in music, or even hummed to elevator music while you were in one, then please give us all you've got so we can listen to it till kingdom come." don't get me wrong, R & B is and has been a great conduit for many popular artists to commiserate together to create music we can all listen to, the only problem with that it is mediocre. Anything pop is popular because everyone does not generally hate the song with every fiber of their being. So, agreeably, anything pop(ular) isn't the worst thing ever, but neither is it good. That said, most R & B is fairly mediocre because it's mostly just alright, thats it. This in itself is not a bad thing, however, coupled with Christmas themes, it becomes something so much worse than mediocre, it becomes transiently dull. Regardless if it's a remix of a Christmas classic, or something original using the holiday themes as a flimsy pretext to compile a Christmas album, it is still dull. Dull dull dull.

prime example of dull R & B Christmas music, is Luther Van Dross. Yeah, too bad he had a stroke, won an award for getting the stroke, then died. I do not wish that on anybody, strokes suck, getting awards for strokes suck, dying sucks. That aside, Luther has one of the worst, if not the worst(tied with Michael Bolton) Christmas albums ever. The guy is shouting his brains out about how much fun it is to celebrate a holiday pushed onto other religions and ethnicities in a shameless effort to bribe them into a cultural habit.

I could go on forever about all this, but it drains me of all Christmas spirit, which is ironic, because the supposed intent is to re-kindle the holiday spirit, but instead they seem to piss all over it. I'm getting tired of having to explain my lack of enthusiasm every year, and I try to live and let live, but a person can only take so much, but I'm not broken yet. I still haven't bought Yanni's Christmas, and I take great zen-like solice in that.

That said, merry Christmas

[Lunchbox]

Do your friends and family think you're a douche too?

[Specially Cork]

You took a wrong turning on the internet. You want livejournal.com

[not just souLLy now]

Your R&B rant sounds similar to something I said to my girlfriend a while back.

I hate to totally write off an entire genre as having nothing of worth in it, but R&B has to be it. My girlfriend was disagreeing and saying it was a commercial R&B artists problem, but all the less known artists she named that were genuinely good, I'd consider closer to soul music. It's all bland, cliched nonsense, with little or no genuine passion. When the most well known artists of the genre are R Kelly and Usher, you know you're having problems. And Rhythm and Blues... pffft as if.

But come on, Christmas music, it has to be lame, it's part of what Christmas is.

[|darc|]

The only good Christmas song is "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" by John Lennon.

[Wagh]

I like writing off genres of music too.

[Hawke]

You'll have to forgive the rant. I nary have many good experiences with Christmas and the masses. The IQ of the local populace seems to halve the later end of every year, and I have a hard time ignoring it