WELL, we learned a valuable lesson here. I had this great idea on how to weasel out of having to do a column for Christmas Day and I ended up screwing it up by getting too cute. These carols
don’t quite fit to a TBasically, I challenged readers to come up with localized versions of popular Christmas carols. I promised to send the authors of the top five songs one of the new Honolulu Lite "Great Feeling, Less Taste" T-shirts, which aren't for sale anywhere. (That includes Toys "R" Us, which would just hand them over to John Gotti's son and Mafia buddies if they walked into the store. After that incident in New York where Gotti and gang muscled their way through the store buying up toys, including Tickle Me Elmo dolls which were supposed to be sold out, the toy store should change its name to Toys Or Else.)
First of all, I figured I'd only get a few entries and would easily be able to use them to fill the Christmas column. But then I made the mistake of saying that if the songwriters used certain words in the compositions, like booger, pancreas, warthead and Heather Locklear, they'd get extra points.
Not only did I get swamped with entries, many of them were so vile that we couldn't publish them in a daily newspaper. Some even made me queasy. And that's saying a lot.
For instance, Ana Kiupe began a "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" song: "Chuckie, da warthead writah, get one booger on his nose ..." And then it got worse. And she included a drawing that I suppose was me covered with ukus and other horrible-looking things and I was singing "Heather Baby! I love you and my shave ice too!"
Not really Christmas material, uh?
And that was one of the tasteful entries.
Cathryn Downes also weighed in with a "Rudolph" entry containing the lines: "Then one drunken Christmas Eve, Charley came to say, Machine gun to death that butt-head over here for doing the macarena in my beer."
It's my fault. I seem to bring the worst out in people. And Christmas can be such a trying time of year. But machine-gunning butt-heads for doing the macarena in my beer? Cathryn, what were you thinking? Do you actually think you can get a disgusting line like that in a major daily newspaper? (I also resent the suggestion that I get drunk on Christmas. I just get kind of happy.)
Nevertheless, there were several entries that passed key tests to win a T-shirt. They were original, funny and, most importantly, they rhymed. (One song writer actually tried to pass off "bolo head tree" and "chicken fights" as rhyming words.)
Meter also proved challenging to some writers. Try singing W. Kubota's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town":
"You betta not shout, you betta not cry, you betta not pout, I'm telling you why, Cuz you neva get tickets and Michael Jackson is coming to town!"
Ouch. W. Kubota, with all due respect, you betta not write.
Anyway, despite my misguided instructions, at least five readers came up with printable songs. Because of space, I won't be able to publish the entire songs on Christmas Day, but I'll try to include enough to give you the idea of what they sound like.
In the meantime, here's one of the winners now:
"No Mo Snow" (To "Silent Night"), by Stan Murakami
No mo da snow, No mo da ice.
Sun and rain, Dat mo nice.
Sometimes rainbows; Cross ovah above.
Shorts and T-shirts; No need weah fur gloves.
All dat ono kine food.
Christmas time make you feel good.
OK, it could use some work. And it doesn't mention Heather Locklear anywhere. But it's pretty good. Now, get out and get your shopping done.
