Hilarity Pile: Kelly Clarkson’s Game of Thrones Christmas card, Sesame Street meets GoT on Jimmy Kimmel (shell)

With interest in the show higher than it’s ever been, the internet can usually be counted on to provide a steady stream of Game of Thrones-themed curiosities. We’ve got a couple of doozies.

First up, pop star Kelly Clarkson has put out a pretty epic Game of Thrones-themed Christmas card. You wouldn’t normally think that Game of Thrones and Christmas cards would go well together, given that the latter are supposed to be placid and pleasant while the former is full of death and horror, but I think Clarkson’s family pulls it off.

If you’re wondering, “Blackstock” is the name of Clarkson’s husband. That’s a good thing, because “Blackstock” sounds way more like a Game of Thrones-style house name than “Clarkson.” Anyway, this is easily one of the moodiest Christmas cards I’ve ever seen, and I appreciate the lengths they must have gone to to make it happen—those costumes couldn’t have come cheap.

Elsewhere in things that shouldn’t be paired with Game of Thrones but are, Jimmy Kimmel put together a sketch combining dialogue from the Hound’s infamous chicken speech with video from Sesame Street. Behold:

The mashup was inspired by the news that HBO will be getting first-run episodes of Sesame Street starting next month. You can decide for yourself if this is better or worse than the time Sesame Street parodied the show directly with Game of Chairs.

Finally, Reddit commenter m777z had some interesting thoughts on the release date of The Winds of Winter. He pointed out that 131 days passed between when George R.R. Martin announced the release date for A Dance with Dragons (March 3, 2011) and when it hit store shelves (July 12, 2011). Assuming that an equal amount of time will pass before the announcement and release of The Winds of Winter, Martin should have said something yesterday if he wanted the book to hit store shelves before the premiere of Game of Thrones Season 6.

Yesterday came and went without an announcement, but it did inspire Reddit commenter Fat Walda to to rewrite the lyrics to Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” into a lament for the crushing disappointment A Song of Ice and Fire fans feel whenever they get excited about the potential release of the next book only to be let down.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because the weirwood softly creaking
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that it planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the Winds of Winter

A Dream of Spring, Gurm only knows
How the writing schedule goes
But if book six is on its way
Then surely it should be announced today
And my heart was stabbed by a flash of a tweet unsent
That split the net
About the Winds of Winter

And in the reddit thread I saw
Ten thousand users, maybe more
People upvoting without thinking
People hyping without listening
People craving books that translators claimed to get
But no one yet
Had read the Winds of Winter

“Fools,” said I, “you do not know
Hyping like a cancer grows
Read my blog that I might teach you
See my stats that I might reach you”
But my posts like silent raindrops fell
And echoed on the blogs and twitter

And the readers bowed and prayed
To that author-god they made
The not-a-blog flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the post said “The Wild Cards Anthology will come out on the third of May.”
And he did slay
Our hype for Winds of Winter

And THEN Fat Walda’s lyrics inspired Reddit commenter A_K_o_V_A to sing the song with his acoustic guitar!

Sometimes the internet is a wonderful place. Random acts of fan collaboration like this almost take the sting out of the fact that Season 6 is rapidly approaching with no release date for The Winds of Winter in sight. I mean, they doesn’t, but kudos to everyone involved in this chain of delightful events.

h/t  Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly