FINALLY... the Last 2 days of my 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes

So I completely boned that all up... But ah well. Let's finish up my 12 days of Christmas Cassettes, and then get things back to the regularly scheduled post-holiday programming. There's a lot to get caught up on. So here goes! 

Day 11: Some Rather Questionable Choices

One of the rules that I set for myself when collecting cassettes from Goodwill was this: Don't buy tapes ironically. Don't buy them for the sake of telling a joke or a visual punchline. I was only going to buy stuff that I genuinely LOVE. This Christmas countdown has been a pretty big exception to this rule in some cases, and no cassettes better demonstrate this breakdown of my personal code better than these two:

I mean, LOOK at these things!!! "Christmas Rap Music" by Crew X and "A Romantic Christmas" by John Tesh? Er. Mah. Gerd.

This thing goes so far back around from "good" that it travels completely through "bad" and almost back into "good" territory again. I'm pretty sure some of this music is going to be played in actual rotation with our Christmas playlists in the years to come. Every single track on this tape is a rap version of a classic Christmas song, with a few originals included as well. 

Track List (Not sure where side A ends and side B begins because this thing is still in its cellophane and I don't plan to open it any time soon)

1. The First Noel

2. Up on the Housetop

3. We Three Kings

4. Jingle Bells

5. O Little Town of Bethlehem

6. Deck the Halls

7. Joy to the World

8. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

9. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

10. Twelve Days of Christmas

11. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

12. The Christmas Rap

Even more questionable than a Christmas Rap album however is a collection of "Romantic Christmas" songs by John Tesh. Of course the question here is: how romantic can you make songs like "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" or "In a Child's Eyes" without going straight down to creepy town? Some of the songs are even accompanied by a boy's choir. This does not scream romance at my house. Disappointingly, these all seem to be instrumentals, so I guess John Tesh just wants to set a Christmas-y ambiance for sexy-time. There is no John Tesh lustily belting out double-entendre-laden lyrics for  "Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella," which just seems like a wasted opportunity.

-Side A-

1. O Little Town of Bethlehem

2. Gesu Bambino

3. It Came Upon a Midnight clear

4. The First Noel

5. Panis Angelicus

6. O Holy Night

7. Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella

8. O Come All Ye Faithful

-Side B- 

9. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

10. The Coventry Carol

11. We Three Kings of Orient Are

12. Silent Night, Holy Night

13. Gloria In Excelsis Deo

14. The Homecoming

15. In a Child's Eyes

16. The Christmas Song

Day 12: A Couple of my Personal Classics

For my final day of the countdown I was going to feature two of my all-time favorite Christmas albums:

First up is "Twisted Christmas" from Bob Rivers Comedy Corp. This this has been on constant rotation for Christmas since I first heard it back in '87 or '88. My favorites are hands down "The 12 Pains of Christmas,""The Chimney Song," and "The Bathroom Door Said Gentlemen" but some other greats involve guest stints by Jack Nicholson and Elvis Presley.

-Side A- 

1. The Twelve Pains of Christmas

2. The Chimney Song

3. We Wish You Weren't Living With Us

4. Wreck the Malls

5. A Visit from St. Nicholson

-Side B- 

6. O Come All Ye Grateful Dead-Heads

7. I'm Dressin' Up Like Santa (When I Get Out on Parole)

8. The Restroom Door Said Gentlemen

9. Foreigners

10. Joy to the World

11. A Message From the King

And it just isn't Christmas until I've heard "The Chipmunk Song" at least once. It is a Christmas must-have as far as our playlist goes. 

-Side A- 

1. Here Comes Santa Claus

2. Up on the Housetop

3. Silver Bells

4. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

5. Jingle Bells

-Side B-

6. Santa Claus is Coming to Town

7. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

8. Frosty the Snowman

9. White Christmas

10. The Chipmunk Song

So that was it! That was the end of the countdown that was supposed to end on Christmas. Instead, I was lucky to have it up before New Year's Eve. I'm sure you all count yourselves as very lucky indeed. What's that you say? More? You want more??? All right then. ONE LAST THING:

Here is an item that I have been meaning to post about for at least 2 Christmases now, and by GUM I am finally going to do it! This 7" record stars the 6 Million Dollar Man in "Elves Revolt" Here's the plot synopsis from Bionic.wikia.com:

• "Steve discovers that Santa's elves are in a labor dispute with their boss. Complaining of low wages and bad working condiions, they go an strike. Their "picket line" is literally formed by a terrorist elf named Ramat, whose scheme to bring Santa to the bargaining table involves melting the polar ice cap. Getting a report from the National Weather Service that the ice cap is melting at a rate of 1°/hour, Steve and Oscar rush to the North Pole to see if there's anything they can do to reverse the process. If not, the majority the northern hemisphere will be covered in water by Christmas. However, they are soon captured by Ramat and can do little more than talk to their fellow captive, Santa Claus, about his union problems. In the end, the foreman of the elves comes to his senses and orders his men to stop Ramat. When they do so, they are able to diffuse all the heating elements Ramat had emplaced, and the two sides of the labor dispute reconcile."

So there are union picket lines, terrorism, and global warming involved in this very special Six Million Dollar Man adventure. The copyright on this record is 1978, which is the same year I was born! I was pretty psyched to find this at Goodwill for only .99 cents, and still in the cellophane no less! Apparently there is a full sized record that contains 4 Christmas-themed Six Million Dollar Man adventures, and this is just one of them... But it's enough for me. Here. Give it a listen (It is bats**t INSANE.)

All right! Now I'm officially done for 2014! I will be back in the new year at some point with a semi-regular posting schedule, and LOTS of stuff to talk about that are literally MONTHS behind schedule. So look forward to that! 

I'll be back soon enough with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies! In the meantime, Happy Hunting! 

I totally fudged it... but for all the right reasons...

I'll drop in my last 2 days of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes tomorrow.

I hope you all had as awesome a Christmas as my family and I did.

--Derek

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 10 A (Not Quite) Very Special Christmas 2

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Today is another solo tape, and so I am taking advantage of this post to share not only a Christmas cassette, but also a Christmas-y surprise I found at Goodwill just a few days ago. But first... Today's Cassette!

I desperately wanted to find the original "Very Special Christmas" on cassette tape to share with you here. This one is not as good. BUT it still has some very notable tunes included nonetheless. Tom Petty's "Christmas All Over Again" is an absolute favorite of mine,

and Sinead O'Connor's cover of Bob Dylan's "I Believe in You" while arguably not a Christmas song is another great listen.

But the winner for most bizarrely awesome song on this tape goes to Mr. Frank Sinatra and Ms. Cyndi Lauper for their duet to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

At the time, it was a move that would have "broken the internet" or whatever bulls**t thing it's called these days. A blue-eyed, classic, classy crooner from the gin-soaked rat-pack like Sinatra, teamed up with flighty, rainbow-muppet-come-to-life, "girls just wanna have fun" screeching Cyndi Lauper? 

Yes please. And it comes off sounding pretty damn great! Honestly! The rest of the tape is a mess really. Either artists I can't imagine anyone liking, or songs that did NOT need a remake of ANY kind (No one but Stevie Wonder is allowed to sing "What Christmas Means to ME"!!!) or artists we LOVE doing stupid songs (Aretha singing "O Christmas Tree"? Really?) 

-Side A- 

1. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Christmas All Over Again

2. Randy Travis - Jingle Bell Rock

3. Luther Vandross - The Christmas Song

4. Frank Sinatra & Cyndi Lauper - Santa Claus is Coming to Town

5. Boyz II Men - The Birth of Christ

6. Jon Bon Jovi - Please Come Home For Christmas

7. Paul Young - What Christmas Means to Me

8. Aretha Franklin - O Christmas Tree

9. Ronnie Spector/Darlene Love - Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

10. Michael Bolton - White Christmas

-Side B- 

11. RUN DMC - Christmas Is

12. Extreme - Christmas Time Again

13. Bonnie Raitt and Charles Brown - Merry Christmas Baby

14. Tevin Campbell - O Holy Night

15. Debbie Gibson - Sleigh Ride

16. Vanessa Williams - What Child is This? 

17. Ann & Nancy Wilson - Blue Christmas 

18. Wilson Phillips - Silent Night

19. Sinead O'Connor - I Believe in You

And now on to something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!

So while looking around at Goodwill the other day I found a bag of colorful cookie-cutters in the toy section. I gave them a cursory glance (there were some giant Halloween cutters in there, bats and Jack o' Lanterns, and I have a weird cookie-cutter thing going on) and since they were a buck and appeared to be ones I didn't already own, I grabbed them. I saw a reindeer in the mix, and it looked like Rudolph, so I figured a buck was worth it for a licensed cookie cutter of that character alone. But what I discovered when I got this home was that they weren't just ANY cookie cutters, there was a nearly-complete set of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 3D cookie cutters in there! The only character missing is Sam the Snowman... and I have his butt. Just no body.

Each cookie cutter comes with a body and a leg cutter. You cut out two legs for each character, and then stand the cookie up on the leg pieces. the top of the cutter is a stamp for making the character look how they're supposed to. This one is Santa Claus (These are all from the Rankin and Bass stop-motion TV special btw).

I was VERY excited when I found Yukon Cornelius in the bag... it was at this moment that I realized I had a set of Rudolph-themed cutters.

This is either adult Rudolph or Blitzen, Rudolph's father. the expression on his face makes me kind of think Blitzen... but I can pretend whatever I want.

Herbie! The dentist elf! Have you ever noticed how un-elf-like Herbie is physically as well? Is this where the inspiration for the movie Elf came from?

Santa's sleigh. Meh. I'd rather have had Sam the snowman. But oh well.

Rudolph himself! Why they made Blitzen but not Clarice I will NEVER KNOW. They didn't even need to make her her own set of legs. She could have just shared Rudolph's!

Once I figured out I had a set of Rudolph cookie cutters, I only really cared about one thing: Did I have Bumble? Turns out I did. Relief washed over me like I'd just urinated after a long car ride. It was that satisfying to find this guy in the bag. Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting more, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 9 The King (Not that one)

(YES I KNOW TODAY IS LATE. Double posting today! Yeayah!)

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

So today I'm just focusing on an old classic in my family: The King himself... ELVIS. 

My family has been Elvis CRAZY as long as I can remember! My Aunt (the one who also loves Garfield) collects Elvis merchandise by the TON. She loves the man. So I grew up listening to Elvis in all his various different iterations and incarnations. This included Christmas Elvis to be sure.

And with Christmas comes an entire assortment of Christmas songs sung by the King himself. There is no such thing as a Christmas without Elvis. I honestly don't feel like sitting and listing off the tracks on these two tapes, but be assured, all of the classics are present and accounted for. "Blue Christmas" makes an appearance, "Here Comes Santa Claus" with its boppy, rockabilly beat... you name it, and its on one of these two cassettes.

Oops! Just tore off my panties and threw them at the screen. Guess I'll quit while I'm ahead. 

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 8 GANG WAR!!! (For Kids!)

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

So today I'm mixing up the format just a little. I'm not focusing so much on track-lists and more the state of affairs in the fictional world of Christmas Sing-along characters. Both "Frostie" and Santa Claus are present for today's post... but they've also brought along their posses (possies? that doesn't look right no matter how I spell it). 

So here we have "Dancing With Frostie: Sing Along With Frostie and the Gang" and "Santa Claus & the Fun Street Gang" And here I posit this question: Which sing along "gang" comes out on top if these two decide to rumble?

Well. Let's take a look at the gangs first. First up, we have Frostie's gang. I'm not sure if they spelled his name with an "ie" to avoid some sort of copyright or what... but I find it disturbing. This gang starts off getting a few bad-ass points based on this alone. It takes one bad motherf**ker to misspell arguably THE most famous snowman's name in such an arbitrary and yet still completely homonymic way. This is how you know this gang means business. Now... in the "not-so-badass" column we have: This "gang" seems to be completely made up of woodland creatures. This, to me anyway, say more "herd" or at least "pack" rather than gang... but I'm not going to argue with however they choose to self-identify. We don't even have any wolves, cougars, bears, wolverines, or anything. We have: 2 mice, 3 rabbits, a skunk, a turtle, a deer, and what appears to be a cockroach or locust or something. Maybe a cricket? I want it to be a cockroach, honestly (it's sliding off the "h" is "with" for any of you less-eagle-eyed readers who have no f**king clue what I'm talking about) because the idea of a Christmas cockroach warms the cockles of my heart. again however, I see this as more of a stampede rather than a gang. They aren't even anthropomorphic... well.. not really. I mean, the Get-Along Gang was made up of animals... but they had thumbs so they could shiv you is cornered... you know?

Pictured: A Gang STILL more dangerous than Frostie's.
Art by @witalobenicio

The gang led by Santa Claus automatically has street cred because they have not only a name but a street name. Now, the "Fun Street" kids might not sound as tough as say... The Orphans from "Warriors" or... "The Yancy Street" kids... or those "Unholy Bastards" but you're letting the geography of this situation color you impression of the situation. Just because the kids don't live on "Broken Beer Bottle Street" doesn't mean they wouldn't still carve your nose off with one. Of course... looking at them and seeing the fact that they all appear to be Hummel figurines and/or Campbell's Soup Kids come to life doesn't help to alleviate that first impression either.

This doesn't exactly scream, "I'm going to cut you b**ch!!!"

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this whole idea to be honest. I thought it was brilliantly clever when I was holding both of these tapes in my hands at Goodwill: Some sort of epic battle between the two groups... the bone of contention DEFINITELY the spelling of Frosty/Frostie's name. There would be fantastic blood matches, with the deer goring several of the singing, happy, campfire children before being taken out by the Fun Street Gang's trained army of raptors. The skunk would spray Santa, who would retaliate by smacking Frostie's animal friends with his guitar with a vicious back-swing. Frostie would end up in the fire at some point and the Fun Street gang would win (but at what cost?) because Santa. That's why.

But that's about as far as I want to go with this whole concept, honestly. I/m tired and Christmas is too close for this kind of nonsense to be dragged out too far. So this is where we are. I am CONSTANTLY questioning my life choices. Wondering where I went wrong. But that is a ponderance for another day.

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 7 ...and Now a Word From Our Sponsors

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Today I'm featuring a couple of cassettes that jumped out at me for a couple of different reasons, not necessarily because of who performed them, or songs included... but mainly because of who was responsible for creating them. 

These are two Christmas music compilations that were sponsored by folks that I would not normally associate with Christmas... at least not initially. 

First up we have "Christmas with Courvoisier Cognac" performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. What we have here people, is a Christmas tape sponsored by a booze company.

The folks at Courvoisier keep it simple and instrumental here, because they know that once people get nice and boozed up they don't want a lot of confusing Christmas lyrics going on in the background to harsh their buzz.

-Side A- 

1. Deck the Halls

2. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

3. Angels We Have Heard on High

4. Adoramus Te, Christe

5. Silent Night

6. Adeste Fidelis

-Side B- 

7. The First Noel

8. Gesu Bambino 

9. What Child Is This? 

10. God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen

11. Coventry Carol

12. Joy to the World

And finally, we have a cassette created by the folks at True Value hardware stores. 

I don't know... I guess I just thought it was funny that a chain of hardware stores put together a collection of Christmas songs. AND... this thing has "The Night Before Christmas" performed by WILLARD SCOTT!!!

This guy. 

Oh whoops! I meant:

This guy. Merry Christmas.

-Side A-

1. Willard Scott - "The Night Before Christmas"

2. Julie Andrews - Hark! The Herald Angles Sing

3. Bing Crosby - O Holy Night

4. Garth Brooks - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

5. The Lettermen - What Child is This

6. Wayne Newton - Silent Night

7. Air Supply - Winter Wonderland

-Side B-

8. Nat "King" Cole - The Christmas Song

9. The Beach Boys - Frosty the Snowman

10. Glen Campbell - I'll Be Home For Christmas

11. Dean Martin - White Christmas

12. Anne Murray - O Come All Ye Faithful 

13. Andy Williams - Joy to the World

14. Ella Fitzgerald - It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

There's some genuinely great music in the mix here, with classics from the likes of Andy Williams, The Beach Boys, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Julie Andrews. Garth Brooks makes a sort of anachronistic appearance, and let's not kid anybody about it... I bought this thing for Willard Scott. And because a hardware chain put it together. 

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 6 A Mildly Depressing Exploration of Genre Christmas Music

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Along with more famous Christmas albums put out by favorite artists, groups, animated characters, Muppets, or as the soundtracks to holiday films... you will also find your alliterative collections of specific genre-themed Christmas albums. A couple of those that I found (and that looked tolerable to me) were these: 

The first one, Jingle Bell Jazz, is (you guessed it!) a compilation of jazz Christmas music. I think the track that won me over and that made this tape coming home with me an inevitability was Miles Davis's "Blue Xmas" which is not to be confused with the song "Blue Christmas". It is a poisonously pessimistic look at Christmas through the eyes of someone surrounded by the hypocrisy of Christmas in the city. I treasure songs like these almost as much as the heart-warming ones because it reminds us that not all of the Scrooges are necessarily evil... and they aren't always necessarily wrong.

The rest of the tracks on the tape are fun, a lot of them instrumental, and almost all of them livelier, (jazzier!) versions of old favorites. I especially love the scat-CRAZINESS that is "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie".

-Side A-

1. Duke Ellington - Jingle Bells

2. Lionel Hampton - White Christmas

3. Chico Hamilton - Winter Wonderland

4. Carmen McRae - The Christmas Song

5. Pony Poindexter - Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer

6. Paul Horn - We Three Kings of Orient Are

-Side B- 

7. The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

8. Lambert Hendricks and Ross - Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

9. Herbie Hancock - Deck the Halls

10. The Manhattan Jazz All-Stars - If I Were a Bell

11. Marlowe Morris - Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

12. Miles Davis - Blue Xmas

Next, the Country Christmas. I'll be honest here, I would NOT have bought this thing if there wasn't a Johnny Cash song included. And it is arguable not even a Christmas song. I have never heard of the story of Belshazar in relation to Christmas before... but it's Johnny Cash singing about a greedy king and a disembodied hand writing in blood. That and Miles Davis's "Blue XMas" and this is one of the darkest Christmas's ever. I love the line "He was weighed in the balance and found wanting," in Cash's deep voice.

-Side A- 

1. Roy Drusky - White Christmas

2. Jean Shepard - O Come All Ye Faithful

3. Del Reeves - I Saw Mommy Dance With Santa

4. David Frizzell - Blue Christmas

5. Billie Jo Spears - Silent Night

6. Bobby Helms - Jingle Bell Rock

-Side B- 

7. Porter Wagoner - Johnny's Christmas Tree

8. Ginny Wright - O Holy Night

9. Patti Page - Holidays

10. Johnny Cash - "Belshazah" (The song is supposed to be "Belshazar" but appears to be misprinted on both the cassette itself and on the liner notes) 

11. Leroy Van Dyke - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

12. Your Country Singers - Sleigh Ride

To be honest, I haven't given many of the other tracks a try (I hunt all this stuff down on YouTube because I indeed do NOT own a cassette player on which to listen to cassettes... I just collect them mostly as objets d'art for the time being. A tape player is actually secondary in importance to the cassettes for me at this time...) so I have no idea if the rest of the tape is charming or grating or both in equal measure. Patti Page's "Holidays" is depressing in an awesome way. It's all about heartbreak... and that sort of horrorshow seems to be a running theme in today's post.

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 5 The Nutcracker

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Tonight I'm featuring only one cassette on its own. But it is arguably a collection of music that has had one of the biggest impacts on my family and how we celebrate (or at least decorate for) Christmas. It is the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" 

I'm a big fan of the music from the Nutcracker. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, The Chocolate Spanish Dance, The March, all of these and more are famous pieces of music that have woven their way into Christmas as naturally as Santa Claus or the star on the tree.

We used to read the storybook to my daughter when she was very young, and because of this, when she saw the nutcrackers on sale in department stores, she would get very excited. So beginning when she was just 3 years old, we began collecting Nutcrackers. We decided that every year we would add a new Nutcracker to the shelf, and so began a tradition for our family that lasts until today. We've been collecting them for a total of twelve Christmases (although there have been two years out of those twelve when two Nutcrackers have been added to the collection instead of just one) and they now take up an entire shelf (and then some) to themselves every Christmas season.

Hey. I'm a collector.

So the first Nutcracker we bought was purchased in 2003. From 2003 to 2007 the Nutcrackers were all pretty small and fairly modest (though they ranged from traditional designs to more exotic costumes like a Russian Cossack and an Irish mandolin player) when suddenly in 2008 we got a giant one riding a rocking horse. And there was no looking back. The next year we picked up a Nutcracker ballet Clara Nutcracker, HOLDING A NUTCRACKER which I find ridiculously meta and awesome.

The year after we bought Clara, 2010, was the first year we could not decide on just one nutcracker, and we brought home both a Snowman and a Penguin because both were on clearance. It was 2011 when I picked out the Nutcracker on my own and decided we would be getting a court jester Nutcracker. He is still to this day my favorite. 2012 Mrs. Claus and her tray of baked goodies came home with us. The next year, 2013, is when my two boys found a Santa Claus Nutcracker HALF THE SIZE OF MRS. CLAUS and begged and pleaded to bring him home. Despite my anal retentive tendencies and insistence that he was "the wrong scale" the Santas had it. It was this same year that I won this FABULOUS glittery and GIANT fellow at a workplace Yankee Swap:

He's too tall to actually FIT on the Nutcracker shelf, and so he sits on top of the computer directly under that shelf. His name is Captain Glitterati. Well... it is now. I just thought that up as I was writing this. But I am going to pretend that that's what I named him back when we first brought him home.

In the first picture above, and on the far left of this group shot, you can see the Nutcracker we bought this year: The Rat King! My older son was hoping for an elf Nutcracker, but we couldn't find one. And to be honest, I do wish that our Rat King had multiple heads, instead of just the one (as he is sometimes portrayed) but I'm still pretty excited to finally have one in the collection. I saw a PIRATE Nutcracker at Wal-Greens this season after we had already picked up Ratty there... but reminded myself there is always next year... and that we're going to run out of shelf space soon enough without picking up doubles EVERY year... But still... pirate... Hm. Maybe if it goes on clearance after Christmas I'll just snap it up then.

I am so insane.

But it's a tradition I'm glad we have, and when my kids are adults and they've moved away from home, I will continue to buy each of them a Nutcracker every year, to keep that tradition alive.

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 4 The Muppets!

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Today's cassettes are Muppet themed! This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and if you'd like to hear me TALK a bit more about the Muppets in general, be sure to check out the Muppets discussion between Erik Johnson, Jason Roberts, and myself over at the Geek Fallout podcast! But let's just focus today on these two classic Christmas Muppet music collections, shall we? 

First up we have "The Muppet Christmas Carol" which believe it or not, I just watched in its entirety for the first time just this season. I liked it. I've seen clips, and longer portions of the movie before, and I am a BIG fan of the Muppets, so this film is a perfect fit for me. No idea why I've put it off for so long. The copy I found at Goodwill has never even been opened from its cellophane wrapper. That feels like a shame. I don't plan on opening it for now either, as I still have no way to actually play any of these cassette tapes. 

Here's the track list: 

-Side A- 

1. Overture 

2. Room in Your Heart

3. Good King Wenceslas

4. One More Sleep 'Til Christmas

5. Marley and Marley

6. Christmas Past

7. Chairman of the Board

8. Fozziwig's Party

9. When Love is Gone

-Side B- 

10. It Feels Like Christmas

11. Christmas Scat

12. Bless Us All

13. Christmas Future

14. Christmas Morning

15. Thankful Heart

16. Finale - When Love is Found/It Feels Like Christmas

17. When Love is Gone

"This is scary stuff. Should we be worried about the kids in the audience?"

"It's okay. This is culture."

Next up is the "John Denver & the Muppets: A Christmas Together" soundtrack. I remember seeing this John Denver Muppets special sometime as a child... but for the life of me I have no strong, clear, exact memories of it at all. It's weird. 

-Side A- 

1. Twelve Days of Christmas

2. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

3. The Peace Carol

4. Christmas is Coming

5. A Baby Just Like You

6. Deck the Halls

7. When the River Meets the Sea

-Side B- 

8. Little Saint Nick

9. NOEL: Christmas Eve, 1913

10. The Christmas Wish

11. Medley: Alfie: The Christmas Tree/Carol For a Christmas Tree/It's in Every One of Us

12. Silent Night, Holy Night

13. We Wish You a Merry Christmas

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 3 A Boy Band Christmas!

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Today I will try to talk to you over the cacophony of thousands of  screaming teenaged girls (nevermind the fact that I am not speaking out loud, just play along) to bring you a pair of cassettes featuring a pair of boy band from two very different eras! 

First up we have the Beach Boys! Formed in 1961 in California, the Beach Boys are FAR from being the world's first boy band... but they came to the scene pretty early on. "Merry Christmas From the Beach Boys" is not an original Beach Boys Christmas album, and is instead an early 90's compilation of earlier Christmas songs released on different Christmas albums. But it still gets the Beach Boys Christmas vibe going. There's that haunting, almost hollow wall-of-wound thing they have going on and their classic sort of doo-wop sounding beach music that treats these songs pretty well. Here's the tracklist:

-Side A-
1. Santa Claus is Comin' to Town
2. We Three Kings
3. Frosty the Snowman
4. Blue Christmas

-Side B-
5. I'll Be Home for Christmas
6. Little Saint Nick
7. White Christmas
8. Santa's Beard
9. Merry Christmas, Baby

The next cassette almost made me pee when I saw it at Goodwill. Finding a copy of "New Kids on the Block: Merry, Merry Christmas" was so exciting I'm sure Santa heard my squeal of glee all the way up at the North Pole. 

NKOTB was HUGE in the late 80's and "Merry, Merry Christmas" was released in 1989, the same year as the album "Hangin' Tough". Every girl I knew around the time I was 11 years old had posters of these guys GALORE plastered all over their rooms. Here's the track list: 

-Side A- 

1. This One's for the Children

2. Last Night I Saw Santa Claus

3. I'll Be Missin' You Come Christmas (A Letter to Santa Claus)

4. I Still Believe in Santa Claus

-Side B- 

5. Merry, Merry Christmas

6. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)

7. Funky, Funky, Xmas

8. White Christmas

9. Little Drummer Boy

10. This One's for the Children (reprise)

This is a very serious message. So all of you please listen. 

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 2 Old Hollywood Holidays

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

So today's post is going to focus on a couple of actor/singers who made a name for themselves performing on stage, on screen, and in song. 

Lena Horne does an amazing version of "Jingle Bells" titled "Jingle All the Way" among many other jazzy, brassy covers of Christmas standards. Horne was a famous performer of the stage and screen all the way back from the forties up until the 90's when she finally retired. She has performed with greats such as Tony Bennett Harry Belafonte, and yes, even Bing Crosby. Her voice is brash and yet feminine, big and yet not obnoxious. The tracklist here includes:

-Side A-
1. Jingle All the Way
2. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
3. Let it Snow! Let it Snow!
4. Winter Wonderland

-Side B-
5. White Christmas
6. The Little Drummer Boy
7. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
8. The Christmas Song

Since Bing Crosby does possibly my FAVORITE version of "Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" it is almost impossible to extricate him from Christmas now for me (the possible exception being the fact that he does the Headless Horseman song from Disney's Sleepy Hollow short) and this makes a good collection of Bing Crosby Christmas music a necessity around the holidays. With a career that began in the 20's and didn't stop until the 70's, Crosby is fondly remembered for Holiday classics like "Holiday Inn" and "White Christmas. The tracklist on his tape includes:

-Side A-
1. Silent Night
2. White Christmas
3. Faith of Our Fathers
4. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
5. Adeste Fideles
6. I'll Be Home for Christmas

-Side B-
7. Jingle Bells
8. Christmas in Killarney
9. Silver Bells
10. It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
11. Santa Claus is Comin' to Town
12. Mele Kelikimaka

And who can forget his truly bizarre but FANTASTIC duet with David Bowie?

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 1 Story Time Favorites

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.) 

2014 has been the year of me falling back in love with cassette tapes. Upon watching the Guardians of the Galaxy this summer, my old love of creating mix-tapes in high school was rekindled. BAck in highschool I was JUST transitioning from buying cassette tapes to buying CDs. But I was still making mix tapes to listen to in my car, or to give to friends. I have fond memories of owning cassettes, handling cassettes, and constantly organizing and reorganizing them. Because of this, as careful readers will note, all through my Halloween countdown this past October a good-sized pile of cassettes had made its way home with me from Goodwill. What readers could NOT have known was that I was also stockpiling cassettes of a Christmas persuasion in preparation for this 12-Day event!!!

My 2014 12-Day Christmas Countdown will be dedicated to Christmas cassettes!!! And to kick things off, I will be highlighting a couple of cassettes that feature Christmas books adapted to audio form! 

The first cassette is an audiobook recording of It's Christmas which is a collection of poems by Jack Prelutsky. I am a HUGE Prelutsky fan, and this collection of poems is one that gets read every single Christmas at our house. But here, the poems are being performed by the author himself, and by Alice Playten. There is music and singing included in the recording as well, making this a nice one to put on and play.

Here's a poem from the book that always makes my kids laugh:

Auntie Flo

Every year on Christmas

there's a gift from Aunti Flo,

she's sent me pairs of underwear

for three years in a row.

The box is always beautiful,

the bow is neatly tied,

but I'm always disappointed

when I see those shorts inside.

I wish she'd send a model plane,

or even a big stuffed bear,

I'd take a box of stones and rocks,

but please! no underwear. 

My wife says that when she gets a gift from her Auntie Flo is depresses her too. I didn't even know she HAD an Auntie Flo. 

Hm. 

Oh well. 

Finally we have the audiobook of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas which is an amazing story from an amazingly talented poet/author as well. The cassette has the entire story narrated by Boris Karloff on Side A, and all of the songs from the TV special isolated on Side B. So this thing is basically the audio track from the TV special. And... I am completely fine with that. I own this audiobook/soundtrack/whatever-you-want-to-call-it on CD as well. 

Not a shabby set of cassettes to have to kick things off with, if I do say so myself! I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting! 

Creepmas Day 13: My Creepmas Crèche!!!

So this year I'm celebrating Creepmas! 

From the 13 Days of Creepmas website: 

"A reaction to the continuing incursion of Christmas into Autumn and Halloween, CREEPMAS is a good-natured chance for Halloween lovers to exact revenge by bringing some spooky good cheer into the holidays or, more appropriately, the Hallowdays..." Read more about the inspirations behind this 13 day celebration HERE. 

So this is it! Day 13! The big finale! I figured this one had to be special, as I will probably NOT be celebrating Creepmas again next year unless some sort of BRILLIANCE strikes and I have an awesome idea for another Creepmas celebration on the site. So... it's time for a blow-out. Back in mid-November, I posted to let anyone know who cared that I would be taking November off from blogging. In that post, I put up a picture of a crèche/nativity scene that I had done with pop-culture characters a couple years prior. 

So THIS year I figured I would do yet another crèche... but make it a Creepy Creepmas Crèche!!! So take a gander at my finished project: 

It decidedly does NOT have the same sense of grandeur that my first nativity scene had. There is not, for instance, a giant orange T-Rex trying to eat the angel. But it matters not dear readers, for I posit that in this case, it is not the largesse that makes the crèche... but the sense of story. The internal logic. The character selection. The fact that I tried to keep all of the figures relatively horror-based or at least death-based. So as you soak in your initial view of the scene, let us prepare to take a closer look... shall we?

First, we have Anubis (the taller) as my shepherd. This was a really hard role to cast as I had absolutely NO horror toys that made sense as a "shepherd". I wracked my brain. I would have killed and devoured someone's liver for a Hannibal Lecter action figure at that moment! One of the Funko minis would have been perfect (Silence of the Lambs??? Eh? EH?) but alas, I could not think of a shepherd that fit the bill. But then I thought of the role Anubis plays in the Egyptian after-life... guarding souls on their passage to their judgement much like a... a... SHEPHERD. So I went with it (-shrugs-). In this shepherd's flock, in place of sheep, or a donkey, or a cow or any sort of normal animals, I went with: Tiny Anubis. I dunno why. I just wanted another animal in there. A Hellhound from Ghostbusters and Cerebus. Because dogs. Bast... because cat? This isn't making as much sense as I write it now. The skeletal T-Rex I felt was inspired at the time... but now I just miss my massive orange T-Rex all the more. Mothra. Is... an animal I guess? And that runaway crawling zombie just made me laugh. Shepherd! Round up that flock! Ha!

Ahem. Moving on.

Next up we have the Three Wise Guys... eh? Zombie stooges are perfect for being wiseguys... and there's three of them, and they are zombies. So PERFECT. I'm also pretending that the hammer, the wrench, and Curly's missing eyeballs are the gifts for the newborn king. And Kodos? I tried to tell him I wasn't going with a "three kings" theme, but he just wouldn't listen. And just wouldn't leave. So there he is. A third wheel in a group of four. Not so wise.

Now we're up to the angels. Attending this very important birth are not one-- not two-- but THREE angels! I couldn't NOT include the skeleton with wings. It perched there so perfectly, and just WORKED. The Weeping Angel? C'mon! And Death from the Sandman just balanced it out so I had to have three. I think it works. Can you definitively say exactly how many angels should be in attendance? Especially at THIS birth? I don't think you can. 

Finally we have the royal family themselves. We have the proud Papa Jack Skellington, the glowing mum The Bride of Frankenstein's Monster, and the bouncing baby boy himself, Sam from Trick R' Treat! I don't think there could ever be a BETTER group of ghouls to represent the taking over of Christmas by the creepiness of Halloween... There's just no way to do better than The Pumpkin King, The Bride, and the guardian of Halloween himself. Plus I think the goofy jack-o'-lanterns lend a certain kind of ambiance.

I love Sam so much I even have a spare that I turned into a Christmas ornament! I love seeing this little fella staring down at me from the tree! And if there are any doubts that Sam can't be a great part of your Christmas festivities, just check out this video from Fearnet! 

So that's it kids! Happy 13 days of Creepmas! I'll be back tomorrow with the start of my 12 days of Christmas countdown, which ends on Christmas day itself! I won't spoil the surprise today by sharing what it is I'll be talking about for my Christmas Countdown, but I do want to thank you all for celebrating Creepmas with me this year! I'll be back tomorrow! Until then, Happy Hunting!