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John Waters brings his own brand of Christmas cheer to Lou Lou's Jungle Room
"It's the kind of place where the weather belies the underground."
Still from 1973's Wicked, Wicked with the Hotel Del in the background.
He filmed a 300-pound transvestite eating dog manure. He made a movie about a guy with a singing asshole. He filmed two folks having sex — with a chicken in between them. So perhaps you can imagine something of what John Waters — countercultural filmmaker, author, gleefully filthy raconteur par excellence — will be bringing to town with his annual Christmas show, happening December 8 and 9 at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room in the Lafayette Hotel.
“Oh, it’s got everything!” exclaims the long-running Prince of Puke. “It’s got How To Be Political at Christmas, How to Have Christmas Sex, How To Deal With The Weather At Christmas, How To Be A Tinsel Terrorist, How To Deal With Old Age, Christmas Travel, How To Deal With Your Family. It’s a rant and a sermon.”
Upcoming Event
John Waters Christmas
- Monday, December 8, 2025, 7:30 p.m.
- Lafayette Hotel, Swim Club & Bungalows, 2223 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego
- Age Limit: Not available
Upcoming Event
John Waters Christmas
- Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 7:30 p.m.
- Lafayette Hotel, Swim Club & Bungalows, 2223 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego
- Age Limit: Not available
The tour takes him all across the lower 48, but Waters confesses a special fondness for the City in Motion. “First of all I used to play at the Casbah, the punk rock club, which I absolutely loved. I’m great friends with Justin Pearson, who is your city's greatest punk singer/star/record producer/record releaser. We previewed Cry-Baby there" — by this, he means the musical based on his film — "before it opened on Broadway. So I spent a lot of time there. It’s the kind of place where the weather belies the underground. There’s a gritty underground, which you would not think of a place that’s so goddamn nice all the time.”
While he can’t remember ever laying his head on a pillow in the Hotel del Coronado (“They don’t put me on an island, I gotta get to the airport at five in the morning”), he’s pleased as punch to learn one of his favorite movies got filmed there: 1973’s Wicked, Wicked, a Psycho/Phantom of the Opera mashup featuring a somewhat innovative if forgotten split-screen technique called “Duo-Vision.” “I love that! That is the weirdest thing that you said that. My best friend Pat Moran — who’s been in my movies, she’s a casting agent that’s won Emmys for The Wire — her daughter, I took when she was a baby, like six years old, I took her to see Wicked, Wicked. And we called her that, Wicked Wicked. She doesn’t know it, I hope she doesn’t see this, but I’m giving her the one sheet [film poster] that I just found, for Christmas. So how’s that for a backstory?”
Waters won’t be performing music in his Lou Lou’s shows, but he’s celebrating the season with his third Christmas single on the Sub Pop label. “Happy Birthday Jesus,” a treacly bedside prayer performed by a small child known only as Little Cindy, is a favorite of his from decades past, although he can’t quite remember when he heard it for the first time. “That song is very Southern, and I lived in Baltimore, but I didn’t live that far South. But I did hear it later. And I was obsessed by it! Even when I recorded it, I make the same mistake that she does. She stumbles over one word, and I do it too, on purpose.”
Video:
Little Cindy: "Happy Birthday, Jesus"
He’s guided by a strong sense of cheese, but not exclusively. “Well, I covered the barking dogs singing ‘Jingle Bells,’ which is really ludicrous. I like to do covers of novelty songs that became novelty songs without wanting to be one. Little Cindy was done seriously, and if there’s anybody I would pray with, it would be with her.”
For the new single’s flipside, he threw in “The Night Before Christmas” performed in Pig Latin, a long-running children’s jargon (not a proper language) which places the beginning of each word at the back end, then throws in an “ay” at the very end. “It was really hard to record that correctly. I had to get my assistant to watch every word. She did not know how to speak Pig Latin, but she grew up in a different country, so she picks up languages really well.”
Video:
John Waters: "Happy Birthday, Jesus"
“My mother used to talk Pig Latin to my father, so that we didn’t know what they were saying. But then she taught me it. So, even in Pink Flamingos, they skip along singing ‘We are the filthiest people alive’ in Pig Latin. We couldn’t get it right, ‘cause they had to get it in one take. We did so many shots. And I think Edith answers the phone in Polyester ‘Ello-hay?’ So I’ve always just had Pig Latin as some sort of nonsensical language. It’s the only foreign language I could speak.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
John Waters brings his own brand of Christmas cheer to Lou Lou's Jungle Room
"It's the kind of place where the weather belies the underground."
John Waters brings his own brand of Christmas cheer to Lou Lou's Jungle Room
"It's the kind of place where the weather belies the underground."
Still from 1973's Wicked, Wicked with the Hotel Del in the background.
He filmed a 300-pound transvestite eating dog manure. He made a movie about a guy with a singing asshole. He filmed two folks having sex — with a chicken in between them. So perhaps you can imagine something of what John Waters — countercultural filmmaker, author, gleefully filthy raconteur par excellence — will be bringing to town with his annual Christmas show, happening December 8 and 9 at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room in the Lafayette Hotel.
“Oh, it’s got everything!” exclaims the long-running Prince of Puke. “It’s got How To Be Political at Christmas, How to Have Christmas Sex, How To Deal With The Weather At Christmas, How To Be A Tinsel Terrorist, How To Deal With Old Age, Christmas Travel, How To Deal With Your Family. It’s a rant and a sermon.”
Upcoming Event
John Waters Christmas
- Monday, December 8, 2025, 7:30 p.m.
- Lafayette Hotel, Swim Club & Bungalows, 2223 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego
- Age Limit: Not available
Upcoming Event
John Waters Christmas
- Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 7:30 p.m.
- Lafayette Hotel, Swim Club & Bungalows, 2223 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego
- Age Limit: Not available
The tour takes him all across the lower 48, but Waters confesses a special fondness for the City in Motion. “First of all I used to play at the Casbah, the punk rock club, which I absolutely loved. I’m great friends with Justin Pearson, who is your city's greatest punk singer/star/record producer/record releaser. We previewed Cry-Baby there" — by this, he means the musical based on his film — "before it opened on Broadway. So I spent a lot of time there. It’s the kind of place where the weather belies the underground. There’s a gritty underground, which you would not think of a place that’s so goddamn nice all the time.”
While he can’t remember ever laying his head on a pillow in the Hotel del Coronado (“They don’t put me on an island, I gotta get to the airport at five in the morning”), he’s pleased as punch to learn one of his favorite movies got filmed there: 1973’s Wicked, Wicked, a Psycho/Phantom of the Opera mashup featuring a somewhat innovative if forgotten split-screen technique called “Duo-Vision.” “I love that! That is the weirdest thing that you said that. My best friend Pat Moran — who’s been in my movies, she’s a casting agent that’s won Emmys for The Wire — her daughter, I took when she was a baby, like six years old, I took her to see Wicked, Wicked. And we called her that, Wicked Wicked. She doesn’t know it, I hope she doesn’t see this, but I’m giving her the one sheet [film poster] that I just found, for Christmas. So how’s that for a backstory?”
Waters won’t be performing music in his Lou Lou’s shows, but he’s celebrating the season with his third Christmas single on the Sub Pop label. “Happy Birthday Jesus,” a treacly bedside prayer performed by a small child known only as Little Cindy, is a favorite of his from decades past, although he can’t quite remember when he heard it for the first time. “That song is very Southern, and I lived in Baltimore, but I didn’t live that far South. But I did hear it later. And I was obsessed by it! Even when I recorded it, I make the same mistake that she does. She stumbles over one word, and I do it too, on purpose.”
Video:
Little Cindy: "Happy Birthday, Jesus"
He’s guided by a strong sense of cheese, but not exclusively. “Well, I covered the barking dogs singing ‘Jingle Bells,’ which is really ludicrous. I like to do covers of novelty songs that became novelty songs without wanting to be one. Little Cindy was done seriously, and if there’s anybody I would pray with, it would be with her.”
For the new single’s flipside, he threw in “The Night Before Christmas” performed in Pig Latin, a long-running children’s jargon (not a proper language) which places the beginning of each word at the back end, then throws in an “ay” at the very end. “It was really hard to record that correctly. I had to get my assistant to watch every word. She did not know how to speak Pig Latin, but she grew up in a different country, so she picks up languages really well.”
Video:
John Waters: "Happy Birthday, Jesus"
“My mother used to talk Pig Latin to my father, so that we didn’t know what they were saying. But then she taught me it. So, even in Pink Flamingos, they skip along singing ‘We are the filthiest people alive’ in Pig Latin. We couldn’t get it right, ‘cause they had to get it in one take. We did so many shots. And I think Edith answers the phone in Polyester ‘Ello-hay?’ So I’ve always just had Pig Latin as some sort of nonsensical language. It’s the only foreign language I could speak.”
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