Mainlining Christmas

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holidays Spirits Les Standiford, 2008 Premise: The story behind the story of A Christmas Carol. This historical Christmas book included both some really interesting parts and a few things that I've read a dozen times by now. Overall it was pretty enjoyable. If you are a literary type and you want to read only one Christmas history, this would be a great choice. The best parts were Dickens' personal and professional history, including the details of the development of the story and the publication business of the time. There are some details about attempted plagiarism that were especially entertaining. I enjoyed the portrayal of Dickens' attitudes about Christmas and the impact of A Christmas Carol. The author's affection for both the book and the history is very clear, and the writing maintains a good balance between compelling writing and educatio...

The things we do for your amusement. Seriously, I have a soft spot for Hostess Cupcakes and will occasionally treat myself. These special holiday pastries are... less of a treat. Do you like sugar? I mean, REALLY like sugar? These are at least a cheap source. The boxes were both fine, if generic. Both adequately conveyed the "holiday" aesthetic, although I'm still trying to scrub the cupcake mascot from my brain. The Twinkies are pretty - a nice dark red color. They look moist and sweet, and I was intrigued by the promise of peppermint. Unfortunately, the peppermint was more of a hint than a full flavor. Mostly the cake still just tasted of the corn syrup/imitation vanilla that is characteristic of mass-produced cake. I also found it slightly disturbing that the case felt slightly greasy in my fingers, yet dry in my mouth. I mean, I still ate it, but it concerned me. The cupcakes were even more of a straight sugar-shot to the arteries. The ca...

Sometimes the best way to tell where you stand with someone is the quality of the gift they give. Is is thoughtful? Is it well-chosen? For the holiday, this pile of garbage got you a clip show. The episode opens with the castaways listening to a little Christmas music on the radio. Gilligan makes a wish that they would be rescued for the holiday. Just then, an announcement breaks into a broadcast. A rescue ship is heading for the island to save them! (Why this is on the general radio is sort of unclear, although there's some hand-waving about it being a holiday-timed human interest story.) They bustle about to create a signal fire, and, as they are expecting to be rescued any minute, begin reminiscing about their first day on the island. Cue the flashbacks. To be fair, my internet research indicates that some of this was footage from the pilot and some was reshot because the cast changed after the initial pilot was filmed. Apparently the pilot was never aired during the ori...

Santa's Husband is a children's book where the Plump Jolly Old Elf is portrayed as a black man who's so busy, his white husband fills in for him at the mall, leading to some confusion as to his identity. If that premise doesn't intrigue you, you're reading the wrong blog. I stumbled across a link to an interview with the writer , Daniel Kibblesmith, that included some shots of AP Quach's artwork. Between those and the description, I was sold. The book is thirty-two pages, and there's no real plot or story. It's more a series of kid-friendly pictures coupled with text introducing you to Mr. Claus, Santa's husband. Like a lot of children's books, it reads like a series of comic vignettes. It's a fantastic reimagining of Santa and his operation, and the relationship between Santa and Mr. Claus is sweet and touching. Towards the end, it offers a brief introduction to multicultural holiday traditions that's refreshingly diverse. ...

This review is yet another in our long and prestigious series on crap we found clearanced for damn near nothing - this display piece was left lingering in the clearance aisle of K-Mart into January. While there may not have been room in the inn for this decoration, there was space in our closet. Lemax does a lot of miniature pieces, some of which make decent stand-ins for table-top gaming and toy displays. I considered this a pretty nice find: these usually sell pretty well, in my experience. If I'm remembering right, this one was going for 75% off, which felt like a deal, even with one of the lambs broken off ( Little lamb, who broke thee? / Dost thou know who broke thee? ). Here's the piece out of its packaging with the broken lamb put back together again. We'll pretend I glued it down instead of just balancing it on its broken feet. First reactions: this isn't a bad piece overall. The grassy display and manger look good, as does the fence. The back of the...

The day after Black Friday is always bittersweet. Not because of those who are trampled to death by throngs of rabid shoppers (there's no need to grieve - those who fall on Black Friday will rise again in Valhalla's Megamart, the greatest of all fates), but because we know we'll have to wait an entire year before the next. As you've probably guessed, these photos are from our semi-annual Black Friday Party, where we offer friends a place to rest before they head out for a final round of shopping (we assume). We gathered together, shared some laughs, and reflected on the true meaning of the holiday. Turns it it's consumerism. If you had consumerism on your scorecard, congratulations - you're a winner. But as much as we'd love to hold onto this moment, Black Friday also serves as a reminder: there's only 395 shopping days until Christmas 2018 (I'm assuming everyone's already prepared for this Christmas - otherwise you're i...

Why Him? is a raunchy farcical version of a story the movie industry loves to tell over and over: father disapproves of daughter's boyfriend, shenanigans ensue. In this case, the father is played by Bryan Cranston, and he's the owner of a now-struggling printing business, while the boyfriend, played by James Franco, is an eccentric self-made app-store mogul. The daughter (Zoey Deutch) gets her family to visit her and the boyfriend in California for Christmas, and awkwardness follows. Franco's character swears unstoppably and is emotionally needy, relentlessly sexual, and socially clueless. Once the father finds out that the boyfriend intends to propose and the daughter is contemplating dropping out of school to run a nonprofit the boyfriend will supposedly fund, he goes into a progressive freakout where his attempts to undermine and find evidence against the younger man provoke an all-out breakdown. All this between jokes about complex high-tech toilets, too-realistic...