The Corner Penthouse

For almost every December from 2005 to 2017, I posted an "Unusual Holiday Song" on Spook Central as a gift to all of my dear readers. The Corner Penthouse site didn't exist at the time, so this was the only way I could share these peculiar musical oddities. Eventually, I grew tired of the feature, and it wasn't really appropriate for Spook Central anyway - none of the songs were Ghostbusters related - so I stopped. I eventually started a Halloween Treat feature every October, which was more fitting for the site. This past year, I started moving as much of the non-Ghostbusters content as I could from Spook Central to The Corner Penthouse. As a holiday treat to all of you, I present the entire collection of Unusual Holiday Songs that originally appeared on Spook Central.

December 15, 2005 - Rugrats Holiday Classics

In the spirit of the holidays I have a little present for all of you: two MP3s I encoded of the two best songs from the Rugrats Holiday Classics! CD (2004).


These two songs feature Real and Extreme Ghostbusters cast members Tara Strong as baby Dil, Kath Soucie as Phil & Lil, and E.G. Daily as Tommy.

Enjoy!


December 24, 2009 - Merry Cryptmas

I am now officially starting a recurring, but not necessarily annual, tradition here at Spook Central of posting one or two holiday songs that aren't quite your normal holiday songs. I unofficially christened this new feature back in 2005 with the posting of two Rugrats holiday songs. I currently have enough material for several more years of holiday song posts. After that....well, I'll just have to see if I can find anything - assuming the Mayans are wrong and we're all still here after 2012.

We start with two oldies but goodies that demonstrate the special bond between Halloween and Christmas (and New Years). They come from the 1994 album Tales From The Crypt: Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas.


If you want something that's also humorous, but less creepy, to listen to tomorrow, check out Frank Welker's A Totally Ridiculous 12 Days of Christmas from 1986.




December 25, 2010 - A Macarena Christmas

This year's song of choice is one that I never even knew existed until I found the four-track CD single at a church's White Elephant Sale back in July 2009. You all know the original Bayside Boys remix, as much as I'm sure you'd like to forget it, and that stupid dance - which the people in the Snuggie commercial are trying to bring back even though some of them weren't even born when it was popular. (The Snuggie and the Macarena - when one piece of crappiness isn't crappy enough.) Well, now here's the official mashed-up Christmas version of it. Ladies and Gentleman, cover your ears, for I now unleash the horror that is Los Del Rio's Macarena Christmas (1996).


And, yes, there's even a music video for the song...

And while I'm on the subject of the Macarena... Way back in 1996, Rhode Island Soft Systems, Inc. created the "Hey, Macaroni!" screen saver, which featured a group of anthropomorphic macaroni noodles doing the Macarena while a song parody played in the background. It was a HUGE internet sensation, winning all kinds of awards. You wanna know why I bring it up? Because the damn song has been stuck in my head these past 14 years and I wanna get it out!!!


Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can visit the original June 1997 homepage for the "Hey, Macaroni!" screen saver (ignore the "550 No such directory" alert box that pops up when the first page loads), or the May 2001 revamped homepage. The original 16-bit 950 Kb .wav of the song is still available (I used it to make the MP3 that plays below the dancing macaroni above), and so is the original 1.1 Mb free version of the screen saver (features the short version of the song which excludes the last two sets of lyrics listed above). Easter Egg: In the Chooser program, make sure "Hey Macaroni" is selected, click Setup, then About, and click on the noodle part of the occassionally-blinking macaroni to play a snippet of the song.


December 20, 2011 - Put On Your Yarmulke, It's Time For Chanukah

For the past few years I've been posting an unusual holiday song each December. This year Matthew Jordan (of the Ghostbusters Wiki) offered to make me a little image to use for this now-annual tradition, and I thought it would be a great way to connect all of the posts, old and new. So, this year is the first year that the awesome title banner above is being officially used, though I retrofitted all of the old posts with it.

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. This is the holiday that Jewish people typically celebrate in December, though sometimes it occurs in November (it all depends upon where the Hebrew calendar lines up with the regular calendar each year). Hanukkah is an eight-day holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. For the non-religious and the non-Jewish, think of Hanukkah as the Jewish Christmas :-)

Hanukkah is not as popular in terms of mainstream music as Christmas is, so there really aren't any well-known Hanukkah songs. "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" and "Chanukah, Oh Chanukah" is about as well-known as it gets. Adam Sandler wanted to change all that in the mid-1990s with the release of a song that he appropriated titled, "The Chanukah Song". Available on his 1996 comedy album "What The Hell Happened To Me?", it's not so much of a song as it is a list of people who are Jewish. Still, it became really popular and is pretty much the only mainstream Hanukkah song there is. If you tuned in to see The Real Ghostbusters in the Winter of 1998 on the then-new Fox Family channel, you would have seen Sandler's live concert performance of the song, as it was constantly shown during commercial breaks. A few years after the original was released, Sandler made a revised version, changing a few lyrics and updating the list of Jewish people. This version, cleverly titled "The Chanukah Song, Part II", was recorded live at Brandeis University for his 1999 album "Stan and Judy's Kid". Because having two versions of the same song wasn't enough, Sandler released a "Part III" in 2002 on the Eight Crazy Nights soundtrack, this time featuring vocals from actor Rob Schneider and the children's choir The Drei-Dels.


Of course, why stop at only three versions when you can have FOUR!!! No, Sandler didn't put out a "Part IV" (not yet anyway), but someone did do a cover version... and it's someone whom you would never have expected to do a cover version of an Adam Sandler song - NEIL DIAMOND! Off of his 2009 "A Cherry Cherry Christmas" album, this version is more melodic, relaxed, and "adult contemporary" than Sandler's version - and it's probably the "safer" version if you want to listen to the song with your parents.


An animated music video was even created for the song.


December 21, 2012 - If It Doesn't Snow On Christmas

As some of you may know, every year in December I post an unusual holiday song on the Spook Central blog. Well, I'm not gonna let one bitch of a storm prevent me from continuing with the tradition.

I have a small surplus of unusual holiday songs on my computer from which to choose each year, but obviously I don't have access to that data for the time being. While I don't remember all of the songs, I do remember one of them. Luckily, the always awesome Matthew Jordan found me the MP3s online so that I'm able to make my usual Unusual Holiday Song post as usual. Thanks also to Raffaele Ruffaldi for helping out by uploading the MP3s.

Actors who also sing are not an uncommon thing. Heck, it's damn near a requirement if you want to be a tween star on the Disney Channel. Sometimes actors sing well (Anne Hathaway is a good recent example) and sometimes they don't (see Don Johnson, whose singing career is still looking for a heartbeat). Today we discuss an actor who falls into the latter category.

Joe Pesci, best known for his roles in Home Alone and Goodfellas, released an album in 1998 entitled "Vincent Laguardia Gambini Sings Just for You". If you don't recognize the name in the album title, then you've probably never seen the film My Cousin Vinny.


The album, which is available in Explicit and Clean versions, includes a variety of songs that Pesci sings in-character. One of those songs is called "If It Doesn't Snow On Christmas", in which the singer waxes philosophically about how problematic it might be for Santa to deliver presents if there isn't any snow on Christmas.

Below are the "clean" and "explicit" versions of the song. The explicit version has lots of forced profanity that really doesn't fit in the song. It doesn't even sound natural either, which makes that version a pain to listen to. I'd suggest sticking with the clean version.


Now this is where I normally would have ended this post, but thanks to some research done by the incomparable Matthew Jordan, I learned that this song has a little history.

You see, the only versions of "If It Doesn't Snow On Christmas" I've ever heard were the ones Joe Pesci sang, so I thought it was written specifically for his album. It turns out that the song was originally sung by the singing cowboy himself, Gene Autry, with his group The Pinafores way back in 1949. The song was the b-side to Autry's hit single "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (maybe you've heard of it) and was written by Rudolph composer Johnny Marks, along with Milton Pascal.




December 22, 2013 - Silent Night, Deadly Night

This year I decided to change things up a bit for this reoccurring feature. The title up there may say "Unusual Holiday Songs", but we're gonna take a look at an "Unusual Holiday Video" this year.

Everyone loves Christmas, so it should come as no surprise that even classic and modern horror movies icons do, too. This 2007 commercial for DirecTV in Argentina gives a glimpse as to how Darth Vader, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Dracula, Chucky, the Mummy, Hannibal Lecter, Samara, and the Wolfman enjoy the holiday season. I'm kinda surprised that the Cryptkeeper isn't there to join in on the festivities.


Yeah, I would have expected more bloodshed, too.


December 16, 2014 - It's Hammer Time!

Since 2005, I have been posting unusual holiday songs for either Christmas or Hanukkah every year. Okay, it was a one-time-only thing in 2005, but has become a regular tradition since 2009. Normally, I just make one holiday post for Christmas or Hanukkah. Because I've grown tired of what I started, I've decided to make two posts a year until I've gone through all of the songs I've collected. This guarantees Hanukkah and Christmas posts this year and for the next two years, and two Christmas posts in 2017 to finish out the feature. Maybe it'll come back as a once-in-a-while thing after that - if I come across a really unusual holiday song that I feel the desire to share - but, generally, it'll end with Christmas 2017.

So, with the future of the Unusual Holiday Song feature here at Spook Central mapped out, let's get this mutha started... and who better to start this mutha than the baddest mother- since Shaft. I'm just talking about The Hebrew Hammer.


Way back in 2003, Jonathan Kesselman wrote and directed a little blaxsploitation-spoof called - I bet you didn't see this coming - The Hebrew Hammer. Imagine Shaft, if done by Mel Brooks, and you'll have a pretty good idea what this film is like. If you still can't picture it, check out the trailer. Yeah, it definitely earns its R rating. If you can appreciate Mel Brooks films, Jewish humor, mature humor, spoofs, and buttkicking, then you'll like the film - though I know that it's not for everyone.

The film opens with a title song that is a clear spoof of Issac Hayes' "Shaft" theme, and it's pretty awesome. The MP3 of the song, performed by Bashir Salahuddin, was originally found on the movie's official site circa 2004.




December 22, 2014 - Reindeer Crossing

It's not very common that a comedy song itself gets parodied, but that's just what happened to "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer". In 1997, Cledus T. Judd, country music's answer to Weird Al Yankovic, decided to switch up the Christmas classic by swapping the gender of the protagonist, and making a lawn mower the source of accident. Thus, "Grandpa Got Runned Over By A John Deere" was born. Grandma comes from the Billboard's Greatest Christmas Hits: 1955-Present album, while Grandpa comes from Cludus' album I Stoled This Record.




December 6, 2015 - A Styling Jew On Christmas

The month of December can be a downright depressing time of the year if you don't worship the fat guy in the red suit. Go to any store, and you'll likely see candy canes, wreaths, Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, stockings, and red and green 'til your eyes bleed. Looking for some blue and white? Maybe, if you're *really* lucky, you'll find a small display of Hanukkah merch shoved in the back, or hiding in a corner somewhere - and that's if the store even bothers to carry stuff for their Jewish customers.


Little Kyle Broflofski of South Park, Colorado knows all too well what it's like to be a Jew on Christmas. His frustration grew so intense that he just had to put his feelings to music. Below is little Kyle's homemade recording. I should tell you that little Kyle has quite a little potty-mouth on him. He drops the F-Bomb quite a bit, so a "Parental Advisory - Explicit Content" warning is warranted.


This song actually comes from the television series "South Park", and appears on the album Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics. For more South Park holiday fun, check out the episodes "Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo" (1997) and "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" (1999), both of which appear on the Christmas Time In South Park DVD ("Classics" is also on the long out-of-print Christmas in South Park DVD). Considering that they are hosted by a talking piece of fecal matter, it almost goes without saying that they are not suitable for kids.


December 22, 2015 - A Totally Weird Christmas

You know, the holidays can be a hard time for me. It seems like I get treated unfairly. It's bad enough that Burl Ives doesn't want me to join in any reindeer games - which is ironic because I am neither a reindeer, nor athletically-inclined.


Then you have Weird Al Yankovic, who wants to grind me up into reindeer sausage! Is he a member of the Elite Hunting Club?



I hold no ill-will towards Mr. Yankovic. In fact, he's the subject of this post. He's written and performed two original holiday songs. Off his 1986 album Polka Party! is "Christmas at Ground Zero", which is not about a Frank Cross-produced holiday special emanating from the former World Trade Center site. Catch it live, Christmas Eve, on IBC! It's actually a cheery Ronnettes-style Christmas song about surviving a nuclear bomb attack.


Ten years later, on his Bad Hair Day album, he gets even darker with "The Night Santa Went Crazy". The title, pretty much, sums up what the song is about. Although an original, the darkly humorous Christmas song is performed as a style parody of "Black Gold" by Soul Asylum, with melodic references to "Mama I'm Comin' Home" by Ozzy Osbourne and "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake.

An "extra gory" version of the song was included as the third track on the "Amish Paradise" single, but is now also included on The Essential Weird Al Yankovic compilation album. In this version, none of the reindeer survive, Santa is killed by a member of the SWAT team, and the elves file for unemployment benefits.




December 20, 2016 - Spinning That Latin Dreidel

Jewish people have very few festive Hanukkah songs. There's Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song"...and that's about it. Erran Baron Cohen, brother of Sacha Baron Cohen and composer of the original music for "Borat" and "Da Ali G Show", tried to change that back in 2008 with his album, Songs in the Key of Hanukkah. As promotion for the album, the first single, "Dreidel", was released online for free. You've probably heard the original version of this traditional song. You know, "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay..." Yeah, that one. Well, if you ever wanted to know what that song would sound like if it were performed by a latin marching band, now you'll get to find out. There's also a music video for the song.




December 24, 2016 - A Not-So-Rosie Christmas

One of the perks of being rich and famous is that you get to torture the public with vanity projects showing off your (lack of) talent, simply because you have the funds and means to do such stupid things. It's even worse when you con the public into paying for you to "play" with your friends. Such was the case with Rosie O'Donnell. After years of doing stand-up and crappy movies - Exit to Eden, Car 54 Where Are You?, Another Stakeout - and failed sitcoms (I'll always remember the long-forgotten 1992 FOX series Stand by Your Man - Melissa Gilbert and Sam McMurray deserved better), someone, somewhere, thought to give Rosie a daytime talk show in 1996. For what ever reason, it became REALLY popular - and it generated Rosie merchandise. I remember there being not one, but TWO, dolls crafted in her image: a cartoonish talking plushie (with a freakin' HUGE forehead!), and a more realistic legitimate "Friend of Barbie" doll. If Rosie could get two dolls, why the heck has there never been a Rita Rudner doll?!?


Anyway, Rosie got rich and popular, so she decided that she wanted to put out a Christmas album, teaming her up with some of the famous (and more talented) people she idolized; like Celine Dion and Cher. A Rosie Christmas was released to a brainwashed public in 1999, at the height of her popularity. To be fair, she did give the proceeds to charity (as far as I know), but that doesn't mean that the album should exist in the first place. Rosie was very popular with children, and some of the songs on the album were performed with then-popular cartoon characters. It's two of these tracks that are the subject of this post.

The sixth track features Elmo from Sesame Street (voiced by Kevin Clash) and Rosie performing "Do You Hear What I Hear?" A minute into the song she fumbles the line "your turn" and they left it in! When Rosie is the best singer in a duet, you know you have a problem. Kevin Clash is so much better as Splinter in the 1990s live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, and as Baby Sinclair in Dinosaurs, but Elmo's the only role that's payed his bills. Good for him, but bad for the sanity of children everywhere.

The eleventh track features Angelica Pickles from Rugrats (voiced by Cheryl Chase) and Rosie performing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". Who thought it was a good idea to back the vocals with big band Dixieland jazz music? This song, which is supposed to be sung from a little kid's perspective (which Angelica is), would have worked SO much better with the original's music track - and with just Angelica singing. Why is it that the Rugrats can't get a decent instrumental backing for their songs?


In spite of being some of the worst music you'll ever hear, and being a total vanity project, A Rosie Christmas must have sold well, because a year later there was a follow-up: Another Rosie Christmas. Well, either it sold well, or Rosie was just so rich and vain that she said, "Screw them, I'm doing a second one just because I can." I don't know, and I don't care.


December 12, 2017 - I Know What We're Gonna Do This Christmas

In 2007, Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, former writers of Rocko's Modern Life, created a little animated show for Disney called Phineas & Ferb. The show is about two little stepbrothers named Phineas and Ferb - what, you thought they were gonna be named Phil and Bob?!? - who live every day of their Summer vacation to its fullest. Through sophisticated computer technology, and a box of crayons, they manage to create every type of wild thing imaginable to have fun each day, all while their sister, Candace, tries in vain to prove to their mother that they're up to such crazy shenanigans. Meanwhile, their pet platypus, named Perry, is really a secret agent, who spends nearly every day away on secret missions against the (not so) evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz - who really should hire a lawyer and sue the agency Perry works for (OWCA) since they seem to be breaking a lot of laws by keeping tabs on every little thing he does in the guise of "stopping him from doing evil things". Is OWCA a branch of the U.S. government?!?

Music plays a big part in the series, and personally, I think the original songs they use on the show are some of the best I've heard on TV since Animaniacs. Disney, of course, made sure that the fan's desire for the music did not go unfulfilled, and that their coffers did not go unfilled. They've released several albums full of Phineas & Ferb music. The first half of the 2010 album Phineas & Ferb: Holiday Favorites contains songs from the "Phineas & Ferb Christmas Vacation" episode, while the second half is all new songs recorded exclusively for the album. While this isn't my favorite Phineas & Ferb album, and I'm very disappointed that there isn't even one Hanukkah song on it - the Isabella Garcia-Shapiro character is, as you could tell from her name, Jewish - I do think that it's a great album, overall.

My two most favorite songs from the album are "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" (performed by the cast) and "Perry Saves Christmas" (performed by Major Monogram & Carl the Intern, the two people who give Perry his missions). "Twelve Days" is the traditional song you all know and love, except that each item is tailored to what each character wants, and not the usual list of items. Dr. Doofenshmirtz changes his want on every verse.

1st Day - Phineas: A jet-powered rocket ski.
2nd Day - Candace: Two busted brothers.
3rd Day - Isabella: A sash full of patches.
4th Day - Jeremy: A silver guitar.
5th Day - Dr. Doofenshmirtz: The entire Tri-State Area / A large portion of the Tri-State Area / Two of the three states that comprise the Tri-State Area / One single state / Five golden rings / Promotion to colonel / [feels put on the spot for "one thing that I want from this mythic all-powerful gift giver who only comes once a year"] / Some almond brittle.
6th Day - Baljeet: A kiss from a girl.
7th Day - Buford: More nerds to bully.
8th Day - Major Monogram: Promotion to colonel.
9th Day - Perry: (chatters)
10th Day - Carl: A job that pays me money.
11th Day - Vanessa: My own set of wheels.
12th Day - Ferb: (spoken) One line of dialogue.

"Perry Saves Christmas" is a rewritten version of "Frosty The Snowman", with Major Monogram singing about how Perry saves Christmas from Dr. Doofenshmirtz while Carl the Intern provides occasional commentary. It's listed in the album notes as "Frosty The Snowman (Recorded as "Perry Saves Christmas")", which apparently makes that its official title. I'm guessing that there's a legal issue involved here, just like how Weird Al Yankovic was legally required to title one of his parodies, "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*", complete with backslash AND asterisk (source: "UHF" DVD Audio Commentary at 0:35:15).

The album features the singing talents of Vincent Martella (as Phineas), Ashley Tisdale (as Candace), Alyson Stoner (as Isabella), Mitchel Musso (as Jeremy), Olivia Olson (as Vanessa), Bobby Gaylor (as Buford), Maulik Pancholy (as Baljeet), Dan Povenmire (as Dr. Doofenshmirtz), Jeff "Swampy" Marsh (as Major Monogram), Tyler Mann (as Carl the Intern), Thomas Sangster (as Ferb), Jaret Reddick, Laura Dickinson, Danny Jacob, Aaron Daniel Jacob, Jeff Gunn, Vangie Gunn, and Robbie Wyckoff.




December 22, 2017 - A Bob Rivers Christmas

This will be the last Unusual Holiday Song post I plan to write, as I've grown tired of the feature and I think it's run its course. I figured I'd go out with a bang by writing about FOUR songs - the most I ever offered in one post.

Bob Rivers is an American rock and roll radio on-air personality in the Pacific Northwest, as well as a prolific producer and songwriter of parody songs, most famous for his Christmas song parodies. In the 1980s, Bob spent almost 6 years at WAAF in Worcester, Massachusetts (in the Boston market), as part of the successful "Bob and Zip" morning show with Peter "Zip" Zipfel. In 1988, Rivers released Twisted Christmas, which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album was filled with humorous Christmas songs and parodies. My favorites are "We Wish You Weren't Living With Us" (track 3), "Wreck The Malls" (track 4), and "The Restroom Door Said, 'Gentlemen'" (track 8).


Rivers released a second album of humorous holiday-themed music in 1993 entitled I Am Santa Claus (the title track was a parody of Black Sabbath's song "Iron Man"). Track 12 on this album is a spoken-word The Wizard of Oz Christmas spoof entitled "The Magical Kingdom of Claus".


Bob later released three other Christmas-themed albums: More Twisted Christmas (1997); Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire (2000); and White Trash Christmas (2002). Bob Rivers' last regular radio program, "The Bob Rivers Show with Bob, Spike and Joe", was broadcast on Seattle oldies station KJR-FM until August 8, 2014, ending a 25-year run in the Seattle market.


Well, that's it. I'm sure that there are other unusual holiday songs out there, but you'll have to find them yourself.

Thanks to Matthew Jordan for making the "Unusual Holiday Songs" title banner that appears at the top of this post.