Today is the last Christmas Video of "My Simple Christmas Wish" I'm posting this year or, more likely, forever — and believe me, I could post 'em forever. Its composer David Friedman wrote what just might be the most performed song in a cabaret context ever. If you don't believe me, go to YouTube and do a search for "Simple Christmas Wish" and another for "Rich, Famous and Powerful," and you'll see most of the videos that folks — mostly with some connection to Broadway or musical theater — have made.
I used to go to a lot of such shows back when (a) I was often going to New York and (b) there were a number of places in and around Los Angeles for such performances. In L.A., venues where one good singer and a piano player could entertain an audience of 25-200 people don't last long but when I went to them, you could almost lay even money that someone would get up and sing "My Simple Christmas Wish."
In fact, once it was more than one person. At a showcase one night — this is some time ago but still vivid in my memory — the second performer of the evening sang it. Then later, the sixth performer — who I guess had arrived too late to hear the second performer — sang it and didn't seem to understand the odd response of the audience and one member yelling out, "You too?"
But that almost wasn't the end of it. A lady who closed the show got up and said, "Well, I was going to sing 'My Simple Christmas Wish' but…" and everyone laughed and she sang something else. But I don't think she was kidding.
Anyway: Tomorrow on this blog, we start our regular countdown of Twelve Days of Christmas Videos as well as Eight Days of Hanukkah Videos. Nice of them to start the same day this year, isn't it? And now, for the last time ever on this blog (probably), here's "My Simple Christmas Wish." This time, it's interpreted and rendered helpless by Perez Hilton, who seemed determined to give us the gayest version ever…