Santa For A Day
The year was 1981. I was eighteen years old. Much too young to be Santa Claus, right? Especially with my short skinny self. Right? Wrong!
It’s all my fault. I can blame nobody else. I was the one who opened my big mouth, and I paid the price.
I was working at a restaurant called The Village Inn, down in Tampa Florida. There are no white Christmases in Tampa. Nope, it drops to about 60 in December. (16 to those of you measuring in centigrade.) The coldest month of the year. Truly, not the best weather for wearing a padded suit, a fake mustache and beard, etc.
Lemme describe our busboys, those fellows who clean up the tables after you finish eating. There were four of us.
First we had Stacy, an engineering student at the university up the road. Very tall, very thin, very black. He was never a candidate for the position of Santa Claus and he didn’t want to be one. This is the same guy who’d work for six hours, get so exhausted he could barely move, then pop off to the restroom for a moment and come back running and dancing in the aisles. He swore he wasn’t taking speed, but nobody believed him.
Next we had Ricky, a high school student. He was short. Shorter than me, and not many could say that back in those days. If we were auditioning for elves, he’d have won the job. But Santa? No way. His ambition was to form the world’s first all-white funk band. He introduced me to the music of a then-obscure fellow named Prince. Last I heard, Ricky was breeding snakes.
Then we had Michael LaRocca. That would be me. Not a bad fellow, really. Working to pay his way through college. Thick legs (muscle, thank you) and broad shoulders. But it was never any big secret that he didn’t especially like kids. To be blunt about it, he still doesn’t. Apologies to any parents reading this, but Michael was never meant to be one. It’s just that simple.
Finally, we had Mike. Tall, thin, angular, thin, blonde, thin, and sunburnt. Oh, and did I mention thin? I don’t know if/where he was a student, but his face looked the youngest of us all. A real surf dude. He even called people “dude.” In fact, when this unlikely candidate got the job of being Santa Claus, he would say “What do you want for Christmas, dude?” Even to the girls.
The dining room manager was always a consummate professional. Quite strict on the busboys. A drill sergeant of a woman, in fact. Maybe she was a prison warden in another life. Her name was Jo LaRocca. That’s right, my mom.
On Christmas Eve, Mike put on the Santa garb and sat at his post. The rest of us were laughing before he even got there. He looked absurd. Sunburnt Santa. The beard was falling off his angular red face, and any fool could compare his padded upper body to his skinny legs and see that this was NOT Santa Claus. He was a joke, and we enjoyed it thoroughly.
Day one of two, Mike was hanging out with the kids. They weren’t buying it. It was obvious. I like Mike a lot, don’t get me wrong. We all did. Bussing tables or BSing in the breakroom, he was hilarious. Given the stresses of the job, we needed hilarious. But he was the worst Santa ever. Kids were yelling at him, peeing on him, calling him a fake. It was a disaster.
Should folks laugh at their co-workers? Of course not. But could we stop ourselves? Of course not! And as we all laughed at him, mocked him, and just plain acted real stupid, I made the biggest mistake of all. I dared to utter the words, “I could do better than that.” Mom heard me say them. This was very bad.
Thus, day two of two, yours truly got to play Santa Claus. An eighteen-year-old Santa Claus. An underage alcoholic with a bad attitude. Mom was a strict boss, in case I forgot to mention that. She told it like it was. Be Santa, or be unemployed. Grr! So, on Christmas Day, which I’m fairly sure was a Sunday (our busiest day of the week), I was Santa Claus.
I strapped on the various and sundry accouterments required to be Santa Claus and checked myself out in the mirror. Not bad, to be honest. But I was in no mood to be honest. Kids? Noooo!!!
It didn’t take me long to work out the deal. I’d seen most of these kids every Sunday for about a year, but even if I hadn’t, I knew what was what. The girls were all angelic, and the boys were all evil. Truly, mean rotten nasty evil. It was in their eyes. Demonic eyes. You know how some photos show people with red eyes? In the case of these little dudes, it wasn’t bad photography. It’s just how they were.
With the girls, it was easy. “Yes yes, you’ve been a good girl this year. What do you want Santa to bring you?” Then I’d hear the list and say encouraging things and send them on their merry way. Quite simple.
The boys were different.
Let me backtrack a bit. I am Scrooge. Sorry if that offends you, but I am. Back in my younger days, I was even worse. For me, Christmas isn’t Christmas unless I can watch How The Grinch Stole Christmas. I have yet to forgive him for wimping out at the end, but never mind.
Okay, here comes a little boy sitting on my lap. Or to be more specific, jumping on it. Pouncing, leaping, going for broke. Little fat bastard trying to crush my family jewels. Is there a bull’s-eye on them?! He’s the Antichrist. I still have nightmares about that little… dude.
“Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas! And what do you want for Christmas, young man?” I boomed in my best impression of a baritone. It wasn’t much, but it dang sure beat Mike’s wimpy little tenor. But it didn’t matter. I could’ve been God’s gift to Christmas and this little… dude would have been unimpressed.
“You’re not Santa! You suck!”
I’ve heard stories about Santa colleges, where one can go learn what to say and how to react to all the various and sundry things that naughty little boys (always boys) say. But I’ve never been to one. No, dear sweet Mom just threw me to the wolves and probably laughed behind her hand. In fact, I saw her hand covering her mouth more than once. I was winging it here. So, I simply ignored his question and made something up.
“I know you’ve heard that I have two lists, right? The list of nice children and the list of naughty children.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, thoroughly unconvinced.
“But I also have a third list, one you haven’t heard about. It’s the borderline list. That’s right, some children are right there on the border. Are they naughty or are they nice? I’m not sure where to put them. And to tell you the truth, little man, you are on that list.”
Stunned silence. On his part, because he’d never heard that before. On my part, because I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to make up next.
(Note to my fellow authors — If you’re going to lie, do it big.)
“So you can tell me what you want me to bring you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll bring it. Because I don’t know if you’re naughty or nice, see? You’re borderline. Those are the hardest ones for poor ole Santa to figure out.”
(By now his mother was beaming at me. I was happy. But I had to ignore that and try to keep piling it on. That’s a lot to ask of a mere eighteen-year-old BS artist.)
“I’ll tell you what I think,” I added. “If you want to know.”
“Yeah.”
That was all he said. “Yeah.” But to whip out a cliche, his eyes spoke volumes. If this were a fishing story, I’d say he’d bitten into that bait and found a hook stuck in his mouth. Amazing!
“Well, as I said, you’re borderline. But if you’ll be really good, and I mean REALLY good, between now and Christmas, I’ll put you on the good list. If you’re bad, I’ll put you on the naughty list. And you don’t want that. You want to be on the good list. Don’t you?”
A pause. As if the little brat wasn’t sure! What is it with kids who won’t suck up and take a bribe when they’re offered one? Jeez! When I was a little brat — um, I mean kid — I NEVER refused a bribe.
“Yes, Santa Claus.”
Reel this one in. Yes!
“That’s what I thought, son.” (Yes, I called the little brat son.) “Now tell Santa Claus what you want, and if you’re really good between now and Christmas, I’ll bring it to you. How’s that?”
Of course it was fine, and of course the list of things the little brat wanted was enough to max out seven credit cards. A train set, a Motocross bicycle, a slingshot for torturing his little sister, a GI Joe with Kung Fu grip. I listened to him, patted his evil head, gave him some candy, and gratefully sent him on his way. Neither he nor his mother suspected that I wanted to stick his head in a toilet and hold it there until he died. Well, I don’t think they did.
After that, I got a bit of break. Meaning, the little girls. They were sweet and shy and wanted little Barbie dolls. If it were up to me I’d nuke Mattel, but I realized that Santa isn’t supposed to say that, so I promised them all Barbies and gave them candy and sent them on their merry way.
I still hear Mike laughing. I’m gonna give him a busted lip for Christmas. I know damn well he deliberately stunk as Santa just because he didn’t want the job. Grr!
Every little boy was a brat. I am not joking. I whipped out that borderline story with every one of them. I was tempted to scream, “You are evil and you should die and I’ll stuff your stocking with coals and switches and hope your parents beat you to death,” but that wouldn’t have been good for business. So I went into borderline story mode and drank up the parents’ gratitude while never believing it’d change a thing. I know them boys were evil. They all looked like my little brother.
Finally, I got the intellectual. The skeptic. The little one who chose not to be an evil brat, but rather a smart brat. So smart that you just wanna knock him across the room. Especially for reminding me of myself. Don’t do that!
Now you may remember that I never received a formal job description, but something in me suspected that “knock brat across the room” wasn’t in it.
“I don’t believe any of that Santa Claus stuff. You’re just some guy in a suit and fake beard.”
This was a few hours into the shift, so I was getting cocky. “And why do you say that, young man?”
“Because there’s no way you could fly all the way around the world so fast. Not in one night. That’s just not possible.”
Smart-aleck little… dude. For a moment I thought he had me. But apparently I can “think on my feet” if pressed into a corner, because here’s my reply:
“We’re in Florida now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And what time is it here?”
“About noon.”
“Okay, let’s say it’s noon. Do you know what time it is in Alabama?”
“No.”
“It’s still eleven in the morning. And what time is it in Texas?”
“I dunno.”
(I got your butt!)
“Ten in the morning. And in California, it’s only nine in the morning. That’s the thing, see? Time zones. I start where it’s earliest and get everybody in that time zone in one hour, then pop over to the next time zone and have an hour to get all them, and so on. And some time zones out over the ocean don’t even have people in them.”
It took him a moment to figure that all out, because I wasn’t expressing myself as eloquently as I could have. I blame it on exhaustion. But finally he replied, “Really?”
I nodded sagely.
My little skeptic seemed to agree. And that was the point, right? Getting him off my lap so I could move on to a little girl who didn’t make me work so hard. Conning the little people into buying the myth for one more year.
For the record, I was nine and little brother was eight when we sneaked out of bed one night (his idea) and found a bunch of wrapped presents on top of a high closet shelf. When we received those same presents for Christmas, marked “From Santa,” little brother drilled Mom like the cop he would grow up to be and she confessed. But even so, I never deliberately disillusioned anyone. Santa Claus is a fun guy to believe in.
Later came a little skeptic who needed both the time zone story and the borderline list story for me to win him over to the cause. In a brilliant flash of insight, I added, “Do you want Santa to tell you another secret?”
His eyes widened and he leaned in close. “Uh huh.”
“You can’t tell anybody.”
“Okay.”
We were whispering now. I really didn’t want his parents to hear this part.
“Do you like milk and cookies?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Me too. But I go to a lot of houses on Christmas Eve night, and everybody leaves me milk and cookies. Do you think you could eat and drink that much milk and cookies?”
“No.”
“Okay, so here’s what you do.” I leaned my mouth right up to his ear, my beard brushing his face, and whispered to my little conspirator, “When your parents go to bed, drink the milk and eat the cookies, and leave Santa a beer.”
He giggled, then turned to face me. He nodded. “Okay, Santa.”
“Good boy.”
The boy’s mother, who had been talking to my mother, looked up as if sensing that the visit was over. So I said, louder and more Santa-like, “Be a good boy and do your homework and clean up your room and do what your parents tell you, okay?”
“Okay, Santa. Thank you, Santa.” And the little imp winked.
But you know, I’m pretty sure that when Santa came sliding down my little friend’s chimney, he’d definitely be in the mood for a beer. I know that’s what I always left out for Santa when I was young.
After that the job got easier. Whip out the time zone story, whip out the borderline list story, and all the little boys fell into line. I lined up another beer or two for Santa — I only tried that stunt with my favorite little boys.
As I converted the skeptics or at least gave them pause, mothers gazed upon this all-too-young Santa with gratitude. I think I even made Mom proud. But that’s something I learned about Mom long ago. She could get proud over the silliest things.
The day finally ended, and I had to reluctantly admit that being Santa was a whole lot easier than bussing tables. To myself, of course, never to anyone else. And not a single kid peed on me, either. Mike tried real hard to mock me, but his jealousy ruined the effect.
The following year, all four of us busboys were still working there, but they found someone else to be Santa Claus. A waitress’s husband who was much older and needed neither padding nor fake beard to assume the role. Nobody complained about him, either. Certainly we didn’t.
Twenty years later, I’m still not complaining. And in those twenty years, I have never been Santa Claus again. Nor do I want the job.
Michael is an American living in Hong Kong. He has been working as a full-time author for over two years and as an editor for over a year. He has 4 novels scheduled for publication. He’s proud of the fact that he rarely writes in the same genre twice. One of his novels is an EPPIE 2002 in the Thriller category. His website is at http://free_reads.tripod.com.
Interviews With Successful Ezine Publishers - James McEwen
James McEwen is publisher of Biz Marketing Corner. Subscribe to our ezine and get a FREE membership to our Website Marketing and Promotion Center - the tools you need to successfully build and market your business.
To subscribe visit http://www.bizmarketingcorner.com or mailto:bizmarketingcorner@virtual-responders.com
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JM: To me, publishing an ezine is very important because it helps me establish a relationship with my subscribers. It is a great way to follow-up and to let them know what resources and valuable information I have found which will help them become more successful.
KH: How long have you been running an ezine and how many subscribers do you have?
JM: I started my ezine 3 years ago, Dec. 1999, and I have about 10,885 subscribers.
KH: Do you submit your ezine to directories and/or announcement lists and if so how effective has this been in gaining new subscribers to your publication?
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JM: I’ve only written 4 articles to promote my ezine, but I have learned that it is very effective. My New Year’s Resolution is to write more articles more often! (lol)
KH: What methods do you use to promote your products or services within your ezine?
JM: I used to copy and paste the ads from the affiliate programs or the reprint rights but I have learned it is better to write your own ad and recommendation for the product or service that you use.
KH: How do you go about preparing your ezine for publication?
JM: I prepare my ezine a week in advance. I do a lot of proofreading with the help of my daughter, Miausha. I search the net for information that would be of value to my subscribers. When I finish the final copy of my ezine, I always send a test email to my email address to make sure everything is formatted correctly.
KH: Any advice to future ezine publishers? Things to look out for or things to concentrate on when publishing an ezine?
JM: My advice to future ezine publishers is to always be prepared a week in advance so you are ready for whatever comes up.
Use TextPad at http://www.textpad.com to help you publish your ezine and use Mailwasher at http://www.mailwasher.net to screen your emails for viruses and/or bounced email and junk mail. Use a recently new software that will help format your ezine properly at http://www.reseller-rights.net/eeaf/
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How to Write a Chorus
A song without a chorus can hardly be called a song. This rather bad statement is my personal opinion so if you don’t agree, that’s okay. But I would like to start this lesson with this statement, not only to wake you up, but rather because it’s one of the key-statements of this lesson. So if you don’t like songs without a chorus and never intend to write one, than probably you won’t feel at home in this class this month. I must say I never felt at home when I was at school but that’s another story… But if you do stick around, even if you don’t like to write choruses, maybe you will change your mind about them.
A chorus is more or less the heart of a song, at least if it’s a good one of course. Why this is true is not as obvious as it seems. People always tend to remember the chorus of a song, while it may not even be the most interesting part of the song at all. The easiest explanation of course is the fact that the chorus is usually played a couple of times during a song. But if this was
the only reason why a chorus is the heart of most songs, how come then that lots of choruses are easily forgotten, even if they are played seemingly endless in the fadeout of a song? So there must be more to it.
In this lesson we will see it’s hard to reveal the secrets of a good chorus. Writing a good chorus may be more a matter of the heart (something called talent?) than the mind. But since this
counts for songwriting in general, don’t be afraid; there are always some tricks to learn to help those who have to struggle a little more then the lucky, more talented ones. And believe me, most
of us belong to the first group, to put it stronger, even the most talented ones often join the struggling crowd when they’re not inspired…
In lesson 5, we already saw some elements a good chorus should have. Now we will take a closer look at these elements, by discussing some rules you should follow if you want to write a good chorus. These rules are:
It should be catchy
It should contain elements of the rest of the song
It shouldn’t be an anti-climax
Following these rules, you obey to the most important rules of writing a good chorus. We will take a look at these rules in the next paragraph. You can also click on the links to go directly
to the discussion of each of these rules.
Rule 1: a chorus should be catchy
What makes a chorus catchy? The easiest answer (for me at least) is: listen to all those golden oldies. Almost all the classics from the sixties and the seventies have catchy choruses. Of course The Beatles were real masters at this, but it seems all the bands that became famous in those days were able to write catchy choruses which seem to stick in your mind forever. Who doesn’t know the chorus of Honky Tonk Women for example…
Listening to examples is a great way to teach yourself, and that counts for songwriting too! But there’s something more to say about this issue too.
Keep it simple
One of the main rules in writing a good chorus is to keep it simple. Try to avoid to make the chorus sound complicated.
This doesn’t mean that as long as you keep it simple technically spoken the chorus will sound simple! A chorus built around a difficult, but well written musical part will be easier to listen
to than a technically simple chorus which is written in an unlogical manner.
Consider The Average Listener
The above indicates you’ll have to keep the average listener in mind while writing your chorus. Most listeners aren’t musicians so don’t forget that! The average listener will often look for
things he/she can recognize, a certain general feeling of what sounds logical and which has been developed during many years. You would probably think now that I’m saying most listeners are dumb but that’s not the case. So don’t treat them like that. They won’t buy the same stuff over and over again (‘though this seems
to be heavily contradicted by the house-rage of this time….) so you will have to keep them anxious. In the chorus you can try this by experimenting with backing vocals, special arrangements etc, but be careful and don’t overdo things.So in general you could say the secret to write a catchy chorus is to make it sound logical.
Rule 2: a chorus should contain elements of the rest of the song
In this lesson we already saw a chorus is one of the most important parts of your song. In most cases, it’s the part of the song which will be played the most often. So it better be good!
Another trick to make your chorus a good chorus is to give it the treatment it deserves! Since it’s the main element of your song, whether you like it or not, it should get all the attention it needs while you write it, to gain all the attention it needs when you play it. This brings me to a rather contradictionary issue: writing songs is a very intutive job and that also counts for writing choruses. But to obey to the rule that a chorus should contain elements of the rest of the song, you should at least examine and evaluate your music thoroughly. In mine opinion just writing your music from the heart will generally result in the best music, but it’s not very sensible only to rely on your heart. Evaluating your music can be very useful and especially when it comes to writing a chorus. So no matter how you write, whether you write straight from the heart or not, you will have to evaluate your song. Not only because it will enhance your songwriting skills simply because you are “forced” to think about what you have written, but also because “technical rules” like these can only be followed by using technical means like evaluation.
Since a chorus is the part that will be played and remembered most, it’s the best place to “advertise” your song. Maybe if you consider the chorus to be the advertisement of your song, you
will better understand the importance of putting elements of the rest of the song into it, making it kind of an excerpt of your song. Some advantages of doing so are:
Recognition
People will recognize the song by just hearing the chorus. But it works the other way around too; they will recognize the chorus as being part of that piece of music they accidentally hear when they enter a bar for example.
Recollection
People will remember your song much more easily. Because the chorus is an excerpt of the song, they will only have to remember the excerpt to remember the song. Why not using old school-tricks
when they work fine?
Strenght
By putting elements of the song together in your chorus, in fact you are just making a miniature of your song. When you do this right, it will result in a very strong piece of music. Producers
will be pleased when they see you have skills to achieve this, because they usually want you to cut out all the unnecessary stuff from your song.
But what elements should you take? This in fact is completely up to you and depends on the song you are writing. Generally it works fine to pick some of the more melodic parts of your song,
simply because most people remember a melodic piece of music better than a monotone piece. And that’s about all there is to say on this issue, but there are some pitfalls to look out for.
These tips might help you avoiding them:
Don’t copy too much
While putting the best elements of your song together into your chorus, you are taking the risk of ending up with a chorus that unveils all the secrets of your song making the rest of the song
predictable and dull. Therefor it’s better not to copy too literally but hussle things a little. Tricks like changing the key of the parts while played during the chorus can help. Just consider all the best parts to be some sort of colour-palette, which enables you to make various versions of the same picture.
Don’t make the chorus too long. Better leave out some good parts than desperately putting everything together in the chorus! Good choruses almost never exceed 6 lines. As you can see, this part of writing songs can be very tricky. Don’t forget your skills will grow after every song you’ve finished, even the more technical skills that you’ll need to write a good song, like evaluating your song and deciding what parts should be reflected into the chorus. I deliberatly used the term reflect, because this is one of the most vague issues of writing songs, making it one of the most difficult parts of it. But aren’t things always getting more difficult when technique meets feelings?
Rule 3: a chorus shouldn’t be an anti-climax
The third important rule seems simple but, unfortunatly, is not. Just like the second rule we discussed above, we will discover it’s again a matter of walking on the edge. You will have to carefully find your way between what’s good and what is bad, and there isn’t a clear path to follow. But again, experience is something you can’t buy but which comes free with endurance and perseverance. So just don’t give up when it’s getting tough; your peaks will get higher and your downs won’t be as low as they used to be! So a chorus shouldn’t be an anti-climax. Clear! But why is this rule not as simple as it seems? I will try to explain this. If you follow the first two rules you won’t too quickly end up with a chorus that’s an anti-climax, just because these two rules ensure your chorus will be more or less the heart of the song. But still your chorus can become an anti-climax, simply because
another part of the song attrackts too much the attention. A very impressive instrumental break can easily put the chorus in the shadows. So if your chorus is an anti-climax depends not only on
the chorus itself, but on the rest of the song too. To avoid this disturbing effect, you will have to be very careful where to put that instrumental break, charismatic leadvocal-line etc. To make things even more complicated, you will have to watch out for the chorus to become the climax of the song itself! This can be disasterous to your song, because you will end up with a song which repeats it’s climax over and over again, with the result that you end up with a song that doesn’t seem to have a climax at all! So every time you write a song you will have to deal with the problem to write a strong, catchy chorus but on the other hand not to make it too
strong…
This virtual contradictionary is hard to solve, just listen to daily radio. But there are some ways to help you with this:
Distinction
To avoid the chorus and the climax of the song to interfere with each other, you can try to make a very clear distinction between these two rivals. You can do so by putting them apart from each other “physically” (give each of them their own space in the song), or by making them sound as different as the song allows you to. The clearer the difference, the less chance of interference. If you can’t beat them…
Another aproach is to put the climax in the chorus itself. This works best when done in the final chorus. This solution requires you to change that chorus, otherwise it won’t work, as we discussed earlier in this lesson. These changes can range from just changing the key, adding additional instruments (like backing-vocals) to even changing the lead-vocal line. When done right you will end up with a super-chorus, which won’t be forgotten easily!
Taken from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Marble/9607
About the Author
Free Music Education Center is a reputable site provideing free music lessons on all aspects of music and production
Taken from:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Marble/9607