Scott Weiland Ruins Christmas

I can't stop watching Scott Weiland's video for "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and it's reminding me of an old Chuck Barris line. "I like this act," the great Barris once said, introducing some poor nutcase on The Gong Show, "but then again, I like morgues!"

And indeed, I kind of like Scott Weiland, or at least, I appreciated Stone Temple Pilots in spite of their cold-blooded and constitutionally unattractive frontman. I liked them just for being such a huge carbuncle on the ass of grunge. So I always cut the man a little rope -- coz he was there, after all -- even if his job these days amounts to stinking up various reunion tours and taking himself way too seriously.

Which brings us back to this foul-beyond-comprehension version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and the mind-bogglingly weird video that goes with it, in which the notoriously grumpy vocalist feigns chestnut-roasting sentiment by hopping from foot to foot like a man dying to take a huge piss.

Weiland released his Christmas album, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, back in early October, but I didn't pay any attention, except to maybe think "Weird!" for a split second. I just didn't appreciate how weird until I got a load of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" last week. I certainly didn't have a problem, on paper, with the idea of Weiland releasing an album of holiday standards. As the man himself argues in a piece on Blabbermouth.net, "Well, you know what, man? People don't know me. They know what someone's opinion is. And they know my songs. But they really don't know me."

And it's true, we don't know him, but it's not the ontology of Scott Weiland or the existence of the record itself that's making my eyes spin and my ears curl; it's the fact that nobody bothered to tell him that it sounds like shit. Who is advising the man on these matters, and why did they fail so dramatically in this instance?

Admirably, Stephen Thomas Erlewine at allmusic.com gets behind The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, writing that it has "layers of kitsch" -- in places. But there's none here, on either "I'll Be Home for Christmas," or on its (possibly worse) companion, "Winter Wonderland." Weiland isn't ribbing you with his grotesquely exaggerated croon -- that would require a sense of humour, plus he gives the game away in that whiny defense he mounted over at Blabbermouth, forcing us to sit through the wounded adolescent you-don't-know-me bit before talking far more engagingly about his dad playing records on Christmas Day.

And on that note, there was probably some Dean Martin on the turntable back then, and it's probably the untouchable Dino that Weiland is hoping to channel on "I'll Be Home for Christmas," along -- as Erlewine notes -- with Der Bingle. There might even be some sort of cosmic significance to the fact that Dean Martin actually passed away on Christmas Day. There is, I hope, no significance to the fact that Weiland is taking an eggnog widdle on his grave 16 years later.

Or perhaps there is; I don't claim to have any grasp on the ineffable workings of the universe, not to mention its peculiar sense of irony. In any event, sorry. Here's your palate cleanser, and -- um -- happy holidays!