Tiny Tim
Tiny Tim’s Christmas Album
1995, Rounder Records
Lesser singers, such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Barbra Streisand have tried.
They’ve tried to conjure up a joyous holiday spirit while they wrap their pristine voices around some of the worst songs ever written. They’ve tried to make us feel good. They’ve tried to make us hold our loved ones a little closer. They’ve tried to make us think about Jesus while we’re on our fifth brandy eggnog.
They’ve tried and failed. At least for dirtbags like me who only like Christmas because it’s a day off from work—and shouldn’t us assholes be the REAL judge of what makes great Christmas music?
I think so. And you can trust me. I’ve only had three martinis tonight.
One of many refreshing left turns in the Twin Peaks revival is its disinterest in traditional television cliffhangers. Episodes end with dangling questions galore and turning points left up in the air, but David Lynch never gives us a hard cut to credits after a gunshot in the night. Instead he often goes out on a song, a “live” performance on stage in the long-standing Roadhouse. Like Mr. Rogers changing his shoes and jacket, the moment the neon bar sign hits the screen, you know the show is almost over. What young band in Lynch’s iTunes is playing this week?
Composer Angelo Badalamenti was the Great Missing Man For the first few hours of Twin Peaks season 3.
When you see Whipped Cream & Other Delights by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass in a thrift store, you buy it. Just to have it. It’s like a membership card into the club of cheap-bin record hunters (all of us have it). This LP in your possession says that you’ve been there. You know the fluorescent lights. You know the dirt. You know the smell. You know the pain.
Sometimes I get to thinking that I’m a real mean guy. A hard ass, a walking scowl, one gruff customer, a storm system coming in from the south, a beer bottle that’s been pissed in, a bruised banana, a carcinogenic soul with an abortion clinic dumpster for a heart, a dead dandelion in a winter field, a tornado that carries away your kitten, a broken cookie jar, bad news in old blue jeans, a hair in your fettuccine alfredo, a spoonful of bitter medicine that doesn’t help, a straight-up jerk, a bad dream, a bus station restroom, a carton of curdled milk, a human skull that you find in the grass on your Easter picnic, a soiled towel, one foul fella.