Today's listening: The Big Beat of Dave Bartholomew: 20 of His Milestone Productions 1949-1960 ; Lounge Lizards, Big Heart: Live in Tokyo

Mark and Barb and Joanie go to the movies: Bad Santa (dir. Terry Zwigoff)

I don't know what the hell I expected. Maybe something to take its place alongside The Ref or The Santaland Diaries in my small cache of favorite Christmas-related works. And I know, Terry Z's favorite theme is that old standby, total cultural alienation. But please. If the idea of a drunk, a dwarf, and a fat kid rolling around on the floor in pain after clubbing each other in the vamily jewels leaves you in stitches, this is totally your kind of movie. It definitely seems designed to milk money out of the pinhead crowd (though some marketing genius decided to see if they could cross it over to art-movie types like me--nice plan), though to date I don't think it's been too successful at this.