The thing I dread most about this time of year is the relentless onslaught of treacly Christmas music that can be heard damned near everywhere (and that forces me to resort to listening to more punk and metal than usual in an effort to exorcise its saccharine overload), but this year had been relatively merciful.
While ordering a pizza at the local schmancy pizzeria, I endured the eight-jillionth repeat of Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song" (you know it, the one about Chet's nuts being roasted by over a campfire by cannibals or something), but the one that made me wat to core out my ears with a melon baller was Bing Crosby's ultra-nauseating triumph of fake "Irishness," "Christmas in Kllarney," which is full of the expected stereotypical "wheedly-whee" flavor that one comes to associate with old Hollywood's movies' trite invocation of Ireland. It's ultra-phony and, for me anyway, it's impossible to hear Bing Crosby these days without inserting my own lyrics about him merrily and drunkenly beating his kids, driving some of them to suicide. Seriously, how is this not horrible?
Come on, New Year's Eve...
