Okay, here's my Merry Christmas gift to everyone who doesn't read this blog: The Roches, Saturday Night Live, November 17, 1979, delivering what is probably the weirdest version of "The Hallelujah Chorus" since Luis Bunuel's Viridiana.

I remember seeing it: I was attending Southwest Baptist, it was fall break, and I was visiting a friend in Alabama for the week of Thanksgiving. The friend was Tim Callaway, who had been the youth minister at Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in St. Petersburg, Fla. After it was over he said he thought their harmonies were perfect, eventhough he was certain it was meant in total mockery.

Granted, it's a little weird to look at, and they are dressed in those funky 1970's boho clothes and all -- look at the divine (I think she's divine, anyway) Maggie on the left, doing her best Annie Hall interpretation -- and Suzzy (who seems so jacked up on amphetamines she makes Iggy pop look like Perry Como) is doing all those gyrations but otherwise, no, I doubt it was all that ironic, especially given their Christmas record, which I ought to be pulling out any day now.

Ah, the Roches. I ought to buy every record they ever made. Why don't I? (Winona Ryder in Heathers: "Coz you're an idiot, Dad.")