Merry JesusChristmas to all! (even you sinners)

I’m such a superior Christian I will no longer limit my holy culture warfare to just heathens who say “Happy Holidays!”

For me, even “Merry Christmas!” insults my savior.

So let me to be the first to wish you a most politically incorrect, “Merry JesusChristmas!”

Wishing someone a mere Merry Christmas and not including His first name is, to me, as insulting as calling the Messiah, “Dude.”

At one time I may have been like you. I said what I thought was an innocuous “Happy Holidays!” to everyone I met during the two-month-long mirth march that is the sprawl-i-days. I did this because people got bored and walked away as I stood there and gushed about just how much happiness I wished to bestow.

I wanted them to have a Happy Halloween, a Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. B-list holidays like Groundhog Day were merely implied.

But I have Jewish friends, too. I want them to have a Happy Hanukah and all the other days, too. 

In my travels I meet blacks who celebrate Kwanza, agnostics who are devout in celebrating nothing and people of every religious stripe. It’s a big ol’ world out there, full of Buddhists, Hindus and celebrity Scientologists who swear their sacred beliefs are key to looking fabulous and getting invited to star in movies made by successful Jews like Stephen Spielberg.

I recently read of a California inmate who persuaded the court to let him celebrate Festivus, the Frank Costanza-orchestrated anti-Christmas.

Now, I may have disagreed with the beliefs of many of these individuals, but I didn’t want to crusade against them, especially during the holidays.

That would be rude.

Really, I just want everyone to have one hell of a good time. Life’s short and full of pain. Dance whenever you hear the music.

I wish everyone had the time to hear my most heartfelt and colorful wishes.

I hope you’re sitting down for this. It’s a mouthful. Here goes:

“May tonight you sleep soundly and enjoy the world’s greatest dreams and may tomorrow you awaken to a golden sunshiny day when all those dreams begin to magically come true. May it be the best day of your life and may every day after that only get better and better and better until your whole happy existence is complicated by a fantastic Powerball jackpot victory.”

Despite is earnest intentions, that one cost me friends who were either too busy to stick around for the full incantation or thought having things like man caves full of worshipful harems would distract from watching the football games.

Everyone -- Jews, African-Americans, Celtic Druids and imprisoned Festivusians -- seemed to prefer the snappy omnibus “Happy Holidays!”

All but the Christians.

If you didn’t say “Merry Christmas!” you were in league with Satan -- and I wonder is there is a Satanic equivalent to Christmas? Do they exchange gifts?

If it involves orgies, and I suspect it must, they aren’t publicizing it enough during membership drives.

In a season when many of us somehow manage to squeeze in a little worship, I want to reference The King who wore around his neck a cross, the Hebrew letter chai, and a star of David because he said didn’t want to be excluded from heaven on a technicality.

That’s The King all right. The gospel according to Elvis.

It’s my second favorite Elvis quote right behind, “Milk makes ya sexy!”

Like Elvis, I wouldn’t want to be excluded from a posh afterlife for not being Christmasy Christian enough. That’s why I’m one-upping even holiday busybodies like the American Family Association.

Again this year, the  organization issued a McCarthy-like list of companies that insist their employees greet customers with a cheerful, yet secular, “Happy Holidays!”

Well, they’re now subversive in my eyes for abbreviating “Merry Christmas” at the expense of the birthday boy.

That’s all for now. I’m off to find more ways to save Christmas for us poor beleaguered Christians and warn everyone that Santa is just Satan to a careless typist.

So, to all my devout Christian friends, Merry JesusChristmas!

And to those insufficiently sacred and, in the spirit of the season, I wish for you the previously referenced bit that starts with a good night’s sleep and ends with the Powerball winner.

Either way, may you all hit jackpots, spiritual and otherwise, on this holy, happy day.

"Hey Hey Johnny," songs for dead celebs

An old friend of mine used to keep a list of people who should have been shot instead of John Lennon. It was a very long list and he tended it with a maniacal fervor.

Of course, there were men like Kim Jung Il, Idi Amin, the since decapitated Saddam Hussein and other tyrants bedeviling the planet about 25 years ago.

But there were also numerous garden variety miscreants who, I felt, certainly didn’t deserve ballistic ventilation. I remember his list included one wobbly NFL kicker for the Detroit Lions whose scattergun field goals had cost my friend a small fortune in ill-considered wagers.

It’s wrong, of course, to talk about the need for more gun violence on a day so marred by tragic gun violence, but I always think about him and his list on December 8.

I was too young to be moved by the grief tsunami that swept across the country 30 years ago this evening.

Of the Beatles, he’s probably only my third favorite behind Paul and George, which is like finishing last since who cares about Ringo (in fact, I think Ringo was on my friend’s list).

My favorite solo song of his is “Watching the Wheels,” but the rest move me very little. And I maintain all the best and most tuneful Beatle songs were Paul’s creations (“Hey Jude,” “Penny Lane,” “Yesterday,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Eleanor Rigby”).

And then there’s the whole Yoko Ono thing. We have, as a nation, watched her for more than 40 years and no one has yet to figure out what he saw in her.

Lennon’s hailed for his devotional fatherhood to Sean, but no one ever mentions how he abandoned his first family and never paid a minute’s worth attention to his first son, Julian, who released a fine album I recall from about 1985, and seems to have grown up normal despite John’s cold absence. 

Still, I’m fascinated by Lennon and understand my friend’s list wholeheartedly.

Why him?

His contributions were incomplete. It was Lennon I thought of after Paul’s recent diss of George Bush. McCartney praised Obama and hinted it was great we had a president who knew how to read.

Conservatives howled because, well, that’s what conservatives do best.

My first thought was, “You guys ought to be glad some one shot John Lennon. I wish he’d been around as we were ramping up to fight this goddamn ridiculous Iraq war. Man, he’d have been raising holy hell.”

We lost so much when we lost him -- and the music wasn’t the half of it.

That’s what I lament about his death. We lost an agitating jester.

I never let this day pass without playing the two great songs written to commemorate his death and life. They are monumental works and I still struggle to get through them without wiping tears.

The first is “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny),” written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John, who was one of Lennon’s best friends and with whom he made his last concert appearance.. 

It’s a fascinating friendship. Elton bet Lennon that if his version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” went No. 1, Lennon would have to perform at Madison Square Garden with him. It did and their lively version of, ironically, Paul’s song, “I Saw Her Standing There” is Lennon’s last live performance.

Elton performed “Empty Garden” once and couldn’t make it through. Propelled by a heartbeat rhythm, the song is so plaintive, so heart wrenching, it combines rage and grief to create something beautiful. He’s never played it again.

The other is “All Those Years Ago” by George Harrison. It’s the flip side of the Elton song.

It’s a bouncy delight about the joy he knew by being friends with John when it was just the four of them bouncing around in the van as it rolls across the English countryside. It’s the side of John Lennon even Yoko never knew.

How he wrote a song this beautiful, this euphoric, about something that had to be so devastating to him leads me to believe angels exist and they love to dance.

Here’s a short list of other worthy songs inspired by dead celebrities:

• “Candle in the Wind,” Elton John, about Marilyn Monroe. It pained me when he and Taupin re-wrote the lyrics to commemorate the death of Princess Diana. Seemed kind of cheesy. Still does.

• “American Pie,” Don McLean, about Buddy Holly and, really, the death of era. Still one of the most compelling pop songs ever and the best to over-analyze in the company of good friends and a warm bong.

• “Song for Sonny Liston,” by Mark Knopfler, about the legendary boxer. Knopfler is one of the best storytelling songwriters. This 5:07 song makes me want to read books about Liston.

• “American Roulette,” by Robbie Robertson, about James Dean, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe. Concussive beat, stinging guitars and urgent vocals make this feel like an ambulance ride to the ER after an OD.

• “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” by Drive-By Truckers, about Ronnie Van Zant, George Wallace and Bear Bryant.” Man do these guys cook. This starts at a simmer and burns to a boil. Every southern band is compared to Lynyrd Skynyrd.   It’s time to start comparing bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Drive-By Truckers.

• “Alcohol and Pills,” by Todd Snider about Hank Williams Sr., Elvis, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons and Jimi Hendrix. Another cautionary tale: “Alcohol and pills, it’s a cryin’ shame. You think that they’d have been happy with the glory and the fame. But fame don’t take away the pain. It just pays the bills. And you wind up on alcohol and pills.”

• “Family Tradition,” by Hank Williams Jr. about Hank Williams Sr. I don’t know if Hank III has updated this one, but I’d buy it. You can’t go wrong with any of the great Nashville Hanks. Dallas Wayne has a great song that describes the blueprint for a really great night. It’s meant for Senior, but could apply to any of the Williams boys: “Crack the Jack and Crank the Hank.”

Imagine the fun.

Make Daylight Savings Time weekly

I love this turn back the clock thing so much, I wish we could do it once a week. The cool thing about this is in 20 years, we’d only be about 18 years older.

Yes, Daylight Savings Time slows aging. But only by one hour.

If we did it once a week or maybe one minute per hour, we could live to be 175 years old.

I see many benefits. Gas prices would rise more slowly. Happy Hour would be Happy 61 Minutes (and generous bar owners would feel obliged to round up). And the timeless game of baseball would seem endless.

Well, that baseball part would remain unchanged to those who underappreciate its nuance.

We’ve never used “Time Out” as a disciplinary tactic. I guess it works for some, but it’s too early to discern the long-term effects.

For instance, when this generation of misbehaving children grows up and starts attending college and professional sports, will they depart the arenas and en masse head for a quiet corner whenever a referee whistles, “Time Out!”

Again with baseball, it used to be popular for teams to have “Turn Back the Clock Day,” when teams would dress in bygone uniforms and sell things like soda and popcorn for a buck and a quarter.

It was great fun and we thought it would be wonderful if the whole city complied. So if you had a “Turn Back the Clock Day” to say 1929, beer citywide would be a nickel and commuters would have to find horses to ride to work.

I guess I’d like to turn back the clock to the 1950s when it seemed like it must have been a really great time to be a white male who liked to drink. That would have worked for me better than say if I were a black male who liked to vote.

So I’m pretty comfortable with our times. Despite all our many upheavals and daily doom in the headlines, I’m optimistic about the future. I’m just not in that big of a hurry to have it come rushing up on us so quickly.

The exception, of course, being the year 2020 when my enduring insistence that 2020 will be a great year for visionaries is likely to finally gain marketing traction.

A friend of mine once said time is man’s worst invention. It’s very profound. As I’m becoming more conspiracy minded the older I get, I must conclude the concept of time was conceived by the guy who’d invented the first clock but couldn’t find a use for it.

So, voila, time! Now, if you have one fussbucket with a time piece then everyone needs one.

I say to hell with time. Let’s all just show up whenever we feel like it. And bring a book.

I have three watches I adore: one from my late grandfather; an Elvis one from my good buddy Quinn: and a really snazzy one generously gifted to me from a Las Vegas resort for work that didn’t warrant the bauble. They gave one to Val, too.

It was the oddest thing. We were there on an assignment for a now-defunct magazine. The magazines I’ve worked for that can now be described as now-defunct are too numerous to name.

But we were on a fancy lake cruise outside of town and our host presented us with two boxes from an elegant jeweler. Inside were these fabulous watches.

I said, no, we couldn’t. It wouldn’t be ethical.

As I was saying this, I was admiring the watch was on my wrist and thinking, “It’s a tad too snug, but I saw a jeweler in the casino. I’ll bet he’ll size it for free.”

I was correct.

Ethical considerations be damned, there was no way I was leaving Las Vegas without that watch. It’s magnificent.

To this day, Val still thinks some husky guy is going to show up at our door and tell us we need to kill Vinny or he’s taking back the watches.

I know this much: Val will kill Vinny. She loves that watch. Me, too.

But one of these days I’m thinking of making all three timepieces obsolete.

I’m thinking of getting a $75 tattoo of an $18,000 Rolex for my left wrist.

It’ll be waterproof, impressive in refined company, and will make even the wafer thin models look clunky by comparison.

I’ll do it one of these days, I swear.

I just need to find the time.

Dead celebs & the grief tsunami

The passing of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson especially reminds me of my persistent grief deficiency. People, both unsung and great, die in droves every day and I for the most part just don’t give a crap.

Of course, like every boy at one time or another, I really and truly loved Farah, or at least her poster. My wife was commenting on how beautiful she was in a day when Hollywood beauty wasn’t so cheap. And it’s a good point.

She had a great smile. A lovely figure, those blue eyes and that fabulous hair. And it was all bestowed by a generous God at birth. The way it ought to be.

I felt bad that she died too young and her last years were a sad struggle, but who said life was fair?

The obits are packed with old grannies who’d probably would have traded their 93 years as homely spinsters with whisk brooms growing out of their facial moles for the one year that Farah had on “Charlie’s Angels.”

So she had her fun. I’m sorry she’s gone but, hey, we all gotta go someday.

But the soul-rending grief over the death of Michael Jackson, about whom nothing was natural, is surprising even the cynics.

Not me, a cynic’s cynic.

I’ve realized since the tragic passing of Princess Diana that many people have so little love in their lives they need to conscript dead celebrities for grief surrogates to allow them to feel those emotions.

Of course, maybe being a cynic gives me an emotional vacancy that I might enjoy if I only knew how to fill it up.

I thought of this after I read this dramatic statement released by Elizabeth Taylor. Check it out:

"My heart…my mind… are broken,” she said. “I loved Michael with all my soul and I can’t imagine life without him.
“We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together. I was packing up my clothes to go to London for his opening when I heard the news. I still can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. It can’t be so.

“He will live in my heart forever but it’s not enough. My life feels so empty. I don’t think anyone knew how much we loved each other. The purest most giving love I’ve ever known. Oh God! I’m going to miss him. I can’t yet imagine life with out him.

“But I guess with God’s help... I’ll learn. I keep looking at the photo he gave me of himself, which says, 'To my true love Elizabeth, I love you forever.' And, I will love HIM forever.”

I wonder if the apostles grieved Jesus with such emotional virtuosity.

Understand, Michael was not one of her eight husbands -- and I had to check Wikipedia to make sure.

Really, he was just an eccentric friend. I have scores of those. If, say, Frank, died tomorrow (and it wouldn’t be from overwork or stress), my eulogy wouldn’t come close to Taylor’s in its gripping tone.

I’d probably say: “Some people said Frank had a problem holding his liquor. Not true. Frank’s problem was that he could never set his liquor down. I’m going to miss Frank, but there’s a new guy two bar stools down who is auditioning for the role of Frank II so I think we’ll press on just fine.”

And I think we need a little perspective on Jackson’s place in musical history. The guy was a magical dancer. Many of his tunes were catchy. But it wasn’t like he was the King in heaven, and by “King” in heaven I’m of course talking about Elvis Presley.

Still, it’s impossible to deny the affect Jackson had. As CNN anchor Kyra Phillips observed on Friday, “Michael Jackson touched so many people.”

The problem was a lot of them were little boys.

I believe the King in heaven won’t be so willing to overlook such “eccentricities.”

And this time I’m not talking about Elvis.