Have you ever noticed how much teenybopper sensation Justin Bieber looks like that poster child of the checkout aisle tabloids, Bat Boy? This interesting revelation hit me recently when I saw this caricature by John Kricfalusi of the mop-topped little knucklehead. It immediately put me in mind of Bat Boy, who I believe is currently still on his mission of helping the U.S. military hunt down Osama Bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan. Some quick Google searches turned up photos of both parties that I have combined here to prove my theory:
I swear, they're practically twins, save for the mop-top hairdo. Of course, even that small discrepancy can be easily remedied with the help of Photoshop. So here now is my Frankensteined cobbling together of the two images, resulting in "Bat Beeb":
Pretty cute, huh? Bat Beeb is sure to have all those pre-teen girls swoonin' over him, wishing they could give his big pointy ears a loving tweak. By the way, speaking of the Bieber kid, the overrated little twerp is playing tonight at Toronto's Air Canada Centre. My readers from around here may want to avoid that area of downtown until tomorrow. You have been warned.
Yes, sad to say, but I tend to get a little Grinchy this time of year. Mostly it's due to the drudgery of Christmas shopping. It's not that I don't want to buy gifts for family and friends, mind you, it's just that I end up having a tough time trying to find stuff that I think they will like. In fact, it always seems that I see all sorts of books, CD's and DVD's that I'D like instead! So it does feel like I'm trekking through many a store over and over before I settle on the right gifts to buy for others.
But my main complaint about Christmas shopping is making my way through the overcrowded malls and having my ears assaulted by all of the crappy contemporary Christmas songs! I'm afraid that my tastes in music have always been a lot closer to my parents' generation than that of my own, and in fact as a teen I always preferred the records my Dad played around the house far more than what my peers were listening to at the time. As such, I never did develop a taste for the rock music of the day, although a lot of the pop/rock on the radio back then certainly was a lot more tuneful than what's on nowadays. Which brings me to my complaint.
Why do all of the untalented, similar sounding, young pop/rockers of today feel that they need to release their crap versions of Christmas songs? They all seem to sound the same, as their trilling crap voices meander around the notes without ever really hitting their target, adding in a lot of inane "Yeaaahhh"s to fill in any pauses between the lyrics. And then there are the mindless rappers who have cut melody out of the equation altogether, trying to force in ten times as many words (most of them unintelligible) than the original composers had written in the first place. And all of this tuneless, appalling crap is being blasted at high volume out of every clothing and electronics store that I am forced to pass by.
Now to be fair, there are a few stores and restaurants where I can hear old chestnuts from glorious Christmases past sung by the likes of Bing, Frank, Dino, Sammy, Ella, Peggy, and Nat, but even then there still seems to be a few contemporary crap songs thrown into the mix just to rankle my nerves. Incidentally, why is it only at Christmas that the great singers of the past are allowed to be heard in public at all before being placed in the box of mothballs again for another year? If one didn't know better, one might assume that Bing Crosby had recorded "White Christmas" and nothing else during his entire career!
So there you have it - the reasons for my annual Grinchy demeanor. Please let it be Sinatra singing as I sit down to a plate of roast beast...(sigh)
And speaking of Frank and Dino, here's some fun Christmas music by the all time kings of cool - a surefire remedy for curing Grinchiness:
I swear, they're practically twins, save for the mop-top hairdo. Of course, even that small discrepancy can be easily remedied with the help of Photoshop. So here now is my Frankensteined cobbling together of the two images, resulting in "Bat Beeb":
Pretty cute, huh? Bat Beeb is sure to have all those pre-teen girls swoonin' over him, wishing they could give his big pointy ears a loving tweak. By the way, speaking of the Bieber kid, the overrated little twerp is playing tonight at Toronto's Air Canada Centre. My readers from around here may want to avoid that area of downtown until tomorrow. You have been warned.
