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Tuesday, December 06, 2011

The Great Gift-Wrap Massacre Of 1994

All right. I have a question to ask all of you, and before I ask it, I ask that you please refrain from throwing tomatoes, expired egg nog, and giant lumps of coal my direction.

How many of you are done your Christmas shopping? Or Hanukkah shopping? Or Kwanzaa shopping? Any sort of holiday shopping?

Okay, that was actually FOUR questions...my bad.

So, what's the answer? Myself, I've gotten mine finished already. I actually had it done the day after Black Friday.

I know, I know...I see some of you shooting daggers my way, but just hear me out. I used to be a December 23 shopper too. I used to postpone Christmas shopping until the very last possible minute too. Sometimes, it wasn't by choice. When I was Christmas shopping, especially during my teen years when money was quite tight, I'd have to wait until close to the end of the holiday rush before I could buy one gift. But after working years in retail and seeing how crazy some people can get in regards to getting everything on their list by whatever means necessary, it's made me realize that the earlier I get my shopping done, the happier holiday that I get to enjoy.

As of right now, my December is looking stress-free, which is exactly what my intention was this holiday season. Besides, it gives me more time to write in this blog, right?

But that's the shopping out of the way. Next comes one of the necessary evils of the holidays that is linked to the holiday shopping.

That necessary evil being the joy of gift wrapping.



Until a few years ago, I absolutely hated wrapping presents. I was by far one of the worst wrappers that ever existed. My presents always looked like they were wrapped by someone who didn't have any fingers. I'm saying that I made Slater from Saved By The Bell look good. When I was a teenager, I reckon that a two year old could have done a better job wrapping Christmas presents than I could.

Oh sure, I could have avoided the whole idea of wrapping presents by performing a few short cuts. I could have just put everything in convenient gift bags. I could have just not bothered to wrap them at all. I could have put them in decorative boxes that looked like they were wrapped. Heck, I could have just gotten the people at the gift wrapping booth at the mall to wrap them for me.

But I guess it was to my credit that I chose not to go that route. I was one determined little kid and I refused to let a roll of red and green wrapping paper and Scotch tape prevent me from learning how to wrap.

But that first year of wrapping my own presents was a bit of a disaster in the making right from the get-go.

If memory serves me, it was Christmas 1994. I was thirteen, and prior to 1994, my sisters used to help me with my wrapping jobs. But by '94, both of them were out of the house, and I realized that I had to step up to the plate, and attempt to wrap my gifts by myself. Had to learn how to do it sometime, right?

And what a disaster it was.



The above picture is a simulation of what some of my gifts looked like that first year I wrapped them. Maybe they didn't seem as bad as the one up above, but they were really bad. Some of the gifts were covered with either too much paper, or not enough. The gift tags that I used were the same colour as the paper, so they blended together. I think I may have ended up using an ENTIRE roll of Scotch tape to wrap one gift. I think the only thing I did right was sticking the bow on the gift, and that's only because I bought the stick-on bows with the adhesive backing on them. You wouldn't have wanted me near a spool of silk ribbon. I was liable to either tie my arms and legs together with it, or end up strangling myself with it.

Let's just say that my gift-wrapping skills needed work.



I even think that one Christmas I ended up running out of Scotch tape and ended up wrapping one of my dad's gifts with duct tape. While it is true that duct tape has a million and one uses, using it for wrapping presents is not the best choice.



All I really wanted was for my gifts to look as elaborately wrapped and beautifully done the same way that gifts were shown wrapped in television shows, commercials, and the Sears Wish Book. Because I was at the age where I was struggling to find out who I really was, and feeling as thought I was failing at everything new that I was trying out, and I really wanted to succeed at something.

And well...back in 1994, gift wrapping just wasn't working out.

Oh, certainly my family didn't really care too much about my sub-par wrapping job. And I suppose in the long run, it didn't matter how nicely wrapped a gift was as the paper would be ripped to shreds in a fifteen seconds flat. But, compared to the wonderful wrapping jobs that the other members of my family had done with their presents made mine kind of look like something a blind chimpanzee would have done. For whatever reason, the shoddy workmanship on my presents really stood out, and for whatever reason, it really bothered me.

I swore to myself that the following Christmas would be different, and that I would make up for my lack of gift-wrapping experience.

Unfortunately, it took several years for me to master the art of gift wrapping. The next year, Christmas 1995, was just as disasterous as 1994. That year, I didn't know where my family had hidden all of the gift wrap for Christmas present wrapping, so I ended up having to use some leftover birthday wrap...wrapping paper that looked as if it had been in our family before I was born. The paper was brittle, the tape refused to stick, I had to make gift tags out of loose leaf paper...yeah, that was a great Christmas.

Things didn't improve any during 1996 either. That was the year that I made the mistake of buying the El Cheapo Scotch tape from the local dollar store. Note to all of you out there, do not buy the El Cheapo tape. It doesn't stick, it doesn't hold, and I ended up having to rewrap the gifts on a couple of occasions because the tape didn't stick at all.

By 1998, I was beginning to get a little better at wrapping boxes, but wrapping up clothing items was a disaster, as my packages would usually resemble shiny red and green blobs of some unknown substance. But, hey, if I could offer up one hint of positivity in this, at least nobody could tell what was underneath the wrapping paper.

And then in 1999 (which was one of the last years my family had a real Christmas tree as opposed to artificial), I had to rewrap (and in one case, re-buy) gifts because the tree stand was overflowing with water, and all of my gifts that I had just put under the tree were soaking wet! It was a total disaster, and admittedly, I was so angry at the prospect of having to wrap my gifts over again that I just used tissue paper to wrap them up instead, and kept them far away from the tree until Christmas Eve.

But you know, over the years, my handiwork with wrapping gifts got a little better each year. I knew how to measure exactly how much paper I needed, I didn't have to spend a fortune on tape, and I even got better at penmanship for writing everyone's names on the tags. The more and more I did it, the better I got. Mind you, I'll never wrap as well as say, Martha Stewart, but I really am at the point where it doesn't really matter what I think of my wrapping abilities anymore because I know that the real judges wouldn't care.

I suppose you can say that the perfect lesson to learn from this is not to judge a book by its cover...or in this case, not to judge the gift (or the gift giver) by its wrapping job. And that's a good lesson to learn. Not the one that I really wanted to express in this entry, but just putting it out there.

No, the lesson that we can all learn from my mishaps in giftwrapping is persistence. Never giving up. Practice making near-perfect.

Because if one keeps at it, you never know what magic you can create. Case in point, here's a few of the gifts that I ended up wrapping for Christmas 2010.



And you may wonder why there's so many. Well, I don't have kids of my own yet, so I tend to spoil my nieces and nephews. That, plus I have ten people to buy for on my list. But as you can see, not one of these gifts look all that terrible. They may not be suitable for a holiday display at Macy's, but they're good enough for me.

Definitely a far cry from my misadventures in gift-wrapping during Christmas '94, at least.

Something else happened along the way. I went from loathing wrapping to LOVING wrapping. I now do the gift wrapping of my gifts, as well as volunteering my services to people who want their gifts wrapped too. If I was more confident in my ability, I'd add a fee.

But, then again, that wouldn't be very Christmasy, would it? Or, maybe it would, I don't know.

Monday, December 05, 2011

Monday Matinee - Home Alone

Sometimes being the youngest child in a family can be nothing but trouble.

I can make this claim. I am the youngest of three. I know what it's like to be the baby of the family, and how uncomfortable of a position it can be.

Oh sure, there's people that will tell you that being the baby of the family is the best possible position to be in. Everyone spoils you with gifts, they say. Give you lots of attention, they say. Treat you like a little prince or princess, they say.

They lie!

Truth is, I didn't particularly like being the youngest. I was constantly supervised to the point where my mother would freak out if I crossed the street by myself. And don't even get me started on my two older sisters. They would constantly come up with new ways to have fun with me from pouring a whole bottle of styling gel on my head to tickling me every chance they got.

I also felt as though my opinions weren't taken as seriously as the ones given by the 'adults' of the family, even though I had thought that my opinions were good. It was very frustrating to see everyone else's ideas and thoughts entertained while mine ended up becoming dust in the wind.

I tried everything to try and become heard, even resorting to making mischief to get attention. But all I got instead was sent to my room, or some other punishment, and in the long run, all I ended up doing was proving that I was too immature to be taken seriously. Took me a while to figure it out.

But you know, even at the age of 30, I still get the feeling that because I'm the youngest, everyone assumes that I think and act like a child when the truth is that I haven't been a child for years. I guess it's one of the many pitfalls to being the youngest of a family...no matter how old you get, people still treat you as if you're a child.

This is kind of related to the main character of today's Monday Matinee subject...one of three holiday films that I'm going to be spotlighting this month.  Like me, our subject was also the youngest one in his family, and like me, he always felt as if nobody took him seriously. I think in his case, he may have been worse off than I was because he actually had siblings who point blank told him that he was completely helpless and that he was nothing but a disease.

That's harsh.

You know, I think before we continue, I think we should add a little mood music...how about the music from the opening?



Yep, in case you haven't figured it out yet (and in case the title wasn't a dead giveaway), the subject for today's entry is the movie Home Alone.



Released in movie theaters everywhere on November 16, 1990, Home Alone is the story of what happens when a family who goes off on an overseas Christmas vacation accidentally leave their child at home. That's bad enough. But what happens when two robbers happen to be stalking the neighbourhood and they decide to break into the home of the family, leaving the child to defend his home against the thieves?

Well, that's just plain scary...for the thieves.

The movie was directed by John Hughes of Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink fame, and is widely considered to be the breakout performance of Macaulay Culkin, who was just ten when the film was released. The movie also starred Daniel Stern, Joe Pesci, John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, and Roberts Blossom. The movie performed favourably at the box office, taking in a final gross of almost three hundred million dollars during the last months of 1990 and first months of 1991. It was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the highest grossing live-action comedy ever. Despite this, the film itself got mixed reviews.  Some critics praised the movie, while others panned it.

Regardless, it was one of the most memorable movies of 1990, and I wanted to talk about it in this blog, being that it's Christmas, and because I think there's a couple of things we can learn about ourselves that this movie shows us.



Kevin McCallister (Culkin) is eight years old. He's the youngest member of the McCallister family. He is the son of Kate (O'Hara) and Peter (Heard), and he has four older brothers and sisters. In order of birth they are Buzz, Megan, Linnie, and Jeff.

TRIVIA: All four actors cast in the roles of Kevin's brothers and sisters were born in 1977 (even Buzz, if you can believe it). Either that was a wild coincidence, or Kate McCallister had quadruplets.

The McCallister family has big plans for the holiday season. For Christmas, they planned a vacation to Paris, France. Paris was the home of Peter's brother, Rob, and Rob had invited all of the McCallister family to his home for a Christmas reunion vacation.

As a result of this, the already full McCallister home was even more packed. In addition to Peter, Kate, and their children, Peter's other brother Frank was also invited to go. Frank, his wife Leslie, and their children were all at the McCallister home, as the two families were to board the same flight to Paris.

This situation is Kevin's worst nightmare. All of Kevin's siblings and cousins are mean to him, poke fun at him, and make him feel as though he was worthless. His older brother Buzz is especially nasty to him, telling him some scary stories about the next door neighbour, Old Man Marley (Blossom), about how he was a serial killer who grinded up his victims into rock salt used to melt the ice off of the sidewalks. This story was obviously an urban legend created by Buzz, but it would cause Kevin much grief, especially as the film progressed.

To make matters worse, Kevin couldn't stand his uncle Frank. For the record, Kevin couldn't stand much of his extended family at all. He especially seemed to take a dislike to his cousin Fuller (who was played by Culkin's younger brother, Kieran), who had a tendency to wet his bed...especially if he was given a soda to drink just before bed. But Frank very much had the same maturity and mentality as any of the children that were staying at the McCallister home, and he took delight in picking on Kevin just as much as the kids did.

During dinner, Kevin is dismayed to learn that Buzz purposely ate all of the plain cheese pizza that was ordered, and ends up shoving Buzz away, spilling milk all over the airplane tickets and spilling soda down the front of Frank's pants. An enraged Kate, after Kevin sasses her with attitude, drags him up to the third floor attic as a punishment for his actions, and where he wished that his whole family would just disappear.

That night, a strong wind blew over the city of Chicago. Christmas decorations blew away, and tree branches swayed in the wind. In the case of the majestic tree outside of the McCallister home, one of the branches broke off and fell on top of a set of power lines, blowing the transformer, and plunging the neighbourhood into darkness.

And resetting all of the electric alarm clocks inside the McCallister family home, causing everyone in the home to oversleep. Which then leads to a frantic mad rush of getting everyone up, dressed, and into the airport shuttle buses so they can make their flight. Fortunately, the McCallisters make their flight with seconds to spare.

Unfortunately, they left someone behind. Kevin.



Turns out that in between the shuffling of bodies and accidentally counting a neighbour's kid as an extra head, Kevin was lost in the kerfuffle. Waking up and wandering through the house, he's wondering where everyone went. It suddenly dawned on him that he made that wish...the one where he wished his family would disappear.



At first, Kevin was horrified. Then he got that devilish grin in his eyes.

Why he could do whatever he wanted without anyone telling him what to do. If he wanted to jump on his parents bed eating popcorn, he could. If he wanted to steal things out of Buzz's room, he could. If he wanted to eat ice cream for dinner while watching violent movies, he could. Really, things were great for Kevin.



Not so much for Kate McCallister though, who realized on the plane that she wasn't going to win the 1990 Mother Of The Year Award. Immediately after landing in Paris, the worried McCallister clan rushes towards the nearest phone to try and get someone to check on Kevin to see if he's okay. But when that fails, Kate realizes that she must find a way to get back home to Chicago.



At the same time that Kevin is trying to adjust to life without a family, a couple of robbers happen to be scoping out the neighbourhood, looking at stealing all the valuables they can carry. They're the Wet Bandits, a team of two comprised of Marv (Stern) and Harry (Pesci). Harry was the brains of the operation (well, figuratively speaking), who posed as a police officer to get access to each of the homes they broke into. Once he got in, the clueless owners would tell him all of the security precautions that they used to protect their home, as well as their vacation plans. Of course, once Harry found out, he filled Marv in, and the two of them would bypass all the security measures to break in and out without even triggering an alarm. Oh, and the name Wet Bandits? That was the brainchild of Marv, who left the sinks running in the kitchens as a calling card.



Yeah, Marv was kind of a space case.

Anyway, Kevin attempted to make the best of his situation. He went to the store to buy food, he decorated his own miniature Christmas tree, and he even went to buy a toothbrush...of which he accidentally shoplifted running away from Old Man Marley, which spawned a police chase across a frozen pond...

...yeah, it didn't go to well.

To make matters worse, Kevin bumps into Harry and Marv on his travels, and Kevin immediately recognized Harry as the police officer that visited his home earlier through the gold tooth in his mouth.

So now, Kevin was in a pickle. He knew that Harry and Marv were bad news and were up to something. But he couldn't go to the police because he thought that they would arrest him for shoplifting the toothbrush. He soon figured out that maybe wishing his family away wasn't the brightest move.

And with Harry and Marv scoping out his home at all hours, Kevin knew that he had to do everything he could to protect himself as well as his family's belongings...especially since he overheard the two talking about breaking into the house that night. Now he REALLY wants his family back, but he doesn't know how to get them back.

He tries asking a neighbourhood Santa Claus for help in bringing them back, but when that fails, he decides to go to a nearby church. It is here that he happens to cross paths with Old Man Marley once again...but this time, Old Man Marley smiles at him, sits down beside him, and Kevin soon realizes that he's not as bad as Buzz made him out to be. 



In fact, Kevin soon discovers that Old Man Marley got into a fight with his only son, and they hadn't spoken in years. Going to the church was the only way he could get to see his granddaughter, as she was a member of the church choir. Kevin tried to tell Old Man Marley not to be afraid to reach out to his son, and that maybe if he tried to talk to him, things might get better.

Wow...sounds to me like Kevin could have taken his own advice there. Had he not taken Buzz's description of Marley so seriously, it's possible that Marley could have helped him out a lot sooner...maybe he could have stayed with him until the McCallisters made their way home. But hey, if he had, the movie wouldn't have been as much fun, and we would have been deprived of scenes such as the ones below, when Kevin set up booby traps all over his home to ward off Harry and Marv.

In one of the most memorable scenes of the whole movie, Kevin rushes home after visiting with Old Man Marley, and quickly sets up the traps before Harry and Marv arrive. I only wish I could find the clip of him setting up the traps, but there really wasn't any that were all that great...so, I hope that posting the iconic music that went along with that scene will bring back memories.



Though, I did manage to find a little montage of some of these traps in action, and you can see some of them below...problem is they're mixed in with scenes from the Home Alone sequel released in 1992. I'll point out the traps that appeared in the first one though...



The clip where Marv has Buzz's tarantula on his face
The clip where a barefoot Marv steps on the very fragile ornaments
The clip where Harry gets set on fire with the blowtorch in the kitchen
The clip where Harry and Marv get shot with the BB gun
The clip where Marv falls down the basement stairs after stepping on a nail
The clip where Marv falls down the ice covered stairs
The clip where Harry slips on the front steps
The clip where Harry grabs on the red hot doorknob
The clip where Harry gets covered in glue and feathers
The clip where Marv hits Harry with a crowbar to kill Buzz's tarantula

Man...it's a wonder those two didn't end up DEAD!

Now, I'm going to stop here because I don't like to post endings to movies. But since you know a sequel was made, you have to have some idea. All I'll tell you is that there's more traps, a cameo role by John Candy, and Old Man Marley makes a smashing appearance 15 minutes before the end of the film. Literally, quite smashing.

The whole idea of Home Alone was to provide a whole bunch of laughs and slapstick comedy to the audience, and it certainly achieved just that. But I think there's a deeper meaning to the whole movie as well.

Actually, there's two lessons that we can take away from Home Alone.

One...don't take what others say about someone else to be the truth until you get to know them. Any of the scenes between Kevin and Old Man Marley will prove that lesson to be true.

But I also think that a lesson that we can take from this is that no matter what, every member of a family is important, and that we shouldn't dismiss anyone's ideas because of age. I mean, Kevin was only eight, and yet his booby traps were almost Rube Goldberg like. I mean, the kid was a genius. Every single trap worked the way it was supposed to. I couldn't imagine Megan, or Linnie, or Jeff even coming up with that plan. Certainly not Buzz.

And I also think that Kevin learned a very valuable lesson as well...and that lesson is that no matter what you may feel about your family, it's always better to have them around.

But then again, given that there was a sequel, maybe he DIDN'T learn it after all...



Sunday, December 04, 2011

Sunday Jukebox - Do They Know It's Christmas?

You know, amongst all of the bad news surrounding the economy, the schizophrenic nature of the value of a dollar, and the doom and gloom that today's economy seems to be plagued with, I can see how the last thing people would want to do is just give money away.

It's been reported that charitable organizations are struggling to raise money all over the world this holiday season. With pennies becoming harder to pinch, and with belts being tightened to the point where we have permanent grooves around our midsections, it's tough to spread the wealth around.

And it's not because everyone is the world is greedy, and want to keep money to themselves either. I'm sure there are some Scrooges and misers who would rather die than give their pennies away to people, but not everyone is like this. I know I would love to be able to donate to some of my favourite charitable organizations if I was financially able to.

Of course, that's not to say that one needs to have money to be able to give back to the community. People can volunteer at soup kitchens to feed the needy. They could wrap Christmas presents at a local mall for charity. They can organize toy drives where people donate toys for kids to open up on Christmas, or they can go door-to-door singing Christmas carols. Even a gesture as simple as making someone a card for the holidays can be considered giving back to someone.

Or, if your name happens to be Bob Geldof or Midge Ure, you could just record a song for the Christmas season where all the proceeds for the record went towards stopping the plight of world hunger.

And, that is the topic for today's blog entry.



I'm sure that anyone who was around in the mid-1980s remembers the single 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'. I know my sister who was twelve at the time had the single in record format. It's hard to miss the distinct cover design, which was illustrated by artist Peter Blake, and that album cover held a prominent place in my sister's bedroom for many years.

The year was 1984. During that year, the BBC had a series of news reports about the famine that was going on in the country of Ethiopia. In October of 1984, a BBC reporter named Michael Buerk was featured in a report showing scenes filmed in Ethiopia. It really was a sad sight to behold. Lots of people who were literally starving to death because they didn't have the necessarily food, water, or medicine to survive.

It kind of made you realize that as stressful and expensive as the holidays can get for us, things could always be worse. And in Ethiopia in 1984, they were living the 'worse' day in and day out.

The news reports were quite tough to watch, and it naturally affected the people of the United Kingdom in a variety of ways. In the case of Bob Geldof, the images were so powerful and emotion-evoking that he immediately came up with an idea. What if he wrote a song for the 1984 Christmas season where all the proceeds went towards ending the famine in African nations? Certainly, songwriting was something Geldof was experienced in, having been a part of The Boomtown Rats at the time. But he needed help in creating the perfect song. He called up his friend James “Midge” Ure, who was the lead singer of the band, Ultravox.

Together, they ended up writing the lyrics and melody of the song, which they entitled 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', and the date the song was to be recorded was planned for late November 1984. At the time, Bob Geldof had been scheduled for a radio interview with BBC Radio 1 DJ Richard Skinner to promote an album. Instead, he used the interview to promote 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', talking about how he had planned to assemble a group of musicians from all over the United Kingdom to participate in the recording. Geldof's hope was that the media interest in the song would be high as more and more names were signed onto the project.

By the time the recording session had been booked for November 25, the media was perched outside Sarm West recording studios, waiting to snap pictures and video of each singer and band as they arrived to record the song. The use of the recording studio was free of charge, courtesy of the owner, music producer Trevor Horn. Initally, Geldof wanted Horn to produce the record himself, but Horn was unavailable at the time. There was one catch though. The use of the studio for free was only available for 24 hours, so if the song was to be recorded, it would have to have been done in a day.



And when you have a group of musicians, some of whom had never met each other, and some of whom regularly competed against each other on the UK music charts, it was expected that the session would have some conflict and some problems. But, we'll get to the behind the scenes action in a bit.

For now, let's enjoy the song.



ARTIST: Band-Aid
SONG: Do They Know It's Christmas?
DATE RELEASED: November 29, 1984
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #13
PEAK POSITION ON THE UK CHARTS: #1 for 5 weeks

Now, before I go on with the details behind the making of the song, I think we should find out who exactly sang on the record, as there were a LOT of artists that took part. Here's just a few...

Bob Geldof, Simon Crowe, Pete Briquette, Johnny Fingers (The Boomtown Rats)
Midge Ure, Chris Cross (Ultravox)
Bono, Adam Clayton (U2)
Phil Collins (Genesis)
Tony Hadley, Steve Norman, Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp, John Keeble (Spandau Ballet)
Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor (Duran Duran)
Paul Young
Martyn Ware, Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17)
Marilyn
Jody Watley (Shalamar)
Keren Woodward, Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama)
Paul Weller (The Style Council)
James “J.T.” Taylor, Robert “Kool” Bell, Dennis J.T. Thomas (Kool & The Gang)
George Michael (Wham!)
Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt (Status Quo)
Boy George, Jon Moss (Culture Club)
Sting (The Police)
David Bowie
Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
Stuart Adamson, Bruce Watson, Tony Butler, Mark Brzezicki (Big Country)
Paul McCartney


...among others...

Most were British based, but there were a few Irish and Scottish groups that took part. The song even had a bit of American flavour to it as Jody Watley and Kool & The Gang became a part of the single's final cut.

Now, I have to say that it was quite a feat to have a whole bunch of musicians of varying styles, tastes, and levels of popularity come together to record a song where all the profits would go towards a good cause.

And the song was one that people rushed to buy. Within days of its release, the song hit the top of the British charts in late 1984, staying there for five weeks. In the United States, the song didn't quite chart that high, but it did make the Top 20 on the Billboard Charts, peaking at #13 in early 1985 (reason being that the American charts counted airplay in addition to record sales, and back in 1984, the song didn't get much airplay). In the UK, the song was re-released on the charts the following year, this time peaking at #3...one of the few instances in which the same song made the Top 5 in two different years at two different times.



The song did very well in sales as well. Between 1984 and 1985, the single sold over three and a half million copies. For thirteen years, the song held the record for being the highest selling single in UK history, the record broken in 1997 with Elton John's remake of 'Candle In The Wind', as a tribute to the late Princess Diana. With the success of Band-Aid's single, Geldof used that success as the basis towards the formation of 1985's Live-Aid, a concert extravaganza held that summer, in which an estimated 1.9 BILLION people worldwide watched the event, which much like the Band-Aid single, raised funds to end world hunger.

But as I said before, the recording of the song didn't exactly go off without a hitch. There were some rather comedic moments, and there's some interesting facts about the recording of the song itself that are worth knowing, but there were also some tense moments between some of the singers, and one almost didn't show up at all!

Did you know, for instance, that the song was recorded out of order? The first part recorded was the end of the song where the chorus of “feed the world, let them know it's Christmas time' was sung in an endless loop. The reason behind that was to have everyone get involved in the song straightaway, allowing the group shot to be photographed at the same time.

Also, it should be noted that each musician involved in singing the main body of the song, sang the whole version of the song. Some artists like Sting and Simon Le Bon had previously recorded their parts beforehand, but chose to re-record them once again. Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet was the first soloist to take to the microphone, and the rest followed suit. From there, Midge Ure would listen to each recording and cut and paste the segments that would eventually be used for the final cut.

Remember the opening of the song where there's a drum rhythm? That effect was achieved through a combination of electronic drum beats, a snippit from a Tears For Fears song, and the actual drum set that Phil Collins had brought with him to the session!

Boy George almost didn't even make it to the recording session! Despite Bob Geldof calling Boy George in New York the day before the recording session, asking him to be a part of the record, by the time the session began at nine o'clock that morning, Boy was still nowhere to be found. It took a while for Boy George to agree to fly out to England to record the song, and he arrived at around six o'clock that evening.

It was reported that Boy George did not get along with another George during the recording session. Apparently, Boy George and George Michael didn't gel well together, and both of them traded insults with each other.

As far as the band Status Quo goes, they were originally supposed to have sang the verse with the 'Here's to you...' line, but apparently Rick Parfitt wasn't able to hit the high notes for the verse, so they were replaced.  However, it was reported that they contributed to the recording session in other ways...by bringing alcohol and drugs.

Silly '80s bands.

There was even a bit of tension between Ure and Geldof during the recording of the song, as Geldof would constantly barge into the production booth while Ure was inside, telling the singers what lines to sing.

Boy George was the last vocalist to sing his part on the record (made sense since he was the last one to arrive), and after that was done, the work began on the B-side of the record, a song called 'Feed The World'. That recording featured spoken word messages from artists who didn't sing on the A-side, which included Bowie, McCartney, and the members of Big Country.

The recording was finally completed on November 26, 1984 at 8am...almost 24 hours after the process began.

Soon after 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' was released, the current #1 artist at the time, Jim Diamond, urged people to skip over his single the following week, instead prompting people to buy 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' instead. He ended up getting his wish, as the song lasted five weeks at the top, being dethroned by Foreigner's 'I Want To Know What Love Is' in early 1985.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of the song's success comes with this fact. The original song was re-recorded twice more. Five years after the original version was released, a new version was re-recorded with what were the top British artists at the time. The group name was Band Aid II, and these artists included Lisa Stansfield, Wet Wet Wet, Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Cliff Richard, and Bananarama (making Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward the only people to sing on both the '84 and '89 versions) of the song. Like its predecessor, the second version also made it to #1. It was a nice effort, and some of the singers were quite good, but I preferred the original. What do you think?



A third version was recorded in 2004, but I'm definitely not a fan of that one, so I won't post it. You could probably find it if you put the words Band Aid 20 in the search engine, Google.

Other countries put out their own efforts as well to help donate money to the people of Africa as well.



USA for Africa released 'We Are The World' on March 7, 1985.



Canada's Northern Lights followed suit with 'Tears Are Not Enough' that same month.



There was even an effort put out by Yugoslavia!

But Band-Aid did it first, and in my opinion, they did it best, and the song did what it set out to do, which was to raise awareness of third world countries.

And I think if anything, it made us all realize, if only for a moment, that as bad as we think things might be here at home, it's nothing compared to what others may be going through.

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Sat A.M. - Saved By The Bell "A Home For Christmas"

It's a bit of a rarity for me to devote a blog entry on a single episode of a live-action Saturday morning show...particularly one on a show that I've already done a previous entry on.

I know that I've done the episode spotlights on TGIF days, but this episode spotlight on a Saturday is something new to me, so I hope I do it justice.



I know some of you might be scoffing at the idea of me doing an entire episode spotlight on the NBC Saturday morning sitcom Saved By The Bell, but there's a reason why I wanted to do this.

It's because for what the show was, and how cheaply produced it was, it managed to churn out a rather enjoyable holiday show. In fact, I'm going to say that they managed to make a pretty enjoyable hour of programming, as the message behind it was a good one.

I know when I first saw it around the age of ten, I liked it.



The topic for today's blog entry is about the one and only Christmas themed episode the original Saved By The Bell series did back in 1991. Yes, I know that Saved By The Bell: The New Class had Christmas themed episodes too, but I didn't think any of them were all that memorable. The one they did in '94 was a Christmas In July episode. How festive. The one they did in '95 was a basic retelling of the holiday show the original cast did four years earlier. How plagiaristic. And don't even get me started on Christmas 1996 when they BURNED DOWN THE MAX and replaced it with something that a Crayola crayon box barfed up!

And yes, I did do extensive research on this show, including the lame spin-off, and yes, after all that, I stand by my opinion that the original Christmas show was the best of them all.

Before we get into this episode's discussion, let's talk a bit about the original version. The show was actually a retooling of the show 'Good Morning, Miss Bliss', which had debuted in 1988. In 1989, half the cast (including Miss Bliss) were let go, and the show was changed to the name 'Saved By The Bell'. It ran for four years, the last episode airing in May 1993.

One of the reasons why the show was so popular for kids who grew up during that time period was because of the characters. The six main characters of the show each had their own distinct personalities and quirks, so that everyone who watched the show could identify with someone on the show.



You had Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), the blonde, preppy-dressing, girl-crazy guy who was a lazy student but incredibly street smart...well, provided his plans didn't blow up in his face. There was A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez), an army brat used to moving around from school to school, who was the typical jock of the series. Samuel “Screech” Powers (Dustin Diamond) was the intelligent, but socially awkward teenager who had an easier time understanding quantum physics than relationships. Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen) was your stereotypical pep squad leader who always managed to put on a happy face, and whose worst insult in her vocabulary was 'jerk'. Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhies) was the rich girl, whose parents were in the country club scene, and who loved designing clothes almost as much as buying them. And Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) would have made a great feminist during the 1970s, but found her environmental beliefs and women empowerment views to be largely ignored at Bayside High School.

Quite the motley crew of teenagers, aren't they?

I'd probably say that out of these six, I'm most like a weird hybrid of Zack and Screech, with maybe a smidgen of Kelly mixed in for flavouring. But, that's just me, I suppose.

Now that you know who the characters are and what the show is about, we can continue.

If you want to watch the show before reading the detailed description, you can do so in these following links. Each word in the following sentence represents one part in the story...I just hope that it's not regionally blocked.  So, just click on here!



The episode spotlight that I want to talk about is the episode entitled “A Home For Christmas”. It was originally a two-parter, with part one airing December 7, 1991, and part two airing on December 14, 1991. It's Christmas in Los Angeles, and Zack and his friends arrive at Zack's house for a small party to kick off their Christmas vacation. And after Zack's mother surprises them with homemade gingerbread cookies, we learn about how the gang plans to spend their holiday.

Slater, Kelly, and Jessie managed to get part-time jobs at a shopping mall. Kelly got a job working as a sales clerk at a men's clothing store, Slater got a job at the gift wrapping kiosk (which he does a poor job at), and Jessie took on a job playing one of Santa's elves, and failing miserably at it. I would have suggested that Jessie would require Prozac to get through her shifts as an elf, but then I thought about that caffeine pill freakout, and realized that it probably wouldn't have been a good idea.

Surprisingly enough, Lisa, who was normally known for being the self-absorbed one, decided to spend her time volunteering at the hospital as a candy striper, and was a key figure in organizing a Christmas party for the sick kids there.



As for Zack and Screech...well...they'd end up having a Christmas adventure of their own. While Screech was showing off a doll that apparently drank all the water in the entire city of Los Angeles, Zack quite literally ran into a young woman who was making her way to work. The woman was a bit put off by Zack at first for making her late for work, but she did volunteer two pieces of information. Her name was Laura, and she worked at one of the many stores in the shopping mall. But first, Zack had to get Screech dried off.

It was in the men's room that the next piece of the puzzle fell into place. A middle-aged man happened to be in the restroom at the same time that Zack and Screech were there, and taught Screech how to get dried off in a hurry. But then Zack seemed to notice that the man was applying shaving cream on his face to shave in the mall's restroom, and came to the conclusion that the man was homeless. After leaving the man some money in the restroom, Zack and Screech continued their search for Laura.

Luckily, Laura's place of employment was at Moody's Store For Men, which was the same store that Kelly worked at, so finding Laura was quite easy for Zack. Zack immediately asked her out, and Laura was reluctant, but Kelly went to bat for Zack, telling him that she could trust him...provided they ate near a security guard. But then when the man that Zack and Screech helped passed by the store, and Zack was telling the group that he hoped that the money he left him would be used for food, and not on drugs and alcohol, Laura's mood chilled, and she turned Zack down cold. Zack was left confused about the whole thing, and the fact that Slater and Lisa were making fun of him over the snub just made the whole thing smart more.



Luckily, after Laura happened to pass by the food court, and after Screech helped Zack convince Laura to give him a second chance, Laura warmed up to the idea of going on a date with Zack...even if she had an unusually voracious appetite. But, hey, maybe the idea of dating a female Jughead appealed to Zack.  As a finale to their date, Zack and Laura went to visit with Santa (after a bruised and exhausted Jessie let them in at the front of the line), where Laura had a rather huge wish to give to Santa. Zack questioned Laura about what she wished for, but she wouldn't even give Zack a hint. Eventually, Zack let it go.

But later on, Zack, Slater, Screech, and Jessie come across a disturbing sight as the man that Zack and Screech helped earlier has now passed out on the floor. Luckily, Zack and Slater managed to revive him, and the ambulances took him to the hospital. But when the gang headed off to Moody's to pick up Kelly for the hospital Christmas party, and they fill her in on what happened, Laura has a rather weird reaction to it all. Why would she feel so strongly about this?



All is revealed at the hospital party. Turns out our homeless man was taken to the same hospital that the party was held, and with help from Lisa, Zack manages to find out where the man's room is. So with Slater and Screech tagging along, they wander through the corridors of the hospital to find the room, and are shocked to see that Laura is by the man's bedside.

And it is here that all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. The man is Frank Benton. The girl is Laura Benton. They are father and daughter. Which means that Laura was homeless too.

Now it all made sense...her turning Zack down the first time, her reaction to his hospitalization. The reason why Frank passed out was due to malnutrition, and once he started feeling better, Zack and his mother invited the Benton family to dinner at their home, where Frank explained how he and Laura ended up homeless. Frank was let go from his job, and was unable to keep up with his bills. He and Laura headed off to California in hopes of finding work, but the economy back in late 1991 wasn't that great. Besides, with only one rumpled suit and no forwarding address, it made the search for work all that much difficult. Laura's job at Moody's was the only income that they had. In that moment, Zack decided that he really wanted to help Frank and Laura out, simultaneously realizing how lucky he and his family were in the process.

The next day, Zack's mother was planning the annual mall Christmas play, a retelling of the Charles Dickens classic 'A Christmas Carol', and Laura expressed interest in acting in the play with Zack and his friends, but knew that Mr. Moody wouldn't let her off work to act in it. To put it mildly, there wasn't a whole lot of personality difference between Moody and Ebenezer Scrooge. Kelly tried to get Mr. Moody to change her mind, and let it slip that Laura was homeless, but Mr. Moody wouldn't budge, even going so far to say that if he had known she was homeless, he never would have hired her, as he had the belief that all homeless people were thieves.

What a class act of a guy, huh?

Of course, Zack came up with a brilliant (if not totally commercial) idea to get Laura in the play, which was to give Moody free advertising during the play in exchange for Laura being allowed a role. Sigh...I guess there's commercialism in everything, isn't there. But, seeing as how happy it made Laura, I guess we can overlook it.



But Laura's happiness wouldn't end up lasting. For when she arrived back at Moody's, Mr. Moody accused her of shoplifting a sportsjacket, and threatened to call the cops on her, prompting Laura to flee the mall, visibly upset. Oh, but lest you think that Laura pulled the wool over our eyes, Mr. Moody was the one who acted terribly. Turns out that the sportsjacket that Laura was accused of stealing wasn't stolen. Kelly had put it away on the store's newly created layaway plan. As in, Kelly had another salesgirl put it aside so that she could buy it for Laura's father, as Laura had told Kelly that the sportsjacket was what Frank needed for job interviews. Kelly had planned to pay for it after the play was over, but ran late trying to get changed, and she and Zack arrived at the store just seconds after Laura ran away. And neither one of them were happy with Moody at all. I know I wouldn't have been.

A search throughout the whole mall progressed as Zack, Kelly, Zack's mother, and the rest of the gang split up to tell Laura that they believed in her. It wasn't until Zack and his mother arrived at a Christmas tree lot that they happened to come across Frank and Laura, who were planning to spend Christmas Eve in the back of their car. Of course, Zack and his mother weren't going to let that happen, and after explaining the circumstances behind the sportsjacket scandal, Frank and Laura were convinced of their friendship, and accepted their offer to spend Christmas Eve with them.



The next scene takes place at the Morris family living room where Frank and Laura are enjoying a nice Christmas with Zack and his friends, with the exception of Kelly. Turns out that Mr. Moody had asked Kelly to work late on Christmas Eve, which makes everyone else roll their eyes in disgust, claiming that Moody hadn't learned anything from the experience.

But then Kelly came in, with Mr. Moody following behind her carrying a present!  Turns out that Mr. Moody suddenly had a change of heart, and was terribly sorry about misjudging Laura. He wished her a merry Christmas, offered her some prime shifts for the after-holiday sales, and left...but judging by the grimace he uttered, I have a feeling that Kelly might have twisted his arm a bit in making him come. Whatever the case, Laura ended up with the sportsjacket, which she happily presented to her father for a Christmas present, and Zack surprised them with the news that the Bentons could stay with the Morris family as long as they needed until Frank found a job.

The ending was simple, yet perfect, as it had the whole gang singing 'Silent Night'.

So, what lessons can we learn from a Saved By The Bell Christmas? Well, I think one lesson is to not judge a person based on what they might have heard from others. Upon first glance, would you have thought that Frank and Laura were homeless? No. They looked a lot like any average person who passed through the mall. Zack had no idea that Laura and her father were homeless when he met her. But when he found out, did he run away or judge her? Not in the slightest. In fact, he actually tried to help her, and got his friends to open their arms up to her and Frank. Which is what the whole point of the holidays is about.

I guess if there's one thing we can take out of a Saved By The Bell Christmas, it's the pleasure and joy that Zack and his friends got out of helping someone who had fallen on bad luck. Because when you look at it, and if you were in a dire situation as Frank and Laura Benton were in, wouldn't it be nice if someone went out of their way to help you, as Zack did with them?

Think about it and reflect on that for a second.