Randy Newman: Right on the Issues, Wrong for America

Live from Los Angeles, it's MY BLOG!

Yeah. Room 614 of the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo. Big Trouble in Little Tokyo.

L.A. is a giant fucking mess. Traffic. Traffic and more traffic. Remember, I lived in Atlanta so if I'm complaining about the fucking traffic then I promise you IT FUCKING SUCKS HERE.

You might like to think that Chicago or New York or Philly or DC is "the American city." That's cute. That's nice. It's laughable, too.

Los Angeles is America's gift to the world. New York is more like London than any part of America. But L.A.? Oh yeah, baby, that is America. Sprawl. Pollution. Corrupt cops. Excess. Gang wars. Ethnic conclaves. Stupidity as art. Violence instead of sex. Sex as violence. Television as culture. Self-awareness as self-knowledge. You want it? It's here. And it costs a fucking fortune.

I'm here to raise money and awareness and possibly educate folks about homelessness. The real story of homelessness. Because L.A. is THE American city, the homelessness here generally LOOKS like a bunch of people sleeping on sidewalks in Skid Row. These are people with mental health issues. So you see them so visible here and you say "Ah, you see, the poor crazy fuckers, let's create a more humane mental institution and throw them in it and then homelessness is gone!"

Sorry for that. Wouldn't you rather hear about me rubbing elbows with the stars? Bouncing from one trendy Hollywood party to the next? Well shit, you should because it's all true.

I think that Charlyne Yi might be a child genius. The DooDoo Christmas Show couldn't really be described as anything else.

I've read that there might be remains of some old L.A. drunk culture and that fascinates me to no end. Raymond Chandler haunts? Seriously? (Editor's note: Raymond Chandler was a pulp detective novelist, not the fat dude from "Friends." For more information: stuff about Raymond Chandler)

I'm talking about places where people who thought they were going to have something but found out they were actually going to have nothing end up. Apparently there are still thousands of idiots who come to Hollywood each year thinking they're "gonna make it." I say "idiots" in a loving way, mind you. Anyway, then they don't make it and they discover the healing power of drink. (Compare that to New Orleans: People come there because they don't give a shit if they make it or not and quite frankly that's the least of their worries so they just get hammered, joyously and happily.)

Why are we so different than all the nice Mexicans who come to Los Angeles every day? "Let's bust our culas, amigos y amigas!" I just don't get it. They actually come here and in a few months think they've made it. We go to L.A. and if we're working in the service industry or "compromising our principles" we decide that we're colossal fucking failures and we start drinking our way to oblivion. We suck.

In closing, I'd like to say "thank you" to the fine people at Lexus for choosing Sabine Ehrenfeld for their "I need to buy my rich, uninteresting husband a Christmas present" ad. Honestly, tell me THAT'S not range! From pimping the poor man's ebay to Lexus? Let's face it, America (or should I say Los Angeles, because they're one and the same), we LOVE Sabine. It's been proven. She could sell us the new fucked up Medicare plan and we'd buy it.

So there you have it. I don't love L.A., L.A. loves Sabine, and homelessness isn't fucking funny. Drink up, America.

Except colon cancer, maybe

First of all, I would like to do what people do when they win something or something fortuitous happens to them. So now, I am officially on record as thanking God for the fact that I found 23 bottles of Dixie Beer yesterday. Dixie Brewery isn't coming back to life. These might be the last 23 bottles in the city.

All praise to Jesus and hell, even Allah, who deserves all of the credit and without whose strength I wouldn't be here today.

Actually, I am proving that life is just one big happy accident. And it is. I had to get my hair cut yesterday. What led to me finding the Dixie Beer?

Before I moved here, I met Will Forte during Jazz Fest 2004. We stayed in touch. I guess now we're friends, whatever that means. We have a fundrasier on December 19 that he's hosting in Los Angeles. Accident one.

After Katrina, the only bar in my neighbourhood that is open is Pal's Lounge. It was there that I met Adrienne, who told me about Savannah, who cuts hair at Mickey Nolan's in the Quarter. That's where I went to get my hair cut yesterday. Accident two.

I had to go down there early yesterday because there's no parking and it takes a long time to find a space. I got there early and went into the little shop next door to Mickey Nolan's. And it turns out, yep, that this place had 17 Dixie beers. I bought them all. And the lady who worked there told me that there was another store close by that might have some. And they did. Accident three.

Life is an accident. Get over it.

One of the most INFURIATING things I hear on a regular basis is "Everything happens for a reason." My response? Uh, no. No it doesn't. Most of the time we just happened to make a random choice that led to something else.

My mother always derided me for watching television and for drinking. But if I didn't do those things, I would never have met Will Forte and he wouldn't be holding this fundraiser for us. Does that mean that God wanted me to watch TV and drink? I mean, after all, doesn't everything happen for a reason?

When a soldier kills an innocent person in Iraq, and then that soldier is killed by a roadside improvised explosive device, that happened for a reason, right? Except that the solider has a wife and kids back home. Oh well, tough luck bitch, everything happens for a reason. And by the way, to the survivors of the dead Iraqi, too fucking bad for you! Wrong place, wrong time? Oh no, because EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON!

Hey, that has to be what Barbara The Cunt Bush meant when she said that post-Katrina life was "working out really well" for the people living in the Astrodome in Houston. You lost everything, but look now, no crime! See, everything happens for a reason!

And all the racist bastards in New Orleans know it: Katrina got rid of all the black people in NOLA! Hooray, everything happens for a reason!

My mother, the Baptist Sunday school teacher, must know that her rheumatoid arthritis and double-mastectomy happened for a reason. I'm sure it's been working out really well for her.


I'm saving the Dixie Beer for New Year's Eve.

Bourbon Street is lame. It used to be interesting in a sociological/anthropological sort-of way. Now it's worse than downtown Calhoun on a Friday night. I've never been there but I don't need to go to know how lame that is. For my local friends, let's say, Bourbon Street sucks worse than Gretna. And Gretna fucking sucks fat whale shark cock. Do whale sharks have cocks? Who knows? I'm not going to the Georgia Aquarium and asking them about whale shark phalli.

I leave for Hollywood on Wednesday.

How did I get here?

Who cares! Everything happens for a reason!

I'm marching with Krewe du Vieux at Mardi Gras. Thank you God and Jesus and Allah.

Snoopy's Christmas with My Missing Darling

I have pretty much had it with Christmas songs that are laments that someone's "baby," "sweetie," "honey," or "darling" is not there, or celebrations of the fact that that honeybunny IS there.

That is simply not what Christmas is supposed to be about. Fuck off! You need to understand, if he or she wouldn't make the effort to be with you at Christmas, they probably hate your fucking guts anyway. Get over it, freak. What are you, a stalker?

Examples include that wretched "Please Come Home for Christmas" by the Eagles, "Christmas, Baby Please Come Home" by too many fucking people to count, "Merry Christmas Darling" by the Carpenters ("Logs on the fire fill me with desire?" Holy shit that is terrible!), and "All I want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey.

Next on the banning list: Anything that combines Christmas with "Rockin!" Christmas doesn't rock. End of. If you want to rock, wait 6 days and rock on New Year's eve, you idiots. Or better yet, rock at Easter. "Have a Rockin' Little Easter!" would be awesome: "Jesus woke up; Let's Rock!"

The two most egregious offenders of this idiotic genre are of course "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." WHO THE FUCK ROCKS AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE? If you're doing that, you need to be in fucking rehab. Toss in that "Little Saint Nick" tune by the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson may have been a genius, but that song makes me want to put him back in the asylum forever.

I'm very disturbed by songs about making out with Santa Claus. This is some seriously fucked up imagery: "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Great. It's bad enough the kid's mom is a slut and he sees it, but she happens to be swapping spit with Father Fucking Christmas! Also included is "Santa Baby."

Up next: Songs that have absolutely no connection to Christmas. "Baby It's Cold Outside?" "Walking in a Winter Wonderland?" Nope. Nothing at all. Who made the rule that you have to have songs about snow anyway? The whole fucking planet does NOT live in Vermont, assholes.

While I'm at it, all songs that end with a very slow playing of the first few notes of "Jingle Bells" must be banned. This is not cute or interesting, it's a fucking cliche. Please start with "Christmas in Dixie" by Alabama. In fact, please kill Alabama and destroy every copy of every one of their recordings.

All recordings of Christmas songs by Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand (yes, yes, I know), Whitney Houston, George Michael, and any other person who screams their fucking heads off should be dropped into a volcano.

Lastly, please never again let me hear a "Christmas Novelty Song." This would be that mind-numbing "Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer" and that dumbarsed song about Snoopy having Christmas dinner with a WWI German pilot. Take the people who made this dreck out back and beat them senseless with a snowshovel.

This leaves us with a nice, tidy, sensible catalog of Christmas songs. Either traditional carols or pop songs sung by the masters. Which reminds me: If you have a copy of Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole singing a Christmas tune, why the fuck are you playing the version recorded by some talentless contemporary hack? It's simple, really:
White Christmas = Bing Crosby
The Christmas Song = Nat King Cole

Follow that example and you'll be fine.