At Home in Hespeler

Here’s a question. Why has Mark Steyn never recorded Baby, It’s Cold Outside?* In two Christmas themed albums with Jessica Martin, Steyn has covered everything from Sweet Gingerbread Man, to It’s a Marshmallow World, from Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to Santa Clause is Coming to Town and Jingle Bells. Now with his latest CD, Goldfinger, Steyn adds Can’t Take My Eyes off You, the Very Thought of You and, implausibly, a slow jazz standard of Cat Scratch Fever (he think’s he’s got it some more, yea).

And can it be a coincidence that this CD shows up in my mailbox the same day they announce the latest Bond movie, Spectre?** His rendition of Goldfinger leads to an obvious choice to do the theme song for Spectre, and it’s not to let Madonna ruin another Bond intro. No, never mind the Mark Steyn for Senate petition that was floating around a year or so back, it’s time for a Mark Steyn for the Bond theme song movement.***

But still, Goldfinger, the seven-song CD, comes in at around 30-minutes so it seems like you could shoehorn one more in. And Jessica Martin, his favourite female foil, makes an appearance anyway, so why not drop Baby, It’s Cold Outside on to the CD? It is, after all, according to Steyn himself, the root of all Jihad. This from Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West, one of Steyn’s must own books:

What was so awful about Sayyid Qutb’s experience in America that led him to regard modernity as an abomination? Well, he went to a dance in Greeley, Colorado:

The room convulsed with the feverish music from the gramophone. Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips…

In 1949, Greeley, Colorado was dry. The dance was a church social. The feverish music was Frank Loesser’s charm song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”… It’s a useful reminder how much we could give up and still be found decadent and disgusting by the Islamists. A world without “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” will be very cold indeed.

Wow, just think how bad the war on terror would be going if Sayyid Qutb had heard Cat Scratch Fever Mark Steyn style. So the jihadists would hate Baby, It’s Cold Outside and Steyn could add his name to what is probably the only list in the world to include Rod Stewart, Buddy the Elf and Hot Lips Page.

Fortunately we have Goldfinger to enjoy, which has plenty of it’s own abomination’s of modernity.

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Update: Dec 15

Hello to readers of Mark Steyn, who has linked here for the second time. Glad to have you stop by. A couple of notes that Steyn himself has raised.

* Last week, Mr. Steyn noted he had answered that question in his song of the week: “I gave a kind of an answer a week ago, but evidently Mr Gardiner is not satisfied.” Actually, it was not a matter of satisfied or no, it was a matter of I hadn’t read that particular article yet.

** Originally I referred to the title of the movie as Smersh. Steyn is, of course, correct, the movie is “Spectre”, not Smersh. At the time of writing the post, I was reading Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love, in which SMERSH is heavily involved in a plot to kill James Bond. Apparently I had SMERSH on the mind. It is now corrected in the text, but noted here.

*** Let the record state, I agree with Mark Steyn (and Don Black) “that Shirley Bassey should sing them all”. However, far too often it is not Shirley Bassey, but Madonna or Duran Duran who does the theme, and a poor job they make of it too. I am merely submitting Steyn to get the gig in lieu of Ms. Bassey should she be unavailable.

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Track List

1. Cat Scratch Fever
2. On a Slow Boat to China
3. Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
4. De Quoi A-T-Elle L’Air Ce Soir
5. Roses of Picardy
6. Goldfinger
7. The Very Thought Of You

Mark Steyn Baby its cold outside, cat scratch fever, Goldfinger, James Bond, Mark Steyn, Spectre