Ep. 239 skewers "Crazy Al" Gore’s climate doomsaying and Nate Cohn’s failed Trump predictions while mocking celebrity Electoral College meddlers like Martin Sheen for exploiting electors’ consciences. The host contrasts Obama’s centrist campaign with leftist governance, blaming Democratic losses on policy extremism but cautiously endorses Trump’s deregulation and Supreme Court picks over elite-driven moral economics. A detour praises Stephen Sondheim’s Evening Primrose and "I Remember Sky" as high art, contrasting it with Alan Menken’s commercial warmth, before circling back to voter agency over celebrity interference—arguing democracy thrives when elites stop dictating outcomes. [Automatically generated summary]
Some people, when they want to know the future, shake their magic eight ball, turn it upside down, and read the message on the bottom.
Me, I turn to journalists and politicians, because when you shake them and turn them upside down, change falls out of their pockets, much of which was yours to begin with.
So, as 2016 winds to an end, let's take a look at what the best prognosticators are prognosticating for the year ahead.
We'll begin with Al Gore.
The former vice president is famous for predicting climate change would destroy the world in approximately two years ago.
That prediction turned out to be amazingly accurate after we realized the world he was talking about was the one inside his mind.
For 2017, the man nicknamed Crazy Al by a team of baffled psychiatrists is predicting the terrible climate crisis will continue, with the weather getting so hot that most of the Midwest will be buried under snow until April.
Global warming seminars held in 20 below temperatures will cause a virtual epidemic of unintended irony.
And CNN journalists throughout the country will solemnly accuse their audience of being anti-science right up until the moment they realize that their audience is actually watching something else, like The Walking Dead or Westworld or anything with a story less preposterous than the global warming bushwa on CNN.
Gore further predicts that the release of the sequel of his film, An Inconvenient Truth, tentatively titled, Fooled You Twice, Shame on You, should generate enough revenue to keep him in Xanax through the middle of next June.
After that, he plans to further fund his medicinal regime by improving his invention of the internet with a new internet add-on called Pornhub.
Another prognosticator looking at the year ahead is New York Times futurist Nate Cohn.
Cohn made his prognosticating bones by predicting that Donald Trump would lose the Republican nomination because he wasn't really a Republican and lose the election because he wasn't really a candidate.
Cohn explained that Trump had a high floor but a low ceiling, along with flocked wallpaper and an attractive set of French windows.
Cohn was absolutely correct, and that's why Trump will be subletting his apartment at a high price when he moves into the White House.
For 2017, Cohn is predicting that Donald Trump will still lose the election because obviously 2016 has all been a terrible dream.
And any minute now, Nate Cohn predicts he will wake up and not only will Hillary have won, but ice cream will grow on trees and the entire Cohn family will be happy, happy, happy all the time forever.
So there's a glimpse into the future by those experts among us who make their livings glimpsing the future, then making stuff up.
My advice is that you listen very carefully to these wise people, then bet your money that whatever they say will come true.
You can place those bets by contacting me here at the Daily Wire.
I'm giving excellent odds.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Radar Tech Hooray00:03:26
I'm for hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dee-dee.
Chim-shaped, ipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day, hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing!
Oh, hoorah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hoorah!
That never gets old.
Oh, what is she?
She's made.
It's made of milk.
A maid of milk?
All right.
Come on, give the guy a break.
You see, he's wearing somebody, at least somebody's doing something here.
The swan does have a swimming cap.
Now the swan has a swimming guy.
Okay, we caught up on the swans.
But who knows what the maid will be doing next week or over the weekend.
Over the Claveless weekend, which is almost upon us.
And Christmas is almost upon us.
It's like coming out at us like a train.
And one thing we don't want to have happen to you, we don't want you to be driving home to see your family, maybe going a little bit too fast and get caught in a speed trap.
We don't want you to drive too fast.
We don't want you to drive unsafely, but we also don't want you to get taken advantage of by some municipality with a ticket quota that's making up its debt by catching guys who are going a little bit fast.
So, what we are doing is we are promoting Rocking Mountain Radar and their devices.
And we called the folks at Rocky Mountain Radar and asked them if they would give us, give our audience, our specific audience, a chance to try this stuff out.
And they are slashing their prices by 50%.
If you go on rockingmountainradar.com/slash Andrew, you will get 50% off some of their premium products.
This is the only radar device that is made that not only detects speed traps, but also messes with their radar.
So they can't get a good reading on you before you have time to slow down.
So you will see them coming.
It's an amazing stuff.
It was developed by a guy who worked into the defense industry.
His job was to fool guided missiles.
So he built the stuff.
So when you shoot a guided missile at a jet plane, he built the stuff that makes the missile miss.
So he figured, hey, this is hard.
What would be easy is using this to make the radar get a bad reading on your car until you are going close.
Now, of course, that doesn't work if you're traveling 100 miles an hour.
And if you're traveling 100 miles an hour, we can't help you anyway because you're doing the wrong thing.
But if you're a little bit over the speed limit, as we almost always are, and you get hit in one of those places where they're collecting money by giving people tickets, this is the stuff.
It is the only technology that both detects the guy and scrambles his radar.
This is how much they back their products.
When you register your device with Rocking Mountain Radar, you qualify for their ticket rebate program.
If you get a ticket within the first year of owning your scrambler, Rocking Mountain Radar will pay your ticket.
That is a lot of dough for those of us who have occasionally gotten the occasional ticket for traveling like 130 miles an hour.
They will not pay your ticket if you're traveling so fast that the cop just has to look at you to see it because then this isn't going to help you, right?
But we don't want you to do that anyway.
So just go on rockingmountainradar.com/slash Andrew.
You will get 50% off a lot of their products.
There also is a lot of information there about where you can use these things and so on and so forth.
These are the best scramblers and detectors available.
This is stealth technology for your car.
This is something that you could put in your jet, but it's for your car.
Rockingmountainradar.com/slash Andrew for 50% off this top-of-the-line equipment.
Good stuff.
Electors' Conscience Call00:15:37
Okay, so the electors vote on Monday to ratify the will of the American people.
But fortunately, fortunately for the Democrats, celebrities are here to save them from the, you know, we thought, you know, the Russians rigged the election, James Comey rigged the election, there's all this stuff.
But now, finally, finally, they have brought celebrities to save the day before the electors, the Electoral College, ratifies this.
Now, what this teaches us is the left never learns anything.
Do you remember?
You remember when during the election, we had celebrities come out with that save the day video?
Do we have a little slice of the save the day video?
But we can end this nightmare before it begins.
We can save the day.
For our children.
For our communities.
For America.
All it takes is all of us.
All of us.
All of us.
We cannot pretend both sides are equally unfavorable.
We can't say one vote.
It doesn't matter.
Your vote matters.
Your vote matters.
It affects everything.
Not just the presidency, but the Senate.
The House.
Your local officials.
Immigration.
Immigrant.
Student debt.
Common sense, gun laws.
The Supreme Court.
Now, that was so effective.
Because, you know, they didn't just lose the presidential election, remember?
They lost everything.
You know, they lost everything.
So at the time, I don't know if you remember this, an ad company came out with a response to this, which I just love.
This was a classic, classic response to the Save the Day video.
This is the, have you got that yet?
Election Day is Tuesday, November 8th.
I know this because some famous actors told me.
Thanks, famous actors.
I had no idea.
No idea.
I was just thinking sometime in December, maybe January.
Wait, it's this year?
I thought it was over.
It turns out this election is important.
Really important.
Really important.
Really, really important.
Because I thought it was, you know, no big deal.
Again, thanks, famous actors, because it's times like these when we realize just how lucky we are to have famous Hollywood actors.
OK, I mean, if anything, if that video, that original save the day video did anything, it probably gave Trump a couple of votes.
I mean, probably a couple of never Trumpers just thought, I can't vote for Donald Trump, but I'll vote against Hollywood actors.
Now, so now they have a new video.
We're going to play the entire thing because it's comedy gold.
They have a new video where famous actors come and tell us that, tell the electors, Republican electors, that they must vote their conscience and therefore vote against Donald Trump and save us all from the hideous fact that the Democrats lost the election to Donald Trump.
But just to make, just to be fair, just to be fair, I said that the left never learns anything.
If you pay attention, especially if you're watching on Facebook, YouTube, or on our site, The Daily Wire, if you're watching, you will notice a subtle difference between these famous actors and the famous actors in the original.
So pay attention.
Here's the entire video of famous actors telling Republican electors to basically betray their trust.
Republican members of the Electoral College, this message is for you.
As you know, our founding fathers built the Electoral College to safeguard the American people from the dangers of a demagogue and to ensure that the presidency only goes to someone who is to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
An eminent degree.
Someone who is highly qualified for the job.
The Electoral College was created specifically to prevent an unfit candidate from becoming president.
There are 538 members of the Electoral College.
You and just 36 other conscientious Republican electors can make a difference.
By voting your conscience on December 19th and thereby shaping the future of our nation.
I'm not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton.
As you know, the Constitution gives electors the right to vote for any eligible person.
Any eligible person, no matter which party they belong to.
But it should certainly be someone you consider especially competent, especially competent to serve as President of the United States of America.
By voting your conscience, you and other brave Republican electors can give the House of Representatives the option to select a qualified candidate for the presidency.
I stand with you.
I stand with you in support and solidarity with conservatives, independents, and liberals.
And all citizens of the United States.
The American people trust that your voice speaks for us all.
And that you, you will make yourself heard through the constitutional responsibility granted to you by Alexander Hamilton himself.
What is evident is that Donald Trump lacks more than the qualifications to be president.
He lacks the necessary stability.
And clearly the respect for the Constitution of our great nation.
You have position.
The authority and the opportunity to go down in the books as an American hero who changed the course of history.
And you have my respect.
You have my respect.
You have my respect.
For your patriotism and service to the American people.
Unite for America.
That is amazing.
We have the respect.
If we will just do what they tell us, we will have the respect of Hollywood celebrities.
I am so excited.
I mean, I have to say, my immediate reaction to that is two words, one of which I can't say on the air, and the other one of which is you.
I mean, that immediately just comes pouring out of me.
But if you were paying attention, if you were watching on the Daily Wire, if you subscribe, you can see these things, you would notice that two big differences between these celebrities and the Save of the Day celebrities.
One, I would say that the average age of the Save of the Day celebrities was about 45.
I would say the average age of these celebrities was about 115.
I mean, these were like old, old people who were talking to us.
And I don't mean to make fun of that because a lot of conservative celebrities are older.
You know, you see guys like John Voigt coming out.
Why is it the older celebrities come out as conservative?
It's because they don't have as much to lose.
They're not as afraid.
John Voigt doesn't have to be afraid that his career is going to end because he expresses his political opinions.
So I think that the people who are in the original video, and the other thing is you notice the star power in the original video was much, much bigger.
It was Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson.
Those are two of the biggest stars in the country.
If we can say there are still big stars, those were big stars.
They weren't going to put their integrity on the line for this.
I mean, remember, I'm old enough to remember when questioning the outcome of an election was actually unpatriotic.
So the hypocrisy here is stunning.
And what they're asking people to do is stunning too.
You know, I mean, if these guys have a problem with their conscience, they don't need Martin Sheen to tell them what to do.
I mean, I suspect most of these guys are voting for the Republican candidate with a great deal of joy.
Even if he wasn't their first pick, they may be voting for him with a great deal of pleasure and joy.
This is nuts.
And all I can tell you is I think it's going to have the exact same effect that the Save the Day video.
But it's part of, it is part of a phenomenon that we are seeing that is really, really telling.
It's part of, well, you know, we'll get back to what it's, actually, I have a little more time before I have to say goodbye.
It's part of this phenomenon of somehow this election can't be happening.
That's what we can call it.
It can't be happening.
It's got to be a nightmare.
It's got to be something that's in my worst dreams.
If you go back and you look, here's a collection from our friends at Newsbusters of reporters and journalists and experts, so-called experts, trying to say that the election isn't fair because it was done according to the American rules with the Electoral College instead of by the popular vote.
We're talking about a candidate who's lost in a historic way in terms of the popular vote, but clearly won in the Electoral College.
There was also profound soul searching for millions as well, asking, how did this happen?
Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote.
Is this something of a national emergency?
And our journalists afraid to say so because they're going to sound partisan.
I don't think in this sense, when you look at the Electoral College, the people have spoken, because Trump has lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.
But that's not the only way.
One second.
And when you look at the roots of the Electoral College, the roots of the Electoral College are rooted in slavery.
Do you think it's time to take a look at the Electoral College system?
If we are never going to use the Electoral College, then we should abolish it.
We need to get rid of the Electoral College.
Yes, let's not forget that after this is over, like we forgot it in 2000.
I'm not saying get rid of the Electoral College and the idea that a state is worth a certain amount of delegates.
That is one thing.
Then turn it into a delegate.
This is a puzzle that needs to be changed.
This whole election cycle has shown us what the founding fathers have created needs to maybe be changed.
I think this whole searing election experience may leave people just with less trust in the system, period, with questions about why, for the second time in the lifetime of a lot of people, the person with the popular vote is not president.
I obviously know we all know how the system works in the Electoral College, but when it happens twice in a person's, in 16 years, it does raise questions.
So which is it?
Is it the Electoral College was put there by Hamilton when he was taking off from his Broadway show, when he took time off from his Broadway show to invent the Electoral College.
Was it put there to save us, or was it put there to damage us?
Which is it?
You know, it's like they're saying we should have won the football game because we gained more yards just because you got more points.
That doesn't mean anything.
All right, we've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to the Daily Wire and subscribe.
Yesterday's mailbag was fantastic.
You could have been there.
You could have been part of that mailbag if you would only subscribe to thedailywire.com, which is a lousy eight bucks a month.
You can spare it.
So why is this happening?
I mean, because it's happening a little bit on the right, too, where the right is picking on everything Donald Trump does and everything, you know, it's all, I'm getting a lot of this at home.
I'll talk about that in a couple of minutes.
You know, one of the things about Barack Obama is you forget that he ran as a centrist and he ran as the man of reason and he was all, you know, we're just pushing the ball back and forth over the 50-yard line was one of his lines.
But he governed as a leftist and he governed also.
I won't use the word tyrant.
I think that's a little overblown.
But he governed by extra-legal means with his executive orders and his pen and his phone instead of getting laws passed, instead of negotiating with Congress.
And for all the right picked on the Republican Congress, the Republican Congress did a pretty good job of putting a wall against his legislations.
What they couldn't do is they couldn't stop him from executive orders.
They didn't defund the government when people wanted them to do that.
But they did some pretty good in-house, you know, inside baseball blocking of his agenda, of his legislative agenda.
But he governed as a leftist.
And every time, every time, the left goes to the left.
They can't help themselves.
They have to do it.
They think that's the middle of the road.
But every time, they lose enormously.
And this is the thing that they can't accept, that Obama was a popular president and remains a popular president.
His policies were not popular.
And the one thing they can't say is that's why Donald Trump won, because people are sick of what's happening in the country.
And they come up with every, you know, Keith Ellison is running for the head of the DNC.
And he asked, you know, what's his quality?
This is a guy who supported Louis Farak and he said things about Israel.
I don't like the guy, but that's, and he's far, far, far left.
So what's his take on why they lost?
This is cut seven.
What is your diagnosis?
What happened?
Why did Hillary Clinton lose?
Well, the most proximate cause is that we lost by about 76,000 votes in three states.
And I think the real answer is voter turnout.
How do we turn out the vote in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, places like Pennsylvania?
Let me tell you, in Minnesota, which is right in that belt of those in the industrial Midwest, we survived that wave because we prioritized voter turnout.
And in my district, in the 5th district of Minnesota, when I first got to Congress, we had the lowest congressional turnout in my state.
But even Minnesota was a lot closer than it should have been, right?
But we survived the wave.
Why?
Because we prioritize turnout.
That's the real issue.
There will be waves.
Every party is going to have its own ebb and flow.
How do we survive it?
We prioritize turnout.
And in my state of Minnesota, we have made turnout.
I have the highest turnout, and we have four constitutional officers who are all Democrats because we prioritize voter turnout.
Two senators who are Democrats.
Because we prioritize turnout, that's what I'm good at, and I think I can bring it to the national stage.
Not about policy, not about ideas, not about the people and how they're suffering and how the economy, you know, the economy is really in much, there hasn't been, Alan Greenspan, the former Fed guy, said the economy hasn't grown for five years.
It hasn't grown at all for five years.
And it's not going to, he said, until there's entitlement reform.
So it's about turnout.
It's about tech.
But why don't people turn out?
They turned out for Obama.
Why didn't they turn out for Hillary Clinton?
Because she was dishonest, because she was unappealing, all these reasons.
And the fact that Obama's America isn't working.
It isn't doing well.
I'm getting yelled at a lot off screen by many of my friends, not just at the Daily Wire, but a lot of friends that I really respect, a lot of people whose political opinions I respect, for being too optimistic about what is happening with Donald Trump.
And I want to explain this, okay?
I want to explain my attitude, because I was virulently opposed to Trump getting the nomination.
When he got the nomination, I thought, well, I've lost this election because I'm not going to get a small government guy.
And I have been delighted by what he's been doing with his appointments.
The way I look at it, he hasn't really done anything yet.
He's just appointed people, but he's appointed people who are going to handle one of the things that I think are the three great threats to liberty in our country right now.
And people say, well, you know, if Hillary Clinton did this, you would get upset.
You're absolutely right.
I am much more patient with a guy who is zigzagging in the right direction than I am with someone who is marching in the wrong direction.
I'm not going to pick on Donald Trump every time he zigs or zags and say, oh, this is a disaster, if he's zigzagging toward freedom, if he's zigzagging toward greater liberty.
The three things that I think internally are really are really dangerous to us are the regulatory state, which has gotten out of control, Congress giving over its responsibilities for making law to these unelected regulators who just are politicized, who are dedicated to more and more and more control because that's what they do.
That's their job.
In the same way, a research doctor, his job is to find new cures, new things that he can do.
They come in to find new regulations that they can make.
That's what gives their life meaning.
Paul Ryan On Elites And Entitlements00:05:53
They need to be stopped.
And so far, Trump has been appointing people who look like they really are going to do that.
The second is debt.
And one of the things, you know, let's stop for a minute on this regulation thing.
You know, Trump met with all these tech monsters, guys, the guys who run the big tech companies.
Here's what he said to them.
This really was appealing.
I'm here to help you folks do well.
And you're doing well right now, and I'm very honored by the bounce.
They're all talking about the bounce.
So right now everybody in this room has to like me at least a little bit, but we're going to try and have that bounce continue.
And perhaps even more importantly, we want you to keep going with the incredible innovation.
There's nobody like you in the world.
There's nobody like the people in this room.
And anything we can do to help this go along, and we're going to be there for you.
And you'll call my people, you'll call me.
It doesn't make any difference.
We have no formal chain of command around here.
I'm honored to have Gary, the president of Goldman Zach, left Goldman Sachs to do this.
And Wilbur, everybody knows Wilbur.
They never call on Wilbur or us on Wall Street.
They just say, oh, it's Wilbur.
There's nobody like him.
And we're going to do fair trade deals.
We're going to make it a lot easier for you to trade across borders because a lot of restrictions, a lot of problems.
But I think you'll see.
And if you have any ideas on that, that would be great.
These are all guys who opposed him.
Some of them very virulently.
They all opposed him.
He's meeting with them.
He's telling them he's going to make their lives easier.
Look, these are the guys who solve problems.
I mean, let's face it.
You want your environment cleaner.
You want better transportation.
You want better infrastructure.
These are the guys who solve those kinds of problems.
They're solved not by regulation, never by regulation.
They're solved by less regulation, more innovation, more technology.
That's what he's talking about.
We saw Bill Gates.
The left went nuts because Bill Gates came out and compared Trump to Kennedy, saying that he is going to stop the regulatory regime that is slowing innovation down.
And it really is slowing innovation down in Silicon Valley.
That's a good thing.
That's the first thing.
The second thing that I think is a major, major threat to our freedoms and to our well-being is entitlements and the debt.
Entitlements just sucking the life out of our economy.
This is the other thing Greenspan was talking about.
You know, you talk about we can grow our way out of debt, we can grow our way out of a deficit.
You can't grow if all that money is being sucked into entitlements.
And the only guy who has been talking about this is Paul Ryan.
And I know there are all these guys on the right who hate Paul Ryan because he didn't do this and he didn't do that and he's been in favor of immigration, all this stuff.
He is the only guy who has stepped on this third rail, and this is a third rail for the right as well as the left.
The right wants its entitlements too.
And yesterday, I think it was yesterday, maybe the day before, Trump was doing his thank you tour in Wisconsin and he had this to say.
Trump and Ryan have been at daggers drawn, but now he had this to say.
Speaker Paul Ryan, I've really come to appreciate.
Oh no, I've come to appreciate him.
Speaker Paul Ryan, where's Speaker?
Where is he has been, I'll tell you, he has been terrific.
And you know, honestly, he's like a fine wine.
Every day goes by, I get to appreciate his genius more and more.
Now, if he ever goes against me, I'm not going to say that, okay?
He's a great guy, and we have some amazing things in store.
And we're going to work on taxes.
We're going to work on Obamacare.
We're going to work on things.
And he's going to lead the way.
So thank you.
We're going to work on the wall, Paul.
All right.
Trump playing the crowd.
A crowd that's booing Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan, who's the best friend they have because he's the only guy who stands up.
Do I think that Ryan is going to get some of the reforms he want?
I would say I have a, I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful.
Trump has promised he's not going to do anything with entitlements.
That's a mistake.
He thinks he can grow his way out.
It's the entitlements that stop us from growing.
But if Ryan has a chance, he certainly has more of a chance now than he would have with Hillary.
So I'm a little bit hopeful about that.
The third thing, of course, is the Supreme Court.
If you think that Hillary Clinton would not have appointed judges who thought the Constitution was a living blank document, you're wrong.
I mean, they would have just said there is no right to bear arms.
The right to, you know, we've got to stop this spending in politics.
I mean, Hillary Clinton spent billions to try and win this thing.
Trump didn't.
He won.
Money in politics is not the problem that she said.
Listen, the thing is, the people have done a mighty thing.
The people have said that the consensus that existed since World War II is over and it has crumbled and it has left us behind.
Everything now is built for the elites.
Even the moral world, we were talking about sexual morality.
This sexual morality that is in place now where you sleep with anybody you want and then you get an abortion if you get pregnant and all that, that works great for elites.
That works great for elites.
They'll have a few affairs.
They'll use birth control.
If someone gets pregnant, they'll pay for her abortion.
If that skews her mind in some way, never mind.
That's no problem, because we were only worried about the woman.
We're not worried about the baby.
And then they'll get married because that's what elites do.
They get married and then they have children and then their lives go fine.
That sexual morality works for elites, just like the economy works for elites.
This cheap money that makes the stock market go up but doesn't do a damn thing for you if you want a job.
The people have said this is not working for us.
And that means, and they wrong-footed me, they wrong-footed every expert on television.
They wrong-footed the Democrat Party.
They wrongforded the Republican Party, and they did what they wanted, which is one of the things that happens in freedom.
Now, listen, I don't worship the people.
The people can make mistakes.
They can make terrible mistakes.
Why That Song Haunts00:08:37
I'm praying to God they have not made a mistake this time.
This guy is volatile.
He's volatile.
He doesn't know enough.
He's surrounding himself with, I think, pretty decent people.
I'm hopeful.
It is wrong.
It is wrong.
59% of the people in New Fox Poll say they're hopeful.
It is wrong to say to the people, you can have no hope.
You have made a decision that I didn't like, and therefore you can have no hope.
Look, this presidency could be a disaster.
I know that.
But right this minute, right this minute, what I'm seeing, the guy is zigzagging in the right direction.
I'm good with that, and I am hopeful about it.
And I am willing to say to the people, Look, it's your country.
It's your country.
It doesn't belong, it doesn't belong to Rush Limbaugh.
It doesn't belong to me.
It doesn't belong to the left.
It doesn't belong to the Hollywood actors.
It belongs to you, and you have made a decision.
I am hoping to God, I'm praying to God that you made the right one, and I am willing to eat humble pie about that because it's your country.
All right, stuff I like.
I just wanted to explain myself because off camera I'm getting the crappy.
I just wanted to point out why I feel the way I do.
You know, here's this thing.
There was a, I may have talked about this last year at Christmas time.
I can't remember.
There was a musical of the A Christmas Carol on TV in, I think, 2004.
And all musicals of A Christmas Carol, except the one with Mr. Magoo, are terrible.
And the reason is because they're sentimental, and the story is not a sentimental story.
It's actually quite a deep, tragic story.
I believe, and I talked about this last Christmas Eve, I think, I believe very deeply that the Christmas, that Dickens' A Christmas Carol is one of the great pieces of wisdom literature up there with the Tao Dei Jing and with Ecclesiastes in the Bible.
It is one of the wisest works ever written.
So there was this musical with Kelsey Grammar and Playing Scrooge.
It was based on a stage musical move to TV.
But it had one very pretty little song in it.
And this song always struck me.
The music was written by Alan Mencken.
And you know Alan Mencken because he wrote The Little Mermaid.
He wrote Beauty and the Beast.
He wrote Aladdin.
His partner, his writing partner was Howard Ashman, who wrote Little Shop of Horrors.
And Ashman died of AIDS.
You know, AIDS was devastating, obviously, to the musical community because it targeted gays.
And Ashman died.
And I've always felt that Mencken never found another lyricist of Ashman's quality.
But in this, he had Lynn Ahrens, who wrote Once on This Island and Susical.
She's talented.
And whenever I watched Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast came out when my daughter was like the perfect age, so I saw all these movies right away when they came out.
And I always thought Mencken had been very, very strongly influenced by Stephen Sondeim.
Stephen Sondheim is to me one of the great artistic geniuses of the 20th century.
I've given two stage performances, standing ovations.
Now people give everything a standing ovation.
I've only twice in my life have I ever shot up out of my seat.
Once was for Stephen Sondeim's Sweeney Todd and the other was for Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.
But Stephen Sondheim, with his music and his incredibly complex and non-sentimental, cold lyrics, has really transformed musical comedy in America.
He's just one of the great artists, the great American artists.
So he wrote, and I think Mencken has been very influenced by him.
So I'm just pointing this out because I want to show you the difference between pop art and high art.
Okay, here's the difference.
And I like pop art and I like high art, but there is a difference between them.
Back in the 60s, Sondheim wrote a TV musical called Evening Primrose, and it's only just now become available.
It became available in the last two years or so.
It starred Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr, who everybody knows because she was the oldest daughter in sound of music.
And then she married a dentist and retired.
But before she did that, which I always admire, I always admire actresses who marry and just get out of the business at some point.
But before she did that, she played in this TV program, Evening Primrose.
And it's basically a musical that's a horror story.
It's based on a John Collier story.
And if you've ever seen the old Alfred Hitchcock presents, many of those were based on John Collier's stories.
He was a great suspense short story writer.
And the lyrics and the music to this musical are very weird and sentimental, but there's one beautiful song in it called I Remember Sky.
The story is about some people who get trapped inside a department store and they can never leave.
And it's kind of this horror story of what happens inside this department store.
And Charmian Carr sings a song about remembering what it was like to be out of the department store.
And she describes it with metaphors from inside the department store.
So she can't, she has no reference points outside, but she can just vaguely remember what sky looked like.
So let's play just this little bit of this very disturbing song of a girl who's been in a department store her whole life but can just barely remember what it was like to be outside.
I remember sky.
It was blue as in, or at least I think I remember sky.
I remember snow, soft as feathers, Sharp as thumbtacks, Coming down like lint, And it made you squint when the wind would blow.
I love that.
I mean, but it's very disturbing.
The music is just a little discordant, You know, and it you get the feeling that you're dealing with something almost like psycho.
It's very psychotic.
It's a very weird song And I'm and I'm not accusing Alan Mencken of stealing this at all.
I'm just saying that the artist we admire, every artist takes the artists he admires and kind of refashioned them in his own image.
And Mencken is a far, far more commercial artist.
And so just remember that tune, I Remember Sky, right?
And here's Alan Mencken's song, There's a Place Called Home, from the TV version of a Christmas Carol.
There's a place called Home I can almost see with a red front door and a roaring fire and a Christmas dream.
Yes, a place called home full of love and family.
And I'm there at the door, watching you come home to me I'll recall this day I finally found To apply
and a life for two you'll have everything you could ever want All I want is you And a place called Home, you and I will always be in the dark of the night.
Let your heart come home to me.
It's very pretty.
It's really sentimental.
Every element of discord has been removed from that original Sondheim song, and it goes off instead of into those weird little flats and sharps that Sondheim uses, it goes off into this big, beautiful, sentimental number.
But it is lovely.
I've always liked that song.
A place called Home from a Christmas Carol.
That's stuff I like.
The Clavinless weekend is upon us, and Christmas is barreling toward us full speed.
We will be back on Monday to take, you know, to assess the damage.
So keep your heads down, and we will be there then.