The debate over who’s more popular–the character you play or the actor you are–has become passe. Richard Dean Anderson is McGyver to some and Col. Jack O’Neill to others, but who cares who cares who this soap opera star is at home? Come on! (Not that I have Xmas wishes sung to either of those characters… next year, Santa, please?!)
So some stars are fictive, like Sherlock Holmes or Ronald McDonald or Garfield the cat. They occupy a massive swath of the constellations in our culture and we need to recognize the Christmas tributes in music just for them.
The obvi kickoff here is the TV universe of Star Trek and the movie universe of Star Wars. Yes, i know they are multimedia, but let’s face it: the big difference between them and their fans is the down home box in the front room vs. going out into the dark world with strangers. Since i don’t take sides they appear together today.
Sasha sings Tai Shindehai’s “Santa Vader” in pretty good English, but this is the French take on the whole Star Wars mythos. Anywho, Vader is compared to a workaday Santa and seems somehow sexier because, i guess, he might kill Jar Jar for that little girl for Christmas.
The 800 pound gorilla in this cateogory is the Bon Jovi “R2D2, We Wish You a Merry Christmas” from the unsanctioned 1980 album Christmas in the Stars. Both of these have been posted earlier by me.
Internet/cable host Richard William Wheaton III is famous for playing the ingenue on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has never grown out of his smug pinched expression, however, so now resides comfortably as an expletive on The Big Bang Theory. Chelsea P Manders has an electronic girlish fantasy dedicated to him in her “Will Wheaton’s Christmas Dance Mix.” So there’s that.
Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario has been in several Billions of Dollars of movies (Pirates franchise, Star Trek franchise, Marvel universe, ‘Avatar’–others). Not bad for a ballet dancer from New Jersey (whose looks could kill). Her fan base is not balanced: “All I Want for Christmas is Zoe Saldana” is a rap adulation from Gerald Walker (mostly appearing here as a teaser to get you to download his work). I’m not sure if he’s smitten as a kitten or just riding the coattails of name recognition to get you to notice his song.
But now I’d like to mention (again) the odd Christmas album from Christian Rick Moyer: Merry Trekmas. This guy pulled out all the stops tricking up carols for the Federation. Please enjoy “Benji the Spaceman” in which our fave black Cap. Benjamin Sisko competes against STTNG with DS9 running what seem to be Middle Eastern jihadists against each other with peacekeeping metaphors.
Since STTNG ran longer and harder, let’s leave on “Jean Luc, the Bald Head Captain” also by Moyer but featuring the suavest, classiest, most classically trained Cap. of all who showed us how to lead without punching so much. Dreamy….