John Waters and the End of Christmas

I cannot stand the crass commercialization of Christmas, or the Solstice for that matter.  I put up my Christmas lights on December 24th and take them down on January 6th.  Christmas Eve through Epiphany is my Christmas Season.  The twelve days of Christmas and all that… Christmastide.
I’m not overly religious, but I do appreciate tradition.  I also appreciate jesters and the power of turning things about.  You don’t really know a culture until you know its popular culture and its underground or counter-culture.
So in honor of Three Kings Day I give you, Three Queens Day. This is actually a pic from the Miss Gay USA  pageant 2013;

The inspiration for this gender switch for the last day of Christmas is thanks to John Waters.  As a rather WASPish person (you can’t help who you are born as) I am probably not the typical John Waters fan.  But I was once mistaken for Patty Hearst at the Canadian border when she was missing.  Waters and Hearst are close friends. And absolute eons ago when I wrote for a site called Brazen Hussies, I seamlessly and oh so cleverly worked a connection to John Waters into every post I wrote for the site that dished about everything and took inspiration from the glamor of old Hollywood.
So anyway… the job I’m currently working allows me to listen to audiobooks or music while I visually proof print versus digitized records.  Today I was finally able to download Carsick from my local library via the mobile Overdrive application.

If you are not already familiar with the purposively filth and shock that can be John Waters, you might want to “just move along, nothing to see here.”

But if you want to know more about what this iconic film-maker and cultural commentator thinks about the good, the bad, and the perverse of America, as well as what he finds delightful or moving, or frightening and disgusting, as well as some aspects of the life of the real John Waters, I encourage your to buy or borrow a copy of the audio version or book.  It is wonderful to have Waters read his own work.  For me at least it is like having a John Waters film, in which he stars, play in my head.

For those of you not familiar with the wonders of libraries in the 21st Century, there are apps for mobile devices which allow you to borrow digital copies of audio books.  I love to hear authors read their own work.  It gives me a much richer understanding of those books, both fictional and nonfictional, whose authors choose to read for the audio versions.  There is so much information in an author’s voice.  I highly recommend checking out these audio books if you are not already addicted as I am to the format.

And no, it does not kill the printed book.  I’ve purchased print copies of books  I have previously listened to so that I might have it to lend out or as a reference piece.

No, John Waters has not killed Christmas, but he inspired me to view this years Epiphany through a different lens.  What a different world it would have been had Queens been the ones to seek out the Baby Jesus.

Goddess, I love cultural mythology.

On the 12th Day of Christmas I hope your true love gives you something by John Waters.