Santa Claus: Origins

Hollywood, consistently bereft of original ideas, loves prequels and “origins” stories.  In the holiday spirit I’m offering my own prequel story:  Santa.

 30-something days after Easter, in an undisclosed, secure location in Jerusalem.  Jesus meets with the Apostles, alerting them that His remaining time is short and gives them instructions on how to proceed in His absence.  In particular, He orders them to go out and spread the Word, not merely in Israel but also Turkey, Greece, and the rest of the known world.  He promises them that in a few months they will receive further instructions.  With that, He dismisses them – all except one:  Nicolas.

 “For you,” He tells Nicolas, “I have a special assignment….” And proceeds to explain.

“For these past few months I have preached peace, love, and understanding.  My reward was to be nailed to a cross.  While I know that my Apostles will be well inspired with the Holy Spirit to spread my message far and wide, I am less confident that the message will be well received.  To ensure that it is, I have the following plan.

 “As you know, I was all about giving rather than receiving.  I took not so much as a single life, but gave my own.  To remind them of my message, and to encourage them to listen, understand, and follow it, I have decided that on my birthday, December 25, instead of receiving presents, I will give them, particularly to the children.  I want you, Nicolas, to deliver these presents to the children every year on my birthday.”

Nicolas listened intently and asked, “All children, my lord Jesus?  Even those who have not obeyed your commands?”

Jesus thought for a moment, and reconsidered.  “Perhaps not.  It would be wise for you to monitor which children have been good, and which have not, and reward the former and not the latter.  We do not wish to spoil them.  For those who have not, give them something unpleasant like coal.  Oh, and for children from Holland, have Black Peter take them to Spain.”

“Black Peter?  Is he a Nubian?”

“No, he’s like us, he just has black skin.”

“…and Spain?”

“Trust me, no Dutch child wants to go to Spain.”

 Nicolas took this in, and accepted the assignment.  “I will set up an operation at the North Pole, and raise an army of elves to make these presents.   We will be outside any kingdoms and not subject to any inconvenient laws or interference.”

“Excellent.  To deliver these presents, I would suggest a sleigh, driven by eight magic flying camels.”

“Camels, my lord Jesus?  If we are at the North Pole, I would recommend reindeer instead.  They tolerate extreme cold far more than camels do.”

“Reindeer do sound better.  I was right to trust you, Nicolas, you are very sharp.”

“Thank you, my lord Jesus.  I will need one more reindeer, with a big, red nose, to light the way.  We will be flying at night.”

“Yes, that’s good.  How long do you think it will take to get this endeavor up and running?”

Nicolas shrugged, stroked his white beard, and guessed, “About 1800 years should be enough.”

“Good, make it so.  Merry Christmas!”

Gilgamesh

I recently finished reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, as “interpreted” by Stephen Mitchell (Gilgamesh, A New English Version).  Mitchell cannot read the cuneiform, Sumerian, or Babylonian language and did not have access to the original tablets, so what he did was simply reinterpret what prior authors had done, resummarizing it in a more coherent and sensible fashion than the prior attempts.  The initial work, however, was most of the heavy lifting: the original tablets had been lost for thousands of years and only found in the 1800s by various archeologists digging around in what we now know of as Iraq.  The original scholars had to decipher a dead language in a unique alphabet with no one around to help them out.  Eventually they put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured out what we could consider the “epic” of Gilgamesh, a fictional hero dating back 5,000 years ago or more.  Parts of it, concerning a great flood, coincide with parts of the Old Testament of the Bible.

 Gilgamesh was the ruler of Uruk, a large city southeast of Babylon and northwest of Ur.  The cities of this area and of modern Iraq follow the so-called “fertile crescent” of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.   

 “It’s Good to Be The King”.  Apparently Gilgamesh’s leadership style was heavy handed and unpopular.  Among the most objectionable of his policies was assertion of the right to take the virginity of new brides.  As we know, it was only relatively recently that even modern, industrial Western societies abandoned the presumption of virginity at marriage.  Presumably this was the case in Iraq 5,000 years ago.  Gilgamesh demanded – and received – the prerogative to be first to bed the bride; the groom had to wait patiently while the King nailed his wife.

  I’ve never been married, but from what I can tell, grooms are as likely to be nervous on their wedding nights as brides.  Any groom less than 100% confident in his abilities as a lover will probably appreciate a virgin bride who has no basis for unfavorable comparison.  This is completely negated by having your new bride get nailed by none other than the Hero King Stud, Gilgamesh himself.  How can you follow that?  So I suspect it was the grooms of Uruk who were more upset with this policy than the brides.

 The unhappy citizens of Uruk pleaded with the gods to send them some relief from this terrible man upsetting their wedding plans.  The gods sent a somewhat unfinished product, Enkidu. 

Enkidu is described as a virtual duplicate of Gilgamesh, though a bit shorter.  He starts off as a wild man living in the wilderness, running around with animals, naked, unclothed, “raised by wolves” so to speak.  In this condition he’s not particularly suited to his job of fixing the Uruk problem.

 Ishtar & Shamhat.  The temple of Ishtar was run on a very interesting basis.  The priestesses, far from being celibate nuns, were in fact sacred prostitutes who supported the cult by sleeping with the congregation or the general public for a fee.  Presumably this was considerably more effective (and popular) than bake sales or raffles.  One of the priestesses, Shamhat (there’s a feminine name) is assigned the task of civilizing Enkidu.

 She approaches Enkidu, strips naked, and begins masturbating in front of him.  This gets his full attention, and he proceeds to “get the idea” for the next full week.  After this marathon lovemaking session (apparently making up for 20-something years of abstinence in the wild) Shamhat shaves him, dresses him in elegant clothing, and feeds him “people food” (including a good amount of beer, which he likes).  At this point he is “civilized” and the animals no longer recognize him as their buddy – similar to the bachelor hooking up and alienating all his single buddies. 

Bromance.  Enkidu enters Uruk, and right away there is trouble.  Sure enough, he and Gilgamesh fight, with destruction following around them – I’m imagining that commercial where the robots fight and smash up the guy’s apartment while he casually and indifferently moves from room to room and cooks and eats his bachelor food.  Finally Gilgamesh prevails, but only after Enkidu had put up a big fight.  They emerge from the ruckus as best friends…maybe a bit more than that (Mitchell’s footnotes observe that the tablets imply a romantic relationship exists between the pair).

 Humbaba.  For some reason Gilgamesh gets it into his head to go west to the forests of Lebanon to defeat a mighty volcano monster called Humbaba.  The elders of Uruk, and Enkidu, think this is a really bad idea and try to dissuade him, with no success.  He goes off west, and persuades Enkidu to follow along.  Having done so, now he starts having second thoughts – a series of terrifying nightmares – and it’s up to Enkidu to change his mind and interpret the dreams with a very counterintuitive and implausible but positive spin (maybe Enkidu should have been a lawyer). 

 They meet Humbaba, who is just as fearsome and powerful as they feared, but somehow they are able to reduce him to begging for mercy.  While Gilgamesh is inclined to spare his life, Enkidu persuades him to finish off Humbaba.  This earns him a curse from the gods, whose “plan” apparently was for Gilgamesh to defeat, but not kill, Humbaba.  Enkidu comes down with a nasty, mysterious illness which strikes him down in the prime of life.  This stuns and demoralizes Gilgamesh (see below).

 Ishtar & the Bull.  When they return to Uruk, the love & war goddess herself, Ishtar, courts Gilgamesh.  But Gilgamesh is not impressed, and he rebuffs her advances with zero tact or discretion.  Basically his argument is: every lover you take, you eventually grow tired of and dispose of in a particularly nasty fashion.  You sent one of your ex-BF’s to Hell.  Thanks, but I’m not interested in winding up like they did.  Incensed, as you can imagine, Ishtar gets the gods to send her a Bull to fight Gilgamesh to punish him for his arrogance, but Gilgamesh kills the Bull and laughs in her face. 

 Enkidu Dies.  As noted, Enkidu suffers a disease which weakens and kills him; despite having faced down Humbaba and the Bull, Gilgamesh is powerless to save his friend from this threat, and loses him.  When his prayers and grief fail to save Enkidu or resurrect his cold, inert, lifeless body, Gilgamesh soon realizes the same fate ultimately awaits him someday.  He becomes obsessed with learning the secret to immortality.

 Upnaptishim.  Gilgamesh seeks out the sole mortal to have gained immortality, Upnaptishim.  Here is the Bible angle:  Upnaptishim is the epic’s equivalent of Noah, who survived a mighty flood by building a huge ark and filling it with pairs of animals.  Ultimately this man tells Gilgamesh, “I’m sorry, but one day you will die.  Everyone dies.  It’s part of life.  I can’t fix that or give you immortality, no one can.  All I can tell you is to enjoy life as much as you can, while you can.”  End of story.

You Deserve It (?)

Recently I started watching a new game show on ABC called “You Deserve It”.  It’s a quiz show and its “gimmick” is that the contestant is playing not to win money for himself or herself, but for some special person who “deserves” the winnings.  Supposedly the intended beneficiary is left in the dark about this until the end of the show, at which point the “prize crew” surprises the person with the good news. 

 All well and fine, right?  Not exactly.

First of all, is the actual premise.  So far as I’ve seen the beneficiaries tend to be very close family members of the contestant.  I don’t know about you, but if my brother won me $200,000.00 on a game show, you can bet I’d be splitting it with him big time, probably 50/50.  These are not estranged relatives we’re talking about.  If they’re good enough to deserve this money, they’re good enough to share it with the person who actually won it for them.

 Second is the quiz system.  Like on “Wheel of Fortune”, the “answer” is a person, place, or thing, which the contestants have to guess. They get a “free clue” (which is so vague as to be meaningless) then have to “buy” 9 extra clues.  Each clue results in the prize money being reduced by a (supposedly) random amount.  Clearly the less clues you need to solve the puzzle, the more money your friend will wind up with.  The 9 clues together add up to the full prize amount, so if you were dumb enough to require all 9 clues you’d wind up with nothing.  Even 7-8 clues tend to reduce the prize amount considerably.

 One problem is that the clues are obviously very vague and many are mutually inconsistent.  You’re going to need at least 5-6 clues to get the answer.  And along the way the prize money will go down.  From what I’ve seen, in every case the maximum reduction amount always gets hit.  Not right away, but it will.  I strongly suspect it’s rigged that this amount will be hit by the 3^rd or 4^th clue every time.  Someone should keep track (next time I’m watching, I will).

 Another problem is the clues themselves.  One was outright misleading.  When the “answer” was “Barack Obama”, one clue was “basketball player” and another was “44”.  The poor contestant was racking her brain about professional basketball players, and she knew she didn’t know any who wore #44.  Does Obama play basketball?  I’m sure he does every now and then.  So does about half the country.  But to my knowledge he’s never played for the NBA, which was clearly what the game designers intended to be implied by the clue: they knew the contestant would assume “basketball player” meant “professional basketball player”.  Of course, no one believes Obama played for the NBA.  So here’s a clue which not only doesn’t help us guess Barack Obama, but which steers us AWAY from him.  And clearly the “44” clue, possibly helpful on its own, in conjunction with “basketball player” would combine in the contestant’s mind to mean “professional basketball player who wears #44”.  Clearly the game designers were aware of this.  This poor girl had to buy more clues just to offset the damage done by these two.  If a clue hurts your chances of guessing the correct answer, that’s not much of a clue, is it? 

 I would have hoped that the days of rigged TV game shows were long gone, but apparently they’re still very much alive and well.

More Obscure Bands

I suppose Hawkwind and Wishbone Ash count here, but I’ve already mentioned them.  Here’s another few groups worth checking out by anyone who considers themselves a “rock fan”.

 Be Bop Deluxe.  The main character is Bill Nelson, and their most famous album is Sunburst Finish.  This was a British pop band from the 70s, from 1972-79.   The music is standard issue rock from that era, not particularly special or original, but certainly competent and well-made.  Nelson’s guitar work is excellent, and salvages what might otherwise be standard issue 70s pop into something more substantial and worthwhile.  “Ships in the Night” has a reggae feel very similar to the Scorpions’ “Is There Anybody There” from Lovedrive.

 Max Webster.  A Canadian pop band.  The main character: Kim Mitchell.  They used to open up for Rush in the late 70s, but have since broken up; they were active from 1973-81.  Kim Mitchell is still on the radio in Canada.  I have their first two albums, the self-titled debut and High Class in Borrowed Shoes.  MW are somewhat more commercial, a bit like Blue Oyster Cult, even with some quirkiness thrown into the mix (e.g. “Toronto Tontos”).  Mitchell, as with so many commercial guitarists, knows exactly how much bad-ass guitar to throw into the mix to keep it from being just “banal and insipid” garbage.  

 The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.  My buddy Dave described them as “AC/DC with keyboards”, but to me the sound is like a heavier, rock-oriented vaudeville show.  Their top song is “The Faith Healer”.  Alex Harvey himself had a kind of Beano look to him, with striped t-shirts, and his voice is practically identical to early Bon Scott (e.g. “Big Balls”); it’s hard not to suspect that Scott was ripping off Harvey for his vocal style, at least early on.  Guitarist Zal Cleminson dressed in clown makeup, but aside from looking incredibly gay (in both senses of the word) is actually damn good.

 Argent.  Aside from this band, keyboardist Rod Argent is best known for the band the Zombies, whose hit “Time of the Season” was actually released after the band had already broken up.  They’ve since reformed, with Argent, and of course play that song on their reunion tour.  Argent himself teamed up with guitarist Russ Ballard to make several albums of pop-prog-rock.  Argent’s material reminds me of that bizarre candy Willy Wonka invented, the one which changes to completely different flavors.  At one point I’m hearing King Crimson, then Uriah Heep, then Jethro Tull, and some Deep Purple (actually Uriah Heep in more recent years have been accused of sounding more like classic Deep Purple than Purple themselves do these days – Heep Purple?).  They are all over the place.  KISS covered “God Gave Rock’n’Roll To You”, but their original hit was “Hold Your Head Up”.   I purchased a 5-pack of their albums Argent, Ring of Hands, All Together Now, In Deep, and Nexus.  All of them have atrocious album covers.

 Budgie.  I separate this Welsh 70’s-80’s band in to three phases.  First they were very close to being Black Sabbath clones on the first four albums: Budgie, Squawk, Never Turn Your Back On A Friend, and In For The Kill.  By the fifth album, they had loosened up a bit with some more jazzy, even bossa nova feel:  Bandolier, If I Were Britannia I’d Waive the Rules, and Impeckable.  Unfortunately, Bourge quit, and was replaced by John Thomas, right in time (1980) for Budgie to emulate Saxon and Y&T for their NWOBHM eras; these three albums are Power Supply, Night Flight, and Deliver Us From Evil.  They broke up, and eventually reformed around original bassist/singer Burke Shelley.   No mention of Budgie is complete without a reference to Metallica, who covered “Breadfan” as a single (the b-side to “Eye of the Beholder”) and “Crash Course in Brain Surgery” on the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP.   While both songs are good, “Zoom Club” (from In For The Kill) is probably their best song.   Budgie share the tendency of Frank Zappa and Blue Oyster Cult of having extremely odd song titles: “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman”, “Napoleon Bona Part I & II”, “Hot As A Docker’s Armpit”, “Panzer Division Destroyed”, “If I Were Britannia I’d Waive the Rules”, etc.