A couple times in the last few weeks I’ve discussed on-air the on-going disagreement I have with our own gruff but lovable Ross Maxwell. Ross enjoys Paul McCartney’s insipid Christmas ditty Wonderful Christmastime. I, on the other hand, contemplate removing my own tympanic membrane each time I hear it and feeding into a paper shredder. I even went so far as to call it “the worst Christmas song of all time”. Of course, that was an exaggeration. Anyone unfortunate enough to have ever heard The Christmas Shoes knows that that song cannot be surpassed for it’s shear wretchedness on multiple levels.
For those unfamiliar, The Christmas Shoes was released in 2000. However, since I don’t listen to the kinds of radio stations that play that kind of dreck, I didn’t hear it until several years later when a friend brought it to my attention because she apparently hates me. When I finally succumbed and decided to give it a listen to see if it was really as bad as she said, I searched it on YouTube. There, I was surprised to find both the song and a video by comic Patton Oswalt dissecting and disemboweling this audio abomination.
I listened first to the schmaltz fest. How bad is the song? So bad that it was adapted into a Christmas TV movie starring Rob Lowe. That bad! Then I listened to Patton’s take. It did not disappoint.
While some people observe annual Christmas traditions like wearing ugly sweaters or erecting a dead tree in their living rooms, my annual tradition is to dim the lights in my apartment on Christmas Eve, sit back with a cup (or rocks glass) of Christmas cheer and listen to Patton Oswalt shit all over The Christmas Shoes for nearly seven minutes. Even better…someone created an amazing video to Patton’s appropriately brutal breakdown of this audio assholery. Check it out and maybe, you too, will make it an annual yuletide tradition.
[YouTube: Billy Bob Jomes]
