Xmasploitation

Jesse Walker | December 2, 2004

The funniest thing I've read all year.

Comments

|12.2.04 @ 3:10PM|#

Anything that contains the text, "A Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski" gets a thumbs-up from me.

|12.2.04 @ 3:14PM|#

is this bullshit or what?

the rand thing is too good to be true.

i would love to hear those round table christmas tapes.

|12.2.04 @ 3:15PM|#

Who is Santa Claus?

|12.2.04 @ 3:16PM|#

RTFFA (read the full fucking article) before posting, says i to i.

whoops.

|12.2.04 @ 3:20PM|#

Rocket fuel! Especially the Rand and Nuge parts.

|12.2.04 @ 3:26PM|#

Great stuff.

Nugent claims to never have done drugs. Perhaps he should have.

|12.2.04 @ 3:45PM|#

The Village People one was the best.

Whatever happened to Shields and Yarnell, anyway?

Jeff|12.2.04 @ 3:49PM|#

Too funny, although the real-life Bob & Doug christmas special on SCTV falls into the catagory.

|12.2.04 @ 3:54PM|#

Speaking of them, a friend of mine saw the Village People at some sort of festival/county fair kind of thing. Apparently it included a few original Village People. Like up to 25% original Village People. Her verdict:

50 year old guys shouldn't wear chaps.

Thanks Scalzi, I had managed to blot out all memory of Shields and Yarnell.

|12.2.04 @ 4:14PM|#

The Star Trek special was my personal favorite. Absolutely dead-on.

Also, the photo of the young Dorothy Parker was a revelation. I had no idea she was so damn hot.

|12.2.04 @ 4:42PM|#

In case you missed it in the comments, someone on that page posted a link to the apparently real Star Wars Holiday Special:

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0193524/

Jesse Walker|12.2.04 @ 4:50PM|#

The Star Wars Holiday Special is indeed real. I wrote a quick review of it here.

|12.2.04 @ 5:05PM|#

Ha! Bea Arthur singing in the Star War special! Was she a wookie?

Mmmm...wookie porn....

Jesse Walker|12.2.04 @ 5:13PM|#

She was a bartender!

|12.2.04 @ 5:22PM|#

Oh, man, she must have been at the cantina! So that's how she spent her time between Maude and Golden Girls. I have got to see this movie!

|12.2.04 @ 5:27PM|#

Ayn Rand loved Christmas, but she didn't have kids who would love it more. Any speculation on what would go under Ayn's Christmas tree ?

For an 8 year old boy:

a train set
a computer
a dart set and poster of Immanuel Kant


For an 8 year old girl:

New York Barbie
a computer.
a dart set and poster of Immanuel Kant.

Jesse Walker|12.2.04 @ 5:29PM|#

Oh, man, she must have been at the cantina!

Bingo. What's especially silly about her scene is that it ends on a "serious" note, leaving us all to contemplate the sad realities of life under Darth Vader.

Did I mention that Jefferson Starship has a cameo, too?

|12.2.04 @ 5:29PM|#

Whatever it would be, you can be damn sure it would be made out of Reardon steel.

|12.2.04 @ 5:47PM|#

"Did I mention that Jefferson Starship has a cameo, too?"

On that wild tangent: Grace Slick has some honorable-mentions with 'White Rabbit', 'Hey Fredrick', and 'Lather'. Jorma Kaukonen has several timeless acoustic pieces.

Oops, that would be the Jefferson Airplane.

|12.2.04 @ 6:12PM|#

"What's especially silly about her scene is that it ends on a "serious" note, leaving us all to contemplate the sad realities of life under Darth Vader."

Unintentional comedy is often the best. When you don't need smart assed puppet robots to help you see the comedy, so much the better. Bea Arthur. Whoo nelly ...

|12.2.04 @ 6:21PM|#

can you download the Star Wars Christmas special somewhere?

|12.2.04 @ 6:42PM|#

Hee, I just looked at the IMDB page again and saw that, in addition to Bea Arthur, the Star Wars movie includes both Harvey Corman and Art Carney, not to mention Diahann Carroll as a character named "Holographic Wow."

Wow indeed.

Incidentally, in looking to see if it was available for purchase, I came across a web site devoted to it, complete with an informative and entertaining FAQ:

http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/text/faq.htm

It includes this bit about why it isn't "officially" for sale:
-----
8a. Has it been released on video officially? Why not?
It has not because George Lucas reportedly hates it and wishes that all copies would be destroyed.
-----
Also, you may be interested to know that it is sometimes informally known as "A Very Wookie Christmas" and "A Wookie Holiday."

|12.2.04 @ 6:58PM|#

jeff,
I'll check on Kazaa when I get home and report back on this thread later tonight. I must see this. Too bad it ain't an Easter Egg on the Star Wars DVDs.

An aside on the DVDs: I watched the theatrical trailers for the original three and was shocked that I couldn't figure out the whole plot and ending by the trailer. It was downright quaint. If Empire was released today, one of the trailers surely would have had the line, "Luke I am your father."

|12.2.04 @ 7:26PM|#

Drooling Richard:

I dig your ideas about the hypothetical Rand children's Christmas.

Although I think the boy, John-Howie, should also get a set of Legos. He uses them to build a little house that's radically unorthodox and visionary in its design.

Then his sister, Dee-Dee, tells him it looks funny and not the way real houses look. When she tries to rebuild it for him, John-Howie smashes the Lego construct to pieces rather than allow the integrity of his vision to be compromised.

Then he yells, "Get out of my way! Get the hell out of my way!" and smacks Dee-Dee one.

Dee-Dee recoils, rubbing her stinging cheek. Yet somehow the sting is mixed with pride and pleasure -- never before had a man respected her opinion enough to smack her for it.

And since John-Howie and Dee-Dee are minors as well as brother and sister, I'm going to stop right there.

Although, I hope any Ojbectivist who reads this will understand: I wouldn't have had such fun making fun of the quirks of Ayn Rand's writing if I hadn't read her repeatedly and found many things of value there.

|12.2.04 @ 7:34PM|#

I meant "Objectivist"! Sorry!

You know, there is a lot to mine in the concept of what Ayn Rand's children would be like.

Little John-Howie stood at the front of the class, slim shoulders thrown back. The smoke of his cigarette curled in the air. "My oral report is about my mom's book, Atlas Shrugged, which is about the evils of collectivism. This will take about three hours."

Franklin Harris|12.2.04 @ 8:02PM|#

I once asked Harlan Ellison about the lost "Star Trek" Christmas episode, and he's been mailing me dead gophers every Christmas since.

|12.3.04 @ 5:57AM|#

I don't get it.

|12.3.04 @ 9:07AM|#

Steve Darkly, you made me laugh so hard that the engineers all LOOKED at me. You know the LOOK. And I couldn't even explain to most of them what all the fuss was about. Drat you. :)

|12.3.04 @ 9:28AM|#

Too highbrow-"hip". Didn't crack a smile (except slightly, at the Cronenberg bit).

|12.3.04 @ 12:33PM|#

Speedwell: Thanks! To quote the great Emo Philips:

"This is my philosophy of life: If I can make just one person laugh ... I'm still doing better than Tony Danza."

|12.3.04 @ 1:37PM|#

The article was hilarious, the comments after the article were great, and the Hit and Run comments are as well.

BTW...Life Day rules, man!