I have no one to blame but myself.<\/p>\n
They told me I was foolhardy to listen to Christmas music on the radio before Thanksgiving. But I had braved these minefields before, and I\u2019d made my peace with the fact that \u201cLast Christmas\u201d by Wham! has inexplicably become a holiday standard.<\/p>\n
But I wasn\u2019t prepared for \u201cChristmas Shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usually by the time of my first encounter, I\u2019ve had a few weeks to steel myself and mount some kind of defense. But my first hit came early in the season, and I was caught unawares. I didn\u2019t recognize the instrumental intro soon enough, and before I knew it, I heard those first few words\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was almost Christmas time, and there I stood in another line\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
I lunged for the dial, but the damage was already done.<\/p>\n
You may think I\u2019m overreacting, and that one can voluntarily expose oneself to this odious piece of Yuletide dreck without leaving permanent scars on your immortal soul. But you\u2019d be wrong. So very, very wrong.<\/p>\n
Consider the maudlin premise. You begin with a kid with poor hygiene who abandons his dying mother\u2019s bedside on Christmas Eve in order to buy her a pair of shoes so she can look good in her coffin. There are the obvious questions, such as, you know, why<\/em> is he abandoning his dying mother\u2019s bedside on Christmas Eve in order to buy her a pair of shoes so she can look good in her coffin? But those questions are easy. The real horror lies in the questions no one thinks to ask.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s one: how did this kid get to the store in the first place?<\/p>\n Think about it. He\u2019s clearly not old enough to drive himself, and it\u2019s unlikely that he lives next door to a Famous Footwear or a Foot Locker. So that means someone gave him a ride, and, given that we\u2019re told he is \u201cdirty from head to toe,\u201d his chauffeur is probably somebody from his own family who is used to the stench. So now you have at least two members of the family are leaving Mom to die alone.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, Stallion,\u201d I hear you say. \u201cMaybe he took the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n No, he didn\u2019t. Remember, his entire life savings is supposedly the collection of pennies he dumps on the cashier\u2019s counter, and he needs to con the singer into picking up the difference. How was he going to get home without bus fare? See, I\u2019ve thought this through, because I\u2019m a professional. Don\u2019t try this at home.<\/p>\n Anyway, you\u2019ve got one kid trying to buy shoes with pennies, and another older kid, or maybe even Dad, waiting in the parking lot. Why doesn\u2019t the driver come in to help shop for the shoes? Because two people would ruin the scam. And, come on, who do they think they\u2019re fooling? The whole thing is a scam.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no dying mom. There\u2019s just a couple of kids, a Sparkletts water bottle filled with pennies, and a story that gets strangers to buy shoes for them all over town. The day after Christmas, the older kid goes back to the stores, returns all the shoes, and pockets the cash. Meanwhile, suckers all over town are still feeling warm and fuzzy and think they now know \u201cwhat Christmas is all about,\u201d while two underage grifters score a bunch of easy marks. Next year, they\u2019re going to move up from shoes to bigger prizes.<\/p>\n \u201cCould you buy this flat-screen TV for my mama, please? It\u2019s Christmas Eve, and this XBox is just her size\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cChristmas Shoes\u201d is everything vile, repugnant, and disturbing about the world today distilled down into two verses, a bridge, and a chorus. If you listen to the radio unprepared, don\u2019t say I didn\u2019t warn you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ihave no one to blame but myself.They told me I was foolhardy to listen to Christmas music on the radio before Thanksgiving. But I had braved these minefields before, and I\u2019d made my peace with the fact that \u201cLast Christmas\u201d by Wham! has inexplicably become a holiday standard.But I wasn\u2019t prepared for \u201cChristmas Shoes.\u201dUsually by ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3432"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5126,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions\/5126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}