We are halfway through our Christmas Tour 2010 and I’m struck this year by the great response to the little ‘old school Christmas’ reading we’ve been doing from the stage. The approach is much like a ‘beat poet’ performance and basically includes all the old school stuff I used to enjoy from the 50′s and 60′s. So thanks for the great reaction from the audience. I’ve included the piece below.
I want an old school Christmas, in black and white, when the tv stopped at the stroke of midnight.
No cell phones. No facebook, no myspace or twitter,
We ate tv dinners and watched Mr. Wizard.
Chatty Kathy, Lincoln logs, and water balloons,
Back then we watched when they walked on the moon.
It was Lucy and Ricky, and the Ed Sullivan show,
We didn’t have an xbox we had the yo yo.
I want an old school Christmas. And I want it bad. Now that Santa has email, it’s just plain sad.
We ate Gingerbread cookies and a mug of hot chocolate,
Now it’s blended pumpkin latte for all the cash in my pocket.
Ozzie and Harriet, Donna Reed and, Mr. Ed,
Back when tv couples slept in separate beds.
No smart phones, iPads not even a kindle,
We read about the wisemen from a leather bound bible.
Poodle skirts and soda jerks, Jocks and greasers,
No yahoo or google, we didn’t know any baristas.
We passed notes in class. We paid pennies for gas. We had a candy called Pez. The phone rang we had to guess
We ate Rice-A-Roni, We had pixie sticks, when you walked outside the streets were filled with kids. Dobie Gillis, Jerry Mathers, I dreamed of Jeanie. I wrote her a letter…she’ll get back to me.
So heads up Santa I want to go old school I want turn back the clock when old stuff was cool. Wrap up those memories, put em under my tree.
But if you can’t do that…..
I’ll take a nintendo wii.
