The traditional Althouse Christmas photograph.

(What we wore and how we looked in 1953.)

Choir from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University covers “Bed Intruder Song” as X-mas carol.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

Here's the original. Kinda puts Santa in a different light doesn't it? He's climbing in your windows....

ADDED: "The Bed Intruder Song" has a long Wikipedia entry.

Critical reception

... Jason King, a music professor at NYU was quoted by NPR as saying "It's catchy. It has a really good hook, but it's problematic, too. There's a way in which the aesthetics of black poverty—the way they talk and they speak and they look — sort of becomes this fodder for humor without any interest in the context of the conditions in which people actually live." Baratunde Thurston of The Onion told NPR:

"As the remix took off, I became increasingly uncomfortable with its separation from the underlying situation. A woman was sexually assaulted and her brother was rightfully upset. People online seemed to be laughing at him and not with him (because he wasn't laughing), as Dodson fulfilled multiple stereotypes in one short news segment. Watching the wider Web jump on this meme, all but forgetting why Dodson was upset, seemed like a form of ‘class tourism.’ Folks with no exposure to the projects could dip their toes into YouTube and get a taste. [...] The creativity unleashed has been amazing, and what mitigates my fears of people minimizing the gravity of the situation is how Antoine himself has responded and taken charge of his own meme."

The original interviewee, Antoine Dodson also has a Wikipedia entry. He was chosen "Meme of the Year" in the 2010 Urlie awards. Here's a Washington Post piece declaring that Dodson "is one of the strongest people we’ve seen in a while," that he has "an inner strength that is worthy of awe and respect."

Must be Santa!

Stopping at the Pennsylvania welcome center at the New York end of I-90.

It's eerie late at night...



At the foot of the "Pennsylvania Wineries" column, lies inebriated Santa:



But don't worry....



"You can't make a wrong turn in Pennsylvania."

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian yells: "FROSTY THE SNOWMAN NOT SANTA." Oh, yeah! Good point. Ha ha. I need to get my American iconography straight. 

Have you ever laughed so hard at a joke that the person who told it got mad at you for laughing too much?

I have!

Not recently. Long ago. Something just reminded me of it. The something was the observation that I'm especially amused by jokes that have to do with the size of things. Oh, I'll be completely specific. We were talking about the expression "postage stamp lawn," that is, a very small lawn, perhaps the size of an area rug. But what if there really were a postage stamp the size of an area rug? That would be a huge postage stamp. Ha ha. Imagine the size of the envelope you'd put it on. Okay. That to me is hilarious, and it reminded me of the joke I found so funny — decades ago — that I laughed so hard the teller of the joke got mad at me for laughing so much. I was cutting the joker's hair — I used to think I could do haircuts and acted upon that belief — and I noticed a bright red dot on the top of his head — the size of a pimple, but not a pimple — and not something he'd ever have noticed. I said, "What's this red dot on top of your head?" He said, "That's my Santa Claus hat!"

Now, maybe the joker will read this post and get mad all over again. Or, that is, get mad for a new reason, that I've blogged about a time he got mad at me. To him, I'd say, I have remembered "That's my Santa Claus hat!" for more than 30 years, and — in my little sense of humor — I still think it's the funniest thing I've ever heard anyone say. It may not be the funniest joke I've ever heard, but I'm sure it's the funniest completely spontaneous remark I've ever been present to hear on the spot. On the dot.