Christmas time is here again. Tis the season for celebrating old traditions. Around this blog, that means dusting off posts of Christmas past, posts that are staler than re-gifted fruitcake. Enjoy.
The Wal-Mart Christmas Musical
The entire play takes place in a Super Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon during the busy, holiday shopping season. Here’s the story in a nutshell:
Our heroine is a young ingenue who looks almost exactly like me. She has been sprinkled with holiday cheer fairy-dust and sent on a quest in the Land of Wal-Mart. She must find another strand of the same brand of lights she bought last year, to finish the string dangling 1 foot short of the bottom of her half-finished Christmas tree. Then she must get through the check-out and back to her car before the fairy dust wears off and she turns into a mean, bitchy old crone.
The show opened with Miley Cyrus’ spiritual performance of “I’d Rather Be Naughty, So $&%# You, Santa!” In honor of the season, she updated her usual bra-and-panty costume with a sprig of mistletoe, strategically placed. As for Miley’s dance routine, let’s just say I will never look at a humble candy-cane the same way again.
Next up, one of the female leads softly crooned a simple ballad to the 5 ragged children gathered around her cart. She was imaginatively costumed in skin-tight black stretch pants and a leopard-print shirt cut low enough to reveal a pair of angels tattooed on the upper slopes of her absolutely ginormous, er, charms. The song was ” I TOLD You 20 Times!” and the chorus went something like this:
“I TOLD you 20 times you gotta be 8 years old before Santa will bring you “Call of Duty, Black Ops.” I’m going to have your daddy (Rodney, that guy who’s staying with us and kinda like your daddy) WHUP YOUR A** if you ask me ONE more time!”
I wasn’t the only one who left the show humming THAT moving tune.
The children’s choir almost stole the show with their rousing hit, “I Want THAT!” The lyric was not complicated – only “I Want THAT”, over and over – but the performance elevated the words to art. The volume of their childish cries built and built to a mighty crescendo. The number ended with the whole choir falling to the floor in the aisles, kicking its collective heels. Unforgettable.
The Greeter’s Gospel Choir’s a-Capella rendition of “Go Tell It On The Mountain (The Holidays Are Here)” had everyone clapping along. The reworked lyrics explained in an uplifting, catchy way how if the store employees said “Merry Christmas” at the door, it would be the same as forcing shoppers to join a church and submit to full-immersion baptism just to get in the store. Entertaining and really thought provoking.
But the showstopper was the big production number finale.
I took a couple of dance classes as a kid, so I’m familiar with steps like the flap-ball-change. But I’ve never seen the moves the Wal-Mart Shoppers Dance Troupe perfected for this extravaganza, a routine they call the Oblivious Shuffle.
Each shopper/dancer leaned on his or her cart and pushed it slowly, oh so slowly, back and forth across the stage. Their shuffling gate kept one shoe (or house slipper, as the case may be) on the floor at all times. The shuffling feet made a “shush, shush” sound that underscored the “squeak, squeak” of their unoiled cart wheels. The occasional crash of colliding carts played like cymbals in the composition.
About half of the dancers had cell phones pressed to their ears. One at a time, each burst into song with lyrics like “…so that witch my baby-daddy is with now said they couldn’t take the kids on Christmas Eve and I told HER, if you think I’m going to pick them up on HIS weekend, you can just tell that &%$#…” Their solos were incomprehensible, one-sided conversations when taken by themselves. Together, they wove a timeless Christmas story.
The dancers went through their movements with vacant, glassy stares that gave the illusion that they were totally unaware of everyone else around them.
Think of Night of the Living Dead as a ballet.
Meanwhile, the young ingenue wove her cart skillfully in and out of the shuffling throng, trying to get to the registers. The checkers each turned their lights off as she approached, crying “price check on 10″, “change needed on 5”, “register frozen on 8“ in a surprisingly harmonious medley. The audience held their breath when a determined shopper with 2 carts piled high cut in front of our heroine in the “15 items or less” lane, but there was no crash – it was all part of the show.
I don’t want to give away the ending in case you decide to see the show. Suffice it to say our ingenue looked a lot like the apple-wielding hag in Snow White as she trudged to the car with her packages at the end.
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Next year I’m changing the name of my blog for the holidays to “Mistletoe, Strategically Placed.” (Did I say that in years past? Am I dusting off old comments?) Happy, merry, and all that jazz!
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This is so funny. Oh the joys of shopping at Wally World! 🙂
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Great! I secretly hope that foreign visitors never judge us by what they see happening in Wal-Marts. It’s scary, really. I was at the grocery store yesterday, and overheard a dad counting backwards to his (slightly) misbehaving kid, who looked to be all of eight years old. As Dad called out “ONE,” he said “OK – now I’m calling Santa and there will be NO presents!” The kid started wailing and I stood there, wondering why the dad couldn’t have just taken away a video game or marched the kid over to the bread aisle and given him a time-out. Sigh…
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The sad truth is: There still will be presents!
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That’s exactly what I thought!
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Every time I go into our neighborhood Wal-mart (which isn’t that much anymore), I witness at least one “train wreck” family like some in your post. Sad. For the life of me, I can’t fathom how someone can be poor enough to require food stamps also need so many bags of kitty litter, cokes and cartons of bottled water, but have the latest smartphone technology strapped to her ear — to the tune of $80/month — rudely chatting, complete with expletives, during the entire check-out process.
I’d rather go to red store down the street and pay a little more for the same stuff and avoid the prime time reality TV show.
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There is nothing like a trip to Walmart to get you into the Holiday spirit — of Ebenezer Scrooge!
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This was a most entertaining reminder of the many reasons why I don’t shop at Walmart. Although, I might have to catch the “show” just once before Christmas.
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Perfect timing, Peg-Ebenezer Scrooge. I JUST got back from a hellish Walmart experience. Stupid me, I decided to go to the biggest, most obnoxious Walmart in the state because my son wants a certain laptop and it’s cheaper there. After about an hour waiting in line I nearly had a nervous breakdown so I decided to entertain everyone with my own spirited rendition of that ol’ holiday classic sung to Frozen’s Let it Go: “Shopping blows! Shopping BLOWS!”
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I would have given my left arm to see that performance. Next time, give me a call so I can get to TicketMaster before the show is sold out.
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I simply MUST get to this play before the North Koreans have it banned.
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Shush. Shush shuffle. Night of the Living Dead ballet. “..rendition of “Go Tell It On The Mountain (The Holidays Are Here)” Losing Hope (think she’s in aisle 9)
Thank goodness for online shopping. (None of it comes close to having your entire shopping money with you…all of $5.00 as a kid…and an old cluttered Woolworth Five and Dime store. Somehow the big box stores drained all the magic out
Chuckled all the way! Jingle on!
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I went to Walmart today and wanted to kill 7 different people from the time i parked until i had my cart ready to shop. It was less than three minutes! It went downhill from there, sadly.
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Try not to shop there just for the reasons you listed. What is this world coming to! Thanks Peg, now I’m really depressed-probably won’t get the cards done tonight.
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I laughed until tears came out of my eyes… and other places. So true and so funny! Why is is that pronouncement wear (hottie, princess, hope, sexy) is always worn by the nottie, the servant, the hopeless and the androgynous?
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The plus side of the Wal-Mart performance is how good you feel about yourself when you finally get out of there.
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I was headed to Walmart last night until I read this. Ah, the memories of Christmas past. I sent my niece. She is younger and hasn’t been broken yet.
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Good move. We’ve done our time in the trenches.
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Thank God we dont have to pay for the performances!
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Maybe not in $$$, but it costs us a bit of our humanity each time.
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Reblogged this on Ninasusan.
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“Mistletoe, strategically placed” is going to be my Phrase of the Week.
I think this is going to be the new Christmas classic. 🙂
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It’s a spin on a favorite line of my Dad’s. He’d say “I direct your attention to the sprig of mistletoe attached to my coat-tails.” By the time somebody figured out he was saying “kiss my a**” he’d have left the room.
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You are the most hilarious reviewer that I have ever had the privilege to read. Thank you for making my day brighter!
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I have not darkened the door of a WalMart in 20 years, with the rare exception of the one in Marble Falls, TX where my father (rest his soul) loved to go and watch people. You have reminded me, why I don’t go to WalMart and further, why I finish all my shopping long before the holidays.
My new mantra, ‘If it can’t be found on-line, preferably on Amazon you don’t need it.’
Peg, this was the very best review of Christmas shopping I have read in a very long time. Thank you for the grins and giggles.
Merry Christmas.
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Merry Christmas to you and yours, Val. And may all your holdays be Wally-world-free!
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This made me laugh out loud! 🙂
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Thanks – this is one of my favorites.
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