Hard to believe we’re already on 17.\u00a0 We’ve been through\u00a0Justin Bieber and Santa’s\u00a0Beard – but I repeat myself.\u00a0 We’ve been through dead cats, Pearl Harbor, and priapic pine cones covered with\u00a0marshmallow fluff.\u00a0 Are you getting hungry yet?\u00a0 I’m starved – in fact, I haven’t been this hungry since 1984.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this isn’t about that.\u00a0 This is an advent countdown of Christmas and other miscellaneous holiday songs that make me barf a bit,\u00a0the ones you know you’re supposed to love, but\u00a0really you’d rather run hot wax in your ears than sit\u00a0through them\u00a0on the radio again – you know the kind I mean.\u00a0 Today’s exercise in holiday tune torture came to us from – oh, wait, this is<\/strong> about that.\u00a0 You know what we can do with all of Dean-o’s marshmallow fluff?\u00a0 Of course you do.\u00a0 We can feed the world.<\/p>\n Do they know it’s Christmas?\u00a0 Do they?\u00a0 I’m reliably informed, by which I mean my friend Beth told me and I’ve never known her to be wrong about anything, that 47% of the population of Africa is Muslim.\u00a0 They may know<\/strong> it’s Christmas, but I’m not sure they care much.\u00a0 There won’t be snow in Africa?\u00a0\u00a0Depends where you look, but mostly – no, no there won’t.\u00a0\u00a0 There were 44 artists on the original cut of Bob Geldof’s immortal song, and by the time Do They Know It’s Christmas was recorded, most of them would have believed you if you’d told them it was Valentine’s Day.\u00a0 But hey, it was the ’80s.\u00a0 That’s OK.\u00a0 And hey, their hearts were in the right place, and they raised a LOT of money for a good cause.\u00a0 Maybe it’s time to write a new song, though?\u00a0 We could get 44 artists together to sing something that wouldn’t make people cringe 20+ years later…<\/p>\n Bob Geldof does not have a solo line in the song.\u00a0 There’s a reason for that.\u00a0 He also wrote it, and it shows.\u00a0\u00a0“Hey, let’s put some really depressing words of guilt up against a solid, upbeat tune.\u00a0\u00a0What about something like ‘the Christmas bells that ring there\u00a0\/are the clanging chimes of doom \/ well, tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you.’\u00a0 How about that?”\u00a0<\/p>\n “Yep, that right there is the Christmas spirit, Bob.\u00a0 Thanks for playing.”<\/p>\n Oh, go on.\u00a0 You haven’t\u00a0watched the damn thing since Martha Quinn’s\u00a0first Christmas, and if you watch closely you can see Boy George giving his brother George Michael the finger.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n