Top Ten Old Christmas Albums

As we prepare for Thanksgiving this week, it's time to start thinking seriously about Christmas music. Some people think it's too early for Christmas music, but I think that's crazy. The truth is, Christmas music is great all year round and only gets better the closer we get to Christmas.

So today I will share with you my top ten list of amazingly fantastic Christmas albums by dead or almost dead people (to keep in line with the theme this blog, of course):

10. Elvis Presley: Elvis Christmas
You pretty much need an Elvis album in your Christmas music collection. Some of the songs on this album are a little strange, but it's worth it if only for the extremely Elvis-y Blue Christmas and Here Comes Santa Claus.

9. Frank Sinatra: A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra
Frank singing classic Christmas tunes. Can't go wrong with that!

8. Christmas With The Rat Pack
Who doesn't love the Rat Pack? They're certainly entertaining and there aren't many other Christmas albums featuring drunk, middle aged men forgetting the words to Christmas songs. Best song: Marshmallow World.

7. Nat King Cole: Christmas For Kids: From One To Ninety-Two
I discovered this album when I worked at Zany Brainy and we played it all Christmas. It has lots of happy fun songs that you won't find on a lot of the usual Christmas albums. And Nat King Cole has a great Christmas song voice.

6. Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas
First of all, I love when Ella wishes me a swinging Christmas. That's really all their is to say. Best song: Sleigh Ride.

5. Andy Williams: Merry Christmas
Listen, Andy Williams is Christmas. His version of Sleigh Ride on this album is disturbingly '60s and makes me want to do a weird Ann Margret dance, but I cannot stop listening!

4. Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song
For those of you who need more traditional Christmas songs, this is the perfect album.

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas
This one is so amazing that I listen to it year 'round. The piano is fantastic and it's just an all around feel good album. I especially love My Little Drum.

2. Bing Crosby: White Christmas AND Merry Christmas With Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters
Yes, these are two albums, but some songs overlap and they really should be one album. Bing and the Andrews Sisters are just fabulous together and very old-timey. I especially love Jingle Bells.

1. Andy Williams: The Andy Williams Christmas Album
Yes, this is the best Christmas album of all time. It has everything—all your favorite classics plus the weird '60s influences we've come to know and love from Andy. Buy it now before Christmas is over!!

And an honorable mention goes to a completely amazing remix of Happy Holiday by Bing Crosby. I want to dance every time I hear it.

So, those are my favorite old Christmas albums. What are yours?

Old Christmas Movies on the Big Screen

This year the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove is once again showing some classic films that I'm pretty excited about. Namely, Miracle on 34th St. and White Christmas! Don't miss them if you're in the Chicagoland area!

Soylet Green is What?

"It's the year 2022... People are still the same. They'll do anything to get what they need. And they need SOYLENT GREEN."

Wow, Soylent Green, what can I say? I watched it over the weekend and it was ... interesting.

The basic premise is it's 2022 and there's apparently been a population explosion and Global Warming has come to fruition, causing fresh food, electricity, and housing to become hot commodities. One day, an old rich man is murdered and a cop, played by Charlton Heston, takes it upon himself to solve this murder case, while also stealing the rich man's food and having sex and taking endless showers with his woman. Pretty soon he learns some disturbing details surrounding the case and flips out and gets shot. The End.

Where does the Soylent Green come in, you ask? Good question. It's literally only mentioned about three times in the entire movie. This was surprising to me, given the name of the film. The focus of the movie is on this murder case and, almost more than that, on the many strange goings-on of the future. While some of these predictions are interesting, they do not make for a very creepy movie, and the ending feels somewhat anti-climactic since we haven't really gotten a feel for the prominence of Soylent Green. If I hadn't read that tagline at the beginning, I don't think I would have even known that Soylent Green was a very big deal.

Probably the most fun part was seeing what these filmmakers thought the world would be like in 50 years, only 13 years from now!

Some highlights:

• Global Warming sets in, causing problems for our crops and animals. The solution: heavily processed food using whatever edible, living things there are, such as soybeans and kelp.


• Apparently in the future, sexy women will come with swanky apartments, literally as part of the furniture, which is what we will call them. "Furniture"


• The population of New York City will grow to 40 million (about 5 times what it is now. Better start having more kids!), and anyone who's not wealthy will be lucky to get an apartment and may resort to sleeping in stair wells.


• As a result of this population explosion, riots are frequent and "riot control"
  consists of large dump trucks that scoop people up in the front and dump them into the back of the truck. I think the scene depicting that was supposed to be creepy, but it wasn't.

So is it worth watching? Eh, if you like Charlton Heston and/or sci fi movies, probably. I'm glad I watched it, but it's probably not something I need to see again and it definitely didn't weird me out as much as anticipated. But you may not want to take my word for it ... I don't have the best history with sci fi movies.

Old Movies for Young People

Every month I show an old movie to a bunch of twenty-somethings (like me!). Sometimes it goes over well and other times not so well. So I thought I'd put together a list of the movies that have been well received by my generation in case you're ever in this situation. Granted, they may still make fun of them and not fully understand their brilliance, but some movies are so good that even the hippest young adults can forgive their corniness.

On to the list ...

• Some Like it Hot - probably our most successful Old Movie Night to date. It's just full of good stuff that will never go out of style: the Mafia, men dressing up as women, hot blond chicks. Plus there are also plenty of dirty innuendos that any young crowd is sure to love.



• Psycho - This movie is so famous that anyone who hasn't seen it will at least know about the shower scene. And while some of it is a little corny and strange, it's still scary enough to creep everyone out.



• Casablanca - A classic that even then youngsters have heard of, and is still good enough to hold everyone's attention. Plus it contains a number of quotes that are commonplace even today.



• The Sting - Paul Newman never fails. Too bad I killed him.



• Sunset Blvd. - This movie is insane and who doesn't love insanity? Once Norma buries that monkey, there's no turning back.



• The Philadelphia Story - Everything about this one is great. It's funny and it helps that most people know Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. It's just a good time.



• The Birds - It's a little corny, but still pretty scary and definitely a favorite amongst my friends.



• Singin' in the Rain - I was hesitant about showing a musical for Old Movie Night. People my age just don't understand them. But luckily, Singin' in the Rain is famous and fabulous enough that the crowd dismissed the painful unreality of it and just enjoyed. Plus that Gene Kelly is a dreamboat and everyone knows it.



• Miracle on 34th St. - Really just a classic!


• Goldfinger - Pretty much everyone loves James Bond and gold painted ladies laying in a bed.

As I write this I'm preparing for the next Old Movie Night this weekend featuring The Mummy and House of Wax for Halloween. The double feature is usually a safe bet. They have to like at least one of those, right?

Annie: Censored!

Last night TCM showed the classic, Annie, I'm not sure why. But it brought back fond memories of my Annie obsession as a child. In my younger years (and maybe in my older ones too) I was quite a big fan of this film. This may have been partly due to the fact that it's a musical, partly because it's awesome, and partly because Carol Burnett is in it.

In any case, since I was poor as a child, the only copy of Annie I had was taped off the TV, and back in the olden days TV networks saw nothing wrong with editing the heck out of a movie to make it fit conveniently in their two hour time slots. As a result, there were literally at least 4 songs missing. Maybe more.

I realized this was the case when I saw the movie in its entirety when I was in high school and it was eye opening. So many new songs, I didn't know what to do. Being older, I thought they were all kind of lame and I wasn't too impressed, but I'm sure that had I'd seen them when I was 5, they would have been amazing.

So I had to learn to deal with this shocking news that made me feel incomplete and cheated. Then came more shocking news.

My mother confessed to me that she'd done some editing of her own to our taped-off-the-TV version of Annie.

This should have been obvious to me. There was always this one scene in the movie that, when I looked back, came to a painfully abrupt ending. What happens is, after Miss Ferrel uses her feminine wiles to convince Warbucks to adopt Annie, he is so whipped that he goes to the orphanage himself to sign the papers. When he arrives, slutty Miss Hannigan sees an opportunity for ... money, sexiness, attention from an adult? ... and she promptly begins to seduce Warbucks. This is when it happens. Hannigan gets Warbucks cornered in her office, catches a glimpse of a diamond pin on his shirt and exclaims, "My God, is that thing real?!" End scene.

Little did I know, there was much more seduction and even a really lame song that continued after that. Needless to say this was the most shocking of all the edits, given the fact that the scene ended mid-sentence.

I'm not bitter though. I think my mother was right—the scene was basically pointless. Why do we need to know that Miss Hannigan wants to seduce Warbucks? We already know she's a skanky weirdo.

This issue came up not too long ago in my mother's presence and she explained her reasoning. First, obviously, it was moderately obscene moment. But most importantly, at that time in my life I was a pretty big Carol Burnett fan and my mother didn't want me to mimic her skanky ways.

I think it was the right choice. But I often (or barely ever, really) wonder what I'd be like today if that scene had stayed in.

Judy on Life

This morning, my mother alerted me to something very exciting: LIFE magazine on Google books. That's right, there's literally 35 years of LIFE magazine sitting there for the reading, many with some fabulous movie articles. The most important ones are, of course, the two Judy Garland issues, one from 1944 and one from 1954. The July 1969 issue also offers a "A Farewell to Judy." They also covered stories about Judy's "comeback," Judy falling over on stage in 1951, and check out this makeup ad that teaches you how to "have that lovely kind of Judy Garland complexion," complete with marginal notes by Judy herself!

Or if you're not obsessed with Judy Garland for some reason, there are plenty of other very cool LIFE issues:

• If you're in a Halloween mood, check out this cool Hitchcock cover, and this interesting article on 3-D movies including House of Wax.



• Frank Sinatra looking dashing as always.



• Marilyn Monroe and lots of fun pictures from Some Like It Hot.



• The Beatles causing a ruckus!



• And possibly my favorite of them all, Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady.

And if none of these interest you, you can search for whatever you want in the box on the left of the page or just look through them by year and spend literally hours and hours reading!

Famous (Old) People in Chicago!

Big News! If you're in the Chicagoland area, you have the chance to see quite a few washed-up celebrities in the coming weeks. Here's a rundown:

First, both Julie Andrews AND Andy Williams will be appearing at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove within a week. I suggest you check them out. They're both plugging their new books and with the ticket, you'll receive a signed copy. Julie will be there on October 13th, and Andy on October 19th. Check out the Anderson's Book shop website for more info. I got to see Julie Andrews there a couple years ago and it was completely fantastic. I highly recommend it!

And lots of fabulous events coming up at the Hollywood Blvd. theater in Downers Grove and the new Hollywood Palms in Naperville including appearances by Tippi Hedren, Debbie Reynolds, and Tony Curtis! I've been to a few of these celebrity appearances at these theaters and they've always been a great time. I saw Tony Curtis and he was fun and pretty hilarious. You won't want to miss it!