I gotta agree with Paj on all his picks, but watching those videos made me nostalgic for my favorite holiday song.
I had a roommate in college who listened to a lot of complete drek, and since it was her stereo I had to put up with it. But I gotta give Valerie props for introducing me to the Pogues. Damn near unintelligible Irish punk music ... sometimes it's almost magic. So here's the Pogues with "Fairytale of New York."
Happy holidays, everyone!
Aight, so it's a GAP commercial but this 30 second spot, but this inspired a Rufus Wainwright phase that I don't regret at all. I still listen to songs like "April Fools", "Baby" and his cover of "Across the Universe" constantly. Of the Winter Holidays I've been more of a New Year's person than a Christmas person, "What are you doing New Year's Eve" hits me in all the right places. Now this commercial came out in 1997 or 98 and I had been dying to find a decent version of the song, but all I could find on Napster or Lime Wire were live snippets but not the entire song. After year's of searching, last year's McGarrigle Christmas Hour has a full lenght version of Rufus Wainwright's "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve" and yes I bought the album just for that song. In fact, I think it's the last physical CD I've bought. Here's to getting some sugar on New Year's yo!
Aight, hope y'all had a Merry X-Mas...now on with the countdown.
"Christmas and Hollis" -Run DMC
Question: when y'all get together and sing this at your peeps house. Does everyone just jump in on DMC's "It's Christmas time in Hollis Queens..." part?
Do They Know It's Christmas"-Band Aid
Sorry, but this kicks "We Are the World"'s Huey Lewis and Dan Akroyd singing-ass.
Not only do you have Paul Young singing lead over the likes of Sting and Bono, but you have none of the old school British Rockers like the Stones, Beatles or the Who. This was strictly 2nd gen British invasion and it kicks ass. I can still hear the whining-slash-sqealing of my sister and her friends over the D2 appearances in the video and the oversinging of Simon LeBon's "It's hard but when you're having fun..." Still the best part of this video? KOOL and the M'FN GANG!!! I didn't know they were British! That's right with KATG ...iiiiiit's FRESH! FRESH! this video's fresh, Band Aid's fresh, Christmas is fresh, famines not fresh...
Oates. That was a response I used to give when people asked me who was my favorite singer. Just Oates. THIR. Anyway lets take a trip back to the days when Oates was Mackin' bigger than Michael Jackson.
#4 on the TC and M Holiday Song list is a video I can distinctly remember from the WTBS Night Tracks days before my dumb town got MTV. I think it was 1983 or 1984 and the cheezy 80's was just starting to blossom. This is like a time capsule for what music video was all about in the 80's. Song-based story telling, gratutitous attempts of the singers trying to show off their other talents, and most of all really lame concept and direction. The thing is back then, I loved the song but hated the video and found it unbearable. Watching this video now, I find it hillarious, not for the comedy itself, but for the attempt at comedy and it's failings. If you want proof that Hall and Oates were huge back then, this video is proof. You'd have to have a huge ego to think you could pull this video off. Anyway, Hall and Oates released two versions of this song swapping the lead vocals. They even filmed two different videos to reflect the change. Here's #4 on the TC and M Holiday Music Countdown: Jingle Bell Rock by Hall and Oates (Oates Version)
Aight suckas! With five days left to go until Christmas I'll be counting down my favorite holiday songs. Number five is is "I Wish it was Christmas Today" by Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kataan and Tracy Morgan.
Yeah and try to get that melody out of your head. You can thank me later!
As of Halloween Morning it doesn't look like I'm going to have a costume for tonight. It's the combination of fake pneumonia and chronic laziness again...I almost did a cop out costume for work. I was going to be grunge guy with a flannel shirt and a Lollapalooza '94 shirt, Doc Marten boots and ripped jeans. It felt cheap so I passed. Plus I think I actually wore that stuff out to the grocery store a few days ago. Anyway wearing a tie and a cashmere vest is the best I could do today, but it got me thinking that I've never been a big Halloween guy. It's strange though, I like costuming up and I like going out to see all the hoochies on Halloween, but I've never been big on dressing up ON the actual day itself. I mean I'll wear a Lucha mask all day just kickin' it, but I've never used a Lucha mask in a Halloween costume...I have no idea what that means, I'm just sayin' that's all...
Anyway here are my top 5 Paj Halloween Costumes
5. Ninja
Before the whole Ask a Ninja- Real Ultimate Power ninja renaissance, there was a TV show back in the day called "The Master” about an old Ninja and his cracker-ass apprentice. I don't remember much about it other than it was about ninjas and it was rockin' and it stayed on the air just long enough for me and all my friends to be ninjas for Halloween. We did the turn a black t-shirt into a ninja mask by pulling the sleeves through the hole and tying around our head. Come to think of it I should have done that today.
4. Old School Dracula
I swear I think I wore this costume five years in a row or something ridiculous like that. It had all my favorite elements in a costume: Face paint, fake blood, a cape, and plastic fangs. I think I stopped wearing capes with my Halloween costumes when I got my cape tangled while I was riding my bike. Shit, come to think of it I could have been killed! Stupid Halloween!
3. Vinyl Jumpsuit Batman
I think this is what happens to kids when their parents are either busy or uninterested in Halloween: they get the shitty vinyl costume in a box. SVCIB was pretty much a plastic one piece jumpsuit which was colored to look like whatever was popular at the time. Sometimes the designs would come close to looking like they were supposed to. Sometimes they actually had what it was supposed to be written on the front, like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle", which serves no one but the clueless parent who's buying a costume for a kid who wants to be Donatello for safety trick or treat night at the high school gym. Anyway, I had Batman twice and Superman once and the experience melds into one big horrible nightmare of dripping with sweat in a plastic cocoon and cutting my lips trying to stick them through the mask's little square pie hole. Then the mask string always breaks then you're just standing there in a pool of sweat looking like a retarded superhero in Keds. HATE!
2. ½ of the Nasty Boys
The Nasty Boys were a bulky wrestling tag team in 90’s known for their ability to be “nasty”, go figure. One of their signature moves was the “pit stop” where one of the boys would shove the face of their hapless opponents into his partners arm pit.
It was a natural choice for me and my bulky blonde friend. As far as costumes go it was easy. All it took was black sweatpants, biker boots, cheesy shades, and paint-splashed black muscle T-s. We even had a hot female manager in all black ta boot. It was great costume and we looked embarrassingly like them.
We actually entered the costume contest at our college Halloween party and as we lined up. The band broke out into an impromptu version of Janet Jackson’s Nasty Boys. We ended up losing to our Sikh friend who dressed up as Gandhi. It was aight though; after he got his prize we gave that pacifist a pit stop for good measure. Truly nasty.
1.Chris Farley-Chippendale Dancer 
This was a lot of fun. I got many many compliments from the club goers that night and I even got on the guest list for a local radio station crappy concert series. The only thing that horrified me was that there were people who didn’t get the joke and thought I was just going as a male dancer. Anyway I made the top 3 for the 90’s costume contest but lost out to a killer Drew Carey and Mimi. It was fun getting to be center stage for a huge party, but I knew I was toast. Hmmm I still have that shirt and bowtie laying around and if I go to a different club…I gots to think on this a bit suckas. 5000.
In the month's GQ there's a cool article featuring the top dozen of movie pricks. "The Dickhead Dozen" Does a pretty comprehensive job. It includes two Zabka entries, Tommy from Valley Girl (who always seems forgotten) and Darryl from "Coming to America" cracks the top five, so there are no complaints. However, since we're on the topic, here are some of my favorite movie dickheads that didn't make the list.
Wade "You Got Served"
He had all the ingredients for the prick formula. He was blond. He was a rich kid from Orange County trying to hustle the urban inner city kids. His crew had to cheat to win their first battle with Elgin and David, which ultimately led to the break up of the crew. Combine the shit-talking he does with that dance where he runs his hands over his face switching clownin' expressions makes his punchability factor extremely high. His comeuppance is that an arena chants "Served" as he walks off in defeat at the Big Bounce. Wade loses points since there's no girl involved and because no one will admit to seeing this movie.
Stab "House Party"
Man what a career this guy had. He got to be the villain in House Party and House Party 2. Plus, as a member of Full Force he got to sing on Samantha Fox's "Naughty Girls Need Love Too". He lays the massive beatdown to Kid to start the movie and spends the rest of the movie looking to do so again. His trademark line is sniffing the air while saying "What's that I smell? I smell PUSSY" In the meantime, he also inspires to George Clinton to utter the classic line "I cried two tears in a bucket, fuck it!" Now a movie prick reaches the pantheon when even his prick posse thinks he's gone too far. Stab crosses that line when he schemes to get Kid out of the house party with gasoline and jack him when he comes out of the burning house. Burning house? Stab and the rest of Full Force get theirs when they are taken out to the docks by the cops and beaten severely. Stab loses points for getting punked out by the cops and not really being the rich pretty boy type.
O'Bannion "Dazed and Confused"
One of the most memorable characters from this movie. Ben Affleck plays redneck badass to perfection here. Wonderful details for this character include, he failed his senior year so he gets to be the biggest dickhead to the Freshmen twice. His hazing paddle has a brazen "FAH Q" burned into it. His dressing down of the guy he's playing pool with is just awesome. "Y'all are an embarrassment to the sport of pool and should be proud that I let
He gets his when the freshmen dump paint on his head when he has Carl cornered for an ass paddlin'. O'Bannion loses points because he's part of such a great ensemble. He's not in many scenes but pound for pound he's a dickhead hall of famer.
play at my table. You are the worst pool player I have ever seen in my life. You
keep watchin' me you might learn something...Okay homo, I hope you are ready to
taste the agonizing bitter humiliation of defeat." 
Kurt and Ram "Heathers"
The jock, bully, date-raping, dickhead duo of the mother of Teen Movie satires, deserve mention here. "Who does that guy think he is, Bo Diddly?" was one of my favorite lines of all time. In addition to the charming traits in the intro they brutalize a nerd outside of a funeral, by twisting his arm and force him to say the following "I like to suck big dicks. Mmmm Mmmm I can't get enough of them." They get their just desserts when they are murdered in cold blood, with the scene staged to look they were gay lovers closing out a suicide pact. This leads one of the fathers to cry out at the funeral "I love my dead gay son!" If you haven't seen the movie, trust me, it was hilarious in 1989. The duo loses points because despite all their dickery, they are really quite harmless.
Shannon Hamilton "Mallrats"
Ben Affleck gets props here for another one of his early roles. If being the manager of a store called "Fashionable Male" wasn't enough to make him a prick. Beating the shit out of Brodie while explaining his plans for his ex-girlfriend should put him in the movie dickhead Hall of Fame. He tells Brodie that he loves girls on the rebound because they are more open to suggestion after being in disappointing relationships. He then tells Brodie he's going to use the situation to his advantage to screw her in an uncomfortable place...and it ain't in the back of a Volkswagen. He gets his comeuppance when a tape of him having sex with a 15 year old is played in the mall. His pillow talk consisted of "Who's your favorite New Kid? Call me Joey,,,ooh yeah call me Donnie. Please don't go girl." Doesn't matter, Affleck was da bomb in Phantoms yo!
As a disciple of the movie Hi-Fidelity, I sometimes get obsessed with Top 5 lists. I thought I'd finally start this feature in Tortilla Chips and Milk. For the debut of this feature, I'd start out with my Top 5 fantasy cars when I was a kid. Here we go!
5. The 60's TV Batmobile
First of all, the styling is incredibly, campy, retro, and cool at the same time. The exhaust breathes fire and the NoS system is on all the time because the fucker needs parachutes for brakes. Forget all that though, what puts the Batmobile on this list is that it had the most ingenious anti-theft device ever known to man! The Batmobile has a big-ass red button that said "Start". It wasn't actually the ignition button, but instead it activated the ejector seat! So any villain who tried to boost the Batmobile and tried to drive off got their asses sent flyin'! Heh, that's what you get when you try to jack the Batride BEOYTCH!
4. Mr. T's Taxicab from D.C. Cab
In the movie D.C. Cab, T has been tormented by the fact that he can't keep the inner city D.C.'s away from admiring the local drug dealers flash car. He lectures them and tries to chase the kids away and make them stay in school, but it's no use. T's words turn to jibba-jabba against the power of a cool g ride. T's Cab company D.C. Cab becomes prosperous and he pimps his shitty cab into the Mona Lisa of Taxicabs. You can't see it here but he also had a plane that circled his roof light. The second he rolls up to the drug dealers car, the kids all flock to T's Cab as he singlehandedly ends the drug epidemic in Washington D.C. It just goes to show once again that Mr. T has always been for the children.
3. George Jetson's Spaceship
So, it isn't really a car but that didn't stop young Paj from wanting it. First of all it flies. Beat that suckas! Second of all that big-ass spaceship turns into a briefcase and back at the push of a button. If that isn't an invitation to catastrophe I don't know what is. No joke, sometimes I like to imagine that any plot that centers around a briefcase is replaced by George Jetson's briefcase. For example, the scene with Jules, Vince, Brad, and Flock of Seagulls in Pulp Fiction would go something like this: "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I *transforming sounds* MUTHA FUCK!!! Get this MUTHA FUCKIN' Green bubble-ass MUTHA FUCKIN' futuristic flying car the FUCK offa me! " aaaaand scene! 
2. Greased Lightnin'
We're talking about the fantasy red version that Danny and Sandy fly away in, not the shitty white version that Balmudo carved up like a sardine can at Thunder Road. Now as I'm typing this, I'm moving my arms as such that if you were sitting to the right of me, my digit would be planted in your ear canal right now. If you need to ask why Greased Lightnin' is on this list, just complete these lyrics: "You know that ain't no shit...", "You are supreme...", "You know that I ain't braggin'..." If you can't complete the lyrics and have never seen the unedited Grease, or listened to the soundtrack, go rent it now ya pansies!
1. The Bandit's Trans-Am
I could see a million Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, and Funkmaster Flex/X-ibit creations, but nothing will ever match the feeling of desire a five-year old PAJ had every time he walked by this car on the way to school. I didn't care about the specs or the performance, all I knew was that it had a big ass firebird decal on the hood, and Burt Reynolds drove it and that's all that fucking mattered. Eastbound and Down, is how I roll, yo!
