Noir Dame Blog

Retro-inspired culture and media – audio drama, classic TV and film

Here’s hoping everyone has been enjoying their holidays. In my household, which is also preparing for a big move, we’ve been a bit pooped, but are still enjoying the 12 days of Christmas. This Christmas Eve we tried something new – the Feast of the Seven Fishes – a tradition in many Sicilian and Italian-American households on Christmas Eve, commemorating La Vigilia, the nighttime vigil leading up to Christ’s birth. We cooked seven fish or seafood related dishes, as well as some others that could be eaten by a vegetarian guest, and also dug into a Tofurky the next day for Christmas dinner (my report on that later!). Afterwards, we were seriously pooped, but it was also the best dinner, bar none, we’ve ever had.

My family’s culinary traditions center instead on pfferneuse and stollen, so the story of La Vigilia was completely new to me. What’s great is that there’s also a unique combination graphic novel and cookbook celebrating the Feast of the Seven Fishes, collecting an online comic strip from 2004. I highly recommend you check it out, starting with their blog, (currently hosting a New Year’s Eve recipe) and investigate, if you’re within driving distance, the annual Feast of the Seven Fishes hosted by the novel’s writer, Robert Tinnell.

While some people throw out their Christmas trees on the 26th, traditionally, the twelve days of Christmas run through the Epiphany, January 5th, which is also a gift-giving day in some cultures. So I’m happy to continue to share some holiday treats through the blog through New Year’s and into the Epiphany, also known as Twelfth Night. First is a treat for those of you in Chicagoland or midwestern towns, who may have grown up with the delightful stop animation Suzy Snowflake. That’s right – she’s back!

Here’s a holiday tradition some of us would prefer to forget… the continuing tyranny of the Star Wars Holiday Special, a televised chamber of horrors from 1978 that sticks around like torn pieces of used gift wrapping.

If you’ve never seen or heard of this special, consider yourself lucky. It is truly bad, yet many who love Star Wars and bad B movie culture continue to search for this tarnished grail, in a misguided assumption that this, like Mystery Science Theater 3000, is “good bad”, rather than “truly, really, unreasonably bad,” “hours of your life that you won’t get back bad”. And now, if you are still curious about this travesty of a holiday special, someone has arranged to give you all the details, without forcing you to sit through Carrie Fisher’s mind-numbed (and mind-numbing) singing of the “Life Day” song.

(When AMC switched over to commercial interruptions of their movies, and stopped showing many of their classics (including the hard-to-find, brilliant screwball that is one of my favorites, Midnight), I called foul. Now, with these fun shorts by Kevin Maher and the continuing excellence of Mad Men, have to admit the change was worth it.)

On the other hand, there is some fun Star Wars action to be had this time of year, that is much more cheesy than painful.

One is, of course, the Christmas in the Stars album that came out two years after the Star Wars Holiday Special… which is surprising, considering how much George Lucas hates the original TV special. Not only did no one learn from this experience, but this second holiday project also launched Jon Bon Jovi, singing lead on this song, “R2D2 We Wish You a Very Merry Christmas”. That link to the song comes courtesy of TheForce.net, for years the top resource on the web for Star Wars fans.

During the 1970s, the ubiquitous version of the Star Wars theme wasn’t the original soundtrack and score by John Williams, but by Meco – a sound producer turned instrumentalist who made a “boogying” disco version of Star Wars sail up the charts. While you can still find his greatest hits albums (including versions of the themes to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek, “Spooky” and “Other Galactic Funk”), you might enjoy the more recent (2005) Star Wars Party album. Purists who loved Meco’s discofied tunes will find a mixed bag, but the first track, “I Am Your Father,” is worthy of Lord Vader’s own New Year’s Eve.

My personal favorite discovery, of Star Wars holiday trash, is a pastiche from the old Donny and Marie Show. Readers who’ve heard some of our radio ads know we’re a big fan of Donny, especially here:

Unfortunately the sound tracking is off on the first video, fine on the second. But you get the gist — and the pleasure of seeing Redd Foxx and Paul Lynde! And for a super short version, just to see the classic staging, and costumes by Bob Mackie… featuring a group of Stormtrooper Rockettes… here’s a recent clip projected at a convention:

– Patience

One of the best things about this treasure is that you can enjoy this film a few days after Christmas, or later in the year – a drab day in March, a hot day in June – and it resonates just the same.

Let’s start our collection of IAWL news with the ugly, and then get to the good – kinda like the movie – which someone at the FBI was silly enough in 1947 to classify as pro-communist. Oh, yes. I didn’t believe it until I read it either. Of course, this was during the period where having your name listed in “Red Channels” – a publication with no real “vetting” process – meant your career was over – and people actually lost their jobs for being “premature anti-fascists,” which sounds today like the beginning of a dirty punchline. (A “premature anti-fascist” was someone who disliked Mussolini or Hitler before 1939, and that encompassed a lot of people – some of them Communist, but many of them not.)

Speaking of the presumed guilty… Have you ever imagined what it would be like to inherit George Bailey’s money mess in real life? LA media circles have been abuzz about a former PR executive, John Stodder, who has been blogging steadily despite being embroiled in a city scandal. In May, Stodder and another exec from Fleishman-Hilliard, a major PR firm, were convicted of overbilling the Department of Water and Power. (He has maintained his innocence throughout.) It’s intriguing to read his view on IAWL, considering his real life involvement in a money mixup. He admits, “At 19, I thought it was pretty corny, and couldn’t figure out what this sentimental mish-mosh of angels, Charles Dickens and Horatio Alger had to do with us, a couple of Berkeleyites in the mid-1970s.”

Stodder isn’t the only person to revise his opinion of It’s A Wonderful Life after getting a few more miles on him. There are many interesting articles regarding “Zuzu” Bailey – Karolyn Grimes. She, like the Bailey family, has had some major challenges to overcome, but notes that her appreciation for the film and its fandom has grown with time: “You have a choice,” she says. “You can drown in your sorrows, be the grumpy old Mr. Potter and be hurt and be in pain … but I think you need to put that behind you because, my gosh, life is a wonderful gift.”

Zuzu was always the most surprising of the Bailey family, wasn’t she? In the 1990s, she was honored by a power pop trio from Minnesota named…what else? Zuzu’s Petals. As an all female rock band, they were usually compared to bands like the Breeders or Babes in Toyland, though more in the tradition of Husker Du or The Replacements (Laurie_Lindeen of Zuzu’s Petals went on to marry the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg, and is writing a tell-all, “Pedal Pushers”). Two-Tone Records is now making their music available again. Surprise, though – there’s another Zuzu’s Petals, an all-male band from Turlock, CA. If you like “alternative” rock music and IAWL, take a second for a listen.

LA Observed has an interesting piece on how Encino, today an upscale Valley community near LA, was turned into Bedford Falls.

And if you haven’t already caught Dimitra Giannakoulias’ great article on It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s not too late!

Puget Sound has a taste of vanilla and cinnamon to it this time of year! Beats mulling spices, I guess.

There’s a delicious article about the School for Santas in Midland, Michigan.

Some who get snow globes for the holidays later become collectors…

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, you can party hardy at a Matzo Ball!

James Brown died early this Christmas morning.

But the man who once sang “Christmas in Heaven” probably wouldn’t want people to grieve, but instead to remember another song he sang:

Santa Claus, go straight to the ghetto.
Never thought I realized, I’ll be singing a song
With one of you. My!
Santa Claus, go straight to the ghetto.

Don’t leave nothing for me.
I have you. Can’t you see?

Wonder if those pranksters at “L.A. Style” feel a little embarassed with themselves.