It’s the tail end of Febuary, and maybe I’ve been holding on to this for too long; sure it appears all colors of the non-secular rainbow have been conveniently placated in time for the holidays; you’ve got “Nestor the Long Eared Donkey’s Drive-by Kwanza”, “A Chanukah without Stymie”, and the family favorite “The Half Hour of Fart and Impotency Jokes For the Young-in's.” (Loosely based on some beloved European Fairy Tale that has lasted for three hundred years only to be gang raped by those lovable Balrogs of the entertainment industry.)
Now, your probably asking “Why (Oh why, Jim) are there no Satanic holiday shows for the holidays?”
Well I’ll tell you…
Once upon a time.
On Christmas Eve many years ago I awoke to the strange sound of cup cakes being poured into an enormous Welshman. For many moments I sat motionless, afraid to peer out at what might be waiting in the dark of my room. A terrifying fear took me over, like when Tom and I had to drive those two girls home and they collectively weighed eleven hundred thousand pounds and they both sat on the passenger side of my ’76 Pontiac and I was rolling down Forrest Ave with the drivers side five feet in the air.
“Hello deah!” I called out into the darkness.
Silence…
“Who am’s that?”
Finally, I could have no more of this! Drawing back the bed post curtain I beheld a most chilling sight, more chilling than when that nude Armenian ran into the laundra-mat and slid on a packet of “All Tempa”-Cheer and rendered himself unconscious when he careened nose first into another nude Armenian! My limbs bore a cold weight as I could make out the faint shape of a man standing over my bed, a man, donned in the clothing of yore: (A bowling shirt and keds), a man, but of skin and bones made from ice and possibly razzles (His slacks too! At least they looked like razzles.) a man of neck, yet he bore no head (Many versions of this story appear on the web, the most popular being I awoke to a ghostly rear end over my face and ‘roused by the Coney Island anthem “Ohio Sit Up-Time!” but this is only partially true.) I was aghast, who was this specter come to visit me on such a night as this?
“I am the ghost of Jack Parsons!” The ghostly apparition spoke.
A skeptic man was I, “You are no spirit.” I told the ghoulish figure. “You are merely the remnants of my dinner, an undigested bit of beef and gruel, or perhaps the hour and a half I spent sniffing Freon behind my Norge Kool-King, or the fourteen tabs of LSD I found in that dumpster this afternoon or the handful of Elephant Tranquilizers I washed down with a fifth of Absinth before nap time.”
“Then where did I get his moustache from!” The ghost asked brandishing a matt of slightly browned facial hair in a frying pan with some socks.
“But your moustache died twenty years ago this very night when you tried to make a tooth brush out of a rocket engine!”
“Actually, I stole this one from Abe Lincoln when he passed out from exhaustion during the hot-oil sumo fist fight semi-finals!” The ghoul chuckled.
“Jack Parsons!” I immediately realized. “Whaddap?”
“Jimmy!” He said to me (though his neck!) “I have come to you this night to tell you; ‘you must write a holiday children’s show, before all the time slots are filled up.”
“Your right Jack, I’ll get started right away… Right after I finish the ‘Bit-o-Cephalopod Candy Bar.”
I worked feverishly, as if possessed by some unseen evil or a man drinking espresso all day spinning on a whirlie-bird with Jessie Helms and Endora from Bewitched. Countless days and nights scooted past (It might have been less, I left my watch on my other set of arms and could only guess at the time from a large digital clock in the middle of my computer screen.) I toiled on, not stopping for food (Ok, I had some Chinese delivered, but I did not tip!) or scouring my internet for obscure Simpson’s references to append to the end of my e-mails. I continued until my last drop of strength left and I had run out of Ovaltean.
Many hours passed before I awoke in a scattering of the most unspeakable arcane glyphs, some cut into the pages with a combination of spoon and fork, sometimes called a “Spork” others drawn in living blood from some other source than myself (I may have used Texas Pete, I can’t remember), many other made with lite-brite. (if only I had those refills, I could have done Bozo the Clown! They never have the refills!) I packed all of them into a ziplock samich bag (Wit two proofus of poicheses!) and sent them over to none other than the unholy duo of holiday stop motion puppet antics Slappy Bankin and Wally Rash
For the next few days I waited for their reply, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into additional weeks with days in them, until I nearly had forgotten all about it. (Anyway I was busy looking for my car, I had the keys, but not the car, sometimes they tell you to check the dryer, I looked in there like four times, no car!) The night the full moon appeared from behind Shelly Winters lawn furniture I received a phone call. (actually two phone calls, the first was from an insurance company, and it was going to actually cost me like $300 more [annually!] to insure my car, [which I still could not find by the way]) but the second call was the…
…wait; three calls, my mom called and asked me for her circular saw back, I lied and said I had not seen it, but the truth was I snapped it thrice slicing some bacon, never slice pork products with power tools, you’d think I’d learn my lesson the fourth and fifth time.
Anyway, the next thing I knew was whisked away (with a whisk!) to the most dreadful place I had ever been whisked with a whisk away with. Whew! The Bankin and Rash studios in a most unspeakable and eldritch location of Northern New Jersey off of Route One Paramus right next door to “Jeff’s Ready-to-Eat Pianos”
Wally and Slappy were eager to get the project off the ground to coincide with advertising from Peppermint Patty’s new confectioner made from human fat and feta cheese: Peppermint Taffyupopoluses (to this day, no one has any idea why.) From the sketchbook of my mad driven (I use the word driven, in the sense I still could not find my car, man I looked friggin’ everywhere!) unconscious they had manufactured the terrifying foam sets and the most menacing of sock puppets for the magnum opus of demonic holiday offerings:
“Goatlafalu: The Six Teeted of Sour Nog”
(alt title: “The X-Mass That Should Of Have Not Yuled”)
SCENE 1:
Fade in to the depths of a frozen cave, long and eerie shadows are cast upon the five pointed walls of the keep, a passageway is lit from a row of torches that flicker with black flame.
From a darkened entrance way we hear the slow plodding footsteps of some unseen figure. Forbidding music queues.
Camera closes on the face of a familiar holiday icon. It is Santa Claus, the music crescendos then falls into the strains of “Jingle Bells” transposed into a minor key. We look on Santa; something is wrong, he appears exhausted, there are dark circles under his eyes like a man deprived of sleep for many weeks.
Close up: Santa (Voiced by Mickey Rooney): [nearly out of breath] “Goatlafalu, I have done what you ask: I have beheaded all my trusty elves with the rusted scythe of that which has no elbows and bathed in their sinews, allowed the eleven brothers of suffering to devour the souls of my reindeer and worst of all, watched Mrs. Claus give birth to the six hundred headed Paul Lynde! Now, please, if you have any Christmas goodness in your heart you will let me die!
Cut to: Goatlafalu comes forth from the darkness, his face afoul with a slight smirk, he stands with two other goat-like figures. One has a small moustache and beady eyes, on his shoulder he wears a red armband with a historically recognizable symbol in black against a white field (On close inspection we see the symbol is none other than “The Pringles Man”), another goat-figure is with them, it is the she-goat of a thousand breasts, each breast feeds a member of the ’88 Oakland Raiders.
Close up: Goatlafalu (Voiced by Anton LeVay) [Amused] “Ah, Santa, you are in no position to make demands. Soon the artic sun will barely rise above the frozen peeks of the Madnessing Mountians like a man who hides in your toilet and you only see the top of his little head.
Close up: Pombnab the She Goat (Voiced by Betty White) “Let us summon the little Medowlark Lemmon monsters again.”
Camera cut to Santa who is now jabbed and poked by small ethereal beings who also pummel him with smoggy basketballs, the minor key keeps in step as the melody changes over to “Sweet Georgia Brown”
Santa: “Please! For the love of…”
Goatlafalu: “Bind him to the altar and cover him with tainted shrimps!”
With all that said, the glowing review of the day is for Doves - Some Cities