Vince Vance and the Valiants – “All I Want For Christmas Is You”

  We start out by zooming in on one of those holiday snow-globe things, with the bits of white whirling around a house that is really cute, which means it’s probably located in a subdivision that we can’t afford. Then we transition to a real house, with the camera plunging through one of the windows where the individual panes have all been artfully primed with fake snow by a set designer that clearly has never been in an actual snowstorm where the temperatures are negative and the howling wind can freeze and snap your nose hairs off in less than a second.

  But it’s all good once we get inside, with a lovely Christmas tree decorated in a vaguely Martha-Stewart way, and we get our first glimpse of the woman singing the song. (I should probably advise you that you shouldn’t get used to her current outfit, because she changes it at least 47 times throughout the video, a clear sign that she has focus issues.) But right now she’s all dressed in white, which is probably a lie, and she’s happily emoting as she fondles the fireplace mantle and performs some minimalist choreography as she sashays her way over to the window that doesn’t look like one you would find in a real place where they get snow.

  Cut to somewhere else, with somebody jacking around with some calendars on a desk. Then we get another angle on the goings on, and we can see Vince Vance is sitting at that desk and squirming about in an overly-caffeinated way. It’s very easy to distinguish Vince from the other set props. He’s the one with the alarming hairdo that kinder people might call “beehive” but I’m gonna have to stick with the facts and say “suppository stapled to head”.

  Then we zip to another place, one where Vince is apparently some type of perfume salesman. At least I think he is. (It’s hard to pay attention with all the distractions on the set, like the odd jacket Vince is wearing that seems to have been attacked by metal house numbers.) There are two women on the other side of the display case who are piling up boxes of merchandise on top of the counter with feverish intensity, oohing and ahhing over each little box as if each of them has been personally touched by Jesus.

  Vince turns to the camera and acts as if he’s been overwhelmed by this display of rampant consumerism, but I’m thinking Vince should be more concerned about his hairdo and his savagely-accessorized jacket, either of which could cause a citation to be issued by the city Code Compliance division.

  Then we cut back to Happy Singing Lady (Let’s call her Phoebe. Some say it’s Lisa Layne, who does the actual vocals on the song, and some say it’s another singer/actress. I’m not Facebook friends with any of these people, so I’m officially claiming ignorance and going with a pseudonym in case judicial issues arise.) Phoebe is in the midst of singing to a tree ornament, which is a good call if you don’t want your audience to talk back and critique your performance. She does this for a bit, then plops the ornament on the tree, so we can see that it contains some type of hologram of Vince.

  Wait, is Phoebe in love with the Suppository Man? (Which reminds me of Phoebe Snow and “The Poetry Man”, a mid-70’s song about angst and rhyming couplets, but we’ll just have to assume that there’s no connection because that would take the oddness to a level that none of us are prepared to contemplate.) Phoebe launches herself away from the Christmas tree, allowing us to gander upon her new outfit which looks like something Shirley Temple would have worn on The Good Ship Lollypop. Then Phoebe collapses on a couch that someone has handily placed nearby.

  Cut to a shot of Vince also collapsing, in his House of Perfumes, apparently because the bill he is writing up for the Jesus-touched eau de toilette ladies has numbers beyond his computational skills. As he sprawls on the ground, four people lean in to study both his drama-queen antics and the possibility that his hair could be used to reinforce the foundation of the store. (If you pause at 1:18, you can see that these four are: the lead singer of Wang Chung, Jane Wiedlin from The Go-Go’s, a Santa with a crappy beard made out of Cool Whip, and Laura from “General Hospital”, during the “Luke and Laura” period when her choice of stylist was more important than the plot. Just kidding. Sort of.)

  Back to Phoebe, who has changed clothes again and is now perched on a staircase that leads to… probably Venice Beach, because they don’t have real snow there, either. Brief shot of Vince doing something in that odd office of his, then we have a scene where Phoebe (yet another outfit) is receiving gifts from a deliveryman with an identity crisis. She quickly shoos him away so she can go sing to the tree again, an important thing to do when your current sweater matches the color of said tree.

  Then we wander into a series of scenes that I don’t really get, which I suppose shouldn’t really surprise me, but I try to keep the faith and support artists in their choices even if it scares me. This has something to do with Vince and his hair picking out women’s apparel that was only attractive for about 30 seconds in 1992 between the presidencies of The First Bush and Clinton. These outfits (in name only) are then delivered by the psychotic deliveryman to yet-another-sweater Phoebe, who sings to one of the packages until Vince appears in the wrapping paper, using sign language to express his devotion to the fair Phoebe.

  This is the part where I should probably start drinking.

  Now we have a bit where a saxophonist is displaying his prowess whilst standing next to one of those Salvation Army bucket-collection people. I’ll refrain from saying anything about the Salvation Army (people don’t like to hear that they are anti-gay, which understandably bugs me) or anything about the saxophonist (because I mistakenly did NOT recognize Clarence Clemmons in a Lady Gaga video a while back, which led to a comment chain that would make you think that I am Hitler’s offspring). We’ll just let these folks do what they need to do and wait for Phoebe to put on another fetching blouse.

  And, eventually, there Phoebe is, advertising a spangly top matched with white trousers, sitting the wrong way at a piano and fighting to keep her suddenly-voluminous hair from taking over the scene. This kicks off a montage of Vince doing… I don’t know. Something about picking out fur coats (you shouldn’t, shout-out to PETA), spazzing out in his office full of presents for Phoebe (you shouldn’t, because it just doesn’t read well on the screen), and not letting landscape workers take care of that hair with a weed-eater (you should, end of story).

  Now we’re back to Phoebe, but we can’t see her couture at the moment because she’s staring out one of the window panes with the fake snow sprayed in a pattern that does not happen in nature. Then we have a short bit with presents being shoved under a tree (do these people really think that Phoebe needs more clothes?), followed by more shots of Vince…. well, not sure what he’s doing, but it appears to involve him channeling Martin Short and giving a show to young children who don’t really know who Vince or Martin might be, but they are well-behaved enough to smile politely and wait for someone to arrive with a tray of milk and cookies.

  Next up is another shot of the hopefully-medicated deliveryman starting to offer Phoebe yet another festive present, but then lurching out of the way so Vince can waltz in and offer himself up as the latest gift. (If you study the architecture above the door, you can clearly see that they had to raise the door opening, and the entire first floor of the house, an additional three feet so all of Vince’s hair could arrive at the same time. I’m sure the actual owners of the house were a bit pissy about that until someone cut them a check.)

  Phoebe and Vince embrace, with both of them being careful to avoid lacerations to the face from Vince’s dramatic and lethal hair, and then they both focus on the snow-white puppy dog that Vince has thoughtfully brought along for his muse and her fluid wardrobe. They both quickly retire to the couch, because everyone knows that Vince can’t be expected to stand very long before the weight of his hair causes a hernia. And that’s where we wrap things up, with Vince and Phoebe bonding over a docile pooch who is a clear professional and knows better than to lick himself unless it’s in the script.

  But it’s a given that Fido is secretly eyeing Vince’s coif. He knows there’s got to be some kind of doggie treat shoved up in that mess. He just has to wait another 17 seconds for Phoebe to wander away for another costume change, and then the game is on, and Vince better start running…

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