There's a door at the back of your mind. Do you open it? A strange little boy approaches you to tell you he sleeps in cars because he's bad. How quickly do you phone for help? These and other questions asked and, more or less, answered in this spoken word episode of HARK, featuring "Faith In Santa" performed by Hermann Lammers Meyer and "The Train" by Celestial Navigations. In case you can't tell, this one was kind of a trip.

We missed National Dog Day, but every week is a good week to celebrate our furry friends. Right? Come with us on this. We listened to two songs about pets, "Christmas Is Going to the Dogs" by Eels and "It's Hard to Be a Cat On Christmas" by Cats Across America, and it, you know, could have gone worse. It didn't go great.

With one week left until September, it's back to school season! Hear us stroll down memory lane with Christmas songs by bands that bring us back to our own school days, "Christmas at the Zoo" by The Flaming Lips and "It's Christmas Time" by Yo La Tengo.

Friend of the show Andy has served us with another request - this time for what could be the worst of all versions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah": a Nativity/Good Friday centric cover by The Osmonds, recorded in the Year of our Lord 2015. To cleanse our palates, we then listened to Rufus Wainwright's "Spotlight on Christmas". Hallelujah.

This week on HARK we return to a musical genre we haven't heard in a while - hip-hop - and do we even have to tell you at this point that the results were mixed? RJ adores the lollygagging "Landy In my Eggnog" by Bad Lucc enough for the both of us, while our opinions are more united on the brief but baffling "Hanukkah (My Favorite Time of the Year)" by Too $hort,

This week we take a request from a dear friend who wanted us to suffer through two poorly-told musical tales of Christmas disillusionment: "Where Are You Christmas?" by Faith Hill and "Silver Bells" by Kathie Lee Gifford featuring Regis Philbin. Join us on this journey through talk show banter and music video hairstyles of yesteryear. Thank you to Mindy for the request!

It's a hot one here on HARK when we cover two Christmas songs about sunshine and fun times. Also about being selfish and rubbing oil on a country music star. We listened to "Ho Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum" by Jimmy Buffett and "All I Want For Christmas Is a Real Good Tan" by Kenny Chesney, and we're still mad about it. This is the MBMBAM bit that partially inspired this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YklkGhtAFmM

This week on HARK, we're not celebrating a holiday... we're celebrating a Holliday. It's Ian's birthday! When the birthday boy is given free reign over song selection, he puts forth two familiar Christmas tunes from his childhood, the always-classic "Let It Snow" by Dean Martin and the never-classic "Christmas Dinner Country Style" by Bing Crosby.

This week, we add another language to our list - we're celebrating holiday songs in French in honor of Bastille Day! While we're not able to shed too much light on the cultural context (and our mastery of the language is... it's just the worst), join us for two very enjoyable chansons en français, "Un Flambeau, Jeanette, Isabella" as performed by Diane Taraz and "Petit Papa Noel" by Tino Rossi.

This week we cover two requests from our # 1 fan timemachine, who followed up on the theme of a previous episode which... well... you'll know which one. We discuss the genre-ruining "Santa Stole My Girlfriend" by The Maine and the surprisingly less surreal but still slightly off "Santa's Beard" by They Might Be Giants. Thanks again to timemachine for the requests!