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By Steve Eskew

Allow me to be the first to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. In July? Yup July, and believe me, celebrating five months early makes unmitigated sense in today’s senior centers. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

A big bah-humbug to the pandemic for last December. Stranding Santa at the North Pole plunged those of us in our second childhood into the opposite of jolly. 

Worse: zooming awkward Christmas greetings on our computers ignited innumerable squabbles. We curmudgeons demanded compensation from the universe for our lost holiday. We stewed. We steamed. We brainstormed.

Then I recalled one summer when our kids were at that magic age when they still had visions of sugarplums dancing in their naughty noggins. Surprise! Grandmama threw the rugrats a special shindig. Christened “Christmas in July,” the party thrilled one and all. 

My retelling this memory to my hot-to-trot senior colleagues jingled some bells in our belfries. “December be damned. Let’s do Christmas now!”

After our disastrous Christmas skits of years past, we decided karaoke would be the perfect choice to help celebrate our summer yule tidings. 

Wanna bet? All of the missed cues, blown lines and upstagings of our past Christmas skits put together paled by what happened during this  latest Christmas fiasco.

As the modest master of a condition known as “humble bragging syndrome,” I submit that it’s tragic that I, a natural-born leader, was not the person in charge of the karaoke affair.

I had highly recommended myself, the incomparable Steve Eskew (the only person whose real name I dare use below).

Blackballing my supervisory aspiration was our resident control freak, the archaic Ms. Effie Greer. She not so kindly reminded us that, as the center’s biggest donor, she and she alone would be choosing the director of the affair. And that it would not be Steve Eskew. 

Well!!

She’s hated me ever since the center opened when I rejected her advances. Six times. It’s that football-sized goiter of hers that turned me off. I’m so shallow. 

All right, all right, she has no goiter except in my fantasies. But still—

Long story longer, Effie’s got the hots for 77-year-old sex siren Studly Dowell. Thus, much to my chagrin, she handpicked him as the karaoke organizer. The dirty old—

Studly couldn’t organize his underwear drawer. So, choice after stupid choice stumbled its way into the show. And that gave me great glee—courtesy, the wicked twin and critic who lurks within my jealous brain. 

Here are a few of Studly’s gems:

For openers, Studly insisted upon using bright red lights onstage “to create a Christmas mood.” That idea died on arrival. Red lights made each of the performers look like they were on the verge of a crying jag as they belted out such upbeat standards as “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas tree.”

Matilda Gawlewski, completely lacking stage presence, perspired heavily as she warbled a hauntingly horrible song titled “Monster’s Holiday.”  

Well duh, she performed this stinker wearing a repulsive brown furry coat. I nicknamed the coat “road kill.”

Lulabelle Crumpet quipped, “Oh,Lord! Think how many mice had to die so that Matilda could wear that monstrosity.”

Next, tone-deaf Mortimer Muddly totally crucified “The Little Drummer Boy.” Absolute toenail-removing torture.

Studly himself boldly chose a non-Christmas song, “Blue Room” (probably in honor of Viagra). Are ya ready? It’s a 40-minute ditty. Of all the—

Suddenly a Christmas miracle occurred: after a bone-crushing two minutes, the audience booed Studly baby off the stage.

There definitely is a God.

One of Studly’s exs, a woman we refer to (affectionately) as Gravel Gertie, proved to be an Ethel Merman wannabe, minus the star quality. Gertie loudly belted “Santa Baby.” Many seniors turned their hearing aids off.

Neurotic Ichabod Goober performed “O Holy Night.” ’Tis still a mystery why he closed one of his eyes as he sang. In addition, his fly was unzipped. He looked like a one-eyed sex maniac.

Finally, a second Christmas miracle happened and Eskew felt rescued: 

Jared Frick upstaged and enraged Barney Buckster during a mouth-foaming duet of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” They came to blows and closed the show. Permanently.

No concert tour is planned.

Footnote: Effie and Study’s whirlwind wedding is next December 25th. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Matilda will sing “Coat of Many Colors.” I shudder imagining what she’ll wear. 

I’m sending them a recording of my singing a parody—“Studly’s Monster Holiday,” accompanied by a simple “get well” card. 

I carry a grudge, but I always take the humble highroad.

Happy New Year! 

— Steve Eskew

Thank God Liberal Arts courses are so easy. Even retired businessman Steve Eskew received a pair of master’s degrees in both dramatic arts and communication studies from the University of Nebraska at Omaha after he turned 50. When asked to take over a professor’s theater column at The Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Steve began a career as a quasi-journalist. Narrowly by the luck of the Irish, this led to numerous publications including theater and book reviews, profiles and Steve’s favorite genre, humor writing. Check out his new humor blog, ESKEWPADES.