The Ultimate Christmas Fake Book

With a label proclaiming its status of "Newly Revised Newly", The Ultimate Christmas Fake Book enables hopefuls to con and hoodwink their way through any professional Christmas engagement. The deceptively simple anthology features old favorites, such as "Angels We Have Heard on High", "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear", and "Joy to the World". Tucked between these comfort foods rest the eclectic, the overstimulated, and the just plain twisted. Old favorites? Not quite. Fairly early on we are presented with a song title representative of the question posed by any busybody nasal toned housewife while looking into her heathen neighbor's living room: "Do They Know it's Christmas?" This is followed by more meat-and-potatoes carols, but it isn't long before we come across "Neighbor, What Has You So Excited?" You can tell it's trying too hard; it's desperation for news borders on the obscene. I Hope it doesn't have a heart attack. This song title works best in conversation if recited at the speaker's breaking point, so as to create a prepubescent air of chemical imbalance and self-conscious testosterone. And, to round out our Overeager Category, we have "What Month Was Jesus Born In?" Another prepubescent display of awkwardness sure to turn heads, ludicrously emphasized by the uncomfortable placement of the preposition at the end of the sentence.

Speaking of strange wording, what about "Deck the Hall with Boughs of Holly"? I always thought there was more than one hall. Is that just me? Did the people in this song have to downsize, or something?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the great epic titles, like "Ring Out, Ye Wild and Merry Bells!" What terror, what fervor! King Lear couldn't have put it better. Again, note the hints of obsession. Whoever this guy is, he needs to stop hyper-focusing. He really likes those bells. I mean, really, really likes them. Hmmm.

And lastly we have the exhausted, stuttering"Still, Still, Still".

Enough said. Buy this book.