The Los Angeles Times is a bolshevik lefty socialist organ hiding behind skirts of Official respectability and voluminous advertising. The Los Angeles Times selectively reports with bias, omission and commission, but it is not so dedicated to the cause that it turns down money - Left, Right, or floating in midair and waiting for Elvis. In 1977 the Sunday Times added to its usual multi-pound repertoire an external organ called Parade. If you want "12 CDs for the price of 1" or hallucinate that angels have a special message for you, Parade is your sugar plum.
Parade is sin qua non blue/pink collar tabloid trash from its derelict Christian message to its cheap paper and sloppy four-color printing. It empowers and lends hope, all the while never breaking the fifth grade reading barrier. We turn to the 25 January 1998 Parade, not stopping at the numerology article or hesitating to drown in smarm like "A Message from the Child You Once Were." Plunge into the heart of lower class America, Page 6. I'm talking "21 Down-Home Classics," "2 All-Time Favorite Albums for the Price of 1!"
The ghastly travesty of hawking an album of Christmas songs on 28 January is telling of itself. It is not as though they were off by a week in November due to a printer's error. The real guts of the farce - as in evisceration - is the singer. "Besides being one of the greatest character actors of all time," wait for it... "WALTER BRENNAN..."
Walter Brennan's career was founded upon his acquiring totally empty gums by his thirties. Brennan became the youngest and most sustaining old fart in the movies, losing his upper plate to Chief Yowlachie in Howard Hawks' 1948 Red River poker game (Western remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, starring John Wayne as Captain Bly) among his nearly one hundred movie triumphs 1929-1969. He earned a 1936 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Come and Get It. His grave (1894-1974) reposes in San Fernando Mission Cemetery, CA. But, sing? No way!
Walter Brennan had a voice like a washboard and couldn't carry a tune in a galvanized iron laundry tub. Holding a cup of eggnog before a fireplace and listening to Walter Brennan extrude Oh Come All Ye Faithful is nobody's idea of a good time, Dolby surround sound or otherwise. Parade does not hesitate to give us access to "Walter's long out-of-print Christmas album." Better that it be left by Walter's subterranean side in San Fernando Mission, CA. At $18.45 for the privilege, it is even unattractive as a gotcha! wisecrack versus a received Christmas fruitcake. (If you reserve a special place in your heart for a nun whose hair shirt is wearing thin, it is a possibility.) CDs cost less than $0.50 each to press, even in small runs.
A serviceable hype assay is the mean number of exclamation points/sentence. The half page ad for what is surely the worst set of vocals recorded up until the advent of Sheryl Crow has six sentences which terminate in a total of four exclamation points, or a ratio of 0.667. (The Journal of the American Chemical Society may pop an exclamation point once in five hundred densely printed pages.) A Walter Brennan Christmas sublets in the neighborhood of magnetic hernia trusses and magic laundry rings.
We suffer a National Walter Brennan Crisis! Why is there no government National Endowment for the Arts subsidy for this album? Every American family must have one! Were Piss Christ (a crucifix in a bottle of urine) or a beautifully composed picture of Robert Mapplethorpe with the handle of a bullwhip snugly nestled within his anus any less deserving? They have whole books dedicated to their pulchritude.
Roy Rogers planned to have his remains stuffed and mounted upon his like immortalized horse Trigger in the Roy Rogers Museum, now defunct. Flesh is one thing, but where is Nellybelle? Hardware shall not be ignored! I call for a Walter Brennan Homeland Severity emergency, the National Walter Brennan's Upper Plate Crisis! Like the quest for the Holy Grail, a whole nation must be mobilized to find that hallowed acrylic denture. No antique shop, no junk yard, no landfill shall be left unturned and unsifted until John Wayne's poker winning is placed back in Walter Brennan's disinterred/reinterred mouth. It's the right thing to do, and damn the expense and inconvenience. Jobs will be created, the American economy will soar...
As for Parade, we tried lining the litter box with it. Our cat started using the shower stall. Walter Brennan lay moldering under torrential 1998 El Nino downpours. Pray that something does not bob to the surface through soupy mud, singing.