Seasons Greetings With Added Seasoning

At first glance, it looks like yet another modern, rigorously tasteful, privately designed Christmas card. On the cover is a drawing of a Roman about to strike a gong--above a phone number in bold red ink, 213-394-6573. Inside, the printed greeting reads simply: “We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, the Peter Norton Family, Peter and Eileen, Diana, Michael.”

But wait, on the back, in small type, the card instructs: “The telephonic portion of this greeting is not active after January, 1989.” And there’s a hand-stamped come-on: “Message changed irregularly.”

Call the number and you might conclude that “Saturday Night Live’s” crazed killer bees have replaced the reindeer on Santa’s sleigh--at least for their trip to the Nortons’ house in Santa Monica this year.

Callers can hear 11 different (as in strange) messages, created by artists Marc Pally, Tim Bennett and their friends.

Among the greetings currently playing on the answering-machine medley are: “Sired by Santa” (a satirical ad for Santa’s Mail Order Sperm Bank--”a fabulous opportunity for an extended family”), “The Christmas Rap” (a rap song featuring tips on wrapping gifts) and “Party” (about 25 concurrent cocktail conversations with words such as virgin birth and Betsy Bloomingdale occasionally audible over the din). Other Norton communications include “Noel” (a musical number Pally describes as “every trashy rendition of ‘The First Noel’ from the Tijuana Brass to Montovani--it’s like visiting 12 malls simultaneously”) and “Apres-Christmas Blues” (a blues guitar-backed song on the agonies of overeating and receiving inappropriate gifts, scheduled to entertain callers between Dec. 26 and Jan. 1).

Those are the easily described messages. The others are even weirder.

Computer software entrepreneur/art patron Peter Norton explained that he decided to commission painter Pally and company to create his greeting this year after purchasing store-bought cards last year and realizing it was “really a dumb thing to do for people in the art world.”

While the Norton greeting may have set new standards for Christmas cards and perhaps even provided a new definition of the term, seasonal greetings for some time have been exceeding the typical card-and-envelope, two-dimensional format. Indeed, a small but growing number of well-wishers are expanding the notions of space and time by sending sculptural cards, video greetings, audio cassette cards, computer-chip cards that play carols and more.

The vanguard of this colorful minority may have been all those folks who began gleefully dropping a handful of shiny confetti in their greetings, much to the chagrin of those whose job it was to clean up the predictable overflow.

On the more elaborate front, some merchants are helping clients move their seasonal messages into a new dimension. For example, Ben Bercovicik of B & B Video in Northridge has shot Christmas card videos for about eight clients this year, charging from $25 for a simple three-minute video to $500 for a format requiring editing and multiple shoots.

“It’s basically a letter on video,” he said. “We can do titles at the beginning, titles at the end. We can put music over part of it and go around town if you want.”

Chris Landeen, who sells and installs fire alarms, and his wife Lea, a manicurist, recently spent $200 for Bercovicik’s services. “I dressed up like Santa . . . we went to the beach and I sat on a surfboard, waiting for the elves to come bring presents,” said Chris Landeen, who noted that Lea was dressed as Mrs. Claus in a wet suit. “We got really elaborate and said Merry Christmas to some of our relatives back East,” said Landeen, a Calabasas resident.

Shooting Around Town

Eti Klein of West Hollywood, who works part-time at a law firm, suggested to her husband, Steve, that they send out a video Christmas card. Bercovicik taped the card at the Klein’s home, at the beach, in a park and in the hills. “We just did fun things we liked . . . we had our dog with us,” said Steve Klein, an electrician. “We didn’t talk much. We just put music that we liked with it. We’re Jewish and we really don’t even celebrate Christmas that much. It was a little bit of both a Hanukkah card and a Christmas card, sort of an all-purpose holiday card.”

Audio cassette cards--once best-known as portable greetings for shipment to servicemen overseas or to friends and family members who can’t afford lengthy long-distance phone chats--are still showing up in mailboxes. For instance, offbeat pop composer-performer Mojo Nixon, best known for the song “Elvis Is Everywhere,” and performing partner Skip Roper recently sent out a card apparently created to entertain and confuse on several levels.

On the cover is a primitive drawing of a Christmas tree and the instruction to stare at it for a minute. (Nothing happens.) Inside is an audio cassette featuring a Nixon Christmas ditty set to the tune of “Louie, Louie” and another repeating the phone number for Nixon’s “Elvis Hotline” and imploring “E.P.” to phone Nixon on it (the hot line is staffed by an answering machine).

While Nixon obviously enjoys producing such gifts for his friends, the time and expense required is considerable.

Some senders of extra-dimensional cards say they have had to modify their plans to make their card projects more manageable.

The Norton family’s answering machine extravaganza, for instance, was originally interactive. After the beep, callers had a chance to respond, contributing to the art in progress. Most people just laughed and all but one response was positive, Peter Norton said. But there were so many callers that he and his wife didn’t have time to listen to all the replies. So they set the machine to not take messages at all.

But even with the cutback, Norton was so delighted with the results of this year’s telephonic Christmas card that he is already plotting next year’s.

“We’re working on a multileveled card,” is all will say about it now. “Beyond that it will have to be a surprise.”