Mainlining Christmas

I stumbled across a discounted series of Christmas specials at Best Buy going for $4.99, and decided to pick them up.  Along with Fat Albert's Christmas Special, some holiday themed George of the Jungle, and Casper's Haunted Christmas (along with some bonus episodes that had nothing to do with the holidays), there were a bunch of Gumby episodes, collected under the manufactured title, "Gumby's Season's Greetings."  Of these, only four actually seemed to be Christmas-related, so I put them on and skipped most of the rest*. I should mention that I know nothing about Gumby.  I think I saw a few episodes when I was a kid, but I wouldn't swear to that.  As such, I know nothing about the characters, their world, or the show's premise I couldn't gloss from these. Each "episode" was about seven minutes long.  None were particularly impressive, but a few were kind of fun.  Most of these were based on an interesting premise or joke, but, with

Part of my relationship with the Christmas season can be explained, not with food or family, but with a song. I grew up in Massachusetts. The Northeast is a good place to be for "traditional" Christmas: We usually got snow, my parents' house was set back in the trees, we had a big fireplace for Santa's presents, and there were the occasional town or school parties that actually had things like carols. However, my favorite part of my parents' Christmas tradition was driving into Boston for one night to see the lights on Boston Common and the animatronics in the store windows. We would also drive around the smaller urban areas nearby, wherever there were lighting displays and holiday music in the streets. City sidewalks, busy sidewalks Dressed in holiday style In the air, There's a feeling of Christmas My second favorite part of Christmas was music, and my favorite song since I got too old for Rudolph (at about 6) was Silver Bells. Originally it may

I never had cable growing up, so "A Disney Channel Christmas" isn't a special I'm familiar with.  Apparently, Disney has been re-cutting and adjusting this since 1958, when it was called "From All of Us to All of You."  The version I saw, expanded to a numbing hour and a half, was released in 1983 and titled "A Disney Channel Christmas." To today's viewers, most of this plays like an extended commercial for Disney DVDs.  It's easy to forget that most of the movies and clips featured wouldn't have been available for sale when this aired.  For a number of viewers, this would have served as an introduction to characters and movies they wouldn't see for years.  Now, the clips feel bizarre and esoteric.  Scenes from Pinocchio, Snow White, and Cinderella are included, despite the fact there's no discernible connection to the holidays or even winter. The shorts are far more interesting.  I particularly enjoyed "Donald's Sn

I only spent one year working in retail at Christmas.  About eight years ago, right after I finished college, I spent a year selling arts and crafts at a Michaels in western Massachusetts. There were a lot of things I hated about that job.  For one, it wasn't exactly the sort of thing I'd imagined myself doing with my degree.  Also, about one in every three customers was certifiably insane.  I once had a hippie ask me how often we had to water the artificial trees. However, I have to say that, despite everything, I really loved working around Christmas. The hours extended, so I was there until after 10 half the time.  The seasonal Christmas merchandise was coated in a layer of glitter so thick that by the end of some days I looked like I'd applied it to myself (good thing that was before the days of Twilight: I'd have hated being mistaken for a cosplayer).  And they'd play the same half dozen cheesy Christmas songs day in, day out. But frankly, if I hated th

Man, I loved this when I was a kid. We had the Disney Channel when I was little, back when it was the channel that showed wall-to-wall old Disney Cartoons and "tween" programming wasn't yet a glimmer in a marketing director's eye. I watched all the Disney Channel Holiday Specials.  There was one for Christmas, and one for Halloween hosted by the Magic Mirror from Snow White, and one for Valentine's Day, and maybe some that I'm forgetting.  They are essentially themed clip shows, but sometimes it would be the only time you would see some of these bits. There were three main types of content spliced together to make this special, so I'm going to talk about each in turn: 1) Material from Movies This is the least interesting part for me now, and I don't remember it much from watching as a kid, so maybe it bored me then too.  A few of the pieces fit the theme well, especially the skating scene from Bambi and the Waltz of the Flowers from Fantasia. 

Not to be confused with the classic "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians," this is an hour-long Christmas special about a ridiculously small group of Martians coming to Earth to blow it up. I'm assuming this was intended to be shown on television, though I'm having a hard time finding evidence it actually ever aired. There's no Wikipedia page up for the special, and the page for PorchLight Entertainment , the company which made it, reads like it was written by someone working for the company. Or their mother. All things considered, this really isn't a bad special. There are some solid jokes surrounding the Martians' misconceptions of Earth based on television broadcasts, as well as the similarities between the little green men from Mars and Christmas elves. Plus, they're ostensibly here to blow up the Earth, which always makes for good comedy. The thing is, while this isn't bad, it isn't exactly good, either. The animation is pretty

This was a very confused movie. I'm not saying that just because I got a little tipsy before watching it, but you may want to keep that fact in mind. The first five minutes are insipid crap, and then the action moves to Mars and I started to... enjoy the movie! The premise is, the kids of Mars are addicted to Earth TV, and they are depressed and not eating. The leader of the Martians calls up his deputies and seeks the advice of the Ancient One. The Ancient One tells him the kids are sick because with the Martian advanced learning technology, the kids learn how to be adults too fast, and never learn to have fun. He recommends seeking the specialist in childhood joy: Santa Claus.  And so the Martians set off to capture Santa. Now, for all the inherent silliness, most (not all) of the actors playing Martians are acting just as serious about their roles as most any cast member of Star Trek, Forbidden Planet, etc. There is a serious problem on their planet, this will fix it, so t