This week’s blog post is by The Paternity Test co-host Matt Boresi, who lives in the Edgewater Glen neighborhood of Chicago with his wife (“Professor Foster”) and their 5-year-old daughter, Viva, who would happily take part in a Krampuslauf down Lake Shore Drive if someone would get the permits.
Dear Krampus,
I think we can all agree that Horned Teutonic folk goblins don’t get the respect they deserve. This time of year, you are crazy busy whipping naughty Bavarian children with birch switches and carting misbehaving Tyrolian moppets off to hell, while Santa Claus gets all the cookies and Tim Allen movies.
But we appreciate you, Herr Krampus.
Sure, your better known administrator, St. Nick, distributes bugles and wooden trains all over the Christian-osphere, but he isn’t willing to do the dirty work. You’ve been eating disobedient children from Oberbayern to Croatia to Piedmont for more than 1,500 years.
That is why I write to you every year and give you a list of fractious and froward individuals and groups who are deserving of a punitive visit from an Alpine monstrosity. This year, my 5-year-old daughter, Viva, has asked to write the list with me. The following parties seem far too obstreperous for us and we would like it if you could arrange some sort of reckoning:
Fake news creators
“John Podesta sells babies from the back of a DC Pizza Place.” “Obama’s last executive order: Sharia Law.” “Electors meet to appoint Bernie Sanders President of Dank Memes.”
Phony baloney news sites and highly partisan nonsense shared on social media are the gateway to Putin’s boot on the neck of western democracy. If you could jam Bannon, Drudge, Alex Jones, AddictingInfo, Occupy Democrats and all the rest into your bag and haul them off, it’d do us all a world of good. Take Andy Borowitz, too. He doesn’t know how jokes work.
Wasps, hornets, scorpions and lobsters
Viva wonders if you could round up some arthropods for her. They give her the heebie-jeebies; especially the stinging and venomous kind. She’s pretty sure lobsters don’t sting, but there’s no way they don’t pinch.
The Grim Reaper
Can folkloric demons fight other folkloric demons? Because a certain scythe-wielding Ghost Rider knockoff took Bowie, Prince, Professor Snape, Mrs. Brady, Chekhov and Harambe when we really needed them.
Big game hunting sandwich barons (and other evil oligarchs)
Viva recently overheard that Illinois least favorite son, “Jimmy John” Liautaud, does more than make sandwiches with too much bread, he also hunts endangered animals in areas of Africa with loose laws about this kind of thing. Lots of people hunt, but can’t we agree hunting rhinos is a Krampus-bait move? She heard about his questionable labor practices, but that didn’t have quite the same impact on a preschooler. She thought perhaps you would like to give him the old “Most Dangerous Game Treatment” for a few hours. And while you’re chasing robber barons, take a run at price-gouging pharma-bro Martin Shkeli, or a few of those DeVos folks.
Jimmy Fallon
Look, Krampus, I know some people find his stammering everyman schtick to be charming, but no one has ever failed up like this giggling talent vacuum. On top of softballing Trump, his stain has pretty much ruined the Hamilton mixtape. I’m sure you have room in your sack for him.
Animate puddles of V8 Splash with a Twitter account and possession of the nuclear codes
Take him. You have a few weeks left to save the world. Viva says, “Please!”
We hope you will take note of the above, and we also hope that we have been good this year so that you don’t enter our homes on cloven hooves and take us away to be eaten or drowned.
Oh, and we’ve left some schnapps for you on the mantle–enjoy.
Frohe Krampusnacht,
Matt and Viva
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