St. Remedius Radio: “The Reason For the Season”

The All-Night Christmas Cover Show at the Matilda Theater

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

For decades, the city of Dallas, Texas was known for its winter holiday celebrations, particularly at its most prominent religious institutions: its shopping malls. Every year, malls and stores competed to recreate the best documentary about Dallas holiday events ever made, with the attendant parking lot demolition derbies, trial by combat over the last of a must-buy item, and chainsaw duels over who got access to freshly undefiled toilets in the mall restrooms. Even after the United Nations defined forcing store employees to listen to “Santa Baby” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” more than once per shopping day as torture, store music systems couldn’t be set to “11” because Corporate insisted a default of “14.” The backstory of why the Dallas holiday experience was often compared to “dying of a ruptured appendix” is a St. Remedius Medical College story on its own, but a response to a city visitor shocked that residents applauded the madness was the first known use of the phrase “Now, don’t kinkshame…”

For the most part, St. Remedius stayed apart from the general Dallas brawls. Those coming into campus-adjacent bars and restaurants and demanding Christmas music at an obnoxiously high volume were promptly thrown into the street. Students were usually either on their way home or too busy recovering from finals overload to want to celebrate, other than joining in with the annual “Walking Dead Holiday Special Singalong” (with the height being the song “Is It ‘Christmas CAROLS’ Or ‘Christmas CORALS'”), and faculty knew the inherent horrors lying underneath the college, particular the nameless detritus brought up with the dreaded sewer Yule Tides. By Christmas Eve, the only noises on campus were of lab subjects both human and otherwise, various bits of equipment processing earwax vampire metabolites, the occasional drone watching for day drunks wandering in from off-campus to put up trees and lights, and headphones and cochlear implants turned up high to drown out the mating call of the Outer Gods.

One place, though, was famed for its Christmas music, and every year the Matilda Theater prepared its All-Night Christmas Cover Show starting right at dusk. For the next 14 hours, until the sun rose on Christmas Day, the Matilda alternated running holiday horror films with live shows from some of Dallas’s best musical acts, ranging from reggae to death metal to freeform jazz. The only rule was that everything played had to be a cover, with the musician or act chosen in advance to let everyone prepare. Every attendee, and the Cover Show was always sold out months in advance, had a favorite, but most agree that the 2014 Bad News show, held in tribute to bass guitarist Colin Grigson’s tragic jenkem overdose, was the absolute high point, especially with a two-hour vocalist solo from heavy metal/ska fusion Mandatory Parker. Every December 25, though, the show ended with an effigy of local insufferable wanker music critic Benjamin Willard launched via trebuchet into the middle of Central Expressway, and everybody went home with dreams of the next year.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open, complete with playlist.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

Benjamin Willard Matilda Theater St. Remedius Radio