Pajiba

I was losing interest in Bowie until this bizarre slice of Anglo-Americana aired. I thought that Der Bingle was entirely too uncomfortable with David and their duet was most memorable for Bing's bewildered "WTF is happening here" look.
Later, though, Bowie performed "Heroes", which I had not yet heard, and I fell in love with his music all over again.
Ba-ba-ba-boo.
I miss Bing.
Perry Como, too.
What?
They were awesome.
You Philistines.

I'll admit. I unashamedly LOVE the original. It plays on an almost non-stop loop in my house (along with about five other Christmas songs) on Christmas Eve. I'll also admit that 12-year old me cried when the original aired for the first time. For two minutes and thirty-nine seconds my mother and I had a piece of music that we could both relate to. By the way, 1977 was an awesome year for Christmas music: Mull of Kintyre was the coveted Christmas number one that year. between these two songs, my family crippled by the death of my dad a few months previously, made it through Christmas that year.

Every time I thought The Thin White Duke had receded into irrelevance, he'd remind me ...

In 1997, Bowie sold bonds backed by the future revenues from part of his catalog. He got a whack of cash immediately while laying off the risk to future revenues - piracy, something better comes along, end of civilization. (Packaging bundles of future retail revenue as bonds, BTW, is one of the instruments that drove the recent financial spasm.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowie_Bonds

Genius.

About when I'd gotten over that, he opened The Concert for New York:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS4ZW6f89QI

David F***ing Bowie, indeed.

I still think "Step-Brothers" is SOLID. And was Will Ferrel in "Walk Hard"? I catch myself watching that 'til the end every time it's on.

I love that video, maybe that's why I couldn't sit through the parody. Or maybe it's because I'm sick of Will Ferrell. For David Bowie's most recent stab at relevance I'd check out his collaboration with Trent Reznor. I love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slKNd22GGaQ

God, John C Reilly is such an outstanding mimic. Hollywood, the wrong one succeeded.

In fact, the video is, until the very end, a word for word recreation of the original

Crosby was a big Hemingway fan and had performed with Sinatra by this point. I'd wager there was a "What the fuck was with all that Wiggy Starshine, son?" after the fadeout.

None of you watched up to the end

BC -Thanks Bobby.

DB -It's Bowie, David Fuckin' Bowie

BC -Yeah and it's Bing Fuckin' Crosby.

It's worth noting that just one year earlier, Bowie released the amazing Station to Station and literally doesn't remember a single goddamn second of the recording process because he was so high on cocaine.

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=308785

And again, DAVID F***ING BOWIE wins at life because even coke blackouts don't slow him down.

Adding to the surreally-ness of the 1977 airing of the Bing Crosby Christmas Spectacular Special was the fact that Mr. Bing F*ing Crosby had keeled over and died on the golf course that summer. So those of us that faithfully watched him every year with our folks got to see Bing rise from the dead (so to speak) AND had to explain to said folks what a "David Bowie" was.

One of my fondest memories, in fact, is saying to my Father (long gone these many years) that one could not EXPLAIN David Bowie, one experienced him. Dad muttered something about "hippies" and we continued to watch the show together.

I miss my Dad very much.

Not only the set, but the colorization is a perfect replica - that tell-tale washed-out TV palette of the 70s. It was so carefully copied, in fact, that it was borderline disturbing up until the punchline.