Mainlining Christmas

I love Pippi Longstocking, although my love has not led me to actually read the source material or seek out other media about the character. My love is mostly confined to the 19 88 movie being a major part of my childhood. If my childhood had instead contained the 19 98 animated series, I might not have the same affection for the character. Not that this was actively bad. It was just boring, and these days boring is the death knell for Christmas media for us. The opening credits, despite being a bit too long, led us to hope for some sort of adventure or excitement. No dice. The entire plot was about two thieves (recurring characters) trying to steal money so they can have food and a place to stay on Christmas. They have no money, and they try various schemes, first to try to make enough to get dinner and go to a hotel, and later they just try to get arrested so they’ll have someplace warm to sleep. They get caught, or almost get caught, Pippi makes an odd excuse for them, all...

It's hard to overstate how big Seinfeld was in the 90's. It was the top sitcom for four years and the top TV show for two. The subject matter was surprisingly adult for its time slot, and among geeks, it offered a rare opportunity to see our interests cross over with mainstream entertainment. While Jerry himself was Jewish, the series had several Christmas episodes, often exploring the holiday without even a hint of sentimentality or nostalgia. That alone makes these stand out from the norm. I felt like the show held up well on a new viewing. While the jokes of course weren't as fresh as when I first heard them, most of them remain funny. The exceptions were Jerry's monologues, which came off more dated. But those weren't more than a few minutes of any episode, anyway. If you're too young to have seen these, it might be worth checking out a few episodes. I didn't feel like any of the Christmas episodes were required holiday viewing (though a case cou...

Something about the old-fashioned radio design on this thing appeals to me. I haven't seen the made-for-TV movie it's tied to yet - and the trailers look awful - but the idea of a role-play radio to the Northpole intrigued me. I found this at a Walgreens on sale a day or two before last Christmas and picked it up. Here's the try-it feature as it's set up in the store: The intention here is for kids to plausibly believe the communicator is connecting them with the North Pole. It's hard to say whether or not it'll accomplish that, but they put some effort into selling the effect. This comes with instructions in a sealed envelope intended for adults. Naturally, the contents provide some info on the man behind the curtain. Or in this case, the simplistic recordings. The communicator is pretty simple in execution. It contains 25 separate recordings, one each for December 1st through 25th. Once it's set up, you start it by turning the knob, as if ...

Forbidden Fruit (Corinna Chapman Mysteries, Book 5) Kerry Greenwood, 2009 Premise: It's Christmas with the staff of Heavenly Pleasures and the inhabitants of Insula. Time for heat waves, bands of roving hippies, and a family with a lost daughter and a very dark secret… ( Previously reviewed: Book One ) I’ve read all of this series. Yes, I only reviewed the first one until now, (although ironically, the first one was probably the weakest) but I had to come back to blog for Christmas! It's funny, but for all the different media we've consumed for the mainlining Christmas project, this year might be the first time we’ve done anything conspicuously set in the southern hemisphere. Australia is hot at Christmastime, and yet the holiday comes on all the same, with all the crowds and obnoxious music and such. Corinna’s commentary on the holiday season is especially fun. The two plots Corrina and her friends are investigating this time around are not as high stakes as s...

BoJack Horseman is a Netflix animated series about a washed-up actor with a horse's head who had a successful sitcom a few decades earlier. I have, to date, seen exactly one episode, and that's this one. After watching it, I have no plans to watch any more. To be fair, it was difficult to get a read on the series from just the Christmas special, which - based on episode descriptions on Wikipedia - seems to be extremely different from the rest of the show. This one almost entirely consisted of two characters watching a Christmas episode of BoJack's old show. Given the premise is that the sitcom in question was abysmal, you can probably guess how that went. The frame story just focused on BoJack and his roommate at Christmas. BoJack's depressed, his roommate eats giant candy canes, and... that's about all you get until the end, when BoJack suddenly realizes the importance of spending the holiday with someone. Heart warming, I know. The sitcom episode concern...

After some careful consideration, Lindsay and I agree that Krampus is our second favorite dark comedy/horror/fantasy movie released this year that features the famous Christmas demon. To be fair, there was some stiff competition . Honestly, Krampus is only nominally comedy or horror - I'd describe the film as a fairy tale before referring to either of those genres. And fairy tale is where Krampus's strength lies: it's a fantasy about Christmas magic and the darker implications of that concept. In realizing this side of the holidays, the movie employs some amazingly beautiful visuals. When we first set eyes on Krampus, we're too busy staring in awe to be afraid. Which doesn't mean there aren't some jump scares and the like. But there's less horror than wonder, even when the things on screen are anything but friendly. The movie opens somewhat gratuitously on dramatized imagery of shoppers battling each other for sales. It's here both to establish t...

We came across a crappy-looking DVD titled, "Chanuka & Passover at Bubbe's" on a shelf of Chanukah (/Chanuka/Hanukkah) books at the local library and decided to throw ourselves on the grenade and save some poor kids from the experience. Naturally, we didn't bother watching the Passover section (we're Mainlining Christmas, not Mainlining Easter), but we sat through the forty-two minutes of low-rent puppetry constituting the Chanukah portion. I should mention that this thing has neither a Wikipedia page nor an IMDB entry, though it seems to be up on YouTube (at least at the moment), and it has at least one fan . We're not 100% sure of the date - the end of the credits cites 1988, but we're not actually sure whether that's when it was released, aired, or finished. Like a lot of children's entertainment, this is more premise than plot. It centers around two puppet children bringing their friend to their grandmother's for Chanukah. For rea...