With a week to go until little Baby Jesus’s birthday now is the time to revel in all the cheesiness that North America has produced during this wonderful season because, let’s be honest, there isn’t much work going on right now.

Some of the Christmas cheese is inspiring, some is kitschy, some of it is outright terrible but we don’t discriminate, we here at Unlimited love them all. I have fond memories of a dubbed from TV VHS version of the 1964 stopmotion classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I always wondered why Yukon Cornelius had such obviously inferior sled dogs like a cocker spaniel, a poodle and a dachshund pulling his sled.

+ Did you know that the people behind the Jingle Cats have created original compositions? Neither had I until I visited their Wikipedia page. Enjoy my favourite Jingle Cats tune, White Christmas. [Jingle Cats]

+ Burl Ives voice blessed the previously mentioned Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special with a brief musical interlude with the song Silver and Gold. Ostensibly the reason for the song is that Yukon Cornelius is looking for silver and gold but that’s something that got changed in a script rewrite. When Yukon Cornelius throws his pick axe into the ground and takes it out and licks it, he’s checking not for gold or silver but peppermint. In the original script Yukon was searching for an elusive peppermint mine. [Burl Ives]

+ In one of George Lucas’s poorest decisions ever (in a long, long line of them) he decided to release a Star Wars Christmas special in 1978. The result is something that is simultaneously terrifying and impossible to look away from. I bring you Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia singing an ode to “Life Day” – the Star Wars universe’s answer to Christmas. [Star Wars]

+ National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is only the second recorded instance of Chevy Chase being funny (the first recorded instance was in National Lampoon’s Vacation). This Christmas dinner scene has so many awesome details that I couldn’t leave it out. [Christmas Vacation]

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 6:45 am and is filed under Daily Blog, Weekly Roundup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.