Mainlining Christmas

It's Thanksgiving, and we at Mainlining Christmas would like to take a moment to tell you what we're most thankful for this year, as we settle down with family to enjoy this glorious holiday.   Just kidding - everyone knows there's no such thing as Thanksgiving; not anymore.  No, today is actually the Thursday before Black Friday.  This is a day of rest before the official start of the Christmas shopping season.  Even most retailer stores are closed today, so they can force their workers to come in at midnight and start setting up.   Yes, today is a day to kick back, eat some food, so you'll have energy tomorrow, and try to trick your loved ones into telling you what they want for Christmas (this is why families traditionally come together on the day before Black Friday, by the way).  It's a day to fire up the old computer and search for deals on Amazon, before they start selling out of DVD sets and iPads.   So get your shopping plans in order, your cars

And all through the city, the workers were hopping, so the parade would be pretty. So sue me, I'm no poet.  As we are missing the parade due to travel this year, I dropped by the neighborhood the day before, to take some pictures of the set-up. As I walked toward Macys from the south, I could see that Broadway was blocked off in front of the store. Here's a closer look, the street was filled with trailers and support vehicles. More Pictures after the jump!

If you thought you'd have to wait a while for something "worse than the Star Wars Christmas Special," have I got a surprise for you.  I stumbled across this dubbed version of an Mexican production from 1959 on Netflix. They also have an Mystery Science Theater 3000 version.  I haven't seen that just yet, but we're planning to get around to it next. What really concerns me - what horrifies me - is that Netflix predicted I'd consider this a three-star movie. I kind of wish I'd visited Wikipedia before watching this instead of afterward, so I'd have known it ranks on the IMDB's top 100 worst movies of all time list . For the record, I would still have watched it; I just wouldn't have done so sober. This is more a morality play than a movie.  Santa is a clear stand-in for Jesus, who gets name-dropped once or twice.  The moral of the story isn't exactly nuanced: do good, and you'll be rewarded in the end - this is actually stated

This is an experiment.  And we are the guinea pigs. This experiment is about Christmas.  More specifically, it is about the Christmas season, running from Black Friday through December 25th.  It's not unusual to hear people lament that, during this stretch, the commercialism and trappings are inescapable. This is, of course, untrue. There are numerous escapes from the holidays.  There are shelters in our homes.  We can turn the channel when a special comes on.  And, no matter how hard radio stations try, no one is actually forced to listen to Christmas music 24-7. Christmas, while certainly obtrusive, is not all encompassing.  But what if it were? What if someone went the entire time between Thanksgiving and Christmas listening to nothing but Christmas music?  What would happen to the human mind if it were not merely exposed to a scattered selection of Christmas specials, but if it were force fed hour after hour of Christmas movies, specials, and episodes? What is the p