Joy to the worst (or assorted Christmas musings that add up to nothing)
December 22, 2006 | 12:00am
Igrew up reading Mad magazine, along with Jingle magazine’s Grin Page (which pretty much explains the sub-normal way I look at the world). I loved Mad’s comic strips, the parodies, the infomercials from hell, the fold-ins, the white spy trying to outwit the black spy and vice versa, observations by Don "Mad’s Maddest Artist" Martin, and of course its "humor in a jugular vein" – exemplified by the section "You Know It’s… When…" You know it’s time to have those pimples pricked… when you start to remind people of the Elephant Man. You know it’s time to wash your favorite jeans… when they start walking on their own. All led me – a trying-hard Alfred E. Neuman acolyte – to do my own mad, Mad take on Christmas.
You know it’s Christmas when… You receive really weird gifts.
Several Christmases past, I received a record-number of 10 planners (or file-o-faxes, whatever you call them). And for someone who has a life that Waiting for Godot pretty much sums up, that was really ironic. Those 10 gifts ended up in the recycle bin, and the luckless 10 recipients probably wanted to put a voodoo spell on me. At least they had a planner, so they could squeeze in the hexing on, say, lunchtime, Feb. 12.
One time, I got a caviar holder. A caviar holder, for crying out loud! The person who gave it to me (a former schoolmate) was a sweetheart for remembering me on Christmas, but I have never really needed a caviar holder. I still haven’t found a use for it. If it was a Lucky Me noodle strainer, or a small bowl for my Century Tuna meals, I would have been elated.
You know it’s Christmas when… The garbage collectors smile at you.
When the waste-management specialists start acting like extras from It’s A Wonderful Life, you know you’re scrooged, er, screwed. In the city I lived in years ago, seeing garbage collectors in action was like spotting the Yamashita treasure.
One time, a rat died near our house – and a dead rat always, always announces itself to the whole wide world. Hello, I am a dead rat. The carcass was there for days – as if it were a goddamn wake. Maybe, the neighborhood gamblers set up sakla stalls like they always do. (Syndicates even allegedly rent corpses from funeral parlors in order to hold sakla sessions.)
The smell was alive – like Frankenstein’s monster, like the B.O. in the "smell car" episode of Seinfeld. It watched television with us. Joined us for meals. Listened to music with us. In one instance, it almost ran away when someone in our house played Cats in the Cradle. It was unbearable.
Then one day, I woke up to the smell of detergent. It was like going to bed in hell one night, and then waking up the next day in the Playboy mansion. I went out to see our street as spotless as the ones in our village brochure.
(Like the time my brother saw a foreigner scratching his head in disbelief at the sight of a million people trying to cram themselves into LRT coaches during rush hour… I bet you the brochure portrays clean coaches with 12 to 14 people onboard, all smiling for no apparent reason.)
So I stood outside, trying to look for the ghost of the dead rat. No trace of it. Then the garbage collectors passed by, baring pearly-white teeth, wishing me joy to the world, the Lord is come, like in a bad episode of Twilight Zone. Ah, it was the start of Simbang Gabi.
The same goes for some of the security guards in the university where I studied. All year long they act like King Kong and Godzilla combined; but come December they smile like Bambi and Thumper combined.
You know it’s Christmas… When you experience apocalyptic traffic jams.
This year’s traffic congestion is the worst ever (though not as bad as next year’s, probably). When my girlfriend and I went to SM Megamall from Greenhills one early evening, it took us almost three hours. Three hours that we could never get back. We could have read War and Peace and be the wiser for it.
Come to think of it, how could 10,000 cars fit into reduced roads littered with pockmarks, illegally parked cars and repairmen who work on roads during 1) the rainy season and 2) the Christmas season?
And then you hear alarming, agitating sirens, only to find – instead of an ambulance en route to a hospital – a fleet of traffic enforcers escorting a luxury car with the sticker "For Official Use Also." The occupant must really be in dire need of a caviar holder.
You know it’s Christmas… When taxi drivers become gods.
Years ago, I wrote this: "Cab drivers start getting more evil when the malls get fuller. It’s synchronous. It’s proportional. It’s something Darwinian and unavoidable. You get hold of a cab, and you watch the driver turn into a weatherman ("Malabon? Bumabaha dun!"), a cash register ("Mga P500, ayos na tayo!"), a corrupt pubic official ("Hindi ko na bubuksan ang metro ha!"), Nostradamus ("Mata-trapik ako dun!") or Beelzebub ("Hindi! Hindi! Hindi!") That is, if they ever stop for you at all."
No need to update those sentiments. It’s as if I wrote them yesterday.
You know it’s Christmas… When people who dislike you (and you dislike back) crawl out of the woodwork to be nice to you.
I really don’t know why. I remember walking through my old neighborhood on Christmas Eve and everyone was smiling like Batman’s archenemy: the barangay tanod, the jueteng collector, the reformed addict, the sakla hustlers, and the thugs who used to hassle weaklings like me for gin money. Peace on earth, goodwill toward geeks. They must’ve been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past the night before.
You know it’s Christmas… when almost all the politicians in the country put up huge billboards wishing us "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Election Year."
As if we need to be reminded.
You know it’s Christmas… When you hear the blasted Chipmunks on the radio.
This brings me to my meditation on weird Christmas tunes. Bing Crosby did a duet with David Bowie on Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth. That’s like Norman Rockwell sharing a canvas with Salvador Dali. Ah, the things musicians do during the yuletide season.
When I was growing up, Christmases were usually heralded by the Ray Conniff Singers – and, of course, Alvin and the rest of the gang singing at 10,000 beats per minute. It was surreal for us kids at that time to sing Winter Wonderland in a house that didn’t have proper ventilation, where the village cuts off the water supply from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and with a rice field parallel to our backyard. We even had Rudolph the red-nosed carabao. Then we turned the next page of the carol songbook to White Christmas.
But the Jackson 5 Christmas album is funky as hell. Listen to the signature Motown bassline on Someday at Christmas and you’ll know what I mean.
I recently saw Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas again on MYX. Bono had a mullet, Boy George wasn’t a street-sweeper then, Sting hadn’t lost the rainforest on his head yet, Bananarama and Paul Young were still big, George Michael still had Andrew Ridgeley, there was still this famous spat between Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, and the drum sound was quintessential Eighties: big, with a lot of reverb, and the master stickman was Phil Collins. The song, though, doesn’t sound dated compared to We Are The World, which featured everyone from Bob Dylan and Ray Charles to La Toya Jackson and Lionel "pre-Nicole" Richie. Lionel’s big hit at that time was Dancing on the Ceiling. How does one dance on the ceiling, anyway?
The other aural freaks are: Macarena Christmas, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus (seriously, Ru Paul sang it), and Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo from South Park. But the strangest one for me is Twelve Days of Christmas.
Yes, yes, I know it was written in the 18th century as a nursery rhyme, but as a staple in the repertoire of young Filipino carolers (like me and my friends back in the day), that was one mystifying song to sing. Oh, what strange gifts true love bears.
How would you feel if you received a partridge in a pear tree? Or turtle doves and French hens a-cooing?
You know, it’s Christmas… When you start reading pesky Christmas articles such as this.
Bah, humbug.
For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.
You know it’s Christmas when… You receive really weird gifts.
Several Christmases past, I received a record-number of 10 planners (or file-o-faxes, whatever you call them). And for someone who has a life that Waiting for Godot pretty much sums up, that was really ironic. Those 10 gifts ended up in the recycle bin, and the luckless 10 recipients probably wanted to put a voodoo spell on me. At least they had a planner, so they could squeeze in the hexing on, say, lunchtime, Feb. 12.
One time, I got a caviar holder. A caviar holder, for crying out loud! The person who gave it to me (a former schoolmate) was a sweetheart for remembering me on Christmas, but I have never really needed a caviar holder. I still haven’t found a use for it. If it was a Lucky Me noodle strainer, or a small bowl for my Century Tuna meals, I would have been elated.
You know it’s Christmas when… The garbage collectors smile at you.
When the waste-management specialists start acting like extras from It’s A Wonderful Life, you know you’re scrooged, er, screwed. In the city I lived in years ago, seeing garbage collectors in action was like spotting the Yamashita treasure.
One time, a rat died near our house – and a dead rat always, always announces itself to the whole wide world. Hello, I am a dead rat. The carcass was there for days – as if it were a goddamn wake. Maybe, the neighborhood gamblers set up sakla stalls like they always do. (Syndicates even allegedly rent corpses from funeral parlors in order to hold sakla sessions.)
The smell was alive – like Frankenstein’s monster, like the B.O. in the "smell car" episode of Seinfeld. It watched television with us. Joined us for meals. Listened to music with us. In one instance, it almost ran away when someone in our house played Cats in the Cradle. It was unbearable.
Then one day, I woke up to the smell of detergent. It was like going to bed in hell one night, and then waking up the next day in the Playboy mansion. I went out to see our street as spotless as the ones in our village brochure.
(Like the time my brother saw a foreigner scratching his head in disbelief at the sight of a million people trying to cram themselves into LRT coaches during rush hour… I bet you the brochure portrays clean coaches with 12 to 14 people onboard, all smiling for no apparent reason.)
So I stood outside, trying to look for the ghost of the dead rat. No trace of it. Then the garbage collectors passed by, baring pearly-white teeth, wishing me joy to the world, the Lord is come, like in a bad episode of Twilight Zone. Ah, it was the start of Simbang Gabi.
The same goes for some of the security guards in the university where I studied. All year long they act like King Kong and Godzilla combined; but come December they smile like Bambi and Thumper combined.
You know it’s Christmas… When you experience apocalyptic traffic jams.
This year’s traffic congestion is the worst ever (though not as bad as next year’s, probably). When my girlfriend and I went to SM Megamall from Greenhills one early evening, it took us almost three hours. Three hours that we could never get back. We could have read War and Peace and be the wiser for it.
Come to think of it, how could 10,000 cars fit into reduced roads littered with pockmarks, illegally parked cars and repairmen who work on roads during 1) the rainy season and 2) the Christmas season?
And then you hear alarming, agitating sirens, only to find – instead of an ambulance en route to a hospital – a fleet of traffic enforcers escorting a luxury car with the sticker "For Official Use Also." The occupant must really be in dire need of a caviar holder.
You know it’s Christmas… When taxi drivers become gods.
Years ago, I wrote this: "Cab drivers start getting more evil when the malls get fuller. It’s synchronous. It’s proportional. It’s something Darwinian and unavoidable. You get hold of a cab, and you watch the driver turn into a weatherman ("Malabon? Bumabaha dun!"), a cash register ("Mga P500, ayos na tayo!"), a corrupt pubic official ("Hindi ko na bubuksan ang metro ha!"), Nostradamus ("Mata-trapik ako dun!") or Beelzebub ("Hindi! Hindi! Hindi!") That is, if they ever stop for you at all."
No need to update those sentiments. It’s as if I wrote them yesterday.
You know it’s Christmas… When people who dislike you (and you dislike back) crawl out of the woodwork to be nice to you.
I really don’t know why. I remember walking through my old neighborhood on Christmas Eve and everyone was smiling like Batman’s archenemy: the barangay tanod, the jueteng collector, the reformed addict, the sakla hustlers, and the thugs who used to hassle weaklings like me for gin money. Peace on earth, goodwill toward geeks. They must’ve been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past the night before.
You know it’s Christmas… when almost all the politicians in the country put up huge billboards wishing us "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Election Year."
As if we need to be reminded.
You know it’s Christmas… When you hear the blasted Chipmunks on the radio.
This brings me to my meditation on weird Christmas tunes. Bing Crosby did a duet with David Bowie on Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth. That’s like Norman Rockwell sharing a canvas with Salvador Dali. Ah, the things musicians do during the yuletide season.
When I was growing up, Christmases were usually heralded by the Ray Conniff Singers – and, of course, Alvin and the rest of the gang singing at 10,000 beats per minute. It was surreal for us kids at that time to sing Winter Wonderland in a house that didn’t have proper ventilation, where the village cuts off the water supply from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and with a rice field parallel to our backyard. We even had Rudolph the red-nosed carabao. Then we turned the next page of the carol songbook to White Christmas.
But the Jackson 5 Christmas album is funky as hell. Listen to the signature Motown bassline on Someday at Christmas and you’ll know what I mean.
I recently saw Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas again on MYX. Bono had a mullet, Boy George wasn’t a street-sweeper then, Sting hadn’t lost the rainforest on his head yet, Bananarama and Paul Young were still big, George Michael still had Andrew Ridgeley, there was still this famous spat between Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, and the drum sound was quintessential Eighties: big, with a lot of reverb, and the master stickman was Phil Collins. The song, though, doesn’t sound dated compared to We Are The World, which featured everyone from Bob Dylan and Ray Charles to La Toya Jackson and Lionel "pre-Nicole" Richie. Lionel’s big hit at that time was Dancing on the Ceiling. How does one dance on the ceiling, anyway?
The other aural freaks are: Macarena Christmas, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus (seriously, Ru Paul sang it), and Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo from South Park. But the strangest one for me is Twelve Days of Christmas.
Yes, yes, I know it was written in the 18th century as a nursery rhyme, but as a staple in the repertoire of young Filipino carolers (like me and my friends back in the day), that was one mystifying song to sing. Oh, what strange gifts true love bears.
How would you feel if you received a partridge in a pear tree? Or turtle doves and French hens a-cooing?
You know, it’s Christmas… When you start reading pesky Christmas articles such as this.
Bah, humbug.
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