One Piper Piping: Pitt's "All I Want for Christmas"

That nimble Christmas elf, Wee Willie Pitt, is holding court at Bukowski's, telling everyone within earshot his holiday wishes, here in this THREAD, "All I Want for Christmas."

The Pied Piper's pipings are in Red-nosed Red, while the commentary of your humble guest correspondent, Charles Henrickson, wondering how Will's attempt at stopping smoking is going, is in the [brackets]:

All I Want for Christmas

[IS A FREAKIN' CIGARETTE, D*MMIT! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!]

By William Rivers Pitt

[One Piper piping . . .]

It's snowing in Boston, finally. . . . until yesterday, we here haven't had so much as a flake.

[Well, that's debatable.]

I've never been much of a summer person; heat and humidity tend to turn me into a useless gob of, well, uselessness.

[No, Pitt, you're a useless gob of uselessness all year round!]

Spring is nice, but around here it has made a generational habit of lasting 0.0000031 days before the heat hammer comes down.

[Spring also has this nasty way of reminding one of a certain Rove indictment scoop of May 12, 2006.]

Autumn is, of course, the World Heavyweight Champion of Seasonal Awesome, but . . .

[This November ruined it.]

Give me winter. Give me cold wind and snowstorms . . .

[GIVE ME A CIGARETTE!!!]

bare branches wrapped in white, pink noses and boots and big coats with lots of pockets.

["Bare branches wrapped in white, pink noses"?? Is this like a cocaine reference or something, Will?]

You can dress for the cold. You can't dress for the heat. At least, I can't. . . .

[Exhibit A:]



I could go around in high August wearing nothing more than a handkerchief and a prayer. . . .

[No, please, Will, don't!]

and I would still be dying a slow, sweaty death. Hat, sweater, coat, gloves, boots, a positive attitude and a love for not sweating through your clothes. . . .

[No Pitt stains for sweaty Will!]

When I lived downtown and my bar was only a few blocks away, the best nights I can remember. . . .

[As opposed to all those nights I couldn't remember ANYTHING. . . .]

always came during blizzards; the regulars would wrap up and slog through the drifts until we staggered into the warmth. . . .

[Pitt would stagger even in the summer.]

Kevin Spacey the actor came in one of those snowbound nights . . . and I got to lift a toast to Keyser Freakin' Soze. Beat that with a stick.

[I'm sure that was a highlight for Kevin Spacey, too, getting to meet you, the famous William Rivers Pitt. Maybe he can play you in the movie, "The Usually Sauced Pitt."]

And, yes, give me Christmas, with all the attendant mayhem, crowds, expense, travel, family bedlam and the ceaseless, intolerable, inescapable music.

["It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas . . ."]

When I was sixteen, I got a job at Filene's in order to raise money for Christmas presents; it was my second job at the time (my third, actually, if you count the golf course gig. . . .

[Pitt has to emphasize that he has actually HELD a paying job at times, so as not to be dismissed as a mere trust-fund baby.]

They put me in the Men's Underwear section. . . .

[Big mistake. Pitt much preferred to be in Women's Underwear.]

my station was right below a ceiling speaker that played insipid Christmas music on a 45-minute loop...for the entire ten hours of each of my shifts.

[Ten business hours, which are longer than ten regular hours.]

Even worse was The Sock.

[Even worse was The Temporary Sock Puppet.]

Press the button, and the sock would play "Jingle Bells" for five straight minutes, like this: "DEE DEE DEE, DEE DEE DEE, DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE," . . . two minutes later, another customer would come over, push the button - "DEE DEE DEE, DEE DEE DEE, DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE" - say "How cute!"

[HEE HEE HEE, HEE HEE HEE! How cute!]

My wife works in a large retail store, and has to deal with Christmas music starting the day after Thanksgiving. If I hate it, she loathes it with the fire of a million supernovas. . . . No lie, she turns into a ravening werewolf. . . .

[Will's mother turned into a Raven.]

Before the weekend is out, I will have seen my mother, my wife's parents, my wife's brother and his new wife, my wife's whole extended family, and all of it with my wife at my side.

[I wonder if any of them are Rethuglicans. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!]

We will eat, we will drink, we will be merry. . . .

[Will has volunteered to take care of the drinking part.]

Before Santa and presents and shopping and all the attendant Christmas b*llsh*t got involved, this holiday was enshrined to commemorate a guy who got nailed to a tree for daring to tell people to be kind to one another.

[Well, there was a little more to it than that, Will.]

I'm not tremendously religious by any measurable standard . . .

[. . . but even so, I will now give you advice based on my lack of knowledge.]

but the guy who got nailed to that tree had some deeply valid points to make. . . .

[I don't know the guy's name, except as a curse word, and I don't really study the Bible or know much about it or even believe most of what it says, but still I'll pull something out of context and lecture you about it.]

that guy had some good things to say . . . those lessons are well worth remembering. . . .

[Just pick the parts you like, pull them out of context, make them say what you want them to say to support your political agenda, and ignore the rest--as I, William Rivers Pitt, Expert on Everything, will now demonstrate.]

especially in a year when the rest of us got royally screwed so rich people could get fat tax breaks they don't need.

[Even though those "rich people" are paying WAY MORE in taxes than anybody else to start with! And how does that royally screw you, Will Pitt, that they don't get royally screwed even more?]

If you have two cloaks, give one away. Someone might even call that "socialism."

[No, I would call it "voluntary charity." VOLUNTARY charity, which is a whole lot different than the government forcibly taking people's money away from them, against their will, in order to give it to others. Have you ever read that "Thou shalt not steal" thing, Willie?]

Take care. Enjoy the snow. Help someone if you can. Hold close to you who and what you love.

[Rotate your tires.]

Be fiercely present in these mad days. . . .

["Be fiercely present," blah blah blah. . . . If that isn't typical progressive mumbo-jumbo claptrap, I've never heard it.]

Remember what we can do, together, if we lean in to the task. This is all I want for Christmas: Lean in. Lean hard.

[Lean meat. . . . As usual, Pitt's essay has gone on and on, so we'll just hear from one reader . . .]

Ah, Will, how beautiful...These lines made me weep. . . .

[These lines made *me* weep:

All I Want for Christmas
By William Rivers Pitt]